I've been discovering Paul Washer - an ardent Baptist from the south of America (look for that name at Sermonaudio). He's pretty amazing. He is talking to a 'born again' baptist culture which is, I think, unique to America. The problem is a live one whether you are in a baptist or a presbyterian church though. Essentially, he's saying that if you don't look like you are alive, you prob. aren't. You might have a date and time to refer back to when you self-consciously decided for Christ - or you might be firm in your confidence that you are part of the covenant community, because of infant baptism. The fact remains the same. The pharisees (even the BEST of them - Saul of Tarsus for example) knew the law better than most of us, they certainly had the right kind of lifestyle (Jesus said our righteousness must exceed theirs!) but they were missing the vital ingredient. Hebrews 4:11 says 'let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience' (that was manifested in a grumbling spirit by those who had seen the very works of God in delivering His people out of Egypt - 'today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness when your fathers tempted me and proved my works'). How will we KNOW we are justified if we are not being sanctified? We could just 'hope against hope' but I'd just as soon NOT risk it myself. Hosea 6:3 'let us know; let us press on to know the Lord'. I'd hate to be amongst those who show up at the 'pearly gates' declaring 'lord lord' only to be told 'go away, I never knew you'. Paul Washer deals with these issues as though they were a REAL possibility (as the Bible seems to suggest they are but somehow we read them through a special filter which over-rules the plain reading) and exhorts us to check our pulse and see that we ARE alive - before it is too late. Only then can we really live in such a way as to make a difference for God, by His Grace and to the Praise of His Glory.