For all the talk of gospel-centeredness, there’s still some fear and trepidation fueled by a common misunderstanding regarding the radical nature of grace. Even amongst the proponents of gospel-centrality, I still hear talk about there being two equal dangers that Christians must avoid: legalism and lawlessness.

Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law, or rules. Lawlessness, they say, happens when you focus too much on grace. Therefore, in order to maintain spiritual equilibrium, you have to balance law and grace. Sometimes, legalism and lawlessness are presented as two ditches on either side of the gospel that we must avoid. If you start getting too much law, you need to balance it with grace. If you start getting too much grace, you need to balance it with law. But I’ve come to believe that this “balanced” way of framing the issue can unwittingly keep us from really understanding the gospel of grace in all of its radical depth and beauty.

It’s more theologically accurate to say that there is one primary enemy of the gospel—legalism—but it comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (you could call this “front-door legalism”).

Other people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (you could call this “back-door legalism”).

In other words, there are two “laws” we can choose to live by other than Christ: the law which says “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I keep the rules” or the law which says “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I break the rules.” Either way you’re still trying to “save” yourself—which means both are legalistic because both are self-salvation projects.

So, it’s a mistake to identify the “two cliffs” as being legalism and lawlessness. The one “cliff” is legalism but it comes in two forms—what some call license is just another form of legalism. And if people outside the church are guilty of “break the rules” legalism, many people inside the church are still guilty of “keep the rules” legalism.

This is super important because the biggest lie about grace that Satan wants the church to buy is the idea that grace is dangerous and therefore needs to be “kept it in check.” By believing this we not only prove we don’t understand grace, but we violate gospel advancement in our lives and in the church. A “yes, grace…but” disposition is the kind of fearful posture that keeps moralism swirling around in our hearts and in the church.

I understand the fear of grace. As a pastor, one of my responsibilities is to disciple people into a deeper understanding of obedience—teaching them to say “no” to the things God hates and “yes” to the things God loves. But all too often I have (wrongly) concluded that the only way to keep licentious people in line is to give them more rules. The fact is, however, that the only way licentious people start to obey is when they get a taste of God’s radical unconditional acceptance of sinners.

The irony of gospel-based sanctification is that those who end up obeying more are those who increasingly realize that their standing with God is not based on their obedience, but Christ’s.

The people who actually end up performing better are those who understand that their relationship with God doesn’t depend on their performance for Jesus, but Jesus’ performance for us.

People need to hear less about what we need to do for God and more about all that God has already done for us, because imperatives minus indicatives equal impossibilities. If you’re a preacher and you’re assuming that people understand the radical nature of gospel indicatives, so your ministry is focused primarily on gospel imperatives, you’re making a huge mistake. A huge mistake!

Long-term, sustained, gospel-motivated obedience can only come from faith in what Jesus has already done, not fear of what we must do. To paraphrase Ray Ortlund, any obedience not grounded in or motivated by the gospel is unsustainable. No matter how hard you try, how “radical” you get, any engine smaller than the gospel that you’re depending on for power to obey will conk out in due time.

So let’s take it up a notch. Don’t be afraid to preach the radical nature of the gospel of grace. For, as the late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said, “If your preaching of the gospel doesn’t provoke the charge from some of antinomianism, you’re not preaching the gospel.”

Thanks to Tullian Tchividjian

…when men give themselves up to separating and narrow principles, the power of godliness is lost, and all their zeal is laid out upon their petty and private opinions, and so religion is turned into a disputacity…. Observe it where you will, and you shall find that separation and distance from the rest of believers, doth not befriend godliness, but undermine it. A regiment fighting apart from the rest of the army of Christ, is always lost through their own peevishness; at least, they lose great advantages of promoting the kingdom of Christ.

John MacArthur

It has now been 15 years since The Gospel According to Jesus was first published and the lordship of Christ became a matter of intense debate among evangelicals. That book stood for the simple proposition that the gospel is a call to surrender to the lordship of Christ in humble, repentant faith.

My publisher originally assigned The Gospel According to Jesus to their academic division. They had high expectations for the book from the start and initially thought it might sell as many as 30,000 copies–an unusually high number for an academic book of that sort. But it surpassed 100,000 in sales in a few months, and within a couple of years it had reached the quarter-million mark. There are now about half a million copies in circulation, and the book is still in print. That is almost unprecedented for a polemic book dealing with a theological issue.

When I wrote the book, I expected it to be somewhat controversial, of course, because I was defending a view that a handful of respected Christian leaders, (including Charles Ryrie, John Walvoord, and Zane Hodges) had already denounced as “lordship salvation.” But I confess that I did not anticipate the firestorm of intense debate that arose. The controversy seemed to dominate the evangelical world for several years after the book was published.

