Revival and the Unregenerate Church Member, John Carpenter

Assurance of Salvation in 1 John

If you open your Bibles with me to first John, chapter four, first John, chapter four, starting in verse 13. By this, we know that we abide in him and he and us because he has given us his spirit. And we have seen and testified that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world.

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he and God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love and whoever abides in love, abides in God and God abides in him.

By this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love cast out fear for fear has to do with punishment.

And whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

And this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God is also love his brother. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone who loves the father loves whoever has been born of him.

By this, we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God? Well, there's the Apostle John here writing in part about how we can know. And if you notice that theme in here about how we can know whether we're really saved or not about what we might call the doctrine of assurance.

Just a few verses later in chapter five, verse 13, he writes that I write these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. That's part of the purpose of his writing this letter so that his readers would know, would have that assurance.

In the passage we just read, he twice uses the phrase by this we know in chapter four, verse 13 and chapter five, verse two. In chapter four, verse 17, he writes of being able to have what he calls confidence in the day of judgment, a sense of confidence that in that day of judgment, you won't be condemned.

That's the blessed assurance that that old hymn is about. And the whole passage is about how true faith and true love show in practical ways in our confession and how we treat people. And based on that, how we can know that we are his first understand that to confess means literally to say the same thing as what it means in Greek, say the same thing as it is to agree with God about who Jesus is.

And that means it's not just words in our mouth, but something that we genuinely believe. So he begins right in verse 13 by this. We know that we abide in him when we confess. We say it because we agree with it, that Jesus is the son of God.

We not just because we want to get something out of God, that magic word used to conjure up what you want. You know, if you say these words, you'll get salvation or whatever. That's particularly clear that when you think of the situation in their day and John was writing, John probably writing later than most of the other writings of the New Testament.

When confessing that, when confessing that Jesus is the son of God could mean persecution, could mean arrest, could mean trial and suffering. Today, it may be a lot easier just to say the words. You know, there's nothing to be lost, really.

The government is not going to come and arrest you for saying at least not yet. It's easier to claim to believe in a statement of faith and to be baptized and all that. But if we don't mean it enough, we don't mean it really in the same way that John's readers were to mean it, mean it enough that we are would be willing to be persecuted for it.

Then it may not be a real confession at all. And of course, God will know that. But for those who really do confess that Jesus is the son of God, it will show in other ways also beside their confession.

It will show, he says, in love and he says we will love God and we will love people. We will love first because we have God living in us. And this is not just a psychological trick that we play on ourselves.

You know, we imagine God living in us and we'll be live more like him in order to try to fool ourselves into acting better. But it is an objective fact. That's what John is saying, that in regeneration, God lives in you.

And since God is love, the God who is love and who is living in us will produce love in us. We will also love it. Verse 19, because he first loved us. We love because God is in us and we love because God first loved us.

It's not as though we earn God's love by saying the right confession or praying the right prayer. No, God took the initiative. God loved us first when there was nothing about us that was lovable. And yet he did, in fact, love us.

And that's one reason we can love his love, his his choice then comes first. Right. First, John, you see that John clearly says we love because he first loved us. Not as though we chose to love God and he decided he'll return the favor.

It's the other way around. Our love, our choice comes out of his prior love. Then in verse 20, he emphasizes that there is an integrity, or in other words, a connection between love for God and love for people.

If you don't have the latter, something you can see, you can see whether someone is being loving to people. If you don't have that, it's because you don't really have the former.

You don't have love for God.

Where he says in verse 20, he does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. You know, so we're cannot. So in other words, he's saying by this, we know. How do you know that you are saved?

Well, if we love God and other people, especially our brothers and sisters in the faith, this is talked about when he says the brother, do you love your brother? He's talking about other Christians in particular, our fellow our fellow believers.

And the flip side, however, is that if anyone who does not love his brother or sister in the Lord whom he has seen, cannot really love God whom he has not seen. Obviously, people these days often want to claim the greatest assurance for themselves.

