Devotional Gems by Jolene: Carnal Christian

Friday, October 23, 2015

Carnal Christian

CARNAL CHRISTIAN

Part one of two devotions in Apostasy series

Deuteronomy 13:4: “It is the Lord your God you must follow, and Him you must revere. Keep His commands and obey Him; and hold fast to Him.”

The carnal [KAR-nal] Christian is distracted by the world. He drifts away from the Christian faith. The longer the carnal Christian stays away from God, he loses interest in God. He apostatizes [a-POS-ta-tizes]—becomes frozen in this misguided behavior.

Everyone knows a carnal Christian: someone who stops attending worship and hangs out with the “wrong” crowd. Soon, he becomes a bold, enthusiastic sinner.

There is an opposite misguided behavior: Saul was a Pharisee, zealous [ZEL-us] for God. Zealous means passionate, obsessive about something. Saul was obsessed about finding people who followed the Way. He was passionate for keeping his religion in the one true God pure. He thought that Jesus was poison.

People who followed Jesus’ disciples’ preaching the gospel of Christ belonged to the Way. Saul searched for these men and woman and brought them as prisoners to Jerusalem (Acts 9:2).

Jesus’ disciples were the first to be called “Christians.” (Acts 11:26).

Saul happily persecuted Christians. Acts 7:57-60, 8:1-3 says that while people were stoning Stephen to death, Saul gave his approved. “Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.”

God will intervene—butt into the life of the carnal Christian—as He did with Saul (Acts 9:1-19). But by then, the damage has already been done. God will judge the carnal Christian. God forgave Saul and made him a great apostle!

But the flip side: Hebrews 10:26-27 says, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.”

The lesson linked below teaches how to protect others from this state of disgrace.

Take Home Nugget

The carnal Christian’s salvation is not necessarily lost. But God’s judgment will bring emotional baggage.

The price for apostasy is staggering: “Anyone who rejected the Law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, who has insulted the Spirit of grace?” (Hebrews 10:27-28).

Carnal Christians drift away from God. Their disinterest in God, insensitivity to sin and withdrawal from fellowship brings them close to a point of no return. Even the blood of Jesus will not save them from God’s wrath!