What Do False Professing Christians Need?

The Same Gospel for Every Kind of Sinner

For whatever reason, at times, there are portions of our Bibles that we are put into a context and we forget about them. So no matter what context someone is in, the jungles of Africa, a transgender, or someone who was raised in the big evangelical church with the water slide, they all need the same thing.

It's the same gospel that resurrects all three, right? It does not change. So if I'm wondering if someone is not in the faith, the solution doesn't change. It's always, we present them with the law. Have you met the standards by God's requirement, perfection to the law?

Well, all three are gonna have to say no, right? Then you ask the second question. Then by what means do you consider yourself to be accepted by God? Well, the two over here are gonna be like, who's God, right?

You got the person in the jungles, you're gonna have to explain that to them. The transgender, depending on their background, and then you're talking about this person in the South who's been raised in the church, if they say, well, and if their answer isn't faith in Christ and the gospel and trusting in his sufficiency on my behalf, if it's anything other than that, like a good person, my baptism, then you understand their experience at church isn't really a gospel.

They haven't heard the gospel yet. Salvation is always by one means and one means only. It's not taking your faith more serious, doing certain kinds of acts of obedience. You can never equate someone's salvation with their performance because if you do that, at that moment, you're not saved by faith, you're being saved by works.

The Gospel as the Power Unto Salvation

What is it that leads people to salvation? And Paul says it's the gospel, right? The gospel is the power unto salvation. So if I'm ever questioning if someone's truly not understood or they're not living according to how they're supposed to be living, it might be one, they're anemic and they've not been discipled because that definitely happens because Paul said rebuke anemic churches.

It's like, hey, Corinthians, stop sleeping with each other, right? Or they actually aren't saved and the only solution to salvation is the gospel. So those are what we're kind of trying to push back with.

If you come in with heavy handed, harsh preaching, it won't convert them.

Preaching to False Professors with Law Before Gospel

If I think that the people I'm speaking to, that a number of them are false professors, by definition, a false professor would be someone who we suspect is unregenerate. And I know you're gonna agree with me.

The strategy there is not to tell dead people to try harder, right? It's not to tell dead people to be holy or to obey more or to be more serious, et cetera. The solution in that environment, the strategy in that environment is to preach the law in all of its holiness, in all of its perfection.

The fact that it reflects God's own holy character and that it is to be obeyed perfectly at a spiritual level. You know, the Jesus in Matthew five kind of thing, right? You need a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees.

You have heard it said, what a shocking, audacious statement, right? You've heard it said in the 10 words, right, that God gave on Sinai, you shall not murder, but I am gonna apply that at a spiritual level to your heart, that if you have anger in your heart towards your brother, you're a lawbreaker.

He does the same thing, excuse me, with the seventh commandment. And he sums up Matthew chapter five, verse 48, you must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. That's the way that we would preach the law.

And the law preached that way to a sinner. All it can do is lay you bare. All it can do is condemn and crush and kill you. It cannot save you. And so that to me is where you begin if you think that you've got, so don't misunderstand what we're saying, not that you are, Sean, but even for the listener out there, we are not saying that you don't preach the law, you do.

You preach the law to expose, you know, the law used as a mirror, right? That as we assess ourselves in light of it, we see I'm undone, I'm condemned, and I'm driven to Jesus Christ who died to fulfill the law's penalty and who lived to fulfill its requirements, right?

And he is the forgiveness of my sins. He is my righteousness. I've covered in his robes. I've washed my robes and made them white in his blood. And now through him alone, by faith in him alone, apart from anything that I could ever do, I have peace with God now and forever, right?

So that's that law and gospel reality.