Partial Apostasy from the Gospel
By John Fast
For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame. – Hebrews 6:4-6 (NASB)
True Christianity has no weak points and no inconsistencies. Pseudo-Christianity has; other ideologies and systems of religion have, but true Christianity has none. Every true Christian will have weak points and inconsistencies which some will blame on Christianity, but the imperfect knowledge, lives, and sanctification of Christians are not Christianity. It is their lives lived in habitual loving obedience to the truths and doctrines of Scripture, not their imperfect lives, that are Christianity and the fruit of a true work of regeneration. The former is the fruit of the Spirit, but the latter are the deeds of the flesh (Gal 5:16, 17). There is a great difference between an imperfect Christian life and a worldly and immoral life; between an imperfect yet sincere obedience to the law of God and a flagrant disobedience of it; between an imperfect love and knowledge of the truth and hostility to the truth of Scripture; between unwilful sin and willful, habitual, deliberate sin; between an innocent ignorance and mistaken understanding of Scripture and a willful ignorance, corruption, and rejection of the plain teaching of Scripture; between an ignorance that is the result of a lack or unavailability of truth and one that is the result of a willful neglect and rejection of truth; between being an imperfect slave of righteousness and being a devoted slave of sin; between a sincere desire for obedience and love of the truth and no desire for obedience or love of the truth; between crucifying the flesh with its passions and desires (Gal 5:24) and indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind (Eph 2:3); between a weak and little faith and a false faith; between being a child of God and being a friend of the world.
It is absolutely impossible for anyone to be reconciled to God while they continue to parrot, pander and cling to, and make themselves a friend of the world, and to love the world and the things that are in the world, and to conform themselves to this world, and would rather have God as their enemy than have the world not be their friend. It is as true now as it was when the apostle John wrote his first epistle, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 Jn 2:15). Worldliness is, as described by Iain Murray,
“departing from God. It is a man-centered way of thinking; it proposes objectives which demand no radical breach with man’s fallen nature; it judges the importance of things by the present and material results; it weighs success by numbers; it covets human esteem and wants no unpopularity; it knows no truth for which it is worth suffering; it declines to be a ‘fool for Christ’s sake’. Worldliness is the mind-set of the unregenerate. It adopts idols and is at war with God.”[1]
Concerning the world, the great Puritan genius John Owen wrote,
“if it can fill the minds, the thoughts, and affections of men with itself, – it will in some fortify the soul against faith and obedience, and in others weaken all grace, and endanger eternal ruin. For “if we love the world, the love of the Father is not in us;” and when the world fills our thoughts, it entangles our affections…. Hence men walk and talk as if the world were all, when comparatively it is nothing…. In their habits, attires, and vestments, in their usual converse and misspense of time, in their over-liberal entertainment of themselves and others, unto the borders of excess, and sundry other things of like nature, there is in many such a conformity unto the world (a thing severely forbidden) that it is hard to make a distinction between them, And these things do manifest such a predominancy of carnal affection in the minds of men as, whatever else may be pretended unto the contrary, is inconsistent with spiritual peace…. In the pursuit of this corrupt affection do many professors of religion grow withering, useless, sapless, giving no evidence that the love of God abideth in them.”[2]
If there is one trait which characterizes a mind conformed to this world it is relativism, namely, the inability or unwillingness to think in terms of absolute truth, of true and false, black and white, light and dark, right and wrong, good and evil. Such a mind is unable to “prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rm 12:2). Nothing is more common today among professing Christians than to talk spiritually, yet live and think worldly; to talk of communion with God, but in every way are still conformed to the world; to have a zeal for religion, but a love for the world; to have a firm assurance of salvation, but no “love of the truth so as to be saved” (2 Thes 2:10). If true Christians are to benefit the world, we must not try to be like it, but to be totally different from it; wiser than it, purer than it, holier than it, be above its influences, priorities, cares, and worries, not fear what it fears or esteem what it esteems, not trust what it trusts, not value what it values, not think and reason like it thinks and reasons, not always asking, “what will it say, what will it think”, not how we can impress it and stay on good terms with it. Judging by the popular conceptions of Christianity, and by what the mass of modern evangelicalism equates with being ‘Christian’, it is plain that the sustained attempt which has been going on for well over a century to popularize a definition of Christian which not only has no basis in Scripture but is in direct contradiction to it, has for the most part been successful, with the result that most people today are so ignorant of the nature and fruit of regeneration and true Christianity that they confuse and confound it with mysticism, humanitarianism, emotionalism, ceremonialism, ecumenicalism, and the acceptance of anything and anyone that professes to be Christian and says they “love Jesus”. If there is one feature that characterizes the numerous conceptions of the Jesus ‘loved’ by modern evangelicalism it is that they are all humanitarian. This is because it is infinitely easier for fallen human nature to believe in the existence of a Jesus who came to make us happy and affirm our self-worth than in one who came to testify that we and our deeds are by nature evil, call us to repentance and faith, to deny ourselves and the world, and who declares that unless we are born again we cannot see the kingdom of God. Failure to recognize, or the attempt to deny or minimize mankind’s natural and inbred hostility to God, His law, and His true gospel, and our natural affinity to sin, evil, and this world, is a primary cause of apostasy from the true gospel of Jesus Christ, as Iain Murray once wrote,
“Apostasy generally arises in the church just because this danger ceases to be observed. The consequence is that spiritual warfare gives way to spiritual pacifism, and, in the same spirit, the church devises ways to present the gospel which will neutralize any offence. The antithesis between regenerate and unregenerate is passed over and it is supposed that the interests and ambitions of the unconverted can somehow be harnessed to win their approval for Christ. Then when this approach achieves ‘results’ – as it will – no more justification is thought to be needed. The rule of Scripture has given place to pragmatism. The apostolic statement, ‘For if I still pleased men, I would not be the servant of Christ’ (Gal 1:10), has lost its meaning…. That this has happened on a large scale in the later-twentieth century is to be seen in the way in which the interests and priorities of contemporary culture have come to be mirrored in the churches. The antipathy to authority and to discipline; the cry for entertainment by the visual image rather than by the words of Scripture; the appeal to the spectacular; the rise of feminism; the readiness to identify power with numbers; the unwillingness to make ‘beliefs’ a matter of controversy – all these features so evident in the world’s agenda are now also to be found in the Christian scene. Instead of the churches revolutionizing the culture the reverse has happened. Churches have been converted to the world.”[3]
