Tozer for Tuesday

Evangelicals are a little guilty of an error that is not quite so tragically bad as the Pharisees’, but it is an error nonetheless. We assume, and rather proudly, and without any proof, that we are in direct lineal descent from the apostles.—A.W. Tozer, Reclaiming Christianity, 48

and

The evangelical Church ought to have a height of moral elevation so great that the sinners look up there. Instead of that, we have edited it down, watered it down and diluted it. We have people showing us that we ought not to be holier than thou, but that we ought to say, “We are the same as you, only we have a Savior.”

This would be like two men dying on hospital beds in the same ward and one saying to the other, “I have what you have but the only difference between us is that I have a physician and you don’t.”—A.W. Tozer, Reclaiming Christianity, 52–53

and

If I go to a sinner and say, “I am exactly the same as you, the only difference is that I have a Savior,” but I do all the same things he does—I tell the same dirty jokes he tells and I waste my time the same way he does and I do everything he does—and then I say, “I have a Savior, you ought to have a Savior,” doesn’t he have the right to ask me what kind of Savior I have? What profit is there for a man to say, “I have a physician” if he is dying on a cot? What does it profit a man to say, “I have a Savior” if he is living in iniquity?—A.W. Tozer, Reclaiming Christianity, 53

<idle musing>
This is Tozer at his best: Calling out the hypocrisy of the evangelical church. But unlike some who attacked it and still attack it, he did so from a foundation of deep concern and prayer. He was like a surgeon trying to cut out the cancer and then nurse the body back to health. I pray that any critiques I offer would be in the same spirit.
</idle musing>