Recently, one of my YouTube viewers, Jason Johnson, let me know that he was quite displeased with the content of my video, True and False Conversion: Are You Gathering or Scattering? He said quite a bit in his rebuttal, but the crux of his argument is below in his own words:
You are preaching ‘works salvation’ aka Lordship Salvation. In one breath you say, you do nothing to get saved, it’s a gift! — true!. Then in the next you say one has to practice holiness and do all these works to ‘stay saved’ or prove that they’re saved — not true.
Well, I confess, he nabbed me. I do believe there is no such thing as a salvation layaway plan where He becomes your Savior now and your Lord later. This teaching is an error in support of the “once saved, always saved” lie.
My response to Jason is below. You can read all of his rebuttal here. Okay, on to my response:
I appreciate your comment, Jason. Actually, I take my position after having fully studied this subject. The bottom line is this: The once saved, always saved people believe in salvation without faith. They offer salvation without repentance. Faith will “always” have works. Isn’t that the message of the book of James?
It really is not appropriate to tell us what Paul says about Abraham and his faith “without works” and to leave out what James says about Abraham’s faith: “But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar” (James 2:20-21).
James asks the question, “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?” (2:14). Jason, your answer to this is, “Sure, James, Paul says it does.”
But doesn’t it make more sense to reconcile the Scriptures rather than to try and use one against another? God is not confused about this matter. If a person says he loves God and consistently embraces a life of sin, as the Scripture says, that person is a liar.
Your gospel offers salvation from the penalty of sin, but not the power of sin. This is why once saved, always saved people harp on being powerless against sin. It is tragic that churches would teach people that obeying God is an option rather than a command, or worse, that it’s impossible.
And, yes, salvation by grace through faith demands obedience to Christ. However, because we are saved by grace through faith, the weak saint can cry out to God for forgiveness seventy times seven…times infinity if necessary.
However, the Lord knows the difference in a weak, struggling child of God who hates his or her sin and who has fallen victim to it, yet holds on to his faith in godly sorrow, and a person who has bought into the “no faith needed” gospel, and uses this lie to justify a life of rebellion against God.
I assume that your position, salvation by grace alone, and my position of salvation by grace through faith, will not be reconciled.
What a weak, powerless, emaciated gospel that tells us to believe some facts about Jesus, say a prayer, and we can live in rebellion against Him, and the worst that will happen to us is we may die sooner than the original plan. But, hey, no problem. We wake up in paradise!
That is not the message of the Bible. Your doctrine has populated hell with multitudes of people who might have otherwise served Christ had you not stripped the gospel of its power.
What do you think? Is obedience to Christ only an option once a person becomes a Christian? Leave a comment.
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Copyright 2019 by Eric M Hill. You may contact me at ericmhillauthor@yahoo.com, Facebook.com/ericmhillauthor, or Twitter.com/ericmhillatl.
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