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The amount of fruit Christians produce varies. Jesus says the good seed may yield “in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty” (13:23b). Some true Christians are not as fruitful as other Christians, but every true believer bears some fruit. If he does not, he’s not a believer. That’s why Jesus says, “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:16a)—not by their professions.
This is because it is not a decision that converts a person; it is the power of the Holy Spirit that does so. We get into the kingdom not because we make a decision, walk down an aisle, raise a hand, or sign a card. We get into the kingdom because there is true faith in our hearts.
“I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day” (2 Tim. 1:12, NKJV).
“The wicked flee when no one pursues” (Prov. 28:1),
those who are unsaved but “know” they are saved. This category consists of people who are not in a state of grace but think they are. In short, they have false assurance.
“Have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you know for sure that if you were to die tonight you would go to heaven?” The second diagnostic question is this: “If you were to die tonight and stand before God, and God were to say to you, ‘Why should I let you into My heaven?’ what would you say?”
Jesus talked more about hell than He did about heaven, and He warned His hearers that on that last day, every idle word would come into judgment.
Evangelism Explosion,
a person’s works are a counterfeit basis for assurance.
no one is justified by the works of the law (Rom. 3:20; Gal. 3:11).
“Why do you call Me good? Haven’t you read Psalm 14:3: ‘They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one’? No one is good except God Himself.”
I see people all around me who aren’t believers but who practice what John Calvin called “civic virtue”; that is, they do good things in society. They donate their money for good causes, they help the poor, and they sometimes even sacrifice themselves for others. They do all kinds of wonderful things on the horizontal level (i.e., toward other people), but they do none of it because their hearts have a pure and full love for God. There may be what Jonathan Edwards called an “enlightened self-interest” involved, but it is still self-interest.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).
Augustine said even our best virtues are but splendid vices. As long as we’re in this body of flesh, sin will taint everything we do. That is what the rich young ruler did not understand. He thought he had achieved the standard.
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (v. 28).
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.”
“And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
But how do we know whether we are called?
Paul provides the answer in Ephesians 2:
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
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The Greek word for “seal” is sphragis.
