We have been setting out a peg analogy and the idea of a dominating belief in order to show that there can be major problems in a church even among people that profess to believe. If people believe they are converted and are not, that means that a professing church is functioning according to unbelief. This is destructive to individuals and would not be a biblical church. This is certainly a sign of the spiritual judgment of God. When the Lord withdraws and leaves a people to themselves, they come up with their own idea of what faith and salvation really are. If justification comes through faith and the idea of faith is not biblical, then the results would be obvious. If salvation is not just a deliverance from a future hell but involves a true conversion of all the aspects of the human soul now, then we can see how utterly disastrous that would be to individual souls and to churches. There would be people deceiving themselves into thinking that they were delivered from hell while they were not new creatures in Christ. A person will not be delivered from hell if s/he is not made into a new creature in this life.
In a recent conversion with a person (referred to as person A) these things became very apparent. I was talking to person A about the need to receive grace for salvation. The person became angry. Person A said that they had been told that all a person needed to do was believe in order to be saved. They then said that now I was telling him or her that s/he needed to be saved by grace and that God had to do that. In other words, instead of being taught that salvation comes through faith, that person had the belief that s/he only needed to exercise some form of belief that came from him or her. No change of heart was required for that. The biblical teaching that a person is saved by grace alone through faith alone was not considered. Perhaps this person would have went on thinking that s/he was saved because of an intellectual belief when in fact s/he did not even know the Gospel of grace alone and that it was a work of God. If that person would have joined a church at a later date, it would have been an unconverted being allowed into membership on the profession of faith but it would have been an unbiblical faith. That is deceptive to the individual and harmful to the church. These are important matters.
If the professing church is going to be turned from its present judgment, it must look at the teaching of Scripture on conversion. We need to hear about conversion and we need to think deeply and pray about what conversion is. We need to understand that there is the message of the Gospel, but there is also the conversion of the sinner. A person must be converted from being a child of the devil to a child of the living God. A person must be converted from being one that hates God to one that loves God. Conversion is when a person is turned from a self-centered mind to having the mind of Christ. Conversion is when the heart is turned from being a heart where even the intents of the thoughts of the heart are evil and nothing but evil to one that has intents that love the true God. Conversion is when the whole inward person is changed from living out of pride to one that receives all it obtains from the grace of God. Conversion is when a person is turned from doing all for the honor of self to doing all to the glory of God. Conversion is when a person is turned from the self-life to the life of Christ in the soul. Conversion is when a person is turned from bearing the fruits of the flesh to bearing the fruit of the Spirit. Conversion is when a person is turned from sharing in the life of the world to sharing in the life of God. Conversion is when a person is turned from such self-love that other people are only loved for the sake of self to being enabled to even love enemies. Conversion is when a person is turned from being a temple of idols to being the temple of the living God.
The above list is not exhaustive, but it is an attempt to show that we must learn to take the teaching of the Bible on conversion very seriously. The Bible speaks of people who are truly converted as being new creatures in Christ (II Cor 5:17). The Bible does not know of a salvation from a future hell apart from a person becoming a new creature in Christ. At the risk of sounding arrogant, until churches return to the teaching of Scripture on conversion they will be weak and inept in the spiritual realm. It is God who changes people rather than people changing themselves as the Pharisees evidently believed. People cannot change their own hearts and instill the life of Christ in themselves. People cannot make themselves new creatures. People cannot sanctify themselves because Christ Himself is our sanctification (I Corinthians 1:30-31). As long as the professing church continues to teach of a salvation from hell apart from the conversion of sinners by God Himself to being saints in Christ Jesus the church will continue to be a place where people are damned through the church. How deceptive it is when churches are full of people who hate the true God while they are deceived about loving Him because they have been taught that they are saved from hell while having no idea of what true conversion really is. We should not be surprised that the wrath of God has come upon us in a terrible spiritual famine.
When the focus of modern evangelism is to get people to pray a prayer or walk an aisle in order to escape from hell, we will say things and do things to get them to do that. But if the focus of the church is to see men and women truly converted and become true disciples of Jesus Christ, then the focus in proclaiming the Gospel will be much different. If our focus is on greater numbers in the church and greater numbers through the baptismal waters, our evangelism will be watered down and be nothing but an attempt to get people to go through certain acts. But if we proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a way that knows that people have to be truly converted and to become disciples, then we will preach and teach on sin, true repentance, and what a changed heart and life is really like.
The situation in modern America is dire in the spiritual realm. An analogy from the medical realm might be very useful in pointing this out. Let us imagine that the vast majority of doctors in America stopped treating diseases and began to only treat the symptoms. They begin to think that patients are going to stop coming to them if they tell them the truth about their diseases. So they decide that they will have more patients if they make people feel better and not tell them the truth about their diseases. The patients will be given medication to make them feel better and will receive counseling in order to have a positive outlook on life. They would do nothing but make the patients feel better with promises of what this would mean for the future. The patients would be deceived about reality because of how they felt which when combined with promises of the future they will go on in a deceived state. The symptoms are dealt with so the patient thinks all is well. They patients are given promises about the future based on how they feel rather than the nature of the disease. It would be easy to see that the results of something like this would be catastrophic to the health of the nation as well as trust in doctors.
We live in a time when this is exactly what is going on in the churches of today. People began to feel a bit guilty or think something is wrong and so they attend a local church where the pastor or leaders are concerned about the numbers of people coming. So the person is told positive things and encouraged to keep coming back. Sure enough the person begins to feel better and might even make a profession of faith. After all, s/he feels better and knows new people. What is the problem? The symptoms were dealt with to some degree but not the disease. The disease is still there and is growing though the person feels better. The person thinks that all is well for the future based on the fact that s/he feels better now. Whenever some doubt begins to creep in, they are told to remember a prayer they prayed or a decision they made at some point in the past that inoculates them against all doubt.
The professing church (orthodox ones also) is taking people and is only treating (though not in truth) their symptoms. But the radical disease of sin is not being dealt with by the teaching of true repentance and true conversion. We can imagine what we would do if a doctor told us that we have a disease and it must be cut out if we are going to live. We might get a second opinion, but we would not settle for a person that told us to just take a few pills and live better. Yet when the Great Physician of souls tells us that unless we are converted and become like little children we will not enter the kingdom (Mat 18:1-3), we are satisfied with a few pills of a prayer and perhaps some behavior modification. The Great Physician of souls tells us that we must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven and we are again satisfied with a few prayers and some behavior modification.
The professing church in the modern day is much like a helper to a physician that would tell the patients that come to the office that all that they needed was in the office and they needed to apply it to themselves. The medicine is set out and they are told to believe that the medicine will work and they need to learn to apply it themselves. The patient might wonder about this since the physician is trained to apply medicine and the patient is utterly ignorant of these things. But the patient is simply told to believe and it will be applied that way. What if a patient went to a heart surgeon and was told to give him or herself a new heart? In much the same way people are being told that about salvation today. Instead of telling them that they need to go to the Physician of souls who alone can change hearts and who alone can apply the balm to the souls and salve to the eyes, people are told to apply salvation to themselves. They are told just to believe that the Physician can do it and to believe that He has done it. What they need to do is to go to the Physician and ask Him to treat their diseases. He alone can cut out that old heart and give them a new one. He alone can take out their old mind and give them a new one. He alone can begin to treat their disease by causing them to die to the disease itself. Sin is not to be suppressed but it is to be cut out by the Physician. Until the professing church learns to point people to the Physician for radical surgery and not tell people that they are to cure themselves by the medicine made available, the disease of sin will be rampant.
God Loves... Himself 
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