The Four Biggest Theological Mistakes That Evangelicals Are Making Today - Michael Reeves

you well so we got for theological mistakes too to chew through and there is a particular order to them I'm starting with the doctrine of God with problems that evangelicals have in their doctrine of God and I really want to see that there is a real order here it's important that we start with the doctrine of God because in any system it is what you do with it with what is most foundational in Christianity that is the doctrine of God that will drive everything so I am NOT going to be driving this question into ethical issues very concretely that we will get there but this all works through into ethical issues and I'd like you to be thinking that way who God is shapes the very nature of Christianity shapes the nature of the salvation that we enjoy of the gospel that we share who God is is determinative for everything Christians think and do but here's the problem Christians are not being as explicitly and intentionally Trinitarian as they really should be and this is given away simply when you see Christians share their faith what is it you expect to hear when Christians share their faith they'll talk about the cross they'll talk about God's free offer of salvation but when they say the word God the word God often isn't unpacked as if we'll all roughly correctly assume what the word God means and so Christians today are waxing lyrical about the beauty of the gospel but not so much about the beauty of the gob God whose gospel it is and therein lies a profound problem for not only then are we failing to distinguish the glory of the trying in God from the glory of idols but we are losing we are letting slip through our fingers the very glory of this God in all his beautiful distinctness let me just show you a little bit of what that is it's as soon as Christians try to get Trinitarian I think there are a few problems they wade into that put them off ever trying to be Trinitarian in the first place so either Trinitarian language becomes extraordinarily abstract which will appeal to some people and not to others so what's the Trinity the Trinity is like a big heavenly boogie it's a big heavenly conga and you can join the divine dance and there's something that's right to that heavenly community that we're brought in to share but it's so abstracted from what we see in Scripture that it can become its own abstract problem before too long while there are benefits to it probably more commonly the problem people slip up on is that as soon as we start talking about the Trinity in popular circles anyway what do you hear about the young Christian says please can you explain the Trinity and we're into other Trinity's like h2o oh dear and not only is it error see exist modalism God just has three different moods or modes that he warms in or cools out of God is this one stuff h2o in can appear in three different modes oh you getting worse than you get the Shamrock leaves streaky bacon eggs all that kind of stuff but in yeah you've heard Avenue and but Christians don't believe in the Trinity because they sense their gods agasshi us orally fishness it is because well John 20 verse 31 John says he writes these things he writes his gospel so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ that is the Anointed One the one anointed with a spirit the Son of God so an invitation to a simple faith in Jesus is an invitation to a Trinitarian faith you're invited to know the one who's anointed with the spirit who is the son of his father getting into a Trinitarian faith is not stepping away from a simple faith in Jesus far from it it is pressing into who Christ is now here's why you lose the glory of God the very beauty the winsome is the attractiveness of God if you lose Trinity what does it mean that God is trying what sort of God are we talking about here well it means that this son of God Jesus Christ the Son of God is one who can say in John 17 24 father you loved me before the foundation of the world that's what this God has been doing fraternity the father has been loving the Sun pouring out the spirit of his blessing on him now that means because God is a Trinity we can say God is love you can only say God is love because God is a Trinity a single person God which is the sort of God Christians will default to if they're not explicitly Trinitarian a single person God who's been by himself for all eternity cannot be essentially loving by definition because you've been eternally solitary only the triune God can be eternally loving only of this God can John right God is love and that means that the glory of this God is it complete odds is the nature of the glory of all other gods and so when we speak of this God seeking his glory that is not a selfish thing with this God because his very glory is a self giving thing the father finds his very identity he says father you loved me before that foundation of the world the father finds who he is he is father in loving giving life to eternally his son that who he is one who pours out life and love and so the glory of this God is an outshining giving generous thing and that can only be with the case with this God only a God whose eternally been loving can have this sort of glory which is why you get to see descriptions of this God's glory in Scripture ah they always have a communicative a sorry you can tell I'm an academic trying to speak English they have a generous sharing quality to them God's glory and Scripture is a radiant