Get­ting Peo­ple Really Saved.

by Mis­sion­ary David R. Cox

Overview: The great­est prob­lem of the church is the unsaved within its own walls. When peo­ple slip into the church as mem­bers, and even worse as dea­cons, min­is­ters, or pas­tor, the only pos­si­ble result is dis­as­ter. We look at what the prob­lem is, how to fix it, how we should define sal­va­tion clearly, and the missed aspects of salvation.

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Prob­a­bly the great­est prob­lem in most every church is the prob­lem of sup­pos­edly “saved” peo­ple tak­ing key posi­tions in the church who are not really saved. This causes prob­lems when mem­bers have “passed the tests” of pub­lic con­fes­sion and bap­tism and are now church mem­bers in good stand­ing, but are not really saved. Seri­ous prob­lems arise when they become dea­cons, Sun­day School teach­ers, influ­en­tial peo­ple who guide and influ­ence the church. This becomes a hor­ri­ble prob­lem when they actu­ally get to the level of being a min­is­ter or worse, a pas­tor (leader) of a church. The only place a blind man can lead some­body is into the ditch. We will deal with this on sev­eral levels.

First of all, we need to define and sharpen our under­stand­ing of sal­va­tion, and just what it is that makes a per­son saved. With­out clearly under­stand­ing this our­selves, we can­not help oth­ers (even though we may really be saved). This will also sharpen our abil­ity to wit­ness to the unsaved.

Sec­ondly, we need to get our head together in how to deal with this prob­lem gen­er­ally among the church as a whole, and also how to deal with it in indi­vid­ual cases.

Thirdly, we need to apply what we learn towards our evan­ge­lis­tic efforts, both in our ser­vices, in our min­istries, in our vis­i­ta­tion and evan­ge­lism efforts, and in our mis­sions program.

Let’s just be plain about it, churches don’t empha­size sal­va­tion enough. While we are talk­ing plainly about this, 99% of the peo­ple out there sim­ply have an extremely hard time under­stand­ing sal­va­tion, and this is espe­cially true in con­texts where we “lead some­body to the Lord” in a few min­utes with­out going into a deep expla­na­tion of sal­va­tion. Don’t get me wrong, this pre­sent­ing the gospel to some­body and their accept­ing it at first con­tact often hap­pens, but with­out true under­stand­ing on the unsaved person’s part, there is no sal­va­tion, and true under­stand­ing is some­thing that needs time and a lot of extra expla­na­tion, study, and med­i­ta­tion on the part of the per­son need­ing salvation.

Let’s say that in the case of a real sal­va­tion expe­ri­ence, there is going to be a response in the soul of the unsaved. With­out that response, there can be no real sal­va­tion. This response is faith, and it is some­thing that begins a chain of cause and effects in that person’s life which may vary a lit­tle but will always be there. There are NO excep­tions to this rule, and even though it some­times takes a lit­tle time to pro­duce fruit (like any fruit tree), the fruit is always with­out excep­tion there with time, and the qual­ity is very dis­tinct (pear trees pro­duce pears, apple trees apples, etc.).

To cul­ti­vate fruit from a fruit tree, you need good soil, lots of water, and sun­light. You also need some pro­tec­tion from birds, ani­mals, harsh weather, and other things and the fruit will come with time. In the cases of trees in adverse cir­cum­stances, the fruit will still come, but will be lim­ited and tardy in going. Nobody tol­er­ates a fruit tree that pro­duces absolutely noth­ing. Remem­ber the fig tree that Jesus said was good for noth­ing? I can­not empha­size enough the impor­tance of get­ting things into a person’s life that pro­motes the process of fruit pro­duc­tion and pro­tect­ing the per­son from harm­ful things.

Here I would iden­tify the pri­mary essen­tials in fruit pro­duc­tion as the following:

(1) Bible read­ing — a reg­u­lar and broad read­ing of the word of God by the indi­vid­ual, fol­lowed by med­i­ta­tion. Per­son­ally the best sit­u­a­tion here is hear­ing a Bible tape in a car over and over. The per­son is bored with dri­ving but his mind is active, and this “killing time” is best for med­i­tat­ing on what it means.

(2) A Bib­li­cal sound local church — I would focus here on sev­eral aspects. Per­haps the most impor­tant one is the explain­ing (expo­si­tion) of the Word of God (see next point). But I would also see here a very high pri­or­ity in befriend­ing and have fel­low­ship with real godly peo­ple (2 Tim. 2:22). The influ­ence of a real godly per­son is tremen­dously impor­tant in pro­duc­ing fruit in oth­ers. We imi­tate those we see, and espe­cially those we respect and look up to in some way. Other aspects that really pro­duce spir­i­tual fruit in a person’s life is the activ­i­ties in the local church, espe­cially Chris­t­ian ser­vice (meet­ing needs of the brethren) and wit­ness­ing. This will only hap­pen when the church and its lead­ers has their “head on straight” doc­tri­nally which unfor­tu­nately is rare.

