Friday after Trinity 13
Now
the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith,
giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in
hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to
marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received
with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature
of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving;
for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4:1-5).
The
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) recently held their convention.
The convention was broadcast on the internet and, for the orthodox Christian
who is unfamiliar with the liberal (and very political) Christianity of
main-line Protestantism, the proceedings were quite shocking. Pastors preaching
sermons, disguised as virtue-signaling prayers, on how white people can atone
for America’s original sin of racism, which is inextricably imbedded in the
machinery of both church and state. Groups of people on stage confessing their
racial sins to people of color, and not receiving an absolution, but rather a
prescription for how to make things right; a kind of modern day, social justice
penance. And, in the most shocking moments, a flat-out denial of Jesus Christ.
When a layman stood up to speak to a resolution asserting the validity of all
religions, pointing out that Christ Himself denies this when He says, “I am the
way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me,”
(John 14:6), he was derided and ridiculed openly on the convention floor by the
clergy. The pastors scrambled to apologize to their “inter-faith guests” for
the ignorant layman’s shocking, rude, and culturally insensitive comments.
Paul
writes to Timothy, explaining that in the latter days, some people will depart
from the faith. Paul seems to be dealing with the legalism of keeping the Old
Testament Law, and the man-made traditions of the elders, that he writes about
in his other epistles. Departure from sound doctrine, however, is certainly not
limited to just these types of things. If you ever needed any evidence that we
are living in the latter days, certainly such shameful goings-on should
suffice. People dressed as pastors, shepherds of congregations charged with
feeding their flocks with God’s Word and administering to them His Sacraments,
denying Christ before all the world. Even the Pharisees were better than this.
At least they honored God with their lips, though their hearts were far from
Him.
No, these are false ministers of a false Christ; one who is concerned with
calling members of the oppressor classes to repentance for their sins of
racism, sexism, and class exploitation. These ministers are not concerned with the
actual Gospel message of Christ crucified as the ransom for mankind’s sin, and
raised to life again on the third day for man’s justification. They are interested
only in fixing the injustices of this present world; they are interested only
in assigning guilt to people for the crimes of their ancestors collectively, to
achieve social justice. They deal only with people as groups, and not as
individuals. They never see a man as someone who is a sinner, in need of
Christ’s forgiveness. He is only a member of a class, a race, or a gender. If
one happens to be a part of an oppressor group, the only forgiveness he can hope
for is what he can earn through doing the penance that the oppressed prescribe,
and then only if he is deemed worthy enough will he be absolved.
This
is called Liberation Theology. It is politics masquerading as religion. It has
infected all of the so-called main-line Protestant denominations, along with
the higher critical method of Biblical interpretation. It is what happens when
you reject the truth of the Bible. St. Paul explains:
But
if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if
Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty
(1 Corinthians 15:13-14).
Higher criticism is a man-centered approach to Biblical interpretation. This approach assumes that to understand the Bible, we must understand the mind of the authors, and their perceptions of God, at the time they wrote what they wrote. It is inherently materialistic; in the higher critical method of Biblical interpretation there is no room for miracles. Higher critics claim to believe the Bible, but they cannot
accept anything supernatural. That means no six-day creation; no parting of the
Red Sea; no Jonah receiving a prophetic word from the Lord and being swallowed,
and vomited out alive again, by a giant fish. It means, in fact, no prophetic
words from the Lord at all. If nothing supernatural happens then all of the
prophecies recorded in the Bible aren’t really prophecies. All of the things
that the prophets wrote are just clever pieces of literature, written hundreds
of years after the events that they claim to foretell. It means no fall into
sin, no promise of a savior, and no Christ, God in human flesh. Jesus was simply
a man, if he even existed, a wise and good moral teacher who cared about
equality and justice, and taught men to love their neighbors. That means no
atonement for sins, and no resurrection from the dead. The result of all this
is indeed empty preaching and an empty faith:
For
if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen,
your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have
fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in
Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable (1 Corinthians 15:17-19).
What
happens to a congregation, or an entire denomination, in the case of the ELCA,
that gives up the guts of the faith? Well, just like when a person is eviscerated,
they die. But, those people have to put their hope in something. Since there is
no supernatural, no hope in a world to come, no hope in a Jesus in whom dwells
the fullness of the Godhead bodily, who died as the atonement for sin, who has
promised to return in judgment and bring ultimate justice to mankind, they must
focus on themselves, and on the here-and-now. All of a sudden, the purpose of
the church isn’t to preach Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins, but to
fight for justice in this world. Man’s problem is no longer being dead in
trespasses and sins, but rather racism, political oppression, and crimes against the environment.
What’s
wrong with justice? Nothing. God’s Word calls us to be just; we are to love our
neighbors as ourselves. If, however, you reject what God says about the human
condition, you will never understand why that is impossible, in this fallen
creation, to achieve that goal. Moreover, achieving social justice, whether you
believe the idea is right or wrong, does nothing to rescue us from sin and
death.
We
are fallen, sinful creatures living in a fallen, sinful world. We are, by
nature, sinful and unclean. It is why Jesus tells us, in the Sermon on the
Mount, to be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. He’s showing us that
we can’t do it. He is using the Law to show us our sin, to show us that we are
lost, and that we need a savior from outside of ourselves. In the absence of
the real Jesus, churches turn to Counterfeit Jesus. In America, that is
oftentimes Comrade Jesus. Comrade Jesus teaches us that our real problems are
systemic racism, sexism, and class oppression. Comrade Jesus teaches us to overcome
these sins through socialism, communism, environmentalism, and whatever other
political “ism” there is that gives man a work to do to atone for their sin.
Not their real sin, mind you, but the things that those “isms” call sin; the
things they use to control men, and keep them from fixing their eyes on the
real Jesus, the author and perfecter of the real faith.
What
is the remedy? In short, it is to repent, and believe the Gospel. That is the
fix for those caught in the heresy of Higher Criticism and Liberation Theology.
Christ’s blood is powerful enough to wash away the stain of our sin, no matter
what it is. But we who are firmly ensconced in supposedly orthodox church
bodies, like the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, are not immune from what has
happened in the ELCA. If we go chasing after fads, and abandon Jesus so that we
can try to make friends with the world to keep parishioners in our pews, the
same thing will happen with the LCMS. If we bow to the pressure to be relevant
to the culture, to be “woke”, to be what the world falsely calls tolerant and
loving, if we abandon sound doctrine, we will end up on a stage competing with
each other in displays of heresy, virtue-signaling how woke we are on whatever
issue the culture is up-in-arms about that week. And we will be outside of
God’s Kingdom along with the other social justice warriors who have replaced
Christ with the idol of politics. God forbid! Lord, have mercy!
