In the past decade or so, there’s been a number of high-profile Christian “celebrities” who’ve gone through very public bouts of “deconstructing” their faith. These individuals include Joshua Harris, a former pastor and the author of the 1997 best-selling book I Kissed Dating Goodbye. YouTube personalities and comedians Rhett and Link (Rhett McLaughlin and Charles Neal III respectively). Former member of the Grammy award winning Christian musical trio DC Talk, Kevin Max. And the last one I’ll mention here for time’s sake is former Contemporary Christian band Caedmon’s Call vocalist and guitarist, Derek Webb.
For Webb, I will go into a little more detail about his deconstruction tale. Early in his career was an important for a popular Christian and worship outfit, the aforementioned Caedmon’s Call. In fact, their song “We Delight” is a wonderful song and some of the lyrics read as this. “We delight in the law of the Word. We delight in the Son Who was perfect from birth. We delight in the day He’s returning to earth, hallelujah!” Today, Webb is a far cry from the man who sang those lyrics two decades ago. In 2017, he said he had left the Christian faith altogether and now identifies as someone who no longer practices religion.
He’s been very open about his deconstruction of his faith. He recently came out with an album called “The Jesus Hypothesis” and the songs on the album are anything but “delighting” in God’s Word and His Son, Jesus Christ. Currently (as of 8/3/2023), one of the songs on the album “God in Drag” is topping the iTunes Christian music charts currently. The song is done in collaboration with the open drag queen artist Flamy Grant and it is an ode of celebration to transgender identities and chastising Christians who will not affirm them in their trans “identity.” The song and the album are blasphemous against God and what the Bible says regarding human sexuality.
Webb’s deconstruction and abandonment of the Christian faith brings to the forefront once again one of the most hotly debated theological questions of the last two-thousand years, “can a Christian lose their salvation?” Can a “believer” who walks away from Christianity willingly give up their salvation in the process? There are two sides to this question. There is the Arminian branch of Christianity who mostly believe that you can indeed lose your salvation. And then there’s the Reformed/Calvinist side who mostly believe in the mantra “once saved, always saved” or “if saved, always saved.” I will show my hand of where I’m at right now, I am in the “if saved, always saved” camp. In the rest of this post, I will go into detail as to why I believe this to be true Scripturally speaking, but before that, I will springboard to the purpose writing this piece: the distinction between belief and being “saved.”
Before I get into my personal conviction and why I am there, I want to make a few caveats. The first being, this is my humble personal opinion and interpretation of the Scriptures and the faith. This is also the outworking of something I’ve been processing the last few years and through this processing, personal study, observation, and prayer; I have arrived at this conclusion. If I am in the wrong to have this kind of nuance, please come to me and I will gladly be open to rebuke. Without further ado, let’s discuss the distinction between belief and being “saved.”
Here is my personal conviction, I am not comfortable simply calling Christians “believers” anymore. In my own everyday conversations, messages, lessons, and etcetera, I have begun deviating from referring to Christians as merely believers, instead, I’ve begun using alternative words and phrases (in addition to just calling them Christians of course) such as saints, brothers and sisters in the Lord, and those that are regenerated to name a few. Why have I arrived to this conviction? Because you can believe in God and Jesus and still not be saved. How do I know this? Consider the words of James 2:19. “Even the demons believe in God and they shudder.” If I have my soteriology correct about who’ll be in heaven, demons aren’t going to be there, they’re not saved. Also, I’ve seen different people who are either a presently in the church or who have tragically walked away from the faith say they “believe,” yet the belief hasn’t translated into any fruit or evidence (Matthew 7:15-20). Just because you believe, that doesn’t mean you’re “saved.” A believer can walk away from Christianity and sadly be on a collision course with hell, a person whose “saved” will not be snatched out of the Savior’s hand (John 10:28).
In the Christian community, Christians are often referred to as believers. This implies that Christians are believers of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are believers that God’s words are true. They are believers in what the core doctrines of the Christian faith. And they believe in order to be saved, they must be born again. And that’s all well and good. Millions of brothers and sisters in the Lord call fellow Christians believers, and I don’t have an issue with them doing so. Again, this is my own personal conviction.
You are probably reading up to this point and you probably want to say “what do you do with the words of Acts 16:31!? Genesis 15:6!? Romans 10:9-11!?” “Jacob, the Bible says believe and that’s how you get saved! Therefore, a believer is someone who is saved!” And you are absolutely right to bring up those verses dear reader! They indeed say belief leads to being saved, to in Abraham’s case, be credited to him as righteousness. But, we need to examine what the word “believe” meant in the Hebrew and the Greek and how that stacks up against the definition of our modern day term believe.
Let’s first look at the modern-day definition of believe. According different dictionaries, believe means the following two things. First, “accept (something) as true; feel sure of the truth of.” Secondly, “hold (something) as an opinion; think or suppose.” Both these definitions seem fairly passive in nature. Belief as opinion, to accept something as true, or to think or suppose doesn’t sound very dogmatic. It doesn’t sound transformational. It doesn’t seem very “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) like. The Hebrew and Greek words (the languages the Bible was originally written in) and definitions are significantly stronger in nature than our milquetoast English definition.
The Hebrew word for believe that’s used in Genesis 15:6 is ‘āman. The meaning of the Hebrew word for believe are the following verbs: To support, to be completely certain, to completely trust, to be faithful, to nourish that belief and grow in it, to be certain, and to stand firm and be completely unwavering from that belief. When Abraham believed the Lord, he completely trusted God (albeit at times imperfectly), he was faithful in his relationship with Yahweh, he nourished his belief in the Lord and walked with God. Therefore, because of this belief, Abraham was changed, and God credited it to him as righteousness, God saved Abraham.
The Greek word that’s used both in Acts 16:31 and Romans 10:9-11 is pisteuō. Pisteuō’s definition mirrors in a lot of ways to ‘āman. The Greek word for belief too is a verb, implying active action. It means to be absolutely persuaded of something, and in the case of the early church, Jesus being Savior. It meant the conviction and trust that impels a person of an inner and higher “prerogative” of the law (of God) and soul. It meant the action that resulted in a saving faith through God and what Jesus did on the Cross. In both the Hebrew and Greek, both words for believe resulted in an eternal, life-transforming change. This belief doesn’t result in a passive intellectual knowledge, it results in becoming a brand-new person who’s a child of God (Ephesians 5:1-14)!
How do we know this change to be true for the Christian? Consider the following verses and references. A Christian is someone who has completely trusted in, given their hearts to, and exalt Jesus Christ as their only Savior and they possess the Holy Spirit (John 3:16, Ephesians 1:13-14, 2:8-9). The Christian is a new creation, the old person is gone, and the new and born-again individual has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). A Christian has been purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 6:20). Christians have been justified through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1). Christians are God’s masterpiece; they have been reborn to do “good works” (Ephesians 2:10). A Christian is guaranteed glorification (Romans 8:30), and nothing can break that. Once a person becomes a Christian and comes to a saving faith, they are written into the Lamb’s Book of Life (Revelation 21:27) and they cannot be separated from God’s love and his seal upon us or be reversed (Romans 8:38-39, 11:29). When someone is saved, this is what happens; they are never the same.
Am I saying belief has nothing to do with the salvation process? Absolutely not! That’s not what I am saying at all and biblically speaking I’d be in borderline heresy (if not full-blown) if I were to believe this. Belief is unquestionably a component of saving faith. However, the belief must extend beyond the intellectual and pierce the heart. Once belief penetrates the heart, that’s when God’s miracle of saving the sinner takes place. There are millions out there that merely have an intellectual belief in Jesus and the things of Scripture and sadly it hasn’t penetrated their hearts and spirit. Therefore, they are a part of the group that Jesus was speaking to in what is in my opinion, the scariest verse in Scripture; Matthew 7:21-23. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (ESV). Belief alone doesn’t save, it’s God’s transformational grace that saves you, belief is merely a step. There is a distinction between belief and being saved and as Scripture and the original languages have shown us, is a pretty drastic one because it’s the difference between eternal life and eternal death.
If you’re still with me, you are reading this and probably thinking to yourself “how do you explain away the Joshua Harrises, Rhett and Links, Kevin Maxes, Derek Webbs, and the countless others who at one-point professed belief/faith/Christianity and walked away? Who did many things for the Lord? What about backslidden believers? Are you saying these believers were never Christian to begin with?” It is not my place to say whether or not any of these individuals are saved or not, salvation belongs to our God, and I pray and hope that these individuals and the people we know and love who’ve walked away will return to Jesus. Regardless of “if” they’re saved or not, they’re all living very dangerously and if they continue on in their apostasy, they are rolling the dice with their eternities. If these one-time believers who professed to be Christian are not saved, they didn’t lose their salvation, they were never saved to begin with! The 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 18.1 I believe succinctly explains the dichotomy between believers who walk away and those whom are truly saved.
“Although temporary believers and other unregenerate men, may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions of being in the favor of God and in a state of salvation, which hope of theirs shall perish; yet such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may in this life be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace, and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed.” (Job 8:13–14; Matthew 7:22–23, 1 John 2:3, 3:14, 18-24, 5:13, Romans 5:2-5).
A Christian who is truly saved doesn’t just only believe intellectually; they are regenerated. Despite the tribulations, temptations, and terrors life will throw at them, they will endure until the end. A Christian “if saved,” is always saved, they will not be erased out of the Lamb’s Book of Life. A temporary believer as the London Baptist Confession states was never a part of the Body of Christ to begin with, they will eventually walk away and be tragically enticed by their carnal desires. Am I being too nuanced in my opinion that there is a distinction between belief and being saved? That’s for you to decide, but between me and my conscience before the Lord, this is humbly where I am now. The question you must answer in conclusion is, are you merely an intellectual believer or are you truly saved? Are you truly regenerated? Have you pisteuō in the Lord Jesus Christ? If so, you are indeed saved and praise God for that!
They often say the difference between salvation and being condemned is “six or so inches” (the distance between your heard and your heart) and it’s so true. An intellectual belief isn’t what saves us, it’s a belief that’s pierced our hearts, our souls, our innermost being and caused us to as Jesus said be “born again” (John 3:3). Nuance aside, this distinction is so important, and I pray you’ll seriously consider your standing before the Lord in lieu of what’s been said in this piece.
PJ's Presuppositions 