"By their fruits ye shall know them" — Matthew 7:16

The fruit of the system

You don't have to take our word about where LGT leads — you can watch it happen in any online discussion where it's defended. The patterns below come from real conversations (anonymized; we name patterns, never people). None of it is done on purpose. That's the point: this is what the system produces in sincere believers, because a theology of required flawlessness leaves its people only two survival strategies — shrink the definition of sin, or hide every failure. Usually both.

Sam says Before we start: these are dear, sincere, often exhausted people. We're not laughing at them — we're documenting what a performance gospel does to anyone who carries it long enough. If some of this looks like a mirror… that's grace knocking, not condemnation.

Survival strategy #1: redefine sin so the streak survives

If your standing — and God's throne — depends on you not sinning, then the definition of "sin" becomes a matter of survival. Watch the definition shrink, in real time:

The move: "Sin is only a conscious choice" Sin gets restricted to deliberate, willful acts. Inborn bent? Doesn't count. Unbidden feelings? Don't count, as long as not "cherished." Motives, blind spots, omissions? Out of scope. Now the streak is survivable — because the scoreboard only tracks what you noticed yourself doing.

What Scripture says Jesus relocated sin from acts to the heart — anger as murder, lust as adultery (Matthew 5:21–28). Paul: "whatever is not from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23). David: "Cleanse thou me from secret faults" (Psalm 19:12) — faults the psalmist himself can't see. The biblical definition is too deep for any self-kept scoreboard. That's not bad news; it's why we have an Advocate (1 John 2:1).

The move: invent a "higher nature / lower nature" filing system Inconvenient inspired statements get sorted: anything about inward pulls toward sin is filed under a "lower nature" that doesn't really count against you (or, in Christology, gets attributed to Christ to lower the bar). Words like "passions" and "propensities" are quietly redefined until they fit the theory.

The tell When a system needs a custom dictionary to survive — where "finished" means partially finished, "propensity" doesn't mean inclination, and "passion" means whatever today's argument requires — the system is being protected from the text, not derived from it.

The move: invent rescue mechanics Pressed on what happens to a believer who dies mid-struggle, the system improvises: God times people's deaths so the sincere don't die mid-sin, and the hopeless are let go. Salvation becomes cosmic musical chairs — your destiny decided by the timing of your last breath rather than the direction of your heart.

What Scripture and a well-known Christian author say "The character is revealed, not by occasional good deeds and occasional misdeeds, but by the tendency of the habitual words and acts… Even if we are overcome by the enemy, we are not cast off, not forsaken and rejected of God" (Steps to Christ, p. 64). God reads direction, not snapshots. No timing tricks required — just an Advocate who "ever lives" (Hebrews 7:25).

Survival strategy #2: the hardening

Here is the saddest fruit, and the one believers under this system can least afford to see in themselves. A theology that makes flawlessness the entry requirement cannot afford honesty — about self, or about others. So, not on purpose, the following pattern grows:

📏 Other people's metrics become your business

When perfection decides everything, you start auditing — first yourself, then inevitably everyone else. Judgment isn't a character flaw they chose; it's the system's homework. The coworker's diet, the sister's dress, the brother's doctrine: everything becomes evidence in a trial that never adjourns.

🔥 The contradiction goes live

In one real exchange, a defender of final-generation flawlessness publicly branded a fellow believer a "pathological liar" — mid-debate, while arguing that the saints must achieve sinless characters. Think about that through the system's own lens: by LGT's own rules, wouldn't bearing public false witness in anger disqualify the speaker on the spot? The theology demands a perfection its defense can't even survive.

🧱 Error becomes unaffordable — so it becomes invisible

When your standing depends on being right and flawless, admitting a mistake isn't humility — it's evidence against you. So the doubling-down begins: history gets rewritten, plain words get redefined, every challenge gets met with a louder repetition. The refusal to ever say "I might be wrong" isn't stubbornness. It's self-defense, demanded by the system.

🤐 And the honest ones go quiet

Meanwhile the sincere believer who knows they still struggle learns the community's real rule: never say it out loud. Sin goes underground. Testimonies become performances. The church that preaches the most perfection becomes the hardest place on earth to confess — the exact inversion of 1 John 1:9.

"Subject to like passions"

"Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain…" James 5:17 — see also Acts 14:15

Scripture's heroes are presented as people of like passions — same weaknesses, same flammable tempers, same need of grace — precisely so that no one would build a theology on human flawlessness. The LGT defender losing his temper in a comment thread isn't a hypocrite to be mocked. He's a living exhibit of the very thing his theology denies: that every believer, to the last breath, is a person of like passions whose only safety is a covering not his own.

The mirror test — use it gently Next time a perfection theology is pressed on you, you don't need to win. Just notice, kindly, out loud: "Friend — in the last ten minutes you've been impatient with me, certain beyond correction, and sharp toward people who disagree. I don't hold that against you; I'm the same. But doesn't that tell us something about a theology that requires neither of us to ever be this way again — and stakes God's throne on it?"

Sam says The fruit tells the truth about the tree (Matthew 7:16–18). A gospel of required flawlessness produces hiding, hardness, and exhaustion. The gospel of a finished work produces honesty, gentleness, and rest. Check any conversation thread — the fruit is on display. Then go be the other kind of tree.

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