We have studied two classes of difficulties: those that arise from a sense of an inability to live a Christian life and those that arise from an unwillingness to become a Christian.
We shall now study how to deal with another type of problem. There are difficulties that we shall meet in our personal work arising from a sense of hopelessness. How many there are who have lost all hope of ever becoming a child of God! We shall now study some of the individual problems that we shall meet in this group.
UNABLE TO FIND CHRIST
There are a large number of people who have been seeking Christ for a long period of time and are seemingly unable to find Him.
Many, because of this, have become quite hopeless. Their difficulty is usually due to the fact that they have mistaken mental assent for faith.
The personal worker, in order to be successful, must understand the difference between mental assent and faith. An understanding of mental assent and knowing how to deal with it will enable him to help not only a great number who are seeking salvation, but also a great number who need healing or a victorious life in Christ.
Mental assent is consenting to the fact that the Bible is true and professing to believe it, but that profession is void of action. It means nothing to the Father.
“Faith, if it hath not works, is dead” (James 2:17). A better translation might be, “Faith, if it does not have corresponding actions, is dead.” In other words, it is mental assent, not faith.
A professing faith that will not stand upon the Word of God and act fearlessly upon it, regardless of feeling or circumstances, is only mental assent. A man is born again by faith in the Word of God. He is not born again by mental assent. He is begotten of the Word of God when he acts upon it and makes it his confession.
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. (Ephesians 2:8)
The moment that a man believes, he receives the life of God. The new birth is God’s Word. It is God who imparts His nature to the spirit of man.
When a man has believed, the rest is up to God. “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:10).
Many say, “I have believed, but I am not saved.” They have not believed, for believing has a positive confession.
The following incident will illustrate this truth. One evening, I was speaking with a woman who had remained after the service for those who were seeking Christ.
She was weeping bitterly. She said, “For six months, I have been seeking Christ. It is so hard to be saved.”
I gave to her Revelation 3:20, showing her that Christ was asking to come into her life, and that when she invited Him in, He came. I also gave her John 5:24, showing that the moment she believed in His Word, she had eternal life.
She said, “I believe, but I am not saved. I do believe. I have believed the Bible all my life.”
She was not believing, however. Believing is acting upon the Word of God. Believing is confessing that what God says, is. If she had believed, she would have said, “I have invited Jesus into my life. Therefore, He has come in because His Word declares so.”
For six months, she had been only mentally assenting. She had been assenting to the fact that the Bible is the Word of God, yet there was no action, no positive confession. Mental assent has no conception of the sacredness of God’s Word. Faith is satisfied with the evidence of the Word of God alone.
I had this inquirer read Revelation 3:20 and John 5:24 aloud over and over again. As she read, I explained to her that it is impossible for God’s Word to fail, that the integrity of the Word was the integrity of God. The Word began to work in her life. She stepped from the realm of mental assent into the realm of faith.
Suddenly, she laughed and said, “It is so simple. I believe; therefore I have eternal life.” When she acted upon the Word of God, then God made it good and imparted to her His own nature.
In your personal work, you will find many who have gone to the altar several times without finding Christ.
To those, you must show the difference between mental assent and faith. Show them that they must take God at His Word. Seek to bring them to a knowledge of the sacredness of God’s Word to Himself.
You may illustrate this by an example of the sacredness of the word of an honest man.
If we lose faith in a man’s word, we have lost faith in him. An honest man will be careful of his words. He will not promise that which he cannot perform. He will watch over his word to make it good in every case.
Show that it is only through God’s Word that man can know Him. Therefore, it is sacred, for if it fails, He fails.
Use Jeremiah 1:12 to show that God is watching over His Word to perform it in the life of the man or woman who will act upon it. Show the inquirer that he must not wait for a feeling of salvation before he confesses that he is saved. Explain that the joy of the Christian does not come necessarily at the moment he is born again, but from his fellowship with the Father.
Show him that greater than the evidence of feelings or experiences is the evidence of God’s Word, which declares that when a man believes, he has eternal life (see John 5:24), or that when he invites Christ in, He comes in.
Mental assent is one of the weapons that Satan uses to hinder those who are anxious to be saved. It is dangerous and subtle because it is clothed in the term “faith.” The seeker does not realize that it is not faith and cannot analyze his difficulty in not finding Christ as his Savior and Lord.
As personal workers, we must be prepared to destroy mental assent and build faith in its place through the Word. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17).
FEAR THAT IT’S TOO LATE
There are those who have lost hope because of the feeling that it is too late. Many have previously rejected Christ and feel that, because of that rejection, God will not receive them.
The need of this group can be met by building the Word into their lives so that they will come to a place of action upon it.
Many times, their attitude is only one of mental assent toward the great promises of God’s Word that would bring life to them.
Use 2 Peter 3:9 to show that it is not God’s will for any man to perish. John 6:37 is a good Scripture for this group as it shows that Christ will receive whosoever comes unto Him at any time.
God declares, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13). Other Scriptures to be used are Deuteronomy 4:30–31; Isaiah 1:18; and Revelation 22:17.
QUESTIONS
- What is the usual difficulty of those who have been seeking Christ for a long time without finding Him?
- Distinguish between mental assent and faith.
