You can't say, well, I'm a Christian and just go right on waltzing down the same old path you've been on. Prove it. I'm not content anymore with just saying if you claim to be a Christian, you must be. And if you made a decision somewhere at a meeting or a conference or you walked an aisle or you went in an inquiry room or somebody took you through a little book, you're okay. The biblical criteria for salvation is right now, what is your life like right now?
Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. How can you really know that you're saved? Can you be a Christian if you struggle with selfishness or a lack of integrity or impurity or some other sin? If you have doubts that your salvation is genuine, what should you do?
What's the first step? Those are questions you need to be able to answer, questions that John MacArthur will help you with over the next few days. We're beginning a study here on Grace to You titled Examine Yourself.
So now follow along in your Bible as John begins today's lesson. The Lord's Supper, I believe, is the most wonderful. The most sacred The most unique act of worship. that the blood-bought Church of Jesus Christ can ever experience. It is sacred.
in many ways. It is sacred because it is a sacred memory of the cross. The bread speaks of his body, and the cup speaks of his blood, and they point to the cross where his body was crucified, and his blood was shed, and so it's sacred because of its. Memory. But more than that, the table of the Lord is sacred because it is a present communion with the living Christ.
He meets us here. The Apostle Paul says, The cup which we drink and the bread which we break, is it not the body and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ? We literally commune with him here. And thirdly, it is sacred, I believe, because Jesus said in Luke 22, 19 and 20, do this. And so it is sacred because it is an act of obedience.
And obedience is a sacred and holy thing. And so the Lord's table is special. I come to the Lord's table as often as I possibly can. And very often, in my own life, I take the most common things in my hand. In my heart they become symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Because this is so meaningful to me. And yet, as I think about it, there are many Christians who rarely or never. For long periods of time come to the Lord's table. Even as there are many who are never obedient in baptism. And I guess my approach was always well.
Maybe they're just ignorant. They don't understand the importance of the Lord's table, or they don't understand the importance of. Baptism. They don't know what it is to make a public testimony in obedience to the The act of baptism. They don't know what it is to commune with Jesus Christ and the body and to celebrate the cross.
They're just ignorant. And I guess I've told myself too, maybe they're just disobedient. Maybe they just are acting carnally. I've been thinking lately that if someone has no desire for testimony. In baptism.
And if someone has no fellowship at the Lord's table, maybe it isn't that they're a weak Christian, maybe it's that they're not a Christian at all. They may think they are. But they're not. What about you? Are you a Christian?
You say, well, uh I'm a Christian. I believe. I made a decision for Christ, and believe me, there are a lot of people who point to the past. to verify Christianity. or to verify salvation and the Bible never points to the past.
The Bible never talks about a decision. In the past. Are you really a Christian? You say, well I came to Jesus. I invited Jesus into my life.
Is that enough? Let me show you something. We all know 1 Corinthians chapter 11 talks about communion.
Now let me just remind you briefly of it. 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and verse Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily. Shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. That's pretty strong. I'll tell you something.
You know what's worse than never coming to the Lord's table? Coming to the Lord's table when you don't deserve to be there, that's worse. Because to do that is to eat and drink unworthily and be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. And so, verse 28 says: Let a man examine himself. And so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment. to himself. It's very serious to come to the Lord's table. It is serious for a believer to come to the Lord's table while entertaining sin in his life. It is serious for a A Christian to come to the Lord's table where he does not repent of everything and desire, above all things, righteousness and holiness and turning from any known sin.
Serious. But what is even more serious is to come to the Lord's table and drink unworthily because you're not a Christian at all. Paul called for an examination in another passage, and I want you to notice this. It's the last chapter of 2 Corinthians 13 and verse 5. I want you to note what it says.
Second Corinthians 13:5. Just the first sentence. Examine yourselves. Whether you are in the faith. Prove it.
Is what he's saying. Prove yourselves. You say to someone, Are you a Christian? Yes. What do you base that on?
