There are many people who claim Christianity but have no fruit, I was once one of these people. At about age 12 I made a profession of faith out of an emotional response to the gospel at church camp but there was no change in me that lasted.
I thought of Christianity as something you tried real hard to become, you are sorry about your sin and never sin again, but I couldn't stop my sin and even leaned into it until my early twenties.
When I became born-again out of sheer brokenness over my sinful nature I no longer wanted the sin I turned to in an attempt to relieve my pain. There were no authentic Christians who could guide me, they had no interest in me. I thank the Lord for this fact because I came to Christ completely on my own without any human support. From that time on I have trusted only in Him always. Even "Christians" had no time or interest in being a part of my new life experience led by the Holy Spirit, they preferred to believe I was the same person I was before I had been changed by Christ.
I noticed over the years that the "Christians" who had no interest in me and my new faith tended to regress as they grew older. Some even walked away from the faith while others continued in their superficial superior attitudes, remaining rude and obstinate as though I had never been born-again and as though their rudeness was somehow going to cause me to want their God.
The closer I got to God the further away they became. It was as though they hated to hear "God-talk" from me because they wanted to view me as the old person. The gossip grew, the hatred and contempt grew and then came the permanent rejection.
The more I told the truth the worse the pretenders became. They had no interest in accurately obeying the Bible and were incensed that I dared to use the scriptures to bring truth to a discussion. They loved their cultural Christianity and false beliefs cloaking everything in "Christian" language while defying the commands of God.
After many years of walking with Christ I realized that perhaps those superficial, prideful, and superior acting Christians had not regressed really, I just grew and my eyes were opened to their infant-like walk that never progressed.
When a believer has the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness and self-control, they have a heart for the lost, and compassion for those they believe are lost. These fruitful Spirits are excited when Christ changes someone into a new creation, they embrace the one who has come to the light.
The mentality of superiority, a sense that they are better than someone else as though they never had to repent in their own life, comes from a cultural Christian who elevates themselves for how good they think they are and the others they look down upon are not.
The superior acting "Christian" does not understand that they were once as filthy and hell-bound as the one they look down upon. Anyone who thinks they deserved salvation because of the absence of certain sins in their lives are not born-again. They could never have come to Christ "crushed" as He said we must come in order to be changed by Him.
Those who have come to Christ crushed under the weight of their own sin, confessing it and desiring to be changed by Him, will be the ones He changes.
If anyone thinks they were never deeply sinful like those others they demean, then they have never been born again but engage in pretending continually. Every visit to the church gathering is one of play-acting to impress others. Their lives are full of arrogance and self-exaltation to prove to men how wonderful they think they are, but it has no substance, it is a fantasy of the worst kind to maintain a false persona of goodness.
Matthew 13:1-9 "13 On that day Jesus had gone out of the house and was sitting by the sea.
2 And large crowds gathered to Him, so He got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd was standing on the beach.
3 And He told them many things in parables, saying, “Behold, the sower went out to sow;
4 and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up.
5 Others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and they sprang up immediately because they had no depth of soil.
6 But after the sun rose, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.
7 Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out.
8 But others fell on the good soil and yielded a crop, some a hundred, some sixty, and some thirty times as much.
9 The one who has ears, let him hear.”"
When we see hostility on the part of a Christian because we brought Scripture to bear in a conversation you can be sure the angry person does not know the scriptures and does not want Christ, if they did they would love His word and bring their own scripture in context, to support the truth or to lovingly clarify it.
Only those who know they do not know and can't answer become angry when the truth is manifest. They do not love the Lord or His Word, they merely love their religion, its cultural rituals and ideas that make them enjoy their own version of Christianity.
We are living in the end times in which most people who claim Christianity have little interest in the Bible except to rearrange the Words of God to say what they want to believe.
These people also form opinions about authentic believers to justify their hatred of them. They attack their character when they cannot prove their scripture wrong. They leave the rational discussion based on Scripture to engage in character assassination. The devil convinces them that if they attack the character they can justify the hatred. It's all smoke and mirrors to intimidate into silence those who love the truth of God.
DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THEM, GOD SEES IT ALL AND YOU CAN REMAIN OPEN, HONEST AND STRONG NO MATTER WHAT TRICK THEY PULL.
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