(3) Solid Expo­si­tional Teach­ing — There is noth­ing that will replace solid, clear, under­stand­able expla­na­tions of the Word of God. Any preacher or pas­tor that is worth his salt will ded­i­cate his entire life to learn­ing how to under­stand and explain to oth­ers the word of God.

(4) Expo­sure to real prayer power — Here I am sorry to say that I have lit­tle per­sonal expe­ri­ence in being around real prayer war­riors. I pray, my fam­ily prays, and in our church we pray reg­u­larly, but this is not what I am talk­ing about. There are some Chris­tians that are prayer war­riors. They say lit­tle to oth­ers, they have deep spir­i­tual dis­cern­ment to know how to pray, and they have great faith. You as a Chris­t­ian can see God is meet­ing most all of their needs in their own lives, and they are sat­is­fied and con­tent. But the key here to these peo­ple is that what they pray for really comes to pass. They have spir­i­tual power before the throne of God. These peo­ple will change a person’s life tremen­dously because they are unas­sum­ing in their Chris­t­ian life, but they are extremely pow­er­ful. The world sadly has too few of these peo­ple. I preach in our church that the rea­son our kids aren’t inter­ested in the things of God is because they have never seen it work. Their par­ents pray for things that never get answered. Their take on Chris­tian­ity is that it is not really real, it doesn’t really work, because they have never seen a man or woman of God pray and get things changed. We should also add here that the thing that deter­mines when and how much fruit a new con­vert pro­duces is also how much prayer he “receives” (peo­ple pray­ing for him) and by what kind of Chris­t­ian (godly peo­ple). This is an impor­tant fac­tor that pro­duces pro­found differences.

I would also iden­tify the pri­mary harm­ful ele­ments as the following:

(1) False teach­ing — Let me just say that Satan will always first try to inject false doc­trine into a new convert’s life. If he can­not stop his for­ward move­ment, then he will try to chan­nel it into unfruit­ful and spir­i­tu­ally empty things. With so many needs that we should be work­ing on as Chris­tians, I see Chris­t­ian youth groups hav­ing soap box der­bies and other such fool­ish­ness. To spend 20 hours on these fool­ish things is easy, but to spend 20 hours on can­vass­ing door to door in evan­ge­lism, or in study­ing for giv­ing a Bible study, nobody can do easily.

Let me say that there are a lot of false teach­ers out there, and their charm and pow­ers of per­sua­sion and mak­ing peo­ple fall in love with them are very pow­er­ful. But beyond that, many good pas­tors are pretty use­less in their spir­i­tual “feed­ing” abil­ity. The com­mon errors I see are that pas­tors believe and prac­tice the belief that pro­grams will build a church instead of spir­i­tual feed­ing by expos­i­tory preach­ing. This is a com­mon error that is best taken to its extreme by the Jack Hyles crowd (or the Pen­te­costal church growth crowd).

The other com­mon error among “good pas­tors” is the fail­ure of their own com­pre­hen­sion in the mat­ter of bal­ance and eat­ing a bal­anced diet. Most pas­tors study lit­tle, and when they do study a lot and get a good han­dle on some­thing, it over­takes them. They want to read or insert that one thing they have “dis­cov­ered” into every­thing that exists instead of mov­ing on to the next discovery.

Here I see (as an exam­ple of many sim­i­lar type prob­lems) pas­tors dis­cover “elec­tion,” “pre­des­ti­na­tion”, and their latch onto Calvin­ism. Their entire min­istry begins to gyrate around Calvin­ism and the doc­trines of Grace. To put it sim­ply, this will destroy peo­ple and min­istries, restrict spir­i­tual fruit, and cause great spirit prob­lems. The only doc­trine that we can ele­vate above all other doc­trines is sal­va­tion, which is not that God has pre-elected some, but that God is offer­ing sal­va­tion to all. The pre-elected empha­sis dri­ves peo­ple to be proud, haughty (after all their are the cho­sen ones) and neglect the unsaved in prayer, mis­sions, evan­ge­lism, and activ­i­ties that actu­ally see the unsaved come to Christ. The true gospel empha­sis moti­vates the entire church and dri­ves peo­ple for­ward for Christ to pro­duce spir­i­tual fruit.

