I wish I had a five dollar note for every time that I’ve heard it said or seen it in writing. A couple of weeks ago it happened again—and of all places in an article in the religious column of our regional newspaper. I’ve also heard it from the lips of people in Reformed Churches. The statement goes something along these lines: God accepts us unconditionally..! Sometimes the statement is used to lay a guilt trip on us for not being as tolerant of others as we ought to be. God loves us unconditionally... therefore we also ought to love one another unconditionally.

Undoubtedly many who say this are only trying to highlight the immense grace of God – the kind of grace that Paul spells out in Romans 5 – that Jesus didn’t come to die for good people but that He died for us while we were still enemies of God. The Lord in grace didn’t wait for us to straighten out our lives before He saved us and made us His sons and daughters. Furthermore the apostle John makes quite clear in his first letter that this wonderful love of God is indeed the model for the love that we are to demonstrate towards others.

And yet....! I have serious reservations. When I read through the Bible I find that it repeatedly calls people to repentance and conversion. The Old Testament prophets certainly didn’t go around telling people that God accepted them unconditionally. Instead they laid it on the line that their behaviour and lifestyle needed attention... before God would accept their worship and hear their prayers.

You may say, "Ah yes, but that’s Old Testament stuff. We now live, not under the law, but under grace. Since Jesus has come it is all different." No it isn’t! Old Testament people too were saved by grace alone and through faith alone.

Let me put it very strongly. God does not love and accept us unconditionally. For Christians to say that – especially to the world at large through an article in the ‘religious’ column of the local paper – only leads to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called ‘cheap grace’; expecting salvation without conversion, forgiveness without repentance. Even worse! It undermines the "Christ Alone" principle that is at the heart of the gospel.

The point that the apostle Paul makes in Romans 5 is not that God loves us unconditionally but rather that He loves us as we are, in and through Christ His Son. There is an important condition to God’s accepting love. That condition is faith in the doing, the dying and the victory of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The wonderful good news of the gospel is not that God accepts us unconditionally. It is rather that God accepts us as we are, warts and all, as we come to Him through Christ’s saving work. It is conditional.... conditional to us repenting and believing the gospel.

We as Christians are selling the gospel short if we simply allow people to believe that God accepts them unconditionally. That is not honouring Jesus Christ. And it even undermines the very grace that we are trying to stress. Grace is not that God just accepts us with no strings attached. Grace is that God accepts us on the basis of a very costly sacrifice that was made for us while we were still sinners.

Neither are we doing other people a favour when we simply mouth the pious platitude that God accepts us unconditionally. That is hardly an encouragement to drive them to the Lord Jesus Christ who alone is the way to the Father.

The ways in which the "Christ Alone of the gospels is undermined today is often very subtle. Just how subtle it is came home to me some weeks ago while I was talking to an elder about a family who left the church and joined another church in town. In their words they felt that it was "time to move on". Over the years I have heard that expression more than once from people who switch churches. In this particular case what was telling was that their new church put the emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts. When the elder reminded them that the Christian faith is all about the gospel of Christ and that even the work of the Spirit was to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, they disagreed, claiming that mature Christians needed to move on from that basic "Sunday School stuff".

There is this perception among some of our brothers and sisters in the faith that the gospel is "old hat". Newer and more exciting things have to be found to draw people into the Christian faith. But in this process, somewhere along the line, the Lord Jesus gets shoved into the background.

The reality is that all of life finds its focus in our crucified and glorified Saviour. Paul makes abundantly clear in his letter to the Colossians that all things hold together in Christ. He is the centre of all things. For crying out loud...! How can you ever "move on" beyond that?

