No Piñata Jesus
Progressive Christianity's False Gospel
This summer it won’t be hard to find a group of children beating SpongeBob with a stick as he hangs from a tree somewhere in Lincoln Park.
Don’t worry, it will only be a paper mache rendering of your cartoon friend– a Piñata.
The children take their turn hacking at the figure to get the sweet treats inside.
Progressive Christianity is going to spend most of June hacking at Piñata Jesus. They aren’t looking for the real Christ anyway, just the treats.
This imitation Jesus separates the Good News of First Importance from the Good News of Jesus’ Life Story.
Remember the 3 ways we’ve described the Gospel…
1. The Good News of God’s Big Story.
2. The Good News of Jesus’ Life Story.
3. The Good News of First Importance.
The false gospel that separates the life of Jesus from the substitutionary death of Jesus is far too common. Separating Jesus’ life story from His death for sin removes any good news from the story.
We’ll call this the Inspiration Only Gospel.
The Inspiration Only Gospel celebrates Jesus as a teacher and model without wrestling with the center of His teaching and mission.
There are two ways this displays itself that we need to be aware of: 1) The Cross-less and 2) the Cross–lite.
We’re going to focus on the more explicit example of Inspiration Only that is Cross-less first. (Later this week we’ll come to Cross-lite.)
Cross-less followers of Jesus’ life present themselves as devoted adherents to Jesus’ teaching. Often this false gospel gains a hearing by pretending to be a neutral observer of what Jesus said simply trying to take His words at face value.
Stories are always told with a motivation. One of the best ways to recognize a narrator’s motivation is to examine the selection, arrangement, and focus of a story’s details.
We find out a lot about the motivation of Cross-less narrators when they neglect Jesus’ explicit focus on repentance, Hell, and the cross.
Presenting Jesus as the ultimate example of compassion without showing His substitutionary death on the cross as the central display of His compassion is deceitful.
Celebrating an Inspiration Only Gospel by fabricating a Cross-less Christ is not taking Jesus at His Word.
Jesus described the cross as the demonstration of His service, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
Jesus warned that sin would lead to Hell, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out” (Mark 9:43).
Jesus called His disciples to fear God more than man because God had authority to condemn to Hell, “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him” (Luke 12:4–5).
There are false teachers who know that throwing Jesus out of Christianity is a bad look. That’s why they settle for editing Jesus down to size for their heretical agenda.
Why repent when you can simply rebrand your “teacher” into what you already believe?
Jesus plays very nicely for your own personal or progressive agenda when you remove the part where He came to rescue you from your rebellion and the condemnation you deserve.
Jesus did not come to be redacted. He came to redeem you from your sin. Jesus does not need an editor. You and I need a Savior!
You cannot cover the tough parts of Jesus in a rainbow flag and pretend He affirms sin in His compassion or requires repentance only from the powerful.
Jesus came to die for sins. His teaching and life explain that, and the true Christian Gospel will keep the Good News of First Importance central to the Good News of Jesus’ Life Story.
The Piñata Jesus has nothing lasting to offer, but the true Christ brings lasting reward!