April 3, 2023 Show with Phil Johnson on “The New Wave of Opposition to Lordship Salvation”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

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Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this third day of April, 2023.

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I'm thrilled to have back a returning guest. I'm not 100 % sure if he still holds the number one rank for most listened, or should

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I say most interviewed guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. He did hold that for a long time, but I guess I gotta do some checking to see if he is still in that position.

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It's been a long time, for some reason, that we've had him on the program. That was no intention of mine.

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I guess the busyness of life and the hecticness of Phil's schedule has kept him off the air program, but I'm thrilled he's back on.

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I'm speaking of Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You, the media ministry of world -renowned pastor, author, conference speaker, and radio and television

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Bible teacher, Dr. John MacArthur. Today we're going to be addressing something extremely important, the new wave of opposition to lordship salvation coming from very unlikely sources.

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It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Phil Johnson. Hey, good to be back,

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Chris. Thanks for having me. And if you could, I think it would be wise to start the program with a definition of lordship salvation, which is a phrase that I believe came into vogue in the 1980s, and if I'm not mistaken,

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I could be wrong on this, but if my memory serves me right, this term lordship salvation actually began as a pejorative term against those

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Christians like John MacArthur and you and I, who believe that repentance is an absolutely essential element of salvation, and then that pejorative term, like many others throughout history, like even the term

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Calvinist was a pejorative term at one time, and now those who are Calvinists love to wear that as a label, at least often they do, there are some that don't.

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But we could go on with other examples of that, but am I right there as far as the origins of lordship salvation as a term?

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Yeah, that's right. I think the term actually dates back to at least the early 1970s, and I think the person who coined it was

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Ray Stanford, who was, I think, the founder, but he was certainly the president of a

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Bible college in South Florida, in Miami, I believe, and this was a particular interest of his.

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He wrote books about the gospel and argued consistently that the faith that's saved must be a kind of notional faith, that it has to be devoid of any call to repentance or the forsaking of sin.

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It was the most antinomian of antinomian views, and it turned out he was actually living a moral failure before he died, and that is a common experience of some of the most outspoken voices championing what

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I would call the no lordship view. It's a kind of antinomianism that suggests that the faith that saves might be without works, without fruit, might be totally fruitless and not even persevering faith, and yet if you've ever for a moment believed or asked

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Jesus into your heart or whatever the minimal requirement they can think of is, then they believe you have a full right to assurance of your salvation, and anyone who teaches otherwise, they will accuse of teaching lordship salvation, which they claim is a system of works.

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And it makes me cringe when I think that there are people who profess to be disciples of Christ Jesus the

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Lord that would have a problem with something called lordship salvation. It's quite bizarre.

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Yeah, well, in fact, the most fundamental of all

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Christian confessions is just that. Jesus is Lord, and you know, Scripture says one day every tongue will make that confession, and it's so basic to faith in Christ to acknowledge that he is

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Lord. He has a right to rule us. I would say anyone who wants to eliminate his lordship from the definition of who he is and where he stands with regard to those who are believers, if you want to get rid of the idea of lordship, then

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I would say you've got a different Jesus, because the Jesus that we worship is Lord, and he does have a right to demand our obedience.

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Yes, and we should probably forsake of not being misunderstood, even though we are strongly opposed to the heresy of this anti -lordship group.

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They are not saying in their denial of lordship salvation that they do not believe Jesus Christ is indeed the

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Lord. They believe in the deity of Christ, most of them, of course, and the trinity and all of that kind of thing, but they are saying that to require that a sinner bow the knee to Christ as Lord and live under his lordship, a life of repentance and obedience, obviously, as best is humanly possible on this earth when we consider that every one of us is a sinner.

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That is what they are objecting to. Yes, though they do use language like, you need to make

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Jesus Lord, as if it's your prerogative to make him Lord or not. In fact, they have kind of an upside -down view of what sin, salvation, and faith is, so that it actually makes the sinner kind of sovereign, because he either makes

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Jesus Lord or he doesn't, and Christ is supposedly at his mercy. You can decide when you want to make

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Jesus Lord. That's the exact language they use. So while they would, you're right, they would at least in a theological confessional way acknowledge that Jesus is

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Lord, they think it's perfectly fine for a Christian to live his life, well, not perfectly fine, not to suggest that they approve of this, but that it's possible for a person who is genuinely saved, born again, regenerate, it is possible for him to live his life, the rest of his life, as if he doesn't care for or acknowledge or desire to obey the

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Lordship of Christ. Yes, in fact, an extremely popular pastor, radio and television teacher, and author in the

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United States especially, but perhaps globally, Charles Stanley, in his book on eternal security,

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I can't even remember how long ago that came out, but it was quite a long time ago, maybe 20 years or more, he actually said or wrote in the book that someone could be saved in genuineness, in other words, it's not just an empty profession or something, they could be truly born again, and immediately after that born again experience, turn their backs on God and live in rebellion against him for the entirety of their lives, and when they die, we can expect to see them in heaven, because their original faith alone profession was all that was needed, and that is,

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I remember when I read that from his book with my own eyes, this is not hearsay,

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I was truly dismayed and disheartened that somebody of such prominence in the body of Christ would hold such a horrific and heretical position.

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Right, it is, at the bottom of the, at the end of the day, this is simply a denial of the perseverance of the saints, they're saying that you might have faith for a moment, and that's enough to guarantee that you'll go to heaven, but you can abandon the faith, you can renounce

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Christ, you can turn away completely, and still, because you had that moment of faith, you're supposedly entitled to assurance that you will go to heaven.

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I posed this question once to one of the well -known teachers of the no lordship view, suppose

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I said, you've got an individual who attends a debate, let's say it's a debate between our mutual friend

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James White, who's a theist, and someone who is not a theist, an atheist or an agnostic, and so they're debating the existence of God, James gives his presentation first and argues persuasively for not only the existence of God but the lordship of Christ, the truth of the gospel, and so this person who's auditing the debate listens to it and says, that's reasonable,

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I think he's right, I believe it, then the atheist gets up, and this guy finds his arguments persuasive, and so he abandons the faith, he only believed for maybe 10 minutes, is he saved, is he a

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Christian, will he end up in heaven, and the fellow I was talking to said yeah, if he genuinely believed for those 10 minutes, he will.

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So, the irony is, I was having a dispute with someone on the internet, where most disputes are born, and this person was accusing me of teaching a work salvation, since I believed in the necessity of repentance for salvation, and we were going back and forth, and I said something that stopped this person in their tracks, and they ceased to respond to me.

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I said to that person, you believe that to add repentance to faith is a heresy that is not only a serious and grievous offense to God, but you also believe it's damnable, and I said, so what you're saying is, the only thing that people should repent from is believing in repentance as being necessary?

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Because they must believe that, am I right? If they think that we must turn from this theology, they're saying that we must repent of it.

