pisteu,wpisteu,w (PISTEUŌ) (PISTEUŌ) “believe”; “trust”“believe”; “trust”

pei,qwpei,qw (PEITHŌ) (PEITHŌ) actact “trust” “trust”pei,qwpei,qw (PEITHŌ) (PEITHŌ) passpass “be persuaded”“be persuaded”

Lordship QuotesLordship Quotes

1.1. The GospelThe Gospel2.2. Salvation—Grace or Works?Salvation—Grace or Works?3.3. Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation4.4. The Troubling of a Lordship GospelThe Troubling of a Lordship Gospel

Lordship QuotesLordship Quotes

1.1. The GospelThe Gospel2.2. Salvation—Grace or Works?Salvation—Grace or Works?3.3. Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation4.4. The Troubling of a Lordship GospelThe Troubling of a Lordship Gospel

The GospelThe Gospel

J.I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God , pg. 73“In our own presentation of Christ's gospel, therefore, we need to lay a similar stress on the cost of following Christ, and make sinners face it soberly before we urge them to respond to the message of free forgiveness. In common honesty, we must not conceal the fact that free forgiveness in one sense will cost everything.”

Salvation—Grace or Works?Salvation—Grace or Works?

John MacArthur, Hard to Believe, pg. 16“The complete surrender of all possessions is the essence of salvation. It is, ‘I give up everything. I deny myself. I offer my life, both in terms of death, if need be, and in terms of obedience in life.’”  “Salvation for sinners cost God His own Son; it cost God’s Son His life, and it will cost you the same thing.” ibid, pg. 93 

John H. GerstnerWrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism, pg. 210“The question is not whether good works are necessary to salvation, but in what way are they necessary. As the inevitable outworking of saving faith, they are necessary for salvation.”

Lordship QuotesLordship Quotes

1.1. The GospelThe Gospel2.2. Salvation—Grace or Works?Salvation—Grace or Works?3.3. Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation4.4. The Troubling of a Lordship GospelThe Troubling of a Lordship Gospel

Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of SalvationJohn MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus“I am committed to the biblical truth that salvation is forever. Contemporary Christians have come to refer to this as the doctrine of eternal security. Perhaps the Reformers’ terminology is more appropriate; they spoke of the perseverance of the saints. The point is not that God guarantees security to everyone who will say he accepts Christ, but rather that those whose faith is genuine will……prove their salvation is secure by persevering to the end in the way of righteousness.” 1st ed., pg. 98…never totally or finally fall away from Christ. They will persevere in grace unto the very end.” Anniversary ed., pg. 109

Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation

John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus, pg. 109“True believers will persevere. Professing Christians who turn against the Lord only prove that they were never truly saved. …No matter how convincing a person’s testimony might seem, once that person becomes apostate, he or she demonstrates irrefutably that the testimony was hypocritical and the professed salvation was spurious.”

Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation

John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus, pg. 149“Obviously, a new believer does not fully understand all the ramifications of Jesus’ lordship at the moment of conversion. But every genuine believer has a desire to surrender. This is what distinguishes true faith from a bogus profession: true faith produces a heart that is humble, submissive, obedient. As spiritual understanding unfolds, that obedience grows deeper, and the genuine believer displays an eagerness to please Christ by abandoning everything to His lordship. This willingness to surrender to divine authority is a driving force in the heart of every true child of the kingdom. It is the inevitable expression of the new nature.”

Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation

John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus, pg. 221“Does that mean confession before others is a condition of becoming a true Christian? No, but it means that a characteristic of every genuine believer is that he or she will profess faith in Christ unreservedly. Paul wrote, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation” (Romans 1:16).” “The apostle John also wrote an entire epistle about the marks of a true believer (cf. 1 John 5:13). His counsel to those struggling with assurance was not that they should pin their hopes on a past incident or a moment of faith. He gave instead a doctrinal test and a moral test, and reiterated them throughout his first epistle. The moral test requires obedience…”ibid, pg. 250

Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation

John MacArthur, Faith Works, pp. 161“Most of the Puritans taught that believers could not expect assurance until long after conversion, and only after a life of extended faithfulness. They tended to make assurance dependent on the believer’s ability to live at an almost unattainable level of personal holiness… As we might expect, the Puritans’ demanding preaching led to a widespread lack of assurance among their flocks.”

Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of SalvationJohn MacArthur, Faith Works, pp. 166-171“Even the little epistle of 1 John (was) written to deal with precisely the issue of assurance… Surely no other passage of Scripture confronts ‘no-lordship’ theology with more force than this brief but potent letter. John’s purpose statement in explicit in 1 John 5:13… There the apostle spells out this intention. He is not trying to make believers doubt; he wants them to have full assurance. What he has to say will not shake genuine believers; though it should certainly alarm those with a false sense of assurance… Here are the proofs he says will be evident in every genuine believer:1) True believers walk in the light (1:6-7)…2) True believers confess their sins (1:9)…3) True believers keep His commandments (2:3-4)…4) True believers love the brethren (3:10)…5) True believers affirm sound doctrine (2:19)…6) True believers follow after holiness (2:29)…7) True believers have the Holy Spirit (4:13)…” 

Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation

“The doctrine [the perseverance of the saints] declares that the regenerate are saved thru persevering in faith and Christian living to the end, and that it is God who keeps them persevering. That does not mean that all who ever professed conversion will be saved. False professions are made; short-term enthusiasts fall away; many who say to Jesus, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will not be acknowledged. Only those who show themselves to be regenerate by pursuing heart-holiness and true neighbor-love as they pass through this world are entitled to believe themselves secure in Christ. Persevering in faith and penitence, not just Christian formalism, is the path to glory.”

