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January 23, 2009
Arrogant Christianity
By Anthony Wade
Arrogant Christianity
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Arrogant Christianity in a Lost World
Deuteronomy 8:
14: then
your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought
you out of
I am tired of arrogant Christianity. I am tired of watching people be hurtful and abusive towards others in the name of Jesus Christ. There is the problem in American Christianity where some believers have embraced a candy-coated Gospel, where there is seemingly no consequence for sin. But there is also the opposite problem; where some have embraced a barb-wired Gospel where there is no room for the love of Christ. There needs to be a balance between the two. The cold hard realities of hell need to be surrounded by the warm loving forgiveness offered by our Lord and Savior. But this goes beyond topics for discussion and evangelizing the lost. This speaks to the way we approach people. The manner in which we walk. You can be stern and serious and loving at the same time. Jesus was clearly the best at it and He is supposed to be our model. There was no arrogance in Jesus. But we see this arrogance at times even in His apostles. The Gospel of Luke tells us a story of when Jesus was turned away by some Samaritans (worldly people) and the Apostles asked him if they should call down fire from heaven to consume them. Here was Jesus response:
But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village. Luke 9: 55-56 (KJV)
Sometimes we can be like those Apostles that day, arrogant in our approach to people and forgetting that Jesus came to save them, not to destroy them.
The dictionary defines arrogance as:
Offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.
Sound like anyone you have to deal with? How many Christians today approach their walks with such an offensive display of superiority and self-importance? Such overbearing pride. Hiding behind God, misusing Scripture, and berating people with fire and brimstone is not the Great Commission. It is not the Gospel message. The truth about us all is we are no better. The Apostle Paul reminds us:
What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one." "Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit." "The poison of vipers is on their lips." "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know." "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Romans 3: 9-18
The words Jews and Gentiles can be replaced with Christians and unbelievers today. Are we any better? No beloved. There is no one righteous, not even one. So why then do some in the modern church feel compelled to deal in judgment and hellfire without the love of Jesus? The key verse from Deuteronomy gives us some insight.
First of all, our hearts can become proud. Somewhere along the line, we can acquire a sense of being superior as opposed to how the Word says we are to be:
Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Colossians 3: 12-14
Sometimes however, we can start to think that we know better
than God. Suddenly Scripture becomes a little less ironclad than it had been in
the past and we can use God as an excuse for having a loveless Christianity.
The Prophet Jonah is a good example. God gave Jonah an instruction. He was
instructed to preach repentance to the city of
God eventually got Jonah's attention but he still displayed
an arrogant and petulant attitude and actually hoped against the plan of God!
Even after
But
the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did
not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But
We too get concerned about things that we have nothing to do
with. We can fall into the trap of confusing the righteousness of God for our
own. We forget that there is a lost and dying world with more people than
The next part of the key verse shows how this is possible we can forget God! Jonah certainly forgot God. So we can today as well. We can come to church on Sundays and raise their hands but on Mondays we can slip back into the judgment business without the love of Jesus. We can walk around with our noses in the air and have a false sense of superiority. You cannot have a heart of pride and remember God at the same time. But some Christians are on a mission to bring the morality of Christianity to an immoral world. They want to break the yoke instead of God. We are supposed to bring the lost to the foot of the cross not hit them over the head with it. Christ breaks the yoke.
Continuing in the key verse we see what specifically we can
forget about God. We can forget that God brought us up out of
I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD. Psalm 40: 10-3
Jesus Christ reached down into the depths of our
And so the heart hardens with pride. We think that by telling the world how bad they are that we are somehow doing the will of God. Somehow Christ is left out of their Christianity. If we are not careful we can become paragons of virtuous perfection; forgetting that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We can even twist Scripture to fit our burgeoning pride. Recently, I had someone actually tell me that their harsh stance with the world was Christian because Jesus "beat people with a whip." No He did not. In the story about the moneychangers, Jesus used the whip to scatter the animals and he overturned their tables. He did not hit them. He did not whip them. Furthermore, if you understand the situation, you would understand that the moneychangers were fleecing people, primarily unbelievers. This was not Jesus taking a stand against the immorality of the world but rather against those who would seek to treat the unsaved poorly or take advantage of them.
These are the people who stand at gay parades with signs saying God hates them. There's an effective witnessing tool. God does not hate them beloved. He hates the sin; just as much as he hates our sin. The truth is we can feel better about our own sin by decrying the sins of others. Now, does this mean we turn a blind eye toward sin? Absolutely not. Does this mean that we cannot take a principled stand as Christians in a fallen world? Of course we can. But we should not be Jonah. We should not stand off on a hill hoping against the world. We should not be surprised or angry when the world that walks in darkness does not understand the things of God. We should not approach things in arrogance and then hide behind Christ for our defense. The Apostle Paul reminds us:
Do everything in love. 1Corinthians 16:14
Jesus actually said that they will know we are His when we treat each other in love. If we cannot witness in love, then we should not witness. In our zeal to teach about hell, let us not forget heaven. In our passion for speaking against sin, let us not forget there is forgiveness. The world may be in darkness but they understand hypocrisy when they see it. A study has concluded that 72% of unchurched people believe that Christians are hypocrites. How does that affect the witness of Christ? Amidst all the political rhetoric about what Christians are supposed to stand for we have been given one charge winning the lost. But that is difficult for a lot of us. It is hard work to have to live correctly as your first witness to the lost. It is even harder sometimes to have to break down those barriers of communication and actually tell someone what Jesus has done for us. It's much easier to just tell them they are wrong and going to hell. But there is no love in that. It is a loveless Christianity being practiced by some whose hearts have grown hard with pride. Who think they know better. Who have forgotten how far down God had to go to save them. They stand off on a hill and wait for judgment against a world that doesn't know its left hand from its right. I just pray that we realize arrogance will not save anyone. Only the God we too easily forget can do that.
Father God, we come to you in thanks today. We thank you for
saving us when we did not deserve it. When we were still deep
in our pit. Deep in our sin. Deep
in our slavery. But we thank you that you reached down into
Reverend Anthony Wade January 23, 2009