A Critique of Lordship Part 2 | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we are doing a follow -up episode to one that was released a few weeks ago.

This is a critique of Lordship Salvation Part 2. We got a lot of feedback from our listeners on the first episode that we did about Lordship Salvation, and what we are going to try to do today is give, if possible, more clear comments on the concerns that we have with Lordship Salvation theology.

We're going to try to give you some clear talking points and handles as to what the concerns are from a

Reformed and confessional perspective. We hope the conversation is encouraging. We hope you enjoy the conversation, and as always, we hope that you are encouraged in the

Lord Jesus Christ. Stay tuned. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

Christian life from a Reformed and a pastoral perspective. Your hosts today who have had quite a hard time getting this show off the ground this morning are none other than John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, just south of Nashville, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

Asheville, Nashville, five hours apart, down I -40, two guys here to talk about Christ and some other things.

John, we're going to give away something today. That's right. Talk to us about it. That's right.

Before we do, that was me trying to distract Justin. I had new people in my new members class, and she leans over to her husband and says,

I didn't realize he was so goofy because she'd only seen me preach.

She hadn't had a conversation with me yet. And he goes, yeah, you've never been with him at Bible study.

You've never tried to record a podcast with him. Oh, brother. Hey, we have a special giveaway today. It's the first time we're giving away a

Bible, and not just any Bible. This is a beautiful, beautiful leather bound. I feel like a Bible salesman, but a beautiful leather

ESV. If you are on YouTube, and we may even show this on social media, it's beautiful.

It has not only the ESV Bible, but it has creeds and confessions. And so if I just skip to the back, we're talking

Belgic Confession. We've got the Nicene Creed, we've got the

Osberg Confession, 39 articles, Canons of Dort, Westminster Confession, 1689.

You've got Heidelberg Catechism, larger and shorter catechism. It's just beautiful. And it's actually not as big as you would think.

And the font is actually a very decent font as well. So we're going to give just one of these away. This was a $360

Bible, and it was donated to us by Jeffrey Rice. And he owns the company that rebound this called

Post Teterbrooks. Now Justin and I have been arguing about this, whether it's Lux or Lux, and the listeners can correct us.

Those of you that know Latin. And he has a Facebook page.

He also has a website and you can go to our show notes to see the links to that. If you would like a Bible rebound, he does an absolute wonderful jobs here, local pastor here in Tennessee.

And so if you'd like to win this Bible, we're going to do a three day giveaway. We're going to have the instructions on how to win, and that'll be on our

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter account. And then on Friday, we will pick a winner. Friday, probably night or Saturday morning.

I don't know, something like that. The rules will be on there. Uh, but we're only giving away one cause we only have one. So enjoy that.

Uh, I really wanted to just pretend like we weren't going to give it away and keep it for myself, but that would be ethical.

Would it, Justin? Not sure. I mean, Jeffrey gave it to us so that we would give it away.

Yeah. We need all the time that we need for this podcast. Cause it is a doozy today. So JP, let's go ahead and just jump into the subject today as the listener will have seen, this is a critique of Lordship Salvation part two.

And so this is a follow up episode to one that we recorded a few weeks ago. It's been out for a few weeks now, at least

I know that's true where we did a critique of Lordship Salvation in that particular episode that we did before.

We interacted quite a bit with a book by John MacArthur entitled The Gospel According to Jesus.

And yeah, we talked about that book. We talked about the content of that book, obviously, and ended up interacting quite a bit with John MacArthur's theology and Lordship Salvation is a camp that John MacArthur is very much identified with.

And what we wanted to do today is follow up on that original episode. We got a lot of feedback from our listeners on the first episode.

People were encouraged and helped by that, which we praise God for. And then there were questions that people had, and mainly the questions were around just seeking clarification.

Could you guys say more about this? Could you be perhaps more clear about Lordship Salvation itself and the concerns that you have with it?

Can you give me some handles that I can just wrap my hands and my mind around as I'm trying to think about Lordship Salvation from a

Reformed confessional perspective? So that's what we're going to try to do today is to give you those handles, to be really succinct and give you talking points in terms of our concerns about Lordship Salvation from a

Reformed confessional perspective. I think I'll go and say this. John and I have gone back and listened to our first episode, and we stand by everything that we said there.

We do lament the fact that it became so much about John MacArthur and about his theology in particular. I think that was less than helpful.

And I think perhaps in an attempt to be gracious to John, because we always want to be gracious and kind towards other people, towards other

Christians, I think that we were perhaps not as clear as we could have been. And what we want to do today is try to clean that up a little bit and be as clear as we possibly can be.

So we're going to get into our talking points here in just a minute. But for those who may be tuning in for the first time and you haven't listened to the first episode, we thought we would take just a few minutes very quickly at the beginning of the show here and talk about Lordship Salvation and sort of how it arose even historically and sort of our take on the movement itself as a whole before we get into our points for today.

So John, if I were to ask you, man, to simply define Lordship Salvation, what is it?

How would you answer that question? Yeah. And just to backtrack before I answer that, I think it's a becoming of a

Christian to always disagree agreeably, that we always show meekness, patience and gentleness.

