Are You Really Saved?: Understanding Sin, Grace, Salvation and Sanctification

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Section One

The Crisis We Face

Many who call themselves Christians live in a state of confusion and denial. We live in the twilight: a place somewhere between light and darkness; a place somewhere between sin and holiness or comfort and sacrifice; and for some a place between thoughts of eternal salvation and eternal damnation, wondering our fate.

The Bible teaches us that the believer’s life should be visibly distinct from the life of a pagan, yet often the two lives look all too similar. The Bible also teaches us that born-again believers can have the assurance of eternal life. But far too many self-professed believers live in one of two dangerous states: the first is a state of false conversion; the second a state of constant fear, wondering if we truly are saved--or just deceiving ourselves.

This confusion is seized by Satan to draw us away from God. His agenda is to confuse us further, letting us think we are saved when in reality we are not. This renders us ineffective in sharing the gospel with others. As we draw away from the one who rescued us, guilt and shame settle in. We live a life void of true joy and contentment; a life without power or visible transformation. Our light becomes a dim bulb to the world instead of being the bright light Jesus calls us to be. Our lives become an endless cycle of sin, guilt, disappointment and an ineffective testimony for God. We cannot share the gospel with the lost because our lives are an empty testimony to the God who saved us. We look more like the lost we seek to reach than we do true believers walking in joyful victory.

Deep down, we begin to give up, believing we will never live the life the Bible teaches us we can live. Paul learned to be content no matter his circumstances. We are only content when everything goes our way. On the outside we fake a joyful state. We say all the right things: God is good. He is in control. I can do all things in Christ Jesus. But deep down our frail hearts belie our empty words. We become conflicted because we feel defeated while we tell our Christian friends that we carry the joy of The Lord in our hearts. No wonder we are ineffective witnesses of the gospel! Our mind and heart cannot handle the contradictions between our words and our deeply held beliefs.

There is a better way. The Bible teaches us that life can be a walk of victory and joy in spite of the trials that life and an enemy bent on destroying us throw at us. This life of joy is dependent on a couple of truths we must not only accept but understand. The first one is believing--truly believing--that the Bible is the Word of God, eternally true and always sufficient with all we need to know.

Romans 8:37-39

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul is giving believers the greatest hope and promise we could ever desire--that once we truly come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ we are saved and able to overcome anything Satan and this world throws at us. When we come to believe this with every fiber of our mind and heart, everything changes. Life’s problems become blessings waiting in the wings. Instead of spinning into depression when problems arrive, we anticipate how God will deliver us from today’s problems that seek to steal our confidence and joy. Our words and beliefs are no longer in conflict—our faith grows!

The Bible gives us every answer to every question men raise about living in this fallen world. Yet many Christians treat the Bible like an internet search engine--looking for a quick bit of information to an immediate question or problem. Instead it should be a book we cannot put down; one that we read, learn and study, hiding its wisdom and truth in our hearts, and searing it in our minds. But many Christians spend far more time reading the local newspaper or a fiction novel than we spend in God’s Word. This begs the question: How can we claim to love God more than anything yet know more about football, sitcoms or politics than we know about Him and His desires for our lives? Does He consume the majority of your thought and attention when you are not sleeping or working? Or is He an afterthought?

Romans 12:2

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect.

Understanding God’s Law of Causality and the three thought processes available to us will engage this transformation and renewal of our mind. The grace of God will flow upon us and lead us to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.

It is our fallen human nature to desire the greatest reward with the least amount of sacrifice necessary. We continually look for instant reward that will cost us little or nothing. We see the world around us unraveling because of this selfish attitude. We spend for today’s pleasures with little or no acknowledgment of the long term financial crisis we are leaving our children. We destroy our marriages because we pursue sex without responsibility, resulting in pornography and prostitution becoming lucrative businesses for peddlers of flesh. In the wake of this destructive thought process, we are witnessing the destruction of the family unit that God teaches us is profitable to man and glorifying to God.

These problems are effects of a faulty thought process in fallen man. And one should probably expect this from fallen man--but certainly not from God’s children. We are called to be a holy people, and light and salt to this fallen world. Sadly the church seems to excuse or even support these sad effects when we see that the life of many professing Christians differs little from pagans. When we as Christians understand Cause and Effect, and learn how the Holy Spirit will lead us to utilize a Godly thought process, everything can change. The church can once again become what the Lord desires of it: A place for believers to be equipped to edify and build up one another in truth and love; and a church that shares the gospel of salvation effectively to lost people that are increasingly desperate for meaning and answers.

