A quarterly magazine for the proclamation and defense of the Gospel
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A quarterly magazine for the proclamation and defense of the Gospel |
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Vol. 4, Issue 2 | Summer 2010 |
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Primum Mobile is a quarterly web magazine. This issue and all its contents are © Copyright 2004-2010 by the editors. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
by Paul Lytle
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.-Galatians 1:8-9
It’s rather interesting to follow the number of followers Jesus has through the course of the Gospel accounts. If we had a graph to track the number of His disciples, we might be surprised. It is not a steady line that goes up. In fact, in places the line would seem to drop off the graph completely.
A couple of examples are notable. In John 6, Jesus feeds the five thousand men (the women and children uncounted, but certainly adding a few thousand) with five loaves of bread and two fish. A little later in the chapter, we see the crowd continuing to seek Him out. What do they want? They try to hide the fact that they are there for breakfast, but Jesus sees through them fairly simply. “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (John 6:26).
Instead of bread, Jesus teaches, and His teaching proves to drive almost the whole of the crowd away. They begin to grumble a little when He identifies Himself as “the bread that came down from heaven” (v. 41). He continues to press the point, using this analogy to identify Himself as the only way to salvation.
“Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” -John 6:61-65
This teaching proves too much for them, and the crowds scatter, leaving primarily the Twelve behind. Yet even of them, Jesus tells them, there will be one more who leaves — Judas.
By the time Jesus reaches Jerusalem in the week leading up to his crucifixion, the crowd has apparently returned, and the people welcome him into the city, laying their cloaks and cut branches before Him. It was a welcome fit for a king, and yet by the end of the week that same crowd would prefer Barabbas to Christ, and they will raise Him up to be crucified. This time, not even the Twelve will stand by Him, save for John.
By the beginning of Acts, the visible church has shrunk to about 120 people (Acts 1:15). By the end of Acts 2, it will be back up around 3,000.
There are only two ways to explain what is happening here. The first way is to just assume that the crowd is a finicky bunch, today truly believing in Jesus, and then deciding tomorrow that they believe in something else. Their faith is so flimsy that it is blown by every changing wind. Today they are Christians, and tomorrow not.
If this is the case, then we must wonder why Jesus intentionally changed the wind on them. On the first day, He fed them. Surely He knew that their faith was so weak. Would it have done any harm to give them breakfast the next day too? Perhaps He could have kept feeding them while trying to strengthen their faith a little.
But that is not what He did at all. He scolds them for only seeking after perishable food. He tells them that He is the only way to salvation, even though He knew that they were not ready for such teaching. Then He told them that many of them were not real believers, and they could not become believers without being chosen by God first.
If this first option is true, then we should point out that Jesus’ sermon here was ill-timed. He drove everyone away!
But this is not the case, and we must find that the second option is the truth — that they were never true believers in the first place. Is this not exactly what Jesus tells them? “But there are some of you who do not believe. . . . This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father” (John 6:64-65).
They followed Jesus around, yes, but they were not Christians. (As a side note, this is exactly why I generally dislike the term we’ve been hearing recently as a replacement for “Christian” — “Christ-follower.” Isn’t that exactly what these people were? Christ-followers? And yet they were not Christians at all. Following Christ around is something I can do on a whim, but it is the Father who makes me a Christian, and that’s the important part.) They were not Christians, but false-converts. They were a part of this great movement, yes, but not out of faith, but for something else.
The Bible assumes that there will be false converts amongst us. Jesus describes them rather well in Matthew 7:22-23: “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” These are people who not only claimed to be Christians, but they even preached the name of Jesus. And yet they never were, and Jesus will cast them out.
Again, Jesus tells us a parable of a wheat field in which an enemy plants tares (which are weeds that look a great deal like wheat). The master of the house does not take out the weeds at once, instead reasoning, “Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn” (Matthew 13:30).
Ultimately, it is as John tells us, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). In other words, there will be people who leave the Christian faith, but that only proves that they never had the faith in the first place.
Before we go on, we need to get this straight — there is a difference in the visible church and the invisible Church. The visible church is what you see on Sunday mornings. They are in the pews, listening. They have their Bibles in their hands. The invisible Church is the Body of Christ, those elected from the foundation of the world to come to a saving faith in Christ.
The person beside you in church may not be saved. For that matter, the preacher may not be either, for we have seen even pastors leave the church. The truth is that not even all of those who claim to know Christ truly know Christ.
