There are people who preach a false gospel of prosperity. There are people who are bought by the blood of Christ who believe wrongly that God wants us all to be healthy and wealthy. There are people who teach a false gospel that salvation comes when we cooperate with God and become good. There are people who are bought by the blood of Christ who believe wrongly that they repented out of an island of righteousness in themselves. There are people who falsely divide the world into two kinds of people, wicked sinners and people of color. There are people who are bought by the blood of Christ who believe wrongly that colorblindness is a bad thing.
Then there are the people that can’t tell these people apart, and who wrongly believe that we have peace with God if we trust in Christ, reject the idea that God wants us all healthy and wealthy, reject any notion that we cooperate with God in our salvation and reject any kind of awareness of ongoing racial issues. The Judaizing heresy, which taught in the first century that we have peace with God if we trust in Christ and obey the ceremonial law, didn’t go away with the Jerusalem Council which condemned it. We, however, continue to flirt with it.
We all agree in principle, all proclaim with our lips, this well-known mantra, “In essentials, unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” Where we disagree, and thus lose sight of charity, is in which things are essential and which things are not. The broad evangelical church tends to have a rather narrow view of the essentials. The cranky Reformed wing tends to have a rather broad view. The trouble gets worse, however, because instead of learning from our brothers we lean farther off our side of the horse.
The solution? To repent and believe the gospel. Repenting means owning our own sins, acknowledging that we have weaknesses, that even our valiant efforts to keep the gospel itself pure from intrusions can unintentionally bring intrusions. We repent such that we know that however bad it might be to believe God wants us all healthy and wealthy, I believe things that are just as bad. We repent of our own propensity of wrongly thinking our right thinking makes us better than those who live more faithful lives than we do while espousing less biblical theology than we do.
We also, however, believe the gospel. That is, we rejoice to know that God’s grace extends to sinners that are as far away from perfection as me. When we believe the gospel and start to get hot under the collar because a professing believer has said, or done X, we not only remember that if X is actually wrong, it is covered by the blood of the Lamb, but remember that we have said or done Y which is just as bad as X. We believe the gospel as we rejoice that He has reconciled all manner of sinners to Himself. We believe the gospel when we are able to see our brothers and sisters with whom we disagree on secondary matters as beloved of the Father, just as we are. Not outside the camp. Not on the outer limits of the camp. But encamped in the heart of the Father.