Did Christ save him or does he save himself? If we can answer that question - then we will know about what true salvation is based on or more accurately based in a "Whom."
If this Mr X's salvation is based on him - he's a goner. Of course everyone of us is in the same boat as Mr. X because all of us must produce the righteousness of Christ and that only comes by grace through faith. It is a gift of God in Christ.
I do believe that there will be fruit of some sort in all believers lives if Christ is in fact in them. There is a problem with "fruit inspectors" as in man's eyes and not through God's eyes.
Another aspect that goes with "fruit inspectors" is just what is fruit? And what does this fruit look like. What if as an analogy a Christian is like an orange tree?
An orange tree is still an orange tree even though it doesn't produce the fruit we want to see in the timeframe we think it should. What happens if this orange tree dies before it has had a chance to be fed properly to grow up to be able to produce the fruit of a ripe orange?
To some works-based people - you would have to display 50 oranges in order to prove you are a real orange tree ( saved ) - to others you need 100 oranges in order to be a proved orange tree. ( saved ) So, this fruit inspection thing is not viable ..that's for God to look at people to determine if they are in Christ or not.
A person could have love and kindness as a fruit in their life but be addicted to some pills or alcohol which they are continuing to struggle with in their life or outbursts of anger..etc.
We religious people love to "categorize" sin - especially the ones that we have never done before and then look down on those that do have a problem that we don't. We say that they are "sinning" - and they are but so are we in other areas too. We all have the flesh to deal with and none of us behaves perfectly in our behavior.
The people that don't have a struggle with alcohol ( or basically anything that they themselves don't struggle with in their flesh that others do ) will condemn the ones that do have these struggles in the flesh and declare they don't have the fruit and thus are not saved. This is Pharisee-ism at it's finest.
Does the orange tree stop being an orange tree even though it dies without having fruit that we think "proves" it was an orange tree to begin with?
What if Christians were like that? What if we fed them messages about the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness in Christ so that they could grow? Then they would produce an abundance of fruit.
I say let's preach and teach the grace of Christ in their lives so that they have the proper nutrients to grow up in Him!
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