Choose Jesus or Choose to Be Liked, You Can’t Have Both

The spirit of the new evangelicals of the mid-twentieth century was a desire to be respected by the theological liberals. R.C. Sproul Jr. said it this way.

Fundamentalism is so named for a fundamental reason. It was a movement that concerned itself with affirming, defending, and maintaining the fundamentals of the faith. As a movement, it affirmed the authority of the Bible. It affirmed the accounts therein of creation, of miracles, of the virgin birth, of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It affirmed the necessity of conversion through faith in the finished work of Christ. It affirmed, in short, the defining issues of historical evangelicalism. Why, then, isn’t the controversy called “the evangelical-modernist” controversy? To get at that answer we must ask another. What is it that distinguishes evangelicals and fundamentalists? Suddenly our problem becomes clear. An evangelical is a fundamentalist that wants the respect of modernists, and sells his soul to get it.

What separates evangelicals from fundamentalists is that we evangelicals don’t breathe fire, and we have fancy degrees hanging in our studies, instead of pictures of Billy Sunday. We evangelicals are they who cut this deal with the modernists, “We will call you brother, if you will call us scholar.” 

“Big Eva” (as some of my fundamentalist brothers are now calling woke evangelicalism led by David French, Ed Litton, and others) is sporting a sentimentality that seeks to be popular with the more intellectual, politically connected intelligentsia of the world. They are quickly giving up on the biblical norms of marriage, sex, gender, and even individual human accountability (for woke racism).

There was a day when our culture was Christianized enough that some believers could pretend to live in the middle—holding hands with God-denying academia while maintaining a somewhat recognizable form of Christianity.

Those days are over. To be liked in this world will require the repudiation of the true Christ, and to be faithful to Christ will result in being an outcast. This is a Joshua and Elijah moment.

And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the river or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:15)

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, how long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. (1 Kings 18:21)

The silence was deafening on Mount Carmel. The people were confronted with the reality that they could not have God and Baal. They wanted Baal but they also wanted to feel like they were still Israel and connected with their Israelite past by claiming Jehovah as well. They wanted to maintain an outward form of Jewishness while denying its substance of it. This sounds a lot like the latter-day “believers” Paul describes in 2 Timothy 3:5

having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!

You cannot affirm obvious sin and claim faithfulness to Christ too. Paul called such people “so-called Christians” (2 Corinthians 5:11). Both the unbelieving world and compromising Christianity in times past were complicit in letting that lie endure. But the world we are now facing will have none of it. You will not have to be bold or rude about it—and I am certainly not advocating starting a fight. This world will push you to a public affirmation or denial of your Lord. You will either have to redefine Jesus in a way that is clearly blasphemous and completely devoid of the gospel message, or you will be despised, hated, canceled, and persecuted.

It is time to decide.

Jesus is the only answer.