diffusive thing and so we see for example the glory of the Lord shone around the Shepherd's that night outside Bethlehem the glory of the Lord is constantly referred to as a radiant shining out thing the heavenly City does not need light of lamp or Sun or moon for the glory of God gives it light that's the nature of this God where all other where single person gods must be instinctively needy sucking in taking wanting our worship this God is full to overflowing and shares I just think about it imagine you are solitaire for eternity imagine your God for a moment you've probably done it before imagine you're God you've been absolutely solitaire for eternity why would you have a creation why would you do it yet maybe for some amusement have some slaves have some friends yeah it is it's either loneliness or weakness it's a lack so the the solitary person God is always motivated by a self gratification by a need by a lack the glory of such a God is like a black hole so the very glory of God must be entirely different given the nature of who the God of the Bible is and so it's not just in the face of pluralism today think for example the Wheaton controversy where a Wheaton professor was saying that Christians and Muslims worship the same God not only is that that threat around that the God of the Bible might be equated with another God but simply for the enjoyment of who this God is if we're not clear on the identity of God we lose his very nature and beauty and that's going to then affect the shape of what gospel he'd offer when a single person goddess is not going to offer the blessings of adoption a God who's not a father cannot offer adoption only the triune God can send his son unites us to his son by his Spirit and bring us in his son to himself as children only the triune God can do that you lose that great benefit of salvation if you lose who our God is second the second from doctrine of God to doctrine of who we are what does it mean to be human and so many ethical questions flow out of this one what does it mean to be human one of the most beautiful prized flowers of reformation thought is the first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism this distills a vast amount of biblical thought into one gorgeous question and answer here it is question is this what is the chief end of man what is the purpose the chief end of man answer man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever this is eternal life John 17:3 to know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you sent now this I think is something that is again far too neglected in evangelical presentations of the gospel and evangelical belief and let me give a personal testimony here I found myself many years ago reading Jonathan Edwards religious affections and when I was reading religious affections he goes through various signs of the hypocritical Christian and and of the true Christian and as he's describing the hypocritical Christian he says the hypocrite does desire the gifts of God such as salvation more than God himself and as I read that I thought you got me but why I felt bad about it I thought but that's what I was taught I was brought up to believe Jesus gets you out of hell to buy you heaven and so what I was brought up wanting the reward of the gospel I was taught unless I really miss her at it the reward of the gospel as I was taught it was heaven salvation and an abstract blessing which is very different to what you see for example in Philippians 1 with what Paul says his desire is he says my desire is to depart and not be in heaven though he would be he says my desire is to depart and be with Christ which is far better because for Paul heaven would not be heaven without Christ and this I think we need to recover and if we do much that is problematic in evangelical circles will be undone and I think for example of the evangelism discipleship split that happens in many churches where basically what happens is this the Evangelist says hey look we the holy guard is going to judge your sinners so all sinners who don't repent will go to hell so you can go to hell or Jesus has died for you so that you can get heaven and by the way this heaven is completely free so you just trust accept this free gift open empty hands accept this free gift and it's yours heaven can be free for you right tonight and anyone in their right mind goes well yeah thank you I don't want hell I want heaven for me because I want good things for me because I love me so yeah I'll go for the heaven please tick and it's free excellent I like this and then they come along the following week to the discipleship class and the pastor very meanly talks about Jesus called the holy living and this new believer says well hang on you told me last week it was completely free so what are you now putting this extra but now this is a complete catch it's not free there's holiness but that's because I sold an abstract understanding of salvation the first place instead as a preacher I should offer Jesus Christ and him absolutely freely have him have Jesus Christ know him walk in his ways which are the ways of freedom and liberation and you will know and enjoy life and then the next week when we're talking about how our lives are going practically and I see this person struggling with sin and I can say my brother my sister why in enjoying that sin are you walking away from the salvation to which you are called Jesus is salvation I'm not offering an abstract thing and it's all down to what we're made for