God is Sovereign God, Who will judge us to determine if we have asked Jesus to be our Savior. This devotional reading looks at how those who are condemned for not believing in Him will be punished.
Nuggets
If we do not have God’s salvation, we are condemned for eternity.
If we are condemned and do not have God’s salvation, we will be punished for eternity.
We’ve been talking about our struggle when we wonder if we are really saved or not. This devotion is the second one in the Christ’s Care Over His People Reaches the Day of Their Resurrection series.
In this devotion, we are going to finish up looking up how God’s justice will raise the wicked.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the The Surity of Our Salvation study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
The foundation of this study is Beveridge’s sermon The Believer’s Safety
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The headings are Beveridge’s words.
To Condemn
“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (Jn. 3: 18 ESV)
If we do not have God’s salvation, we are condemned for eternity.
It all boils down to two choices with God. Are we saved or condemned?
We know that God is adamant that there is only one way to salvation.
- “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Ac. 4: 12 NIV).
- “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below” (Ex. 20: 3-4 NIV).
- “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (Jn. 14: 6 NIV).
Unfortunately, worldview people we John 3: 16-17 and think that is all there is. They don’t continue on to read John 3: 18.
Let’s read it all right now. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (Jn. 3: 16-18 ESV).
There are only two options. Saved, aka sheep. Condemned, aka goats. There isn’t a third option of Matthew 7: 21 people.
The thing is we have to make a conscious decision to accept God’s Plan of Salvation. He wants us to totally believe in Him and submit to His Will.
We can’t neglect making this decision. We can’t put it off until later in life.
We need to make the decision now to follow Jesus. “And he said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’” (Lk. 9: 23 ESV).
Martin said something that really connected with our doubts about salvation. He wrote, “Identification with the sacrifice of Christ removes all personal guilt. So the believer is not regarded or dealt with by God as a sinner.”
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Ooo, baby. Don’t we see ourselves as sinners still!
Oh, yes we do. We are sinners saved by grace.
Emphasis on sinners. Gloss over saved. Ignore grace.
Oh, come on. Isn’t that what our doubts are all about? We don’t think God has enough grace to really save us from being sinners.
That is because we have our focus wrong. We are focusing on us.
We need to focus on God.
- “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3: 16 ESV).
- “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5: 7-8 ESV).
We want to be careful when we dishonor God by thinking He isn’t enough. It was.
It Was Enough
Vocalist: Elaine Guthals
Keyboard: Chris Vieth
God should be praised, not dishonored.
We are condemned because we do not believe and submit to Sovereign God. We tell Him that His sacrifice of His Son to pay the penalty for our sins was unnecessary.
We have to personally trust Jesus as our Savior and Lord. We have to acknowledge that He is the Messiah.
What Mornet said should help us — but you may have to work with me while I explain what I am thinking. He wrote,
“He that believeth not, whether he be serious or careless, whether he be the profane scoffer or the regular church-goer, is condemned already. Notice particularly, I pray you, the force of that word already. Sentence is not suspended till it be seen whether you succeed in attaining a certain pitch of moral excellence or fall below it. It is not unfixed and unsettled till the end of your life, and then for the first time shaped into a verdict. Then it will only be revealed and made manifest. Then it will only be pronounced and read aloud from the page of that book on which it now stands recorded. Already you are condemned if you do not believe in the only-begotten Son.”
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Yes, Mornet is talking about church-goers being Matthew 7: 21 people. Yes, people who do not believe are already condemned.
But look at the gem in the middle. We don’t have to wait until we get to the end of the Sanctification Road to see if we have enough quality miles under the hood.
We aren’t trying to hit a certain goal in becoming a new creation. There is no cut off point to say Tom scored high enough on moral excellence (or what we would say is have enough of spiritual grace), Sally is borderline, but poor Elaine didn’t make it.
Yes, we are to try to live as God would have us live. But that isn’t deciding factor. The one qualification for eternal life is this: do we believe in Jesus as God’s Son?
We are condemned when we don’t believe in Jesus, not because we are sinful.
But the unbelief does lead to sinfulness, doesn’t it? If we think something isn’t a sin, we could escalate in performing it. Maybe we do it more often. Maybe we do it longer each time.
Maybe we move it up to the next level.
We are becoming more sinful. Being sinful is being impure.
We want to be pure like God. Unbelief doesn’t get us there.
Belief and sanctification do get us to purity in God.
At its core, doubt is unbelief. It is unbelief that God’s Word is true.
To Punish
“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Mt. 25: 46 ESV)
If we are condemned and do not have God’s salvation, we will be punished for eternity.
Condemnation requires punishment. We’ve broken God’s laws and commandments. We haven’t followed His Will for our lives.
We’ve disobeyed the Sovereign God Who created us.
We have earned the punishment we deserve because we disobeyed Sovereign God. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (Jn. 3: 36 ESV).
Yes, we are accountable to God. “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (Rom. 3: 19 ESV).
Did you catch that? It says two may bes. We escape punishment by believing Jesus is our Savor and Redeemer.
No, it is fitting that those who don’t accept God’s Plan of Salvation be punished. “Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?” (Heb. 10: 28-29 ESV).
Remember, we were condemned from birth. It is only when we accept Him and begin obeying God that the punishment is suspended.
Making the Connections
I have to process what Mornet said. He wrote,
“It was well he should know that however far he might be inclined to go in his acknowledgment of Jesus, nothing short of personal trust in Him as his [Messiah] would suffice. Nor is it enough, to make a man a Christian, that he accepts, in a general way, the teaching of Scripture, and seeks to bring his life into accord with the Divine commands. There must be something much more precise and radical than this. There needs an uprooting of the life out of its old soil, a transplanting of it into new conditions, the committal of your whole nature into the hands of a Divine Person, out of whose deep inexhaustible being it shall henceforward draw its [succor] and [support]. … Whatever your connection with Christianity may have done for you, if it has failed to connect you with Him it has failed of the one thing it seeks to accomplish.”
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Do we agree with all of that?
- We agree that we have to believe Jesus is Messiah, Savior, and God.
- We agree that we have to believe God’s Word is real and our guidebook in life.
- We agree that we have to become new creations.
- We agree we have to have a personal relationship with God Himself.
Maybe that is what allows the doubts to get a foothold. We only believe some of what God says and not all — or not to the level that is needed.
How Do We Apply This?
- Don’t let our guilt let the doubts take over.
- Don’t downplay sin — it is real and evil.
- Study why we should have faith and its benefits — then ABCD.
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Father God. We believe Jesus is our Savior. We submit to You, Sovereign God. We repent of our sins and turn away from them to You. Amen.
What do you think?
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