NICHOLS: You know, you’ve heard people say—I’ve heard people say all sorts of things about who Christ is. And in our State of Theology survey, one of the statements that we put on the survey directly gets at who Jesus Christ is.
And the statement is this: “Jesus was a great teacher, but he is not God”. Now, when we put that survey to the general U.S. population, 52%—that’s the majority—agree with that statement. That’s to say that the majority of Americans espouse a heretical view of the person of Christ.
And this is a truly crucial, essential doctrine, because the person of Christ is behind the work of Christ. When we’re talking about the work of Christ, we’re talking about the gospel. And without the true gospel, people are lost, and they are without hope in this world, and they are facing eternal damnation.
There could be nothing more important than getting the doctrine of the work and person of Christ right. And as this survey shows, there’s a lot of false understanding and confusion out there about who Christ is. But what’s even more tragic about this survey is that we put that same question to evangelicals.
Now, when you hear us use that term of “evangelicals” in this survey, let me explain to you what that means. It’s not someone just simply checking a box. We actually attached at the end of the survey four questions which have historically served as sort of a grid to identify evangelicals.
There’s a question regarding biblical authority; a question regarding the necessity of evangelism; there’s a statement regarding who Christ is and His atoning death on the cross; and then, fourthly, the exclusivity of Christ, that only faith in Christ can lead to salvation.
So, people who strongly affirm all four of those, they get considered “evangelicals.” We can pull that data out separately and analyze that. And here’s the tragedy. When it comes to that statement, “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God,”
Thirty percent, three out of 10, almost a third of evangelicals agree with that statement. So here are folks who want to say, “Yes, we must have the death of Christ in order to be saved. It is absolutely necessary for this work of Christ.”
But then they turn around, and they’re just so confused that they affirm a heretical view of who Christ is. What are we to do with this? What’s the takeaway? All of this underscores the importance of our studying the doctrine of Christology and teaching the doctrine of Christology.
We just can’t assume that folks sitting in our churches and the Christians we know and our family will just “get it” by osmosis. We have to be intentional and programmatic about teaching this cardinal doctrine. Because if this survey tells us anything, it tells us that we’ve got a lot of work
To be doing.
#Jesus #Divine #Evangelicals
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