As I was driving to work this morning I took in my weekly dose of contemporary Christian music. The CD in the player was Casting Crown's new album, Lifesong. Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy listening to some contemporary Christian music. Lord knows my wife and I have plenty of albums in our library, including the whole Jars of Clay, Mercy Me, and Caedmon's Call collections. Most of the time I can't stand the music on the Christian radio stations so I don't even listen to them at all. I resign myself to playing the same albums over and over again on my iPod or in the car. This leads to more frustrations than the mere monotony of repeated tracks. It leads to a deeper frustration at the content of the lyrics.

This morning in particular I listened as Casting Crowns went from one song talking about how judgmental Christians are to how hypocritical and fake they are in another. The message was actually kind of a downer. I thought this was supposed to be inspirational music? Granted, there is definitely some truth in these lyrics. Yes there is judgmentalism and hypocrisy in the church, and often the two go hand-in-hand. But according to the lyricist that's all we could ever expect from the church. The solution to hypocrisy? Admitting it. That's the sole solution to the problem of hypocrisy in the church, just confessing that we're hypocrites. Is that all the gospel of Jesus Christ has to offer? How sad.

What if we were to apply that same logic to AA meetings. "Hello, my name is Sean Scribner, and I'm an alcoholic." Well, that's it! Congratulations, you are on your way to recovery! In fact, you have already recovered! The only thing that was wrong with you is that you weren't willing to admit that you had a problem! But now that you are, it's ok that you are addicted to alcohol, just so long as you don't forget you are an addict and that's all you'll ever be. Just be sure to never tell others who are addicted that it's wrong, because that would make you a judgmental hypocrite...

Is acknowledgment the gospel's solution to the problem of sin? Not by itself, that's for sure. It may be the gateway insofar as it is an essential component to repentance. But that's not all there is to our salvation.

Imagine if this were all that there was to the gospel: "Hello, my name is Sean Scribner, and I'm a sinner." Well, that's it! Congratulations, you are on your way to recovery! In fact, you have already recovered! The only thing that was wrong with you is that you weren't willing to admit that you had a problem! But now that you are, it's ok that you sin every day in thought, word, and deed, just so long as you don't forget you are a sinner and that's all you'll ever be. Just be sure to never tell others who are sinners that sinning is wrong, because that would make you a judgmental hypocrite...

John Wesley believed that acknowledgement of guilt was an important component in Christian experience. In sermon #3, Awake Thou That Sleepest, he described the condition of the sinner who is "asleep" in sin. This person is ignorant of his condition ["He knows not that he is a fallen spirit" (I.2)], fancying himself in perfect health (I.3), blindly apathetic and satisfied in the midst of "misery and iron" (I.3), and is "content to remain in his fallen state" (I.4). What is this state? He is "dead in trespasses and sins" (I.8), which is to be separated from God's life and happiness (I.8) – sin that cuts men from the very sustaining life of God. He is utterly and inexorably helpless, for "his heart is 'past feeling'" (I.10) and he has no spiritual sensations or inlets of spiritual knowledge (I.11). Certainly the first step in "recovery" for this person is acknowledgement of his condition. He must awake and know himself to be a sinner. He must not harden his heart or resist the Holy Spirit (I.9; II.12). Instead he must be found poor in spirit (II.12). He must heed the words of Ephesians 5:14, "Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Then he will receive the gift of God: "The Spirit of Christ" who will "dwell in thy heart by faith" (III.2); the "true religion" of "participation in the divine nature; the life of God in the soul of man, Christ formed in the heart" (II.10); and love for God and neighbor (III.11). This light is the light of justification and sanctification by faith in Jesus (III.5), the freedom from all outward sin (III.10) and inward sin (III.11), and the light of assurance – to "know that I am in My Father, and you in me, and I in you" (III.6). It is a message of full salvation.

The problem with the popular message of most contemporary Christian music is not that it's lacking truth. The problem is that it usually only offers half truth. It declares a prognosis without prescribing a cure. Why is it that our churches are judgmental and hypocritical? It's because we tell them that to be that way is all they can ever aspire to be! We will not see any real transformation in our churches until the full gospel message is proclaimed in truthfulness, boldness, and love.

In my daily quiet times I always try to make sure that I spend time writing in my journal. My journal writings are usually nothing really deep or profound, and I don't write about any one specific thing -- just about whatever is on my mind during the quiet time. I have been keeping this same journal on and off for about 3 and a half years. It really is kind of neat to be able to trace your spiritual progress over an extended period of time. But it can also bring you down a bit.

I started keeping this journal at one of the most dynamic points in my spiritual journey. Recently I have been reading back through it beginning with the very first page. As I flip from page to page it is as if I am turning back the pages of time and reading the story of my recent life. The words bring to my mind memories of the days when God was doing new types of things in my life for the first time. As I wrote I felt so inspired and had so much to say. Those were important days in my Christian experience.

But there is a knowledge that I have now that I didn't have then that causes me to read those old words with a sense of sadness. I now know about some of the decisions I made between that time and now. By reading those words from almost four years ago you would think that I would have been invincible and could never have fallen off my cloud of glory. But I know better now. I know about how, over an extended period of months, I abandoned my first love an fell into a spiritual laziness. I let my guard down and became weak and vulnerable. I began relying on my own strength and considered myself impervious to attack. This led me down a road of failure uncharacteristic of one who had tasted such sweet victory in life. How could I have known when I wrote those words what I was going to fall into in only a matter of months? As I wrote those words so long ago my future held great prospect. As I read them now, I am filled with a sense of sorrow because, even though I didn't know it then, I know now where those journal entries were headed. Reading those pages is like opening up an old wound.

