Pastor Michael Todd leads Transformation Church (TC.) He is known for crowd surfing during his church’s worship service and spending a lot of money. In the last two years, he’s given away $3,500,000 in houses, cash, and cars, spent $65,000 to buy 168 pairs of shoes, gave $600,000 in “reparations,” and purchased $66,000,000 in real estate.
He’s also known for preaching some good old-fashioned Modalism, giving the world perhaps the grossest illustration in church after he snorted and then hocked a loogie full of spit and snot into his hand and rubbed it in another man’s face and claiming his church had 75k salvations in the last 18 months even though practically none of them stuck around. He recently had a service where ballet dancers with bare butts danced around the stage.
In a recently unearthed sermon, he argues that in the same way the prodigal son was positionally righteous and part of the family, even though he was sleeping with prostitutes, getting drunk, and living a wicked lifestyle, so too is the Christian making it a practice of going to gay nightclubs and bars and ostensibly hooking up- if we’re following the metaphor, and still be positionally righteous and counted as a brother or sister in Christ. He is clear that we shouldn’t be doing these things, but also that doing them would have no effect on our standing before God. Basically, it’s repackaged easy-believism.
“I am made righteous by my position, not my performance.… I am not made righteous by my performance, I am made righteous by my position. And when you understand that, you understand that, yeah, I may suffer consequences for things I do wrong here on this earth, but God still sees his son.
Just think of the prodigal son. He took his father’s inheritance, went and squandered it on- most theologians believe on hookers, on gambling, on frivolous living. But the father never disowned him as his son.
Like he never said, ‘you remember the brother you used to have,’ He would stand out every morning- Grace- looking to extend the unearned, unmerited, undeserved-he did the wrong thing- favor and kindness of a father to the son who did the wrong thing, who acted unrighteously, but it did not change his position in the family.
Church, until we believe this we look at people on the street who smoke as less than us instead of as my brother and sister. You look at the person who’s walking into the gay nightclub as an enemy, instead of your brother and sister. Just because they’re doing the wrong thing, does not mean they’re not in the family. When they believe.”
Of course, Todd is wrong. The story of the prodigal son is about a man who is unrepentant and lost while living in sin, and is found and saved after he repents and comes home to the father. The Bible does not teach Christians can live in continued, sustained, unrepentant sin and still be counted righteous. Instead they must repent and turn from their sin, putting their faith in Christ, and then battling against the temptation of the flesh, as evidence of their salvation.
He explains some more of his bad theology here about what it means to be saved, which begs the question: is unbelief not a sin?
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. 1 John 3:4-10
