Unsaved Christians

  

Parmigianino:The Conversion of Paul

There is no question but that the church today is but a pale shadow of its former self. Long gone are the days of revival, when preaching was powerful, when worship was lively and heartfelt, and multitudes pressed into the kingdom of heaven with tears of repentance. Today the sermons are dull and flat, the congregations half-asleep. We are smug, complacent, and spiritually sound asleep. And worst of all, we are so used to this dull routine that we can scarcely imagine that there was ever anything else. In the words of the apostle, we have a "form of godliness" but deny "its power" (II Tim. 3:5). What has gone wrong?
    There are several causes of our predicament. First of all we have a professional clergy that tends to look at ministry as a career. Pastors tend to measure their success in terms of attendance and budgets. Their aim tends to be making the organization as a whole appear successful, and they focus on numerical growth instead of spiritual growth.
    Compounding the problem is the fact that many churches are working with a type of theology (certain forms of Dispensationalism) that downplays the moral law and holds that it is possible to accept Jesus as Savior and not as Lord. This, coupled with the natural reluctance of most pastors to cause offence, means that we rarely hear sermons about the law of God, about sin and repentance, or about heaven and hell.
    What typically passes for "evangelism," then, is this: the evangelist is anxious to press people to make "decisions" on the spot. Seekers are asked to repeat a "sinner's prayer," and then they are declared to be "saved." Theoretically, if the prayer is said sincerely the person really would be saved. But what happens all too often in this scenario is that there is very little real conviction of sin. The person merely gives mental assent to the idea that "I am a sinner," but often there is a kind of mental reservation. In reality the person being "saved" is comparing himself to everyone else he knows, and really does not think that he is such a bad person. Thus when he says "I acknowledge that I am a sinner" what he is acknowledging is that as a human being he has his share of faults, but to his way of thinking this is more or less normal, and the offenses are fairly trivial. He really does not see himself as a guilty sinner under the wrath of God. He says the prayer, then, as a kind of ritualistic formula to take care of a technical difficulty. There is no real conviction of sin and hence little real repentance.
    Our new "convert" is then baptized and joins the church. But he tends to think of the church primarily as a social organization with its own standards and entrance requirements. The chief function of the church is to put on a program on Sunday morning. The pastor carefully organizes the whole thing; the members contribute financially, and hopefully everything is pulled off without a hitch. The members sits quietly in the pews, listening passively to the "special music" and the "message," which is usually a comforting homily that is neither especially profound nor inspiring. At the end of the "service" the congregation leaves the building self-satisfied. They return to their houses and live out their lives during the rest of the week engaged in a variety secular pursuits. They go through life making pragmatic decisions based on their own sense of self-interest.
    What is missing in this whole exercise is any real sense of the divine or eternal. The whole thing consists in externals. During the week the "Christian" is likely to give scarcely any thought at all to God, to prayer, or to holiness.
    If the church is fairly conservative and tries to maintain some standards of conduct, the "Christian" will likely begin to chafe under the restrictions. Deep inside he wants to be free to just be himself; he wants to be free from external constraint. He begins to resent the idea of having to meet someone else's expectations. He begins complaining about "legalism" and "judgmental church members" – "Fundies" who take the Bible literally. He may eventually become weary of the whole thing and just walk away, never to return.
    In most cases the underlying cause of all of this is that the person was never really converted in the first place. If we may use a paradoxical form of expression, he is an "unsaved Christian," which is to say that he is not a real Christian at all. He never really repented, and he was never really born again. Inwardly he is still very much the same as people outside of the church, and he has the psychology of an unconverted person. His affections are on the things of this world. He mostly pursues his own self-interest. There is no interest in spiritual matters, no real desire to please God. If he has any inkling of what the Bible actually says he will try to find a way either to discredit it or at least a reason not to take it seriously. Church, to him, was never anything more than a sociological phenomenon, but it is a phenomenon that is increasingly making him feel uncomfortable.
    What is easy for us to forget in our spiritual stupor is what is at stake in all of this, viz., eternity itself. We were created by God – we would not even exist at all if it were not for Him. Thus every day we refuse to acknowledge Him and refuse to submit to His will is a day lived in open defiance of His authority. Someday we will have to stand before Him and receive His just sentence on our lives. Our church membership will do us no good if in fact we are not really saved. God looks at our hearts, not the church membership rolls.
    It is incumbent upon each and every one of us to examine himself. "Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? – unless indeed you are disqualified" (II Cor. 13:5; NKJV). We cannot afford to deceive ourselves on this point. God will be the final Judge. Be sure that you are right with Him!

