Thinking Christ in a Pagan World

In Acts 15 we read of the Jerusalem council, a meeting of the Apostles to decide what should be done with the Hellenistic followers of Christ, what rules they must follow and to what extent the Jewish law would define their lives. At the end of the council the Apostles write a letter stating that, “It seemed best to the Holy Spirit and to us not to place any greater burden on you than these necessary rules: that you abstain from meat that has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from doing these things, you will do well.” Acts 15:28-29 (NET Bible).

Andrew Walls, an eminent Scottish missiologist, argued that this was a defining moment in the development of Christianity. Prior to the Jerusalem council there was a way for gentiles to become followers of the One True God, but this involved becoming a proselyte, one who took on all the symbols and traditions of the Jewish faith, including circumcision, the Torah, and the law.[i] Walls argues that had the Jerusalem council chosen to demand that gentile believers follow the traditions and symbols of the Jewish faith, “It is safe to say that huge areas of Hellenistic life would have been left untouched by Christian faith.” The implication of being a proselyte was that one was required to follow all of the laws of the Jews, thus there was no need to worry about how to respond to a pagan world, because joining the Jewish faith meant effectively leaving that world. As a proselyte there was no way a Hellenistic believer could have gone into a pagan’s house to have dinner, or participated in the pagan community’s culture. Walls goes on to explain, “But Paul envisioned a new sort of Christian lifestyle, where believers do join pagans at the dinner table and have to face the implications of acting, thinking and speaking as a Christian in that situation…He envisioned Hellenistic Christians operating within Hellenistic social and family life, challenging and disturbing it, bringing about radical change in it…”[ii]

To be Christian converts in Greek culture, rather than Jewish proselytes in Greek culture was a greater challenge than simply converting to Judaism and living according to the Law. Walls reminds us that, “Greek speaking Jews were negotiating someone else’s culture while retaining their identity; Greek Christians were negotiating their own culture while expressing a Christian identity.”[iii] This means that they had no precedent for their behavior, no model to follow, save Christ, who, filled with the Holy Spirit, came to do the will of His Father. Proselytes were able to look back to the law, back to the traditions of the Jewish faith; the new followers of Jesus had to rely on the Holy Sprit, who alone could lead them into Christian action within the cultural realm in which they lived.

As these new converts brought Christ into their own Hellenistic traditions, lifestyle and intellectual traditions, they began to shape Christianity not by obeying the Jewish law, but by applying the truth revealed by the Spirit to their lives as Greeks. Walls sums up the distinction between a proselyte and a convert by saying, “Converts have to be constantly, relentlessly, turning their ways of thinking, their education and training, their ways of working and doing things, toward Christ. They must think Christ into the patterns of thought they have inherited, into their network of relationship and their process of making decisions…Proselytes may walk by sight, converts must walk by faith.”[iv]

It was this converted Christianity that turned the third century world upside down; as followers of Jesus who were Greek, Roman, and African applied Christ to their intellectual and cultural traditions, they developed the church as it has existed over the centuries. Over the centuries and decades the Holy Sprit has led, forming the church, correcting errors, and allowing the church to continue applying truth to the cultures into which it enters; however, there continues to be a grave danger that we, as the church, will proselytize, rather than convert, those with whom we come into contact.

The Modern Church: Converts and Proselytes

The unfortunate reality is that the “judaizing” tendency of the church did not end with the Jerusalem Council, instead it has been a continual battle to remember that we were not called to a specific set of traditions, rather we were called to God, by Jesus Christ, and it is through the leading of His Holy Spirit that we come into all truth. The modern church stands, again, on the brink of such a decision, with a strong need for a new Jerusalem Council to reaffirm that converts are called to “think Christ” into the intellectual, social and cultural reality from which they come, rather than converting to a set of traditions which, while providing specific guidelines on how to live a traditional Christian life, will remove them from the culture into which they have been freed to speak.