They are absolutely certain they are saved and that they know they're one of God's children. While you you can't really see much love for God's people in their life. Usually, if you love people, you like to be with them occasionally, at least occasionally you want to be with them.

So many people these days think it's OK to have this disparity. No sign, no real Simon, they have nice words and they may be sweet and courteous at the beginning, but no real sign of of love for God's people.

And yet they think they can say they love God and that since they're saved by grace, not works, that their life can be full of full of such contradictions. But as long as they said the right words and supposedly prayed a prayer years ago that they're saved.

But John says, no, if you don't love God's people, it's because you don't love God. And now, how do you get this love? And he says, how do we get the faith that is able to confess that Jesus is the son of God, even if it means persecution, faith that strong that you would be willing to confess it even in the face of of having to suffer for it?

Well, it says in chapter five, verse one, that we get it by being born of God. Being born of God is what the theologians can call regeneration, we have been made new creatures, as Paul uses the term of 2nd Corinthians, chapter five, verse 17.

So what the Lord Jesus called in John, chapter three, being born again, he told Nicodemus, you must be born again. And he said, must you wouldn't say it would be nice if you're born again. But he said, we must be born again, because without that, we are still dead in our sins.

And again, in verse two, it is about visible evidence of a changed life that true conversion, having been born of God, will bring. That's what he's writing about there in chapter five, verse two. We know that we love God's children, not because we're sweet and send cards occasionally, but by our love for the father.

What's the other way around, too? Again, if we don't love our other believers whom we can see, then we don't really love God whom we can't see. And how do we love God? It says right there that we obey his commandments, doesn't it?

That's what it says. I didn't I didn't write that in. You can look at yourself. We obey his commandments. And he repeats that in another way. In verse three, we love God by obeying his commandments. There is none of this nonsense that we have so much of today that so and so, you know, well, he's a true believer.

He loves the Lord. He just doesn't obey him. Well, John says, no, he doesn't love the Lord. That's why he's not obeying him. John here says there's just no such no such thing. If someone isn't obeying God's word, it's because that person doesn't love God.

And then in verse four and five, he gives more evidence for the person who has truly been born of God. Such a person will be radically different from the world, says he will overcome the world. Notice that versus four and five.

Notice that from the beginning of verse four, he writes that everyone who has been born of God, everyone, not just like some of them, the best of them. Everyone who has been born of God overcomes or is radically separate from the world with a different character.

And different priorities, different loves. It doesn't say that, you know, the lover of God should overcome the world. Right. That's the way we often think of it. We often think, well, we have all these people who are Christians and they should overcome the world if they're doing what they're supposed to do.

But we know many of them don't really do that and really don't have to do that. They'll be saved anyway. But John says, no, the one who is born of God, who has been saved, overcomes the world.

That's what it says, isn't it? I didn't make that up.

Is it there or is it not? Today, too many Christians think that living like that with a love for the for the church members and being different from the world is kind of an optional extra for the really committed.

But you can get by if you want to on sort of the economy plan. Right. You can you can fly coach to heaven, I guess, something like that, the basic package and still get saved without having to live like that.

But John says that everyone who is born of God overcomes the world. And the Lord Jesus says that if you aren't born of God, you will not see the kingdom of God. You are not saved, in other words, to put it in the language we often use.

Now, what I've just presented to you is or was the evangelical message that you must be born again and that if you aren't loving other Christians in a tangible ways and aren't different from the world, it's not because you're just a second class kind of carnal Christian.

It's because you're not born of God in the first place. You are regenerate, and this really is very different from the kind of easy believism gospel that is being heard so often today and for the past few generations, really, for the past 100 plus years.

What is often being heard today and really many preachers know better than to say it overtly. But many people interpret it this way, is that all you have to do is come forward at a meeting or otherwise say a prayer and that's it.

And they'll be told that they are saved and they should never doubt it. And even if they even if they don't feel or experience anything new, their life doesn't change. They're just not supposed to doubt it.

