April 18 Daily Devotional

Don't let the world squeeze you into its own mold
Romans 12:2 (J.B. Phillips)

[The Beatitudes] indicate clearly ... >i>the essential, utter difference between the Christian and the non-Christian. The New Testament regards [this difference] as something absolutely basic and fundamental; and ... the first need in the Church is a clear understanding of this essential difference. It has become blurred; the world has come into the Church, and the Church has become worldly.

The line is not as distinct as it was. There were times when the distinction was clear cut, and those have always been the greatest eras in the history of the Church. We know, however, the arguments that have been put forward. We have been told that we have to make the Church attractive to the man outside, and the idea is to become as much like him as we can.

There were certain popular padres during the first world war who mixed with their men, and smoked with them, and did this, that, and the other with them, in order to en­courage them. Some people thought that, as a result, when the war was over, the ex-servicemen would be crowding into the churches. Yet it did not happen, and it never has happened that way.

The glory of the gospel is that when the Church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first. That is how revival comes. That must also be true of us as individuals.

It should not be our ambition to be as much like everybody else as we can, though we happen to be Christian, but rather to be as different from everybody who is not a Christian as we can possibly be. Our ambition should be to be like Christ; the more like Him the better, and the more like Him we become, the more we shall be unlike everybody who is not a Christian.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, i, pp. 36-7

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“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”

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