Someone asked me why the sudden focus on “Easy-Believism” in my blog. After thinking about it for a while, I suppose the answer to that question is the crushing weight of incredulity I felt when I recently heard someone offer the excuse for his sexual immorality, violence, filthy talk, binge drinking, and threats of physical harm was because he was a “babe in Christ.” Actually, it was the one who “led him to the Lord” who offered up that excuse on his “disciple’s” behalf. The person who was discipling the younger man was from a prominent Evangelical Bible School.
Easy-Believism is nothing more than your good old-fashioned antinomianism. It is the system of doctrinal error that states that obedience to the law, in any form, is not required in the Christian's life. This gigantic threat to orthodoxy and orthopraxy must not only be understood but must also be denounced from the housetops. But, to do so requires an understanding of what antinomianism is in order to understand the true threat Easy-believism is to orthodox Christianity.
Antinomianism is a compound word meaning against (anti) the law (nomos). Understood in the realm of theological studies, it means that the Christian is not under the law as a moral code of conduct. An antinomianist takes to an unbiblical extreme a misunderstanding of what the Bible actually teaches. What the Bible teaches is that we are not under the Law written in the Old Testament as a means of salvation (this was the Pharisaical perversion of the Law). Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and ascension fulfilled the Law (See: Romans 10.4; Gal. 3:23; Ephesians 2:15). To say that there is no moral law that believers in Christ must obey is not scriptural.
The insidious core of Easy-Believism is that a person can hear the facts of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and then exercise himself or herself salvificially Godward. The key player in this “transaction” is the human. The human, in other words, does his or her part and then God does His part. This “decision of the will” initiates the salvation act saving the person but effecting no moral change in the person. This belief concentrates on the justification of the believer but there is no “setting apart unto holiness” either positionally or conditionally. If sanctification is to take place at all in the life of the believer, than it must be on man's terms in something called “yieldedness.” To put it simply, repentance of sin in coming to faith in Christ is not necessary at all.
Not only do these folks believe that there is no moral law to be exhibited in the life of the believer, but also that the so-called Christian can remain a “babe” in Christ during his or her entire life and never show the fruit of the Spirit.
My concluding remarks are these:
Titus 2:11-15: "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee."
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1 comment:
If there is a moral law, there is a moral Giver. Moral law cannot come from man since it is man who exercises the law, the law has to come from a transcending Source.
Therefore, this doctrine as explained or this kind of teaching is utterly and completely contrary to the universal fact of a God who gave man its law - the moral law.
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