What is the Gospel, by Keith Comparetto

What is the Gospel

and Have We Received God’s Version or Man’s Perversion?

by Keith Comparetto

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What is the Gospel — a Simple Question?

The Lessons of Church History

A Closer Look at Scripture

The Danger of Presumption

A Humble Appeal

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Preface

My intention in writing this book is to provoke spiritual thought, but not to offend. Some may find the position presented in these pages to be something new, though if this booklet provokes you enough to read it in its entirety, and search the Scriptures with an open heart, I believe you will find that what I am presenting is indeed the “old-time gospel.” I am considerably troubled that the trend of modern biblical thinking has swung so far to one side and remained there for so long, making salvation so easy, as to be damning many souls to hell who have not a concern in the world that they may be spiritually lost. What is more troubling is that the teaching which has led to such over-confidence is now so glibly accepted as biblical fact, that one is considered unloving, judgmental, unbalanced, a legalist or a false teacher for suggesting that the Bible may actually teach otherwise.

There is not enough space here to lay out all the Bible passages, interpretations and older writings that have led to the conclusions presented in this little book. My heart’s desire would be to prick the reader’s conscience to study out true salvation on his or her own (and how few today have done this!) giving due consideration to the massive weight of Biblical evidence as well as the writings of men much greater and wiser than most of us, some of whom have made the study and proper presentation of salvation the focus of their life’s work.

I speak as one who spent my entire Christian life and teaching career on the other side of this, for lack of a better term, “controversy.” The thinking that I now call “easy-believism” was so ingrained in me, the Bible passages so often presented the same way, the altar calls so regularly making the same appeals, that I never questioned such interpretations seriously. I have since had to repent before God for allowing some very serious passages to be dispensed with much too easily. These include (1) the many warning passages which I now consider to be for the lost were preached as warnings to the saved; (2) the Savior’s “forsake all and follow Me” passages, though presented by Christ as essential to the very definition of a Christian, were preached as being merely ways to become more spiritual; and (3) the “continue in the faith” passages were mostly ignored. I now know that these passages were interpreted completely differently little more than a century ago, by brilliant and godly men who spent their lives in their Bibles and on their knees. Their conclusions should not be flippantly overlooked, especially because we have no new evidence to refute them. Proverbs 22:28 warns, “Do not remove the ancient landmark Which your fathers have set.”

The consequences of the new theology for the modern church have been devastating, especially to the lost: from gospel invitations to salvation that make little mention of the cost of being Christ’s disciple, to interpretations of passages which convey the unbiblical idea that Christians can backslide to the point where they can be little different from the world around them and remain that way for indefinite periods of time, the result is that the tares who sit in probably every congregation have their false assurance continually reinforced. True believers are harmed also, not only because their “Christian fellowship” is often not in the Spirit and thus not edifying, but because by hearing the clear meaning of passages on the power of salvation and the sureness of God’s judgment on sinners simply “explained away,” they become confused and miss the wonderful unity of the Scriptures that truly cause the saint to “Rejoice in Your salvation.” The result of the modern teaching within the visible church is that, because so many unregenerate souls can sit comfortably among the saints, the church becomes worldly and eventually dies. Most of us have seen this cycle many times over.

What, then, is the “gospel”? It is the “good news,” of course. But distilling it into a Romans-Road type of formula is dangerously misleading. Like a finely cut stone, the gospel has many facets in Scripture. One facet reveals it as a remedy for man’s depraved condition; another, as the sum total of all God’s commands to believe in, trust, embrace, follow after and forsake all for, Christ. Another reveals it as a treasure trove of precious truths pertaining to salvation, the saved individual and his wonderful position in Christ; and another, as a body of evidences by which God’s elect may know if they have attained it. All of these facets must be recognized, or we will have a defective gospel.

In this book I may challenge your sacred doctrines, your favorite authors, or your common practices; if so, please consider that I had to challenge my own first. My message concerns the Lordship of Christ in the life of a true Christian (though I believe that statement in itself is a redundancy); and because this message is so rarely presented clearly today, this book may cause you to react emotionally and jump to false conclusions. Therefore, please understand that: (1) I am not in any way preaching that sinless perfection is possible in this life, though some have accused me of doing so. (2) I am not preaching that any true believer can lose his salvation, though I abhor the presumptuous self-assurance that characterizes our churches today. (3) I am not preaching that we are saved or kept through works; in fact, I would suggest it is the doctrines I take issue with that come closer to such a notion. (4) I am not rehashing the Calvinism versus Arminianism arguments. Though I have a strong belief in the sovereignty of God, I can respect some Arminians, such as John Wesley, for their strong stand on Christ’s Lordship, and yet take issue with many Calvinists who have not stood so. (5) I am not focusing on a petty or peripheral issue, nor am I speaking to the head and not to the heart. My focus is an individual’s eternal salvation – how one may find it and know it – something I believe the modern evangelical church has played carelessly with, and without which no one has a right to claim any of the wonderful promises of the Bible. (6) I am not attacking or defending any particular denomination or theological system such as covenant or dispensational theology; the Lordship issue cuts across these lines. (7) I am not attacking people; nor am I attacking anyone’s motives. Many who express the positions I now take issue with were, or are, sincere men who loved God and His Word, and cared for people’s souls.

Perhaps most of all, I am not personally attacking you or the people you love. If I put doubts in your mind that cause you to question the salvation testimony of a child, a parent, a friend, or someone else you care about, perhaps the promise, “those who rebuke the wicked will have delight, And a good blessing will come upon them” (Proverbs 24:25), will give you the strength to bring a new challenge to that person. If it is your own testimony that I bring into question, consider the words of John Bunyan when introducing a similar message:

This awakening work (if God will make it so) was prepared for thee: if there be need, and it wounds, get healing by blood: if it disquiets, get peace by blood: if it takes away all thou hast, because it was nothing (for this book is not prepared to take away true grace from any), then buy of Christ gold tried in the fire, that thou mayst be rich, and white raiment, that thou mayst be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness doth not appear, and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayst see (Revelation 3:18). Self-flatteries, self-deceivings, are easy and pleasant, but damnable. The Lord give thee an heart to judge right of thyself, right of this book, and so prepare for eternity, that thou mayst not only expect entrance, but be received into the kingdom of Christ and of God.

Dear reader, I ask you to read, to meditate on the Scriptures given, to pray, to consider these things in your heart. If my plea for all of us to be more careful in examining our salvation is misplaced or unbiblical, I am merely driving some saints to their knees to examine the condition of their souls, which is always a wise thing to do, and which these days is rarely done. But if those on the other side are wrong, they are deceiving people into hell by the thousands. I pray that you will receive these words in the sincere and burdened spirit in which they were given, and allow them to challenge you into determining for yourself, through your own study and prayer, what the Bible really says about salvation. Paul warns, “Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.” –Keith Comparetto

What is the “Gospel”? — A Simple Question?

To those who believe in the Bible, it seems like such a simple question. We’ve all seen literature that summarizes the gospel as a “Romans Road,” or as “Four Spiritual Laws,” or some such presentation that can be stated in a few short paragraphs. The gospel is the “Good News” of course – the Good News of salvation, of redemption from the slave-market of sin, of justification before Him who will judge the living and the dead. But how does one become the beneficiary of this Good News? Some would say the answer is a matter of simple confession to God in agreement with the truths of the gospel, as summarized in part by Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15: “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3-4). But this summary is complicated by the qualifiers that precede it, which indicate that one may “receive” the gospel truths unsavingly: “if you hold fast that word which I preached to you.” and “unless you believed in vain” (1 Cor. 15:2).

Some will say the essence of the gospel is captured in Romans 10:9-13, “if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation…. For “whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.” They interpret these words to mean that receiving the gospel involves believing in the heart and praying a “sinner’s prayer” unto salvation. The problem with that interpretation is that many godly believers don’t remember specifically praying a “sinner’s prayer” when they first believed, but they exhibit the evidences of true conversion, and God’s Spirit “bears witness” with theirs that they are children of God (Romans 8:16). Moreover, most of us know people who have outwardly gone through these “believe” and “confess” steps and then gone back to their old ways, thus bringing their salvation testimony into question.

Others prefer to summarize the gospel with Acts 16:31: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” Still, this summary is inadequate, for the next verse tells us there was evidently more to the Apostles’ message, for “they spoke the word of the Lord to him”; and the phrase “you and your household” in v. 31 indicates that this gospel “summary” was intended for that particular individual and his family, whose hearts obviously had already been prepared to receive the Apostles’ message.

Others will sum up the truths of the gospel with John 3:16, for many the most beloved Bible verse: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” But as a summary of the gospel, this verse is also inadequate, for if simple belief brings salvation, then we must assume nearly all of professing Christendom to be saved, and few even modern evangelicals would accept that premise.

Some will go to Jesus’ words to Nicodemus in John chapter three: “Ye must be born again.” But this truth is not fully explained in the passage, for how does one go about being “born again”? The point here is that despite modern notions of “leading a soul to Christ” or “making a decision for Christ,” the New Birth is not humanly possible, as Nicodemus himself replied. It does seem that an important qualification to all of these summarized “gospels” is found in this very passage, in Jesus’ explanation to Nicodemus in verses five and eight: “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Here, a crucial aspect of the gospel of Christ is proclaimed: that salvation is, after all, not a human act but a divine one, one that involves the infusion of God’s Spirit into man, and one which perhaps should not be so glibly summarized into a simple formula. “You must be born again” means for certain that to be the beneficiaries of the Good News, we must have a work of God performed in us, and that we must, as the passage indicates, evaluate the reality of that work biblically by the fruit it produces (for we are told in the passage, “you hear the sound of it,” i.e., we see its effects); otherwise we have not truly been “born of the Spirit.”