Related articles:
What Must I Do to Be Saved? 
What is Saving Faith? 
Born Again! 
Misunderstanding the New Birth 
What Is "A Personal Relationship with Jesus"? 

Born Again!

Parmigianino, The Conversion of Paul

    The phrase "born again" is standard jargon in the evangelical lexicon, yet few understand what it really means. What exactly is "the new birth"? What is the difference between someone who has been "born again" and someone who has not?
    The phrase itself goes back to a conversation that Jesus once had with a Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus, recorded for us in John chapter 3. Nicodemus was interested in learning more about this famous miracle worker, and was astonished when Jesus told him right at the outset of the conversation, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3; NKJV). Nicodemus was befuddled by this cryptic remark, and asked how it would be possible to reenter one's mother's womb and come back out again. Jesus went on to explain that what He was talking about was a spiritual birth, and that the agent of this birth was the Holy Spirit: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (v. 6).
    So what exactly is the new birth? The apostle Paul gives us a description in Eph. 4:17-24. He begins by describing what the Ephesian Christians were like before they became believers. The Gentiles, he says, "walk in the futility of their mind" (v. 17). The word "futility" suggests that their reasoning processes routinely arrive at the wrong conclusions. Why is this?
    Paul points to a variety of psychological factors. He says that their understanding was darkened, they were "alienated from the life of God," their hearts were blind, and they were "past feeling" (vv. 18,19). In other words, their hearts were unreceptive to the truth of God. This, in turn, ultimately led them to a lifestyle of licentiousness and greed. Once the external restraints were removed, their self-centeredness knows no bounds.
    The genuine Christian, however, has experienced something different. "But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus" (vv. 20,21). When the gospel is being preached a variety of people may hear the audible words being spoken, but they do not all respond alike. For some, the message makes no sense. It is out of synch with their own perception of reality. But for others the message rings true in an uncanny sort of way. It unnerves them. They are undone. The have caught the awful sight of their own depravity, and finally understand why Christ had to die on the cross. The light breaks through, the way of salvation becomes clear, and they tearfully embrace it. "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God," as Paul says elsewhere (I Cor. 1:18). The difference is that in the case of the believer, Christ Himself has spoken to the heart with indelible force and conviction. He has been taught by Christ Himself.
    So what, then, is the end result? First of all there is a clean break with the past: "that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man" (Eph. 4:22). But more than that, we are to "be renewed in the spirit of your mind" (v. 23). We acquire a new way of thinking: new motives and a new outlook on life. As Paul puts it in Rom. 12:2, we are not to "be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." The Christian life begins with an inward transformation. This, in turn, results in "the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness" (Eph. 4:24).
    How can one tell whether or not he has been genuinely born again? For someone converted as an adult it can be fairly easy. He knows what he was like before. He knows how he came to understand the truth. He is conscious of the decision he made. He is now experiencing a different life and a meaningful relationship with God. He has passed from death into life, from night into day.
    But for a young person raised in a Christian home it can be a much more difficult question to answer. He has always been told what to believe. He has always been told how to behave. He is actively involved in a whole range of church programs. But is he saved?
    Only he and God know what is really in his heart. But there are several things to look for. Since salvation involves a conscious choice to trust in Christ as your Savior from guilt and sin, there must be a cognitive understanding of the basic facts of the gospel, a consciousness of one's own sin and guilt, and a conscious decision to trust in Christ. There should presently be signs of spiritual life – a desire to know God, a prayer life, serious Bible study, and a willingness to serve others. In the final analysis you are spiritually what you are in your prayer closet. Where there is no regular, consistent prayer there is no relationship with Christ.
    The question is an all-important one. Let each be honest with himself. "Examine yourselves as to whether your are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? – unless indeed you are disqualified." (II Cor. 13:5).