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. '

Jesus' warning is so profound that it demands we examine our lives against the Word of God—or risk eternal consequences. The stakes are just too high to remain dependent on what we hear at church or read in a book other than the bible.

I have only been a born again believer for fifteen years. For the first forty-five years of my life, I thought I knew who God was and was feeling pretty good about my chances of going to heaven based on two assumptions: I was baptized as a baby into the Roman Catholic Church and I had not committed a mortal sin. Never mind that I had never heard the gospel message explained, I spent my young adult years drinking and having indiscriminate sex, and became an adulterer, leaving my first wife when my children were still young. I was convinced that I was going to heaven.

But God still loved and called me. And on Easter Sunday, 1999--in of all places a United Church of Christ--God firmly convicted me of the fact that I really didn't know Him and that I was a lost, hopelessly sinful man.

In these fifteen years God has blessed me far beyond anything I could ever imagine, and I will sprinkle examples throughout this book. Suffice for now to say He has blessed me by calling me to serve and lead a Christian Radio Station for the past twelve years. And for the last four years, He has allowed me to host a daily Christian talk show--Stand Up For the Truth--that tackles tough, sometimes controversial issues facing the Body of Christ.

Throughout this amazing journey, He has blessed me by connecting me with thousands of Christians. Some are men so thoroughly grounded in the Word of God, and following God so closely that they would probably prefer I not draw attention to them by sharing their names.

I have talked with thousands of Christians who asked great questions and shared wonderful testimonies. I looked at each encounter as a chance to grow in God, taking their experiences and stories to the Word of God to learn more about how God interacts with His children through the ups and downs of this life.

Throughout the thousands of personal discussions, Bible and accountability studies, and phone calls and email inquiries from our radio show, I noticed a disturbing pattern among Christians. We have a lot more questions than answers regarding crucial issues about God and our lives as His children in this world. Many of us experience major fluctuations in our mental and spiritual condition, dependent on our daily circumstances. When things are going our way, life is wonderful, I am blessed and God is good. However when life is not working out according to my plan, life is difficult and God seems to be a distant and unconcerned God. The reality is God is never changing, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. (Hebrews 13:8). This should be a tremendous comfort to us as His children for several reasons we will cover later.

I would read the promises God made in His Word about how He would never abandon us; how He would always provide for us; and how He would give us a peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7). But hardly any of us walk in continuous peace or victory. Something was missing.

So I started journaling conversations and meetings. I took notes from every radio show we broadcasted. And I sought out biblical wisdom by reading the Word of God and learning from Christian men wiser than me. I noticed that many Christians seemed to fall into two different camps: Progressive or Fundamental.

Progressive Christians have downplayed the importance of biblical doctrine, giving rebirth to the latest version of Gnosticism--a heresy Paul addressed repeatedly. Sin is redefined into a personal choice, applying individual morality rather than the Word of God. This is a form of New Humanism that attempts to blend Christianity into the ways of this world.

However fundamental Christians carry our own guilt, often blindly attacking things because we have not taken the time to really understand the Word of God. One challenge we face as fundamental Bible-believing Christians is that our passion for the purity and truth of God’s Word leads us to become incredibly self-righteous at times. We go out of our way to find fault in others when our real intention in doing so is to deflect a critique of our own life as a Christian.

We also hold others to a higher standard than we would ever be willing to be held to by God. The truth is we sometimes hold our beliefs up as the Standard of Excellence that all others must be compared against, instead of holding it up to the Word of God. When we use our personal beliefs and interpretations as the plumb line for good or evil, we assume to be God. For example if I do not believe the gifts of the Spirit (tongues, healing, signs, etc.) are still active these days, the tendency is to automatically paint myself as right and those that disagree as wrong. We also take our arguments and beliefs to the extreme, looking to prove our opponent is wrong with illogical arguments.

Case in point: Todd Bentley, who I critiqued in my last book, is clearly unbiblical in his teachings on signs and wonders. But does that automatically mean that everyone who believes in signs and wonders from God is also unbiblical? Should we use Todd Bentley’s history of unbiblical teaching to paint everyone else that believes in signs and wonders as heretics?

Another example is the Word of Faith movement. There are clearly unbiblical false teachings by some in the extreme of this movement. Does that mean everyone who believes that faith is a crucial ingredient to answered prayer is a heretic? If you answer yes you are ignoring the very Bible itself that teaches us about the prayer of a double-minded man (James 1:6-8). This is where learning the wisdom and complete context of God’s Word is crucial. When someone says we need faith to allow God to answer our requests, we need to ask the deeper follow-up question: Faith in what? Faith that God is capable of answering my prayer within His perfect will? Or faith that God will have to answer my prayer as I desire because of my faith? The first one is biblically correct; the second is wrong teaching, thinking we can manipulate God.