We did get a lot of emails and comments from people that said, I need to learn more from you guys on how to disagree agreeably or, you know, with kindness.

And I would heartily say amen to that, which is what we're going to continue to do as we critique anything, particularly things that I doctrines that I think are confusing categories.

I would not call them heretical, but definitely confusing categories. We need to be we need to be gracious and patient with people that we disagree with.

So in my definition, I would stand pretty strongly in that the majority of books and definitions and sermons that I have heard that Lordship Salvation would be described as one cannot be saved unless they first repent of all their sin and then make

Jesus Lord of their life. The greatest example of this that is used not only in John MacArthur's book by a lot of other people who hold to this theology is the rich young ruler.

He was unwilling to repent of his love of money and make Jesus Lord of his life. So he kept his money and he stayed

Lord of his life. Or you could say his finances stay Lord of his life. Therefore, that man did not receive eternal life because of those two requirements that he failed to meet.

I think that would be the definition that I would. Yeah. And we interacted with the rich young ruler in the first episode, and we may bring the rich young ruler up again today.

But we'll be talking about the confusion of law and gospel later on in the show. Right. And that being the greatest example,

I think the five points we are going to offer are going to be clear. And we're just good Calvinists. So everything always has five points to it.

Amen to that. You can't make this stuff up.

Five points of Reformed theology. The five points of a sound marriage. Now we're getting out of control. Let's do this. We are. So just another brief, maybe preferential, but what am

I even trying to say? I'm trying to front load this introductory comment, like the prolegomena to use like the systematic theology.

Come on now. My goodness. Just a couple more comments along those lines to set it up before we jump into our points today.

Historically, like how this arose, right? In the 80s, 90s, there was some theology coming out of Dallas Theological Seminary associated with a man named

Zane Hodges, maybe most notably, sometimes called free grace theology. It was coming from a more

Arminian, semi Pelagian perspective where the teaching was that man could make this decision, this act of faith to believe the gospel and to trust in Christ.

And based upon that one act of faith that man does, he is then justified.

He is good with God forever. Once saved, always saved in this kind of mechanical sense.

That was teaching that was being propagated in the 80s and 90s in the evangelical church.

And some, at least adherence of that kind of free grace theology, would even talk in ways that made it seem as though it didn't even matter how one lived after that one act of faith.

Like it literally, it matters no more what you do. You're good with God. Once saved, always saved. It doesn't even matter if you keep believing, if you listen to some of these folks talk, because you did one time perform this act of faith, this thing that you did that justified you once and for all, and now you're good.

And so John MacArthur and others in the Lordship Salvation camp, as it came to be known, were responding to that bad theology, that free grace, that Zane Hodges DTS stuff.

And in doing so, it's our take here at Theocast, and we say this humbly, but we want to be clear. We think that Lordship Salvation is yet another example of an overreaction against bad doctrine.

And so in responding and seeking to respond to the bad theology of that free grace movement, our fear is that John MacArthur and others in the

Lordship Salvation stream became off -center themselves and started to confuse categories. It's not altogether unlike the sanctification debate in the early 2010s that occurred in the

Calvinistic evangelical church. Some of the listeners may be aware of this, where Protestant people lost their ever -loving

Protestant minds for a time in saying things about sanctification that were basically Roman Catholic because they were trying to push back against things that they perceived to be antinomian in nature.

And we don't ever want to do that as Christians. We don't want to become off -center ourselves in pushing back against something that's off -center.

We want to maintain centeredness and balance and all those kinds of words that we would use to describe sound doctrine.

And so our effort today is to do just that, to sort of hold the line in this Reformed confessional way and speak clearly about Lordship Salvation and the concerns that we have with it.

And again, as has been very clear, we've got five points to talk through. So, John, if you're ready. Yeah, let me just add something to that.

All five of these points that we're going to argue from are systematic and I would say theological derivatives from confessions and I would say just Reformed theology in general.

If you listen to Zane Hodges and those who espouse Lordship Salvation, there are category confusions and I would say historical category confusions.

Zane Hodges doesn't espouse Lordship Salvation. John MacArthur would. Right, but I would say on either side. Yes, Zane Hodges for, sorry, the free grace.

But both sides, I would say, do not come from a historically Reformed confessional understanding, a covenantal law gospel distinction, third use of the understanding of scripture, which is why there are oftentimes that both sides say things that are confusing.

By the way, we also got criticized for inappropriately describing

Zane Hodges theology, free grace, which I was like, well, there's a first one on either side,

I guess. But the reason I mention this is that we aren't just throwing blobs out there because we just don't like this theology.

It does go up against historical sound theology that's been taught. And if you say,

I love Reformed theology, I think it's biblical, this is why we're saying when you compare what's being taught by both ends, free grace and Lordship, they both butt up against and contradict

Reformed historical theology. Yeah, Reformed historical orthodoxy, right? That's right. What we're talking about is the history of interpretation, the rule of faith, as has been passed down in the confessions, right?

And so here we go. Talking point number one, concern number one with Lordship salvation is that it confuses the order of salvation.

