Fighting against the sin of ‘Comfortable Christianity'

My reflections from my time in South East Asia

I was once told that to be an effective evangelist, results needed to be produced, people need to be saved, lives need to be changed. I’m not saying that that it is a bad thing to want growth, to strive for converts, to fight for the souls of the unsaved. I’m saying that if you measure how effective you are evangelising based on the amount of people converted, then there is a flaw in your thinking. Jesus makes it clear in chapter 13 of Matthew’s gospel that the Word is always good, therefore effective evangelism is about if you are proclaiming the gospel or not. From what I have observed in churches across Sydney, and from reading about churches across the globe, the idea that effective evangelism is about numbers of people saved is more commonly held than I hoped for. And I strongly believe that this is the reason why so many churches and Christians in the West have fallen into the trap, the sin, of ‘comfortable Christianity’.
So then, what is ‘comfortable Christianity’?
As I see it, ‘comfortable Christianity’ is having a casual, complacent faith. And to be entirely honest, I have been guilty of living like this. From the outside, it looked like this: I was a Christian. I read my Bible. I prayed. I went to church. I said the right things. I did the right things. But underneath all of that, I became comfortable with where I was in my life. I casually fought sin. I casually gave praise to God sometime during the week. I had a casual, complacent faith. That is ‘comfortable Christianity’; having a casual, complacent faith with a casual, complacent attitude towards God, casual, complacent fighting of sin.
Fighting against the sin of comfortable Christianity is a daily struggle for me. As I was doing my personal reading earlier this week, I opened Philippians 1:18-30. In this passage, Paul writes that for him to live is Christ, and to die is gain. To live is Christ. That is a life that is fighting against the sin of comfortable Christianity. To fight is to live a life that actively seeks out sin and kills it off; to live a life that actively seeks to worship God in all parts of life.

In his book For the Love of God, D.A. Carson writes:
“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch towards prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”
Here in Sydney, as well as elsewhere in the West, this observation rings true to the depths of Church. I’ve seen friends I care about, people I once called brothers and sisters in Christ, fall away from faith because of a casual, complacent, comfortable Christianity. And that has hurt. It still hurts because I know that they need Christ and, although they once knew Him, they know Him no more.

So what does this have to do with my time in South East Asia?
While overseas, one of the big things I learnt was this: Pride cannot live in the life of those who are taking the gospel to the unreached. Pride leads to complacency in taking the gospel to others. Pride leads to a casual faith in the sovereignty of God to save those who are His. Pride leads to a
life of comfortable Christianity that can lead to death.
As an Australian, I pride myself in the privileges I have because I was born here. I have the freedom to believe what I want. I have the freedom to decide my own future. I have the freedom to be whoever I want to be.
And yet, because I am found in Christ, I am called to give up my right to exercise these freedoms so that I may be found to be a child of God.
So much of who I am, so much of who I strive to be, so much of how I present myself to others, is wrapped up in this death-bringing way of thinking. Personally, my struggle with pride is the hardest part of being a follower of Christ. Taking up my cross daily, denying myself before my Lord, living a life that is solely about Christ is a daily, hourly, minute to minute battle. I am reminded every day that I am guilty of living a life of comfortable Christianity.

Yet, there is hope. Hope that we have been made new in Christ before the Father by the Spirit. Hope that we have the Spirit at work in us. Hope that there is a future for us in Christ. Hope that Christ will come again. Hope that Christ will make all things new. Hope that one day we will in the presence of the Father.
Isaiah 12:3-6 reads:
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day:
“Give thanks to the Lord,
call upon his name,
make known his deeds among the peoples,
proclaim that his name is exalted.
“Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously;
let this be made known in all the earth.
Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion,
for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

Amen.