Born-Againism?

In America, we now have become guilty of "Born-Againism." We have replaced the Catholics' baptism for salvation with a silly prayer at the end of the four spiritual laws or the Romans Road. We make a person pray a prayer, and then declare that their sins have been forgiven! If the rich young ruler had come to one of our churches, he would have been asked to walk down the aisle, say a prayer, and fill out a card. We would send him through the baptismal, and assure him of his salvation. We would, of course, be consigning his soul to Hell by our negligence.

I say he said "something like this" because I was scribbling in my notebook as fast as I could, but I know I didn't get it all. When I get my CDs of the audio from the conference I'll try to clarify a little.

Born-Againism was a new term for me, but I think he's got it completely right. American evangelical theology is as watered down as American beer. In an effort to make the gospel simpler and easier to comprehend, we have lost the very gospel itself. We've made the gospel comfortable for the very "lost" we are trying to save. In our zeal to proclaim salvation by grace alone, we've conveniently erased repentance from the equation. We think we need to "get someone saved" and then move on to repentance and growth as step two, at some later date.

In fact, many of our churches don't even teach their members theological terms and their meanings, leading to great ignorance about salvation and evangelism even in their simples forms. If you're in an SBC church, I'm sure you've heard that people need to "accept Jesus into their heart" if they want to be saved, though the Bible mentions no such event. But, do you have any idea what the terms regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification mean? We can't understand how Paul can say salvation is "not of works" and yet James says "a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." If you don't understand the words describing the categories or stages of salvation, this will never make sense to you. So, you throw out James in an effort to preserve the grace of God.

If that's the case, what do you do with Philippians 2, where Paul tells us to work out our salvation? What do you do with 1 John 2, where John says "whoever says 'I know him' but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him"? What do you do with Peter when he says, in 2 Peter 1, that you are to "make your calling and election sure" by practicing a long list of virtues?

In classic Christian over reaction, Continue reading this post »