NOT BY RESULTS

13–15 minute read

Introduction

We live in a world that worships outcomes. A man is celebrated because his business is booming. A woman is admired because her marriage looks perfect on social media. A preacher is honoured because his church is filling up and his ministry is producing miracles that trend online. Slowly, without many of us noticing, the church has absorbed this same measuring stick. We have started to ask, does this person have results? Is this ministry growing? Are signs and wonders following? And when the answer is yes, we conclude that the person must be right with God.

This is a call to pause and examine that assumption in the light of scripture. Results, however impressive, do not validate a person. They never have and they never will.

The world's standard is not God's standard

Romans 12:2 tells us plainly, “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” The word conform means to be pressed into a mould. The world has a mould, and that mould says results equal righteousness. If it works, it must be right. If it grows, it must be blessed. If it heals, it must be of God.

But Paul does not tell us to conform. He tells us to be transformed, and that transformation begins in the mind. A renewed mind does not evaluate spiritual matters the way the world evaluates business or entertainment. A renewed mind asks a different question altogether. Not does it work, but is it obedient. Not does it produce, but is it true.

What Jesus said about results

There is no clearer passage on this subject than Matthew 7:21 to 23. Jesus said, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Read that carefully. These were not people with empty hands. They prophesied. They cast out demons. They performed wonderful works, which in the original language includes miracles of power. By every worldly and even every modern ministry standard, these people were successful. They had results that many pulpits today would call proof of divine backing. Yet Jesus did not say well done. He said, I never knew you.

This is the most sobering warning in the New Testament concerning ministry. It teaches us that a person can operate in genuine spiritual power and still be unknown by Christ, because power and results are not the same thing as relationship and obedience. What Jesus was looking for was not what they did in his name, but whether they did the will of the Father. Doing versus knowing. Activity versus intimacy. Results versus relationship.

God does not change, and neither do his principles

Malachi 3:6 says, “For I am the LORD, I change not.” Hebrews 13:8 adds, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” And James 1:17 describes God as the Father of lights, “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

These are not decorative verses. They carry weight for the subject at hand. If God does not change, then his standard for validating a person has not changed either. He was never a God who measured a man by his harvest alone. In the Old Testament, King Saul had victories and results, yet God rejected him because of disobedience. In 1 Samuel 15:22, Samuel told him, “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” Saul's disobedience was hidden behind a battlefield success, but God was not fooled by the results. He looked at the heart and the obedience behind the results.

If that was true then, it is true now, because God has not changed his mind about what matters to him.

Why the old path still matters

Jeremiah 6:16 says, “Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” This verse was a call to a nation that had drifted from the ways of God in pursuit of what seemed convenient and current. God's instruction was simple. Go back and ask for the old path. Not the new path. Not the trending path. The old, tested path.

There is wisdom in the popular saying, if it is not broken, do not fix it. The principles of scripture were never broken. Faith, obedience, holiness, the fear of God, love, humility, these have never failed to produce a life pleasing to God. What has changed is the world's tolerance for these things. The world now calls holiness rigid and grace permissive. It calls conviction judgemental and compromise loving. And because the church wants to remain relevant to a changing culture, many have quietly adjusted the message to fit the moment rather than adjusting the moment to fit the message.

But scripture was never given to be edited by culture. Culture was meant to be transformed by scripture.

Drawing all men does not mean drawing the world's ways in

John 12:32 records Jesus saying, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” This verse is often used to justify a softened gospel, one that adapts its standards so that more people feel comfortable. But look closely at what the verse says. It says Christ will draw all men to himself when he is lifted up. It does not say the church will lower its standards to draw the world in. The drawing power belongs to a lifted up Christ, not to a diluted message.

There is a critical difference between reaching people where they are and leaving them where they are. The gospel reaches sinners without becoming sinful. It welcomes the broken without celebrating the brokenness. When the church begins importing the world's philosophy of results and relevance as the measure of spiritual authenticity, it is no longer drawing the world to Christ. It is drawing the world's system into Christ's house.

