Trouble at Coral Ridge

If you're not aware of the troubles at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, I won't tell you, because I don't want to ruin your day.

But let's look at what has gone wrong:

Rev. Tullian Tchividian (did I spell that right?) takes to Christianity Today to defend himself.  I can't help but notice Tullian's Christ-like willingness to forgive.  But no sense of any willingness to ask for forgiveness.

One group has formed a faction, and taken that faction on to plant a new church.  Do people not realize that factions and divisions are reckoned by the Bible in the same category as orgies and witchcraft?
Galatians 5:19-21  Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,  20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions,  21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  


When we hear that a group of the church - including the late Dr. Kennedy's daughter - formed a breakaway group, we ought to hear that as if they had protested Tullian's new call by having a drunken orgy.  Outrageous!  Scripture says, "People like you will not go to heaven - you will not inherit the kingdom of God."

I am far from impressed with Rev. Tchividian.  He is slick, he courts the press, and he seems to have packages the "unpackaged" motif.  He's accidentally cool, and should be far more willing to, say, wear a robe because the people want him to wear a robe.  Submit in love, Tullian!  And stop broadcasting your humility all over Christianity Today, the mag grandpa Billy started.

But that still doesn't excuse people for divining Coral Ridge's future by slaughtering a sheep and reading its liver strife, rivalries, dissensions, and divisions.  I mean, we are talking about two separate congregations with the exact same doctrine.  If they can split over admitted non-essentials, what hope is there?

This could have been handled so many ways but this.

Machen on the Meaning of Freedom, Gal. 1:3-7

The Christian does indeed live still in this world.  It is a travesty on this Pauline doctrine when it is held to mean that when he escapes, inwardly, from the present evil world by the redeeming work of Christ the Christian can calmly leave the world to its fate.  On the conrary, Christian men, even after they have been redeemed, are left in this world, and in this world they have an important duty to perform.

In the first place, they do not stand alone, but are united in the great brotherhood of the Christian Church.  Into that brotherhood it is their duty to invite other men by the preaching of the gospel; and they should pray that that preaching, through the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit in the new birth, may be efficacious, and that the great brotherhood may expand yet more and more.

In the second place, Christians should by no means adopt a negative attitude toward art, government, science, literature, and the other achievements of mankind, but should consecrate these things to the service of God.  The separateness of the Christian from the world is not to be manifested, as so many seem to think that it should be manifested, by the presentation to God of only an impoverished man; but it is to be manifested by the presentation to God of all man's God-given powers developed to the full.  That is the higher Christain humanism, a humanism based not upon human pride but upon the solid foundation of the grace of God. 

But these considerations do not make any less radical the step of which Paul speaks.  It remains true that the Christian has escaped from this present age - from this present world with all its sin and all its pride.  The Christian continues to live in the world, but he lives in it as its master and not as its slave.  He can move the world because at last he has a place to stand.

J. Gresham Machen, Machen's Notes on Galatians, ed. John H. Skilton (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1972), 32-33.