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The more friendly the church is
with sin the more sin the church will celebrate and embrace. In fact, the church
has become so friendly with sin that most church leaders constantly lead the
professing believers in celebrating their sinfulness. I was just a guest at a
well-known prophecy conference where the host asked everyone present, “If there
is anybody here that is not a sinner, please raise your hand.” Not one hand went
up and it was celebrated. You may ask me if I raised my hand? I started to, but
decided it would have been a vain protest that would have been treated with
shock. I’m not willing to cast my bread on a raging sea.
Yes, we all have
sinned and, yes, we all may still sin, but let’s not celebrate it with cheap
theology. A sin-friendly theology is first and foremost an attack on the
cleansing and redeeming Blood of Jesus Christ. He did not come to this earth to
promote and build a sin-friendly kingdom. The Bible is lined with prophets,
pastors, and evangelists that railed against sin. A short review will identify
great servants of God that paid the ultimate price because they preached against
sin. One prophet cried forth, “Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.”
(Hosea 4:17) Our new theology is “we all are joined to our idols,” so “come as
you are and leave as you came.” Jeremiah spent weeks in a mud-filled pit up to
his arms where to go to sleep was to drown in the mud all because his message
was not sin-acceptable. These were just two examples of Old Testament prophets.
Now, meet the Son of God who appeared as the perfect image of the
Father. He was quick to declare that all His messages were direct from the
Father and that He said nothing of Himself. Instead of celebrating sin, He cried
forth, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke
5:32) Repentance means one thing alone, to turn away from sin or to reverse
one’s lifestyle. When he met the woman taken in adultery at the verge of being
stoned to death, He forgave her of her sins but soundly declared to her, “…go,
and sin no more.” (John 8:11) Jesus Christ never coddled sin but instead was
crucified because He proclaimed a righteousness that exceedeth that of the law.
He said, “…That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed
adultery with her already in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28).
No one ever
proved love for the men and women in sin more perfectly than Jesus Christ. He
ate with “publicans and sinners” and was crucified for them, but He never
pandered to them. His message and life reveals an absolutely supernatural hatred
for sin and perfect, Divine love for its victims. That is the exact pattern for
His church. We must never treat sin as acceptable or celebrate it and we must
never lose our passion to see every sinner repent and be forgiven. To confuse
these two ideals is to forsake the great Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no
kinship between a love to reach sinners and the coddling of sin to fill the
church.
The Biblical picture of hope for the sinner to escape sin is
breathtaking indeed. Jesus Christ did not come to make sin acceptable but to
make it unacceptable. Willful, knowledgeable sin is totally unacceptable in the
believer’s life. One of the most powerful condemnations of a sinning religion
came to us in the Book of Hebrews. The writer said, “For if we sin wilfully
after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more
sacrifice for sins.” (Hebrews 10:26) The writer of Saint John’s Gospel and the
Book of Revelation said in his first epistle, “My little children, these things
write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with
the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins:
and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1-2)
This is the perfect Biblical analysis of our Gospel message. We preach against
sin, we warn people against sin, but if they sin, we immediately direct them to
the merciful Redeemer where there is plenty of forgiveness.
There is no
forgiveness to the person that panders sin. The saints of God must never forget
how totally they are dependent on His grace and forgiveness. We must not treat
sin in a casual manner. Sin cost the Son of God the most horrible treatment and
death and it is to be hated with the same passion as we treat His
pain.
The sin-friendly models that are invading evangelical churches are
clearly New Age and unbiblical. Robert Schuller has promoted this idea for many
years. Now we have Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Bruce Wilkerson and similar
religious leaders. This pattern fits the end times prediction perfectly. Even
the worldly, liberal news reporters, and non-religious persons are decrying the
demise of a credible church world and the absence of any sense of the
holy.
We must understand that the prophetic picture for the coming seven
years of Tribulation includes a mammoth religious entity that will be comprised
of many religious ideas all merged to look exactly like the “sin-friendly”
church. This church model talks about “peace” and a worldwide religious unity
that is the perfect picture of what New Age leaders are championing. Rick Warren
just launched a worldwide plan to promote this peace idea to all the universe.
The language of the massive New Age crowd is now the same language as America’s
evangelical big names. Paul Crouch and TBN have been ringing this bell for
years.
One thing to remember, the church of Jesus Christ is still the
voice of holiness and purity from sin and the voice of mercy and forgiveness for
every repentant sinner ready to turn to righteousness and grace. The Gospel
never changes.
Source: http://www.pawcreek.org