My mom used to make butter from fresh cow’s milk. She poured it into a churn and agitated it with a wooden plunger. This caused the milk solids to separate from the liquid. She then skimmed the butter off the top and pressed it into a mold. When the butter cooled, the cake had the shape of the mold. It also had a floral design on top from the pattern in the bottom of the mold.1
This butter-making process illustrates what Christians must not do. We must not conform to a mold unfit for the messianic age.
Nonconformity in Paul’s Writings
Paul mentioned this nonconformity in his exhortations to the saints in Rome (Rom 12:1–16:27). After giving eleven chapters of foundational teaching, the apostle says
Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. (Rom 12:1–2, HCSB; emphasis added)
According to inmillennialism—our prophetic model—“this age” means the Mosaic age. Paul says Christians, whether Jew or Gentile, must reject their old-age lifestyles.
In the previous age, the Jews had the Mosaic law. It governed their Temple and its rituals. At all levels, personal and national, the law defined what was clean and unclean. It regulated the Jews’ life. This would change in the new messianic age.
The Gentiles had their gods, temples, and superstitions. Pagan religions defined life for the Gentiles. Paul reminded the Corinthians of this. He said, “Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led” (1 Cor 12:2). The Gentile ignorance of the Mosaic age was passing away in Paul’s generation (Acts 17:30).
Things were changing for Jew and Gentile. The old order of things was ending. It was “ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13). The saints were “receiving a kingdom.” In it, they would “serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Heb 12:28). So, the Roman Christians must reject conformity to the Mosaic-age way of life.
Paul said the Roman Christians knew “the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light” (Rom 13:11–12).
The night of the Mosaic age was almost over. The day of the messianic age was at hand. It was time for people to live in the daytime.
Paul goes on to describe this way of living as kingdom life. Christ is now “Lord both of the dead and living” (Rom 14:9; emphasis added). He is reigning. And, “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Rom 14:17; emphasis added). “Meat and drink” rituals—whether Jewish or Gentile—are futile. God’s kingdom ethic has replaced them.
Paul’s vision of the Christian life was one of kingdom nonconformity.
Nonconformity in the Sermon on the Mount
Paul was following in his Lord’s footsteps. Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5–7) defines kingdom living. “The unifying theme of the sermon is the kingdom of heaven.”2 We discussed the Sermon’s kingdom orientation in our last post (here). It defines kingdom nonconformity. It is the manual for living for Christ’s followers.
Here, Jesus teaches what comprises true happiness. Poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, an intense desire for righteousness, mercy, cleanness in heart, peacemaking, and suffering persecution for righteousness’s sake (Matt 5:3–12). These things bring blessedness. And, they are counter-intuitive. How many self-help manuals list these as ways to happiness? Only kingdom nonconformists seek happiness in this manner.
Those who obey the Sermon show the world the way to happiness. They are “the light of the world” (Matt 5:14). This light-bearing brings glory to the Father (Matt 5:16). Human kingdoms promise their citizens happiness through humanly devised means. They fail. Only God’s kingdom can produce true blessedness.
To live according to Jesus’s commandments is to reject non-kingdom ethics. It is to live a life of kingdom nonconformity.
Nonconformity in Us
We need to remind ourselves of several truths about this kingdom living. First, the need for kingdom nonconformity has not passed away. The Mosaic age ended in AD 70, but pre-messianic ways of thinking persist. Paul said,
Thou hast put all things in subjection under his [Christ’s] feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. (Heb 2:8–9; emphasis added)
“The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16) still try to lead us into vanity. To live in the kingdom of heaven, we must still adopt its nonconformist lifestyle.
Second, God means for kingdom life to occur in a local church. The kingdom of heaven is the reign of Christ over his people in his churches. Revelation gives a picture of this. “In the midst of the seven candlesticks [i.e., churches] one like unto the Son of man” stands (Rev 1:13). He instructs, encourages, and rebukes his churches as needed.
The prophets said the kingdom would grow. For example, the king of Babylon saw this in a dream. Daniel interpreted the prophetic symbols. “The stone [i.e., the kingdom of heaven] that smote the image [pagan empires] became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth” (Dan 2:35). The New Testament shows this kingdom growth. It occurs by the multiplication of churches (Acts 2:37; 8:1; 9:31; 13:1–3; 14:23; 1 Cor 14:33; Titus 2:5; et al.).
So, the kingdom of heaven comprises local congregations of nonconforming people. They refuse to allow anything other than a kingdom ethic to guide their lives. Their ethics come from Scripture, especially from the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5–7).
Third, Jesus died to create a people who live this way. Paul said, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10; emphasis added).
Here is a hard saying. If we do not live as kingdom nonconformists, we are not Jesus’s disciples. The Lord said, “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you” (John 15:14; emphasis added). John agreed. “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4).
Conclusion
Our culture tries to force us, like soft butter, into its mold. It wants to make us after its own image.
We must not allow this to happen.
God, through Christ, has established his kingdom. Our Lord and his apostles have preached the gospel of the kingdom to us (Matt 4:23; 9:35; 24:14; Acts 8:12; 20:25; 28:31).
That gospel requires us to repent of our sins and submit to Christ. It demands we make the Sermon on the Mount our manual for living. Anything less than this belongs to the pre-messianic age.
The rewards for this kingdom-submission are great. Kingdom nonconformity produces a joy and happiness found nowhere else. Because of this, the apostles could say, “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice” (Php 4:4).
This is my wish for you. “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost” (Rom 15:13).
Footnotes
- The image in this post (here) is used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 only as published by the Free Software Foundation.
- D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 127.
2 comments
👍🏼 Good reading
Thanks! May the Lord be praised.