But in the 20^th century, the age of mass evangelism, many lost sight of this important truth. They put into practice human doctrines, systems and methods for “winning the world to Christ” which swelled the numbers in the church but failed to warn its members that, just as not all professing Israel was truly Israel (Romans 9:6), so not all professing Christians are true Christians. Thus, by abandoning the biblical principle of individual self-examination, they unwittingly allowed the church to be infiltrated by the unregenerate world. We would contend the reason for this is that in modern times, there has indeed been preached “another gospel, which is not another” (Gal. 1:6-7), for the true gospel has never changed. The fact is, there is no quick and easy gospel, for God’s truth is given “precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little,” but those who are truly His will find Him because He has drawn them to seek Him diligently: “My son, if you receive my words, and treasure my commands within you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding; yes, if you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.” (Proverbs 2:1-5).

The Lessons of Church History

Church Creeds, the Reformation, & the Puritans

The unbelieving world has often asked the question, “How do we know which “Christianity” to believe if Christians cannot even agree with each other? This may be a reasonable question to the casual observer, but a careful study of the creeds (basic statements of faith also called confessions) and founding documents of most branches of Christianity, indicate that in times of spiritual vitality there have been very few differences among Bible-believing Christians. The great differences arose as the various branches and denominations began to decline and cast off the once broadly-accepted creeds that grounded the church in the teachings of Scripture.

With the coming of the Reformation, a long period of decline came to an end, and many of the great doctrines of the faith which had been lost or clouded by the corrupt establishment church of the Middle Ages were expounded once again. These included truths such as “effectual calling” and “the perseverance of the saints,” in which the saved individual is truly a new creation, with a new mind, a new heart, and the power to persevere in the faith, and without which the authenticity of his faith should be questioned. Proverbs 4:18 illustrates this wonderful salvation and perseverance, in words which are a precious promise to the true believer: “But the path of the just is like the shining sun, that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day.”

In an earlier age, the above view was found in the writings of virtually all the great Christian writers. For example, Martin Luther wrote, in the 1500’s,

I believe that there is upon earth a little holy group and congregation of pure saints…brought to it and incorporated into it by the Holy Ghost by having heard and continuing to hear the Word of God… Thus, until the last day, the Holy Ghost abides with the holy congregation or Christendom, by means of which He fetches us to Christ and…whereby He works and promotes sanctification, causing [this community] daily to grow and become strong in the faith and its fruits which He produces.

In the 1600’s, the Westminster Confession of 1646, which one Baptist historian calls “the noblest of all Evangelical creeds,” likewise recognized the power of true salvation:

To all those for whom Christ hath purchased redemption, He doth certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same… effectually persuading them by His Spirit to believe and obey, and governing their hearts by His Word and Spirit….When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin; and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good…enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and, by His almighty power determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ: yet so, as they come most freely, being made willing by His grace.

These very biblical concepts were not found merely in Reformed and Presbyterian thought. The Baptists in England voiced their solidarity on those doctrines with their Presbyterian and Congregationalist brethren when they retained the above words almost verbatim in their London Baptist Confession of 1689. “The 1689,” as it is often called, was so respected and received by Baptists in general that it was taken to America and, with few changes, published as Philadelphia Baptist Confession of 1742, and referred to as “the Baptist Confession.” As such, it helped provide a foundation for Baptist faith in early America, including being foundational in framing the popular New Hampshire Confession of 1833. The 1689 was updated and republished again by C.H. Spurgeon in 1855, and, in fact, its doctrines were not seriously opposed until a great falling away began to occur in the mid-nineteenth century.

Other great writings in the remarkable seventeenth century were the works of John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress, for many years the most popular book in the English language other than the Bible itself. Bunyan, who spent many years of his life in a prison cell with nothing but a Bible and God, found it completely compatible with Scripture that those who don’t tend to examining their own profession of faith are likely to miss heaven, for the gate is narrow, and the Savior told us to “strive” to enter it. John Owen, also in the 1600’s, wrote on this topic in Evidences of the Faith of God’s Elect, as well as in other works, and Thomas Shepherd, the first president of Harvard, preached a series entitled “The Ten Virgins” over an entire school year, challenging his hearers to examine their professions of faith. Richard Baxter wrote a manual for young preachers and spent much of the book advising ministerial candidates to be sure of their salvation:

Take heed to yourselves, lest you be void of that saving grace of God which you offer to others, and be strangers to the effectual working of that gospel which you preach; and lest, while you proclaim to the world the necessity of a Savior, your own hearts should neglect him, and you should miss of an interest in him and his saving benefits.

In fact, nearly all the preachers of the Puritan era made calls to self-examination a regular part of their preaching – some perhaps to excess, but they held that it is better to be duly warned and lack assurance than to be falsely assured and lack saving grace. A backslider was not a sinning Christian who could still be assured he was on his way to heaven; rather, he was one in danger of losing his soul if he did not repent. Those who fell short on the “marks,” or evidences, of saving grace, regardless of what they professed to believe, were considered unregenerate and lost.

Revivals and “Revivalism”

During the remarkable years of the revival known as the Great Awakening, George Whitefield and John Wesley preached a similar message in their evangelistic efforts. Jonathan Edwards, who was perhaps the greatest theologian during the time of that revival, looked back on the results of those years which resulted in thousands of new “converts,” and was so grieved at what he saw in many of those people that he wrote a book entitled A treatise on Religious Affections. In the book, he examined what he believed to be the biblical evidences of salvation, and, by contrast, which supposed evidences were false and deceiving ones. In his introduction, Edwards wrote, “It is no new thing that much false religion should prevail, at a time of great reviving of true religion, and that at such a time multitudes of hypocrites should spring up among true saints.” One of his main themes throughout the book is that the affections – love for God, for His Word, for His people, etc. – are a necessary ingredient of true saving grace. Edwards’ conclusion strikes at the heart of what we consider to be a false test of salvation today: a continual appeal for people to remember their “experience” of salvation, as if that memory had more value in gauging the truth of their conversion than whether their life has evidenced the fruits of salvation.

I have met many who were counseled to pray a salvation prayer to gain the assurance of a time and place “experience,” despite the fact that nowhere is this called for in Scripture. Edwards wrote, “Christian practice is the chief evidence to ourselves, much to be preferred to the method of the first convictions [i.e., the initial “experience”], enlightenings, comforts, or any immanent discoveries or exercises of grace whatsoever.” Edwards wrote this work as a mature servant of Christ, and his advice would be well-heeded in our day – yet how few today seem interested in what he had to say.

After Edwards, in the early 1800’s came evangelist Charles Finney’s “New Methods,” new evangelistic practices such as the “gospel invitation” which seemed effective but had the unintended result of bringing many false converts into the fold. (Some refer to the use of such methods as revivalism, to be distinguished from the straightforward and unadorned preaching style that characterized the earlier revivals.) Asahel Nettleton, one of the great preachers of the Second Great Awakening which had been occurring for twenty years prior to Finney’s arrival, was noted for the fact that such a large percentage of his converts, brought to the faith under solid doctrine with no human additions, were still persevering in the faith many years after their conversions. On the other hand, the “faith” of Finney’s converts, who were brought to a decision using the emotionally manipulative methods which are still used today, was most often short-lived. Even Finney himself, later in his ministry, bemoaned the fact that many of his “converts” did not retain evidences of grace, and wrote, in Lectures to Professing Christians:

Of what use would it be to have a thousand members added to the church, to be just such as are now in it? Would religion be any more honored by it, in the estimation of ungodly men? One holy church, that are really crucified to the world, and the world crucified to them, would do more to recommend Christianity, than all the churches in the country, living as they now do. O, if I had strength of body, to go through the churches again, instead of preaching to convert sinners, I would preach to bring up the churches to the gospel standard of holy living. Of what use is it to convert sinners, and make them such Christians as these?

It should be noted that Finney was confronted regarding his unorthodox practices – specifically for the reason that they were likely to produce false converts – but he would not hear. The damage of Finney, including the practices which were adopted because they insured dramatic “results,” may be incalculable, because it filled churches with people who were “Christians” in their words but often counterfeit saints, and their use has continued unabated to this day.

C.H. Spurgeon was one of many who, in addition to opposing the New Methods including invitations, often commented on the large numbers of people settled into the churches who did not seem to evidence true salvation:

A man does not have salvation until he comes by the power of God’s Spirit through faith to a living, personal, vital, intimate union with Christ as the Lord. A man is not a Christian until he has a vital union with Christ. A man is not a Christian until he is inseparably joined — personally joined to Jesus Christ. A man is not a Christian until Christ becomes his life. A man is not a Christian unless you can cut into his heart and find love for Christ; cut into his mind and find thoughts of Christ; and cut into his soul and find a panting after Christ.

Spurgeon was also troubled at the growing trend in his day, due primarily to Finney’s ground-breaking influence, to use programs and entertainment to bring the unsaved masses into the preaching arena, pointing out its damaging effects:

The mission of amusements fails to effect the end desired. It works havoc among the young converts. Let the careless and scoffers, who thank God because the church met them halfway, speak and testify. Let the heavy laden who found peace through the concert not keep silent! Let the drunkard to whom the dramatic entertainment had been God’s link in the chain of their conversion, stand up! There are none to answer. The mission of amusement produces no converts. The need of the hour for today’s ministry is believing scholarship joined with earnest spirituality, the one springing from the other as fruit from the root. The need is biblical doctrine, so understood and felt, that it sets men on fire.

Unfortunately, the trend which Spurgeon decried has continued unabated into our day, and continues to weaken the church.

The Views of Older Bible Commentators

One need not read much from the great authors of our religious heritage to realize that most of our most revered preachers and writers of the past, until at least the late 19^th century, took the above positions as a matter of fact – they assumed Christians loved God and His Word, did not love the vices and idols of the world, and lived in a general pattern of obedience to His commandments and victory over sin, and if they weren’t, they probably were not in the faith and needed to examine themselves. This was the view of virtually all older Bible commentators, including the beloved Matthew Henry, who wrote,

It is the great duty of all who call themselves Christians to examine themselves concerning their spiritual state. We should examine whether we be in the faith, because it is a matter in which we may be easily deceived, and wherein a deceit is highly dangerous: we are therefore concerned to prove our own selves, to put the question to our own souls, whether Christ be in us, or not.

