How many of you have experienced this in your walk? You were sinners, rejected by believers because you were not saved while no one in your circle of friends and family who were believers, spoke to you about Christ, out of concern for you eternity. In fact at family gatherings Christ was never mentioned even though the family were church goers and lived seemingly outward moral lives.
You were considered unworthy of love because you were in sin without Christ. You admired the Christians you knew, because they had all the "right" answers and lived "morally" or so you thought they were very good people.
After becoming born again God lifted the scales from your eyes and you suddenly saw them differently. They were self righteous, they hated you worse after you became born again because you grew "too intense" about the Scriptures. You wanted to talk about Christ and base everything you said and did on the Word of God. Much of what they said was unscriptural and worldly, when you would correct them, they would become angry, having no desire to check anything against the Bible. Their sense of superiority caused almost a mild rage to surface whenever they were challenged, being corrected by the person they looked down upon was more than they could stand.
Often pretenders have lived decent lives most of their existence, they didn't steal or murder or act immorally, allowing pride to develop in their hearts that couldn't tolerate even mildly, the suggestion that they might be wrong about something. In other words, they never saw themselves as sinners and were never broken over their sinfulness because their outer lives that people could see, were pretty good. But inside their hearts were just as black as those who were living wickedly. The difference is that the pretender lived wickedly in their hearts and the other sinners were living wickedly openly.
Psalm 51:17 "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise."
Matthew 15:8 "'THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME."
The pretenders have regressed in their walk and accept things now that they would not have accepted earlier in their lives. They have maligned your reputation based on what they saw before you was saved, and maintained that view of you, that no longer exists. They prefer to keep you in a one down position by negating that Christ has made a change in you. Often pretenders love their superficiality, they maintain a facade of sorts, but lack the love that Christ commanded us to have for one another.
They have excluded you from fellowship by mixing with each other and leaving you out. I think we have seen the difference between those who are pretenders living morally to impress someone and the true believer who lives morally because they have been changed into a new creation by Christ.
Those who love Christ have a love for the brethren that surpasses human love. When they see that someone has been changed into a new creation, they recognize the change and rejoice with them feeling a new connection to them, that is a spiritual heavenly bond.
1 John 3:14 "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death."
If you have experienced this, then you are in good company. Many born again blood bought believers who have been dramatically changed by Christ, are rejected more as a new believer, by church goers, than they were when they were unsaved. They feel safe with the unsaved, because those who are not born again don't expect anything out of them and they can appear superior to them.
A possible answer for this might be that pretenders are usually self righteous and arrogant. They PRIDE themselves on how good they are and look down their noses at the unsaved. However, when someone who is lost and becomes born again with a fire in their heart that surpasses the pretender, the pretender shuns, this "new you", it is convicting to them, jealousy emerges and forms of subtle revenge begin to rear its ugly head.
Everyone who has seen this happen knows what it looks like. Some may remember thinking that now that they have become born again, the believers will like them and they will be accepted into the body with great joy, often the reverse is true. Keep in mind that the world we live in now, if full of mostly pretenders. God says that most who claim to be believers have not trusted Christ and are living a lie. They are basing their Christianity on tradition and works that make them look good, there is little faith and much haughtiness.
Matthew 7:21-23 "21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’"
I write about this subject to encourage those who have been hit, in blindsided fashion, early in their walk with Christ, with dismissal from pretenders. I also write this to challenge those who might be pretenders to take a good look at their own heart to see if they have ever become born again.
May the Lord encourage the down hearted who have been rejected for their faith and removed the scales of the eyes of those who have an elevated view of their own importance.
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