That's right. Or in a more theological way, there's a confusion in the order of salutis, the order of salvation. And so what we're talking about here is how people are actually saved and what this looks like in a human being's life.

And in particular, what we're getting at here is that the historical Reformed understanding is that regeneration precedes faith and repentance and obedience and all those things.

And in fact, repentance and obedience in particular are fruits of salvation. They are not what saves a person.

And there is a confusion of all of that in the Lordship salvation stream because it comes across, it sounds as though a person in order to be saved must repent of sin, like you said,

John, and at least be willing to obey all of the commands of the Lord, if not be obeying them in order to be right with God.

And so our pushback against that is, no, we do not have to do anything in order to come to Christ.

Christ bids us to come to him, to cast ourselves upon him, to trust him for everything that we need in terms of salvation and our standing before God.

So this is very similar to the Marrow controversy that broke out in the

Church of Scotland in the 18th century, right, where there was a small rural presbytery, the

Octorator Presbytery, where it became a very controversial matter in terms of this one question of examination that was effectively getting at this issue, like must somebody forsake sin in order to come to Christ?

And it split the Church of Scotland because there were some known as the Marrow Brethren, because of the book,

The Marrow of Modern Divinity and their association with that book, who were adamant, and we would agree with the

Marrow Brethren, that no, we must not do anything in order to come to Jesus. Because if we do need to do anything in order to come to Christ, then we're all damned, right?

And so lordship, we fear, is very confusing on this because it sounds like there's stuff that you need to do in order to be able to legitimately come to Christ.

This would be, I'm going to go to Ezekiel 36, 26. This is the promise of the new covenant, just even understanding the nature of the new covenant.

And so let's just read it here. It says in verse 26, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit

I will put within you and I will remove your heart of stone from your flesh and give you, notice who's the acting agent here,

God, and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statues and be careful to obey my rules.

So the first acting part is God removing death and then giving us life, giving us the spirit and then giving us the capacity to obey.

So notice the nature of that. And that just flows into the New Testament. When you start hearing

Paul, you were dead in your trespasses and sin, he made you alive, right? Ephesians 2. He made you alive.

And then later on he says that he now causes you to walk in the good works that he had preordained for you.

But the order is important. It's dead, alive, obey. It's always, that's the order as the

Reformed has described it, the ordo salutis. It's the way in which we understand regeneration in the process of sanctification afterwards.

It's not sanctification before, which we'll get to that in a little bit. We will. But the order is important. One, it's given to us in scripture, but it also is important because it helps you understand how the nature of salvation works, right?

You're dead. The gospel's herald, new heart. Now you obey.

Exactly. Yeah. The message of Christ, the word of Christ is preached, which is the means that the

Lord ordinarily uses to save people, right? And so as Christ is heralded and Christ is preached,

God gives literally new hearts to people. He acts upon their hearts and gives them life.

And upon being given life, you know, the scales fall off of our eyes. Our hearts are set free.

We're actually rational for the first time in our lives. And we see Christ and we don't know everything at that moment, but we know we need him, right?

And so that's how this works. God does this supernatural thing. He performs a miracle and gives us life in the new birth, which then results in faith and then results in repentance and obedience, et cetera.

Yeah. One more thought from you, John, maybe before we move on to number two. Right. I know that there's objections because there are a lot of people who love

Calvinism and then would also love lordship salvation. And they would say that those who espouse lordship salvation would agree with our understanding of fortis ludus that, oh, of course, no, no one can ever be saved.

Right. But the confusion is only in that this is where we say there's category confusion.

And this is what happens. This is the inconsistency. When you don't have historical theology and orthodoxy and understand the categories that I think bump up and keep you from making, you know, error in your theology, they will say things like, no, no, we believe that regeneration must happen before there's obedience.

And then in the same breath say, but unless you repent and make Jesus Lord, you cannot be saved.

And, and what's your, sorry. No, go ahead. What you're doing there is inverting the relationships.

You know, you're changing that order and we're going to get to this more in our last talking point, actually, when we get to talking about justification and sanctification, but streams only flow one way.

That's right. They only flow downhill and you cannot reverse the order or invert relationships here.

And this is where, again, it's matters that we say regeneration, faith, then repentance and obedience. Right. And one is fruit of the other.

And so whenever you speak in a way that makes it sound like repentance and obedience are kind of just part and parcel of being saved and it gets confusing as to what comes first and how this actually happens, what produces the other, that's a problem.

And so here we go. Number two. So number one was our first concern with lordship salvation is confusion about the order of salvation.

Number two, we are concerned that lordship salvation redefines faith.

It redefines faith and what it even is. And so as compared to a historical reform definition of faith, the lordship stream is very confusing here because they seem to desire to weave things into the definition of saving faith that the reforms have not historically understood to be a part of faith.

So, for example, in the lordship camp, there is a desire to say, to teach, to preach, even that repentance and obedience or even a desire to obey are a part of what faith itself is.

That faith is inseparable in terms of its essence and what it is is faith is inseparable from repentance and obedience.

