It's not my place to make a judgment as to the salvation of my brother or sister, Christ alone will separate the goats from the sheep and the tares from the wheat.
If I see someone who, having been baptized, and who confesses the same Christian faith, then I welcome them as a brother or sister. Who am I to know the contents of my brother's heart and conscience? God alone is fit to judge, and we confess Christ's return in judgment, and then and only then will all be said and done.
If I see my brother or sister in serious error, I will encourage them to speak to their pastor. If I can, I will offer what I believe is a more biblically sound exegesis and doctrinal position; I'll address the commandments of Christ and how we are to conduct ourselves. I'll speak of repentance of sin, and the hope of the Gospel for sinners.
So as it concerns the Christian who may be in error, or who may be wayward, the correct response is course correction--and ideally from their own pastor, as this is an integral part of the pastoral office and vocation: shepherding. But it would be deeply erroneous if I were to presume that my baptized brother or sister isn't "really saved" on account of this or that sin, or this or that doctrinal error, etc. I'm not the Judge of the quick and the dead, Jesus is. I'm just an ordinary sinful wretch like everyone else.
By turning the locus and activity of our salvation away from the objective, clear, explicit, and external word of God--God's saving grace in action in visible and verbal means--toward our selves, and our own moral abilities, or by whatever metric of fruit inspection, we make ourselves the agents of our own salvation.
In so doing we cease to preach the Gospel as Gospel and the Law as Law, confusing the two. We turn to ourselves, rather than to Christ and His Gospel, for the assurance and hope of our salvation.
When salvation becomes a question of, "What have we done?" it ceases to be about God's free and unconditional grace in the Crucified and Risen Lord Jesus, and instead it becomes all about how well we can measure up. Measure up to what? To God's Law? Sometimes, but frequently it is no longer about the commandment of God, but rather about whatever particular moralistic and legalistic rules and codes to make us feel better about ourselves.
Failing to live up to the high calling of God in the Law, we find other routes by which to puff ourselves up in our sinful flesh. When the Law is no longer preached as the Law, and when the Gospel is no longer preached as the Gospel, it becomes a bunch of us running around like chickens with our heads cut off either screaming about our own good works or weeping in despair over our total and abysmal failure.
This is the way to shipwreck a person's faith, make them them captain of their own salvation.
The Law remains, to condemn our sin and instruct us in the way we should live as the people of God. But to measure our salvation by the measure of the Law is to preach death to those in the grave. Since we are not the captains of our own salvation, we do not fasten ourselves to the ship of our own righteousness before God under the Law; but rather to the ship piloted by Christ, who drags us out of the deadly sea below and upon the security of His ship. He alone shall bring us to that distant shore, He alone will keep us, He alone will accomplish this.
That's why we put our faith in Him, not in the Law, not in ourselves, not in our works, but Him. Boasting only in Him.
-CryptoLutheran
Thank you for your excellent reply. I appreciate it greatly.
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