Who said, “Elementary, my dear
Watson?” Who said, “Play it
again, Sam?” Who said, “Beam me
up, Scotty?” How about, “You
dirty rat.” If you answered,
“Sherlock Holmes, Ingrid Bergman, Captain Kirk, and James Cagney,” you’re
wrong.
The great detective Sherlock Holmes never said, “Elementary, my dear
Watson” in any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s written works.
Ingrid Bergman actually said, “Play it, Sam, for old times’ sake,
play As Time Goes By. Captain
Kirk occasionally said, “Beam us up, Mr. Scott,” but never did he say,
“Beam me up, Scotty.” Although
Cagney impersonators use the “You dirty rat” line, there’s no movie in
which the actor ever said it.
How about this one? “Money
is the root of all evil.” Is that
in the Bible? No, what the Bible
says is “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”
If you’re like most of us, you were sure you knew the correct answers
because those questions are something everybody just knows.
Like most of us, you thought it was common knowledge, but it turns out
that common knowledge is wrong.
The same thing applies to statements we hear all the time—we think God
said them; but in fact, they’re churchy statements God never said.
Churchy statements are something we hear in church, but God never said
them. Preachers have said them,
evangelists have declared them as gospel truth, and Sunday school teachers have
repeated them so many times, they’ve become common knowledge.
But as we’ve seen, common knowledge can be wrong.
Churchy statements can also be vague, devoid of content, and undefined.
Consequently, they mean nothing. Such
churchy statements can mean anything you want them to mean.
A churchy statement may sound good, even spiritual, but when you get
right down to the bottom line, they have no content.
It doesn’t matter if we miss the Watson/Play it Again, Sam/Scotty questions,
but it eternally matters if we think God made the churchy statements we’re
going to examine because they all have to do with the gospel and salvation, two
subjects of consuming interest.
The churchy statements you’ll read come from gospel brochures, sermons,
books, and articles. You will read
them exactly as their authors said or wrote them.
Let’s take this journey together; let’s look at churchy statements
God never made. We’ve got to get
it right.
Dr. Michael D. Halsey, Pastor
“READ THE BIBLE AND DO EVERYTHING IT
SAYS.”
How about trying to keep this one? “You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all
your might.” That one stops us
dead in our trying-to- climb- the –heavenly- ladder- tracks.
How about the last of the Big Ten? You
shall not covet.” We can’t even
get past the first ten rungs of that way too high ladder, can we?
We shouldn’t expect any other result than failure, should we?
Is there anybody, anyone, anytime, anywhere who can say he “Read the
Bible and did everything it said?” No
one. Is there anyone among us who
can raise his hand and answer, “Yes, I have and will continue doing so
perfectly?”
Anyone who reads the Bible cover to cover and tries to do everything it
says is doomed to fail. In fact,
anyone who reads the Ten Commandments and tries to keep them is doomed as well.
The apostles called the Law a “yoke, which neither we nor our fathers
could bear.” (Acts 15).
They couldn’t; we couldn’t; God doesn’t expect us to.
God never said that this is the requirement to go to heaven.
This is a churchy statement some man made up, some man who didn’t read
what God said: “Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in his sight by
observing the law . . . (Romans 3:20). Somewhere,
way back when, someone neglected to take Galatians 2:16: “Know that a man is
not justified by observing the law.”
This churchy statement has worried many a serious reader, but it
shouldn’t have; it should never have seen the light of day, but it did, as
early as the first century AD (cf. Acts 15 and the book of Galatians).
Paul wrote the entire book of Galatians to refute the idea that anyone
could come to God on the basis of his reading the Law and doing everything it
says.
The fact that we don’t have to try to do everything the Bible says or
everything the Law says in order to be saved is very, very good news for us.
The even better news is the rest of the story—“Know that a man is not
justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.”
(Galatians 2:16) That’s
what the gospel is, it’s “good news.”
God’s call to you is a call to put your faith in Christ alone, not
Christ plus reading the Bible and doing what it says or in Christ plus reading
the Ten Commandments and trying to observe them.
“CONFESS AND FORSAKE YOUR SINS AND COME
TO JESUS”
The thing about churchy
statements is that they sound good, even spiritual.
They express some mighty fine sentiments.
