Why Can’t They See It?
There is a famous psychology experiment that many undergraduate psychology students undergo. You should go to theinvisibilegorilla.com and focus on the students in the white t-shirts and count the number of times that they pass the basketball. Do that before you read any further.
How many of you originally noticed the gorilla in the room??
Psychologists call this “inattentional blindness.” Inattentional blindness is the inability to see even important and startling things when we are too focused on something else. This psychological effect is very powerful.
We see this inattentional blindness illustrated from Scripture. In John 20, Jesus has arisen from the dead. Mary is standing at the tomb, weeping. In verse 14, Mary turns around and sees Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus! How could she not have known? She had walked with him, served him, listened to him – how many minutes, even hours, had she spent looking into the face of her Savior and Lord? But she did not recognize Him! Why? Inattentional blindness.
When Jesus asked her why she was weeping, we see what she was focused on – “Did you take him away, sir? Tell me where you put him. I will go and get him” (20:16). Mary was so focused on her sorrow that she could not see the source of her joy standing inches away from her. It was only when Jesus called out her name that she came back to reality and could see how she had deceived herself. Inattentional blindness.
That explains why many people can’t come to grips with the fact that the Bible, the New Testament, teaches that we are saved by faith, but not by faith only.
A LESSON FROM ISRAEL:
God has always wanted man to trust him. The only way we can please God and make it to heaven is to trust him. In essence, God was telling Adam and Eve, “Trust me. You do not want to eat of that fruit.” Of course, they did not trust God and because they did not trust God, they did not obey him and they decided they would follow their own path to wisdom. The results are always disastrous.
Throughout the Old Testament, God had wanted Israel to trust him. The word “trust” is found in the Old Testament 130 times! Israel, by and large, did not trust God. They turned to alliances with foreign nations to save them. They turned to idols. When you stop trusting God, you stop obeying God. Israel sank so low that she started calling evil good and good evil.
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WE ARE SAVED BY FAITH:
There is no doubt that we must trust God and we must trust Jesus Christ. Our souls are on the line, the destiny of our souls hangs in the balance. That’s why we have so much material in the New Testament about Who Jesus is (see, for a small sample: Romans 3:28, 2 Corinthians 5:7, Galatians 3:7, Ephesians 2:8, Hebrews 11:6).
So, it is without doubt that we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ. We must trust Him. But, it is equally certain that we are not saved by faith only. Now, no one believes, in reality, that we are saved by faith only. Even those who teach that we are saved by faith only admit that we must repent of our sins. Nobody believes that we can be saved in our sins. So, the “faith only” crowd contradict themselves when they say that we are saved by “faith only” but also repentance.
Yet, they refuse to see that baptism plays a key role in the process of conversion as well.
WE ARE SAVED BY BAPTISM:
People who refuse to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins do not trust Jesus. They are not humbling their hearts to His word. It is inattentional blindness. If you read Matthew 13:14-15, you see that the Jews still suffered from inattentional blindness and people have the same disease today.
The Bible clearly teaches irrefutably that baptism is an integral part of the salvation process: Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38; Romans 6:3-4; Galatians 3:26-27; Ephesians 5:26. If all that is not clear enough, Peter says plain and simply, “And that water is like baptism, which now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21).
Why can’t people see that? Well, it is, at least partly, inattentional blindness. They are so focused on salvation by faith and that we are not saved by works, that they can’t see the plain and obvious Scripture as they are presented.
Let us take all that the Bible teaches on a topic and humbly submit our hearts in full obedience to Christ’s commands.
–Paul Holland
