Is someone really a follower of Christ? How is someone to know? Well, the place I regularly go when I'm wrestling with this question and with this kind of discernment question is chapter 7 of Matthew. Specifically, it's the final three segments of The Sermon on the Mount. I think this is super interesting. The Sermon on the Mount has all these important ethical teachings of Jesus and then he finishes it all off with these three final points.
First, he tells us that we will know a tree by its fruit Matthew 7:15-20. A good tree bears good fruit, a bad tree Bears bad fruit. OK, simple enough. But wait, there’s more!?
Secondly, immediately after that in Matthew 7:21-23, he talks about the final judgment and how many will come to him on that day and say “Lord Lord did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons and do many mighty works” and he'll say back to them, “away from me I never knew you.” That kinda puts a grunge on the cool for anyone who places all their eggs in basket number 1 now doesn’t it?
And finally, right after that in Matthew 7:24-29, there is the story of the wise and foolish builders. The man who builds his house on the rock and the man who builds his house on the sand. So, it would appear that all three points/parables are connected and, I really hate to say this but, I think we always get these, particularly that last one, wrong.
The point of that final parable about the sand and the rock and the house is not simply that the Christian builds their house on the rock of Jesus and the non-Christian builds their house on the sand and how one stands and the other falls. It's here in verse 26, when he explains that the one who hears my words and obeys me is the man who's built his house on the rock! It’s not hearing to the point of believing that may or may not be evidenced by spectacular signs and wonders or an outpouring of the Holy Spirit such as Speaking in Tongues like many believe. It’s believing unto the point of obedience, even when obeying is evidenced by the simple, the mundane and/or what goes unseen and unrewarded or when obeying is the hard thing to do.
So the whole point of these final three little segments of the sermon is for Jesus to basically say, “I'm serious! Do what I have told you to do in this sermon and you'll know who my true disciples are. That’s because the fruit of their lives will be the fruit that I've been talking about throughout this whole sermon!”
Unfortunately, because we are carnal creatures, we always look at the wrong fruit. That judgement passage points this out. These people come to Jesus and they say “Lord Lord” which is a declaration of his divinity. This is a Jewish audience he’s speaking to and so they would know that on the day of judgment that only “Yahweh/Yehovah” a.k.a. “God” can rightly judge. And here they are calling Jesus “Lord Lord,” the rightful judge! They are declaring his divinity. They have good Doctrine and then they claim that they even cast out demons in his name. You can take that literally or figuratively here and it doesn’t change the crux of the message one bit. These are people who were, or were seen to be, activists against evil in the world and they did, or they appear to have also done “Mighty Works.” That means they may have actually performed Miracles. That would mean that these are spectacular signs and wonders.
Sadly, for the majority of us, those are the three things we usually look to, to determine if someone is a Believer or not. Is their Doctrine right? Are they speaking up against the evil in the world? Do they do spectacular signs and wonders? And yet what Jesus says here is that none of those things are a clear indicator of whether or not you actually belong to Him. What really matters is your fruit. Did you actually obey His words and does your life reveal that? Did you both talk the talk and walk the walk?
Obviously, they didn’t! They may have talked the talk and arguably, some of them may have even tried to walk the walk. Arguably, some of them were faking it from the get-go and shameless enough to think that on the day of judgement, they could fool the one and only true and righteous judge into believing they were something they weren’t. So that's why he calls them workers of lawlessness! You never obeyed. You didn't actually do what I asked you to do.
And so, it doesn’t matter whether it's John MacArthur, or Benny Hinn, or whoever; we always get caught up in how spectacular were their works, how effective their ministry is or was, how big their sanctuary is, how many people they have/had on staff, how good is their doctrine and at the end of the day, it's simply the fruit of their character that reveals whether they really belong to Jesus/Yeshua or not.