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Yeah, I think it was Charles Ririe who first, actually in a book he wrote in the 1960s, balancing the

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Christian life, he has a chapter at the end titled, Must Jesus be Lord to be

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Savior? And in that chapter, he makes the comment that there are these two views, one, you have to yield to the

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Lordship of Christ and repent, or number two, you just believe with a kind of notional faith, and that's sufficient, and he said one of these two is a false gospel, and therefore comes under the curse of Galatians 1, verses 8 and 9, which is the strongest curse the

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Apostle Paul ever penned, basically saying, if you hold to this version of the—a wrong version of the gospel, then you're damned.

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And so, in effect, that's what Ririe was saying. If you don't share this view that repentance is something extraneous and additional and not part of the actual gospel message, and by repentance, he would have put an asterisk there,

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Ririe would have, and said, if you mean repentance as simply a change of mind about who

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Jesus is, then okay, I'll allow it. But, Ririe said, if you believe repentance is a willingness to turn from sin, a newfound hatred of sin and love for Christ, if that's what you mean, then you're adding a work to salvation, and that's a damnable false gospel.

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So, he was the one who sort of drew the line between the two views. I wouldn't even hold it that strongly.

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I do think that antinomianism is a deadly danger and it leads a lot of people into false professions of faith, but I wouldn't say everybody who's ever held that view wasn't a true believer while he held that view.

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I think it's possible for people to be theologically confused and mix things up without being guilty of, you know, damnably corrupting the gospel.

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But I have to say, some of the extreme versions of no lordship doctrine come awfully close to corrupting the gospel so much that I would say anybody who defends or, you know, proclaims that gospel and holds to it even after biblical correction, then

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I would wonder whether he's genuinely a believer or not. By the way, interestingly enough, our mutual friend,

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Dr. William Webster, who is going to be one of the speakers at my upcoming

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Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio free pastor's luncheon on Thursday, April 13th, 11 a .m.

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to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, and also one of the speakers at a three -day

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Bible conference that I'm running at the church of a friend of yours,

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Pastor Josh Miller, Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg. Dr. Webster and Rev.

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David T. King are the speakers at that as well. But interestingly enough, Bill wrote a book that is in print and available with that same exact title that you just mentioned,

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Must Jesus be Lord to be Savior? But obviously his answer to that question is an absolute yes with ten exclamation points.

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Yeah. In fact, I've never met Bill Webster, but I've known of him for a long time. If I'm not mistaken, he was writing on this issue prior to the 1980s.

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People look at this and think John MacArthur's book, The Gospel According to Jesus, was the watershed, and it was.

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It actually was the moment that brought this issue to the forefront of the lordship debate.

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But there were people, including Bill Webster, who were writing on the issue before John MacArthur ever published anything on it.

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And in fact, it goes back to the 1950s. Eternity Magazine ran an article with that same title,

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Must Jesus be Lord to be Savior? That was a kind of written debate between, as I recall, it was

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John Stott on the lordship side and somebody else, I don't remember who, on the no lordship side.

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But the guy who was arguing for no lordship took a much milder position than any of today's antinomians do.

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But I think that article in Eternity Magazine is what first stirred the waters on this issue and had people discussing it.

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No, that was the magazine of the late James Montgomery Boyce, wasn't it? Yes, that's right. Well, actually, I think it was

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Donald Gray Barnhouse who founded it. And perhaps we should also define a word you have repeated, antinomianism.

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The very word itself means anti -law, but please explain how that is relevant to the discussion here.

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Yeah, I would define antinomianism as, well, there are various varieties of antinomianism.

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Some of them, the most sinister ones, and what people, sadly, what people usually think when they hear the word antinomian is someone who just absolutely violates the law of God in everything he does and really doesn't care about it.

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There are milder versions of antinomianism, and I think they're still wrong. They usually start with the notion that the moral law of God is of no ongoing significance to believers.

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So the Ten Commandments, they were for an older dispensation or for the Old Testament only. And so we, as Christians, don't really need to worry about the application of the

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Ten Commandments as the Ten Commandments, that the Lord placed all

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Ten Commandments with a simple law, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. It's a confused and confusing view.

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It's true that the first and second great commandment absorb and more or less condense, yeah, it's a condensed statement of the entire moral law of God.

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But the fact that Jesus gave us the commandment to love doesn't render the Ten Commandments insignificant.

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There are a number of moral precepts from the Old Testament that are not repeated in the New Testament, and yet they're applicable to us.

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I would say the strictures against bestiality, for example.

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If you say every law in the Old Testament is abrogated so that it doesn't apply in the

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Christian era, what do you do about the sin of bestiality?

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Because that's not specifically named anywhere in the New Testament. So I think a more careful view would be to say, you know, the moral precepts of the

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Old Testament are still relevant to us today. It's the ceremonial aspects of the law that have been fulfilled in Christ and therefore kind of abrogated.

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It's not so much that they were done away, but that they were fulfilled and ongoing principles in Christ.

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But the moral laws that apply to our behavior, particularly in the realm of, you know, sexual morality and how we express love for one another, things like that, those are still applicable to Christians.

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And yet there have always been varieties of evangelical teaching that try purposely to minimize the importance of law.

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And today you have people who chafe so much at the idea that there is still a use for the moral law in the

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Christian life. They chafe so much at that that if they hear a preacher even repeat one of the imperatives of Scripture, any of the commands, they will accuse him of preaching law rather than gospel.

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My position would be the law is a prelude to the gospel. The fact that you cite commands and actually tell people that some of the commands of the law are binding on us, that doesn't negate the truth of the gospel.

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The law still serves its purpose to show our sin and to teach us what righteousness is.

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It's not the gospel, and it needs to be kept distinct from the gospel, and the two shouldn't be blended.

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But the law is nevertheless still a prelude to the gospel, and it's perfectly appropriate for preachers of the gospel.

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If they're going to preach the full counsel of God, there is a place for the proclamation of the principles of law as well.

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By the way, folks, if you think Phil is on a game show right now, and you're hearing a ding every time he gets an answer correctly, you're mistaken.

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I think Phil has his phone off of silence, and he's getting texts. Yeah, I'm sorry about that.

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It's actually my computer picks up text messages, and I tried to silence it before we came on, but I couldn't figure out how to do it.

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If I silence the notifications, it silences you.

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I can't hear you. Okay, that's fine. I'd rather deal with the dinging than anything else. And this really is based, it seems, on a total misunderstanding.

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I'm going to bring up a very well -known figure. I don't know actually how well -known he is today, but during the 80s and 90s, he was really a famous evangelical.

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I'm not going to mention his name because I believe he must have changed his opinion. He had a major television show that eventually featured

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John MacArthur and D. James Kennedy and R .C. Sproul on it to oppose the

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Evangelicals and Catholics Together document. But one time years ago at a conference that he was leading,

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I approached him during a break, and I asked him, when are you going to get John MacArthur on your show to perhaps even debate lordship salvation?

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And he said, well, you know, I love John. I've loved him for a long time, but I don't know how he could possibly have an answer to a

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Roman Catholic who is defending his religion. And I said, what are you talking about? He said, well, John's teaching that works need to be added to faith for salvation.

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I said, no, he's not. You've got to reread the book, The Gospel According to Jesus. He makes it clear in there that that's not what he's saying.

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And I'm assuming that that individual did realize he was wrong since he did invite

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John and those other men on the show. But it seems that is the crux of the issue.