This apostasy from biblical Christianity has resulted in a form of godliness that calls itself ‘Christian’, yet exhibits few if any of the marks of true biblical, doctrinal, and historic Christianity, a trend noted by my good friend and fellow pastor David Harrell,
“Sadly, the absence of spiritual fruit is one of the most defining characteristics of modern evangelicalism. While worldliness and doctrinal compromise are major contributors to this barrenness, the greatest corruptor is the massive number of unregenerate professing Christians who make up the church today…. The pseudo-Christianity in our culture continues to be fertile soil for the seeds of depravity to germinate and grow into a harvest of unimaginable and unrestrained moral degeneracy in our country…. And much of the blame can be placed on false teachers and undiscerning pastors who refuse to confront sin and its effects with the only truth that can save,”[4]
This trend to deny the nature of sin and its corrupting effect on our entire nature has not abated but has accelerated until “features so evident in the world’s agenda” – features unimaginable twenty years ago, such as the normalization, promotion, and celebration of the most unnatural, irrational, insane, self-destructive, wicked and vile ideologies and behaviors – are not only “now also to be found in the Christian scene”, but the acceptance and affirmation of which is considered to be consistent with showing the love of Jesus. This is nothing but hatred of God and His Word. This is a flagrant and gross misrepresentation of the nature of God whose, “eyes are too pure to approve evil,” and who “cannot look on wickedness with favor” (Hab 1:13), and who is “not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness;” (Ps 5:4). Worldliness is no accident, but is the tool of Satan used to keep men and women under his dominion, “and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 Jn 5:19). Many today make a mockery of Satan’s lies, deceptions, and temptations, as though they were the delusions of an unenlightened and superstitious mind. Not so Jesus, and Peter, and Paul, and John. Not so Luther, Calvin, Knox, Owen, Flavel, Whitefield, Wesley, Edwards, and Ryle. Not so anyone who understands the nature of spiritual warfare, that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). The system Satan uses is so devious and subtle that men and women are willing participants and captives to his devises, as the eighteenth century pastor and author Thomas Scott described,
“Satan is continually employing all the deceivableness of unrighteousness, in order to impose upon men with the semblance of truth. He is ever aiming to mix poison with our food; and, according to the prevailing sentiments of the more religious sort of persons, he accommodates his devices, making some damnable heresy palatable and unsuspected, by grafting it on, or infusing it into, the doctrine that most currently passes with apparently serious people; just as an artful destroyer of vermin mixes his poison with the very food of which they are…most fond.”[5]
Natural Born Enemies
Despite the clear teaching of Scripture and the abundance of plain and open expressions of it, people in general are very reluctant to admit that they are inherently wicked and haters of God by nature, and that their minds are hostile toward God and His Word. They say they are not aware of any such feelings, as the great eighteenth century pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards once explained,
“Natural men do not generally conceive themselves to be so bad; they have not this notion of themselves, that they are enemies of God. And therefore when they hear such doctrine as this taught them, they stand ready to make objections. Some may be ready to say, ‘I do not know, I am not sensible, that I hate God, and have a mortal enmity against him. I feel no such thing in myself, and if I have such an enmity, why do I not feel it? If I am a mortal enemy, why should I not know it better than any body else? How can others see what is in my heart better than I myself? If I hate one of my fellow creatures, I can feel it inwardly working.’”[6]
To quote just one of Edwards’ many replies to this still common objection to the doctrine of original sin and mankind’s total depravity, doctrines which today are not only intensely disliked, but scoffed at and vilified by the bulk of modern evangelicalism,
“If you pretend that you do not feel enmity against God, and yet act as an enemy, you may certainly conclude that it is not because you are no enemy, but because you do not know your own heart. Actions are the best interpreters of the disposition; they show better than anything else, what the heart is. It must be because you do not observe your own behavior, that you question whether you are an enemy to God…. What other account can be given of your opposing God in your ways; walking so exceedingly contrary to him, contrary to his counsels, contrary to his commands, and contrary to his glory? What other account can be given of your casting so much contempt upon God; your setting him so low; your acting so much against his authority, and against his kingdom and interest in the world? What other account can be given of your setting your will in opposition to God’s will, and that so obstinately, for so long a time, against so many warnings you have had? What other account can be given of your joining so much with Satan, in the opposition he is making to the kingdom of God in the world? And that you join with him against God, though it be so much against your own interest, and though you expose yourself by it to everlasting misery?”[7]
It is a dangerous practice and principle to make a person’s opinion of their own condition the criterion by which to judge their eternal safety. Men and women will not be judged on the last day by the opinion they had of themselves, or by how sincerely they believed in a lie, or by the relativistic and artificial standards they have set for themselves. Jesus warned us that many who will be cast into hell cling to a good opinion of themselves until death rips it from them, “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness’” (Mt 7:22, 23). Try as they might to disguise it from themselves and others, natural men and women and apostate Christianity cannot altogether disguise their dislike and animosity for the absolute truths, doctrines, commands, principles, and nature of God revealed in Scripture, their unwillingness to obey His law, and their aversion to holiness and to worshiping God in spirit and in truth. This is nothing but enmity to God. It is still true that, “Those who hate the Lord would pretend obedience to Him;” (Ps 81:15), and His “enemies will give feigned obedience to You” (Ps 66:3).