Now, once they are told this, people will come along and they'll call this follow up. Right. So they come forward, they're saved and they're told never to doubt it. You've said the right words, so you're saved.

Now, never doubt it. And maybe someone else will come along and what's called follow up. And we'll say, you know, now that you know God has graciously saved you, don't you want to show your gratitude by being baptized and reading your Bible and praying and going to church?

And if you might say, OK, and some of them might actually be truly saved, but others might be doing it just out of a sense of duty. And others, however, will think, hmm, OK, I'm saved. I'm never supposed to doubt it.

Now, why should I have to bother with all this boring religious stuff? And they'll go about their merry way. It used to be that for the very reasons we saw briefly in First John, that such people would never have been assured that they were saved in the first place.

People would know better than to give them. Well, we'll see if they're saved, if they persevere. But now now they'll be assured they're saved right off the bat just after a certain prayer is said and continue to be assured they're saved.

And so the object of revival would be in many people's eyes to try to get these people who prayed this prayer and said the magic words at one time and made some kind of profession of faith to try to get these people to start living more like the Christians they are supposed to be.

That's today what is called revival. But the reality is that most such people, as John has told us, can't have a revival at all because they've never been revived at all before you can be revived. You need to be vibed.

And John says that people who do not show the signs of life that he describes here in First John have never been vibed in the first place. Now, this was evangelistic preaching. Be born again. And if you are born again, it will definitely show in your life and will not for sure in the long term if you persevere.

But the effect of this preaching will be divisive. Paul says to the perishing, it will be the aroma of death because it will remind them that they are dead in their sins and they cannot bring life to themselves.

It'll make some people really irritated because it undermines their religious sense of self-righteousness. But to those who are being saved, Paul says it is the aroma of life because they're no longer depending on themselves.

And it reminds them of the grace of God that has saved them because they know that that is the message, that that is where the life is. So today we have a misplaced emphasis in revival preaching. We have all these people often supposedly saved as small children or who repeated a repeat after me prayer and were kind of slapped on the back and then told that they're saved and never to doubt it.

And we have so many like them to show no signs of life. And so to explain them, to explain why there are so many out there like that who have said this prayer, supposedly been saved, but show no signs of life to understand them.

We've misinterpreted a few verses from the beginning of First Corinthians, chapter three, where Paul tells the Corinthians that he has to deal with them. Paul basically writes to them, I would have liked to have dealt with you as mature, but I couldn't.

I had to deal with you as carnal, as babes. And we've misinterpreted that statement to mean that there is a third class of person, you know, kind of between the saved and the lost. There's this other class called the carnal Christian and that they can stay that way indefinitely.

But that's really not what the passage says. Paul never says that there's such a thing as a long-term carnal Christian. In fact, by Second Corinthians, chapter 13, verse five, writing to the same group of people, when some of them still haven't repented and started to mature, he doesn't just, you know, chide them.

Why are you still these carnal Christians? Why do you still need to be, you know, as though you need to be revived? But he bluntly tells them that perhaps your problem is, you Corinthians, some of you anyway, is that you need to search your hearts whether you're saved or not.

That they need to test themselves, he tells them, to see whether they are still in the faith. And he implies that there's the very real possibility that some of them are not. But today we often think of revival, again, as rekindling the spirituality of carnal Christians.

So we're always trying to think how can we get these, quote, carnal Christians back in church and say the right thing to them? And so we'll think of, well, what music will attract them? What kind of service will attract them?

We'll do all these things to try to get the carnal Christian in and provoke him to start living like he should. The problem is they never seem to get revived because they have never been vived in the first place.

They don't, really don't need a good pastoral visit to remind them about why they should be grateful for their salvation. And why they'd really love to be, you would really love to be involved in everything we have going on.

You'd love the Christmas play, you'd love the cantata, whatever. They really don't need that. They need to be evangelized. Remember, as John says, if they don't show the signs of life, of loving God. That's the signs of life.

