A Christian Worldview Is A Biblical Worldview
The great missionary Adoniram Judson once said, “A true disciple inquires not whether a fact is agreeable to his own reason, but whether it is in the book (the Bible). His pride has yielded to the Divine testimony . . . . Break down your pride, and yield to the Word of God.”
I think of that quote often when I consider “modern Christianity.” Why aren’t more churches and Christians having a positive impact on the world around them? Why are so many who claim the name of Christ living in such sinful ways? It would seem that they have not yielded their pride to God’s Word.
Many claim to believe in God, and many claim to be recipients of the love of God in Christ Jesus. But God’s Word is clear, “the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep His covenant and remember to do His commandments” (Psalm 103:17-18). God’s covenant love rests upon those who repent and believe, who walk in obedient faith, who are in right covenant relationship with the LORD. The steadfast love of the LORD is not upon those who have merely walked an aisle, raised their hand, said a prayer, or even joined a church… but upon those who keep His covenant and do His commandments—who keep His Word.
In Psalm 78 God’s people are commanded to be saturated with God’s Word, and to teach God’s commandments to their children, so “that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments” (Psalm 78:6-7). This is the same idea as paideia in Ephesians 6, where parents are to raise their children in a Christian culture—a Christian understanding of the world, of authority, of beauty, of citizenship, and of responsibility. It’s the same idea throughout God’s Word, like Deuteronomy 6 or throughout Proverbs where parents are commanded to raise their children in an environment saturated in and controlled by God’s Word. God’s Word must shape the norm of every area of life. Our pride, along with the whole of our lives must be yielded to the Word of God.
From Him, Through Him, And To Him: No Neutral Ground
“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36).
There are verses in Scripture that feel like mountain peaks. You climb steadily through rich theological terrain, and then suddenly you stand at the summit and see everything at once. Romans 11:36 is one of those peaks.
From Him. Through Him. To Him. All things.
Paul does not leave room for leftovers. He does not carve out a realm of human autonomy. He does not grant us a neutral corner where Christ politely waits outside. All things come from God as their source, are sustained through God as their means, and return to God as their end. That is not merely a theological statement. It is a statement about reality itself.
And if that is reality, then there is no neutrality. Again, the whole of our lives must be yielded to the Word of God. The Word of God, written and incarnate, must saturate and govern every area of life.
The Glory Question
The fundamental question of every human life is not, “Is this religious?” but, “Whose glory is this for?”
Paul said everything we do is to be done for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). We are either gladly acknowledging that all things are from Him, through Him, and to Him—or we are attempting to reroute the glory. There is no third option.
In Romans 1 Paul tells us what fallen man does: he exchanges the glory of the Creator for the creature. He suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. That suppression is not passive. It is active. It is covenantal rebellion. And it often wears the mask of neutrality.
Under the guise of religious freedom and separation of church and state we are told that education can be neutral, government can be neutral, and even culture can be neutral. But neutrality is not humility, or some way of accommodation. It is actually a claim to autonomy, and therefore a subversive act of treason.
Cornelius Van Til was right to insist that “there is no alternative but that of theonomy and autonomy.” Either God’s Word governs (theonomy), or man does (autonomy). And as Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” Either the norms come from heaven, or they are constructed on earth. There is no middle ground where no one is in charge.
In Matthew 6:10 Jesus tells us that we are to pray for God’s Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, which implies that we should be seeking to live out and live up to the same. The norms of our lives are to be heavenly norms—the norms of God found in His Word that flow from heaven itself.
In Ephesians 2 Paul makes it clear that all outside of God’s grace in Christ are covenantally dead, without God and without hope, following the prince of the power of the air, the very spirit of the age. They may think they are autonomous or unaffiliated, but there is no such thing. Jesus Himself makes it plain: “Whoever is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30). That is not the rhetoric of extremism; it is the logic of Lordship. If we are not pushing and pursuing the norms of the King, we are in fact pushing treason.
Setting The Mind On The Spirit
Paul brings this home in Romans 8. “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5).
Notice the language. Setting the mind is not accidental. It is intentional. It is directional. It is covenantal.
To set the mind on the things of the Spirit is not merely to think about “spiritual topics.” It is to view all of life through the categories and norms of God’s Word. It is to let Scripture define reality. It is a true worldview—a Christian worldview.
Colossians 3 tells us to seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Philippians 4 tells us to dwell on whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable—the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. This is not escapism. It is orientation. It is training the mind to think God’s thoughts after Him. It is how we get a biblical worldview.
If Christ is seated at the right hand of God, then He is not a private Savior tucked away in the heart. He is the reigning King. To set our minds on Him is to acknowledge that His Word sets the norms of every area of life: family, church, state, education, vocation, art, economics—everything.
This is why in 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul tells us to take every thought captive to Christ. That’s not a slogan. It is a command. But it’s a command that goes well beyond our thinking into every area of life. Which is why Paul says we must take our thoughts captive so that we will be obedient. Our minds must be captivated by Christ so that our entire lives will be. But this is a lifelong task.
Van Til once wrote, “The individual believer has a comprehensive task. His is the task of exterminating evil from the whole universe. He must begin this program in himself.” That is the starting point. We do not crusade outward while leaving our own minds untouched. We begin with repentance. We begin by asking whether our thinking has been catechized by the Spirit written Scripture or by the spirit of the age.
But we do not stop there. If Christ is Lord, then His Lordship extends outward. If Christ is Lord of lords and King of kings, then He is Lord of all.
No Neutral Education
This is especially evident in education.
I used to think that as long as I was teaching my children the Bible at home it didn’t matter if the government was teaching them everything else. Sure, I would have to unteach some things, but by and large what the public school system was teaching them was innocent enough. But I was a fool.
