Romans 12
I’m going to open this week with a quote from pastor/author Dean Inserra…
“A church that refuses to call people to die to themselves and follow Christ is going to be full of people who admire and are “cool” with Jesus, as long as He doesn’t interfere with their lives.”
A convicting quote if ever there was one! So many churches these days are presenting a doctrine built on the idea of a “cool” and tolerant Jesus. Sin’s not a worry, hell is too scary to talk about so let’s just focus on being cool. Let’s embrace sin, rationalizing it by wrapping in this warm snuggly blanket of love and acceptance that, by the way, is in no way biblical.
When we as Christians find ourselves wringing our hands over the deplorable state of the world today one of the overarching reasons as to why things are the way they are is this. We’ve allowed the gospel to be watered down, re-imagined, and forged into a terrible half-truth that has nothing to do with what Jesus came to teach.
Sin is real. Hell is real. God’s Word lays out in great specificity what sin is and there isn’t a single place in scripture where Jesus points to a sin and tells us not to worry about it.
In Romans 1, Paul is very clear in letting us know that when we choose to sin, God will abandon us to that sin. For as long as we choose to surrender to disobedience, God will let it happen. The good news is that He always stands by ready to cover you in grace and bring you back into the light of His righteousness. I’m going to share with you Romans 1:24-27 because of its relevance to one of today’s biggest societal debates.
So, God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So, they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.
If you read this and try to justify it as being out of date, antiquated and not the way Jesus would respond today, you’re reading your Bible wrong. And, sadly, you’re not alone. Gallup Polling put out this news release one week ago:
A record-low 20% of Americans now say the Bible is the literal word of God, down from 24% the last time the question was asked in 2017, and half of what it was at its high points in 1980 and 1984. Meanwhile, a new high of 29% say the Bible is a collection of “fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man.” This marks the first time significantly more Americans have viewed the Bible as not divinely inspired than as the literal word of God. The largest percentage, 49%, choose the middle alternative, roughly in line with where it has been in previous years.
For my money, this is where the Christian Church’s biggest struggle resides these days. The inerrant truth of the Bible has been squashed to make certain sins acceptable and that opens the flood gates to so much compromise that we get the chaos that we see happening all around us today.
For the record, the Bible, over the centuries has easily become the most vetted document ever written. And most of that vetting took place at the hands of skeptics and cynics totally committed to proving it all to be myth, legend, and fables. 2022 years later and not one shred of evidence has ever been produced that can debunk God’s Word. Yet, if you get enough people proclaiming it all to be a fairy tale with little to no opposition…here we are.
Romans 12:2.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
As a society, we’ve lost the heartfelt desire to be transformed by Jesus into new creations. We conform to the ways of the world because it is the path of least resistance. It’s also the wide gateway to eternal condemnation that Jesus warns about in Matthew 7:13-14. This is Jesus Himself explaining how hell becomes a reality for those who choose to believe that sin, well, isn’t real.
Conformity is little more than an example of spinning your proverbial tires in the proverbial mud. Conformity gets you nowhere. Conformity tells you that your addiction isn’t a problem. That sexual immorality isn’t. That men can be women and women can be men simply by proclaiming that to be the case. Conformity in other words does nothing but feed, nurture, and harvest sin.
The only thing that changes this reality is for Christians to rediscover the heart to be transformed by Jesus. Letting go of this perception of Him as “cool dude” and instead revering Him as Lord over your life. We need to be fearlessly vocal in proclaiming the gospel as truth. Paul says we are to, “Gently instruct those who oppose the truth.” Gently being the key. He goes on, “Perhaps God will change those people’s hearts, and they will learn the truth. Then they will come to their senses and escape from the devil’s trap. For they have been held captive by him to do whatever he wants.”
So, on top of everything else, conformity puts us in bondage, enslaved by Satan. Who, by the way, is also real. Find your heart for transformation. Re-live your Damascus Road Moment. If enough of us choose to do that, who knows? This insane world may actually come to find its peace through the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.