Well, so many years ago, I made a decision. That means nothing. The Bible never verifies anybody's salvation on the basis of the past. It's always on the basis of the present. And if you don't have the evident proof of real salvation in your life now, There's a very real possibility you're not a Christian at all.
No matter what. happened. in the past.
So examine yourself. to see whether you're in the faith. Prove yourself. Say, John, how do I do that? How do I know if I'm really a Christian?
I believe. Maybe you've even been baptized. I go to church, I I think I'm a Christian. Look with me at Matthew chapter 5 and let's find out. When Jesus arrived on the scene, the Jews had already decided.
What Right living was all about. They had already built their own code. They had already developed their own system. And they had it pretty cut and dried, pretty well laid out that this was what it was to be holy. And it was all external.
was all self-righteousness and works. And Jesus came and shattered that thing, and he said, I want to give you a new standard for living. I want to give you a new criteria by which you evaluate whether you're redeemed or not. I want to tell you how a citizen of the kingdom really lives. You want to prove yourself, here is the proof.
You take your life and let the Spirit of God compare it with the facts of the Sermon on the Mount, and the result will be an examination, and the end result will be whether you're a Christian or not. Here is the standard. And the key to it all is one word.
Now watch this. It is the word righteousness. That's the key. Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount. If you are a child of the king.
If you are really converted, if you really belong to God, if you've really been redeemed, the characteristic of your life will be righteousness. And there are a lot of people who claim to be Christians, and you look a long time to find any righteousness in their lives.
Somebody said to me last week, there's a lady in our church who says she's a Christian, and ever since she's been a Christian, she has been living with a man who is not her husband. And 1 Corinthians 6 says, fornicators do not inherit the kingdom of heaven. Why? Because that is a constant state of unrighteousness. And Conversion is characterized by righteousness.
Look at it in verse 20. This is the key verse to the whole sermon, chapter 5, verse 20. Jesus says, I say unto you, Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Listen. They went to the Temple every day.
They paid tithes. They fasted, they prayed, they were religious freaks, if you will. And he says, I don't care about all of that unless your righteousness, this is minimum requirement, exceeds that, you will in no case enter my kingdom. You see, righteousness is the cynical non. Righteousness is the issue.
Righteousness is that which sets us apart as converted. And righteousness is simply a long word for living right. Living under God's standards. Living by God's definition. In 2 Timothy 2 and verse 19, it says, The Lord knows them that are his, and who are they?
They are those that name the name of Christ and depart from iniquity. In Titus chapter 1, In verse 16, he says, Certain ones profess that they know God, but in works they deny him because they are abominable and disobedient. In other words, the profession means nothing unless there is obedience there, unless there is righteousness, unless there is holiness, unless there is a departing from iniquity. God has every right to expect that. And I heard a fellow say the other day, and he was preaching, and he said, Isn't it wonderful that you can come to Jesus Christ and you don't have to change anything on the inside or the outside?
That's a lie right out of hell. There better be a transformation. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, it's well summed up. If any man be in Christ, he is a what? New creation, old things passed away, and all things have become new.
1 John 1, verse 9 says, Christians are constantly confessing their sin. Being righteous in that sense, practical righteousness, does not mean that you never sin. It means that you deal with it when you do. You confess it and you turn from it and you repent of it and you despise it and you hate it. You don't love it.
It means in chapter 2, John says, If you really love me, you'll keep my commandments. And by this, we know that we know him when we do what he commands us. Further, in chapter 2, he says, A true believer will be one who will love his brother. He that hates his brother is in darkness even till now. Further on, he says, If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
And James put it this way: Don't you know that? Friendship with the world is enmity against God, you adulterers and adulteresses. You can't be the friend of the world and the friend of God. Further on in chapter 3, he says, He that is born of God does not continue to commit sin. He can't because a new seed is in him, and he cannot continue to commit sin.
