Repenting from Lordship Salvation…Halfway

28 August 2011

The first error of lordship salvation is thinking that God won’t save you (or hasn’t saved you) if you have a rotten life.  Entry into heaven goes with a good life (conditionally or inevitably), and if you examine your life and see that it’s not good, you’re not going to heaven.

The second, and more subtle, error of lordship salvation is thinking that Yahweh is the sort of god who would send you to hell if He could.

I’m finding that there are an awful lot of people who have halfway repented from lordship salvation.  They no longer believe that Yahweh requires sanctification in order to enter heaven.  However, in their heart of hearts, they still believe in a furious god who would send them to hell if he could.

So they invest themselves in the Free Grace gospel: Jesus saves us on the sole condition of faith alone, with no works before, during, or after the moment of faith required.  No front-loading the gospel; no back-loading either.  Just belief in the proper content.  God won’t weigh your works at heaven’s gate to determine your eternal destiny; He will ask a simple question about your soteriology.  Pass that theology test, just once, at any point in your life, and you’re golden.  That done, you can forever fend off the vengeful deity: you have already done all that is required of you, and he can’t send you to hell, no matter how he might want to.  This would, in fact, be good news…if Yahweh were even remotely like the god they’re describing.

***

Do you see that there’s a lot of self-effort going into passing the theology test?  That the good news of the freeness of God’s grace is being turned into a weapon to hold a (fictitious) angry deity at bay?

Do you see that when we do this, we don’t actually trust God at all?  That if we did, we could just trust Him to guide us into whatever content we need to know?

***

To the people I’ve just described, I have a message.  I didn’t think of it myself; I inherited it from someone who lived five centuries ago.  He was a Roman Catholic, confessor to a neurotic Augustinian friar named Martin Luther.  Luther was so obsessed with his sins that he would be in the confessional for six hours at a time, trying to get forgiveness for everything, lest he be damned.
Finally–so the story goes–his confessor shouted at him, “God doesn’t hate you; you hate Him!  Don’t you know the Scriptures command you to hope?”

Exactly.

God doesn’t hate you.  And if you’re trying to hold Him at bay, be it with a stack of good deeds, a saving proposition, or with the very words of John 3:16, then the problem is that you hate Him.

But you don’t believe the very first words of the verse.  “God so loved the world…”

The solution is simple: trust Him.  He who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

5 Comments | Bare Minimum Gospel Foolishness, Controversies, The Free Grace Food Fight | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Justification by Faith in Genesis 1

21 August 2011

If you read through the days of creation in Genesis 1, you’ll see an overall pattern:

  1. God commands a thing into existence
  2. He divides it from other things
  3. He names it
  4. He evaluates it

The pattern is not slavishly adhered to in every case; like a musical theme it’s embroidered upon in various ways, for various reasons.  But the overall pattern holds.  The only time God says something is “not good” is when he’s looking at a man alone.  The man was meant to be the image of the triune God, and he cannot do this by himself, without another person to relate to.

And then, in due course, Paul comes along and tells us, “If any man be in Christ, He is a new creation.”

When we believe in Jesus, we, too, are born into existence by God’s command, separated by the gospel to be a new people for His name, and given the right to be called the children of God.  The evaluation comes after all that.

If God says “not good,” it will be for the same reason He said it in the garden: because we fail to reflect the image of God to which we are called, for which we are separated from the world, and by which we are named.  This failure is certainly possible.

But notice that failure, if it comes, comes after we are re-created, separated to God, and named His children.  None of those things are dependent upon passing an evaluation.  Which is to say that we are justified by faith, not works, and we know this from the very first chapter of the Bible.

 

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Mystical Union: Reading John 17:3

14 August 2011

In the ongoing discussion of 3D Theology, our esteemed opponents have taken significant exception to the way we are using John 17:3.  The various objections mostly have to do with how our reading of the verse conflicts with this theological formulation or that one, and are being dealt with in the venues where they were made.   To my eye, one particular point of discussion has been notably absent: discussion of the immediate context.  I’d like to remedy that lack today.