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People are, on the one hand, they have perhaps a good and right and godly and biblical desire to protect and preserve one of the pillars of the

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Christian faith, justification by faith alone. But they do so in an unbiblical manner and wind up regurgitating an equally dangerous heresy to works righteousness.

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And that is a works absence salvation where they are even going as far as saying that works aren't even a necessary evidence.

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And what we are saying is that works in no way add to the merit for our salvation that Christ himself alone provided when he died a perpetuatory sacrifice on Calvary for his people.

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We are not saying that human's works are adding to that or helping to save or helping to keep saved anyone.

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We're saying that they're just the fruits of genuine saving faith. Am I right here? Yes, that's right.

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And in fact, the whole idea that repentance is some kind of works -based addition to faith misses the point that repentance is something

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God grants. It's repentance is not a meritorious human work any more than faith itself is.

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And in fact, repentance, I properly understood repentance is simply the flip side of faith.

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You can't have faith without repentance, and you can't have repentance without faith. It's turning.

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To repent is to turn from sin. To believe is to turn to Christ. And it's one turning.

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So it's two sides of the same thing. And scripture often blends repentance with faith.

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And when Jesus came preaching and when John the Baptist came preaching, that was the first word of every sermon both of them gave, repent.

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They weren't calling for a work. They were calling people to faith. And scripture also says that God has granted repentance to the

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Gentiles. If you understand repentance as something God grants, that should correct you from the false notion that it's some kind of meritorious human work.

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That's the difficulty. And the same with any aspect of our faith.

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Paul says that those who don't love the Lord Jesus Christ, let them be accursed. Well, that lets me know that in some way, a love for Christ is part and parcel of genuine faith.

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If you love, if you believe, you will love Christ. If you truly believe savingly, then love for Christ is one of the fruits.

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And that's true of all the rest of our works. All we are saying is that if faith is genuine, it will bear fruit.

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The works are the fruit of faith. They're not faith itself. They're not part of the definition of faith.

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They aren't a prerequisite to faith. They aren't a condition for justification in any way.

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But they are a necessary and inevitable fruit of genuine faith.

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And different people will bear different amounts of fruit. Always, someone wants to ask the question, well, how much?

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How much fruit? And that's an insane question. There just needs to be fruit.

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In some cases, the thief on the cross, I would say, bore a fairly paltry amount of fruit.

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He simply recanted and repented of his former mockery of Christ and asked him for mercy.

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Is there fruit in that? Yes. It shows that his heart was changed. And nobody's saying, well, you have to do a certain amount or a certain number or a certain kind of good works.

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Simply saying what the Apostle James says, that faith without works is dead. It's not true faith.

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And so we stand by that. And we're going to our first commercial break if you have a question for Phil Johnson on this very vital theme of lordship salvation.

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And when we come back, we'll be getting into the second part of that theme, the new wave of opposition to lordship salvation coming from very unlikely sources.

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Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence.

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Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you are of one opinion or another and your church is in disagreement with you and you don't want to identify yourself quite just yet, or perhaps you're the pastor and you have a disagreement with your elders or your denomination over these issues.

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Well, we understand that you'd want to remain anonymous, but it's just a general theological question. Please give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Phil Johnson right after these messages. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.

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G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching, writing about and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

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That's royaldiadem .com and mention Chris Arns and Avariantrip and Zion Radio. We're now back with Phil Johnson, the

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Executive Director of Grace to you, and we are discussing the new wave of opposition to lordship salvation coming from very unlikely sources.

39:26

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you have a question, make sure you give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

39:32

Only remain anonymous if your question is personal and private. Before I go on to have you unveil the unlikely sources that the new opposition is coming from, traditionally, ironically, most of the most vociferous and even at times especially in the past, nasty and hateful rhetoric coming against lordship salvation has been coming from dispensationalists which ironically

40:07

John MacArthur is one. Obviously not the same brand of dispensationalism, but that seemed to be at least initially in the 80s where the uproar was primarily coming from.

40:20

And is there anything inherent in dispensationalism that would create such a hatred for this concept of lordship salvation or is this just what you might call a coincidence?

40:34

What's the deal there? Yeah, well, I think a lot of the early dispensationalists, including

40:40

C .I. Schofield and Lewis Ferry Chaffer. Chaffer was, of course, the theological grandfather to Dallas Theological Seminary, which is a dispensationalist school.

40:55

And so he sowed the seeds of this, and Charles Ryrie picked it up, and then Zane Hodges took it about as far and extreme as you could possibly take it, and all of them were connected with Dallas Seminary.

41:08

And so was this brand of antinomianism, the no lordship doctrine.

41:13

So much so that when James Montgomery Boyce, who also was a kind of dispensationalist like John MacArthur, when he wrote about this, he referred to it as the

41:23

Dallas Doctrine. It was so closely connected with Dallas Seminary. So it was originally an intramural debate between dispensationalists, old -line dispensationalists, who followed the

41:38

Schofield notes or Clarence Larkin's charts or Lewis Ferry Chaffer's systematic theology.

41:45

They tended to be on the no lordship side, and some of them took it like Zane Hodges did to almost ludicrous extreme.

41:54

And that's what John MacArthur was writing about with the Gospel According to Jesus. In recent years, it seems to me that at least the noisiest opponents to lordship salvation are coming from the opposite end of the spectrum, from a brand of Reformed theology that also seems to be touting a strain of antinomianism.

42:17

Yeah, that is exactly the new wave that I was hinting at before. And this new wave of opposition from Reformed Christians or professedly

42:28

Reformed Christians, is this also some kind of a warped attempt at preserving sola fide and sola gratia in a very wrong way, in a misguided way?

42:44

What is the story there? Because every Reformed Christian that is historically accurate in their identifying as Reformed is a person who believes in perseverance and preservation of the saints.

42:59

So it seems like quite a bizarre development for Reformed Christians to be in any way opposing this lordship salvation.

43:10

Yeah, I don't know how to reconcile it either. I do think that they have a skewed perspective of what sola fide entails.

43:19

Sola fide simply means that faith is the sole instrument of our justification. The principle of sola fide, although it translates to the words faith alone, sola fide historically is not arguing that a

43:35

Christian can go through life on the basis of his faith and never bear any works or stay in rebellion to the lordship of Christ for, you know, ridiculously prolonged times.

43:49

All of the Reformed confessions of faith recognize that, yeah, Christians who don't make use of the means of grace as they should can fall into sin and even remain there for a time, for an embarrassing amount of time.

44:06

I mean, you look at David in the Old Testament, and I think between the time he sinned with Bathsheba and his repentance had to be at least a year.

44:16

So it's possible to fall into sin and pursue a course of sin for a long time, but what

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Reformed theology teaches is the perseverance of the saints that ultimately our faith will triumph over our sin, that if you have genuine faith, the

44:32

Holy Spirit is at work in you and greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world, and you won't be able to persist in prolonged sin without facing the discipline of the

44:46

Lord, and you also won't be able to do it, and you shouldn't be able to do it, and have any sense of the security of your assurance.

