Can I Deny Being a Christian to Escape Persecution?

Warning, the following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished Netflix but don't know how to meal plan, and people who refer to their pets as fur babies.

Viewer discretion is advised.

The Gospel of Salvation and Judgment

People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ, therefore, forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of Almighty God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed, and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come, in that final day, their house will stand.

The Question of Denying Christ Under Persecution

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll answer the age-old question, can I deny being a Christian to escape persecution?

Now, as we get started on this episode, Tim, what Bible verse do you have to read for us today? Tim, I've got to be honest with you. Sometimes we'll start an episode where we're asking a certain question and then you'll read a Bible verse that's supposed to obviously, like, relate to that question in some way and, you know, I mean, sometimes, you know, I'm sure there's been times where we've done an episode where we've started out that way and, you know, the Bible verse doesn't necessarily outright answer the question for us immediately, but I've got to say, Tim, it's really hard sometimes to try and make these episodes, you know, as, like, make the questions sound more complicated than they actually are sometimes.

It's really hard to do that when you have Bible verses that just seem to be so plainly obvious that it's like, I just don't even, like, what else do we need to say at this point? You know, like, if the answer is can I deny being a Christian to escape persecution, what else do you say?

Beyond what God has already said, right? Jared. Yeah, I think for a lot of people,.

It's just a lot more complicated than what it actually is. And so, you know, I think there's a certain kind of person that refuses to accept that the Bible has any moral obligations on it whatsoever and it just kind of reduces to pragmatism, essentially.

Pete. Yeah, yeah, it really does. And, you know, I can, you know, I think a lot of people, what they do with these kinds of conversations is at end of the day, they just, like, it's almost as if they totally ignore what they know or what they know to be true and instead, like, only think about things through the lens of their emotions because that's the only way that I can even, you know, comprehend someone hearing a Bible verse like that and then, you know, saying like, hey, as a person who claims to be a Christian, the best thing for me to do morally is to lie and say that I am not a Christian if it means that I'm going to be killed because I'm going to be leaving, you know, this responsibility behind and that responsibility behind.

And so, you know, and I can understand it from a certain perspective, meaning, you know, like, the Bible says that our hearts are deceitful above all things, and so, we're constantly tempted to, you know, we're constantly tempted to want to be lied to and think emotionally and be irrational and not trust in what God has said, but, you know, but then that doesn't make, that doesn't mean it's right.

That just means, like, we're tempted to do that and I just, it's hard to talk about this subject in any way that tries to take seriously the person who says, well, there's a time where God would be honored by you lying and saying that you're actually not a Christian based on what the Bible says.

Jared. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people, they definitely, when they're thinking about topics like this, they're filtering it through lens that God is love, essentially. So, a lot of it is they're thinking with their emotions and then I think if they're doing anything theological at all, one of the things that they're often doing is they're filtering these kinds of discussions through their limited knowledge of who God is in general.

So, it may be for them that they know very little about what the Bible says in general, and they know very little about God, but then what they've been told is that if they walk, you know, walk an aisle or pray a prayer, they're going to be saved.

And then basically, they're like, period, the end, and they can't lose their salvation anyway. And I mean, you know, there's part of that's obviously true, but not maybe in the way that they're thinking.

Jared. And then, you know, they go from there to essentially think about who God is to them and God is basically just this big loving daddy who understands how things are hard and he's forgiving. And so, in their mind, God who he is in terms of his nature is he's loving and he's forgiving, period, the end.

So, then when they answer questions like this, if something just seems too hard or mean or the entailments of it are ghastly, then they basically just conclude from that that God would understand if they just can't really do that thing that they're supposed to do in general.

Pete. Yeah, it seems like there's no room at all for any sort of, like, God is holy or God is just, you know? So, it seems like they're totally anemic. I mean, certainly, you know, God is love, but then, like, there's more to God's character than just that.

Jared.

Right, right. So, I mean, what this question came about is that I was asking some questions related to, you know, the next scheduled pandemic that we're going to have that should be coming shortly. So, I was basically asking, you know, true or false, true Christians should be willing to risk going to jail in order to go to church during the next scheduled, you know, quote-unquote pandemic or whatever.

