The Genuine & the False
By Pastor Timothy S. Adkins
In some circles every profession of belief in Jesus is
regarded as transformative and saving. Even if there is more evidence that a
person’s encounter with Jesus did neither of those things, a profession of
belief is just not something to be questioned. No matter how little of the
essential gospel a person has heard and understood and believed, his declaration
of faith in Jesus is beyond question. It is thought rude at the very least to
doubt the genuineness of another person’s professed belief. After all, who are
we to say? So the thinking goes.
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2 Peter 1
5 But also for this very reason,
giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, 6 to
knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance
godliness, 7 to godliness brotherly
kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. 8 For if these things
are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For he who lacks these
things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was
cleansed from his old sins. 10 Therefore, brethren, be even
more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things
you will never stumble; 11 for so an entrance will be supplied
to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ.
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Is it possible for someone to be fatally mistaken? Does it
ever happen that loved ones and friends assure us that we are fine when, truth
is, we are dying? Imagine a young man has developed a certainly-fatal disease.
There is a cure, but only one. Instead, he takes two aspirin and declares that
he feels much better and everything will be just fine. Friends and loved ones
assume he has taken the one proven treatment; he said he did. But he continues
to manifest the same symptoms and appears to be getting worse and none the
better. Because they love him and hope for the best, and so as to not discourage
him, no one points out the obvious—he is still gravely ill and is visibly declining
at a rapid pace. He has not been cured. His belief that all will be well is a
delusion. He will die soon. Is it love to maintain silence? Is it love to quietly
repose while our friend slumbers in a burning house? Now, if you can, think spiritually…
Consider. Once a lady told me of the night when her son, not
yet ten, asked her to pray with him at his bedside. With glistening eyes she
told of her precious little boy praying to accept Jesus and how he was soon
after baptized and received as a member of the church. It is not something in the
man’s life now that comforts her about his spiritual state, it is the memory of
his praying when he was a little boy.
Now in his forties, at least once-married, once-divorced and
the father of two little boys, at the time I heard this account he was living with
a woman not his wife. A nice-enough fellow for sure, but his life provides no
sound evidence of a saving belief in Jesus or an evident love for Him. The
evidence of his life suggests that his childhood prayer, while quite sincere at
the time, was not a transforming, saving encounter with the living Christ. The
evidence more than suggests that he is yet a stranger to the saving power of Jesus.
One sad thing is that it never occurs to this woman that her
precious son, who lives the life of a worldly man and not the life of a
Christian man, might actually be a worldly man who does not know or love Jesus
Christ. Sadder still, because she so fondly recalls the night when her sweet little
boy prayed, she comforts herself by the memory. But she never calls on her son to
cease his sinful rebellion against God and to turn to Christ in humble
repentance and be saved by believing the gospel—she is convinced he is already
a once-saved-always-saved man who is just not living it at the moment. His life seems pretty normal as lives go
these days, but there is nothing that should cause anyone to seriously think that
this man loves Jesus Christ and wants to please Him. And if that is true, the
reality is that the young man is a never-has-been-saved man who is still
perishing in his sins, a nice fellow though he be.
This story is no isolated incident. Untold multitudes are
perishing in their sins, having once prayed at their bedsides or elsewhere,
having been baptized and become members of a church. If only we truly believed
the gospel, we would know that when one actually comes to know and love Christ
as Savior and Lord, he will begin to live as a believer lives—imperfectly, yes,
but as a believer and not as a worldly man.
When anyone, young or old, professes to believe the gospel,
we must look for gospel fruit in their lives. We must look for it in our own
lives. Our Lord once said, “You will know them by their fruits.” No gospel fruit
means no spiritual life is present to produce it. The presence of consistently
bad fruit means the bad fruit grows on a bad tree. The presence of consistently
good fruit indicates that the fruit is produced by a good tree. Real and saving
belief in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only Savior produces definite
results.
Is it possible for someone to think he has
obeyed the gospel when he hasn’t? Is it possible for a person to think
he is a real Christian and be fatally mistaken? The answer is yes. Jesus once said,
“Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not
prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in
Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart
from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matthew 7:22-23).
Could someone assume that he is one of God’s
elect without a biblical reason for believing so? Again, the answer is yes. The
only biblically sure reason for anyone to believe that he is one of God’s elect
is that he has come to Christ, believing in Him with heart and soul. How do we correctly
distinguish the elect from the non-elect? The elect come to Jesus. The
non-elect do not come to Jesus. But here we must be careful. Here we must be
sure. We must ask, “Have I been born of God?”
The Apostle Simeon Peter addressed people
who, all of them, professed to belong to God’s church, Christ’s called-out-assembly:
“Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make
your call and election sure…” (2 Peter 1:10a). People may wrongly assume that
they are true Christians when they are not, so this is something about which we
all need to be absolutely sure! And the only way to be sure is to examine
ourselves.
Do you know
for certain that you have given your entire self to Jesus Christ—trusting
only in His saving merits, relying entirely on His grace through a naked,
empty-handed belief? Augustas Toplady once wrote in the hymn Rock of Ages, “Nothing in my hand I
bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.” Do you know what that means? Be sure you
do. Your eternity depends on it. –TSA