- Explain how to deal with a mental assenter.
- Why is mental assent so dangerous?
- Show how to deal with a man who felt that it was too late to be saved.
13
Dealing with Those Who Have False Hopes
In our last lesson, we studied the methods whereby we could deal with those who had a sense of hopelessness and those who felt that they could not become children of God.
In our efforts for the Master, we shall very often contact another group of people whose need is the opposite. They refuse to seriously consider the acceptance of Christ as their Savior because they are entertaining false hopes for their own salvation.
In the place of hopelessness, they have too many hopes. A large number of people belong to this group. We are contacting them continually. Some of the finest people we know belong to this number. They assent to the existence of God and a future life, yet they are without concern for their soul’s welfare. A great body of church members, nominal Christians, belong to this class. We must be prepared to teach them.
Perhaps the largest number of this class are those who expect to be saved by their works of righteousness. These people believe that they are not sinners. They say they are doing the best they can in doing unto others as they would have done unto them.
They believe that through their honest and moral lives, they have as much right to enter heaven as anyone.
Many of the Scriptures and facts that we studied in dealing with the indifferent would help in this class.
The greatest fact to make clear to those who expect to be saved by what they are doing is the following:
• A man does not enter heaven because of what he does (right living), nor is he refused admittance into heaven because of what he does (wrong living). A man enters heaven because of what he is through the new birth—a child of God.
• A man is refused entrance into heaven because of what he is by nature, a child of wrath. (See Ephesians 2:3.)
Their need may be met, if they are honest in their opinion of salvation by their own works, by showing them the message God has given to us in the book of Romans.
The book of Romans is a legal document. It is revelation brought down to the light of human reason so that an unsaved man may understand it. The first three chapters are a courthouse scene.
In the first chapter, the gentile world is brought before the judgment throne of God. The judgment comes from Him that His wrath is revealed against their unrighteousness.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness. (Romans 1:18)
In the second chapter, the Jew is brought before God and the same indictment is brought against them. He says that, through their inability to keep the law, the name of God has been blasphemed among the gentiles. (See Romans 2:24.)
The conclusion from the throne of God is given in Romans 3:9–10: “What then? are we [Jews] better than they [Gentiles]? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.”
No unsaved man stands righteous before God because he is “under sin”—under the sin of Adam that brought spiritual death, the nature of Satan.
Study Romans 5:12–21 so that you will be able to expound upon it to an unsaved person.
Then show how God continues by showing that nothing that a man can do will make him righteous. (See Romans 3:20.) You may use for an illustration of this fact the example of the failure of the Jew to become righteous by his own efforts through the law. His failure was due to the fact that he was spiritually dead, a child of Satan.
However, never try to make a man see his need of Christ and His righteousness by pointing out to him that he is under the curse of the law as long as he trusts in his own works. Many teachers teach this, but it is wrong, for the gentile was not given the law. It was given to the Jew; no gentile has ever come under the law except through circumcision. The gentile’s position is shown in Ephesians 2:12 (TCNT): “You were shut out from the citizenship of Israel; you were strangers to the Covenants founded on God’s Promise; you were in the world without hope and without God.”
Continue with Romans 3:21–30 to show that God has provided a righteousness for man through faith in Christ. Use 2 Corinthians 5:21 to show how He has done it.
In the past lessons, we have covered how to show an inquirer the way of the new birth and the righteousness that becomes man’s through faith in Christ, so we will not deal with it now.
If you, through meditation and prayer, will let these passages of Scripture master you, the Holy Spirit will be able to use you effectually in showing a man who is honest with himself salvation through faith in Christ alone.
Others who entertain false hopes are those who say, “A God of love would not send anyone to hell.” We can meet this by explaining that we know nothing of God’s love except through the Bible, and the Bible teaches plainly the existence of heaven and hell. The whole message of redemption, the reason for Christ’s coming, centers in the fact that hell became the eternal home of man through Adam’s high treason.
God does not send a man to hell. Man goes to hell because he is a child of Satan. If he continues in this life as a child of Satan, he will remain one with him after death, which means that he must go to his father’s home.
God has provided a redemption in Christ whereby a man may come out of Satan’s kingdom (see Colossians 1:13) into Christ’s kingdom and become a child of God. (See John 1:12.)
When a man becomes a child of God, heaven becomes his home as logically and naturally as hell becomes the home of the child of Satan.
Show that God has done all that He can to save a man from hell. He cannot, however, go beyond man’s will. A man wills to remain alienated from God, or he wills to become a child of God.
Christ said, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself” (John 7:17). If a man wills to know these things, he will know.
Others say, “I feel that I am all right. I am not afraid to die. I feel that I will go to heaven.”
We can show these that we only know of heaven and a future life through the revelation that God has given to us. Jesus said, “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. (1 John 5:11–12)
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36)
A man has no authority for faith in his feelings alone. A man may know definitely that he will go to heaven when his faith is resting on God’s Word.
QUESTIONS
- What is the greatest fact to make clear to a man who expects to be saved by his own works?
- Show how you would expound the message of Romans in meeting the above need.
- How would you deal with one who believed that a God of love would not send anyone to hell?
- What would you show the one who said, “I feel all right”?
- Did you carefully study every Scripture in the lesson?