Paul's Appeal for Prayer Support - No. 6
Romans 15:30-33
RO193-01

Romans 15:30-33. Our subject is Paul's Appeal For Prayer Support, Segment Number 6. Paul closes the instructional part of his letter to the Roman Christians at the end of Chapter 15 with 2 personal prayer requests; he asks that he be delivered safely out of the hands of unbelieving Jews in Jerusalem as he delivers the Jerusalem relief fund to the starving Jewish Christians there. He also asks that the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem would cordially accept the Jewish relief fund from their gentile brethren in Asia. In time, both of these prayer requests were granted to Paul by the God whom he served. Paul wanted, he indicates, to enjoy some refreshment and rest in Rome with the believers there before going on to preach in Spain. And he's looking forward to that. He closes the main body of his letter with a benediction in which he has wished upon the Roman believers the grace of God.

God's Peace in Us

Free Grace salvation from God, we have indicated, provides first of all, peace with the Holy God through justification, which provides us with eternal fellowship. We call that the Outer Circle. Grace salvation from God, however, also includes the peace of God, secured through the confession on a moment-by-moment basis of our known sins. This to maintain our temporal fellowship, the inner circle. Peace based on a Free Grace Salvation, which is received and retained apart from all human actions, is what gives us the assurance that we are saved and that our destiny is Heaven. It is very important that you understand that.

It is not uncommon, and it happened happens on and off. It happened recently where a Christian, who is associated with the Word of God in instruction, has that gnawing edge of wonder and doubt: "Am I going to heaven?" And usually that question arises because the individual is looking for confirmation in the wrong direction. They're looking for confirmation on the basis of some experience that other Christians have had. They're looking for a confirmation on some personal mode of life, some lifestyle within themselves that they don't see.

It is important that you understand the basis of salvation so that you will know the ground of your assurance relative to that salvation. You will never have peace unless you understand that Free Grace is the means for our eternal life. Any other system is doomed. The recipient of Free grace salvation, however, once he has it can never be separated from God's family and lost again. All things in his life from that point on are directed for his good by God. That's why you should not be too pushy as a Christian. When you want to move in a certain direction, you have interests and certain ambitions in a certain direction, if God doesn't open those doors, you should understand that everything in your life now is working for good as a believer. You're under his divine surveillance and every angel of Heaven is involved with pushing forward to move you ahead to God's best.

So, you need to move with that understanding. Paul prays for a peace of assurance in eternal fellowship in the lives of the Roman Christians. And he prays for their peace in the inner circle of temporal fellowship, in their experiential peace. Paul often calls God the God of peace, meaning the source of peace. He invokes peace here at the end of this main part of his letter upon these Roman Christians, simply because that is the nature of the Christian life. If your life is not a life basically of peace, then you're out of step with God's purpose and ideal for you as a Christian. The Christian life is not turmoil. It is not fear. It is not conflict. It is not hustling, conniving, conning, yelling, screaming, fighting, grabbing, pushing, anxiety, eating your heart out and sweating it out. None of that is characteristic of the Christian life. Those are all aberrations that come into our lives as believers, and we should understand that that is all out of place.

So, now that brings us to a current theological debate. Some of you are aware of it, you've been reading the literature and the books on it, you've been asking questions and it is a very serious matter because it touches upon this very thing that at the end of Romans 15, Paul wishes for all the believers, the peace of God upon them, the assurance and the knowledge that one is indeed going to Heaven.

The Biblical Basis for Salvation

So, this brings up the subject of what is saving faith from the Bible's point of view. What is faith that really takes you into Heaven? What is the real biblical basis for salvation?

In John 6:47, the Lord Jesus Christ makes a statement about Himself that is a simple declaration that any normal intelligent person can understand. Every child can understand this verse. You could ask your children to explain this and they could probably tell you what it means. But it is now the center of a firestorm of theological debate. In this verse, Jesus says referring to Himself, the context indicates that this is about Himself, "Truly, truly. I say to you, he who believes [that is, believes in Him.] has eternal life."

