Two problems with some contemporary presentations of the Christian message
With some closing remarks on the necessity of forgiveness
One serious omission in some current versions of the gospel is that they leave a vast blank space between the starting point of one’s initial salvation and the end of lightly promised forgiveness and acceptance by God on the day of judgment.
This is not a simple subject, so it might be helpful to begin with a brief overview of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth.
One obvious point worth mentioning is that Paul was not trying in this letter to prove that God existed. Neither was he trying to explain the Trinity, or prove that the Bible really was the Word of God. He also was not trying to persuade unbelievers to become Christians.
Paul was writing to people who were Christians already. This is clearly evident from a number of comments he makes in the first chapter. There he states that he is writing to people who are recipients of the grace of God made available through Christ; who are enriched by God in utterance and knowledge, have the testimony of Christ confirmed in them, and who come behind in no gift as they wait for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He states that Christ will confirm them unto the end, so that they may be “blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and tells them that they have been called by God into fellowship with Jesus Christ. He states near the end of the chapter that “of him [God] are ye in Christ Jesus.”
This is very high praise. Of how many Christians in the churches today might these things be said? Perhaps not as many as we might think. Such commendations certainly do not apply to everyone that the world might consider a Christian, judging only by outward appearances.
And what does Paul say to these saints? Not covering the letter in any particular order, he tells them about his own work and ministry. He gives them instructions on how they should conduct their worship services and on how they should relate with each other. He has teachings about marriage, and about resolving church conflicts.
That sounds rather prosaic, but of course he also spends much more time explaining the deeper things of the Christian faith, and what it means to be and live as a Christian. It would be possible to write many volumes about those topics, but I would like to focus here on one more general category of comments scattered throughout different portions of the letter – that is, Paul’s rebukes to the church.
In spite of his strong affirmations of their faith made at the beginning of his letter, Paul also points out to them a number of mistakes they are making – serious mistakes, which are contrary to the faith they represent.
For one thing, he says there is an unhealthy spirit of factionalism and division among them. They were attaching themselves to different spiritual leaders, to such an extent that they were not “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.”
Also, they were tolerating serious immorality in the church – and in spite of this they are puffed up with spiritual pride instead of mourning for their sins. He tells them that “your glorying is not good.”
Furthermore, some were drinking to the point of drunkenness at the communion suppers.
Church members were suing each other in courts of law as if they were no different from unbelievers - and some were even cheating each other with sharp business practices.
Spiritually, some were drifting into false teachings (15:12), and others were getting wrapped up in useless theological questions (15:35-36).
Finally, there was general spiritual immaturity in the congregation. Thus Paul says:
And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able (3:1-2).
People say there is no such thing as a carnal Christian, but Paul says differently.
For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith (says), I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? (3:3)
It is perfectly possible, in fact it is common, for sincere Christians to stray into various bypaths, be wrong, have faults, and fall short in many ways of the values and ideals we profess to believe in. This is evident not only from many scriptures but also from our personal experience.
Paul did not write to the church at Corinth and say “You have trusted Christ and made him the Lord of your life so you are now instantly and totally sanctified and everything you say, think and do is always right. You do not have to strive diligently to make your calling and election sure. You do not have to humble yourself beneath the word of God, confess your faults, and correct what is wrong in your life. You don’t have to walk in the straight and narrow way that leads to life. By no means. You have your salvation certificate. You passed your course in basic doctrines. You’re in. You have no further need to live for God.”
On the contrary, Paul in this letter gives the weak, carnal and disobedient Christians many exhortations. He says in chapter 10 “Don’t be ignorant” (v.1) (and there are plenty of ignorant Christians). “For some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame” (15:34). Peter was not chatting idly when he said “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;” (2 Peter 1:5).
