For The Believer
Humanity At Work
THE STORY OF A WEEKLY CHURCH-GOER
As I have been sharing my faith with others, I have started to notice a fairly common response from many people. They claim to be Christian, but often refer back to a time in their life when they used to go to church. This may have been independently or with parents. But it quickly becomes clear that with many of these folks, they are no longer actively participating in weekly services or ministry of any kind. When asked if they have faith, most readily claim yes, and even state their belief that Christ is the son of God.
When I was a “young Christian” (age 33), I had an interesting conversation with my pastor from our first church. He told me that if you look out at a congregation on any given Sunday, the faith profile of the people attending church was felt to be similar to any other non-church gathering you might attend. That was perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but he was trying to make an important point. Just because people gather in a church building on Sunday, doesn’t mean they are saved!
This really settled in for me when my pastor from our second church was preaching one day on a similar topic and he openly confessed to the church that he went to service with his family since before he could remember, but clearly told everyone that he was not saved until he was in his early 20s. Since then, many others in the church that I have become friends with have told me similar stories, finally finding true salvation in their thirties, even later for some.
Could many of us be living our lives assuming that we have saving faith, while it is simply an intellectual belief? Maybe that is why in Romans 10:9 it specifically addresses the issue of believing in one’s heart as the way to salvation. It draws it down to a matter of the heart, rather than intellect! Does scripture offer any other evidence that this might be the case?
Let’s Break It Down…
In order to know what you really believe, you must first understand what belief actually is.
ACCORDING TO MERRIAM-WEBSTER, BELIEF IS:
1. A state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.
2. Something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion.
Do you trust in Christ as LORD over your life, or do just believe He is God’s son, and want Him as your Savior?
Scriptures For Study
The following scriptures provide some insight on what it means to trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, and to truly believe in Him as LORD.
1 John 1:5-10
1 John 2:15
1 John 2:19
Matthew 7:21-23
I believe that these scriptures, when supported by others, help to build a clearer picture of what it looks like to be saved. The Bible never tells us that we will be sinless. Jesus was the only human that was sinless, and only at our death will we fully take on sinless resurrection bodies. While we sojourn here on earth, we will sin, and God will convict our conscience when we do! As we grow in our faith, sin becomes less frequent and less offensive. When we do sin, Christ stands as our advocate defending us before the Father. As we confess our sins and turn from them (repent), we are restored into fellowship with Him.
However, God will not allow us to live in a state of perpetual, willful sin (an example of practicing lawlessness = deciding to continue living in sexual sin because we just refuse to go without). If we truly are saved, God will likely increase the intensity of the conviction we feel in our conscience, and eventually, He will chasten us to repentance.
This sermon (link below) by Pastor Joe Focht at Calvary Chapel Philadelphia helps to shed some light on what it truly means to repent and abide in Christ:
Pastor Joe Focht – Calvary Chapel Philadelphia
Those who no longer feel any conviction in their conscience when they sin should be very concerned about the status of their salvation. We may rest assured however that He is longsuffering for each one of us to repent and come to Him.
How do we know if we are truly saved?
This video resource from Ray Comfort is compelling!
Does God’s patience with us justify continued sin?
This video resource from Paul Washer is a great watch.
Paul discusses the call for true believers to become more and more like Christ as we grow (sanctification), and yet, like the Apostle Paul says in Romans 7, we also deal with ongoing sin… “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”
Yet we also see the hope Apostle Paul shares in his conclusion (Romans 7:24-25): “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”