What Must I Do to be Saved?

    To anyone who has given serious thought to the question, "What will happen to me when I die?," and has thought about the moral dimension to the problem, the obvious follow-up question is, "What must I do to be saved"? To the one who come to understand what the stakes are, there can be no more important question.
    As we have seen, Christ offered Himself up as an atonement for sin, but that does not mean that everyone is automatically saved. In order to receive the forgiveness of sins we must be personally joined to Christ in a kind of legal and mystical union, and that requires action on our part.
    But exactly what action? At first the answers found in the Bible seem confusing and even contradictory. When the Jews at Pentecost asked the apostle Peter, he said "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. . ." (Acts 2:38; NKJV). But when the Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas the same question, they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:31).
    There is no real contradiction here. The fact of the matter is that repentance, faith and baptism are three different aspects of the same thing. The essential thing is faith – we are "justified by faith." But in order for faith to be genuine it must be accompanied by repentance, and then it must be expressed in a formal commitment to Christ in baptism.
    It is the repentance part with which most modern Americans have difficulty. Americans are possessed with a consumer mentality (see our book America's Deadliest Enemy), and the church has sometimes made the mistake of trying to market Christianity as a consumer product. Evangelists are eager to tout all the advantages of Christianity without mentioning any of the demands of discipleship. It all sounds so easy! "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life"!
    The Bible makes it clear, however, that if we would receive the forgiveness of our sins we must first repent of them. "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins bay be blotted out . . . " (Acts 3:19). The whole problem is our sin and our guilt, and we are hardly sincere in asking for forgiveness is we don't repudiate the lifestyle that created the problem in the first place.
    The point was beautifully illustrated in a story told by Jesus. In Luke 18:9 we are told that He confronted "some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others." Jesus proceeded to tell them one of His famous parables, or stories. Two men went up to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray. One was a Pharisee, a member of a very strict sect of observant Jews who were scrupulous about keeping the Jewish law. The other man was a "publican" or tax collector. The publicans, however, were not tax collectors in the modern sense of the word. They were generally private contractors who were hired to collect taxes for the Roman government. They were notoriously dishonest and corrupt, little better than extortioners in some cases. To make matters worse, because they worked with the Roman authorities who, of course, were Gentiles and did not keep the Jewish law, the publicans were regarded by their fellow Jews as ceremonially unclean. They were, in effect, unholy renegades. In other words, in this story the tax collector represented the opposite end of the social spectrum from the Pharisee. The Pharisee represented the elite of Jewish society; the tax collector the filthy scum.

    Jesus goes on to describe the prayers of these two men. The Pharisee's prayer went like this: God, I thank You that I am not like other men – extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector" (v. 11). He then proceeds to list his own accomplishments: "I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess" (v. 12).
    Far different was the tax collector's prayer. "Standing afar off," he "would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast" (v. 13). His request was simple, frank, and to the point: "God, be merciful to me a sinner!" (The text literally reads, "the sinner," as if in his own eyes he was the only sinner in the world, so mortified was he with his own guilt – cf. NASV; Amp.) He did not pretend to be a righteous man. He knew all too well that he was not. He frankly admitted the case and begged for mercy. He realized that that was all that he could do under the circumstances.
    Jesus then drew the moral of the story: "I tell you, this man [i.e., the tax collector – RWW] went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (v. 14).
    For many it is this element of repentance that prevents them from coming to Christ in a genuine way. It is our pride that stands between us and Christ. We don't like to admit that we are lost sinners, and we don't like to be in the position of humble suppliants. We would rather pretend that we are basically alright and would like to think that we are doing God a favor by lending our good name to the membership rolls of His churches. But there is no true Christianity where there has not first been sorrow and contrition for sin. Salvation begins with heartfelt repentance.

