LORDSHIP SALVATION PART 2
June 20, 2019
READING TIME — 4-5 MINUTES
Lordship Salvation Part 2
9. If salvation depends on your perseverance in faithfulness and good works, how can you know for sure you are saved? Though you may be living faithfully now, how do you know what tests or temptations you will face tomorrow? If you cannot predict the future, isn’t there a chance you could sin and die before you repent? As long as that is possible, how can you say with certainty that you are a true Christian and that you have any assurance of eternal life? How could you honestly give assurance of salvation to anyone who says he or she believes the Gospel?
10. Where is there room to grow? If your saving faith included obedience as Lordship salvation teaches, forsaking all sins, a committed life, and a guarantee of faithfulness, what is left to do? Why are there so many ethical demands in the Bible addressed to Christians? Aren’t they unnecessary if a godly life is inevitable/automatic/guaranteed?
11. Did the apostle John preach a false Gospel? Since the Gospel of John does not mention repentance, or submission, or commitment to Jesus as Lord as conditions for salvation, but does mention believe as the condition for salvation 98 times, would you call that “easy believism?” Do you think John was ignorant or irresponsible (But I know you believe that is impossible since this is God’s inspired Word)?
12. Isn’t your “costly grace” a contradiction in terms? If grace is a free gift to you paid for by Jesus Christ, how can it cost you anything? If you do anything or make any commitments to merit God’s grace, doesn’t that compromise and cancel it (Romans 4:4; 11:6; Ephesians 2:8-9)? How then can you receive the grace of salvation in any way other than simple faith?
13. If we look for fruit as proof of one’s salvation doesn’t that turn us into fruit inspectors who must examine each person’s fruit with arbitrary standards? Regarding fruit inspecting, who has the list of appropriate works that qualify somebody as a Christian, or a list of works that disqualify somebody as a Christian? Please show me the list because I don’t see anywhere in the Scriptures where a list of fruits or works is given to prove one is a Christian. And what do you consider “fruit”? If a believer is doing good works in secret, as Christ encouraged us to do in Matthew 6:1-8, other people wouldn’t even see this “fruit.”
14. Many Lordship Salvation teachers qualify faith with terms such as “spurious faith,” “counterfeit faith,” “intellectual faith,” “false faith,” “insincere faith,” “pseudo Faith,” “emotional faith,” and “head faith.” Or, the positive they use terms like “true faith,” “authentic faith,” “saving faith,” “personal faith,” “real faith,” and “heart faith.” Where are these expressions found in the Bible? Even the Presbyterian Benjamin Warfield said that “the saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith, or the attitude of faith, or the nature of faith, but the object of faith.”
15. If Lordship Salvation is true, then why did Jesus say to the thief on the cross in Luke 23:43 “Today you will be with Me in paradise?” Why didn’t Jesus ask the thief to surrender to His Lordship, demand anything of Him, ask Him to make a commitment?
16. If Lordship Salvation is true, then in Acts 16:31 why didn’t Paul ask the Philippian jailer (in response to the jailer asking in v. 30 what he had to do to be saved) to surrender to Jesus’s Lordship, make a commitment, promise obedience to prove that he was a believer?
17. Lordship Salvation ignores the possibility of a carnal Christian. If there are no carnal Christians, then what is Paul referring to in a 1 Corinthians 3:1-4 when he called the Corinthians carnal and said they were like newborn infants who couldn’t receive anything other than milk? If there are no carnal Christians, explain Lot could be called “righteous” three times (2 Peter 2:7-8), but he exhibited perpetual unrighteous behavior (Genesis 19:30-38). Also, if there are no carnal Christians, why did Paul call the Corinthians saints (1 Corinthians 1:2), yet the remainder of the book revealed their unsanctified behavior?
My good friend Dr. Andy Woods’ summary of the problems with Lordship Salvation is appropriate:
“Although Lordship Salvation represents the right diagnosis of a problem, it holds out as the solution the wrong cure. The remedy for carnal Christianity is preaching more aggressively on the manifold blessings that accompany the sanctified life and the importance of the Spirit-filled life (Ephesians 5:18) to avoid the prospect of forfeiting rewards at the Bema Seat (1 Corinthians 9:24–27; 2 John 8; Revelation 3:11). Let us hold out these genuine cures for carnal Christianity rather than embrace the false cure of Lordship Salvation. Such a false cure fundamentally alters the gospel, which is the best news that God ever gave man.”
SOURCES USED
Bing, Charlie. GraceNotes #11. <http://www.gracelife.org/resources/gracenotes/pdf/gracenotes11.pdf.>
________. “Why Lordship Salvation Misses the Mark for Salvation.”
Woods, Andrew M. The Coming Kingdom: What Is the Kingdom and How Is Kingdom Now Theology Changing the Focus of the Church? Grace Gospel Press.