A Solemn Warning: False Conversion

A Warning Against False Conversion and the Loss of Young People from Church

If you have your Bibles, I want to encourage you to open them and turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. And we're going to read this morning from 2 Corinthians 5 verse 20 into 2 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 2.

And the title of the message is A Solemn Warning. Several years ago, I was invited to come and speak at a homeschool convention where I was asked to speak on the subject of why do children often leave the faith when they become adults.

That was the question that I was asked to address. Why do so many young people make confessions when they're younger, participate in church when they're adolescent, but after they become adults, they often depart the church?

And the reason for this question should be rather obvious. It is not only anecdotal that we have all seen it happen, but it is also statistically accurate that it does happen. Many statistics have shown and bore out the fact that a large percentage of young people who are raised in church, reared in church, and even go to church and make confessions of faith will often walk away from the church when they become adults.

One study even showed it was 7 out of 10. And so when I was asked to come, I prayed on the subject, considered the statistics that I was reading and looking at the situation, and I decided to give an answer that was quite pointed and the answer that I gave was not very popular.

In fact, I would say that with some of the people in the room that I gave the answer to, it was quite offensive because I think what they expected me to say was something to the effect of, well, the influence of media, culture, universities, and politicians and all of these other things come in and vie for our children's attention and ultimately cause them to go a different direction.

Some want to talk about the failure of adequately equipping our children in apologetics and theology and doctrine and all of those things are true as far as it goes, but I said it's not the root. The root cause of why young people leave the church when they get older is because they have not been converted.

That was the answer. The root cause of why young people will leave the church is many of them have not been converted and yet have been confirmed in some type of conversion by the church and their parents with no evidence of that conversion being present.

We rear a generation of false converts and we call them backsliders. When they've never taken a step forward. Children are often quick to affirm the faith of their parents which is appropriate and good and parents are often eager to confirm the faith of their children because we want them so badly to believe.

So it is not uncommon that young people go through their lives with a pseudo-faith based primarily upon the relationship with their parents rather than a genuine relationship with God and often times what happens is people who think they got saved in some experience a long time ago and I have to tell you, I spend a lot of time with the Ministry of Set Free, Brother Andy and I preach there, I preach there every Thursday and so many of those men want to talk about some event that happened way in their life a long time ago where they met Jesus when they were 5, 6, 7, 8 years old and they said no, no, no, that's when I got saved.

Christ didn't change my life, it didn't make an effect, there was no root, but that's when I got saved. The reality is we have an entire generation of false conversions that we have to answer for. And I'm not the only one who has recognized this by the way, A .W. Tozer gives a haunting quote, A .W. Tozer said this, he said, it is my opinion that tens of thousands of people if not millions have been brought into some kind of religious experience by accepting Christ and they have not been saved.

The Problem of False Assurance and Manipulated Decisions

It's not just young people, it's adults as well. We created this in our zeal to try to produce conversions, we produced methodologies that in themselves automatically produce false conversions. Out of the second great awakening came the crusade movement and out of the, not the crusades of the 11th century, no the crusades, different crusades, but the tent revivalist movements that went out to the country sides and to the towns and villages and they brought along with them a conversion message that lasted about as long as the revival.

Ray Comfort in his book, Hell's Best Kept Secret, mentions this, he says, in November of 1970, a number of churches combined for a convention in Fort Worth, Texas. At that convention they secured 30 ,000 decisions.

Six months later, a follow up committee who had the names, addresses, and phone numbers of every one of those 30 ,000 people who supposedly made a conversion to Christ were sought and only 30 of them could be found still continuing in their faith.

And if you think that's an exaggerated statistic, I can tell you that is what has been produced. Charles Hackett is the Division of Home Missions National Director for the Assemblies of God churches, which I know is a different type of church than us, we're Reformed Baptists, but still listen to what he says because I think it affects every denomination, not just his own.

He said this, he said, a soul at the altar doesn't generate excitement in most churches because we know that 95 out of 100 will not become integrated into the church. In fact, most of them will not even return for another visit.

He said, we know it! We know the statistics, we know what happens, yet we still keep doing it because we're so concerned with this invitation moment at the end of the message where we have to get someone down.

I mean, Brother Andy makes the joke all the time, play those keys, sister! Play another verse of Just As I Am so we can get somebody down the aisle so we can all make it to the Piccadilly! Was this 1977, okay, is there still a Piccadilly?

You understand the point I'm making. How many of you have been in a church service where the pastor says, somebody out there has to come forward? We manipulate, we manufacture conversions, and then we wonder why we have churches filled with false converts.

