Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
Beware of Pseudo-Spirituality, Part 3.
Friday, November 3, 2000
Turn to the Gospel of LUKE 15:25
Spirituality by respectability – the false contention that a believer is spiritual because his sins are more respectable than the sins of someone else.
Youre more spiritual than others because your sins are more respectable than the sins of someone else, is arrogance.
JAM 2:10 “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.”
PRO 5:12 “And you say, How I have hated instruction! And my heart spurned reproof! And I have not listened to the voice of my teachers, Nor inclined my ear to my instructors!”
PRO 5:14 “I was almost in utter ruin In the midst of the assembly and congregation.”
REV 2:4 “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.”
Spirituality by respectability – the false contention that a believer is spiritual because his sins are more respectable than the sins of someone else.
LAM 3:22-23 “The Lords lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Thy faithfulness.”
MAT 18:27 “And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.”
HEB 5:2 “He will have compassion with the ignorant and misguided,”
LAM 3:32 “For if He causes grief, then He will have compassion according to His abundant lovingkindness.”
Turn to MAT 9:10
MAT 12:7 “But if you had known what this means, I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent.”
COL 3:13 “bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.”
Turn to the Gospel of LUKE 15:29
What the older brother did not think he needed (repentance), he resisted and resented in others, and thus he could not, he would not share in the celebration.
Transference arrogance – accusing others of things you have done or would do, given the opportunity.
The gates of death will never shut on a person until the gates of grace have opened for him over and over again.
LUK 7:47 “Your sins which are many, have been forgiven,”
ISA 1:18 “Come now, and let us reason together, Says the Lord Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.”
The believer involved in this system of pseudo-spirituality is very legalistic, very superficial, and involved in more subtle sins than the believer who is antinomian.
Turn to Luke 18:9
Self-justification, the first stage of the arrogant skills.
They move into the second stage of the arrogant skills, self-deception.
Self-absorption, they take their very own flaws and super-impose them on others.
Williams translation – “The Pharisee stood and said this self centered prayer.”
Spirituality by respectability establishes a system of overt morality, and calls it a system of spirituality.
Turn to 2CO 6:3