SAVED AND LOST Your message to the unbeliever God recognizes two groups of people in the world: the saved and the unsaved, the lost. All of us start out unsaved, lost and in need of salvation. The saved are saved eternally and unless the unsaved become saved, they remain lost forever. The unsaved are not unsaved because they sin more and the saved are not saved because we sin less. We did not become sinners by sinning our first sin, we sin because we are sinners. We were born children of fallen Adam (dont be too hard on Adam we would have blown it too). We were not born children of God. If we want to become Gods children, we need a birth from God himself. The good news is that Jesus death fully met our deep need to become Gods children. Becoming Gods child is not Gods requirement of us. God isnt asking us to *do* anything. The great news is that becoming Gods child is Gods grand provision for everyone born into the world, born not his children. Why then are some saved and others not? The saved are saved because weve received the gift God provided to all through the death of his son. Look at your dictionary and it will tell you that receiving is not the same thing as doing something. When any one simply believes the good news of Christ they are instantly and forever brought to God. But some preachers today are doing their best to avoid any mention that there are lost, unsaved people who need to receive salvation. They disparage the truth that there are unbelievers who need to believe the good news of Christ or else remain unsaved. What? Friend, when you avoid telling unbelievers the truth that God has fully met our need and that they need to believe in Christ to receive it and be saved, you deprive those people of recognizing their need to be reconciled to God. As a result of being told they have no need to be reconciled to God, they remain alienated from Him. And they remain foreign to his gift of righteousness. Still other teachers have gone far beyond wanting to avoid the uncomfortable. These go so far as to tell unbelievers that God wants to convict every person of their righteousness. Is it true? Are unbelievers righteous? First, the common Christian belief about conviction that God requires us to feel remorse for sin in order to be saved, is false. Yet, until and unless the unbeliever believes the good news of Christs death, he does not yet possess the gift righteousness God made available to all. Until the unbeliever believes the gospel he is yet unrighteous. The person who has yet to believe in Christ and accept God’s free gift is still unsaved and still without God. Teacher friend of mine, if your message to the unbeliever is you are really righteous to God, you just dont yet know it, then your message is false. You are preventing unbelieving people from seeing they have a need that has been fully met, and that reconciliation to God and righteousness is theirs for the believing. You are keeping unbelievers from coming to the only mediator between God and man God himself has provided, the man Christ Jesus. What’s your message to the unbeliever? Is it, “God already sees you as righteous, you simply never heard it before, but now that you’ve heard just be convinced of it”? Or is your message, “Because you’re estranged from God, Jesus died to perfectly and forever bring you to God, now please receive the reconciliation”? The former message is the message of new age humanism, dressed in Christian language. The latter is the message of God, the good news of the grace of Christ.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 14:00:12 +0000
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