Can One Be “In The Church” But Not Saved?

A friend of mine recently gave me a copy of Ray Comfort’s book entitled God Has A Wonderful Plan For Your Life: The Myth of the Modern Message.  In it, Comfort shares fervently the belief that many have come to be in the Church, but are not truly born-again or as he says, “saved”.  He also quotes a number of renowned evangelicals of recent past as well as current times who agree with them.  Although not in that category (renown, that is), I do find myself leaning towards agreement.

I am writing this partly in response to my friend’s request that I tell him what I thought of Comfort’s book.  The evidence that the author provides is clearly undeniable and supported by many other sources – vast numbers of people have been led to believe that they are Christians when they are not.  (Some of you reading this may be among them.)  And we ourselves are to blame.
Comfort goes on to show how the message that “Jesus solves problems” or “Jesus provides happiness” is not exactly telling the truth.  Yet that is exactly what the modern church is doing today in its form of evangelism.  And while we’re at it, we are making the Gospel only attractive to those that feel they lack happiness or are in trouble – ignoring the millions who claim they are happy and doing very well, thank you very much.  The Gospel, he correctly points out, “is a promise of righteousness, not a promise of happiness.”

If people come to Christ for “happiness” – do they then leave Him (or worse still, believe God does not exist) when they have trials and tribulations feeling anything but happiness?  To address these issues, Ray Comfort calls on the “Law” first to help a person understand his/her failed condition before God and his/her need for salvation for the judgment that will come.  He quotes John MacArthur who says, “It is impossible for a person to fully realize his need for God’s grace until he sees how terribly he has failed the standards of God’s Law.”  Comfort, after he gives two wonderful “in flight” illustrations which I will leave my readers to enjoy on their own (pages 69-71 of the book), writes, “Instead of preaching that Jesus will ‘improve the flight,’ we should be warning sinners that one day they will have to jump out of the plane. ‘It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment’ (Hebrews 9:27).”

So, while I can support all this and while I do not in any way, shape, or form support anything close to the ideas of the “prosperity Gospel” or “easy believism” and “Jesus will make everything just fine here and now” philosophies, I feel Ray has offered very little room for what I find to be so true for me as a Christian in this life, here and now.  Let me explain.

Billy Graham once implied something along this line: “If someone could prove to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no God, that Christ never died and rose again, that there is no heaven or afterlife – I would still go on living as if these all existed.”  The point Graham was making is that indeed, being truly born-again does make a difference to how I live and how I can cope here and now.  And to me, the value of that is priceless.

So while I like where Ray Comfort comes from and I believe we need to help a person truly get to the point of feeling remorse and repenting before God, before he/she can be saved from eternal judgment, I believe we also can and should point out that our life here and now can be lived with the knowledge that Christ wants to live in us and we in Him.  He wants to walk beside us through the storms that will come and indeed for many of us are here right now.

May God bless you as you consider “how then shall we witness?”

[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

Thanks for dropping by. Sign up to receive free updates. We bring you relevant information from all sorts of sources. Subscribe for free to this blog or follow us by clicking on the appropriate link in the right side bar. And please share this blog with your friends. Ken Godevenos, Church and Management Consultant, Accord Consulting.  And while you’re here, why not check out some more of our recent blogs shown in the right hand column.  Ken.

 

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

“Give This Message to the People, Moses” -- Exodus 6:6-9

“Say, therefore, to the sons of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage.  I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.  Then I will take you for My people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.  And I will bring you to the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession; I am the Lord.’”  So Moses spoke thus to the sons of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses on account of their despondency and cruel bondage.
 

In the passages previous to this one, we read that Moses obeyed God, got frustrated with the outcome, and then God reminded him of Who He is, what He has done, and what He has promised.  But I love the beginning of this short passage, “Therefore, tell your fellow Hebrews . . .”.

As I study this passage, I have come to believe that one of its purposes is to remind us that our relationship with God, our knowledge of Who He is and what He has done and has promised, is to be shared with others, beginning with our own people –family, friends, coworkers, and countrymen/women.  This is all about ‘telling others’.  It is about ‘witnessing’.  And then God, in telling Moses what he is to say, gives us some instructions as to what we are to say.  God would have us tell people that:

1.     Our God is indeed, as we saw from the previous passage, more than just a Creator and Provider – He is our Lord with whom we can have a personal and intimate relationship, as a Father and a child.