Loving God. How do you show that? Well, keeping his commandments. Loving people, loving the brothers and sisters in the faith. Loving the church, in other words. Then they have not been born of God. They are un-regenerate.

And there's no reviving them. They may be saving them. They may be evangelizing them. But not reviving them. So who are the un-regenerate church members? Well, first, as Jim Ellef writes in that pamphlet on page 6, they are those who do not come to church.

Let me quote from his essay. There he says, consider what failure to attend indicates. It tells us that the professed believer does not love the brethren, need the preaching of the word, relish the corporate worship of God, or acknowledge any submission to God-ordained leadership.

In general, the one who does not come says that the environment of believers is not his preferred environment, and he is more satisfied with the world. In a Baptist church, in particular, to be a church member, one is supposed to be regenerate, born again.

Membership in the local church is supposed to be a reflection of membership in the universal church. So when we give membership and keep membership to someone, we are saying that we believe, from all that we can see, that this person is a member in the universal church.

And we do that, you know, charitably, believing the best of people's confession. A regenerate person, well, what are the signs of being regenerate? How would we know? A regenerate person would love God, as John said, and so that would also mean they would crave the pure spiritual milk of the word, as Peter wrote in 1 Peter 2, verse 2.

And out of love for God, he or she will keep God's commands, and that includes the command to worship, doesn't it, and assemble. And the truly born again person will love the church, and so assemble with it.

There's some desire, some love to be with the church. A person who has forsaken our assembling, our assembling anywhere, maybe they're going to another church, OK, I understand that, but the assembling of any of God's people, anywhere.

Someone who has done that, I can only think logically, think logically about this, there's a person who claims he loves God, who claims he is a Christian, and does not go to church anywhere at all. Logically, I can only think of two things, or three, that can be true.

Either he does not really love God, that's why he doesn't want to come to this meeting, all this God talk, because he hates God and doesn't want to hear about it. Second, he does not love us, doesn't love us Christians, so he doesn't like to be around us.

Maybe he loves God, but he doesn't want to be around us Christians, and we know you can't really do that, can you? Or both. Of course, it has to be both, doesn't it? That's what John says. So either way, the apostle John says that we have no way of telling if they are really saved or not.

By this we know. How do we know someone is saved? Well, by this, they love God, they keep his commandments, they love the church, they love his people. And if they don't show those signs, well, by this we don't know.

And so we can't say. Our statement of faith says that the grand mark that distinguishes a true Christian from a false one, perseverance, and of course loving our brother is one of the things we're to persevere in.

And some of us are a real trial to really test your perseverance, your ability to continue loving. The statement of faith says a persevering attachment to Christ. You hang in there, following Christ, even when it's not so fun anymore, when it's hard.

Someone who has dropped out of church, and where there is a Bible teaching and God-centered church available, a person who drops out of attending that kind of church is showing that he has stopped persevering.

There's no grand mark to distinguish him, whether he's a true believer. But that brings us to a big problem. Church roles these days, especially Baptist churches, are full of people who now show no signs of spiritual life.

The roles are full of people who haven't been seen inside, quote, their church for many years, sometimes for decades. As Eliph writes on page 7, there should be no satisfaction until more come to our churches than are on our roles.

So we need more attending than are on our roles. Some could answer back, yeah, but what difference does it make? Why not leave it be? Why trouble the waters over this? And there are three basic reasons why a church membership role should only consist of those who show the signs of life that John is writing about.

First, such people testify to the world that the gospel makes no difference. People look at them and they think, if that's what it means to be a member of that church, or of any church for that matter, then I don't want it.

They're no better than I am. Maybe they're even worse than I am. And second, our false assurance given to them inoculates them to true Christianity, to being genuinely converted. Imagine there could be someone who comes to their door, trying to witness to them, maybe from another good church, and they might say, I'm a member of a Baptist church, so I'm already saved, even though they haven't been here in many years.

They won't consider really getting saved because we tell them they already are. The assurance we give them by including them as members could be the stumbling block that leads them to hell. Third, it poisons the atmosphere of the church.

