Why progressivism hates repentance

By Rosaria Butterfield, Op-ed contributor Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Progressivism is a stench within the Church that denigrates biblical promises by filtering them through the world’s values. And while it hates almost all faithful biblical doctrine, it seems to have particular ire for the doctrine of repentance unto life, that saving grace “by which a sinner, being truly aware of his sinfulness understands the mercy of God in Christ, grieves for and hates his sins, and turns from them to God, fully intending and striving for a new obedience” (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 87).

So why does progressivism hate repentance? Let me give you three reasons.

1. Progressivism is parasitic

Progressive “Christianity” lives like a ravenous flea on the back of your most faithful family dog. It twists the biblical meaning of love and perverts biblical doctrine to serve political ends.

Take, for example, the gay rights slogan “love is love.” It is meant to level the playing field and say that love is the same in all situations, regardless of subject or object. If this is true — if love is love — then condemning homosexuality is hateful. But if God is love (1 John 4:16), then loving what God hates is violence against your soul (Isaiah 5:20) as well as your neighbor (Romans 1:32).

We saw this parasitic faith clearly during the COVID era. Remember how, in 2021, getting the jab became moralized as loving your neighbor? If healthcare falls under the sovereign sphere of the family — which is its biblical categorization — then adhering to governmental overreach never exemplifies obedience to God’s moral law, the Ten Commandments. Get the jab or don’t get the jab, but pastors who posted manipulative pictures of themselves with a bandaid covering their upper arm declaring to the world that getting the jab is loving your neighbor confuses Law and Gospel.

2. Progressivism replaces the biblical Triune God with ‘Jesus, my imaginary friend’ and advances a diabolical separation between faith and redemption

Preston Sprinkle, director of the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender and leading Evangelical voice in the celibate gay theology movement, provides a valuable example.

He writes, “I refuse to put scare quotes around the term Christian when referring to those who hold to an affirming view [someone who believes the Bible affirms homosexuality and 'gay marriage']. I call them Christian to refer to their confession of faith and not a person’s actual redemptive state. Scare quotes would imply that I doubt the genuineness of their faith” (People to Be Loved, Grand Rapid, MI: Zondervan, 2015: 220).

While Sprinkle may not “doubt the genuineness of their faith,” God does. The issue is not their genuine emotions but the object of their faith; that is what will lead them to destruction.

Sprinkle is our anti-Christian age’s uber-winsome-mench, “calling them [those who affirm homosexuality as biblically holy] Christian to refer to their confession of faith.” Does the man know that the word “genuine” means “authentic”? Does he know that to “confess” a faith is to agree with what the Bible says about it?

A real Christian knows faith is rooted in regeneration (John 14:6).

In Redemption Accomplished and Applied, John Murray explains: “Regeneration is inseparable from its effects, and one of the effects is faith. Without regeneration, it is morally and spiritually impossible for a person to believe in Christ, but when a person is regenerated, it is morally and spiritually impossible for that person not to believe … regeneration is the renewing of the heart and mind” (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1955, 2015: 111). The only genuine faith is the born-again, regenerated one.

Faith rooted in feelings unhitched from the Word is the idolatrous faith that sends people to Hell (Psalm 115: 4-8). In contrast to wolves, real Christians proclaim a faith whose object is the real and risen Savior.

3. Progressivism is destructive. It destroys the peace and purity of the Church (See Jude 3, Ephesians 4:3.)

In the Autumn of 2023, Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) released a celibate gay Christian sexuality curriculum for Cru staffers titled “Compassionate and Faithful.” They then provided staffers with this mandatory training but asked them not to share it beyond their $813 million ministry, including their own pastors.

“Compassionate and Faithful” is now scheduled to be jettisoned overboard like weighty cargo on a sinking ship by the end of 2024, perhaps because faithful staffers lost their jobs for discussing Cru’s theological problems in public after Cru leadership rebuffed their concerns or rebuked them for lacking “winsomeness.” I suspect donors smelled the rot.

Keith Johnson, director of theology at Cru and visiting lecturer at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida, announced the termination of “Compassionate and Faithful” in a Sept. 26 private staff meeting for Cru’s U.S.-based team, leaked immediately to author and podcaster Jon Harris.

In this meeting, Johnson extolled the virtue of “Compassionate and Faithful,” reframing it as a mere “learning experience” and dismissing its critics for failing to share Cru’s “Jesus First” missional position. He went on to say: “Our plan going forward is to integrate our LGBT+ equipping into existing developmental venues ... Going forward, we think it’s increasingly important to speak in our own theological voice” (Cru ends controversial sexuality and gender training | WORLD).

This whole thing sends chills down my spine. Intentionally hiding one’s teaching from pastors, depicting opposition to a clearly sub-orthodox position on human sexuality as a failure to be suitably missional, and then planning to simply integrate those ideas in a different and subterranean way, is destructive to the Body of Christ.

The universal need to repent

I’m grateful that the Gospel Pastor Ken Smith shared with me 25 years ago did not include “LGBT+ equipping.” If I had been told that my lesbianism wasn’t a morally culpable sin, but only that acting on it sexually was no bueno, I wouldn’t be a Christian today. Why? Because my lesbianism did not need equipping. The world, flesh and devil knew how to equip my sin perfectly. What sinners need is the grace to repent and turn and no longer “be” LGBT+ because homosexuality is found in the flesh, forbidden in the law of God, and overcome by the Savior. Repentance was what I needed.

And that need never ends. When Christians sin — and we do — we too must repent. Repentance is Gospel grace. It gives glory to God, grows a sinner in sanctifying freedom, and models the only godly example for others. Repentance of sin is the only answer to progressivism’s rot. How do I know?

Does anyone remember the garbage idea of trans pronoun politeness? I was the idiot who claimed such violations of the ninth commandment as missional and loving. I repent before God and man: (Why I no longer use Transgender Pronouns — and Why You shouldn’t, either. - Reformation 21).

Similarly, real Christians who find themselves publicly promoting progressive garbage must repent publicly. Public repentance of public sin will be the litmus test of faith for this anti-Christian age. And wolves and goats, instead of repenting, will double down by deflecting criticism, claiming they have been misunderstood and misrepresented, and playing the victim.

To Johnson and all those like him: Are you listening? Will you repent publicly? You claim to have a “Jesus First” approach. Ok then; we would like you to start sharing the biblical Jesus who calls sinners to repent and believe, not the imaginary Jesus of this anti-Christian age who uses “homosexual orientation” as a morally neutral category of personhood. We reject the banal claim that we merely disagree about a “vision for cultural engagement.” That’s a smoke screen. We are disagreeing about theology, and you are promoting a damnable one.

Progressivism’s true colors are right before our eyes: “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (James 3:15). The Gospel message, in contrast, is “repent and believe” (Mark 1:15), and repentance bears genuine fruit (Matthew 3:8).

The phrase “repent and believe” is called a synecdoche, a phrase where the two parts serve as one whole. Genuine faith contains both elements: repentance and belief, and without both, it cannot be real faith. That’s why progressivism rots the Church from the inside out. It simply hates the very thing that God loves — the precious life-giving Gospel, which calls sinners like you and me to repentance unto life.

Originally published at Clear Truth Media.

Rosaria Butterfield holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from The Ohio State University, is an author, speaker, pastor's wife, homeschool mom, and former professor of English and women's studies at Syracuse University. She is the author of several books, including The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown and Covenant, 2012), Openness Unhindered (Crown and Covenant, 2015), The Gospel Comes with a Housekey (Crossway, 2018), and Five Lies of our Anti-Christian Age (Crossway, 2023).