My Dear Christian Friend

Yes, I am deliberately calling you that—because you are dear to me and, more importantly, to God. You are both His friend and mine, and you are indeed a Christian. You told me last week that you weren’t sure you were still a Christian. Your exact words were, “Am I a Christian? Do I really believe, or do I need help with my unbelief? Or have I crossed the line already, and it’s too late for me?”

There are so many comforting things in Scripture, but let’s start with one from Jeremiah. He wrote, “Return, you faithless sons, and God will heal your faithlessness.” I know that you know God forgives sins. Faithlessness is the sin that He forgives. It’s the sin of unbelief that encapsulates all the others, and it is the main assignment of the Holy Spirit—as Jesus sends Him into the world—to convict us concerning that very sin. Our chief problem is a lack of trust in God. That problem does not belong to you alone. And God, thankfully, is the only one who can do anything about it.

The prophet Hosea said the same thing when he wrote, “I will heal their apostasy.” Apostasy is a word that means to stand away from. It is a defiant word. Picture someone who turns their back on you, crosses their arms, and won’t look at you or approach you because they have taken their stand away from you. That’s much stronger than doubt. That’s even more than denial. That’s a rejection. And that rejection is what is being forgiven.

If anybody ever felt rejected, it was Jesus on Good Friday, when God the Father turned His back on Him. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to convict the world of its one sin—the sin of not believing that the person of Christ has become the new you.

Do you believe that Jesus believes in God? Well, of course you do. And because He does, so do you. Now, you’re thinking to yourself, “I can’t trust in God the way Jesus does.” Let’s rescue that thought from its circular reasoning and give it a second try: Christ Himself is doing the trusting for you. This is from Jeremiah, where he says that God Himself is our trust. Our unbelief does not nullify the faithfulness of God, as Paul wrote to the Romans.

The fact that anyone believes the gospel message is a truly great mystery, as Paul later wrote to Timothy. Those of us who acknowledge that we do trust His word and believe in His Christ have no idea how that came to be. Jesus spoke about that in the fourth chapter of Mark when He described the Kingdom of God producing its own members. “If we are faithless”—and we certainly are that—”God Himself remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”

Look toward the faithful version of yourself found inside of Jesus. For your true life with God is hidden with Christ in God. The element of your Christian life that you can see and feel and experience is the one that makes you believe you’re not a Christian. It’s filled with this “doubt thing”. But God is perfectly pleased with the version of you that resides comfortably inside of Him at the right hand of God the Father Almighty in eternity.

We have been set aside as precious, acceptable, and perfect—not by our own choice or effort. We have been sanctified by the will that resides inside of Jesus. His incarnation was for the sake of our human flesh, as we find in the tenth chapter of the book of Hebrews. Jesus is not ashamed to call us His brothers because He has become the new version of all of us. There is only one new man, and He has more than enough faith for all of us. You can have fun looking this up in the second chapter of Hebrews and the second chapter of Ephesians.

Jesus came down to earth to do and believe what we cannot do or believe. That truth is buried in the high priestly prayer found in the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel. Faithfulness resides in the One who has called us. He got the ball rolling, and He will bring it all the way home. Have some more fun confirming those from First Thessalonians and from Philippians.

My dear Christian friend, you are indeed a Christian. The only one who is not absolutely confident of that is the shadow version of yourself stuck here in space and time. The real you in eternity is most certainly a Christian, because you are inside of the only real Believer.

I’ll leave you with this: the thief on the cross looked at Jesus and saw all he needed to see. God bless and have a wonderful evening.

In Christ,

Pastor Frank