You’ve probably noticed the recent popularity of books detailing people’s trips to both heaven and hell, ostensibly intended to warn the future inhabitants of hell and comfort the future inhabitants of heaven. The most recent addition to this genre is Heaven Is For Real—not to be confused with Choo Thomas’ Heaven Is So Real! or Heaven Is Fo’ Real Dawg, a soon-to-be-released album by a Christian hip-hop artist. (Just kidding.) (more…)

Now that you’re here, you are probably expecting me to argue that those who teach “eternal security” or “the perseverance of the saints” are somehow belittling the seriousness of sin by doing so. On the contrary, let me reverse the argument:

If I believe that certain sins—or a certain number of sins—can cause me to lose my standing with God, then I must believe that there are scores of sins that are fairly minor and inoffensive to God. Why? For every sin I acknowledge and confess on a daily basis, there are myriad other sins—of commission and omission, word and deed—of which I am unaware.

One way I could set my mind at ease is to convince myself that perhaps God is unconcerned with these sins, that they are not an offense to him and that they pose me no real eternal danger. Although they may build up over the course of my life like toxins accumulate in a body from living near a nuclear waste dump, most likely I will die of natural causes before a tumor develops and kills me. As long as I repent for the sins I’m aware of, He’ll let me slide on the others.

But what if this is not the case? What if I don’t have the right to determine what sins are more serious to God? What if the seemingly innocuous little weeds of self-righteous pride I can’t keep from sprouting in my garden are just as noxious to God as the tree of debauchery in my neighbor’s yard? What if it’s not for me to decide which sins God will damn me for and which sins he will shrug off like a doting grandfather?

If the second is true than I am in deep trouble, without hope in the world.

I am without hope unless I receive the righteousness of Another—”alien righteousness” as Martin Luther put it—that has no connection or dependence on my ability to perform and is appropriated through faith alone. This is a scandalous and obnoxious thought to a human mind obsessed with justifying itself, posturing itself, positioning itself in a more favorable light in order to earn God’s favor or avert His wrath.

No, sin is much more serious than your wildest imaginations. But there is good news—THE Good News.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. – Philippians 3:8-9

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice-President for Academic Administration of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, are living demonstrations of the theological diversity of the SBC. The former is an example of cultural captivity, the latter of biblical fidelity.

On Sunday, Moore posted on his blog a thoughtful and provocative piece on professing Mormon Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the National Mall the previous day. In it, he decried American evangelicals’ dearth of discernment that has led them to embrace Beck’s potpourri of religio-nationalistic rhetoric at the expense of the gospel.

On Monday, Land was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered explaining why he spoke at the rally. He admitted that most evangelicals would not consider Mormonism a Christian faith and noted that he probably has more in common theologically with Barack Obama than with Glenn Beck.

But his most interesting statement came later in the interview when he noted, “I think perhaps the most charitable way for an evangelical Christian to look at Mormonism is to look at Mormonism as the fourth Abrahamic faith.”

This was Land’s way of connecting the historical roots of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Mormonism, but it’s worth noting that neither Jesus nor the Apostle Paul share his view. According to them, there is one Abrahamic faith, unified under one common denominator (see Matthew 3:9, John 8:38-40, Romans 9:6-8, Galatians 3:7-9, Galatians 3:16-17).