1 Therefore I exhort you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—living, holy, and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect. Romans 12:1-2 (LSB)
Deception is our enemy’s most powerful weapon. When a person is deceived into believing a lie they are not intending to participate in something that is wrong. No, they believe they have the truth and all those who oppose what they believe are just wrong. When the lie leads people to believe that their form of ‘religion’ is true Christianity, regardless of how unbiblical it is, they are not actually intending to be evil following an evil system. They are ‘sure’ they have the truth. They are sincere. I am sure the priests of Baal whom Elijah defeated at Mount Carmel were sincere as well.
For the last several years with the advent of neo-evangelicialism, the ‘seeker-sensitive’ and church growth movements as well as the continued spread of the Word of Faith and Health, Wealth and Prosperity heresies, those whose consciences were bound to the Word of God have been raising the alarm that the ‘religion’ within these movements is not genuine Christianity. However, the spiritual forces behind them are very powerful. There are whole cities and towns in the U.S. right now where not one church remains that has not been compromised by one or more of these deceptions. Since the focus within these churches is wrong we find that solid biblical doctrine is replaced with self-improvement, self-help, entertainment, and a recreation of God in the form that man wants.
A common core of the tattered remains of much of American Evangelicalism can best be summed up in what is known as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. This religion is based around the following five points.
- A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
- God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
- Good people go to heaven when they die.
When I presented the gospel to my daughter when she was about 9 years old, I asked her some diagnostic questions about her understanding of salvation. These five points are pretty much what her ‘default’ religion was. She loved church. She loved Sunday school. She loved Jesus, but she had no concept of sin and hell. She understood that good people went to heaven and mean people did not. Who is responsible in this system for one’s salvation? It is each person. God is not involved. What does this do in relation to one’s sanctification? Well, first, these people who believe that this ‘religion’ is equivalent to genuine Christianity will consider doctrinal words such as justification and sanctification as simply attempts by others to put them under some form of legalism. Since point 3 is what these people are all about, they react violently and vehemently against all clear Biblical teachings that teach that man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. No, they hate that one since their own form of religion is all about them. <Continue reading post>