The Call to Be Reconciled to God

Today as we continue our study of 2 Corinthians, we're going to back up. Last week, in the last two weeks, I've looked at verse 21 of 2 Corinthians chapter 5. I did two weeks on that message. But we're going to back up to verse 20.

And the reason why is because Paul has been describing his ministry as a ministry of reconciliation. And in verse 20, he actually calls his hearers to be reconciled to God. And then in chapter 6, verse 1, he warns them of having received the grace of God in vain.

So let's stand and read together what Paul writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

For our sake, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Chapter 6, verse 1, working together with Him then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.

For He says, in a favorable time, I listened to you and in a favorable or in a day of salvation, I have helped you. Behold, now is the favorable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.

I pray now as I seek to give an understanding of it that you would, by your mercy and grace, keep me from error. For Lord God, I'm a fallible man. I'm capable of preaching error. So for the sake of your name, for the sake of my conscience and for the sake of those who will hear this message, I pray, Lord, that you would protect me and protect them.

And I pray, God, that as the message is preached, that your Holy Spirit would come and fill me and that He would go out through the message and, Lord, through the working of faith into the ears, the mind, and down to the heart, Lord, that He would bury this message deep.

Within.

And Lord, if there are those here who know Christ, may they rejoice in verse 21, which reminds us of the two parts of justification which are so important, that Christ has taken our sin and He's given us His righteousness.

And Lord, if there are those who are here who know that they're not saved, Lord, I pray that today that they would see Christ as glorious and wonderful and, Lord, that they would not through any manipulation but through the working of the Holy Spirit come to know Christ.

But Lord, for those who are here with a false hope, with a pseudo faith, I pray, oh God, that you would, in your mercy, grant them eyes to see their condition and a willingness to repent. And I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

As I was trying to outline the text this week and thinking about how I wanted to preach it, it was the natural desire to just move on into chapter 6, and yet it continued as I was studying to be brought up in my mind that chapter 6 is connected to what came before.

It.

And I say this all the time, but we have visitors today, people who are not always with us. Chapter divisions really don't matter much. In fact, they don't matter at all in the sense of the grand scheme of things because they weren't a part of the original.

Paul didn't write chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, he just wrote. And later, in an attempt to try to make the scripture easier to follow and understand, chapter divisions were added, and then even later than that, the verse divisions were.

Added.

And so today, we think of John 3, 16, or a verse like that, and we really only know that verse, and often times we rip it out of its context and we rip it out of its place in the text because we only know that one verse.

So it was my thought in the initial phase of preparing this message that I was going to simply begin with verse 1 of chapter 6 because last week we ended chapter 5, but I kept looking at the word then.

So if you look at verse 1 of chapter 6, you'll notice it says in the ESV, it says, Working together with him then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in.

Vain.

Is the word then in the King James, brother, or is it? We then. Okay. Is it in the NAS? It's not. What does it say?

And.

And.

Okay.

But it's still tying it to, it's a conjunctive idea, or a connective idea of connecting it to what has come before. And what has come right prior to chapter 6, verse 1, is a wonderful explanation of the gospel.

And even though I would say Paul is tying to that, I don't think that's all that he's tying to. I think that he's actually tying to what he says in chapter 5, verse 20. And so I've outlined the text as we see it today like this.

Chapter 20, I'm sorry, chapter 5, verse 20 provides to us the call of reconciliation because remember, reconciliation is the subject matter. Paul has been in chapter 5 reminding his hearers that he is a minister of reconciliation.

Remember that the Corinthian church had been infested with people who had called Paul's doctrines into question, who had called Paul himself into question, who had questioned the very legitimacy of his apostleship.

And Paul has said back in chapter 3 that he is a minister of the new covenant and now here in chapter 5, he identifies himself as a minister of reconciliation. And so in chapter 5 when he says that he's a minister of reconciliation, God gave him the message of reconciliation, he gets to verse 20 and he gives a call to reconciliation.

Notice what he says, therefore, again a connecting word, connecting to what just came before.

It.

He says, therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. And then he gives the appeal. We implore you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Now I don't know if that bothers you, but as I was studying through it somewhat bothered me because it raises the question, and Brother Mike and I just finished a series teaching together on the subject of hermeneutics, which is how to study the Bible, and one of the things that we talked about is when you come to a text and a problem is raised, sometimes the problems are obvious, sometimes the problems are a little less obvious, sometimes the problems deal with the teacher, sometimes the problems deal with the student.