Education is never merely the transfer of information. It is the formation of loves. It is the shaping of what students will regard as normal, plausible, and beautiful. To be sure, there are many godly public educators who truly love the Lord. But they are told they must keep Christ out of their classroom. So the love that has formed and shaped them is not welcome in their teaching. And that’s problematic at best. But whether the teacher realizes it or not, there is always a bias and an agenda behind what’s being taught. Which means it will be hard for a teacher that’s a Christian to truly leave their faith out of their teaching, but it also means that what they are being told to teach and how they are being told to teach it has come with its own biases and agendas, ones that may claim to be neutral yet are anti-Christian nonetheless.
If a child is taught mathematics as though the universe is a brute fact rather than a creation upheld by Christ, he is not receiving neutral math. If literature is severed from moral order and ultimate meaning, that is not neutral literature. If history is taught as random progress or as the triumph of human autonomy, that is not neutral history. And it has become all too clear lately that the version of history we have been fed is a lie that is seeking to help some get more money and more power while neutralizing others, all in the name of equality. We have been fed revisionist lies that are seeking to dethrone Christ. But to quote one of their own leaders against them, “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” And God is the one who defines justice. And God is the one who controls history—it is His story after all.
C. S. Lewis once warned that when we train students to believe that values are subjective, we do not produce liberated thinkers; we produce “men without chests.” We create people whose reason and appetites are untethered from objective moral order. Neutrality—or lies disguised as such—does not produce humility. It produces hollowness. It does not produce strength. It produces fragility.
In time my wife and I pulled our kids out of public school, because we realized they didn’t just need to be taught the Bible, they needed a Christian education. Christian education, at its best, refuses all the lies. It seeks to teach every subject in the light of Christ because it believes that Christ is already Lord of every subject. It aims to show students that the world is ordered, meaningful, and governed by a faithful God. It trains them not merely to know facts but to love what is true, good, and beautiful.
But even here we must be careful. Simply placing Bible verses on the wall does not sanctify a curriculum. The deeper question is whether Scripture is setting the norms. Are we allowing God’s Word to define what justice is? What beauty is? What truth is? Or are we smuggling in the world’s definitions and baptizing them?
True Christian education is the paideia of the Lord, a Christian culture and way of life for all of life—a Christian understanding of the world, of authority, of beauty, of citizenship, and of responsibility. It is a whole environment saturated in and controlled by God’s Word. It’s being taught, in word and deed, in every subject and every area of life, that God’s Word shapes the norm of every area of life. It’s being taught to see the world through the lens of, and to yield all of life to, God’s Word.
Beyond The Classroom
If this is understood and applied rightly it should be clear that this is not merely an educational concern.
Parents cannot be neutral. Many take the so called “gentle parenting” approach these days, where they rarely tell their children “no.” Where they let their child’s emotions dictate everything. But parents who simply try to be “nice” to their children, or even try to raise their children to be “nice” but do not consciously train them in the Lordship of Christ are not raising neutral children. They are, at best, raising functional secularists with good manners. But more likely, they are raising heathens through and through.
Likewise, pastors and elders cannot be neutral. A church that proclaims forgiveness but refuses to apply Christ’s Word to culture, law, and public life is not being humble; it is truncating the gospel. If Christ is Lord, and He is, then we cannot simply be apolitical, or seek to remain unaffiliated. We have been commissioned by Christ to disciple the nations. And that means we are in the culture war whether we realize it or not. We are either gaining ground or giving ground away—we are either being salt and light, or giving in to the darkness.
Likewise, magistrates cannot be neutral. Law always reflects morality, and morality always reflects theology. The only question is whose theology. As I write it’s currently primary election time. And I know there are quite a few professing Christians running for office. I wonder if they are planning to hold that office rightly under the Lordship of Christ, and thus tethered to true morality and justice, or if they are going to live and rule by lies… Do they plan to yield that office to the Word of God, or simply follow what seems right to man? One brings flourishing and the other brings death.
Chesterton once observed, “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” Neutrality does not empty the throne. It simply invites a substitute king. And it’s not the king you want. As Lewis said, “There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan.” There is no neutrality. It is either the spirit of the age or the Spirit of Christ. Or put more simply, it is either Christ or chaos.
Living Not By Lies
We live in an age that insists on compartmentalization. Faith is private. Scripture is devotional. Christ is spiritual but not comprehensive.
But Romans 11:36 does not permit that kind of shrinking. From Him. Through Him. To Him. All things.
To live not by lies is to refuse the lie of neutrality. It is to confess that Christ’s Word governs not only our prayers but our policies, not only our worship but our work, not only our theology but our thinking. All of Christ for all of life.
This begins with the mind. If we do not set our minds on the things of the Spirit, we will be discipled by the flesh. If we are not actively bringing our assumptions, ambitions, and affections under Scripture, they will drift toward autonomy, which is really bowing to the spirit of the age.
So we return again and again to the Word. We let it correct us. We let it set the categories. We let it tell us what is true, what is good, what is beautiful. We yield to the Word of God and let Him define marriage, authority, justice, mercy, discipline, and hope.
We do this not because we are fanatics who are trying to build a private Christian subculture, but because the nations belong to Christ, and reality itself is ordered this way. Christ is already King. The Father has already given Him all authority in heaven and on earth.
Our task is not to make Him Lord. It is to acknowledge Him as Lord, and to lead the world to do the same.
And so we ask, in every endeavor: Is this from Him? Is this being done through Him? Is this consciously ordered to Him?
There is no neutral ground. There never has been. So may we yield all of ourselves and all of life to the Word of God. “To him be glory forever. Amen.”
In Christ’s service and yours,
Nick Esch