Featured Unregenerate believers?

An excellent post, asking a very good question.

Let me start with they "claim to be believers." I think your idea is that if they really believed that Jesus is God, and they trusted in His sacrifice as their means of salvation, then they would be actually saved. But who decides if their "faith in Christ" is what is necessary to obtain salvation? God does. Romans 4:4-5, if God credits a person's faith in Christ as righteousness, no matter its actual merits, the person is transferred from the realm of darkness into the kingdom of His Son. We do not transfer ourselves.

All this to say just because someone prays a prayer, sheds a tear, or attends church day and night, that does not obtain salvation.

In Matthew 13:1-23 we read about four kinds of people. Some have so hardened their hearts, that they do not even understand the gospel. Others make a decision that they intellectually believe in God, Jesus, and the afterlife. With sincerity they "believe." But they make no full fledged commitment to Christ, not only to strive to follow Him, but to serve Him, even it is costs material wealth or relationships, i.e. the treasures of this world.

Now you are going to get differing views because some people believe that the lost are unable to trust fully in Christ, unless they were chosen individually before creation, and altered by "irresistible grace" such that they willingly commit to Christ.

Other believe the lost, at least those who are not in the soil #1 state of Matthew 13, can hear and respond effectively to the gospel.

But because there are so many "gospels" out there, i.e. easy believism, Calvinism, Arminianism, and many hybrids, as someone said, they have been inoculated (they think their view is all that is needed). Your efforts may come across as telling them they do not believe hard enough, or they need to engage in works to be saved. I am not a mind reader.