Pastor's Thoughts
REVIVALS
Recently the Baptist church held a revival at the Walworth County Fair Grounds. Through the use of giddy, enticing, exciting music and preaching they want people to "experience" Christianity and to chose to believe in Jesus Christ. While we rejoice over everyone who trusts in Jesus Christ for their salvation, there is some dangerous theology here of which we need to be aware. Is faith a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast? Or is faith a conscious decision on the part of a person in which he asks God to come into his heart.
REVIVALS
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2:8-9
Recently the Baptist church held a revival at the Walworth County Fair Grounds. Through the use of giddy, enticing, exciting music and preaching they want people to "experience" Christianity and to chose to believe in Jesus Christ. While we rejoice over everyone who trusts in Jesus Christ for their salvation, there is some dangerous theology here of which we need to be aware. Is faith a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast? Or is faith a conscious decision on the part of a person in which he asks God to come into his heart?
Here is what Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, the largest ministry in the United States directed toward university students says, "Someone may say, ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe that He died for my sins. Why I have believed this all my life. Am I not a Christian?’ Not if that person has refused to yield his will to Him..." (Much of the following is drawn from the book, The Fire and the Staff, a book of Lutheran theology written by Klemet Preus.) Do you see how this emphasis shifts the focus from Christ to me?
Billy Graham put it this way. "Placing your faith in Christ meant that first you must make a choice. The Scriptures says, ‘Whoever believes in Jesus is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son’ (John 3:18)... In order not to be condemned you must make a choice - you must choose to believe." Notice how Billy Graham uses the words believe and choose as if they were the same thing.
So what’s the problem? The problem is that faith is 100% the gift of the Holy Spirit. By nature people are spiritually blind, dead, enemies of God (read all of Ephesians 2). Dead people cannot choose to believe in Jesus. The second problem is that those who believe it is necessary to lead a person into some kind of experience or human choice at the same time push the comfort of God’s Word and sacraments, the very tools the Holy Spirit uses to create faith and strengthen faith, into the background. The certainty of salvation is no longer found with Christ and the promises of God’s Word. Rather some feeling or experience or choice is needed to be sure that you are saved. While this "experience" is sometimes perceived to be more exciting, the end result is to make a person’s salvation more uncertain.
I recently received an e-mail from one of our former members now living in Arizona who personally has wrestled with this issue in her life. Let me quote part of it for you.
The 25th anniversary of the school is a major milestone and I hope you had a wonderful celebration. Actually my Sunday was good too because yesterday was confirmation Sunday. I was deeply touched by the faith of the two young women, who each read an original and very intelligent essay about her faith. One girl described how the Lord's Supper was nourishing the faith she received at baptism. Afterwards I told them that I was a recent convert to WELS who underwent hardships because of false doctrine and to never take their faith for granted just because they were lucky to grow up with the true Gospel...
You know my experiences with a Reformed church were very unsettling. Now I understand that the problems of the Reformed church go way beyond annoying legalism. The real problem with the Reformed church is that it does not believe in the sacraments. I was told that baptism does not really do any good and the Lord's Supper is only a symbol, reducing these sacraments to mere ceremonies God has commanded us to perform. But then how does the sinner receive desperately needed grace if not from the sacraments? The answer varies and always depends on some action the sinner must perform to earn or otherwise acquire grace. The decision theology Christians (not necessarily Reformed) I met a few weeks ago said that the sinner has to make a decision for Jesus and then he will receive grace. Reformed Christians believe that the sinner has to ask for grace before he can receive it and one purpose of suffering is to reduce the poor sinner to rock bottom so that he has an incentive to ask for grace. Or in other words, my suffering is really a punishment for not asking for grace...
John Wesley, born in 1703, who believed he became a Christian when his "heart was strangely warmed", wrote in his system of theology, "We know that there is no inherent power in the ... letter of Scripture read, the sound thereof heard, or the bread and wine received in the Lord’s supper... We know likewise, that God is able to give the same grace though there were no means on the face of the earth." We believe otherwise. We believe that faith is the gift of the Holy Spirit who works through the means of grace, the gospel in word and sacrament. See John 17:17; Romans 10:17; 2 Thessalonians 2:13,14. We do not want our own experiences and choices elevated above the comforting truth and certainty of God’s Word which simply proclaims to us that because Jesus perfectly lived our life and died our death our sins have been forgiven, we are at peace with God, and heaven will one day be our home. Thank God that the certainty for my salvation doesn’t rest in me - my choices or my experiences or my feelings which are always subject to change - but solely on God’s grace and the work of the Holy Spirit who has made me and will keep me a believer in Jesus all the days of my life. As we sing in one of our hymns: On Christ, the solid rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand. (CW 382).
Now I understand why legalism produces either self-righteousness or despair. Christians blessed with a solid family life who have not undergone many hardships would be tempted to feel very smug in their Christian walk. But I felt great despair because if I believe in these false doctrines, then I am largely out of luck getting grace. When I was 18, most of my family disowned me, my marriage was not a success and since I already made my decision for Jesus years ago that grace would already be used up. And since I have endured a lot of hardships, I wondered what sin I committed to deserve all that suffering. Did God take away my husband because I was not praying enough or reading the Bible often enough? ... Praise the Lord that God's grace does not depend on anything I have to do. I intend to hold fast to this great truth for the rest of my life because I know nothing can separate me from the love of God...