Just before the opening ceremony of the Fourth Lausanne Congress for World Evangelization—a gathering of more than 5,000 church leaders from around the world—the Seoul Statement was released. Each time the Lausanne Congress has met, a document has been published: the Lausanne Covenant in 1974, the Manila Manifesto in 1989, and the Cape Town Commitment in 2010.
The Seoul Statement builds on the good work of those previous documents while addressing several challenges facing the church today. The preface reiterates the need for urgency in evangelism and calls for the church to “nurture the faith and discipleship” of believers by responding biblically to “trending social values and to distortions of the gospel, which have threatened to erode the sincere faith of Christians and to destroy the unity and fellowship of the church of the Lord Jesus.”
The 13,000+ word document seeks to give voice to the call of this Congress: Let the church declare and display Christ together! The Statement is worth reading as a whole, but here are some highlights.
1. Recommitment to the Gospel
The Seoul Statement begins with a retelling of the gospel in story form, beginning with creation and God’s blessing for humanity made in his image. “Blessing received was to become blessing shared between peoples, and blessing returned as worship.” Next we see humanity’s fall into sin, described here in terms of seeking independence from God and rebellion against his rule, with death as the consequence, leaving all human beings in bondage to self-will.
Tracing the Bible’s storyline, we see the covenant with Abraham and God’s promise of a new people, so as to “restore the blessing of his life-giving presence to one people within whom he would again unite all peoples in a relationship of mutual blessing.” Then we follow the long and tumultuous story of Israel’s kings and prophets until we arrive at Jesus’s birth: “Through the Spirit of God, the Son of God, who is the eternal Word, became a human being in the womb of a virgin, Mary, as the beginning of God’s new creation.”
In the ministry of Jesus, whose obedience is counted in the place of Israel, we see God’s power in defeating the Evil One. “The blessing Jesus pronounced was not wealth or health but God’s own life as the transforming power of new creation.” On the cross, Jesus “died as our representative substitute, the God-sent Adam of the new creation. In Christ, God was taking the punishment for our sin onto himself. The one who has life in himself gave his life for the life of the world. He was condemned, while his ransomed people were freed—freed from slavery to sin to love and serve the Lord.”
The Statement continues with an affirmation of Christ’s resurrection, his exaltation, and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on God’s people, who live in anticipation of Christ’s return to establish a new creation. The church now lives by faith, and “through our presence, our practice, and our proclamation we tell the story of the gospel to the ends of the earth.”
2. Interpretation of Scripture
The next section of the Seoul Statement reaffirms the Bible as God’s Word written—inspired, unerring, authoritative, and sufficient, the supreme norm for church’s life—a Book with the gospel at its center and the edifying of the church as its aim. But the main focus here is on interpretation and the need for Bible reading that is “attentive to historical, literary, and canonical contexts, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, and guided by the interpretive tradition of the church.”
The Seoul Statement holds up the Protestant principle of Scripture as the supreme authority alongside the “necessary and positive role of tradition which passes on a continuity of faithful reading from past generations who were led by the same Spirit and believed in the same gospel of Jesus Christ through the same Scriptures.”
In interpreting the Bible, the Statement reminds us that no one reads the Scriptures in a cultural vacuum. Christians in different parts of the world benefit from and challenge one another’s cultural perspectives in interpretation: “Each local church both represents the whole church in reading Scripture faithfully in and for its own context, and contributes from its local culture distinct insights that benefit the whole church.” This section concludes with a call to more Bible reading.
We call local churches to devote themselves to the public reading of Scripture and to form faithful Bible readers and listeners, as individuals, groups and worshipping communities. In forming such cultures, we must allow the word of God and the gospel it proclaims to shape our worldview and lives. We therefore affirm the need for the global collaboration of all members of Christ’s body, and for attention to the ancient creeds, confessions and ecclesial traditions.
3. The Church’s Witness
It’s the church that must declare and display Christ to the nations, so naturally, the Seoul Statement turns from the Word of God to the people of the Word. This section’s context is the “confusion” brought about by “aberrant forms of church that distort the values of Christ and his gospel,” leading to “disillusionment among baptised believers” and the tendency for some to “distance themselves from the formal or institutional church.”
This section reiterates the importance of understanding the church as the communion of God’s people: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. The pilgrim church faces challenges from without and threats within.
