Who can be saved
Who Then Can Be Saved?
Whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Romans 10:13
With man this is impossible . . . He cannot do it. Man can do many things but not that. Amazing to think of all the things that man can accomplish and yet to see his extreme weakness. With the increase of technological ability, man seems increasingly unable to manage his own life and affairs. The lives of the leading men and women of society seem to be shaken and so fragile. The inner man is so much under the control of Satan himself. He is the author of chaos, destruction, decay. Our brilliance is dimmed by our inability to manage ourselves. It is the personal life of man that needs control and is falling apart for lack of it.
There are some people in this world known only by God. It is better to be known than to be an enigma. We may go to church with them week after week and never know what beats within their hearts. There may be people here today who have never made a personal declaration of faith in Christ. I think that there is personal victory and progress when people take that step.
Difference between the “can’ts” and the “won’ts”. It is impossible for man to be saved, in other words they cannot accomplish their salvation. Whosoever will . . . salvation is most always a greater hurdle to the will than anything else. Eagle & The Wolf
Man looks on the outward appearance but God sees the heart.
To the disciples this man looked like a prime prospect. They were astonished that he did not make the grade. They were not conscious of their own sacrifice. There is that possibility in the church today that people can construct their own façade and hide behind it.
While this man was consumed with the process of gaining everything the disciples were consumed with the
process of losing/leaving everything.
The disciples who then would qualify to be saved? In their minds this refusal made a statement relative to the few who seem to find the way.
The most receptive group of people in a given church to challenge relative to giving, outreach, etc are those who are already active in the process.
There are a “few” relatively speaking who will be saved????
Many are called – few are chosen.
There is a narrow way and a broad road. Few there be.
Many will say unto me Lord, Lord.
Total Lordship of Christ is a pre-requisite to enter the kingdom. The responsibility of wealth weighs heavily in the process. Money is a difficult thing to give up.
The following words are from an old engraving on a cathedral in Labeck, Germany:
Thus speaketh Christ our Lord to us:
You call Me master and obey Me not.
You call Me light and see Me not.
You call Me the Way and walk Me not.
You call Me life and live Me not.
You call Me wise and follow Me not.
You call Me fair and love Me not.
You call Me rich and ask Me not.
You call Me eternal and seek Me not.
If I condemn thee, blame Me not.
See: Isa 29:13; Luke 6:46; Titus 1:16; Jam 1:23-25
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Cannot be my disciple . . . .
We are often more impressed with what our eyes can observe than anything else.
If people look right and fit easily we don’t ask too many questions in the church. This makes it easy for people to follow spiritually self-destructive paths and by the time we discover their problems it is far too late to do anything about it. Early detection is the answer.
Jesus knows our hearts and we know the hearts of people that we spend time with.
Often ineffective for people who have no mutual relationship to speak into another person’s life. One of the very real notions of the body of Christ is that we are connected and it is through that connection that we grow. People who skirt the fringes of church life are often unaffected by the gospel.
We are to hold one another accountable. That is those who mutually invest in each other’s lives.
Have a tendency to want to hide our struggles and our problems from each other. This provides a place for the devil to work undetected.
Isolation – My business is my business
Anonymity – I’m not accountable for what I say.
Privacy – I’ll do it my way.
Individuality -
Personal -
Anything that the devil can do to break the connection will be something that he will use to precipitate our downfall. People “disconnect” in the summer months and the fell removed when the Fall rolls around again.
The rich young ruler was known only by Jesus.
What was the difference between this man and the disciples who walked with Jesus? The call to discipleship is no different than the call to Christ. People who come to God must do so on His terms, convinced that they are no longer the people who know what the best for their lives is.
In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of what he called the Great Divide: 'The first step which follows Christ's call cuts the disciple off from his previous existence. The call to follow at once produces a new situation. To stay in the old situation makes discipleship impossible.'
William Barclay writes:
It's possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a disciple; to be a camp-follower without being a soldier of the king; to be a hanger-on in some great work without pulling one's weight. Once someone was talking to a great scholar about a younger man. He said, "So and so tells me that he was one of your students." The teacher answered devastatingly, "He may have attended my lectures, but he was not one of my students." There is a world of difference between attending lectures and being a student. It is one of the supreme handicaps of the Church that in the Church there are so many distant followers of Jesus and so few real disciples.
Wilbur Reese writes with biting sarcasm:
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please
Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don't want enough of him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want the warmth of the womb not a new birth.
I want about a pound of the eternal in a paper sack.
I'd like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
How much of God do you want?
See: Deut 6:5; Luke 14:
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
-- Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1958, pp. 16-17
See: 1 Thes 2:8-12; 1 Pet 1:6-7
Christianity is something which is meant to be seen. As someone has well said, "There can be no such thing as secret discipleship, for either the secrecy destroys the discipleship, or the discipleship destroys the secrecy." A man's Christianity should be perfectly visible to all men.
