By Amber Bruce
At the end of the sermon “Cross Road” from Mark 8:22-38, Pastor Dave posed four questions that arose from the text for us to ponder. The questions are:
- Is it possible to be a believer and not follow the discipleship road? Is that even an option?
- Does every believer need a second touch?
- Can I lose my soul if I’m a believer?
- Will Jesus be ashamed of me?
He suggested that we do some biblical digging to find the answers to these questions. To that end, this post is written to give you and your group some biblical direction in seeking answers.
- Is it possible to be a believer and not follow the discipleship road? Is that even an option?
First we need to be clear what we mean by “believer.” James 2:19 reminds us that even the demons believe that God is one – and shudder! That is not the description of a “believer” in this sense, which is exactly the point James is making. The context tells us:
18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! 20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works;
James’ point is that true faith is demonstrated by a person’s actions. Jesus makes a similar point through three parables at the end of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 7:15-27). First, He warns his hearers to recognize true teachers by their fruit (i.e. actions). Then, He warns them that not everyone who called Him Lord would actually enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only the ones who “do the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Finally, He warns that failure to act on His teachings is like building a house in the sand – its fall will be great! – while acting upon His teaching is like digging into the bedrock for a firm and lasting foundation.
“Belief” in the Bible is not just about head knowledge, but a full acceptance that translates into action. See also 1 John 2:3-6; 4:13; 5:13.
What about people who say they believe but their lives show no fruit? First, it is not our place to make a final judgment (Matt 7:1). Only God can see the heart (1 Sam 16:7). Second, they may be walking in sin for a time and come to repentance (like this man in the church at Corinth: 1 Cor 5:1-2; 2 Cor 2:6-8; 7:9). Third, we can cling to the promise that “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil 1:6). So if someone is truly a believer, God will bring them onto the discipleship road (Ezek 36:26-27; 2 Cor 5:21) and keep them walking it (Jude 1:24).
What about passages like John 8:31-33, 48, 59, where Jesus speaks to the “Jews who believed in Him,” but they argue with Him, blaspheme Him, and even try to kill Him? Later in John, Jesus says that His sheep believe Him, know His voice and follow Him (John 10:3, 26-27) and that no one can take them away (John 10:28), and He has not lost any of them (John 17:12). So I think we can conclude that the “belief” of those Jews was proven to be false by their subsequent actions.
- Does every believer need a second touch?
The answer to this will depend on what is meant by ‘needing a second touch.’ Scripture tells us how to receive salvation:
Mark 16:16
Acts 16:31
Rom 10:9-13
Eph 2:8-9
The message is clear: believe and be saved. That’s it.
Yet, there is a sense in which we need continual “touches” from Jesus. These are not for our salvation, but to draw us into a deeper knowledge of Jesus and into a deeper experience of His grace (2 Pet 3:18, see also 2Pet 1:5, Eph 4:15, Col 1:10, Col 2:19, 1Pet 2:2). 2 Corinthians 3:18 describes this process as we behold Jesus and are transformed into His likeness bit by bit.
- Can I lose my soul if I’m a believer?
We already looked at John 10:28; 17:12, where Jesus makes it clear that He will not lose one of His sheep. 1 Thessalonians 5:13 spells this out even more clearly regarding our souls:
“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God is working to sanctify you.
We also looked at how to be saved. The Bible clearly tells us how we can be saved:
Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. (Rom 10) This includes intellectual assent, but it is deeper than that. It is faith that steps out and takes hold of Christ, embracing him as the master of your life.
By grace through faith, not by works (Eph 2:8-9). This faith is the kind that works, but it is not faith in our works. Our faith is in the character and the work of God who saved us. It is in Jesus, not Jesus and ___________. Not Jesus and baptism, not Jesus and praying “the prayer,” not Jesus and reading the One Year Bible. We do those things because we trust in Christ, but we do not trust in those things to bring us to God.
