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Receiving Physical and Spiritual Blessings from God Does Not Equate to Salvation
If you made the statement above to most people of the world, they would probably look at you like you were crazy and say “what do you mean, if God is blessing someone, he has to approve of them!” If you made that statement to someone who calls themself a Christian, they may or may not agree that physical blessings by God does not necessarily mean they are saved or in a right relationship with Him. If you make the statement that a person who has been blessed spiritually by God may not be saved or be in a right relationship with God, you will most likely get resistance or even an emphatic “that’s not true”, even from people professing to be Christians.
Times have not changed much since the days of Jesus when it comes to the world’s belief that if God is blessing you (physically or spiritually), you must be saved and in a right relationship with God. It is not hard to see from scripture that just because a person is being blessed by God financially (physical wealth), that does not automatically equate to being saved or in a right relationship with God. The Rich man in Luke Ch. 12:15-21 was so blessed by God that he had to build bigger barns to hold all that he was receiving and yet God called him a fool. There are several other examples such as the “rich man and Lazarus” in Luke 16:19-31, which clearly teach that physical blessing does not get you into heaven. Yet, the world still follows after the health and wealth gospel, which is not really a gospel at all (Gal 1:6-9).
Now this may shock some folks but just because a person is blessed by God, even miraculously such as being given a spiritual gift from the Holy Spirit as in the times of the early church, this does not equate to being saved or illustrate that a person is in a right relationship with God. I offer you two examples to illustrate my point; first of all King Solomon. In 1 Kings 3:9-12, Solomon had asked for an understanding heart and God granted his petition and gave him such a wise and understanding heart that he was wiser than anyone before him and there will not be anyone wiser after him. This wisdom that God gave Solomon was spiritual and physical, as well as miraculous. In 1 Corinthians 12:7-12, the word of wisdom is listed as one of the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit. Solomon wrote both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, which are considered the wisdom literature of God, and Solomon came to the spiritual conclusion that the whole of man is “to fear God and keep His commandments…” (Ec. 12:14). The problem remains that with all this spiritual and miraculous wisdom Solomon possessed, it is still said of him in 1 Kings 11:4 that his wives turned his heart after other gods and he was not loyal to the Lord his God. I will of course let God be the judge of whether or not Solomon is saved, but from what we read in the scriptures it does not appear that he repented of his sins.
The second example I offer is the Corinthian church, which was spiritually blessed, but also a spiritual mess at the same time. They were abusing the Lord’s Supper so much so that we read in 1st Cor. 11:30, “for this reason many are weak and sick among you and many are dead”. They were also using the miraculous spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit to look down upon others and exalt themselves. Once again I will let God be the judge of who will go to heaven and who will not, but what the Corinthians were doing was sinful and if we die in our sins there is no hope of heaven for us (Jn. 8:21 & Isaiah 59:2).
I say all this so that we will not think that just because we are blessed with physical and spiritual blessings by God, we are saved or in a right relationship with our Father. We of course are very physically blessed, as we live in the US, but sometimes we may not recognize our spiritual blessings such as being able to assemble in peace, having many men in our congregation who can preach, having the opportunity to attend regular gospel meetings with a good spiritual family, etc... We cannot become lackadaisical in our service to God, rather we must search the scriptures daily, rightly dividing the word of truth (Acts 17:11 & 2 Tim 2:15). As Paul told the Corinthians in 2 Cor. 13:5, “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves that Jesus is in you?” The simple fact is that God gives us the choice to serve him every day of our lives, up to the minute we pass away from this life. It’s your choice, make it daily.
