Satan tries to get the churches to sell out their evangelical distinctives and join in ecumenical alliances with liberals and high churchmen, and to say this is all in the interests of evangelism. He also does this in a personal way. We are born again, but time goes by and he tries to get us to return to the old sins – the old temper, pride, ambition – by reintroducing them in very subtle ways. He purifies the ambitions a bit: now they are not in the world, but in church. Or maybe it is obstinacy, or laziness – we just want to settle back. The church becomes like a cart that carries you along, and then we think what busy people we are. Or cowardice – when we were first converted we would speak to anyone, but now we keep our faith to ourselves. Maybe it is covetousness – material things become much too important to us, and what is mine counts most. And then self comes back – we serve the Lord, but we do it because we want to be noticed. How sad when you see not only ecumenicals, but even Christians who rediscover a taste for expensive things – clothes, cars, houses. Satan watches every one of us and observes that this one or that one is not careful enough about these things.
The Bible says that we may be few, and yet, much to the embarrassment of the world, we are powerful to advance the kingdom of heaven. We are gathering people out of their ranks by the faithful use of God’s means. But then, foolishly, we become powerless when we desperately try to ape the world to drag up a few followers. We give way to idolatry – I can please God; I can worship in my own way. Some even deny the shed blood of Christ alone, and say man can perform works of righteousness acceptable to God, even adding hypocritically, he needs grace to help him – a deceitful piece of reasoning that in reality contradicts grace.