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“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God”
(1Peter 3:18 ESV)
When you here preaching and teaching do you here mainly that heaven is about getting God? Or more along these lines.
Come to God and avoid hell.
Come to God and get your best life now.
Come to God and have your life, family and finances fixed.
Come to God and make good friends at church.
Come to God, that’s what good people do.
Basically, come to God and things will go much better. My main problem with this teaching is that Jesus seems more a means than the end, more ticket than treasure, more of a gateway to heaven than the goal of heaven.
Some questions for myself and my readers. Don’t be too quick to answer, think about them for a bit.
If our family falls apart will you still follow and love Jesus?
If our health fails will you still treasure Christ above all things?
If we go broke after giving to the church faithfully for years will you question the promises and goodness of God?
If things really go rotten and we still have Jesus, is that enough? Or will we walk away in disillusionment because following God didn’t pay off like we have been taught? Is God the means to a payoff or is he not only how we get to heaven, but the main reason we want to go? Is Jesus our heaven? Is what makes hell seem most hellish and painful to us not having God? Very tough questions to be sure, with some possibly painful answers from our own hearts.
My purpose in this post is not to beat people up, but a call for introspection and repentance for all of us. May those who teach and preach be careful that we keep God and his work at the cross at the very center of everything, and that those who listen show care and not magnify the gifts of God’s grace above the giver himself.
Lord Jesus, keep us by your mighty sovereign grace from worshiping anything but you.
There is a type of belief in Jesus that does not save nor honor His name. Belief in the right thing in the wrong way can be very dangerous.
““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
(John 3:16 ESV)
We who grew up in the church learned this verse at an early age. Every time I hear it I think back to my childhood. If you believe in Jesus you are saved, seems like a simple formula that any child could master, but the following verse seems to throw a kink in things.
“Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.”
(John 2:23-25 ESV)
In these verses we have people who believe in Jesus and yet Christ does not entrust himself to them, he sees something in them that causes him displeasure. What is it about the belief in John 2 that causes this? The key I believe is found in these words: “Many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.” The people were following Jesus mainly because of what he could do for them. They were not following him for the right reasons or he would have been pleased.
Matthew 7 also speaks of calling him Lord and not entering the kingdom of heaven.
““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? ’And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”
(Matthew 7:21-23 ESV)
There is a belief in Christ that does not please him and a calling him Lord that he finds repugnant. How can we know that what we believe is of the right kind? Do we have head knowledge and no heart knowledge? Are we more interested in what Jesus could provide for us more than Jesus himself? Do we say we love Him and then disobey Him? If what we know about Christ doesn’t cause us to worship him, what we know is worthless and downright dangerous. If what Jesus provides for us is more valuable than the gift of himself we have become idolaters. If what we know about Christ does not change us we have believed in vain.
A saving Christ honoring belief is one that through faith places its hope in what Christ has done, and His supreme value to us as greatest treasure, this in turn overflows into obedience as worship. What we believe about Christ must blossom into action.