"Truly, truly," those words are absolutely certain assurance statements. When you have "truly, truly," that's an indication of an absolute truth. "I say to you," the son of God says, "he who believes [that is, believes in Him,] has eternal life." On the basis of this verse, it is clear that the way to secure eternal life in Heaven is by an act of faith in Jesus Christ. He is the object by the context here of this faith. What "believing" means is to accept the Free Grace salvation offer of Jesus Christ. Saving faith, therefore, in the Bible is very simply trusting in Jesus Christ alone to save one from Hell and to destine one for eternal life in Heaven.

That's all that this verse is saying. This verse is saying 'you trust in Jesus Christ who has covered your sins with His own death upon the cross to take you into Heaven. You will get there and that's all you have to do.' As a matter of fact, that's all you must do, to add anything to this will undermine His capacity, His ground upon which He can take you into Heaven.

Free Grace Salvation

"Truly, truly. I say to you, he who believes has eternal life." The word "believes" in the Greek Bible looks like this, the Greek word "pisteuo," p i s t e u o. This word simply means "to trust without any thing added to that confidence, trust without any works added."

So, John 6:47 is a clear expression of salvation by what we will call "Free Grace." This verse clearly says salvation is the result of Free Grace, something that God gives you. You don't deserve it. As a matter of fact, you deserve the opposite. You don't earn it. It's an offer. You take it or you reject it. It's received by childlike trust in Christ for salvation.

The Reason for the Gospel of John

Now, this verse is in a gospel where the author, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has explicitly told us what his main objective was in writing this book. You'll find that in John 20:30 & 31. The main objective of writing this book, John 20:30, John says, "Many other signs therefore Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book." There were great many things that Jesus did that confirmed His deity, His claim to Messiahship, His claim to being the Savior, which have never been recorded for us. We've gotten enough to confirm, and John says there was a lot more. But verse 31 says the ones that have been selected for our recording, "these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name." The English Bible there says exactly what the Greek Bible says. This gospel was written to tell you how to go to Heaven. That was his main objective. Throughout this book, he is again and again and again telling you scores of times, literally, he tells you how to go to Heaven in this book.

The Biblical Basis for Salvation

So, therefore, this verse of John 6:47 is one of those times that is executing his main purpose of telling you how you get to Heaven. What does it say? It says, 'Free grace.' The key to salvation in the whole book of John is trusting in Jesus Christ as the divine Son of God to take us into Heaven on the basis of His atonement, which He made on the cross for all mankind.

So, there's one word to describe "pisteuo," Free Grace Salvation, get it, this word: it is the word "appropriation." In the gospel of John, again and again, you'll find that salvation is something that you appropriate, you are willing to receive. The offer is made, you say, "I accept it." The offer is made on the basis of a testimony of the living God, and you either point to that God and say, "You're not telling me the truth," or else you say, "I believe that you are a god of veracity. Since you had told me that I can be saved on the basis of trusting Christ to take me into Heaven because He's covered my sin, I will do that. I believe you and I trust in Him." That is an act of appropriation. Free grace is nothing more than an act of appropriation.

I stress that to you because there are now solid sound-in-general Bible teachers in the Christian community who say 'No, salvation is not to be described as an appropriation. It is more than just receiving from God salvation. It is more than just saying, yeah, I believe the gospel, yes, I trust in Christ. It is more than that. There's another requirement.' And we shall get to that in a moment.

However, I want to point out to you a couple of things we have already learned in the book of Romans. In Romans 4, things we have learned that confirm that salvation is an appropriation and that's all it can be: if it's more than you just accepting something from God, if it's you accepting Christ as Savior and adding something to it, whatever, then it is no longer an appropriation, it is no longer something that you receive as a gift.

In Romans 4:4-5, we read, "Now to the one who works [This is relative to salvation.], his wages is not recognized as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him, who justifies the ungodly [the Lord Jesus Christ], his faith is reckoned as righteousness." Now, that's very clear, isn't it? If you work for salvation, then salvation cannot be an appropriation of a gift. It has to be the payment of a salary that you are due, you earned it. But God doesn't work that way. Verse 5 says God works on the basis of trusting in the one who justifies God and His Son, Jesus Christ, so that that faith is recognized as righteousness. That is exactly what Abraham did.

