Moralistic Deism
We cannot
be truly free from sin by our own power. Christ is our mediator, and he has
taken our place. Matt Chandler says, “…moral, therapeutic deism is the idea
that we are able to earn favor with God and justify ourselves before God by
virtue of our behavior.” [1]
Because of our culture, we have come to this mindset that we must be perfect
Christians. And perfect Christians offer up perfect worship, right? Wrong. When
we adopt this mindset, our ability to keep up with our repentance will in turn
just weigh us down. We will continually wrestle for moral ground and aptitude.
Eventually, we will give up, realizing that we will always be losing more than
we will be gaining. When we bring these cultural notions into the church we are
often disappointed to see others faults. This is where the label "Christians are all a bunch a hypocrites" comes from. While some will entertain the notion
that they are perfect, the truth will remain that we are all sinful by nature.
This seems like a disappointing fact, but instead it should allow us to celebrate
even more in the victory of Christ’s resurrection. The problem is that the cultures
of churches today are preaching perfect Christians, to imperfect people. However, if we truly understand the truth of the Gospel as explained in 1
Corinthians we see that the grace of the Gospel “not only saves us, but it
sustains us.”[2]
Paul writes to his fellow believers, “Now I
make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you
received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold
fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.”[3]
In order to form a pure culture of worship in our generation we must teach that
– God has saved us through the perfect life of Christ, His substitutionary
death, and the bodily resurrection of Christ Jesus.
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