And we want to be really clear. The reforms have always said that where there is saving faith, repentance and obedience will be present.

That is true. But there always has to be a distinction maintained between faith and repentance and between faith and obedience.

They are not one and the same. That's right. Saving faith, for example, as our confession, the 1689

London Baptist Confession would define it. It consists of trusting, resting and hoping in the

Lord Jesus Christ for justification, sanctification and glorification on the basis of the covenant of grace.

So, as you hear, even that definition, that's in 14 .2 of our confession, there is nothing there about repentance and there is nothing there about obedience.

Our confession says things about repentance and it says things about obedience, but not when it defines what faith is.

And our concern with lordship is that those things are collapsed together and it sounds as though repentance and obedience is a part of faith.

If you are new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith Versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest.

And if you struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

slash primer. Yeah, under good works of the

London Baptist Confession, and this would be the same as a Westminster, chapter 16. This is what we're trying to help explain here, redefining faith.

So it says, point three, their ability to do good works does not arise at all from themselves, but entirely from the spirit of Christ.

So what he's describing that as is the result of, right? It's the result of, it's not the cause of.

It's not even part of. No, and being able to go back and look at the confessions and look at the scriptures that they use as far as an explanation, defending the positions by which they have come to these conclusions is helpful because when you read certain passages, for instance, that says, repent and believe for the kingdom is near, we get all kinds of categories.

They'll say, well, John, it literally says that in the text. So I literally have to believe it. And that's where the one that's biblicism, which we did a whole entire podcast on that, and you can go and listen to it.

We'll put it in the notes. But being able to distinguish and understand and read, and basically the whole argument is redefining faith.

It's turning it into something that it seems that the rest of scripture is in complete disagreement with.

Yeah. Like faith includes obedience. Faith includes repentance. Our response is, well, no, it doesn't. Faith is actually separate and distinguishable from those things.

And yes, where there is saving faith, there will be repentance and obedience. Absolutely true. The Reformed have said that for centuries.

And there's no, there's never a disconnect there. I mean, then you're going against what James says. So we understand that.

So I think the damaging results of this, John, whenever you start to change the definition of faith and you weave repentance and obedience into that definition, you rob people of any possibility of assurance because now in order to even have legitimate faith in the

Lord Jesus, I need to be adequately repenting and I need to be adequately obeying. And nobody, of course, can define that standard in terms of what adequate repentance or adequate obedience looks like, because God's word is pretty clear when it comes to obedience in particular, that only perfection passes muster.

And I mean, nothing short of perfection is acceptable. And so then we have to talk about the sincerity and our motivations and all this kind of stuff.

And it gets uber confusing to the point. It's like, okay, well, I don't know that any of us are saved then, you know, if adequate repentance and obedience are a part of what it even means to believe in Christ.

That's right. And it's very confusing. It's very harmful. Do you have any other thoughts about that before we move on to the next? No, I'll get to this when we finish all these points up.

But this is where certain kinds of preaching comes, where they are always trying to snuff out the lazy

Christian, the fake Christian, that's right, the nominal Christian, those which who said the sinner's prayer, but aren't really believers.

And this has been coming more and more into the Facebook group and into my people are just sending me more and more clips by prominent

Calvinistic preachers who are making claims like the majority of, you know,

Christians in churches today have a false sense of assurance, right? And what they're doing is they're pointing to this very thing, that this issue that we're talking about, redefining faith.

And some of these other categories I think will apply to those preacher clips as well, and we'll probably talk about that as we go.

So we're now moving on to talking point number three. So number one, confusion about the order of salvation. Number two, a redefinition of faith.

Number three, a collapsing of law and gospel. We are concerned that lordship salvation collapses law and gospel.

So you've heard us talk, probably if you've been listening to Theocast for much time at all, you've heard us talk before about the distinction between law and gospel.

That is a reformed and Lutheran category that's been around for a long time, where law exists in the

Old and New Testament, gospel exists in the Old and New Testament. And whenever you hear words of things that we are to be doing, you are hearing law.

Whenever you hear of what God has done, particularly in the person and work of Jesus, that's gospel.

And let's just go ahead and jump in on this. I'm happy to maybe give examples of this sort of confusion, John, but I wouldn't look like you might.

Yeah, I just, I want to say before you give an example, I want to kind of give an introduction to what you're about to say. Collapsing of the law and gospel means you end up changing the very nature of them.

For instance, the law becomes achievable and the gospel now has something to achieve.

The law is now a means of salvation, and the gospel now contains all kinds of things to do.

And that's why it becomes achievable. You lowered the standard of the law and it is now, if I repent enough,

I can be saved. And now the gospel is, when you repent enough, you can be saved.

And so there becomes such a mixture between the two that we really don't know the difference between, well, what is the law that condemns us and what is the gospel that now saves us because they're being mixed.

So whenever you confuse law and gospel, the way I like to summarize it to people a lot in terms of its damaging fallout is that the gospel is turned into a covenant of works that needs to be kept for righteousness.

So this is where you get all that language of the demands of the gospel or even another John MacArthur title, hard to believe, you know, that kind of like the gospel ends up sounding hard when the law and the gospel are confused.