So, true Christians, you know, true or false, should true Christians be willing to risk going to jail in order to go to church this next time around? So, you know, the question is basically, did we learn anything from the last one, right?

Pete. Right. Jared. So, did we learn anything from this last one, and then are we willing to suffer a little bit this next time around? So, have we, did we get it all out of our system on round one, and now, you know, are we ready to finally suffer for the Lord in any meaningful way?

And you had a lot of interesting comments on that. And, you know, one of them was from a lady who was essentially saying, hey, that she's pregnant right now, and she has three kids to take care of, and if she goes to jail, then, you know, there will be no one left to take care of the kids and all that.

So, then, in her case, she may have to really think about it because it might be too hard for her to, you know, make that kind of commitment, but maybe she'll figure it out. And so, that kind of provoked me to think about just a ridiculous, like, scenario.

So, I just wanted to amp it up, you know, because when you think about, like, going to church and getting persecution for going to church, I wanted to just bring it into, like, the full-scale martyr situation and see how people would respond to that.

So, the situation I came up with was a pregnant mother of four is faced with the choice to renounce her faith or face death shortly after her husband's killing, essentially. So, scenario is her husband just got killed for not renouncing his faith, and she's being given the same choice.

Either you renounce the faith or you die, right? And so, in her case, she's pregnant and she has three other kids or whatever, and basically, if she, you know, if she refuses to renounce her faith, both her and her unborn baby would perish, leaving her other children without care.

So, what should she do? And then the options I gave at that point were, you know, one, be faithful unto death, two, renounce her faith, and then three, pretend to renounce her faith. So, pretend to renounce her faith.

So, it's like, be faithful unto death, you know, renounce the faith, and then below that, renounce the faith, parenthesis, lie.

Jared. And I mean, a surprising amount of people, they actually picked that pretend to renounce their faith as if it were, like, a realistic thing. So, part of what we're trying to ask in this kind of question is, we're trying to ask, is there a difference, essentially, between renouncing your faith and pretending to renounce it under pressure in order to escape persecution?

Denying Christ, Endurance, and the Witness of Scripture

Pete. So, I guess as we think about that, the title question, you know, what would your answer be? Can I deny being a Christian to escape persecution? Jared I mean, absolutely not.

Pete. No. Jared. No. I mean, yeah, I think as you read through, you know, Matthew 10, 32 -33, I mean, it's about as clear as you possibly can get. Pete. Read it again for everyone. Read it again for everyone.

Jared. I got a few, I'll read a few here. Pete.

Okay, yeah, let's hear them. Jared.

Matthew 10, 32 -33, everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but everyone who denies me before men, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven.

So, I mean, that seems about as black as white as it can possibly get, and really, that is the, you know, fountainhead for all the rest of the scriptural teaching on this in general. I mean, there's just a lot in the Bible that addresses this kind of topic.

So, 2 Timothy 2, 11 -13, this saying is trustworthy for if we have died with Him, we also live with Him. If we endure, we also reign with Him. So, the idea of enduring in the Christian life is all connected with this idea of not denying the faith.

But if we endure, it says, we will also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will also deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. So, I mean, God, in terms of His very character, He can't deny Himself, because He's the God of truth in that way, and He's going to be faithful to what He says He's going to do.

And what does He say He's going to do? Well, we already know. If we deny Him, He's going to deny us. That's the way it works. And so, He's going to be faithful to His character and do what He says He's going to do.

Revelation 2 -13, I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, yet you hold fast to my name. So, like, this whole idea of holding fast to His name and not denying Him, it says, you hold fast to my name, and you did not deny my faith, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.

And then, you know, I mean, you have the whole, you know, Luke 9 -23, and He said to them, if anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me. So, the whole idea of the Christian life is we confess that Jesus is Lord.

That means, like, we're making a pledge of allegiance to Him. We're saying, You're my Lord. And what we're supposed to do is we're supposed to deny ourself, not deny Him. And then, if you want to know evidence that we're actually Christians in the Christian life, we're going to endure faithfully to the end, and we're not going to deny the Lord.

And then, if we do deny Him, it says, you know, He can't deny Himself. So, if He's going to be faithful to Himself in that way. So, I think that's just one of those things that, one of those, you know, areas in the Bible where it just shows that 21st century American church isn't ready for persecution because we haven't even worked out some of the basic things yet.

