Since 2010 I have been studying the RED LETTERS with a deep and longing desire to know for sure what Jesus taught about being His disciple. There are so many messages out their today from a universalist view that we can live as we please to the greasy grace doctrines of all is forgiven so live life the way you choose after all Gods Grace covers it all. I know that I can do nothing whatsoever to earn my salvation yet at the same time I was haunted by the words, “depart from Me for I never knew you”.
The group of men I have been blessed to mentor/disciple and I are about to engage in David Platt’s study series from his book “Follow me. A Call to Die. A Call to Live. I have already read the book and much like Radical, I believe David does a good job at causing his readers to search the scriptures with regard to being a true disciples and not be found in the masses of deceived people, who think they are disciples. For those who only desire a comfortable, sacrifice free life, enjoying the pleasures of this world with no true desire to be ruled over, this book will anger you. For those of you who desire a deeper understanding into what it means to live the life of a true disciple of Jesus Christ, this book will help you on that road.
Below is an excerpt from the first chapter. Enjoy:
WHAT ABOUT BELIEF?
Amid this emphasis on the cost of following Jesus, you might wonder about passages in the Bible where it seems that salvation involves simple belief. Jesus tells Nicodemus that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Paul and Silas tell the Philippian jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” According to the book of Romans, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Based on these passages, you might conclude that believing in Jesus is all that’s involved in becoming or being a Christian. This is absolutely true, but we must consider context in order to understand what the Bible means by belief. When Jesus calls Nicodemus to believe in him, he is calling Nicodemus to be born again— to begin an entirely new life devoted to following him. Likewise, when the Philippian jailer believes in Christ, he knows that he is joining a community of Christians who are being beaten, flogged, and imprisoned for their faith .
The cost of following Christ is clear.
In the same way, Paul tells the Roman Christians that to believe in the saving resurrection of Jesus from the dead is to confess the sovereign lordship of Jesus over their lives. In each of these verses (and scores of others like them), belief in Jesus for salvation involves far more than mere intellectual assent. After all, even demons “believe” that Jesus is the crucified and resurrected Son of God. Such “belief” clearly doesn’t save, yet such “belief” is common across the world today. Just about every intoxicated person I meet on the street says he “believes” in Jesus.
Scores of people I meet around the world, including some Hindus, animists, and Muslims, profess some level of “belief” in Jesus. All kinds of halfhearted, world-loving church attenders confess “belief” in Christ. We can all profess publicly belief that we don’t possess personally, even ( or should I say especially) in the church. Hear the shouts of the damned in Matthew 7 as they cry, “Lord, Lord!” Jesus replies to them, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Clearly, people who claim to believe in Jesus are not assured eternity in heaven. On the contrary, only those who obey Jesus will enter his Kingdom.
As soon as I write that, you may perk up and ask, “David, did you just say that works are involved in our salvation?” In response to that question, I want to be clear: that is not what I am saying. Instead, it’s what Jesus is saying. Now I want to be very careful here, because we could begin to twist the gospel into something it’s not. Jesus is not saying that our works are the basis for our salvation. The grace of God is the only basis of our salvation— a truth we will explore further in the next chapter. But in our rush to defend grace, we cannot overlook the obvious in what Jesus is saying here (and in many other places as well): only those who are obedient to the words of Christ will enter the Kingdom of Christ. If our lives do not reflect the fruit of following Jesus, then we are foolish to think that we are actually followers of Jesus in the first place.
DANGEROUSLY DECEIVED
Consider a recent study which found that four out of five Americans identify themselves as Christians. In this group of self-proclaimed Christians, less than half of them are involved in church on a weekly basis. Less than half of them actually believe the Bible is accurate, and the overwhelming majority of them don’t have a biblical view of the world around them.
The pollsters went even deeper, though, to identify men and women who are described as “born-again Christians” (as if there is any other kind). These are people who say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus and who believe they will go to heaven because they have accepted Jesus as their Savior. According to the research, almost half of Americans are “born-again Christians.” But out of this group of “born-again Christians,” researchers found that their beliefs and lifestyles are virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the world around them.
Many of these “born-again Christians” believe that their works can earn them a place in heaven, others think that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, some believe Jesus sinned while he was on earth, and an ever-increasing number of “born-again Christians” describe themselves as only marginally committed to Jesus. Many people have used this data to conclude that Christians are really not that different from the rest of the world. But I don’t think this interpretation of the research is accurate. I think the one thing that is abundantly clear from these statistics is that there are a whole lot of people in the world who think they are Christians but are not.
There are a whole lot of people who think that they’ve been born again, but they are dangerously deceived. Imagine you and I set up a meeting for lunch at a restaurant, and you arrive before I do. You wait and wait and wait, but thirty minutes later, I still haven’t arrived. When I finally show up, completely out of breath, I say to you, “I’m so sorry I’m late. When I was driving over here, my car had a flat tire, and I pulled over on the side of the interstate to fix it. While I was fixing it, I accidentally stepped into the road, and a Mack truck going about seventy miles per hour suddenly hit me head-on. It hurt, but I picked myself up, finished putting the spare tire on the car, and drove over here.” If this were the story I shared, you would know I was either deliberately lying or completely deceived. Why? Because if someone gets hit by a Mack truck going seventy miles per hour, that person is going to look very different than he did before!
In light of this, I feel like I’m on pretty safe ground in assuming that once people truly come face-to-face with Jesus, the God of the universe in the flesh, and Jesus reaches down into the depth of their hearts, saves their souls from the clutches of sin, and transforms their lives to follow him, they are going to look different. Very different. People who claim to be Christians while their lives look no different from the rest of the world are clearly not Christians. Such deception is not just evident in the United States; it’s prevalent around the world. As I was praying through the countries of the world recently, I came across Jamaica, a country that is supposedly almost 100 percent Christian. The prayer guide I use made this statement about Jamaica: “It enjoys one of the world’s highest number of churches per square mile, but the majority of self-proclaimed Christians in Jamaica neither attend church nor lead a Christian life.”
As I read this, my heart was overcome by the unavoidable conclusion that multitudes of men and women in Jamaica think they are Christians when they are not. They join scores of people in countries around the world who call themselves Christians yet don’t follow Christ. Spiritual deception is dangerous— and damning. Any one of us can fool ourselves. We are sinful creatures, biased in our own favor, prone to assume that we are something when we are not. The Bible says that the god of this world (Satan) is blinding the minds of unbelievers to keep them from knowing Christ Couldn’t it be that one of the ways the devil is doing this is by deceiving people into believing they are Christians when they are not?
Platt, David (2013-02-05). Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live.
Radical Disciples - A Remnant Revolution 