The church carries the treasure of the gospel in “earthen vessels” in vulnerability and humility, not looking to point to itself but to the all-surpassing power of God. Therefore, it does not resist its opponents according to the powers or armaments of this world but perseveres through adversity and suffering by the power of God, fully armed with spiritual weapons of righteousness.
The church grows as it gathers for worship, the community of faith’s “foundational practice. Worship is the ultimate end to which all our mission endeavors are directed. The work of mission will end when Jesus returns but worship will continue forever.”
Even in an anti-institutional age, all Christians are to “submit to the authority of a local church. Just as individuals grow because local churches grow in health and maturity, so too local churches grow because individuals grow in knowledge, intimacy, and accountability.”
The Great Commission summons all believers everywhere to participate in our Lord’s will to make disciples of all peoples, by baptising those who believe in the gospel message and teaching them true obedience to Jesus Christ. In the power of his Word and Spirit, God sends us out into the world as a holy people to bear witness to the gospel before a watching world. We do this through our Christ-filled presence, our Christ-centred proclamation, and our Christlike practice.
4. The Human Person: Image of God Created and Restored
Now the Statement turns to the main challenges facing the church today, beginning with the question of what it means to be human.
How we answer this question has profound implications for our witness in the world and our life in the church. It goes to the very heart of the great upheavals in the world with regard to issues such as identity, human sexuality, and the implications of advancing technologies.
The Statement starts with the meaning of humanity as made in the image of God, and our creation as “an integrated physical and spiritual unity.” Over against recent ideologies of gender, the Statement says,
The biblical account of creation recognises that humans are created as sexual beings with clearly identifiable physical characteristics as male and female and relational characteristics as man and woman. The “sex” of an individual refers to the biological characteristics that distinguish male from female, whereas “gender” refers to the psychological, social, and cultural associations with being male or female. The Bible unambiguously affirms that human beings, both male and female, bear the image of God, representing the Creator in the care of his created earth.
We lament any distortion of sexuality. We reject the notion that individuals may determine their gender without regard to our createdness. Although biological sex and gender may be distinguished, they are inseparable. Maleness and femaleness are an inherent fact of human createdness—a fact to which cultures give expression in distinguishing between men and women. We also reject the notion of gender fluidity (the claim to fluctuating gender identity or gender expression, depending on situation and experience).
The Statement does acknowledge the existence of intersex individuals and the significant psychological and social challenges they face, calling the church to compassion in these cases.
Next, the Statement expounds on the Christian understanding of marriage.
According to God’s design, marriage is a unique and exclusive covenant-relationship between one man and one woman, who commit themselves to a lifelong physical and emotional union of mutual love and sharing. . . . Furthermore, the biblical teaching is consistent that covenant marriage is the only legitimate context for sexual intercourse. Sex outside the bounds of marriage is declared to be a sinful violation of the Creator’s design and intent.
With this understanding of marriage and sexuality established, the Statement then rules out of bounds other examples of departing from the biblical witness.
We lament all attempts in the church to define same-sex partnerships as biblically valid marriages. We grieve that some Christian denominations and local congregations have acquiesced to the demands of culture and claim to consecrate such relationships as marriages.
We see here a reinforcement of an outward-focused, procreative direction for marriage, followed by a lament for how our society devalues children and marriage in the pursuit of sexual freedom. Abortion is mentioned here as one of the tragic results of human sinfulness.
We affirm that marriage is intended by God to serve human flourishing by providing the necessary context for the nurture of succeeding generations. Faithful marriages allow for strong bonds of family life, appropriately delimiting freedom and creating the bounded and nurturing environment that enables children to thrive.
The biblical vision of marriage includes the fulfilment of the Creator’s mandate to procreate, and simultaneously provides companionship and pleasure for the couple. We are saddened that the pursuit of sexual freedom as a perceived personal and social good has downplayed the procreational aspect of marital sex, which has often led to the devaluing of children and the dramatic increase in abortions globally.
Alongside the attention devoted to marriage and family, the Statement also acknowledges the importance of singleness.