The problem is that God never said them; someone made them up.
As strange as it may sound, God never said that the way to get to heaven
was to give up sinning.
It is of interest to note the account of Jesus’ conversation with the
infamous “woman at the well” in John 4.
Although she was a serial adulteress (vs. 18) and was, at the moment of
the conversation with Christ, involved in an illicit relationship with someone
else’s husband (vs.18b), Jesus does not tell her to forsake her sin or turn
from her past sins. He tells her,
“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you
would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.”
Jesus makes no demand that she clean up her life; He makes no demands
that she stop seeing someone else’s husband.
Using her serial adultery to show her need of salvation, He points her to
the living water (salvation) which He says is available to her as a gift from
God.
The inherent nature of a gift is that it comes to you with no
“do-this-and-that-strings” tied to it. If
a gift has things you must do to have it, it’s not a gift, but a recompense
for things well done. The Apostle
Paul pointed this out in Romans 4:4: “Now when a man works, his wages are not
credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.”
When the reader applies logic to this churchy statement, he sees its
absurdity: “How many sins do I have to give up?
All? Part of them?
If I’m to give up part of them, which ones?
What if I give one or two of them up for a day or so, but lapse back?”
Logic would point out to the reader that such a churchy statement is
impossible to accomplish. The sin
nature is ever with us. “If we say
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us; if we say that
we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar.”
(I John 1:8, 10) The Apostle
John wrote those words to believers! Logic
forces us to the conclusion that even believers sin.
The Bible is filled with such reports—see the book of I Corinthians for
a look at those
Further logic will lead him to the conclusion that this churchy statement is
saying that you’ve got to get cleaned up before you can be saved, and that old
hymn, “Just as I Am,” is way, way wrong.
It’s like saying, “Get cleaned up so you can take a bath.”
The reader needs to consider Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by it is by grace
you have been saved through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the
gift [there’s that word again] of God—not by works, so that no one can
boast.” Just think of it—if
we’re saved by turning from our sins, we would have bragging rights over God
Himself. Just think of it—if
we’re saved by turning from our sins, someone could say throughout all
eternity, “I’m sure glad that I stopped __________, ___________ , and that I
quit ___________ or I wouldn’t be here.”
The good news is that we don’t have to turn from sins to be saved;
Christ’s work on the cross is enough.
“PUT YOUR HAND IN THE NAIL-SCARRED HAND
OF JESUS”
This type of churchy statement
deserves a category all by itself for its vagueness.
If we gave awards for the vaguest of churchy statements, this one would
win the Oscar. This statement should
win an award for ambiguity. What
does it mean? You can say it means
one thing, someone else could say it means something else.
Had Thomas Jefferson read that invitation, he would have said that was
exactly what he was doing—he was following Jesus’ ethical teachings.
That’s one of the problems with it, it has no content.
It sounds poetic, like something we could commit to music.
It has that stained-glass sound to it, doesn’t it?
But the apostles never gave such an invitation anywhere in the book of
Acts. It’s nowhere.
Why? It’s meaningless;
it’s not the gospel. That’s why
the apostles never said it—it’s not the gospel and therefore it can’t save
anyone and never has.
The gospel has a very specific and definite content.
There are certain things a person must believe in order to be saved.
He must believe that Jesus is the Son of God (i. e. God).
In John 8:24, Jesus said to the Pharisees, “I told you that you would
die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the One I claim to be, you
will indeed die in your sins.” Who
did Jesus claim to be? God.
(John 1:1; Jn. 10:30) The
people of His day understood the claim to deity He was making; that’s why they
picked up the rocks to execute Him.
Jesus died to pay your personal penalty for sin and that fact must be
believed in order to be saved. I
Corinthians 15:1ff: “Now brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I
preached to you . . . . that Christ died for our sins. . .”
Jesus died as our substitute, paying the penalty for our sins.
The payment was completed—He said from the cross, “It stands
finished!” Something which is
“finished” needs no additions to it, or else those additions are, in and of
themselves, a statement to the contrary, “No, it’s not finished.
I must do something too!”
Although Jesus died, He didn’t stay dead.
He rose from the dead and Paul says that this is part of the gospel which
must be believed because he continues the sentence by writing, “ . . . that He
was raised from the dead on the third day.”
