If you’re like me, you visit atheist social media groups to
evangelize. It is sad to be confronted with many of their “testimonies” like:
·
I had spent 20 years of my life in church as a “Christian,”
and it didn’t work for me. Finally, I saw the light and left.
How do you answer such testimonies? Perhaps it’s best to first
be grounded in the Biblical understanding of salvation. If we are in Christ,
there is nothing that can remove us:
·
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor
angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate
us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38–39)
If nothing can separate us from Jesus, and this includes
ourselves, it means that those who claim that they had a saving relationship
with Jesus and then rejected Him, never had Him.
Therefore, we need not worry that there is something the
matter with Jesus and His ability to keep us:
·
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and
they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no
one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is
greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. (John
10:27–29)
The Lord is our faithful protection. Those who “left” Jesus were never in Jesus:
·
They went out from us, but they were not of us;
for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went
out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. (1 John 2:19)
How then do we answer those who claim that they had once
been saved but now have rejected the faith? I would assure them that had they
known Jesus, they would never have left, but even now, assure them that the
door is open to them:
·
For there is no distinction between Jew and
Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call
on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans
10:12–13)
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