How Many People Who Claim to be Christians Truly Are?

In answer to my question about his beliefs at a McDonald’s, a young man named Alex said “Well. I’m a Christian, so I believe in God and heaven and hell.”

What to say? Should I take that at face value and enjoy the fellowship of another believer?

Not so fast!

One of the first, very shocking lessons I learned when I started to intentionally start Gospel conversations is that relatively few people who believe themselves to be Christians really are. Many have very different and unbiblical ideas about just what it means to be “Christian”.

So I’ve learned to be cautious about extending a hand of fellowship to just anyone who claims to be a Christian, implicitly giving them false assurance of salvation in the process.

For his part, Alex’s definition of being a Christian was “believing in God and trying to be a good enough person”. We talked about this a long time, and one key question I asked was “If you were mistaken and really are not a Christian as the Bible teaches, but are on the road to hell instead, when would you want to know?”

“As soon as possible” Alex responded.

Good answer. When one is headed down the wrong road, the sooner they turn around the sooner they can get on the right path.

Some might say that questioning one’s salvation causes doubt that only discourages any faith they do have. But if one’s faith is in their own ability to earn salvation or anything other than in Jesus, it would be a faith not worth having in the first place.

“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.” (2 Cor. 13:5)

Good advice from the word of God!