Christianity Is Broken, but Can Be Fixed

I haven't read all this thread, so if I'm repeating a point someone has made, somebody please correct me.I can agree to a point that there should be something demonstrably different about Christians in loving one another that isn't always demonstrated. I also agree with those who say that there are many people who call themselves Christians who aren't. I also agree that Christians continue to sin -- but as long as they lament it and fight it they can know they are Christians. I also agree that it isn't always easy to tell who is a Christian and who isn't, but like Iano I know some who definitely are, and on this board he's one, and Buzsaw and Randman. How do I know? Because of what they believe and what they say about the Bible and about Christ. They know they are saved by grace through faith in Christ's death in their place. That is basic. If that is not believed, no matter how loving your lifestyle it's not in Christ.All that I think has already been said.But beyond that I'd like to question the premise. You can't say that the good opinion of outsiders is always a criterion for what true Christianity is, as in their saying your lifestyle is "the way it ought to be." Jesus told us the world will hate us. The world loves its own so being appreciated by the world MAY BE reason to question one's Christian life rather than the opposite. This attitude continues in every generation. It was expressed by the early Romans and Greeks against the early church and it is still expressed. Scripture is clear that if we don't encounter this attitude something is wrong.

I don't think that was a premise of mine, and I don't think my statement that our lifestyle can be recognized as "the way it ought to be," is tantamount to saying that "the good opinion of outsiders is always a criterion for what true Christianity is."I do not believe that the good opinion of outsiders is a reliable criterion of the true faith, and I definitely agree that if everyone speak well of you, something is wrong. I think millions of people believe in Christ's death in their place, and it does them no good whatsoever. They have not obtained grace, and they are not saved from anything, as is proved by the fact that they live no differently than anyone else. If you are saved from the things the faith is designed to save you from, which will be true if you really have grace, then there will be an automatic impact on your life. It is unavoidable.Look through Acts sometime and look at what the apostles preached to the lost. Despite the fact that I found a dozen places, some short and some long, where the apostles preached to the lost, not one ever shows them telling anyone that Christ died in their place. If that's what you preach, and that's all people believe from your preaching, then you'll get the results that Christians get every day, which is that less than 1 in 20 people experience any difference in their life whatsoever."Believe that Christ died in your place, and you will be saved" is a false and powerless gospel.

1 John discusses this throughout the letter. They will be recognized by their righteousness and the keeping of Christ's commandments. Christ said they will be recognized by their love. Since love, Scripturally, sums up the commandments, these things are all the same.

The gospel IS the atonement in our place. As I said, it's basic. That means it's where you start, not that that's all there is to it. If you don't have that belief then you aren't a Christian. It certainly doesn't imply that all who think they believe it really do. The test IS works based on faith. But works without that belief isn't the gospel.

Hmm. So after Peter explained absolutely nothing about the atonement to the crowd on the day of Pentecost, and then baptized them, and they received the Holy Spirit and were added to the church--after all that, they weren't Christians?Y'shua did die for sinners, but not "in their place," which is an invention of St. Anselm, who lived in the Roman legal-minded culture. Even the Orthodox churches have never adopted the Roman substitutionary atonement. That's purely a western invention, and it is not Scriptural. The Protestants simply inherited it from the Catholics.Either way, the thought that you have to understand that Y'shua died for your sins in order to be a follower of Y'shua is also an invention. Acts 2 is enough to destroy the idea, because none of those people were told about it.The Protestants have made it so important that, as you said, it IS the gospel to them. As I said, that's why their gospel is so powerless and ineffective. It's false. That's not where you start. Paul does mention Y'shua's death for sins in his letters to the churches, because it's sound teaching. However, neither he nor any other apostle mentioned any version of the atonement in their proclamations to outsiders. Your focus on the atonement as the gospel, so typical of Protestants, is simply a way for Martin Luther and his descendants to avoid becoming disciples. Since Y'shua only gives his Spirit to those who obey him, (Heb 5:9), this explains the consistent, historical ineffectiveness of the Protestant gospel. No, works without belief in Christ isn't the gospel. The Gospel is faith in Christ, not faith in the atonement. There is a huge difference. One implies and involves obedience, and the other completely ignores it.