The assurance of our salvation is based on:
The trustworthiness of God; 1 John 1:9 tells us that if we confess our sins, God is faithful to forgive us and cleanse us. In Phil 1:6, Paul expresses his confidence in the faithfulness of God to finish the work that started in us to bring us to Himself when Christ returns. 2 Timothy 2:11-13 highlights the faithfulness of God, even when we are not faithful. The Bible is clear: we can trust God to fulfil his promises to us. He will not fail to give salvation to all who believe.
The confirmation of the Holy Spirit; Rom 8:16 says The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. When we are saved, we have the presence of the Holy Spirit confirming to our own spirits that it is true. But remember last week when we talked about grieving the Holy Spirit. You may feel more or less of the presence of the Holy Spirit depending on how you are living. So if you are sure you have faith in the promises of God, but you aren’t feeling the confirmation of the Holy Spirit, check your life to see if there is something you need to clean up. 1 Thess 1:5)
The evidence of a changed life. (1 Thes 1:5-8; Col 1:6; 1 John 2:3-6) The truth of the gospel can be seen in its effectiveness. Is your life changing? Are you obeying God? Are you becoming more like Jesus? This is evidence of salvation. Keep in mind that this is mentioned last for a reason. Bearing fruit doesn’t happen overnight. A young Christian may not have much to show yet. Every Christian goes through periods of dryness where there isn’t a whole lot of fruit. But if you have been a Christian for a while and haven’t been growing and becoming more Christ-like, that should give you some pause. Evaluate where you are at spiritually. Are there specific sins that you need to repent of? Have you ever truly submitted to Christ as Lord and Savior?
Instead of asking, “Can I lose my salvation?” we should ask, “Can God lose me?” Salvation is from God and belongs to God. He absolutely will not lose you. Jesus promised he would not lose any of the sheep God gave him (John 6:39; 10:28; 17:12) He said that we are safe in his hand. You can rest assured of your salvation with absolute confidence from God. A missionary to China used to say, “God is inside you and God is outside you, and those are the only two sides you have!” (John 14:20). Nothing can separate us from God’s love (Rom 8:35-39). There is nothing we can do or anyone else can do to steal us away from God’s salvation.
- Will Jesus be ashamed of me?
When God looks at you, he doesn’t see your failures or your successes. He sees that Jesus’ blood cleansed your sin and that Jesus’ righteousness clothes you as if it were your own (2 Cor 5:21; 1 John 1:9; Phil 3:9). He sees you as a beloved child (Rom 8:15-16; Gal 4:4-7). If you are in Jesus, there is no way He can be ashamed of you: you are one with Him and are glorified in Him (John 17:20-23).
God has promised to glorify those He has saved. In fact, it is so certain to happen that Paul speaks of it as already done (Rom 8:18, 28-30). No one, not even God, can bring a charge against us or condemn us (Rom 8:33-34).
So why does Jesus warn that for those who are ashamed of Him, He will be ashamed of them at His coming? The following passages flesh out this idea more fully: Rom. 1:16; 2 Tim 1:8; 2 Tim. 1:12; 2 Tim. 1:16; Heb. 11:16; 1 John 2:28; Matt 10:33. The final verse in that list is the clincher, stating even more strongly the warning: “but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
The question to ask ourselves is, “Am I ashamed of Jesus?” Do we take Jesus at His Word and accept His view of reality? Or do we reject some or all of what He says? If we are ashamed of Him, He will be ashamed of us (Mark 8:38). If we deny Him, He will deny us (Matt 10:33).
This brings us back to the first concept about the Jews who “believed” in Jesus, but in their rejection of Him showed that their belief was false (John 8). The warning Jesus gives in Mark 8:34-38 is to check that we are true believers: do we actually believe in Jesus? If so, we have a new heart that wants to follow Him (Ez 36:26-27), the Holy Spirit empowering us (Rom 8:9-11), and will show our faith by walking in His ways (James 2:18-22). We will deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. We will not lose our souls, and Jesus will not be ashamed of us.