Even into the nineteenth century, most commentators were hesitant to take professing converts at their word but pointed out from Scripture the fruit of the genuine Christian. Albert Barnes, author of Barnes Notes on the whole Bible, and Charles Hodge, commentator from the old Princeton school and best noted for his Systematic Theology and his superb exposition on Paul’s epistles, are two examples of commentators who held to the biblical orthodoxy of the earlier divines.

But by the early twentieth century, this important truth was almost dead, replaced by a heresy that turns salvation into little more than a ticket to heaven, and sanctification into little more than an act of human will which we may or may not choose to exercise. Accordingly, the church became populated by masses of helpless “believers” who could not make it in the Christian life without the guidance of their leaders – and thus, a hierarchy of spiritual and non-spiritual “Christians,” in which the greatest losers were those who were not true Christians at all, but were left trying to do that which, without the aid of the Holy Spirit, they do not have the power to do! “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13).

In contrast, the truth is that, as God’s elect, all who have been effectually called and are persevering in the faith, despite differences of office and calling, are a true brotherhood, all equal in God’s eyes, and not one of us has attained anything that we have not received from God’s gracious hand: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us,” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Bible Conferences and the Keswick Movement

A reasonable question to ask is, what brought about the monumental change in doctrine from the old to the new? It seems that a major shift in opinion occurred from the middle to late 19^th century when the Bible conference movement, an outgrowth of the Keswick (or Higher Life) holiness conferences in England, took hold in America. These Bible conferences were designed to promote greater holiness among Christians, which is certainly a worthy enterprise, but the great error of the holiness conferences, despite all good intentions, was its skewing of the very definition of saving faith, which originally included as an essential element the inner working of the Holy Spirit in bringing about the sanctification of every true believer.

D.L. Moody, despite his personal piety and sober demeanor which were by all outward indications admirable, took up the holiness banner along with others in his influential Bible conferences at Northfield, Massachusetts. But his theology was seen as deficient by a number of his contemporaries, including the English preacher J.K. Popham. If Moody’s theology were orthodox, Popham implied in a tract entitled “Moody and Sankey’s Errors Versus the Scriptures of Truth,” he would not have failed to rely on God’s ability to keep His own converts in the faith through the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. Writes Popham,

Nor could he have made a pedestal of the weakness of his converts, and, standing above them in conscious superiority, lugubriously telling them that he could foresee many of them would be tempted to fall away when he departed! Pity he could not see it needful and right for him to remain with these helpless “converts” of his, to charm the evil spirit who would tempt many of them to fall away when he was no longer there to protect them!

With the sanctifying power of saving faith thus glossed over, holiness increasingly became primarily the result of one’s dedication or surrender, a mere act of the will. The essential holy nature of a true Christian became less important than what a person must do to become holy. In time, the great “perseverance of the saints” doctrine began to fade, being replaced by “eternal security,” which offered confidence of heaven without the necessary evidences of salvation that are God’s appointed means of making our hope secure. Those who rightly opposed this presumptuous eternal security were said to be teaching the heresy of many declining churches at that time: the idea that assurance is not possible to the Christian in this life. It must be pointed out, however, that Reformed Christian orthodoxy has always taught, as the Bible does, that true Christians are eternally secure; yet one is assured of it only as he perseveres in the faith: “Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father,” 1 John 2:24.)

The 20th Century

The evolved holiness doctrine described above became even more prevalent in the late-19^th and early-20^th centuries. In fact, as the holiness doctrine became commonplace and the old truths were forgotten, the very notion of what constitutes a Christian – i.e., the baseline – was defined downward at the same time the Bible conference movement was transforming itself into the age of mass evangelism led by popular evangelists such as Sam Jones, Billy Sunday, Gypsy Smith, Bob Jones and others – all of whom embraced the newer and more “easy-believe” theology. Likewise did the new and instantly-popular Scofield reference Bible, one of the first of its kind which boldly placed the author’s own notes between the verses of the Scriptural text, in violation of the policy of all well-known Bible societies of the day. Scofield himself was a lawyer who was converted as an adult, yet one writer points out how this heretofore unknown Bible teacher, by taking the King James Bible and adding his own notes to it, “assured himself a place in the memory of all who read that version of the Bible.” Scofield was perhaps not even aware how out of the mainstream his ideas were as he made a “Biblical” case, whether intentionally or not, for saying that one who merely accepted the facts of Christianity could be considered positionally saved, even though his or her life showed little evidence to back up that testimony.

This idea was not new. It is always interesting how, throughout church history, the same heresies reappear under different names – for example, the old Arian heresy of the 4^th century reappeared in the theology of Jehovah’s witnesses in the 19^th century. Likewise, the theology proposed by Scofield above was simply warmed-over antinomianism [or “anti-law”], a teaching which was determined by the early church and every subsequent age to be heretical. It nevertheless surfaced a number of times throughout history, including its appearance in the teachings of Robert Sandeman in Scotland in the 18^th century. It was Andrew Fuller, the early Baptist missionary and theologian, who dissected “Sandemanianism” and definitively exposed it for the error that it was. Consequently, Sandeman’s heresy, as a serious theological position, would not rear its ugly head again for nearly 100 years. When it it did, it would find its way again into mainstream Christian thought through the writings of Scofield and his most prominent disciple, Lewis Sperry Chafer.

Chafer came under the influence of Scofield at the Northfield Bible conference in Massachusetts, and eventually became co-founder of Dallas Theological Seminary and a prolific writer, facts which helped to disseminate Scofield’s ideas at the seminary level. His writings, including his massive, 8-volume Systematic Theology, are still popular today, influencing a new generation of students who are unaware that many of his ideas, when they were first published, were considered quite unorthodox. Conservative theologian B.B. Warfield of Princeton, writing in 1919, attempted to point out Chafer’s heterodoxy in the following comments on Chafer’s book, He that is Spiritual:

Mr. Chafer is in the unfortunate and, one would think, very uncomfortable condition of having two inconsistent systems of religion struggling together in his mind. He was bred an Evangelical, and … stands committed to Evangelicalism of the purest water. But he has been long associated in his work with a coterie of “Evangelists” and “Bible Teachers,” among whom there flourishes that curious religious system (at once curiously pretentious and curiously shallow) which the Higher Life leaders of the middle of the last century brought into vogue; and he has not been immune to its infection. These two religious systems are quite incompatible. The one is the product of the Protestant Reformation and knows no determining power in the religious life but the grace of God; the other … in all its forms, modifications and mitigations alike, remains incurably Arminian subjecting all gracious workings of God to human determining. The two can unite as little as fire and water.

In our times, a number of prominent theologians of the old school have commented on Chafer’s theology and the damage it has wrought in the modern church. An example is this comment from J.I. Packer:

If, ten years ago, you had told me that I would live to see literate evangelicals, some with doctorates and a seminary teaching record, arguing for the reality of an eternal salvation, divinely guaranteed, that may have in it no repentance, no discipleship, no behavioral change, no practical acknowledgment of Christ as Lord of one’s life, and no perseverance in faith, then I would have told you that you were out of your mind.

Another is John MacArthur, who along with a few others in recent times has attempted to bring back the older and established salvation doctrines (now often termed, for better or for worse, “Lordship salvation”) of Spurgeon and his predecessors. MacArthur makes the following comment on Chafer’s theology, which can be confirmed by any serious study of the earlier writers:

Prior to this [the 20^th] century, no serious theologian would have entertained the notion that it is possible to be saved yet see nothing of the outworking of regeneration in one’s lifestyle or behavior. In 1918, Lewis Sperry Chafer published He That is Spiritual, articulating the concept that 1 Corinthians 2:15 – 3:3 speaks of two classes of Christians: carnal and spiritual. Chafer wrote, “The ‘carnal’ Christian is…characterized by a ‘walk’ that is on the same plane as that of the ‘natural’ [unsaved] man.” That was a foreign concept to most Christians in Dr. Chafer’s generation, but it has become a central basis for a whole new way of looking at the gospel.

The curiosity created by this new way of thinking about the Bible captured the greater part of the popular evangelists, the professing church, and nearly all the seminaries of that time, to the extent that anyone who questioned it was considered uninformed and out of step with “Biblical” doctrine. A few writers at that time (the 1920’s & 30’s), notably A.W. Pink, H.A. Ironside, and A.W. Tozer, tried to stem the tide of empty professions, and preached against the shallow evangelism of their day, but they were vastly outnumbered. In our own day, though most Christians have never read Chafer, the vast majority of our popular Christian writers and preachers were spawned in seminaries that were heavily influenced by Chafer and Scofield, and are of what could be termed the “easy-believe” mentality. Their ideas dominate most of the popular, even so-called “conservative” study Bibles (Scofield Bible, Ryrie Study Bible, etc.) and most modern Christian books and commentaries (for example, Wiersbe’s Be… series) read by millions of Christians and their leaders, who unknowingly accept their presuppositions without question.

The interconnection of these writers is astounding: Chafer and Scofield (who themselves were heavily influenced by the 19^th century Keswick movement and the dispensational writings of J.N. Darby) were colleagues who formulated their then-dubious ideas together. Popular authors John Walvoord and Dwight Pentecost, both Dallas Theological professors, and both enormously influential in formulating Christian intellectual thought along with popular author Charles Ryrie, were Chafer’s and Scofield’s disciples, traveled in their circles, and disseminated their ideas. After the modern revival of lordship views came to the forefront with John MacArthur’s The Gospel According to Jesus in 1988, popular author Warren Wiersbe wrote the introduction to his friend Charles Ryrie’s So Great Salvation, a negative response to MacArthur’s book; and we could go on and on. All of these men and others exert great influence on the Christian public by injecting a bias into the way passages are interpreted and preached, and thus the way Christians talk about them. Thus, the salvation doctrine taught in most pulpits across America today is not the time-honored orthodox position of the last two thousand years, but a new doctrine based on the complex and innovative but questionable teachings of a small handful of men and the many who were influenced by them. Certainly, “a little leaven has leavened the whole lump.”