Also in chapter 10 (verses 6-12) Paul told the Corinthian Christians not to lust after evil things; not to be idolaters; not to commit fornication; not to tempt Christ; and not to be complainers (murmurers). He also warned them to be careful, and not to be too complacent in their Christianity, saying “Wherefore let him that thinketh (thinks) he standeth (stands) take heed lest he fall.”
Paul twice tells them “Do not be deceived” (6:9 and 15:33). It is possible for Christians to be deceived in various ways, great and small.
Speaking of people who were taking communion improperly Paul said “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.” Are there not many weak, sickly and sleeping Christians in the Bible-believing churches today? And taking communion wrongly is not the sole cause of this.
So, we can see from all of this that even the best of Christians remain human beings. We “see through a glass darkly.” We make mistakes, sin and err – and what if someone today with Paul’s insight were to present such a detailed description of the faults of the Evangelical and Fundamentalist churches in America today? What sins, errors or shortcomings might be pointed out?
One of them might be an oversimplification of the gospel. We live in a society dedicated to making our lives as convenient, trouble-free and easy as possible. Has this desire to make things as simple and easy as possible carried over into some of our presentations of the gospel?
Not long ago a man who regularly attends church, believes in the Bible, and has some knowledge of Scripture told me that the good news of God in Christ could be summed up as “Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again.” What could be simpler? Someone else wrote that the gospel in its simplest form was a truncated version of 1 Corinthians 15:3–4: “Christ died for our sins and was raised on the third day.” Notice he expanded the gospel a bit by adding something about sin.
The gospel has also been presented as four spiritual laws: (1) God loves us and created us to have a relationship with him; (2) our sins separate us from God; (3) Christ died for us, paying the price for our sin, and rose again; and (4) those who believe in Christ and receive him can have a personal relationship with God.
Now, such attempts to reduce the gospel to its bare minimum, to make it as simple and as quickly accessible as possible, can serve to start a conversation. They may even set someone off on a journey that will culminate in real belief—but do not these attempts also reflect a worldly mentality? Are we not trying to present an instant gospel, on the understanding that the simpler we make it, the easier it will be for people to understand and accept it?
Unfortunately, the main barrier between the natural man and the good news of God manifest in Christ is not a lack of intelligence. True, misconceptions and misunderstandings that people have about Christianity are a hindrance. It is part of apologetics, preaching and even ordinary conversation to clear them up, but lack of human understanding is not the main obstacle. The primary obstacle is sin, which is the natural inheritance of the human race from Adam.
Christ said, “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). Even friendly, decent, law-abiding people have in their natural state an inherent enmity toward, and alienation from, the God who created them. This does not manifest itself only in overt hostility. It also manifests itself in polite indifference, in the belief that God is not significant or necessary. This is the living death of alienation from God, and is the basis for Paul’s remark that “There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth (understands), there is none that seeketh (seeks) after God” (Romans 3:10–11).
This is not a simple matter. True, the four basic laws and other attempts to reduce the gospel to the bare minimum have their uses, but they are very far from being “all the counsel of God.” Paul said in Acts: “I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God” (20:27). When Peter and Paul preached, we find that their presentations were direct and plain, but very far from simple. The minimal presentation of the ABCs will quickly lead to questions, and those questions lead to heavenly mysteries that the angels desire to look into.
“I am supposed to believe in Jesus, so that my sins will be forgiven, and I can have a relationship with God and go to heaven someday? But I am not a sinner. I am a good person. Sure, I have made mistakes, but so has everyone. Deep down, I am not so bad. All that God requires of us is that we do our best and be sincere. And Jesus? Who was he? God come to earth in human form, born to a woman that never knew a man? You mean I have to believe in the Bible? What about science, evolution, and Genesis? What about all the mistakes and contradictions in the Bible? And why would God come to earth in Roman Palestine 2,000 years ago?”
The gospel leads to all of these and many other questions. It also leads to opposition, to denials of the gospel. Thus, Paul not only preached the manifold wisdom of God, “the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God” (Ephesians 3:9). He also spoke against those things that were in opposition to God. We read in Acts that Demetrius the silversmith said: “not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath (has) persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands:” (Acts 19:26).