Pete. Oh, no. No, not at all. Not at all. I mean, can you imagine if, you know, the early church was made up of the same people that make up the 21st century Christian American church, at least? You know, like, I mean, they were getting fed to lions.

Pete. And we're talking about, hey, I can't, you know, I can't, I need to think about Jared. Whether I can risk going to jail. Pete. Whether I can risk going to jail because I've got children at home and I'm pregnant with another one.

Well, I think that exposes a few different flaws, and you've, I mean, you've touched on some of them. Like, number one, just in general, I think we're dominated by a fear of man rather than of God. You know, but another one that I think we haven't touched on yet is just, like, we're not ready for persecution just in the sense that, like, we don't actually trust that our, it seems like at least, we don't actually trust our brothers and sisters in Christ to take care of our family in our absence.

I mean, that's, I just wonder if people even realize that that is actually a responsibility of the local church because, you know, like, if I were personally to go to jail for my faith in some way, whether it's just straight up, like, hey, you're going to jail because you're a Christian or it's, you know, you're going to jail because you went to church in the middle of our pandemic that we had going on, you know, I would fully trust that my church would take care of my family in my absence.

And I would, and not even just a trust, I would expect them to. Pete. Right. Tom. Because, like, we're told, we're commanded to bear one another's burdens and, you know, to give to any who have need and, you know, if I were to be killed or something, the church is commanded to take care of the widows and the orphans.

And so, it seems like we just don't even, like, beyond just the fear of man rather than of God, it seems like we don't even understand that the church is actually, it's not just this thing you go to on Sunday.

It's not just a big light show, you know, that you experience every Sunday and then try to a few minutes early so you can beat all the traffic like it's a rock concert. It's actually a family of brothers and sisters in Christ who have all been redeemed because of Christ's blood who are not only worshiping God, but they're also loving neighbor as themselves and bearing one another's burdens.

So, it just seems like from a persecution perspective, we don't, I mean, it almost seems like there's no groundwork laid to prepare us in any way spiritually for any sort of serious persecution. Jared.

The Local Church, Ecclesiology, and Responsibility to One Another

Yeah, that's definitely true. I mean,.

I think when you look around at the American church right now, not only do we not have any expectations of ourself in general as it relates to just our basic commitment to the lordship of Christ and our life at all, it seems like we don't have much of an ecclesiology or much of an understanding of what the church is there for also, as well.

So, I mean, you can ask this question in a variety of ways, and whatever controversial question we'll ask online, typically it's the same kind of people who are making the same kind of allowances for the same kind of faithlessness in situations where Christianity might actually have to cost them something.

So, it doesn't really matter. I mean, it doesn't really matter how you ask the question. You can ask the question in a wide variety of ways, but essentially, I mean, when you think about the kind of question that we're asking right now in general, the question we're asking is basically the question, does Christ's lordship demand anything from the individual believer at all?

Like, in an absolute way, right? Like, does saying Jesus is my lord, does that have any entailments whatsoever? Does it restrict your freedom in any way? Does it make any kind of absolute demands on you whatsoever in the Christian life?

And I think for the vast majority of professing Christians in America, there's no absolute demands that are made upon the Christian at all. Like, in that statement, right? So, if Jesus is Lord, like, there's no real demands that are made from that other than you just need to say, I'm a sinner, please forgive me.

Other than that, I mean, and you may not even have to do that so long as you have sentimental family members who want to think the best about where you're going, despite the fact that you're showing no evidence of being a Christian at all.

But like, in the minds of many American Christians, essentially, there's no demands that are made at all from that basic statement that Jesus is Lord. So, any kind of commands that God has are basically viewed by the vast majority of people as being entirely optional commands that you may want to try to follow so long as it seems reasonable, it's not going to cost you anything, and you don't have something better to do and everything else.

So, it's the same group of people that basically will look at questions like this and they're going to respond in a similar way once Christianity or the basic entailments of the Lordship of Christ begin to cost anything.

So, part of it's that. Part of it, on the other hand, is a lot of things that you mentioned in that we don't understand our responsibilities to our church body as well. So, for most people, they do go to church, they go to their rock concert or whatever they're going to, and they're going to sit there, they're going to listen to a few songs and get their feels on with these emotional songs about Jesus being their boyfriend and whatever else.

