The “Gospel” of Fire Insurance

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Romans chapter 6 this morning, as I mentioned earlier. Romans chapter 6. And we’re going to continue on with our series on these false gospels, the series that I’ve called Not Quite Christianity, because we’re talking about beliefs that sound similar to Christianity.

They sound similar to the gospel, but they’re not quite the same thing. And on the first week of this series, I introduced you to what I called the false gospel of unconditional acceptance. And that was a set of beliefs, as I told you, that emphasize what we would consider to the positive attributes of God, they take those and they crank those all the way up.

And then they take the negative, what we would say are the negative attributes of God, and they turn those all the way down. So they would take the love, the mercy, the grace, and they say, yes, we’re going to emphasize that. We’re going to talk about that all the time.

God’s justice, his judgment, his righteousness, all those sort of things, we’re going to downplay or eliminate those all together. And we end up with a warm, fuzzy God who’s not real bothered by our sins. And this distorted view of God leads us to the conclusion that God isn’t bothered by sin.

He doesn’t ask people to repent. He doesn’t expect people to repent. He doesn’t expect us to seek his forgiveness.

And if we look at what the Bible teaches about God, nothing could be further from the truth. God does command us to repent. God does extend forgiveness because we need it.

We need God’s forgiveness for our sins. And today we’re going to look at a teaching that’s really similar to this one. We’re going to look at another false gospel that’s really similar to that gospel of unconditional acceptance, and I call it the gospel of fire insurance.

Now, I’m not the one who came up with the term fire insurance. Some of you have heard that before, I’m sure. But I call it the gospel of fire insurance.

And these two teachings, they’re similar, but there’s a difference between them. They differ on whether or not we need God’s forgiveness. The gospel of unconditional acceptance and the gospel of fire insurance differ on whether or not we need God’s forgiveness, but they both agree that sin isn’t much of a problem.

See, the gospel of unconditional acceptance says sin isn’t a problem and you don’t need God’s forgiveness. The gospel of fire insurance says that you need God’s forgiveness, so go out and get it and then sin is not a problem. Does that make sense?

All right. The definition I came up with for this gospel of fire insurance is it’s the belief that if we just make a quick profession of faith and then we can carry Jesus around in our back pocket, that that will keep us out of hell, even if we never show any evidence of him changing our hearts. Let’s say that again.

The gospel of fire insurance is the belief that you can make a quick profession of faith, you can pray a prayer, you can say some words, and then you’ve got Jesus in your back pocket, and that’s all you need. That’s enough to keep you out of hell. even if you never show any evidence whatsoever that he actually saved you and took up residence in your heart and changed you at all.

And it’s the idea, again, that you can pray a prayer. You can believe that Jesus died for you. All of these things are important.

None of these things are, I’m not saying these things are wrong. You have to believe that Jesus died to pay for your sins in order to be saved. You can pray a prayer and trust Christ. Now, the prayer itself doesn’t save you.

It’s just a vehicle for expressing that faith. When I was five years old, my mother led me in a prayer at our kitchen table. Had I not meant those words, it would have done nothing for me.

But at five years old, I knew I was a sinner. And how do you talk to God? You pray to him.

And so I prayed right there and admitted my sin, admitted my need for a Savior, and asked Jesus to save me. So the prayer is not necessarily wrong. It’s the idea, again, you can pray a prayer, you can say a few words, and then just walk away from God.

Just totally reject God. Just totally reject God’s will for your life. Ignore all the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

Embrace the same sinful lifestyle as before, the same sinful lifestyle that you’ve always had, and still be covered like fire insurance because this one-time religious experience. You took out a policy with Jesus once upon a time, and so now you’re covered no matter what else happens. And the teaching is so dangerous because it sounds so superficially similar to the gospel in some ways.

But when you get down to the heart of it, it’s completely different from the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that you can be forgiven no matter how you’ve sinned. You can be forgiven if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior today. It’s not about doing good works.

Again, I want to be very clear on this, and so I’ll probably make this point several times throughout the message today. It’s not about doing good works or earning your salvation or if I could just be good enough, God would love me and accept me and forgive me. I talked about that a couple weeks ago.

That’s the gospel of moralism and it leads nowhere but a bunch of well-behaved people in the left and hell. There’s nothing in the Bible that teaches. There’s nothing in the gospel that teaches that we have to earn our salvation.

The gospel of Jesus Christ says you can be forgiven no matter how you’ve sinned. You flip that around, though, and the gospel of fire insurance teaches that because you can be forgiven, it doesn’t matter how you sin. You see the difference between those two?

