Our Moral Climate Does Not Encourage Faith

By A. W. Tozer

And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake:
but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.
- Matthew 10:22

There is a plain and evident fact in genuine Christianity
that is often overlooked by eager evangelists bent on
getting results: that to accept Christ it is necessary that
we reject whatever is contrary to Him!

Let us not be shocked by the suggestion that there are
disadvantages to the life in Christ.  Everyone who has
lived for Christ in a Christless world has suffered some
losses and endured some pains that he could have avoided
by the simple expedient of laying down his cross.

The contemporary moral climate does not favor a
faith as tough and fibrous as that taught by our Lord and
His apostles.  The delicate, brittle saints being produced in
our religious hothouses today are hardly to be compared
with the committed, expendable believers who once gave
their witness among men.  And the fault lies with our leaders.
They are too timid to tell the people all the truth.  They are
now asking men to give to God that which costs them nothing!

When will Christians learn that to love righteousness
it is necessary to hate sin? -- that to accept Christ it is
necessary to reject self? -- that to follow the good way we
must flee from evil? -- that a friend of the world is an
enemy of God? -- that God allows no twilight zone
between two altogethers, where the fearful and the
doubting may take refuge at once from hell to come
and the rigors of present discipline?
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Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.