Faith Matters | It’s not enough to agree with Jesus. We need to start obeying him

It’s become acceptable in our society to say you believe something without having to do anything about it.

How about a few random hypothetical examples? One can be the special envoy for the president over the climate change task force and lecture the world’s populace on how our use of fossil fuels is destroying the environment. At the same time, however, it’s acceptable to fly one’s personal jet around the world using the same fossil fuels. One can also lead a large business that criticizes a certain state’s photo ID requirement for voting while at the same time requiring the same ID to board one of their flights or pick up tickets to one of their baseball games.

We live in a culture where all we have to do is say we agree with something. We don’t have to actually do it.

I’m not sure when it happened, but we live in a Christian culture that does the same thing. At some point in the past it became acceptable to merely agree with Jesus. We don’t feel obligated to obey Him. Instead of changing our lives to meet the standards Jesus taught we change the teachings of Jesus to agree with our lives. One of the most blaring examples is found in Christians’ view of sex.

Most Christians would still agree adultery is wrong; that sex is reserved for a man and woman within marriage; and pornography is a sin. Unfortunately, statistics tell a different story. Ashley Madison, an online company that helps married men and women have an affair, polled its customers and found 25% of their clients are self-proclaimed evangelical Christians. A Pew research poll found half of self-proclaimed Christians see “sex between consenting adults who are not in a committed romantic relationship – is sometimes or always acceptable.” And a different report states 68% of churchgoing men and 30% of woman view pornography regularly.

Evidently you don’t have to do what Jesus says to claim to follow Him. You just have to agree with what He says.

Jesus thought otherwise and says so in Matthew7:21: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” This verse should scare you. It scares me. Jesus is talking to religious people and distinguishes between those who truly know Him and those who just agree with Him by evaluating their actions. The evidence of following Jesus is found in doing what He says, not in just agreeing with what He says.

Many of us are tired of living defeated lives. We know God offers us more, we’re just unable to grasp it. What if this is why? What if our failure to obey to the most obvious teachings of Jesus is the key to the lack of power in our lives?

At some point we have to stop just agreeing with Jesus, and we need to start obeying Jesus.

Faith Matters is written by members of the Bradenton area clerical community. Phillip Hamm is senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Palmetto.