Post by tlsitd on May 29, 2018 11:40:19 GMT -5
This is prickly subject, but it's one that I'm going to attempt to tackle anyway in the hopes that it'll do some good, with the Lord's blessing.
There are a few reasons why a Christian might be confused/deceived.
1. They're a new Christian and don't have much knowledge or discernment yet.
None of us starts out with much knowledge or discernment when we're first saved. We have to learn and grow into Christ-likeness. We have the desire for Him and to do what pleases Him when we are born again, but we're more like the world in our thinking than we are like Christ at first, and we don't know what is true and what is false because we have not learned.
...Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
(Ephesians 4:13,14)
Of course, Christians who don't obey the Lord as they ought in putting what they learn and know into practice won't progress as those who do will, and will remain less wise and more earthly in their attitudes and desires---spiritually retarded Christians---no matter how long they may be in Christ. Christians do not mature merely with age, but with obedience and faithfulness. A Christian who is young in years may be more spiritually mature than an older Christian who has been in Christ for many years. It's a matter of what we do in Christ that determines how and whether we grow.
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:12-14)
2. They're a disobedient Christian who is living in some kind of known sin or who is doing something that isn't God's will.
God blesses those who love Him with all their heart, soul, strength and mind, and who are faithful to Him, and are doing the things that please Him, with understanding---not those who do not obey Him, or who are dabbling in things He isn't pleased for them to be dabbling in (the knowledge of evil for example---like the occult or free-masonry or demonic pagan or false religious practices), or presuming to do things that the Lord has not called or equipped them to do.
If we use the understanding God gives us faithfully, He rewards us with more. But Christians who do not do this, do not increase in knowledge or wisdom---and the knowledge and wisdom they have will be impaired and fragile also.
(We must remember and never forget that apart from Jesus we can do nothing that pleases God, and that He is the source of our wisdom and understanding (not just the Bible)---His Spirit is the one who teaches us all truth. So if we are offending or rebelling against Jesus (our Teacher), our spiritual power (which includes the power to grasp God's truths) will be impaired, and we will be more susceptible to persuasions from demons, because God will not be defending us---and His truth, which He has granted us to know---from their attacks, or giving us the understanding of His word that we desire and need from Him. He wants us to repent, or to stop doing whatever it is that we are doing which does not please Him, and will allow confusion in our lives until we do.)
3. They're not actually born again/saved.
Obviously, a person who has never been born again, and who does not have the Spirit of God in them, is not really a Christian, and therefore cannot understand the truths that come from the Spirit of God. He or she has no ability to understand or discern Scriptural truth from error, or to discern 'wisdom' or advice or attitudes or doctrine that come from people who are not speaking according to the Spirit of God and who twist and misinterpret the Scriptures.
But ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard Him (see Romans 10:14-18), and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus... (Ephesians 4:20,21)
I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about everything---and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you---abide in Him. (1 John 2:26,27)
This is a serious problem. (As one of the members here has said before (and I may be paraphrasing here): "There is no one so lost as the one who thinks he is found.")
A person who has never been born again doesn't even know what that means. They haven't had that experience. Talk to a Roman Catholic, for example, and ask them to tell you what it means to be born again and to tell you about the moment when they came to know Jesus Christ in spirit and knew that He was in them and that they were saved. () They can't answer this, because it hasn't happened to them. The same is true for every unsaved person. They can't pinpoint the moment when they knew Jesus had come to live in them and that they were saved. They might say something like: "Oh, you know, I've always been close to God", or "I wouldn't call it a 'moment', but more of gradual process of coming to know Him".
Let me tell you something: Being born again is NOT a process. It's an event. Sanctification---growing in the knowledge of God and likeness to Him in attitudes and behavior and desires, is a process, but actually being born again is not. It happens to you, once, in a moment, and if you're born again, you know exactly when that moment was and can tell anyone about when and how it happened to you. It's the most important event that has ever happened to you!
Let's not try not to offend people by making light of this, as though there's more than one way to be born again. There isn't. The baptism of the Spirit that saves us---the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ coming to dwell in a person---that is a one time, distinct event. And people who have not had it, are not saved, and we shouldn't smile and nod at them and pretend that they're alright.
Spiritually unregenerate (that is, unsaved) people have no real assurance that they have eternal life, except that that assurance came from man; they're just hoping that they'll be good enough to make it into heaven, but God Himself has given them no assurance that they are His and have eternal life. They do not have the Spirit of God, and therefore have no God-given understanding: The best they can do is try to figure out what the Scriptures mean with their brain.
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
(1 Corinthians 2:12,13)
Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? (2 Corinthians 13:5)
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. (Romans 8:9)
All of these reasons can potentially be remedied: Obviously, new Christians need to keep learning and applying what they learn. Disobedient Christians or Christians who are out of God's will in some way need to repent or get into His will. And unsaved people who think they're saved but aren't need to be born again in truth, through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, should God so grant it to them.
So if you fall into any of these categories, or if any of these things apply to you, do whatever you need to do to get understanding from the Lord.
The Lord be with you.
There are a few reasons why a Christian might be confused/deceived.
1. They're a new Christian and don't have much knowledge or discernment yet.
None of us starts out with much knowledge or discernment when we're first saved. We have to learn and grow into Christ-likeness. We have the desire for Him and to do what pleases Him when we are born again, but we're more like the world in our thinking than we are like Christ at first, and we don't know what is true and what is false because we have not learned.
...Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
(Ephesians 4:13,14)
Of course, Christians who don't obey the Lord as they ought in putting what they learn and know into practice won't progress as those who do will, and will remain less wise and more earthly in their attitudes and desires---spiritually retarded Christians---no matter how long they may be in Christ. Christians do not mature merely with age, but with obedience and faithfulness. A Christian who is young in years may be more spiritually mature than an older Christian who has been in Christ for many years. It's a matter of what we do in Christ that determines how and whether we grow.
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:12-14)
2. They're a disobedient Christian who is living in some kind of known sin or who is doing something that isn't God's will.
God blesses those who love Him with all their heart, soul, strength and mind, and who are faithful to Him, and are doing the things that please Him, with understanding---not those who do not obey Him, or who are dabbling in things He isn't pleased for them to be dabbling in (the knowledge of evil for example---like the occult or free-masonry or demonic pagan or false religious practices), or presuming to do things that the Lord has not called or equipped them to do.
If we use the understanding God gives us faithfully, He rewards us with more. But Christians who do not do this, do not increase in knowledge or wisdom---and the knowledge and wisdom they have will be impaired and fragile also.
(We must remember and never forget that apart from Jesus we can do nothing that pleases God, and that He is the source of our wisdom and understanding (not just the Bible)---His Spirit is the one who teaches us all truth. So if we are offending or rebelling against Jesus (our Teacher), our spiritual power (which includes the power to grasp God's truths) will be impaired, and we will be more susceptible to persuasions from demons, because God will not be defending us---and His truth, which He has granted us to know---from their attacks, or giving us the understanding of His word that we desire and need from Him. He wants us to repent, or to stop doing whatever it is that we are doing which does not please Him, and will allow confusion in our lives until we do.)
3. They're not actually born again/saved.
Obviously, a person who has never been born again, and who does not have the Spirit of God in them, is not really a Christian, and therefore cannot understand the truths that come from the Spirit of God. He or she has no ability to understand or discern Scriptural truth from error, or to discern 'wisdom' or advice or attitudes or doctrine that come from people who are not speaking according to the Spirit of God and who twist and misinterpret the Scriptures.
But ye have not so learned Christ; If so be that ye have heard Him (see Romans 10:14-18), and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus... (Ephesians 4:20,21)
I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about everything---and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you---abide in Him. (1 John 2:26,27)
This is a serious problem. (As one of the members here has said before (and I may be paraphrasing here): "There is no one so lost as the one who thinks he is found.")
A person who has never been born again doesn't even know what that means. They haven't had that experience. Talk to a Roman Catholic, for example, and ask them to tell you what it means to be born again and to tell you about the moment when they came to know Jesus Christ in spirit and knew that He was in them and that they were saved. () They can't answer this, because it hasn't happened to them. The same is true for every unsaved person. They can't pinpoint the moment when they knew Jesus had come to live in them and that they were saved. They might say something like: "Oh, you know, I've always been close to God", or "I wouldn't call it a 'moment', but more of gradual process of coming to know Him".
Let me tell you something: Being born again is NOT a process. It's an event. Sanctification---growing in the knowledge of God and likeness to Him in attitudes and behavior and desires, is a process, but actually being born again is not. It happens to you, once, in a moment, and if you're born again, you know exactly when that moment was and can tell anyone about when and how it happened to you. It's the most important event that has ever happened to you!
Let's not try not to offend people by making light of this, as though there's more than one way to be born again. There isn't. The baptism of the Spirit that saves us---the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ coming to dwell in a person---that is a one time, distinct event. And people who have not had it, are not saved, and we shouldn't smile and nod at them and pretend that they're alright.
Spiritually unregenerate (that is, unsaved) people have no real assurance that they have eternal life, except that that assurance came from man; they're just hoping that they'll be good enough to make it into heaven, but God Himself has given them no assurance that they are His and have eternal life. They do not have the Spirit of God, and therefore have no God-given understanding: The best they can do is try to figure out what the Scriptures mean with their brain.
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
(1 Corinthians 2:12,13)
Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? (2 Corinthians 13:5)
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. (Romans 8:9)
All of these reasons can potentially be remedied: Obviously, new Christians need to keep learning and applying what they learn. Disobedient Christians or Christians who are out of God's will in some way need to repent or get into His will. And unsaved people who think they're saved but aren't need to be born again in truth, through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, should God so grant it to them.
So if you fall into any of these categories, or if any of these things apply to you, do whatever you need to do to get understanding from the Lord.
The Lord be with you.