Modern views of Christianity vary wildly, of course, yet there is a very popular movement toward the idea that God requires nothing of the Christian but faith/belief. And further, this faith/belief is frequently defined in the most minimalistic way possible so as to include nothing more than giving mental assent to a very small number of propositions, such as that “Jesus is Lord”, perhaps, or that “he died for our sins”.
To be super clear, I’m talking about the idea that all one has to do is to believe an idea—to tell himself it’s true. He doesn’t have to live it out or even understand it, for that matter. Nope, he simply has to believe it in this most minimal way. And I find this view to be quite at odds with the give-me-everything-you’ve-got teaching of Jesus:
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Jesus. Luke 10:27. NIV
But contrary to this, they’ve got the requirements of God whittled down to the bare minimum of this hyper-specific “faith”.
And then, to try to cover over the problems that causes, there’s a hyper-reliance on the concept of a “grace”, where that grace is strongly at odds with the concept of “works” (as in “works salvation” or “earning your way to heaven”, etc.)
These have become mainstream ideas among the churches. Not all the churches, mind you, but many. And even churches who have not traditionally thought this way are having more and more of this influence show up in their teachings and practices at present.
And to this, many will say, “Praise God!”.
But I wonder if we have got this exactly right. Sure, there’s something to “grace” and all, but even the flagship grace verse leads immediately into a pro-works discussion that makes many churches today quite uncomfortable:
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Paul. Ephesians 2:8-10. NKJV
If I’m understanding it right, the modern view I’m describing would just as soon have Verse 10 be left out, for there is a constant strife against works among these fellowships, as opposed to a humble and diligent embracing of the concept.
And the strife between the scriptures and the modern view doesn’t stop here. Elsewhere, the same writer (Paul) writes powerfully of what we assume is the same grace, and he says two things about it that are themselves overlooked frequently in grace discussions today:
11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,
Paul. Titus 2:11-12. ESV.
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
Paul. 1 Corinthians 15:10. NKJV
I don’t see large numbers of Christians today renouncing ungodliness and living godly lives, and I certainly don’t see them being “trained” to do so, as Paul wrote of grace doing. Rather, I see more and more ungodliness being normalized and excused in the churches. And secondly, I think that if Paul were preaching this thing about working harder because of grace today, he’d be silenced in most of the churches. This would make a great many church-goers exceedingly uncomfortable today.
Somehow, the ethic has changed since the First Century, and what is taught in our churches today does not really jibe with everything that was taught then—even if we’re reading the same scriptures. We may be reading them, but it appears we’re ignoring and even explaining away a large part of what we read.
Indeed, I do believe the two passages above may come as a surprise to a great many church-goers, and may even strike them as surprising, should they stop to ponder them for a moment.
1050 Commands in the New Testament?
There is much to be said about all this, and there is not enough time to say it here. So I’ll leave you with a very powerful resource that is floating around the Internet today in various forms. Here is a list of 1050 commands in the New Testament. You can find it here and there, and I know nothing about the particular church to whose website I’ve linked here.
Now, I have not studied every entry on this list. So I’ll assume it likely that some of this is collected in error. For example, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some command in here given to, say, an apostle or an evangelist that wouldn’t have been given to all Christians. But even if we were to dismiss 50% of the list as not applying to all, that still leaves us 525 commands that were expected of the first Christians to follow in the church culture of the First Century.
And that raises the question of our our present Christian society has become one with such a resistance to rules and standardized behavior and expectations and such. In our vigilance against a “works mentality” or a “works salvation”, have we gone too far? Have we thrown the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak? Have we ruled out things that God had ruled in?
Surely, we have.
And it’s not like things are just going so utterly well in the churches that we don’t have time to stop and make any improvements. No, I think that the “grace” pendulum has swung to far to the one side that not nearly enough of the intended enriching work is being done, and the Christians are languishing as a result of spiritual malnutrition. There’s not enough learning and teaching and training and correcting and admonition going on. One can hardly find anyone to take him by the lapels and talk some good sense into him when he’s being knuckleheaded about something. One can hardly find friends in the churches to step in when a marriage or family has gotten dangerously out of balance. One can hardly find a fellowship in which all the “see to it” passages are seen to.
So maybe we’ve gotten too big for our own britches, and are not being careful to listen to the Master regarding what kind of lives he wants us to live. And maybe we’re abusing the language of “grace” and “faith” in pretending that the religion we’re living out is one that’s fully pleasing to God when it is not.
That’s what time I think it is.
Please spend even five minutes perusing this list. And turn on your brain (which may not be on by default) and ask yourself this: Why would these apostles and prophets, and even Jesus himself, be giving out these hundreds of commands and directives and instructions, when our churches today spend so much time de-emphasizing these things?
Somebody has got it wrong. And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it probably wasn’t Jesus and his apostles and prophets!
