Belonging to Christ


Have you ever quit something? I quit my little league baseball team as a kid years ago. I couldn't see well and I feared getting hit with the ball. So I quit, showing that I was not a baseball person.

The Apostle John tells us that not everyone who is among us and looks like a good Christian is really a born again belieliever.

They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
1 John 2:19

Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.
2 John 9

The fact that they would leave us (and/or all Christian churches) and reject "the teaching of Christ" -His deity, humanity, payment for sins on the cross, and His ressurection - reveal that they do "not have God" nor ever "belonged" to Christ's body (us). It's not that they lost their salvation, but by rejecting the teaching of Christ, they reveal they never really belonged to Him.

We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.
Hebrews 3:14-15
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