Today, the denial of a life-changing effectual calling and a God-sustained perseverance in every saved person has changed the very nature of preaching from Biblical texts. Passages such as Psalm 1 and Proverbs 2:1-5, for example, which traditionally were seen as factual contrasts between the saved, “blessed” or “wise” man, and the unsaved or “foolish” man (a theme presented so beautifully throughout Scripture, but especially in the Psalms and Proverbs), are seen today primarily as a list of things the Christian must do to be blessed of God. This view tears down and makes conditional – even works-oriented – one of the central truths of Scripture: that God loves and spiritually blesses His elect, whom He sees as righteous, and in whom He has written His law upon their hearts (Hebrews 8:10), “both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”(Phil. 2:13).

No Place for Truth

Through seminaries, pastors, evangelists, and missionaries, these new doctrines are carried virtually around the world, while the deep, biblical salvation teachings of Bunyan, Edwards, Spurgeon, and others remain buried in old books as the professional Christian world rushes on. As I discovered these older writings, I wondered why they were never presented at least for consideration during my college days, even to a student like me pursuing a Bible degree; in fact, most books like these are no longer in print.

I find it interesting that, while John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is one of the most read books in the English language, his writings on the difficulty of salvation are almost universally ignored. While Jonathan Edwards is revered for his role in the 18^th century Great Awaking revival, how few are aware that he spent much of his life in deep contemplation about the nature of true saving faith, and questioned the genuineness of a sizeable percentage of the “conversions” during those revival years, writing in 1751, “How small a proportion there are…who, in the time of the late religious [revival] through the land, had their consciences awakened [i.e., made some profession of faith], who give abiding evidences of a saving conversion to God.” While A.W. Pink’s The Sovereignty of God is still widely read, his Studies on Saving Faith has been out of print for years. The salvation testimony of the beloved Spurgeon is often retold, with all of the touching details about the dark, snowy evening and the country preacher’s appeal to “Look and live.” But how few have ever heard that what drew Spurgeon to the Savior was his faith in the desire and certainty that salvation would not merely save him from sin but keep him from it:

The sweetmeat which tempted me to Christ was this: I believed that salvation was an insurance of character. In what better way can a young man cleanse his life than by putting himself into the holy hands of the Lord Jesus, to be kept from falling? I said, if I give myself to Christ, He will save me from my sins. Therefore I came to Him, and He keeps me. O how musical these words, ‘They shall not depart from me!’

And, while A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God is considered a devotional classic, few seem moved by his opposition to shallow professions and the questionable evangelical trends of his day. Perhaps it is because the message of these men is a “hard saying” which is not popular with the shallow Christianity of our day. Moreover, it seems that the absence of such writings has aided Satan in his mission to deceive souls despite the fact that people today have more biblical knowledge than at any time in history.

A Closer Look at Scripture

The above facts may sound like dry historical trivia, but we would be wise to be aware of the ideas that have shaped the way we think about Scripture, for rarely in any age do Christians read the Bible in a vacuum. And as people of the Book, we must understand that the final details of God’s revelation of salvation were given in the writings of the New Testament, not in the writings of primarily 20^th century theologians who, whether from good intentions or otherwise have infected our churches with an easy-believe mentality that underlies their entire program.

Consider the following scenario which can be found to some degree in many evangelical churches today. An individual’s acceptance into the church is usually based on whether he could remember a time when he believed the truths of the gospel and had a “born-again experience.” One’s “salvation testimony” usually recounts when it happened, where it happened, and how he felt when it happened. If such a person becomes cold and indifferent to spiritual truth, we are much too quick to say he is “not right with God,” “carnal,” “not walking with the Lord,” or “backslidden.” Preachers give constant appeals for apathetic “Christians” to “come back” to God or to “get right” with Him, despite the hard truth presented in such Scriptures as Col. 1:22-23, which says that Christ died “to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight––if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard” – thus indicating that those who become cold and indifferent should first be considered lost.

Of course even true Christians may be found in various stages of development and maturity; but if God has indeed saved a person, that salvation has great power and meaning. A powerless salvation, at any age or at any stage, is not a genuine one, for, as Spurgeon said, “Beloved, believe in God to keep you faithful and earnest all your life…take a ticket all the way through…Other tickets are forgeries.”

The New Theology

God has placed within His Word many warnings directed at those who fellowship among the saints but are, in truth, children of Satan. They are the tares among the wheat Jesus spoke of, and in most cases are blind to their own condition, for as Scripture says, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked – who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). This natural blind and deceived condition is exacerbated by the preaching they are hearing, which dogmatically holds to interpretations that are rarely found among Christian authors prior to the late 1800’s. We do not suggest that there is no room for differences of interpretation of individual passages among good men; but when the Scriptures are always preached with the same bent (as in the following examples), with regular invitations for backsliders to “get right with God,” the result can destroy people’s souls. Some of these modern interpretations include the following:

1. Old Testament backsliding passages such as Isaiah 5, the parable of the wild grapes, are preached as if spoken to genuine Christians who backslide and can fall to the point where God must “burn their hedge,” “tear down their wall,” and “trample them down,” terms which are interpreted to refer to a ruined Christian life. This is a classic modern easy-believe interpretation: to parallel the wickedness of national Israel to that of a backsliding Christian. This is an unsound interpretation for a number of reasons:

First, it is contrary to the principle found throughout Scripture that those who live wickedly will not inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Galatians 5:19-21, Colossians 3:5-7, etc.).
Second, it fails to take into account God’s ultimate spiritual rejection of those who are Jews by blood but not in spirit: “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God” (Romans 2:28-29). The Old Testament backsliders, like those described in Revelation 2:9 and 3:9, are those who “say they are Jews, but are not.” Their refusal to repent reveals their unsaved condition, and means they will be partakers of all of the great judgments described in those Old Testament passages.
Third, this interpretation also ignores New Testament passages such as 1 Corinthians 10 and Hebrews 3 & 4, which are the key to understanding those Old Testament unbelievers. Old Testament Israel is often referred to as the congregation, or church. Its parallel in the New Testament is not the universal church of true saints, but the visible church, which includes both true and counterfeit saints. If we read Hebrews 3:12 – 4:2 carefully, it is evident that many or even most of the Old Testament Jews were apostates, i.e., those who had “departed from the living God,” contrary to true believers who by definition are steadfast to the end. The passage indicates that they were rebels with hardened hearts (v. 14-16); sinful and disobedient (vv. 17-18); unbelievers (v. 19); faithless (v. 2); they did not enter into His rest (v. 3:18 – 4:1); and people who did not profit from the Word of God (4:2). If we add to this the characteristics in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 – murmurers, idolaters, sexually immoral, etc. – we cannot deny that these are characteristics of unsaved people, according to ANY biblical standard. Ephesians 5:5 says, “For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words.” Furthermore, if they “did not profit from the Word which they heard” (Hebrews 4;2), we realize the people being described are those who did not persevere on their spiritual journey, thus revealing that they were never truly saved.

We must be very careful about coming to conclusions about Scripture that will justify the wicked and weaken the church (Proverbs 24:24; Jeremiah 8:11, 23:16-22; Ezekiel 13:22, etc.). Isaiah says that we should “tremble at God’s words” (Isaiah 66:2), and the above passages should cause us to fear, lest we also should fall away, for only they who endure to the end, by God’s grace, are the truly saved, as is taught all throughout the New Testament (Matthew 10:22, Luke 8:15, Romans 2:7, 11:22, Colossians 1:23, 1 Timothy 4:16, Hebrews 3:14, James 1:12, 1 John 2:24, Revelation 2:10-11, etc.).

2. Passages using biblical terminology which typically applies to the wicked are routinely preached as referring to Christians. To preach that Christians can be the object of God’s wrath and fiery indignation (as is often preached in Hebrews 10:27); calling Christians “sinners,” “adulterers and adulteresses,” “enemies of God,” (as often preached in James 4); saying a Christian can backslide to the point where God will “abhor you” (as in Leviticus 26), and your life will be “laid waste” (as preached in Isaiah 5) confuses the difference, as pointed out above, between “My people” as unbelieving Israel and “My people” as the saved remnant. It also fails to give proper place to the loving Father-son relationship between God and His true children, “the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’” The negative terms cited above are not compatible with this familial relationship.

Another example of this tendency is the description of the people in the church at Laodicaea in Revelation 3:13-20, using adjectives that Scripture frequently applies to the unsaved: “wretched,” “miserable,” “blind,” and “naked.” We must ask, Can a believer, one of God’s elect, be so repugnant to God that He would vomit His own child, whom He sees as righteous – though only by the blood of Christ – out of His mouth? Though this passage is routinely preached as if the Laodicaeans were believers who had become lukewarm or complacent in their service to God, consider that the Lord advises them with words indicative of their need for salvation, especially “white raiment” suggesting the white robes of salvation, and “eye salve” to heal the spiritual blindness of a lost person. While there is certainly an application to Christians in this and the other passages mentioned above, sobering words like these, as most older commentators believed, always carry a warning to counterfeit Christians.

3. New Testament apostasy (falling-away) passages, such as those in the book of Hebrews (chapters 2 & 3; 6:1-7; 10:26-31, and others), are preached as if speaking to backsliders, not to those who are lost. Few if any great preachers or commentators I know of prior to the 20^th century take such a view of Hebrews. In fact, most write that the book of Hebrews contains many serious warnings to those in the church who are trusting in false confidences, and thus are lost. If these passages are preached assuming they refer to true Christians, our pastoral challenges for people to come back to God from their backslidden condition are powerless because our hearers have already been given a theological underpinning for believing that they can live in a long-term, cold-hearted condition and merely be “backslidden,” and still get to heaven in the end! Spurgeon said to such presumptuous professors,

Beware, I pray thee, of presuming that thou art saved. If thy heart be renewed, if thou shalt hate the things that thou didst once love, and love the things that thou didst once hate; if thou hast really repented; if there be a thorough change of mind in thee; if thou be born again, then thou hast reason to rejoice; but if there be no vital change, no inward godliness; if there be no love to God, no prayer, no work of the Holy Spirit, then thy saying ‘I am saved’ is but thine own assertion, and it may delude, but it will not deliver thee.”

