God is not the author of confusion. Yet today it seems Christianity in general cannot even agree on what the gospel is and how do men get saved. Without even looking to the cults, some teach baptism saves, some teach a prayer saves, some teach you need to repent of every sin, some teach you must simply believe and if any repentance etc is mixed in you committed a work of righteousness (and your believing gets voided), some teach you have to work to keep it, some say you never lose it even if there is not a hint of fruit whatsoever after.
There is confusion, but one thing I try to do is see where someone is coming from and i try to carefully search the bible in context, instead of picking verses out of context. I try and teach that you cannot pull a verse out of context PAST where it contradicts another verse. What I mean is this. — Take Romans 10;13 — “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” You can take the bible literally but you can’t take a verse literally isolated from the rest of the bible. Literally this verse means, “Lord save me!” and the person is 100% eternally saved regardless if they meant it, believed it, had any fruits of repentance, or simply repeated a prayer. These folks literally cried, “Lord, Lord”!
You have to take the verse in context, because in Matthew 7, it says the opposite, “Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
The churches today reconcile that in some interesting ways. Many will teach, “yes a prayer doesn’t save” but then in the next breath they will say “with every eye closed, every head bowed, no one looking around, if you just raised your hand, repeat the following prayer I pray — but know that a prayer doesn’t save — but if you really believe it then you are saved but just know that the prayer didn’t save you. But make sure you believe what you just prayed.”
I address some of these issues in great debt in earlier blog posts such as “Jesus is not a flu shot” and “Don’t recruit with the fatted calf.” I tried to define biblical repentance on a tract called “Fish oil salesmen” on the front pate.
Bottom line, salvation is not to be taken lightly. My conviction, and many old time preachers over the past 100 years (AW Tozer, etc) believed that most of the church today is lost and doesn’t know it. I write this not with arrogance or pride, but it is a passion of mine to get to the bottom of this, and to me the greatest tragedy is for someone to spend their whole life in church and at the end, hear not well done, but “depart from me”. I can’t even fathom the shock. The horrors when the life long church member cries out and pleads, “open the book again,” ‘There name does not appear Lord’. DEPART FROM ME.
Revelation 20:15 says And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
I don’t have it all figured out, but here are some thoughts on salvation. First, I have doubted mine at times. I mostly doubt because I don’t understand how a holy, perfect God living inside of me lives there when I continue to have such a rotten attitude at times. Or to be so fruitless at times or weak or to fall yet again. The problem is I get my eyes off of HIM and get focused on me or others. That will confuse things.
It is funny that I never doubted my salvation when I was lost. The devil blinds the lost to think they are saved. And hounds the saved to think they are lost.
The bible says to examine your salvation. 2nd Corinthians 13:5 says Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
Is your faith dead or alive?
I think saving faith is this. If a saved person reads that verse, they will honestly look at a few things. And be willing to look. it is pride that keeps us from examining and while the saved can be prideful, see if you are at least willing to honestly evaluate yourself by the bible.
The bible says the saved will show fruits of repentance.
Our ultimate trust is in Christ. He is who we look to, to be saved. He is the only reason we stay saved. He will be the one that motivates our hearts to change to bring fruits that prove to the world and ourselves that we are saved.
Yet, we can look at a few things that differentiate saved or lost.
As stated above, a big clue is the lost do not ever doubt their salvations. They think they are good and they think God is unreasonable to put anyone in hell. If they read about the book of life and the lake of fire, they think that will never happen. They don’t have a fear of God because they made up a god in their own mind to suit their sins. That is an idol, and that god cannot create a place called hell because their god doesn’t exist. Except in their imaginations.
A saved person will say, “I am so scared that my name is not in the book of life. Oh, Lord, did I do something wrong? i am so carnal and wicked at times, and I don’t care about souls. I don’t deserve to have my name in the book of life! Please change me so i can see proof you are in me. Please make yourself real!” Faith is not by sight, and if God simply opened the channels of hell for a second, even the hardest atheist would beg for salvation. Yet God usually only reveals after we make a leap of faith. However, when we make the leap and meet God, after that, we can get discouraged more changes don’t happen faster.
As someone said, “I’m not where i want to be, but praise God i am not where i used to be.”
A challenge is our old nature never gets to the point where it naturally wants the things of God. Lost people have one nature with a conscious and a fear of going to jail keeping them somewhat straight. Religion will keep people honest to some extent, but it comes with the price of thinking you are better than other people. And it comes with the more expensive price tag of not realizing that the wages of sin is death. So they think because they are better than the Jones, they think they are right with God and that God is impressed.
However, if you watched Hitler help an old lady cross the street you will not be impressed but disgusted. Hitler is wicked compared to you, hopefully. But we are far far more depraved and wicked compared to perfection. Compared to God himself.
When we get saved, God’s nature moves in, but our old natures don’t just vanish. God’s nature is more real when we first get saved and yet just like in the garden God will leave some of our sinful desires behind so we still have free will to live for him or live for ourselves. We can bounce at times between 2 competing totally opposite pulls, and we often over time learn to choose God, often because we get sick of the consequences choosing our own way. But God gently and patiently leads us to the paths of righteousness and we slowly learn to lean on Him.
Yet in those moments of wandering, we can panic and get discouraged and wonder how we could be saved. We panic and hope we are not secretly lost. We fear we messed up for the final time. And slowly we see God pull us out of it and we are all the better.
We didn’t lose our salvation, but in our wondering and weakness we lost site of the shepherd for a moment. And God pulled us out. We see nothing in us deserved us being saved, and nothing in us really can keep us saved. But we learn we can trust Him and he isn’t going anywhere.
The love of God. It is what will sort out our confusion and show us we belong to Him. Have you experienced the love of God in your life yet? You need to to experience eternal life.
Jesus loves me, this i know. But it took me a long long time to accept that love.