“If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46).

The politician convicted of racketeering tells the press that since Jesus is his Savior, he will be all right.

The businessman who taught a Sunday School class and gave millions to the Lord’s work is convicted of running a Ponzi scheme and swindling millions from people who trusted him.

The  preacher found guilty as a child molester insists that his faith in Jesus will see him through this crisis.

God’s people trying to get this right want to say to them, “Would you just shut up about being a Christian!  This is a time to keep it to yourself. You have not earned the right to go public with your testimony.”

Those who bring shame upon the Lord have no right to a public declaration of faith. Let them repent and “bring forth fruits meet for repentance.”

Are these people Christians?  It’s possible.  God’s people are certainly capable of messing up big time. When that happens, we need to “go back to Bethel” in repentance and then withdraw for a time of spiritual rehabilitation.  .

Are such people effective witnesses for Jesus? Anything but.  They have brought great shame on the Name above all names. The  louder they proclaim their Christianity, the more the world scoffs at their hypocrisy.

How do you suppose the Lord Jesus feels after blistering the hypocrites of His day–the scribes and Pharisees (see Matthew 23)–to know that He has raised a new crop of hypocrites Himself?

He’s not very happy with that, we can be certain.

A hypocrite is someone who makes a claim they do not live up to.  No one is above the temptation to say one thing and do another.

The way we know this is a huge matter with our Lord is by the way He emphasizes again and again the need for an alignment between one’s profession and his actions. Consider the following statements, all from the Upper Room Discourse in the hours before Jesus was arrested in the Garden….

“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:17).

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

“He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me” (John 14:21).

“If anyone loves me, he will keep my word” (John 14:23).

“He who does not love me does not keep my words” (John 14:24).

“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love” (John 15:10).

“You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:14).

Anyone see a trend?

The Lord Jesus ties our identity in Him with our obedience to Him.

Only the obedient love Him.  Only the obedient should claim to know Him.

If you are not obeying Jesus and making a sincere effort to live for Him, your public profession (what we call a testimony) is worthless. In fact, it’s counter productive and does more harm than good.

Just be quiet.

Well, what we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a problem.

We have a generation–untold millions of church members across the world–claiming identity as followers of Jesus Christ but without even a semblance of obedience to His teaching in Scripture.

Read the obituaries.  So  many of the people featured here are said to have gone to Heaven, to have been gathered with the Lord Jesus, to have received their eternal reward.

In the weeks following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, traveling through the most crime-ridden section of the city, I was struck by the large number of churches. Almost every block had a church building and some intersections had houses of worship on every corner. And yet, lawlessness was rampant.  The problem?  So many people have religion but nothing more.

Obedience tells the tale on us.  To the church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul said, “For this purpose I wrote, that I might know the truth of you, whether you are obedient in all things” (2 Corinthians 2:9).

We who are not obeying should not call ourselves followers of Jesus.

We have no right.

In the 8th century B.C., the Lord God spoke through His prophet Isaiah: “Listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth; for the Lord speaks.  Sons I have reared and brought up, but they have revolted against me.  An ox knows its owner, and a donkey its master’s manger, but Israel does not know.  My people do not understand” (Isaiah 1:2-3).

Nearly two full centuries later, God said through His prophet Jeremiah: “The stork in the sky knows her seasons; And the turtledove and the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration; but my people do not know the ordinance of the Lord” (Jeremiah 8:7).

God’s people had rebelled against Him and were as lost as any pagan anywhere.  By “lost,” I refer to “not knowing the way home.”  (On the farm, more than once I got lost in the deep woods.  I was able to get home, but for a while was at a loss as to how.)

We live in a time of ignorance of the Lord’s word.  How can we “keep His commandments” when we don’t even know what they are?  Let us not think for a moment that the “commandments” of which He speaks are the Ten Words of Exodus 20.  Jesus is referring to all the teachings He has given.

We live in a day of profession without possession.  We claim that which we do not practice.  We claim to be what we do not live.  We have the certificates framed on our walls but we know little of our business.

We love the world and live like the world and yet our words speak of Jesus.  Our Lord said of His generation, “This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me” (Matthew 15:8 in which He was quoting Isaiah 29:13) Hypocrisy is not a new phenomenon, sadly.

Whereas Jesus came to do a new thing in this world, His followers are falling into those old patterns of saying what we do not live, owning what we do not possess, claiming what is not ours, and expecting blessings to which we are not entitled.

We excuse ourselves by saying we’re trying, that the gospel give second and third chances, that God is a forgiving God. All of which are true.

But there is a difference in an honest attempt to measure up and serve Christ and outright deceitfulness.

This is a simple thing our Lord is asking….

If you are going to be mine, act like it.

And if you are not going to live the life, then don’t tell people you are a Christian.