Of course it is quite a biblical concept to "move on". But move on to what? The writer to the Hebrews (chapter 6) also spoke to his readers about "moving on" – but not to some position that violates the "Christ Alone" position. He says: "Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ let us press on to maturity." But what does he then do? He goes on to expound the High Priestly work of the Lord Jesus Christ who was a Priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Christian maturity is never about moving on from the gospel. It is rather a fuller understanding of that gospel in all its facets and a more complete application of the "Christ Alone" principle to the whole of our lives. The sad fact is that when we move away from the "Christ Alone" of the gospels we do not "move on" at all... instead we are actually stepping backwards.

The way that modern fads and fancies in the church can also undermine the "Christ Alone" principle came home to me in another way some weeks ago. Some visitors (from a low-lying country in Europe which will remain anonymous...!) attended our worship service. The sermon that evening was a Heidelberg Catechism sermon about the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ, based on Hebrews 2. These visitors remarked afterwards how refreshingly practical and relevant the teaching of the Catechism still is for today’s world. They then lamented that in their church they didn’t hear Catechism sermons anymore. In their church the sermons tended to be "very horizontal" as preachers struggled to address people’s felt needs. Sure, Jesus was still mentioned but somehow the "Christ Alone" principle of the gospels lost out.

Please understand! I am not in any way opposed to addressing people’s "felt needs" from the pulpit – although we do well to remember that some of people’s deepest needs are often not "felt". The point is though, that if all of life holds together in Christ Jesus then addressing the felt needs of people in our culture ultimately needs to take us beyond the horizontal solutions that we find within ourselves and in our relationships with others. It needs to take us to the ultimate solution which is "Christ Alone".

A big part of our problem today is the "culture of tolerance" which pervades our society. Today in Western Society it is not politically correct to claim that there is only one name give under heaven by which we may be saved. Of course, the cry of "Christ Alone" that sounded out afresh at The Reformation has never sat well with sinful humanity. We don’t like to hear that we cannot add even the smallest part to our salvation. However, in the multicultural, multi-religious societies of our major population centres it has never been more opposed. How dare we Christians claim that the gospel, which we proclaim, really is the only way to eternal happiness?

Unfortunately this tolerance of all other solutions is increasingly making our society very intolerant of all things Christian. The evidence of that intolerance is not hard to find. Not long ago, at a hospital I was involved with, a cross (mounted on a wooden block) was removed several times from the hospital chapel. A multi-faith brochure produced by the chaplaincy department was not allowed to have the symbol of the cross among the various other religious symbols – only the picture of a dove representing the Holy Spirit was considered okay by those in authority. That was less threatening to the politically correct, than the cross which speaks of the uniqueness of the Christian faith. Here in our own city a weekly opinion column regularly takes pot-shots at the church and at Christians, in tones which, if they were directed at the Muslims or Hindus, would create an outcry. Our tolerant culture is willing to accept all sorts of contradictory claims but it suddenly becomes very intolerant when we as Christians claim that Jesus’ saving work is the only ultimate hope for human beings.

That helps us understand some of the issues I have raised in this article. The slogan "God accepts us unconditionally" is just another manifestation of the culture of tolerance. It plays right into the hands of the Enemy who doesn’t want people to know that God accepts us in Christ alone. In fact, the slogan "God accepting us unconditionally" actually promotes this false "tolerance" to the highest level—that of God Himself.

When people tell me that they’ve "moved on" to things beyond the gospel of Christ I can’t help but wonder whether that is not a surrender to the spirit of this age of tolerance. The gospel is so uncomfortable because it keeps reminding us of the inadequacy of other solutions than "Christ Alone". So we "move on" into areas spirituality beyond the gospel.

When the church in it’s preaching limits itself to human "felt needs" then it may indeed avoid the stumbling block of the "Christ Alone" of the gospel and so find acceptability in our age of tolerance. Sadly, the temptation then is to offer therapeutic solutions that lull people into a false sense of security. Folk will then all too readily conclude that they are merely a little "sick" and that some "therapy" can solve their personal and relationship problems. Reality is that unless they trust in the Lord Jesus Christ they are spiritually dead. It’s not therapy but salvation that they need.