There's all kinds of ways that you can identify problems in the text and as I was looking at this text I thought, there's somewhat of a problem here, and here's the problem. Paul's talking to Christians, and yet in the midst of this statement, in talking to Christians, he stops and he says, we implore you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

And the problem, the question that arises out of that is, wait a minute, aren't these people already reconciled to God? And if they are already reconciled to God, why call them to reconciliation? Well, it is certain that many of them are reconciled to God, many of them are Christians, but it is also just as certain that many people in Corinth are not yet reconciled to.

God.

In fact, we're going to see in chapter 6, verse 1, some of them think they are, and they're not, because he says that they have received the grace of God in vain. And so I would say that the reason Paul has made this call, he has made this imploring, on behalf of Christ, to be reconciled to God, is because in his mind he is confident that there are those in that church who are not.

I'll never forget, years ago, I was in a small church, and the pastor who was preaching was getting toward the end of his message, and I think they had a business meeting after church or something was going on after the service that required the attention of the church.

And so as the pastor was finishing his message, he looked out of the congregation, and I was there, Jennifer probably remembers this, she was with me. He looked out of the congregation and he says, well, you're all believers, so I don't have to give an invitation, we'll move right to the meeting.

Now however you feel about invitations, because again, we don't really do a formal invitation here, and in a moment I'm going to talk about why. But at that church, they did a formal invitation at the end of the message.

But the pastor was willing to stop his message, look out of the congregation, say, well, everybody here is saved, so I'm not going to give the invitation, we'll go right into the business.

Meeting.

Now, you may feel differently than I do, and that's okay, but that did not sit well with.

Me.

It is not as if I cannot, in my heart, look at many of you and confirm you as believers, because many of you I've heard your confession of faith, and I've watched you be baptized, many of you I've baptized myself.

It's not as if I would in no way ever confirm a person as a believer. But to look out at a congregation and say, there's no reason for me to take a moment and again point you to Christ and the gospel, because we have something else to do, just didn't sit well with me.

And I only tell this story because if there's one thing that we can see in this passage, is it's the reminder that we all need to be called again and again to be reminded about the urgency of the gospel and the fact that there are those who are playing a part who are not genuinely saved and need again to be reminded that, hey, have you truly been reconciled to God?

I wonder this morning how many of you would say, you know, I really don't know. I made a confession years ago. I said the words, I got wet, but I really don't know where I stand with God. Paul says we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

I mentioned earlier about the invitation, said I was going to say this, so I'll say it. We don't have a formal invitation here, as in many churches. And our reasoning is simple. In the New Testament, the call to repentance and faith was a general call given to the masses, given to the groups.

And at that moment, the call has gone out. And it is the work of the spirit of God that will cause you to receive that call. And when that work happens, it will be evident in your life with a desire to do two things.

One, it will be a desire to follow Christ in baptism. And two, it will be a desire to be numbered among his people. And so if you feel God has called you to faith and he has given you the gift of faith, I say this, and I think it's in our bulletin somewhere.

Come and talk to us, because it doesn't have it. It isn't as if we need to do it right here, because I think that's what people think. I think people think that that this is the only place where somebody can get saved.

I remember years ago, a guy came. He says, you guys don't give an invitation. When can someone get saved? I said right now. You can get saved right now, brother. I'm going to confirm. I think you are.

But you're right there walking the aisle and coming forward and doing something here is actually the byproduct of what was known as the mourner's bench. It was introduced in the Methodist church and popularized by Charles Finney.

It was a bench that was put at the front as a place for people to come and get down on their knees and mourn over their sins. Later, they would call it what? The altar.

Guess what?

There are no altars in the church today. This is not an altar. This is a supper table. We have the Lord's Supper here. Roman Catholics call it an altar because they believe they are representing the sacrifice of Christ.

We're not doing that. And we don't have a bench up here. You can feel free to cry where you are. I'll preach long enough. It'll probably happen. But you understand my point is this is there's nothing magical about coming forward.

There's nothing magical about signing a card or shaking a hand of a minister. What happens is the Holy Spirit of God comes and changes your heart. And when he changes your heart, he gives you new affections and new desires.

And he gives you the gift of faith. And that gift of faith is what changes your life. And so when I say to you, be reconciled to God, I'm asking you this question. Has Christ changed your life? And if you can say yes, then praise the Lord.

But I can guarantee you there were people in Corinth who couldn't say yes. Because there were people in Corinth who were opposing Paul's message. They were opposing the very gospel of Christ. They were what Paul will later call super apostles.

They had a high opinion of themselves, a low opinion of Paul, and therefore a low opinion of the gospel. They were false teachers. And so Paul says, I implore you. What does it mean to implore? I'm urging you.

