Honest debate of Lordship Salvation

Not a gift, then?

 

We are agreed up to here. I believe we agree much more than we disagree on this subject.

By this are you agreeing with MacArthur that pisteuw has a meaning of obey? (See the first edition of The Gospel According to Jesus, pp. 174-176.) Sigh. And I was doing my best not to refer to MacArthur in this thread.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this.

See, we agree much more than we disagree!

Here is what I wrote on 10:9 previously in this thread.

"That's no answer to my points. The verse is clearly demanding verbal confession of Christ as Lord since it says "with the mouth." Is that or is that not a sine qua non of salvation for everyone, including illiterate people with no vocal chords?


"My view of this verse is the standard pre-LS view. To give just one example of many I could give, Charles Hodge wrote in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, "The two requisites for salvation mentioned in this verse are confession and faith. They are mentioned in their natural order; as confession is the fruit and external evidence of faith" (p. 341). LS puts a new spin on this classic passage which is contrary to the traditional interpretation. I stay with the tradition, myself, not this new-fangled doctrine of LS, which makes the two requirements the same."

 

Macarthur states repentance is given to man to use, making it not a "work". This is how he gets around the requirement of it being the same thing as making Jesus Lord not being a work (like faith being given to man not being a work also...but if it came from within man, it would be a work).

 

1. I will say this, that saving faith, as seen in Scripture, always results in obedience---inherent in pisteuw is obedience.

2. How can we escape the obvious parallels in John 3:36 of "Believing" and "Obeying"?

3. The faith that God honors always results in obedience--I believe this is the genius of Hebrews 11.

4. What then is your explanation of Acts 20:21?

5. My own belief of this text is set forth in Dr. Moo's commentary on Romans, demonstrating that this heart-mouth combination must be understood in light of the Deutoronomic text.

 

MacArthur on the Lordship of Christ

Hi Web:

Here is an article that documents and discusses more of MacArthur's Lordship theology. The documentation is from MacArthur's own writing found in various sources.

See John MacArthur's Position on the Lordship of Christ


LM

 

John:

Thanks for this link, I will peruse it later.

The LS preacher said, "...you were not saved if you did not consciously accept Christ as Lord when you got saved." That is a very common position among LS preachers.


LM

PS: I know a preacher in CA whose has shared similar stories that he has been witness to. LS preachers going into sound, balanced churches, introducing LS and the "contrary" LS doctrine brought "division" and "offences" (Rom. 16:17) into that church.

 

Wrong! JM does teach an "exchange" of commitment for salvation.

Read- The Exchange/Barter System of Lordship Salvation


LM

PS: I don't care if certain persons, who have not read JM or any of his critics, gripe that I link to articles at my blog. I'm not going to copy and paste them here.

 

JoJ, I didn't see that article in the link you provided...

 

Lou,

1. I must confess that at first I was adamantly against your confrontation of LS, but now that I have stepped back and look at it again, I find myself agreeing with some of what you have been saying---not all of it, however. :thumbs:

2. I truly think it is unscriptural to tell a person that you should have consciously acknowledge Christ as Lord to be saved---I see no evidence of that in Scripture.

 

Web:

I'm sure by now you are used to the LS/MacArthur apologists crying "misrepresentation."

It is the standard retort when faced with clearly documented statements by JM that they cannot dismiss away by saying they are mere "overstatements.


LM

 

Definitions

Yes. I don't know of any other kind of salvation. Except you believe Jesus as LORD...

No. JMac is teaching that if you believe in Jesus Christ, your life will actually show it. How that ever became to be an addendum to the gospel, I have no earthly idea. No, it will not PERFECTLY show it. JMac has said for years salvation is by grace alone through faith alone because of the finished work of Christ alone.

Yet he is accused of preaching works.

The lordship salvation debate ended 15-20 years ago. The Hodges-Ryrie-Wilkin side lost. Period. Their view is not even the majority view today at Dallas Seminary - and you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who belives the 'no lordship' doctrine who is not connected with DTS.

Incidentally - I'm a current student there.

 

MacArthur on the Rich Young Ruler

When the rich young ruler approached Christ, he asked, “Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” That “good thing” is works.

In commenting on this passage, John MacArthur writes,

That citation from the revised edition of The Gospel According to Jesus is a sanitized revision of what John MacArthur first wrote. In the original edition, John MacArthur states:

From his book Hard to Believe MacArthur wrote:

Do these statements by JM accurately define the Gospel that results in the reception of eternal life?