Now, what am I saying? I'm saying this: God says, If you're really saved, there'll be righteousness, there will be holiness, there will be a whole new approach to life. You will have sin, yes, but you will see a decreasing frequency of sin. And when sin appears, you will despise it and you will hate it, as Paul in Romans 7 did. And you will confess it and you will turn from it and you will repent of it, and you will hunger and you will thirst for that which is right.
And you will obey, and you will love your brother, and you will hate the evil system of the world. That's the way it is. If you're really saved. You can't say, well, I'm a Christian and just go right on waltzing down the same old path you've been on. Prove it.
You say you're a Christian, prove it. I guess maybe I'm not content anymore with just saying if you claim to be a Christian, you must be. And if you made a decision somewhere at a meeting or a conference or you walked an aisle or you went in an inquiry room or somebody took you through a little book or whatever or whatever, you're okay. I don't think that that's ever the biblical criteria for salvation. The biblical criteria for salvation is right now, what is your life like right now?
Say, what are the standards? Let's look at Matthew 5 to 7. But I want you to see the criteria. Jesus sits down and teaches us the principles of. living in his kingdom.
And here's where it starts. Blessed are the poor in spirit, verse 3, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And the emphatic Greek is indicated here: theirs only, theirs alone, nobody else but them. In other words, the only people who ever enter the kingdom are those who are broken in their spirit, those who face their spiritual bankruptcy, those who see themselves as sinners, those who know inside that they can bring nothing to God. They are poverty-stricken in terms of their own spirit.
They have nothing on which they can count. They have no hope for themselves. Poor in spirit. And the result is: in verse 4, they mourn. And again, emphatically, and only they shall be comforted.
The only people who ever receive salvation, he says, the only people who ever come into his kingdom are people who are broken over their sin and who mourn over their sin. And then in verse 5, they are people who are crushed into meekness. They alone inherit the earth. They alone are kingdom citizens. And the upshot of all of that, when you're broken in spirit, mournful, and crushed to meekness is verse.
6. You will hunger and thirst after righteousness, and only they will be filled. What's the If you didn't come to Jesus Christ broken over your sin. If you haven't come to Jesus Christ literally shattered to the very depths of your being over your sinfulness, if you haven't mourned over your sinfulness, if you don't hunger and thirst after righteousness more than anything else, there is a good probability that you're not even a Christian. That's the criteria our Lord gives.
First of all, he says, there will be the proper entrance into the kingdom. That's where he begins the Sermon on the Mount. A kingdom citizen can be determined by his own. Selflessness, his own self-despising, his own sense of inadequacy and bankruptcy and nothingness. There are a lot of people who come to Jesus because they think he'd like to get in on what they have.
We handle that that way too. We say, wouldn't it be great if such and such a big, famous thing became a Christian? Because, boy, the Lord, he doesn't need that. What makes you think he thinks he needs their ability in addition to his power? It's absurd.
If you don't come to Jesus on his terms, then you don't come at all. And his terms are brokenness. Mourning, meekness, and hunger, and thirst for righteousness. And who are these citizens of the kingdom? Verse 7: they are merciful.
They are pure in heart. They are peacemakers. They are persecuted. They are reviled. You want to know something?
If you come to. to Christ Broken, contrite, mourning, hungering, and thirsting after righteousness. By the way, it's the only way to come. I don't believe anybody's ever a Christian who doesn't repent of sin. You know, you may have made a decision years ago.
That wasn't your salvation if it didn't involve this. And years later, maybe you came back to the Lord broken over your sin. That's the moment it became real. That's the moment you entered the kingdom. And you'll live that way the rest of your life, loving righteousness and hating sin.
One of the characteristics of a Christian is when he sins, he despises that thing. He hates It's not what he wants. It's the sin that is in him that does that. He hates it. And when you come on those terms, the Lord makes you merciful.
And he makes you pure in heart. and a peacemaker. And you try to live like that in the world and they'll never be able to stand you.
So, what happens in verse 10? You get persecuted, verse 11, you get reviled, you get all kinds of things said against you falsely. But that's all right. Be happy. Why?
Because you're a kingdom citizen.
Now, the first thing I want you to see then is: if you're really a Christian, you come on these terms. Mourning over sin.
Now the second thing about it. Examine yourself. If you're a Christian, not only will the entrance to the kingdom be on this. condition. But your testimony will be different too.
And that's what he goes into in verse 13. You're the salt of the earth. And then in verse 14, you're the light of the world.
Now, listen to what I'm going to say. If you're really a Christian, your testimony will be clearly, decisively, and easily distinguishable from the rest of the world. That's what he's saying. You see, the world is like decaying meat. It's rotting.
And you know, salt is a preservative. And we are here in the world to preserve the decadence and the destruction of the world. That's why the tribulation is so horrible. When the church is gone, the salt is out. And we are here to preserve this thing, and we are distinguished from the world.
We are a preserving agency in the midst of a decadent. decaying civilization. And we are to be a light set on a hill, and we are to be salt that has its savor. In other words, he's saying, not only if you're a Christian, do you come in the right way, but you're going to have a testimony that is easily and clearly distinguishable from the rest of the world. What about your testimony?
Is it very evident to everybody around you that you're different? Or do you do what everybody else does? Are you right in the flow of life with everybody else? When you became a Christian, did it change things about your life? If it didn't, then it didn't happen.
It didn't happen. Our Lord goes further. He says another thing that will characterize one who's a child of the kingdom is obedience. Verse 17, do you think I came to destroy the law? Do you think I came to set aside the prophets?
No. To fulfill it. In fact, not one jot or one tittle shall ever pass from this law. And I say to you, whoever therefore shall break one of the least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
And then he goes on to say, Your righteousness better exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisee. Point is this. If you're truly saved, you'll be obedient. You'll be obedient. There'll be acts of obedience.
The law of God will be something you long for. Again, Romans 7. Paul longed to do the law of God. He hungered to do the law of God. He delighted in the law of God.
He loved the law of God even though sin was always tugging at him.
So, examine yourself. Are you really saved? Did you come in mourning over your sin? Did you come in broken over your evil heart? Examine yourself.
Are you clearly distinguishable from the rest of the world? Examine yourself. Are you obeying God? Is the great hunger of your heart to do that which is His will? He goes further.
If you've really been converted, you'll think different. That's right. He talks about right thinking in verse 21 and following. You see, the Jews would do the outside stuff, they just couldn't handle the inner things. And so the Lord says to them, You heard you shouldn't kill.
Whoever would kill would be in danger of judgment, but he says, I want to go a step further and take it inside and say, You shouldn't even have bad thoughts in your heart against somebody. In other words, a child of my kingdom is not somebody who's a non-murderer, it's somebody who, inside his heart, doesn't even desire to hurt anybody. And he pushes the whole thing inside. If you're really a child of the kingdom, you're going to have a different heart. Ezekiel 36, the Lord says, When you become redeemed, he takes out the stony heart, the heart of obstinacy, and he puts in a heart of flesh, a new heart.
And further, he says in verse 27: you heard it said you should not commit adultery, but let me take it inside, you shouldn't even want to. You shouldn't even look at anybody that way. You shouldn't even think that thought. In other words, a citizen of the kingdom is different And when somebody says, well, I'm a Christian, I just have problems in that area, and they continue to be an adulterer, or continue to be a fornicator, or continue to be a homosexual, or continue in some kind of thing like that, I always go to 1 Corinthians 6 and say those kind of people do not inherit the kingdom of heaven. You didn't come to Christ on his terms, you came on yours, and they don't make it.
Until you're broken and shattered over those things, until you weep yourself to tears and crawl into his kingdom mourning for righteousness, you'll never know what true redemption is. Further than right thinking, he says: if you're really a child of the kingdom, you'll have right words. Not only thinking right, but talking right. And in verse 33 he talks about that. He goes on to talk about perjuring and about swearing and about how your communication should be yea, yea, and nay, nay.
