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Monday, February 25, 2008

False professors receive Jesus as . . . .

It is my humble opinion that many of the problems that plague our modern evangelical churches are simply due to the fact that they are absolutely full of false converts. I have spent some significant time counseling people in various churches since I began pastoral ministry in 2000, and I am convinced after several years of experience with nouthetic counseling, that the single-greatest problem with the many professing Christians is that they profess and do not actually possess Christ. They do not possess the new heart (Ezekiel 36:25-27) and their lives show it. Instead of being characterized by Christian love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control; their lives are continually patterned by the following characteristics:

1. Immorality - pornography and adultery run rampant in evangelical churches. I have counseled many a man (and some women) who are easily beset by these sins. Pornography is a common sin that is easily accessible and easy to hide. Christian men will desire to kill this sin and put it to death. False professors will covertly look for ways to continually hide it, manipulate their surroundings and schedules so they can engage in it, and will not seek to kill this sin because it a rewarding idol since it brings fast gratification with little outward and immediate consequences.

2. Impurity - pop evangelicalism is generally devoid of people with chaste and pure behaviors and motives.

3. Sensuality - pop evangelicalism, Christian Contemporary Music, and modern emergent "preaching" is rife with limelight guys and sultry chicks in tight garb, wiggly hips, complete with sassy, red-hot lyrics and lowbrow messages.

4. Idolatry - many pop-evangelicals have traded the biblical Jesus for a functional savior that only gives them temporal hope and joy. However, they quickly fall into depression and despondency after the idol stops delivering the temporal goods. This is often the trigger that flips the switch into outright apostasy for many a false professor; especially once they have discovered that their "custom-fit" version of Jesus doesn't exist. It is also important to note here that some professing Christian apologists love the joy of feeding their functional savior, which is to engage in intellectual fisticuffs. However, they have no enduring desire for the true Christ of Scripture. This functional savior can only last so long and when their creeping unbelief shatters that idol, a major paradigm shift takes place and they either outright leave their former profession in the dust or they jump from the frying pan into the fire by trading in their kit-car Jesus for another idol. Again, we have seen this with the several apostates that find their way to this blogsite.

5. Sorcery - horoscope hunters and rock-rubbing pop-evangelicals and emergents are cool with mixing New Age mysticism, medieval monastic mysticism, and other sorcery with their "custom-fit" Christ.

6. Enmity - false professors always show a general hostility towards the true Christ of Scripture, His message, and His people (Rom. 8:7-8).

7. Strife - the false professor enjoys creating contention by pointing the finger at everyone else's sin as a means to show that they possess superior sanctification. They will become angry and defensive when confronted about this particular sin as it characterizes who they are at heart: hypocrites (Matt. 7:3-4).

8. Jealousy - some false professors are not happy with your natural display the fruits of the Spirit, and they want the gifts without submitting to the Giver of the gifts. Again, this is what idolatry does, it causes people to pile sin upon sin; like compound interest.

9. Outbursts of Anger - this is a chief characteristic of many false professors, as they have not the deep God-given desire nor the ability to control their anger when their idols are assaulted or their egos are exposed by the light of Christ. True biblical teaching and preaching angers them and causes them to gnash their teeth.

10. Disputes - they enjoy a good fight for the sake of a good fight; whether its intellectual, verbal, or physical. They always want to win because they are the master of their own universe. They have their reward.

11. Dissensions - the false professor is a contentious quarreler. They love the fight and if you think they don't then just try to lovingly confront them with their divisive behavior and watch the sparks fly upward!

12. Factions - one of the characteristics of some false professors is that they are theological nitpickers who use very minor theological differences between believers as a reason for avoiding biblical accountability and discipleship. They will look for microscopic doctrinal reasons to protect their true motive, which is a heartfelt desire to avoid close fellowship with born-again believers because true fellowship, discipleship, accountability, and teaching/preaching eventually exposes their idol-laden heart for what it is, and in the famous words of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, they "can't handle the truth!"

13. Envy - since they really can't have Christian love, joy, peace, patience, . . . . self-control, et. al. because they don't have the spiritual equipment needed to produce these fruits, then they don't want *you* to have them either. Since they can't have peace, they don't want anybody else to have peace either.

14. Drunkenness - because they lack self-control, some false professors show that lack by abusing alcohol and recreational/prescription drugs or they use their prescription drugs as an excuse to avoid being sober-minded. Many an M.D. will be glad to continue to take your co-pay in order to write you a prescription for your favorite tranquilizer, sedative, or narcotic since neither he nor you are equipped to deal with the root problem, which is the idol you are protecting.

15 Carousing . . . and things like these - the life of the false professor is characterized by a libertine lifestyle. Again, look at pop-evangelicalism. Dissolute behavior is okay because we can freely continue in sin since grace will abound, contradicting what Paul says in Romans 6:1.

It is also true that many of the apostates that have "graced" the combox of this blog are former false professors who had an emotional experience, heard some good music, and were snookered by a preacher to have their spiritual heaven-bound ticket punched so that they could receive some free "fire-insurance" from a market-driven "custom-fit" Americanized Jesus (1 John 2:19). However, they were and are still engaged in all or many of the behaviors above. A good place to start in the direction of self-examination is the article Do You Love Jesus or Your Sin? Piper also expresses my sentiments well below.

13 comments:

  1. Excellent post, and very insightful. The little time that I was involved in youth ministry yielded some similar results, but nothing as comprehensive as this. This is a great tool for those involved in ministry, as well as a great tool for self reflection, conviction, and growth.

