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Transcript 114B — Can We Discern Hypocrites in the Church?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: We know that Christ, when He was on the earth, could discern true believers from liars or hypocrites. Should we as Christians, with the Holy Spirit and God's Word, be able to distinguish hypocrites from true believers? I think that's a very important question. What do you do when there are people who are hypocrites and are using God's Word as a shield for their own self-righteousness? And I hate to say it, but I've encountered many people that I know aren't really saved, yet they believe they are, and are using God's Word as a tool of deception. And many people are doing what Paul warns against in Galatians 1, and that's believing in a false gospel, a false doctrine.
HC: The question that has been raised is this matter: Inasmuch as Christ could, as eternal God, know when a person was really born again, can we as Christians, under the discerning power of the Holy Spirit, discern whether a person we're looking at is truly a born again believer? The answer, of course, is no. We cannot do that. We cannot look upon a man's heart.
Any man who is living like a Christian, who confesses Christ, we assume that he is a born again believer. Only God knows for sure what's in his heart. Only God knows whether he really has surrendered his will to Christ. Now the Bible does say, "By their fruits ye shall know them." And one way that we can suspect that someone may not be right with God is going to relate to what they do with the Bible.
The Bible says that if you add to the words of this book, He will add to you the plagues written therein. And so one of the first questions we have to wonder is, "What are we going to do with the Scriptures? Are they alone the divine Word of God, or are we ready to accept truth from any other kind of source, whatever it may be?"
Now what do we do when we know somebody is coming with another gospel, or when we know somebody is hypocritical, or whatever? The answer is that we can pray for them. If they come at us with another gospel, we don't want to have conversation with them. The Bible teaches in the Epistle of Second John, in verse 10, if someone comes with another doctrine, we are to give them no greeting. The only purveyors, the only witnesses who are the true witnesses, should be those who are bringing the true Gospel. But certainly we can pray for those who think they are saved, and yet they are not saved.