Then later on in the Book of Romans we read that sobering verse in 11:6 where it says, "But if it is by grace [speaking here of salvation, but if it is by grace], it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise, grace is no longer grace." So, this verse says that grace and works are mutually exclusive. You can't go to Heaven by trusting in Christ as Savior and promising to live a good life. You've added to the ground of salvation. You cannot go to Heaven by saying 'I trust in Christ as Savior, I believe the gospel and I'm going to become a church member, I'm going to give funds to the church, I'm going to help the poor, ... anything you add now removes the grace basis of salvation.

And here's why that is a serious, serious problem. In Ephesians 2:8 & 9, God explains the basis upon which He will and indeed only can save a sinner: "For by grace you have been saved through faith [So, you're saved by an appropriation of the promise of God. You're being saved by grace, by a gift, through trusting in Christ.]; and that [the "that" refers to the salvation that you have received. That salvation is] not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast." That makes it very clear that God will save on the basis of grace, or he won't save you at all.

The Consequence of Adding Works to God's Perfect Salvation

OK, you start putting 2 and 2 together and I'm sure sooner or later you are going to think about the millions of people in the largest denomination in the world, the Roman Catholic Church, which teaches its people that they must earn the merit of Christ by their own good works, and at a certain point they will accumulate enough good works that God will say, 'OK, you deserve to be saved. You have demonstrated that you do deserve the merit of Christ. We will apply it to you and you may be saved. You may come into Heaven.' That is a pure works system of salvation. That's what the Protestant Reformation debate was all about. What that tells you on the basis of the Scriptures we have just looked at is that no Roman Catholic on the face of the earth today who seeks salvation on the basis of his church teaching of works to deserve the merit of Christ can possibly go to Heaven. He may be sincere. He may be dedicated. He may be very active religiously, but he's going to have the horror of opening his eyes in the Lake of Fire.

Now, even the Roman Catholic Church understands that you cannot answer the question of 'how much is enough to cover you?' Therefore, in the Middle Ages, one of the popes came up, I think it was Gregory the Great, who came up with the concept of Purgatory, and he found it someplace in one of the apocryphal books that to be sure that you are covered, you go to a holding station, a way station, a spiritual dry cleaning plant that finally finishes off whatever sin you may still not have covered by your own works.

Then one of the people on the pope's staff said that, 'You know what, Your Holiness, we can sell special masses and indulgences and church services and all kinds of good works to people that we priests will perform to help cleanse these folks in Purgatory.' What kind of a bum would not want to pay to get his mother out of Purgatory, which is a place of suffering? What kind of a low-grade ingrate would not want to get his father out of Purgatory, and from that suffering? And to this day, you may pay the church for the masses to be said, for the candles to be lit, for all the works to be done by the priestly hierarchy to help you out of Purgatory.

This is a satanic system. And while we may recoil and you may shudder from the thought that millions of Roman Catholics in their sincerity are going to end up in the Lake of Fire, that happens to be the truth on the basis of the Free Grace Salvation teachings of the Word of God secured by an act of appropriation and nothing else.

Don't make the mistake of adding to the complete sacrifice of Christ. Nothing more needs to be added or can indeed be. Any effort to do so will undermine the very basis upon which God can take you into Heaven.

The "Lordship Salvation" Concept of Saving Faith

Now, there is, in opposition to Free Grace Salvation, another approach to being saved, which is what the theological debate is all about, what the books are being written about. That is called 'Lordship Salvation.' Lordship Salvation has a totally different concept of saving faith.

We have said that the biblical teaching is Free Grace Salvation: free grace as the basis of saving faith. Saving faith is trusting in Christ as Savior without anything else. As the Lord said, you believe in me, you will have eternal life. What Lordship's salvation teachers raise is the question of how one knows for sure that he has exercised saving faith that he is going to Heaven. This is what the challenge is all about: how do you know that the faith you have is saving faith and not a deceptive faith?

You see, we have just indicated to you that Roman Catholics have a faith. Their faith is in their church. Their faith is in the teaching authority of the church. The faith is not saving faith. It is a misplaced faith. It is a faith that is in the wrong object.

So, Lordship Salvation teachers are raising the question about saving faith. And the reason for this, the thing that has brought this up, (And this is not a new idea, this goes way back.) the thing that has brought this up is here's a person: he's reared in a Christian context. (His parents are Christians. He's been surrounded by Christian instruction. He's been sheltered from the worst systems of the world, the worst corrupt evils of the world. He's been given great ideals. He's been pointed in the direction of emulating Jesus Christ to grow in His image.) yet he grows up and he lives a godless life (He's out in the world.). But way back when he was a youngster, he professed to take Jesus as his Savior. As he grew up, he was very dedicated. He was the kind of a person that did what was right, avoided what was wrong. He joined the church, received water baptism, his symbol that he has trusted and become part of Christ. All of this was done. Yet look at the way he's living now. Look at his ideals. Look at his objectives. Look at what he's doing.

So, Lordship Salvation teachers, in their agony over why Christians-so-called act like that, have come to the conclusion 'the problem is they're not Christians.' The problem, the reason they're not Christians, is because they were misdirected on how to get into the Christian life. What they mean by that is that they were told that the Bible teaches Free Grace as the basis of eternal life and all they have to do is appropriate the gift of God. That, the Lordship Salvation teachers say, is not true. They say that your confirmation of whether you are going to Heaven or not is to be found in your lifestyle, not simply in the fact that at some point in time you received Christ as your personal Savior. It is to be confirmed by your lifestyle. So, Lordship Salvation teaches that saving faith is not an act of appropriation of God's free gift.

Lordship Salvation says 'in contrast to appropriation, it is commitment. Saving grace is not an act of appropriation of the free grace of God, saving faith is not an act of appropriation of God's free grace, saving faith is a commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.' What they're saying is 'that a person to be saved must also intend, when he receives crisis Savior, to also make Him Lord.' And you've heard Preachers say this, 'receive Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord.' What they mean by that is to make a commitment that you will live a certain lifestyle.

Lordship Salvation Proponent Dr. John MacArthur

This has been brought to a head by a very good Bible teacher on the West Coast, John F. MacArthur Junior. Dr. MacArthur is a sound Bible teacher. He speaks to thousands of people every week. He has put out millions of cassette tapes. He has a wide ministry on communication media. He is well known. And basically he is a man committed to the inerrancy of Scripture and is a sound teacher of the Word of God. But he has agonized over the fact that Christians-so-called live like the devil.

One man told me that he had attended a pastor's conference here in Dallas, that Dr. MacArthur was the speaker. MacArthur was explaining why he wrote this book. He wrote a book called 'The Gospel According to Jesus,' in which he tries to deal with this subject of what is saving faith and in which he rejects Free Grace salvation and in which he establishes seeks to establish a saving faith as Lordship Salvation.

In this book, he takes to task Dallas Seminary as the hotbed of propagating Free Grace salvation. He takes to task Dr. Charles Ryrie, who wrote the Ryrie Study Bible. He takes to task Dr. Zane Hodges, one of the all-time great Bible teachers who used to be a Greek teacher at Dallas Seminary. And he takes to task Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer as the source of all this confusion. Chafer, of course, who was the preacher par excellence of the grace of God, who founded Dallas Seminary. So, MacArthur is pointing his guns at some of the all-time great teachers of the Word of God. They all are brought under his attack because they all teach Free Grace salvation. MacArthur says, "That's wrong."

When somebody of his stature and his influence says that we have to sort of give it a second thought; this is not somebody who doesn't know up from down, some TV evangelist con man who doesn't know much about the Bible at all. This man is a good teacher of the Word of God. Therefore, we have to face what he has said.

In his book, 'The Gospel According to Jesus' on page 28, he says this: "No promise of salvation is ever extended to those who refuse to accede to Christ's lordship, thus there is no salvation except Lordship Salvation." So, he makes it very clear there that salvation, that saving faith means that when you accept Christ as Savior, you also intend to live a godly life, you also intend to make Him the Lord of your life, and not only savior. The 2 are joined together.

On page 29 of his book, he says, "He does not become anyone's savior until that one receives Him for who He is, Lord of all. Acts 10:36." And of course, Jesus is Lord of all as Acts 10:36 says He is. He is Lord of the unbelievers, and He is Lord of believers. No one has to make Him Lord, really. He already is the supreme sovereign authority, which is what Lord means, over all humanity.

