TEACHING A DIFFERENT GOSPEL (Part 1 of 2)

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The body of Christ is under assault from those hostile to the Bible’s teaching, but it is under a greater assault from those claiming to be Christ’s followers who insist on disregarding biblical teaching. They are liberals posing as the true disciples of Jesus’ earthly ministry, as opposed to those they disregard as “fundamentalists,” whose fault is to hold firm to biblical doctrine.

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James 3:1 (ESV): “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”

Matt. 7:15 (NASB): “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”

Isaiah 5:20 (NET): “Those who call evil good and good evil are as good as dead, who turn darkness into light and light into darkness, who turn bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter.”

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THE WORST ABUSE facing the body of Christ today comes not from those who readily admit they are not believers, but from those who claim to be faithful followers of our Lord Jesus Christ but just better  Christians than the rest of us.

Who are they, and why is that a problem for the body of Christ?

They are the so-called “religious left,” and they are a problem because the non-believing world cannot distinguish between the statements and beliefs they make from the beliefs common to our world.

In fact, most of what the religious left obsesses about is the faithful doctrine preached and testified to by their faith-based brethren, whom they dismiss with a variety of pejorative terms, like, “religious nationalists,” “far-right doctrinaires,” or “fundamentalists.”

“INCLUSION” or “REPENTANCE”? 

ONE PROMINENT THEOLOGIAN from the “progressive” left claims he wants churches to be modeled after Christ’s ministry, but then he mischaracterizes that ministry and what Christ tried to do.

He says that Jesus, the God-Man, fraternized with the worst dregs of first-century Israel—tax collectors, prostitutes, derelicts, and other street people—to the consternation of the religious leaders of the day.

This pastor proclaims a desire to emulate that community of “inclusion” in which the outcasts could feel dignity as human beings, asserting it was the high-strung moralists who were appalled by Jesus’ choice of friends.

However, this pastor misstates Jesus’ ministry.

Jesus was not building friendship circles of diversity and inclusion, He was reaching out to the “lost,” to the “least of these,” and to the “sick,” to everyone who needed healing.

His goal was to call them to repentance and salvation and invite them into the fellowship of believers.

• • • “The kingdom of God is near,” Jesus said. “Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:14-15 NIV)
    • “Jesus heard this and said to them, ‘It is not the healthy people who need a doctor, but the sick. I did not come to invite good people but to invite sinners.’” (Mark 2:17 NCV)

POST-LIBERAL THEOLOGY

HERE’S THE CRUX of the problem.

This left-wing guru of post-liberal theology wants to figure out how to develop spiritual communities “large enough for everyone” but not one based on “strict doctrine,” which he considers “repressive.”

In other words, creating a church in name-only, one that looks like a church—with steeples, stained-glass windows, and robed choirs—which stops being the church as soon as the preacher steps into the pulpit.

From that post, the post-liberal pastor can water down the Gospel, and morph it into something “relevant” to the congregation’s “itching ears,” a pablum of feel-good Christianity that reinforces the flock’s desire to feel comfortable and self-righteous.

Why open the Holy Bible if you want to avoid “strict doctrine”? After all, where else would you find strict doctrine but in the Holy Bible?

Why open the Holy Bible if you no longer believe or teach that it is God’s Word—eternal, infallible, inerrant, absolute truth, entirely reliable, and totally believable—but you have to reconfigure it a bit to make it palatable to modern sensibilities.

REVISED HOLY SCRIPTURE

LET’S CALL THIS perversion of the Gospel for what it is: promulgation of sin.

Christian author and teacher John R. Cross condemned the new apostasy this way: “The rejection of biblical absolutes has resulted in a callousness towards wrong, with each generation becoming more comfortable with sin.” The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus, GoodSeed International, p. 267 Kindle edition

That’s it! That’s the point! Rejection of “biblical absolutes” is synonymous with rejection of “strict doctrine.”

That is why the non-believing world cannot distinguish between the religious left (progressive Christians) and the general worldview of our times: it’s because there really isn’t a difference.

Those who are standing in the breach are not the tightly wound  doctrinaires and fundamentalists of Christ’s body, as the progressives would calls us—today’s Pharisees—but the faithful men and women who worship the living God, clutching our Bibles and prayer journals, raising our voices in praise, and confessing our need for a Savior.

EVER-WIDENING SCHISM

THIS SCHISM WITHIN the church has widened since the 2016 election of President Trump and Vice President Pence because an overwhelming majority (estimated at 80 percent) of the white evangelical vote was cast for them to lead our great country.

Faith-based evangelical believers voted for them knowing two things: one, the candidates would promote social policies fundamental to civil society, which are held dear by most evangelicals, and two, that the Vice President is a strong believer, but the President needs our prayerful help.

That leaves the progressive left in a diminished position, firing off pop guns and water pistols in its effort to change the political landscape. Of course, that makes them the darlings of their cousins, the secular left.

They are dangerous, not because they wield any power, but because, like Satan disguising himself as “an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14), they lob their rhetorical flimflammery from the pulpits, hiding behind the symbols and denominational names that—like sheep’s clothing—hide the wolves within.

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PRAYER

ABBA, FATHER, ALL PRAISE and glory to Your holy name, O Lord. We  humbly ask You to forgive our sins and heal our land, to lead us in all righteousness for Your name sake, to empower us to be Your witnesses, a light in the dark, salt to the bland, an answer to questions. Let us be the Lord’s witnesses to the world around, starting with our marriages and families and then radiating out. Let our testimony, O Lord, be God-inspired and God-honoring so that everyone will know our testimony is from You. In Jesus’ name we pray. AMEN