Pastor John Hewett, a friend from some years back, once attended the Carolina Panthers-Minnesota Vikings football game in Charlotte. Just outside the gates, two stern-faced men stood holding up huge signs.
“JESUS CANNOT BE YOUR SAVIOR UNLESS HE IS YOUR LORD.”
Noticing the expression on John’s face, one of the men said, “Jesus can save you.”
John said, “He already has.”
The fellow said, “You sure don’t act like it.”
Fascinating the way some Christians find one single aspect of the Christian faith and turn it into the end-all of salvation and righteousness and go to seed on it.
Thereafter, it becomes the theme of their sermons and the thrust of their conversations. If they’re Facebook friends with you, that’s all you ever read from them.
For some, it’s the KJV Bible. If you’re using anything else, you are a compromised liberal and naive to boot. Either you have been taken in by the con men in the faith or you are a scam artist yourself.
For some it’s Calvinism. Unless you cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ as they do–or Brother John himself did–you’re shallow, don’t know your Bible, and a blind leader of the blind.
I once had a deacon who had come to Christ at the age of 43 after a life of ungodly living. His conversion was dramatic and total. He went from blind to perfect vision overnight and became a zealot for the Lord.
As a new believer, he looked around the church and saw complacent, dozing members and came to the conclusion they had probably never been saved. The aspect of salvation they had missed out on, he decided, was repentance. They had never truly repented of their sin, otherwise they would be changed, transformed, made new, and on fire for the Lord.
Thereafter, repentance became his theme.