Salvation Summaries

Acts 26:28-29 28 Then Agrippa said to Paul, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?” 29 Paul replied, “Short time or long– I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.” (NIV)

Are you a Christian?

Many of you who are reading this would likely answer “yes.” After all, religious surveys consistently show that most Americans are Christian. A 2015 Pew Research Center report, for example, says that 70.6% of American adults describe themselves as Christian(1). In a 2012 Gallup report, 77.3% of American adults “identify with the Christian religion” (2). And according to a 2011 Barna report, “roughly four out of five” Americans consider themselves to be Christians (3).

But there’s a big problem with these surveys. Just because they show most Americans as Christians does not mean that most are Christian.  I believe the percentage of what I will call “Biblical” Christians is not only lower, but much lower.  If this is true, an untold number of people who believe that they are a Christian – and thus expect to go to heaven when they die – may not be Christian, and heaven may not be their final destination. I’ll give you three reasons for this.

Reason 1: Saying you are a Christian does not make you one

Let me start with an analogy to help make my first point.

Let’s say a research organization asks you to participate in a 10-question survey on religion, and one of the questions is: “Are you a good person? Yes or no?” How would you respond? You would say “yes,” right?  And how many other people, do you think, would answer it the same way?  Correct. Most would.

There’s a problem with this answer though.  According to the Bible, no one is good.  Not some, or a few, but none (Romans 3:10, NLV).

So, here we have a situation where most people say one thing, but the truth is quite different.  The reason for this, of course, is in how one defines “good person.” Most people use their own, subjective view of what a good person is (i.e., they care for others, try to obey the 10 commandments, etc.), but the standard God uses is perfection.

In a similar way, I believe most people today have their own subjective view, or definition, of what a Christian is, but this may not agree with the Bible’s portrayal of one.

If you were bold enough to ask 20 people on the street to define a Christian, what type of responses would you hear?  Some would likely say that a Christian is someone who seeks to be a good person, or to live by the golden rule.  Others might say it’s a person who tries to live by the 10 commandments. A few might say it’s someone who was baptized and goes to church.  While all of these are good to do, none of them makes you a Christian.

Others might say that Christians are defined not by what they do, but what they believe. For them, a Christian is someone who believes in Jesus, believes that Jesus is the Son of God who rose from the dead, or believes in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (or the Trinity). All of these are important beliefs, but a general belief in God, Jesus, or the Trinity doesn’t make you a Christian either. According to the Bible, even the demons believe in Jesus, and they aren’t Christian.

Still others, though likely a minority, might give you a Biblical definition of what a Christian is and truly be one.

My point is that a number of people who claim to be a Christian may not be one if they define a Christian in a way that differs from how the Bible defines one (note: I realize that some surveys may ask you to read a brief definition of a Christian and use it to determine if you are one, but I believe many people will fall back upon their own definition. I also believe that a one sentence definition is insufficient to define what a Christian is).

Reason 2: A relationship must exist between who you claim to be and what you believe

To be a Christian, there are certain things you must believe to be true. What are these?

A good place to start is the Apostles and Nicene creeds, which were developed in the 3rd and 4th centuries.  These creeds provide a basic outline of Christian beliefs and proclaim the following:

• God the Father is almighty; He made the heavens and the earth
• Jesus is God’s Son; He is one with the Father; He was incarnate, or God in the flesh.
• Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead.
• Jesus has authority to judge the living and the dead.
• The Holy Spirit is the Lord and deserves to be worshiped and glorified.

A Christian must also believe that Jesus has the power to forgive a person’s sins, and that He was without sin, for a Christian – which means a worshiper or follower of Christ – would not worship Christ without believing these things.

We read about this in the gospel books of the Bible, where Jesus came to earth to save sinners. To save sinners (i.e., save means to rescue or deliver a person from God’s wrath and THUS allow that person to receive eternal life), Jesus had to be more than a man; He had to be divine. He had to have the authority and power to actually forgive the sins of His people, and to do this He had to be sinless (for how can a person forgive the sins of another if he also sins?). If you only believe that Jesus was a good teacher who performed miracles, but was not divine or sinless, you can’t be a Christian, for you would be putting your faith in a mere man rather than someone who is divine.

As a result, if most people in this country are truly Christian, most would believe that Jesus was and is God, or that He is otherwise divine, correct?  But according to surveys from some of these same research organizations, this is not what we find.

According to a 2015 Barna report titled, “What Do Americans Believe About Jesus? 5 Popular Beliefs,” only 56% of adults believe that Jesus was God, and 26% say He was a spiritual leader like Mohammed or the Buddha.  Also, 52% of the respondents agreed either strongly or somewhat that Jesus was human and committed sins like other people (4).

If more than half of Americans think that Jesus sinned and nearly half deny His divinity, then 70% – 80% of Americans cannot be biblical Christians.

And, in a 2009 Barna report titled “Most American Christians Do Not Believe that Satan or the Holy Spirit Exist,” 58% either strongly or somewhat agreed that the Holy Spirit is a symbol of God’s power or presence but not a living entity.  Also, 59% either strongly or somewhat agreed that Satan is not a living being but (only) a symbol of evil (5).

Although the creeds do not specifically mention Satan, it is difficult to see how a person can be a Christian and not believe in Satan.  Why?  If Satan doesn’t exist (even though the Bible says he does), then demons wouldn’t exist; and if both don’t exist, there likely isn’t a hell (which is where they were cast according to the Bible); and if there is no hell, there’s no punishment for sin; and if there is no punishment for sin, Jesus didn’t need to come to this earth to save anyone.