It is risen Christ who is to be trusted for salvation.
It is this risen Jesus who makes a promise which must be believed: the
promise of everlasting life. A
person must believe Jesus’ promise in order to be saved.
There are 101 things he could believe about Jesus—that He was a good
teacher, that He was born in Bethlehem, that He did miracles and lots of them,
that He was born of a virgin, that He rode
into Jerusalem on a donkey—but believing those facts do not save anyone.
A person must believe the facts that He’s God that He died for our sins
and rose again and makes a promise of everlasting life.
A key word in the gospel is the word, “alone.”
A person must believe Christ alone saves.
Not Christ and the good I do. Not
Christ and my baptism or Christ and my church membership certificate.
If salvation is by Christ and some work I do, such as giving up any sin,
then it’s no longer a gift because I’ve done something to earn it.
A question we have to ask is, “Can faith alone save us?”
The answer is yes, faith alone in Christ alone does save us because His
work on the cross is sufficient and completed.
Salvation is not a “deal” where we work some works and then He does
the rest. Salvation is by faith
alone in Christ alone.
The gospel is 180 degrees from being vague.
It was so concrete, all but one apostle died for proclaiming it.
One is never killed for vagueness or for using stained glass language.
The apostles were hounded and harassed because their message was concrete
to the point that Paul said, “I preach Christ and Him crucified.”
Rocks don’t fly at ambiguity. Whips
don’t cut exposed backs for vagueness. Jails
don’t incarcerate orators bringing man’s wisdom with flowery oratory.
Is there any better news? It’s
concrete and simple, so with that specific content in mind, Paul could say to
that jailer in
“FEEL SORRY FOR YOUR SINS AND COME TO
CHRIST.”
Of all the churchy statements,
this one and one other has been so highly programmed into us, it’s solidified
to the point of petrifaction. The
feeling sorry as a condition for salvation is based on one word, “repent.”
The invitation goes like this, “God won’t save you until you say,
‘I’m sorry.’ Or, “To be
saved you must come forward and shed great tears of repentance.”
The implant that needs to be surgically removed is the definition our
English ears put on the word, “repent.”
This churchy statement bothered me as a child because when people told me that I
must feel sorry for my sins to be saved, I believed them and I honestly tried
hard to work up that sorrow. But
what sorrow can an eight or nine year-old work up?
I just couldn’t manufacture the emotion; the feeling eluded me, even
though I was trying hard to get it going. Is
that what salvation depends on, feeling sorry for sins?
Salvation depends on a feeling?
We’re different in personality. Some
people are emotional; they cry at the reading of a telephone directory.
Others can watch the most tear-jerking of movies and sit as a Stoic.
Actors can cry on cue, having the ability to command their tear ducts.
Others simply do not and cannot cry; they go through life with the
British stiff upper lip. Do these
personality differences give some a leg up the salvational ladder and forever
deprive the rest of us?
As you may have guessed, the issue is the meaning of “repent.”
Tradition can’t help us with the meaning; we can’t say, “I’ve
always heard ‘repent’ means ‘feel sorry for,’” and go by what we’ve
always heard as our guide. What
we’ve always heard can be wrong.
Growing up, I’d always heard, believed, and acted upon the “fact”
that running behind DDT trucks as they sprayed for mosquitoes in our alley was
fun and a great activity for boys living the Huckleberry Finn life.
So, my friends and I lived for the days when the trucks came by and
sprayed DDT so thick that we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces as
we ran behind them yelling and screaming like so many Hucks and Toms.
But then Rachel Carson came along and wrote “Silent Spring” a book
which ruined our fun. All of sudden DDT trucks were in exiled.
What we’d always believed to be true turned out to be a deadly untruth.
From then on, the tradition of the DDT trucks was dead.
Coupled with the imported idea that “repent’ means to feel sorry for sin is
its companion, “turn from sin.” In
many cases, the churchy statements usually tie the two concepts together.
But the meaning of the word in the Greek language (the language in which
the authors of the New Testament wrote) is “to change the mind.”
To take the Greek word and wed it to “feeling sorry and therefore, a
turning from sin” has no foundation in the Greek language.
People have assumed such a connection, but it is not there.