Repent and Believe Are Two Sides of Same Coin

Now Lordship Salvation, in order to clarify how a person is to be saved, stresses the concept of repentance of one's sins as a separate act from believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. You have heard me say many times that repentance and believing are 2 sides of the same coin. You cannot repent of your sins in the sense of abandoning them to turn to fellowship with God without believing in Jesus Christ as Savior; to repent and to believe are the same thing. You cannot believe without changing your mind about Satan, about evil, about going to Hell and everything that's involved there. When MacArthur says, "No, no, repentance is a separate act from believing," by repentance, he means total submission to the will of God as part of saving faith. So, nobody goes into Heaven, he says, who at the point of trusting in Christ does not also intend to be totally submitted to the will of God. Then we watch his life, and we see whether he has indeed demonstrated that he has totally submitted to the will of God.

So, how many of you here this morning on that basis are sure you're going to Heaven now? We know enough about you to know that that is suspect. We suspect that you know a lot more about yourself than we do to know how suspect your destiny would be on that basis. This is a very serious matter, and it is shredding Christians everywhere who have not been as well taught as you have so that a remark from even a good Bible teacher like MacArthur will just roll off you without crushing you with doubts and intimidation.

The False Premises of Lordship Salvation

What in effect then, if you will look back at John 6:47, what the Lordship Salvation teachers tell us John 6:40:7 says is something like this: 'Truly, truly. I say to you, he who repents of his sins and believes and submits totally to My will has eternal life.' Would you get that idea from reading that verse? 'Truly, truly. I say to you, he who repents of his sins and believes in Jesus Christ and submits totally to His will has eternal life.' Obviously, all of that has been read into that verse. That's not what the verse says at all! The verse is simply a Free Grace salvation declaration: 'Trust me, and I'll get you into Heaven.'

Now, Lordship Salvation teachers justify their interpretation of John 6:47 by saying that the word "believe" in the New Testament means "submission to the will of God." That is not true. That is not the meaning of the word believe. The word "pisteuo" simply means "to trust," and that's all it means. You can look it up in all the Greek lexicons you want to, consult all the linguists you want to. You'll find that the word "pisteuo," believe, means "to trust." It does not incorporate the concept of submission to the will of God in your life, that is added.

Lordship's Salvation teachers are basically, as I said, fearful that Free Grace salvation, which is clearly what John 6:47 teaches, is going to encourage licentious, immoral living. They have concluded that the reason kids grow up and act the way they do is because they have been given a wrong concept of how to be saved. They've been told that salvation is an appropriation of the grace of God, when instead they should have been told that salvation is a commitment to the will of God. Therefore, Dr. MacArthur calls Free Grace salvation, such as is taught out of Dallas seminary, he calls it "cheap grace." And the concept of believing on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, he calls "easy-believism."

The truth is that the marvelous, unconditional love of God, which is extended in free grace salvation is in fact the motivation for personal godliness. He is fearful that people are not going to act right in their lives if they are not brought to some kind of commitment at the point of their salvation. But it is the person who really knows that his sins are forgiven who is the person who is highly motivated not to insult the Lord Jesus Christ, not to ignore Him, not to forget about Him, not to live contrary to His commandments, especially since the Lord has made it very clear that if you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

What Lordship Salvation teachers have done is redefine saving faith as submission to Jesus Christ rather than simply as trusting in Him. MacArthur, on a variety of pages in his book, has these statements, (I want you to listen to these and you tell me which of these are true.) various places.

On page 135, MacArthur says, "Forsaking oneself for Christ's sake is not an optional step of discipleship subsequent to conversion. It is the sine qua non of saving faith." Is that true or is that false: you have to commit yourself to the will of God or you aren't saved.

On page 139, he says, "He is glad to give up all for the Kingdom [the believer, the sinner.]" "He is glad to give up all for the kingdom, that is the true nature of saving faith." Have you given up everything that you really should have given up in your life in order to be born again? Have you ever known someone who is an alcoholic who was genuinely born again, who has genuinely experienced saving faith and that was the end of the alcoholism? Yes. Have you known someone who has genuinely trusted in Jesus Christ as Savior, who was an alcoholic and who continued to have problems with it as a Christian after his born again? You bet you do. I don't care what sin you mentioned. For some people, salvation terminates their enslavement to that part of their sin nature. For other people, that enslavement is not immediately broken.