True love for God does not consist of loud and boisterous claims of being ‘madly in love with Jesus’; it is not modern notions of natural human and romantic love; it is not an ooie-gooie bottomless pit of subjective emotional sentimentality, but is expressed and manifested by an objective, loving, reverent, sincere, and submissive obedience to the authority of all of God’s Word, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments;” (1 Jn 5:3); “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (Jn 14:15); not just outwardly, but from the heart, “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness” (Rm 6:17-18). A pretended, outward, superficial obedience is the product of a spurious and counterfeit love; a love divorced from obedience to God’s Word. It is to honor God with our lips while our heart remains far from Him. It is the worst kind of false love, one that is in reality the worst form of hatred, namely, hatred for God and His Word. This is the crime of which all of fallen mankind stands guilty before God. This is why all of mankind are by nature children of wrath (Eph 2:3), “The wicked are estranged from the womb; these who speak lies go astray from birth” (Ps 58:3). If men and women were not naturally and totally depraved from birth and were not by nature children of wrath, they would naturally be inclined to love and fear God and delight in and obey His holy Word, His will, and His gospel; but the reverse is obviously true. Thomas Scott wrote of the reason for this enmity toward the true gospel,
“But, while the heart remains unregenerate, the glory of God and the gospel will either be misunderstood, or hated in proportion as it is discovered…. This forms the grand objection of the carnal mind to the Gospel …. The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can it be; and its enmity to the purity and spirituality of the precepts is as strong, as its enmity to the indiscriminate sentence of final condemnation which it denounces. Nor can this enmity be reconciled; it must be crucified and destroyed…. I will not pretend to say, nor do I think any man can say exactly, how much explicit knowledge of divine truth is absolutely essential to salvation … But this I will say, that, whatever darkness there may be in a man’s understanding, unless he feels and behaves as a sinner justly condemned for breaking a righteous law, and expects salvation of mere grace in God’s way, and as reconciled to God, as loving his service, and longing after holiness – that holiness which the law requires, – and so living holily in sincerity and truth, he cannot be saved, according to the Bible.”[8]
A steady and universal effect points to a steady and universal cause. The Bible is exceedingly clear; men and women are by nature enemies of God, “hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds” (Col 1:21), and, “Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives” (Eccl 9:3). The Hebrew word translated “insanity” (howlelowt), stresses the irrational aspect of insanity. Hatred of God and His Word is irrational given the nature of God and the nature of man, yet it fills the heart of unregenerate mankind, “every intent of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually” (Gen 6:5). This insanity comes to full expression when God removes His means of common grace by which He restrains it and gives people over to their totally depraved mind (Rm 1:28). This is the widespread insanity we are witnessing today. Men who think they are women, and women who think they are men, and those who support and defend such insanity, put themselves in the same category as those who think they are George Washington, or Napoleon, or Joan of Arc, or an animal, or a cucumber. People who support and defend the insane and imaginary idea of “gender dysphoria” and giving gender-altering drugs to children are insane. When God gives any person or any nation over to a depraved mind they no longer have the ability to function as rational human beings. Their condition is irreversible. They cannot be reached by truth because they no longer possess a rational mind; rather they revile “the things which they know by instinct”, and become “like unreasoning animals,” (Jude 10). Even unreasoning animals, however, by instinct care for, nurture, and protect, not maim or kill their offspring; even they by instinct know there is a real difference between male and female; even they by instinct only mate with the opposite gender. To do otherwise would go against all their natural instincts. When a rational human being denies and rejects what even the lower animals do and know by instinct they no longer possess a rational mind, but are driven and controlled by their unrestrained sinful and evil nature and desires, debase themselves, and, like Nebuchadnezzar, their heart and mind is made like that of beasts (Dan 5:21). This is how God debases and degrades prideful men and women who habitually rebel against, reject, and despise Him and His Word; He gives them over to the degrading, self-destructive, and damning insanity that is in their hearts.
Not content, however, with merely rejecting God’s Word, His will, His nature, and sound doctrine as fables fit only for weak and superstitious minds, fallen men and women feel compelled to corrupt, misrepresent, and portray the true gospel and its doctrines in ways intended to make them appear hideous, harsh, demeaning, foolish, unreasonable, archaic, and hostile to their own idolatrous conceptions of God and their own inflated opinions of themselves. This is how they justify inventing different Jesus’ and gospels that affirm their self-importance and intrinsic goodness, flatter their pride and self-righteousness, confirm them in their worldly and sinful lifestyles, conform to their own fallen human reason, and assure them that God is a God who loves them just the way they are and who is (to borrow the narcissistic language found on more than one ‘church’ website) “incredibly passionate about you and your story”, even more than His own holiness and glory; all while pretending to believe what the Bible teaches about God, Jesus Christ, salvation, and what it means to be Christian. In other words, the god of contemporary ‘Christianity’ is one who exists for us, we are his highest priority, he accommodates us, he exalts us, he worships us, he obeys us, he needs us, he is dependent upon us for his happiness, he is constantly at our disposal, his highest priority is our comfort and happiness, he willingly changes and conforms to our own conceptions of him, he bows to our sovereign free will, he is always learning and adjusting his plans, his commands, doctrines, and nature change with the times, he is all this and more (or less), but for all that he is there is one thing he is definitely not; he is not the God of the Bible.
Such is the hostility of natural men and women to the things and person of God as He has revealed Himself in His Word; a God who “is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day” (Ps 7:11), and who, in the words of the great Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs, “cares more for His own glory than for the souls of a million people”. Such a description of God is abhorrent not only to the modern mind, but to the bulk of modern evangelicalism. So, like the wicked prophet Balaam, if they cannot curse the things of God, they do their best to corrupt them, “forsaking the right way they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor”, and they do so because, like Balaam, they “loved the wages of unrighteousness” (2 Pt 2:15). They specialize in mystifying and complicating the plain and simple and in making the most clear and straightforward truths and doctrines abstruse. This apostasy from the truths and doctrines of Christianity occurs when, in the words of the nineteenth century pastor, theologian, and Princeton’s first, and for a time, only professor of theology, Archibald Alexander, people are,
“seduced by the pride of their own hearts, they forsake the true doctrines of the Gospel, fall in love with some flattering, flesh-pleasing form of heresy, and spend their time in zealous efforts to overthrow that very truth which they once professed to prize …. they are overcome by some insidious lust or passion, and fall into the habitual pattern of some sin, which at first they secretly indulge, but after a while cast off all disguise, and show to all that they are enslaved by some hurtful and hateful iniquity. Persons who thus apostatize from the profession and belief of Christianity, or who fall into a habitual course of sinning, are commonly in the most hopeless condition of all who live in the midst of the means of grace.”[9]
When people have the means of knowing God’s Word and His will, the willful ignorance, neglect, corruption, and rejection of His truth and doctrines is a sin that will bring a double and dreadful damnation. They cannot plead ignorance. When people neglect, reject, and corrupt the only means God has given to save men and women from the wrath to come then let their blood be upon their own heads. I take no pleasure in warning of God’s wrath and hell, but I see so many people who profess to be and who assume they are Christian running full speed down the broad road that leads to destruction by slighting the narrow road that leads to eternal life, that I am resolved that no one can accuse me of not having warned them where they are going when they die unless they repent and believe not the man-centered, corrupted, and apostate gospels of modern evangelicalism, but the one and only true gospel of Jesus Christ.
The message of modern evangelicalism, especially American evangelicalism, is narcissistic in the extreme. Contemporary evangelicalism has taken the New Testament teaching of “All Scripture is…profitable (2 Tim 3:16), and turned it into “All Scripture is lucrative”, provided it can be reinterpreted, misrepresented, redefined, packaged, and commercialized in a way that is attractive to the carnal, worldly, self-centered, and unregenerate mind. The reasons commonly presented for becoming a Christian are self-centered and pragmatic. It tells people that if they become a Christian their life will get better and Jesus will help them fulfill all their worldly and self-centered goals and ambitions, and that they will win the praise, admiration, and gratitude of the world by their various benevolent acts of ‘kindness’ and ‘love’. This is not the message of true Christianity. Unlike modern evangelicalism, Jesus never enticed anyone to follow Him with promises of worldly prosperity and pleasures, the praises and admiration of men, a sense of self-worth and self-importance, or the freedom to be worldly-minded and indulge the lusts and desires of the flesh. He never cloaked the exceeding sinfulness of sin with respectable names. He never flattered human pride. He never sugarcoated or psychologized mankind’s wicked and depraved nature. He never made the hard and narrow way broad and easy. He never condoned what God condemns or permitted what God forbids. He never made a life of sin compatible with being a child of God. The message of Jesus was just the opposite, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household” (Mt 10:34-36); “If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (Jn 15:19). It was not the message of the apostle Paul, “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Phil 1:29). It was not the message of the apostle Peter, “For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong” (1 Pt 3:17). It was not the message of the apostle John, “Do not marvel, brethren, if the world hates you” (1 Jn 3:13). The message of the true gospel is one of rejection and hostility by the world. It tells us we will lose friends, family, reputation, worldly possessions, suffer rejection, marginalization, false accusations, and persecution from the world. It tells us to count the cost, die to self and to sin and to the world, take up our cross, and follow Christ wherever He may lead. This is not the message heard from the bulk of contemporary evangelicalism; in fact, it is the exact opposite of what is heard from the mass of contemporary evangelicalism.
