JOEL B. GROAT When Being Good Is Not Good Enough
Summary
Many Mormons see themselves as basically good people and are generally unaware of the sin chasm between them and God. When we come alongside them as fellow sinners worthy of eternal death (Romans 3:23; 6:23), we can both avoid an adversarial interaction and help them see their only hope of eternal life is exchanging their huge load of sin for the perfect righteousness of Jesus. This can only be obtained on God’s terms as a gift and never on the merits of their good works.
Introduction
The woman on the phone was unhappy and made me aware of her displeasure in very clear terms. She had just read an article in our ministry newsletter that critiqued Mormonism. She told me she knew that her church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was true and that she was confident of her belief.
I felt prompted to ask her how much she struggled with sin. Her reply was quick and decisive: “I’m doing fine; I hardly ever sin at all.” Realizing that I might never speak to her again, I asked, “When you pray during this next week, would you be willing to ask Heavenly Father to show you any sin you might have?” She replied without hesitating, “Why would I want to pray a thing like that? There would be nothing to see anyway.”
Her reply saddened me, but it highlighted something that I’ve found common among Mormons—a superficial view of sin. This view significantly affects how Latter-day Saints understand forgiveness, guilt, and grace, and it is an obstacle to conviction and true repentance.
The Problem
The LDS religious system does an admirable job of encouraging its members to avoid sin, especially the serious and readily noticeable sins like murder, sexual immorality, and apostasy. The church places an accompanying emphasis on the many necessary requirements for members to prove their worthiness. A teaching manual lists more than a dozen commands for keeping the Sabbath day holy. It also provides at least fifteen specific requirements for “exaltation” along with the admonition that “the time to fulfill the requirements for exaltation is now.”1
It can inflate a person’s pride to associate sin with mainly grave offenses while abiding by a checklist of externally good behaviors. This self-righteousness hinders many people from accepting grace only through faith only for salvation.
It is easy to miss this works-based aspect of LDS culture and think our main goal in evangelism is to divest the Mormon of Mormonism so he or she can “turn to Jesus and be saved.” But if we think this way, we may miss opportunities to engage relationally with Mormon people. When we attack using devastating arguments as weapons that disprove the LDS religion, we could destroy a person’s connection to his or her faith and ignore the deeper spiritual need. There are no winners or losers in evangelism; we should avoid paradigms that are more about “subduing the enemy” than sharing the grace and love of Jesus.
There are potential dangers in depending on information and winning arguments to prove our point. For one, it is possible to become frustrated, angry, and argumentative during the conversation. And if we “win,” we run the risk of becoming prideful, arrogant, and even condescending. I have cringed when hearing fellow believers boast about how they sent the Mormons packing by “ripping apart their arguments” or “putting them in their place.” Is it really a victory to win the battle for the argument while losing the war for the soul?
The Solution
If the eternal state of the soul is the priority, a good starting point is embracing our own inability to bring about the change in heart a person needs to move from error to truth. It comes by admitting how powerless humans are to bring about their own regeneration and spiritual transformation while humbly seeking God’s divine intervention on their behalf. This removes the pressure to “win” and frees us to share, regardless of how we, or our message, are received. The Mormon must be seen as a person who is a fellow bearer of the image of God rather than the enemy.
Only when this happens will our Mormon friends be in a position to realize that sinfulness starts in the heart and that no amount of good works could possibly offset the sin that separates all people from God. Our objective, then, is to help them see how focusing on externals can cause people to miss the seriousness of sin in their lives, which can keep that person from a right relationship with God.
The Goal
The goal is to help Mormons discover the biblical view of human sinfulness for themselves. To do this, we must establish common ground to connect with them as fellow fallen humans who need Jesus. Once their self-awareness has been heightened, they can pray and ask God to show them their own spiritual need in light of His holiness. We aren’t teaching or lecturing; rather, we are directing them by using questions so they can discover their true spiritual state from God’s perspective.
The Opener
One straightforward approach is to ask the Mormon if it’s important to keep the commandments. Commandment keeping is an integral part of the LDS system and is understood to be essential for eternal life. This question, therefore, is familiar and nonthreatening. Most likely the response will be an emphatic yes. This is a perfect time to tell the story of the rich young ruler who came to Jesus asking about how to obtain eternal life.
The Progression
Go to Matthew 19:16-22 and read the account, pointing out that this man was seeking eternal life. From here a series of questions, such as the ones below, can allow the Spirit to teach through the pages of the Bible. (Note: The order these questions are used does not matter.) Take the time to listen carefully to the answers.