4. The hard sayings of Jesus, in which He sets forth His terms of discipleship, are preached as good principles for all Christians to follow, but not necessary for salvation. One such saying is Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Although most notable earlier authors believe this passage sets forth the terms of the gospel which applies to any who would claim Christ as their own, it is generally presented today, adhering to the newer Scofield-Ryrie interpretation, as a series of levels to which aspiring believers may attain. Fifty years ago, A.W. Pink said, in upholding the older view:

No one can receive Christ as his Savior while he rejects Him as Lord. It is true, the preacher adds, that the one who accepts Christ should also surrender to Him as Lord, but he at once spoils it by asserting that, though the convert fails to do so, nevertheless Heaven is sure to him. That is one of the Devil’s lies.

Another of Jesus’ “hard sayings” is Matthew 16:24-26: “Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?’” Modern preachers and commentators claim that these verses tell Christians how they can be more “spiritual” if they take their faith to this level, perhaps similar to how an average athlete becomes a super, Olympics athlete. Yet an important clue is in the context of the passage, for why are the verses above followed by a verse warning a person about losing his soul?

5. The parables of Jesus, most often given as warnings to false professors (such as the very religious, but very lost, Pharisees), are preached today not as salvation passages but as moral lessons for Christians – for example, the seed and the sower is seen as a parable about how the Word of God falls on the hearts of Christians. But the passage indicates that only one of the four bears any fruit, thus only one is saved. To preach it otherwise is to allow those who are “unfruitful” because they are, for example, distracted by riches and the cares of this world, to be deceived into a false sense of security.

Another parable is the prodigal son, often preached today as a story of a Christian coming back from a backslidden condition, rather than as a story of salvation. It is indeed, first of all, a story of salvation: Jesus used it to convey to the Pharisees why He bypassed them and went directly to the publicans and sinners, and perhaps even to foreshadow God’s intention to offer salvation to the gentiles – thus, the anger and jealousy of the second brother, representing the Jews.

But this parable is also a beautiful picture of an individual’s salvation: the unsaved person takes the provision of his Maker and squanders it on riotous living; because of the natural consequences of ungodly behavior, he finds himself in a pitiful condition; in his despair, he “comes to himself” (i.e., he is “enlightened”), then comes to his father in deep repentance, much as the publican who prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” His father, like God, has been awaiting his return, kisses him, and puts “the best robe” – the robe of righteousness – on him. To make this into a Christian backslider story denigrates the life-changing power of God’s saving grace, because it makes it to be of so little value that it could not keep a sinner from such a woeful condition: “He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake!”

6. The “carnal Christians” passage in 1 Corinthians 3:1-15 is interpreted as referring to a “carnal” (fleshly and worldly) class of Christians who remain in that state for an indefinite period of time. This interpretation, however, is not being honest with an important passage of Scripture. The people here are described as being guilty of somewhat carnal behaviors, namely, following celebrity preachers, and the disunity that resulted from it. Paul is not speaking here of a chronic condition, a condition which Charles Ryrie (author of the Ryrie Study Bible) defends when he says, “Certainly we can admit that if there can be hours and days when a believer can be unfruitful, then why may there not also be months and even years when he can be in that condition?” This takes human reasoning to the extreme, for the Bible tells us that a true Christian is as Charles Spurgeon said: “If the grace of God has really changed you, you are radically and lastingly changed.” Since Romans 8:6 tells us that “to be carnally minded is death,” we can understand why Paul and other New Testament writers would later warn those who persisted in such behaviors to examine their professions of faith to be sure they were genuine, as in 1 Corinthians 15:2, 2 Corinthians 13:5, and many other passages.

1 Corinthians 3 then continues in vv. 11-15, “For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” This portion is also used to support the carnal Christian doctrine, but in context, Paul is referring to the carnality of following preachers and not Christ. Verses 11-15 continue in this vein, as a message to preachers that their churches are not to be built on men but on Christ. Preachers who allow their churches to aggrandize their own gifts and personalities, though they be otherwise godly in sincere as Christians, will be saved but not rewarded for their church-building labors. There is nothing here to support a doctrine of a long-term, self-pleasing, flesh-feeding, world-embracing, “carnal Christian.”

7. Warnings to the unsaved within the church, which appear throughout the epistles, are seen as speaking only to genuine Christians. This popular interpretation often rests largely on the evidence that these inspired letters are addressed to “the brethren,” “the saints,” “the church,” “all who are sanctified.” But this argument goes against the vast body of solid, Biblical Christian commentary prior to the 20^th century, and it disregards a rather simple but vitally important scriptural principle: that unsaved people often congregate with God’s people, and thus, the greeting of a biblical epistle does not exclude the possibility that the author is speaking to “tares” that may be growing among the “wheat.” As Charles Hodge points out, regarding Paul’s introduction to his letters to the Corinthians,

It is not to be inferred from the fact that the apostle addresses all the nominal Christians in Corinth as saints and as sanctified in Christ Jesus, that they were all true believers, or that those terms express nothing more than external consecration. Men are uniformly addressed in Scripture according to their profession.

In fact, it could be argued that virtually all of the New Testament writers, despite their use of similar introductions, put forth clear warnings to the unsaved:

Paul addresses the book of Romans “to all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints,” but in 2:1-9 as well as other sections he clearly speaks to self-righteous, unsaved Jews: “But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath…” He tells those in the Corinthian church, “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? ––unless indeed you are disqualified.” (2 Corinthains 13:5), and “judge [yourselves]” (1 Corinthians 11:31). He told those in the Ephesian church of sinners who will not inherit the kingdom of God, and then writes, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them” i.e., with those who are lost. (Other similar warnings include Romans 8:6-9, 1 Corinthians 15:2, and Galatians 5:19-21.)
The writer of Hebrews warns, “Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience” (Heb. 4:11), and “looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God” (Heb. 12:15).
James addresses those who are among other things “double-minded,” “adulterers and adulteresses,” “enemies of God,” and “sinners,” terms which have some application to all of us, but which nearly all older commentators primarily considered as descriptions of, and warnings to, the unsaved within the church. In over thirty years in evangelical churches, I never heard them preached as warnings to the lost, but as admonitions to the saved.
Peter tells his readers that the genuineness of their faith would be tested by persecution (1 Peter 1:7); that they must persevere in the faith (1:13) with godly fear (1:16); and that they should be diligent to make their “calling and election sure” (2 Peter 1:10); and
John wrote his entire first letter (1 John) to put his readers to the test of true faith, suggesting that those who did not keep His commandments were “liars” with “no truth in them” (1 John 2:4). In 2 John, vv. 8-9, he calls them to self-examination: “Look to yourselves, that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward [i.e., salvation]. Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God.” [I.e., those who do not live as they profess, are not truly His.]

Sin and the Christian

Those who preach the above interpretations would say they are simply acknowledging the presence of sin in the life of the Christian, which is indeed true, for the Bible says, “there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). Even for the Christian, John says that “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). In fact, I would suggest that no one is more aware of the reality of sin in his life than a true Christian. To deny it would be prideful, unreasonable and unbiblical: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). As Christians, we are painfully aware of our own remaining sin, as Paul was when he admitted that “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice,” and then cried out, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:19, 24). But here is one of the differences between the sin of a false professor and that of a true Christian. “For the false professor,” someone has said, “sin is his couch of ease; but for the true Christian, it is his bed of thorns.” Spurgeon said it this way: “The man who is converted cannot live as he likes; or rather, he is so changed by the Holy Spirit that if he could live as he likes, he would never sin.”

But we are on dangerous ground when we begin comparing ourselves with “sinning saints” in Scripture. The case of Old Testament saints is especially significant. Lot, who “pitched his tent toward Sodom,” though he was “oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked” [i.e., “vexed” or “troubled” by it], is nowhere said to have participated in their wicked behavior. Even the cowardly offering of his daughters to the wicked men of Sodom was, as far as the text tells us, a one-time event and not a lifelong behavior, and it is noteworthy that even in such a wicked city as Sodom, we are told that his daughters were still virgins. Samson, the Old Testament judge, is another interesting case study; it seems that, in modern times, his character has been unfairly impugned and his sins grossly misinterpreted, especially when we consider that he is honored in Hebrews 11:32 as a great man of faith. Likewise, when we consider David, it is natural to think of the enormity of his sin and say, “Look how far David went into sin!” Yet we find that the sin and its cover-up occupied him for only a few months, just over a year at the most, and when he was confronted with it, he, like Peter in the New Testament, immediately repented and wept bitterly, as recorded in Psalm 38:3-6:

There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your anger, nor any health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. My wounds are foul and festering because of my foolishness. I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long.

In other words, David responded to his sin as a true believer, and when we look at his life through his writings, we see a man who loved God with such intensity that God called him “a man after God’s own heart.” “We had best not think we can sin like David,” one of the old divines wrote, “until we can repent like David.”

Another common example of a so-called “backsliding believer” is Jonah, who ran from God, yet the time span of his sin as presented in the book is only a day or so, and he was immediately, severely and supernaturally chastised. Solomon is much more of an enigma, but we must admit that there is much we do not know about him. We do not know the exact timeline of his life: when he was saved, which of his books were written when, etc. Furthermore, the doctrine of Old Testament salvation is in itself difficult to know with precision. Certainly it was by faith – “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness” – which manifested itself in obedience toward God, just as in the New Testament. But the reality of an indwelling Spirit of God, residing permanently in every true believer, was quite possibly different in the Old Testament, as Jesus indicates when He announces the sending of the Comforter, God’s Holy Spirit, as something heretofore unknown (John 14:16-17). Likewise, there is no mention of a New Birth in the Old Testament; however, it is not only spoken of, but mandatory in the New Testament: “You must be born again.” In any case, we cannot take these Old Testament figures, or our own personal experiences, to contradict the plain meaning of other Scriptures, and we should not build a doctrine of salvation based on incomplete information in the Old Testament when we have a more perfect explanation of it in the New Testament.

Likewise, New Testament characters do not furnish us with adequate support for a “carnal Christian” doctrine. Peter is often the brunt of preacher jokes for his impetuous personality and his denial of Jesus by the enemy’s fire. But we also see Peter’s great sorrow in Matthew 26:25 when he heard the rooster crow the third time: “And Peter remembered the word of Jesus who had said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.’ So he went out and wept bitterly” (Matthew 26:25).

