COMPROMISE
The church at
Ephesus faced a culture characterized by immorality. We, too, live in a culture
tolerant of sexual immorality. It is popular to be open-minded to many types of
sin, calling them personal choices or alternative lifestyles. But when the body
of believers begins to tolerate sin in the church, it is lowering the church's
standards and compromising its witness. Remember that God's approval is
infinitely more important than the world's. Use God's Word, not what people
around you are willing to accept, to set the standards for what is right or
wrong.
I would not
utter what I believed to be a falsehood concerning the Lord, even though the
evil one offered me the bait of saving all mankind thereby.
C.H. Spurgeon
Here is the
great evangelical disaster – the failure of the evangelical world to stand for
truth as truth. There is only one word for this – namely accommodation. The
evangelical church has accommodated to the world spirit of the age. First,
there has been accommodation on Scripture, so that many who call themselves
evangelicals hold a weakened view of the Bible and no longer affirm the truth
of all the Bible teaches – truth not only in religious
matters but in the areas of science and history and morality… This accommodation has been costly, first in
destroying the power of the Scriptures to confront the spirit of our age;
second, in allowing the further slide of our culture. Thus we must say with
tears that it is the evangelical accommodation to the world spirit around us,
to the wisdom of this age, which removes the evangelical church from standing
against the breakdown of our culture.
Francis A. Schaeffer
The Great Evangelical Disaster, Crossway,
1984, p. 37-38.
The person
who refuses to compromise under any and every circumstance is obstinate,
unreasonable, and selfish. That sort of strong-willed inflexibility is sinful
and has been the ruin of many relationships and organizations. But when it
comes to matters of principle – moral and ethical foundations, biblical
absolutes, the axioms of God’s Word, God’s clear
commands, and the truthfulness of God Himself – it is never right to
compromise.
John MacArthur
The Book on Leadership, 2004, p. 51.
Sometimes the
majority only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Author
Unknown
Compromise
is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another –
too often ending in the loss of both.
Tryon
Edwards