The Gospel Coalition

This is the second installment of a series of posts which began yesterday on ways people might be decieved into thinking they know God when in fact they don’t. These are taken from my book Do I Know God? 

Deception 2: “I remember the time I made a decision for Christ. Isn’t that enough?”

A lot of people think they have a relationship with God because they can remember a time when they decided to follow Jesus. Perhaps, like Jason, you remember a youth conference or a church service when you walked forward. Or maybe you remember a conversation with a Christian friend or one of your parents in which you invited Jesus into your heart. And you’ve been told that as long as you can recall that event, you can know for certain that your relationship with God is genuine. Regardless of what your life has looked like from that moment until now, if you can remember a time when you made a choice for Jesus, you can know you are eternally saved.

Theologians call this errant view decisional regeneration. But the Bible never says that simply remembering a time in your life when you made a decision for Christ guarantees you a relationship with God—never!

What the Bible does say is that if you really want to be certain about your relationship with God, then you should examine yourself to see whether you are in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5). In other words, if you want to know that you know God, if you want to experience that assurance in your heart, then you should look for evidence in what you love and how you live (this is covered in chapters 7 and 8 of Do I Know God?).

A few weeks ago a woman approached me after church and asked me to pray for her son. He was in his thirties and on his way back to prison. Everything she told me about him led me to believe that he didn’t know God. So as I prayed, I asked God to save her son, to make her son a Christian. Halfway through my prayer, however, she interrupted me and said her son was a Christian and I didn’t need to pray for his salvation. That confused me, so I asked her how she knew he was a Christian. She said she remembered that one night a few years ago her son had walked forward after a church service. As in the case of Jason, his life showed no evidence that he had changed. But because his mom could remember that event, she was convinced that he knew God.

To be sure, remembering God’s activity in our past is beautiful and important. My point is this: we can’t assume that our relationship with God is real if our only basis for that assumption is a past event, whatever it might have been. Instead, we need to ask ourselves, How am I living? and What am I loving? None of us enters into a relationship with God merely by raising a hand, praying a sinner’s prayer, walking an aisle, or remembering a decision made years ago, especially if our lives show no evidence that our prayer or decision made any difference.

But what about people who go to church regularly? What about people who teach Sunday school or tithe or sit on church boards or even preach sermons? They’ve been religious—isn’t that enough?

And what about people who are serious about spirituality? They have found some kind of spiritual fulfillment—isn’t that enough? We’ll look at these two common kinds of false assurance in the next posts.

Today I was interviewed by a new friend: Cindy Swanson. Cindy is a radio show host in Illinois and sharp as a tack. Having done numerous radio interviews, I can honestly say, Cindy was one of the best. Thanks for a great conversation Cindy. Press on!

Having been a pastor now for 8 years, I am convinced that one of the most strategic mission fields in North America is the church. And it’s this conviction (based on Matthew 7:21-23) which led me to write my first book Do I Know God? In that book I outline six ways people might be decieved into thinking they know God when in fact they don’t. Over the next few posts I will outline those six ways (excerpted from the book) in the hope that more people would avoid going through life thinking they know God when in fact they don’t.

If you know someone who might think they know God when in fact they don’t, please consider getting the book and passing it on to them. In doing so, you will be loving them well and perhaps saving them from hearing the dreaded words, “Depart from me I never knew you.”

Deception 1: “I prayed the sinner’s prayer. Isn’t that enough?”

I met Jason four years ago when his girlfriend, Krista, asked me to talk to him about his relationship with God. Krista had started attending the church where I preached, but Jason refused to join her. They were unmarried and living together and moving in opposite spiritual directions. But Krista thought maybe I could help.

Jason agreed to meet with me. I soon learned that he had prayed the sinner’s prayer at a Christian youth conference when he was in high school. Apparently one evening the speaker delivered a powerful message about heaven and hell that scared Jason down the aisle. When Jason reached the front of the auditorium, with tears streaming down his face, the speaker asked everyone who had come forward to “repeat this prayer after me.” Jason repeated the prayer word for word. When it was over, the speaker declared, “If you just prayed that prayer, you are now a child of God. Heaven is your true home, and you never need to fear hell again. Welcome to the family of God!”

That assurance put Jason at ease. From that moment forward, he rarely thought about heaven or hell again. He hung on to that speaker’s promise, believing he was eternally secure in the family of God.

As the years went on, however, nothing about Jason changed. He continued in sin without thinking twice about it, because that speaker had assured him that since he had walked the aisle and prayed the prayer, he was a child of God from that moment forward, regardless of the way he lived.

