BE CAREFUL OF "BECAUSE I GOT BAPTIZED..."

I have been hearing a lot of discussion about baptism the last several months and I am glad. Too many people are misunderstanding what baptism means and it is evident with some of the responses you get when you ask someone why they consider themselves a Christian... "Because I got baptized...".

Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay, recently gave some explanation in an article called "Where Have All The Baptisms Gone?" that showed why we have had less baptisms in recent years. Here are three of his reasons...

• Membership rolls have swollen with missing members. From the best I can determine, we would have a difficult time locating over 6 million of our 16 million members. We have baptized members who seem to show no fruit of salvation.
• We are baptizing unregenerate members. The previous statistic of missing members seems to support this thesis.
• We focus too much on incantation evangelism. Many argue that, in our desire to get greater numbers of decisions for Christ, we ask numbers of people to say a few “magic” words to become a Christian, rather than explain to them the true meanings of repentance and faith.

So many of our churches have membership rolls with more than double the names on the roll than those who attend regularly. Large quantities of people have been added to the membership of our churches and then disappeared. In order to be a member of a Southern Baptist Church, you must be a follower of Jesus Christ and baptized by immersion as illustrated by the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3:16. So the question must be asked "If they left the church, were they actually saved to begin with?"

John gives us an answer to this question in 1 John 2:19 (ESV)  They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. Look at the phrase 'would have continued with us'. If a person is truly saved by Jesus Christ, then he or she is now part of the body of Christ which is the church. Also notice the phrase "that it might become plain that they all are not of us" showing us again that if they were genuinely born again, they would be still part of the church.

Denny Burk, in his article "Leaving The Church Means Leaving Jesus", he says "The spirit of Jesus says that leaving the local church reveals one’s true spiritual condition. The one who leaves is at best one who is Christian in name only. His leaving reveals that he was never really a bona fide follower of Jesus. To be sure, being a disciple of Jesus in a church involves much more that attending a weekly meeting. But biblically speaking, it cannot involve less than that."

BUT WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO HAVEN'T LEFT THE CHURCH?
This brings us to the other point that Thom Rainer made which dealt with "incantation evangelism". For years, churches have put so much emphasis on the "sinner's prayer" that we have made it to appear as if as long as you repeat the right words, you are automatically saved. Don't get me wrong, we are to pray for God to save us, forgive us of our sins and adopt us into His family but saying those words is not what saves you, God does. Only God can give you a new life (Ephesians 2:1-10).

Two messages have really impacted me on this idea of the necessity to warn our church families to make sure that they are really saved... both of these messages were preached at a Together For The Gospel conference. The first one I recommend to you is a message preached by Mark Dever in 2012 called "False Conversions: The Suicide of the Church" and the other message is from John MacArthur called "Mass Defection: The Great Physician Confronts the Pathology of Counterfeit Faith". 

SO WHAT'S THE BOTTOM LINE?
Please, please, please don't base your eternity on the fact that you repeated a prayer that somebody told you to pray or base your eternity on the fact that you were baptized. The only way to be sure of your eternity is to know that God has truly saved you. How can you know this? By the "fruit" that you bear in your life now. Here are some of the ways to recognize the fruit or changes that have taken place in your life [from John MacArthur's Study Bible notes]...
A. Love for God: Psalms 42:1ff; 73:25; Luke 10:27; Romans 8:7
B. Repentance from Sin: Psalms 32:5; Proverbs 28:13; Romans 7:14ff; 2 Corinthians 7:10; 1 John 1:8-10
C. Genuine Humility: Psalms 51:17; Matthew 5:1-12; James 4:6, 9ff
D. Devotion to God's Glory: Psalms 105:3; 115:1; Isaiah 43:7; 48:10ff.; Jerermiah 9:23, 24; 1 Corinthians 10:31
E. Continual Prayer: Luke 18:1; Ephesians 6:18ff.; Philippians 4:6ff.; 1 Timothy 2:1-4; James 5:16-18
F. Selfless Love: 1 John 2:9ff; 3:14; 4:7ff
G. Separation from the World: 1 Corinthians 2:12; James 4:4ff.; 1 John 2:15-17; 5:5
H. Spiritual Growth: Luke 8:15; John 15:1-6; Ephesians 4:12-16
I. Obedient Living: Matthew 7:21; John 15:14ff.; Romans 16:26; 1 Peter 1:2, 22; 1 John 2:3-5
J. Hunger for God's Word: 1 Peter 2:1-3
K. Transformation of Life: 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.