I'm begging you. I'm telling you this is so important. If you never have, be reconciled to God. I say that to you today. If you're here today, some of you I don't even know. Which is great to see so many people, so many faces I've never met.

I hope to meet you. And you may have been a Christian for a long time or you may have come in today and you're wondering, what's this about? I urge you to be reconciled to God. The Bible says we are sinners.

We are at war with God. And the only way to bring peace is through the cross of Jesus Christ. That's the reconciliation that needs to be made. It's not reconciliation between man and man, because Jesus said, I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword.

And I will divide father from son and mother from daughter. There's division that the gospel brings, and it's true. But the reconciliation which is brought is the reconciliation between God and man. And if you've never been reconciled to God, I urge you to look at your sin for what it is.

It is what separates you from God. It's what brings his condemnation is what brings judgment upon you to turn from it and turn to Christ. And be saved. I implore you on behalf of Christ. To be reconciled to God.

The Ground of Justification in Christ's Sin-Bearing and Righteousness

And what is the ground of that reconciliation? This is our second point. What is the ground? We've seen the call to reconciliation. What is the ground of reconciliation? Well, the ground of reconciliation is this.

Two pillars. The first pillar, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin. I spent the last two weeks explaining this. I'm not going to spend the whole sermon doing this. But understand this.

Christ had no sin. And when you trust in him, the sin you have is applied to him. And he takes the punishment in your place and he bears the burden on the tree. That which you deserve, he received. God made him who knew no sin to become sin for you.

That's the first. We say there's two pillars of justification. The first is that your sin is applied to Christ. The second pillar of justification is in the second part of the verse. Oh, I didn't put the verse up, excuse me.

So that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. The second pillar of justification is not only have your sins been applied to Christ, but the righteousness of God, which is demonstrated in Christ, his righteousness is applied to you.

We sang about it already. No, we haven't. We're going to sing it during communion. Nothing in my hand, I bring only to the cross, I cling naked, come to thee for dress. Come to you to be dressed in your righteousness.

That's the grounding of justification. And again, if you don't understand that and you want to talk about it, you need to understand it better. We have many men in this church who would be happy to talk to you.

Stay as long as you need. Don't leave this place. If you don't understand this and you need to understand it, don't leave this place today without grabbing one of us. No, none of us are too busy. I hate that one.

And I understand what some people mean. And I appreciate what you what you what you're saying with some people. I know you're busy, Pastor, but I'm never too busy to talk to you about your soul. I'm not worried about the temperature, the air conditioning or the fact that the toilets overflowing.

But I'm never too busy to talk to you about your soul.

I'm being serious.

I mean, we got we can talk about that later. But your soul is more valuable than anything that you have. If somebody asked you today, can I purchase your eyes for twenty thousand dollars, you'd say you're a fool.

Well, what about fifty thousand dollars?

You're a fool.

What about one hundred million dollars? There's no way I would sell my eyes for any amount of money because my eyes are valuable to me. Jesus said, what does it profit a man if he gained the whole world?

And lose his soul, your soul is more valuable than your eyes. Jesus says your eye cause you to sin, what do you do? Plug it out and throw it from you because your soul is more valuable even than your eyes.

Beloved, your soul matters. So don't leave this place if you're confused about your soul. And you need your questions answered. We want to talk to you. The ground of justification is our sin is imputed to Christ, his righteousness is imputed to us.

The Warning Against Receiving the Grace of God in Vain

And then we move to chapter six. And we have the warning, the warning of reconciliation. He says, working together with him, then what work Paul's talking about, his work as an ambassador is going back to verse 20.

This work that we're doing, we're working together. We're we're calling people to him to be to be reconciled to God. Where God is making his appeal. By the way, we know chapter six, verse one is connected to chapter 20, because when he says in chapter five, verse 20, he says God making his appeal through us.

And then later he says, working together with him. That's the working together. We're ambassadors. We are. God is working in us to make this appeal. God is working with us. He's doing this through us.

That's how we see the connection here. And in chapter six, verse one, he says, working together with him, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God. In vain, what does it mean to receive something in vain, it literally means to receive it without effect.

One of the words that is used, it's the word kinos in Greek, and one of the words that can be used to translate this word kinos is the word fruitless. And I think that really does capture the heart of this, because if we say we have received the grace of God and there is no fruit.

What are we seeing? A false confession. A false confession is one that bears no fruit. And that's not my, people get upset about that. There is an entire movement that is arguing that it is perfectly legitimate that a person had come into a genuine saving relationship with Jesus and have no change to their life.

