Yesterday I received the June issue of Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. I’ve been a member of ETS since 1982 when I received my Th.M. degree.

There is a fascinating review by Ardel Caneday of Northwestern College in Saint Paul of a book by Alan P. Stanley, Did Jesus Teach Salvation by Works? The Role of Works in Salvation in the Synoptic Gospel.

Though Caneday finds minor fault with the way Stanley expressed himself in places, he is in essential agreement. Indeed he concludes, “Stanley’s book should become a standard resource for all who would accurately preach, teach, or write concerning salvation and works in the Synoptic Gospels” (p. 401).

The sentence immediately before that, however, mentions GES, though not in a positive light: “The marginal views of those associated with the Grace Evangelical Society, historically related to Dallas Theological Seminary where Stanley wrote his disseration, seem to receive undue attention, especially in chapters 1 and 12″ (p. 401).

The reviewer is speaking of Stanley’s attention to the writings of Jody Dillow, Zane Hodges, and me. Are our views marginal? Certainly in the scholarly world they are. To be mainstream today among evangelical scholars one must hold the party line, that Jesus taught salvation (eternal life/kingdom entrance) by works.

Over 25 years ago I took a class on James by Zane Hodges. I remember his comment on James 4:4 that says, “friendship with the world is enmity with God.” He said, “If you wish to be recognized by the scholarly world as a serious Biblical scholar, then you will not be a friend of God.” He urged us to count the cost. We could be “marginalized” and written off as misguided souls, or we could be main stream and lauded as a world-class scholar. Losing God’s friendship, Zane said, was too high a price to pay to have the praise of men.

It is encouraging to see GES mentioned in a leading scholarly journal, even if the comment is not a positive one.

Sunday before last I spoke at Shreveport Bible Church on 1 Cor 9:24-27. I’ve been there several times over the last 15 to 20 years, all the way back to when Chris Dolson was the Pastor. I enjoyed visited with all the warm people there. The drive going was easy but coming back it was a bit tiring. Sheveport is about a 4-hour drive from where we live 30 miles north of Dallas. (In addition, I drove 60 the whole way for fuel economy and safety, but that takes longer too.)

Yesterday I was at my home church in Dallas, Victor Street Bible Chapel. It was great to see everyone again. Dan Mosher spoke on First Corinthians 2.

This Friday Sharon and I fly to Tampa. I’ll be speaking Sunday at Bayside Community Church. I always enjoy going there. Sharon hasn’t been with me there in a while, but she loves going there too. Margaret Riedel is so hospitable that we feel like she’s adopted us.

I saw my urologist today and he said I had a calcium oxylate stone and that’s there’s still one in my kidney. But, he said won’t need to see me for 8 months, then we’ll do another xray to see if anything has changed.

 Kyle Kaumeyer, the office manager and my right-hand guy, is doing better after his second back surgery in a year. His pain, though still significant, is more manageable, and he is walking normally again. He’s off pain meds. Thanks for your prayers for him. We won’t know for a few more months whether he will continue to improve, but we are optimistic.

The Omaha Conference Aug 1-2 went very well. Messages by Dan Hauge, John Niemela, Lonnie Hofer, and me were well received. There was lots of good discussion. Most of the messages dealt with the doctrine of eternal rewards. My thanks to Pastor Chuch Tschetter and all the wonderful people of Community Bible Church who hosted the conference. We also had people from two other churches in Omaha and Pastor Paul Carpenter came from Jansen, NE, and Hal and Marlene Mills came from Iowa.

I also enjoyed speaking Sunday morning at Community Bible Church. I spoke on Gal 5:1-6. Don’t fall from grace! During the Sunday School between the two services I spoke on Lordship Salvation and fielded questions.

On Sunday afternoon I flew back to Dallas, changed plans, and flew on to John Wayne airport in So Cal with GES board member Walt Millet. We had our summer board meeting in Long Beach. The meeting was excellent. We set the new budget for fiscal 2009 and discussed all aspects of our ministry.

I was able to visit my Mom and Sister on Monday night and Tuesday morning. I even had lunch with Mom before having to head out.

