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So what is the difference between a real Christian and a false Christian? It has to do with being in Christ.
We've been about deception for a long time. And part of that means asking yourself honestly: were you deceived at one time? Pretty much every day, if we're honest. We come out of it, in and more than one way, daily, in keeping with repentance. And what do you do when you see that you were deceived? What do you actually do with that?
People tend to do one of two things. Either they say, "Wow, I was deceived. I want to repent of that, and I want to help others not be deceived." Or they double down on the deception because they're embarrassed, because they've been in it for so long, and it's hard to admit you were wrong. It's a difficult thing for a human being to admit, "I was thinking about that in the total wrong way." But when you make yourself able to admit that to God, when you repent, when you confess, it's a freeing thing. And it's the same posture we take toward people who've hurt us and never repented. You give them over to God, because the Bible says without repentance there cannot be forgiveness. But if they do repent, be ready to forgive them, for the simple fact that Jesus has forgiven us so, so much.
A Forgotten Doctrine
This is one of the many doctrinal things worth digging into: a forgotten doctrine, if you will. Not forgotten in the sense that the church erased it, but forgotten in the sense that it's fallen to the back because it isn't easy. It's spiritual. It's the kind of doctrine that could offend people, and preachers know it, so it stops getting preached from the pulpit. And when we stop wrapping our minds around these spiritual, divine truths, out of weakness or fear or laziness, we stop being anchored in them. And when we're not anchored, we've opened ourselves up to deception. That's what's meant by "forgotten." Not that the church forgot it existed, just that we've quit teaching it, and false doctrines are rising rapidly in the church because we aren't anchored on the things that matter.
To be clear, this isn't deconstructionism. Deconstructionism looks at grandma and grandpa's faith and says they had it all wrong for nineteen centuries because they just let culture tell them what God's word meant, and now we're going to let our current culture tell us instead. That's not what's happening here. That's rooted in selfishness and wanting to be significant. What's happening here is the opposite: recovering something true that's simply been neglected.
Salvaged by God Deep Dive: Union with Christ
"I Know a Man in Christ" — 2 Corinthians 12:2
"I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago, whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows, such a man was caught up to the third heaven."
What are we supposed to take from this? That we all get to take trips to heaven when we're on vacation? Absolutely not. Paul, up to this point, had not even told people he was taken up into the heavens. It was too wondrous, too great, too much for him to share. He finally shares it with the Corinthians because the Corinthians are, frankly, off their rocker, and he's trying to bring them back to reality. This is the danger of cherry picking verses out of a text instead of exegeting the whole chapter. You really need to understand the context, not just lift a line out.
Communion works the same way. "Eating and drinking damnation onto yourself" isn't about how you handle a little shot of juice and a cracker. There have been many well meaning but off base pastors over the years, especially growing up in the '70s and '80s, who turned communion into something it was never meant to be. The actual context: rich people at Corinth would bring food and scarf it down while the poor who had nothing went without, dividing the church into cliques. Sound familiar? Even in "remnant churches" today (all of Romans 11), that click and that click dynamic still shows up. The pursuit is fellowship with one another in a deeper, loving understanding, not eating and drinking damnation unto yourself by dividing the body.
Bottom line on reading Paul: read around whatever text you're in. Understand what horrible things the church he's addressing was doing, and understand that he's setting the record straight for how to move forward. He's justifying that he has an experience above all experience, and if you're pursuing experiences only, which is exactly what a lot of the apostate church does, chasing feelings, chasing significance, chasing "the Lord spoke to me," you've missed the point of the passage entirely. (For the record, this is 2 Corinthians, not 1 Corinthians, though the same principle of reading in context holds for both letters.)
The real gold in 2 Corinthians 12:2 isn't the third heaven. It's the very beginning of the verse: "I know a man in Christ." He doesn't even name himself. He doesn't say, "I, here's what I got to do fourteen years ago." He disregards himself entirely and identifies as a man in Christ. That's his identification.
"Crucified With Christ" — Galatians 2:20
"I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly."
