The question of salvation and evidence of faith is a contentious one, and in this episode of Grace in Focus, Katherine Wright and Ken Yates seek to clarify their society’s position on false converts. Through thought-provoking discussions, they tackle the common misconception that physical acts or outward righteousness are guaranteed markers of a person’s salvation. Drawing from biblical examples and personal anecdotes, they address the extremes often presented in theological debates and provide listeners with a deeper understanding of grace as the cornerstone of eternal life.
00:00:00 Introduction and Listener Supported Message
The following is a listener supported ministry from the Grace Evangelical Society. If a person says they’re saved, but with no apparent life change or fruit, is there the possibility of a false profession of faith? What is it that actually saves a person? Thank you for joining us today. This is Grace in Focus, and we will center our discussion today on these questions as we come to you from the Grace Evangelical Society. We are located in North Texas. Our website is faithalone.org. Our national annual convention is next week. It is in Denton, Texas, and if you are local with us, we’d love to invite you to get registered and come spend some time with us next week at Camp Copas. Registration details at faithalone.org. And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here are Katherine Wright and Ken Yates.
SPEAKER 03 :
Katherine, we have a question from one of our listeners that’s also a pretty common question, but we thought we would deal with it once again. Maybe it’ll be addressed from a different angle here. So who asked the question and what is it?
SPEAKER 02 :
So this comes from Donald. He says that he wanted to ask us a question about salvation in false converts.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, when he’s talking about salvation, he’s talking about eternal salvation.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. I see y’all believe that there is no obedience required before or after the moment of faith. If someone lived a life of sin and never had a changed life by the power of the Holy Spirit, wouldn’t that mean they are a false convert? Yes. Wouldn’t Jesus say, depart from me, I never knew you, I think based off of Matthew 7?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, Matthew 7, verse 23. We think that’s probably where Donald is quoting from, where Jesus says, and then I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. Okay, well, there’s a number of issues in this question. First of all, let’s address something that sometimes, well, probably fairly often, GES is accused of. Sometimes you hear people say, man, GES thinks everybody who claims to be a believer is a believer. Or a Christian. Everybody who claims to be a Christian is a Christian. And what you’ll often hear is, and it’s a straw man argument, they go, oh, GES says anybody who raises their hand or says a sinner’s prayer or walks down the aisle is a believer and is going to be in the kingdom. And we do not believe that. There’s been many people who’ve walked down the aisle. There’s been many people who, quote unquote, have said a sinner’s prayer or raised their hand at an evangelistic meeting. who are not believers. None of those things save you from the lake of fire. We believe in false professors. We believe that there are people in our churches who claim to be believers, but they’re not.
SPEAKER 02 :
More nuanced than that, I think that there are many people in our churches who think that they’re believers, who think that they’re saved and aren’t.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. And the reason we say that is because they’ve never believed in Jesus alone for eternal life, and they know they have it. And so, yeah, there’s plenty of people in our churches who are like that. And that needs to be said. It’s just a false accusation towards GES on that. But his point is, we say a person is not a believer, even if they claim to be, if they’ve never believed in Jesus for eternal life. I would add to that, based upon his question, even if they’re living righteously.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, you know, we could look at some pretty famous people from the outside and looking in, we would say, oh, they’re living righteously. But based off of the gospel that they preach, we know that they are not believers. Oh.
SPEAKER 03 :
Or at least the gospel. We don’t know what they believed when they were young.
SPEAKER 02 :
But based off of what they’re teaching. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
And there’s plenty of people like that. There’s plenty of people who, quote unquote, to use the question, have a changed life.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
Let’s say I buy into the teachings of the Catholic Church.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m not a believer, but I listen to the teachings of the Catholic Church and, you know, anti-abortion. I need to be good to my neighbor. I need to do works of charity. And so I go in and go, well, I want to go to heaven. I want to be in the kingdom. So I’m going to go to mass. I’m going to give money to the poor. I’m going to go on mission trips. I’m going to pray. I’m going to do all these things. in order to make it into heaven. And there’s a changed life, you know, and let’s just really expand on it. Let’s say I’m a drug addict or an adulterer, whatever sin. And I look and I go, man, I got to clean up my life. And so I clean up my life and I do this and someone looks at me and they go, wow, he’s a changed man. Look what Christianity has done to him. Well, if that’s the gospel he believed, then he’s not saved. If that’s the only gospel he’s ever believed, he’s never believed in Jesus alone for eternal life. He’s never believed that he was saved by grace. He believed that he was saved because of his good works and there’s this big change in his life. Well, then no, that’s a false professor. So that’s taking, what would we say, the inverse.
SPEAKER 02 :
External proof is always fickle in a lot of ways, very subjective. Donald’s correct in saying that we teach that obedience is not required before or after faith. That’s fundamentally a workspace salvation, and we reject that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and obviously the two clearest books on this would be Romans and Galatians. Just look at Romans. We are declared righteous by faith alone, apart from any works of the law. But let’s now look at his particular example. I gave the example, what if somebody has a changed life? And we look at it and say, well, they’re not a believer. But let’s look at his. What about somebody who says, okay, I have believed the message of grace, but we see no change? Or what does he say? There is no change. First of all, I would say, we don’t see, we don’t know. How do we measure there’s been a change?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, and also you don’t know their whole life.
SPEAKER 03 :
Exactly.
