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Nike Christianity: Why Just Doing It Doesn’t Do It

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Admin

By: Daniel M. Doriani

What is Nike Christianity?

Performance Christianity, or Nike Christianity, is a “just do it” approach to the Christian life. Nike Christianity is a form of legalism. Nike Christians avoid the worst errors, but so accentuate obedience to God’s law that other ideas shrivel up. They think of Christian living as little more than obedience to God’s law.

They reason, “God says we should tithe, so tithe.

The Bible says we must pray, so pray.

It says submit to leaders, witness, read Scripture, so we should submit, witness, and read.

“Just do it!”

Some Christian leaders unintentionally support Nike Christianity. They reason, “God has redeemed us at the cost of his Son’s life. Now he demands our service in return. This is our duty.”

They dwell on God’s law and neglect the other aspects of the Christian life—the love of others, the nurture of character, the pursuit of noble but entirely optional projects, and more.

Here is how a counseling session from a Nike Christian may sound:

Some of you are doing bad things. You should stop! God wants you to do good things instead of bad things.
Some of you are doing good things. Keep it up!
Here is how to keep it up. You must plan to endure, taking these steps: Make a decision. Pray every morning. Commit yourself to God, 100 percent. Avoid temptation. Guard your mind, heart, and eyes. Seek a partner in accountability. Then you will stay on the right path.

The Problem with Nike Christianity

In one way, no one could object to this advice; those who dispense it certainly mean well. But the relentless stress on what men should do misses the most basic issue, the heart issue. Men fail to take the steps to “keep it up” because they don’t want to keep it up.

Please understand: it is good to submit to God’s law and follow Jesus’ example. The Savior is also our Sovereign and Lord (Jude 4). But obedience is one element of the Christian life, not the whole. Indeed, the emphasis on obedience places the will ahead of the heart.

Grace Before Law

From beginning to end, God’s love and grace go before his demands. We love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). The love of Christ, who died for us, compels us to live not for ourselves but for God (2 Cor. 5:14–15). It is “the grace of God,” not the law of God, that “teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions” (Titus 2:11–12). Commands don’t change people, love does. Unless God first loves a man and reconciles that man to himself, he cannot obey God’s commands. Law, by itself, cannot change the heart.

From The New Man: Becoming a Man After God’s Heart

Daniel M. Doriani

Daniel M. Doriani is vice president of strategic academic projects and professor of theology at Covenant Theological Seminary. Previously he was senior pastor of Central Presbyterian Church in Clayton, Missouri.

NEW RELEASE – Modesty by Martha Peace & Kent Keller

Posted on August 14, 2015 by Kim

Modesty: More Than a Change of Clothes by Martha Peace & Kent Keller

176 pages | List Price: $12.99

Summary: Modesty might seem like a “gray area,” but it should matter to us because it matters to God! In the Bible, immodesty is forbidden for reasons that go beyond mere outward appearance. Martha and Kent write to teen girls in alternating sections, helping them to identify immodesty’s causes and consequences, detect legalism, and seek modesty in their actions and dress. Includes discussion questions.

About the Authors:

Martha Peace is a certified biblical counselor and conference speaker, as well as a best-selling author. She lives with her husband, Sanford, in Peachtree City, Georgia.

Kent Keller (MDiv, The Master’s Seminary) has spoken at the Shepherds’ Conference and at youth ministry conferences in South Africa and Australia. He has also taught at training institutes in Croatia and Ukraine and is associate pastor at Faith Bible Church, Sharpsburg, Georgia.


What Others Say About This Book:

“It is refreshing to see the topic of modesty elevated to the importance that it deserves!”

—Mary K. Mohler, Director, Seminary Wives Institute

“A God-centered, gospel-saturated, and practical guide to the uncomfortable topic of modesty.”

—Brian H. Cosby, Author, Giving Up Gimmicks

“Martha and Kent carefully apply the Bible’s teaching on the heart of modesty. We highly recommend it to you.”

—John and Lynn Crotts, Faith Bible Church

Teaching the Tough Stuff: Why We Go to Church

Posted on August 14, 2015 by Admin

By Starr Meade

The church has come under harsh attack in our time.