Both Progressive Christianity and extreme Fundamental Christianity can be dangerous.

So in summary, the crisis we face as Christians is confusion because we have not taken the Word of God seriously. We have memorized quick little sound bites from the Word and falsely built an entire doctrine around these select few verses. We rely too much on the teachings of others instead of spending serious time reading what God Himself teaches us through His Word. If we begin to take God and His Word seriously, understanding it in proper context and applying its wisdom to our lives, we will find that peace that surpasses all human understanding. Everything in our lives will change!

Understanding God’s Law of Causality and our available thought processes brings everything into proper biblical focus.

The Crisis of the Church

I am convinced that the crisis we face is actually a pretty simple one. It comes down to the very fundamentals of the Christian faith. But this simple crisis leads to virtually every problem we face, from our doctrinal disputes to understanding how to survive and thrive in this life as we await God’s final redemption of this fallen world. If we can find the correct biblical answers to these questions, life will make complete sense and believers will find true joy, peace and contentment, regardless of our temporary circumstances:

Who is God? (His complete nature and characteristics)

Who is man before he is miraculously saved by God?

Who is man after he has come into a saving relationship with God?

What is grace? (The biblical definition, not the modern belief)

This is the gospel! If we do not teach it in its entirety we do not teach it at all. The failure to share the complete gospel is the reason that, though the number of self-professed Christians swells, the number of true disciples continues to decrease. The saddest thing about this is that many false converts are convinced they have been saved, and because they do not think contrastively, they are unwilling to entertain the possibility that they are false converts.

Obviously these questions raise more questions such as How can I know if I am truly saved? How does sin affect the believer or unbeliever? Why do bad things happen to God’s beloved children? These are secondary questions, easily answered when we find the correct answers to the four primary questions.

If every church taught the correct biblical answers to these four fundamental questions, we would become an irresistible force, attracting lost sinners and seeing miraculous conversions, and watching Christians become disciples of Jesus Christ.

We might think we already know the correct answers to these four primary questions. And some people do. You can tell by the way they live regardless of their current circumstances. You would never know if they were healthy or facing imminent death. You would never know if they are rich or poor. And you would never know if they are riding high or facing serious challenges. They would constantly exhibit peace and joy, bearing much fruit for God.

But interestingly, I have been conducting a private poll over the last six months regarding the fourth question, What is grace? I have asked 61 people to give me the biblical definition of grace, and only 3 have given the definition the Bible gives. Many of these I asked are pastors. If we do not understand how God defines grace—the thing that saves us--how can we know that we have truly received it? These are the fundamental issues we will discuss in this book.

Let’s be honest, even the best of believers will face challenging times. But we will not wallow in self pity very long. After a brief period, we will return to a state of peace and joy because we can correctly answer our four primary questions. Once we know these answers, life’s problems become opportunities for growing in the grace and knowledge of God (2 Peter 3:18). Therein lays the deeper beauty--when we know the fundamental answers to these four primary questions, our hearts and minds are open to an even greater understanding of God and ourselves. We will grow in wisdom, able to share the love and grace of God with those we know. We will become effective ambassadors of the gospel.

Because many churches cannot give the correct biblical answers to these fundamental questions, everything else they teach is built on a faulty foundation. When we do not understand who God really is—His nature and character—we struggle to explain why bad things happen to good people; why prayers go unanswered; and why Christians struggle with the same issues as unbelievers.

When we cannot explain the nature and character of God, we are left chasing after a God we truly would not recognize if we did see Him. Remember the Pharisees did not recognize Jesus as the Son of God and Messiah. We are forced to rely on our own beliefs and image of who we think God is. In effect we become the blind leading the blind—just like the Pharisees that Jesus rebuked constantly. And like these Pharisees we become too proud to ever admit we could be wrong. We add sin upon sin.

Pastors and Bible teachers have a special calling and responsibility before God. We will be held accountable for everything we teach others and how we shepherd them. If we are faithful and point them to God as He reveals Himself in the Bible, we will be double-blessed. But if we lead others to stumble because of our error and pride we will be doubly-responsible for our error.

