BLOG 2/26/14. “UNCONVERTED BELIEVERS”—SAY WHAT?
It could sound remarkably like an oxymoron, but there is a very subtle phenomenon out there in the church that is not at all new. I refer to it as that of unconverted believers. It sneaks up on you, in one sense, though it should not. It is replete in the whole Biblical story. If you think about Israel as it is recorded historically in the Old Testament documents, here were this people who had had dramatic demonstrations of God’s design for them over and over again from God’s promise to Abraham early in Genesis. You would think that after their deliverance from Egypt that they would forever be indebted to the God who delivered them, and be eager to conform themselves to the life-forming principles that he gave them miraculously at Sinai. A no-brainer? One would think so, but within only a matter of days/weeks they were already reverting to the pagan practices they had ostensibly left in Egypt.
The history that follows is one episode after another of Israel, on the one hand, expecting the blessings of God’s people, identifying themselves as being his, and on the other hand forgetting the very covenant that called them to be a radically different kind of people. So that by the 7th century they were so compromised that God began to confront his unconverted-compromised people with a series of eccentric figures, who are called prophets, to describe their unbelief and disobedience, and to remind them of his purpose, his love for them, but more particularly of the consequences—judgments—of reverting to the religious patterns of the non-Israelite nations around them.
Here’s my point: God dramatically met with a God-fearer named Isaiah in an awesome encounter, basically did a radical job of transformation in him, and then invited him to go as the divine instrument to speak to Israel. But get this: God told Isaiah that the people to whom he was being sent would hear and hear but would not understand, … that they would see and see but not perceive (Isaiah 6:10). This was the experience of all of the prophets. Those who should have seen and heard were, in fact, blind and deaf, i.e., unconverted.
It was most graphically true with the great Prophet of God by the name of Jesus. If anyone should have understood who Jesus was and how he fulfilled all of the characteristics of God promised Messiah, it should have been the people of Israel. Yet they couldn’t see or hear.
So why should we be surprised that some of the people, who should most be expected to hear the invitation of Jesus Christ to discipleship, and to be the sons and daughters of Light, should be those who are part of Christ’s church? … To my point: one encounters over and over again those (even, or maybe especially, among its leaders) the phenomenon of those who will affirm all of the doctrines, say, of the Apostles or Nicene Creeds, and will fight you if you question their loyalty to the church and to faith—but never seem to get the point, i.e., remain essentially unconverted in understanding and in obedience to the radical commands of Christ.
This first dawned on me when for a dozen years I taught a twelve week class for new church members entitled: “Beyond Membership to Discipleship” which was a pretty intense refresher course on the essence of faith in Jesus Christ and the way the church was a community of that faith. I always reminded the many participants that they would have to give a statement of their faith in Jesus Christ on the last session. I sought in every way I could to help them to understand that this was of their personal experience of repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ. These were nearly all folk who had been members of the church all their lives in some other places.
Result: No eyes to see or ears to hear! The statements of the most of them were that they had always loved the church, that they felt that God was near, and that God would hear them when they called on him—but seldom of a knowing embrace of Jesus as Savior, and commitment to a life of discipleship.
Unconverted believers. Get it? Church members still in the dark. Where do we go with this?
