What is a Christian worldview?

As this book presents the difference between Christianity and other worldviews, the goal is to sharpen your perspective on your own biblical worldview. Obviously, the Christian uses the Bible to answer all those worldview questions mentioned above: There is only one God, who is supreme and sovereign. And while He is transcendent-above and beyond us, He is also immanent-right here among us at the same time. He created it all-the universe and the world in which we live. Furthermore, He did it with absolutely nothing. He didn't rearrange or put together matter of some kind that was as eternal as He is.

As for knowledge, the Christian worldview doesn't agree with skeptics who say knowledge is simply unattainable. (By the way, if you want to ruin a skeptic's day, ask him how he knows knowledge is unattainable.) Because God is the all-knowing knower of everything, and because we are made in His image (see Gen. 1:27), we can know all we need to know as we work on our own Christian worldview. Obviously, the most important part of a Christian's worldview is knowing God. We can know God through two forms of revelation: the created order of His universe and special revelation - the Scriptures. More on this also in chapter 1.)

Although the greatest human intellects have studied the creation, men are in utter darkness as to its origin and purpose. The Christian, receiving by faith the word of God, understands "that the worlds were framed by the word of God"; and that God created all things "to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God" (Heb. 11:3. Eph. 3:9-10).

An immense fact — simple but of vast import — characterises Christianity. It gives us a positive object; and this object is nothing less than God Himself. Human nature may discover the folly of that which is false. We scorn false gods and graven images; but we cannot get beyond ourselves, we cannot reveal anything to ourselves. One of the most renowned names of antiquity is pleased to tell us, that all would go well if men followed nature (it is manifest that they could not rise above it); and, if fact, he would be in the right if man were not fallen. But to require man to follow nature is a proof that he is fallen, that he has degraded himself below the normal state of that nature. He does not follow it in the walk that suits its constitution. All is in disorder. Self-will carries him away and acts in his passions. Man has forsaken God, and has lost the power and centre of attraction that kept him in his place and everything in his own nature in its place. Man cannot recover himself, he cannot direct himself; for, apart from God, there is nothing but self-will that guides man. There are many objects that furnish occasion for the acting of the passions and the will; but there is no object which, as a centre, gives him a regular, constant, and durable moral position in relationship with that object, so that his character should bear its stamp and value. Man must either have a moral centre, capable of forming him as a moral being, by attracting him to itself and filling his affections, so that he shall be the reflex of that object; or he must act in self-will, and then he is the sport of his passions; or, which is the necessary consequence, he is the slave of any object that takes possession of his will. A creature, who is a moral being, cannot subsist without an object. To be self-sufficing is the characteristic of God.

One of the chief privileges of a Christian is to have to do with God in everything. Being himself God's workmanship, he is never in his true place except when under the dominion and direction of the Divine will. In all the circumstances and relations of life he has to act or to suffer according to the truth and the power of God. The government of the world, in what manner soever it may be conducted, or in whose hands soever it may happen to, be, is by the Christian to be referred to God. The powers that be are ordained of Him. Now the natural thought of man is far from this truth. To regard himself as the origin of his own honour is a characteristic trait of the natural man at all times. At the present day, we find on every side the assertion of this principle in the broadest terms.

More than this; it is only by looking at Christ that I know the future according to God any more than the present place of the Christian. The nations are wearying themselves in the very fire for vanity, trying this expedient and that to improve the world. I do not wonder that statesmen have weary heads; I do not wonder that there is constant change and disappointment; for in point of fact it is only man trying to patch up a thing that cannot be mended. But then here is what God will do. With Him is no patching up, but the bringing in what He calls a new creation. This is what God has in hand. He does not mean alone to bring glory to Himself by taking men up to heaven to be with Christ there, and reign with Him, but also to bless men under Christ's reign on earth. And how does one know this? By bringing Christ into the consideration of man here below. God has promised Christ the earth, and all things; for He did not merely reconcile those that believed, but all things. Consequently it is there we see the triumph of the truth as against all the rationalizing of men. Rationalism merely allows of man's experience whereby to judge all else. According to it man cannot work miracles, and therefore there were none! man cannot prophesy, and therefore there could not be prophecy! Everything in this school is founded on man's little circle of power, knowledge, and experience; but man is far from being the measure of everything, — is, in fact, the measure of nothing. Christ is the measure of all things. Christ is the truth, and that is what I have wished to press on you.