The English reader can easily see that “repentance” does not mean
“feel sorry for” by turning to
II Corinthians 7:8-10 where sorrow is not identical to repentance: “Godly
sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation . . .”
Here the reader can see that “feeling sorry” is separate from
“repentance.” The Greek language had a perfectly good word to mean “feel
sorry” and used it in the case of Judas, but Judas remained unsaved after his
sorrow for betraying Jesus. He
regretted what he had done, but that regret did not save him.
Nowhere in a statement of the gospel is the Greek word “feel sorry
for” used.
The gospel of John was written to bring people to faith in Christ (John
20: 30-31), yet the reader will never find the word “repent” used in the
book, not one time. The reason is
obvious: when a person comes to faith alone in Christ, the faith itself is a
change of mind directed toward Christ, who He is and what He has done.
When the jailer at
The emphasis of the New Testament is not, “What are you going to do
about your sin?” The emphasis is
upon what Christ has done about your sin.
He paid the penalty for it completely, so completely He shouted that He
finished that work from the cross. This
focus upon what Christ has done about your sin puts the emphasis where it should
be—upon Christ, not upon us.
Those who insist upon a feeling of sorrow for sin in order to be saved
are focusing upon what you can do about your sin, they are ignoring the meaning
of the Greek word, and, when they tie the feeling sorry for sin to forsaking it,
they are forcing upon the word “repent” a load it cannot bear.
“GIVE YOUR HEART TO JESUS/INVITE CHRIST
INTO YOUR HEART”
Of all the churchy statements,
this is Number 1. It’s the most
popular of all gospel invitations, the most accepted of all the invitations made
concerning salvation. “Give your
heart to Jesus” is thundered from pulpits, lecterns; television and radio
evangelists repeat it every day, all day. Books,
tracts, and pamphlets have felled forests in order to get “Give your heart to
Jesus/Invite Christ into your heart” into print.
You’d think that with its wide-spread acceptance and daily use that it
must have been a favorite of the apostles. Since
it’s ubiquitous, surely the apostolic preaching of the cross concluded with
“Give your heart to Jesus/Invite Christ into your heart.”
But the opposite is true. You
can search Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; you can read the book of Acts and
every sermon in it and you will never find those words ever given by Christ or
the apostles in a gospel invitation. Never.
This is amazing in view of the fact that we hear it and read it so much.
We hear that we must give our hearts to Jesus so often, how can it be
that it’s never stated as a condition of salvation?
Go figure.
This invitation is blatantly an unbiblical one for many reasons. It
reverses what the Bible clearly says about salvation—it is a gift, that is,
salvation is something God gives to the one who believes in the risen
Christ, the Son of God, the one who died to pay for the sinner’s personal
penalty for sin. God gives
everlasting life to the one who trusts Christ alone.
Many times the New Testament pictures salvation as a gift.
But, “Give your heart to Jesus” turns everything upside down—the
sinner is told to give something to God, thus reversing the gift and the giver.
Because of this invitation, God is now the receiver; man is the giver.
But the New Testament is clear: we have nothing to offer God for our
salvation—not our lives, our hearts, our works, our vows, our giving up of
sin, or our even trying to give up sin. Such
an invitation makes salvation a “deal,” not a gift—God gives, but I also
have to give something in return. This
makes salvation an exchange, which it is not.
Secondly, by such a presentation of the “gospel,” we’re kept
ignorant about whether we are really saved or not.
How much of our heart do we give? All
of it? How do we know we’ve given
all of it? Wouldn’t all include
martyrdom? Who can say he would be
willing go that far? This invitation
plagues us with doubts, questions, and morbid self-examination—“Did I really give my heart to Jesus?”
“What if I find areas that I didn’t give over?”
“What if I did, but now I don’t?”
And on and on it goes, leaving the person without peace, which Jesus
promised to us when He said, “My peace I leave with you.”
Thirdly, this invitation is a misunderstanding of Revelation 3:20:
“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens
the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”
The verse was addressed to believers in the
There is no reference in the paragraph to an unbeliever or to an unbeliever’s
heart. It is a statement which
pictures the fellowship (eating together) Jesus desires to have with the church
in
In this invitation, there’s no mention of the deity of Christ, the
cross, the resurrection, or believing Christ’s promise of everlasting life,
nor of believing Him and Him alone for that promise.