So, they're going to get that and then they're going to listen to their little planned speech and that's going to be the extent of it. And then they don't really think in terms of any responsibilities that they have towards their family members.

So, you say, hey, if I were to go to jail, like if you were to go to jail, you would fully expect that your church family would take care of you based on the kind of church family that you're going to at the moment.

But I think for the vast majority of people, they don't understand that church members have any responsibilities to themselves, to other people. I mean, just think about the controversy that J .D. Greer got in by rebuking people for getting to church 10 minutes late and leaving 10 minutes early.

I mean, they don't have any responsibilities to anyone in that kind of framework. But I mean, the Bible, the way the Bible speaks about your responsibility to your faith family, I mean, it's pretty stark.

And if you have this world's goods and you see your brother in need and you don't give them the things that are needful to him, essentially you say, to part in peace, be warm and filled, how does the love of God abide in you?

So, when you think about that, like, we live very individualistic kind of lives with little expectations about what we, about the actual responsibilities that we have for each other. But I mean, when the early church was formed, post-Pentecost, you have 3 ,000 people come into faith, they began to sell their houses and their properties in order to take care of people.

And we may very quickly be in a situation where we're having to think like that, I need to sell a car in order to take care of my family members. I need to sell a house in order to take care of my family member.

We got to get creative, we got to sell, we need to start doing a yard sale, start selling all the junk. So, we're not even thinking in those terms and we don't even think about the church in that kind of way because it's just such a watered down perspective of what we're even doing as Christians, you know, individually and as.

Christians together, for sure. Petey. Right, right. Now, I know there's going to be, I know there's a lot of people screaming at the screen right now saying, well, what about Peter? What about Peter? You know, he denied, he denied, he denied three times.

And I was planning on asking you that probably a little later in the episode, but I figure it might be good just to go ahead and talk about, you know, what's going on there. I mean, you know, does the fact that Peter did, you know, he did deny Christ three different times in the span of like a few hours basically, you know, is that grounds to say, hey, you know, this is like a thing that Christians can do, they can deny Christ if it means they're going to if it means they're going to be killed basically, or they're going to be persecuted in some way, or was, you know, was it like Peter, that's like a special instance that's going on there because Christ is still, you know, Christ is still alive at this point.

You know, how should we view like just your average everyday person who denies the faith at the threat of being killed compared to Peter denying Christ at the threat of, you know, potentially being crucified himself?

Jared. Yeah, well, whatever you do with Peter, what you don't want to do is use Peter's example as a way of giving an individual permission to actively in their mind make excuses for allowing, make excuses for denying the faith, like actively in that way.

Like meaning, like there's any number of heinous sins that a Christian can commit that God obviously will forgive them from, but then I'm always worried about the kind of Christian who looks at examples of notorious sins in the Bibles that individuals have committed and then they look at that as license to, like in a high hand, in a bold way to commit those same sins of self.

So, an example of that would be something like, you know, David with his committing adultery and murdering of Uriah. So, if you have a Christian who's looking at you and he's saying, hey, God forgave David of his adultery and murder, so I'm going to go murder someone and commit adultery because God will forgive me.

That kind of individual is not really even in the same situation as David at all at that point. Does that make sense? Meaning, like it's a very difficult, I mean, it's a very different situation to be in, like David's situation or Peter's situation where if you're Peter, like imagine you're Peter, Peter went into the encounter saying there's no way I will deny you.

I will not deny you, right? So, he went into that encounter with the full intention of saying if everyone else denies you, I won't deny you. And the Lord looks at him and basically says, hey,.

You know, before the Pete. You will deny me the most.

Jared. You will deny me the most out of all of them. You know, so, like there's lessons to be learned, like pride comes before a fall, like, you know, there's lessons learned about Jesus was asking them to stay up and pray with him and they would stay up and pray with him.

So, they weren't prepared for that moment. They weren't taking that moment seriously. They were filled with pride and thinking that they were going to, you know, do better than what they did. I mean, pretty much all of them fell away that night.

