In the Scriptures, the Lord reminds us that "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked"(Gal 6:7). To mock God is to speak of Him or treat Him as if He is other than He has revealed Himself to be. This being the case, it would seem as if many in the name of Christ, mock Him as they treat Him as anything other than their only Savior and source of eteranl life. No place is this more manifest among the Church than in the apathetic and conditionalistic participation in Worship, reading of the Scriptures and prayer. If apathy and conditionalistic demands are what people are sowing, what are and shall the reap?
The following is an exerpt from Article IV of the Augsburg Confession that speaks of how this mocking of Christ takes place in the lives of many.
Here the scholastics (i.e. the supposedly educated and/or spiritually enlightened) … teach only the righteousness of reason — that is, civil works — and maintain that without the Holy Spirit reason (human mental/physical abilities) can love God above all things.
As long as a man’s mind is at rest and he does not feel God’s wrath or judgment, he can imagine that he wants to love God and that he wants to do good for God’s sake. In this way the supposedly educated and spiritually enlightened teach men to merit the forgiveness of sins by doing what is within them, that is, if reason in its sorrow over sin elicits an act of love to God or does good for God’s sake.9
Because this view naturally flatters men, it has produced and increased many types of worship in the church … someone has always been making up this or that form of worship or devotion with this view in mind.
In this point of view there are many vicious errors that would take a long time to enumerate. But let the intelligent reader just consider this.
If Christian righteousness, that is our rightness and perfection before God, is gained by the use of our reason, what difference is there between philosophy and the teaching of Christ?
If we merit/earn the forgiveness of sins and the favor of God by these elicited and made up acts of ours, of what use is Christ? If we can be justified by our reason and the works our reason tells us to do, what need is there of Christ as Savior or of regeneration/of being raised from death to life?
On the basis of these supposedly spiritual opinions, things have come to such a pass that many people ridicule us for teaching that men ought to seek some righteousness which comes from by grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ, which is a righteousness that is beyond the philosophical.
We have heard of some who, in their sermons, laid aside the Gospel and expounded the ethics of Aristotle, political correctness, etc. If the opponents’ of righteousness through Christ alone are correct in their ideas, this was perfectly proper, for Aristotle wrote so well on natural ethics that nothing further needs to be added. We see that there are books in existence which compare certain teachings of Christ with the teachings of Socrates, Zeno, and others, as though Christ had come to give some sort of laws by which we could merit the forgiveness of sins rather than receiving it freely for his merits. So if we accept this teaching of the opponents that we merit forgiveness of sins and justification by the works of reason, there will be no difference between philosophical or Pharisaic righteousness and Christian righteousness.
Book of Concord - Apology of the AC Article IV
Italicized - my edits.
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