Galatians 6:7 warns us plainly, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Sowing to the flesh, even under a spiritual banner, will still reap corruption. Sowing to the Spirit reaps life, regardless of how the results look in the short term.

Gifts are not the same as character

Modern ministry culture often treats visible results, growing numbers, healings, financial breakthroughs, as the badge of spiritual qualification. If a man's ministry is producing results, he is quickly considered fit to lead, mentor, or be followed without question. But scripture separates gifting from godliness.

1 Corinthians 13:1 to 3 makes this distinction unmistakably clear. Paul says a man can speak in the tongues of men and angels, have the gift of prophecy, understand all mysteries and all knowledge, have faith to move mountains, and give all he owns to the poor, and yet without love, he is nothing. Nothing. Not diminished, not lesser, nothing. Gifting without character is described by Paul as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, noise without substance.

Galatians 5:22 and 23 then gives us the true measure God is looking for, the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. Notice this list has nothing to do with numbers, growth, or visible achievement. It has everything to do with the inward transformation of a life. Fruit, not results, is the biblical evidence of a life connected to God.

The real danger

The danger of measuring spiritual standing by results is that it can quietly excuse compromise. A leader who is producing results, growing a following, seeing miracles, becomes difficult to correct, because the results are treated as proof that God is with him regardless of his conduct. This is exactly the trap the people in Matthew 7 fell into. They pointed to their results as evidence, as if to say, surely if we were wrong, none of this would be happening. Yet Christ still said, I never knew you.

This is why scripture repeatedly calls believers to test everything, not by outcomes, but by the word. 1 John 4:1 instructs us to “try the spirits whether they are of God.” Acts 17:11 commends the Bereans for searching the scriptures daily to see whether what they were told was true. Not whether it produced results. Whether it agreed with the word.

The other side of the same error

There is a quieter danger that grows out of this same soil, and it deserves to be named plainly. A church culture that honours men because they have results will, almost without noticing, begin to look down on men who seem not to have any. The preacher whose church is small is assumed to be less anointed. The believer whose business has not prospered is assumed to be lacking in faith. The faithful member who serves for years without applause is quietly overlooked, while the one with a following is ushered to the front. We do not usually say this out loud. We simply act it out in who gets platformed, who gets consulted, who gets believed, and who gets politely tolerated.

But scripture never made worldly visibility the measure of a man's worth before God. When Samuel came to anoint a king from among Jesse's sons, he was drawn to Eliab's appearance, yet the LORD told him, “Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature... for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). David, the one eventually chosen, was not even called in from the field at first. He was the one nobody thought to consider.

Paul says something similar of the church itself. “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (1 Corinthians 1:26 to 27). If God himself regularly chooses the overlooked, a church that reflexively honours only the visible and successful is applying a standard God does not use, and quietly dishonouring people God has not dishonoured.

James addresses this directly as a sin, not a preference. He describes a congregation that gives the best seat to the man with fine clothing and a gold ring, and tells the poor man to stand or sit on the floor, and calls this “respect of persons,” adding, “Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?” (James 2:1 to 4). Honouring results while looking down on the absence of results is the same partiality in modern dress. It judges by what is visible, which is precisely what James condemns.

This matters because obedience without results is not failure. A man can be entirely faithful, prayerful, holy, and obedient, and still labour in a field that never grows large, a ministry that never trends, a business that never booms. Zechariah 4:6 reminds us that true fruitfulness is “not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD.” The size of the outcome was never fully in the labourer's hands to begin with, which means it was never a fair measure of the labourer's faithfulness either. To honour results and quietly disdain their absence is to reward what God never promised to distribute evenly, while dishonouring the very obedience he actually asks for.

