4 Feb 2024

We have noted in previous sharings that the conflict between Christianity and the spirit of this world (and any age) arises from the wrong understanding of the meaning of the gospel as well as wrong appreciation and interpretation of the revelation of God in the Scripture.

God has joined the three offices of prophet (teacher), priest, and king in the mediatorial role of Jesus Christ and he directs us in the BIble to relate positively to them all.
God has joined faith and repentance as the two facets of response to the Saviour and has made it clear that turning to Christ means turning from sin and letting ungodliness go. Biblical teaching on faith exhibits Christian believers as not only knowing facts about Christ, but also coming to him in personal trust to worship, love and serve him. If we fail to keep together these things that God has joined together, our Christianity will be distorted.

Unfortunately, faith has been represented by many believers and even churches as simple assent to the truth about Jesus’ saving role, and thus it results in exaltling faith in a way that destroys faith. Simple assent to the gospel, divorced from a transforming commitment to the living Christ, is by biblical standards less than faith, and less than saving, and to elicit only assent to this kind would be to secure false conversions. What does saving faith in Christ actually amounts to?

In other words, what does it mean to be a Christian? The error which is tragic is the idea that one can be a Christian without being a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. It reduces the gospel to the mere fact of Chris’s having died for sinners, requires of sinners only that they acknowledge this by the barest intellectual assent, and then assures them of their eternal security when they may very well not be born again. It is not unfamiliar, for instance, to tell someone to pray the sinner’s prayer and straightaway assure him/her that this person would be in heaven the next moment if he/she dies.
This view bends faith beyond recognition – at least for those who know what the BIble says about saving faith – and promises a false peace to thousands who have given verbal assent to this reductionist Christianity but are not truly in God’s family. The motives of those who have fallen in this error may have been good – they want to preserve in its purity the gospel of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. They know that adding works to faith is a false gospel, and they rightly want to avoid that heresy. But preserving the gospel is precisely what they have not done.

There is no doubt that salvation is by God’s sovereign grace and grace alone. Saving faith, repentance, commitment, and obedience are all divine works, wrought by the Holy Spirit in the heart of everyone who is saved.
However, genuine salvation cannot, and will not fail to produce works of righteousness in the life of a true believer, although the progress may be different for different ones. There are no human works in the saving act, but God’s work of salvation includes a change of intent, will, desire, and attitude that inevitably produces the fruit of the Spirit. The very essence of God’s saving work is the transformation of the will, resulting in a love for God. Salvation thus establishes the root that will surely produce the fruit; some describe it as a seed implanted that surely will grow and develop into a fruitful tree.

The preaching of a false gospel holds forth a false hope to sinners. It promises them they can have eternal life yet continue to live in rebellion against God; it encourages people to claim Jesus as saviour and yet defer the commitment to obey him as the Lord of our lives; it promises salvation from hell but not necessarily freedom from iniquity; it offers false security to people who continue to revel in the sins of the flesh and spurn the way of holiness.

The tragedy is that many contemporary Christians have been conditioned to believe that because they recited a prayer, signed on a dotted line, walked up in response to an invitation, they are saved and should never question their salvation.
Scripture encourages us to examine ourselves to determine if we are in the faith (2Cor. 13:5). The Apostle Peter wrote: “Be all the more diligent to make certain about his calling and choosing you” (2 Peter 1:10). It is in order to examine our lives and evaluate the fruit we bear, for “each tree is known by its own fruit” (Luke 6:44).
The Bible teaches clearly that the evidence of God’s work in a life is the inevitable fruit of transformed behaviour (1 John 3:10). Real salvation is not only justification; it cannot be isolated from regeneration, sanctification, and ultimately glorification. Salvation is the work of God through which we are “conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29). Genuine assurance comes from seeing the Holy Spirit’s transforming work in one’s life.

Those whose faith in Christ is genuine will persevere in grace unto the very end. True believers will persevere. The Apostle John wrote: “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us” (1John 2:19).
God will keep His own. He is able to keep them from stumbling, and to make them stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy (Jude24). A true disciple may fail Christ but will never turn against him. A true Christian might temporarily fear to stand up for the Lord but would never willingly sell him out and betray him. True disciples may falter, but when they fall into sin, they will seek cleansing. They will not wallow in the mire (cf 2 Peter2:22).

Perseverance is the only path to the prize of final glory; perseverance requires a sustained exertion of concentrated effort day in and day out – a single-minded, wholehearted self-denying, flat-out commitment to praising and pleasing the Father through the Son as long as life lasts. We are fully aware that by grace, we are saved through faith – it is a gift of God and it is not of works. But it is a mistake to then conclude that the outworking of the Christian life subsequent to conversion is one that requires no effort, no exertion, no self-denial, no flat-out commitment and just means “plain sailing”. Of course the One who enables the believer is the Holy Spirit and His enabling, but that does not mean that the believer does not work hard, in dependence on the Spirit, to work out his/her salvation.
The sustained inward effort, raised to the limit of what we can do with the gifts and energy God has endowed us is one central aspect of Christian holiness, one without which a person’s supposed holiness would degenerate into self-indulgent softness. But true holiness is neither self-indulgent nor soft.

In my 56 years as a believer, and in the opportunities God has given me to serve in different contexts, what remains a burden to me is to see Christians, apparently serving in different contexts, and even leading various ones in discipleship groups and bible study groups, living lives that are not much different from unbelievers; there is no desire for God and God’s Word; there is so much ‘ignorance’ of the basics of the gospel and many are not even aware of the Bible and its revelation, and God’s desire for His church. But what is equally disturbing is that many such ones are not even prepared to make efforts and to exert in pursuing God and holiness – this is not a priority in their lives. As far as Scripture and theology are concerned, they think it best to leave it to the pastors and leaders. It is no surprise that they become easy prey to the “roaring lion which seeks someone to devour”. Such ones are easily “neutralised’ by the enemy in spiritual warfare and soon become “casualties”. Not being aware of the conflict between Christianity and the spirit of the age; not being fully conscious of the influence of the world and the flesh; not convinced of the spiritual pressure and “darts” of the evil one, such believers would surely ‘degenerate’ in their walk with God. True holiness is tough and virile; it has backbone and guts – it would persevere and endure to the end!