• Did the young man think he was doing well? Upon what did he base his confidence? The young man thought he was fulfilling his duty by keeping the commandments of God.
• What are the Ten Commandments? These are found in Exodus 20:1-17; turn here if the person is struggling to come with all of them to help them avoid embarrassment.
• What did Jesus teach about keeping these commandments? Read Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28. Let your friend see that successful commandment keeping begins in the heart… and that is where commandment breaking starts as well.
• What does God want from His saints? Contrast the external commandment keeping with the internal. Psalm 51:6 says, “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.” Jesus said in Matthew 12:34: “You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
• Did the young man have an inward or outward righteousness? Had he truly kept all the commandments? Stay here for as long as necessary to identify the real problem of the rich young man—he had substituted external commandment keeping for true purity of heart.
• Was God impressed with the rich young man? The answer, most emphatically, is no.
Getting Personal
Up to this point, the discussion has probably been comfortably impersonal. But hopefully you have established common ground with a mutually agreed-upon understanding of these passages. Rather than sparring, this conversation allows a Christian and a Mormon to pursue truth together. Now it’s possible to become more personal with the following questions while remembering to listen and remaining open to how the Holy Spirit can direct the conversation.
• Do you think you have ever been like the rich young man?
• Do you think being unrepentant can hinder our relationship with God? Can it keep us from closeness to God?
• If you sincerely ask God to show you the sin that might be hindering your relationship with Heavenly Father, do you think He would show it to you so you could confess it?
• Have you ever asked God to show you your own sinfulness and waited quietly for an answer?
This might be the perfect opportunity to share your own personal testimony. Like many of us, Mormons are attracted to personal stories of moving spiritual experiences. Explaining how you felt when you returned to God after a time of confession and repentance can have a profound effect on the listener. Maybe even share a time when you were like the rich young ruler, so the Mormon knows this is an issue you have worked through personally. This might even prompt them to share their story. If so, please don’t dismiss or negate this experience simply because they are Mormon. The goal is to establish common ground; whether they realize it or not, they may demonstrate that an experience with the Holy Spirit is not limited to Mormons.
These personal questions can help lead you to that last question: Would praying for God to show you your sinfulness be something you would seriously consider doing? If the answer is yes, encourage your friend to do it that night and to come back another time to share with you what God has shown him or her. You could even volunteer to do the same.
Taking the Sum of Our Sins
Another way to heighten awareness of sin is to ask Latter-day Saints what separates human beings from God. Or, are they even aware of how much sin stands between them and God? Most have no idea. Feel free to use a piece of paper to demonstrate the math and help a Mormon understand the following point.
Let’s say a child starts sinning at age five and from five to nine years old only commits four sins per day. Is that a reasonable amount?
Have some fun with this dialogue. For example, I’ll share that my kids were pretty good, but they could accumulate three sins in three minutes at bedtime.
So, four sins per day times five days per week (we’re giving nights and weekends free from sin) equals 20 per week multiplied by 50 weeks in a year (two weeks a year vacation from sin) equals 1,000 sins per year. From ages five to nine a child will accumulate approximately 5,000 sins.
From ages 10-14, let’s agree that more sins will happen—after all, these are the junior-high years. Let’s make it eight sins per day.
I’ve never had anyone say eight sins a day was too many, but I’ve had people say that eight was far too few.
So, 8 sins each day times 5 days a week (yes, we are still giving weekends sin-free) is 40 sins per week multiplied by 50 weeks (junior high kids need vacation too) equals 2,000 sins per year. In this five-year period, a child accumulates 10,000 sins. That may sound like a lot, but let’s not dwell on that for now.
Now for the teen years—ages 15 to 19—eight sins per day just seems far too few. My kids could burn through eight sins before lunchtime. And these are usually more serious sins. With that in mind, let’s use 16 sins per day for this epoch in their lives.
So, 16 sins per day, five days per week—yes, I know teenagers sin far more on the weekends, but we’re still giving them weekends sin-free—that’s 80 sins per week. And teenagers will never stand for losing their two weeks of vacation, so we are still at 50 weeks, which comes to 4,000 sins per year. During this five-year period, about 20,000 sins have been committed.
Pause—let that sink in.