As Eliph writes in page 9, certainly the unregenerate among the church demoralizes the troops. We are going to battle with traitors in the ranks. We have to drag the dead. This wearies believers, and especially pastors, doing the work of the church with large percentages of these unconverted members makes life difficult indeed.

Which would you rather have? Gideon's first army or Gideon's last? The first army, what, 30 ,000? They wanted 30 ,000 men? And the last with 300? But he won with the 300. An example of what this has done to the church, I believe, to have so many unregenerate as an accepted part of the church, and what it's done to the atmosphere, and really the expectations of the church, is something I've noticed visiting many different churches, in that today, particularly when you talk to the real earnest Christians, the eager, particularly the new converts, those who have a vibrant faith and show all the signs of life that John wrote about here, they kind of assume, they won't really say it, but they often assume that the church really isn't going to be that challenging.

That it's kind of the place you have to go, but they expect very little out of the church in general. They don't expect to find any real accountability there, because there's all these other people who can't make it up to real accountability, so they understand you have to just keep them along.

The church really won't hold me to the standards of God's word, and they may want that, many deeply want that. They'll faithfully attend, because they feel they have to, but they just know that it's not really where they will get discipled, in the church in general.

It's just not about discipleship. And so, if they want that, they'll have to go somewhere else. So you find a lot of talk these days about something called discipleship groups, which is for the real eager types.

And they look for these discipleship groups, or other little groups, and it's really often something outside their church, or perhaps it's a little group inside the church, sort of a small, serious church within the larger, non-serious church.

Now, I appreciate their quest. What they want is right. Discipleship, that's right and good. But, in the New Testament, the church as a whole is a discipleship group. You don't find this little thing about little groups of serious people inside this larger group of non-serious people.

You don't find it.

And as a church historian, I know that is exactly how monasticism began. The monks and the nuns, the rest of the church was seen as worldly and corrupt, and so these other little groups started to form of really serious types that were going to apply themselves.

And after a while, they would go off by themselves up to the top of mountains, and they would build monasteries, and the whole thing evolved into monks and nuns and monasteries and nunneries and all that.

And you find some of the same thinking now among evangelicals today. If you really want to get serious, you have to form your own little discipleship group. And you really expect very little out of the church.

But, in the New Testament, the church is about accountability, having the Word applied to your life personally, being trained, joining with the body and growing. The church in the Bible is a discipleship group.

If it's become something less than that today, it's because of the unregenerate in our midst, who we're kind of caving into as we shape the whole church to suit them. Now, what has contributed to this dilemma?

Eliph list eight things which we'll review very, very briefly, a couple of which we've actually already touched on. Now, first, we've sold the benefits of believing in Christ, but not told people to count the cost, often.

Churches in many tracts today will say very little about repentance, or about sin, about specifically turning from sin. Going through Micah, I've said quite a lot about these false teachers we have on TV today, who say, oh, we don't even need to mention that people are sinners, don't even mention sin, don't be negative, let's be positive, let's always look on the bright side.

And that sounds very attractive, but it's very, it's really very unscriptural and very detrimental. But it's the spirit of the age, it's what a lot of people want. There's very little said today about our total inability to save ourselves.

Because that doesn't really appeal to people's pride, does it? To be told, you can't do anything to save yourself. You're lost, you're totally corrupt, you're dead, and your trespass is a sin. Although it's very biblical, it's not particularly attractive.

And often there is nothing on the fundamental requirement of submission to the Lordship of Christ. If you think in Romans 10, that famous scripture, what you have to do to be saved, believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, if I get this right, and confess with your mouth that He is Lord.

But there's often very little really applied and said about that. So it's no wonder that when people are told, all these good things you can have, if you confess, if you say this prayer and you come forward, you can have all these good things, and you really don't have to do a thing, you will be totally saved.

It's no trick that then they will pray a prayer, and then show no signs of life. And then when we add to this problem, a second one, which is our misapplied doctrine of assurance. Then the problem becomes severe, I think.

