Do You Go to Church?

Many people, when asked about their relationship with God, will offer up some religious credential. Some will lay claim to membership in some church group or have been baptized or some other religious activity. Others, when asked about their standing with the God of creation, will hold on to some supernatural religious experience. 

The critics of the Apostle Paul were once pointing out his sufferings as evidence that he was a false teacher and were relying on their religious hopes of being in good standing with God. While doing this, Apostle Paul said:

“Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Co 13:5)

Paul had experienced a personal and real encounter with Jesus on his way to Damascus to persecute the followers of Jesus:

 “And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” (Acts 9:4-5)

The Apostle did not claim any relationship to the Jewish system of belief for his standing with God. In answering their charge of being a false teacher he simply answered: if Jesus Christ is not in you, you are a “reprobate.”

The scripture is clear on the way you must come before God:

“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Act 4:12)

No church group holds this power. There’s no personal religious activity you can depend on for salvation to be offered to you.

Jesus and Jesus alone has the power to change you from a reprobate. A reprobate is someone who has been rejected by God and beyond hope of salvation. This is the condition of everyone who is not “in the faith” that the Apostle Paul taught.

To be saved you must first see yourself as depraved and hopelessly lost. As long as you hold onto some other hope based on anything other than Jesus, you are a reprobate. It may seem harsh to call someone a reprobate but when God’s word reveals the truth of your desperate condition it will provide you with a path to be liberated from your sin.

Jesus said, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32) Only the people who care for you will speak the truth to you when you seek approval of God for your life. Will you hear the truth of God’s word and be set free?

The word of God declares this truth about Jesus:

 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:16-18)

Is Jesus in you? Are you a “whosoever” that has believed in Jesus?

The Gospel of Jesus teaches that when you repent of your sin and call on the name of Jesus for forgiveness, you are transformed into the temple of the Holy Spirit and are indwelled by God Himself. If you are depending on a religious group relationship or some religious action you have taken, you are a reprobate. Call on Jesus today and you will be in Jesus and Jesus will be in you.