Am I being like Jesus?

How should I respond to a person who claims to know Jesus but continually talks and acts as if they don’t, yet when questioned immediately has all the biblical answers? I’ve not seen this person walk the talk, but only do a lot of talking. They are not new to faith, but claim a life-long experience of knowing Christ. Why then do they act most of the time as if they don’t? The temptation is to judge, even condemn, yet I do not have that freedom.

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (Romans 8:33–34)

If this person is a child of God, they are protected from condemnation: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1) If they are faking it or deceived in some way, then they are already condemned:

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:18–21)

Last night, one person in our study group clarified the distinction this way. He said that 1 John clearly states that no matter what we claim, if we don’t love God and others, we are not Christians. Yet 1 John also says that if someone is not “of us” they will not stay with us, so that does not solve my puzzle. I’m reminded of the Liar’s activities:

And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” (Revelation 12:10–11)

Satan is the one who condemns. If I do it, am I playing his game instead of doing what Jesus does in intercession for His people? My goal, even if there is evidence of sin, should be restoration regarding sin (evidence is confession and repentance) and humility rather than pride, faith rather than unbelief, and integrity rather than pretense. Restoration is not my skill set. Instead, I wonder about this from the Lord?

Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. (Romans 14:4)
Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. (Romans 14:10–12)

This seems God's answer to my question. This person is irritating me. In hoping for the best and not seeing it, I want a reason for the problem, which is something like Eve being tempted by the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God wants me to deal with my problem, not ask Him to show me things only He knows. I now remember the Narnia story where the Lion scarred the back of the boy’s friend and the boy asked why. The Lion (representing Christ) told him, “That is her story” meaning ‘mind your own business and leave her to me.’

PRAY: Lord, You sometimes use unsolved issues to build my faith or to show me what I need to confess. I don’t like being around people who profess faith but their actions and attitude stinks, yet You are intimately acquainted with millions of us who tend to say one thing and do another, try to run our own lives, or fake it instead of being honest. By Your grace, may I grow up and become more like You instead of trying to play God as if I was already there.

What I deserve and what Jesus saved me from . . .

READ Ezekiel 5–8

Ezekiel is a solemn read. God tells him that His people have rebelled against Him more than the other nations, and have not even obeyed the rules of those nations, never mind His rules for life as His people. For this, He would execute judgments like never done before (and would never be done again).

Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord God, surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore I will withdraw. My eye will not spare, and I will have no pity. A third part of you shall die of pestilence and be consumed with famine in your midst; a third part shall fall by the sword all around you; and a third part I will scatter to all the winds and will unsheathe the sword after them. Thus shall my anger spend itself, and I will vent my fury upon them and satisfy myself. And they shall know that I am the Lord—that I have spoken in my jealousy—when I spend my fury upon them. Moreover, I will make you a desolation and an object of reproach among the nations all around you and in the sight of all who pass by. You shall be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror, to the nations all around you, when I execute judgments on you in anger and fury, and with furious rebukes—I am the Lord; I have spoken— when I send against you the deadly arrows of famine, arrows for destruction, which I will send to destroy you, and when I bring more and more famine upon you and break your supply of bread. I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will rob you of your children. Pestilence and blood shall pass through you, and I will bring the sword upon you. I am the Lord; I have spoken. (Ezekiel 5:11–17)

God’s disciplines are intended to bring about a change of heart and restore His people through conviction, confession, and repentance as they realize that no one and nothing else can save them. Not military might, not food and plenty, not silver and gold, not the idols they have made. He tells them:

And if any survivors escape, they will be on the mountains, like doves of the valleys, all of them moaning, each one over his iniquity. All hands are feeble, and all knees turn to water. They put on sackcloth, and horror covers them. Shame is on all faces, and baldness on all their heads. They cast their silver into the streets, and their gold is like an unclean thing. Their silver and gold are not able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord. They cannot satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity. (7:16–19)

The purpose of this great discipline is clear — even repeated thirty-eight times in this book. God says, “According to their way I will do to them, and according to their judgments I will judge them, and they shall know that I am the Lord.” Their Lord, not their work, not their family, or friends, or riches, and certainly not their idols or their way of doing religion. Only God is Lord, Master, Savior, Creator, Owner, Ruler of their lives.

God showed the prophet visions of His jealousy and of the horrible idolatrous worship done in secret by the elders of Israel, and by the women, and by those who worshiped the sun. Then He said, “Therefore I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.” (8:18)

I think about my own shortfall, and about the shortfall of all who put their faith in Christ, and the shortfall of others who have no faith, the nations and people who persecute Christians and non-faith minorities, those who do evil for the sport of it. The affront to God is enormous. We cry out to Him for justice, forgetting that He has already poured out His wrath on that enormous overflow of sin — and that poured out wrath was willingly borne by God the Son so that those who put their faith in Him are now under no condemnation.

These days, and in most cultures and places in the world, those who share this incredible good news of God’s grace are unwelcome. Admitting sin is not popular. Accepting Jesus or even acknowledging Him as Lord even less. Being saved from judgment could be desired, as long as it comes without accountability or responsibility.

Ezekiel tells me that, apart from the Gospel, apart from the grace of God and the saving work of Jesus Christ, what I would experience if He gave me what my rebellious and selfish soul deserves. Reading it is painful, yet also precious and a gut-wrenching reminder of the marvelous grace of God.