A person might say, “This is all just a matter of semantics.
We’re saying the same thing.” But
we are most definitely not saying the same thing.
Believing that Jesus is God who paid one’s personal penalty for sin,
who rose from the dead and trusting Him alone for the promise of everlasting
life is a far cry from “Ask Jesus into your heart.”
Someone may say, “But I mean the same thing when I tell people to ask
Jesus to come into their heart.” Then
we would ask, “Then why don’t you say it the way the Bible says it?” The
person who says, “Ask Jesus into your heart” doesn’t use the word
“believe,” which John uses 98 times in his gospel.
He never asks a person to “give his heart to Jesus or to “invite
Jesus into his heart.” The reason
he doesn’t is because such a statement is not the gospel.
THE
PROBLEMS WITH CHURCHY STATEMENTS
Christ
declared His work on the cross “finished” over two thousand years ago.
Yet, people, well-meaning though they be, insist that it’s not finished
by adding to that work. Their
additions include confessing sins, confessing Christ publicly, vowing, giving
one’s life to Christ, trying to turn from sin(s), trying to keep the Ten
Commandments, trying to keep the Golden Rule, or the or trying to keep the
Sermon on the Mount; they try to feel sorry for and forsake their sin, they try
to change their lives, anything and everything they can think to do.
The reasons for this penchant for addition stem from thinking, “I’ve
got to do something. It can’t be
as simple or as easy as just believing.” Our
parents raised us to believe that nothing is free in this life; if you want
something, you have to earn it. We
carry this logic into the matter of getting into heaven and begin to work for
our salvation, when Christ said that He did all the work and finished all the
work.
Thinking he must make his additions of good works robs a person of
something precious—assurance. Once
you put your foot on the works path, you can’t be sure of your destiny because
you’ll never know if you’ve done enough for long enough.
If it takes faith in Christ plus 1000 good works, how do you know it’s
not 1001? How many do you have to
do? You don’t know.
No one knows. The reason no
one knows how many or how long is because works are not a requirement for
heaven.
It’s important to note that salvation comes by faith alone in Christ alone.
This means that salvation doesn’t come by faith in Christ plus
something we do, such as good works, that’s a false gospel; it does not save.
Never has; never will.
Jesus was clear about this in Matthew 7:21-22: “Not everyone who says
to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter into the kingdom of heaven – only the one who does the will of my
Father in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we
prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful
deeds?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. Go away from me, you
lawbreakers!’” (Jesus defines
“the will of the Father” in John 6:40: “For my Father’s will is that
everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I
will raise him up at the last day." We
should note also that Jesus doesn’t say, “I once knew you;” He said, “I
never knew you.”)
Jesus paints a scene of stark reality—these aren’t Buddhists or Hindus who
are in view, these are those who think they’re Christians.
They’ve done spectacular things for Jesus; but they never trusted Him
alone for everlasting life.
Salvation is by faith alone, faith in the right object—the crucified
and risen Jesus of Nazareth. Although
some have made faith complicated, it is simple and we operate by it every day.
Every day, millions of people go to the doctor who diagnoses their
illnesses. He then takes out a small
piece of paper and writes something on it which you can’t read.
You believe that the doctor has diagnosed your illness correctly and you
believe that what he wrote on that prescription will cure you.
You take that piece of paper to the pharmacist and you believe that he
can read it and fill it correctly. Once
he does, then you open the lid to the bottle, you take out a pill, and even
though you have no idea what’s in it, you swallow it three times a day!
Why? You’re persuaded that
your doctor has written the right prescription and that your pharmacist has
filled it correctly. You believe
your doctor and your pharmacist.
That’s what faith is: faith is being persuaded that something is true.
That’s it. Faith doesn’t
include works, faith is not a work, and the merit of faith is in its object, not
in the faith itself. (Romans 4:4-5)
Therefore, in regard to salvation, faith is being persuaded that Jesus is God
who died to pay your personal penalty for sin, rose from the dead, and promises
everlasting life to anyone who trusts Him and Him alone for it.
Churchy statements don’t save; only the gospel does.
Churchy statements are not the gospel.
Salvation is all of grace!
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