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Transcript 516A — What Does it Mean to Believe?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes, Mr. Camping. My question pertains to what you have to do in order to be saved. In Galatians 5:19-21 says that adulterers and so on will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Now just to believe in the Bible but not know what the Bible has to say, is this going to save us?
HC: The question really is this. What does it mean to believe? Can a man believe in the Bible and still go to hell? And of course he can. You can believe that the Bible is the Word of God. You can believe that Christ came for sinners. You can believe that you are a sinner, or that all mankind have sinned. You can believe that God means what He says, that the unsaved will be cast into hell. You can believe that Christ rose again on the third day. You can trust God altogether that Christ is Eternal God, who paid for the sins of those who believe on Him. You can believe all of these things and still end up in hell.
The fact is that belief has to be more than just an intellectual knowledge of something, or even an emotional knowledge of something. It has to be a commitment to what we believe or to what we read about in the Bible. Now let me illustrate. The Bible teaches that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Okay. We can believe that that's a true statement, that's a trustworthy statement,
But am I ready to say of myself, I too am a sinner and have come short of the glory of God. That's saying it a little differently, you see. The Bible says that because the wages of sin is death, and the Bible holds that the death that God has in view is eternal damnation, I can believe that. But am I ready to say I am a sinner, and because of my sins I am going to hell. I am in deep and terrible trouble. That's saying it a little differently, isn't it?
Real trust, real belief is where I have committed my life to this. Now let me use an illustration that I've used many times, but it still is applicable. Let's say that you were standing outside of a great gorge, on the side of a great gorge, like the Niagara Falls, or some other great gorge that you want to name. And there's a tightrope across this. And this tightrope is hundreds and hundreds of feet above the bottom of the canyon, so that anyone on this tightrope who would fall off would fall to his death for sure. And this tightrope stretches out for hundreds of feet.
And now a man comes along, and he claims that he is a very accomplished tightrope walker. And to prove it he walks out on this wire, right out to the middle of this chasm, and he certainly is very proficient in what he is doing. And so he walks back on the tightrope to where you are standing, and he says to you, "Do you believe that I can walk out on that tightrope with a man on my back?" And you reflect for a moment, and you think about how proficient that he was as he walked out on that tightrope, and you say, "Well yes, yes, I believe that you could certainly do that. I've never seen a man who was as proficient in tightrope walking as you are. And I certainly believe that you can walk out there with a man on your back."
Well, by this time a crowd is gathering, and so he says to you, "Now look. Let's show this crowd here that I am really able to do it. You get on my back, and I'm going to walk out there on that tightrope." Now that's a different story, isn't it? Right at that point your belief is not quite what you thought it was. You thought you believed that he could do it, but you by no means were ready to hang your life on that belief. And so you begin to stutter and back away and say, "Now wait a minute. Wait a minute. I'm sure you can do it, but you're not going to try it with me." In other words, you haven't really believed that he could do it. You just kind of guessed that he could.
Now this is the way a lot of people approach salvation. They believe with their minds that all that the Bible says is true. But they don't hang their life on that. They don't commit themselves to this so that they are ready to face God and face Heaven or hell based upon what they read in the Bible. And so even though they believe with their minds all of these things of the Bible, they still end up in hell.
CALLER: Okay. How about believing without knowing what the Bible has to say, or knowing what is expected of the believer? Let's say I was to accept Christ, and then I say, "Well, I'm not going to open the Bible because I'm afraid I might find something in there that's going to hurt me." And there are people like that, that don't know one end of the Bible from the other. And I was one of them for a long time myself. How about that?
HC: The question is, if a man accepts Christ and now he says, "I don't dare open the Bible for fear that I might find something there that will hurt me," what does this mean?
You see, if we say we accept Christ and we do not understand the Bible to be the Word of God for our lives, if we're not ready to read the Bible if we're able to, now some people don't have Bibles to read. Some people are blind, and they can't read, or they don't have the intellectual capacity to read. That's a different matter.
But if we are able to read the Bible and we say, "I don't want to read it, because I might find something that hurts me there," then effectively we're saying, "I don't trust You, God. I don't trust You at all. I accept Jesus as my Savior because I've been told about Him, but I don't trust the Bible." And that's the evidence of unbelief. The Bible is the Word of God. The Bible is the book that tells us about the Lord Jesus. If we do not accept the Bible as the Word of God, we're not saved.
Accepting the Lord Jesus Christ does not save us. The fact is, the Bible doesn't even use the language "accept the Lord Jesus Christ." That is language that is not found in the Bible. The Bible says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." That is, hang your whole life on Him. Commit yourself to Him.
And because we have become born again, we're going to have a very deep desire to know what is in the Bible, because we know that the Bible tells us of our salvation. It tells us of God our Father. It will be the book that we will cherish most highly.
CALLER: Okay. Then in order to be a Christian I'd have to believe, for example, that Moses opened the Red Sea and the people walked through.
HC: The question is, then in order to be a Christian, if the Bible says that Moses walked through the Red Sea or opened the Red Sea, or God opened the Red Sea so Moses and the children of Israel walked through it and the water stood as a wall on either side, do I have to believe that because the Bible says so? Absolutely. If you would read that in the Bible and say, "Well, I don't believe that. I'm a Christian and I've accepted Christ, and there are a lot of things in the Bible I believe, but that's too big for me, I can't buy that," by that action you show that you don't trust God at all, because the Bible is the Word of God. And when you begin to doubt the Bible, then you are showing that your trust is not in God. Your trust is in some kind of a salvation you've designed in your own mind, but you're not ready to humble yourself to the salvation God has shown in His Word.
CALLER: Okay. That really helps me and I really do appreciate your time.
HC: Thank you for calling. Good night.