Ephesians 2:1-10
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Transcribed by AI.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen. In this Lenten season, we are talking about moralistic therapeutic deism. We defined it as a as a doctrine that has been part of the church and incorporated into many Christian churches, but is different from the doctrine of Orthodox Christianity. Just a reminder about those words moralistic is a focus on morals as Christianity is all about good behavior. Therapeutic is a focus on the function of religion as being good for my mental health, it makes me feel better. And deism is the idea that deism is God who is far away, who looks down on humanity, but doesn't do a whole lot. This doctrine wasn't created by me this idea of moralistic therapeutic deism, it came from a book soul searching the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers that came out in 2005. They did a study that talked about the the life of teenagers, and they did hundreds of interviews where they went out and created this idea, coined this term based on what those teenagers said, they came up with five core beliefs. The first one which we covered last week is a god exists to create it in orders the world and watches over human life on Earth. To God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible, and by most world religions. Three, the central goal of life is to be happy, and to feel good about oneself. For God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life, except when God is needed to resolve a problem. And finally, good people go to heaven when they die. Today, we're talking about that second one. God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible, and by most world religions. Now, there is a whole lot going on in this in this belief, I think good, nice and fair, is an interesting question. Is that really what the Bible says? Good, nice and fair? Or is it something else. But tonight, I'm not actually talking about that. I want to talk about two things. First, that the primary purpose of religion is to build character, to make a person good. And second, that this is true amongst all religions, that basically all religions are the same, because their final goal is to make people better, to make bad people good, and to make good people into better people. This is what it says when it says, as taught in the Bible, and by most world religions, basically, they're all the same. Now, the book soul searching, quoted some people in talking about this, there was a 17 year old Mormon who said, I believe in well, my whole religion is where you try to be good. And if you are not good, then you should try, just try to get better. That's all. And quote, another girl said, quote, morals play a large part in religion, morals are good if they're healthy for society, like Christianity, which is all I know, the values you get from, like the 10 commandments. I think every religion is important in its own respect. You know, if you're a Muslim, then Islam is the way for you. If you're Jewish, well, that's great, too. If you're a Christian, well, good for you. It's just whatever makes you feel good about you. Even this morality is actually rather nebulous, good, nice and fair to each other ends up being an open question, depending on what you think is good, what you think is nice and what you think is fair. What does it mean? Well, sometimes it's just simply don't hurt others. But the authors actually found that there were also questions about jeopardizing your success that one The worst things you can do is to really jeopardize your future consent success by making a problem in your life by making a mistake. Now, the idea that Christianity is there and other religions, to primarily build character or build a moral foundation has been around for a very long time. Parents have often talked about what it means to send children to Sunday schools so that they can have a good moral foundation. I always found the phenomenon that parents would send their kids to Sunday school, but not come to church themselves to be rather odd. And this was kind of the reason kids need to be raised right to have a good moral foundation and going to church will teach them right from wrong. You might recognize some of those thoughts. That the idea is that God's plan and power for us is to make us good people. I've seen Sunday school curriculum that focus fully on character lessons from the Bible, where Bible stories are there to teach us to be good, right are diligent. The same thing happened when you look at VeggieTales. Very popular in my life. VeggieTales pulled the Bible and turned it into life lessons. You're supposed to be honest, good, kind, moral. But that's not what the Bible is about. I also found a Children's Bible in my search, and it was it was fully doing this. I didn't buy it. But I did look at a sample. And it was amazing how this character Bible that's what they called it turned God's Word into lessons about good works. The opening story was about diligence. It was how God created the heavens and the earth. And it briefly retold the story of creation and said something like, Isn't it amazing how diligent God was doing every detail, making sure everything was just right. And the lesson was this, you can be diligent like God, even if the work is hard, make sure you do everything just right. Many people turn the Bible into character lessons. It's about being a better person being more moral being brave. We see this if you read books about leadership lessons from Jesus, how to be a good leader and take care of people 10 life lessons from the Bible that help us be the right kind of person. Many things, many Christians think that the main purpose of the Bible is to turn us into good people. And it's true then that even that this is true across other religions. The thing that is common across all of history, is that human beings have a similar morality. And if there is an instrumental version of religion, it's to say, God wants us to be good. But does that square with the Bible? does that square with the truth claims that God makes over our lives? Well, if you look at what Paul says in Romans, you can see that he isn't talking about people being good. In fact, he tells us that all people are evil. Romans chapter three, he says, no one is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside together they have become worthless. No one got does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive the venom of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood in their pads are ruin and misery and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. This doesn't sound to me like the kind of person that can be reformed. Paul tells us that everyone, even the most religious people are like this. And he sums it up. Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in His sight. Since through the law comes knowledge of sin. Because we're all sinners, there is nothing we can do that is good before God. If God wants us all to be good, nice and fair, St. Paul tell is a simply, we can't do it. Nothing that we do is good enough for God. In Ephesians chapter two, he tells us something very similar, that we were dead in the trespasses and sins that we once walked. Dead is not something that can be healed. You can't train your way out of being dead. You can't go to the gym and hope to make your spiritual muscles stronger.
Only the dead can be made alive. And he says this, But God being rich and mercy because of the great love which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up with Him, and seeded us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us, in Christ Jesus. God didn't come to make good people better, or make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive. And that is what Jesus Christ did. He came down to earth, to become a human being to live among us and with us, and be the perfect person that we couldn't be. Because we couldn't do what God demands, because we couldn't live up to his rules. Jesus did it for us. And then he entered into our dead lives by becoming dead for us, and rising from the dead. He can give us eternal life. So that being united with Him, He raises us from death, and makes us one with Him. This gift is not about our goodness, he doesn't make us better people. In fact, I know a lot of non Christians who are very good, kind, generous, fair, wonderful people, maybe even better than me. What Jesus does is he doesn't make us good. He makes us alive. He takes dead people and gives us life. And it's a gift he gives to you. He gives it to you by hearing his word. He gives it to you by his sacraments, a grace that only comes from God. And it has nothing to do with your morality. It has nothing to do with your works. You can be as terrible a person or a good person, you can be horrible or wonderful. It's the grace of God that gives us life. So what do we need to do? When we talk about morality in the church? Well, we have to remember that it is an effect of God's grace, and not the goal. That the goal of God's grace given to us is to make us alive and give us a new life. And then when we live that new life, we naturally be more like Jesus. Our job isn't to become better, but to live the life that God has already given us. And so that means yes, sometimes we do talk about sin and morality. Sometimes we talk about what it means to be good and true, to love your neighbor as yourself. But it's not because that's the main goal of the church, is because this is part of our life as Christians living the life that God has given us. And we need to recognize our sin, repent from it and turn and live as God calls us to. So what should we do? I think we as Christians should stop talking about our faith is primarily about morality, that we're not here to be good. And Jesus doesn't make us good. We're here to be made alive, alive with Christ by His death and resurrection, and given eternal life. In his name, amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai