The Difficulty of Assessing New Believers

Everyone who seeks to make disciples in obedience to Jesus Christ faces the difficulty of trying to discern whether a person who professes Christ genuinely believes. None of us wants to give an unbeliever false hope of salvation if they have not yet repented and placed faith in Jesus!

We try to deal with this problem different ways. Some take every profession at face value, often speedily baptizing those that profess, leaving the results to the Lord. Others, seeking to be more careful and discerning, do not give newly professed Christians the confirmation of baptism until after a certain number of lessons has been taught or time has passed to observe change.

But in the end, every local church still deals with doubts concerning new disciples. We all want to “know for sure” that those we have led to Jesus have true faith. I would like to suggest that, while we must do all we can to present the Gospel clearly and seek to discern where a person might be at spiritually, we will never be able to be sure. Ultimately, we cannot avoid the possibility of accepting false converts. Only God can see the heart.

The following truths have helped me have greater clarity about assessing disciples. I hope that some time spent pondering them will take some of the pressure off of us as we work with others.

Those Who Endure to the End are True Believers.

The book of Revelation uses a number of phrases to describe Christians in this age and those saints alive during the Tribulation. They are described as those who “conquer”, those “faithful unto death”, those who “hold fast”, those who “keep my works to the end”, and those who “endure” (Revelation 2:7, 10-11, 18, 25-26; 3:5, 10-12, 21; 13:10; 14:12).

What are the clear implications of these verses?

• Those who endure to the end, who “conquer” in faith, who maintain their faith to death—these are those who are truly God’s people.
• Some will seem to believe, will be tested, and will fall away. Some will not endure to the end, will not conquer, will not maintain their faith.

We must do all that we can to teach the word of God and pray for those who profess Christ, but whether these endure to the end is not our burden to bear.

We must not feel guilt or personal failure when someone falls away if we have done our part to teach, counsel, and pray in love.

Church Discipline Reveals True Saving Faith.

1 Corinthians 5:9-13 commands us to judge one another, to assess one another’s faith. If one among us continues unrepentant in sin, particularly the types of sin this and other passages explain to us as worthy of church discipline, we are to urge them to repentance. We are to lovingly show them how to change. If they don’t respond in repentance, they must be “purged out from among us.” That is a heavy statement.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 shows us that church discipline clarifies the Gospel. A person does not have genuine faith in Jesus Christ if they do not ultimately want to follow Him. Jesus makes disciples, not hypocrites. I believe some people come to saving faith while under church discipline.           

Discipline urges those in sin to prove their faith. It places them under God’s chastening to help drive them back to God so they can be restored to fellowship with God’s people.

Don’t avoid church discipline! Don’t feel guilty for leading God’s people to use it. The purpose is salvation and restoration, not punishment. If the one disciplined knows God, he/she will eventually respond to chastening. Even if he doesn’t, he cannot remain in fellowship with God’s people as an influence of evil.

Sometimes we are surprised by the ones that respond to church discipline and follow Christ with fervency later. We are shocked at other times by those who harden themselves against God and never look back.

Remember that the battle with false teaching, false faith, sin issues, etc., is NORMAL for Gospel ministry!

Levels of Growth Vary Between Believers.

The Parable of the Sower tells us, “And other seeds fell upon good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold” (Mark 4:8).

While we labor to help all believers grow to maturity and grow quickly, the truth of the matter is that each person grows only in proportion to his/her humble and obedient response to God’s Word. We are to love people genuinely and exercise patience as we faithfully teach them.

In my experience, some believers grow to a certain level, then hit a spiritual roadblock. Sometimes these take years to gain just a little growth. Others grow more in their first year of faith than others do in ten years. They may have the same opportunities, yet their response to God’s Word is not equal. This is NORMAL, although it is a cause of great frustration among missionaries and pastors!    

Baggage and Hindrances Can Make Change Difficult.

Where a person begins their journey in faith impacts their growth, too. Often those that come to saving faith early in life become much stronger believers than those who come to faith later in life.

We must remember that those we serve are human! Some come from horrible home situations. Some have committed horrible sins and have many ruined relationships around them. All of this affects their emotions and habitual thinking about life.

Often pastors and missionaries come from godly homes and churches filled with many strong Christians and families. They know little about what it means to come to Christ out of total paganism. They don’t know how hard it is to deal with many years of habitual sin and broken relationships. Be patient! Do not tolerate sin, but also realize that sanctification takes time.

Personal growth in Christ might be more difficult because of limitations such as real ignorance about life, health problems, mental problems, illiteracy, past slavery to vice, or the fact that they are the first or only believer in a godless home situation. We must maintain gentleness with patient understanding. Paul urges us to be this way in 2 Timothy 2:24-25a: “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.”

We must be careful lest we let our ambition to complete our ministry and be considered successful lead us to impatience and frustration with people struggling with sin. Working with such people can be very trying to the soul, a serious test of patience and endurance. In this we must be like our Heavenly Father. Have we not ourselves fallen on our face before the Lord blessing him for his steadfast love and patience towards us times without count?

With these things in mind, brethren, be “faithful stewards” (1 Cor. 4:1-2). We must dig deep in God’s grace so that, like Paul, “we do not lost heart” (2 Cor.4:1-2). In our weakness, God’s grace is “sufficient” (2 Cor. 12) to help us graciously assess disciples.

This article is the shorter version of a three-part series. Here is part one of that series.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the ESV® Bible