Funny, He was the Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb God Himself provided, just as He had provided a ram in the place of Isaac, typifying the greater sacrifice to come. When the Israelites brought their sacrifices, the idea was that their sins were on the animals' head. This is particularly clearly described in relation to the scapegoat. The sacrifices in other words were indeed killed in the place of sinners, to atone for their sins which otherwise sinners will ultimately pay for themselves. The term "propitiation" in the following certainly suggests the payment for my sins by His death which is the same as His dying in my place: And just because one facet of salvation is not mentioned in one place doesn't mean it doesn't apply. The Bible has to be read as a whole. Oh it's thoroughly scriptural and well argued by good preachers from scripture. Well, I can believe that some people are saved who don't understand all the particulars of their salvation, but if someone outright denies that Jesus died in our place, as you appear to do, I would have to think you have a false gospel. Yes it is where you start. You don't seem to be aware that "easy believism" is soundly denounced by many churches, making your remarks a straw man. Obedience is strongly emphasized in the context of Jesus' death in our place. Where are you getting the idea that all Protestantism is "ineffective?" What all are you counting over what period of time? What does "faith in Christ" mean to you?

I realized a better answer might be that they were all Jews who lived the life of the Temple including the daily sacrifices and the many they brought for their own atonement. It was to the Gentiles that Paul wrote the instruction concerning the blood sacrifice for our sins, to people who hadn't been brought up in it.

You didn't answer what I said about Acts 2.I maybe should have avoided the "in the place of" argument. Let's save that for later. I will tell you that I believe Y'shua died for the forgiveness of sins, and I certainly agree that the verses you gave say that. They don't say "in the place of," and there's a point I was making that really ought to wait for some other topic. Let's pretend I never brought that up, because it's not the point here.The point is, does an unbeliever need to know that Y'shua died for the forgiveness of sins. I say no. I say that's a message for unbelievers. Since all the verses you brought up were from letters to churches, those don't address what I said. Acts 2 does, as does the 11 other places the apostles address the lost without ever mentioning the atonement. Acts 10 and the message to Cornelius is another relatively long passage you can look at. Those Gentiles received the Holy Spirit without any comment about Y'shua dying for the forgiveness of sins. My remarks were not a straw man. I do need to clarify, though, that I am aware that some churches are strongly against easy believism. However, almost no churches are against the idea that salvation comes by believing in a theological doctrine, the atonement. Since that belief won't save anyone, because it's faith in Christ, not faith in a fact, that saves, such churches, for the most part, suffer from the same ineffectiveness that the easy believism churches do. I have the apostles example, in every case and without exception in the Scriptures, to back up my statement that it's not. Do you have anything to back up your statement? It means believing in Christ. If you go look at Acts 2 and Acts 10, as I suggested, or if you go find the other 10 places in Acts where apostles preach to the lost, you will see that they preach Christ, not Christ's death for sin. They do mention that Y'shua died, but in every case it is only so that they can proclaimm that he is risen, and that his resurrection proves him to be the Son of God and Lord of all.The goal of their preaching was to make disciples. Thus they proclaimed the Lord himself, not the atonement. They described him as risen, righteous, and worthy to be believed, served, and followed, and then they asked their hearers to believe on him, which meant becoming his disciple. It meant they would become his followers, believing him and all he said.Such a faith saves. Such a faith is incredibly powerful and will transfer a person from death to life and from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God's beloved Son. Believing that Y'shua died for your sins and that heaven is now a free gift is not powerful, and it doesn't transform anyone unless the person happens to also commit himself to Y'shua, abandoning his own life and will for the Master's.Admittedly, the force behind that faith was his death. However, that power will be there whether or not you know about the mercy and grace obtained by his death. Learning about the source of that power is for later; for the disciple to learn how he was transformed. Learning about it will not transform him. Only becoming a disciple will.

It really doesn't explain the absence of an explanation of the atonement in Paul's proclamations to the lost, and it's absent every time in his, too. Also, it's absent from Peter's proclamation to Cornelius, also a Gentile.