Would that some evangelists, preachers, teachers, and writers today could turn away many, or even a few people, not from the worship of Diana, but from the falsehoods of Darwinism; of Marxism; of blind faith in science, or what some people claim is science; of radical and destructive feminism, destructive to the lives of the unborn, to the family, and to the nation; as well as from the deceptions of various spiritual alternatives to Christ that offer personal salvation through inventions of the human mind. This includes forms of Christianity in which basic doctrines are denied and the gospel is revised to meet the demands of our degenerate times.
Another modern insufficiency is to say that “We are saved by faith alone” but then redefine faith, so that it is taken to mean “assent to doctrines.” You agree to these doctrines, and you are in. However, the Bible teaches that “The just shall live by faith.” This means that faith is a living thing that pertains not only to our thoughts but to our words and our actions and our emotions. “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth (avails) any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh (works) by love.”
Faith also involves becoming a new creature in Christ: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” This is not only a theory or a doctrine. God said, speaking through the prophet Ezekiel:
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
Christ said “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” and “the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” And, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you . . . As the living Father hath (has) sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth (eats) me, even he shall live by me.”
So we are saved by faith alone - or rather, we are saved by grace working through faith (Ephesians 2:8) - but faith includes life and the Spirit. As the Bible says, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” It also says, “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”
Here we come to the necessity of forgiveness (the unfinished topic from last week). If we have the Spirit of Christ, the fruits of that Spirit will in some way be evident. We will be able to fulfill the requirements of the law through love for Christ – for “love is the fulfilling of the law,” and in “Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth (avails) any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh (works) by love.”
And how can we claim to know such things without having love for others? And how can we love others and refuse to extend to them the same forgiveness that God has given to us?
Moreover, as in Christ we grow in grace and in the knowledge of God (2 Peter 3:18), we can see more clearly the providential hand of God in the details and circumstances of our lives. We can know that, in truth, all things really have worked together for our good (Romans 8:28). We can sincerely give thanks for all things, even the bad ones (I Thessalonians 5:18), knowing that God has worked in those very circumstances to bring us to Jesus Christ. Moreover, we know that all of the bad things we have experienced on earth, even the worst of them, if we are in Christ, are nothing compared to the glory of our final destination.
With all of these things, with all of our needs supplied by God “according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus,” how can we not forgive? It may not be easy. It may take a long time and many struggles. We may have such deep hurts that nothing less than the light of God in Christ can enable us to deal with them. But whatever the case, in Christ we can forgive, even as he forgave those who wronged him and cruelly persecuted him.
Christ said:
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
Many who did great works for Christ and called him Lord will be cast away. How do we know that we are not among them? How do we know that we are not like the foolish virgins, standing waiting for Christ with lamps of doctrine and outward Christianity that are without oil, empty of life and incapable of giving any light?
This is why we have to work out our own salvation in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). Are we doing this? The following verse says “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Surely if God is at work in you that should occasion some sense of awe and great responsibility.
Why does Paul say “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves” (2 Corinthians 13:5)? Why does he not say “You have eternal security and can never be lost, so you have no need to pay any attention to all of those teachings?”
Eternal security is a biblical teaching. We read in Philippians that “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Christ is able to save us “to the uttermost” – “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth (lives) to make intercession for them.” That includes the forgiveness for others that Christ has expressly commanded on more than one occasion.
Is that adding faith to works, so that we are saved by faith plus works? No, it is rather expanding the definition of faith to make it a living reality extending unto true holiness and everlasting life instead of just a theory or an abstract doctrine that leaves us cold, hard, unforgiving, and not doing to others as we would have them do unto us.
And what if this person who has wronged us so terribly could be forgiven and also gain eternal life in the presence of God? Would those who do not want to forgive prefer that fire came down from heaven and burn up the objects of our undying hatred?