As Jason and I talked, it was clear to me that he did not know God. He possessed some factual knowledge about God, but he did not know God. He did not have an authentic, eternal relationship with Jesus Christ. Regardless of what the speaker led Jason to believe at the youth conference, he was spiritually lost, still dead in his trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1), still without a saving relationship with his Creator.

I never saw Jason again.

What he and others like him fail to understand is that entering into a relationship with God is a spiritual transaction, not a physical one. In other words, God doesn’t save and adopt you into his eternal family just because you once repeated the words of a prayer, walked an aisle, raised your hand in church, or signed a commitment card.

You enter into a spiritual relationship with God when he opens your blind eyes and softens your hard heart and you become aware for the first time that you are a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior. At that point you run to him because you understand you need him and you want him.

I love what C. S. Lewis said: “Unless he wanted you, you would not be wanting him.” In other words, we enter into a relationship with God when we respond to God’s initiative, not when God responds to ours. We love him because he first loved us. In fact, his love for us caused our love for him.

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

Don’t get me wrong—praying the sinner’s prayer or walking forward at a Billy Graham crusade or raising your hand in church isn’t wrong or inappropriate in itself. But it can mislead you into thinking that such an action alone offers you a guarantee of salvation and entry into God’s family. It doesn’t.

Physical, external acts like repeating the words of a prayer don’t turn slaves into sons. Divinely crafted internal revolutions do. And initially, only God knows who those people are, because it is an act of God—not an act of man—that brings people into an eternal relationship with him.

From this article in the Washington Times, Tim Keller says:

Think of [those Christian] people you consider to be fanatical. They’re overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive and harsh. Why? It’s not because they are too Christian but because they are not Christian enough. They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, empathetic, forgiving, or understanding—as Christ was.

Charlton Heston, known best perhaps as the actor who played Moses in “The Ten Commandments” (my all time favorite movie) and who met Jesus face-to-face in “Ben Hur,” died Saturday night at his Beverly Hills home. He was 84.

This illuminating article features a new study which shows that unchurched Americans actually prefer churches that look more like a medieval cathedral over contemporary church buildings.

In an article entitled 21st Century Apologetics, Anthony Sacramone reviews Keller’s book The Reason for God. He writes:

When C.S. Lewis crafted the radio talks that became his now classic work of apologetics Mere Christianity, carefully constructed arguments and analogies culled from the miscellany of common experience were his chosen tools of persuasion. But in an ADHD world in which factoids supplant facts, rage overrides reason, and the sui generis self knows none of the permanent things, how does the Christian soul-winner keep cool, engage the easily distracted, and defend the faith without sounding defensive? Timothy Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, shows how in his new book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.

Leadership Journal recently interviewed David Anderson, John M. Buchanan, R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Rick Warren, and me on Biblical authority and today’s preacher. This is their intro:

In the October 15, 1956 inaugural issue of Christianity Today, founder Billy Graham authored an article, “Biblical Authority in Evangelism.” Over 50 years later, Leadership’s Angie Ward interviewed five respected American preachers about what’s changed, if anything, in light of today’s culture. We offer excerpts from Graham’s original article, along with comments by these leaders. Their insights help us understand our world so we can better touch our culture with the gospel.

Read the whole interview here.

There is nothing glamorous about writing a book. In fact, it can get downright ugly at times. Yesterday was one of those “ugly” days. As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, I’m writing my second book for Multnomah entitled Unfashionable. The thesis is that Christians make a difference in this world by being different from this world; they don’t make a difference by being the same. And my concern is that many young Christian’s are entirely too fascinated with “fitting in” and so we’re not making the difference in the world that we could be making. 

Speaking comes much more naturally to me than writing does. But I have a book to write, and so I wrote. Here is a portion of what I struggled to get on paper yesterday (bear with me, it’s a very rough draft):

Not long ago I was asked by the women in our church to come and speak to them about the role of the Bible in the life of the Christian. I began by saying that when it comes to the Bible, most Christian people do not struggle with its reliability. In other words, we believe it is the Word of God. It is not, as some might claim, a man-made book. Rather, it is a God-made book. “All Scripture is breathed out by God,” 2 Timothy 3:16 says. This means that even though God employed various human writers (Moses, David, Isaiah, Paul) God is the Bible’s ultimate author. God-selected human writers wrote precisely what God wanted them to write so that what we have is exactly what God intended us to have. Furthermore, Christians have affirmed both the Bible’s infallibility (an absolutely sure and safe God-given guide in all matters of life) and its inerrancy (it is entirely true and entirely free from any mistakes). We affirm, in other words, its perfect truthfulness. Where most of us struggle, however, is when it comes to the Bible’s timelessness. We affirm the Bible’s reliability but we struggle with its relevance. What do I mean?

The word “secularization” is a fancy term used by social scientists to identify the process through which God and His Word are relegated to the fringe of what’s important (fashionable) and defining in society. A secularized society is a society that has determined to make what God says socially irrelevant even if it remains personally engaging. It restricts the relevance of God to the private sphere only. This has created, according to Richard John Neuhaus, “a naked public square.” That is, His Word may be alive and well privately but publicly it is dead. God and his Word may be important individually but rather unimportant socially and culturally. How our culture got to this point is a study that goes way beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to say here, however, that we now live in a world that has a bloated sense of human insight. The questions that, in an earlier age, people believed only God could answer we have now placed within human reach. This cultural death of God and His Word can be seen in just about every sector of society: science, technology, politics, economics, art, corporate relationships, and, yes, even amongst professing Christians!

Sadly, many Christians have become just as “secular” as the world around them. We’ve been suckered into thinking that what God has to say is not nearly as relevant as what the world around us is saying. So, even though we may embrace the Bible’s integrity, we have a hard time embracing its sufficiency. After all, the Bible was written over a period of time during which people did not face the unique pressures that we face in our modernized world, nor did they have access to the answers we now have. So, while the Bible contains some good and wise principles, does it really have anything to say about the real life challenges and opportunities we face in the modern world? Does the Bible really speak to life in the 21st century? Many professing Christians, I’m afraid, have concluded that it doesn’t.

For example, in the January 4, 2008 issue of First Things, Mark Ward writes, “Luke Timothy Johnson, New Testament professor at Emory University, has openly admitted what few liberal Christian defenders of homosexuality will: ‘I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us.’”

For some, this example may seem a bit extreme. I don’t think it is. Professor Johnson has simply stated what many professing Christians practice. I’m not old, but I have been a pastor long enough to know that when it comes to the way many Christians think about marriage, parenting, finances, politics, education, career aspirations, ministry, and even worship they do not take their cues first from what the Bible says. Rather, many turn to gurus like Tony Robbins or Dr. Phil or Oprah or Rush Limbaugh. Therapeutic technique, marketing strategies, and the beat of the entertainment world often have far more influence over how we live and choose, what we like and don’t like, than does the Word of God. Like the world around us, we read self-help books, study the latest pop-culture craze, watch MTV, and listen to the experts on everything from how to parent to how to have the most satisfying sex life. In other words, we learn what to value and how to function by absorbing the worldview of our current culture without ever asking, “What does the Bible say about this?”

So in theory we may believe in sola Scriptura, but in practice too many Christians are guided far too often by cultural trends than God’s truth.

I had a conversation recently with an attorney friend who was telling me about one well-known Christian leader who was suing another well-known Christian leader over a disagreement regarding property rights. As he was telling me this, it became painfully clear that this was not an irresolvable issue. Misunderstanding and poor communication seemed to be the real culprit in this situation. My friend, being friends with both of these men, had been asked to be a mediator, getting these two men together so that they could work out their differences. The two men refused to meet with one another and the lawsuit went forward.

At one point in our conversation I asked him, “What has been their response to those passages in the Bible concerning Christians not suing one another?” My friend looked at me and said, grievingly, “Throughout this entire situation, what the Bible says never entered into the discussion.” Puzzled, I asked him to explain. He said, “Tullian, as much as I hate to say it, in my many dealings with Christians, the Bible is all too often ignored completely.”

Sadly, when professing Christians discard the Bible, it prevents them from making a difference in the world because their standard is no different from the world. To make a lasting difference in the world we must think and live differently than the world does. And the place where we learn how to think and live in accordance with God’s ways is in the Bible.   

For three years now my sermons have been airing twice weekly throughout the greater Ft. Lauderdale area on WAFG (the radio station of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church). This week, Godward Living (the radio outreach of New City Church featuring my sermons) began airing on REACH FM every day (9:30am & 12:30am). REACH FM is a network of stations reaching the entire state of Florida. This means that Godward Living will not only be airing twice weekly but twice daily on stations that broadcast to millions of people! You can find station information to pass on to friends or family in other parts of the state here.  You can also listen live on the web daily.

This is a tremendous opportunity, but we need your prayer support. Please pray that Godward Living would be heard and that as a result many would come to a saving knowledge of Christ.

For those who are interested in hearing the unedited, non-radio, most recent sermons you can listen to them or download them for free here.