So let me give an example from Luke chapter 10 of how lordship, salvation, and others confuse law and gospel.

And it just becomes really, really concerning for people and people don't know what to do. So this is right before the parable of the

Good Samaritan, beginning in Luke chapter 10 and verse 25, and behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test saying, teacher, what shall

I do to inherit eternal life? So this lawyer comes and asks Jesus this question. Jesus said to him, what is written in the law?

How do you read it? And he answered, you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.

And he said to him, you have answered correctly, do this and you will live. Okay. Then of course, the lawyer is going to go ahead and say, well, you know, who's my neighbor seeking to justify himself, all that.

But here's the point. In the lordship camp, you hear people say both things when they represent

Jesus and the message that Jesus brought, taught. They'll say, well, Jesus on the one hand says that we need to believe in him for eternal life.

But then on the other hand, Jesus says that you need to love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, if you're going to live forever.

And then what ends up happening is we pit the two against each other, right? And create all kinds of confusion.

That's what happens in the lordship camp. Whereas for us in just kind of reformed law gospel place, we say, no,

Jesus says, believe in me for eternal life. And then he also, when he preaches the gospel, but then when he teaches the law here, he's,

I mean, this is a summary of the law, love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, right? That is law and not gospel.

So instead of pitting the two against each other, believe in me, love God with all your heart, if you're going to have eternal life, we realize that belief in Christ actually provides righteousness.

So we have not loved the Lord, our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbor as ourself, but through faith in Christ, his perfect obedience is counted to us as though we kept the law.

And so that's how we would say you rightly understand law and gospel. That when Jesus talks about loving

God and loving neighbor, he's preaching law. When he talks about coming to him and believing in him and receiving what he has done, he is talking about gospel.

And one belief in Christ provides the other righteousness according to the law.

That's right. And the Lordship Salvation Camp confuses these things and then starts to say that, well, part of the gospel, you hear

Jesus say it, and again, it's biblicism, John. Like you said, there's a lot going on here. You heard Jesus say it. If you're going to live forever, you better love

God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. To which I want to raise my hand and say, okay, well, if that's true, then we're all, we're all damn because none of us have done that even for five minutes.

Nope. Right. So there must be something else. And maybe belief in Christ provides us with all the righteousness that we need.

Because he always loved God perfectly, and he always loved his neighbor perfectly, and he always kept the law perfectly. Well, part of the

New Testament is the Pharisees and the Sadducees lowering the standards of the law to make it achievable.

And Jesus is always coming in saying the famous phrase, you've heard it said, do not sleep with another man's wife.

But I tell you, you're going to be condemned of the law if you lust, right? What you have

Jesus doing is that these people walk up to prove they are acceptable and righteous in the eyes of God.

And Jesus says, you want to be acceptable in the eyes of God? Then he gives them the requirements to be acceptable in the eyes of God.

We hear that. And when you collapse law and gospel, we hear, oh, well, that's what it must mean in order to be saved by Jesus.

I have to forsake my mother and my father. I have to pick up my cross. I have to do this. I have to do that.

What Jesus is saying, if you want self -righteousness to be acceptable in the eyes of God, then this is what it looks like.

That's right. That's right. Because to the sinner who's broken and comes to Jesus, he says, come to me.

And at that moment, Jesus has already presented himself to be Messiah, perfect one, sent by God, Redeemer, cleansing.

I will breathe the final lamb. Behold the lamb of God. When Jesus says, come to me, all of those titles is what that means.

When you come to me, I am priest. I am prophet. I am king. I am Redeemer. I am lamb. And you aren't coming to Jesus to prove to him you mean business.

This is the thing, Justin, that where lordship salvation, I scratch my head because I'm like depravity is a doctrine that most people who believe in lordship hold to, but yet it seems to go out the window because no one can obey

God unless the spirit grants them. That is John six. That is Ephesians two.

And yet somehow we get to a place where the law allows us to adjust the order of salutis.

No, the law condemns. The gospel saves. There's nothing to do in the gospel other than you receive it.

And you can't even do that unless the spirit grants you faith. That's Ephesians two, right?

It's a gift of God, lest any man should boast. So I think it's when you come up against a passage and Jesus putting a requirement on you and you're feeling the weight of that, you need to hear that as, oh,

Jesus is beating down any self -righteousness that I might want to try and claim that God would accept me.

And then you hear the tender words of Jesus saying, there's nothing for you to do to be saved, but believe in me.

Now you're understanding the gospel. And two really quick thoughts before we move on.

We've said this before, but it bears repeating. If you read through the gospels with this lens on, I think it's very helpful.

Notice how Jesus interacts with those who think that they're righteous or who think that they can achieve righteousness.

And then notice and go through the gospels and observe how he interacts with people who know they're not righteous and realize they got nothing to stand on and nothing to bring.

Look at how he interacts with them. And I would say with basically no exceptions for all of those who come to him trusting in their own righteousness or who think they can achieve it.

He is at times harsh, right? He is like really crushing them with the law.

