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

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this third day of April, 2023.

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 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.

It's been a long time, for some reason, that we've had him on the program. That was no intention of mine. I guess the busyness of life and the hecticness of Phil's schedule has kept him off the program, but I'm thrilled he's back on.

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 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.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Phil Johnson.

Hey, good to be back, Chris. Thanks for having me.

Defining Lordship Salvation and the Charge of Antinomianism

And if you could, I think it'd 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, 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 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 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. 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?

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 Ray Stanford, who was, I think, the founder, but he was certainly the president of Bible College in South Florida and Miami, I believe.

And this was a particular interest of his. 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.

It was the most antinomian of antinomian views. And it turned out he was actually living a double life. I think he was disqualified through a moral failure before he died. And that is a common experience of some of the most outspoken voices championing what 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 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.

And it makes me cringe when I think that there are people who profess to be disciples of Christ Jesus the Lord that would have a problem with something called lordship salvation. It's quite bizarre.

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

Yes, and we should probably forsake of not being misunderstood, even though we are strongly opposed to the heresy of this anti-lordship group. They are not saying in their denial of lordship salvation that they do not believe Jesus Christ is indeed the 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 as humanly possible on this earth when we consider that every one of us is a sinner.

That is what they're objecting to.

Yeah, though they do use language like you need to make Jesus Lord as if it's your prerogative to make him Lord or not. And 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 Jesus Lord or he doesn't, and Christ is supposedly at his mercy.

You can decide when you want to make 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 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 Lordship of Christ.

Yes, in fact, an extremely popular pastor, radio and television teacher, and author in the United States especially, but perhaps globally, Charles Stanley in his book on eternal security, 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, I remember when I read that from his book with my own eyes, this is not hearsay, I was truly dismayed and disheartened that somebody of such prominence in the body of Christ would hold such a horrific and heretical position.

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

I posed this question once to one of the well-known teachers of the no lordship view, suppose, I said, you've got an individual who attends a debate, let's say it's a debate between our mutual friend, 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, 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 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.

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.

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?

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.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it was Charles Ryrie who first, actually in a book he wrote in the 1960s, Balancing the Christian Life, he has a chapter at the end titled, Must Jesus be Lord to be Savior? And in that chapter, he makes the comment that there are these two views.

One, you have to yield to the 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 eight and nine, which the strongest curse the Apostle Paul ever penned, basically saying, if you hold to this version of the, a wrong version of the gospel, then you're damned.

And so in effect, that's what Ryrie 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, Ryrie would have, and said, if you mean repentance as simply a change of mind about who Jesus is, then okay, I'll allow it.

But Ryrie 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.

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

I think it's possible for people to be theologically confused and mix things up without being guilty of damnably corrupting the gospel. 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 proclaims that gospel and holds to it even after biblical correction, then I would wonder whether he's genuinely a believer or not.

By the way, interestingly enough, our mutual friend, Dr. William Webster, who is going to be one of the speakers at my upcoming Iron Trumpets Iron Radio free pastor's luncheon on Thursday, April 13th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

And also one of the speakers at a three-day Bible conference that I'm running at the church of a friend of yours, Pastor Josh Miller, Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Dr. Webster and Reverend 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, Must Jesus be Lord to be Savior? But obviously his answer to that question is an absolute yes with 10 exclamation points.

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.

Yes.

People look at this and say, and think, John MacArthur's book, The Gospel According to Jesus was the watershed, and it was. It actually was the issue that brought this, it was the moment that brought this issue to the forefront of the lordship debate.

But there were people, including Bill Webster, who were writing on the issue before John MacArthur ever published anything on it. And in fact, it goes back to the 1950s, Eternity Magazine ran an article with that same title, Must Jesus be Lord to be Savior?

That was a kind of written debate between, as I recall, it was John Stott on the lordship side, and somebody else, I don't remember who, on the no-lordship side. But the guy who was arguing for no lordship took a much milder position than any of today's antinomians do.

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

No, that was the magazine of the late James Montgomery Boyce, wasn't it?

Yes, that's right. Well, actually, I think it was Donald Gray Barnhouse who founded it.

And perhaps we should also define a word you have repeated, antinomianism. The very word itself means anti-law, but please explain how that is relevant to the discussion here.