In other words, it's going to come out right because out of the abundance of the heart, what? The mouth speaks. And so our Lord is saying: if your life is set to hunger after righteousness, it'll result in obedience. And obedience means you've got right thinking going on. And when you open your mouth, right words will come out.
And when you act, verse 38 and following, right deeds will be the result. You won't retaliate, instead, you'll be kind. And if somebody asks you for one, you'll give them two. In verse 43, you'll love your neighbor. And then down further, you'll even love your enemy.
You'll even love tax collectors. In fact, in verse 48, he says, This is the whole idea: be like God, he loves his enemies. You see the point? Prove yourself. Don't tell me you're a Christian because five years ago you walked an aisle.
Don't tell me you're a Christian because once you signed a card. Don't try to tell God you're a Christian because you went forward in a meeting, you went into a prayer room, you talked to a counselor, and don't tell yourself a Christian because some counselor told you you were a Christian because he didn't know either. The worst thing you can do to somebody is talk to them about Christ, and when they've prayed a prayer and verbally invited Christ in their life, then to sit there and assure them they're really saved because you don't have any idea whether they are. That's the Holy Spirit's work. He's the one who grants assurance.
And he grants it by the inward testimony, Romans 8, and by the outer exhibit of works that prove it. Because faith without works is what? It's dead. You know, one of the legacies that we've had from the kind of evangelism that's gone on in our country is that we believe salvation is attached to a decision. But the assurance of salvation has nothing to do with the decision in the past.
It has to do with what's going on in the present. Jesus put it this way in John 8: If you continue in my word, then you're my real disciple. It's always continuance. It's always present tense. And so our Lord says: if you're really a child of the kingdom, you come in the right way mourning over sin.
And your life is totally different, distinguishable from the world. And you are characterized by obedience, right thinking, right talking, right doing. He goes even further, right motives. The right kind of religious expression, the right kind of worship, we might call it. When you worship God in chapter 6, it's real.
It's not like the phonies who blow a trumpet and come and pray to make a parade. He talks about the hypocrites. whose religion is phony. Yours is real. And when you pray, you pray right.
You pray. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. He's saying if something's really changing your life, your religion isn't phony, it's real. Your prayers aren't like the prayers of the phonies, they're real prayers. And your fasting isn't the fasting of public display, it's the fasting of the closet that no one ever knows about.
So he says, you obey, you're going to have right thinking, right words, right acts, right worship. and right relations too. You're not going to love money. Verse 19 of chapter 6, and I'm just talking you through the whole thing here. He says you're not going to lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.
You're not going to get hung up in serving money. Because you can't serve God in money. Don't say you're a servant of God when your whole life is bent on getting money. Those two are incompatible. You're trying to be a friend of the world and a friend of God, and you can't.
If you're a friend of the world, you're the enemy of God. If you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you. He's saying, citizens of my kingdom have a right relation to money. You're listening to Grace to You with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. Today John looked at some marks of genuine salvation, traits like meekness, brokenness over sin, and a hunger and thirst for righteousness.
The title of John's current study is Examine Yourself.
Now, friend, to cultivate that hunger and thirst for righteousness that you heard John talk about today, you're going to need a steady diet of God's Word. And one way to cultivate that intake of biblical truth is to take advantage of the thousands of Bible study tools on the Grace to You website, particularly our sermon archive. Dive into all of our free resources today. Just visit our website, gty.org. There you'll find all of John's sermons.
That's over 3,600 messages from 56 years of his pulpit ministry. And all of those messages are available to download free of charge in mp3 and transcript format. That includes our current study called Examine Yourself. You'll find all of that free content at gty.org. And friend, wherever you're listening from today, know that you are not alone.
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Now for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for starting your week with us and be here for John MacArthur's lesson tomorrow to see what sort of evidence proves your salvation is genuine and what does not. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time. on Grace to You.
