Do You Truly Believe?

When God saved me, He did it through my hearing a sermon on Matthew chapter 7. Particularly one portion of that chapter.

Matthew 7:21-23 “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.’”

I had grown up in a wonderful church. I regularly heard the Gospel proclaimed and I had the head knowledge of Christ crucified. But there was no transformation present. I had no real love for God or for His word. In my mind, I was saved because I had walked an aisle and said a prayer.

That is why Matthew 7 crushed me. Because it completely demolished the view that I had of my salvation and works righteousness. At age 33, I realized for the first time in my life that I was that man who would have heard Jesus say to me, “I never knew you.”

God saved me through that brokenness. God called me to proclaim the Gospel to the nations in Panama out of that brokenness. And eventually, the Lord called me into full time pastoral ministry out of that brokenness.

And to this day, that passage in Matthew chapter 7 still haunts me. Because I never want to wear a religious garb in the pulpit and be a different person outside of the church. I don’t want to be one of those preachers that nit pick the lives and Christianity of others in order to make myself look more pious.

Because of Matthew 7, I am consistently made aware of my own sins and need of repentance. And it makes it almost impossible for me to hold a self righteous view of others. I believe the Apostle Paul realized this in his own life. He called himself the chief of sinners. God saved a terrorist like Paul so that no one could ever say, “My sin is too great for God’s grace to overcome.”

Even in writing this, I do not want it to come across as me saying, “I have arrived.” As Paul would say, by no means. I see more and more of my great need for God’s grace and forgiveness in my life daily. I am so prone to forget the promises of God and the goodness of the Gospel and to seek fulfillment in my own ways. As Martin Luther once said, I need to preach the Gospel to myself every day, because I forget it every day.

Recently, I began to ask myself why Christianity in particular was filled with so much extreme hypocrisy. Why do we hear so many stories of pastors who disqualify themselves from ministry because of moral failures? Why do we see so many people file into churches each week with smiles, saying things like “God is so Good” and “Jesus is my rock” only to get in their cars and not open their Bibles again until the next Sunday?

Over and over in the Gospel, we read Jesus preaching on repentance and belief as the only means to salvation. As Christians we understand repentance, or at least the definition. Repentance is a change of mind that leads to a change of action. It is a turning from sin.

But we often skim over the believe portion of Jesus commands. It is so easy for us to say to ourselves, “I believe in Jesus.” But we have to ask, what does it mean to truly believe something? Imagine that you were relaxing in your home one weekend. All of the sudden, you realized that your home was on fire. You believe that your house in going to burn down, because you see the proof of the fire right before your eyes.

And because you believe that you and your family are in danger, your actions change. No longer are your lounging in your recliner, but rather you are frantically exerting all of your energy to see that you and your family get out of the house safely. Your actions follow your belief.

Now imagine that you run into your living room and scream to your spouse, “The house is on fire!” And your spouse replies, “Wow, I can smell the smoke and see the fire, and I agree we need to evacuate!” But instead of moving, they continue to lay there watching the television. You would have to say one of two things; Either your spouse is going insane, or they truly do not believe what they have professed to have seen with their eyes.

This is sadly the pattern we see in Christianity more times than not. People who will say all of the right things about their belief in Christ, but behind closed doors, they live their lives as if there were no Gospel at all. Their profession of believe is in word only.

In Mark 1:15, Jesus commands us to repent and believe the Gospel. He commands us to change our actions. And our belief that the Gospel is true becomes the catalyst to our repentance.

Here is what I am saying. If we truly believe that the Gospel is true, then our lives, my life, will look radically different. If we believe that the Gospel is true, then no longer will we justify the lack of prayerlessness in our lives. If we believe the Gospel is true, then we will desire obedience to Christ and become horrified at our sins. If we believe that the Gospel is true, then we will see eternal souls in our interactions with others and be concerned over their salvation. If we believe the Gospel is true, then our obsession with materialism and worldly trinkets would fade, and the great commission and making Christ known would become our obsession.

Do you believe, I mean truly believe, that Christ is risen from the dead and that He now rules and reigns over all things at the right side of God the Father? Do you truly believe that the day will come when you stand before Him to give an account?

Before answering yes too quickly, ask yourself if you are professing belief, yet still sitting comfortably in a burning house. We can so easily deceive ourselves. If we truly believe the Gospel, then actions such as repentance, prayer, and pressing in to His word will be the natural actions that follow.

We all go through times of spiritual dryness. We all go through times of putting on the mask of belief while living a life that does not match that confession. But in those times, we need to be reminded of the truth of the Gospel. We need to be reminded that Christ died for our sins. And that we are not justified by our religious activities, but we are saved by Christ and Christ alone.

And in that salvation, something supernatural takes place. Jesus changes our hearts to actually be concerned. In Christ, we now have a heart that desires to walk in obedience to Him, and that grows more and more to hate the sin in our lives. True belief is accompanied by a change of heart that leads to a change in thinking and in action.

Jesus said in Matthew 7 that many people would stand before Him claiming Christ as their Lord, expecting to be granted eternal life in Heaven. These people justified their profession with their external religious activities. But Jesus responded and said, “I never knew you.”

Matthew 15:8 “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;”

I never want to be the man who professes Jesus with my lips, yet possesses a heart that is far from Him. I don’t want to profess a belief that holds no passion. And I don’t want any one else to be that self deceived person either. As the Apostle Paul said, we should be those who constantly examine themselves to see if they are truly in the faith. To see if their profession of belief in Christ has the fruit of daily repentance to back up their claim.

When you read the commands of Christ to repent and believe, realize that repentance can never be genuine unless your heart has first been pierced that a belief in Jesus that has dramatically changed how you think about your life.  If you do not get the Gospel right, then what you have done is restrain the hearts of people, and their hearts will not be transformed. Someone with a belief that is in profession only without a real change of heart is a person that has conformed to a pattern of religion but has not been transformed by the Holy Spirit. If your belief in the Gospel is merely an empty profession, then you have given yourself just enough of Jesus to never truly know Him. There is a distinct difference in knowing some facts about Jesus, and truly knowing Him. And if you truly know Him, your life cannot help but be transformed.