The Moral Law and the Gospel

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

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. So the 10 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 10 Commandments as the 10 Commandments. That the Lord placed all 10 Commandments with a simple law, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself.

It's a confused and confusing view. 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. But the fact that Jesus gave us the commandment to love doesn't render the 10 Commandments insignificant.

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. I would say the strictures against bestiality, for example. If you say every law in the Old Testament is abrogated so that it doesn't apply in the Christian era, what do you do about the sin of bestiality?

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

It's not so much that they were done away, but that they were fulfilled and ongoing principles in Christ. But the moral laws that apply to our behavior, particularly in the realm of sexual morality and how we express love for one another, things like that, those are still applicable to Christians.

And yet there've always been varieties of evangelical teaching that try purposely to minimize the importance of law. And today you have people who chafe so much at the idea that there is still a use for the moral law in the 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. 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. The law still serves its purpose to show our sin and to teach us what righteousness is.

It's not the gospel, and it needs to be kept distinct from the gospel, and the two shouldn't be blended, but the law is nevertheless still a prelude to the gospel, and it's perfectly appropriate for preachers of the gospel.

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

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. I think Phil has his phone off of silence, and he's getting text messages.

I'm sorry about that. 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.

Well, it doesn't

If I silence

It doesn't bother me.

If I silence the notifications, it silences you. I can't hear you, so

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. 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.

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 John MacArthur and D. James Kennedy and R .C. Sproul on it to oppose the Evangelicals and Catholics Together document.

But one time years ago at a conference that he was leading, 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?

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 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. 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, and I'm assuming that that individual did realize he was wrong since he did invite John and those other men on the show.

But it seems that is the crux of the issue. People are, on the one hand, they have a, perhaps, a good and right and godly and biblical desire to protect and preserve one of the pillars of the Christian faith, justification by faith alone.

But they do so in an unbiblical manner and will wind up regurgitating an equally dangerous heresy to works righteousness, and that is a works absence salvation, where they are even going as far as saying that works aren't even a necessary evidence.

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

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

Yes, that's right. And in fact, the whole idea that repentance is some kind of works-based addition to faith misses the point that repentance is something God grants. It's repentance is not a meritorious human work any more than faith itself is.

And in fact, repentance, I properly understood, repentance is simply the flip side of faith. You can't have faith without repentance and you can't have repentance without faith. It's turning. To repent is to turn from sin.

To believe is to turn to Christ. And it's one turning. So it's two sides of the same thing. And scripture often blends repentance with faith. When Jesus came preaching and when John the Baptist came preaching, that was the first word of every sermon both of them gave, repent.

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

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

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

The works are the fruit of faith. They're not faith itself. They're not part of the definition of faith. They aren't a prerequisite to faith. They aren't a condition for justification in any way, but they are a necessary and inevitable fruit of genuine faith.

And different people will bear different amounts of fruit. Always someone wants to ask the question, well, how much? How much fruit? And that's an insane question, is there just needs to be fruit. And in some cases, the thief on the cross, I would say bore a fairly paltry amount of fruit.

He simply recanted and repented of his former mockery of Christ and asked him for mercy. Is there fruit in that? Yes, it shows that his heart was changed. But nobody's saying, well, you have to do a certain amount or a certain number or a certain kind of good works.

Simply saying what the apostle James says, that faith without works is dead. It's not true faith. 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. 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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We're now back with Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of Grace to You and we are discussing the new wave of opposition to lordship salvation coming from very unlikely sources. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

If you have a question, make sure you give us your first name, city and state and country of residence. 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, 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 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?

What's the deal there?

Yeah, well, I think a lot of the early dispensationalists including C .I. Schofield and Lewis Barry Chafer, Chafer was, of course, the theological grandfather to Dallas Theological Seminary which is a dispensationalist school and so he sowed the seeds of this and Charles Ryrie picked it up and then Zane Hodges took it to about as far an extreme as you could possibly take it and all of them were connected with Dallas Seminary and so was this brand of antinomianism, the no lordship doctrine.

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 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 Schofield notes or Clarence Larkin's charts or Lewis Barry Chafer's systematic theology.

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

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

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