When I got back to Dallas Tuesday night, Sharon picked me up. “There was a terrible smell in the house last night. I hope it isn’t another squirrel that got trapped in the walls and died.” When we got home, the smell was bad. This smell was so bad we burned candles and considered bringing someone in to drill in the walls and find out where it was and remove it.

Today at noon Sharon called. She had borrowed a neighbor’s dog to try to locate exactly where the dead varmit was. The dog went to the entry way and sniffed at a bag that was hidden out of sight. In it Sharon found leftover chicken and broccoli that had been fermenting since last weekend! Yikes. I’m married to Lucy Ricardo (for those of you old enough to remember the TV series I Love Lucy).

This weekend I’m driving to Shreveport to speak at Shreveport Bible Church.

I’m off tomorrow morning for Omaha and Community Bible Church where we are having a regional conference. Speakers include myself (3 messages), John Niemela (2 or 3 messages), Dan Hauge (2 or 3 messages), and Lonnie Hofer (one message). The conference runs from 7-9 PM on Friday and from 9 to 5 on Saturday.

I’m also schedule to speak Sunday morning at the two service and the Bible study hour in between at Community Bible Church. Then I fly to Southern California for the GES Summer Board Meeting on Monday August 4.

I passed several fragments of a kidney stone last Wednesday night. Since then I’ve been feeling a lot better. I’m basically back to full strength, which is a good thing with the speaking and travel I have scheduled for Friday through Tuesday.

Thank you for your prayers and encouragment.

On Saturday night at 6:00 I had chills, nausea, and a horrible headache. I’ve had these symptoms before. I thought this was an allergy headache. I went to bed and slept 14 hours till 8AM.

 I got ready and went to a local church, Berean Memorial Church in Irving, TX, as their guest speaker.

All went well until about 30 minutes into my message. All of a sudden I felt terrible. It was as if a switch had been thrown. I felt weak and I could barely stand. I leaned on the podium and rushed through my 7 applications, my conclusion, and a closing prayer. All that would have normally taken about 10 minutes. This time it took about 2 minutes.

I sat down and started drinking water. People came up and my strength came back. I was weak but okay the rest of Sunday.

Monday morning around between 4 and 7AM I started feeling really lousy, with a great pain in my right side. I thought it was appendicitis. Off to the emergency room my wife and I went.

They decided right away it was kidney stones. A CT scan showed two, one close to ready to pass and one high up in the kidney. Monday and Tuesday were two of the worst days in my life. Nothing worked. Pain meds make me hallucinate and they do little to decrease my pain. I took one pain med Monday morning and one Monday night and that was it. I decided I couldn’t handle the pain meds!

Yesterday I finally was able to eat a bit. Today I felt up to a try for the office. I’ve been here 2 hours and am already quite tired. I think, though, that I can make it four hours.

How I long for a glorified body with no more pain and suffering. Kidney stones are a reminder of the Fall that has resulted in so much pain for the human race.

Recently I have become alarmed at how sloppy pastors and even Bible scholars have become in handling the Word of God. It isn’t just those who openly call themselves liberals or post-conservatives or postmoderns or modest foundationalists who essentially make the Bible fit their preconceived notions of the way things should be. No. Now many who identify themselves as conservatives do this as well.

 Exegesis starts at the local level. We interpret a verse of Scripture in light of the paragraph in which it appears, the section of the book, the entire book, all of the writings by that author, the entire testament (old or new) in which it appears, and then ultimately the entire Bible.

For example, how would you determine what Paul meant by gospel when he uses the term in Gal 1:6-9? You’d start in that paragraph, right? Then you’d look at how it is used in the first section of the book (1:10-2:21), the second section (3:1-4:31), the final section (5:1-6:18), then and only then in the rest of Paul’s epistles, then the rest of the NT, then the rest of the Bible. Yet I’ve heard and read conservatives today who jump from Galatians 1:6-9 to verses in other books of the NT, without even discussing at all the use of the word in Galatians. Paul explains what he meant in Gal 1:6-9 and by gospel in Gal 2:15-21. We need not and should not go outside Galatians to determine what Paul means by a term in Galatians unless he doesn’t discuss that term in Galatians.