SPEAKER 02 :
You know, you’re looking at this and you’re seeing a person in maybe this specific season in their life. You don’t know.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
Just me thinking through this because this is a question we get asked a lot. The thing about these questions that I find problematic, I guess, is that it seems it’s such an extreme. It’s always the extreme. What if you take somebody and they said that they believed, but then they became a Satanist? The worst possible case scenario. And I just wanted to say, first and foremost, I just think that that is a red herring. I don’t think that that’s such a minor – the percentage of that is so, so small that – But could a believer do that? Absolutely. We’ll talk about that, but I guess my point is that people want to ask this question, and they’re using the extremist example. But in the day-to-day world – Okay. Let’s say, you know, the, the average Christian just misses church for a couple of weeks. Like they want to, and I’m not saying this is Donald, but what my point is, is that, okay, you take this extreme example and you’re trying to then take that extreme and apply it to everyone. Well, then how much obedience is required? Okay. You’re giving this extreme example, but what about just like, what if I got 30, 70? Like, and what, you know what I mean? Like, what if I, if I’m living, I have this changed life, but you, and you see it. So, okay. It’s such a subjective thing, but yeah, I just, I just, as a general statement, that’s my, one of my biggest frustrations with these, this question is that, well, you’re taking an extreme and then where’s the app? How do we apply that to just the average person? And I just think that’s a red herring.
SPEAKER 03 :
And obviously, if we take this view and we’re examining ourselves and we’re examining others, what’s always going to happen is people are going to doubt their salvation.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s always going to happen.
SPEAKER 02 :
We take the extreme, but the reality is it’s going to be applied in the average parishioner, the average Christian. And when you do that, it is inevitably going to cause people to first become very judgmental because we’re all judging each other by these subjective external things. Right. And on an individual level, it’s also going to cause, like you said, people to doubt.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I remember one time I did a funeral for a retiree who died. I was a chaplain and I was assigned to do this. The army assigned me and I was preaching. There was where the church was. I was joining the pastor of that church to do this funeral.
SPEAKER 02 :
Mm hmm.
SPEAKER 03 :
And so the pastor knew the guy who died. I never met him. So I was basically just there to say, hey, he served his country. We’re a grateful nation. And then I was just going to give the gospel. I didn’t know whether the guy was a believer or wasn’t a believer or anything like that. I didn’t know the guy, you know. But the pastor of this church, when he took me into his office, I said, you know, hey, can you tell me something to say about this guy? You know, just so I have something to say other than, okay, we’re grateful that he’s a soldier and all that. And the pastor said, yeah, I’ll tell you something about this guy. He’s going to burn in hell forever. And the way he said it was, he said, he’s going to bust the gates of hell wide open. Wow. And I said, well, no, why do you say that? He goes, well, he used to go to church, but then he quit going to church. And so he was never a believer. If he was a believer. And so that’s the way he measured that. Mm-hmm. And that seems very strange. It’s like, well, okay, well, if you measure his salvation based upon his good works, why don’t you measure it on the first part of his life when he went to church? Right. You know, he went to church all the time. Okay. But then he didn’t. So how are we going to measure it? And each person, as you mentioned, we’re going to judge them.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
And we’re going to think I’m better than them. And then there’s other days where I’m going to say, well, maybe I don’t measure. Right. You know, maybe there hasn’t been a sufficient change in my life. And I would go so far as to say we also can’t do this because I don’t care. Pretty much whoever you are, you can look at your life and go. I’m doing pretty good there. I mean, even a terrible person, you know, even like, you know, like I’m a believer and I, you know, commit adultery. I can look at my life and go, yeah, but I’m good to my kids. Is that a change?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, and also on the opposite of that, that anybody on their worst day, I mean, you think about if you probably wanted a good example would be Lot, right? If you didn’t have Peter’s words about Lot being a righteous man, I guarantee you everybody would say that guy’s going to burn in hell.
SPEAKER 03 :
Sure. He loved living in Sodom. He got drunk. He impregnated his daughters.
SPEAKER 02 :
I mean, the guy, right.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, but Peter says his righteous soul was tormented in that city.
SPEAKER 02 :
So you look at his, what we know of his life. You know, to Donald’s question, we would look at that and be like, well, that guy is obviously not saved. That’s a false convert.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, there ain’t no change in that guy’s life.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right, exactly. And that was my point at the beginning of this is that we only have our very limited perspective of anybody’s life. How can you say there was never a change to begin with? That’s such a bold statement to say about anyone.
SPEAKER 03 :
We should all quit judging people. Remember, Jesus said… He who believes in me has eternal life, will not come into judgment, but has already passed from death into life. Obedience plays no part in that whatsoever, receiving the gift of eternal life. Well, thank you, Donald, for the question. We hope this helps. And remember, everybody, keep grace in focus.
SPEAKER 01 :
Be our guest and subscribe to our 48-page magazine, six issues per year, also called Grace in Focus. It’s free by emailing your name and snail mail address to gesatfaithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org. Maybe you’ve got a question or comment or feedback. If so, please send us a message. Here’s our email address. It’s radio at faithalone.org. That’s radio at faithalone.org. And when you do, please make sure your question is as succinct and clear as possible. That would be a great big help. And on our next episode, what is Jesus’ message to the rich young ruler? Please join us, and until then, let’s keep grace in focus. The preceding has been a listener-supported ministry from the Grace Evangelical Society.