The gospel says you can be forgiven no matter how you have sinned. The gospel of fire insurance says because you can be forgiven, it doesn’t matter how you sin. It’s nothing but fire insurance.

That’s why I use that term, fire insurance. Salvation is nothing more than a policy that you take out so that you can keep out of hell and nothing else changes. And according to this view, you can sin however you want.

You can do whatever you want because, hey, Jesus has already paid for it anyway. So why wouldn’t we? The reason why we wouldn’t, we turn to Romans chapter 6, if you haven’t already.

Romans chapter 6, verses 1 through 14. Some in the early churches had already adopted this idea that, hey, Jesus has paid for it. It’s under the blood of Christ. It’s under God’s grace.

And so we can sin as much as we want. And the Apostle Paul wrote to them, wrote to the church at Rome, to just take that idea and just rip it apart. He just tears the idea apart.

And so he says, starting in verse 1, What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? He says, God forbid.

How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? So in those two verses, he begins to address that teaching that, hey, I can just live however I want. I can sin however I want.

It’s under the blood of Jesus Christ. And I’ve heard people say this very thing. Some of you may have heard people say this very thing. I can go ahead and do X, Y, and Z.

You fill in the blanks. I can go ahead and do this that God says don’t do because God forgives me. God will forgive me for it.

I’ve even heard people say, well, I need to get prayed up so that I can go do this. So God will forgive. Wait a minute.

That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. If you already know this is wrong, God will forgive you when you sin. but don’t go out and think, hey, I have license now to sin because God will forgive me.

That indicates a heart problem as we’re going to talk about in the next few moments. So Paul, looking at that view that was beginning to be prevalent then and is prevalent in some circles today, Paul, looking at that view, asked the rhetorical question whether or not this was a legitimate way for a believer to act, for a believer to behave. He says, is this the way the believer is supposed to be?

Hey, I can sin however I want and God will forgive me. And he says, God forbid. it.

He says, absolutely not. In the strongest terms possible, he says it doesn’t work that way. Okay, so we go on to verse 2, and he says, how shall we continue in sin?

Okay, how do we, I’m sorry, that’s actually verse 1. How shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? He says, how is that possible?

How shall we that are dead to sin? There’s verse 2. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?

He says, as believers, we’re supposed to be dead to sin. So how do we go back them and live in sin and he says it’s impossible it’s impossible the way he’s asking that question how shall we he’s not asking in hopes that somebody will give him an answer and say well this is how you do it no it’s a rhetorical question again to say this is impossible if you’re a believer you’re dead to sin and and you don’t go back and live in the same old sin if we’re dead to sin we don’t live there anymore there’s a there’s a song that a friend of mine from the church in Arkansas he’s been here and visited. I keep trying to get him back and sing for us, Brother Ken, he reminds me of you, but he sings a song that says, thanks to Calvary, I don’t live there anymore.

Some of you all are nodding your heads, you’ve heard this song. It talks about the old way of living and then says, thanks to Calvary, I don’t live there anymore. Well, talking about the old way of living and sin because of Jesus Christ, if you’re a believer in him, if you’ve trusted him, if you’ve received salvation from him, if you’re indwelt by the Holy Spirit, you don’t live there anymore.

That’s not your address anymore, that old sinful word of law. He goes on in verse 3. We’re going to look at a big chunk here, verses 3 through 7.

He says, Know ye not that so many of us, as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into Christ, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, but henceforth we should not serve sin.

For he that is dead is freed from sin. Let’s start back at the beginning of that. He talks about being baptized into Christ in verse 3.

We need to be very clear on that because some people think we are water baptized into Christ. That water baptism is part of our salvation. But the Bible uses the word baptism in multiple ways. That Greek word is baptizo and it means immerse.

There are reasons why they just transliterated it and said baptized it should be translated immerse if you’re going to translate it into an English word. And so the Christian becomes immersed into Jesus. There’s no mention of water at this point in the passage.

The believer, when we trust Christ, we are said to be immersed into Christ. There are several other places in the Greek New Testament where it uses this phrase, baptized into, we’ll see, baptized into or baptized unto in our English translation, and the verb there is baptizo, and then ice, the conjunction meaning into. When we see that phrase, it’s used about a half dozen times in Scripture, depending on which version you’re looking at, and it’s used to describe how we’ve become identified. with something.

So you were immersed into Christ, meaning when you were a Christian, you just dove into Christ with both feet. That’s the expectation, that we dive into Christ with both feet, we’re immersed in him, and we become sort of irreversibly identified with him. That people see Luana and they say, she belongs to Jesus.