But thanks be to God the story has yet to be finished. There are more chapters yet to be written; there are even new journals altogether. We can say this in light of the Easter season we are in. The God who raises the dead raises the sun on a new day. With God there is always hope for tomorrow. The doom and gloom of past mistakes and failures does not have to linger. Thanks to God and His grace, every person is salvable.

Today is a new day. We all write pages of life down with every decision we make at every moment. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can come into our lives in their fullness at this exact moment in time and help us make the right decisions. I believe in a God of resurrection who is able and wiling to do a work in our lives that is not merely relative but real. Response to God's grace in faith not only changes us in relation but in actuality. The future of my past may not have the greatest of outlooks, but the future of my present holds infinite possibilities, for God is the God of the present and it is in the present that He seeks to actualize His great salvation in our lives.

Recently in one of my classes a colleague of mine presented a reflection paper on a Lausanne article he chose for that class session. The article was titled Christian Witness to Nominal Christians Among Protestants and can be found here. In this specific article, a “nominal Christian” is defined as “one who, within the Protestant tradition, would call himself a Christian, or be so regarded by others, but who has no authentic commitment to Christ based on personal faith.” This would be one who:

a. Attends church regularly but has no vital relationship with Jesus as Savior and Lord;
b. Attends church regularly but only for cultural reasons;
c. Attends church only for major festivals and ceremonies;
d. Hardly ever attends church but maintains a church relationship for reasons of security, emotional or family ties, or tradition;
e. Has no relationship to any specific church and who never attends yet considers himself a believer in God.

John Wesley, in his sermon #2, The Almost Christian, describes this nominal Christian perfectly. This type of Christian has “heathen honesty (I.1)”—a basic set of moral principles by which they operate. They have a “form of godliness (I.4)” which “does nothing the gospel forbids (I.4).” They abstain from gluttony, avoid contention, do not willfully hurt others, and even use the means of grace (I.5-8). But in the end, they lack sincerity (I.8). There is no “inward principle of religion, from whence the outward actions flow (I.9).” There is no “real design to serve God” or “hearty desire to do his will (I.10).” Instead there is only a concern for self and a concern to simply “do” the right things, “say” the right things, and go through the motions, just like the person described above.

Upon reading aloud the abstract of this article, my colleague presented us with a series of questions. Two of these questions stood out to me as they were being presented. The first was, “How many nominal Christians do you know?” I literally laughed out loud when I heard this question, not because it was funny, but because of the sheer rhetorical nature of the question. I responded, “The question should be, ‘How many not-nominal Christians do you know?’” Using the formula for determining Christian nominalism above, how many Christians do we actually know that don’t fit these categories? In his sermon #4, Scriptural Christianity, Wesley asked the same question. Upon describing the type of Christianity that set the world ablaze in the first century, Wesley asks, “Where does this Christianity now exist (IV.1)?” He looked at the culture in which he lived and wondered where this scriptural Christianity had gone. “Is Christianity, scriptural Christianity, found here (IV.3)?” The obvious answer was, “No.” Sadly I think that the same is true for us today.

The second question that stood out to me was, “What makes a person grow nominal?” The group had all sorts of answers to this question, and truth be told, there probably is no one single answer that stands alone. But as I sat there thinking, I thought about what in my own personal past had ever contributed to the times in my life where I could have classified my Christianity as nominal. What did I come up with? Lack of accountability. The periods of my Christian experience where I had become nominal are marked by a complete and total lack of personal accountability to any person. We deceive ourselves when we say, “I only need to be accountable to God.” The fact is we all need to be held accountable on a daily basis by real people for the things we do and don’t do. Without someone else to keep us sharp, we soon become dull and rusty. Only a fool stands alone.

But the problem of nominalism runs much deeper than this. A lack of accountability may have been the reason why I had regressed in my Christianity at a time in the past. But what about the general predicament of our churches in America today? What is the solution to our problem as a whole? How do we get our churches to shake off the dust of apathy and embrace our destiny as the “called out ones” of God? Wesley’s prescription was nothing other than a touch of the divine. He proclaimed that what sets the true Christian apart from the nominal Christian is love. It is love for God (rejoicing in God our Savior, delighting in the Lord, and in everything giving Him thanks) and neighbor (a I Corinthians 13 reality in relationship to fellow man) that makes the difference. In conjunction with this love is a true Christian faith. “Faith which bringeth not forth repentance, and love, and all good works, is not that right living faith, but a dead and devilish one (Scriptural Christianity, II.4).” It is not a mere “faith of the devils” nor even simply a speculative faith--the belief in Scripture and the Articles of Religion. What saving faith is to Wesley is a belief in the gospel--God’s whole revelation to mankind. It is a conviction of Christ’s divinity and a trust in his merits. It is a full reliance on the blood of Christ, and a fully trusting response to grace. It is a sure trust in the mercy of God, through Jesus Christ, and confidence that Christ died for “even my” sins. In sum, it is a disposition of the heart.

What kind of Christian are you going to be this day? Are you content to go through the motions and be nothing more than another face in the pews? Or will you embrace your calling, make your election sure, and be the holy vessel of grace for a lost and dying world? The choice is up to you.