Paul is emphasizing Christ's atoning death here, substitutionary atonement, another doctrine being forgotten and worth its own conversation entirely. But when he says Christ lives in him, this is not poetic verbiage. It's not theoretical, metaphysical language. He's being literal. Divine, spiritual, but still very literal: Christ lives in me. This reality runs throughout the New Testament, that we are living in Christ, that we are in Christ, and he is living in us. Union with Christ. Every earthly relationship, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers with their children, pales in comparison. Those relationships are just a little whisper of the image of what's actually going on with our heavenly Father.
That's likely where the commonly used phrase "ask Jesus into your heart" comes from. It's a little misleading as phraseology, but the truth underneath it is real. And part of the journey toward that truth is recognizing there's a difference between being a Christian and being a disciple. When you start looking at those things, and this has been a mighty struggle for fifteen years, particularly through the spring of 2026, people pick up a bit here, a bit there, and get frustrated or offended before they land on it.
The Sinner's Prayer: Real Conversion or False Convert
Here's the hard truth: the sinner's prayer is a way for you to become in Christ. It is also a way for you to become a false convert. Why are people saying the sinner's prayer? Because they sang "Just As I Am" twenty five times? Because of that emotional tug, that sappy music behind the altar call that some preachers can't even function without? When you come to Jesus as a broken sinner, recognizing your sin, wanting to be justified because he took the punishment you deserve upon himself, and you confess to God (sometimes that is a sinner's prayer), but with that confession and repentance, there is a change. There is new life. Jesus does come into your heart. But the real transformation is that in that same transaction, you become a new creature and you are now living in Christ. That's why the behavior changes. It's not behavior modification to earn God's goodness. It's good old fashioned gratitude producing a love you've never experienced before.
As you try to teach people these truths, people fall into different camps. Many times you become the enemy, many times you become their hero. Either way, it's never supposed to be about you. Even when they revile you and say all manner of evil against you, rejoice and be exceedingly glad. Even when they lift up your name and tell you how much light you bring into their life, look, you just try to be faithful with what you've had. Stay grafted in (John 15), stay in the vine, stay in Christ.
Being in Christ is different than having said a sinner's prayer and then trying to walk out your faith with Jesus coming alongside to help with your goals and your dreams and making your life better. That's not scriptural. It's much deeper than "Jesus is my boyfriend" or "Jesus is my friend." No, Jesus is the one who sticks closer than a brother. And as men, nobody wants to hear they're the bride of Christ (picture the meme of the big burly guy with the beard and the cigar in a wedding dress, captioned "what we feel like when we're told we're the bride of Christ"). But when you understand your creator God took your punishment upon himself and offers you a free gift of eternal life, the metaphor of the bride of Christ becomes real, and being part of that union is the best thing in all of the universe, because your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. That's different than saying a little prayer to get out of a bad spot.
That bride of Christ picture also plays out in marriage. A godly husband looks at his wife the way Christ looks at the church: protecting her with his life, loving her, putting her before himself and above himself. The reverse holds true for wives as well. That husband and wife relationship is an appropriate, if imperfect, picture of the relationship Christ has with a fallen world as believers are brought to him.
Test Yourselves — 2 Corinthians 13:5
"Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves. Or do you not recognize this about yourself, that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you fail the test?"
You've got to really test yourself. How? You lay your life down next to scripture. Even in the last thirty to sixty days, that kind of examination has turned up areas that could've been handled better, or weren't done correctly. And what do you do when you examine yourself and come up short? You've got some repenting to do. That seems to be a recurring theme. And it comes back to Jesus Christ in you. Failing the test is a hard thing to face, which is exactly why the Bible says daily, in keeping with repentance. Not weekly, not monthly, not "I'm such a good Christian." Daily, in keeping with repentance, we serve the Lord because we are in Christ. That's a different deal than "I said a prayer, therefore I'm in."