Over the last twenty years the culture of the United States has changed dramatically. Gone is the faith in organization and academic understanding as means of perfecting the world. Over the last two centuries Christians spoke into a Modern world, thinking Christ into the structures and organization in which they lived and worked. In cultures founded on professionalism and structural organization, evangelical Christians developed highly structured, professionally led churches; churches with ridged structures, professional pastors, and careful academic defenses of doctrine. These churches (as in every generation) had their problems. Looking back we can question the wisdom of professionalizing Christian work, of forming such ridged structures that many attendees of churches feel their role was primarily that of a spectator while paid staff attempt to lead them into spiritual health; yet despite all its problems, we must also recognize that in its time the “traditional” church has had a major impact on the world around it. “Traditional” pastors like Peter Marshall and A. W. Tozer carried the person of Christ into 19th and 20th Century America in a way that touched the lives and academic currents of the age. They thought Christ into their culture and the Lord blessed their work. But cultures change, and though the change is gradual, it is easily missed. Over the past twenty to thirty years the culture of the United States has changed, and the church has largely missed the change, contentedly bringing in proselytes rather than calling for converts.

The church has continued to pursue traditions that served it well in the decades of the 1930s and 1940s: it has continued to maintain a firm structure, with seminary educated pastors, university trained musicians and neatly subdivided ministry areas. Christians continue to publish logical arguments against evolution, or for the existence of God, even as the culture questions logic as the bedrock of human knowledge. The culture has shifted, and in shifting it has moved away from those perspectives that made the church of the past two centuries so effective. The culture has shifted away from structure, and has become skeptical of claims to objective truth. They have seen the failure of organizations. The promise that given the right structure and organization, the right education and the correct truths we could perfect the world, have proven empty lies. The current generations is looking for experiences that give meaning to their lives, rather than truths that will define their lives; they are interested in hearing stories rather than carefully orchestrated arguments, and they are open to the existence of a reality beyond what is visible. The transformation of the culture, and the resistance of the church to change, has left the church in the position of once again demanding proselytes rather than calling people to conversion. Unchanging church structures demand that individuals enter into a new culture, a church culture, in order to follow Christ, instead of demanding that new Christians think Christ into the patterns of culture in which they live.

Let me clarify, I am not arguing that there is no universal truth, nor that we are called to live just like the world. The Word of God is clear that there is universal truth, there is sin, and there are things we are called, as followers of Jesus, to leave behind; but the church has complicated these things by adding the need to enter into a culture based on structures, traditions and intellectual movements that grew out of the 1900s; a culture that is largely foreign to youths who come to know the Lord today.

So what does it look like to call converts, instead of proselytes? Does that mean we cease to have churches or no longer train pastors? I don’t think so, rather it means that we allow those who are of this generation to define the form church takes so that it fits into the cultural, social and intellectual traditions in which they live. Like the apostles we recognize Biblical truth, that there is a necessity to obey certain things (including abstaining from sexual immorality, which is a huge part of the current culture), we recognize that we are called to follow Christ, and that any disobedience to His commands is not acceptable; but we also recognize that the call of the converted has never been clear. That within the bounds of Christ’s commandments there are areas of gray, in which we must depend on the Holy Spirit to lead us into the wisdom of God. If the church wishes to have an impact on the current generation like the impact had by the early Christians, or like the impact had by those pastors and elders who applied to truth of Christ to the 19th and 20th century in which they lived, we must set converts free to enter into the messy task of thinking Christ into the social and cultural traditions, into the intellectual landscape and into the pagan world in which they live. It is only as they are given freedom in the Spirit that the church will again touch the culture in which it exists.


[i] Andrew Walls. “Converts or Proselytes? The Crisis Over Conversion in the early Chruch.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research. Vol. 28, #1 January, 2004.
[ii] Ibid, 5.
[iii] Ibid, 6.
[iv] Ibid, 6.