Moral Christianity? The Quiz

Q: Which of these two persons is more likely to be a Christian?*

Person 1: Bill

Bill hadn’t always grown up in the church, but when his dad divorced his mom when he was 12, his mother started going back to church. It took Bill a while to warm up to church with all its cheesy Southern gospel songs and seemingly fake smiles, but after a while, it became his favorite place in the world. By high school, Bill was at the church door every time it was opened. He became a leader in his youth group and was well respected by all the church members and the ministers. He went on all the mission trips and even coached the youth basketball team. Bill never missed Sunday mornings, and only rarely missed Wednesday night prayer and youth services. Bill has a daily quiet time every day and is more consistent with it than you are. He also votes pro-life and pro-marriage. What’s more, Bill is the kind of guy that every father would want his daughter to date. He’s not a drinker or a partier; in fact, he tries to keep his friends away from that stuff. Everyone at school knows where he stands on that issue. What’s more, Bill has never touched weed and he’s a virgin. He even decided to save his first kiss for marriage. Bill generally makes good grades and is expected to enroll in the local Bible college next year to study to be a minister.

Person 2: Phil

Phil is Bill’s next door neighbor, and they are the same age. Phil has always been a little angered at Bill, partly because it is hard for Phil to measure up to Bill’s high level of living, but partly because Bill’s commitment to the truth just irritates him. Phil was never a big church attendee. As a matter of fact, he only went in middle school because some of his friends went. For the most part, Southern Christians tend to annoy Phil, so he stays away from church, even though he is interested. Phil is more like your typical teenager. He has done some weed, and he occasionally attends parties. Sometimes he even smokes a cigarette and drinks a beer, even though he is underage. It can be said that he has a loose trigger on curse words, and he frequents pornography sites. On one or two occasions, he and his girlfriend have crossed the line physically. He’s apathetic about politics and will be lucky to get into tech college next year. He is a straight D student. Phil is not all that rotten though: he’s become a good big brother to a little brother that has autism.

A:

The question was: “Which of the two are more likely to be a Christians?” At first glance, it might seem that Bill is the best candidate. After all, it seems like Bill is doing a far better job at living the morals of the Christian faith. But from these two paragraphs, that’s about all we can tell. The Biblical answer to this question is that we cannot tell who is more likely to be a Christian from this information.

Bill does indeed live a model life. He’s grown up within the graces of the church, and does all the things the Bible tells him to. He’s a good role model for everyone else in the church, but we can’t tell anything about his spiritual condition. In the snippet, we cannot see into his heart. It is entirely possible that Bill has a repentant heart that loves Jesus and that he lives the right way simply because he wants to honor Jesus. But it is equally possible that Bill is a self-righteous Pharisee. Bill could be doing all these things, not because he is actually a Christian (I didn’t mention anything about faith, repentance, and a renewed heart) but simply because he finds his value in doing good stuff. You see, a righteous person can easily be that way because they find their identity in the idol of doing good works. This is a subliminal way of trying to earn our salvation by good works. This may come as a surprise, but anyone can follow God’s law in an external manner just through willpower: doing good stuff, being at church, condemning those that do wrong, not drinking, reading the Bible, etc. Not everyone can follow the law out of a right motivation to serve God out of great gratitude for God’s mercy through Jesus. This requires a divine takeover of our wills, which happens at conversion. The verse that I might give to Bill is this: “Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:2-3).

As for Phil, the answer is the same. There is no way to tell whether he is a Christian based on the information I’ve given simply because you cannot see into Phil’s heart. From one angle, if Phil has never truly met Jesus, then it is understandable for him to fool around with his girlfriend, look at porn, drink, and do poorly in school. If he is not a Christian, then there is no point in him trying to obey the law. But on the other hand, Phil could be the picture perfect portrait of a Christian. This might sound weird, but let me explain. Let’s say Phil gave his heart to Jesus a year ago. Since then, he’s been slowly growing in grace. He doesn’t drink quite as often as he used to, and he’s debunked the porn habit. He currently makes Ds in school, but those are better than the Fs he used to make. He also has returned to church for the first time in 10 years, and he doesn’t do weed as much. Seeing conservative Southern Christians and Bill as annoying in their self-righteousness ironically might even be a sign of Phil’s sanctification. Phil’s life might still be full of sin, but he’s better than he was. Why? Not because of moral willpower, but because he has a deep desire to look like the One who loves him and saved him. So while Phil’s life might still look terrible when compared to Bill, he has grown more because he depends on Jesus more. You see, Bill's life is just as full of sin as Phil's is. Phil's sin might be more outward and external, but Bill's sin could be inward and internal: self-righteousness, pride, and exalting the self.

A quick disclaimer here: even with Phil, we should guard against measuring spiritual growth by good works. Spiritual growth is not measured so much by adherence to the moral law (i.e quitting alcohol) but by love for and dependence on Jesus. It is not the one who lives the moral life that understands the gospel better but the one who learns to crucify the self and draw their power only from Jesus that really gets it.

By way of conclusion, let me give you a little illustration that has been helpful for me. We as Christians are inspired by the lives of the saints, old and new. As someone like Spurgeon or Wilberforce gets older, we might expect them to sin less and less and generally follow the law. While this might be the case from the outside, almost universally, every great Christian man or woman has discovered that as they get older, they see themselves to be even more sinful and depraved then they knew before. As they grew in age and grace, they grew in the knowledge of their terrible sinful estate. But as they grew in knowledge of their sin, they also grew in knowledge and dependence on Jesus their Savior, and became more and more His. So as you grow older, don’t expect to see yourself as morally better. Expect to see yourself and your sin more clearly and truly. Expect to see yourself morally worse. But this is not a bad thing. Oh no, it is a magnificent thing, because it draws us closer into His arms. We would do well to remember that.

*Descriptions of persons do not attempt to describe real-life persons. In fact, in many instances, they probably resemble the author more than anyone else.