Not Luana hops in and out of church whenever it’s convenient, and it’s really not even about church, but Luana hops in and out of her faith when it’s convenient, and I’m saying that because I know you don’t, but people know the one belongs to Jesus Christ. They know Kay belongs to Jesus Christ because we’ve been immersed in Christ. The same phrasing is used in a couple places. It talks about people being baptized into the church, meaning they’re identified with the church. People see Greg walking down the street, they know he’s part of the church.

It talks about the Jews being baptized into Moses, meaning they were being identified. They were identifying themselves with the teachings of Moses. So when you see this phrase baptized into Christ in verse three, it doesn’t mean that through the water we become saved.

It’s talking about what happens when we give our lives to Christ and we dive in with both feet. You know, we hear that word immersion sometimes used. If you’re going to go overseas and learn another language, then you’re going to go to Paris and you’re going to learn French.

You go to a French immersion school where it doesn’t matter whether you speak much or not, you’re just sort of thrown in and all they speak is French. You’re going to learn it. You’re going to know French because you’re surrounded by it.

You dive in. That’s what it’s talking about here with Jesus. So it’s talking about us being immersed into Christ and we should be.

The idea that we would trust Jesus Christ and then never have anything else to do with him in our lives is completely foreign to the scriptures. Now, if you believe in Jesus Christ, if you trusted in him for salvation, the expectation is you dive into Christ with both feet. And in verse 3, it talks again about this inseparable link to Jesus, and that includes his death.

But if we were baptized into Christ, we were also baptized into his death. And what this is talking about, we’re identified with the death of Christ. The whole reason why he died was to pay for our sins. Our sin was put to death with him on the cross.

And so we go through this whole thing where our sin has been crucified in him. The old way of living, the old self, has been crucified with Jesus Christ. So there’s not only the expectation that we would dive all in with Jesus, but there’s also the expectation that our old way of living isn’t something that we just pick up and bring back when it suits us. That old way of living has been put to death.

It’s dead. It’s gone. And verse 4, where it does talk about our baptism.

and I think this does refer to water baptism, our water baptism even is a picture of this. When somebody trusts Christ, the first act of obedience is to undergo baptism, to be immersed in the water, not because it saves you, but because we’re identifying with Jesus Christ. It’s a physical way of expressing what we’re talking about with the immersion into Christ. We’re diving in with both feet, so let’s do it in the water. But we put somebody under the water, and it’s a picture of the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so when you went under the waters, those of you who have, what that was a picture of, instead of using dirt, we used water that you were buried with Christ in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life.

You were already saved. That’s not how you were baptized into Christ. It’s the way you showed being baptized into Christ. But it’s a picture of us being identified with his death, his burial, and his resurrection. we are supposed to be inseparably identified with Jesus Christ from the time of our conversion.

That’s the expectation. Verses 4 and 5 talk about how Jesus was raised from the dead to have new life, and so are we. It says that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the newness of life.

For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. That picture of baptism where we’re buried with him, God raised him up from the dead. And when we’re raised out of the waters of baptism, it’s symbolic of his resurrection and of the fact that God has also given us new life.

That the same God who oversaw Christ being crucified and our sin being crucified with him and our old self being crucified with him, the same God that oversaw that is the same God that raised him from the dead and is the same God that raises us from that state of being dead in our sins and trespasses and gives us new life in Jesus Christ. How is this possible? How is it possible that we would have new life? Because it’s the work of God.

It’s what God does in us. And the old self, the old way of living was put to death so that God could break the grip of sin on us. You know, as long as that old self was back there somewhere, we were going to be tempted to go back to it.

You ever have things that you think, you know, you’re cleaning out your garage or your closet, you think I really ought to get rid of that, and you don’t, well, I might use it one of these days. Yeah, we all do that. We all have those, and eventually, they’re just going to stay there.

They’re just going to stay there, and always in the back of our mind, we think, well, I might use that, I might. No, we have to get, it has to be gotten rid of. If that old sinful self was still back there, we’re just going to hang on to it, and at some point think, well, we might bring that out of the garage and back into the living room.

So God said, no, we’re just going to put that to death. We’re going to crucify that. We’re going to bury it.

It’s dead and gone. We’ll try to dig that up. And so he gives us this new life in order to break the grip of sin.

Because you know what? I’ve noticed when we’re cleaning out the garage, we do it about once or twice a year because we have to. And we don’t keep bringing in more stuff.

I just keep finding more stuff that we need to get rid of. But Charler will tell me to be ruthless, and I think, I can’t let go of that. I might need that.

You know what? I get rid of it, and the hold is broken over me. I don’t really care.

I haven’t needed that again in three years ever since I threw it away. It’s to break, he gets rid of the old man to break the hold that it has on us. We don’t have it to go back to anymore and we think, why did I ever leave that in the first place?