we are made not to leave earth and simply go to enjoy heaven or paradise or some abstract blessing we are made to love the Lord your God with all your heart we are made to glorify God and enjoy him forever we are made to know him it's really a simple understanding of humanity that flows out of a basic God centeredness God is the reward of the gospel and that means that as we think about the as we proclaim it we need to be very clear that we're making God the reward showing people the beauty and yes the glory of this trial and marvelous God he is the Lord from all made for what is the human problem and here I see again evangelicals profoundly lightining the nature of the human problem with disastrous postural effects and let's have a look at some of what they are so we made in the image of God to delight in God to love him to love one another so that's what we're made for what then went wrong in the Garden of Eden what is the essential problem of sin now sometimes people say it's that Adam and Eve disobeyed God they did what they were commanded not to do now that's true absolutely but it doesn't actually plumb deep enough as to why they disobeyed and it's good to go underneath the act of disobedience to appreciate the motivation because then you get a deeper understanding of what sin is and what happened in the sin was not simply that for some reason they're wiring went wrong and they made the wrong choice now there was a deep motivation in the choice and it wasn't that they stopped loving it wasn't that Adam and Eve were created to be lovers of God lovers of each other and that they then became haters and non lovers no no all humans are lovers question is what do they love and in Adam and Eve their love turned this is why the Apostle Paul when he writes of sinners he describes them as lovers of themselves lovers of money lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God that's the problem with sin that the love we just love as humans and we are made to love God that's where health and happiness is found but the problem of sin is that the direction of our affections and desires and loves has turned towards other things than God and you see this if you look at Genesis 3 verse 6 why is it that Eve takes the Apple why does she do it because she sees it is desirable for gaining wisdom apparently sin has got a hold on her because it's drawn her desires her affections what she wants and so the human problem is deeper than her actions it is deeper than outward disobedience her act of sin is just a manifestation of a deeper turn in her heart she now desires the fruit more than she desires God and this says James and James 1 is how it is with all sin James 1 verse 14 and 15 each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he's dragged away and enticed then after desire has conceived it gives birth to sin and sin when it's full grown gives birth to death or Ephesians 2 we used to walk in the desires of the flesh that's our problem it's a deep orientation of what we want is the problem now to illustrate how this rolls out why it's so important in everyday Christian living to get this I want to introduce you to a debate between Martin Luther the reformer and Erasmus the great Renaissance scholar because Martin Luther believed that this very issue is that the heart of the Reformation and therefore at the heart of all he was fighting for in terms of pastoral benefit in the Reformation this was the issue he believed let me explain a little bit Erasmus believed that our basic problem as humans is that we are just a bit weak willed and lazy and so we ought to be holy but can't be bothered what we need is to pull ourselves together and try a bit harder right a problem is basically spiritual laziness and he wrote a book in 1524 called the freedom of the will putting that to Martin Luther suggesting that Luther have been just a bit strong in how he spoke of sin and so on the next year Luther usually didn't pay attention to many of the criticisms that were fired at him you just throw him away or worse and this time because it was Erasmus he wrote a response called the bondage of the will in 1525 now that phrase is unfortunate in so many ways the bondage of the will is a phrase that's commonly misunderstood because people think we'll the bondage of the will that doesn't make sense or fit with my human experience because I always do what I want I do what I want in my will seems remarkably free I do what I want so my will does not seem to be in slavery of any sort but that's not what the cement Luthor were saying exactly you do always do what you want but here's the thing you cannot choose what to want you always go for what you want you don't actually have the kind of level of control to you can choose to act differently but you can't choose to desire differently we're not wired like that so for instance if for supper later I could offer you a bowl of delicious soup or a bowl of sewage there is one of them that you want and one of them that you don't want and for as much as you might want to prove me wrong you can't change your desire for one of them and your hatred of the other right and your choices will follow your strongest desire and if your desire to prove me wrong is stronger than your desire to avoid sewage then you'll eat the sewage but it was soon still your desire driving you you wanted to prove me wrong it's always your desires that will drive your choices and so we freely choose to do the things we want but we will never naturally choose