You once said that when the Lord Jesus comes back for us, he will take his people who are ‘walking with him’. You did not say, ‘his people who are saved’. Why did you say that?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘What it Means to be a Believer’ (1989).

That's a very important question. Please understand what I did not mean. I did not mean that when the Lord comes there will be two groups of believers. Some believers that are walking with the Lord Jesus who he'll take them to heaven, and some believers that are not walking with the Lord Jesus and who he'll leave behind. When the Lord comes, he will take every believer that there is. Let's hear what Scripture says will happen when the Lord comes. First Thessalonians 4, is a key passage. It says that when the Lord Jesus comes, 'the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first' (2 Thessalonians 4:16).

Let's think about that for a moment. Not all will be dead. Did you notice that? In that sense, the Bible does not teach a general resurrection on the last day. When the Lord Jesus comes back, he's going to first raise the dead who are in Christ Jesus. The important issue there is, if you want to be among the dead who are in Christ Jesus, you'll have to be in Christ Jesus while you're still alive. What does it mean 'the dead in Christ'? It means people who, when they were alive here on earth, personally received the Saviour. They heard him say, so to speak, 'I am the door, if any man enter in by me, he shall be saved' (John 10:9). They took him at his word; they entered in and they were saved. Forever after, they could be described as those 'in Christ.' They were in Christ from the moment they trusted the Saviour right through life. When they departed this life their bodies lay in the grave, but they themselves had gone to be with the Lord. Like the thief on the cross, you remember him, the penitent thief, the one who repented and said, 'Jesus, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom,' and the Lord said to him, 'Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise' (Luke 23:42–43). I love those words—today, no delay, no long interval for purgation or anything like that whatsoever. 'Today,' immediately 'with me,' says Christ. Not only in paradise, which would be lovely in itself, but 'with me.' When believers in the Lord Jesus die physically, their bodies go into the grave or are cremated or something, but the persons themselves go to be with the Lord Jesus. 'Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise,' said the Lord. When the Lord Jesus comes again, their bodies will be raised. Once you are in Christ, you are in him forever.

We see in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–17 that when the Lord comes there will be two groups. The first is 'the dead in Christ.' The other group is those who are described as, 'We that are alive and remain.' Paul doesn't mean every man, woman, boy and girl who happen to be alive on the earth at the time. He says, 'we,' and to be fair to his letter, you must read it all and see who the people are that are included in the term 'we.' He's writing to the Thessalonians who had been converted. They had 'turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivereth us from the wrath to come' (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10). In other words, they were people who had been saved. They had personally trusted the Saviour and had been born again. They belonged to the Lord Jesus.

When he comes, the dead in Christ will be raised first, and then all believers who are alive on the earth at that time will be gathered them with the risen dead, and together they shall be forever with the Lord. So let me make that verse clear; every believer will go when the Lord comes. None shall be left behind. How can you tell if a person was saved or not? It is the mark of a true believer that they walk with the Lord. Listen to the Lord Jesus: in John 8:31–44 it is recorded that there were some people who came to the Lord Jesus and said they believed in him.

So our Lord said to them, 'If you continue in my word, you truly shall be my disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. If you're really a disciple of the Lord Jesus, you will continue in my word and, knowing the truth, you will progressively be made free.'

They said, 'Free from what?'

'Well,' he said, 'I was talking about sin.' He explained that everyone who continues in sin, who constantly sins and doesn't intend to do anything else, is the slave of sin. 'And I was pointing out,' said the Saviour, 'that if now you really are my disciple, you will continue in my word and progressively I shall set you free from sin.'

The Jews got furiously angry. 'Who do you think you are?' they said. 'And who do you imagine you're talking to, coming here and telling us we're slaves of sin and we need to be set free from sin? You go and sing in the next street. We didn't ask you to come here.'

It wasn't long after that that our Lord had to tell them straight, even though they professed to be believers in the Lord Jesus and said that God was their father: 'Sorry, God isn't your father. You are of your father, the devil.' You see, it isn't enough to come to Christ, is it? Thousands of people come to Christ. The condition is, 'If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin' (1 John 1:7).

Do you say, 'Does that mean I've got to be perfect as a Christian?' No, you'll not be perfect this side of glory, but the mark of a Christian is that they walk with the Lord, and when they stumble in sin—and all of us sin, every day—they don't run away from the Lord. We keep with the Lord, and we confess our sin and seek his grace to deliver us from sinning. That's the mark of a true believer.

It is always possible for true believers to wander off; and get a long way off. When true believers wander away, that raises a big question. God knows their hearts, of course he does, but it raises a question whether they are people like Peter, who are true believers at heart but have now fallen and are living inconsistently; or were they never true believers to start with? The mark of a true believer is that he or she walks in the light, walks with the Lord. I don't wish to unsettle anybody, but if you say to me, 'But, oh dear, am I hopeless then, because I thought I was a believer, but I've been living a long way away from the Lord?' Well, my dear friend, my dear brother, my dear sister, the Lord waits to welcome you back again. There is forgiveness if we confess our sin. He's faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The thing you can't do is to say, 'I'm a Christian, but I've no intention of walking with the Lord.' 'I'm a Christian, but I don't want the Lord to save me from sinning. I want to enjoy myself. I'm going on my own way; I want to keep on sinning.' 'I don't intend to walk with the Lord, but I hope to be taken to heaven when he comes.' True believers don't talk like that.