People today are making the Scriptures bend to their desires about divorce and remarriage, use of money, use of time, the saving message, how to be spiritual and please God, etc. We actually have people in Christianity who are teaching Buddhist and Hindu medidative techniques to help us feel closer to Jesus! Amazing.

 God has not left us uninformed. He has given us His Word. Let’s be spiritually minded people who have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:14-16). The Free Grace position is based on the Word of God and if ever start molding the Bible to say what we want it say, then we will lose the Free Grace message.

I listen to lots of messages by pastors and theologians. I also read lots of articles and books. I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend over the past 15 to 20 years.

Back in the day exegesis, the art and science of drawing the meaning out of a text, was something that many conservative Evangelicals did fairly well. Admittedly biases would come in and people would miss the point. Lordship Salvation is an example. However, even when a person would miss the point of a passage, they would be pointing to words and phrases in the passage in an effort to prove their points.

Today what passes for exegesis is stating one’s opinion and then citing one or more verses. Little if any comments are made as to why the cited words prove the point. The writer or speaker assumes that merely mentioning words of Scripture is enough.

An especially disturbing trend in this regard is authors who will give one or more pages of verses, one after another, with no comments or explanation. The impression is given that the author’s point must be true for look at all the verses that say that.

Exegesis requires analysis. Bible 101 is observation, interpretation, application. If we skip observation, then we will not interpret or apply correctly. Of course it is possible that merely by reading a passage quickly one will make some helpful observations. But in my experience meditation is what results in break through observations. But regardless of how long one thinks about a text, exegesis requires one to observe. Then exposition, the explanation of our exegesis, requires that we give enough of our observations to prove our interpretation.

Why isn’t this being done much today? The seminaries aren’t teaching it. What seminaries teach today is that students are to study the scholars and cite them. A NT scholar, for example, is not someone who studies the NT per se, but someone who is an expert in what all the scholars have to say about various texts. The way new views of passages emerge is by one scholar slightly tweaking the views of all the other scholars. Occasionally this can result in correct exegesis. But if people are studying the writings of other scholars and not the actual text of inspired Scripture, we can expect a lot will be missed.

I’ve been spoiled. I was trained by Zane Hodges, a man who taught me to study and meditate on the text of Scripture first and only go to commentaries and journal articles after I’d come to my own conclusions. I’ve enjoyed his writings and those of men like Jody Dillow (The Reign of the Servant Kings). Writers like Zane and Jody prove their exegesis not by merely quoting texts, but by pointing to the grammar, by doing word studies, by looking at word order, by examining the preceding and following context, and by looking at parallel texts.

Quoting Scripture is not exegesis. Exegesis is analyzing Scripture.

Sharon and I leave tonight for Colorado Springs. We will stay with our good friends Arch and Carolyn Rutherford, who recently moved there to work with Dr. Jody Dillow and BEE. While there this weekend I plan to meet with Jody to discuss our journal and our conference and other things related to the Free Grace movement. I also hope to meet with Pastor Raleigh Gresham, another old friend.

It also happens to be our anniversary today and Arch and Carolyn’s this weekend, so we will all celebrate. I think we are going to a neat brunch at the Broadmoor on Sunday.

We’ve been married 32 years and it seems like we just got married the other day. How time flies. I rejoice at how kind God has been to Sharon and to me in our years of marriage. We have had good health and good years.

I’ll also be speaking this Sunday night. Arch and I are speaking at the same church, Northeast Bible Chapel. He will speak at the AM service. I’m speaking on Gal 5:1-6. I took the occasion to completely redo my message on the passage, and Kyle in the office redid the PowerPoint slides.

Don’t fall from grace (Gal 5:4). Legalism causes the fall. We live by faith in Christ, not by focus on the commandments (Gal 2:20; 2 Cor 3:18).

This past Saturday night I spoke on the meaning of the words save and salvation in the NT. A friend who is an expert in the book of Philippians, Bob Swift, made some terrific comments when we discussed salvation in Philippians.

