Our Lord Still Demands New Testament Standards

By A. W. Tozer

That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing,
being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the
knowledge of God.      - Colossians 1:10

    Not the naked Word only but the character of the
witness determines the quality of the Christian convert.

The church can do no more than transplant herself.
What she is in one land she will be in another. A crab
apple does not become a Grimes Golden by being carried
from one country to another.

    God has written His law deep into all life; everything
must bring forth after its kind!

    It would appear logical that a subnormal, powerless
church would not engage in missionary activity, but
again the facts contradict the theory. Christian groups
that have long ago lost every trace of moral fire never-
theless continue to grow at home and reproduce them-
selves in other lands.

    There is a weakness too in world missionary activity
carried on by the evangelical wing of the church. That
weakness is the naive assumption that we have only to
reach the last tribe with our brand of Christianity and
the world has been evangelized! This is an assumption
that we dare not make.

    Evangelical Christianity is now tragically below the
New Testament standard. Worldliness is an accepted
part of our way of life. Our religious mood is social
instead of spiritual. We have lost the art of worship.
We are not producing saints. We carry on our religious
activities after the methods of the modern advertiser.
Our literature is shallow and our hymnody borders on
sacrilege. And scarcely anyone appears to care!
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Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.