All of the truths of Scripture, especially those truths that expose the depravity of our nature, the sinfulness of sin, the nature, holiness, and sovereignty of God, the justice of God’s wrath, and the necessity and nature of regeneration to be saved from the wrath of a holy and offended God, have been and will continue to be abused as long as, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick;” (Jer 17:9), and men and women remain “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;” (Eph 4:18). While professing to know God, by their deeds they deny Him, and while honoring God with their lips their heart remains far from Him, and while professing to believe some truths, they redefine and repudiate others. Today we are being told that ‘faithful’ Christians can disagree about the Bible’s teaching concerning the sin of homosexuality, the perversion of transgenderism, the horror of abortion, and a hundred other truths on which the teaching of Scripture is by no means ambiguous. This is not only utter nonsense, but apostasy from the truths and doctrines plainly taught in God’s divine revelation and evidence of a heart that still hates God. Can a faithful Christian disagree with what the Bible says about murder, stealing, adultery, fornication, or idolatry? Of course not! Jesus said, “And why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (Lk 6:46), and, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His glory,” (Lk 9:26). The words of Jesus are all the truths, doctrines, and commands of Scripture. He is the incarnate Word of God (Jn 1:1, 14); “The Scriptures and the Lord, bear one tremendous Name; the written and the Incarnate Word, in all things are the same – Revere the sacred page; to injure any part, betrays with blind and feeble rage, a hard and haughty heart.”[10] Genuine faith is faith not just in this or that truth of Scripture, not just in the truths of the New Testament, but in all the truths revealed in all of Scripture; it is to accept and trust all of Scripture “for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe” (1 Thes 2:13). The faithful nineteenth century French pastor and theologian Adolphe Monod stated it well when he said,
“If faith has not for its basis a testimony of God to which we must submit; as to an authority exterior to our personal judgment, superior to it, and independent of it, then faith is no faith.”[11]
Anyone who is ashamed of, apologizes for, and is unwilling to own the clear teaching of Scripture, whether it is its teaching concerning the sin of homosexuality, the distinction between men and women, creation, man’s fallen and depraved nature, his need for a new nature, the nature and character of God, the reality of hell and eternal torment, its own authority, inerrancy, and inspiration, or any other fundamental principle and doctrine of Scripture, is not a faithful but a false Christian who is still hostile in mind to God and His Word, and are no different from the Jewish rulers who were afraid to openly confess their ‘belief’ in Jesus because, “they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God” (Jn 12:42-43). The approach to Scripture described by the great Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield in 1894, and that came to characterize liberal theology, now characterizes the mass of modern evangelicalism,
“Wherever five “advanced thinkers” assemble, at least six theories as to inspiration are likely to be ventilated. They differ in every conceivable point save one. They agree that inspiration is less pervasive and less determinative than has heretofore been thought, or than is still thought in less enlightened circles. They agree that there is less of the truth of God and more of the error of man in the Bible than Christians have been wont to believe. They agree accordingly that the teaching of the Bible may be, in this, that, or the other, – here, there, or elsewhere, – safely neglected or openly repudiated.”[12]
As I stated at the end of the last study, when any fundamental principle and doctrine of the Bible is forsaken, renounced, or redefined, and especially when many of them are as they are today, and when the rule of obedience and holiness which the gospel teaches, and which a genuine new birth always produces, is habitually denied, neglected, and even vilified, and when men and women believe differently and even contrary to what the Bible plainly teaches, and live differently and even contrary to what it requires and commands, there is a partial apostasy from the true gospel of Jesus Christ and what it means to be Christian.
Becoming Laodicean
It is this partial apostasy which may justly be charged against, and what Jesus Himself in His Word does in fact charge against every nation on earth where the gospel has been publicly professed and confessed. We are very prone to approve of ourselves, and to be self-satisfied with our own state and condition and to rest in that self-satisfaction. Such were the false prophets of Israel, “They keep saying to those who despise Me, ‘The Lord has said, “You will have peace”’; and as for everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, they say, ‘Calamity will not come upon you’” (Jer 23:17). Such were the Pharisees “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous” (Lk 18:9). Such was the lukewarm church of Laodicea which thought it was “rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing”, yet was oblivious to the fact that it was “wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Rev 3:17). It is a sad and horrible thing to witness how tenaciously the most profane, prolific, immoral, worldly, ungodly, and obstinate sinners will cling to the belief that they are truly regenerate if they have ever had any kind of religious experience. They pin all their hopes on this one event. Most, however, are generally blinded to their true condition, to the true gospel, and to the true nature of regeneration by this false hope and assurance. Churches content themselves with their outward success, they judge themselves by their own faulty and worldly standards, and like those in Corinth who rejected Paul and his teaching, “they measure themselves by themselves, and compare themselves with themselves,” (2 Cor 10:12). As long as their efforts produce a measure of outward success, and as long as they are living up to their own standards, they will fiercely contend that all is well, that the gospel, its doctrines, and demands are all being sufficiently adhered to, and that they are in fact teaching and living the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Only a few faithful churches and Christians remain who complain and warn, seemingly in vain, that the glory, power, purity, and holiness which the gospel teaches, demands, and produces are virtually lost in the world, and as the pressure to compromise and conform to the world continues to grow more militant, irrational, and tyrannical, and as hostility to the truth escalates, and the cost for being faithful continues to increase, the faithful are becoming even fewer.
As the church of Laodicea illustrates, the judgment of Jesus Christ concerning professing Christians and their good or bad spiritual condition is usually far different than that of their own self-assessment and opinion of themselves. What unregenerate and worldly-minded men and women consider to be a ‘good’ church, Jesus finds nauseating and repulsive (Rev 3:16), “that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God” (Lk 16:15). Many an accurate and profound theologian has lived and died without a single ray of saving light. The natural man, no matter how gifted with natural talent or endowed with theoretical knowledge, has no spiritual discernment, makes no distinction between the holy and profane, between divine and human wisdom, or between what is true and almost true. As Charles Spurgeon once remarked. “The church that the world loves is surely the church that God hates”. Likewise, the Christianity and gospel that the world loves are surely the Christianity and gospel that God hates. The Christianity that dilutes and alters the gospel, misrepresents the holy nature of God, denies, either in word or practice, the authority of Scripture, and attempts to impress, include, accommodate, pacify, and befriend the world is no Christianity at all. It was not simply for the sake of this church only that Jesus issued such a severe rebuke and warning, but it is to serve as a warning to all churches in all ages. That the spiritual condition of modern evangelicalism and of most churches in the world is no better than that of Laodicea is now too obvious to be denied or concealed behind a pretended and superficial reverence for the Word of God, false and man-centered gospels and erroneous theologies of regeneration, benevolent and humanitarian activities, a false charity, tolerance, and love, spurious professions of being Christian, and meaningless declarations of ‘love’ for Jesus.