Years ago, it was popularized, it was called the carnal Christian movement. That when you become a Christian, you're a carnal Christian, meaning you're still living in the flesh. And at some point, you'll become a spiritual Christian.

Just we don't know when, may never happen. Who knows? The more modern expression of that sometimes referred to as the hyper grace movement. And again, the idea is that a person can receive the grace of God and there be no change.

Now, I'm going to tell you this right away. The change may be subtle and the change is going to need to grow. And I'm not the same man I was 20 years ago because Christ has grown me. And I'm still I joke about it.

I said I'm still just barely saved. I'm still fighting that battle. But I know that Christ changed my life. He changed my affections. He changed my desires. He changed my direction. He changed everything.

I was on par to be a to be a professional magician. That was my direction with life. Now, I don't need to know that, but that's where I was headed. And Christ, through the power of the spirit, reconciled me to God.

And Paul says here that there are those who have received the grace of God in vain. I think there are two places in scripture where we can actually see this played out. And for the sake of time, I'm going to take you to both of them, I'm going to read them, but I'm going to be very brief in my comments because either one of them could be its own sermon.

But I want to show you two places where Jesus himself spoke of this very thing. The first one is in Mark, chapter four, so if you have your Bibles, you can turn to Mark, chapter four. And go to verse three, this is what's known as the parable of the sower.

I prefer the term the parable of the soils. Because the sower is consistent, it's the soils that are different, it says, listen, behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path and the birds came and devoured it.

Other seed fell on rocky ground where it did not have much soil and immediately it sprang up since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched. And since it had no root, it withered away.

Other seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain. And growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.

Now, this is one of the few parables where Jesus actually gives us an interpretation. Some of the parables don't have an interpretation and they're, I would say, among the more difficult because people tend to run to all kinds of understandings of them.

But this one was so important that Jesus. Not only gives it to his apostles, but or to the masses, but he gives to his apostles a divine interpretation of what he's saying here. And so we need not wonder what he means.

The seed is the word of God. And the soils represent how the word of God is received by people. It represents the heart. And he says some people's heart is packed down tight, just like a walkway where feet have traversed it so many times that it has packed the ground so tight that a seed could not even breach the top layer of the soil.

And when the seed falls upon that soil, it simply sits on top and waits for the birds to come and devour it. And Jesus said that's the person who, when they hear the word of God, they reject it.

Immediately.

And the birds in that sense represent Satan taking it away. Now, you know that happens. You know there are people you you give them the gospel and they immediately want nothing to do with it. But then there is the fourth.

I'm leaving out the two middle ones for just a moment. But the fourth soil is marked by this. It bears fruit. Now, the fruit is different. Some 30, some 60, some 100, right? Not all Christians are going to be the same.

Not all Christians are going to bear the same fruit. Not all Christians are going to bear fruit in the same quantity. But there is the one consistent thing that the seed that falls in the good soil, not because the soil itself is by nature good, but because it's been prepared by the sower.

That doesn't say that, but there's at least an intimation there that there's something to do with the heart that's been prepared for the seed. The seed comes in and it bears fruit. And that is the believer.

That is the genuine Christian. But in between, there are two types of soil. First, there is the soil that is called the rocky soil. Rocky soil doesn't have much depth. But the seed can make its way down a little ways and get enough strength to spring up.

But it will not have fruit. It will not bear a crop. Because it has no root. Same as the seed that falls among the thorns. It gets rooted. But the external power of the surrounding weeds and thorns choke out the nourishment.

And neither the seed that falls among the rocks nor the seed that falls among the thorns bears fruit. Now, you can debate all day long whether you think either one of those are saved. But I am convinced in my heart that Jesus is giving us a picture of two types of hearts that are falsely converted.

Again, you may see that differently, you may want to argue with me afterwards, and if you do, I'm just going to point you to Andy and Mike. But here's the conclusion. Here's why how I come to that conclusion.

The testimony of the believer is that the believer bears fruit. We are told in Matthew chapter 7, when Jesus is giving the greatest sermon ever given in the history of the world, the Sermon on the Mount, he says, you will know them by their.

Fruit.

And just with that in our mind, I want you to turn over to the other passage, John chapter 15. Jesus gives an illustration here of himself and his father as the vine and the vine dresser. John chapter 15, verse one, Jesus said, I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser.

I think King James has husbandman every branch in me that does not bear fruit. He takes away and every branch that does bear fruit. He prunes that it may bear more fruit. Keep in mind, please, that this is within the church because everyone on this vine has made some type of profession of a connection to the vine.