I saw a bumper sticker on a car in my church's parking lot today that made me look twice: "If you're living like there is no God, you'd better be right!" with flames licking up from the bottom of the sticker.
My first thought was – wow. All Law and no Gospel.
So if a person who lives as though there is no God saw this bumper sticker and said, "Oh no, what if there is a God?" and starts cleaning up his moral act – does that mean the person is going to heaven? Not without the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ. Even if the person from that time forward lived a perfect life (which is impossible in actuality), that wouldn't make up for everything wrong he had done previously.
On one of the podcasts that I listen to, someone once said something to the effect that if Satan took over a city, he wouldn't make it a city where there's no law and order and everyone is engaging in crime and there's mayhem and evil everywhere. No, it would be a city where everyone is a respectable, law-abiding citizen, the children are all well behaved, where all the people are moral and go to churches every Sunday where Christ is not preached.
There needs to be repentance AND the forgiveness of sins. Otherwise all you wind up with is the confusion of Law and Gospel, a kind of "clean up your act or you're toast!" sort of legalism that saves no one.
Dawn,
Bumper sticker theology has a way of messing people up. I have stopped putting that stuff in my car. I figure, what happens if this driver drove like there is no God?
LPC
LP,
Yes, I have stopped using bumper stickers as well, for the same reason. Many of them are meant to be short and provocative, but provocative is not necessarily what you want to be while driving! And even if you have a Christian bumper sticker that’s not provocative, you better be sure you’re driving impeccably or people might use you as one more excuse to say, “the church is full of hypocrites!”
I think bumper sticker “theology” is outright fanatical. People are put off by them. It’s almost a “in your face” type of approach. I think the best way to witness is with your actions. Now if someone were to walk up to me and asked me to talk about Jesus and God, I would take a few moments and share with them what God has done for through Christ.