What Is Wrong with the Evangelicals?
I have already explained why the issue is fruit on the Jehovah's Witness page. I have already addressed the fruit of the evangelicals on the What Is a Cult? page. It's addressed even better by Ronald Sider in the book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience. Jesus said to make the fruit bad and the tree bad in Matt. 12:33. The fruit of the evangelicals is simply awful, and there are reasons for this. The fruit is bad, because the tree is bad.
There's probably never just one reason why a religious tree is bad. With the evangelicals, however, there is at least one very significant reason, and it lies in a doctrine. While we do not believe that doctrine is a good means by which to judge a group, you can judge a doctrine by the fruit it produces. There is a specific doctrine of the evangelicals that lies right at the source of the bad fruit, like a disease that killed the tree before it ever had a chance to grow. That doctrine is salvation by faith alone.
Just yesterday (on Sunday, March 9, 2007) I listened to Charles Stanley on AM 640, which I believe broadcasts from Memphis. He was preaching on Matthew 6:14-15. I have used that passage as an example on this web site. About 20 years ago, my wife and I were in a Sunday school class where those verses came up. We were shocked to find out that of the four couples in that class, we were the only ones who believed the verse! The verse says that our heavenly Father will not forgive our sins if we don't forgive the sins of others. All three other couples believed God would forgive us whether or not we forgave others. Why? Because we are saved by faith alone.
It turns out Charles Stanley agrees! It's not just three couples in a Sunday school class twenty years ago. One of America's most well known preachers says that all our sins are forgiven redemptively whether or not we forgive others, because salvation is by faith alone. There is some sense, he says, that we don't experience that forgiveness, and our relationship is not right with God, if we don't forgive others, but we are still redemptively forgiven. We're still going to heaven.
I don't want to focus on this one issue of Matthew 6:14-15. I want to use it as an example. No one, just reading Matthew 6, would think that Jesus meant that the Father would forgive our sins but we wouldn't experience that forgiveness. It's a pretty bizarre statement even to make. However, salvation by faith alone is such an important and overriding doctrine that Matthew 6 must be interpreted this way.
This is the point. All sorts of verses have to be interpreted in light of salvation by faith alone. Even a verse that says, "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone," must be interpreted to somehow mean that we are saved by faith alone, even though it says word for word that we are not. Bizarre interpretations are given for all sorts of verses. Romans 2:6-7 says that God will judge us according to our works and will repay us eternal life if we seek immortality by patiently continuing to do good. Galatians 6:9 repeats that almost verbatim. Despite these clear statements, evangelicals are not allowed to believe that doing good has anything to do with eternal life because salvation is by faith alone. So we have to reinterpret these verses.
Before I go further on the point I really want to make, let me give you one more example. Salvation by faith alone has led evangelicals to regularly say that we can't add to our faith. Yet, that is exactly what 2 Pet. 1:5 says we must do. And why must we do it? According to that passage it is so that we can make our calling and election sure and gain an abundant entrance into the kingdom of God (vv. 10-11).
But it doesn't stop at bizarre interpretations. There's something worse. What's worse is not that Jesus' words are re-interpreted, such as Charles Stanley did with Matt. 6:14-15. It's that they are ignored. Jesus said that no one can be his disciple who does not lay down his life, take up his cross, and forsake all his possessions (Luke 14:26-33), but this is not required of evangelicals because salvation is by faith alone. At least some evangelicals justify this by saying that Jesus said this before he died on the cross. Others say that there are believers and disciples and that it's good to be a disciple, but both believers and disciples go to heaven. This sort of teaching is not merely a doctrinal issue. This sort of teaching is a false gospel.
I remember being asked to do a last minute devotion at a single get-together at a Baptist church many years ago. Without much time I chose Matt. 5:38-42. It talks about turning the other cheek, giving your cloak to those who sue you for your coat, and giving to all who ask of you. One of its main lines is: "Do not resist an evil person" (v. 39, NASB). I talked to the other members of the singles group about taking Jesus at his word. Afterward, a lady who helped lead the singles group came up to me and told me, "That was very inspiring. Of course, we know that Jesus didn't want us to take that too far." I didn't know what to say. I was already learning that my friends in the singles group were prone to not believing what Jesus said.
It is no problem for any evangelical who's admonished to obey Jesus to tell his admonisher, "It's by grace, brother." Somehow, this is supposed to communicate that we're not under condemnation even if we don't obey the Scriptures. The apostles do not agree. John says that those who claim to know Jesus but don't obey him are liars (1 Jn. 2:3-4). Jesus himself said, "Why do you call Me, 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I say?" (Luke 6:46, NASB). He adds, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.” This is not an optional issue. Those who do not obey Christ do not know him.
This is the reason for the terrible fruit of the evangelicals. They do not preach the Gospel! The Gospel is the power of God to salvation (Rom. 1:16). The Gospel Christ preached did not change after he died. When he said that a person could not be his disciple without giving up his life, he was speaking eternal truth, not temporary truth that would change upon his death. According to Hebrews, written decades after Jesus died for our sin, Jesus is the author of eternal salvation to those that obey him (Heb. 5:9).
Until the evangelicals preach the Gospel of faith in Christ, a Gospel that calls men to believe Christ rather than to disbelieve him or explain away his words, they will never bear good fruit because so few of those who hear them really believe. Some do. Some believe because they have experienced the grace of God, and the grace of God teaches them to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age (Tit. 2:11-12). Others believe because they read the commands of Christ in the Bible, and they don't know to disbelieve him. So they believe and are saved. Most, though, simply believe the rhetoric of the evangelicals, who tell them that if they believe Christ died for their sins they'll go to heaven. No actual faith in Christ, such as believing what he says and teaches and following his commands, is preached, so they do not offer this to Christ. Thus it is no surprise that such bad fruit is borne.
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