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No, although fruit is very important, it can be faked. What is really important is love. Does a Christian love God? That's the really important question. There's a story Jesus told of people who meet him face-to-face at the Final Judgment to whom he says, "Depart from me, I never knew you." These same people had exorcised demons in his name, performed miracles in his name, and even prophesied in his name. But Jesus tells them he never knew them! How is this possible? Isn't casting demons out of people a good thing? Yes, it is. Isn't performing miracles in Christ's name something that is right and good? Yes, it is. Isn't prophesying in Jesus' name a good thing, too? Well, yes, it is. So, why, then, does Jesus tell them to depart from him? They were doing good. And they were doing it in his name! The answer is in what they never claimed: To love him. Why is that important? Because loving God with everything you are is where doing good, where obedience to God, starts.
Matthew 22:36-38
36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"
37 Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
38 This is the first and great commandment.
Paul the apostle explained that anything we might do, however sacrificial, and praiseworthy, and good, apart from a motive of love, first for God, and then for others, is of no spiritual benefit. Read 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. But the majority of people claiming a faith in Christ, claiming to be Christian, have no love in their hearts for the Saviour. One day these same "Christians" who attended church for decades, and read their Bibles, and prayed, and gave money to the Church will stand before Christ and hear him say, "Depart from me, I never knew you." The thought of such a fate horrifies me!
How can such a fate be escaped? Well, the apostle John explained:
1 John 4:16
16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
When a person truly believes the love God has for them, it engenders in that person a love of God which, in turn, becomes a powerful motivation to forsake a Self-centered life for one centered upon God. Paul knew just how crucial love was to Christian living and so he prayed for the Christians at the church in Ephesus the following:
Ephesians 3:14-19
14 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
15 from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,
17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height--
19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
The Bible says that the "love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us." (Ro. 5:5) When a person believes the love God has for them and so trusts in Christ as their Saviour, the love of God is given to them in the Person of the Holy Spirit. He is Himself the love of God, who works to transform sinners into Christlike children of God, making them holy, faithful, loving vessels in and through whom He can accomplish His will. Love for God, then, is the key difference between a false convert and a real one and a vital component of genuine salvation.
False believeers aren't really doing good they are doing thing to promote themselves, not Jesus.
Being loving is the Fruit of a relationship with Jesus. It is not something we do, but Jesus does in us.
Love is the Fruit of our relationship with Jesus.
Well, be careful not to mistake motive for the moral quality of a particular action. If a person is dying of thirst and a self-centered egotist gives him water to drink and saves his life just to look good in the eyes of others, is the egotist's saving of the thirsty person's life an evil thing? Should the egotist not have given the thirsty person water to drink until he had the right motive for doing so? Of course not. Giving water to a person dying of thirst is a good and right thing to do - even if one's motives for doing so are selfish. You can criticize the egotist's motive, then, but you ought not to criticize his act of giving water to a person dying of thirst. The motive is wrong, but the act is not.
Well, yes...and no. Jesus doesn't make a puppet out of us. We must reflect in how we live his love in us. He won't, though, force us to do so. Love is not love if it is compelled.
It is the Fruit of the Spirit, yes. And that fruit is manifested in and through us as we maintain constant, moment-by-moment surrender to God.
When we turn to Jesus to overcome the devil's influence in our life, He frees us from sins power.
In Heaven we will be perfect because the devil will be cast out and we will only be influenced by God.
God could give us the Spirit without measure or limit and we would be sinless because we would be able to overcome the devil's influence. But God doesn't do that.
I prayed for that exact thing, for God to give me the Spirit without measure or limit, but He told me no.
How about turning to Jesus because you have known and believed the love he has for you?
But the devil is only one of the three great enemies of our soul that the Bible identifies. Scripture also tells us we are caused to sin by the influence of the world in which we live and by our own fleshly desires. See Ephesians 2:1-3, Galatians 1:4, James 1:13-16 and James 4:4.
I agree with you: We will be free of the presence of sin when we are with the Lord in eternity. Won't that be wonderful?!
Oh? God's answer to our sin problem wasn't to give us more power but to put us to death. You see, our "old man," that selfish, self-centered, flesh-focused, temporally-preoccupied person we were before we were saved is beyond improvement. It is just too rebellious, too selfish, too drawn to sin to be reformed. Paul explains:
Romans 7:18
18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.
Romans 8:7-8
7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.
8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Knowing this, God did not act to make our "old man" our fleshly, carnal Self better, but put it out of the picture entirely. How? By crucifying our "old man" with Christ on his cross some 2000 years ago. And because this has happened, a Christian is not only free from the stain of sin but also from its power. Paul explains:
Galatians 2:20
20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Galatians 5:24
24 And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Galatians 6:14
14 But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
Romans 6:6-7
6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
7 For he who has died has been freed from sin.
Did you notice the ending of the last passage I included from Romans? "He (or she) who has died has been freed from sin." Every believer has, by placing their trust in Christ as their Saviour and Lord, been crucified with him spiritually and is thereby freed from the source of all their sin, the "old man." You see, the blood of Christ cleanses us from the stain of sin, but the Cross of Christ frees us from the power, the source, of sin.