What God once said of Israel, Jesus may truly and justly say of the bulk of modern evangelicalism, “Alas, sinful nation, people weighed down with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who act corruptly! They have abandoned the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away from Him” (Is 1:4). The same question which God asked of Israel may be asked of modern evangelicalism, “What injustice did your fathers find in Me, that they went far from Me and walked after emptiness and became empty?” (Jer 2:5). People turn away from God, His law, and His gospel and from its fundamental truths and doctrines because they first turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to myths (2 Tim 4:4). No one ever turned away from God except in the pursuit of some idol. No one who truly loved the truth ever turned away from the truth, and no one ever turned away from the truth except to exchange the truth of God for a lie (Rm 1:25). To believe in a wrong gospel is just as damning as believing in no gospel. To believe in a different Jesus is just as damning as believing in no Jesus. Atheism is unnatural, but practical atheism comes naturally to all people everywhere, not natural by creation, but natural by corruption, as the great Puritan Steven Charnock observed,
“Inconsideration of God, or misrepresentation of his nature, are as agreeable to corrupt nature, as the disowning the being of God is contrary to common reason…. This principle runs through the whole stream of nature. The natural bent of every man’s heart is distant from God. When we attempt anything pleasing to God, it is like the climbing up a hill, against nature; when anything is displeasing to him, it is like a current running down the channel in its natural course…. How softly do we sink down into that which sets us at a greater distance from God!”[13]
This is why error is more insidious, dangerous, and destructive than outright unbelief because it is more agreeable to our fallen nature than atheism, and as such it is much more contagious; it “will spread like gangrene” (2 Tim 2:17). The Exodus generation “quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them” (Ex 32:8), and “they quickly forgot His works; and did not wait for His counsel” (Ps 106:13). After entering the land of Canaan, a generation arose that “turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord;” (Jg 2:17). The Galatians quickly deserted “Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel” (Gal 1:6). All we need to do is consider how quickly the false gospels of ‘social justice’, of ‘wokeness’ and of Progressive Christianity, just to name a few, have spread and infected people’s lives and thinking in just the last few years. Consider how quickly the most worldly and wicked lifestyles, the most unbiblical beliefs and teachings, the most irrational and unnatural ideologies, and the most tortured interpretations of Scripture have become accepted as compatible with being evangelical. Consider how quickly the world has come to dominate the life, practices, and thinking of the church. Given the multitude of different gospels and different Jesus’, and the massive accumulation of false teachers by false churches and false Christians (2 Tim 4:3), it is not surprising that people now in general entertain wild and even blasphemous opinions regarding the nature of God, the nature of regeneration, and what it is to be Christian. The greatness of the evil of this turning away from God and His Word, the vanity, folly, unreasonableness, and ingratitude displayed by turning away from the truth to myths, the strange, irrational, and self-destructive nature of this defection, and the depths of depravity, irrationality, and insanity into which those who exchange the truth of God for a lie eventually descend, make any apostasy from the truths and doctrines of the gospel inexplicable apart from the natural, innate, and inbred hatred which fallen and unregenerate men and women have for God, His Word, and His worship – a hatred which is often disguised behind a cloak of external, superficial, self-gratifying, and man-made religion and which nothing but a new nature born of the Spirit of God working through the pure Word of God can overcome, crucify, and cure.
The only means which God has provided for creating this new nature is the very truth, doctrines, and gospel from which most of modern evangelicalism has turned away, repudiates, apologizes for, and is now ashamed, “for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pt 1:22). Any gospel that excludes the true nature of man, the law of God, the nature of sin, and God’s wrath against sinners is not the gospel of the New Testament. Today people are told to listen to all conceptions of God, and to all points of view with an open and nonjudgmental mind (all views that is except the one taught by the Bible), not how “to test the spirits to see whether they are from God;” (1 Jn 4:1); they are not told to “keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hinderances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them” (Rm 16:17). Instead they turn away from the truth to myths and to those who teach them (2 Tim 4:3, 4), and accuse anyone who attempts to speak truth and expose and correct error as being ‘arrogant’, ‘too narrow’, and of thinking they are ‘the only one who is right and everyone else is wrong’; accusations which, if we were only espousing our own ideas and opinions as they are, would be legitimate, but when what we are saying is the plain teaching of Scripture, such accusations only betray a worldly and relativistic mind that is still hostile to the truth, unwilling to think in terms of absolutes, or to submit their mind to the authority of Scripture. Indeed, if anyone is able to seriously consider the nature of the true gospel, the spiritual benefits that it promises to bestow, and the new life that it promises to give both now and for eternity, they cannot help but be astonished to find that the generality of modern evangelicalism has become so weary of it, so antagonistic toward it, and so ready at the slightest threat to self-interest to compromise and relinquish it. It was because Israel grew weary of God that they stopped calling on Him and turned to idols and a superficial worship, “Yet you have not called on Me, O Jacob, but you have become weary of Me, O Israel” (Is 43:22). All that men and women long for and strive to attain in this life – true freedom, peace, joy, contentment, fulfillment, purpose – are to be found nowhere and in nothing else than the true gospel of Jesus Christ and its doctrines. Whatever good God has to communicate to us, without which we are nothing but the very worst and most vile and malignant products of sin and misery, it is all to be found only and exclusively in Jesus Christ, His gospel and its doctrines, “For in Him all the riches of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority” (Col 2:9, 10).
