Full Contact Christianity

From the cradle Johnny was raised to love Jesus and trust Him, and he does.  But every Sunday, Johnny hears the same words at the end of the church service: “Maybe you’re with us today and you’ve heard all these things before.  You know all the facts about Jesus.  But you’ve never truly trusted in Jesus’ promise that He saves you, that He gives you eternal life.  I’d like to invite you to do that now.  You don’t have to raise your hand or walk an aisle; this is not about works.  It’s just about you trusting Christ as your Savior, today.”

Johnny is beginning to wonder if maybe, the preacher is talking to him.  He thought he believed in Jesus, but how can he be sure?  Maybe he just knows a lot of facts about Jesus.  Thus begins a long, disheartening spiritual journey in which, for the next decade or two, Johnny struggles with doubts about his salvation, even though his church teaches a clear gospel.

Or does it?

We are all familiar with the idea that a man may say one thing, and do another; a man may loudly proclaim the virtues of honesty and then cheat on his taxes, for example.  We would quite appropriately say that this man proclaims a mixed message: honesty with his mouth, and theft with his life.

I want to suggest to you that Johnny’s church unwittingly does the same thing.  Their doctrinal statement is clear and accurate on the gospel in every respect.  The words uttered from the pulpit, including the contents of the invitation itself, are doctrinally correct.  However, the church’s practice of issuing an invitation to Johnny at the close of every church service proclaims a different message: a message of doubt, not faith; of anxiety, not assurance.  A message that is not good news.

How is this possible?  How could something so clearly and obviously Christian as an invitation actually work against the gospel it is supposed to be proclaiming?  To answer that question, we need to backtrack two centuries and look at the history of the practice.

The invitation as commonly practiced is not, in fact, biblical at all.  There are many great instances of evangelistic preaching in the Scriptures, but not a single instance of an evangelistic invitation being offered in a meeting of the church.  In the New Testament, evangelistic preaching takes place in the highways and byways, the markets, the philosophy department of the University of Athens—in short, in places where unbelievers congregate.  A meeting of the church is another matter altogether.

How, then, did we come to the point where an invitation is a normal part of a church service?  The answer lies not with the apostles but with the revivalists of the Second Great Awakening, who believed that revival was not primarily a move of the Spirit, but could be orchestrated by men through a series of techniques.  Chief among these techniques was the “anxious bench,” a place at the front where those anxious about the state of their souls could come and be prayed for by the assembled people.  The preacher would call those who wanted prayer to come down and sit on the anxious bench.  This practice rapidly transformed into a Billy Graham style ‘altar call,’ and it made its way from tent meetings to churches, where it became an institution.  To this day, many churches will close every service with an invitation to come forward and receive Christ as savior—and woe betide the minister who fails in his duty to deliver a stirring invitation.

The practice poses an obvious problem: “Salvation is completely free.  You don’t have to do anything but believe Jesus.  If you’d like to do that now, get up out of your seat in front of everybody and walk down here.”  Concerned that the practice confused people by asking them to perform a work (walk the aisle) in order to receive a free gift, many churches have done away with the altar call in its common form.  However, a great number of churches still close every service with an invitation.

Is this a biblical thing to do?  In one sense, clearly not.  There is no biblical precedent for the practice as a regular part of church.  But someone will say, “Hey, there’s no biblical precedent for driving your car to church, either.  Doesn’t make it a bad idea.”  That is, there’s perhaps no biblical precedent for ending the service with an invitation, but is it actually contrary to biblical principles?

Yes.  It violates practically everything we know about the church meeting.

To see this more clearly, take a close look at what Hebrews teaches us about church:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

When the church assembles in worship, Hebrews tells us, the roof opens, the walls grow thin, and we enter into the Holy of Holies of the heavenly tabernacle.  There we serve before the throne of grace as the Lord’s priests, offering our sacrifices of praise to Him and hearing His word to us.  How could an invitation fit into this?  Can you imagine trying to evangelize priests in the Holy of Holies?

Of course not.  The invitation clashes terribly with the priestly aspects of our worship.

Priestly service, however, is not the only purpose of the church meeting.  As Paul makes very clear in 1 Corinthians 12-14, God also intends the church meeting to edify the Body of Christ.  A properly conducted church meeting will have an evangelistic effect upon an unbeliever, should one come in (14:23-25).  But this is not because the service is bent toward winning him; rather, it is because the service is conducted according to Paul’s instructions, which is to say, it is aimed at edifying the Body.

It does not edify the Body to bend every church service toward an invitation where the preacher attempts to bring about some sort of crisis experience.  That is not how the Christian life is supposed to work.  God calls us to a life of victorious obedience through His Spirit, not to a life of constant crisis experiences where we’re forever seeking to get saved again or rededicate the rededication of our rededication to the Lord, or whatever.

