My friend emailed me a great question: “According to 1 Cor. 6:9 -10 ‘...the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God.’ What happens to the people who believe in who Jesus is, but practice the wicked things listed in the passage, and do not repent? I am glad I am not God.” How would you answer?
At the end of Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount, he makes four different contrasts, between two ways, two types of prophets, two types of disciples, and two types of builders. In each case, Jesus differentiates profession from practice. We may believe in who Jesus is, but the real question is, does Jesus know us? Our word know has a cognitive connotation. Jesus’ use of the word to "know” traces its roots in the Hebrew word “yada,” which spoke of an intimate relationship. We can know who Jesus is and believe it is true. But saving knowledge changes us. “How?” we may wonder.
Jesus shows us that the road that leads to life is narrow. Paul Washer says Leonard Ravenhill told him, “To be the man of God you have to say ‘no’ to things that others may find permissible.” We know a person’s character not by their profession but by their fruit. Good trees bear good fruit and cannot bear bad fruit. One can even call Jesus Lord and still not be in a relationship with him. Jesus said at the judgment some would say, “We prophesied in your name, drove out demons, and performed miracles.” Surely those things get us into heaven? Jesus will tell these, “I never knew you.”
It is not enough to believe in our minds who Jesus is. To use an old analogy about a tightrope walker who asked a crowd if they thought he could push a wheelbarrow across a great waterfall. One man said, “I believe it. I know you can do it. I just saw you do it.” The tightrope walker answered, “Get in the wheelbarrow.” The man believed in his head. But the real measure of his faith is what he did. Would he commit to getting in the wheelbarrow to demonstrate his faith? No wonder the scriptures tell us to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5). We not only hear Jesus’ teachings, but we put them into practice (Matthew 7:24).
I shared this with my friend and said, “To believe in who Jesus is” sounds cognitive to me. The ones who are saved are not the ones who know about Jesus, but the ones whom Jesus knows. Have we been transformed by our relationship with Jesus? Jesus knows. Without transformation, there is no salvation. We are glad we are not God, but we are glad God is God. We never want to hear him say, “I never knew you.” Let’s live what we believe.
