Read transcript below
Keywords
salvation, lukewarm teaching, Holy Spirit, new covenant, intimacy with God, spiritual growth, faith, forgiveness, Christian teaching, relationship with God
Summary
In this episode of Dispatches from the Spiritual Front, Alan Wartes explores the deeper meaning of salvation beyond mere forgiveness, emphasizing the importance of recognizing lukewarm teaching in the Christian faith. He discusses the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding believers and the necessity of cultivating a personal relationship with God to discern true teachings from distorted ones. The conversation encourages listeners to seek intimacy with God and to be vigilant against teachings that do not lead to spiritual growth.
Takeaways
God’s goal in providing salvation goes beyond what we think.
Forgiveness is just the starting place for believers.
Jesus aims to transform us into new creations.
Lukewarm teaching often relies on intellectual arguments.
Ask God for discernment in recognizing teachings.
The Holy Spirit empowers us to understand God’s will.
Lukewarm teaching can lead to a life of complacency.
Regular Bible reading helps confront distorted teachings.
The New Covenant offers a direct relationship with God.
Intimacy with God is essential for spiritual growth.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
01:10 Understanding Salvation Beyond Forgiveness
02:52 Recognizing Lukewarm Teaching
06:04 The Role of the Holy Spirit in Teaching
08:48 Confronting Lukewarm Teaching and Cultivating Relationship with God
Transcript
Hi! I’m Alan Wartes and this is Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. Welcome.
I especially want to welcome and thank all the new subscribers who have joined Dispatches in the past month. Your support and your presence are extremely valuable, thank you.
I encourage you to leave a comment when you have something to add or ask so we can include your voice in the conversation. Also, please share these dispatches with anyone you think would welcome them.
This week, I’d like to address a question posed by a subscriber after hearing last week’s episode called Phase Change.
In it, I shared that God’s goal in providing salvation in Jesus goes way beyond what most people think. We get easily entangled in the idea that the whole point is to rescue us from the judgment and death we deserve because of rebellion and sin.
We do need that, I said, but only as a starting place. Forgiveness had to be accomplished to pave the way for what happens next — our complete rebirth as new creations in Christ.
Jesus didn’t spring us from jail on death row and then leave us standing on the street with nothing but a pardon and best wishes for a better future.
It is God’s plan to take you home from there; clean you up and treasure you as his child. He desires to set you completely free from everything that landed you in prison in the first place.
To make that possible — because we cannot do it ourselves — he offers to live within you and do all that needs to be done by you, for you. That’s the new covenant.
Your part is to simply to believe and surrender to this wholeheartedly, with nothing held back.
Hang in there, I’m getting to the question, I promise.
In making that argument I said it’s time for us to get to the bottom of why, then, so many believers seem stuck in a sort of half-life. We’re forgiven, but don’t yet experience the promised rivers of living water flowing through our lives if we believe.
It’s time, I said, to stop listening to teaching that leads us into this kind of lukewarm fugue state as believers.
That’s what prompted one viewer to ask, “How do we recognize lukewarm, status quo teaching when we see it?”
It’s a really important question.
But I want to repeat something I said in my very first dispatch: I don’t have any big-brain credentials or special claim to authority. I’m not a psychologist, sociologist or theologist.
I’m just a follower of Jesus, like you, with a lot of years in the trenches trying to work out my faith in the real world.
But I am a writer. That means I can boil things down into bullet lists of key points like a boss.
So, in response to this question, that’s what I did.
I came up with seven telltale characteristics of lukewarm teaching and how to spot them. They’re not bad, if I do say so myself.
Then, I leaned into the next step, which is to put some meat on the bones of each point.
I wrote out the question again: How do we recognize lukewarm teaching when we see it?
Number one: It is overly intellectual, relying too much on cerebral arguments.
I jotted down Proverbs 3:5-6:
“Lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight.”
Proverbs 3:5-6
Then I looked at that. I looked at the cursor blinking at me for more. And I suddenly realized that this advice applied to all six of my other points.
It was as if the Holy Spirit said, “Hmm, you may be on to something there.”
As my wife Issa likes to say, God’s funny. He and I had a good laugh, I can tell you.
So, there may come a time when it’s right to share those bullet point ideas with you, but for now, this is me backing up and starting over. There is a perfect answer that actually contains all possible answers
How do we recognize lukewarm teaching when we see it?
Ask God.
After all, my whole premise has been that this is what Jesus’ death and resurrection purchased for us — unhindered access to our Father as his children. Reborn, restored, full of power and knowledge.
Don’t take my word for it, read what God promised in Jeremiah 31:
“‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will by my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the Lord.”
Jeremiah 31:33-34
The bottom line is, if you have placed your faith in Jesus as your savior and king, then you don’t need anyone to teach you anything.
At the moment Jesus died, the veil separating people from the Most Holy Place in the temple in Jerusalem was torn in two, by God’s own hand. That didn’t happen so that a select few special people could go in and bring back God’s wisdom to the rest of us.
That’s the old way! And it didn’t work.
The veil was torn for you. Jesus died so that by the Holy Spirit he himself could live within in you. You are the new temple of the living God and Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant God has made directly with you.
Jesus is our high priest now, and we need no other.
I’m not saying we should never listen to each other. I’m not contradicting Paul who said that some are gifted by the Holy Spirit to teach others.
What I’m saying is that Jesus set us free from bondage to any teaching that does not lead to “life, in abundance.” That doesn’t lead us deeper into the paradoxical freedom of complete surrender to God’s will.
Perhaps, lukewarm teaching is best defined by what it doesn’t call forth in your life.
Now, here are a couple of things to keep in mind as we all try to make this work in daily life.
First, your sinful nature — that part of you that still believes Satan’s lies — wants to hear lukewarm teaching. It craves it, in fact. That’s because it’s not demanding. It provides cover every time you cling to sinful thoughts and behavior. Only the Holy Spirit within you can overcome that as you surrender to his guidance.
How? Start by listening to what Paul wrote to the Colossians:
“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”
Colossians 3:2-4
Second, the one thing all lukewarm teaching has in common is that it cherry-picks, distorts or outright ignores God’s Word. We must confront that the same way Jesus did by saying, “It is written….”
Here’s the key: You’ll have an easier time doing that if you are regularly reading the Bible yourself and seeking understanding directly from God.
The new covenant didn’t just deliver you from hell — it delivered you into a new life in which you confidently approach God as his child.
Cultivating this relationship and surrendering your whole self to it is not only how to recognize teaching that leads in a different direction — but also how to avoid being deceived by it.
May God bless you and keep you — and guide you into this intimacy with him.