So that’s 35,000 sins accumulated before age 20. If we go another five years, we’ve added an additional 20,000 sins, which brings us to 55,000 sins by age 25. Now, do you think that is an exaggerated or unrealistic assessment?
Again, I want to be clear: In many years of using this illustration with Mormons of different ages, church positions, and ethnicities, nobody has ever challenged the way I counted the sins!
With that, ask a few key questions:
Do you think this is also true of you? I know it’s true of me.
After getting an affirmative answer, I ask:
How many of those sins have you confessed? How many of them do you even remember so you could confess them? And is it possible you have sinned and didn’t even know it, making it impossible to repent?
Silence here is your friend. Pray that it sinks in.
Follow-up Conviction with Questions
A Christian friend in Peru asked me to speak to his elderly LDS mother. I was prompted by the Spirit to walk through the sin-counting exercise with her. She was over 80, so when the sum hit 55,000 by the age of 25, she said quietly, “Estoy condenada” (I am condemned). This is where we want the Spirit to bring people—to a place where they feel the weight of their own sin.
From here, the conversation can go any number of directions, but I try to ask some variation of these questions:
• With that much sin on your account, do you think you could ever do enough good works to tip the scales in your own favor?
• If God the Father is perfect, and we need to be perfect to be worthy to live in His presence, can we ever hope to do enough to offset a life of accumulating sin?
Depending on the answers to these questions and the openness of the person, I may ask,
• If there were a way you could get rid of every sin you’ve ever committed or ever will commit so you could stand perfect before Heavenly Father, would you want to know it?
Unless I get a clear and convincing yes to this question, I won’t share the gospel. But if the Mormon is open, I explain how God is willing to take every sin that a person has committed and trade them for the perfect righteousness of Jesus. Key verses that highlight this exchange are 1 Peter 2:21-25; Isaiah 53:6; and 2 Corinthians 5:17-21.
Regarding the elimination of all their sin, I have had Mormons tell me how they were forgiven when they were baptized into the LDS Church. While this is a Mormon teaching about a person’s status at the time of the baptism, other doctrines make it clear that the only way a Mormon can receive forgiveness of sins after his baptism is through repentance, which involves confession, forsaking, restitution, and keeping the commandments.2
The goal is to make a person aware of the pervasiveness of sin and the affront it is to a holy God. Jesus told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector who went to the temple to pray in Luke 18:9-14, concluding that it was the tax collector, not the Pharisee, who went home justified (a term meaning “declared righteous”) when he cried out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
Forgiveness, justification, and eternal life can only be obtained as gifts—freely given by God and freely received by believers in faith. True faith is in the character of the Giver (God) and the trust that He will do what He said. It is important at some point to help the Mormon realize that any attempt to use commandment keeping to earn God’s acceptance and forgiveness is an act of unbelief. In fact, it is an affront to God the Father who has already paid for the gift with the blood of His Son Jesus (Titus 3:3-8; 1 John 1:7-10).
I’ve used the following example to illustrate the offense of earning or paying for a gift: Suppose my millionaire aunt gave me a new car. I’m grateful, so I tell her that while I could never hope to pay her back, I’ll do her yardwork every Saturday for the next ten years and pay her ten dollars a week. The car is such an expensive gift, how could I possibly take it for free? I ask the person, “Would my aunt appreciate that my actions seem to be more of an act of repayment rather than mere gratitude for her gift?”
In the course of discussing awareness of sin with our Mormon friends, we may find it appropriate to ask related questions such as the following:
• Could we ever do enough to have God owe us anything?
• Do any of us on any day ever do “the very best we can”? If we don’t, what are the implications in light of God’s holiness and demand for perfection? (See Matthew 5:48.) You can contrast this with the Book of Mormon scripture that says, “We know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23).
• How wide is the gulf created by your sinful heart that separates you from your Heavenly Father?
• Have you ever thought that verses about sinfulness—such as Isaiah 53:6; 64:6; and Romans 3:10-12—apply to you?
• What does 2 Corinthians 5:21 mean in this light?
Discussions with Mormons must be humble and Spirit-led in an atmosphere of discovering truth together. Rather than being critical adversaries, we can become friends and allies in a common quest for truth.
Joel B. Groat (Grand Rapids, Michigan) received his MTS in New Testament from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary in Michigan. He is currently the director of ministries at the Institute for Religious Research (IRR.org) where he has served for the past 30 years. Joel authored the Spanish DVD course La Fe de Mi Prójimo (My Neighbor’s Faith).