Sam Harris v. Francis Collins

    So far in our review of Sam Harris' book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, we have seen Dr. Harris attempt to build an objective standard of morality on the basis of science. In the end what he had to offer was a kind of undated version of the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill, but he gave us very few specifically scientific reasons for his conclusions.
    We also saw him wrestle with the problem of fee will v. determinism, and was not entirely successful here either. He began by denying the idea of free will, but then tried to argue that it is still possible to think rationally. We have motives for what we think – motives that are in our emotions, but we are still rational beings.
    In light of this Dr. Harris' treatment of Francis Collins is nothing less than deplorable. Dr. Collins is the Director of the National Institutes of Health, an evangelical Christian, and the author of the book The Language of God (Free Press, 2006). Dr. Harris says that "to read it [i.e., Collins' book] is to witness nothing less than intellectual suicide" (Harris, p. 160). In The Language of God Dr. Collins recounts, among other things, his religious conversion. He had been reading C.S. Lewis when he was struck by a passage in which Lewis said that given the claims that Jesus had made for Himself, either the claims were true or else Jesus was either a fraud or a lunatic. It is not possible to accept Him as a "great moral teacher" and yet think that He was wrong about who He said He was.
    Collins had felt the force of the argument, but the decisive moment came when he was hiking in the Cascade Mountains, and "the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ" (quoted in Harris, p. 163).     
    And what is Dr. Harris' reaction to this account? "This is self-deception at full gallop. It is simply astounding that this passage was written by a scientist with the intent of demonstrating the compatibility of faith and reason" (Ibid.).
    Self-deception at a full gallop? Wait a minute here. What exactly happened to Francis Collins?
    According to Dr. Collins' own account of his conversion, the book of Lewis' that he had been reading was Mere Christianity. Dr. Collins says that he was especially impressed by a section entitled "Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe" (Collins, p. 22). Dr. Collins says ". . . I realized that all of my own constructs against the plausibility of faith were those of a schoolboy . . . Lewis seemed to know all of my objections, sometimes even before I had quite formulated them. He invariably addressed them within a page or two. When I learned subsequently that Lewis himself had been an atheist, who had set out to disprove faith on the basis of logical argument, I recognized how he could be so insightful about my path. It had been his path as well." (Ibid., p.21).
    Dr. Collins, however, did not convert right away. He continued to struggle. Why? "My desire to draw close to God was blocked by my own pride and sinfulness, which in turn was an inevitable consequence of my own selfish desire to be in control. Faithfulness to God required a kind of death to self-will, in order to be reborn as a new creation" (Ibid., p. 222).
    In other words, Dr. Collins' rational self thought that Lewis' arguments made sense. Dr. Harris himself gives the reasons that Dr. Collins cites as the basis for his faith: "the Big Bang, the fine-tuning of Nature's constants, the emergence of complex life, and the effectiveness of mathematics, as well as our moral intuitions" (Harris, pp. 165-166). In other words, while struck by a subjective experience, Dr. Collins still had a rational basis for belief. What the experience did was to break down his resistance to the truth. This is very far from being "an intellectual suicide."
    Dr. Harris says that there are "alternate (and far more plausible) accounts of these phenomena" (the ones cited by Collins in Harris, p. 166). We might wonder what "alternate" and "far more plausible" account there can be for such things as the effectiveness of mathematics, but he does not elaborate. We suspect that it comes down to a matter of perception. Dr. Collins' experience in the Cascade Mountains enabled him to see things in a new light. And what he was seeing was very real and not at all imaginary. It is doubtful that the "alternate" explanations, if they do in fact exist, are "far more plausible."
    What is especially unfortunate about Dr. Harris' strictures on Dr. Collins' conversion experience is that what Dr. Collins described is, for the most part, what Dr. Harris had just said in the preceding chapter of his book is the way all people think, presumably Dr. Harris himself included! We all have motives for what we think, but that does not prevent us from thinking rationally. Dr. Collins described what had happened to him on an emotional level. He also gave us his rational reasons for faith. Why cannot Dr. Harris see what Dr. Collins sees? The answer: his motives are different.
    Frankly, in light of what Dr. Harris had said about motives and beliefs in the earlier chapters of his book, we cannot see how he can condemn Dr. Collins for having the very same thought processes that Dr. Harris himself had described.