false converts

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Wrong Motives Produce No Lasting Joy

Recently, I have been reading through the wonderful allegory by John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress. We were also blessed to obtain an audio dramatization from Master Books that we would highly recommend to anybody who loves this story.

One scenario stands out in my mind and I have been pondering for some time now. The characters involved in the scene are Christian and Pliable, both of whom come from the City of Destruction. The first carries a weight of sin upon his back and is plodding on the way to the Celestial City as quickly as he is able, while the latter has nothing that seems to be holding him back.

Pliable is a clear reflection of the defining of his name. Pliable means easily influenced or easily bent. From the beginning, we know that he is a follower and not a leader. He follows Obstinate in trying to get Christian back to the City of Destruction, but quickly changes his mind when he hears of the wonders of what is in store for those who reach to the Celestial City.

sloughofdespond

As I considered Pliable, I thought of Christian’s early attempts at seeking to be an evangelist and how similar it is to much of what we find in evangelical circles today. Christian’s methods of reaching the unconverted changes later in the story, but to begin with, they are far from appropriate and certainly not Biblical. Let’s us think about some of the problems with Christian’s approach to reaching Pliable.

1) Pliable is not in dire straits as is Christian. As mentioned previously, Christian has become aware of the burden of sin, but Pliable has not. No person has ever come to Christ who has not been first brought to the awareness of the danger he or she is in. If they do not believe they are fleeing from the wrath of God, then there is no true conviction.

2) Pliable is easily swayed first from Obstinate’s viewpoint and then to Christian’s, and it is not long before he returns to the City of Destruction because he does not like what he finds on the path to the Celestial City. A person who is convinced to follow another, other than Christ, will not follow for long until another comes along with a more persuasive argument. We will be like King Agrippa who told Paul, “Almost you persuade me to be a Christian.”

3) Pliable then listens to the wonders of what heaven will be like and becomes enraptured with all the glories that will soon be his. It is in this way that Christian makes a mistake. He seeks to share with Pliable that which is designed to gain the attention of a worldly person, but he forgets some of the most important factors of evangelism. He fails to address that Pliable is not aware of his sin, he is not aware that his city will soon be destroyed, and he is not aware that trials and tribulations are the lot of all who live godly in Christ Jesus.

4) Pliable soon learns the reality of the Christian life and he is not impressed. In seeking to follow the way of Christ, he, like millions today, thought that this would be his best life now. He thought that there were no troubles to assail him and that life would become easy. He sought to come to faith for the wrong reasons, namely, because of what he thought he could get, and not because of what had already been accomplished through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

5) Pliable falls into the Slough of Despond which Bunyan describes like this:

This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond: for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place; and this is the reason of the badness of this ground.

This became too much for Pliable for he cannot stand to be mired in such filth. Instead of fleeing to the cross as Christian does, Pliable immediately climbs back out of the Slough and makes a beeline for the City of Destruction. Christian learns that for all to be well with his soul, he must flee from his sin. It is only when our sins are nailed to the tree that we can know the joy of forgiveness and no further condemnation.

Pliable is like many today who think that they can come to Christ with their own good works or apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. For those who know Christ, we must seek to share the truth of the Scriptures that no man comes to Christ who does not realize the depths of his sin and the matchless wonder of the Savior. Truly, Pliable’s wrong motives for wanting to be a follower of the Way produced no lasting joy. Fellow believers, if we use wrong motives to seek to entice people to follow Christ, we cannot be surprised when we find that we have only made false converts.

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A new way to describe false converts?

As I was driving along I-40 here yesterday, I saw something that started a chain of free-association in my head, and landed me on this thought: should we begin calling false converts “cowboy Christians?” Allow me to explain:

You see these guys all the time. They look the part. They act the part. They dress the part. They use all the right words and phrases. They walk around wearing the Wrangler™ Jeans, western shirts, a belt buckle that doubles as a full-length mirror, Justin™ Boots, cowboy hat. They’ve always got a wad of chew in their cheek, they go line-dancing every weekend, they go watch the rodeo every time it comes to town, and they drive a big, huge, full-size pickup truck,with dual rear wheels–and a sticker in the back window that says something like “Cowboy Up!”

By all of their outward appearances, you would swear they are a cowboy. There are truly real cowboys out there–but this guy ain’t one of them.

But they’re not.

What does this have to do with the church? This:

You see these guys all the time. They look the part. They act the part. They dress the part. They use all the right words and phrases. They walk around wearing the kahki dress pants, polo shirts, and they carry the biggest study Bible they can find. They’ve always got a smile on their face, they go to a building every Sunday and hear a speech, they have a couple CD’s from a singer that used the word “God” or “Christ” in one of their songs once, and they drive a big, huge, full-size pickup truck, with dual rear wheels–and a fish sticker on their back bumper.

By all of their outward appearances, you would swear they are a Christian. There are truly real Christians out there–but this guy ain’t one of them.

But they’re not. They think they’re saved because

  • they go to church (check)
  • their parents went to church (check)
  • their kids go to church (check)
  • they have had their children dedicated (check)
  • they have had their children baptized (check)
  • they send their monthly donation to the church (check)
  • they volunteer at the homeless shelter (check)

    • “OK, we’ve got the checklist finished! Now we can just sit back and wait for that sweet by-and-by, ’cause we’ve got our ducks in a row, and we’ve got our ticket stamped!”

    What they do not know–perhaps because their pastor has never told them–is that salvation is not about looking the part. It’s not about whether you wear a shirt-and-tie, or an old pair of jeans, when you walk in Sunday morning. It’s not about a list of “Things To Do” that we need to perform in order to get enough gold stars and smiley faces on God’s Heavenly Chart.

    Salvation is about seeing ourselves for being the dispicable creatures we are, and knowing that Christ Jesus–the Son of the Living God–came to earth, wrapped Himself in this disgusting stuff we call flesh, took our wounds, our stripes, our death, and made them His own, so that we could be the righteousness of God in Him. It is about seeing that all of our good deeds, and all of our “church” and all those little trinkets we call “good deeds” are nothing more than rags that are covered with the filth of human effort, and the stench of self-righteousness.

    A person can look the part, they can dress the part, they can talk the part. But unless that person sees that there is absolutely no way for them to reconcile themselves to God apart from repenting from their sins and confessing Christ Jesus as their Savior AND Lord, they are a “Cowboy Christian.” They look like one–but they ain’t.

    Isaiah 53:3-6—He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

    Isaiah 64:5-7—You meet him who rejoices and does righteousness, who remembers You in Your ways. You are indeed angry, for we have sinned—in these ways we continue; and we need to be saved. But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is no one who calls on Your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us, and have consumed us because of our iniquities.

    2nd Corinthians 5:21—For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

    Philippians 1:9-11—And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.