44:59

If you sin, and if you're sinning willfully, that ought to shatter your assurance. It doesn't necessarily mean you're not saved, but it does mean you can't be as confident of your salvation as someone who is following the

45:13

Lordship of Christ. Yeah, go ahead. Well, going along with that, the reality of someone being among God's elect, the true number of those people is known only to God, and the individuals are only known to God infallibly, but while we live here on this earth and we function as a church, we only have the profession and the lives of those who profess to be our brethren to go by, whether to consider them truly saved.

46:00

Now, even though a person who is living in rebellion, and it may be a temporary period of rebellion, of course at the time that they're demonstrating that, we don't know that, because for all we know, they could be on the path to continuing that way for decades until they die, but while they're in the process of being in rebellion, or in the state of being rebellion, we as Christians are commanded by God to treat them as unbelievers, even though, as I said, they may be in reality among God's elect, and they themselves should find no comfort that they are truly born again, while they're still in rebellion.

46:42

Am I getting this right here? Yeah, that's right, and in fact, I think you asked what would cause someone with a

46:50

Reformed background and an understanding of Reformed theology to embrace this kind of antinomianism.

46:57

I think the doctrine of assurance looms large in these discussions, because one of the things they want to do is not make assurance so difficult to achieve that nobody can do it.

47:11

The Puritans had a tendency to do this. You read certain Puritan works, and they set the bar of assurance so high that I don't know how anybody sitting under that kind of preaching nonstop could ever achieve assurance.

47:25

And then the question comes up, where do we look for assurance? What is the ground of my assurance?

47:31

Is it my own works, or is it the work of Christ? And the answer to that, and for anyone who knows the gospel, is obvious.

47:37

It is the work of Christ. Christ is the one I look to, not only for salvation, but for assurance and the promises of Christ, that He would save those who believe.

47:50

But then I also have to face the question, how do I know that my faith is real? How do I know that I am not a temporary believer, someone with temporary faith, non -saving faith, a kind of notional faith that would be like Judas, who pretended to believe and probably gave a credible confession of faith—certainly did, because when

48:10

Jesus said one of them was going to betray Him, all of the other disciples suspected themselves before they suspected

48:19

Judas. And yet He fell away, and He fell away in a way that's permanent, that makes clear, as Jesus said, it would have been better for Him if He hadn't been born.

48:28

So how do I know that my faith is the faith of Peter and not the faith of Judas?

48:34

And to a certain degree, that requires self -examination, and Scripture even includes this commandment, examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.

48:43

And this sort of rigid antinomianism says you can't possibly examine yourself to see whether you're in the faith, because the minute you start looking at yourself, then you're trusting your own works.

48:54

I think that's a kind of pedantic overstatement that doesn't do justice to the full -orbed teaching of sanctification in Reformed theology.

49:07

And the person who's dealt with this the best, I think, with the clearest understanding of this is Joel Beakey.

49:13

I recommend his books on assurance. He did his doctoral work on the subject, and he dealt with this very issue and points out that there is a significant difference in flavor, not necessarily in doctrine, but in flavor.

49:30

You have a distinct difference between how, say, the magisterial

49:35

Reformers, Calvin and Luther and all, dealt with assurance. They were ministering to people coming out of Roman Catholicism who thought assurance was impossible.

49:47

And so when they talked about assurance, they made it as easy as possible. The Puritans, on the other hand, were dealing with lots of people who had a kind of spurious faith.

49:58

They professed faith in Christ, but their lives didn't reflect any devotion to Christ.

50:05

And so when they talked about assurance, they tended to make it hard. And that difference,

50:11

I don't think, was as much a difference. Some people look at that and say, yeah, the Puritans actually departed from the original

50:19

Reformed theology. I think it just had a different emphasis, and it's possible to go overboard either way.

50:26

It's possible to make assurance seem—what you teach is so superficial that it seems like anybody who, you know, sits on his mommy's lap and says a prayer to ask

50:38

Jesus in his heart has a right to assurance. I've met people who believe that. And then it's possible to go so far the other direction, that you set the bar of one's personal obedience so high that you destroy the assurance of weak believers.

50:54

My goal would be to do neither, but I want to do justice to the lordship of Christ in the process and also be fair with what

51:03

Jesus said Himself about the duties of discipleship. Now, if anybody who defends this anti -lordship salvation heresy were to have a friend—let's say this man is engaged to a woman, and let's hope he's engaged to a woman—and this woman is habitually cheating on this man sexually.

51:39

She hardly spends time with him at all. She is constantly humiliating him in public, tearing down his manhood.

51:52

She steals from him as often as she can. She says vile and horrific things about his family.

52:02

And I could go on and on and on, and people were to say to this man, you've got to call off this engagement.

52:10

This woman does not love you. Oh yes, she does. She tells me that she loves me, so I know she loves me.

52:15

You would think that that man is insane. Is there really any difference when it comes to an infinitely more important issue than how we are to determine the profession of an alleged

52:27

Christian who says he loves Christ? If they are living in such a way that defies that claim, why on earth should we believe them?

52:40

Yeah, and in fact that's an interesting—you just gave a hypothetical. Let me give you a real -life scenario. I have a book in my library written by a guy who opens the book—I think it's a book on assurance, as I recall—but he opens the book with a story of a friend of his who was a pastor, all right?

52:57

And can you pick up where you left off there? Because we have to go to our midway break, but don't forget, this is the book.

53:04

And if anybody wants to join us again, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -S -E -N at gmail .com.

53:11

Don't forget, folks, the midway break is always a bit longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize

53:25

Iron Troupe and Zion Radio and all of their programming geographically to Lake City, Florida.

53:30

They do so with their own public service announcements and other local things that they air in the middle of the show, while we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials.

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Use this time wisely. Please write down as much of the contact information provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers, even if it just means you're saying thank you for sponsoring

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Iron Troupe and Zion Radio. And also, of course, send in questions to Phil Johnson to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

53:59

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Phil Johnson. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

54:18

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

54:26

G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I have been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

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I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

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And there's more great news. Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can get you a 30 % discount off the registration fee.

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Chris Arnson, I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd at the

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Go to g3min .org and enter promo code G3ISIR for your 30 % discount off the registration fee.

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I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

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Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

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It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

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For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

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Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sent you. Hello, my name is

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Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Ovinio, and thanks for listening. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron radio,

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Before I return to my guest, Phil Johnson, and our very important subject today,

01:10:34

The New Wave of Opposition to Lordship Salvation Coming from Very Unlikely Sources, I just have a couple of very important announcements to make.

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click support, then click click to donate now. Also, a reminder to all men in ministry leadership, you are invited to a free pastor's luncheon, the next

01:12:48

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio biannual pastor's luncheon, which will be held Thursday, April 13th, 11 a .m.

01:12:54

to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, featuring two speakers,

01:13:00

Dr. William Webster, who is a pastor in Battleground, Washington, and a Banner of Truth author, and also

01:13:06

Reverend David T. King, who is a pastor in Katy, Texas, and a co -author of Dr.

