Is God a Means to an End or an End?
Would I be out of line if I were to talk to you about utilitarian religion, and expedient Christianity? And the question you need to ask yourself is, “is God a means to an end?” And you have to decide very early in your christian life whether you view God as an end or a means.
The philosophy of the day become humanism, and humanism can be defined this way; it is the philosophical statement that declares that the end of all being is the happiness of man – the reason for existence is the happiness of man. According to humanism, salvation is simply a matter of getting all the happiness you can out of life.
Then came the fundamentalists who said, “we believe in the bible, we believe in the deity of Christ, we believe in hell and heaven and we believe in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.” But the atmosphere is that of humanism which says, the chief end of being is the happiness of man. And so it wasn’t long until we had this, that the fundamentalists knew each other cause they said ‘we believe these things’ not denying that they were men for the most parts that had met God.
But it wasn’t long until having said, “these are the things that establish us as fundamentalists” the second generation came in and said, “this is how to become a fundamentalist . Believe these things and therefore become a fundamentalist.” And as it has gotten to our generation, the whole plan of salvation is to give intellectual ascent to a few statements of doctrine. And a person is considered a christian because they say ‘uh huh’ at four or five places when they are asked to and if they know where to say ‘uh huh’, someone shakes their hand , smiles and says, “you’re saved brother.” So it has gotten to a place where salvation is nothing more than an assent to a scheme or a formula and the end of this salvation is the happiness of man because humanism has penetrated.
So if we were to analyze fundamentalism to liberalism it would be like this; the liberals say, “the end of salvation is to make man happy while he is alive.” The fundamentalists say, “the end of salvation is to make man happy when he dies.” Until the gospel preached is something like this; “accept Jesus so you can go to heaven, you dont want to go to filthy hell when there is heaven. So come to Christ that He may give you heaven.” And this appeal could be as much as to selflessness, its so subtle it just goes everywhere and what is it? in essence it is this: That this philosophical postulate that the end of all being is the happiness of man, has been covered over with evangelical terms and Biblical doctrines until, God reigns in heaven for mans’ happiness, Jesus Christ died for mans’ happiness, all things exist, the heavens and angels and everything is for mans’ happiness. And, THIS IS UNCHRISTIAN!!
Christianity say, “the end of all being is the Glory of God.” Yet humanism has brought about the betrayal of the ages and it’s in this betrayal that we live and believe, We need to come back to Christianity. And you may ask, ‘didn’t God intend to make man happy?’ Yeah! But as a by product with his glory being the end and not mans’ happiness being the prime product from his glory.
And what you believe determines why you repent or accept Christ, I hope you see the difference. The difference is, here is someone repenting because they’re afraid that they’ll be hurt in hell and they have no sense whatsoever of the enormity of their sin. they are only repenting to escape hell. THIS IS SELFISH! Oh that you would repent on biblical terms again and that you would come to Christ in truth and serve him wholeheartedly because he DESERVES it. We all are sinful and we deserve the wrath of God but he offers us the free gift of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ and that in the end it leads to His Glory.
AMEN!
Inspired by Paris Reidhead sermon; Ten Shekels and a Shirt.