LM

 

The Issue - Reality

What causes all of this? What begins the discussion? Where did MacArthur BEGIN all of this?

If you listen to his tape series on TGATJ, he does an interview on tape six that preceded the airing of the radio series. He tells three stories of people with whom he had experience:

1) A guy who was his best friend in high school and college who went witnessing with him in a bad section of LA for years. Mac lost contact with him and met him a few years later. The guy was an avowed atheist.

Is the atheist saved or lost? In Mac's view, he made a false profession of faith. In the cheap grace view (and that's what it is), the atheist is still saved even if he doesn't believe God exists.

Be honest with me - does that really make any sense?

2) A guy who he discipled every Tuesday morning for a year. At the end of that year, the guy left the church, explicitly denied the Christian faith, divorced his wife, and joined a liberal Episcopalian church where he became a rector and denies Bible teaching regarding who Christ is.

Again - is this guy saved?

Anyone who has ever hung around Baptist churches knows all too well those folks who have emotional experiences and come down front drooling during the revival. Then they get baptized. Then you don't see them again until their funeral.

My grandfather supposedly had a 'born again experience' when he was younger. Yet not only did he never go to church, he was drunk the last forty years of his life, smoked like a chimney, and I never heard him use the word 'God' without it being followed by that other word. Never. When people prayed, he got up and left and snorted as an avowed agnostic.

In the Zane Hodges school of thought, that guy's saved. I think it was R.B. Thieme who said one could become 'an unbelieiving believer,' going so far as to say 'you cannot lose your salvation even though you deny God.'

That's not what the Bible says. I believe that salvation is forever, but I also believe that you will not deny God or His existence a la the atheist if you truly know Him. But again - in the CG paradigm, the only folks who are wrong are those who question the salvation of those without the first fruit in their lives.

That said, Mac's first edition needed some revision due to overstatement (one of Mac's biggest problems). Yet I hold him in high esteem. The so-called 'gospel' of Ryrie-Hodges-Wilkin would have told me I was Ok because I had a 'religious experience' when I was ten.

I read an article not long ago by M. James Sawyer about the controversy. He said that there were shrinks in LA who were having problems with people doubting their salvation due to Mac while none of Hodges followers had this problem.

No, duh. A God who will tolerate and even excuse my sin and let me into the kingdom - why would I have to worry about anything in the first place?

 

I take it you don't believe the god of this world, the father of lies can deceive true believers?
Was Lot saved?

 

A straight shooter, I see. :thumbs:

 

Dear Lou

I checked out your blog and noted something about a Wilkin-Shea debate. What is that in refernence to - and when?


M

 

The Straw Men Are Coming

And why would you say that? This gets away from the point - but having watched this debate for 20 years, hey, I'm used to it.

Nobody's advocating sinless perfection here. Yes, believers can be deceived (I would think this would go without saying, but I guess I'm wrong).

Why you would think someone who lives in defiant and open rebellion towards God - to the point of hating God or denying His existence - is the equivalent of a failure in a moment of trial is beyond my ability to process. It's the difference between the lost Judas and the saved Peter.

 

This is, of course, not the same as believing there is a lexical definition of "obey" for pisteuw, which is what MacArthur appeared to be saying.

Concerning John 3:36, I look at that verse as Hebrew parallelism, in which case the proper translation should be "believes" and "doesn't trust" rather than "believes" and "doesn't obey." I don't see "believe" and "doesn't obey" as parallel expressions.

That repentance and faith are both necessary for salvation, of course. Once again, this usage of "Lord" is a title, not a theological statement. I don't see that simply the usage of the title Lord in a soteriological context necessitates recognition by the lost person of the Lordship of Christ. He is Lord whether we recognize that or not!

Why must repentance necessarily mean a recognition of the Lordship of Christ? I don't see that in either the "change of mind" definition or the "turn from sin" definition. Why can't repentance refer primarily to God as the Judge of sin instead? That is a more immediate connection to salvation than the Lordship of Christ is. Christ as Lord is then another step away from salvation, seeing that it is the holy God Who judges sin. In other words, sin is an offense to God in His holiness rather than specifically God as sovereign.

Oh, shucks, you're going to make me read Moo? The man wrote 941 pages of sometimes crashingly boring prose. (Sigh.)

Forgive me for complaining. Moo is actually quite good there. He wrote in agreement with what I've been saying, "Paul's rhetorical purpose at this point should make us cautious about finding great significance in the reference to confession here, as if Paul were making oral confession a second requirement for salvation" (p. 657).