01:13:12

Webster's. This is absolutely free, so you're going to be fed spiritually for free, physically for free, and everybody in attendance is going to receive a heavy sack of brand new books selected personally by me, donated by Christian publishers all over the

01:13:29

United States and United Kingdom, including a donation that is on the way to us from Grace to You Ministries, thanks to our guest and my friend,

01:13:37

Phil Johnson, who has donated 100 copies of a book I selected by John MacArthur.

01:13:43

Well, if you'd like to attend this event, just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line.

01:13:51

It's absolutely free of charge. Also, for the three days following that luncheon, Friday the 14th,

01:13:57

Saturday the 15th, and Sunday the 16th of April, there will be a three -day Bible conference at a different church,

01:14:03

Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, also featuring Dr. William Webster and David T.

01:14:09

King. The theme of that conference is the gospel removed by Rome, rescued by the

01:14:16

Reformers, and rejected by modern evangelicals. If you'd like to register for that conference, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:14:24

and put conference in the subject line or put conference and luncheon in the subject line if you're going to both, and let me know how many people are planning to attend either or both of those events.

01:14:36

So we look forward to seeing you there April 13th for the luncheon in Loisville, Pennsylvania, and the 14th through the 16th in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

01:14:45

And last but not least, if you are not a member of a biblically faithful church, a Christ -honoring, doctrinally solid, theologically sound church, no matter where you live on the planet

01:14:55

Earth, I have extensive lists spanning the globe of biblically faithful churches, and I've helped many people in our audience find churches no matter where they live on the planet

01:15:04

Earth, sometimes within just a couple of minutes from where they live. So if you are in that predicament, you do not have a biblically faithful church where you are a member, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:15:14

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Phil Johnson, our guest today on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, who is discussing the new wave of opposition to lordship salvation coming from very unlikely sources.

01:15:30

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We do have quite a number of people who are waiting to have their questions asked and answered, but before we go to them, and even before I go to Phil regarding the point he was trying to make about a book that he has, and this was in response to an analogy

01:15:52

I gave, which I'll repeat in a moment, but Phil, we can't let the two hours fly by without mentioning the

01:16:00

G3 conference, since they are faithful advertisers on this program, and since I love that conference, and I look forward to it every year, and I man an exhibitor's booth there every year.

01:16:12

Tell us about this next one coming up in September where you are one of the many featured speakers on the sovereignty of God.

01:16:20

Yeah, the G3 conference is my favorite conference after the Shepherds conference.

01:16:25

I have to say that because the Shepherds conference, you know, is posted right, and it really is my favorite week in the year, the

01:16:32

Shepherds conference, because I'm able to connect with so many pastors, people in some cases

01:16:37

I've known for years. It's just a delight to be there, but the G3 conference is in its own way even better because it's not just pastors, it's lay people, and the organizers of G3 have an uncanny knack for, you know, choosing some of the best, most conservative, most articulate speakers.

01:17:01

It's a week of just profound blessing, and you're always there.

01:17:08

That's always good. I get to see you there, and it's just a great week.

01:17:13

It's in Atlanta, and I think this year it's in the convention center that is adjacent to the

01:17:20

Atlanta airport, so that you don't even need to rent a car. If you fly in, you can take the airport transport right over to the venue, and it's just an extremely convenient, well -planned conference.

01:17:34

I love it. I've been going to G3 for five or six, maybe seven years, and I look forward to it every year.

01:17:42

It isn't every year anymore. They do it every other year, so we've had a year without it, and that's going to make this year even better.

01:17:50

Now, are you saying that they're returning to the first venue in Atlanta that they used? Yeah. Oh, wow.

01:17:57

You know, I'm happy about that. Yeah. Yeah, no, me too. I thought the venue they had last time was bigger, but the acoustics were difficult to hear.

01:18:08

It wasn't as convenient. It was in downtown LA, or downtown Atlanta, and so I'm happy to go back to the original venue.

01:18:18

They'll be using more space than before, because I think they're expecting an enrollment of in excess of 7 ,000 people.

01:18:25

Oh, yeah. The last number I got from Virgil Walker is 8 ,500. Wow. Well, it will be the biggest conference

01:18:31

I've ever spoken at, which makes me a little nervous. And it's on the sovereignty of God, and just to whet the appetite of our listeners, not only is

01:18:41

Phil Johnson going to be speaking there, but Vody Baucom, Stephen Lawson, Paul Washer, Dr.

01:18:48

James R. White, Mike Riccardi, Justin Peters, Ken Han, Owen Strand, James Coates, who is the pastor from Canada who was arrested and made global news because he refused to shut down his worship services during the

01:19:03

COVID pandemic, Scott Annual, Virgil Walker, and Darrell Bernard Harrison of the

01:19:09

Just Thinking Podcast, Scott Brown, and Susan Heck, who is actually a dear friend of Phil Johnson's.

01:19:16

Susan was just recently on this program, and she's speaking to the ladies there, and I know that you are also a very close friend of her late husband as well.

01:19:25

Right. He was my roommate at Moody Bible Institute, and Susan's father is the pastor who baptized me.

01:19:31

Wow. She and I went to the same high school. Wow. What a providence.

01:19:36

And if you want to register, go to g3men .org, g3men .org. Please, folks, if you're going to register, please, please, please do yourself a favor and do an

01:19:45

Iron Trip and Iron Radio a favor by using promo code G3ISIR.

01:19:51

You will receive 30 % off the registration fee using that promo code

01:19:57

G3ISIR, and Iron Trip and Iron Radio will receive the credit for your purchase or your registration, and that will help us a lot because we want

01:20:07

G3 Ministries to continue to renew their advertising deals with us every year, so please use promo code

01:20:16

G3ISIR if you intend to attend, and it's a no -brainer because you're going to get 30 % off.

01:20:23

That's G3ISIR. Okay, going back to our discussion, you had just been in the middle of a statement responding to an allegory, an analogy

01:20:37

I gave that relates to this subject where an imaginary man is engaged to a woman, and she is showing by her life that she really despises this man.

01:20:53

She is habitually cheating on him sexually. She is robbing him blind financially.

01:21:00

She is constantly belittling him in public and belittling his family, and we could go on and on and on with the nastiness and the horrible things that she says and does, and yet when people say you've got to break this engagement off, this woman hates you, and the man says, oh no, she loves me, she tells me so, and in fact,

01:21:20

I could even make the allegory more accurate by saying she told me so 10 years ago when

01:21:27

I was 18 or whatever, because of the fact that many people will think that a person is saved just because they raised their hand at Bible camp and at one point in their life made a profession of salvation in Christ, and moments later they became a habitual rebel against Christ, and they lived that way for decades until they died.

01:21:50

But anyway, you were in the middle of talking about a book you had that reflected... Right, and your point obviously is that it's possible to misbehave so egregiously that your claim that you love the person you're serving or married to or whatever would be called into question legitimately so by everyone who knows how your behavior is, and the same thing is true in the realm of salvation.

01:22:17

No matter how insistently you profess faith in Christ, if everything in your life shows contempt for him, then people are right to doubt the genuineness of your profession of faith, and in fact, you probably ought to doubt it yourself.

01:22:35

So I have a book. Yours was a hypothetical scenario. Here's a real life scenario. It's a book that I have on sanctification, as I recall, and he opens the book with a description of a friend of his.

