Transcript

ANNOUNCER: When Bible verses talk about the gospel or faith, how do we know whether or not passages are talking about eternal salvation, justification, or abundant living, sanctification? Please listen today. We’re glad you’re joining us here on Grace in Focus. This is the podcast and broadcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Find us at faithalone.org. We have many written articles in our archives, which you can study and research. We also have a place where you can find out about our conference ministry. We have a national conference each year in May, and we also do regional conferences. And our bookstore where you can find Bob Wilkin’s latest book, The Gospel Is Still Under Siege. It’s all at faithalone.org. 

Now with today’s question and answer discussion here is Bob Wilkin, along with Sam Marr. 

SAM: We got a call from a guy, we’ll just call him Matt. He listens to Grace in Focus on the radio sometimes, but he is not explicitly a free gracer, but he called because he’s struggling with assurance, and that’s a lot of the phone calls we get are people that really want to be reassured. 

BOB: Which is great. We want people to deal with assurance. I believe it led you into talking with him about some of the things he’d heard from various pastors either online or live. Things they’d said about John and the Synoptics Matthew Mark and Luke, some things which you can see would easily lead people to have some measure of confusion.

SAM: Yeah, we had a long scattered conversation, but just to hit some of the highlights of it. One of the first things he said was that he’d heard you and Ken and various other people talk about the Gospel of John being the only explicitly evangelistic book in the New Testament, and he can’t reconcile that with verses in the Synoptic Gospels that talk about repent for the kingdom is here, things about entering the kingdom. And he gave an example of a sermon he heard from a pastor who said that verses about the wide and the narrow gate, the wide gate represents the people who think grace is easy. Or as we would say, it’s so easy. It’s free or so cheap it’s free. They’re all crowding around the wide gate and missing out. And the narrow gate is for the people who realize that it’s not as easy as just believing there’s something else to it. 

BOB: Okay, wait a minute. The wide gate is John 3:16. Right. It’s believing in Jesus is the wide gate. That’s the way to hell. That’s the way to, I’m not going to make it because I’m only believing I’m not repenting. I’m not working. I’m not following. I’m not obeying. Right? That’s the broad way. 

The narrow way then is I’ve got to turn from my sins. I’ve got to follow Christ. I’ve got to obey Him. I’ve got to persevere to the end. That’s the narrow way. And so what you’ve got John 3:16 is certainly not something we’re going to highlight. If I’m a pastor and I hold this view, I’m not going to highlight John 3:16 or Ephesians 2:8-9 or Revelation 22:17. I’m going to go to verses like maybe James chapter 2. Or I’m going to go to 1 John or I’m going to go to Hebrews and I’m going to take some verses. 

But now I believe that what Matt was saying is the pastors he’s heard, they like to go to the Synoptic Gospels, to Matthew, Mark and Luke. 

SAM: Yeah. The book part of our conversation was talking about verses in the Synoptic Gospels where Christ is calling for people to repent. For Matt he was saying, well, the Gospel of John might be talking about believe and having everlasting life, but then the same guy, Jesus, is talking about repenting before the kingdom in the Synoptics. So clearly he said both. So we have to do both. 

BOB: Yeah. And this is a common problem that we have to deal with when we’re sharing our faith. When we’re helping people deal with this issue of assurance is how do we harmonize verses in the Gospels that call to turn from your sins, to follow Christ, to count the cost of discipleship. And yet in John, it’s simply believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. You believe in Him, you’ll never perish. You’ll never hunger. You’ll never thirst. You’ll never die. You’ll never be cast out. 

And the simple way to harmonize it is, Lord Jesus taught both. He taught believe in Him for everlasting life to be secure forever and follow Him in order to have fullness of life. Be someone who counts the cost of discipleship, so that your life can be meaningful and significant that your life can be more than simply, okay, I know I’m going to heaven when I die. But I’m making a mark in life that’s pleasing to God. And of course, once a person learns this, they can learn about eternal rewards too. 

SAM: Yeah. So we talked about that for a little bit. And then there are two big, I think, moments in the conversation we had. This was an hour long conversation. Very pleasant talking to him. And at the end, he had very kind things to say about GES. But there are two big things I think that had an impact on him. 

And the first was when I told him that the Gospel of John never uses the word repent and Christ never told the people he was evangelizing to repent. I don’t think he believed me at first, but I told him, you know, you can go look for yourself. And so I think that had a huge impact on him. And because I think in his mind, he’s probably like, well, even if it’s not emphasized in John, it’s there somewhere. It’s still the same guy. But I think that that really impacted him heavily. 