John Mark is also often viewed as a backslider, but the truth is, we know very little about him. We know only that Paul “thought not good to take him with them, who departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work,” but that later, Paul wrote to Timothy, “Take Mark, and bring him with you: for he is profitable to me for the ministry.” He does not say that he was once “unprofitable,” and we ought not to presume he was “backslidden” when we know nothing of the reason Mark departed from them. Evidently Barnabas, also a godly man, did not seem troubled by Mark’s departure. Perhaps Mark did not feel the Spirit was leading him in that direction, or that he was qualified for the ministry with Paul at that time. Perhaps it was simply a matter of spiritual immaturity, but we have no grounds to extrapolate that Mark walked away from the Lord or got involved in long-time serious sin, and thus was an example of the modern “backslider,” when the text does not tell us so.

In any case, whether Old Testament or New, our model of Christian behavior is Christ, and the great saints when they are at their best, as presented to us in Hebrews 11. The faults of sinning saints, however we perceive them, are not recorded for our encouragement in sin, or for our comfort when we sin, but as examples that we would not do as they did. The true believer’s comfort, when he sins, is not in the sins of others, but in Christ alone.

The Indivisible Truth

Again, we are not preaching that sinless perfection is attainable in this life. But if we say a Christian can look just like the unsaved person for indefinite periods of time, we make a mockery of 2 Corinthians 5:17, which says that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new,” a truth that is reinforced throughout the Bible, including the following passages. Portions which are especially relevant to our theme are underlined.

Psalm 23:1-3: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.” How many will trust Psalm 23:4, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” as God’s preparing them for death, while forgetting that the rest of the Psalm declares God’s work in the believer for life? Salvation is a sovereign work of God, with power to lead the believer into righteousness: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Sanctification is God’s work, and it is done in all Christians, so that only He gets the glory. This is indeed the gospel the Apostles preached, and the one “that you received.” How is God glorified in a salvation that leaves a person in a condition little different from his natural state?

Proverbs 2:6-8: “For the LORD gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding; He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to those who walk uprightly; He guards the paths of justice, And preserves the way of His saints” We are commanded in Proverbs 4:23, “Keep your heart with all diligence,” but according to Proverbs 2:6-8, there is an unseen power making it possible for us to keep that commandment.

Romans 2:5-9: “But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who “will render to each one according to his deeds”: eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self–seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness––indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil…” Those who are perpetually “backslidden” should see which half of this verse applies to them, and should be fearing the wrath of God, not the absence of rewards.

Romans 6:12-22: “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness…. But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. The fruit of salvation, though I have omitted a portion of the passage which acknowledges the weakness of the flesh, is stated as a fact, not as a should be.

Romans 8:1, 6, 9, 13-14: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit…. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace…. But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His…. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. (This distinguishes a spiritual walk from a fleshly one in terms of saved and lost, not in terms of “spiritual Christian” and “carnal Christian.”)

2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” The one who is truly saved (“in Christ”) is, not merely ought to be, a new creation. The true Christian loves God, which is evidenced by the reality that he now longs for Him and delights in His Word, Psalm 119:174! The truth is as Spurgeon said: “Many people think that when we preach salvation, we mean salvation from going to Hell. We do mean that, but we mean a great deal more… we mean that He is able to save him from sin and make him a new man.”

Galatians 5:22-24: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self–control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires..” Note that it says they “have crucified,” not “should crucify.”

Colossians 1:21-23: “And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight–– if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard…” Most of us know many professing Christians who fall away into deep sin. Many will never come back to church, and of them we will rightly say, “They went out from us…that it might be made manifest that they were not of us.” But many others will eventually come back to church or “back to the Lord” when they are burdened by their own guilt, a natural consequence of sin even in an unsaved person, which demonstrates “the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another” (Romans 2:15). Some of these will even come back with great joy and become excited and active in the church again, but if Biblical salvation is indeed as this verse describes it, these people need to be seriously questioned about their salvation before they are accepted back into the embrace of the assembly of saints.

But this verse has further implications. If those who choose to remain in what they admit to be a “backslidden” condition would consider that they are not just sacrificing closeness to God but are playing with their eternal destiny, many would consider their condition more carefully – for it is not saying a prayer or making an emotional profession that brings one to salvation, but as Jesus said, we must “strive to enter in at the narrow gate,” for wide is the way that leads to destruction, but narrow is the way that leads to life. Or, as Peter wrote, “Be diligent to make your calling and election sure.”

1 Timothy 4:16: “Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.” Do those who tell of a salvation experience but then grow cold and indifferent to the things of God have a right to boast confidently that they are saved? And who could imagine that Paul would have to remind even Timothy of this warning?

Titus 2:13-14: “looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.” If this does not happen in an apparently saved person’s life, or if it happens but then they fall away, what does it say about their “redemption”?

Hebrews 8:8-10: “…Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah––not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” This passage quotes Jeremiah 31:31-33, echoed in Ezekiel 36:26-28, words spoken to Israel which speak of a day when God will supernaturally change their hearts to obey Him, and will remember their sin no more. This Hebrews passage then goes on to indicate that this prophecy was now coming to pass with the coming of Christ – i.e., it is a description of every New Testament believer. Some, including many of the Puritans, believed it may also have a national fulfillment at a future time.

1 John 2:3-5: “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.” Does one whose life is characterized by a continual struggle with serious sin and with a lack of love towards God and His Word have the right to be confident about his salvation?

Jude 1:24: “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.” Certainly, any Christian can fall into sin, sometimes even for an extended period of time, but again, the issue is whether such a person can confidently insist that he is saved.

Biblical Assurance

The above passages should rejoice the heart of the true believer who sees God working in him “both to will and to do.” However, it must be asserted that it is possible to have true faith and yet lack assurance. “This infallible assurance,” says the Westminster and 1689 Confessions, “is not an essential part of faith, for a true believer may wait a long time, and struggle with many difficulties before obtaining it.” On the other hand, it is also possible to have assurance without genuine saving faith. as the same Confessions point out: “Temporary believers and other unregenerate people may deceive themselves with futile and false hopes and unspiritual presumptions that they are in favour with God and in a state of salvation, but their hope will perish.” The balance between these two undesirable conditions, which would be biblical assurance, is one that cannot be understood aside from both Bible knowledge and genuine Christian experience: “Yet those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, and endeavour to walk in all good conscience before him, may be certainly assured in this life that they are in the state of grace” (all from the 1689 Modernized by A. Kerkham). These quotations may seem strange to those familiar only with modern evangelical theology and practice, but a careful study of Scripture will bear these statements out.

First, understand that we believe God desires that all of His saints would have the assurance that they have been partakers of the grace of God. “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God” (1 John 3:21). Just as the Israelites were told that God would work miracles among them “that you may know that I am the LORD,” every New Testament saint upon salvation is given the inner witness of “the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,” “the guarantee [or “down payment”] of our inheritance,” which works in the inner man resulting in “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:14-19).

But assurance in this modern age has become, in most evangelical circles, an end in itself, to be held almost as a basic right of all church members who have grown up in the church, been baptized, prayed a sinner’s prayer, walked an aisle or signed a decision card during an invitation, whether or not they have experienced or give evidence of these workings of the Spirit. However, assurance has never been given out as cheaply as it is today. Those who struggle over assurance are often counseled for the quick cure, as if the problem is merely a matter of learning or assimilating a Bible verse or two. A popular verse used for such purposes is 1 John 5:13, which says, “These things I have written to you, that you may know that you have eternal life…” This verse is often misunderstood to support the notion that a lack of confidence about one’s salvation, or causing others to lack confidence, is not of faith, or is even sinful; thus, it is often pointed out to a new “convert” to give him immediate assurance. It is also used in appeals given from pulpits such as, “How many of you know for sure you are going to heaven?”

The above appeals, however, fail to consider, first, that self-deceit about one’s soul is the natural state of the unsaved man, and giving Bible verses out of context that perpetuate that self-deceit can lead one to hell. God-given assurance does not come from the Bible alone; it is the combined result of (1) the truths of God’s Word, (2) an individual’s awareness of them, (3) the evidences of saving grace working in his life, and (4) the inner witness of the Holy Spirit – the last three of which cannot be known by any other human being. To carelessly impart assurance to a new convert before we see these evidences is extremely dangerous, as pointed out by Dr. John Duncan, who observed in the late 19^th century, “When the doctrine of assurance [as] being necessarily contained in faith (as to be essential to it) gets into a church, in the second generation it gets habituated to the use of the highest appropriating language by dead, carnal men.” I fear that this describes most churches in our day.

Scripture teaches clearly that assurance is only for those whose life and affections back up their testimony: “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him” (1 John 3:18-19). We cannot take 1 John 5:13 out of context and ignore the rest of the book, which is a self-test by which those who profess salvation may determine whether or not they are in the faith. John repeatedly points out that mere words do not make a true saint: “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not practice the truth” (1 John 1:6); “If someone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar” (1 John 4:20); “He that says, I know him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4); “He that says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness even until now” (1 John 2:9). Why are we overly eager to claim the assurance of 1 John 5:13, while at the same time ignoring or glossing over the discomfiting implications of all of these verses and others in the same book, such 1 John 2:15, which says, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him”?

Another favorite “assurance passage” often given is 2 Peter 1:19: “We have also a more sure word of prophecy,” and is used to indicate that we base our salvation on the Bible, not on our feelings. A common pulpit appeal is for people to raise their hands if they would like to know from the Bible how they can go to heaven. It is true that the Bible is indeed the source of all we can know about salvation; but one must evaluate one’s own condition not only on what the Bible says about the facts of salvation, but about the fruits of salvation. If the person lacks assurance, they first need to determine if their life, not their memory of an experience, gives evidence of true salvation – or bears the “marks of grace,” as some Puritans expressed it. If they are not sure, they should be advised to spend time in God’s Word and on their knees, and allow Him to give assurance or take it away. As for re-praying the sinner’s prayer “just in case,” it has no biblical basis; it accomplishes nothing, and could indeed make one more a child of hell than he is already.