So to return to Johnny, the young man at the beginning of this article, can you see the problem?  He is coming to church to worship God as a priest and to edify and be edified as a member of the body.  Instead reinforcing those things, the invitation asks him every single week whether he ought to doubt the validity of his service and his membership in the body of Christ.  This is neither edifying nor worshipful, nor does Scripture give the slightest reason to do it in a church service.

Of course many churches have ended every service with an invitation for decades, and the prospect of reform poses a serious practical problem: what to do instead?  How should the service end?

Here are two suggestions: First, how about the Lord’s Table?  Instead of trying to induce a crisis of faith every week, and inevitably bending every sermon to that end, what if every service closed with Christ inviting His people to fellowship at His Table, and every sermon bent to that end?  Treat the assembled Body as the Body, rather than challenging each person to doubt his standing in the Body.

For churches that observe the Lord’s Table infrequently and aren’t ready to make the change to weekly communion, here’s another possibility that still ends the service on an evangelistic note.  Rather than treating the congregants like potential unbelievers, treat them like believers.  Invite them to stand, read the Great Commission, and dismiss them to go out and fulfill it.  A church could even do both: have communion and then dismiss with the Great Commission.

Of course these are just two of many possibilities, and each church will have to choose a course of action that is right for its own circumstances.  But in doing that, let’s be obedient to the Scriptures’ teaching about church, and end the service in a way that doesn’t treat the assembled believers as potential unbelievers, but rather as what they are: the family of God, the Body of Christ, a holy priesthood gathered for their good and God’s glory.  That is good news.

In Part 1 of this series, we considered a common misinterpretation of the gospel message, and asked how it could come about, and what we might do about it.  The following is my answer to that question.

Where We Led Fred Astray

Fred is missing a right view of God, and it’s our fault.  See, we tend to address Fred’s answer to the diagnostic question as though it were all a matter of technique.  We present a god who has padlocked the gates to heaven, and hidden the key under a rock somewhere.  Fred, depending on being a good person, has the wrong key.  If he tries to put that key in the lock, the door won’t open, and he’ll go to hell.  We, believing in Jesus’ death on our behalf and His promise of life, have the right key.  The lock will open, and the stingy god will have to let us in.  Let’s just face it: any view where your salvation depends on you finding the right answer is just another form of salvation by works.  Theological works instead of moral ones, maybe—but works nonetheless.

This whole picture is fundamentally wrong, because it builds on a fundamentally flawed view of God.  “Yahweh by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding He established the heavens.”  This is not a God that could be tricked into saving us.  If He didn’t want to save us, he wouldn’t, and no technique of ours would ever force His hand.

But what does the Scripture say?  “All day long,” Yahweh says, “I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”   He is not reluctant to save; He seeks us.  “God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”  We do not get saved because of a technique, any technique.  We get saved because He saves us, and for no other reason.  He reaches out to us and we trust Him; He promises us life and we believe; He became flesh and dwelt among us, and as many as receive Him become sons of God.

How To Make It Right

So how do we fix our gospel presentation?  First and most obvious, don’t use that diagnostic question.  As the prologue of John’s Gospel does, present the true story: God is not waiting for us to come force His hand, He is reaching out to us, and we have rejected Him.  “He came unto His own, and His own did not receive Him.”

Once Fred understands that God is eager to save him, the whole story takes on a different tone.  God sought him; has always sought him, but Fred has fled from God.  We do not appeal to Fred to adopt a different technique for saving himself; instead we appeal to him to stop running away from the loving God that seeks and saves the lost.  We should seek to convince Fred of God’s love for him, because it is that love that will move Fred to love God: “We love Him because He first loved us.”  Thus Fred will find, not a stingy god who must be forced to let anyone into heaven, but Yahweh, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.  He will find the Father of the prodigal son, who runs to embrace him and kills the fatted calf in his honor, even though he couldn’t possibly deserve it any less.  He finds Jesus, the Second Person of this Triune God, seeking a relationship with him, and willingly dying Fred’s death, so that Fred can find life and healing, so that Fred will be able to stop running from God.  This is a God Fred will trust, and when that God promises to save him, Fred will believe the promise.

How do we convince Fred that God loves him?  Certainly we can tell him the story, and we should.  But even if we tell it well, is the story really credible?  Has Fred ever seen anything, in his whole life, to suggest to him that such love is anything more than a fairy tale?

Jesus once prayed for a solution to this problem.

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.  And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:  I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.

In other words, the answer is something you learned in kindergarten: show and tell.  Fred will believe in the love of God when he sees it lived out in the unity of Christ’s Body.  Christ is in us; as we allow Him to live through us, His love will permeate our lives and unify us with one another.  For Fred, that won’t just be a pretty story, too good to be true.  It will be an incredible, undeniable, breathtaking fact: God’s love will be right before his eyes, and he will know that God loves him just as God loved Christ.

