Light Brings Salt
Volume 3, Issue 30 July 24, 2005
Iron Range Bible
Church
Dedicated to the Systematic Exposition of the Word of God
Once Faith - Always Saved
In a recent article from the Grace
Evangelical Journal the subject of faith was dealt with by Bob Wilkin who is
the editor of the
journal and the director of the Grace Evangelical Society. He began with a very perceptive statement of
the on going situation in the churches today.
He said, "Christianity is
called the Christian faith for a reason. Christianity is all about doctrines.
It is all about what we believe. Our lives cannot be transformed unless our
minds are first renewed by the Word of God (Rom 12:1-2).
You might think that one thing
pastors and theologians would be absolutely crystal clear about is what faith
is. Sadly, just the opposite is true. Faith appears to be a dense fog, an
impenetrable mystery for most pastors and theologians today. People
hearing them become totally confused as to what faith is."
If we are unclear about faith then
what are the ramifications? We will be
unclear or confused about what is the basis for the most important decision
related to our eternal future, our salvation.
Jesus said, "He who believes in Me
has everlasting life" (John
Zane Hodges (an excellent current
theologian) cited an 1890 book by Robert L. Dabney, a
Calvinist, in which he said that no one can be sure whether his faith is
genuine or spurious: "There is a spurious as well as a genuine faith.
Every man, when he thinks he believes, is conscious of exercising what he
thinks is faith. Such is the correct statement of these facts of consciousness.
Now suppose the faith, of which the man is conscious, turns out to be spurious
faith, must not his be a spurious consciousness? And he, being without the
illumination of the Spirit, will be in the dark as to its hollowness."
Hodges then concludes:
"Obviously, the kind of theology Dabney
represents strips believers of their grounds of assurance and dangles them over
an abyss of despair."
Over a century later, Evangelicals
today continue to repeat Dabney's contention.
Years ago there was an ad on TV by
Clairol, Only your hairdresser knows for sure. Well,
that is popular evangelical theology today.
Only God knows if your saved, have the right faith and we can never
truly know!
Typical of this type of teaching
is seen in the ministry of Dr. James White who is a leading Reformed apologist.
He regularly conducts debates in which he defends five-point Calvinism.
White's ministry is called Alpha
and Omega Ministries. Under the "Statement of Faith" on his website
we read this startling statement:
"As a result of this faith [God's gift of saving faith], based upon
the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, God justifies or makes righteous the
one who believes."
Did you pick up on the problems
there? There are 2 major issues right
off the top. First is that he's saying
that the faith that saves is a gift given by God. Is that what Eph, 2:8 says?
No! Salvation is the gift that results
or flows from faith in (eis) Christ. Remember, believe in Him and you have eternal
life! They come to this position from a
faulty understanding of the depravity of man, that is
the unbeliever. Their concept of total depravity is total inability to respond
to the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit and believe the message of the
Gospel. They fail to apply the truth that Paul teaches in Rom 4:16 that
salvation is by faith since it is the only Grace way, to have faith in the
right object, Jesus Christ, is not a work.
Secondly he says that
justification is God making the one
believing righteous. That he would maintain this error which is common Catholic error
is highly unusual. To be justified is to be declared righteous by God not made righteous.
This occurs when God sees in the one believing the imputed righteousness of
Christ!
Many more examples could be given.
The point is, for many if not most Evangelicals, faith
in Jesus is a mystery which is unknowable prior to death. One goes through life
hoping he is born again and fearing that when he dies he may end up in the hot
spot.
Don't be Confused
Faith in the Bible is precisely
what faith is in English. It is the conviction that some-thing, the object of
faith, is true.
If we look at the passage I
mentioned last week as an example concerning faith in John 11:25-27: Jesus said to her,
"I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even
if he dies, 26 and everyone
who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?" 27 She said to Him, "Yes,
Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son
of God, even He who comes into
the world."
The Lord Jesus made two simple
declarations about Himself and those who believe in Him. When He asked Martha,
"Do you believe this?" He was asking if she was persuaded that His
two declarations were true. She said she did believe what He said. (perfect tense)
There was no fuzziness here. In
order to make a passage like this complicated, one must import a foreign
meaning into the word believe (pisteuo).
Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus
also illustrates the idea of faith as simple persuasion. John
"If I have told you earthly things
and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly
things?"
No one suggests that Jesus was
revealing a mystery when He spoke of Nicodemus not believing the earthly
things. Nicodemus didn't understand what Jesus had said. Thus he was not yet
persuaded it was true.
The second reference to belief in
the same verse is speaking of the same verbal concept. Whatever believing means
when speaking of believing earthly things is the same concept as believing
heavenly things.
Clearly believing earthly things
is simply a matter of mental assent. So, too, is believing
heavenly things. There is not a single use of pistis
or pisteuo which is mysterious or unfathomable.
Believing is the conviction that
something is true. Saving faith is the conviction that the justifying message
is true: that the one who simply believes in Jesus has everlasting life.
Our works, feelings, will, and
desires play absolutely no role in whether we believe something and whether we
know we believe or not.
If believing what Jesus has
promised is not enough, then why does Jesus call people to believe Him? If
trusting Jesus is more than believing what He says, then how specifically does
one trust Jesus? And how does a person know when he has done it?
If we lose our grip on faith, then
we lose our grip on the good news. We cannot evangelize clearly if we think
faith is more than intellectual assent, that it is more than believing facts,
or that it is anything other than being convinced that the saving message is
true.
If a person defines
"believing in Jesus" as some special kind of faith, then he doesn't
believe what Jesus is saying, "He who believes in Me has everlasting life" (John 6:47). We can illustrate this
concept with two ways in which people define this special faith idea.
First there are those who say we
must make a commitment. For them special faith includes committing oneself to
serve Jesus for the rest of one's life, then Jesus was saying, "He who
commits to serve Me for the rest of his life has
everlasting life." That, of course, is not what Jesus said. That would be
justification by works. A person who believes that does not believe the saving
message.
Others focus on perseverance in
good works. For them special faith
includes perseverance in good works till death, then Jesus was saying, "He
who perseveres in good works till death has everlasting life." That is not
what Jesus said. A person who believes that does not believe the saving
message.
It seems that many people are
somehow embarrassed by Sola fide that they feel the need to dress up faith with
good works of some kind, a special kind of faith. By so doing they inadvertently pervert the good news of Jesus Christ.
Man says . . . God Says
President of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted
Haggard (charismatic) has joined forces with the Institute on Religion and
Democracy (IRD) with the purpose of getting Christian leaders to agree to be more
careful about what we say about Islam. The resulting position paper criticized
disparaging Islam by certain Christian leaders including Franklin Graham.
Further, the paper implied that we are worshipping the same God, something
faithful Muslims would vehemenently deny.
(When anyone says we worship the same God, you know that that one does not know
who the God of the Bible is.)
Man Says: Try to formulate and
celebrate common acts of worship. As Christians who worship God as Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, as instructed by our Lord Jesus, we find any worship that
omits those names and concepts of God (offensive to Muslims) to be impoverished
rather than enriched. We do not wish to strip our worship down to the point
that Muslims would find it
acceptable, nor do we require Muslims to reduce their worship to a point that
would be acceptable to Christians. It is better to worship alongside Muslims,
with them practicing what they consider to be proper worship while we
Christians observe, and vice versa, rather than trying to have a common
worship. ("Guidelines for Christian-Muslim Dialogue," Alan Wisdom,
God Says: (2 Cor.
"Can two walk together, except they be
agreed?" (Amos 3:3)