By Phil Roberts
Anyone who comes to Jesus must come with a sincere heart. He will not receive the insincere. Compare for example the reception granted by Jesus to the sincere inquiries of Nicodemus (John 3:1-5) with the cold shoulder he turned to the insincere calumny of the chief priests in Matthew 21:23-27 when they asked him by what authority he was acting.
If you wish to come to Jesus and be received by Him, you too must be sincere. You must first be sincere with yourself. You must recognize that you are a sinner in need of salvation. The Pharisee of Luke 18:11-12 lacked such sincerity and his prayer was rejected. You must be sincere in your reason for wanting to become a Christian. Jesus has always had people who followed Him only for the “loaves and the fishes” (John 6:26). If we serve Him only for social acceptability, or to please a wife or relative, we will not be received.
You must be sincere about forsaking the world. It is perfectly possible to be quite sincere in our belief about the deity of Christ, the resurrection, baptism, the church, etc., and yet be quite insincere about our desire to forsake our former manner of life. This may well have been the problem with Simon the sorcerer. He believed in Christ all right. But he had never sincerely committed himself to being dead to sin.
You must be sincere about examining your present religion. Only that which can be proven by the Word of God is true. But family ties and family traditions often hinder us from sincerely measuring our religion by the Bible.
How sincere are you?
This bulletin is being published for the purpose of encouraging a further study of the Word of God. Editor – Josh Liggin
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