What is easy believism?

Question 07067

Easy believism is a label applied to any presentation of the gospel that reduces saving faith to a bare mental agreement and leaves out repentance, the identity of Jesus, and any expectation that a converted person will be different afterwards. It is a criticism rather than a movement, and hardly anyone claims the name for themselves.

The label is used carelessly, which is a shame, because the thing it points at is real and has done considerable damage. Let me describe what the criticism is aimed at, where it lands, and where it is unfairly thrown at people who are simply preaching grace.

What easy believism actually describes

At its worst it is a transaction reduced to a formula. Repeat this prayer, sign this card, and you are in. No mention of who Jesus is or why He died, no expectation of turning, no follow up, and no discomfort at any point. The convert is assured of heaven and never seen again.

Easy believism also shows in a doctrine of assurance built entirely on a past event. A person is encouraged to rest on the date they walked forward rather than on the Saviour they walked forward to, so that the memory becomes the ground of confidence rather than the promise of God.

And it shows in a silence about sin. Where the gospel is presented as a solution to unhappiness rather than to guilt, there is nothing for a person to turn from and therefore nothing much for grace to do. The result is a message about improvement rather than rescue.

So the criticism has a target. I have preached at events where the appeal was so vague that a person could have responded to it without any idea what they were responding to, and I have regretted every one of them.

It is worth being clear that easy believism is not a doctrine anyone defends in print. It is a description of practice, and the practices it describes usually arise from good motives: a desire to see people saved, a fear of putting obstacles in the way, an anxiety about seeming harsh. Good motives can still produce poor results.

Why it matters

The first cost is to the people themselves. Someone who has been assured of salvation without ever trusting Jesus is in a worse position than before, because they now have an answer to the question and will not ask it again. Easy believism can inoculate a person against the gospel.

The second cost is to the church. Congregations fill with people who have made a decision and have no appetite for God, and the whole enterprise slowly adjusts itself to their expectations. Preaching gets thinner because the audience has no hunger for anything else.

The third cost is to the credibility of the gospel outside the church. When large numbers of professing converts show no difference in how they live, the watching world draws the obvious conclusion, and it is not an unreasonable one.

This is why I take the criticism seriously even though I disagree with some of what is done with it.

The fourth cost is to the labourers. Nothing exhausts a pastor like a congregation of people who have been told they are fine and show no sign of it. You cannot disciple someone who believes the matter is already closed, and easy believism closes it early.

What Scripture says about mere agreement

James is the sharpest voice here. James 2:19: “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe, and shudder.” Demonic theology is impeccable and demonic salvation does not exist. Assent is not the article.

The parable of the soils in Luke 8 describes people who “believe for a while and in time of testing fall away.” That is a real response producing a real appearance and no root. Jesus told the story precisely so that His hearers would not mistake initial enthusiasm for conversion.

John 2:23-25 is more striking still. Many believed in His name when they saw His signs, “but Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people.” A belief that Jesus Himself did not treat as saving faith, recorded without comment.

So the New Testament is entirely alive to the possibility of a profession that is not the real thing. Anyone who thinks the concern behind the easy believism criticism is invented has not read the Gospels carefully.

Simon Magus and the profession that was not

Acts 8 gives us a worked example. Simon “himself believed, and after being baptised he continued with Philip,” and within a few verses he was trying to buy the power of the Spirit with money. Peter’s verdict was blunt: “your heart is not right before God.”

What is striking is that Luke uses the ordinary word for believing about him. From the outside there was nothing to distinguish his profession from anyone else’s, and it took a specific test to reveal what was underneath. That is exactly the pattern easy believism produces at scale.

Peter’s response is instructive too. He did not tell Simon he had lost anything. He told him to repent and pray, which is what you say to a person whose profession has been exposed as hollow. The NET Bible notes on Acts 8 discuss the difficulty translators have had with the passage.

Where the label is thrown unfairly

Here is my caution. The phrase easy believism is regularly used against anyone who preaches that salvation is by faith apart from works, which is to say against the apostle Paul. Ephesians 2:8-9 really does say that salvation is a gift, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Believing is easy in the sense that it costs nothing and can be done by a dying man with minutes left. That is not a weakness in the gospel; it is the point of it. The thief on the cross had no time for anything else and was promised paradise the same afternoon.

So when the label is used to imply that faith must be made harder in order to be genuine, it has become an attack on grace. Making the door narrower than God made it is not faithfulness. The corrective for a shallow gospel is a fuller gospel, not a more expensive one.

The wider version of this argument goes under the name of Lordship salvation, and I have assessed it in detail there.

There is also a version of the criticism that treats emotion, urgency or public appeal as the problem in itself. I do not accept that. God has used direct appeals throughout church history, and plenty of solid believers date their conversion to one. The issue is content rather than method.

The right corrective

Preach the whole thing. Who God is, what sin is, who Jesus is, what He did, and what it means to trust Him. A person cannot exercise saving faith in a message they have not understood, and most of what easy believism produces is the result of leaving things out rather than of grace being too free.

Call for repentance and faith together, as the apostles did, without turning either into a work. Acts 20:21 gives the pattern in one line, and I have unpacked the relationship in the article on faith and repentance.

Follow people up. A great deal of the damage attributed to easy believism is actually the damage of abandonment. People who were genuinely converted at an event and then left entirely alone will often look, five years later, exactly like people who were never converted at all.

And ground assurance where it belongs, on the finished work of Jesus and the promises attached to it, which is the argument of the article on assurance.

So, now what?

If you responded to an appeal years ago and nothing whatever followed, do not panic and do not dismiss it. Settle it in the present tense instead. Come to Jesus today, with understanding this time, and let the question be closed properly.

If you preach or lead, examine what you leave out rather than what you add. What part of the message has quietly dropped off the end of your invitations?

You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe, and shudder!

James 2:19, ESV

The gospel is easy to believe and impossible to earn, and those two facts are the same fact seen from either side. Guard both and the criticism loses most of its force.

And if you are the one worrying that your own faith has been too easy, notice what that worry is made of. People who have never trusted Jesus do not lie awake wondering whether their trust was real. The concern itself is usually a sign of the very life you are afraid you lack.

Preach the whole gospel, follow people up, and leave the results to God. That is the answer to easy believism, and it always has been.