It was never God’s intention. Let me be very clear on this. It was never God’s intention to save us just to leave us shackled to that same old sin that will destroy us and separate us from him.

I mean, it was so destructive in the first place. Why would God want to leave it there? God’s intention is to save us and transform us into something completely different.

Let’s look at verses 8 through 11. It says, Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more. Death hath no dominion over him.

For in that he died, he died unto sin once. But in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

God did not just put our old man to death in Jesus Christ. And when I say that old man, that’s the term the scripture uses here. It means the old self, the old way of living, the sinful person that we were before. God didn’t just put that to death, and that was the end of it.

God raised us to new life in Christ, as the passage has already said. He didn’t just take something away from us. God gave us something better in return.

He gives us new life in Jesus Christ. It’s like Paul wrote about in Galatians chapter 2 when he said, I am crucified with Christ. I’m crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me and the life which now I live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Somebody’s very upset back there this morning. So it’s not just that God took one life away from us. God gave us new life.

God gave us a better life. God gave us real life in return for the old man who was crucified with Christ. And verse 9 teaches us that just as Jesus died and defeated death, he did this once, he defeated death for us, and death no longer is supposed to have a hold on us. Death and sin, the hold of death and sin, are supposed to have been broken for us.

And I say supposed to, not meaning that he wasn’t able to. He broke the hold of death and sin. And I say supposed to because that’s the expectation.

And why anybody would want to say, well, I trust in Christ as my Savior. I don’t need that new life. I can just go on living the old one.

Why would we want to do that? He’s already broken the grip that those things had on us. He offers us new life instead.

You know, it says that he’s broken the power of death. But we will eventually, unless the Lord comes back during our lifetimes, we’ll eventually succumb to physical death. But what this is talking about is the even more frightening reality of spiritual death.

Spiritual death is separation from God. Spiritual death is the fact that we’re separated from him now because of our sins. We’ve positioned ourselves to be God’s enemies.

And that separation continues in eternity. That separation continues in eternity because we’ll go into an eternity separated from God instead of experiencing his presence in heaven, we’ll be separated from him in hell. That’s spiritual death.

And it’s that spiritual death that is longer lasting. And I submit to you, it’s a more frightening reality. That spiritual death has no hold over us anymore if we’re in Christ. It’s powerless over us.

Verse 10 says, He died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. He died once, and that was all it took. If you remember back to the series we did on the book of Hebrews, It talked about him accomplishing in one act what could not be accomplished by all the other religious activities and sacrifices that people have done down through history.

In one act, he conquered death. He defeated death. He defeated sin.

He broke the power of those things over us once and for all. And now, all of that is swept away. If you’re in Christ, all of that is swept away, and all that remains for you instead is new life in Christ. And the believer is supposed to consider himself dead to sin.

The Bible says we’re dead to sin. That’s how we’re supposed to think of ourselves. Now, I’ll talk about this in just a moment.

That doesn’t mean that we will never sin, but we’re supposed to consider ourselves to be dead to sin. He says in verse 11, Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead and be done to sin. When he says likewise, he’s telling us just like Jesus.

As you go back over the few previous verses and how Jesus died, Jesus conquered sin, and he says likewise, well, think of yourselves the same way. Jesus conquered sin. Jesus conquered death.

Jesus has overcome. In Jesus, you have overcome. He says, think of yourselves the same way.

Because he says here, reckon. I love that word reckon. It’s such an Oklahoma word.

But it’s also a Greek word. And that Greek word is logizomai, which means to make a thorough accounting of something. It means to make a thorough accounting.

Look at all the evidence. Look at all the numbers. Don’t just make this on the spur of the moment.

But thoroughly, look at all of this. Total up all the arguments and consider yourself to be dead to sin. Look at all the evidence.

And when we look at the evidence of what Jesus has done for us, we’re supposed to think of ourselves as being dead to sin. That’s how we’re supposed to reckon ourselves. So to you who are believers in Jesus Christ, what he’s saying here is that you need to take a thorough accounting of everything that Jesus has done, and then think of who you are in light of that, that Jesus has already conquered death for you.

Take into consideration all that he’s done. And don’t just think of what you want in the moment, not what we think we need in the moment, but to consider who we are in Christ. That’s how we’re supposed to look at ourselves. The death of Jesus Christ is the lens we’re supposed to see ourselves through.

We’re dead to sin, and we have new life through him. And one other interesting thing about this word reckon. In the Greek, the way the verb is constructed, it means it’s something we’re supposed to do continually, not just once.

