During one of the many times the apostle John, in his Gospel, recounted Jesus’ discussions with Jewish audiences, he once wrote, “As He [Jesus] spoke these things, many came to believe in Him” (John 8:30).
That certainly sounds like good news, doesn’t it? We’re always happy to hear about people believing in Jesus. Christians want everyone to believe in Jesus.
I have been thinking about my post of last week that I titled “Gratefully Guilty as Charged.” I did my best, in a very brief format, to show that “works” are required for salvation (not the initial salvation that accompanies the new birth, but ultimate salvation when one inherits God’s kingdom after standing before the Lord Jesus Christ at judgment). And I listed three crystal-clear New Testament passages authored by Paul—all written to saved Christians—that proved my point:
“I feel like the man has shown his true colors. His true colors prove that he is unbalanced. The man believes that works are required for salvation.”
The above quote, copied verbatim from a public forum, is by a ministry leader and a former friend. For years, he published a number of my teaching articles in his ministry magazine, articles in which I consistently taught that the biblical gospel is a call to repentance, a living faith, and a new life of obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Any Christian who has read 1 Corinthians knows that the Corinthian church had problems. There were divisions, quarrels, strife and jealousy among them as they fought over their favorite teachers (1 Cor. 1:10-12; 3:1-4; 11:17-19). There was sexual immorality in the church, and tragic toleration of it (1 Cor. 5:1-2; 6:15-20). There was also toleration of professing Christians who were greedy, idolaters, swindlers (1 Cor. 5:11) and drunkards (even during the Lord’s Supper; 1 Cor. 11:21).
The popular doctrine of “once-saved-always-saved” or “unconditional eternal security,” advocates that those who genuinely believe in Jesus at any point in their life are guaranteed to live forever in God’s eternal kingdom. There is no possibility, advocates claim, of anyone forfeiting salvation once it is gained.
Last week I published a short teaching about “Bible Babies”—Christians who, just like actual babies, become mono-focused. They have no awareness of anything outside of what they are currently fixated on. Give a baby a rattle, and his entire world becomes that rattle.
Bible Babies similarly become fixated on single Bible verses and ignore the immediate and wider contexts of those verses, so Bible Babies often misinterpret those single verses. That is to be expected of baby Christians, but they ought to grow up after a few years. Tragically, some Bible Babies have been believers for decades. (Some are pastors.)
My wife and I have been blessed with three children and fourteen grandchildren. So we have some experience with babies. All babies are the same in at least one respect—they very easily become mono-focused. If you give a baby a rattle, it becomes the entire world for that baby. They become consumed with it, losing any awareness of anything else.
Over the past 20 years, most Christian folks who know me as “David Servant” suspect that is not my actual name. (Although some have remarked, “Wow, what a great name to have and be called to ministry!”) When I selected “David Servant” as my pseudonym, I hoped that most Christians would realize it was an obvious pseudonym, and that they would also assume there is some good reason for it. And there is, of course.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16; Deut. 5:20).
I once read an otherwise intelligent unbeliever state that the reason he didn’t believe in the God of the Bible is because, according to the 9th Commandment, God only condemned misrepresenting the truth when one is under oath as a “witness” in a court case. So, the God of the Bible, he oddly concluded, is OK when people lie outside of court, and that was a standard that was inferior to his own!
Most every true Christian understands that Christianity has its roots in Judaism. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, and He kept the Mosaic Law all of His life. All of His apostles witnessed Him perfectly keep the Mosaic Law. He obviously, for example, kept the annual Feast of Passover (which, incidentally, foreshadowed His saving work in numerous ways.)
The early church was 100% Jewish. All of those early Jewish Christians, who lived among non-believing Jews, followed the Mosaic Law that they had been keeping all of their lives. It is clear that Peter, for example, kept the Mosaic dietary laws at least until Acts 10, which would have been seven to ten years after the Day of Pentecost.