If Jesus is not the life of our life, then he becomes but another in a long list of ethical instructors among the world's religions. We must sense this danger because the greatest danger to orthodox faith in this generation and in the foreseeable future is not inaccurate exegesis, or inadequate application, or ineffective communication, or inaccessible worship. The greatest threat to orthodox faith in our lifetimes is and will be religious pluralism: the presumption that, because all truth is relative, all worship essentially the same God. The assumption of the equal value of all forms of spirituality is now so much a part of the DNA of our culture that we cannot examine the religious motives of terrorists or mention the events of Christ's crucifixion without being accused of bigotry.
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We feed this pluralism whenever our preaching reduces Scripture to mere moral or behavioral instruction. Jay Adams boldly makes the point: "If you preach a sermon that would be acceptable to the member of a Jewish synagogue or to a Unitarian congregation, there is something radically wrong with it."9 It is certainly true that the moral maxims of the great religions of the world often parallel each other, but the Christian faith is unique in presenting a God who lived to provide the righteousness that we cannot earn, who died to provide the grace we do not deserve, and who lives again in us that we may have his life now and eternally. We cannot be the body of Christ if he is not the source of our life.
If we begin to perceive vast portions of the Bible to be void of the unique claims of our Redeeming God, and preach that way, then we will ultimately undermine the Christian faith of our listeners. On the basis of our preaching they will begin to trust and live a religion that is but a refinement of self rather than a union with Christ. They will join the rivers of humanity that are seeking fulfillment in what they do or gain, rather than in the eternal grace of their Savior. They will increasingly live in isolation from him, seeking his occasional grace only when they perceive themselves to have sufficiently crossed him, or when they are in a crisis so large that they need his rescue, or when they have so imbibed the world's definition of personal fulfillment that they need miracles of prosperity to make them happy. Those who express such faith will not see all of their lives as dependent on the Savior's life in them because we will not have preached all of the Scriptures as a revelation of their need of him for every breath. Other pursuits and other religions will look acceptable even attractive because they seem so to coincide with the Christless religion of self-improvement that we inadvertently preach if we do not proclaim the message of the redeeming God that unswervingly reveals his grace throughout the Bible.
Without the unique claims of Christ pervading our preaching, the church that is his body ceases to have meaning for his people. On National Public Radio this past week, I listened to an author describe an Evangelical Presbyterian who read her horoscope when she got up, practiced Tai Chi before breakfast, wore a crystal necklace to work, and did yoga exercises at night without perceiving any particular tension in her practices. "Of course," said the author, "this is just a caricature." Replied the interviewer, "I don't think it's a caricature; I think that I'm married to that person." Preaching that is not Christ-centered ultimately promotes a faith that is not of Christ even if it thinks of itself as Christian. The consequence is syncretism and the ultimate dissolution of the church.