April 29 Daily Devotional

Scripture for Day 119—James 5:19–20

¹⁹ My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, ²⁰ let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Devotional:

Some believers fear that their salvation depends on them so that they can actually lose it. Is that what God says in these verses? Before we answer that, let's get our feet on solid ground.

God makes it clear in his Word that you cannot be saved today and lost tomorrow. Our Lord Jesus Christ saves his sheep forever. He gives his elect eternal salvation. "I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:28). When the Lord converts you, you pass from death to life. You are transferred from the darkness of Satan's empire to the light of God's kingdom. "The Father ... has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins" (Col. 1:12–14). But if that's the case, how can the backslider need to be saved all over again from spiritual death?

Before we can answer that, we need to ask a second question. Who knows who are actually elect and born again? First, God knows objectively. God's Word says, "The Lord knows those who are his" (2 Tim. 2:19a). Second, you know subjectively as God assures you by his Holy Spirit working through the Word. "The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ…" (Rom. 8:16–17). But as far as other people are concerned, they must look on the outward appearance. They must deduce whether or not we are converted from what they hear us say and what they see us do. They are bound to judge us by this test—"Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity" (2 Tim. 2:19b).

Our text is not written from God's vantage point, nor from the perspective of what we know about ourselves, but from the point of view of fellow-Christians observing one another's lives and hearing one another's talk. To them, if one backslides, it must call into question whether or not he is genuinely born again. Why? Because they see him failing to pass the only test they can apply, namely, that he professes the name of the Lord but is not departing from iniquity. It's in this sense that these verses warn us that eternity is at stake when a fellow church member wanders away from the Lord.

In the church, we must look on one another as those who profess Christ. And our great concern must be to encourage each other the whole way through to the Celestial City. We must learn to see backsliding as if it is evidence that the person has never really taken hold of Christ at all. We must hurry to them. We must seek to recover them for our Lord.

In other words, as important as membership in the visible church is, it is not an automatic guarantee of salvation. Within every fellowship there are those whose profession is not real and whose attachment to Christ is not yet a genuine saving faith. Their true condition, as still in bondage to sin and death, becomes evident to the caring eyes of those who watch within the fellowship. Turning away from the truth and from the life that accords with the truth, gives a revealing testimony to how things really are. It calls for a spirit of concern in every truly Christian heart.

Click here for background on the author of Are You For Real?: Meditations in the Epistle of James for Secret or Family Worship.