Just as I am




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I have remarked before on the lite beer antinomianism in which the preaching of God's grace makes people complacent about their sins. There is no progress toward amendment of life because God's grace has you covered. It is a simpleminded little transactional model in which God pays off our tab as we run it up.

The message is insidious because it is so nearly the gospel, and it is easy for anyone to understand. Thus, it is readily accepted as the truth. But God's grace should be leading us (even if quite slowly sometimes, for we drag our feet) toward greater holiness, not complacency about our unholiness.

That is not to minimize the troubles I and others have with besetting sins which, for some, become a combat of a lifetime's duration. But we are fighting, that is the difference. We do not shrug at our sins.

Sometimes the message of God's grace is orthodox when it comes out of the preacher's mouth, but turns antinomian as it enters the hearers' ears. That problem can be avoided by the use of the Bible's many illustrations and its clear reasons not to continue in sin. One can, for example, remind people that we cannot be salt, light and a city on a hill if, after you boil the matter down to clear instances and take away the spiritual-sounding rhetoric, we are morally indistinguishable from our unbelieving neighbors. You cannot be an example to someone if you are just like him.

The subject comes up in blogging about Christian unity because antinomianism, whether of the lite beer or stout variety, causes schisms. What happened previously in the Episcopal Church, is happening now in the Presbyterian Church USA, and is shortly to happen in the United Methodist Church, could not have gained a foothold without a starting point in indifference toward our own sins and errors. From that point, it is easy to be indifferent toward others' sins and errors.

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