Dan Phillips of Pyromaniacs has posted an excellent article on how every good scripture-driven sermon produces what he has coined as the ‘responsibility-index’. Here is an excerpt:

Perhaps I’ll develop this further another time, but the faithful sermon we hear changes our status before God. Of course, I’m not talking about justification, but about accountability. The pan-Biblical principle is: greater privilege = greater responsibility. In this particular connection, we certainly see it in Jesus’ words: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin” (John 15:22).

So let’s say you are in a church that teaches the Word of God — which you should be. As you listen to the Word faithfully preached, something is happening to you. This is true whether you feel it or not, whether your behavior changes or not. Something is happening. What is happening?

What is happening is this: your responsibility-index is rising.

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