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Article Archive |
2008
Keep the Saved, SAVED!
by Jim Morris
It seems that few folks nowadays realize that the saved can be lost. God once said through His prophet Hosea, “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). In fact, the apostle Paul gives us a vivid example of a saved people being destroyed by God Himself in 1 Corinthians chapter 10.
Remember, God raised up Moses as their deliverer to lead them out of bondage into freedom. “They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (10:2). God even gave them spiritual food and drink (10:3, 4). “Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert” (10:5).
Saved people can be lost when they set “their hearts on evil things” (10:6) even though the world considers them okay. For example, these common sins today will destroy us: idolatry, or a false god such as “riches” (10:7), drunken revelry (10:7), sexual immorality (10:8), testing the Lord (10:9), and grumbling (10:10). Baptized people of God were destroyed because of their unbelief and sins.
How can we keep the saved saved? We must remain faithful to God by guarding our three-fold relationships in life described in Romans chapter 12: Independence, Interdependence, and Dependence.
INDEPENDENCE. We must remain independent from the world in order to serve our God faithfully (12:1-2). Our very lives must be “living sacrifices” on God's altar (12:1). We must not conform to the world's deadly ideas but be transformed by God's living word. One of our greatest temptations is to allow the world's ideas to come into our assemblies. Only when we maintain our independence from such evil influences will we be able to “test and approve what God's will is” (12:2).
INTERDEPENDENCE. We must strengthen our interdependence within the church to serve one another (12:3-8). Just as we have a body with many members, “so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (12:5). We must learn to think of ourselves in terms of a multi-member, mutli-functioning “body” rather than as isolated individuals. Each member exists to serve one another. Another temptation is to think only of ourselves—our wishes, our desires, our needs. However, to function as Christ's body we must learn to share our time, our talents, and our treasures. We need each other!
DEPENDENCE. We must increase our dependence upon God to serve the world (12:9-21). Staying aloof from the world's value system and summoning up the will to serve one another in a sacrificial, godly way, requires a close dependency upon God. We must see the world as God sees it. We must learn to “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good” (12:9). This is “sincere love.” It is our dependence on God that allows us to make the sacrifices necessary to carry out His will in His world. We need the Lord most of all!
When we nurture our three-fold relationships in life found in Romans chapter 12 then we will be able to “keep the saved, SAVED!”
07-09-08
# 28