We give out assurance, not based on the kind of life-changing confession that John was writing about. You know, John is saying, by this you know. Are you living like this? If you live like this, you can have assurance.

But we give out assurance based on maybe saying a prayer, coming forward, maybe a feeling. I think anyone that's seriously tried personal evangelism has met people who are supposedly saved, and who have been given assurance by someone, but have shown no signs of life.

In Pennsylvania, when I was up there, I went to follow up a list, I was given this list of people. We went to every door in the little town we were living in, and they had given this list of people who had supposedly been saved.

That was the top of the list, saved. I didn't say, you know, maybe they've shown interest, or they prayed with us, or they asked for someone to come visit. It just simply said, saved. Oh, that's nice.

And I went to visit each of those people on that list, and this one young man, I think he was about 16 or 17 years old, I was trying to talk to him about what it means to be saved, you know, I was at his front door, and then he interrupted me and told me, point blank, like those northerners do, I'm not interested in this stuff.

Okay, now so was he really saved or not? Just about a week before, he had prayed this prayer, got his name on the list, he's saved, I was told. Now, a week later, he says, I'm not interested in this stuff.

Was he saved? Of course not. But he had been given assurance. In fact, of the seven names, not one of them showed any real signs of life. Even though they had been given assurance. Some of them were very nice people.

They showed no signs of interest in Christ. There is no place in Scripture where an individual, think about that, look at Acts, look at other places in Scripture, is there any place you can think of in Scripture where an individual is given assurance that he is absolutely saved after supposedly praying a prayer and never told to doubt it no matter what after this.

That's why John writes that if you persevere, if you show the signs of life, then you may know. By this you know. Eliph rightly writes on page 9, our job is to give the basis upon which one can come to assurance that he or she is a true believer.

Not to give assurance outright. That's what John is doing here, isn't he? He's giving the basis. By this you may know. Do you love God? Let's show it, do you keep his commandments? Do you love your brothers and sisters of the Lord?

Let us show in tangible and practical ways. If you have that, you may know it. You may know that you have eternal life. You may have confidence in the day of judgment. If you don't have that, don't let some guy slap you on the back, telling you you're saved for sure because you said a prayer.

Don't let that keep you from really seeking God. The third contributor to this dilemma is that we have lacked caution in the area of childhood conversion. Now we come to a very sensitive subject. I think this may come as a shock to some of you.

But if the grand mark that distinguishes a true Christian from a superficial professor, as they call it in a statement of faith, someone who professes to believe, but is superficial, has no real faith in the heart.

If the grand mark that distinguishes a true Christian from a hypocrite, someone who just has it on the surface, is perseverance, how can we know that a child is truly saved? After all, a child hasn't had the time or the experience to demonstrate whether their faith is genuine or not.

They haven't had the time to persevere. Where are they supposed to persevere from? That the bully took his chocolate milk at lunch and he didn't throw a fit and hit him in the nose? Which is good, but that's hardly long-term perseverance.

Now certainly children can be saved. But it is very difficult to tell because a child can also be easily manipulated. And many children by nature will say whatever it is you want them to say. They'll by nature maybe want to please you and say, OK, I believe I will be baptized or whatever.

And so it's very difficult to know whether a child is truly saved. But if you give them that hasty assurance because they said what you want them to say at a very young age, and they really aren't saved, we may have inoculated them to true evangelistic preaching because now they think they've already had that taken care of and they really don't need to listen to that anymore.

Now they're saved and so well, they can go about taking care of other business. That's why I'm told, I'm not looking at this personally, but I'm told that formerly used to be Baptists would not baptize small children.

That even if they made the right testimony as children, they would wait until sometime later in their lives where they could show that they cared more for the Lord than they did their friends. That's often what teenagers go through, isn't it?

And they show with their lives what they love more, their friends, their peers or the Lord. And so let them go for a while and show which one they love more before we tell them that they're saved. That they are, as John wrote in 1 John, overcoming the world.