Let's put it in a more grim light, no more forceful context. Here's someone who's hooked on drugs. He does genuinely come to eternal life in Christ. He is genuinely born again. Is he going to wake up the next morning and be free of the craving for those drugs that he has acclimated his physical body to? And is he going to indulge it? Likely he will. Is that a sinful thing against the Temple of God the Holy Spirit, your physical body? Yes, it's just as sinful then as it was before he was saved. Does that mean he's not a Christian? Well, if he's committed himself to the will of God, then he is not going to do what God says you shouldn't do. But the truth of the matter is in experience, people are saved, and they do not yield entirely, immediately, and maybe not for a long time, and possibly never all the areas of their lives to the will of God.

On page 153 of his book, Dr. MacArthur says, "His demeanor was one of unconditional surrender, a complete resignation of self and absolute submission to his father. That is the essence of saving faith." Talking about the prodigal son, is that true?

Page 174, he says, "The concept of faith that excludes obedience corrupts the message of salvation."

On page 176 he says, "So-called-faith in God that does not produce this yearning to submit to His will is not faith at all. The state of mind that refuses obedience is pure and simple unbelief." Is that true?

None of those statements is true. Every one of those statements is a false statement concerning what constitutes saving faith on the basis of the Scriptures we've already looked at this morning. Nowhere in the Bible is salvation structured on anything but appropriation of the free grace of God. Nowhere in the Bible is a suggestion made that salvation is based upon a commitment that you will accept Christ as your Savior and then make Him Lord in your life.

Lordship Salvation, furthermore, likes to make a distinction between what they call the head belief and a heart belief. You've heard that: "Some people are not saved because they've got it up here in their head. But the people who are saved have got it right down here in their heart." Did you read about that in the Bible? The only thing I've ever read in the Bible says, "That with the heart man believes unto salvation." Romans 10:9 & 10. And obviously what the heart there means is the brain, the head, the mind, the intellect. It's with the intellect you believe the salvation. So, where does this idea of head belief and heart belief come from?

Lordship Salvation, in effect, calls for the lost sinner to make a deal with God to give him salvation. The deal is that the lost sinner says, "I'll live right. Take me in." God says, "OK, you promise to live right? I'll take you in." That in effect is what they're saying.

False faith is defined by these teachers as falling below the biblical standard of conduct for a true believer, which is pretty hard. Where do you draw the line? How much bad can you be before you've got evidence that you're not in at all? A little bit of bad, little bit of self-will, little bit of out of the will of God. How much can you be out, and then still believe you're in? You see how uncertain all this becomes?

One of the verses that the Lordship Salvation teachers point to is Matthew 7:20. I want you to look at that, Matthew 7:20. Matthew 7:20, they argue, confirms their view that salvation is a commitment to a lifestyle. "So then, you will know them by their fruits." The context of this passage, beginning in verse 15, deals with false and true teachers, and it says, "You will know them by their fruits." Lordship Salvation teachers argue that you prove your salvation by the fruits of your life: that is your conduct, your lifestyle.

But you will notice that verses 15-19 do not deal with the subject of personal conduct, does it? It does not deal with personal conduct as the fruit of your life. What it deals with is true and false doctrine. It is talking about what these false teachers are teaching and he says you'll know a false teacher by the fruit, meaning his doctrine that he teaches. This verse has nothing to do with how you live as a Christian. It has only to do with what is taught. It makes this analogy of a tree bearing good fruit as a tree, a good teacher, a true teacher who is teaching good fruit, that is true doctrine.

If you'll turn to Matthew 12:33-37, you'll see that this is confirmed: it is their doctrine that is the fruit. Matthew. 12:33, the analogy of the tree again, "Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. [Verse 34] You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart," what you're teaching. Jesus calls these false teachers a bunch of vipers spewing out their poison. [continuing in verse 35 and 36] "The good man out of his good treasure brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth what is evil. And I say to you, that every careless word that men shall speak, they shall render account for it in the day of judgment."

