In the book of Revelation there is the 7 letters to the 7 churches in chapters 2 and 3, this is what Jesus said to each church.

1. Ephesus; repent or else I am coming to you and I will remove your lamp stand from its place—unless you repent.
2. Smyrna; the one who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.
3. Pergamum; therefore repent or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will wage war against them with the sword of my mouth. To the one who overcomes….
4. Thyatira; and i will give to each one of you according to your deeds…The one who keeps my deeds until the end, I will give him authority over the nations… and il will give him the morning star.
5. Sardis; So remember what you have received and heard, and keep it, and repent. Then if you are not alert, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.
6. Philadelphia; the one who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God…
7. Laodicea; But because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth.

I didn’t quote everything He said, He also said some positive things about each church. After all He does indeed love us all. But I focused on the warnings He gave to the 7 churches because I really think it applies to the modern Church of today, no matter what denomination you belong to.

We should sense the urgency here in what Jesus said to the 7 churches. He is warning them and telling them the consequences if they don’t heed His warnings. He telling them that if they don’t repent He is going to send them to hell. Yes, that is exactly what He is telling them. It is an urgent warning to shape up or ship out.

We as modern everyday Christians don’t take our sanctification nearly as serious as we should. We don’t really believe that if we continue in our sins that God is going to send us to hell. We believe that once we made that decision to accept Christ as our Savior that we are safe from the fires of hell.

We think that when we were told to repent, it just meant that we were supposed to repent of our sins right then, at the time when we are saying the sinners prayer. You did repent didn’t you? Of course you did, we all did, and then we were baptized and now we are saved. Do you believe that? I do. That is how we became a Christian. Some think just the sinners prayer is good enough, some think baptism is what saves us. Either or, I don’t think it matters, God is gracious and kind and He wants all of us to become part of His heavenly family. 

What concerns me is the second part of our journey. Our sanctification. I am convinced that we must submit to the sanctification process or we will lose our salvation in the end. Now I quoted Revelations but I could have very easily have quoted from the gospels or from Acts or Romans, Corinthians, Galations, Timothy, Peter, or John and others.

We have all read the multiple warnings in multiple books of the Bible but we tend to gloss over them because they don’t fit into the theology that we have been taught. These warnings are in the Bible so they are true so we need to square this circle. It is time to make all these things fit.

They all do fit and the answer is simple, but it is a hard pill to swallow. Salvation is a two part process and we must complete them both in order to be saved in the end. 

You probably think I am crazy but if you were to rise up above your biases and just look at this thing through my eyes for a moment maybe you can see what I see. This is what I see, the warnings apply to all of us, we must be obedient, this is not optional it is required of us. It must be for many reasons but take what Jesus said in Revelations as an example. He warned them, he told them they must repent and be overcomers. It is the same exact thing every book in the New Testament says, going all the way back to John the Baptist, who told us to produce the fruit of repentance or we would be cut down like a dead tree. 

After John the Baptist, Jesus started His ministry and the very first message he proclaimed was “repent for the Kingdom is a hand” and you have to believe He meant for us to repent successfully our whole lives. Yes I know this sounds harsh and hard but didn’t Jesus tell us that the road to life is narrow and difficult? 

The urgent part of the message is this: we are not taking the repentance part seriously enough. Many of us Christians are still living in sin. We are walking in sin, we are addicted to our sins, we behave sinfully. And we don’t realize that we are in danger of the fires of hell. We are not completing the second part of salvation as laid out in the Bible.

I want to say one more thing, the early Church leaders believed in the two part process, they all did but I will quote just one.

Chystostom writes, “Here Paul awakens those who had drawn back during their trials, and he shows that it is not right to trust in faith alone.for that heavenly tribunal will also inquire into our works.”

One more, Theodoret writes, “We will be judged based on our works. Therefore, after baptism, we need to patiently persevere in good works. It is not sufficient to haphazardly do righteous deeds. Rather, the eternal blessings are reserved for those who are willing to undergo the difficulties of walking with God throughout their lives.

These quotes are from their commentaries on Romans 2:6-9

In summary the Bible is very clear on this point, it is indeed a two part process and we should live accordingly. Im afraid many, many Christians are going to die and be sent to hell because they did not take seriously enough the admonishment to, “Be holy for I the Lord thy God I’m holy”

Don’t be one of “those” Christians.

Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, make He make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you, may He lift up HIs countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen