The smear that was brought to the Christian community this week by a pretender who spent years in a mega church, preaching and teaching, has ruined the Christian witness of many by declaring publicly that he no longer is a Christian.
It is important to say that no one who is authentically born again ever walks away. When Christ makes us a new creation after we trusted Him, the old is passed away and we are brand new. No one who is born again can go back into the old creation again.
Ephesians 1:13-14 "13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory."
Those who walked away after tasting the fruit of the Holy Spirit by being with other believers were Judas's, they never were born again.
We knew this man when he was four years old. He was raised in a godly home with very loving parents. He made the choice to pretend all his years to be what he was raised with, but somehow he missed the memo that says a true born again experience is not what you say, or who you know.
This is more evidence that our efforts to train up a child in the way he should go is no guarantee they will choose Christ. We must do our job in teaching righteousness and the children must make their own choice. No one is genetically predisposed to become what their parents teach.
True Christianity is an experience in which Christ has changed us entirely into a new creation. Nothing of the old remains, the new takes over.
2 Corinthians 5:17
"17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come."
This does not mean that we are completely sinless because we struggle with sinful flesh. We are not sinless but we sin less as we grow in Christ. When a believer sins they are grieved over their sin and will confess to be cleansed.
No born again believer flaunts their sin as Joshua Harris has done. No one smiles while declaring they are walking away from their faith and their family when they are born again. The glee with which he made his declaration was one of the very big clues of the sinfulness of this pretender.
1 John 1:9
"9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
1 John 3:9-10 " 9 Anyone born of God refuses to practice sin, because God’s seed abides in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 By this the children of God are distinguished from the children of the devil: Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is anyone who does not love his brother."
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