I recently heard a very popular Evangelical pastor preach a very common message on the radio. He said (and I have heard Reformed say this) that we should be always ready to give our testimony to others. What is a “testimony?” Ever since the days of the Enlightenment, and likely even before then, Christians have equated the Gospel with some sort of ethical conversion, “I was once that and now I am this.” Now, I am all for giving glory to God in what he does, and what he has done in the saints, this is why I like to celebrate the feast days. But to equate the Gospel to ethical conversion is a serious mistake.

Any self-help group can take a drug-addicted or other socially oppressed person off the streets and “clean up their life.” In fact, the world has a better track record, in these modern days, of doing such a thing. As a former minister to homeless and incarcerated, I witnessed much of this sort of secular rehabilitation: Many people could not decide between the rehabilitation of the Church or the rehabilitation of the cult of the state (the state issues them license to minister), because they are both able to help.

Change in social and civil ethic is certainly a result of the Gospel taking root in a person, but it is not the essence of the Gospel. The essence of the Gospel, in regards to the change in the elect, is the change in which what the new Christian worships. The new Christian is now no longer an idolater! Now, the new Christian worships the living God! But, this worship is not primarily ethical in the social and even personal sense. This worship that the new Christian begins to give themselves to is corporate and ceremonial. The new Christian is now identified with what Christ spoke about: The Eucharist, Baptism, and the Church in its entirety.

The temptation within the Church has been to begin to act like God, proclaiming who is and is not elect on the basis of one’s inner morality and, as we have discussed, their outward ethics. But we do not know the heart like God knows that heart. We only know what we have been given; the outward workings of Christ: The Eucharist, Baptism, and the Church as a whole. We have not been given jurisdiction of the heart, as judge.

By teaching the testimony doctrine, Evangelical theology has been teaching, not that we are idolaters, but that we are simply breaching modern ethics. With this doctrine anyone can be a Christian that lives a moral life and inserts the name of Jesus in their life. Proper and submissive worship is not vital in this doctrine.

The drastic change in the Christian life can be seen IN THE VERY WAY AND FREQUENCY THAT THEY WORSHIP! Is the Christian in submission to Godly forms of worship, or is the Christian desiring “worship” that appeases their flesh through modern worldliness? Worship involves the “evolving” manner of the liturgical actions as first portrayed by Christ and his Apostles. You will be judged in the end by this Christological standard. So my question is: Why would one risk all of this by worshiping within the context of modern paradigms, presuppositions, and culture? My other question is: Could many be deceived into thinking they are “saved” because they have reached a higher level of morality but not a higher level of worship?

Why would one want to leave a life of fleshly entertainment just to enter a ceremony of fleshly entertainment, such as found in most Evangelical churches? How much has really happened in our hearts if we cannot leave the worlds liturgy to the world?