They stumbled at that night except for John, essentially. So, John was about the only one of I mean, the other, you know, ten of the other ones ran too, so they all did the same kind of thing. They all abandoned him in that moment.

And so, part of it's that. I mean, part of it is like the Holy Spirit hadn't yet come to dwell within them. So, you have a group of timid disciples on their own without all the full resources that God had to offer them at that moment.

We're basically hiding in the upper room for, you know, after Jesus' crucifixion, just terrified, and God uses these individuals, like he sends the Holy Spirit to come to them, he restores them all, he sends the Holy Spirit to come to dwell within them in that way, and, you know, they, like these same group of timid individuals post-Pentecost become, like, the world's greatest evangelists that you've ever seen in that way.

So, you know, part of it is they didn't have all the resources that God had to give them at that point, to describe the Holy Spirit crassly as a resource in that way. But they didn't have the full gifts of the Spirit in that way.

You know, part of it was an exercise in pride, like pride also, and then, you know, if you think about it, like these weren't individuals who were making allowance for future sin in a high-handed way.

So, the Bible has different categories. There are what you describe as intentional sins in the Bible, and then you have sins of weakness in the moment where you fully intend to be committed to the Lord, and then you aren't as committed as what you think, and you have to ask for forgiveness because you fully intended to do something, and yeah, sure, in a moment of weakness, you fail.

So, that's very different, though, than planning out your disobedience in the future in a high-handed, hard-hearted way saying, you know, I, yeah, this marriage is hard. I don't care. I'm just gonna quit because God will forgive me.

Anytime any individual engages in a high-handed, stubborn, planned-out, premeditated rebellion, like laying aside of anything that God has to say at that point, you should always be much more concerned about them in that way.

So, yeah, no, Peter's example is not an example to say, well, because Peter denied the Lord and was restored, therefore, you go and feel free to confidently do likewise. In fact, I mean, I think the worst thing you can do is put that one to the test at that point.

Peter. Yeah, that seems pretty terrifying to risk your…. Jared God will forgive me, right? Peter. Yeah, risk your eternal destination on a, like, well, he probably will forgive, you know, like…. Jared He's forgiven someone before, so he'll forgive me too, right?

So…. Peter. I don't know. That makes me nervous. Anytime anyone's like, basically, like, where is the line so I can tow it, you know, that's pretty scary to me. I wouldn't want to risk that. And sort of going along with that, I know there were a lot of people who were saying, you know, hey, you should lie.

You should lie about actually being a Christian because at the end of the day, you know, God knows your heart. I mean, the people, hopefully, the thought is hopefully the people who are threatening to kill you, they will believe what you're saying when you say, no, I'm not a Christian.

But then God will know that you're actually lying and you actually don't mean it. And so, therefore, it is okay to lie and say that you are not a Christian in order to save your life and presumably, you know, continue to take care of the responsibilities you have here in this life being, you know, children, family, whatever it is.

And so, what is your response to that sort of statement that, you know, hey, at the end of the day, God knows my heart. He knows I was lying. So, we're all good here.

God Knows the Heart, but He Also Judges Motives

Yeah, I mean, Matthew 10 and 39, whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. I think one of the things that's happening in this kind of discussion is that people really just have very different priorities than God and those kind of priorities are being revealed in these moments to where they're much more worldly than they think and they, I mean, they don't even understand how worldly they actually are in the way that they think.

They only think in terms of the here and now and doing what seems to make the most sense, you know, for this life only. But I mean, as you read through the scriptures, one of the things you're going to find is that you're supposed to give up your life, right?

Deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Jesus.

Pete. Yeah, I wonder if people actually realize that when Jesus was saying, you know, deny yourself and take up your cross, that He's saying, hey, take up your, you know, executioner's tool. It's like saying take up your electric chair, take up your noose, or take up your firing squad and follow me.

Jared. Right, I mean, definitely. I think after like generations of, you know, prosperity music that has basically taken over Christian radio, we've gotten to a point right now that we're just so worldly and we're so materialistic that we don't even understand like laying up for yourself treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.

I mean, we're mostly thinking about building a kingdom here and now, not about laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven, not about taking our, you know, unrighteous mammon and using it to make friendships that will greet us into our eternal dwelling.