I would suggest that the widespread use of these unbiblical assurance teachings and misguided appeals in evangelical Christianity is the great error of our day, and has resulted in an almost unreachable generation of fruitless professors, like those of whom Spurgeon said,

They say they are saved, and they stick to it; they simply are, and they think it wicked to doubt it; but yet they have no reason to warrant their confidence. There is a great difference between presumption and full assurance. Full assurance is reasonable: it is based on solid ground. Presumption takes for granted, and with brazen face pronounces that to be its own to which it has no right whatever.

Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth

Some would argue that, because Christians are repeatedly told to do certain things, it is of course possible that they are able to be in a state of not doing them. In a sense this is technically possible – akin to saying that Jesus could have sinned because God can do anything – but it ignores other biblical truths that must be considered if we are to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). For example, we are told in Jude 1:21, “keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.” But 1 Peter 1:5 says Christians “are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Likewise, James 4:7 says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you,” but 2 Thessalonians 3:3 promises that “the Lord is faithful, who shall establish you and keep you from evil.” Titus 2:11 lays the responsibility for godly living on us when it commands, “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world.” But in the next verses we are given the wonderful promise that our Savior “gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous of good works.” Philippians 2:12 commands us to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”; yet the next verse tells us, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” In 1Thessalonians 5:22 we are told, “Abstain from all appearance of evil,” yet 2 Timothy 4:18 pronounces it done: “And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom. To whom be glory forever and ever. Amen!”

When these passages are considered in balance, “rightly divided,” it is clear that Christians should do these things, but that does not negate the fact that Christians are these things. This is a very humbling truth, for it gives all the glory, not only for our salvation but for our sanctification, to God alone. The modern church, in making sanctification something we must do in order to please God or obtain fulfillment in the Christian life, has thus unwittingly made living the Christian life a matter of works and not of grace; thus, Paul’s admonition to the legalistic Galatians should not be lightly dismissed today: “Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3).

Seeing, but not Perceiving: The Danger of Presumption

Speaking in Parables

It is a historical fact that truth has rarely been preserved in the large institutions of Christendom. God has indeed allowed error to rule the masses for nearly all of church history. His true church has existed as a small remnant, either outside of or within the large institutions, and it seems He has always allowed the insincere to be deceived.

As to why God does this we can only speculate, but it should cure us of the disease of presumption. In Psalm 78:2, the psalmist says, “I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old.” What is this – a God of peace and love, speaking to us in “parables” and “dark sayings”? Perhaps the clearest insight into the heart and mind of God regarding this mystery is Matthew 13:13-15, in which Jesus implies that speaking in parables is God’s way of dividing the sincere from the insincere:

Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: “Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, And seeing you will see and not perceive; For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them..”

Eating the Bread of Deceit

“Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel” (Proverbs 20:17). Perhaps Satan has reserved his most clever ploy for the last days, a day when deceived individuals by the multiplied thousands can sit in churches where the Bible is recognized as the inspired Word of God, often participating actively in its programs and mouthing its doctrinal beliefs, while remaining under the dominion of their sins, lacking in spiritual affections, and deceived by an unregenerate heart. Often the church plays into Satan’s hands by too eagerly making the assumption that their new “converts” are truly saved before the furnace of affliction has proved them to be genuine, thus forgetting the teaching of our Lord in the parable of the sower, in which the “stony-ground hearer” undergoes a counterfeit conversion: “He hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles.” It may be true that because of man’s emotional makeup, along with his fallen condition, such counterfeit Christians will always be an ever-present reality. But when we consider how the message and methods of the modern church often encourage such “conversions,” and even boast in their numbers, I would suggest the church is not merely an innocent bystander.

My Bible education and all of my church experience took place in a number of “conservative, evangelical” institutions, and over the years I have saved almost every piece of literature, every tract, every preaching and teaching outline I had ever received. As I began to examine these things more closely, I looked back in my files through the personal evangelism materials I had collected, and found that in nearly all of them, repentance is barely even mentioned, and even when it is, it is given little more than lip service – not the serious, probing emphasis that it deserves. In its place are salesmanship and methods: “How to get in the door,” “How to break the ice,” “How to draw the net,” and other techniques and gimmicks to get people to make an emotional “decision.” Summaries of the gospel abound, and it seems they become more and more oversimplified.

The results of this kind of “evangelism training” are often counterfeit converts. Consider what may be the typical new “convert” in most evangelical churches today. Welcomed into the church through an outreach program such as a musical performance, outing, retreat, sports event or youth activity, they are given an appeal to “accept Christ” or “trust Christ as personal Savior” and, often in an emotional moment, “make a decision” and are “saved.” Or, perhaps they come into the church already having a testimony of “accepting Christ” as a child, but have been “backsliding” or “away from God” for years, and now want to give their life for Christ. They are encouraged to join the church and, perhaps shortly after, asked to serve in a church ministry, often an outreach program like the one that drew them in. They then go out and invite others to “come to Christ” in the same manner in which they did. We do not question their sincerity or their zeal, but God’s work must conform to right doctrine, or results will be defective.

An ABC Nightline broadcast a few years ago on the topic of “the making of an evangelist,” showed on camera an evangelist-in-training, at a conservative Christian college, supposedly “leading someone to Christ.” As the woman was led by the evangelist in a “sinner’s prayer,” her eyes were open and she showed little outward evidence of one going through true penitence and confession unto salvation. This is no criticism of the young evangelist, who was doing as he was taught, and probably very sincere in his efforts; but this young man should have learned, at some point in his training, of the devastating spiritual consequences of leaving an individual deceived into thinking she was saved, when she probably was not. Furthermore, viewers who saw the broadcast received a distortion of the true gospel, one which could do great damage to the cause of Christ. This is, after all, His work, and we must not deceive any even to win one, for “Cursed is he who does the work of the LORD deceitfully” (Jeremiah 48:10).

Ministerial Shortcomings and God’s Sovereignty

What does all this mean for those who have responded to Christ in the past but may have received Him by means of a deficient message? Are they not truly saved? The answer is that God is sovereign, and He can work even when gross error and deceit are present. Some who professed faith under the above conditions may have been truly saved and become a “new creation” in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), because God is the one who saves. Yet many never evidence true salvation, as manifested by a hungering and thirsting after God and the Bible, a desire to be separate from the world, a spirit of prayer, obedience to Christ, a decreasing pattern of sin in one’s life, etc. They may remain in the church, often “serving,” but their heart and life have never been truly transformed. Of course, we do have certain expectations about one who claims to be saved, but in most of our churches, as long as they don’t boast about their sin or do it too openly, such a person may sit for years, listening to message after message about forsaking their backsliding, getting “back into fellowship with God” or getting busy for God, and never again be challenged seriously to consider whether their salvation was genuine! We must be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that there are many such people in our churches today.

The children in our churches also frequently have empty professions of faith reinforced, often year after year. In many churches they are even rewarded with candy and prizes for memorizing the Bible or “evangelizing” by bringing others in. The children often learn the points of a simplified gospel, such as the Wordless Book or Gospel Hand: God loves me, I am a sinner, Christ died for me, if I receive Him, I may have eternal life. Since this presentation, if not qualified, makes no mention of repentance, or of the fact that one’s decision to accept Christ is not in itself saving, it is teaching a partial truth which in effect is an untruth. If one makes a shallow profession, it is often reinforced with songs like “If you’re saved and you know it, clap your hands,” and “I’m going to heaven, can’t wait!” When they are teenagers, we urge them to go to Christian camp, where they are worked up emotionally with fun, games, and camaraderie, then preached a message and encouraged to “make a decision” for Christ. Many go on mission trips and encourage others to make the same shallow and ineffectual “decisions.” When they come home, they give testimonies about how great their trip was and how great God worked. In the end, with all the tears and emotion aside, how much true, Biblical, lifelong repentance are we seeing? This may the reason for the devastating recent statistic that perhaps as high as 90% of our churched young people today do not intend to continue in the belief system in which they grew up. This is not true conversion. As Spurgeon rightly said, “The work that is done in regeneration is not a temporary work, by which a man is, for a time, reformed; but it is an everlasting work, by which the man is born for heaven.”

The Christian gospel is not complete without considering Jesus’ admonitions to count the cost of being a Christian. When we give people little idea of the need for a deep, soul-searching repentance or of the cost of being Jesus’ disciple, we should not be surprised if they never live up to it, for many of them were never truly saved—only deceived. This is why Jesus taught that “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62); and on the same subject, “And whoever does not bear his cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first, and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?” (Luke 14:27-28) If they fall away from church, we will doubt their salvation based on 1 John 2:19: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for it they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us.” But many false converts, for various personal reasons, will either remain in the church, or leave and then come back. This often happens as they grow up, have children and seek respectability, or simply desire to be a “good person.” When this happens, as it often does, they will blend in just like tares among the wheat. John MacArthur comments,

You may have heard someone, when he is getting baptized, say, “I received Christ when I was twelve, but my life was a mess after that, and now I want to get back to the faith.” The truth probably is that he never received Christ at all when he was twelve. He went through some superficial religious activity and was deceived into thinking he was saved as a result.

Furthermore, the typical church today unwittingly makes it easy for such unsaved people to avoid the implications of many sobering passages of Scripture, thus allowing them to sit among the saved, often with false assurance, and with little fear of God’s final judgment. When the church carelessly allows fruitless salvation testimonies to remain unchallenged, and these people find themselves condemned before a holy God, what legitimate accusations will they level at the churches that have led them to such a fate? And what responsibility do the leaders and members of these churches have to avoid such a charge?

The Simple Gospel

The church has indeed become too sophisticated in how it ignores or dispenses with the many passages that make worldly and ungodly professing believers comfortable within the body, and I believe sitting under the continual drone of that message has made even many true believers dull of hearing. In 2 Corinthians 11:1-4, Paul expressed the burden of his heart toward the Corinthian church:

Oh, that you would bear with me in a little folly––and indeed you do bear with me. For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted––you may well put up with it!.

