When we watch the New Testament church at work, we see that there were two impulses. One was to preserve, maintain, and protect the gospel message. "Guard the good deposit entrusted to you," Paul urged Timothy (2 Tim. 1:14). "I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints," pled Jude (Jude 1:3).

The Two Impulses

But preserving the faith was not the mission itself; advancing it was. The same Paul who wrote of maintaining traditions and guarding the deposit was, on other points, extremely flexible. When the essence of the gospel was at stake, he argued fiercely against circumcision (Gal. 2:3-5). But when gaining a hearing for the gospel was at stake, he quickly circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:1-3). "I have become all things to all things to all people that by all means I might save some," wrote Paul at his amenable best (1 Cor. 9:22). We call these two impulses contending and contextualizing. One is conservative—contend, fight, preserve! The other is progressive—adapt, create, advance! Good missionaries keep both hands on the wheel and always know where the ditches are.

Under-contending/Over-contextualizing

In modernity, the chief cultural sin was to insist on anything supernatural. Eager for acceptance, many preachers whittled away Christianity's sharp edges, giving ground on the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, and the historical resurrection. This was necessary, they insisted, to win over our "cultured despisers.  But in postmodernity, the cultural scorn has shifted. The supernatural is plausible again, but exclusivity and assertiveness are now taboo. The quickest way to ruffle skirts in our pluralist world is to come off rigid or narrow. So the new breed of preachers is tempted to lop off anything that sounds too exclusive—the Bible as universal truth, Jesus as the one mediator between God and man, and God's judgment, along with its remedy, penal substitutionary atonement. This is where our generation must contend or perish.