By Amber Bruce
At Bethel, our mission is to make disciples. We define a disciple as a follower of Jesus who is GROWing (God-lover, Relationship-Builder, Obedient Follower and World-Influencer). GROW came from a study of the more than 800 commands in the New Testament. Grouping those commands into categories, we came up not only with the acrostic GROW, but with several commands that fit in each one. Under the category of “God-lover,” one of the attributes of a disciple is that he or she believes the gospel is God’s only plan for salvation (Acts 4:12; Rom 1:16; John 14:6). Included in that belief is the idea that we need salvation from God’s wrath. Bethel’s statement of beliefs includes the following paragraph:
Bethel Beliefs: The Last Things
We believe in “that blessed hope” (Titus 2:13) the personal, visible, pre-millennial return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust, the everlasting blessedness of the saved and the everlasting conscious suffering of the lost. (Zechariah 14:4-11; Matthew 25:46; John 5:28-29; 11:25-26; Acts 1:11; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18; Revelation 20:4-6, 11-15)
Many in our culture stumble over the apparent contradiction of a loving God who is also a judging God. We cling to the deep-seated belief that we can decide for ourselves what is right and wrong; therefore a loving God should support us no matter what we do. We may not consciously agree to the statement “moral truth is relative,” but if we chafe under the idea of a God who judges, then we do believe it at some level.
Because this belief is so pervasive, we have this post as an extra tool for leaders to explore answers to the question, “How can a loving God send people to hell?” It is a question with which we all must wrestle; if not for ourselves, then for the many people we love who stumble over it.
First, we must remember that God is a God of love. First John 4:8 tells us that God is not only loving but “God is love.” In other words, God defines love by his existence and exemplifies love in his actions. God’s love is expressed fully and perfectly in the death of his Son Jesus on the cross (John 3:16). In redemption, as Reverend Charles F. Whiston points out, “we watch God meet our evil with his own unconquerable, agonizing love; meet it, stop it, overcome it.”
In our culture, the ideal of a loving God is something we all like to believe. But that idea comes only from the Bible. Reverend Tim Keller writes how he discovered during his college days that no other religion has a personal, loving God at the center:
“Like so many of my generation I believed that, if there was a core to all religions, it was a loving God. I wanted to believe in a God of love who accepted people regardless of their beliefs and practices. I began to take courses in the other major religions of the world – Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Confucianism, and Judaism. … [M]y explorations in other faiths proved me wrong on this particular point about the centrality of a loving God.
“I found no other religious text outside of the Bible that said God created the world out of love and delight. …I turned to look more closely at Buddhism, the religion I like best at the time. However, despite its great emphasis on selflessness and detached service to others, Buddhism did not believe in a personal God at all, and love is the action of a person.”
Tim Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (Dutton, 2008), Chap 5 “How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?
The same Bible that teaches that God is love also teaches about God’s judgment. You can’t pick just one part to believe in. If you want a God who is loving, you must also accept a God who is sovereign, holy, and just.
It seems to many of us that anger is in contrast to love. However, anger and love are not mutually exclusive. In his book The Reason for God, Tim Keller argues, “The Bible says that God’s wrath flows from his love and delight in creation. He is angry at evil and injustice because it is destroying [his creation’s] peace and integrity.”
Not only is wrath compatible with love, it is a requirement for a God worthy of our praise. How could we respect a God who would do nothing about all the evil and sin and death and injustice in this world? Czech philosopher and theologian Miroslav Volf makes the point that the only way we can love others without becoming bitter and violent and the only way we can worship God is if he has a plan to ultimately right all wrongs.
“If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence – that God would not be worthy of worship.”
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Abingdon, 1996), p.303.
The God of the Bible is worthy of our worship. He promises that he and he alone will bring justice (Deuteronomy 32:35,41,43).
Unless we can trust in God’s plan to settle all accounts perfectly, we will find ourselves embittered at the injustices done to us and to those we love. We will feel the need for vengeance and “be sucked into the endless vortex of retaliation,” as Tim Keller calls it. When we trust in God’s provision to right all wrongs, we can forgive others and wait patiently for God’s justice to be made known. If the offender repents and trusts in Christ, his wrongs are paid for on the cross. If not, his wrongs will be paid for in eternal condemnation in hell.
