‘Christians Aren’t Perfect: Just Forgiven’ – Another Example of Miserable Sub-Christian Pseudo-Theology

Doubtless you’ve seen the miserably inaccurate and misleading bumper sticker sporting the phrase- ‘Christians aren’t perfect: Just forgiven.’

The first phrase is completely accurate.  The second is a miserable failure and completely misleading if not heretical.  Why?  Because the use of the word ‘just’ fails to appreciate the cost of redemption and the price of forgiveness.  ‘Just’, in the context of the sticker, can only mean ‘simply’ or ‘merely’ or ‘only’.  None of which measures up to capturing the full truth of the horrors which salvation required.

Jesus was crucified and died on the cross for our salvation.  Can any of us with any sensibility say that Jesus was ‘only’ crucified or ‘simply’ crucified or ‘just’ crucified?  Only madness would lead us to answer yes.

Indeed, the early church understood so clearly the abject horror of Jesus’ salvific act that it correctly appropriated Isaiah 53 as a description of that deed.

3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. 9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. 10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. (Isa 53:3-10 KJV)

Anyone who can read that passage, and view the execution of Jesus in its light, who can still say ‘just forgiven’, show that they lack any sense of the high price of redemption.

This is why it’s best to get one’s theology from the Bible, and not from soundbites or bumper stickers or Christian bookstore pins or mottos.