While marriage has been the assumed ideal for adults in all societies, and in marriage husband and wife complement each other, marriage is not an essential step to make a person complete. Both married and single persons are fully able to fulfil the Creator’s will and bear witness to Jesus Christ. Each individual, created in the image of God, is a complete person with maximum potential within the context of other human relationships. The Lord Jesus, the ideal human, exemplified this truth about the life of singleness. The apostle Paul positively argued that singleness, whether circumstantial or vocational, offered the Christian unique opportunities to serve the cause of the kingdom of God in ways not possible for those who are married. (1 Cor 7:32–35)
After giving an overview of biblical teaching on same-sex sexual relations, the Statement concludes,
All the biblical references to sex between persons of the same sex lead us to the inescapable conclusion that God considers such acts as a violation of his intention for sex and a distortion of the Creator’s good design, and therefore, sinful. However, the gospel assures us that those who have, by ignorance or knowingly, given into temptation and sinned, will find forgiveness and restoration of fellowship with God through confession, repentance, and trust in Christ.
This section ends with the recognition of people within the church who experience same-sex attraction and calls for Christian leaders and local churches to support faithful believers by “developing healthy communities of love and friendship.”
5. Discipleship: Our Calling to Holiness and Mission
One of the biggest challenges facing the church today is the integrity of our witness when it comes to Christian leadership. The Statement acknowledges the “steady stream of reports of financial mismanagement, of sexual misconduct and abuse, of abuse of power among leaders, of efforts to cover-up these failures while ignoring the pain of those who have suffered because of them, and of spiritual anaemia and immaturity in evangelical churches around the world.”
A disciple is a follower of Jesus, formed by the gospel for a life of loving God and loving others. Mission is properly aimed toward the formation of disciples whose love for God and love for others are united in an undivided heart. “Our Lord Jesus commands us to be disciples and commissions us to make disciples.”
For this reason, “the pursuit of righteousness in our personal lives, our homes, our churches, and in the societies in which we live can no more be separated from the announcement of the gospel than being a disciple can be separated from making disciples.” The Statement calls on ministry leaders and missionaries to “remain in vital fellowship with and accountability to local churches.”
6. On War and Peace
The next section reaffirms God’s purpose in Christ to reconcile all peoples through the gospel in a world full of conflict and celebrates the presence of churches, Christian organizations, and individual Christians in championing the cause of peace. It lays out a vision of Christian witness in war-torn places.
We call all Christians to serve the vulnerable in contexts of war by pooling our resources and supporting the relief efforts of churches and humanitarian organisations that are situated near conflict zones. We also commit to serve as peacemakers, by supporting negotiations aimed at ending conflicts and by calling for justice and reparation for the innocent victims of violence.
The Statement also calls out those who would confuse church and state.
We lament that some Christians have looked to the state rather than the gospel as the key means for bringing about God’s intentions for the world. This takes an especially regrettable form when wed to nationalism—here defined as the belief that every state should have a single, national culture and no other—or ethnonationalism—which is the belief that every ethnic group should have its own state.
The Statement asserts “no modern state is able to claim or will ever be able to claim to be the special agent of God’s saving rule,” and so the church must “commit to pray and serve peoples in conflict in the world so that the gospel of Jesus Christ might bring true peace to all peoples.”
7. Stewarding Technology
Finally, the Statement turns to the question of technology and accelerating innovation, raising issues that range from areas such as genetic engineering, cloning, biotechnology, mind-uploading, digital media, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. Without getting into specific application, the Statement recognizes the danger of Christians being “discipled]” by social and digital media, yet also calls for “faithful presence in digital spaces, faithful contextualization through connected devices, faithful teaching of digital literacy, and faithful practice of hospitality for forming healthy usage habits.”
Christians must discern technologies that are motivated by the idea that neither nature nor human nature should be allowed to limit human freedom. At the same time, Christians are called to faithfully steward technology.
We call all Christians to pursue technological innovation and use with love, justice, and faithfulness, both before God and toward others. We recognise that technology shapes the environments in which humans live, play, relate, and work, as well as how Christians fellowship with one another, pray, read Scripture, grow in faith and character, worship God, and share the gospel. Therefore, Christian development and use of technology must seek the welfare of our neighbours and enemies, promote human flourishing and dignity, having fixed our eyes more fully on the future that awaits us in the new heavens and the new earth.
There’s so much more that could be excerpted from this Statement, but I think I’ve given enough highlights for you to have a taste of what this is all about. I recommend you spend some time with the whole document.
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