01:22:47

He went to Bible college with... They were best friends. This guy became a pastor, and as a pastor, he was arrested and convicted of robbing 14 banks and sent to prison, and the reason he robbed the banks was to finance his dalliances with prostitutes, and yet this guy who's writing the book says, but I know for sure he's really saved.

01:23:20

Your reaction is like mine. I'm like, how bad would this guy have to be before you at least entertain a doubt about whether this guy maybe is more like Judas than he is like Peter, but that's a common...

01:23:36

And it was even more common in the 80s, I think, than it is today. John MacArthur's books on the lordship issue have helped turn the evangelical attitude towards casual faith and nominal faith around, but the idea is coming back again where you have people arguing that there really is no amount of sin in your life that should destroy your assurance, and I would say based on Scripture, that's patently absurd, and in fact, most of the evidences that the apostle

01:24:10

John points to in 1 John, a book written to bolster weak assurance and to destroy presumptive assurance, the first epistle of John, he's talking about how you may know that you have eternal life, and most of the evidences he cites have the believer looking at his behavior and belief system and doing a self -evaluation.

01:24:37

He does not say, just look to the cross, and no matter what your life is like, as long as you're saying,

01:24:46

I trust Jesus to be my Savior, then you should be okay. The question that I think

01:24:52

John is answering and the question that each of us ought to ask is, do I really trust Jesus?

01:24:58

If I don't obey Him and I don't show Him any love and I don't think about Him or desire

01:25:04

Him or have any kind of connection with Him that governs how

01:25:10

I live my life, can I honestly say I believe Him? Jesus Himself asks the question, why do you call me

01:25:17

Lord, Lord, and you don't do the things I say? It's not sufficient just to give lip service to the

01:25:23

Lordship of Christ. The proof that your faith is real is seen in the fruit that it bears.

01:25:29

You mentioned Judas before. I think that's an excellent example because he must have made some kind of a public profession in the sight of his fellow apostles, of his love and devotion to Christ.

01:25:46

There must have been something that he said, and yet Jesus Christ Himself said of Judas, it would have been better for him that he was never born, which obviously answers the question, will

01:25:59

Judas be in heaven? Obviously he won't, because if he is in heaven, then

01:26:06

Jesus's words were false, because it was better that he was born for him if he's in heaven, but since he's not, it would have been better for him that he was never born.

01:26:16

I actually heard a pastor during a sermon on this.

01:26:22

After the sermon, he gave a Q &A. He offered a Q &A for the people in the congregation, and somebody said, and he said, well, theologians have debated this for centuries.

01:26:34

We don't really know, and I said, and I raised my hand. I said, yes, we do. Jesus said it would have been better for him that he was never born.

01:26:40

Obviously he can't be in heaven. Oh, we're out of time. We can't talk about this anymore, but that's really one of a prime example of how somebody's profession can just be a charade.

01:26:52

Yeah, yeah, that's right, and there aren't many people I would say that I don't think our doctrine of sanctification gives us permission to be judges of people, whether they're going to heaven or not, but the point is if someone is living a life that is entirely inconsistent with his profession of faith, then you have a reason to question his faith, and if you're aware of sin in his life, you have a duty actually to go and confront him, and Jesus lays out the plan and the pattern for church discipline in Matthew 18.

01:27:28

You first go and confront your brother privately. If he refuses to hear you, you go back with a witness, and the two of you confront him, and if he refuses to hear them, then you tell it to the church, and the whole church pursues him for repentance, and if he refuses to hear them, then he's put out of the church.

01:27:45

He's put out of the fellowship, excommunicated, which is to say he is publicly declared to be someone who we don't think is a believer, and Jesus said you treat him as a tax collector and a sinner, which is not to say you treat him badly, but that you look at him as an evangelistic prospect rather than a fellow believer.

01:28:09

So at some point, you have to make a judgment that I don't know for certain, and I don't have the authority to consign anyone to heaven or hell, but I have to make a judgment about whether, you know, this person who's sinning is a brother in Christ whom

01:28:25

I should embrace and encourage or a pagan who thinks he's saved, but out of love for him,

01:28:33

I need to show him his need for repentance. Those are very practical questions.

01:28:39

It's not just a theoretical doctrine that we're dealing with, and unfortunately, most churches are so accustomed to the antinomian view that the typical church today just absolutely refuses to deal with sin, according to Matthew 18, and they embrace all kinds of sin in their fellowship.

01:28:58

They become like the Corinthian church, which had wrapped their arms around this guy who was committing incest in 1

01:29:05

Corinthians 6, 5, and 6, and Walsh scolds them and says, it's like you're proud of this, and that's exactly how the typical evangelical church today has become, the proud of how broad -minded and affirming they can be of everything up to and including homosexuality and transsexualism because there's such a high social price to be paid if you speak out against those things or call them sin, and so churches are looking for ways to embrace them, and we've done that for so long.

01:29:41

Evangelicals collectively have embraced sin in their midst for so long that the minute someone comes along and says, wait a minute, this doesn't accord with what

01:29:52

Scripture says, Titus 2, the grace of God has appeared teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly.

01:30:02

That's what grace teaches us, right? Grace doesn't disagree with the law on that point, but you hear people who say, no, no, if you call people to obedience and all that, you're preaching law rather than grace, and that's just absurd, and look what it has done to our churches.

01:30:25

Amen, and before I go to the audience questions, or at least as many as I can read before the end of the program,

01:30:32

I am dying with curiosity, I'm not going to mention the person's name, but a very famous dispensationalist television

01:30:43

Bible teacher and author back in the 1980s was the major supporter of a missionary in Brazil, and his church stopped funding this man, and I had the privilege of having dinner with this man, who's now in heaven with our

01:31:06

Lord for eternity, and this missionary said to me, please pray for me because this evangelist that I'm speaking of, who was the major supporter of my mission work, has cut off support of my mission work because I've translated the gospel according to Jesus into Portuguese, where I minister in Brazil, and I distribute this book very much frequently and in high volumes to the people there, and then later he said that John MacArthur, when hearing of this, at least matched the financial support that this very famous televangelist was giving.

01:31:55

I was wondering if you know who I'm talking about, and if that person has reversed their position against Lordship Salvation?

01:32:02

Nope, he's still, they're still friends. That incident actually started what has become a decades -long relationship with the publisher in Brazil, who published the gospel according to Jesus, and they do a lot of really solid reform things.

01:32:19

They'll translate a lot of Banner of Truth books and so on, and as far as I know, they're still on track.

01:32:27

In fact, I see the man's son, who now who works with that publishing company,

01:32:32

I see him occasionally at conferences. He'll come. Oh, you're speaking of the missionary's son?

01:32:38

Right. Yeah, I don't actually know who the evangelist who pulled the support was.

01:32:47

I remember when I told you years ago on the phone, you knew who it was and you knew about this situation.

01:32:53

I do, but I thought he was just the head of the mission. I didn't realize he was an evangelist. Which one are you talking about, the missionary or the man who stopped the support?

01:33:02

The man who stopped the support. Oh, he's a very famous author and pastor and TV and radio

01:33:09

Bible teacher. If I were to mention his name, you would definitely know who he is, and 99 % of our listeners would.

