The Measure of Saving Faith
Is Not Your Spiritual Efforts
What people claim to be salvation that is anything other than total reliance on Christ as Savior does not save and is not salvation. You can struggle with sins while declaring Christ as Savior and be a recipient of salvation, and you can turn from sins while relying on self-justification and be a recipient of damnation. This is the danger of the false gospel of your works determining your salvation.
Turning from sin does not save you. Turning to Christ does save you. Turning from sin is not salvation. Turning to Christ is salvation. Who Christ saves is saved because Christ is the Savior and the author of salvation. It is the Savior alone who saves and determines a believer’s salvation. Anyone who relies on themselves for salvation does not truly understand salvation, and may very well not be saved.
The lie of religion and its practices in this regard is that if you say enough prayers, cry enough tears, preach enough messages, attend enough services, sing enough songs, right enough wrongs, pay enough tithes, or bless enough lives that these ensure that you will be saved and justified before God. This is a complete lie and a gross misrepresentation of what it means to be saved and justified by God. It isn’t even close to evidencing what the actual fruit of salvation looks like in the life of a believer in Christ and what true justification from God accomplishes above and beyond oneself.
Good Works Are Not a Salvation Metric
From the misconstrued point of view that our works determine our salvation, many people judge themselves worthy of salvation and other people unworthy based on external observance and outward performance. There are those who even resort to scriptural references such as “you shall know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:16) or “examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith” (2 Cor. 13:5) to validate this presumptuous and self-righteous position—asserting salvation as a conditional measure dependent on personal efforts.
When Christ said, “you shall know them by their fruits”, who was “them” that He was referring to? The group that He very specifically mentioned in that portion of Scripture was false prophets. Furthemore, who was the audience that He was addressing there in His admonition? It was the Jews under the covenant of Israel with whom the ordinance of prophecy was established and among whom false prophets arose against the authority of His Messiahship.
Referring to individuals today as false prophets isn’t even a legitimate designation in the context of Christ’s message and in contradistinction from those who were actually regarded as true prophets. These both concerned past times as they applied to former operations—one being of the divine inspiration of God’s Spirit and the other the deceptive influence of another spirit. The only relevance that the concept of false prophets has today is in the nature of individuals who falsely think themselves to have some special call, rank or position in Christ’s church. Their false elevation leads them to assert self-posited judgment against God’s own people on the basis of supposed inspiration from Him. They criticize and condemn the outward and even inward dispositions of people while themselves being blind to their own physical and spiritual corruption. Their conceitedness is the most evident sign of their own compromised, spiritual condition that contradicts true righteousness. These people are not even prophets. They’re just false.
Examining ourselves to see whether we’re in the faith has nothing to do with proving whether or not we’re saved. It has everything to do with understanding whether or not we have fallen away from what is truly the way of the faith. This does not result in the damnation of hell for a believer in Christ, but the correction of Christ who judges believers in heaven. Those who refuse to correct their way of thinking on earth as it pertains to faith are reprobate, which is a disposition that guarantees the judgment of disapproval by Christ and results in the loss of a heavenly reward from Him, not the forfeiting of their salvation from Him. These are matters frequently misappropriated by those who wrongly divide the scripture and mismanage doctrinal truth.
The inner condition of a person spiritually is not measured by outward appearance or external performance physically. It is also not meant to be an opportunity for the psychobabble that many regard today as prophecy, whereby so-called prophets peer into the lives of people to assert things by their own measure of judgment. This is a fabrication of the ministry of Christ and a disgrace to the biblical gift of prophecy. It more accurately depicts the ways of the flesh that endeavor to control what it cannot, which in this case is people’s actions. To rely on anything outwardly and sensually to accomplish what can only be produced inwardly and spiritually is itself sin and deception, because it is not borne of faith. Anything that is not of faith is indeed sin (Rom. 14:22-23) being a work of the flesh.
