Posted at Reformation Scotland:
When Paul told Agrippa the plain, rational truth about Christ’s death and resurrection, Agrippa pushed it away. All Paul’s persuasiveness was not enough to make him move more than a little towards becoming one of those despised Christ-followers. For the godly Covenanting minister Alexander Wedderburn, this was not merely an exchange between two long-ago figures. Wedderburn was deeply concerned that in and around the church, too many people are still “almost” Christians. Rational though Christianity is, Wedderburn was painfully aware of those who would only pick and choose the bits of the faith they like, and who therefore remain at as much of a distance from the Saviour as if they were committed non-believers. His appeal therefore in the following updated extract is to realise the shamefulness of being “almost” and not “altogether” a Christian, and to strive to reach Christ really and truly.“Almost” should make us humble
All of us are committed to doctrinal principles which lead us to be altogether Christians, but we must face the question in point of practice. The Lord could complain of many as He did of Ephraim in Hosea 7:8, “Ephraim is a cake unturned,” that is, raw on the one side and burnt on the other. In some things, they are Christians (especially the things that are consistent with their self-interest), but in other things they deny it, especially in things that are most difficult, and of most absolute necessity.
Why should this make us humble ourselves?
It includes a secret contempt of God
If you cut and carve the laws of your sovereign, taking what you like, and rejecting what you please, you despise the authority that commanded them. To do something at the command of God, and to refuse to do other things, must flow either from some apparent iniquity in the law (which is highly insulting) or from despising the authority that commanded it, and both reflect on God.
It is something God hates
To be a Christian in part, and not altogether, is something God loathes. This was the church of Laodicea, which was neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm. It had some degrees of heat, and some of cold, and God threatens that He will spew her out of His mouth something His stomach loathes.
It means you are pulled two ways
This puts you to serve two masters — to be for God in some things, and for His enemy in other things. “A double-minded man,” says James, “is unstable in all his wayes,” a man who has a mind and a mind. That man must be like Israel in Elijah’s time, lurching between two incompatible alternatives.
It means you never do enough
You may lose out on heaven, even though you do great things for God, because of not doing more. Some things are absolutely necessary for salvation. If we are never so righteous in our dealing with other people, yet, “he that believes not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the only begotten Son of God.” Now how lamentable is it, to do much for Christ, and yet come short of heaven for not doing more?
It means you are already losing out on the best bit of Christianity
To be only partly a Christian deprives you even now of the sweetest part of Christianity. The peace and joy promised in the gospel is attained by performing the most inward duties of it, while neglecting these makes many find godliness a kind of labyrinth to them, as if they are continually breaking open shells that have no kernel in them.
All these laid together evidence what kind of reasons we have for self-humbling, if we are only “almost a Christian.”