He's like, okay, you think you've done it. You haven't done it. And here's what the law requires. You know, and he speaks and you hear it and you're like, that's impossible.

Exactly right. But then when he interacts with people who know they've got no merit, they've got no righteousness, nothing to stand on.

He looks at them like he does the woman of the city in Luke chapter seven and says you're forgiven. You know, though your sins are many, you're forgiven, right?

You have the prostitute and the, and the Pharisee in the same room. And how does he talk to them differently?

And it's not that we're not saying that to be a Pharisee is bad and to be a prostitute is good because some people like ridiculously draw that conclusion.

No, we're not saying that both are sinners in need of a savior. Just like all of us. The point of it is not what you're, what you've done.

The point of it is, do you know you need Christ? Right. And when people know they need him,

Jesus is gentle and lowly. It's just like it's Matthew 11, right? He begs people to come to him. All that you who are weary and heavy laden with what the demands of the law and the things that the

Pharisees have put on you come to me and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I'm gentle and lowly in heart.

Well, his yoke, you know, yoke was used to describe the yoke of the law. Christ is like, look, take the yoke, take my yoke upon you.

Cause it's really light. How is that? Because I've kept the law for you. That's right. You know, and you, you come to me and you'll find rest for your souls and lordship salvation confuses this relationship and the gospel ends up sounding hard.

Well, even going back to Luke seven, the whole illustration of why Luke records that is when

Jesus says she loves too much because she's been forgiven much. And Jesus goes on to say this

Pharisee, uh, never showed any affection towards Jesus at all because he didn't see the need for Jesus.

Correct. And anytime that the law should be that, that tool that knocks you in the shins and causes you to just in pain, fall to the ground and say, what a wretch

I am. And Jesus often had to keep upping the law, upping the law and they still didn't get it.

Yeah. Or it's that weight that's placed upon you. That literally just pins you to the floor and you can't get out from under it.

That's what the law is. So it's not, he's not creating, he's not saying only those who are dedicated, only those who are fully going to abandon everything.

It's only those who are really to put on the high, all of those whose affections are in the right place all the time. That's right.

Jesus, when he gives you law, he, he makes it. I, I always, there are multiple passages.

You already said that Jesus basically says, obey all the law and the prophets and you can be saved. And people go, okay. And they think that's part of the good news.

No, that's the law. It's a summary of the law. It's not only that is that they are so blind by their own sin that they assume they can actually keep the law.

And that's what I'm saying. A lowering of the law. If you lower the level of the law and make it achievable, you have no longer, you're no longer looking at the law.

You've collapsed it into gospel. And what's interesting is that, and we've got to move on to numbers four and five, but what's interesting is that the

Lordship stream will often criticize guys like us because they'll say that we're not taking the holiness of God or the law of God seriously enough.

And we just kind of sometimes like, yeah, I think that's not true because what we're, what we're trying to uphold here is the holiness of God and the holy righteous requirements of the law that no one can meet yet.

You're talking about the law in such a way, it sounds as though we can actually do this, you know? And so you're having to relativize its standards, as you've said, which is not a good thing to do, which let's keep talking a little bit about the law.

John, moving on to talking point number four. So we've already, number one, confusion of the order of salvation. Number two, a redefinition of faith.

Number three, a collapsing of law and gospel. The fourth concern we have about Lordship salvation is a confusion on uses of the law.

So really quickly, just a summation, at least in our confessional tradition, how we define the three uses of the law.

First use is to show us our sin and drive us to Christ. The second use is the civil use to restrain our corruption, teach us what's good, what's bad, what's right, what's wrong.

Third use is to guide our lives in Christ by the spirit of Christ at work in us. We will be conformed to the law, though the law no longer threatens us because Christ has kept it for us and has taken our punishment.

He became a lawbreaker and took the punishment of the law for us. And so we're no longer condemned by it.

It's no longer a fearful thing for us, but it guides our lives. It's our kind advisor, as John Calvin would say.

And our concern with Lordship salvation is that there is an utter collapsing and confusion of these uses of the law.

So everything, and John, I'll let you riff on this and then maybe I'll come back in. I'm just going to kind of maybe front load it and get us going with this.

To me, the only kind of tone that's ever used when talking about the law in the

Lordship salvation camp is a threatening exacting tone. And it's not because they're only preaching the first use of the law.

They're actually preaching the law to Christians, but it sounds scary. It's obey or else, right?

And we would say that the third use of the law ought not be done in an exacting, threatening way to guide the

Christian's life. It's not do this or else. It's like, no, you've been united to Christ and here's now how we live together in the church.

Here's how we live as those who have been united to Christ by faith. Thoughts on that, brother? This is probably one.

Um, I don't know. I don't know how many people who espouse Lordship salvation understand the uses of the law.

Yeah, I don't know either, bro. Right. And again, I can remember when I was trained at TMS, I never heard this concept until I started engaging reformed confessional theology and understanding the different confessional

Lutheran theology too. Specifically the first use and third use are very important because the first use is only always condemn perfection, condemn, and it only relates to the unbeliever as it relates.

