Low-Cost Christianity
I had a great conversation with a good friend of mine this week talking about persecution. We both readily recognize there is a lot of true persecution going on in the world today, and we also recognize there is a “soft” persecution that happens to some Christians even here in our own country. However, we were talking about the potential future and what the church in the US might face going forward in the sense of real, governmental and cultural persecution. We agreed it is coming, and we also agreed we had no idea if it would be in our lifetimes or sometime further down the road.
As we discussed the topic, we talked about martyrs in the past and also the thought of facing a choice of whether to deny Christ or see our family tortured, and the question came up as to whether there is grace for someone who denies Christ in a moment like that. We can think through Scripture and see that Peter denied Jesus three times in one night and received grace, but then we know in the end Peter refused to deny Christ and was crucified for it. We discussed the fact that God is a gracious God and forgives any sin but the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, but we also discussed the concept Jesus said that if we denied Him before men then He would deny us before the Father. It was really a great conversation.
Since then, though, I had been thinking a lot about this topic, and recently ran across some social media posts from a man who claims to be a Christian, who also claims to be a pastor, who was saying blasphemous things about Christ. He was trying to compare a wicked criminal to Jesus in attempt to draw compassion for the man. There is no doubt in my mind that this man knows very little about Christ, very little about the Bible, and if he is a believer, he is far too ignorant to ever be considered to be anyone’s pastor. But his posts got me thinking about how his behavior might link to the conversation I had with my friend.
In the Roman empire, as far as the government was concerned, there was one lord to be faithful to, and his name was Caesar, not Jesus.
You see, in the early church, there was a cost to being a Christian. We share the gospel with people, and use verses such as Romans 10:9, which says, “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Legacy Standard Bible). In the early church, however, the confession of the mouth that Jesus is Lord was much more costly than today. Paul is writing to the Roman people, who live in the city of Rome, the capital of the Roman empire. In the Roman empire, as far as the government was concerned, there was one lord to be faithful to, and his name was Caesar, not Jesus. To confess Jesus as Lord could mean death, imprisonment, torture, and who knows what else because it was considered a direct attack on their entire system. It could mean immediate disassociation from society so people would not be accused of being your friend. It could mean loss of employment, or if you had a business, losing a lot of your customer base. In other words, there was a very high cost to confessing Jesus as Lord, and both Paul and his recipients knew that.
We, however, in our Christian faith, have leaders debating about whether one needs to look at Jesus as their lord and master to be a true Christian. We have many men, some of whom I have respect for in other areas, who vehemently push the idea that to become a Christian is simply this confession of the mouth and belief in a heart, but that there need be no fruit that comes with it. They say that if someone has done this, they are going to heaven, they are a Christian, and no one has the right to say differently. The concept is one often termed as easy-believism, or as I am calling it here, low-cost Christianity. The effort to press the idea of the gift of salvation has taken the grace of God in salvation and made it, not free, but cheap and impotent. Often this comes from people with a sincere desire to see fewer people go to hell and more people enter the narrow gate, however, if in the end those people remain on the broad road and think they are on the narrow one, the results of these sincere people are horrifying.
...if in the end those people remain on the broad road and think they are on the narrow one, the results of these sincere people are horrifying.
You see, we can afford to have low-cost Christianity in a free society that does not overtly persecute Christians. In fact, for a number of people, Christianity has become a means of great gain, whether in finances, power, influence, or fame. This was even true in the apostle Paul’s day in some communities, how much more today in our country? The Christian pool is much smaller than the culture as a whole, and some have realized it is easier to be a big fish in a little pond and stand out then to try to stand out in the ocean of humanity. Since there is little to no cost in making a profession of faith, then, they can experience great gain for almost no investment. Their faith is built on nothing less, and nothing more, than their own identification. Just as a man identifies as a woman to win more easily in competition, we have non-Christians identifying as Christians for their own personal promotion.
Low-cost Christianity has caused Christianity to be coopted into many movements. The woke movement has infiltrated Christianity making the gospel into a social gospel. The nationalist movement is working on coopting Christianity to make the gospel into a cultural Christianity. I would even argue the low-cost Christianity promoters have in some ways coopted Christianity by making the gospel something that has no power to change us in the world we live in today. Not that everyone who holds to some idea of caring for the poor, or of influencing our government and culture, or of free grace is not a true believer in Jesus Christ. Rather, I believe there are those who know what they are doing by watering down Christianity who are leading others astray in their doctrine and theology to a Christianity that is not Biblical, and therefore not Christian at all.
Just as a man identifies as a woman to win more easily in competition, we have non-Christians identifying as Christians for their own personal promotion.
Coming back to the idea of persecution, I am coming to the conclusion that if we are unwilling to pay the price of being a Christian, and would deny the faith as soon as it costs us something, then it is likely we are not Christians at all. We may like the idea of going to heaven someday, we may like the idea of living a moral life, we may like the idea of having a church community to be with, but if we are unwilling to pay the price, then our faith is not in Christ, it is in the benefits that we think we have received. If our faith is in Christ, our faith will remain. It may waver, it may have moments where it is shaken, but it will endure to the end. Much like Peter and so many others who have gone before, the true believers will not deny the One who purchased them in the end. I believe this is why Paul exhorts us, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith: examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you – unless indeed you fail the test?” (2 Corinthians 13:5)
