I was listening to come guy preach about being a Christian and it made me think that there is a large gap between the non-Christian and the people we all know are fairly serious about their Christian life and ministry (not perfect people, just people who have God as number 1 priority most of the time!). These people are the middle ground, they are most probably going to heaven when they die, they have hopefully made some sort of commitment to God but their church participation is maybe limited, they have no spiritual ministry to speak of and their lifestyle is not a lot different from people who don't even know Jesus. I then wondered about these people and what the Bible would say about them and I got to the point of the cross and what it is supposed to do in the Christian.
I think there are probably loads of good books about it but I guess we have to be clear on a few definitions before we start. SALVATION is new life in Christ, experienced now, being saved from the world with its temptations. ETERNAL LIFE starts now and is related to the fact that we will not experience the second death. MINISTRY is what we do in God's work and can consist of various elements of the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:27-29 and perhaps other related things.
I have come to the opinion that baptism is required for salvation, since Jesus said that unless somebody was born of the water and the spirit, they cannot enter the kingdom of God - what is the kingdom? Jesus said it was near and 'at hand' meaning the kingdom is for now. We would presumably enter the kingdom of God after we die regardless but to enter it now requires baptism of water and the spirit. In Acts we read that some followers were baptised in water but had not received the spirit so really we need to assume that we need to be prayed for to receive the spirit after we believe and are baptised.
Does that mean that people who are not baptised cannot have a spiritual ministry? I can only say generally yes that is true from the scriptures although my experience is that possibly some people are given spiritual ministries without baptism. Of course, that is subjective and I don't know how spiritual these people actually are. I don't even know how spiritual I am!! These people, assuming they had made a decision to accept Jesus, would have eternal life since this is God's gift rather than something we earn but it does seem dangerous to separate eternal life from salvation.
It seems in the Bible that baptism was not an issue for people like it seems to be today so maybe there was not a lot of teaching on it for that reason but I think as churches we should be putting baptism as an essential stepping stone to salvation - the people of Israel did not enter the promised land until after they passed through the waters of the Red Sea. I think a lot of these people in the middle are not baptised but what if they are? Some people are simply resistant to the Spirit of God for a prolonged period and I think that God does not contend with them forever and people can get to a point where they lack spirituality until such a time that they might beg God for forgiveness!
So how do we measure our Christian life as being somewhere in the meaningful band rather than the rubbish band? Well we can ask a results-based question - "How many people have you led to the Lord recently?", or maybe, "How many have to talked to about the person of Jesus?" and we can ask a comparative question - "what in your life is different from a non-Christian?" or perhaps, "In what way does the cross and the putting to death of self affect you?". For many people the answer is "None" and "Nothing". If we do not suffer for Christ and if the cross makes no impact on us then I would suggest we need to sort our life out - Oh and get baptised first!!!
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