-- William Barclay
See: Matt 5:16
The symbol of the New Testament and the Christian Church is a cross, which stands for a love faithful despite physical agony and rejection by the world. No amount of air-conditioning and pew-cushioning in the suburban church can cover over the hard truth that the Christian life... is a narrow way of suffering; that discipleship is costly: that, for the faithful, there is always a cross to be carried. No one can understand Christianity to its depths who comes to it to enjoy it as a pleasant weekend diversion.
... W. Waldo Beach, The Christian Life [1966]
leadership in challenging words:
It is not won by promotion, but by many prayers and tears. It is attained by confessions of sin, and much heart-searching and humbling before God; by self-surrender, a courageous sacrifice of every idol, a bold, deathless, uncompromising and uncomplaining embracing of the cross, and by an eternal, unfaltering looking unto Jesus crucified. It is not gained by seeking great things for ourselves, but rather, like Paul, by counting those things that are gain to us as loss for Christ. That is a great price, but it must be unflinchingly paid by him who would be not merely a nominal but a real spiritual leader of men, a leader whose power is recognized and felt in heaven, on earth and in hell.
See: Luke 14:28-33; Phil 3:7-8
The entire Disciples' Prayer must be something that flows out of a truly committed heart. It ought to be a definition of your spirit, your attitude toward God, what is inside you. An unknown author put it this way:
I cannot say "our" if I live only for myself.
I cannot say "Father" if I do not endeavor each day to act like His child.
I cannot say "who art in heaven" if I am laying up no treasure there.
I cannot say "hallowed be Thy name" if I am not striving for holiness.
I cannot say "Thy kingdom come" if I am not doing all in my power to hasten that wonderful event.
I cannot say "Thy will be done" if I am disobedient to His Word.
I cannot say "in earth as it is in heaven" if I'll not serve Him here and now.
I cannot say "give us this day our daily bread" if I am dishonest or seeking things by subterfuge.
I cannot say "forgive us our debts" if I harbor a grudge against anyone.
I cannot say "lead us not into temptation" if I deliberately place myself in its path.
I cannot say "deliver us from evil" if I do not put on the whole armor of God.
I cannot say "Thine is the kingdom" if I do not give the King the loyalty due Him from a faithful subject.
I cannot attribute to Him "the power" if I fear what men may do.
I cannot ascribe to Him "the glory" if I'm seeking honor only for myself, and I cannot say "forever" if the horizon of my life is bounded completely by time.
See: Matt 6:9-13; Matt 15:8
I love thy church, O God;
Her walls before me stand;
But please excuse my absence, Lord;
This bed is simply grand!
A charge to keep I have;
A God to glorify;
But Lord, don't ask for cash from me;
The glory comes to high.
Am I a soldier of the cross,
A follower of the Lamb?
Yes! Though I seldom pray or pay,
I still insist I am.
Must Jesus bear the cross alone,
And all the world go free?
No! Others, Lord, should do their part,
But please don't count on me.
Praise God from who all blessings flow;
Praise him, all creatures here below!
Oh, loud my hymns of praise I bring,
Because It doesn't cost to sing!
See: Rev 3:15-16
THE COLD WITHIN
Six humans trapped by happenstance
In black and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story's told.
Their dying fire in need of logs,
The first woman held hers back
For on the faces around the fire,
She noticed one was black.
The next man looking cross the way
Saw one not of his church,
And couldn't bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.
The third man sat in tattered clothes;
He gave his coat a hitch.
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?
The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store.
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy poor.
The black man's face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight,
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.
And the last man of this forlorn group
Did naught except for gain.
Giving only to those who gave
Was how he played the game.
The logs held tight in death's still hands
Was proof of human sin.
They didn't die from the cold without,
They died from the cold within.
Unknown
I had walked life's path with an easy tread,
Had followed where comfort and pleasure led;
And then by chance in a quiet place --
I met my Master face to face.
With station and rank and wealth for goal,
Much thought for body but none for soul,
I had entered to win this life's mad race --
When I met my Master face to face.
I had built my castles, reared then high,
Till their towers had pierced the blue of the sky;
I had sworn to rule with an iron mace --
When I met my Master face to face.
I met Him and knew Him, and blushed to see
That His eyes full of sorrow were fixed on me;
And I faltered, and fell at His feet that day
While my castles vanished and melted away.
Melted and vanished; and in their place
I saw naught else but my Master's face;
And I cried aloud: "Oh, make me meet
To follow the marks of Thy wounded feet."
My thought is now for the souls of men;
I have lost my life to find it again
Ever since alone in that holy place
My Master and I stood face to face.
-- Author Unknown
See: 1 Cor 13:12-13
Shirley MacLaine, the award-winning actress granted an interview to the Washington Post back in 1977. In that interview she tipped her hand:
The most pleasurable journey you take is through yourself -- the only sustaining love is with yourself. When you look back on your life and try to figure out where you've been and where you're going, when you look at your work, your love affairs, your marriages, your children, your pain, your happiness -- when you examine all that closely, what you really find out is that the only person you really go to bed with is yourself. The only thing you have is working to the consummation of your own identity. And that's what I've been trying to do all my life.
It's really sad that Shirley has never discovered the truth of what Jesus said, "Whosoever wishes to save his life shall lose it."