“SUPERFICIAL BELIEVISM”

Sometime the true history of the present church will be written. It may not be until the hour when the records are opened in heaven that all the facts will be revealed.

That hour, of course, will divulge most clearly the state of things which prevailed in our own apostate generation. What comes to light could amaze even the saints in heaven. Most startling of all may be that some of the doctrines most vigorously proclaimed in the ranks of the supposedly orthodox will be numbered among the most dangerous heresies ever to stain the pages of church history.

When error has been accepted as truth by the masses it is not too likely that it will be readily or easily eradicated. False doctrine creeps in unawares. It has always been so. The subtlety of error is that it appears so very close to the truth. Only the few who have lived with the Word of God and under the strict guidance of the Holy Spirit have ever detected wherein the error lies. To come out boldly against these false but popular teachings, once they are established, is to bring oneself under condemnation. Often it means that one is branded as fanatic. To all of this church history testifies most eloquently.

Let it now be made plain. I am not referring to the obviously heretical doctrines of the numerous modern cults. Neither am I alluding to the far departures from truth as found among the liberal theologians. I am speaking of a teaching which has had wide and enthusiastic acceptance in our own evangelical ranks, a teaching which is being confidently proclaimed as the message of the hour. In particular I refer to that most popular of doctrines which I shall term “superficial believism.”

From the plain teachings of God’s Word, there is no doubt that eternal souls pass from death unto life through a living faith in Jesus Christ. But ever and always this faith must be preceded by genuine repentance. Paul, the apostle, had but one message for Jews and Gentiles alike wherever he proclaimed the gospel of grace. That message he summed up completely before King Agrippa. Said Paul: “King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: but showed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance” (Acts 26:19, 20).

This is the message which that God-appointed man preached in establishing all of the New Testament churches. And he boldly claimed that he received this message by the “revelation of Jesus Christ.” He did not get it from men (Gal. 1:11–12). Repentance ever precedes faith in New Testament doctrine, and there is no faith born into hearts apart from a repentance which is genuine in the sight of God who knows all hearts. The Pauline teaching further demanded “works meet for repentance.” This was an external evidence that the sorrow for sin and complete turning from sin were a factual inner reality. Here was the visible and public testimony to a transformed life.

True Biblical teaching on repentance has been practically abandoned in this day of superficial believism. It remains as a conviction only with the small minority. Not only has the doctrine come into disrepute, but the type of preaching which the Spirit of God could bless to produce repentance is seldom heard from modern pulpits. Hence, in our orthodox ranks, cold-hearted and dry-eyed sinners are sweetly exhorted to “accept Jesus as their Saviour,” without so much as being told that they must thoroughly repent and completely forsake all known sin. They are but to “believe”; and what is meant by believing is enveloped in a thick mist of theological obscurities.

What, then, are they to believe? Not long ago a preacher lifted a New Testament passage neatly from its context, misapplied it, and then cried out: “If you believe what this verse says you are saved right now; I say, you are saved right now.” The verse was: “If thou shalt confess with they mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9). This particular belief to which the listeners were exhorted was actually nothing more or less than an intellectual assent to historical fact. Such is schoolroom knowledge and not a living faith in God’s Son. Such is the concept of faith in our generation.

This matter of believing on the Lord Jesus Christ is not so easy as it sounds. Take for instance the simple statement of the apostle John: “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God” (1 John 5:1). The word which is translated “believeth,” as used here and in its various constructions throughout the New Testament, means to believe a person to be true; to place trust in them, to rely on them; to commit oneself to them; cast oneself upon them; entrust oneself to them.

It is a cry far from merely accepting with the intellect the historical fact — that Christ died for sinners and rose again for their justification — to this inborn reality of faith that produces the kind of believing here defined. Any other theory of faith can be declared to be wholly superficial. Salvation comes to the sinning one when he, under the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, repents and forsakes sin. He then casts himself totally on Christ as his only hope. It is absolute committal. And such alone is true believing.

We repeat that such faith can never be inspired until repentance is complete. God is the one to be satisfied, and God knows our hearts. Invariably the act of believing is revealed in the New Testament as something wo do which is consistent and continuous. The Greek tenses which are used to declare the believing process undeniably certify that this is so. We read literally in 1 John 5:5, “Who is he that keeps on overcoming the world, but he that keeps on believing that Jesus is the Son of God?” Such a life of constant faith naturally demands unfailing obedience to the will of God.

In such individuals the transforming work of the Holy Spirit is real and complete. They are truly begotten of God, and to this the Comforter witnesses, “And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth” (1 John 5:6). He is the One who alone has right to witness to the believing heart the fact of the miracle of the new birth. God has never delegated to any human being this divine prerogative. These Spirit-born Christians are overcoming the world, the flesh and the devil; not sometimes, by mere effort, but consistently by the indwelling power of Christ. The Spirit’s witness is the abiding assurance within; the overcoming life is the evidence without.

It is nothing short of pitiful to witness the sincere ones, among the adherents of modern superficial believism, try in their own weakness to live the overcoming life. Vainly, and sometimes defiantly, they attempt to cling to what they have been told. “Just believe” was the instruction of the experts, so they struggle to believe that which somehow they know is not quite right. Neither God nor their own lives are witnesses to any supernatural transformation, so they struggle on, or turn back to the old ways in hopeless frustration.

The end of the trail will reveal untold thousands of people who were the hapless victims of this erroneous teaching. They were so near to truth by the standards of a present-day perverted doctrine, yet so very far away from the plain teaching of the Word of God. These became the unfortunate victims of this doctrine of death.

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