Those outside the church have long maintained that they do not need church involvement in order to have valid spiritual experiences. One can worship alone in a beautiful, natural setting just as well (maybe even better), they say, than in a building with walls. In our time, though, even many who profess Christianity have no use for the organized church. They maintain that churches are filled with hypocrites or led by those whose doctrine is hopelessly corrupt. They despair of finding any church leaders worthy of following. If they gather with other believers at all, they do it in “The Church of the Living Room,” where decisions and beliefs are based on the consensus of a few like-minded individuals. Or they connect with an electronic church. Even to attend, let alone join, an actual local church that meets regularly in a building is considered unnecessary at best, and possibly even detrimental to one’s Christian faith.

The problem with such thinking is that it directly opposes the Bible in general and the New Testament in particular. From the beginning, God’s purpose has been to have a people, not simply a collection of individual persons, as his own people. We first meet the promise “they shall be my people and I shall be their God” in Genesis, and we can follow it through the entire Bible. (In fact, it can be a worthwhile exercise to use a concordance with children whose reading skills are adequate and trace those words through the Bible. God says them to Abraham, to Moses,

to the Israelites in the wilderness, to kings, to prophets—and apostles continue to quote them in their epistles.) To be joined to Christ is to be joined to his church. The entire New Testament calls believers to active involvement in that union. Summarizing God’s purpose for his whole creation as described by Paul in Ephesians 3, J. I. Packer writes, “It [the church] is the centerpiece of God’s plan to display his mind-boggling wisdom and goodness to all the angelic powers.”

Three New Testament metaphors can help to show children how important the church is from the perspective of Christ and his apostles.

The Bride Metaphor

The first metaphor is that of a bride. The church is Christ’s bride (Eph. 5:25–32). Ask your children to think of a story or movie where a man has to do brave and difficult things to earn the right to marry the woman he loves. The prince in the story of Sleeping Beauty has to break the sleeping spell and, in Disney’s version, fight the dragon. In Beauty and the Beast, the Beast has to find a way to get Belle to love him in spite of his frightful appearance. You can also tell any stories you might have of a male relative or friend the children know who had to meet a protective father’s demands or surmount obstacles in order to marry the woman he loved. Christ’s love for his bride brought him from the glory of heaven to our broken world, then caused him to give his life in the place of his bride. If we claim to love him, how can we not care about the bride he loves so dearly?

The Human Body Metaphor

The second metaphor is that of a human body (1 Cor. 12:12–27). The Bible tells us that the church is the body of Christ. Christ is the head. He directs, commands, gives life itself to all the members. They are united under him into one whole, each useless and unable to function if cut off from the rest. To illustrate the importance of each member of Christ’s body to the body as a whole, you can give children tasks to accomplish while not allowing them to use specific, necessary body parts. Move an item from the floor up onto a table without using your hands. Travel across a room without moving your legs. Find page 139 in a book while wearing a blindfold. The New Testament tells us that God himself has gifted each believer with abilities to use for the benefit of other believers, and has then put them all together into a body. Each member needs the others. Each member is required to minister to the others.

The Building Metaphor

The third biblical metaphor is that of a building, intended as a dwelling of the Holy Spirit (Eph. 2:19–22). You can draw a picture of a building with your children, labeling and discussing the importance of a foundation (the teaching of the apostles and prophets), a chief cornerstone (Christ himself), and every single brick (individual believers). What good is a brick when it is all by itself, separate from the rest of the structure?

About: Starr Meade

Starr Meade served for ten years as the director of children’s ministries in a local church and has taught Bible and Latin classes in Christian Schools. She lives in Mesa, Arizona, where she is currently teaching classes to homeschoolers.

Teaching the Tough Stuff: Omniscience

Posted on August 13, 2015 by Admin

By Starr Meade

It can stagger our little minds to consider all that God holds in his. He knows every fact and every property related to every created thing, the billions of facts that all humanity combined know as well as the billions more that remain unknown to man.

Why it’s important

As your child goes through life, what he knows of God will prove a tremendous comfort to him if God is his God. One of the things he should know is that God possesses all knowledge. When your child faces a decision or fears an unknown future, he can trust that the God who has promised to lead him knows all that he does not know. In times of strained relationships, when others have misunderstood or wrongly judged him, your child can rest in the assurance that God—whose opinion matters most—knows his heart. Even the assurance that God knows all our sin brings comfort. Isn’t it true that if even our dearest loved ones knew what we were really like they would turn from us in disgust? But God knows his people inside out.