01:33:17

I just don't want to do that because he may have changed. Right, yeah, no, I don't know. In fact, my impression was it was the sending organization that pulled the support from this guy.

01:33:32

They were influenced by someone who's... I don't remember who that was. Okay, well,

01:33:37

I'll tell you after the show. All right, we have an anonymous listener. I recently heard a pastor preach that we do not need to use the

01:33:48

Ten Commandments in evangelism because it wasn't used to evangelize in the book of Acts.

01:33:54

I reminded him that Jesus used the Ten Commandments to the rich young ruler. His response to me was, well, that was only one time.

01:34:02

Could you comment? Well, I'll repeat what R .C. Sproul said one time.

01:34:09

How many times does God have to say something before you get the message? So, no, actually,

01:34:15

I think that's a very good answer that that person gave their pastor. There's truth on both sides.

01:34:24

I don't say you have to take people through the Ten Commandments every time you evangelize.

01:34:30

Yeah, and that has been an accusation against Reformed Baptists by those outside of that camp, and it's not true.

01:34:36

Yeah, I think you have to size up the situation. There are people who might come to you already convicted of their sin, and you deal with them in a totally different way than you deal with the person who is, you know, sort of unconcerned about his sin.

01:34:54

And you see that in the example of Christ. He never evangelized the same way twice. He didn't use a canned presentation.

01:35:02

He dealt with individuals on an individual basis. I thought he used the four spiritual laws. Not in my translation.

01:35:10

I'm just kidding. In fact, that is at the heart of this dispute, isn't it? It is.

01:35:17

The four spiritual laws, Bill Bright reputedly wrote that, and he came out of that Dallas Seminary background, you know, that same brand of doctrine.

01:35:32

And there was another track that went with the four spiritual laws or was supposed to be subsequent to it.

01:35:38

It was about being filled with the Holy Spirit. And he actually had a little drawing in there that had a throne and Christ not on it.

01:35:46

Yeah, I remember that. You know, you're supposed to be sanctified by you put Christ on his throne.

01:35:51

It was the classic, you know, you make Jesus Lord. It's not that you yield to his lordship or recognize his lordship.

01:35:58

You make him Lord. And that was the whole basis of their tract on sanctification. So there were deep problems in that.

01:36:06

And I think to a large degree, a lot of the noise and ceremony that surrounded late 20th century evangelicalism and particularly

01:36:17

Campus Crusade for Christ. You remember Explo 72 and all of that.

01:36:24

It was a huge thing in Dallas, Texas that was as big as the

01:36:29

Super Bowl that year, literally had as many attendees as the Super Bowl. And it was supposedly

01:36:38

Campus Crusade sort of kickoff to their effort to get the gospel to everybody in the world by the end of the 20th century, which they didn't quite achieve.

01:36:47

But that meeting itself really is sort of remarkable for the lack of gospel emphasis that came through in any of the messages that were given there.

01:36:59

It was a lot about music and emotion and all of that. And I think it set a tone for late 20th century and early 21st century evangelicalism.

01:37:10

We haven't quite shed yet. It's this notion that our duty as Christians is to give unbelievers things that will entertain and please them.

01:37:21

And then if they like us well enough, they'll like Jesus and they'll become Christians. And the gospel, of course, is the opposite.

01:37:27

Paul said Jews want a sign and the Greeks want wisdom. We give them the gospel, both, which is a stumbling block to the

01:37:37

Jews. So they want a sign, we give them a stumbling block. And to the Greeks, it's foolishness. They want wisdom, we give them foolishness.

01:37:43

It sounds like Paul's just trying to be contrary there, right? But he's saying, no, the gospel does not offer people what they want.

01:37:52

It offers them what they need. And when they see it, if they do see it with the eyes of faith, they'll want it.

01:38:01

That's what irresistible grace is all about. It will become irresistible to them.

01:38:07

But you can't expect carnal people to have an innate desire for the truth of the gospel.

01:38:12

What they have innately is a hatred for those truths. And you have to proclaim them anyway, and the

01:38:18

Holy Spirit convicts them of sin and righteousness and judgment. And those are precisely the things that the postmodern gospel sidesteps.

01:38:29

We don't want to talk about sin and righteousness and judgment. Let's talk about things that...let's contextualize the gospel to things that people are interested about.

01:38:38

Let's exegete the Marvel movies or whatever. And you can fill the church with bodies that way, but what you've got then is a church full of unconverted people.

01:38:49

And that, in my view, is the biggest problem in the world today. In fact, I think a lot of the social meltdown that concerns most of us is rooted in the fact that the church has not faithfully done her job correctly to preach the gospel.

01:39:04

They've entertained people instead. And now you've got churches full of unconverted people, people who think they're believers, but they don't really believe.

01:39:14

And the last thing you want to do is criticize people for urging people to examine their faith to see if it's real.

01:39:22

And in fact, these pastors who are preaching this easy believism and cheap grace, this repentant -less gospel,

01:39:33

I'm imagining they must not really be intensely involved in the lives of their congregants because they are creating for themselves the nightmare of all nightmares by filling their pews with goats and all the problems that result from that.

01:39:51

I mean, it's really like a masochistic way of operating a church, especially if you actually care about the lives of the people there and are actually involved in those lives.

01:40:06

Yeah, that's a good point. Pastoring is hard enough work without filling your fold with goats.

01:40:13

Right. And by the way, Anonymous, one thing you might want to ask this pastor who responded to your reminding him that Jesus used the

01:40:24

Ten Commandments to the rich young ruler, and he said, well, that was only one time. Can you imagine the thief on the cross who

01:40:32

Christ said, today you will be with me in paradise? And the thief opens up his eyes in hell and he cries out to Jesus, hey, you told me that I'd be with you in paradise today.

01:40:44

And you hear from heaven, I only said it once. I mean, that doesn't make it make any sense at all.

01:40:52

Or like confronting an adulterer, and you say to him, don't you remember your wedding vows to remain faithful to your wife?

01:41:03

I only said it once. I mean, that kind of response is just mind -boggling how bad it is. Yeah, it's a fatuous response, and yet you hear it a lot.

01:41:12

It's the same spirit is behind this line that you hear from preacher after preacher where they claim, well, scripture whispers about sexual sin, but it yells about whatever.

01:41:26

We have Cindy in Findlay, Ohio, who asked, do you see any contradictions between John MacArthur's book on Lordship, Salvation, The Gospel According to Jesus, and Sinclair Ferguson's book,

01:41:39

The Whole Christ, and the book, Morrow of Modern Divinity? I'd be shocked if there was any thing at odds between Dr.

01:41:49

MacArthur and Sinclair Ferguson. I know that Sinclair Ferguson was a strong advocate of Lordship, Salvation, as long as I've known him, but what do you know about that, if anything, about those books?

01:41:59

Yeah, no, as far as I know, on Soteriology, they would be in full agreement. In fact,

01:42:05

Sinclair Ferguson has a couple of books that sort of outline the gospel and the way of salvation, and I often recommend them to people.