2.     Because our God is a God of love, He is fully aware of their circumstances and their needs and that He will deliver them from any bondage they find themselves in.  For many people, life is no longer fun, only bondage.  When the curtain goes down, the patrons have left for after-theatre drinks, and the lights are dimmed, the actor is often left alone, tired, spent, and despondent.

3.     Because He is a God of justice, He will also deal with our enemy, the devil, as well as those that work with him.  Vengeance is indeed His and He will judge the evildoers and repay them accordingly.

4.     He wants us to be His people, His children and to know Him as a Father.  He wants to be our God and lead us and save us.  In short, God will redeem us from being slaves.  If not Him, who or what else?

5.     At the end of our journey, if He is our God and we are His children, we will get our promised land – we will get our reward of eternal life; our struggles will be over; and we will sing of our Redeemer’s praise.

The message could not be any simpler.  All of the above is now made possible for us, who were not originally “children of Israel” and thus were not Jews.  It is now possible for the whole world to participate fully in God’s desire to have us as His children and to save us, through His Son, Jesus Christ.  The New Testament thousands of years after God spoke these words and gave these instructions to Moses, instructs us so.

Now notice the interesting lack or absence of words between the completion of God’s utterance and Moses’ obedience.   The Bible simply says, “So Moses spoke thus to the sons of Israel.”  Wow.  Here were clear instructions, followed by immediate and complete obedience to them.  Are we as faithful, as trusting, as obedient?  Let us determine this day to be so, or at least to be more so than we have in the past.

Now here is the shocker.  This passage clearly warns us that even though we do all we are instructed to do in sharing with others our relationship with and in God, many, if not all, simply will not listen.  And they won’t listen, the Bible says, because of “their despondency and [their] cruel bondage”.  Despondency is defined as a state of low spirits caused by a loss of hope or courage -- often from years of ‘slavery’ or ‘bondage’ in our lives.  And the loss of hope or courage often comes from being or feeling defeated by the enemy, or believing that because of what they see around them, they cannot win; that life is indeed intended to be hard, and then you die.

You and I, as was Moses and Aaron in our story, are often the only chance these people of low spirits have of ever seeing things differently.  We are the only way that some of them will ever find the hope of having joy and purpose and peace again through Christ Jesus and of finding the courage to live life with Him one day at a time, realizing that each challenge He allows is for their ultimate strengthening and confidence, as well as their own mission in life.

Somehow, Moses was not getting that across to his own people, and as we will see, in the passages that follow, God moves in again.  Did Moses listen and continue with his mission?  We’ll find out.  The more pertinent question is, “Are we listening and continuing in Christ, sharing with others our story of redemption?”  I pray so.

[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

Thanks for dropping by. Sign up to receive free updates. We bring you relevant information from all sorts of sources. Subscribe for free to this blog or follow us by clicking on the appropriate link in the right side bar. And please share this blog with your friends. Ken Godevenos, Church and Management Consultant, Accord Consulting.  And while you’re here, why not check out some more of our recent blogs shown in the right hand column.  Ken.

 

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

3 Big Christian Bodies Reach Agreement in Evangelism Ethics

This is big news for those that believe in witnessing.  While you may only support one of the three big groups that make up the three parties who have agreed to this historic document, you will have to agree they make some pretty good points of "how then we shall witness" in today's very complex and multi-religious world.  It's well worth the read.   Most, if not all, of it is based on Jesus' teachings.

Tell us what you think

3 Main Bodies in Christianity Reach 'Historic' Agreement in Evangelism Ethics�, Christian News

Thanks for dropping by.  Sign up to receive free updates.  We bring you relevant information from all sorts of sources.  Subscribe for free to this blog or follow us by clicking on the appropriate link in the right side bar.  And please share this blog with your friends.   Ken Godevenos, Church and Management Consultant, Accord Consulting.

 

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.