In other words, if, if you want to know what causes you to be alienated from God and under his condemnation, first use of the law is designed to be that schoolmaster to absolutely teach you.

You're condemned. Can I interject one thing really quick? Yeah. I think the first use of the law can be preached to Christians, but here's what it sounds like.

It's not, you are condemned. It's more of, Hey, let's all remember what God requires.

And let's remember that even now on the backside of conversion and union with Christ, we can't keep the law adequately.

So we today, just like the first day we believed are saying, were it not for Christ, I stand condemned so that we can talk like that as Christians, but we're not threatening people with it.

We're reminding one another of the impossibility of keeping the law and why we need Jesus so much, but that's not what's going on in the

Lordship stream. Yeah. Right. So then we get to the third use of the law, right? Which is to guide us as Christians.

And there's never in the third use of the law, you never hear do this and live.

It's a good example of this would be something like Ephesians four walk in a manner worthy of the calling to what you have been called, right?

First Peter one or second Peter one, uh, three through nine, which talks about add to your faith, godliness.

And so they're, they're always saying, this is the reflection and the Bible says that if you are a believer, you do these things.

So it's, it's not, it's not a, if you want to obey, it's like, no, this is, this is the new covenant prominence.

You will walk in these truths. This is why even in the confessions, they say those who have faith obey at varying levels.

You've got a new, you've got a new identity. Now you're in Christ. You have a new status. Now you're justified. You've been adopted into the family of God.

And here's how God's kids live. That's what the third use is. Right. And we believe in church discipline because it is, it is there to protect the church and the believer and to keep it to restore those who are going astray.

Right? So Galatians six, one is important. Uh, Romans 15, uh, Matthew, the, the, the steps of a church discipline.

But here's where the danger is, is that sometimes you hear the first use of the law being given to believers.

It's, it's the obey or else kind of, um, attitude in that if you don't live up to a certain level of Christianity, a certain level of obedience, which

I have been saying for years, how much obedience, then you're truly not a disciple of Jesus Christ.

And the danger in that is that you are trying to motivate people by two things, fear and condemnation, where there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

And number two, you're using the first use of the law, which is not designed. Let me just say this,

Justin, what is second Peter one nine say, if these truths are not true about you and increasing godliness, patience, kindness, what does he say that you forgot?

You've forgotten the good news, man. You've forgotten that you've been cleansed from your former sins have been dealt with.

He doesn't point back to the first use of the law. He actually points back to the gospel for their motivation of obedience.

Lord, Lordship salvation, uh, often cause, cause weak, uh,

Christians who have been tossed about by everyone of doctrine, Ephesians four, and who are not strong in their faith.

They use the first use of the law to call into question their faith. Whereas Paul and like even to the

Corinthians, you don't see Paul doing this. I want to come and preach Christ to you or second Peter one nine, you've forgotten you've been cleansed.

The motivation for the believer who is weak in obedience is not condemnation under the law.

No first use, but it is encouragement in the gospel act as what you have received.

You've received mercy and grace. Now live in it. Right. Amen, brother. I, there's a lot I could say, dude, but we're running short on time and we need to get to our fifth talking point.

And yeah, we trust there will be more podcasts to be recorded where we can talk a little bit about the uses. We actually have talked about how we mentioned this all the time.

We've not done a podcast on the uses of the law. We need to do it soon. So maybe that'll be coming down the pipe.

We'll see. All right. Fifth talking point. I just recapping them all as we go. Lest there be any confusion. Our concerns with Lordship salvation.

Number one, confusion about the order of salvation. Number two, a redefinition of faith. Number three, a collapsing of law and gospel.

Number four, a confusion of the uses of the law. And finally, number five, a confusion of the relationship between justification and sanctification.

So again, a few just front loaded comments for me, and then we'll riff on this for a minute and we'll be done.

Justification is the declaration of God that we are just in his sight on the basis of what

Christ alone has done in our place. He has paid the penalty we deserve and we have been credited with, we have been given the righteousness of Christ.

His righteousness has been imputed to us credited to our account. And it's as though we did everything that Jesus did.

And God looks at us and says, just that is justification. Sanctification is the process by which we are transformed more and more into the image of Christ, into the likeness of Christ.

And we are conformed even to live more and more according to God's law. And this is going to be over the course of our lives.

It will ebb and flow. It will look different in different seasons. And it is ultimately a work that God himself by his spirit does as a result of our union with Christ.

We do agree that all those who are justified will be sanctified.

It is not a question. It is certain because God will see to it. And at the same time, there must be a proper distinction maintained between justification and sanctification because what

Lordship salvation does is collapse the two. And instead of talking about it the right way, where our sanctification flows out of our justification, that's the reformed understanding.

Lordship makes it sound as though we are building our justification on our sanctification.

We are building, we are, you know, anchoring our righteous standing before God on our obedience, on our desire to obey, right?

Or even on the adequacy of our repentance or something. Nobody would ever say it like that, but that's how it comes across, right?

It's this, John, we talked about this a lot. It's that prove it kind of theology. It's that prove it mentality. It's like you are constantly, you need to obey in order that so that you might prove that you're really justified.