Most of my theological opponents in the lordship debate were fellow conservative evangelicals who had been my friends and allies in earlier controversies regarding the charismatic movement and the inerrancy of the Scriptures. They were men whom I deeply respected (and still esteem highly for much of the work they have done).

But they were promoting a view of the gospel that, from a biblical perspective, seemed seriously flawed. They insisted there is no place in the gospel for the proclamation of Jesus’ lordship. They said those who call unbelievers to surrender to Christ’s authority are preaching a gospel of works. They taught that repentance is a false addition to the gospel message. They objected to any kind of evangelism that employed the language of denying oneself, taking up a cross, and following Christ (cf. Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23). They declared that devotion to Christ, love for Him, and obedience to His commands are all matters that pertain to discipleship rather than saving faith. Faith, they said, is merely the acceptance of salvation as a free and unconditional gift–and they portrayed discipleship as a second-level commitment. Therefore, according to their view, the gospel presents Jesus as Savior only, not as Lord.

Nearly all the leading advocates of the no-lordship gospel were associated with Dallas Theological Seminary. In fact, Dr. James M. Boice, who wrote powerfully in defense of “lordship salvation” long before I entered the fray, referred to their view as “the Dallas Doctrine.”

The pedigree of no-lordship doctrine at Dallas Seminary is traceable back to founder Lewis Sperry Chafer. The doctrine apparently stemmed from Chafer’s misguided attempts to develop a uniquely dispensationalist soteriology. Chafer (together with other early dispensationalists, including C. I. Scofield) was so zealous to eliminate every vestige of law from the dispensation of grace that he embraced a kind of antinomianism. That was the seed from which the no-lordship gospel sprouted.

Apparently, no-lordship doctrine no longer dominates Dallas Seminary the way it once did, but controversy over the issue is by no means dead. The past year or so has seen publication of a few new books touting the no-lordship view, attempting to revive the debate yet again. At least one organization, the Grace Evangelical Society, was founded in the heat of the controversy a decade and a half ago and regularly publishes a journal and a newsletter devoted to defending no-lordship theology. The question evidently remains unsettled for many.

My own views on “lordship salvation” have not changed, and if anything I now see the issue as larger and more far-reaching than I did when I first wrote The Gospel According to Jesus. Much more is at stake than just the question of how we proclaim the gospel. The lordship issue has serious ramifications for a number of crucial points of theology.

Grace

The doctrine of grace, for example, is profoundly affected by no-lordship teaching. Defenders of the no-lordship gospel often refer to their unique teachings as “Grace Theology” and their movement as “the Grace Movement.” They are convinced that only their system preserves the gospel’s message of grace. That is precisely why they insist every opposing opinion is a kind of works-salvation.

But they are working with an unbiblical notion of “grace.” Grace is not a liberal clemency or a passive indulgence that simply tolerates and coexists with sin. Divine grace doesn’t guarantee heaven in the afterlife while merely overlooking the evils of this life. Authentic grace is the undeserved favor of God toward sinners, delivering them from the power as well as the penalty of sin (Romans 6:14). Grace is dynamic, “teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age” (Titus 2:12).

Furthermore, grace is not merely God’s response to the sinner’s initiative. Quite the opposite. Because He is gracious, God takes the initiative, drawing the sinner (John 6:44, 65), granting repentance (Acts 3:26; 5:31; 11:18), and awakening the heart to faith (Acts 13:48; 16:14). Every aspect of the believer’s response–conviction, repentance, and faith–is the result of God’s gracious work in the heart. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).

God’s grace is rooted in Christ’s atonement for sin, which was infinitely costly. In fact, Christ’s death on behalf of sinners is the supreme expression of divine grace. It is unthinkable that God would sacrifice His Son to purchase heaven for sinners but leave them to fend for themselves against the power of sin in this life (cf. Romans 8:32).

Sanctification

That’s why sanctification is another major doctrine whose biblical foundations are undermined by no-lordship doctrine. The whole gist of the no-lordship message is that while justification is a free gift of God’s grace, sanctification is primarily the believer’s own work–and therefore more or less optional.

But Scripture teaches that sanctification begins at conversion. The process of practical sanctification is launched by God’s regenerating work, when He graciously gives the sinner a new heart and a new spirit of obedience (Ezekiel 11:19-20; 36:26-27; 2 Corinthians 5:17). Just as regeneration marks the beginning of sanctification, glorification marks its end. Sanctification culminates in that moment when we see Christ and are instantly conformed perfectly to His image (1 John 3:2; 1 Corinthians 13:12). Meanwhile, all genuine believers are being sanctified–conformed gradually to the image of Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Romans 8:29). Those who remain unchanged and in unbroken bondage to sin have no true knowledge of Christ (1 John 3:6).