I'm counting from the start, with Martin Luther. I could hunt down a description for you of the early Lutherans, who were said by Menno Symons to be more immoral than the Turks. (I don't know much about the Turkish invaders of that time, but Menno describes the immorality in his statement to include drunkenness and loose living. The Lutherans were noted for it, and even Martin Luther upbraided them for their lifestyle.)There are notable exceptions, sometimes in whole groups. Charles Finney, for example, led quite a movement in NY 200 years ago. Of course, his gospel would be a lot closer to mine than yours. John & Charles Wesley produced phenomenally powerful results, and I have a deep love and respect for the whole 19th century Brethren movement, even with all their glaring faults (they were very divisive, even with one another). They produced great men and women of faith, like Amy Carmichael, C.T. Studd, and others. Jonathon Goforth and Hudson Taylor would also have been products of the Brethren movement, even if they weren't directly involved in it.Overall, however, even those great men and women of God recognized the utter failure of most of Christianity around them. Jim Elliott gave up on the whole American Christian scene, complaining vociferously about what he was seeing, and finally leaving for South America to see if he could start something better among the Ecuadorian Indians.Ray Comfort is a modern evangelist who collects statistics documenting the powerlessness of what's proclaimed in Christianity today. Most major revival meeting produces scores, or even hundreds or thousands of professed conversion from people who believed their message in excitement, but within a month or two, almost none of those people can be found, and no impact is made on the local churches. Billy Graham, Luis Palau, Jimmy Swaggart...take your choice. All the evangelists produce the same miserable results. The dropout rate among those who heard and believed the news that "Jesus died for your sins and if you believe it you can go to heaven" is 95%.In most churches, the majority of the work is done by 1 or 2% of the members. The rest coast along, attending services and listening to sermons and perhaps giving money here and there, but their lives are not noticeably different from anyone else's. They most certainly are not experiencing the "great grace" that the early church experienced, as described in Acts 4.And in the end, that is the one reason I say and do all this. I believe everyone who hears the true Gospel can experience that great grace and live inside that incredible and wonderful life of Christ that is found in his body. They can experience the same confidence Paul had: "Being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will continue it to the day of King Y'shua." They can know Y'shua's statement as true that "EVERY branch in me will bear fruit."That is the power of the true Gospel and preached and lived out inside the community of disciples. Every member experiences great grace. There is a pressure to grow that comes from heaven and works from the inside out that is palpable and irresistible unless you run from it. No one stays in that environment and does not change. Spend some time in it, and the rest of your life will be touched by it.Because Protestantism does not have this power, I say the things I say, and I seek change, because I know that there are people who want to live in that kind of power. Protestantism not only fails to provide it, but it stands in the way of it by making a pretense to provide the grace that it doesn't even understand or know about.

What you are saying is very confusing. Ray Comfort certainly disagrees with you about what the gospel is and I appreciate his preaching enormously. Also Jim Elliot, very inspiring. He was a missionary and a critic of the weak American church both but where did he say what you claim about abandoning the American churches hoping to start something better in Ecuador? His widow Elisabeth Elliott is still a strong voice for the committed Christian life. But all the strong Christians are such critics. Tozer and Pink are two of my favorites, always critical of the condition of the church. Yet all you have listed preach the death of Christ in our place. They also preach a strong view of the Law and exhortations to obedience.{AbE: Also, since you admire Charles Finney and object to the way people misuse the gospel of salvation through Jesus' death by slighting the necessity of obedience, you should know that Charles Finney is "credited" with starting this trend to "easy believism" that is characterized by the call to "make a decision for Christ." I'm not sure how this relates to your view of Finney, but this came about because of his belief that a supernatural work is not needed in salvation, that mere human power is capable of "making a decision for Christ." This has led to the situation you are rightly criticizing, of thousands of professions of faith that don't bear fruit in the end.}This message has been edited by Faith, 12-08-2005 07:31 AM

O.k. here`s a question for you. That famous killing machine, George W.---Christian or not?

