I recently had a conversation with a young woman at work that really caused me to think. I was asking her what she believed when it came to God. She said she considered herself to be a backsliding Christian. When I asked her to explain that to me, she used an expression that caught my attention, she said that “every time she would get saved” things would go ok for a while, then she would fall back in to old addictions and habits. As we talked, she described a pattern of going forward at church, getting baptized, (usually at the urging of family/friends), going to church for a little while, then being tempted by a friend to go back to her old lifestyle of drugs and alcohol. This would repeat over and over again. When I at one point asked her to explain what she meant by “saved” she simply described events, walking down the aisle at church, praying and then being baptized later. After learning all this I spoke with her at length, trying to explain that having a relationship with Christ is not a one-time ritual, but it is a continuous, growing process of your very heart, mind, attitude and perspective being changed by Christ who is now living in you and is in control of your life. I can only pray that God will use my words and show her the difference between her idea of “saved” and what scripture tells us.
Honestly what her perception of salvation reminded me of is the idea of a pagan ritual, one where if you go through all the motions correctly, then you make the god happy and things start to go better for you. During points in the conversation, she would talk about how her circumstances weren’t changing and that she had expected them to after she’d been saved. It really saddens me that somehow she had the idea that the amazing gift God offers us through the sacrifice of Christ is nothing more than a one-time ritual that if you do right, then your external life circumstances will suddenly change and that’s it. there is no heart change, no surrendering to Christ as lord, just a quick fix. She knew the phrases, “sin” “Christ dying on the cross” etc… How did the gospel become so twisted in her mind? Coming to Christ is anything but simply a few words you say in a prayer and a quick walk down the church aisle. It is a realization of the evil person you are before God and with that an understanding that you are utterly and hopelessly condemned before a holy God. You deserve nothing but hell, but God loved you enough to come in the man Jesus Christ to completely take your punishment. If someone, by the Holy Spirit, comes to truly understand that, then their response is total surrender and repentance and a desire for Christ to come into their life and completely change them. Paul tells us in Galatians 2:20 that “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.” Why does he say crucified with Christ? We need to understand that when we repent and surrender to Christ, our old self, with its thoughts, desires, motives, and its will, are dead. It is all crucified with Christ and in its place is Christ living in us. It is that Christ-life that brings about the heart change, not the words of the prayer or the church building etc. Paul again makes this point in 2 Corinthians 5:17 where he says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Paul is again talking about the new life in us through Christ, that it is his spirit that makes us a new creation. Both these passages, when you read them in context, are not talking about a new life or a new creation based on our outward circumstances, but rather a deep, fundamental shift in what (or rather, who) we are living our lives for! Please pray that this woman, and honestly many others I have talked to at work, will come to truly understand the message of Christ. Please also pray that I and the rest of the staff will be gold and able to communicate it effectively, through the words God gives us.
Ashley