I would contend that the church of today has also been corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ, as modern theology has created a massive and complicated system which relies, in part, on the following arguments to explain away simple and basic but very sobering gospel truths:

1. Where submission to Christ’s lordship is so clearly demanded in passages in the Gospels such as Matthew 16:24, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.,” many modern theologians tell us those words do not directly apply to us because Jesus is preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, a dispensation of Law, and not the gospel Paul preached, which is one of grace. (No pre-20^th century commentator I know of holds this view.) Thus, there really are two gospels (though Jesus never really told us so), and the one He Himself preached is not the one for us. This is the view of the Scofield Bible, and it is pervasive today, for whether or not it is openly articulated or acknowledged, its influence is found in the vast majority of evangelical churches. But in the Great Commission, Jesus makes it clear there is only one gospel, and it is the one that He Himself preached: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations… teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you”; and Paul warns Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:3-4, “If anyone … does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words…” Thus, there is one gospel, Jesus preached it, and the sobering words of Matthew 16:24 are for us and should not be lightly passed over!

2. When our Lord says, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me” (Matthew 11:28-30), modern theologians suggest that taking the yoke is an act separate from saving faith. In other words, there are two rests, a rest in salvation and, for those who desire to go to the next level, a rest in sanctification or in service. This is also the view of the Scofield Bible, but it denies the truth Jesus was preaching: that one who has refused His yoke has no claim to His saving benefits, and that genuine, life-transforming salvation is all one needs to find true rest in Him.

3. When repentance from one’s sin is stated as an essential element of salvation in Scripture, modern theologians use complex explanations from the Greek to say that “repent” simply means to have a change of mind about one’s sin and about Christ, merely to acknowledge that I am a sinner and that Christ died for me. Thus, if one has “believed,” he has in fact also “repented.” In one sense this is true: One whom God has drawn to “believe” savingly will indeed “repent” of his sins, and to do so more deeply as he grows in grace. But taken to the extreme, the Greek arguments often cloud the simple gospel truth that when one is saved, there will and must be a corresponding dramatic change in one’s life. As this argument developed in the time of Charles H. Spurgeon, he responded,

Together with undivided faith in Jesus Christ there must also be unfeigned repentance of sin. Repentance is an old-fashioned word, not much used by modern revivalists. “Oh!” said a minister to me one day, “it only means a change of mind.” This was thought to be a profound observation. “Only a change of mind”; but what a change!

This thorough change wrought by true repentance was clearly expressed by John the Baptist, who commanded his hearers to “Bring forth therefore fruits suitable for repentance” (Mark 3:8), and echoed by Paul who said, “[I] declared first to those in Damascus and in Jerusalem, and throughout all the region of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent, turn to God, and do works befitting repentance.” (Acts 26:20).

4. When Paul tells the Corinthians to “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith” (2 Corinthians 13:5), many modern evangelical theologians contend that he was really saying, “Examine yourselves since you are in the faith,” and thus he was not really challenging unsaved people in the church. Again, a complex Greek argument is put forth, and a simple warning goes unheeded. The fact is, virtually no significant Bible translation translates it “since,” and the old commentators would have taken the sober warning of this verse at face value.

5. When 2 Peter 1:10 says, “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure,” the Greek word spoudazo, translated “diligent,” is interpreted by many today to refer to mere acts of “Christian service,” no matter how empty and heartless they may be. Hebrews 4:11, containing the same Greek word, is given the same interpretation: “Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.” Yet both of these verses are intended as warnings for professing believers to examine the spiritual condition of their souls. Their simple truths are explained away using arguments which the old commentators – many of whom were Greek scholars themselves – could not have conceived of.

Questions Begging Answers

If the modern interpretations just described are what the Bible actually teaches; if salvation is as easy as simply believing the facts of the gospel; if repentance merely means a change of mind that acknowledges, “I am a sinner and I believe Christ died for me”; and if taking Christ’s yoke is an option that one may or may not exercise after he is saved, then I believe the following questions beg to be answered:

If salvation is easy, why did Jesus, in Luke 18:18-25, drive away the rich young ruler who asked him the way to inherit eternal life?
If salvation is easy, why does the Bible so often ask us to examine ourselves to determine our standing with God, and to strive to enter heaven? – for example, “search out and examine your ways”; “consider your ways”; “strive to enter in”; “examine yourselves”; “judge yourselves”; “look carefully”; “give diligence”; “be sure you are in the faith” (Lamentations 3:40; Haggai 1:7; 2 Corinthians 13:5; 1 Corinthians 11:31; Hebrews 12:15; Hebrews 4:11; 2 Peter 1:10).
If salvation is easy, why did Jesus Himself say it was so hard that even His disciples marveled? Luke 18:26-27: How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! … And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved?
If salvation is easy, why did Jesus teach so many parables with the theme of false profession – for example, the wheat and the tares, the dragnet, the sheep and goats, the ten virgins, the barren fig tree, the seed and the sower, and many others?
If salvation is easy, why was Jesus, in preaching that gospel, so “despised and rejected,” while preachers of today’s gospel can be so popular?
If salvation is easy, why were Jesus’ hearers in John 6:25-69 so offended at Him, to the extent that “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more”?
If Jesus’ gospel was so easy, why are there so many hard sayings in His teaching? For example, “repent,” “count the cost,” “take up your cross,” “suffer with Him,” etc.?
If salvation is so easy, why will Jesus say to so many at the Judgment, even those who called Him “Lord, Lord,” “Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you”]

Conclusion: A Humble Appeal to Preachers & Teachers of the Gospel

It is my prayer that this little book will, at the very least, encourage a Berean spirit – a spirit of inquiry – as you consider the vitally important issues raised in these pages. This is especially important for those of us who preach and teach, “knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment” (James 3:1).

Certainly, when one puts all the preconceived notions and years of one-sided teaching aside, we must admit that God is a God of holiness, that He hates sin, He does not take it lightly, and He will not pardon those who are flippant about it. And lest some would think that God has somehow changed His ways with the coming of the New Testament, we must not forget the sober warning of our Savior, in words that might be spoken to those who would be tempted to look at their church teeming with friendly, busy people, honoring God with their lips, and assume without scriptural evidence that most of them are saved: “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it…. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matthew 7:14, 22-23). It may be uncomfortable to look at the millions of professing Christians around us, including “many” of our own friends and family, perhaps even ourselves, and consider the “many” who may not be saved; but it has been true in every period of Christendom since Christ, and I believe we are unwise to consider it otherwise today.

Today, as all of us seek the cure for a sickly, worldly, modern church, there is in some circles an awakening to the historic Christian doctrines presented this book. But the old cannot simply be added to the new; the break with the modern easy-believe theology must be clean, or it will be ineffective. A message is not judged acceptable by the mere presence of truth (for some truth can be found in most churches, even those that have descended deep into apostasy) – but by the absence of error. Scripture often warns us to “purge out the leaven.” The damning error in the new theology must be recognized and exposed for what it is. Brethren, those of us who have weakened the most crucial warning passages in the Bible by teaching them as we have been taught to do, whether we do it knowingly or unknowingly, cannot simply throw in an “examine yourself” message now and then – it will be as ineffective as a liberal preacher now and then throwing in a sermon on hell, not realizing his parishioners no longer believe in it. Perhaps there is little difference between a modernist who says “This passage isn’t inspired,” and the “evangelical” of today who says or implies, “This warning doesn’t apply to you, it applies only to Tribulation Jews,” or “This warning doesn’t mean you will go to hell; it simply means God will be displeased with you,” despite ample scriptural warnings to the contrary. What masterful arguments the Deceiver uses, and how easily we may play into his hands if we fail to approach all the Bible with fear and trembling! Indeed, by assuming we have false professors in our own churches, and by preaching Scripture and all of its warnings evangelistically to them, we may find that unbelieving sinners in our midst can be awakened to salvation by God’s two-edged Sword!

Scripture’s warnings to sinners are indeed sobering, but just as sobering are those to preachers who don’t speak out against sin as God does:

“Thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you worthless; They speak a vision of their own heart, Not from the mouth of the LORD. They continually say to those who despise Me, ‘The LORD has said, ‘You shall have peace’; And to everyone who walks according to the dictates of his own heart, they say, ‘No evil shall come upon you.’… I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in My counsel, And had caused My people to hear My words, Then they would have turned them from their evil way And from the evil of their doings.” (Jer. 23:16-17, 21-22).

We are tempted to think such warnings are not for us today. “That was Old Testament,” many will say, “and those false prophets were really bad people, and the people whose sins they were covering up were really bad people.” Maybe so, but let us first tremble at God’s Words! When we too easily presume that such warnings are only for another land and another people, we, like the Pharisees, blind ourselves to the probability that Jeremiah would direct that same message to many conservative gospel preachers in our own day. Our churches, as they fellowship, entertain, and too often commend themselves, are in serious trouble. Those who preach must be honest with Scripture, with themselves, and with their people. The message of the modern church has deceived an entire generation, and it cannot be fixed with a band-aid approach. I, for one, confess that I have misread and taught God’s message of salvation wrongly for many years and to many people, and for that I am truly sorry. May God forgive me!

Proverbs, the book of God’s eternal wisdom for all ages, states an axiom that should not be dismissed lightly: “He who says to the wicked, You are righteous; him the people will curse; nations will abhor him” (Proverbs 24:24). When we preach to worldly or spiritually careless people using appeals that either say or imply, “You are saved, but you need to get right with God,” are we not committing this sin? Perhaps if those who have preached such a message would be honest enough with God and with their people to confess that they have gotten it wrong, and begin preaching the hard truth, we could see genuine revival in our day. It is the duty of God’s people, and especially preachers of His Word, to be as discerning as is humanly possible regarding the condition of people’s souls, and may God give us the wisdom and the courage to do so!

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“Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, And the LORD listened and heard them; So a book of remembrance was written before Him For those who fear the LORD And who meditate on His name. “They shall be Mine,” says the LORD of hosts, “On the day that I make them My jewels. And I will spare them As a man spares his own son who serves him.” Then you shall again discern Between the righteous and the wicked, Between one who serves God And one who does not serve Him. (Malachi 3:16-18).

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