* The following is an excerpt from today’s episode of The Royal Family Podcast. Visit The Light Network’s website to listen to the entire episode. *

Sometimes, people like to think that those who profess Christ are aliens. They’re completely out of touch with what ‘real life’ is like, instead living in a fantasy land and out of touch with what real people do and think. I think one of the reasons people outside of God’s royal family view Christians like this is because it’s a sense of justification. If you can claim that Christians are simply out of touch people with outdated views, you’ll feel better about the sins you’re involved in. But that’s not the case at all with God’s family. Instead, they are very much acquainted with what real life is…they’re just doing their best to stay out of it.

The problem is, some Christians forget that they’re supposed to know what it’s like to be out in the world. Instead, they hole themselves up with other Christians and live in a bubble, free from persecution, sure, but also free from fulfilling the great commission of GOING OUT into the world and trying to spread Jesus’ saving message. Instead, most people try to get those who are lost to come to them…but that’s not the command. The command is to GO, not to tell people to come to us.

So, if we’re going to be faithful members of the royal family — members who are going out into the world and helping the lost find Jesus — then we’re going to need to show the world three things:

One, we’re going to have to show them that we were once a part of the world. In Ephesians 2:11-13, Paul writes,

“Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” 

We are only going to be able to impact a lost world when we show them that we understand where they’re coming from. If we appear all high and mighty and holier than thou — we seem unapproachable. We seem completely out of touch with the reality of their very serious lost condition. But if we come to them from a level playing field — showing them that we were once in the exact same hopeless state — we will be able to reason with them more.

The second thing we need to show people is that we aren’t a part of that world anymore. In 1 Corinthians 5:9-10, Paul says,

“I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.”

Here, Paul is saying that you can’t completely shut yourself off from every sinful person in the world—otherwise, you’d have to go out of the world. So you DO actually have to interact with people who have sin staining their souls. But, he goes on to write to the Corinthians that they are to “come out from among them and be separate.” In 1 Peter 2:12, Peter writes that Christians are to behave differently from the world around them, so that the world will see their honorable conduct and glorify God in the day of visitation.

Yes, we must go out into the world to help the world to come to know Jesus. But the world must see a vast difference in the life they’re living and the life we have anew in Christ.

The third thing that the world needs to see from us is that God wants to save them from their sins, but He won’t save them in their sins. In 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 10, Paul lists a big long list of sins that once characterized who the Corinthian Christians were. But verse 11 says,

“And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”

They WERE that way, implying that they are no longer that way since they’d been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of Jesus Christ. NO sin is unforgivable, but ALL sins must be repented of if we want to go to heaven. The world needs to see that – while it preaches tolerance, God has no tolerance for sin and expects all sins to be completely forsaken.

If we will show the world these things — that we were once lost and hopeless without Christ but that we aren’t that way anymore and that they don’t have to be either — then we can win a lost and dying world. But to win the world, they’re going to have to see that we were just like them. Regular royals — regular people who have been saved by the blood of Jesus…the same blood that’s available to them if they’ll submit to His terms.

For the entire show, please go to The Royal Family Podcast’s page on The Light Network website.