If you don’t believe that God is Who He says He is in the Bible, that Jesus is divine and was sinless, that the Holy Spirit is alive (and is part of the Trinity), and that Satan exists, you can’t call yourself a Christian. And yet, some “Christians” in these surveys do just that.

Reason 3: A relationship must exist between who you claim to be and how you live

Most of us have probably heard about or read surveys showing that Christians – despite all of their beliefs – live no differently than non-Christians.  You may even know some who are like this.

It is true that a Christian can live similarly to the way he or she did before being converted (at least for a while), for this is nothing new. We read about this in the New Testament book of James, for instance, where Christians said sinful things, expressed anger, showed personal favoritism and displayed selfish ambition, to name a few. These same behaviors are found, in varying degrees, among Christians today.

But it’s also true that Christians should act differently from non-Christians because of the spiritual change that has taken place within them.  Too many people believe that becoming a Christian is simply a matter of believing in Jesus and/or going to church, but that’s not how it works. When a person becomes a Christian, a spiritual miracle takes place in them, and this changes them forever.  This miracle is receiving God’s Holy Spirit, which changes them from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive, and enables them to live for God rather than self.  For some, this inward, spiritual change leads to an immediate and noticeable change in their way of life.  For others, the outward changes are  gradual and less visible.

In addition, it’s important to realize that, according to the Bible, there are certain lifestyles a person cannot regularly engage in and be a Christian. For example, murderers, idolaters, thieves, drunkards, slanderers, adulterers, the sexually immoral, etc. (you can find this list in 1 Corinthians and Revelation) will not go to heaven (unless they later become a Christian). But there is another lifestyle that is prevalent in our world today, even among so-called Christians, that is incompatible with being a Christian, and it is “worldliness.”  By definition, non-Christians are worldly; Christians are not supposed to be (though spiritually immature Christians can partly be for a time):

1 John 2:15-17 15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world– the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does– comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.  

So, how do we make sense of surveys showing that Christians live no differently from non-Christians?  I believe they can best be explained in the following way.

According to the apostle Paul in the Bible, there are three types of people in this world: non-Christians, spiritually immature Christians, and spiritually mature Christians.  Non-Christians and spiritually immature Christians may act a lot alike, at least for a while (and I admit, for some it might be a long while). But over time, as a spiritually immature person grows in his or her faith, their way of life will change and increasingly diverge from that of non-Christians. Spiritually mature Christians will act differently from non-Christians now and going forward.

Today, I believe we can categorize people in a more detailed way, and have proposed the following classification scheme, though not all Christians may agree with this system or the definitions I used:

1. Atheists – they believe that there is no God
2. Agnostics – they do not know if God exists, and don’t care
3. Other – these people believe in God, but have some false views of Him due to their reliance upon other religious books that contradict some key teachings in the Bible (about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit).
4. “Christian” – these are people who think that they are a Christian, but are not.  You can divide this group into two sub groups. The first has an apathetic-to-casual belief in God. They rarely if ever go to church, and live like the rest of the world. The second believes in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. They may attend church and pray periodically, or even regularly.  However, they have not experienced a spiritual change in their life, and lack true faith in Jesus. As such, they continue to live primarily for self than the Lord, and have not actively sought to separate themselves from the “world.”
5. Spiritually Immature Christian – these are new Christians or others who have not grown in their faith. These people have saving faith in Jesus as their Lord and Savior, have been forgiven of their sins, and received the Holy Spirit. Because their faith is weak, they have not noticeably separated themselves from the “world,” and may struggle between living for self and the Lord. A portion will likely attend church, read their bible, pray on a fairly regular basis, and make some sacrifices in time or money to fulfill what they believe is their Christian duty. Others may be content with their salvation status and not seek to grow by attending church and/or reading their Bible.
6. Spiritually Mature Christian – these people have saving faith in Jesus as their Lord and Savior, have been forgiven of their sins, and received the Holy Spirit. They have grown in their faith, and seek to separate themselves from the world as they try to obey what the Lord wants them to do. They have experienced a marked change in their way of life brought about by the Holy Spirit and their devotion to Bible reading/studying and prayer. They continue to sin less and less, but at the same time are more aware of when they sin and treat it seriously.  They regularly attend church, Sunday School or Bible study, or have regular personal Bible study in an effort to keep growing in their faith and knowledge of the Lord.  They also seek to associate with other believers for fellowship and further spiritual growth. These Christians are willing to make significant sacrifices for the Lord, whether that is time, money or even their life.

As a result, I believe some of the “Christians” in the surveys are not true or biblical Christians, for they act like the world at large, and no spiritual change has taken place within them.  A likely large percentage represents Christians who are spiritually immature and who will act in many ways like non-Christians, at least for a time, for they have not made much progress in breaking away from “the world.” The remainder, a relatively small percentage, are spiritually mature Christians who truly act differently from the world.

Summary

What I have hopefully shown you is that there are many people who believe that they are a Christian – and thus expect to go to heaven when they die – but in reality are not and will not. These people will likely include some of your relatives, friends, co-workers, neighbors…and maybe even you. This mistaken belief about being a true Christian can result from using a subjective rather than biblical definition of what a Christian is, holding onto beliefs that are incompatible with being a Christian, and/or living in a worldly way because no spiritual change has taken place within.

If this describes you, or a person you love, I encourage you to read this book. In it I will tell you – using stories and verses from the Bible – what a Christian is, how to become a Christian, and how to live like one too. I’ll also include several “tests” you can take to determine if you are, or are not, a Christian. Biblical Christians know that becoming a Christian is the greatest thing that can happen to any person on this earth, and it is my desire that this happens to you.