Grumpy Christians Make it to Heaven

John Bevere is currently the best teacher I know of. He is telling people something that sounds very original, yet which we should have known for 2000 years: being nice is not the same thing as serving God.

He doesn’t put it quite that way. He has written a book called Good or God?, and the basic idea is that we don’t please God by being “good” by our own standards. We have to identify his standards and be good according to them.

I just read something on the Internet. A Mormon injected himself into a Christian comment thread. As Mormons often do, he kept his religion to himself until after he had been exposed by someone else. Then, as Mormons often do, he started claiming his religion was Christian, and that the people who were rejecting it were cruel and mean and probably climate change deniers who don’t even eat organic. Or something like that. He took on a shameless victim stance, which is a familiar Mormon tactic. I assume this is a strategy they have been taught, because I have seen it a number of times.

He said something about how caring and loving Mormons are. I’ll go farther than that. They do a lot of charitable works. They work hard. They don’t commit a lot of crime. They promote kindness and traditional Christian morality.

That’s great, BUT it’s not good in God’s eyes.

It’s hard–no, it’s impossible–to make most people accept this, but here is what’s truly good: hearing from the Holy Spirit and doing what he tells you to do, even if it conflicts with the Jewish law or traditional Christian morality.

Mormons can’t do that. They are not Holy-Spirit-led. They venerate spirits such as “Moroni,” the messenger that supposedly spoke to Joseph Smith before he found his magic golden plates and read off of them as they sat in his hat. Mormons are out of alignment with God’s authority because they reject grace and humility, so they can’t advance far as God’s empowered servants. In this respect, they are like gays and Buddhists and all the other characters who try to “correct” Christianity.

We are supposed to receive salvation, which comes purely as a gift, through faith. We do not have to perform any works in order to go to heaven (contrary to Mormon teaching). Then we’re supposed to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Then we’re supposed to pray in tongues daily, ask God for correction, fight our pride and the spirits that controlled us before we were saved, and become Spirit-led.

Then you do what the Spirit tells you to do, not what Christian law says to do. Yes, I said “Christian law.” We treat the Ten Commandments as though they bind us. We take the things Jesus taught and turn them into rigid laws. We have law, even though we are not supposed to.

The Holy Spirit will usually tell you to do nice things, but sometimes he won’t. He told the ancient Jews to kill babies and old people. Was that good? This may be hard to acccept, but yes, it was good. It was good, because it was God’s command. That’s what made it good. Niceness does not make an action good. God–not Satan–throws nice people into hell every day. He’s doing it right now. That’s not nice. But it’s good.

Do I expect God to tell me to kill babies? No, of course not. That’s exactly the kind of ridiculous question a carnal person would ask in order to “debunk” Spirit-led Christianity. But I do expect God to tell me to go against Jewish law and Christian law.

The “Jesus only wanted us to be nice” crowd is heavily pro-homosexuality. They see nice gays, and they think they must be okay with God. After all, Jesus was very hard on people who were self-righteous and unforgiving. And many Christians are not as nice as random gays.

The strange thing about people who believe this is that they think they’re fighting legalism, but they actually promote it.

If you think you’re going to heaven because you’re nice, then you think you’re being rewarded for good works. That’s legalism. Under legalism, you are rewarded for what you do, not what you are or what you believe.

Real Christians do not believe that. They believe that they will enter paradise when they die even if they commit a substantial number of sins during their post-salvation lives. Many of us take it too far and do as we please, treating salvation as though it cost God nothing, but this is how it works. So a rude Christian who believes in forgiveness by faith will enter heaven, and a really nice Mormon, homosexual atheist, Buddhist, or Hindu will not be able to escape hell.

Going further, a Christian who is not friendly, warm, or relentlessly nurturing may please God much more than an unbeliever who is nice all the time. If the Christian does what the Holy Spirit tells him to do, then he’s doing what is right.

It’s nice to be nice, but what counts is obedience, and you can’t be obedient if you can’t hear the Holy Spirit, because you don’t know what he’s telling you to do.

If we’re saved by grace, why does obedience count? Because we’re supposed to go past salvation. God has things he wants us to do in this life. If we obey, we will be improved, we will help others to be improved, and we will build strong, Spirit-led people who can help others receive salvation, serve God, and humiliate Satan.

Jesus talked about this when he discussed people who would come up to him at judgment and tell him what they had done for him. People will approach him and say, “I built an orphanage. I gave money to the poor. I never criticized anyone else’s sins. I accepted homosexuality because I refuse to judge. I worked in my church for nothing.” Essentially, they will tell him what he owes them because of their works. They will say, “I was good. I did what I thought was good.” But what you think is good is not necessarily good. Only God knows what is good. Jesus said he will tell the people who try to collect on the debt to depart from him. He will say he never knew them.

When you decide what’s good, not only do you fail to discern God’s will; you try to correct God. You substitute your judgment for his. Doesn’t matter whether you have what you call “good intentions.” Even your intentions have to be judged by God. If you intend to do what you think is good, instead of listening to the Holy Spirit, then your intentions are bad.

Mormons are not Christians. They belong to a faith that involves Jesus, and they believe faith is PART of salvation, but they don’t believe faith alone saves us. If you believe that anything other than faith is essential to salvation, then you’re not saved. You’re under the law, and no one can fulfill the law.

The doctrine of following the Holy Spirit sounds very harsh to self-righteous people. They think their man-made doctrine is better, because it tells them to be so nice. Consistently nice. They think they’re better than Spirit-led Christians who are not always nice, and they will use their own niceness to condemn us. When they use it to put us in chains, take our homes, and kill us, this will be part of their justification. Expect it.

If you want more of what God has for you, give up the Christian law. Get to know the Holy Spirit. Ask for correction, and ask God to make you crave correction. He will answer these prayers, and the blessings you receive will be greater than anything you will ever get for being nice.