This past Sunday I began my sermon with this paragraph:
Over the years, I have heard even Christians say, “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are a good person.” When it is a Christian who says this, usually the comment is followed by a quotation from the parable of the sheep and goats from Matthew 25 or from the letter of James. When it is spoken by a Christian, this comment implies that if we would just listen to what Jesus said about how we should treat one another and do what he said then that is the gospel. This comment also often implies, depending on who is saying it, that really Jesus was just a great moral teacher who came to show us how we should live more moral lives. According to this view, the Christian faith consists basically of our doing our best to live as Jesus lived, in other words, being a really good person. Based upon the Scriptures, however, the statement, “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are a good person,” when it is made by one who calls himself or herself a Christian, can really only be made by someone who has never actually read the gospels and the rest of the New Testament or who has chosen to reject everything Jesus and the early church said about who Jesus was and is and what his actual purposes were. In connection with this, C.S. Lewis writes, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’” Lewis continues, “That is the one that we must not say… Let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Here is some additional commentary on this that I was not able to fit into my sermon:
As we look at the bigger picture of the Scriptures, we see that what we believe is actually every bit as important as what we do. For instance, John 3:16 famously states, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.” I don’t know about you, but if something makes the difference between perishing and eternal life, that thing must be pretty important. That would be why Jesus also says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled; believe in God. Believe also in me.” He also says, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24). You see, the bigger picture includes a great theme of belief, which in the Hebrew and Greek means both believing that something is true and putting your trust in it. This great theme is demonstrated in passages such as Acts 16:31 when Paul and Silas respond to a jailer’s question about salvation by replying, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” Paul’s letters again and again make the case that what we believe is not only important; it is of utmost importance. In Romans 10:8-9, we read, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, ‘Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.’” We also read in Romans 1:16, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile." The big picture also includes many statements like 1 Peter 1:8, which says, “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.” If we read the entire letter of James, instead of just the famous verses, we actually see that James is never saying that it doesn’t matter what we believe. James is saying that what we believe must bear fruit in what we do, and this is certainly nothing unique to James. This is the same thing that all the prophets said, that John the Baptist said, that Jesus said, that Paul said, and this is, in fact, what every New Testament document is saying, including Revelation. So even though an isolated verse here and there could be used to make the case that “It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are a good person,” this is most certainly not what the Scriptures are saying overall. James is, of course, right, "faith without works is dead" but it is also right to say that works without faith is dead as well.
Orthodoxy, which means "right belief", may be out of style right now in our culture, but it is of utmost importance in the witness of the New Testament. If we do come to a point where we think, "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are a good person," we should at least do that in full knowledge that this is a personal opinion, which is not based upon the Bible or the teachings of the church, and is, in fact, at odds with those sources. For some reason, it seems, that some Christtians in a good natured effort to be able to get along with our friends and neighbors who are of different faiths or who are indifferent or hostile to the Christian faith (or to distance ourselves from those within our own faith who embarrass or even frighten us) have decided that they will give up their own beliefs in order to be friendlier to others. However, the idea that we have to water down or even give up the belief/truth/theology part of our faith is false. It is possible to wholeheartedly believe and follow Jesus Christ and still love, value, and get along with those who do not share those beliefs.