A few stats may help prove the point. The Barna Group recently did a survey on the Christian worldview, which they defined “as believing that absolute moral truth exists; the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches; Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic; a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or do good works; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; and God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.”1
What he calls a biblical worldview is simply Christianity in my mind. And yet only 19% of self-described “born again Christians” agreed with these statements. Only 62% of that same group strongly believes that Jesus lived a sinless life. Less than half of “born again Christians” believe in absolute moral truth.
My friends, there is a term for people who claim to be Christian and yet do not believe that Jesus was sinless, and it’s not “Christian.” It’s “false convert.”
Abortionist George Tiller, who was not too long ago murdered, ran one of only three clinics in America that would perform late-term abortions. This is a procedure so terrible that even most abortionists refuse to perform it. I do not support his murder. I truly hope that, before he died, he was brought to repentance for his evil acts and to faith in Jesus, but there is no evidence that this happened. I bring him up because I think he illustrates this concept of a false convert very well. Perhaps you don’t know where this career murderer was when he was killed.
He was at church, where he served as a deacon.
The truth is that we will never purge our churches of false converts until Christ returns. He told us that clearly. It is not my intention to begin a witch hunt in our congregations for false converts (though we should be talking with people enough to get a hint of who needs some evangelism).
But I think there is a difference in Jesus’ approach and our approach of today. Jesus and the Apostles attracted crowds. We’re all over that one. We love to attract a crowd.
But Jesus and the Apostles were not scared of chasing a crowd away too, and that’s where we run into trouble.
You need only to look around at billboards to see how much we like attracting a crowd. We’ll plaster up our special services or new sermon series up everywhere. And we know how to market it too. Every so often we’ll do a series on sex to really pack the house. I’m starting to see more reference to sex on Christian websites and billboards that on beer commercials.
Whether or not this is a good idea will have to wait until another article, because I really would like to focus on what happens when we get people into the door. What is it they hear there? Are our services focused on the people? Are the songs inward focused? Are the sermons geared toward improving our lives or entertaining the people? Do we provide trinkets and prizes to keep people around? Are we constantly pointing to our programs and services to keep people coming back?
In other words, are we assuming option #1 from above, that the faith of the people is flimsy and need to be held down while we work to strengthen it a bit?
Or do we confront them with the truth as Jesus did, a truth that we know very well will drive off a good chunk of them?
We seem to be so concerned lately with making the Gospel inoffensive. Do we add or subtract at will, as though we were better at drawing people to God than God is at drawing to Himself?
We would never admit that, but that is what we ultimately believe. Some preachers refuse to use the word “sin,” because it is unsettling. Others will not use the word “repent,” but will try to get around it. They will take the Bible, take the words out of context, and preach something they believe will be more acceptable than the straightforward Word of God is.
But the Cross is offensive. It is not the preaching of sex that brings about saving faith, but the preaching of the Word. It may seem silly to a lot of people, but that is quite intentional!
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.-1 Corinthians 1:22-25
Paul knew of the offense of the Gospel, and ultimately gave his life for it. Does it at all concern us that what the first century pagan saw as an offense worthy of death is regarded by today’s pagan as mundane?
The net result of today’s practices is that we have filled our pews with those same pagans who would have been calling for Paul’s head. We have filled our churches with false converts, and we’re so busy telling them that they are loved by God that we haven’t had time to tell them how to be right with God so they will not face eternal damnation.
Granger Church took part of the Reveal Now study, and the results were shocking.2 47% of the people in the church did not believe in salvation by grace. Those are not Christians who are a little confused. They are pagans who are under the wrath of God unless they repent. 56% don’t believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life. That 56% does not represent Christians who need a Bible study. They are sinners on their way to hell unless they are saved by the grace of God.
I will not pull punches here. I will not hold back my words. Ezekiel was warned to not pull punches in his commission by God:
If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.-Ezekiel 3:18-19
So here is the truth. You may think you are a good person, but you aren’t. You may seem good compared to everyone around you, but that is only because you don’t do everything that your heart tells you to do. Compared to them, you may be okay, but if the secrets of your heart were revealed, they would show you to be a wicked, horrible wretch. That is the you that God knows. That is the you that you hide from everyone, but the one that God knows very well. You have turned away from Him and sought after your own pleasure, and your mind darts to a thousand wicked pleasures every minute.
We don’t fully understand sometimes our own depth of depravity. We’re sitting in the middle of it every day, so it’s normal to us. It’s not okay to God, who is perfect, holy, and just. He will punish us according to our sin, and each one of us has more than enough to earn us an eternity in hell.