Pastors and Bible teachers would be wise to invoke a contrastive rather than comparative thought process. A comparative process is one where when we are challenged we dig our heels in, rejecting any questioning of our thought process or prior conclusions, hoping to prove ourselves right and the other person wrong. It is based in pride. A contrastive thought process is one where we enter a discussion or conflict hoping to learn and be corrected in any wrong beliefs or conclusions we have arrived at previously. We hope to profit from something we learn and become a more faithful teacher of the Word in order to bless others. It is based in humility. But to utilize a contrastive thought process, one must first be willing to admit we could be wrong. If we are unwilling to entertain the possibility that we could be wrong, we build a self-made prison of pride that will come down around us one day.

We are witnessing Christian Cults forming right before our eyes. Some mega church pastors are demanding blind allegiance to themselves, telling their members that if they dare question the church leader, they are sinning against God. Some are insisting members sign pledges to not question leadership or their vision. This means church members are pledging to follow men, not God.

Acts 5:27-29

And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest questioned them, saying 'We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us. But Peter and the apostles answered 'We must obey God rather than men'"

Jesus Christ, not your pastor, is your shepherd. Your pastor and elders are the stewards God has entrusted your teaching and guidance to, and they will be held accountable for their stewardship. We must never blindly follow or trust any man. Everything taught must be compared to the teachings of the Bible. We must find the courage and love to respectfully challenge anything we are taught that we do not understand or that might seem to conflict with a proper contextual reading of the Bible. When your pastor or church lays out its vision respectfully point out that the vision of the church is already clearly spelled out by Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20—-baptize people and make them disciples of Jesus Christ.

But those challenging pastors and Bible teachers must also be humble in their challenges. We must have no comparative agenda when questioning a teacher. We must also be willing to admit the possibility that we could be wrong in our challenge or rebuke.

When all members of a church are dedicated to the Word of God and think contrastively, guess what happens? True Christian Fellowship! Everyone grows in the knowledge and grace of God (2 Peter 3:18). The church starts behaving like the church was ordained.

Should our churches be one way conversations where whatever the pastor or teacher says goes unquestioned? Or is a more profitable model one where the members are encouraged to respectfully challenge one another using a contrastive thought process? This of course must be done with proper order as Paul taught the early church or else chaos would come about. Even Paul’s teachings were studied by the Bereans to make sure they were consistent with the written Word.

These are issues church leadership must wrestle with because a schism is upon us whether we wish it or not. Many Christians are content to just attend church an hour a week, sip their coffee, hear a shallow sermon laced with a little scripture, and go back to the world feeling entertained. But there is a rising minority that is hungry for the full counsel of God, wanting to go deeper in understanding and wisdom. Church leadership will eventually also have to decide whether to submit to the edicts of the world about what church will be—or submit to God’s plan for the church. With the advent of hate speech and even hate thought crime legislation, the day will soon come when American churches face the same decision as the church in Nazi Germany faced. As Hitler consolidated power and became Fuehrer, he gave the churches a mandate: Either do what I say and teach what I tell you or your charter as a church will be withdrawn. Sadly most capitulated to his demand and many churches in America probably will also, because they value their tax exempt status and the love of man more than they do the purity of God and His Word.

But there is a simple solution: Back to the basics of the Word. Jesus told the parable of a merchant who found a pearl of great value, and sold everything he owned to purchase it (Matthew 13:45). Do we treat the Word of God as a precious pearl? Or like a used magazine?

When we search for the deeper understanding and wisdom of the Word that God wants to give us, our eyes are opened to His perfect justice, righteousness, love and grace. Our lives change as challenges of this world become mole hills rather than mountains. We live and carry out God’s will in this lifetime while keeping our eyes and hearts firmly focused on eternity.

The crisis the church faces is not just a pastoral problem. We who are members share equally in any blame that can be assigned. We must return to the basics, starting by defining just what church should be according to the Bible. We must understand and teach who God is according to His Word, not our wishful thoughts.

We will explore these four fundamental questions a little later. But in order to answer them correctly according to the Word of God, we must first understand a principle that God Himself put in place to govern His creation--The Principle of Cause and Effect.

Questions/Thoughts

*How do you learn to understand the Word of God? Are you depending solely on the opinions of others?

*How much time per week do you spend in the Word of God?

*Do you have a close group of Christian friends you can confide in and trust?

*When is the last time you felt personally challenged by a sermon you heard in church?

Section Two

God’s Principle of Cause and Effect

What, Why, How Models

Imagine a world where everything just happened at random, with no order. No laws of science governing gravity or energy. Chaos would reign. God is a God of order, not chaos. Events do not happen randomly. Every effect always has a cause. This is referred to as the Law of Causality.

Causality is the relation between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is understood as a consequence