By David ReayMonday 17 Feb 2014LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read Luke 13:22-27
22 He went on teaching from town to village,village to town,but keeping on a steady course toward Jerusalem.
23-25 A bystander said,”Master,will only a few be saved?”
He said,”Whether few or many is none of your business. Put your mind on your life with God. The way to life-to God!-is vigorous and requires your total attention. A lot of you are going to assume that you’ll sit down to God’s salvation banquet just because you’ve been hanging around the neighbourhood all your lives. Well,one day you’re going to be banging on the door,wanting to get in,but you’ll find the door locked and the Master saying,’Sorry,you’re not on my guest list.’
26-27 “You’ll protest,’But we’ve known you all our lives!’ only to be interrupted with his abrupt,’Your kind of knowing can hardly be called knowing. You don’t know the first thing about me.’ (THE MESSAGE)
We all know of people who used to be very actively involved in church life who no longer darken the doors. And people who seemed to profess the Christian faith but who now have nothing to do with it. We have to admit that we can’t infallibly know the faith status of such people. Drifting from church or not verbally declaring faith might not mean absence of faith.
But we need to be aware that some who seemed so strong in the faith may well have been attached not to Jesus himself but to a church group or some aspects of Christianity. It is common for younger people to be very involved in a youth group and when they move away from that group there is no longer visible faith commitment. They had an association with Christian things and Christian people very much like the people Jesus refers to in this passage.
Merely being around Christians or knowing something about Jesus is not the same as being a genuine follower of Jesus. We can mix with a Christian crowd and not be Christian. As Jesus says,some will not make it into his eternal life because mere association is not enough. Knowing a few Christians doesn’t make us Christians. Knowing about Jesus doesn’t make us his followers.
Blessings
David Reay