Relieved to be Wretched
Relieved to be Wretched
If our goal is for people to be good and love their neighbor, we are falling grievously short in leading them to the cross. This is a moralistic view of the gospel. We must address the elephant in the room: our sin. We are incapable of doing good apart from being born again by faith in Jesus Christ.
Have you ever attempted to do something your body is just not made to do? I always imagined if I worked hard enough, I could do anything I set my mind to. Despite my optimistic determination and a lot of blood, sweat and tears - I learned the hard way that this was just not the case. When I was in my junior year of high school, my best friend and I enjoyed going on casual jogs together for exercise. Somehow this translated into the brilliant idea of going out for the track team. As misguided as my decision was, I added to my foolishness by selecting hurdles as my event to compete in. Aside from the scars I still bear on my knees, this event also offered a narrower field of competition. Other students who were wiser and more experienced than me knew better than to choose hurdles. There are no words to describe how horrifically inept I was at this sport. I came in dead last at every meet. And by dead last, I mean I finished so far behind everyone else that the girls in my heat could have looped around and ran it again, and I still would have come in last. It was demoralizing to say the least. I begged my dad to let me quit, but he insisted I see my commitment through, no matter the damage it did to my fragile teenage ego. Everyone on the team felt so sorry for me, they would line up the side of the track and wildly cheer me on whenever it was my turn to race. Even my coach, with the best intentions, explained to me that some people are just not born with fast twitch fibers in their muscles. So no matter how hard I trained - and I worked harder than most - I would probably never be a fast runner. At sixteen years old I was forced to accept the sobering realization that I actually cannot do anything I set my mind to. Some things would always be out of my reach.
This reality I learned as a sixteen-year-old runs counter-cultural to the prevailing philosophy of our day. The messages that bombard our children today insist that their feelings are the authority of what is true. What they feel is what they are regardless of facts, biology or God’s design. What a confusing and ambiguous world for children to grow up in. They are being taught to embrace the authority of self rather than learning to acknowledge and submit to the authority of God. I fear the Church has unwittingly bought into this ideology by orienting so many of its messages around the self. The gospel is no longer a call to acknowledge our depravity, deny ourselves, and receive God’s mercy and grace granted to us through the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; instead it is cloaked in a false aggrandizement of self. A widely popular children’s curriculum used by many mainstream evangelical churches describes the gospel this way,
“When God became human, it wasn’t to prove God’s divinity. That could have happened from a distance. What if Jesus became human to prove the worth of humanity? Think about what Jesus did. Jesus became human. He invited humans to see themselves the way God saw them. Jesus' birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection proved there was incredible worth in humanity.” (Orange Conference)
Let’s examine this thinking and compare it to what the Bible teaches. Did Jesus become human to prove the worth of humanity? Here is what the Bible says about how God sees us and what motivated Him to send His Son to die in our place:
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. BUT GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one can boast.” - Ephesians 2:1-8
Jesus didn’t die to prove our great worth, He died to prove God’s great love and mercy. While we were dead in our sins and enemies with God, Jesus died for us. (Romans 5) There was nothing worthy or deserving about us. This is what makes the Good News of the gospel so incredibly good. We are admonished throughout Scripture to protect this gospel and guard against anything or anyone who would alter its message in any way. There are 76 verses in the bible that warn about “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, even Jesus foretold that false teachers would rise up from within the Church and lead many astray. I confess that when I was a Children’s Ministry Director I used Orange Curriculum. I was a huge fan of their resources and philosophy of partnering with parents to raise kids in faith and character. While I still believe there are some redeeming qualities to be found in their resources, I now realize how much filtering and discernment must be exercised before placing one’s trust in a name or a brand. There was a time when I lacked this much needed caution and discretion. If it was “Christian” I assumed it was safe to consume. It’s time to sound the alarm and remind each other that Satan is a crafty liar who seeks to steal, kill, and destroy the people of God. He has infiltrated the church with subtle lies that sound so much like the truth. If we let our guard down and get lazy, we will imbibe these almost truths until they slowly erode the foundation of our Christian Worldview and replace it with something altogether different. Recent studies bear this out.
