ANNOUNCER: Welcome again to Grace in Focus and today we continue our discussion on giving a testimony, what is the best way to do that? So often we end up with a false testimony because we mix our testimony about eternal salvation with our testimony about growth and sanctification. And that, if not a false testimony, is at least confusing. Have you ever heard someone giving their testimony, well-meaning probably of course, but really ending up playing the comparison game, comparing themselves to themselves or themselves to other people? Today we want to point this out so that when we give a testimony it really points to Christ and to none other. All right, the discussion is just ahead after I remind you that our website is faithalone.org. We want you to go there and find out more about us and about the resources that we offer. Books, articles, blogs, and a subscription-free magazine called Grace in Focus.
Now I know you’re ready, here’s today’s discussion.
BOB: Well, we’ve got an interesting show for you, as Ed Sullivan would say we’ve got a really big shoe for you today. And it’s something about Jenny Craig. Is that right, Kathryn? What did you say about that?
KATHRYN: That’s right, so we’ve been talking about testimonies and some of the misconceptions with them in the just general confusion. And I relate it to Jenny Craig commercials. I call it the Jenny Craig fallacy because, we all know those weight loss commercials. Maybe it’s Weight Watchers is another one. Any of those kind of commercials where you see these people in their three, four, five hundred pounds, they’re usually sad and depressed looking and boom.
BOB: They’ve lost 150 pounds.
KATHRYN: Overnight, and now it’s all in color and they’re in a great cocktail dress or whatever. And we tend to present our testimonies in that way.
BOB: Instantly, I’m like this.
KATHRYN: Right, I’ve lost all this spirit if we could say spiritual weight, right? All of these sins that I struggled with. Now they’re gone, you know, those desires I had before. I don’t have them anymore. And I’ve lost all this weight, just boom, automatically. That’s very common. And I think it leads to a lot of frustration with people because they hear testimonies like that and they expect to lose all of their spiritual baggage and then they don’t. They still struggle with things and it can lead to either frustration or it can lead to them to doubt their salvation altogether because they think, well, there’s something wrong with me because I didn’t just automatically lose it.
But we all know the Jenny Craig commercial doesn’t tell you about the six months of dieting or the weight loss surgery maybe or, you know, working out,
BOB: Or the different lighting or the makeup or the different outfits.
KATHRYN: Or all the months of work and effort that goes into that. And so we live in a culture that wants immediate gratification, right? We want the immediate gratification and that I think thinking has infiltrated the church. We want the immediate gratification of, okay, everything’s great now in my spiritual life and I’m perfect and I no longer struggle with these sins.
BOB: The implication, a lot of testimonies, if you too come to faith in Christ, it’s guaranteed that your life’s going to be transformed. That’s what is being sold.
KATHRYN: Yes. Where this gets fleshed out, just a small example is in summer camps. These kids go to these Christian camps and they’re put into this little bubble. You do the altar calls and the music’s wonderful, blah, blah, blah. And they think because I went forward and because I accepted Christ or I surrendered or they, you know, they have all of these concepts that are thrust at them that when I go home, I’ll have that spiritual high all the time and so then they go home and what happens.
BOB: Yeah, we saw this all the time with Crusade. People would come to a Christian conference. They’d go on a summer project or whatever. And when they would get back to it, there’d be this kind of depression that would set in. And it would be hard for them. So then what we had to do was have weekly meetings to keep pumping them up. And that’s kind of, by the way, the charismatic model, right? You come and you see people speaking tongues or hear people speaking tongues. You see people healed. You hear prophetic messages about what’s going to happen in the future. All of this kind of gets you from high to high to high.
KATHRYN: They’re chasing that experience. But then you still have to go back to your life and life is messy. And you still have those struggles, that you’ve got kids coming in and maybe they’re struggling with a porn addiction or maybe they’re struggling with mom and dad or whatever it is. And they go back home and it’s still there. It’s selling false goods. Could we be that blunt about it and just say when we present these testimonies that make it look like we’ve lost 500 pounds overnight, we’re selling a lie. And we’re setting people up for failure because they’re still going to struggle with things. And we’ve really caused a lot of confusion, I think, in this way.
And I can hear people sometimes objecting to this. Well, the Lord has helped me grow. The Lord has changed me. I have seen growth in my life. Yes. That’s legitimate and wonderful. But there’s a time and a place for that type of testimony. But that is different than your salvation testimony.
BOB: That’s great.
KATHRYN: We have to separate those two. But what we’re doing is we are sandwiching our discipleship, our sanctification growth as the bread, if you will, in the three-step testimony that we’ve been talking about. And that’s on either side of our salvation. And so we’ve really got to be careful in keeping them separate.
BOB: You’re basically talking about merging justification and sanctification.
KATHRYN: That’s exactly right. Yes. The first time I heard that, I graduated from Dallas Seminary. I went on, I got a doctorate from Dallas seminary. I taught out of a college in East Texas. Then I was hired by Multnomah. I got out to Multnomah and I was scheduled to debate one of my fellow faculty members on lordship salvation. And I remember I was talking to the head of the theology department and he said to me, you know, Bob, the difference between you and the person you’re going to be debating is your views on the relationship between justification and sanctification. I said, what, How so? He said, well, the person I was going to debate believes that those two are enmeshed to where it’s impossible to be justified without sanctification occurring. It’s a guarantee that if you’re justified, you’re going to live a life that’s sanctified and you’re going to persevere to the end.