When liberty should yield to love

If results cannot validate a person before God, neither can the argument that it is not explicitly forbidden. The church has increasingly leaned on this defence to justify practices around dressing, hair covering, tattoos, men braiding their hair, women piercing their noses, men wearing earrings, the reasoning being, since scripture does not name the item specifically, it must be permitted. But this is the same conformity Romans 12:2 warns against, only wearing a different disguise. It has simply moved from does it work to is it technically not forbidden, and called that righteousness.

Paul anticipated this exact reasoning and answered it directly. 1 Corinthians 10:23 says, “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.” Lawful is not the same as edifying. A believer can ask, is this a sin, and receive a technically honest no, while still being far from the question that actually matters, does this build up my witness, my walk, my brother's faith. Paul was not interested in the minimum boundary of what he could get away with. He was interested in what served Christ and served others.

This is why 1 Thessalonians 5:22 instructs believers to “abstain from all appearance of evil.” Not just evil itself, but its appearance. This is a higher standard than most are willing to accept today, because it asks something scripture rarely gets credit for asking, that we govern ourselves not only by what is technically permissible but by what could be mistaken for compromise. If a practice sits close enough to the world's fashions, its trends, its symbols, that an observer cannot tell the believer apart from the culture being resisted, the appearance itself becomes a stumbling block, regardless of the heart behind it.

Paul modelled this personally in the matter of food offered to idols, a subject far more debated in the early church than dress or grooming are today. In 1 Corinthians 8:13 he says, “Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.” Notice Paul does not argue that the meat itself was sinful. In many cases it was not. His willingness to give it up entirely was not a legal requirement, it was love outworking itself as a denial of self. He surrendered a lawful liberty rather than risk a brother's soul. If Paul held food, one of the most basic and defensible liberties, that loosely, it is difficult to argue that fashion, hairstyle, or jewellery should be held any tighter.

This same spirit is echoed in the instruction to modesty and simplicity given to believers regarding appearance. 1 Timothy 2:9 speaks of adorning in modest apparel, and 1 Peter 3:3 to 4 points believers away from outward adorning toward the hidden man of the heart. These verses were never given as a fashion rulebook. They were given to redirect attention. A life increasingly decorated to draw the eye outward is, at minimum, worth examining against a faith that is supposed to be increasingly directed inward and upward.

None of this is to claim that every believer who dresses fashionably, covers a tattoo, wears an earring, or has braided hair has sinned in the technical, damnable sense. That is not the argument scripture is making, and it is not the argument being made here. The argument is narrower and, in some ways, more searching. If something sits on the border, if it can be reasonably associated with rebellion, vanity, worldliness, or confusion of the distinctions God has made between the sexes, and scripture leaves room for debate about whether it is sin outright, why would love not settle the matter anyway? Why contend for the right to keep something that offers no spiritual gain, when giving it up costs nothing but preference, and keeping it risks confusing a watching world about what the church actually stands for?

This is the old path Jeremiah 6:16 speaks of. It is not a call to legalism, which adds rules scripture never gave. It is a call to relinquish liberties scripture never required us to hold onto in the first place, for the sake of a clearer witness. A church that fights to keep every borderline liberty while calling itself set apart has misunderstood what set apart means. Holiness has never been about how close to the world's line a believer can stand without technically crossing it. It has been about how far from that line love is willing to walk, for the sake of not causing a brother, or a watching world, to stumble.

Conclusion

Results can be a byproduct of obedience, but results are never the proof of it. A person's standing with God is not measured by how big their platform is, how many are healed under their hands, or how quickly their ministry grows. It is measured by whether they know him, and whether they are doing the will of the Father, which begins with a transformed mind, not a conformed one.

The call before every believer today is the call Jeremiah gave a wandering nation. Stand in the ways. Ask for the old paths. Walk in what has always been good, and find rest for your soul. God has not changed. His principles have not changed. And no amount of results, however impressive to the world's eyes, will ever be a substitute for a life that truly knows him and truly obeys him.