There are measurements you can judge by, in Christ. And when you're in Christ, you're going to notice inklings, not that you're God and get the final judgment, but inklings of "this is my brother." Think about walking into your own house when your family has a bunch of friends over: do you have a hard time telling which ones are family and which ones aren't? Not usually. The family members go straight to the fridge without asking. That's how you tell. And yet there are also conversations in that mixed group where it's clear someone feels like family even without the blood tie. So yes, we're not the final judge of who goes to heaven and who doesn't. But we're not flying blind either. There are tests, and when we test ourselves, we pick up on other things too.
Treasure in Earthen Vessels — 2 Corinthians 4:6-7
"For God, who said light shall shine out of the darkness, is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the extraordinary greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves."
("Vessels" fits better than "containers," even though both translations exist.) This connects to so many other verses telling us we're not supposed to speak more highly of ourselves than we ought. The first pair of verses showed how we're in Christ; this pair shows how Christ is in us. Union with Christ, both directions. And it's important because if we test ourselves and find this to be the case, it will impact how we live, how we think, how we interact with the body, and how we move forward in life.
Think about a house. You buy it, you move in, and over time that house begins to reflect who you are. You put up pictures, start cooking your kind of food, start using the air fresheners you like. It also reveals how you were raised, like the first time after getting married at nineteen and twenty years old, going to clean the bathroom, and hearing, "What are you doing? We're not moving." Or wanting to hang hockey sticks with an American flag in the living room, and needing the Holy Spirit to step in and say no (kidding, mostly).
That's exactly what it's like: Christ in us, and us in Christ, is how we learn and grow and discern and understand these truths. On our own, we cannot understand spiritual things. Without the Holy Spirit, you cannot understand all the spiritual things God has for you, or the things he teaches. You need the Holy Spirit.
Same principle shows up cleaning out a refrigerator during a move. You clean it really, really good, shut the door or leave it open to dry, go do something else, come back, and there's more stuff in the nooks and crannies. You can never get a fridge clean enough to stop finding more crusties in the corner. That's what life with Christ is like. We ask Christ to clean us up in a way that isn't self serving, and every time you go back and look, if you're walking with Christ, if you're examining yourself, you see there's more to be done. That keeps you humble. And it gives grace to other people who are still stumbling, many times in ways you used to stumble yourself, with the hope that they'll wake up in the Lord and get back into the scriptures too.
Or think of it as a house again: as it increasingly reflects the one living in it, anything that doesn't belong stands out like a sore thumb. You spot it immediately. That's how it works with Christ living in us. We begin to reflect who Christ is, and that's how we learn to discern what belongs and what doesn't. And you need light to have a reflection, which is exactly why the passage says the power is God's and not our own. You don't earn your way into that power by doing more. If you're in Christ, you already have it.
"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28), if you are in Christ Jesus.
Discerning True Faith in Others
Here's a practical picture. When two people both possess the Holy Spirit, when the Spirit lives in them and they're in Christ, what does that Spirit do? It affirms and recognizes the truth within the other person. So say two professing Christians are talking, and one says, "God told me I'm supposed to support the LGBTQ community, affirm them, believe they were made that way." The spirit that lives in a genuine believer is going to register, "I don't recognize that. That's not truth. That doesn't sound right." You may not even be able to put your finger on exactly why, but you know there's a disconnect. If that person genuinely has the Holy Spirit, eventually the Spirit will lead them into truth, maybe not overnight, but over time. But if someone keeps promoting something that contradicts Jesus Christ and refuses to let go of an anti-biblical, anti-Christ ideal, that's a signal something is genuinely wrong.
Where the Spirit is, there will be union and brotherhood. You don't have to agree on every single thing, but together you'll grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Being in Christ, and Christ in us, this is a big deal.
For anyone wanting to go deeper, Sinclair Ferguson's Union with Christ is a genuinely great book on the topic, barely halfway through it and it's already clear this conversation has only touched the tip of the iceberg.
Final Thoughts
Get back into God's word again today. Take the verse discussed above and apply it directly: test yourself, see if you're of the faith. Make sure that you are in Christ Jesus, and that Christ Jesus is in you.