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BOB: And he said, your view is salvation and discipleship are distinct and there’s no guarantee that if you’re justified, you’re going to persevere or you’re going to attain some level of holiness. You might even experience failure at the very beginning of your Christian life. And I said, that’s exactly right.
And a lot of testimonies ,with this one, two, three approach, they may not intend to say that, but what they’re doing is merging justification with sanctification.
KATHRYN: Exactly right. And if we could go back to the Jenny Craig analogy, if I could push it a little bit more, you know, it’s like weight loss, you can go up and down, right? It’s the same thing with sanctification. Maybe you’re doing well and you’re walking with the Lord and you’re seeing Him transform you and then you fall into sin and maybe you fail. And I shouldn’t say maybe, when you fail, you know, you’re not walking with the Lord, you can, quote, gain some weight back, right? It’s analogy. So it’s not perfect. But I think that’s a better way of looking at it rather than it’s all a one-time event.
BOB: I like that. I think Swindoll wrote a book called Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back, something like that. Any progress we make in life is typically so many steps forward and then some setbacks, right? It’s rarely, there’s just a linear movement upward and onward.
KATHRYN: A really good example in my opinion of how this impacts not only our lives, but our interpretation of Scripture is in Acts 8, when Simon comes to faith,Simon the sorcerer. You’re talking about somebody who prior to coming to faith was living an extremely dark, spiritually dark, place.
BOB: Maybe you like what we would call black magic.
KATHRYN: Yes. I mean, the satanic, he comes to faith were told in Acts 8 that he believed, he comes to faith. And not only that, but he’s baptized.
BOB: Yeah, Philip baptized him.
KATHRYN: Right. And so you have a baby Christian. He’s not only a baby Christian, but he’s also coming out of such darkened thinking. And what do people do to Simon?
BOB: Yeah, they say he’s not born again because, Peter and John come down lay hands on them, including evidently, Simon, but we’re not told specifically. And they receive the Spirit and he wants to buy the ability to lay hands on people so they receive the Spirit.
KATHRYN: And why does he want that?
BOB: Yeah, it seems like he wants it because he’s craving all the adulation he had before.
KATHRYN: So not only are we talking about a baby Christian who was living a very dark lifestyle, you know, in this sorcery, but we’re told in the text that he was very popular because of it. And he was fairly wealthy, we could assume, right? He had some money, he’s bribing Peter. So that’s a whole lifestyle. That’s a lot of spiritual weight, right? We’re going back to the Jenny Craig analogy. He’s coming to faith with a lot of baggage. And what do we do?
BOB: We all do to some extent.
KATHRYN: We all do, but I think he’s just such a poster child of what we’re talking about here where we see baby Christians and they come to faith and they struggle. They need somebody like Peter to come alongside them and say, Hey, you need to turn from this. This is going to really cause you some problems if you continue down this path. That’s loving. That’s what discipleship looks like. But what do we do? We throw the baby out with the bathwater. We say he’s not saved. He’s just going to hell. And because why? Because he was immature, because he didn’t become super Christian overnight? It’s so sad because a lot of commentators are going to say he wasn’t saved. And I just, I want to ask them, where’s the opportunity for baby Christians to grow? Where’s the grace for Simon? I mean, how could he know? How could he know that? I mean, yeah, he’s stupid because he’s a baby.
BOB: But you know, the funny thing is the text doesn’t say Simon said he believed. Luke tells us Simon himself believed and was baptized. So either Luke got it wrong or he was born again, and that his wanting this ability to convey the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands was a definitely wrong attitude.
KATHRYN: Right. The reason I bring it up is how many times do we do this with our testimonies in that we present this idea that you’re just going to become this great wise mature Christian. And if you don’t fit that mold, then people are going to treat you like Simon. They’re going to say you’re not saved. The ultimate result of these testimonies is one of two things. Either you will begin to despair. You look at yourself and you realize that I still sin and I still struggle and so you despair, become depressed or you just leave the faith because you just think this doesn’t work. I’m still failing. Or on the other side of that spectrum, it’s going to lead you to legalism. It’s going to lead you to live a life where you are looking to your works for assurance and you’re constantly chasing that.
BOB: And looking down on everybody else.
KATHRYN: And you have to look down on everybody else because it’s constantly comparison game, which is what we’re doing with testimonies, right? Look at me, look at my story, look how awesome I am and look at this transformation I’ve had and this is how you know I’m saved and we’re pointing people to ourselves and our works. And again, our goal should be that we point people to Christ and the promise of eternal life.
BOB: Okay, next time let’s see if we can talk about how we should do it. All right, thanks a lot and keep grace in focus.
ANNOUNCER: Thank you both for that great discussion. Would you like to deepen your understanding of Scripture and the Christian life? Well, a great place to start is our website. It’s faithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org. We’ve got all kinds of free materials on the site available for you. One of those which is extremely popular is our magazine Grace In Focus. It comes out six times a year. It’s full color, easy to read, and people are really growing who read it. So stop by and get a free subscription at faithalone.org. We would like to thank all of our financial partners who help us keep this show going. All gifts are tax deductible and very much appreciated. If you’d like to find out how you can be a financial partner, visit us at faithalone.org. We are so happy when we hear from listeners. Maybe you’ve got a question or comment or feedback. If so, please send us a message. Here’s our email address. It’s radio@faithalone.org. That’s radio@faithalone.org.
Next time on Grace In Focus: Kathryn Wright will give some additional concluding thoughts about giving a testimony. What is the most clear way to share a testimony the most helpful way? So join us next time on Grace In Focus.