When fundamental truths and doctrines of the gospel are forsaken, renounced, relinquished, or redefined, what is left is not the gospel of Jesus Christ but a distorted version of it, and all those who teach and preach a distorted gospel fall under the anathema of Scripture, “if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to (i.e. “other than; besides”) that which you received, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:9). Contrary to popular opinion and practice, very little that calls itself ‘Christian’ today is Christian, precious little that calls itself the ‘gospel’ is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and very little that calls itself the ‘church’ is the true church. Whatever teaching or doctrine that tends to the disparagement and demotion of Jesus Christ, His gospel, and His doctrines, or to robbing Him of His sovereignty in salvation, or to minimizing the stupendous change and radical transformation produced by the Holy Spirit in the new birth, or that redefines sanctification as something other than conformity to the law and nature of God is to be rejected as erroneous and as teaching a different Jesus and a different gospel. The negligence and carelessness of professing Christians in neglecting the truths and doctrines of the gospel, and in their relinquishing the authority, inerrancy, inspiration, and sufficiency of Scripture, and in their abandoning its principles, commands, and obedience, places modern evangelicalism under the same condemnation which God heaped upon apostate Israel, “For this is a rebellious people, false sons, sons who refuse to listen to the instruction of the Lord;” (Is 30:9), and, “O Lord, do not Your eyes look for truth? You have smitten them, but they did not weaken; You have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent” (Jer 5:3). This is the sad condition, and no case can be made for it being otherwise, of the mass of modern evangelicalism.
The truth is, if the gospel had its proper effect on the hearts and minds of all who call themselves Christian, and if the Bible exercised its due authority over their wills, affections, and consciences, most of the evils which we are now witnessing and experiencing would not only be greatly reduced and prevented, they would be inconceivable. However, in a system of religion that calls itself Christian, and that pretends, like the church of Laodicea, that it has in no way fallen away from and apostatized from the true gospel, its commands and doctrines, and the authority of Scripture, it should come as no surprise that various forms of godliness other than the gospel taught by Jesus Christ, the apostles, the New Testament, and historic Christianity be invented; forms that correspond to how they really live and think, and that reduce Jesus to a great teacher, a social reformer, a therapist, a cosmic genie, an effeminate and unholy humanitarian, one of many names by which a generic god is known, the author of their sin, the source of their false prophecies, mystical experiences, and extra-biblical revelations; forms that concocts notions of love and grace that are an insult to real love and grace and blasphemous to the holy nature of God, and one in which only parts of the Bible are to be believed and obeyed; forms which disguise their enmity to God as He has revealed Himself in His Word and His Son, yet still call themselves ‘Christian’ and which still use Christian terminology, yet bear no relation to the Jesus, gospel, and Christianity taught in the New Testament. A ‘church’ and ‘Christianity’ in which an unbeliever can feel at home and safe, instead of one in which “he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all,” (1 Cor 14:24), is not the church and Christianity of the New Testament. All this is done because, in the words of Jonathan Edwards,
“They are enemies in the natural relish of their souls. They have an inbred distaste and disrelish of God’s perfections. God is not such a being as they would have. Though they are ignorant of God; yet from what they hear of him, and from what is manifest by the light of nature, they do not like him. By his being endowed with such attributes as he is, they have an aversion to him. They hear God is an infinitely holy, pure, and righteous Being, and they do not like him upon this account, …. It is from this disrelish that natural men have of the attributes of God, that they do not love to have much to do with God. The natural tendency of the heart of man is to fly from God, and keep a distance from him, as far off as possible…. It is evident that the mind of man is naturally averse to thinking about God: hence if any thoughts of him be suggested to the mind, they soon go away….Other things will stick; but divine things rebound: and if they were cast into the mind, they meet with that which soon thrusts them out again: they meet with no suitable entertainment, but are soon chased away.”[14]
Forms of Godliness
If the Christianity of the Bible, which is said to be a kingdom of light, and love of the truth, and holiness, and obedience, and faith, and self-denial, and separation in principles, affections, reasonings, hopes, joys, and way of life from the world, of communion with God and of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, and of love to God and the brethren – if this may become, as it has for the most part become, a kingdom of darkness, pride, self-importance, self-gratification, carnal entertainment, greed, ambition, biblical and theological ignorance, mysticism, emotionalism, humanitarianism, human reason, worldliness, lies, exploitation, immorality, false gospels, disobedience, unholiness, rebellion, unbelief, sin, hostility to truth, and idolatry – then, and only then, has modern evangelicalism not apostatized from biblical Christianity, its doctrines, its commands, its principles, and its gospel. But this is just what the apostle Paul warned would be the true nature of apostasy, “For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power,” (2 Tim 3:2-5). Under the power of the most vile and outrageous lusts, men and women invent for themselves an outward shape, image, and form of holiness; they invent a form of godliness, which they still call ‘Christian’, by substituting other things for the genuine fruit, life, and substance of what has been lost. The power of true Christianity is openly denied by their still being enslaved by the power of all the lusts and sins that are contrary to it, and which they now turn into virtues and call by different and more respectable names. The grace of God in the true gospel transforms the mind and teaches everyone who genuinely receives it “to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus;” (Tit 2:12-13). This men and women cannot more effectively renounce than by being, “lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power,” (2 Tim 3:2-5). Such people demonstrate by their lives that they are strangers to being saved “by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,” (Tit 3:5), but are still, “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness” (Eph 4:18-19). Given the level of insanity we are witnessing today, much of which is carried out under the name of ‘Christian’, it is frightening to consider that there are still some kinds of impurity, kinds so horrible, insane, and demonic, to which not only our culture, but the mass of professing Christians are spiritually prepared to give themselves over.