He suggested, rightly I believe, that the salvation of Phil 1:19, where Paul says, “I know that this [his imprisonment and various people preaching Christ for good and bad motives] will turn out for my salvation through your prayers and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ…” is explained in the very next verse. Clearly Paul was already born again. He didn’t need the Philippians to pray so that he might have eternal life! He needed them to pray, and the Spirit to empower him, so that he might glorify Christ in his afflictions. Bob Swift suggested that in the very next verse Paul defines the salvation of which he is speaking as follows: “That in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death” (Phil 1:20).  

Salvation in Phil 1:19 is enduring persecution for Christ with the result that Christ is glorified and that he will have boldness and not shame at the Bema.

The same basic idea is seen the notorious problem text, Phil 2:12, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Bob Swift suggested that Paul defines that salvation a few verses later when he write, “That you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world…” (Phil 2:15). Notice that how we will be found by Jesus at His Judgment Seat is in view both in 1:20 and 2:15.

Salvation in Philippians is the successful handling of persecution in such a way that Christ is magnified in our lives with the result that at the Bema we will have boldness and not be ashamed before Christ.

The world salvation in the NT rarely refers to the new birth or to deliverance from eternal condemnation (e.g., John 3:17; Eph 2:5, 8; Titus 3:5). Over 70% of the time in the NT salvation refers to deliverance from death, disease, God’s temporal wrath, or as in Philippians and Hebrews, a figurative use that looks at handling persecution well with the result that one will have boldness at the return of Christ.

Have you heard of a 2006 book called Did Jesus Teach Salvation by Works? It is by Dr. Alan Stanley. Actually the book is his doctoral dissertation that he did at Dallas Theological Seminary.

This past Sunday I gave two messages on current trends in Lordship Salvation and I used Stanley’s book to illustrate two major trends. One those trends is the open proclamation of salvation by works by Reformed Lordship Salvation advocates.

In this book Stanley doesn’t say that we are saved by faith alone but the faith that saves is not alone. That is a clever saying that essentially teaches works salvation, but in a clever way. Stanley comes out openly and says things such as the following:

“When judgment day comes (Matt 7:22-23) it will not be sinners who enter into the kingdom but the righteous. This distinction is important to make for it is only once anyone is in a relationship with Jesus that they are able to produce the kind of righteousness required to make it into the eschatological kingdom (i.e., post-conversion works). This does not mean that one is self-righteous but neither does it mean that one simply has righteousness as a gift from God” (Stanley, Salvation by Works, p. 328, emphasis his).

 “The ongoing nature of salvation can be seen throughout the NT. And yet churches today, for some reason, appear oddly oblivious to the idea that salvation is a process in any sense of the word. Rather most probably think of salvation as a one-time decision, as I once thought myself…Salvation is multifaceted and when all its facets are comprehensively in view it can legitimately be understood as a pilgrimage” (Stanley, Salvation by Works, p. 153).                                                                                                   “There are, in my view, passages that appear to teach the eternal security of believers…We might say that He knows who are His. However, there are also passages—especially John 15:1-6; 1 Corinthians 15:2; Colossians 1:13; Hebrews 3:6, 14—that teach the possibility of forfeiting salvation through lack of endurance. These passages appear to teach anything but eternal security. However, in these instances the perspective in view is not God’s but ours. The NT writers do not know for sure who are God’s. Hence in a pastorally appropriate way they urge their readers on to endurance” (Stanley, Salvation by Works, p. 327, emphasis added).

                                                                                  I could give more examples. The clear answer that Stanley gives to the title of his book is Yes, Jesus did teach that works are a condition for salvation from eternal condemnation. That Reformed Lordship people are openly saying this is both extremely troubling and encouraging. It is troubling since it so far off the mark. It is encouraging since this makes clear what we’ve been saying all along. People steeped in works salvation teaching will hopefully become open to the grace of God for no one can be born again by some works pilgrimage. The Lord may actually use this open teaching of works salvation to bring more people to faith in Christ as they become frustrated by their inability to achieve a personal righteousness worthy of kingdom entrance.