The Quote of The Week From A Friend On Facebook

Today’s quote of the week is from one of my friends on Facebook:

__________ My Master doesn't pat me on the head and give me treats for obedience-tricks.

I listen to a lot of sermons and hear a goodly number of church leaders who falsely teach their people that our Lord’s gifts are certainly free but we need to do something to tap into the Divine gift registry before we can fully enjoy the benefits of the Christian Life. In other words, God works on the quid pro quo system.

What does this line of thinking usually sound like you ask? When God's grace and His gifts are based on such a system: "if you just believe or if you have enough faith then God will ______ " just fill in the blank. In doing this, these church leaders have turned the Lord of heaven and earth and our Creator and Redeemer into a puppet on a string who dances to whatever tune we want. This is not the picture Scripture paints.

And so we are all perfectly clear, Lutherans are not immune to this false teaching. In fact, when not guided by Scripture and our Confessions, Lutheran excel at latching onto just about any heresy and making it their own. Whether it is evangelism that says we are sending people hell if we don’t change the way we conduct our worship services or mystic prayer practices taught by people who think the apostle Paul is overrated and therefore prefers mystics whose theology Scripture and our Confessions condemn; Lutherans have a unique way of wrapping heresy in enough pious language so as to make it appear orthodox at first glance.

Today’s quote is brilliant in its simplicity and condemns each one of us who thinks we do something so God will pat us on the head. The funny thing is that such thinking normally has us patting God on the head for His trick performed exactly the way we wanted Him to.