So, what is a Christian supposed to do with this fact? Most Christians don't live free of sin. They sin every day. How, then, can the Bible be right? How can a person be both dead to sin and committing sin at the same time? Well, maybe an analogy will help: Imagine a homeless man who has inherited millions of dollars from a recently-deceased Uncle. The homeless man doesn't know, though, that he is the inheritor of his Uncle's riches. And so, until he knows he is rich, he will continue to live as pauper. Even though he now has millions of dollars in an account in his name, in his ignorance he remains cold, hungry and without a place to call home. Until he knows what he has inherited, and believes it, and then make withdrawals on his millions, his life won't benefit from his new wealth.
Christians live like spiritual homeless people. Many believers don't know what is theirs in Christ. They don't know they are spiritual "millionaires" in him. And so they go about spiritually weak, and morally compromised, and frustrated in their walk with God, thinking they will only be free of sin when they die. But as the verses above that I quoted to you show, this isn't what Scripture teaches! How does a Christian begin to live in the truth of their death to sin? Paul explains:
Romans 6:11
11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We are told in Scripture that as disciples of Christ we must "walk by faith, not by sight." What does this mean? Well, it means that when we come across a truth like our being dead to sin and alive unto God through Jesus Christ, we choose to believe it is so, we "reckon," or count on, it being so even when we don't see, or feel, or are living like it's true. And when a believer does this, when they begin to "walk by faith, not by sight," it is then - and only then - that they begin to see the truth of their death to sin in how they live.
So, the next time you are faced with temptation, reckon yourself "dead unto sin but alive unto God." Count on it being true. Remind yourself that no matter what you feel or think, no matter how strong the impulse to sin might be, the truth is that it has no more power over you than you choose to give it. You can always walk away from sin. Always. This is what being dead to sin means.
You were given all of the Holy Spirit you can ever, or will ever, have the moment you were saved. As you live in daily, moment-by-moment surrender to him, he works to transform your heart, bringing it more and more into conformity to the will and way of God. But the Holy Spirit is strong for you; he doesn't give you power. As you surrender to him, he makes it possible for you to walk rightly with God. He doesn't just give you his power to do with as you see fit.
A Christian can't do anything to be born again. If he's a Christian, he already is. The reason Jesus told Nicodemus this: Nicodemus was religious, but not trusting Christ. Before Christ, people were justified by faith, by believing in God's promise to send the messiah. If you believe in your heart that Christ is God and that he was raised from the dead and confess it with your mouth, you WILL be saved. That's what scripture says. You don't have to keep trying to get saved, as if it's something you can do. God does it, all you have to do is keep trusting him.I hear a lot about how there are genuine, born-again Christians, and then there are fake Christians who aren’t really saved, and that most Christians fall into the latter category. I hear that a person can think they believe and be absolutely convinced that they’re saved and that they have a real relationship with Jesus, and yet not really be saved. A person can try their hardest to do good works and show real external change and yet not really be saved. Sometimes I hear that the difference between a saved and unsaved Christian is fruit.
But what I don’t hear is what someone in this situation can actually do to become a real Christian. If a person can think they believe and act like they believe, and yet not have real saving faith, then how do they get from the counterfeit belief they have to real belief? How can they say “I’m going to believe now” if it didn’t work the first time? How can they say “I’m going to confess I’m a sinner and turn from my sins” if that wasn’t enough the first time?
I’d like to say this idea that there are unsaved Christians isn’t true, but the bible seems to support it. Nicodemus was one of the major religious leaders, and he prayed, fasted, and tithed regularly. This sounds like someone who believed, was seeking God, and tried his best to be obedient. Yet Jesus told him he needed to be born again.
What does it take to be born again? To have a real change of heart and saving faith? All I hear is that we’re supposed to confess our sins, turn from them, and ask Jesus to come into our lives and save us. But if a person is Christian, then they’ve already done that. So what’s missing in these Christians who aren’t really saved? What can a Christian do to be born again?
A Christian can't do anything to be born again. If he's a Christian, he already is. The reason Jesus told Nicodemus this: Nicodemus was religious, but not trusting Christ. Before Christ, people were justified by faith, by believing in God's promise to send the messiah. If you believe in your heart that Christ is God and that he was raised from the dead and confess it with your mouth, you WILL be saved. That's what scripture says. You don't have to keep trying to get saved, as if it's something you can do. God does it, all you have to do is keep trusting him.
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