God because we don't naturally want him we want to run away in sin and this was Luthor's experience he saw no my problem is not that I'm just weak-willed and I need to try harder in fact he'd spent years trying harder he'd spent years of extreme excetera setec behavior and he said after that I did not love I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners all his efforts to by God off had actually drawn him to hate God more and so he could have he could achieve an outward appearance of righteousness but it would just be a hollow sham he'll be self-worship self-righteousness what Luther began to see he needed was a radical renewal where what he wanted changed where it wasn't just that he was being told trihard a trihard that we love ourselves we love pleasure we love money I just don't love God therefore I'll never choose him so what I need is for my eyes to be open by the revelation of God and so my heart to be turned so I begin to see oh he is actually more desirable more delightful more beautiful than those things I'd spent my life chasing only when our eyes are open like that and our hearts are turned then do we see a radical change in us now that difference between Lutheran Erasmus could look a bit obscure or perhaps but it actually meant that they had two different visions of Christianity and we need to be clear on this today if we're to have the liberation that Luther enjoyed see for Erasmus just try to think how it would be if imagine I don't know if you're a pastor or not but imagine you're a pastor and you know that your problem that the problem of your people is that they're just lazy they ought to be holy but their problem is they can't be bothered what are you going to do with them their problem is they're lazy they need to try harder how are you going to Pastor them tell him to try harder make him try harder and so Erasmus light view of sin actually leads to a hectoring bullying kind of pastor and so Erasmus for Erasmus the most basic image of the church was that the church is like an army so one of his best-known works was entitled the manual of the Christian soldier so the important thing for the Christian is keep the rules D do your duty so let me read you just a little bit from the manual of the Christian soldier and and get our subtle is's it's not just about externals rasmus is very subtle here he says what use is it to be sprinkled on the outside by holy water if you're filthy within no devotion better pleases Mary than the imitation of her humility would you please Peter and Paul will emulate the faith of the one and the charity of the other and thereby you'll do better than if you make 10 pilgrimages to Rome would you imitates Aunt Frances as it is you are arrogant avaricious contentious and so control your temper despise money overcome evil with good hmm so Rasmus urges his readers to be more humble more charitable more self-controlled but if he noticed none of that is at all the same thing as knowing and loving God so behavior and character are what mattered for Erasmus a relationship with God does not feature in his 22 rules for the Christian soldier it's just very revealing for Luther on the other hand the church is first and foremost like a family knowing God the Father is what matters above all and so sin here for Luther is not just dereliction of duty substandard behavior the act of sin has its roots in the hearts desire and adoration now when played out in church life those differences become very obvious let's take a rasmus first of all if right behavior is the goal and a goal everyone can achieve because they just need to pull their socks up well then the church can run like an army pastors can serve as the sergeant majors drilling their troops into line because everyone is capable of getting into line but if we made for deeper purpose to love glorify and enjoy God for made for that and yet if we cannot do so because our hearts are turned against him if we're actually enslaved to sin naturally then merely to order people to do what they can't is cruel in other words anyone who comes to hold Luther's deep view of sin it may initially sound pessimistic actually it means your compassion leaps forward because when you have this view of sin you realize people aren't just a lazy lot you got people who are helplessly addicted you got people who can't simply sort themselves out they need the one thing with the power to liberate their hearts which is the gospel it listened to Luther here he said how can a work please God if it proceeds from a reluctant resisting heart you know you help 20 grannies cross the road it looks good for everyone else and you're thinking I hate having to do this is that pleasing to God no he said to fulfill the law is to do its works with pleasure and love and this pleasure and love is put into the heart by the Holy Spirit so if hearts that are enslaved to the lies of sin ought to be one to God the glory of God in the face of Christ needs to be made known to them Christ needs to be shown to be better more desirable more glorious than our sin so compare Erasmus Stern counsel to this from Luther Luther says look here this is how you cultivate faith in Christ faith springs up and flows from the blood and wounds and death of Christ he says if you see that on the cross God is so kindly disposed towards you he even gives his own son for you then your heart will grow sweet and disposed towards God you can't simply hectare or order people out of their sin you can possibly bring about behavioral change