Friday, February 17, 2012

The Few

Many people believe themselves to be Christians, but are deceived. They acknowledge Jesus with their lips saying, “Lord, Lord,” but deny Him by their lives and their works. They say, “I know Him,” but do not obey His commands, thereby proving themselves liars. Scripture tells us there is a “holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.” Many of those who profess to know Christ get defiant as soon as you mention holiness, yet it is commanded over and over again throughout the entire Bible from beginning to end. These people are professors, not possessors. They do not have Christ nor do they know Him. He is foreign to them. The Jesus they claim to know is a figment of their imagination, a god after their own creation, a dumb idol, a false Jesus. Their Jesus walks around just loving everybody into heaven without so much of an ounce of holiness involved, while the Jesus of the Bible declares that “except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” The Jesus of the Bible is angry at sin and awaits His Father's command so that He may return in power and in glory and crush His rebellious enemies—all those who refused to live holy lives and submit their lives to His authority. The Jesus of the Bible declared that He would say to those who do not obey the will of the Father, “Depart from Me! I never knew you!

You profess to be a Christian. Does Christ know you? “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Have you forsaken all for Christ? Christ is Lord (kurios); you are His slave (doulos). He has set you free from slavery to sin, having bought you with a price—the price paid being His blood—in order that you may become His slave. He paid the price that was on your head. Ergo, He owns you. Do you obey the will of your Master? Christ is your head, you are His body. Do you obey your head? Scripture tells us over and over again that there is a way to live that leads to life. If you do not live according to that way, you shall only see death.

You profess to be a Christian. Where is your fruit? Where is the evidence? Scripture tells us that those who are Christians will bear fruit and that the Father will purge them so that they may bear more fruit. If you have fallen astray, Scripture says that God will chastise you and discipline you, bringing you back to Himself. If there is no discipline in your life, then you are an illegitimate child and not a son. You do not belong to Him. You may have found religion and are religious, but you are not a Christian and you have not truly found Christ. Those who are Christ's are made obedient from the heart, growing in holiness through their obedience.

What is your life characterized by? Going to church on Sunday and then going clubbing throughout the rest of the week? Slumming it up with your buddies? Playing video games or watching TV for hours on end? Cursing up a storm while hanging out with your buddies? Gossiping about this and that? Trying to act like a gangster? Or do you go to church at all? If you claim to be a Christian and never attend church ever, and your entire week is marked by all these sins, you are just a liar and are deceiving yourself and have been deceived by someone else. Some of the greatest lies out there are that we are Christian because of where we are born and raised; because our parents were Christian; because we go to church; because we read our Bible; because we pray; because we walked an aisle and prayed a prayer; because we were baptized as a child. None of these makes you a Christian. “He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.” That makes you a Christian.
“The greatest single cause of Atheism in the world today is [professing] Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” -DC Talk
You may be sitting there reading this and at the same time calling yourself a Christian and yet you know for a fact you are not a Christian. You defiantly try to defend the concept that you're a Christian because someone pope-ishly pronounced you to be so, but there is no proof in your life whatsoever. You don't like going to church, you claim it is boring. You don't like reading the Bible. You don't like talking about God or the things of God; in fact, when it's the topic you feel uneasy. You don't like hanging out with other Christians. Everything about your life is anti-God and yet you claim yourself to be a Christian. You want the benefits of being saved—going to heaven and avoiding hell—but you want nothing to do with the Saviour and His people or His word. The fact is, you're not a Christian. You're a poser. You tell people you're a Christian and then they watched your wicked lifestyle and want nothing to do with Christianity because they've been duped by a liar.

Or maybe you do all sorts of religious stuff like wearing your three-piece suit every Sunday, or singing in the choir, or help the church run events, or look after the sound system, or whatever. But you only have enough Christianity to damn you to hell for eternity. You sit there saying "Amen" in the middle of the sermon only to leave after church and start talking with a dirty, foul mouth that we are warned about in Ephesians 4:29. As soon as church is over, you turn from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde for the rest of the week. You pursue lustful relationships built on fornication. You seek the applause of men and to please men. You live like every other heathen around you until Sunday morning comes again when you put on your mask and try to fool everyone again into believing you're a Christian. You're a fraud and a hypocrite. You sit there in church hearing the great truths of Scripture and yet you are unchanged by them. You heap up more and more of the wrath of God upon your head because you hear the teachings and do not apply them. You think you are invincible because you have religion. But your eternal abode shall be in the pit of hell.

There are even those of you who call yourselves Christians but when you walk by someone street preaching or evangelizing, you mock them or mutter things about them under your breath. You'll stand there arguing with them, forcing fake tears, telling them how evil they are for telling people God will condemn people for sin. You call yourself a Christian and argue with these people telling them your Jesus would never do such a thing because your Jesus is full of love. Your Jesus is a figment of your imagination. He doesn't exist, and what you're doing is called idolatry. Making a god to suit your image. You need to read your Bible and meet the real Jesus, the Jesus Who will judge sin and condemn sinners. You call yourself a Christian and try to defend those who commit such sins as idolatry, homosexuality, fornication, etc. You're not a Christian. You don't even know God or His word. You might want to read Romans chapter 1 and pay very close attention to what it says at the end.

The biggest fallacy that takes place in our world is the belief that you were born a religion. You are not born a Catholic. You are not born a Muslim. You are not born a Bhuddist. And you are definitely not born a Christian. The only thing you are born is a sinner. Everything you do is sin-bent. Your parents tell you not to do something or to do something, and you will try and do the opposite as soon as their eyes are turned. There are some who lie to themselves and say children are not born sinful, but they deny this reality about their children and deceive themselves as to the actions their children commit. They are willingly ignorant—dumb on purpose. They've never taught their child how to hit and their child has never seen anyone hit anybody else, but as soon as she doesn't get her own way... Bam! She hits the other child. Where did she pick that sinful habit up, mom and dad, if she is not sinful and sin-bent? Hmm?

Scripture tells us that of those who profess the name of Christ, few will enter into the kingdom of heaven. The rest will be damned to hell. Why? Because they did not submit to His will or obey His commandments. They merely had self-religion: faith in Christ + good works = acceptance by God. As D. L. Moody put it, "If you are what you were before you got saved, you've never been saved." Thomas Adams stated, "Repentance is a change of mind, and regeneration is a change of the man." If you have never experienced a change in your life, a change in desires, a change in your will, a change in your heart, then you have never been saved. Try and defend your erroneous thinking all you want, but the proof is in the pudding. Your mouth might state it, but your life will debate it.

If you are a Christian and you know people like this, you need to stop falsely encouraging them with statements like, "You're a Christian, so act like it." If they're living for and like the world, they never were nor are they Christians. Your words only feed their deception and increase the wrath that will come upon their head because they call themselves "Christian" and yet deny Christ. We don't pronounce people saved. God does a work in their life and they become saved and the evidence is seen in their life. “My sheep hear My voice...and follow Me.” Do you know the Lord of lords and the King of kings? Do you know the Jesus of the Bible? Does He know you? I can stand in front of the White House telling everyone around me that I know the President, but does the President know me? If he doesn't know me, it doesn't matter if I know him, I'm still not getting into the White House. Read 1 John and test your life against it. It was written so that we may know that we have salvation. Don't go around calling yourself something you're really not.