‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 7:21 NIVUK
I remember way back in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a crime that was commonly committed. People claiming from the local council or the police would turn up at the doors of naive, trusting elderly people, worm their way into their homes and steal from them.
It takes a particular kind of evil to harm old people in this way.
Now conmen and conwomen are trying a similar trick on the phone or on email or text messages. They claim to be something they are not so we give into them and give them money.
Others, even more deviously, are taking advantage of current modern sympathies for transgender people and using this, kind of like a malevolent Mrs Doubtfire, to gain access to single sex spaces and cause harm.
Any right thinking person will deplore such behaviour and condemn it outright.
But this leads us to a conclusion that must be believed, regardless of modern objections:
Someone cannot ever become something just by declaring themselves to be it.
That applies as much to sex as it does to sausage rolls; gender as it does jelly; identity as it does ice cream.
You cannot get to fly a plane by declaring yourself a pilot.
You cannot perform brain surgery by declaring yourself to be a neurologist.
You cannot lead a nation by declaring yourself its ruler.
You don’t get to swap gender on your own say-so.
Likewise, you don’t become a follower of Jesus Christ by simply telling yourself that you are one.
It isn’t wrong or intolerant to challenge people who say they are something but they clearly aren’t. Far from it – it protects us from them and them from themselves.
There has to be a means for us to tell if someone is genuinely a Christian or just someone who is pretending.
Jesus gives us three criteria.
The first is that they are on the right path.
My brother lives near to Dean Village in Edinburgh, and had wanted to visit it, but until we took him there, he had no idea how to get there. The reason was simple: the road his bus travelled on to the city centre passed down a road that was forked like a ‘Y’. His bus comes down the right fork; the narrow road to Dean Village is on the left fork. Since the road was hard to see, he often missed it.
And in doing so missed one of the most picturesque parts of his own home city.
The right path is like that. It is a narrow road. Few find it. And if few find it, that means few walk on it.
This is the what marks out a genuine follower of Jesus Christ: they are not afraid to walk the road alone. They do not give in to peer pressure. They do not seek consensus. They do not need validation or confirmation from anyone.
They simply follow Jesus.
Like the old chorus says:
'Though none go with me
Still I will follow
No turning back, no turning back'
We see that determination and single-mindedness in Paul (2 Timothy 1:15), but also in Jesus, who kept on His mission even when His disciples abandoned Him and fled, leaving Him alone and in danger (Mark 14:50).
There are unfortunately many who have shipwrecked their faith (1 Timothy 1:19), who have surrendered to the prevailing winds and tide of culture (Ephesians 4:14), who have allowed their race to falter through being tripped up or hindered (Hebrews 12:1-2).
Such people are not exactly slow to criticise and attack those who remain true to the narrow path. We see it regularly in the media. They are like captured warriors who betray their commander, but still want to obtain a medal of honour.
It is not our place to judge such people. Jesus did not cast Judas, who was never really true to Him but betrayed Him for little more than money. We should therefore not condemn those who leave the narrow path for the smoother, wider highway to hell.
Leave that to God.
Our task is to ensure that we don’t give in to their folly and retain our focus on being single-mindedly faithful to the Lord.
We should, however, be aware that living life on the narrow path will not always be tolerated by those who live on the wide road. Why was it that John the Baptist was arrested? Because he pointed out the imorality of Herod marrying his brother's wife (Matthew 14:3-4; Mark 6:17-18; Luke 3:19-20).
We should not be surprised at the fiery trial that comes upon us (1 Peter 4:12-16) when we refuse to genuflect in the direction of moral social mores, and refuse to sacrifice our relationship with God on the altar of their desires. We should not be shocked if we refuse to recognise their half-baked religion, are treated as blasphemers and face persecution because of it (Daniel 3).
As an old Salvation Army song says:
'Dare to be a Daniel
Dare to stand alone
Dare to have a purpose true
And dare to make it known'
Of course, we don’t do this aggressively or obtusively, but with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15-16), in a way that shows the lack of logic or justification or legitimacy in the persecution against us.
However, it’s clear from Jesus that the mark of a true follower is their ability to be single-minded and focused for Him, no matter what other’s think, because He must come first.
Apart from being on the right path, we also see that they bear the right produce.
Jesus rightly points out that there are those within the Kingdom of God who disguise themselves as sheep, but are actually rapacious wolves, looking to ravage the flock.
He later commented on how violent men would try to take the Kingdom of Heaven by force (Matthew 11:12).
Ezekiel had another picture of the Kingdom of God in one of his prophecies. He saw it as a flock of sheep in the wilderness, with strong sheep butting against the weak and muddying the water so others could not drink (Ezekiel 34:17-34).
