Reading Classics Together: The Discipline of Grace, Chapter 5
Friday, September 7, 2012 at 6:32PM 
I have been keeping pace with Tim Challies as he reads yet another Christian classic for his Reading Classics Together program, although I didn’t post anything on the chapter we read last week. This week, I’m a day late posting, and it’ll consist mostly of two quotes from the chapter. One of these weeks my real life will slow down and I’ll get back to posting something more like a chapter summary of the week’s chapter.
Jerry Bridges writes:
[W]e see in Titus 2:11-12 … that salvation and spiritual discipline are inseparable. The grace that brings salvation to us also disciplines us. It does not do the one without the other. That is, God never saves people and leaves them alone to continue in their immaturity and sinful lifestyle. Those whom He saves, He disciplines.
This means that if we are being saved, there will be evidence of “God’s discipline in our lives, and the desire to pursue holiness on our part, be it ever so faint.”
The same thing should be true for those around us who claim to be believers.
Many of us have friends and relatives who profess to be Christians but in whose lives there appears to be no evidence of the discipline of grace. Oftentimes we cling to a frail hope that such persons are believers because they made a profession at some time, despite the lack of any evidence of the Spirit’s work in their lives. It seems parents are especially prone to this form of denial regarding children who show no evidence of a genuine work of grace.
We certainly cannot determine the reality of another person’s salvation, and we can never say a certain individual is not a Christian. Nevertheless, we should not be naive in the face of a lack of evidence of any spiritual life. Instead of clinging to what may well be a false hope, we should pray earnestly that God will bring that person to salvation, of if perchance He has, will begin to manifest the discipline of grace in the person’s life.
The term “fruit inspector” is used derogatorily to refer to a mean-spirited judgmentalism, but it’s important to remember that a little fruit inspecting is a necessary thing. False hope is deadly. If someone is being saved there should be evidence of it because the Lord graciously disciplines those he loves, and the work God begins, he completes.
Reader Comments (2)
I so enjoy Jerry Bridges' writing. My favorite so far is his book on holiness.
This is only the second one of his I've read, but I've enjoyed both of them.