If you let Christ live through you, this is what Fred will see.  So it’s not just about correcting what you say, important as that is.  Does your life slander God and give Fred reason to believe that He is stingy, angry, picky, and mean?  Or does it present Fred with the persuasive evidence that Jesus prayed for?

It’s grown fashionable to raise a lot of dust to obscure Christianity’s very exclusive claims.  Rob Bell is just the latest and hippest in a long line of folks whose chief theological talent seems to be blowing smoke and arranging mirrors.  But while conservatives love to bash Rob Bell, we have been much, much slower to learn a key lesson that Bell’s existence and popularity ought to teach us — a lesson about how our presentation of the ‘good’ news often sounds to today’s unbelieving world.

“If you were to stand before God right now, and He said to you, ‘Why should I let you into my perfect heaven?’ what would you tell Him?”

Suppose you ask this question to your new neighbor, Fred.  Like a lot of people, Fred begins to talk about how he’s a decent guy who’s done a lot of good in this world.  “Of course I’m not perfect,” Fred says, “but I’m a good person.”

Suppose you take Fred to one of our standard response verses, Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”  There’s the problem, you say.  Bringing God your good works can’t be the answer, because salvation is not of works.

So far, so good.

Then you lay out the alternative: There’s a message God wants Fred to believe.  It’s not about salvation by works at all; Jesus did all the work.  Fred just needs to believe that…[fill in Saving Proposition here].  Within Free Grace circles, there are various conceptions of the Saving Proposition: “Jesus gives resurrection and eternal life to those who believe Him for it,” or “Jesus died on the cross for our sins, was buried, rose the third day and was seen by witnesses” or “Jesus promises everlasting life” or “Jesus promises you forgiveness of sins if you believe in Him”—in the last few years I’ve heard all these and more besides.  Whichever one you use, if you talk for more than a minute,  you’ll talk about God’s promise of forgiveness of sins and eternal life, and you’ll tell Fred that all this is possible because Jesus bore our sins on the cross and rose from the dead.  I have no interest in trying to argue which proposition is the most biblical.  Instead I want to address a more basic problem that can creep in, no matter which Saving Proposition you are using in your witnessing.

The ‘Gospel ‘According to Fred

Let’s begin by taking off the Sunday School thinking cap for a little while.  Instead, let’s think like Fred—an average American pagan—and let’s go back through that presentation.  The trouble starts with the diagnostic question: “If you were to stand before God right now, and He said to you, ‘Why should I let you into my perfect heaven?’ what would you tell Him?”  What kind of god does Fred see in that question?

The god of that question is interested in keeping people out of heaven.  He’s worked hard to make it a perfect place, and he doesn’t want anyone messing it up.  But Fred’s a decent guy; he always cleans up his own trash at the park, and picks up other people’s litter besides.  So when Fred responds by talking about how good a person he is, he is in effect saying “Hey, God, don’t worry about it.  I leave the city park better than I found it; I’ll be good to heaven too.  I’m doing the best I can.”

Now, of course, you respond by telling Fred that he can’t possibly be good enough.  He would have to be perfect.  So from Fred’s point of view, the picture just keeps getting worse.  First, your god is reluctant to let people into heaven (and what kind of god is that, anyhow?  Isn’t he supposed to be loving?)  Now, you’re telling Fred that your god is so darned picky that practically anything disqualifies a person.  Steal one candy bar, one time, when you’re eight years old, and that’s it—your life is over.  You can’t do anything to make up for it, ever.  Hell awaits, Freddie, you stinkin’ thief.

As many of you know, more than one person walks away at this point in the conversation.  That’s not a god they want anything to do with.  Can you blame them?

But suppose Fred hangs in there.  What’s the next thing you tell him?  This god is not only angry at Fred for his candy bar theft, but he’s mad enough to kill him over it.  And then, to make matters worse, instead of killing Fred, this picky, stingy god goes and kills his own son instead, and because he dumped all his pent-up anger on his own kid, now Fred can enter heaven.  All Fred has to do is agree to this scheme, and he’s in.

Is that demented, or what?  Would you want to benefit from the slaughter of someone else’s child?  Would you want to be complicit in that murder, all because you stole a candy bar?  Fred is horrified, and why shouldn’t he be?

Where We Led Fred Astray

Hopefully by now you are protesting that this picture is all wrong.  It’s not like that at all!

Indeed it’s not.  But where did the story go wrong?  Fred’s picture has everything, doesn’t it?  Man’s sin, God’s righteousness, substitutionary atonement, the promise of life in Christ…what’s Fred missing?

Seriously, stop for a minute and try to answer that question.  What is Fred missing?

I have my own set of answers to this question, but I’ll save them for another entry.  Give it some time and some thought.  Don’t take the easy dodges: don’t blame Fred for misinterpreting you; don’t blame the devil for blinding Fred.  Both those things might be true, but we’re talking about you right now.  How can you help Fred avoid this problem?

We’ll address that in detail in Part 2 of this post.