WHY ARE YOU A BELIEVER?

By Curtis Pugh

Some will try to tell us that people who believe on Christ are cripples: that they are gullible. They maintain that religion is a crutch needed by unstable people. We would agree that some who call themselves Christians are gullible. Some are false professors who do not actually possess spiritual life. These and others like them only have a man-made religion.

But we address the question “Why Are You A Believer” to those who have genuinely been given faith in Christ. Faith is a gift because Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” Saving faith is “the gift of God.” So we may ask, why were you given faith? Why are you a believer?

The Bible is absolutely clear as to why you are a believer if indeed you are a genuine one: if your total reliance is on Christ and His finished work for your salvation. Acts 13:48 says, “And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.”

The context of that verse is this: the Jews had rejected the preaching of Paul and Barnabas when they brought the Gospel of Christ to them in Antioch, Pisidia. Because of this the two apostles turned to the Gentiles – those who were not Jews ethnically. This caused great rejoicing among these non-Jews and “as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” Why did they believe? The same reason that you believed, if you truly have believed on Christ. You like those who believed back then believed because you “were ordained to eternal life.”

Many people do not like the fact that the Bible teaches predestination and God's “determinate counsel” spoken of in Acts 2:23. They reject the idea that even sinners do “...whatsoever thy [God's] hand and thy counsel determined before to be done,” (Acts 4:28). But when men reject God's Word they are left to their own error. Sinners boastfully think that they do as they please when actually they do exactly what God determined before to allow sinners to do. In this way they accomplish God's plan.

Paul makes this clear in his letter to the congregation at Ephesus when he wrote: “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved,” (Ephesians 1:5-6). And again he said, “In whom [Christ] also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will,” (Ephesians 1:11).

So then give God all the praise and glory if you are a genuine believer. If you are trusting the finished work of Christ for your salvation you do so because God ordained it.