So the idea of God knowing your heart, yeah, He does know your heart, and that's scary thing, that He actually does know your heart, that you're not so committed to Him that you're willing to suffer with Him, right?

To share in His sufferings, you know, as the scripture says. And so, what you have is you have a lot of Christians who basically, they don't understand that like a servant is above his master, if they persecuted Jesus, they're going to persecute you, and they don't understand the honor that Christians have getting to share some sort of small measure of what Christ experienced and to share in suffering with Him and being, you know, like even to the point of death at that, like being able to share in death and a death with Him so that we may reign with Him forever, you know, for all eternity.

So all that we're thinking about is just the here and now and our responsibilities in the here and now, and then we're thinking that, you know, Christianity, basically all it means is that you just say a magic prayer and you're saved, and that's it.

Like, that's it. You just say your little magic prayer and you're it, and that's the scope of the Christian life. And then functionally, it's just up to you to figure out, well, how are you going to take care of all the responsibilities that God has given you?

But then when you think about how big God is and how, you know, capable He is of taking care of even the smallest things in your life whatsoever, one of the things you realize is that to live is Christ, to die is gain.

To live is Christ is to die is gain. I mean, if we're going to be living in the flesh, that may be more needful for other people at certain points, but God doesn't need us. He can use someone else to accomplish His purposes.

He doesn't need us to, you know, help our kids. He doesn't need us to help our wives. He's more than capable and competent of taking care of them in other ways. So when we think about these things, there is a kind of person who definitely does think in this way that, you know, it's all up to them.

God's not going to do anything. When you're faced with a situation where it's your life or your allegiance to God, we've lost any sense that, you know, God comes first, right? Being loyal to God is more important than life, breath, health, strength, and everything else.

So we don't even have a category for suffering for God anymore.

Petey. Yeah, and I think that, you know, a lot of people, they say that kind of line, like, hey, God knows my heart. And, you know, whenever I hear that, I mean, obviously God does know our hearts, the Bible tells us as much, but then oftentimes that's like, when you think about that, that's a really scary thing, you know, to know that God knows our hearts, meaning He knows all of the, the Bible tells us, again, I said this earlier, but the Bible tells us that our hearts are deceitful above all things, and all of that deceit, you know, all of those sinful desires that are stored up in our heart, God knows every single one of them.

And so, oftentimes when people bring up this, like, hey, whenever, because it's not just with this conversation as it pertains to, you know, denying the faith or lying about denying the faith in order to, you know, not be martyred, people say this all the time with a ton of different topics.

They'll just throw out, like, well, God knows my heart as this sort of, like, I'm going to, I now declare myself the winner of this theological debate because God knows my heart, the end, you can't say anything about that now.

And I just, you know, I wonder if people who say that realize what they're actually admitting here, and I also wonder, like, you know, I agree, yes, God does know your heart, God knows my heart, God knows everybody's heart, but then, like, do you actually know what's in your heart?

Because I think most of us, as we progress, you know, through the process of sanctification, those of us who have confessed faith in Christ and have been covered by His blood, one of the things that you really do realize is that there is so much evil stored up in your heart.

Even as a Christian, there's still so much evil that's stored up, and, you know, through sanctification, the Holy Spirit is cleansing you of those things and making you more like Christ, but then as you go through that process, you just realize all of these other things that you never even, you might have never even known were there.

And so, I always wonder when people start saying, hey, God knows my heart, like, yeah, He does, but then, you know, do you actually know your own heart? Because, like, that's a scary thing to just, like, hey, I'm just going to throw caution to the wind, I'm not going to consider any of the very clear Bible verses that we've already read today, and I'm just going to depend on, you know, like, hey, God knows I'm not lying.

Well, how do you know you're not lying? I mean….

Jared Paul makes a similar point in 1 Corinthians 4. I mean, he makes the same exact kind of point that you're making, which is the kind of point that every faithful Christian should be thinking about in their mind as it relates to this kind of topic.

So, you know, 1 Corinthians 4, 1, I mean, essentially what's happening in the Church of Corinth is that they're accusing Him and they're attacking His motives and they're saying that He's doing, you know, He's doing what He's doing for selfish gain and everything else.

But, you know, He says in 1 Corinthians 4, 1, this is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.