You're not going to get away with having propagated false doctrine and get away with it. You as Christians will lose before God at the Judgment Seat for that. So, if the Word of God teaches Dispensational Pre-Tribulation Rapture Pre-Millennialism, and you teach something contrary, you're going to answer for it. It's a serious matter to teach false doctrine. You better know what the Bible says before you get up to teach people.

Verse 37 says, "For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned." And you'll notice that He is using the analogy of the tree as good fruit/bad fruit and He attaches it to their words. It is their words which are good fruit or the words which are bad fruit. It is their false doctrine, which is bad fruit. It is true doctrine, which is good fruit. So, this passage teaches that believers can detect the false prophets by the fruit of doctrine that he teaches by their words, not by their works.

True Saving Faith

So, what is saving faith? The false idea is that true saving faith can be distinguished from false faith by the person's conduct. That is not true. There's many a genuine born-again Christian who does not live up to the standards of the Word of God. Yet he is indeed going to Heaven.

So, 2 people believe the gospel message. One of them takes off living a godly life. The other one shows no evidence of being born-again and continues in a lot of questionable ways. The fruitless person, so-called, is judged as having had only an intellectual assent to the gospel and head belief instead of a heart belief. The fruitless professor of salvation is declared to have a false faith, which has not saved him. That's the basis of Lordship Salvation.

Lordship Salvation teachers argue that what is missing in false faith is true repentance and submission to the will of God. Lordship Salvation teachers say that saving faith is not to be defined as trust in Christ alone as an acceptance of salvation, but in terms of a commitment to the will of God for salvation.

You must decide on the basis of Scripture we've shown you, which is true, not the least of which is Acts 16:31. When this poor Philippian jailer, in his desperation and his agony, said, 'Tell me, how can I go to Heaven, how can I be saved?' And what did the great apostle Paul, the great teacher of salvation, have to say? "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." He goes back to the word "pisteuo" trust. Isn't that terrible for the apostle Paul not to have told this man, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and clean up your life and thou shalt be saved, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and commit yourself to a godly lifestyle that you will be saved?' See, the idea of repentance has been interjected here where it is not in Scripture.

I want to tell you something else at this point. The gospel of John, we've already shown you, John says, 'I wrote this book to tell you how to go to Heaven.' Every time he talks about going to Heaven, he associates it with the word "believe." You know that the gospel of John never deals anywhere with the subject of repentance.

I can't understand what is in Dr. MacArthur's mind when he knows that through the whole gospel of John, John never associates repentance, he never even talks about repentance. He never associates it, let alone associates it with salvation. Yet Lordship Salvation says, 'You must have repentance and faith, or you don't go to Heaven.' Yet John has missed the boat completely then; he says he wrote the book to tell us how to go to Heaven, and then he fails to tell us the most important thing, we need to know that we have to repent of our sins with the intention of a good lifestyle or we don't go into eternal life in Heaven? Lordship Salvation, in effect, has made saving faith a deal between the sinner and God instead of a free gift to be accepted.

That kind of saving faith destroys the joy of one's Christian life obviously; you never know where you're going. And it makes it a grueling effort for you to try to prove that your faith is genuine by how you live.

But you see a false faith. When we talk about false faith, you're really talking about a misplaced faith. The Roman Catholics have a false faith. Their faith is in their church and in their hierarchy, priestly hierarchy, to take them into Heaven. That is a false faith, it is a misplaced faith.

Or a false faith is a pretended faith: somebody who has met this beautiful doll and she's a Christian, she believes the Bible, she goes to church. And this guy is a big he-man, a big cusser, smoker, drinker, hard-fisted type, but he really wants to marry this gal. And he gets the picture pretty quick: she's not going to marry me because she's a dedicated Christian. So, she says to him (She makes a foolish mistake of engaging in dating evangelism. She's going to bring him to the Lord.), 'Come to church with me.' So, he comes. He doesn't believe that hogwash for one bit. That's foolishness to him. He doesn't go for it. But he knows that this girl is never going to marry him unless he demonstrates a faith. So, if it's one of those churches where you walk the aisle to get the blue-eyed blond hair, walk down the aisle. So he makes his commitment and she says, 'Oh, thank God he is saved. I'm so happy now we can get married because he's a Christian and I'm a Christian.' The guy was a slobbering bum before he walked down the aisle. He's a slobbering bum when he gets down front and joins the church, and he slobbers in the baptistery when they baptize him. A sinner who is dry, has been made wet and nothing is changed. That, folks, is a false faith. It's a pretended faith.

