Spiritual Recognition

At this point, the question becomes absolutely crucial: How can I tell who is saved? Or, how can I tell who is led of the Lord, or who is not? And the answer is simple: I cannot, until the Lord shows me. “O Lord God, thou knowest.”* (Ezekiel 37:3) This is the only answer that can be given by an humble child of God, for we do not know—we cannot read the hearts of men as an open book. Only God can.

A dear soul once remarked to me that “there was nothing to this discernment business.” In other words, they thought it was easy to tell the difference between him who serves God and him who serves Him not. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it is not. In a judgment of this kind, the full range of human motive, conditioning, and thought is involved. We are, in effect, saying that this person is ready for heaven or this person is ready for hell.

Another dear soul stated that “we cannot know whether a man is really saved or not.” This person argued, that since we cannot know the state of another’s heart, we must leave their judgment with the Lord.

As you can see, dear reader, in one sense they were both right. With God’s help, we can discern what needs to be discerned to do the works of God, and without God’s help, we certainly can be fooled about the condition of a man’s heart. Surely, the work of the Lord can only be done by this way: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”* (Zechariah 4:6) “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”* (Psalm 127:1)

And this is exactly what starts to happen at the very beginnings of an apostasy—men try by their own efforts to keep the truth. And these efforts, (because they are the products of human reasoning without Divine guidance), are not sound and leave room for the devil to gain an advantage over the children of God.

Men of a naturally more liberal cast of mind are repelled by more fanatical teachings and doings. Men of a naturally more conservative cast of mind are equally irritated by general laxity and shallowness. The classic result is the formation of two camps of thought: those who give the flesh too much liberty and those who would give the flesh no room at all. Human nature being what it is, there always seems to be more attracted to the former than the latter.

“And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.”* (Isaiah 30:21) God’s way is always correct. His balance is always just right. He gives exactly the correct slant on things. What we need is to hear the word behind thee, i.e., we need continuous direction and simply are not able to anticipate the direction in which God will go. With this, we must say that when properly understood He never contradicts Himself or reverses Himself. And, yes, we certainly begin to get an idea of where God may be going after a time. But how small we are, and how great is God! There is no searching of His understanding.