Faith Is Not Outward Observation
Form of godliness has become a mainstream practice in Christianity today where many sold on their own efforts in the flesh—repackaged as works for God—drive themselves and others into a pit of corruption. The countless ministers who spearhead these efforts conjure up their own sensual practices that they regard as spiritual inspiration, elevation, revelation, manifestation, consecration, activation, and reformation, which are all one grandiose work of deception. They are deceived by their own vainglory, carnal traditions, religious practices, man-made conventions, doctrinal deviations, and self-righteous intentions.
Faith in Christ requires no form of practice or manner of appearance to prove or authenticate it. It is genuinely faith—the evidence of things not seen—that gives meaning and substance to what is seen. It springs up from the inside of a believer’s heart who is made to bear witness to it on the outside by a confession with their mouth; and it is not our place to judge from without what we do not have the ability to see from within, unless we foolishly think ourselves to be in some form of equality with God, which is a tell-tale sign of a false messenger.
A believer in Christ, when looking for faith in other believers, should not look at their show of religion by mere church involvement, ministry performance, or Christian sentiment. They should look for the evidence of a spirit that is subject to the Spirit of Christ, which is the marker of an expression of faith that actually abides in Him. Those who declare faith in Christ apart from this subjection to Him are of another spirit, which does not automatically mean that they don’t believe in Christ and are not saved, but that they are deceived and have gone astray from what God’s will is for them in obedience to Christ.
There are very many believers who, starting out with an elementary understanding but zealous passion towards faith, begin to take themselves through religious and pseudo-spiritual motions to come about a means of proving that they have a special relationship or connection with God. They often erroneously and mistakenly use the Scripture “faith without works is dead” to qualify their reasoning—a portion of text tirelessly taken out of its context and wrongfully applied to things for which it has no doctrinal relevance. Ultimately, those who follow this line of divergent thinking fall prey to the insidiousness of spiritual pride, endeavoring to prove themselves in works of faith rather than simply trusting in the work of Christ. They go from expressing faith in Christ—in whatever manner they have been taught it—to expressing faith in themselves, faith in their church, faith in their pastor, faith in their service and every other form of personal indulgence apart from total reliance on Christ alone, which is the essence of true faith. Christ leads, guides, directs, inspires, and connects believers as He wills, when He wills, and with whom He wills as faith in Him inspires in us. As long as our focus and attention remains on Christ, our paths are effectively guided by Him. This is the true walk of faith and evidence of the fruit of saving faith, which encourages more and more focus on Christ and less and less focus on ourselves, everyone else and everything else.
As believers, we must allow ourselves to come to the place in our hearts and minds where the Spirit of Christ is the driver of our lives and we are just the vehicle. It is from this vantage point that we understand the reality of us being Christ’s body and He being our head—such that we do not go about our lives in whatever manner we will presumptuously. Instead, we rely totally on Him to lead us where He intends purposefully. This is a true spiritual learning that is essential to this day and age, and is not captured in mere associative religious practice, but the inspiration of faith in Christ. Faith produces trust, which inspires confidence, which accomplishes assurance, which effectuates establishment in God by the direction and intention of the Holy Spirit. This is what God’s gift given to those who believe in Him fulfills, which need not be altered by the mustering up of self-will to fulfill what we cannot within ourselves. There is indeed nothing for us to boast about on this account. What God inspires is His to fulfill and perfect.
True spiritual maturity in the understanding of faith in Christ for salvation involves total reliance on the perfecting work of God’s Spirit in us. It does not abide in outward indulgence in works of our own flesh, nor the exhibition of such works promoted by those around us. When we endeavor to take God’s work into our own hands as our own accomplishment, we defeat the purpose of His work accomplished in Christ. It is in acknowledgment of Christ’s complete and undivided work that we are made ready to stand before Christ in heaven with confidence of His acceptance of our works in service to Him. All other works voiding this understanding—whether they are Christian-affiliated or not—are not accepted by God. They are not built on the sure foundation of Christ, will not stand the test of His judgment, and will not be rewarded by Him. For this reason, pleasing God must be understood as that which glorifies Christ on the basis of Christ, not what flatters us on the basis of ourselves. Christ is only glorified in those who exalt God’s work in Him, not those who promote their own works apart from Him.