Salvation Made Difficult: A Look into Anti-Charisism

Thursday, 22nd January 2009

Two weeks ago, I blogged about how Rev Peter Koh, the senior pastor of my church had "written" an article entitled Salvation Made Easy? A Look into Antinomianism.

Fellow Best Christian Blog of the Year winner Stan has kindly written a point-by-point rebuttal on the contents of that article on his blog, so there is no need for me to also do so. I have however sought and obtained his permission to compile his comments into a Word/PDF document, which I will make available for download using Box.net shortly.

I will instead issue an overall response to Rev Koh's article, which I entitle Salvation Made Difficult: A Look into Anti-Charisism. Before you accuse me of plagiarising the title, please allow me to elaborate :-D

Throughout Scripture, we are consistently told that there are only 2 components required for salvation: God's grace and our faith.

Paul says in Eph 2:8-9
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—
9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

Those of you who have heard Rev Charles Nieman's recent sermon know that
faith = believing + speaking

We exercise faith by believing in our hearts, and then speaking it out with our lips...

Here is what Paul says in Rom 10:8-10
9 That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

and again in 2 Cor 4:13
13 It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken."With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak.

Note that it is God Himself that has made salvation that straightforward. It is legalistic men that makes it difficult and complicated.

There is no such word as anti-charisism; I coined it up. But nonetheless, it is made up of two Greek words: anti which means "against" and charis which means "grace". Hence, anti-charisism thus means being against God's grace.

How many of you remember the conversation recorded in Lk 23:42-43 that Jesus had with the thief who said to Him,"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

The thief was doing his part by exercising faith when he believed and spoke. He believed who Jesus was, and as a result, spoke out by asking Jesus to remember him.

God did His part by extending His unmerited and unearned favour by telling him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

Notice that Jesus did not give that thief a set of rules to follow, such as telling him to make restitution, or to make peace with those he stole from. He gave that man the gift of salvation just like that.

So why are some preachers making salvation difficult when God Himself has made it that easy?

Why do they make the burden of being a Christian difficult when Jesus Himself tells us that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Mt 11:30)?

Preachers like Ps Prince who preach radical grace are being accused of being antinomian, ie. against God's laws.

By the same token, those making such accusations are themselves being anticharistic, ie. against God's grace.

OK, well and good, some of you might be saying. How do we explain the passage in Lk 18 regarding the rich young ruler, where Jesus told him that his salvation depended on selling his possessions?

The Rich Ruler
18 A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
19 "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone.
20 You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'
21 "All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said.
22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.

Does not this passage, where Jesus quotes the Ten Commandments, show that men still has to keep the Law?

For that, we need to go back to verse 18. Notice that the young ruler asked Jesus, "what must I do to inherit eternal life". The man was going to Jesus on the basis of his deeds, and thus Jesus responded on that same wavelength, so as to bring him to the end of himself.

Luke records in the very next chapter (Chapter 19) the following story:

Zacchaeus the Tax Collector
1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through.
2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.
3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd.
4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today."
6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, "He has gone to be the guest of a 'sinner.' "
8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."
9 Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.
10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."

Notice in verse 9 how Jesus Himself declared that salvation had come to Zacchaeus. There was no mention that Zacchaeus had to keep the Ten Commandments. What was the difference? Unlike the rich young ruler, who was trying to boast about his law-keeping, Zacchaeus came as he was, encountered God's unmerited and unearned favour as a result of Jesus' visiting him, he was transformed.

So dear readers. The choice is really yours. On the one hand, you can insist on keeping the Law, but if you do so, then keep every single one of the 613 laws under the Old Covenant, and not cherry-pick the ones that suit you. By doing so, you are effectively operating under the Old Covenant. If every single one of the Israelites from the time of Moses till Jesus died had difficulty doing so, what makes you think you can do a better job than them?

In fact, the irony is that those who insist on keeping the Law end up breaking them, and that is why Paul says in 1 Cor 15:56 "the strength of sin is the law". An excellent example is how Rev Peter Koh himself, being such a stickler for morality, ends up breaking the Eight Commandment "Thou shall not steal" (Ex 20:15) by committing plagiarism which is effectively intellectual theft, something even the secular world considers to be immoral. Looks like he needs to remove the log in his eye before trying to remove the speck in others :-D

On the other hand, you can just raise your hands up and say, "Lord, I give up. I cannot keep the Law, and only by Your grace go I." By doing so, you are operating under the New Covenant and with it comes all the benefits that Jesus Christ died to give us, which includes inter alia, prosperity, health and peace of mind. In other words, life in abundance. Amen?