that way but you're only going to reinforce a deeper self dependence no ears need to be open to the message of Christ and him crucified hearts therefore turned that deep radical level I'm going to keep going at this all right before opening up to any questions by looking very briefly at the nature of salvation and particularly grace so we've looked a god man sin and salvation now to understand the problem that evangelicals have with their understanding of salvation or grace can I just take you back to medieval Roman Catholicism because we've got something similar happening today in medieval Roman Catholicism here's how salvation worked it was as Erasmus said our problem is we're lazy just can't be bothered so God will save those who are holy and we know that but we think oh do I have to I just can't be bothered to be holy and so what happens is God gives this thing called grace which is kind of like a spiritual can of redbull so you can't be bothered to be holy but the priest through the sacraments gives you Red Bull and you tank back this can of grace and suddenly you start feeling right okay I'm ready to be holy now it's a buying grace you've been transformed to want to be holy the verse classically used was Romans 5:5 God has poured his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit he's given us so God gives us this energizing grace that enables us to become holy and therefore worthy of heaven now this by the way was why you might hear Roman Catholics would pray hail Mary full of grace because it's like she's completely wired with this grace she's completely tanked up with grace and so she's just very very eager to be holy now that might sound it's all this is 16th century Roman Catholicism but hopefully it doesn't sound too dis familiar because grace today is still spoken of as this abstract package of blessing even when grace is unpacked in evangelical circles a classic one would be what is grace grace is God's riches at Christ's expenses and that's true there's something right in that statement but again again it can make it sound like God gives this stuff called grace grace as the Reformers spoke of it is not some stuff it's a shorthand way of speaking of how God in his kindness gives us himself so the image that Martin Luther liked to use was not Red Bull surprisingly but he used the image of marriage Grace is rather like marriage that a husband and a wife they swap their status the wife gets her husband status the husband gets the wife status and so we the sinner gets Christ's status by entering into this spiritual union with him and so Luther said Christ is full of grace life salvation the soul is full of sins death damnation now let faith come between them and sins death and damnation will be Christ's well grace life and salvation will be the souls for if Christ is a bridegroom he must take upon himself the things which are his brides everything I have I share with you or am i give to you you must take upon himself the things which are his brides and give to her the things that are his and if he gives her his body in his very self how shall he not give her all that is his and take all that is hers and so there's a very different understanding of grace here rather than abstract blessing here is God giving himself again it's this god centered understanding of the gospel now because grace became an abstract thing in Roman Catholicism one of the charges that Roman Catholic theologians threw out at the Reformers was look if you say we're saved by grace alone what possible motivation is there for people to live holy lives right you've got heaven for freee what why am I going to live a holy life it's as if people are given this abstract thing called salvation but if I'm given Christ as we saw then the Christ I trust in who gives me his righteousness is the Christ who will transform me I cannot walk with Him know him enjoy him but be changed in a twenty surrounded by a people that it's so easily capitulated to our Dolf Hitler Dietrich Bonhoeffer felt that a wrong attitude towards grace was to blame for that mass apostasy and on the eve of the Second World War he wrote a scolding attack on what he called cheap grace he said this cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner grace alone does everything they say and so everything can remain as it was before all for sin could not atone the world goes on the same old way and we're still sinners well then let the Christian live like the rest of the world let him model himself on the world standards in every sphere of life and not aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance cheap grace is grace without discipleship grace without the cross grace without Jesus Christ that phrase is the key one grace without Jesus Christ grace without Jesus Christ was exactly what the Reformers stepped away from and exactly what we must step away from today because they're formers with their message of grace alone they're not offering more stuff they're offering the Christ who transforms so Luther said through faith in Christ Christ's righteousness becomes ours all he has becomes ours or rather he himself becomes ours no one can receive the Christ who justifies without receiving the Christ who makes holy true grace is never grace without Jesus Christ and that's why Paul can say that it is the grace of God that appears training you to holiness you

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Length: 43min 13sec (2593 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2016