And that is not how the scriptures talk. It's not how the reformed have understood it because you're, you're making some, some category shifts and you're confusing some things because it is true.

All those who are justified will be sanctified. If you're not being sanctified at all, you may very well not be justified.

True. Therefore pursue sanctification like crazy to, to know you're justified wrong.

You can't do that. And that's what Lordship does is prove you're justified through your obedience and through your desire to obey and your repentance and the like.

And it doesn't work that way. The stream does not flow uphill, man. Like you said, it's second Peter one. I mean, you got to point people back to the gospel.

That's the source. That's the fountainhead, right? Well, I mean, Calvin argued the, um, the essence of the

Christian life is assurance. It's not the pursuit of the Christian life in Lordship salvation. The pursuit of the

Christian life is assurance. And so we are, we are pursuing good works so that we can find a firm footing in assurance and you're reversing it.

You're looking at your sanctification to clarify your justification and you're supposed to look to your justification as the root cause of your sanctification.

Let me put it this way. Uh, we'll just quote scripture here. He who began a good work in you, who is this flippings, right?

He who began, that's right. He who began a good work in you will complete it. Not you.

So sanctification is not synergistic. It's not you and God working together. But at the same time, he says, work out your salvation with fearing trembling, amen to God.

And he means by fear and trembling, it doesn't mean dread and, um, doubt. He means with reverence and awe.

He goes, work it out because God is the one working in you.

Uh, Galatians three, Hey, who, who tripped you guys up? It's not, you come to faith and now you do the rest.

Right. He says, the same way you start is the same way you continue. It's faith. That's right.

That's right. So when you, when you start emphasizing your sanctification as a means to clarify your justification, and these might be two big words for someone who's brand new to this sex, but sanctification, meaning the process of us becoming transformed already.

Yeah. Yeah. So here's the, here's the, here's the problem is it.

I feel like these passages are very clear. Yes, we obey.

It is the part of the Christian life, just like human beings breathe. Christians obey. At times we don't obey, uh, like we should.

And at times we can go long periods of time, which we've done multiple podcasts on this. But if you are grounding your standing before God as an adopted child based upon your obedience, that means it is possible for you to go from being an adopted child to not being adopted child.

Yeah. That is dangerous. I'm tempted to read the John Calvin quote again that I read in the first one that people liked so much.

And that might be a good way to put a bow on this. And then we'll, we'll transition over to Semper Reformanda.

So John Calvin in the institutes writes this for if they begin to judge their salvation by good works, which is what we're talking about right now, nothing will be more uncertain or more feeble from this.

It comes about that the believer's conscience feels more fear and consternation than assurance. If righteousness is supported by works in God's sight, it must entirely collapse and it is confined solely to God's mercy, solely to communion with Christ and therefore solely to faith.

So he's clear there at the end, this is all about mercy. This is all about union with Christ. This is all about faith when it comes to even our good works that we would perform.

It's all done that way and we cannot look to validate our standing before the

Lord through our good works. Nothing will be more feeble and nothing will be more damaging because we can't do it.

And that occurs often in the teaching of the Lordship salvation stream. So we hope this episode has been good in adding maybe some clarifying comments and giving you some handles and some takeaways in terms of what the concerns are that we have with Lordship salvation.

John, I think you got one more thing to say before we head over to SR. The couple of podcasts we'll add into this, into the show notes,

I think for sure are going to be the law gospel distinction for sure. When the faithful falter is a faithful falter is going to be one and another one on assurance.

Those three I think will help. And maybe even our series on covenant theology too. Yeah, absolutely.

Yep. We'll put those in the show notes and over in SR I think we're going to have a conversation about just sustainability in the

Christian life. Like what is it that will really last over the long term? And then we may even talk a little bit more about the posture and the tone that we aim to strike here at Theocast because that's a relevant thing to discuss in light of critiquing, you know, another stream of theology.

Anyway, we're grateful for all of you guys for listening. We do sincerely hope that this has been clarifying and encouraging for you. We hope that you are encouraged all the more in the

Lord Jesus Christ. Like he saints, he really has done enough. Like we are forgiven and we have been declared righteous on the basis of Christ alone.

And we received what he did by faith alone. We are now making our way over to the Semper Reformanda podcast.

That's the other podcast we record every week. This is kind of our family time with people that have partnered with Theocast.

And that's a fun conversation every week, John. And we kind of pull the filter down a little bit, talk about things behind the curtain, just talk very honestly with our listeners about just the

Christian life and how we aim to do this thing. So if that sounds like something you'd want to listen to, you can find out more information about the Semper Reformanda podcast and just Semper Reformanda in general, how you can partner with us over on our website at theocast .org.

We've got an app and all kinds of things related to that ministry where we're trying to connect people all over the place and geographically situated groups and virtual online groups where we can continue this kind of conversation about rest in Christ.

And so check all that out on the website, avail yourselves of that. And for those of you headed over to SR, we'll talk with you there.

For the rest of you, we will speak with you again next week. And do not forget to get on social media if you want to win that beautiful Bible that John is holding in his hands right now.