Steven Furtick is the senior pastor of Elevation Church just up the road from me in Charlotte, NC and has come under heavy fire by many within the Church who hold teachers accountable for what they say behind the pulpit and on the internet. Furtick has deleted the controversial post, but this type of mentality about a Christian’s conversion is still present within many of his sermons, specifically in his It’s Always Been in You.
This kind of thinking is completely foreign to the Gospel and is nothing more than humanism sacrificing the sovereignty of God on the altar of man.
Furtick, and many others like him, want to water down the Gospel so that it appears more acceptable and pleasing to fallen men. Rather than teaching the truth of the Gospel—that man is inherently wicked and there is no good within him—these teachers promote the idea that the reason God loves you is because there has always been something in you since your birth that he desires and that your salvation does not result in you becoming a new creature, but remaining the same creature with a new awareness of who you really are.
The Apostle Paul makes it clear in his epistle to the Romans that every man is fallen in Adam and that every part of our human nature has been compromised. We can do nothing to overcome our bondage to sin; we are slaves in every meaning of the word. Every single fault that we face in our lives—our malice, our selfishness, our depression—are all a result of this fallen nature.
10 as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands; no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good, not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
in their paths are ruin and misery,
and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
(Romans 3:10-18 ESV)
So if we are in such a degree of slavery to our own fallen nature that we wont’ even desire to be free from it, what is the solution to this seemingly irreversible problem? It definitely isn’t that something good has always been in us. It is the divine grace, mercy, and love of God alone that destroys the fallen man and raises from his ashes a new creation:
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
(Romans 3:21-26)
So no, it’s never been in you. That’s why God made you into something new. Find peace in that knowing that God loved you so much that he died to reverse what you could not.