Your child can rejoice in the love of God who knows the very worst about him—and who goes on loving. God will never discover something about your child that will cause him to cast him off. God already knows it all.

Tips for teaching

You can get your child to begin to consider what it means for God to know everything by asking her to tell you some of the things she doesn’t know. “What will the weather be like on your birthday?” “What is your best friend doing right now?” “What word am I thinking of?” “How many stars are there (exact number, please)?” “What are the names of every person who was alive on the earth five-hundred years ago today?” None of this is difficult for God. He knows all. You can help your child to practice living in the awareness of God’s unlimited knowledge by reminding her, when good things happen to her, “Did God know you would like that?” Likewise, when things aren’t going her way, “Does God know what you would rather have? Does God know what’s best? Can you trust him to choose this for you instead?”

Don’t be afraid to expand their vocab!

When we give our children vocabulary, we familiarize them with the concepts the words represent. You can demonstrate how words are like Lego bricks; you can take them apart and reassemble the pieces with other parts to make something different. School-age children probably know the terms carnivore (meat-eater) and herbivore (planteater). Explain to them that an omnivore eats all things, plants or meat. Bears, skunks, and humans are omnivores. Then use omni and add it to present, meaning here, to get all-present or present in all places. Add omni to scient (related to science and meaning knowing), and you have omniscient, all-knowing. You can also do this with potent, a word for strong. Omnipotent means all-powerful. People avoid theological words in general, and especially with children. But theological words have such wealth of meaning! So, instead, let’s use them and make sure to teach their meanings to our children.

This article is adapted from Give Them Truth by Starr Meade

Calling Something Christian Doesn’t Make it Christian

Posted on August 12, 2015 by Admin

By Starr Meade

Once upon a time there were three little pigs who left home to make their way in the world. They all decided to build houses for themselves. The first little pig chose to build his house of straw. Straw was inexpensive, and a house made of it would be easy to build. The second little pig chose to make his house of sticks. His house might cost a little more, in terms of materials and labor, but he should still have plenty of time and money left to amuse himself as he saw fit.

The third little pig was serious about his house. Unlike his brothers, he wanted a real house. He understood that a structure isn’t a house because someone says it’s a house; it’s a house if it can serve as a shelter and as living quarters. How much shelter can straw—or even sticks—provide in a storm? Won’t the rain drip through and the cold easily penetrate? Won’t the wind tear such “houses” apart—as, in fact, even the wind generated by the breath of a hungry wolf eventually demonstrated? Our third little pig, being serious about his house, had to invest in it. He had to spend time earning money to purchase bricks, and then spend more time building a house with them. But in the end, only one pig had a house that fit the definition of a house. Only that house stood up to the assault of a wolf eager for a ham dinner.

Many belief systems in our day go by the name of “Christian.” Many people call themselves “Christians.” But just like calling a structure a house doesn’t make it one, so calling something Christian doesn’t make it Christian. Only Christ and the apostles he chose get to determine what is truly Christian—or, as they put it, what is the true testimony of the disciples (John 21:24), what is “the pattern of the sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13), what are “the traditions that you were taught” by the apostles “either by . . . spoken word or by . . . letter”(2 Thess. 2:15), what is the “true grace of God” (1 Peter 5:12), and what is “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). There are set and specific truths that comprise the Christian faith, and for something to be Christian, it must embrace those truths. Conversely, there are limits and parameters. Teaching and ideas that go beyond what Christ and the apostles laid down as the foundation of the faith are not Christian, no matter what their advocates call them. We want our children to have a true and lasting faith, and so we must build, not with what might be easiest, or with what might cost the least, but with what truly makes Christianity Christian. Christianity is, first of all, a body of truth—to be known, understood, embraced, applied, and passed on. “Spiritual” ideas and feelings, divorced from that body of truth, are not Christian, no matter what those who have them say. Our children must know, first of all, the body of truth taught by Jesus, built upon and communicated by the apostles, and passed down in the church through centuries. Without that body of truth, they do not have Christianity.

This article is adapted from Give Them Truth by Starr Meade