To Encourage You

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.’”

One of the greatest tragedies recorded in the Bible is Jesus’ prophesy above regarding the shock of “many” who thought they were Christians who will find out, when it is too late, that they were not. That’s why the Bible warns us with these words: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves” (2 Corinthians 13:5). So how do we do this? What are the tests? Well, the Bible contains many such tests. For example, the book of 1 John is primarily a detailed account of such tests. James is another good book on this subject. But there are other places as well, such as in the various ways Paul addresses the churches he writes to in his epistles. One such example is  in his first letter to the Thessalonian church. In the opening of this letter, he describes them, and that description is a universal description of those who truly know Christ. So, what does he say about them? There are many identifying marks he mentions. Here I’ll discuss just one of them, and pick up more tomorrow.

One thing he says to them is that “you became imitators of us and of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 1:6). In other words, they became something that they had never been before they believed, i.e., people who actually imitated Jesus and the true followers of Jesus in the way they thought, spoke, and lived. There are so many people that call themselves Christians today for reasons other than this, but “imitators of Christ” is something that doesn’t describe them in the least. Perhaps they go to a church somewhere, or maybe they were born in the U.S.A., which some people call a “Christian nation.” Maybe they were baptized as a baby. Or perhaps they don’t see themselves as following any other religion, like Buddhism or Islam, so, by process of elimination, they view themselves as a Christian. Or maybe at some time in their life they “walked an aisle” in a church somewhere, at a Billy Graham crusade, or at a Christian youth camp, so that made them a Christian. However, if they cannot look at their own life now and sincerely say that they are imitating Christ with their lives or even think about it much, then there is a real possibility that they are failing the “self-examination” that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians above, and their so-called “faith” was never the real thing. Tragically, they may find them outside the narrow way when they one day meet the true and living Christ.

So, are you truly an imitator of Christ? Do you long to be a “Christ-follower”? If someone else were to describe your life, would they use words like Paul used to describe the Thessalonians? That should be the case if Jesus is truly your Lord and Master, for it’s what the Holy Spirit has provided to us through the apostle Paul as one of the true tests.