Why eternity? The Bible teaches that this life is not all there is; each of us will exist for eternity. Whether that eternal destiny is in heaven or hell depends on our submission to or rebellion against God now. Our actions in this life have everlasting consequences because we are everlasting beings.
Handel’s masterpiece The Messiah culminates in the Hallelujah chorus, which declares with the angel in Revelation 11:15 “The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying,
“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
who is and who was,
for you have taken your great power
and begun to reign.
The nations raged,
but your wrath came,
and the time for the dead to be judged,
and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints,
and those who fear your name,
both small and great,
and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”
Revelation 11:15-18
In the context, God has just poured out his wrath on his enemies and begun to reign on earth, eliciting jubilant praise from the rulers of men who sit in God’s presence. These rulers act as our representatives; we will be singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” along with them because God destroyed the destroyers of the earth (v. 18) and has begun to reign.
In Revelation 22:3-5, we see that destruction of God’s enemies leads to the renewal of the entire created order, the restoration of harmony and peace.
No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
Revelation 22:3-5
Only after the “destroyers of the earth” are gone can the earth once again be a perfect home in which the Lamb will live forever with his bride, the people whom He has redeemed out of all the nations through His atoning death. No longer will the earth be cursed for Adam’s sin. No longer will guilt, strife, struggle for survival, sickness, sorrow, and death have any place in the earth.
Beyond the restoration of peace and harmony, God will give us Himself, the riches of His glory, forever. Moses could not see God’s face and live (Exodus 33:20-23; 34:29-35), but when the Spirit has completed our sanctification, God’s redeemed people will see His face. The ESV Study Bible calls this “the greatest blessing of the age to come, as God looks upon his people with favor and delight.” Part of a poem by John Piper captures this hope of delighting in the riches of God’s glory forever:
What we have lost, God will restore -
That, and himself, forevermore.
When he is finished with his art:
The quiet worship of our heart.
The reality of eternal destinations may seem harsh in the beginning, but as our eyes adjust to the light of the truth we will begin to recognize the beauty before us. The darkness of sin and judgment makes God’s mercy shine more brightly in comparison. As we receive and revel in God’s mercy, it begins to fill us so that our own lives radiate with mercy. We have that “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13) that God will not only restore peace but will give us Himself to enjoy forever.
By kellitempleton
Pastor Dave will be preaching on Titus 3:12-15 this week in Richland, concluding the book of Titus. Here are some suggested questions to discuss with your roommates, family, or small group:
- Review the principles from Titus 3:12-15. Which one is most applicable to you? How are you going to apply it? (answers will vary but this is Dave’s main application at the end of the sermon, so people should have some idea)
- Pastor Dave said a wise disciple looks ahead and makes wise plans to help insure his or her spiritual success. What is your role going to be in small group this year? How are you going to stretch yourself? (new leader, assistant, host, admin, lead the gender specific prayer time, social POC, serving POC, encourage the the small group, regular attender, be prepared before group, etc)
- Read 1 Cor 12:7,25. Why is delegation important? Why do we fail to delegate? (Delegation allows each person to use his/her gifts to serve, encourage, and edify the body of Christ. We fail to delegate out of perfectionism, pride, lack of planning, busyness of life, etc.
- What does it mean in point 2 to “expect the best, give grace?” (Hint Phil 4:8, Col 3:12-13) How would you do this in:
- Small group (expect people to do their study, pray for one another, uphold accountability questions and when they don’t believe that they will/can next time; offer to help)
- Marriage (believe the best in your spouse, don’t assume motives – ask questions, forgive readily, overlook offenses)
- Parenting (believe the best in your child, don’t assume motives – ask questions, expect first time obedience with good training and clear consequences, etc)
- Work (don’t assume motives – ask questions, expect people to make deadlines, provide reminders in grace, etc)
- Friendships (don’t take things personally, forgive readily, overlook offenses, etc)
- Knowing the importance of small group involvement in growing spiritually, what’s your plan for finding a small group this fall? If you’re not joining one, why not? (Remember GroupFinder on Sept 8th after each service in the gym featuring new and open groups.