When men and women live in this state and condition – a condition in which a complete misrepresentation, denial, or repudiation of the true nature of regeneration, the power of godliness, and biblical Christianity consists – if they substitute a scheme and form of godliness, and replace the fruit of the Spirit with humanly conceived counterfeits and virtues, mystical and subjective experiences, and exchange false theologies of regeneration for the true, and human wisdom for the authority of Scripture, then the apostasy of which the New Testament warns against is completely accomplished. This is to be like Jeroboam who invented a similar but false religion and worship as a substitute for the true worship of God, even declaring, “behold your gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt” (1 Kgs 12: 25-33). This is to become like the Samaritans who worshiped that which they did not know (Jn 4:22). This is what all apostate forms of Christianity, be it Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, or modern evangelicalism, have done. The power of faith, love, peace, holiness, conformity to Christ, self-denial, separation from the world, love of the truth, and all the fruit and principles of genuine regeneration, having been lost and denied among the generality of professing Christians, and since all the real glory of Christianity has been forfeited, rejected, and despised, they have set up a form of it by which they content and deceive themselves, and attempt to deceive others. Instead of that love and spiritual unity with Christ and in the truth for which Jesus prayed, there has been substituted an unholy ecumenical unity at the expense and even rejection of Christ and His truth. The Christ-centered and self-denying love of Jesus, His doctrines, His commands, and His truth which is the fruit of the Spirit, has been substituted by a man-centered, Christ-despising, and humanitarian ‘love’ for this world. Regeneration is a ‘decision’ or baptism or a one-time religious experience. Grace and love are antinomianism. Faith is a mere profession. Humility is relativism and doctrinal uncertainty. Holiness is pragmatism. Freedom is hedonism. Sin is a psychological disease or disorder. Total depravity is brokenness. Calling sin by its right names is hate. Evil is good and good is evil. There is not a single Christian doctrine, virtue, and fruit of the Spirit that has not been replaced by some demonic and worldly-minded counterfeit and form of godliness. So long has modern evangelicalism fostered and lived under these various forms of godliness that instead of being led into all the truth (Jn 15:13), it has departed from and renounced almost all.
The word of the gospel, namely, all the truths, doctrines, commands, and principles of which it consists, is the only means given by God and used and empowered by the Holy Spirit to reconcile rebellious, God-despising sinners who are by nature children of wrath with a holy and offended God, and of their walking before Him in holiness and obedience for His glory. It has no other use in this world. Its only purpose is redemptive, not humanitarian or therapeutic. The extent to which this purpose is departed from, to the same extent there is an apostasy from the gospel. Since we are told in Scripture that the nature of the gospel, as to its doctrines, may, can, and will be judged by its fruits and effects in the lives of men and women, to assure people that they are under the security of its promises and truths while they live in a habitual course of sin, continue in a state of rebellion and hatred against God and His Word, deny in practice the truths they profess to believe in principle, exhibit a hostility to its truth and doctrines, and have a mind conformed to this world, is to expose the doctrines of the gospel and the obedience which it always produces and commands, to ridicule and scorn. This being the undeniable state of modern evangelicalism, we can now show how the generality of professing Christians have partially apostatized from the gospel, and examine the ways, means, causes, and reasons thereof. By God’s grace and if it be His will this is what I will begin to do in the next study.
[1] Iain H. Murray, Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950-2000 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000), 255.
[2] John Owen, ‘The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded’ in The Works of John Owen Vol 7 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1965), 264-265.
[3] Iain H. Murray, Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950-2000 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000), 255-256.
[4] David H. Harrell, Why America Hates Biblical Christianity (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 2021), 107-108.
[5] The Life, Letters, and Papers of the Late Rev. Thomas Scott, ed. John Scott (Newhaven: Nathan Whiting, 1827), 407.
[6] Jonathan Edwards, ‘Men Naturally God’s Enemies’ in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol 2 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005 Reprint of 1834 edition), 136.
[7] Ibid, 135.
[8] The Life, Letters, and Papers of the Late Rev. Thomas Scott, ed. John Scott (Newhaven: Nathan Whiting, 1827), 406-409.
[9] Archibald Alexander, Thoughts on Religious Experience (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, Reprint 1967), 169.
[10] Joseph Hart, from his hymn The Scriptures
[11] Life and Letters of Adolphe Monod, Pastor of the Reformed Church of France, by one of his daughters (London: James Nisbet & Co,, 1885), 224.
[12] B.B. Warfield, ‘The Inspiration of the Bible’ in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: Revelation and Inspiration (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, Reprint 2003), 51.
[13] Steven Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, Reprint 1996), 90.
[14] Jonathan Edwards, ‘Men Naturally God’s Enemies’ in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol 2 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005 Reprint of 1834 edition), 131.