Counterfeit Bills and Counterfeit Christians
Wednesday, July 8, 2026
“Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” – C.H. Spurgeon
I stopped into a Dollar Tree the other day to pick up some prizes for our grandkids. You see, we had invited our kids and their kids over for a 4th of July get-together but the weather report was calling for thunderstorms and so, Deanna said, “You’d better put on your Recreation Director hat”… alluding to my college degree in Community Recreation and the 11 years I served as the Recreation Director at a Continuing Care Retirement Community from 1983 to 1993.
Back to the Dollar Tree…
I picked out a bunch of prizes to go with the indoor games I was already planning in my mind and when I got to the checkout counter, I handed the cashier a $50 bill. She called over her manager who shined a blue light on the bill to make sure it wasn’t counterfeit.
“You’d be surprised what people are trying to pass off these days,” she said. “Some of the fake bills are made out of paper mache.”
Her comment – and Charles Spurgeon’s quote – got me thinking about the body of Christ and how many “counterfeit Christians” are actually out there, pretending to be true followers of Jesus. They may look, talk, and act like Christians, but are they the “real deal”?
One of the best – and easiest – ways to determine whether someone’s faith is genuine is to examine their spiritual fruit (see Galatians 5:22-23). If they are producing love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in increasing measure, there is a pretty good chance that they are a born-again believer. If not, the likelihood is that they are “all hat and no cattle”, as they say in Texas.
By the same token, a true Christian can’t help but share his or her faith with others. Jesus has miraculously saved their soul, and they feel compelled to point others to Him so they can have their sins forgiven and go to heaven too. As Rev. D.T. Niles famously said, “I’m just a poor beggar telling other poor beggars where to find food.”
“One of the two who heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.” John 1:40-42a (NKJV)
- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President