Hmm. I'd have to see where Finney really said "a supernatural work is not needed in salvation." I can easily see his opponents saying he believed that, but I can't imagine that was his position.On Jim Elliot, "abandoning the American churches hoping to start something better in Ecuador" is just my summation of his attitude. I doubt he would have said such a thing directly. However, my point wasn't Elliot's purpose in Ecuador. My point was his giving up on the American churches, and I think that's the impression any reader of his journal would get.You wrote of Tozer and Pink that they were "always critical of the condition of the church." That's really all I was trying to say, except that I was also trying to add that I don't think the problem is everyone, so I mentioned people I respect.The issue is the true faith, which is a real belief in Christ that believes and does what Christ says. Theology is irrelevant to that belief. Thus, just because someone believed in atonement as substitutionary is of no consequence. The question is, did they preach a faith that meant and focused on real belief in Y'shua, where you believe and do what he says. That faith saves and has power, whether you have a right understanding of the atonement or not.Therefore, I was not listing people who agreed with me on the theology of the atonement. You asked about why I said Protestantism is ineffective and powerless. I was listing people who agreed on the terrible condition of Christianity. The solution to that is not correcting theology. The solution is a lot more complicated than even correcting commitment, but you have to at least start with a true proclamation, which is the preaching of Christ as Lord, not the preaching of facts about what Christ did. Faith is in faith in Christ, not faith in some facts about Christ.An illustration I like to use is a person who claims to have faith in say, Hulk Hogan. If Hulk Hogan then got on TV and said that to live a happy, full, and prosperous life, one must stand for one hour each night at midnight in the snow throughout winter, then the only true believer in Hulk Hogan is the one who does that. Everyone else really doesn't believe him.It is very typical of Christians to explain away Y'shua's commands. His commands are said to be given during the dispensation of the Law. Obedience to his commands are said not to matter. I say that the person who does not obey Christ does not believe in him. They believe in something else. They may even believe in the atonement, and they may even believe that Y'shua died specifically for their sins so that they can go to heaven, but it won't do them any good until they believe Y'shua himself. The person who ignores his commands, or considers them optional or obsolete is no believer in Christ, no matter what theological facts they believe.One of the things Christ said was that no one could be his disciple who did not deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow him. Whoever counts this as optional is no believer in him. They may be a believer in the modern church, or in Christianity, or in some theological system, or in Martin Luther or Calvin or Pink, but they are not a believer in Christ, because they don't believe him! He says they can't be his disciple unless they do those things, but they say he can. Therefore, they don't believe in him.It is only those who lose their life for his sake who will obtain his life. That's what he said. Any believer in Christ, by definition, believes that.Sorry that's so long, but I hope it's clearer.

Nighttrain, if you will hit the reply button that's at the bottom of the message you're replying to, then people will know who you're directing your question at.

He was famous for introducing the method of requiring people to make a decision. {AbE: which implies that human will is all that is needed.} Seems to me I recall reading that in his bio. In any case this is what I hear said against him. {AbE: And also that he said that revival can be brought about merely by the proper exercise of means, implying that it is not a sovereign supernatural act of God. This has led to the empty "revivalism" that you see in some churches, that is little but human-originated emotion.) I've started his journal but haven't found him to be critical of anything but himself so far, though clearly his level of seriousness would put him at odds with lightminded Christians. Good, perhaps we will end up agreeing on a few things. Of course. But you don't seem to recognize how many are on your side about that. And you do appear to be saying that we are NOT saved by Christ's sacrifice in our place and that is simply wrong. I agree and that's well put. I agree. I have had the same problems with supposed believers you are talking about. If this had been made clear at the beginning I would not have been opposing you. But if you really do believe that we are NOT saved by the blood of Christ then I still have a problem with what you are saying.I have struggled with these issues from the beginning, been appalled at the attitudes I found in the churches. And still find. Good points. Much, thanks. But I wonder if you aren't throwing out the whole gospel of justification just because you see that too many make that their entire theology at the expense of the commands about how to live.{AbE: In saying all this, by the way, I'm not saying I think I live to the commands as I should, I'm simply acknowledging that I consider them the true Christian life and hope to make my way back to that life. It's always a help to hear someone else uphold them}.This message has been edited by Faith, 12-08-2005 09:13 AM