 Salvation is a gift. Do you believe that works done on earth, determining a level of reward or responsibility in the kingdom? Yeah, I do. I think that works have nothing to do with kingdom residents. Okay, salvation. But scripture does suggest rewards in the kingdom, you know, are not all the same. I mean, not everybody has the same reward, that kind of thing. You know, 1 Corinthians 3, 10 to 15, I think suggests this. I'll just read the passage. Paul says, beginning in verse 10, according to the grace of God given to me like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation, and the foundation is salvation, or that's Christ, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest for the day we'll disclose it because it will be revealed by fire. And the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he'll receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he'll suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. So the works here are not the foundation. The works are what goes on top of the foundation. The works do not replace or displace salvation through Christ. That's very clear in this passage. The works are something, again, put upon top in addition to this status that was gained for us by what someone else did, namely Jesus. So the real question here is it an all or nothing idea? Some people will take this, and I've heard this preach, too, that if you're not, they wouldn't say it this way. But basically, if you're not nearly perfect, or as least as perfect as I am, the preacher, if you don't have a life of this endless string of victories here, spiritual victories, then you're going to get to heaven. If you don't have more spiritual victories than not, then everything's going to burn up in flames before your eyes, and you'll be with the Lord empty-handed. I think that's bunk. It's not an all or nothing idea. It's very doubtful. I doubt that it's a total loss because what that implies is that on the other side, you have a total success. There are no total successes in discipleship. Why? Because we're people. We're humans. We're fallible. We aren't deities. We're not God. We're not, by definition, we are imperfect. So if you're going to say that having failures, spiritual failures, and struggles with sin, sometimes you lose. You might even lose a lot. It might be a huge struggle that wipes everything out. I just don't see the coherence of that. Because then you're taking an imperfect scorecard. Let's say you have more victories than failures. Your scorecard is still imperfect. So God gives you everything. It's like a total success. If the scales tip the other way, it's a total loss. I don't think that's the picture at all. What I think's going on here, I should just go to a quick reference in 1 Corinthians 4, verse 5. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time before the Lord comes who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God. I think this verse needs to be part of preceding chapter, at least consideration in tandem with 1 Corinthians 3. I think what the point is that everyone is going to suffer some loss and everyone is going to get some reward. The tallies as it were, what that amounts to. I don't see any evidence in Scripture where it's equal for everybody. I think we're all just going to see how we could have been used, where we fell short, where we rebelled, where we stumbled, where we just failed. We'll see again what might have been what God could have done with us in a given circumstance. We'll suffer loss, but we'll also see what God was able to accomplish with us when we present ourselves as a useful tool. That's one of the motivations for holy living, to be useful. It has nothing to do with earning a place in God's family, mariting it enough. It has everything to do though with being useful. God wants to use people. He wants to use believers to help other people become believers, to help believers grow, to do things for the kingdom. You have to make yourself useful. Basically, if you're just not a disciple of Jesus, if you're not trying to live with him as your model, you're going to become pretty darn well useless, at least useless in certain contexts. That's really where the rubber meets the road as far as the debate. Do we have Christians that are like 1% useful and 99% useless? Ultimately, I don't know. The Spirit of God takes up residence in someone and encourages them to prompts them to do certain things. Do they believe or not believe? Ultimately, I don't have the answer for that. Only the person knows that, and only God knows that at the end of the day. All I know is that we have to believe to have eternal life, and we need to be grateful. We should want to be useful. We need to be grateful for our salvation and live accordingly. Those are the clear things that are taught in Scripture. How we take that information and look at somebody else and wonder, well, that's a human thing to do. I understand that. Ultimately, we can't use those ideas to determine for someone else what's really going on there. I think we all know people like that. We need to talk to them and be honest with them about their sin. We need to challenge them to think about what's really going on inside. Are you really believing the gospel or not? I don't really care that you prayed a prayer 10 years ago, and now you've basically taken that and said, well, I said the incantation, I could do whatever I want now. I question that. I question the validity, the validity of your faith, because you've given me no choice. I wonder because you've given me reason to wonder, but I can't decide for you. I can't tell. I don't know, but you need to examine yourself. Isn't that a scriptural phrase? Let a man examine himself. I'm not going to examine you. I'm going to tell you that from what I see, it prompts a concern, but that's about all I can do. I can just tell you I'm concerned. I can't produce the answer for you. Only you can do that. We need to encourage people to examine themselves. That's what the New Testament does in any number of places. I think we ought to stick to that and not try to position ourselves as some sort of wise spiritual authority able to see behind the veil and penetrate a person's mind and really know what's going on in there, but we can get the person, hopefully, to consider themselves and then talk to them about the gospel. The answer is always the same, whether they are a believer and now they're just stuck in sin or whether they didn't believe at all. The answer is still the same. Do you believe this right now? Do you believe the gospel right now? I don't need a scorecard. I don't need a box score. I don't need to be omniscient. It doesn't matter. What matters is right now.