But, that is not what the Word of God is dealing with. A false faith is not a real trust in Jesus Christ as Savior. It is not a matter of falling below a certain line of conduct. The word "believe" in the Greek Bible means "to trust;" it has no qualifying words; it has no qualifying conditions at all.

Lordship Salvation accuses us non-legalistic believers as teaching a cheap-grace salvation. Yet what does Revelation 22:17 say? Revelation 22:17, "And the Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' And let the one who hears say, 'Come.' And let the one who is thirsty [That is, for the waters of eternal life. Let the one who is thirsty] come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost." "Let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost." Now, you tell me, is that free grace salvation in that verse or is that Lordship Salvation? Is that an appropriation of a gift from God, or is that a commitment to God as to how you will live if he saves you? This offer is free, but it is not cheap grace, because our Lord paid for it dearly. And it is an insult to God to call the Free Grace salvation that His Son has paid for "cheap grace."

Lordship Salvation also accuses us non-legalistic believers of easy believism for salvation. Hard-believism, apparently, is to commit yourself to a lifestyle as a Christian. Taking the water of life is easy. It only requires an act of faith in Christ to receive it. Lordship Salvation has actually complicated being saved with the additions of all your human good intentions.

And the third thing that we are accused of as non-legalistic believers is of intellectual assent for salvation. By that they mean that we have a detached acceptance of the gospel with no personal involvement. Intellectual assent is used to connote a tolerance of a view which one just goes along with without conviction.

There are a lot of things people believe and we say, 'OK, if you say so.' We go along with it, we'll accept it intellectually, but we don't have a personal conviction on it.

Well, in the Bible, salvation is based entirely on an act of the intellect. It is believing or not believing in what God has said about His saving you. People know whether they believe something and whether they don't believe something. They know whether they believe in something that they will trust themselves to it.

You find a little hernia; you got a broken muscle. You go to your doctor, he says, 'Yes, here this is. You know, your body is like a balloon sac inside. Sometimes those muscles get broken and stretched and pop out. Then you have to go in there and sew them up. I've done it 500 times. I'll do it. It'll cost you so much.' But you go to your friend, who is a student of medicine. He's read books. He says, 'Yes, that's exactly right. No problem. You just cut it open, sew the muscle up, I'll do it for 50 bucks and I'll do just as good a job as that guy that's done it 500 times.' Now, you know whether you believe him or not, don't you? You don't have to get all complicated as to whether you believe him or not. The ultimate demonstration of your faith is whether you put yourself under his knife for 50 bucks.

You know what believing is? It is not that complex as Lordship Salvation is trying to make it. People know whether they believe in something in terms of whether they are really ready to trust themselves to it or not. What God considers is the distinction between faith and unbelief toward His Son. You can believe something without accepting it willingly or even emotionally.

Yes, Lordship Salvation says saving faith has to be not only what you believe, but you have to have an emotional attachment and you have to have a movement of your will. Well, I believe a lot of things that I don't get too hot about that I wish weren't true. I have to do some things that I believe I must do, which I'm not really willing to do. So, that's not true, that your will and your emotions always have to be there.

There is no saving faith without knowing the gospel. We've learned that in the Book of Romans. Whatever else we say, you cannot be saved, the Bible says, if you don't know the gospel. That, to me, suggests very clearly that salvation is a matter of a decision of the mind. Romans 10:14 says, "How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?"

Romans 10:17 says, "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." You are saved on the basis of hearing the gospel. This is an act of the intellect which accepts the gospel of the grace of God. It is an inward conviction. This is believing that the testimony of God about Jesus Christ and about salvation through Him is true. That is what the Bible means by saving faith. Saving faith is simply taking God at His word, as is expressed so beautifully in 1 John 5:9-13. "If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for the witness of God is this, that He has borne witness concerning His Son. The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son. And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life." On what basis? On the basis of the fact that they believe that God does not lie when He says, "Trust in my Son, He's covered your sins. He will take you to Heaven. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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