A Saviour with no purpose? A Redeemer who can’t redeem? This should raise your eyebrows or cause a frown. Of course it makes no sense that the historic, prophesied about Messiah – the anointed One, the Suffering Servant revealed to God’s prophets in ancient times, would be purposeless. Yet this is really the underlying message – the subliminal text, of liberal Christianity – so-called ‘Progressive Christianity’.
The Jesus of the progressive liberals – the all-tolerant, politically correct version of Christianity, is a Christ without the Cross. An open-minded Saviour of… no-one. Because if the very words of the Holy Bible are no longer to be taken literally, for today and forever, then there is no need for redemption. If it’s more important to just ‘all get along with eachother for love’s sake’ than to repent and proclaim repentance and salvation to others, then what’s the point? We see that being ‘progressive’ is actually regressive.
One Progressive writes that the church “…needs to reform its theology and focus on life in this world, the only life anyone on earth has experienced… to take seriously Jesus’ call to change the way we live our earthly lives: being personally empowered by the divine spirit to love the ones society ignores, and thus model a society that cares for the earth and is bent to favor the poor and neglected, not just those who have the power and wealth.” (Edgar Zelle, of the online Progressive Christianity.org).
Biblical doctrine does tell us to care for the poor and needy in our midst, yet centred around who Jesus Christ is – our Creator who became incarnate to suffer and take our sins, to reconcile us to our Maker. Of course we should care for others as people equally made in the image of God and who are broken. However, we are not to be just ‘social crusaders’ without the message of the Cross to bring transformation of hearts. Biblically based Christianity – centred on the One who suffered for our sins – does not need to ‘reform its theology’ but rather devote to and practice its theology! If the Lord Jesus Christ is reduced to a generic ‘divine spirit’ of social justice, we actually have a powerless Christianity that will be hard to differentiate from a Socialist group!
Historic, orthodox Christianity does not have a politically correct ‘saviour’ but a real one!
Those around us need to know the One who laid down His life to give us new life, to rescue us from our sinful ways. The Cross of Christ matters, because this is God’s way for transforming society.
But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
Galatians 6:14, the Bible
Let’s not be ashamed to be Christians who actually believe the whole of the Bible, not just picking and choosing the bits that promote social activism but ignoring the why. If anyone reading this perhaps needs a fresh view of the reason for being a follower of Christ, or is a curious seeker, see here
Truth Prevails 
“Reforming” theology so as to become progressive is actually removing bits of theology to become impotent.
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