You are not good enough to earn your way into eternal life. Your actions are offensive to Him. Your good deeds are like filthy rags to Him. There is nothing you can do to make up for all of your wickedness. You cannot give something to God to get Him to forget what you have done, thought, and said.
It is out of His tremendous and undeserved love that He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus, to die on our behalf. He took the punishment we deserve upon Himself and died to pay it. He paid the price we owed.
We cannot earn that gift. We can only repent and have faith in Him. By faith alone are we saved, by the Blood of Jesus alone. There is no other way. There is no other option. We can only believe, or we can remain in our sin.
There are three ways we can respond to a message like this. We can be offended and walk away. Such a person may leave the church, but they were never a part of it anyway. We can respond in repentance for what we have done and eternal thanksgiving to the Father. I tell you the truth, if you respond in true faith, you will be justified. Finally, we can just nod, fool ourselves that this is exactly what we already believe, and go about our ways, not yet realizing that we have never met Jesus. We will always have false converts. The difference is that it is harder to not know you are headed for hell with this message than with sermons on relationships and money.
I was a false convert for more than a decade. I was in the church for years. I was in the drama team, I practiced with the praise band. I was at the church all the time. And no one bothered to find out if I was really saved. I was around pastors quite often, and not one of them talked to me about the state of my soul. For more than a decade I was the victim of our decision that keeping people around was more important than preaching the Gospel. Finally, I just walked away, thus proving that I was not a Christian at all.
By Grace, one day this message had its effect in me. The Spirit bent me over in repentance and faith. I had been a false convert, but the true Gospel – not this cowardly effort to grow the visible church at the expense of the invisible Church, but the true Gospel – had its effect in me.
Your sex life is nothing compared to this. Your finances are fleeting, but this is not. Good communication is great, but I would not trade the Gospel to know how to speak more effectively. We can think of all the little sermon series we want, but their messages are ultimately nothing without this.
My proposal is a simple one. We abandon worldly wisdom for the Gospel. We abandon our surveys and our sex series and our dramas and our little tricks to get people into the door, and instead we preach the Bible. Paul reminds us of the importance of preaching the Word:
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.-Romans 10:14-17
Are we preaching the Gospel, or something else? Are we preaching the Word, or something else? It doesn’t work the other way. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ.
How about some church discipline? It is biblically mandated (Matthew 18:15-17), and it’s not a suggestion. Someone like George Tiller should have been removed from that church long ago, not made a deacon. He should have been confronted with his sin and asked to repent. Instead of condoning his sin, he should have been given the Gospel. We have done nothing for him by pretending that he has not sinned!
But frankly, we’re too worried about numbers to actually hold someone accountable for their sin, as Jesus has told us to do. Yes, they probably would have lost a member of the church, but the preaching of the Word to someone in unrepentant sin may bring about faith. It’s not our job to keep people in the sanctuary; it’s our job to spread the Word.
My proposal is straight-forward — we spread the Good News of the Gospel of Christ. We teach the terrible truth about sin and the sweet truth of the Gospel. We will do it through preaching, evangelism, church discipline, discipleship, and community. In all areas we should lift that good news high — that we have failed, but that Christ has succeeded for us. Our churches may shrink, but the Church will grow. In other words, the visible church will get smaller, but the invisible Church will get larger.
And that’s the one that matters in the end.
Finally, we will not be guilty of the blood of the false converts if we teach the full council of the Word. They will not stand before God on Judgment Day and say, “But Paul Lytle never told me!”
Jesus was not too worried about driving away the crowd in John 6. He preached the truth, not what they wanted to hear. And most left Him. But they left because they had not been drawn by the Father. They left because they did not truly believe.
I fear that our churches are going to remain, at best, a place to entertain pagans before they are cast into the Lake of Fire until we are willing to tell them the truth. God has told us that sinners will be destroyed. Will we remain quiet about it? If so, then their blood is on our hands. Forget your numbers; tell the people the truth.
If it means that most of the congregation leaves, so be it. A false convert should be assumed in your church, but we should not be content to let them stay without hearing of the Gospel that saves. We can only preach the Word. It is for God to draw them if He wills.
1. http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/21-transformation/252-barna-survey-examines-changes-in-worldview-among-christians-over-the-past-13-years, accessed June 1, 2010. RETURN
2. http://www.alittleleaven.com/2008/08/the-fruit-of-pu.html, accessed June 1, 2010. RETURN