Sanctification is as much a work of divine grace as justification. By portraying sanctification as an optional human work, advocates of no-lordship doctrine actually fall into the very error of works-salvation they profess to deplore. They have made at least this aspect of salvation into a human work.

Justification by Faith

The pivotal doctrine in the lordship debate is justification by grace through faith alone (sola fide). No-lordship doctrine is a corruption of sola fide. The leading proponents of the no-lordship view err because they tend to make justification practically the only work God does in salvation, and they omit or downplay the doctrines of regeneration and sanctification.

Justification is a forensic decree–God’s legal verdict that the sinner has been fully forgiven and credited with the full merit of a perfect righteousness. Justification must be distinguished from regeneration and sanctification, but it can never be divorced from them. There is no such thing as a justified sinner who is still unregenerate or utterly unsanctified.

That is not to suggest that we are justified because of our sanctification. We are not even justified “because” of our faith. Faith is the instrument of our justification, not the ground of it.

The righteousness of Christ–not any work done by the believer or wrought by God in the sinner–is the true ground of our justification. In other words, God gives us a righteous standing only because of the perfect righteousness He imputes to us. We’re not justified because of any righteousness we attain in our sanctification. We’re not justified because of the quality of our faith or the depth of our repentance. God accepts us only for Christ’s sake. Because of our union with Christ, he receives us as righteous in Christ. Thus we are justified because of what Christ has done on our behalf; not because of anything we do, period.

And it is by faith alone that we lay hold of the promise of justification. That’s what Scripture means when it speaks of being “justified by faith” (Romans 3:8; 5:1; Galatians 2:16; 3:24).

But, as the Reformers said, while faith alone justifies, the faith that justifies is never alone. Genuine faith inevitably produces good works. The works are the fruit, not the root, of faith. And justification is therefore complete at the very inception of faith, before faith ever produces a single work. It is not a process like sanctification.

Most who have defended the lordship of Christ for the past decade and a half have labored diligently to make these things clear and to defend the principle of sola fide. This will become more and more important if the debate is rekindled, because there are a number of theological trends on the horizon that tend to undermine the principle of sola fide. These include the so-called “New Perspective on Paul,” several recent attacks on the doctrine of imputation, ECT-style ecumenism, and a revival of Anabaptist opposition to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Some who have helped popularize these trends claim that they too are simply battling the shallow “faith” and cheap “grace” of modern evangelicalism, but they actually overthrow the heart of the gospel when they abandon the doctrine of justification by faith.

The errors of no-lordship theology do not find their origin in the principle of sola fide; they stem from an incomplete, man-centered soteriology that refuses to see anything beyond justification. In defending the gospel from no-lordship doctrine, we must take care not to commit the opposite error by downplaying or abandoning the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

The Sovereignty of God

Another doctrine under attack in the lordship debate is the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. No-lordship theology cannot coexist with biblical views of election, predestination, and divine foreknowledge. Simply put, you won’t find a Calvinist who believes in no-lordship doctrine.

If salvation is really all God’s work, how could it be utterly lacking the grace of sanctification? Is surrender to Christ really a human work, or is regeneration with all its effects a sovereign work of God? How can a believer whose heart has been renewed by divine grace fail to bow to Christ’s lordship? As I wrote in chapter 1 of The Gospel According to Jesus:

We must remember above all that salvation is a sovereign work of God. Biblically it is defined by what it produces, not by what one does to get it. Works are not necessary to earn salvation. But true salvation wrought by God will not fail to produce the good works that are its fruit (cf. Matthew 7:17). No aspect of salvation is merited by human works, but it is all the work of God (Titus 3:5-7). Thus salvation cannot be defective in any dimension. “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). As a part of His saving work, God will produce repentance, faith, sanctification, yieldedness, obedience, and ultimately glorification. Since He is not dependent on human effort in producing those elements, an experience that lacks any of them cannot be the saving work of God.

I once listened to a message by S. Lewis Johnson critiquing a book by Zane Hodges in which Dr. Johnson concluded that the central error underlying no-lordship doctrine is nothing but the ancient heresy of semi-pelagianism–the belief that saving grace cannot be efficacious without the prior cooperation of human free will.

