Scandal #4, Cheap Grace vs. Whole Grace.

So why this scandal? Sider asks, and what can we do about it? We must do more that cringe and cry at the huge gap between Biblical vision and contemporary evangelical practice. We must beg God to show us what to do to make things better.
Close to this problem, Sider says, is a cluster of unbiblical ideas and practices that amount to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace". Cheap grace results when we reduce the gospel to forgiveness of sins; limit salvation to personal fire insurance against hell; misunderstand persons primarily souls; grasp only about half of what the Bible says about sin, embrace the individualism, materialism, and relativism of our current culture; lack a biblical understanding and practice of the church, and fail to teach a Biblical world view.
George Barna decries our "costless faith" concluding that we have made it too easy to be "born again". Sider goes on to say, "I am convinced that at the heart of our problem is one sided, unbiblical, reductionist understanding of the gospel and salvation. Too many evangelicals in too many ways give the impression that the really important part of the gospel is forgiveness of sins. If we just repeat a formula and say we want Jesus to forgive our sins, we are Christians. Notice, however, how this can so easily lead to cheap grace. If all there is to accepting the gospel is receiving the forgiveness of sins, one can accept the gospel, become a Christian, and then go on living the same adulterous, materialistic, racist life that one lived before. Salvation becomes, not a life-transforming experinece that reorients every corner of life, but a one-way ticket to heaven, and one can live like hell until one gets there." Justification and sanctification are both central parts of the biblical teaching on the gospel and salvation. To overstate the importance of the one is to run the danger of neglecting the other."
My thoughts: As a wise man said in our congregation a few years ago, "The problem with the church today is that we have too many Chrisitans, and not enough disciples."
Amen!