I would note that “fruit” and sheep have the con­cept of repro­duc­ing itself as the true fruit. That means see­ing an unsaved per­son accept the Lord as Sav­ior. This is the fruit that is the most desir­able. When we focus on other things as fruit and detract from this repro­duc­tion aspect, we are just wrong. I would also note that nature (i.e. God) has placed the seed of the fruit around a highly desir­able fruit. The con­cept of a sweet apple with seeds in the mid­dle is exactly where we need to focus. The point is repro­duc­tion of the fruit tree, and the repro­duc­tive ele­ment (the seed) is sur­rounded by a deli­cious, sweet, eye-pleasing fruit. God wants Chris­tians to “get to the point” (repro­duce other Chris­tians) and do it by hav­ing a tes­ti­mony that is pleas­ing to God and man.

The error of many pas­tors is that they do not under­stand that there is a broad bal­ance of doc­trines and activ­i­ties that his peo­ple need to be experts in if they are to be fruit bear­ing Chris­tians. He must go from one to the other, and when teach­ing that par­tic­u­lar one, do so with inten­sity and enthu­si­asm, but then go on to the next thing they need.

(2) Sin­ful con­duct by sup­pos­edly good Chris­tians — One of the great deter­rents of Chris­t­ian growth is the pres­ence of sup­pos­edly godly Chris­tians which sin with­out repen­tance and con­fes­sion of their sins (they do not per­son­ally leave off sin­ning). This evil influ­ence will slow and restrict spir­i­tual growth that leads to fruit bear­ing. Paul puts it a lit­tle leaven leav­ens the whole lump. Remem­ber you become like those you run around with.

(3) Sins and crises that dis­tract and dis­able a person’s Chris­t­ian life — Here I would put things like life dom­i­nat­ing sins like for­ni­ca­tion, divorce, pornog­ra­phy, sex, drugs, alco­hol, and other life dom­i­nat­ing sins. (Yes, divorce is a sin because it is not God’s will. The fact that an unsaved per­son leaves the Chris­t­ian is accepted by God does not mean it is God’s will. God’s will is that the unsaved part­ner gets saved and lives the Chris­t­ian life. There is no rea­son why two obe­di­ent Chris­tians should ever get a divorce.) Other life dom­i­nat­ing sins or prob­lems here would be bit­ter­ness, rejec­tion, sin­gle­ness, gos­sip, hatred, cov­etous­ness, and other such char­ac­ter flaw sins that seem to take over and dom­i­nate the life of the person.

Per­haps we could even include here work as some­thing that defeats spir­i­tual growth in a per­son. Every­body must work, but I have seen a trend of peo­ple work­ing to the exclu­sion of church and their spir­i­tual life (mak­ing work a part of our covetousness).

Here other fac­tors enter in also, such as the pre­ma­ture death of child or the sud­den death of a spouse or a sin­gle preg­nant teen. These things can set back a Chris­t­ian greatly, or they can be the things that make a Chris­t­ian strong and fruit­ful. The dif­fer­ence here is a Pas­tor and a local church that will truly coun­sel in a bib­li­cal way, and deal with what is wrong and fix it. That is their job, and if they can­not do it, they should leave the profession.

Let me add here that it is not the pastor’s job to put fruit on the trees, but it is some­thing that should come nat­u­rally because the tree is a cer­tain type of tree. I can buy apples in the super­mar­ket and put them on the tree with string, and it will look great, but that is not what we are to do. We get all mixed up in a works sal­va­tion type of sit­u­a­tion (all the while preach­ing loudly “saved by grace”) because we fall into the trap of “if you do this then you are a good Chris­t­ian.” We are not jus­ti­fied by out­ward works but by faith. But faith must have its evi­dences or “fruit.”

A Clear Plan of Sal­va­tion (fin­ished 05/20/05)
Sal­va­tion Verses (fin­ished 05/20/05)
(Notes on Sal­va­tion Verses) (fin­ished 05/20/05)

Our the other end of the spec­trum are the easy believism crowd which empha­size exclu­sively sal­va­tion. Their goal and pri­or­ity is num­bers, so they want to get “con­verts” at any price. They are the num­ber coun­ters, and any qual­ity or even plas­tic apples count just as good as real ones. Jack Hyles was one of the best exam­ples of this, and his Hyles want-a-be’s are all over Amer­ica and the world. Their prob­lem is that they have excluded repen­tance from sal­va­tion, from the pre­sen­ta­tion of the gospel, and there­fore they preach another gospel that is not the Bible gospel.

Size Mat­ters, but not in the way you think.