commitment. G. Michael Cocoris, Lordship Salvation — Is It Biblical? (Dallas: Redención Viva, 1983), 13.
He Calls for a New Birth
ot everyone who claims to be a Chris tian really is. Unbelievers do make false professions of faith in Christ, and people who are not truly Chris tians can be deceived into thinking they are.
That might have been taken for granted a few decades ago, but no more. The cheap grace and easy faith of a distorted gospel are ruining the purity of the church. The softening of the New Testament message has brought with it a putrefying inclusivism that in effect sees almost any kind of positive response to Jesus as tantamount to saving faith. Chris tians today are likely to accept anything other than utter rejection as authentic faith in Christ. Modern-day evangelicalism has developed a large and conspicuous fringe, embracing even those whose doctrine is suspect or whose behavior indicates a heart in rebellion against the things of God.
The gospel Jesus proclaimed did not foster that kind of gullibility. From the time He first began to minister publicly, our Lord eschewed the quick, easy, or shallow response. He turned away far more prospects than He won, refusing to proclaim a message that would give anyone a false hope. His words, always tailored to the individual's needs, never failed to puncture an inquirer's self-righ teous ness, unveil wrong motives, or warn of false faith or shallow commitment.
Jesus' meeting with Nicodemus in John 3 is an example of this. It is the earliest of His one-on-one evangelistic encounters recorded in the Gospels. It is ironic that Jesus, who so often confronted the Pharisees' unbelief and outright antagonism, began His evangelistic ministry by answering a leading Pharisee who approached Him with an enthusiastic word of affirmation. We might expect Jesus to welcome Nicodemus warmly and interpret his positive response as a profession of faith, but that was not the case. Far from encouraging Nicodemus, Jesus, who knew the unbelief and self-righ teous ness of Nicodemus's heart, dealt with him as an unbeliever.
Some view this passage of Scripture as a statement about how easy it is to believe in Jesus Christ.1 That is not the point of this episode at all. It is true
1. Cocoris cites John 3:14 – 15 as support for a defi nition of faith that explicitly eliminates the idea of commitment. G. Michael Cocoris, Lordship Salvation — Is It Biblical? (Dallas: Redención Viva, 1983), 13.