All have lukewarm elements and practices in their lives; that’s where the God’s excessive grace of it all is. The Scriptures demonstrate clearly that there is room for your failure and sin in your pursuit of God. His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3). His grace is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9). Many think that when you mess up, it means you were never really a genuine Christian in the first place. If that were true, no one could follow Christ. Many think they must have a life of perfection (which none will attain on this earth). To call someone a Christian simply because he does some Christian-y things is giving false comfort to the unsaved. But to declare anyone who sins “unsaved” is to deny the reality and truth of God’s grace.” And Scripture stresses the need for you as a believer to desire to give to the poor, but emphasizes that not everyone is called to give all their possessions away or give in the same way necessarily. Like how in the New Testament one guy named Zacchaeus when he got saved simply paid everyone back and a different guy sold everything he had. Each responds differently, but the willingness to give possessions away was evident in both of them.
Most like to avoid when Jesus states that it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Yes. Through Christ all things are possible so it’s not to say some rich people might be saved, but here in the United States many sometimes like to deny their status of being rich. Americans are rich, and it’s safe to say when Jesus says the road is narrow and few will actually find it….and fewer still among the rich, it applies to the majority of Americans.
Jesus said it first. Also, read the passage and evaluate yourself as to whether or not you’re giving out of your desire to serve God or whether you are holding on to your possessions with a tendency to hoard. I know I tend to hoard things that essentially aren’t mine to begin with. They’re God’s. The Bible stresses not to give God your “leftovers,” He wants your devotion and your firstfruits. Think of it in the context of Cain and Abel. God despised Cain’s sacrifice because it wasn’t the best that he had to offer. God was insulted by this. God doesn’t want leftovers. He wants devotion.
Your life is “measured by how you love.” Love is required to serve God successfully. Both a love for God and love for others.
Don’t believe or think you have to work your way to Jesus. You don’t. Fully believe and Know that you are saved by grace, through faith, by the gift of God, and that true faith manifests itself through your actions. As James 2 writes, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
Can you have “dead” faith and be saved? Why would you, in your right mind, want dead faith if you can have what God has to offer you? Typically individuals who desire this “dead faith” don’t want to give God their all. They are hesitant or fearful of actually committing to following Jesus. Why toe the line of “Can I do ___ and still be saved?” Your heart is already in the wrong place if you’re trying to see how much you can sin and still be saved. Give God your all, devote yourself to Him, because when it comes down to it there’s a lot of uncertainty in scripture on whether or not a person cannot be devoted to following God and still be saved. There is no doubt however, in the fact that a person who devotes themselves to loving God with all their heart, soul, and mind will be in heaven
In short, You are not saved by works, you are saved by grace through faith. If you truly are saved though, there will be works in your life that attest to the fact that you are saved. Being a lukewarm Christian is being no Christian at all based on understanding of scripture. The idea of a “lukewarm Christian” is something that American Christians have created in order to make a safe option of Christianity that requires little or no devotion or actions to follow up on your faith in Christ.
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