    Blessings in Christ,

    BJ
    Stupid Scholar

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  2. I began to read your post and started thinking of all the examples of what you describe but then I quickly realized, you were describing my own heart.

    I consider myself Christian but recognize that, even though I agree with your points, I sometimes fall victim to those very sins.

    I suppose the real Christian (vs. faux Christian) will repent when we commit these sins and grow in our faith.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. I get the feeling that pious, orthopraxy-emphasizing liberal mainliners and postmodern Emergers see this post as being directed towards conservative Evangelicals.

    They especially love to say that people are commanded not to judge. And anyone who does so is being a hypocritical Pharisee. And by their reasoning, they might say that the author of this post is a Pharisee for judging so many people as "professors" of the faith instead of "possessors".

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  5. "If you claim to know Christ but you don’t see this love for God that Jesus purchased for all of His people that is greater than your love for sin, then you must question whether you actually know Him at all." -Steve Lehrer

    This post, Steve's article, and Dr. Piper was quite the powerful spiritual lesson.
    For me personally, and so that i am better equipped to speak the truth in love.

    Thanks. May the Lord grant me grace for grace so that i might hate my loving my lusts, pride, and self-pity, and that I would love Christ with a greater love; a sacrificial love, that only brings glory to His name and shines as a light upon His Person. Amen.

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  6. archshrk,

    You said,

    "I suppose the real Christian (vs. faux Christian) will repent when we commit these sins and grow in our faith."

    You got it. The issues are:

    1. How does the person respond to accountability and loving confrontation?

    2. Is this a repetitive pattern that has been patiently dealt with before through biblical counseling yet there is no victory over this particular lifestyle/pattern?

    3. Is this person grieved by their sin? Is there a growing abhorrence to it? Is there evidence of chastening? (i.e., Heb. 12:5-11)

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  7. (I hope the pic stays, by-the-way!)

    The final paragraph and paragraph numbered 4 brought to my mind some of the comments to your February 12post; those who haven't read it/them ought to do so now.

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  8. Great post, but the photo is downright disturbing...

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  9. Great post, but the photo is downright disturbing...

    The photo is a great play on the biblical concept of a hypocrite, and hypocrites are downright disturbing.

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  10. “10. Disputes - they enjoy a good fight for the sake of a good fight; whether its intellectual, verbal, or physical. They always want to win because they are the master of their own universe. They have their reward.”

    This is insightful and interesting. How do you think this relates to those who are considered “competitive”? Do you think it's always wrong to be competitive? I ask because I certainly know that my urge to win (if I take but a few moments to examine it) is almost always a desire to be better than someone else and/or win glory and fame for myself. Yet I know many Christians who very much enjoy a good competition (but usually only if they win) and I have no outstanding reason to suggest their motives are mostly/completely selfish/sinful.

    I am always hesitant to generalize from personal experience, so I don’t want to judge without knowing a more Scriptural approach to this issue. (I'm sure a desire to “excel” vs. “win” fits into this discussion somehow.) So I had some questions:

    How do you think #10 should affect our judgments about conduct during and approach to sports, debate club, Saturday night board games, etc.?

    The converse to #10 seems to be that Christians will desire less (or not at all) to win “fights.” Would this be a fair assessment?

    Can you think of a Biblical character that moved from this (let’s say) “fighting position” to something more peaceful and humble? (This would help me analyze #10 more).

    I appreciate the thoughts and time.

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  11. Actually, I think those are great questions, Matthew!

    You said:
    ---
    Do you think it's always wrong to be competitive?
    ---

    It depends on what is meant by this. I think it's perfectly fine to try to strive to be the best that you can be, and we can often use others to spur us on in that regard. That is, we race toward a prize and the competition actually makes everyone better than they would be if there was no prize.

    However, the win-at-all-costs attitude is naturally wrong. If your reason for competition is to destroy the opposition rather than to do a mutual spurring onward, then that would be problematic.

    In our fallen state, I don't know if many of us ever get the right balance on competition. Too often it does become about us beating the other person rather than both of us striving for victory. However, I also know from personal experience (especially playing chess with my cousin) it is possible to compete without actually caring about the outcome. It didn't happen often, but the times that neither of us actually cared if we won or lost but just wanted a good game are some of the best chess experiences of my life.

    You asked:
    ---
    How do you think #10 should affect our judgments about conduct during and approach to sports, debate club, Saturday night board games, etc.?
    ---

    I think the key to remember with sports is that ultimately they don't matter at all. Same thing with board games. (Debates are a little different, if the debate is actually a relevant debate and not just a sport debate.)

    I'm a hockey fan. I love the Avs (and we just got Forsberg & Foote back...). I enjoyed watching the Avs hoist the cup in 2001. But does any of that matter now? Of course not. And did any of that change my life? Not in the least.

    It was fun to watch the Rockies make it to the World Series this year, but the world didn't end when they got swept.

    Ultimately, sports are trivial so obsessing too much about them is definitely sinful.

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  12. Dustin, great post!

    I always enjoy the work in apologetics that you and the other T'Bloggers do, but it's always posts like this that convict me of my utter inability to be a good person let alone a good Christian that is so humbling when contrasted by the atoning work of Jesus on the cross.

    Despite my shortcomings, I am more than grateful for the sanctification.

    God Bless you, Homie!

    jesse from montebello

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