Dr. Johnson’s analysis was accurate. Scripture teaches that God’s saving grace is inherently efficacious. All whom the Father has chosen shall come to Christ (John 6:37). Each one of them will be effectually called, justified, glorified, and perfectly conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29-30). No aspect of salvation can fail, because none of it hinges on the fickle human will. All of it is the efficacious work of a sovereign God. Accept those truths and you cannot embrace no-lordship doctrine.

Other Important Points of Doctrine

Where you land on the lordship question will also have far-reaching implications for your views on assurance, faith, repentance, eternal rewards, human depravity, the role of the moral law, and a host of other crucial doctrines. Almost no aspect of soteriology is left untainted by the errors of no-lordship doctrine.

-R.C. Sproul, Saved From What?, p.27

For instance, we may so quickly pursue “what the Bible means to me,” greatly emphasizing “to me,” that we completely ignore the distance between ourselves and the text, and compromise the Bible’s historical specificity and thus the nature of God’s graciously given verbal revelation. Worse, the morbid person given to endless introspection will glumly focus on all the passages that establish human guilt; the triumphalistic extrovert will fasten on everything that shouts of victory; the self-seeking hedonist will find passages that speak of life and joy. It is far better for all Christians to read every part of the Scripture, think it through on its own terms, discern, so far as possible, its contribution to the whole of the canon, and then ask how such truth applies to themselves, and to the church and the society of which they are a part.

Because the Bible is God’s word, it is vitally important to cultivate humility as we read, to foster a meditative prayerfulness as we reflect and study, to seek the help of the Holy Spirit as we try to understand and obey, to confess sin and pursue purity of heart and motive and relationships as we grow in understanding. Failure in these areas may produce scholars, but not mature Christians.

Above all, we must remember that we will one day give an account to the one who says,

“This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.”  (Isa. 66:2)

- D.A. Carson, Collected Writings on Scripture, 52, 53

Are You Kidding Me?

I’m reflecting upon an issue that I imagine is not distinctly an American problem, but a troubling one none the less.  The matter at hand is the role that our cultural and national identities play in the character of our local church. Having recently attended a gospel conference, I heard a speaker say that “the Church is multi ethnic but NOT multi cultural…we have one culture, and that is Christ”. Someone might immediately point out that it is impossible not to observe cultural distinctives in our local bodies. Some would argue that our language is a cultural norm.  What about the wearing of suits?  That conversation is all well and good but I’m thinking about another practice all together.  That being the military parade that takes place in most Sunday morning services on this Memorial Day weekend.

I’m not going to waste your time attempting to prove to you that I’m a loyal American that loves his country.  What I would like for you to consider is why every Memorial Day and July 4th weekend a fair number of our churches feel compelled to abandon the worship of our Sovereign and King in order that we might pay homage to our country’s military forces.  This brings me to the place of my reflection.  There are a couple questions I’m considering and wondering if you do as well.  Namely,

• Is it right for a local body of believers to ‘honor’ someone or something other than God?
• What criteria do we use to determine whether that someone or something is worthy of receiving honor from us corporately. As opposed to me thanking a soldier individually.  Remember that the Church is a distinct and unique enterprise, most notably because of it’s creator and owner.
• What form does that recognition or honor take?  A plaque?  A 30 minute slideshow?  Or maybe 20 minutes of patriotic songs that we normally ascribe to Jesus Christ?
• Where/when do we bestow this honor?  Do we use the singular time that we as a body of believers have set aside to assemble together for this purpose?

You might ask, “what’s the big deal Bo?”  Here’s the big deal.  So much of my life is so distracted with the cares and concerns of this world that I have become very protective over certain things of my life.  Things are distinctly separate from this world. Gathering corporately on the Lord’s Day to commemorate His resurrection is, for me, the epitome of that separation.  And to drag my favorite national holiday into that assembly is not only out of place, it’s vile.

If I’m missing the boat on this one, please correct me.

And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from EVERY tribe and tongue and people and nation.

Rev 5:9 NASB

“I am not at a loss to tell you that it could not be for any good thing in Jacob, that God loved him, because I am told that “the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election might stand, not of works but of him that calleth.” I can tell you the reason why God loved Jacob; It is sovereign grace. There was nothing in Jacob that could make God love him; there was everything about him, that might have made God hate him, as much as he did Esau, and a great deal more. But it was because God was infinitely gracious, that he loved Jacob, and because he was sovereign in his dispensation of this grace, that he chose Jacob as the object of that love. Now, I am not going to deal with Esau, until I have answered the question on the side of Jacob. I want just to notice this, that Jacob was loved of God, simply on the footing of free grace.”

C. H. Spugeon’s sermon, preached on Sunday, January 16th, 1859