It’s not enough for us as believers to wake up one morning and think, I’m dead to sin and go on because you know what we’ll eventually do? We’ll go try to dig up the body. We’ve got to wake up every morning and tell ourselves I’m dead to sin because I’m alive in Christ today.

It’s a constant reckoning. It’s a constant reminding ourselves of that case of who we are in Jesus Christ. Now let’s look at the end of the passage here, verses 12 through 14. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lusts thereof.

Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, that yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. Verse 12 is teaching us when it says, Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.

It’s telling us that for the Christian, sin doesn’t get to call the shots. sin doesn’t get to be in charge anymore. Now, before we come to Christ, sin is very clearly in the driver’s seat.

We’re sinners and it’s in our job description and we do it really well. But it says sin is supposed to come out of that driver’s seat when we trust Christ. In verse 13, it teaches we’re going to be on one side or the other. We might think we can straddle the fence and yeah, I belong to Jesus, but I want to have one leg in the world too.

There are many places in Scripture that teach that’s not how it works. You can’t serve two masters. You’ll end up loving one and hating the other.

Jesus said that. This says, you know, don’t yield your members, your parts, your body, yourself, as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield them instead to God. Because those really are the two options.

We’re either going to submit to God or we’re going to submit to sin. There’s no third way down the middle here. So we’re going to either end up submitting ourselves to our sinful nature and doing what feels right in the moment, or we’re going to end up submitting to God and doing what we know is right in eternity.

And it tells us, this tells us to act like we’ve been raised from the dead. Because in reality, that’s what’s happened in a spiritual sense. We have been raised from the dead.

The old man has been crucified. It’s been put to death. It’s been crucified with Christ. It’s been buried.

And God has raised us up to a new life. He says, you’ve been raised from the dead. Act like it.

Act like it. Think about if you were physically raised from the dead. Wouldn’t that kind of change your perspective on things?

You know, we’re just going along living our lives. Then bam, we’re dead. then somehow or another, you wake up, God raises you from the dead physically, and you wake up and you realize you’ve been given a second chance, you realize that, but you also realize that life can end at any moment.

Doesn’t it change your priorities? If you died and came back tomorrow, would you live any differently than you did today? I think my calendar would change.

I think my checkbook would probably change as well. I think a lot of things would change. I think I’d look at a lot of the stuff I do and say, well, that might have been good, but it wasn’t the best thing I could have spent my time on.

I think my list of priorities would get a lot shorter. Folks, think about the change that it would cause to your life if you were physically dead and resurrected. Spiritually, we should look at it the same way.

We’ve been dead and resurrected. Everything should be different. So Paul emphasizes in verse 14, he says, sin shall not have dominion over you, but you’re not under the law, but under grace.

I love that verse. I’ve loved that verse for years. That’s one of my favorite verses in Scripture.

Because you’ll hear that voice of temptation. You’ll hear Satan whisper in your ear, oh, it’s fine, it’s just a little sin. And sometimes the only thing that I can muster to get out of there is to repeat this verse and say, no, the Bible says sin shall not have dominion over me.

I’m not under the law, but under grace. Sin is not in charge. Paul emphasizes here that sin is not in charge.

We don’t have to obey it. And as Christians, we should not live lives that serve sin, that serve, that embrace those same old sinful lifestyles from before we met Jesus. When people met Jesus in Scripture, they were changed.

They were transformed. When people experienced the power of His resurrection, they were transformed. It should be no different today when we encounter Jesus Christ. And so there are some things that we can draw from this about how we respond to how we address sin in our lives.

First of all, we need to realize that nothing I’m saying means we’ll never sin again. The Bible teaches that we’re going to sin. That’s why it says in 1 John 1.

8, If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. This is written to believers, not to the world outside. This is written to people who’ve already trusted in Christ. And they said, if we say we have no sin, we’re liars.

If I told you I haven’t sinned yet today, I’m lying to you. And that’s a sin also, so I’ve just compounded the effects. We’re going to sin.

It’s an unfortunate reality because we still have a sinful nature in our physical body. Now, Christ has given us new life. That’s the only reason why, with the help of the Holy Spirit, that we can fight those sinful temptations.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 3 to a group of believers. He called them brethren, but multiple times in the chapter, he called them carnal. That word carnal means sinful, fleshly. And some people, I’d encourage you to go back and read it for time’s sake.

I’m not going to this morning. But 1 Corinthians 3, verses 1 through 4, he talks about how they act like they’re carnal because they act like babies in Christ when they should be a little more mature than that. they’re following one man or one other personality instead of everybody being united around Jesus, and he says they’re acting carnally.

And some people have taken that since he’s writing to people that he calls brothers, and they’ve misinterp