In the 2021 American Worldview Inventory we see a new trend emerging among American adults. This is what was concluded:
“And the latest insight from the nation’s largest, ongoing worldview research project reveals that the worldview Americans are most likely to draw from is unknown to the people who turn to it—a relatively new and obscure philosophy of life known as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism—or MTD.”
More than four out of every ten adults draw from this ideology in some form or fashion whether they are aware of it or not. The term Moralistic Therapeutic Deism was coined by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton as a result of research they conducted while surveying and interviewing American teenagers in 2005. This is how they defined the core beliefs that characterized this emerging worldview:
belief in a God who remains distant from people’s lives
people are supposed to be good to each other (i.e., moral)
the universal purpose of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself
there are no absolute moral truths
God allows “good people” into Heaven
God places very limited demands on people
These ideas sound hauntingly familiar. I have heard them echoed in conversations with professing Christians and camouflaged in Sunday School curriculum and sermons in evangelical churches. It’s not surprising to discover that in March of 2022 the American Worldview Inventory of American Parents discovered the following:
“The new AWVI 2022 study found that although two-thirds of the parents of pre-teens claim to be Christian (67%), only 2% possess a biblical worldview. The outcome is barely different among the two-thirds who claim to be Christian. A mere 4% of them possess a biblical worldview.”
These are compelling statistics. It’s clear to see that the landscape of the American Church has been changing for some time and many of us have been unaware of how far we have drifted from the shore of the truth and foundation of God’s Word. Why and how has this happened? I think it’s our human instinct to point fingers and blame people and systems, but I am part of that system so I must begin by examining my own heart and take Jesus’ advice, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5)
I am big on empathy and grace. I can recall a myriad of instances when people would come to me in their brokenness seeking wise counsel and I would fall short of helping them identify and address the real root of their problem - sin. In my attempt to comfort them, I would assure them of God’s love, grace, and His faithfulness to forgive, but avoided challenging them to assess their understanding of what it means to have saving faith. I inadvertently gave others permission to remain in their repetitive patterns of sin rather than showing them the access they have to the resurrection power found in Jesus Christ. I should have led them to the truth and shown them in Scripture how Jesus has set them free from the bondage of sin and death when we truly put our faith in Him. Maybe what hurting people need more than our comfort and coddling is to be reminded that they are sinners in need of a Savior. Do you believe that this is where true freedom lies, or do you feel the need to buffer this truth and shield the self-esteem of others?
We must believe the truth and power of the gospel ourselves before we can live it and share it with confidence. Do you believe you’re a sinner? In the 2021 American Worldview Survey I mentioned earlier, of the 74% of Christians who adhere to a Moralistic Therapeutic Deism worldview, 91% do not believe people are sinful and need salvation through Jesus Christ, yet they identify as Christians. As I evaluate sermons of various churches online, many of them avoid teaching the concept of total depravity; that human nature is thoroughly corrupt and sinful as a result of the fall. Instead, I hear admonishments to do good and be good without clarifying the why and the how we find the power to do so. If our goal is for people to be good and love their neighbor, we are falling grievously short in leading them to the cross. This is a moralistic view of the gospel. We must address the elephant in the room: our sin. We are incapable of doing good apart from being born again by faith in Jesus Christ. I am eternally grateful that I attend a church where I am reminded weekly that I am a sinner in desperate need of a Savior. This doesn’t hurt my feelings, on the contrary, it sets me free. I am relieved to be wretched because it keeps me constantly aware of my powerlessness to save myself. No matter how much I set my mind to doing or being good, I cannot escape the corruption of my sin nature apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in my life.
“He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” - Titus 3:5-7
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” - Galatians 5:16-17
“But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” - Romans 6:22-23
This is such incredibly good and powerful news. What we were powerless to do, Christ did on our behalf. We are all sinners in need of a Savior - and by the grace, goodness, and mercy of Almighty God - He has provided us a Savior who is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to Him. (Hebrews 7:25)