01:42:12

I don't know of anything in there I would disagree with. Thank you, Cindy. We have

01:42:18

Andrew in Brooklyn, New York. What do you say to those who say Lordship, Salvation forces a person to turn to their works for assurance rather than to Christ?

01:42:29

You really touched on this earlier. It's not the accusation necessarily that Lordship, Salvation is teaching a works salvation, but that when we want peace of mind and know that we are right with God, that we are looking to our own works rather than to Christ for that assurance.

01:42:49

I believe that's what Andrew is saying the accusation is, if you could. Yeah, yeah, and as someone who believes in what people label

01:42:58

Lordship, Salvation, I would admit that there is a danger there. I know of people who tend to do that too much, and I think it is a danger.

01:43:09

I think you can go to either extreme, and I think I kind of said this earlier. There are two extremes to avoid.

01:43:16

One is to tell people, your behavior doesn't matter. Don't look at your works. That has nothing to do with it, because the fruit of your works, everywhere scripture tells us, by their fruits you shall know them.

01:43:27

By your own fruits you shall know whether your faith is genuine or not. Now you're not looking to your works as the ground of your justification.

01:43:36

You're looking to your works as the proof that your faith is real. The only ground for your justification is the righteousness of Christ, and that's true.

01:43:46

So there are dangers on both sides. There are people who will say, you know, look to your works. That's what assures you that you're saved.

01:43:54

No, it assures you that your faith is real. What assures you that you're saved is the perfect righteousness of Christ.

01:44:02

But there are people on the other extreme who say, your works don't figure into the equation in any way at all, even as proof, a later proof or fruit of the reality of your faith.

01:44:14

If you're looking at your works, then you're looking in the wrong place, and that just doesn't accord with what scripture tells us, and in explicit commandments, like examine yourself to see whether you're in the faith.

01:44:29

We have Josh in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. When and where will the recordings from the most recent

01:44:36

Shepherds Conference be posted? I've listened to the Q &A with Jay Mack and the closing sermon,

01:44:43

Good Stuff, but I'd like to watch, listen to the rest of them.

01:44:49

Yeah, people always ask that, and I don't really know the answer. There's a staff of people who go through those and prepare them to be posted, and I know the goal is to get them online as soon as possible, but they don't do them piecemeal.

01:45:02

They wait till they're all edited, and they put a beginning on with some announcer saying what it is, and then a copyright notice and stuff like that.

01:45:11

When they're all ready, they'll post them all at once, and I think that'll probably happen within the next 10 days or so if they follow what they normally do, but that's not part of what we do here at Grace to You.

01:45:22

That's done by the staff at the church, and I don't really know their timetable. I will say, though, that when those come out, look for a breakout session

01:45:31

I did on this very subject, the lordship salvation issue. Great. It'll be a little bit more complete and orderly, perhaps, than a radio interview could ever be, but if you're interested in more and you want to hear what

01:45:45

I have to say, I go into pretty much detail on both the history of the lordship controversy and answering some of the latest attacks.

01:45:58

And by the way, Josh, since you live in Pennsylvania, please try to come to the Iron Sharp and Zion Radio events that I mentioned earlier.

01:46:05

If you are a man in ministry leadership, come to the luncheon, April 13th, the

01:46:10

Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, and you can invite your wives and your children and anyone to the conference, which is not closed to men only, the three -day conference at Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, the 14th, 15th, and 16th of April.

01:46:29

Send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com if you'd like to register for either or both of those events. We're going to our final break.

01:46:36

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Phil Johnson right after these final messages. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

01:47:00

I'm very excited to announce that my long -time friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharp and Zion Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

01:47:08

G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

01:47:21

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

01:47:34

And there's more great news. Chris Arnson of Iron Sharp and Zion Radio can get you a 30 % discount off the registration fee.

01:47:41

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01:47:55

Chris Arnson and I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd at the

01:48:01

G3 National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on the sovereignty of God. Make sure you stop by the

01:48:06

Iron Sharp and Zion Radio Exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnson while you're there.

01:48:11

Go to g3min .org and enter promo code G3ISIR for your 30 % discount off the registration fee.

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01:53:37

This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially.

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Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work of our

01:54:05

Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, the end of which we strive is the glory of God.

01:54:11

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

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Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and always.

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01:55:59

Scott Brown here. I hope you can join me and Chris Arnson at the Chief End of Man Conference in Ridgecrest, May 4 -6.

01:56:08

The Chief End of Man Conference is a national conference of church and family life which exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture.

01:56:17

At this conference, you'll hear Paul Washer, Joel Beeky, Scott Anial, Josh Bice, and lots of other great preachers, some of my favorite preachers.

01:56:25

And also, we're having a pre -conference. It's a singles conference, May 3 and 4, just before our big national conference.

01:56:32

I hope you can come. For more information, go to churchandfamilylife .com.

01:56:39

Churchandfamilylife .com. Hope to see you there. And that's Ridgecrest, North Carolina. Hope to see you there.

01:56:44

I just want to make a brief reminder, folks. You've been hearing the ads for the Historical Bible Society.

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Don't forget that that organization is founded by Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, who is a very serious injury and medical malpractice attorney.

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1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. He has been sponsoring our Iron Trip and Zion radio program since it first went on the air, and we owe him a lot of debt.

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So I hope that you will return the favor by referring anyone you know who is a victim of a personal injury or medical malpractice to Buttafuoco and Associates.

01:57:35

Dial 1 -800 -NOW -HURT. We're now back with Phil Johnson, and we have, let's see here,

01:57:41

Robert in White Plains, New York, who says, can you offer the names of people from the

01:57:47

Reform Camp who are opposing Lordship Salvation so that we may stay clear of them?

01:57:55

You know, I'd rather not. I think if you read widely, you'll know who I'm talking about, and I just don't want to start a lot of talk and fight.

01:58:06

Stuff like this tends to leak out onto social media, and one of the complaints

01:58:11

I have about the recent attacks coming from Reformed sources against Lordship Salvation is that so far they've done virtually all of their polemics on blogs and social media, little tweets here and there that just sort of poke you in the eye.

01:58:28

I don't want to respond in kind. I did a, like I said, a breakout session at the

01:58:34

Shepherds Conference. I just don't want to unleash a big debate in social media on this.

01:58:40

The people who know know, and, you know, if they want to discuss it further, I'll do that by email or written articles or whatever.

01:58:52

I just don't think social media is the appropriate place to deal with most theological matters.

01:59:01

Well, Phil, it has been an absolute joy for you to be back in the program. We cannot allow it to be another period of months or a year or more before you're back.

01:59:11

I hope you come back quickly, and I want to remind people listening that Phil will be one of many speakers at the

01:59:17

Sovereignty of God Conference, the G3 National Conference, September 21st through 23rd in Atlanta, Georgia.

01:59:24

To register, go to g3min .org, g3min .org, and use promo code

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G3ISIR. That's G3ISIR. And don't forget, folks,

01:59:37

Virgil Walker of G3 Ministries is going to be our guest tomorrow, and his topic is a tsunami warning for the

01:59:44

Southern Baptist Convention. I want to thank everybody who listened. I want to thank everybody who took the time to write, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives