Today many millennial professing Christians have made themselves prey to superficial and self-help style preaching in postmodern evangelical churches. They are not set in these churches by God, but they’ve searched them for agreement with a world of their own imagination. The look or imagery is the pastor on a dark stage in his “dress” t-shirt with a neon lettered “JESUS” in the background. He’s using the Bible, actually in the casual, disarming verbiage of a vulgarized modern version. It’s hard to tell where the text of scripture ends and the speaker’s commentary begin. He’s not preaching the text, but pawning popular psychology under the subterfuge of scripture. He lightly seasons his talk with sprinkles of biblical phrases, giving the impression of divine harmoniousness.
As an example of the type of sprinkle of biblical phrase, I return to 1 John 4:18 and the second half of that verse: “He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” If you read that out of its context, it sounds like the fear of someone is holding him back from love that would perfect him. Fear is then an actual enemy. “Made perfect” is what happens to him if he operates in the sphere of love. The love is God’s unconditional love for him, that doesn’t require keeping any standards. Since salvation is free, not based on performance, God keeps loving him when he’s drunk, fornicating, using foul language, dishonoring his parents, and watching naked sex on television. The threat of punishment for violating standards is the real adversary, because it contradicts allowed freedom of unconditional love. Jesus already paid for that sin, so there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Everything in the previous paragraph is wrong. It’s in direct contradiction of the second half of 1 John 4:18. It is the opposite of what God tells us in the verse. Someone is afraid. Who is it? “He that feareth” is the person who is afraid of God’s future judgment. He should be. It is appropriate to be fearful of God’s future judgment. What possible believer could or should be afraid of God’s judgment? One who is not sure of His salvation. The professing believer, one who says he is saved, is afraid because he is not living as a believer. How is he not living as a believer? He is not loving like a believer. Love is a test of true salvation. Without the evidence of biblical love, he has appropriate fear of future judgment from God, that is, eternal punishment in Hell.
The previous three words in 1 John 4:18 are “fear hath torment.” “Torment” describes the fear. “Torment” is punishment. It is the befitting condition of a true believer, who is not obedient to God. The disobedience to God is in not loving God and in not loving the brethren. Not loving God or loving the brethren is not obeying the Word of God as it relates to God and the brethren (1 John 5:1-2).
The fear of future judgment of God, its effect of torment on the professing believer, is a helpful instrument from God to denote or detect the lack of conversion. Here is a person who should take advantage of this absence of assurance of salvation in order to examine himself. It is like physical pain to someone with an internal injury. Something is wrong and the pain communicates that, so that he can do something about it.
A professing believer possesses fear because he “is not made perfect in love,” that is, he is not maturing in love for God and for brethren like a genuine believer necessarily will mature. He is not conforming to the image of the love of Jesus Christ. He is not growing in the love that Jesus had for the Father and for others. The fear is the helpful result of the lack of a mandatory evidence of conversion: the transforming love for God and others found only in a genuine Christian. A professing believer with this pain of torment should make good use of this amazing, benevolent tool of God.
Someone might wonder if he’s got the coronavirus. Testing positive to an accurate Covid-19 test will help him to take suitable action. He can know what to do next. The test is a gift of helpful information. He won’t die from the sniffles of a cold, but he could die from the sniffles of Covid-19. He can go about to take the necessary remedy.
The self-help fraud preacher gives out a placebo test. It tells the millennial he’s fine like he is. The people with fear actually have the problem. It’s a counterfeit message conformable to the spirit of this age. Fear is the enemy. Bathe in unconditional love. Stop being afraid of the nasty transactional love that requires change. You’re fine eating, drinking, and being merry. You have nothing to be afraid of. All of that present, ongoing lust is not just permissible, but it’s the freedom that Christ died for. He was suffering on that cross so you could live like you are in worldly lust. That is a person made perfect in love. Your fear is now gone because you are thinking about what Jesus did so that you could binge watch every season of Handmaid’s Tale and bar hop from one den of live entertainment to the next.
The millennial is testing false negative. He thinks he’s fine and that’s what his “preacher” wants him to think. The “preacher” wants a congregation with this false sense of security, not feeling at all the torment of possible damning unbelief. That’s what his congregation needs, but he gives them instead a remedy for their pain. They’re dying and they don’t know it, because they’ve been anesthetized to the necessary pangs of their lack of conversion. Right now evangelicalism is teeming with these dulled from awful danger.
Good stuff. If you haven't yet read him, you would probably appreciate Os Guinness. I'm reading his book "Impossible People" right now (https://amzn.to/2WFr8t7). Here's a taster:
" … most probably the greatest danger in the coming generations will not be in the extremes but in the soft center of the almost-anything-goes, amiable accommodationism of current Evangelicalism. As in the time of the prophet Elijah, the postmodern church has become a breeding ground for the undecided, for fence sitters, for people who want to have their cake and eat it too, and so for syncretists who have forgotten the meaning of the word. There are too many Christians weary of taking a stand because they are so wary of repeating the mistakes of the past. They have become “whatever” people, those who hedge their bets and watch from the sidelines to see who will win the contest on the Mount Carmels of our day."
Guinness certainly isn't where you are (he's an evangelical), but I think you'd appreciate a great deal of what he says.
That paragraph is what I'm writing here. Thanks Tyler.