Which all sounds incredibly gloomy, were it not for the fact that Jesus is the Good Shepherd who takes care of all the sheep in His flock (John 10:11-16).
As part of His care for us, Jesus skips to a different metaphor to help us understand how we can tell a sheep from a dressed up wolf – no matter what it declares itself to be.
And the answer is very simple: by its fruit.
Not literally, of course. Neither a sheep not a human being can grow fruit from their body.
This is an image – an image of the things they produce. The Bible uses this image for one thing and one thing only:
Character. Specifically character that shows a repentant life.
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.
Matthew 3:8 NIVUK
What fruit is this? It’s the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
Years ago we had the privilege of being on the bridge of a huge cruise ship weighing thousands of tons. It really struck me when they told us that even a ship of this size can be moved by the prevailing currents of the sea.
Let’s imagine for a second that the captain declared the ship to be going north, because that was the course he plotted in, but due to drift the ship was now headed north-west, according to every sat nav, compass and instrument on board.
Which would be the truth?
Or let’s say an airline pilot programs the on-board computer with a cruising speed of 550 knots, so he says that’s the speed the plane is doing, but a headwind reduces this to 400 knots.
Which of these is the truth?
The point I’m making is that there is such a thing as objective reality – things that are ‘really real’, no matter how inconvenient or unfortunate they may be.
One of those ‘really real’ things is this: you are not what you say, you are what you are and do.
In other words, your attitudes and actions will say more about your true identity than your mouth ever will.
Jesus says that before we accept the word of any preacher or teacher, we should examine their attitudes and lifestyle. If these do not line up with their words, then we should ignore them. Disbelieve them. Turn them off. Stop reading their books.
In our lives, they should be cancelled.
We leave the judgement and condemnation for what they are doing to God, but we simply use our discretion and discernment to come to the conclusion that this person is not right for me to listen to or obey.
This passage is astonishingly clear. From my heart, I wish we, as believers, would pay far more attention to this.
But we also need to make sure we are on the correct side of this teaching. We must produce fruit in keeping with repentance in our lives – all the time.
Because that is the mark of a genuine Christian.
Apart from walking the right path and producing the right fruit, we lastly see that they must have the right priorities – that is, they must seek to do the will of the Father first and foremost. This has to come before the more eye-catching and spectacular deeds like prophecy, exorcism and miracles.
We get that. I’m sure it’s easy to see why doing the will of the Father is most important. But what is it?
Many Christians tie themselves up in knots over this. They go to retreats and fast and spend hours, or even days, to know the will of the Father. Yet for the overwhelming majority of our day to day decisions, the will of the Father is crystal clear and in black and white in the Word of God.
What does Jesus mean by the will of the Father here?
He’s just spent two and a half chapters explaining it.
You see, this phrase has been misunderstood for a long time as referring to marrying the right person or having the right career or any other of the innumerable choices we face every day.
But the reality is that it's far, far more mundane than that.
The will of the Father is to listen to and obey His Son (Matthew 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35) in everything, but primarily in His moral teaching in the Gospels and amplified in the pastoral letters to the church.
If we get that right, we will also have His guidance on the ‘big ticket’ matters (Matthew 6:33-34; Proverbs 3:5-6).
But we must get the moral things right first. We must follow Him first, and then He’ll tell us where He’s leading us.
If we get this right, then we received our reward. If we refuse, and are dazzled by the flashy showmanship of these other gifts, Jesus has but one message for us, and it’s a rebuke I pray none of us ever has to hear:
‘I never knew you.’
What a horrifically painful thing to hear from the Lord!
This world abounds in fake believers. They have, without a doubt, confused the masses into teaching that prevailing cultural mores and attitudes are god and true Christianity is nothing but a fusty anachronism.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
What we should do as believers is be active to respectfully and gently contend for the Gospel, but also make sure we can tell if someone is who they truly say they are.
In these verses Jesus gives us three pertinent and relevant ways of doing so: by examining the path they are on, the fruit they are producing and their priorities in life.
May God help us to take a firm and uncompromising stand on the narrow road.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, the days are evil. There are so many antichrists and false teachers and leaders who confuse rather than encourage. Help me to keep my vision and my focus clear: to remain undeterred and to know who is true and who is false. Amen.
Questions
1. Is everyone who declares themselves to be a Christian really a Christian? How can we tell a fake one from a real one?
2. Who has the right to judge and condemn them for what they are doing? What is our responsibility in all this?
3. What can we do to make sure that we remain on the narrow path, producing fruit and following the Father’s will, no matter what?
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