In a sense, this discussion needs to start in 1:1 — and some of the issues that will come up in the ensuing discussion can probably only be resolved that way — but for today, let’s just work through the beginning of this prayer.

  1. Jesus begins by saying that the hour has come, and then makes His request:
  2. He asks the Father to glorify Him.
  3. The purpose for the Father glorifying Him is so that He can, in turn, glorify the Father.
  4. He will glorify the Father because the Father has given Him power over everyone.
  5. The purpose for the Father giving Him power over everyone is in order that Jesus give eternal life to all those the Father has given him.
  6. And what is this eternal life?  It is to know the Father, the only true God, and to know Jesus Christ whom the Father sent.
  7. Jesus says He has, in fact, glorified the Father, and finished the work the Father gave Him to do.
  8. On that basis, He asks the Father to return to Him the glory He had before the world existed.

It all hangs together nicely, doesn’t it?  (For those of you who want to talk Greek, some comments are already online here .)

This is to say that eternal life is not a thing.  It is not a widget that Jesus puts in your pocket and then you walk away.  It is not a ticket stashed at the Will Call window by the pearly gates.

Eternal life is knowing the Father, and Jesus Christ His Son.  Jesus is the Life (14:6); the Father has life in Himself and has granted to the Son to have life in Himself (5:26).  Eternal life is ongoing relationship with the One who is Life.  Because He is infinitely faithful and He loves you, if you want a relationship with Him, you’ll have one.  He guarantees it.

Over time, eternal life looks like this:  first, you don’t have it at all; you’re dead in your trespasses and sins.  Then you believe, and you do have it.  Then, as you grow, you have more of it, until you have an abundant life (10:10), and the living water Jesus gave you becomes a fountain of life to those around you (4:14, 7:38).  Stop believing, like Thomas did (20:27), and you’re still a part of the family (1:12-13).  You’re born again; you can’t get un-born (10:28-29).  Eternal life is, well, eternal.  But like Thomas, you can lose a blessing (20:29), and of course you can fail to be a blessing to others.

Simple as that.  God is a Person–know Him.

6 Comments | Meditations, Mystical Union | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Mystical Union: Understanding Works

7 August 2011

We are often fond of saying that justification is a gift, and sanctification is a lot of work, which is true in one way.  But what we often mean by it is that we do nothing in justification, and then sanctification is quid pro quo all the way.  That needs a rethink.

In Ephesians 2:8-9, Paul says that salvation — by which he means being made alive with Christ, raised with Christ, and seated with Christ in the heavenly places — is not of works, lest anyone should boast.  Boasting is excluded by God’s grace.

Thing is, this is also true of sanctification, is it not?  We don’t buy our way into spiritual blessing in this life any more than we buy our way into the family to start with.  Everything we have  — everything — is given by God.  “What do you have, that you did not receive?  And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not?”

Why, indeed.

God blesses us in sanctification, to be sure, but it’s not a quid pro quo type of transaction, any more than justification is.  Sanctification is hard — very hard, at times.  But it’s hard because we’re sinners, and it runs counter to our nature to cooperate with God instead of rebelling against Him.  God is seeking to give us His blessings, to pour out far more than we can imagine, but there are certain relational blessings He simply can’t give us without our cooperation. You can give a rebellious 2-year-old a hug whether he wants it or not, but you can’t give him the experience of a good hug unless he’s willing to receive it.  If he fights you, you may succeed in getting your arms around him and squeezing, but relationally speaking, it’s hardly the same experience, is it?

Sanctification is, above all, a relationship with the living God.  Like all good relationships, it requires that we be willing to receive the other person.

But is this so different from justification?  As long as a person insists on working, on taking his destiny into his own hands, on keeping Jesus out of the picture, then he cannot be born again.  “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to be called sons of God….”

The difference is in scope more than in kind.  But we ought to expect nothing else: “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?”

7 Comments | Meditations, Mystical Union, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols