EASY BELIEVISM
Clearly many
Christians have not embraced the fact that Christians must be committed to
Christ and His teachings. They may have mentally assented to certain gospel
facts...joined a church...repeated a prayer...walked forward at an evangelistic
meeting. But by any biblical measurement they were never converted. There was
no transforming conviction of sin, no repentance, no commitment to Christ's lordship,
no love for those who love Christ.
When the
reality of sin and its radical effects on the whole man are bypassed the idea
takes over that it simply takes a decision for Christ to bring about the new
birth. A decision for Christ is all that is needed. This is “easy-believism,”
in which repentance from sin is sidelined. Those who make a decision receive a
pronouncement that they are saved. This proves premature. False converts are
the outcome. The theory of the carnal Christian has been invented in order to accommodate
those who have made a decision but who bear no marks of the new birth.
Erroll
Hulse
Who Are the Puritans? Evangelical Press, p.
131.
True
conversion is more of an ongoing activity than a onetime experience. It is the
act of deliberately and repeatedly turning from vanity, sin and Satan to serve
the true and living God.
The Signs of True Conversion,
Crossway Books, 2000, p. 15.
American
Christianity tends toward a kind of "easy-believism." The Gospel is
often presented in a way that suggests that someone is saved as soon as he or
she has "accepted" Jesus as Savior, even if that
"acceptance" never manifests itself in the emotional and volitional recentering of the person's entire life. But this is
actually the paradigm of the sort of dead and fruitless faith that the whole
New Testament condemns.
Mark Talbot
The Signs of True Conversion,
Crossway Books, 2000, p. 28.
There was no
“easy believism” in Paul's presentation of the Gospel. Decision was to be
accompanied and followed by devotion. Jesus Christ IS Lord and, therefore, MUST
be Lord in our lives.
Stephen Olford
The
gospel Jesus proclaimed was a call to discipleship, a call to follow Him in
submissive obedience, not just a plea to make a decision or pray a prayer.
Jesus’ message liberated people from the bondage of their sin while it
confronted and condemned hypocrisy. It was an offer of eternal life and
forgiveness for repentant sinners, but at the same time it was a rebuke to
outwardly religious people whose lives were devoid of true righteousness. It
put sinners on notice that they must turn from sin and embrace God’s
righteousness. It was in every sense good news, yet it
was anything but easy-believism.
John MacArthur
The Gospel According to Jesus, ©
John MacArthur, 1988, p. 21.
The
gospel according to Jesus explicitly and unequivocally rules out
easy-believism. To make all of our Lord’s difficult demands apply only to a
higher class of Christians blunts the force of His entire message. It makes
room for a cheap and meaningless faith – a faith that may be exercised with
absolutely no impact on the fleshly life of sin. That is not saving faith.
John MacArthur
The Gospel According to Jesus, ©
John MacArthur, 1988, p. 31.
The modern definition of faith eliminates repentance,
erases the moral elements of believing, obviates the work of God in the sinner’s
heart, and makes an ongoing trust in the Lord optional. Far from championing
the truth that human works have no place in salvation, modern easy-believism
has made faith itself a wholly human work, a fragile, temporary attribute that
may or may not endure.
John MacArthur
The Gospel According to Jesus, © John MacArthur, 1988, p. 172.
I believe
young people are indifferent to the church today, not because the church has
required too much of them, but because it has demanded so little.
Mort Crim
Genuine faith
must go beyond the mere intellectual assent concerning biblical doctrines.
People must let the implications of these doctrines radically affect their
hearts so that they respond positively to God with the obedience and works of
faith.
Daniel Fuller
The Unity of the Bible, Zondervan, 1992, p.
312.
Why are we
experiencing such an epidemic of open- and not-so-open- sin in the church today?… [Because] we have promoted a “gospel” that says it is
possible to be a Christian while stubbornly refusing to address practices or
behaviors we know are sinful. We have accepted the philosophy that it’s OK for
Christians to look, think, act, and talk like the world. We have made it an
offense to admonish people about their sin, either privately or, when
necessary, publicly. If only we were as loath to commit sin as we are to
confront it!
Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Holiness, The Heart God Purifies, Moody
Publishers, p. 175-176.
Although a
Christian should believe simply, he should not “simply believe.”
Os Guinness
The writer
has met many people who profess to be Christians, but whose daily lives differ
in nothing from thousands of non-professors all around them. They are rarely,
if ever, found at the prayer-meeting, they have no Family Worship, they seldom
read the Scriptures, they will not talk with you about the things of God, their
walk is thoroughly worldly; and yet they are quite sure they are bound for
heaven! Inquire into the ground of their confidence, and they will tell you
that so many years ago they accepted Christ as their Savior, and "once
saved always saved" is now their comfort. There are thousands of such people
on earth today, who are nevertheless, on the Broad Road, that
leadeth to destruction, treading it with a
false peace in their hearts and a vain profession on their lips.
A.W. Pink
The
nature of Christ's salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day
evangelist. He announces a Savior from hell rather than a Savior from sin. And
that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to
escape the Lake of Fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality
and worldliness.
A.W. Pink
We
are too apt to rest in a bare profession of faith, and
to think that this will save us; it is a cheap and easy religion to say, “We
believe in the articles of the Christian faith”’ but it is a great delusion to
imagine that this is enough to bring us to heaven.
Matthew Henry
The
entrance fee into the kingdom of heaven is nothing: the annual subscription is
everything.
Henry Drummond
Neither
is it a verbal acknowledgement, in owning that which Christ suffered at
Jerusalem, which will free any from this charge and guilt. Unless the Lord Christ,
that Christ which is God and man in one person, is owned, received, believed
in, loved, trusted unto, and obeyed in all things, as He is proposed unto us in
the Scripture, and with respect unto all the ends of righteousness, holiness,
life, and salvation, for which He is so proposed, He is renounced and forsaken.
John Owen