Naughty or Nice?

My oldest daughter and I were out shopping for Christmas gifts a few days ago when I heard the song "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" over the store's stereo system. I was singing a long with it in my head when I came across the line "he's making a list, and checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty and nice. . ." It dawned on me for the first time, what a horrible position to put children in - i.e., to ask them whether they have been "naughty or nice." If they are honest with themselves, they are sinners just like their parents. However, if they want any presents under the tree, children are not only encouraged to lie about their sinfulness to themselves, but to argue a case for their own self-righteousness while sitting on the knee of this jolly old elf. Is this not the exact opposite of how we should be training our children? Should we not hope and pray, as they mature, they will begin to be convicted more and more by the Holy Spirit of their own sinfulness and prompted toward true repentance? It is at that point we must be ready to point them to the cross - to point them to a righteousness outside of themselves. They need to be reminded of the promises of God, as we do, every day.

I guess if we are honest with ourselves we all should be getting switches and ashes this year. However, for those that believe we look forward to a crown.

"What a Good Boy am I!"

Several weeks ago I ran across an interview on Fresh Air featuring Dr. John Hagee. You can hear the interview here. If you are not familiar with Dr. Hagee, he is a dispensationalist on steroids. However, I came away from the interview more concerned about Dr. Hagee's soteriology than his eschatology.

When asked about who is going to Heaven Dr. Hagee replies, "There is no market on who's going to heaven. Only God himself knows who those people are who are walking and living as they should." [emphasis added] The interviewer later asked Dr. Hagee, "What are you doing to prepare [for the rapture]?" Dr. Hagee responds, "I am doing what I do everyday. I live right, read the bible, pray, try to treat other people like I would like to be treated and I am going to leave the rest to the grace of God." [emphasis added]

Now if you asked Dr. Hagee do you believe in a works based salvation, I would guess that he would resound with an emphatic "no." However, his theology clearly does not match up with sola fide. My question is who among us is "walking and living as they should?" Moreover, who is "living right?" If you lower the requirements of holiness to being a moral person you may have a few. However, the demands of the law are far greater- you must be perfect. Have I loved God with all my heart? Have I loved my neighbor as myself? If you have never done so, I would invite you to review the Westminster Larger Catechism questions 103-149. I think you will come away with the same conclusion as I did: most mornings I break all of the ten (10) commandments before I walk out the door for work. Where is our hope then?!

A dying J. Gresham Machen in a telegram sent to John Murray said, "I'm so thankful for active obedience of Christ. No hope without it." Meredith Kline comments on Machen's death bed declaration:

"The active obedience of Jesus is his fulfilling the demands of the covenant probation. By the passive obedience of his atoning sacrifice he secures for us the forgiveness of sins. But he does more than clear the slate and reinstate us in Adam's original condition, still facing probation and able to fail. Jesus, the second Adam, accomplishes the probationary assignment of overcoming the devil, and by performing this one decisive act of righteousness he earns for us God's promised reward. By this achievement of active obedience he merits for us a position beyond probation, secure forever in God's love and the prospect of God's eternal home." Meredith G. Kline, Covenant Theology Under Attack.

Dr. Hagee, I am leaving it all up to the active obdience of Christ. No hope without it.

Kingdom Confusion

. . .and Ya Daddy Don't Rock and Roll (Thoughts on Moralism -- Part IV)

"The Bible is far more than a rulebook to follow," Jerry Bridges states in Gospel-Driven Santification. "It is primarily the message of God's saving grace through Jesus Christ, with everything in Scripture before the cross pointing to God's redemptive work and everything after the cross--including our sanctification--flowing from that work. Bridges goes on to say, " So I learned that Christians need to hear the gospel all of their lives because it is the gospel that continues to remind us that our day-to-day acceptance with the Father is not based on what we do for God but upon what Christ did for us in his sinless life and sin-bearing death. I began to see that we stand before God today as righteous as we ever will be, even in heaven, because he has clothed us with the righteousness of his Son. Therefore, I don't have to perform to be accepted by God. Now I am free to obey him and serve him because I am already accepted in Christ (see Rom. 8:1). My driving motivation now is not guilt but gratitude. . .For a growing Christian, desire will always outstrip performance or, at least, perceived performance. What is it then that will keep us going in the face of this tension between desire and performance? The answer is the gospel. It is the assurance in the gospel that we have indeed died to the guilt of sin and that there is no condemnation for us in Christ Jesus that will motivate us and keep us going even in the face of this tension. We must always keep focused on the gospel because it is in the nature of sanctification that as we grow, we see more and more of our sinfulness. Instead of driving us to discouragement, though, this should drive us to the gospel. It is the gospel believed every day that is the only enduring motivation to pursue progressive sanctification even in those times when we don't seem to see progress."

"Ya Mama Don't Dance. . .(Thoughts on Moralism -- Part III)

John Hendryx, of Monergism, writes in his article Christ vs. Moralism , "[a] common religion of our time is one of moralism, and many evangelicals tend to moralism without even realizing they are. Moralism seeks to achieve perfection through behavior modification. It often accompanies the religion of 'family values' that we hear about each day on the radio. This kind of religion risks self-righteously looking down on unbelievers by putting our supposed morality in a comparison with theirs. It is as if we believe our entrance into Christianity is by grace but that our lives in Christ are due to our maintained by some kind of moralism. . .Unfortunately a large percentage of Christians think moralism, avoiding wrongdoing of every kind, is what Christianity is all about, (otherwise why so much effort to get our morals put into law) not realizing that we need to repent of trusting in our good deeds and bad ones. . .The world would believe us much more if we simply stopped pretending and boasting about being so much more moral than we really are."

"Ya Mama Don't Dance. . ." (Thoughts on Moralism -- Part II)

William H. Willimon writes in his book Peculiar Speech - Preaching to the Baptized, "Unfortunately, most of the theology I learned in seminary was in the translation mode. Take this biblical image and translate it into something more palatable to the people who use Cuisinarts. The modern church has been willing to use every-one's language but its own. In conservative contexts, gospel speech is traded for dogmatic assertion and moralism, for self-help psychologies and narcotic mantras. In more liberal speech, talk tiptoes around the outrage of Christian discourse and ends up as an innocuous, though urbane, affirmation of the ruling order. Unable to preach Christ and him crucified, we preach humanity and it improved."

"Ya Mama Don't Dance. . ." (Thoughts on Moralism -- Part I)

The protagonist in Sarah Dunn's semi-autobiographic novel The Big Love makes an interesting statement regarding modern evangelical Christians:

"I was raised as an evangelical Christian, a real born-again, a tribe which completely lacks a comedic tradition and is almost entirely missing an intellectual one. . .Because I realize I don't have to tell you this -- people hate evangelical Christians. They hate, hate, hate them. They hate the Christian right, they hate the Moral Majority, they hate Jerry Farwell, they hate the pro-lifers, they hate people with the little silver fish on the back of their minvans, they hate the guy at the office with the weird haircut who won't put money into the football pool."

Although this comes from Alison, Dunn's fictional character, it rings painfully true. Why does the world view modern evangelical Christians in this way?

Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, two researchers from UNC, Chapel Hill, have described the new American religion as "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism." While Smith and Denton's studied the beliefs of teenagers, they recognized that most teenagers share the views of their parents and what is being taught in their churhes. Gene Veith's article A Nation of Deists describes the essentials of this new religion. "[T]his creed is a far cry from Christianity, with no place for sin, judgment, salvation, or Christ. Instead, most . . .believe in a combination of works righteousness, religion as psychological well-being, and a distant non-interfering god."

Have we traded in the promises of God for the Gospel according to Dr. Phil?