You can imagine the response of the pastor, or maybe you can’t.
He had just collected the information forms from each of the six couples attending the pre-marriage class and was scanning through them. This evangelical church was considered one of the finest, most solid in the community, and it was.
As he scanned the forms, his eye drifted toward the “address” portion. He had developed this habit because he occasionally came across couples that were living together.
Sure enough, here was one, and another one, and another…. It turned out that five of the six couples in the class were living together.
This is a true story. Granted, most of these cohabiting couples were not from core church families. Nonetheless, they had been attending the church long enough to know about the class. These were church people at least in the sense that they wanted to be married in a church, and they wanted pre-marriage counseling from a Christian perspective.
Therefore, it seems strange that they were not concerned about being Christian in one of the most foundational aspects of life. As we think of sin from a scriptural perspective, historically sex outside of marriage, what the Bible calls fornication, has been considered one of the most blatant forms.
Therefore, it is difficult to imagine those who view themselves as Christian couples, who attend an evangelical church, being so casual about it. Having sex before marriage is wrong, but deciding to live together seems to be in God’s face about the whole thing.
Though five out of six is a rather strong (or weak) showing, cohabitation is not unusual among the evangelical community. And if a blatant transgression such as cohabitation is common, how much more do other forms of sin run rampant?
How does it happen that righteousness is so neglected by evangelicals? The problem begins at the beginning of the evangelical’s experience—with the salvation message.
Scripture teaches that we are saved by faith alone and not by our works. Yet Scripture indicates that repentance is a significant aspect of the gospel message. In fact, Peter, in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, mentioned repentance and faith is not.
How do we reconcile these two scriptural conditions for salvation? The answer is that faith is more than believing facts. A person is not saved just by believing the facts that Jesus is God and that He died for our sins. As James notes, “the devils also believe and tremble.”
A closer look at the definition of faith as used in Scripture reveals that faith also includes a commitment or submission to Christ based on the facts related to Him.
A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament by Dana and Mantey is one of the classic texts on Greek, used by many seminaries across the years. This text gives evidence that in biblical times the Greek phrase translated “believing in Him” meant “surrender or submission to.” (italics theirs) Based on the evidence they provide, the authors go on to say, “Thus to believe on or to be baptized into the name of Jesus means to renounce self and to consider oneself the life-time servant of Jesus.” (p. 105)
Since saving faith connotes commitment or surrender to Jesus, faith includes repentance. Surrender to Jesus encompasses an intent to turn from our sin. We are not saved by turning from our sin. That would be works. However, we cannot be saved if we are unwilling to do so.
Nonetheless, the gospel message as presented in most evangelical churches does not include this dimension of surrender and repentance. In most cases, a person is told that he can be saved merely by asking Jesus into his heart or receiving the free gift of salvation.
Consequently, our couples who are living together can ask Jesus into their hearts, can receive the free gift, and continue to live together. Or Republican members of Congress under the influence of evangelicals at one level or the other can make self-serving choices and still be keeping the “faith” as defined by evangelicals.
How did we get to this watered down understanding of faith and the gospel? I plan to address that in the next post.