J.I. Packer, Concise Theology, pg. 242

Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation

“The only evidence of election is effectual calling, that is, the production of holiness. And the only evidence of the genuineness of this call and the certainty of our perseverance, is a patient continuance in well-doing.”

Charles Hodge, Commentary on Romans, pg. 292

 “‘Let him that thinketh he standeth,’ that is, let him who thinks himself secure. This may refer either to security of salvation or against the power of temptation. The two are very different, and rest generally on different grounds. False security of salvation commonly rests on the ground of our belonging to a privileged body (the church), or to a privileged class (the elect). Both are equally fallacious. Neither the members of the church nor the elect can be saved unless they persevere in holiness; and they cannot persevere in holiness without continual watchfulness and effort.” Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, pg. 181

Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation

“Here we simply note that, in lieu of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints (that the new life bestowed by irresistible grace is lived out the rest of the regenerate person’s life), the dispensationalist substitutes the doctrine of eternal security of the believer (that the new life bestowed by regeneration in response to faith may or may not be lived out without affecting the ‘security of the believer’). In other words, a true believer may not persevere in holiness. Reformed theology teaches that such a failure would prove that the person is not a true believer at all and that only those who persevere to the end will be saved.”

John H. Gerstner, Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism, pg. 142 

Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation

“Endurance in faith is a condition for future salvation. Only those who endure in faith will be saved for eternity.”

R.C. Sproul, Grace Unknown, pg. 198 “Readers, if there is a reserve in your obedience, you are on the way to hell.” A. W. Pink, Practical Christianity, pg. 16 “No Christian can be sure that he is a true believer. Hence there is an ongoing need to be dedicated to the Lord and deny ourselves so that we might make it.”

John Piper and Pastoral Staff, TULIP: What We Believe About the Five Points of Calvinism: Position Paper of the Pastoral Staff, pg. 25. 

Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of SalvationStriking ParallelStriking Parallel

“The Scriptures repeatedly exhort us to persevere , to ‘hang in there.’ It is only the one who endures to the end who will be saved.”

Joseph Kindel, (Roman Catholic), What Must I Do to be Saved?, pg.79 “There is no valid assurance of election and final salvation for any man, apart from deliberate perseverance in the faith.”

Robert L. Shank (Arminian), Life in the Son, pg. 293  “We can never know that we are elected of God to eternal life except by manifesting in our lives the fruits of election – faith and virtue, knowledge and temperance, patience and godliness, love of brethren. It is idle to seek assurance of election outside of holiness of life.”

Lorraine Boettner (Calvinist), The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, pg. 309 

Lordship QuotesLordship Quotes

1.1. The GospelThe Gospel2.2. Salvation—Grace or Works?Salvation—Grace or Works?3.3. Eternal Security/Assurance of SalvationEternal Security/Assurance of Salvation4.4. The Troubling of a Lordship GospelThe Troubling of a Lordship Gospel

The Troubling of a Lordship Gospel The Troubling of a Lordship Gospel  E-mail from Bob Wilkin, 2001“During the first message presented at Ligonier’s Conference in Orlando last June, Dr. R. C. Sproul indicated that Dr. James Boice, a scheduled speaker at the conference, was dying in faith that very night. Then at the end of the message he asked all 5,000 of us present to pray that Jim dies in faith. This struck me as sad. Here was a great pastor, theologian, teacher, and author. Yet Sproul was not sure that he was regenerate. (In Reformed thought, if a person fails to die in faith, he proved he was never saved in the first place.) I was reminded of R.T. Kendall’s remark that nearly to a man the Puritan divines died doubting whether they were saved and fearing they were going to hell. Dr. Boice died that very night, June 15th, [2000].”

The Troubling of a Lordship Gospel The Troubling of a Lordship Gospel  E-mail from Bob Wilkin, 2001“During the first message presented at Ligonier’s Conference in Orlando last June, Dr. R. C. Sproul indicated that Dr. James Boice, a scheduled speaker at the conference, was dying in faith that very night. Then at the end of the message he asked all 5,000 of us present to pray that Jim dies in faith. This struck me as sad. Here was a great pastor, theologian, teacher, and author. Yet Sproul was not sure that he was regenerate. (In Reformed thought, if a person fails to die in faith, he proved he was never saved in the first place.) I was reminded of R.T. Kendall’s remark that nearly to a man the Puritan divines died doubting whether they were saved and fearing they were going to hell. Dr. Boice died that very night, June 15th, [2000].”

R.T. Kendall: “Nearly all the Puritan ‘divines’ went through great doubt and despair on their deathbeds as they realized their lives did not give perfect evidence that they were the elect.”

The Troubling of a Lordship Gospel The Troubling of a Lordship Gospel

R.C. Sproul, “Assurance of Salvation,” Table Talk, November 1989, pg. 20

“A while back I had one of those moments of acute self-awareness, and suddenly the question hit me: R.C., what if you are not one of the redeemed? What if your destiny is not Heaven after all, but Hell? Let me tell you that I was flooded in my body with a chill that went from my head to the bottom of my spine. I was terrified.

“I tried to grab hold of myself. I thought, ‘Well, it’s a good sign that I am worried about this. Only true Christians really care about salvation.’ But then I began to take stock of my life, and I looked at my performance. My sins came pouring into my mind, and the more I looked at myself, the worse I felt. I thought, ‘Maybe it’s true. Maybe I’m not saved after all.’

“I went to my room and began to read my Bible. On my knees I said, ‘Well, here I am. I can’t point to my obedience. There’s nothing I can offer.’ I know some people only flee to the Cross to escape Hell. Then I remembered John 6:68. Peter was also uncomfortable, but he realized that being uncomfortable with Jesus was better than any other option.”