Hence, for example, when the Godhead willed to express Itself in creation, all things were created by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. It may be difficult to utter the meaning of that wonderful verse; but we may glean from it that everything, from highest to lowest and from greatest to the least, came from the hand of the Word, and was intended to be, each thing in its measure, an expression of the glory of the invisible God. (See Rom. 1:19-20; so also Ps. 19:1.) Not merely that it was created, nor merely that it was created by the agency of the Son (both of which remain true), but that when it was so brought into being it took its form and function as part of a vast creation intended to give expression to the eternal power and Godhead of its Creator. It is thus possible to find in nature — in its laws, its forms, its colours, its minerals, its forces — illustrations without end of divine realities. Material things themselves are not the great ultimate reality, but they serve as vehicles to convey to intelligent creatures the great Reality that lies behind them. And that Reality is God Himself.

227 This closes the preface: Solomon now enters on his subject. "The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge" - not of wisdom, but of knowledge. A weighty sentence. All true knowledge, all moral knowledge begins by putting God in His own place. Nothing is right or true without that. For to leave Him out falsifies the position and relationship of all. I may know physical facts and what are called laws (that is, abstractions from uniform facts), but that is all, without it. Not that there are no instituted relationships, for there are, as parents, husband and wife, and others now man is fallen. But right and wrong refer to each in its place. And not only is the fear of God a motive, which maintains their authority in the heart, but, if I leave God out, what has instituted them and given them their authority is wanting. Each stone has its own place in the arch, but if the keystone be wanting, none can keep theirs.

Never call it worldliness to discharge aright your duty here below. It is worldly-mindedness wherever the world or its things may occupy us as an object, instead of pleasing and doing the will of the Lord here below. It is not what you are doing which is so important as fellowship with His mind; it may be in appearance the most holy work, but if it links Christ and His name with the world, it is only deceiving ourselves and playing so much the more into the hands of the enemy. But, on the other hand, supposing it is connected with the world, there may be the most ordinary act, yet as far as possible from worldliness, even though it were only blacking a shoe. It is hardly needful to say that the power of Christianity may be enjoyed in the heart and ways of a shoe-black just as truly as anywhere else. Anything that is outside Christ will not preserve, and must have the stamp of the world on it; whereas, on the other hand, so great is the efficacy of Christ that if my heart is set upon Him, and seeking after what is suitable to Him at the right hand of God, we become truly witnesses of Him; and, supposing there is real occupation with Him there, this will assuredly give to what we do a heavenly stamp, and impart the truest and highest dignity, no matter what we may be about.

Since the days of Job and Solomon the eternal Wisdom has come into the world in the person of the Son of God. Every thing must now be considered in relation to Him. "Christ is the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:24). What can man show in the way of power in comparison with the "exceeding greatness" of the power of God "which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places"? (Eph. 1:20) What wisdom can man show, with all his research, that will compare with what God revealed when He turned Calvary's disgraceful gibbet into the means of salvation and blessing for countless myriads? Men denied His beloved Son the petty dignity of kingship over the Jews, and God has given Him the headship of the universe; and all that has come to Christ, and will yet come to Him, was settled in the counsels of infinite love ages before men imbrued their hands in the blood of the Holy One! His enemies will yet be confounded at their own folly and be constrained to acknowledge the surpassing wisdom of God. "The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Cor. 1:25). "Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (1 Cor. 3:18-19). The man who leaves God and Christ out of his life's scheme is as hopelessly adrift as a vessel in a storm without chart and rudder.