And it, you know, that made a big difference for me. I was raised with the free grace message, even if I didn’t hear that term. But I didn’t realize he never talked about repentance in John. So that’s pretty significant. 

There’s two, I think key verses to analyze, I was reading an article of yours before we started this, the phrase “go and sin no more” does appear twice in John. And actually appears only in John. That blew my mind that He never even said that in the Synoptics. But if we want to look at those verses real quick, it’s John 5:14 and John 8:11. 

ANNOUNCER: Did you know that the Grace Evangelical Society offers an MDiv degree through our online seminary and tuition is free to those who maintain a 3.0 grade average? It is a three-year degree program and you could submit your application now to gain acceptance. Then stay apprised of our registration periods for upcoming semester terms. Program and application details can be found at GESSeminary.org. Have a look at our MDiv degree. Become an approved workman. Find out how GESSeminary.org.

BOB: You mentioned how Matt was saying was surely repentance has to be there somewhere. Even if the words repent and repentance don’t occur, the concept must be there. He’s not alone. there are a lot of pastors and theologians who have said, in the gospel of John the concept is there. And they cite various verses. I have an article, if you go to faithalone.org, where I shoot that idea down. 

Besides, surely if we know that Jesus preached repentance, right? And we find it in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, then if John’s writing an evangelistic book and repentance is a condition for being born again, John’s not going to just give some kind of vague, maybe illusion to repent. He’s going to mention it. So he didn’t. 

All right. So let’s go to your two verses were they John chapter 5 and John chapter 8. Yes. So which one first? 

SAM: Yeah, we’ll do 5:14 first. This is the man who’s healed at the pool of Bethesda. Yeah. And I think it’s a little while after he heals him, but Jesus talks him again. And he says, see, you have been made well, sin no more lest a worse thing come upon you. 

BOB: So what’s interesting here is, Jesus doesn’t say, stop your sinning so that you can have eternal life. He doesn’t mention eternal life here. He doesn’t mention believing in Him here. What he’s talking about is something worse happening to you in the future than what’s already happened to him in the past. He’s not talking about his eternal destiny. He’s talking about his well-being in this life. What this first should tell us is, look, if a person is delivered by God from some difficulty in their life that was caused by sin in their life, and then they turned back to that sin, they could expect that that difficulty in their life is going to come back and even worse. 

And so the issue here is not his eternal destiny. We don’t know if this man was born again or not, but what we do know is that this man needed to avoid sinning more, lest something worse would happen to us. Now this, by the way, doesn’t guarantee that the reason he was paralyzed in the first place was due to some sin. But it is to say that as God grants mercy to this man, God does not want him to go into a life of sin. 

SAM: Yeah. I think the same in 8:11, the woman caught in adultery. They tried to stone her, Christ stops them. In verse 11, He says, “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.” And it’s the same as the man at the pool of Bethesda, except for here, she actually is caught in sin. And he’s telling her that sin almost caused your death. Don’t go and do the same thing, you know, sin no more to avoid that. 

BOB: Right. And it wouldn’t have to necessarily be adultery. It could just be anything that’s in rebellion against God was going to lead to calamity. Now again, like the man at the pool of Bethesda, we don’t know if this woman was born again or not. But what we do see is the Lord does not talk to her about everlasting life or believing in Him. Neither one is an evangelistic passage, possibly one or both of them were already born again, possibly the Lord evangelized them after these incidents. But John doesn’t go there. And neither do the synoptics, these incidents aren’t even found in Matthew, Mark or Luke. 

I think Matt, you’ve raised a good point. There is an issue here concerning sin. My book, Turn and Live: The Power of Repentance, talks about the fact that repentance is life-restoring. So if we’re walking in rebellion against God, to repent is a good thing, but it doesn’t give me eternal life. 

SAM: Yeah, I’d say don’t take our word for it. Go read the Bible for yourself, read God’s word, pray, ask the Holy Spirit to help you discern, but just keep in mind, the evangelistic book of John doesn’t mention repentance. So maybe when I read Matthew, Mark and Luke, I can read that, and when I encounter the word repentance, just think, is this talking about everlasting life or is this talking about discipleship or the nation of Israel or any number of other things and pray about it. 

And I think you’ll see if you wanted these people everlasting life, you would have said believe in me for everlasting life because that’s what he did in John, but the writers of those other books, their goal wasn’t to teach their readers how to have everlasting life because they were already disciples. 

BOB: Right, now, of course, He does want everybody to have eternal life, but I think the point is well taken that He doesn’t always evangelize in every encounter He has with every person. And sometimes He realizes the person needs something else for the time being or that they’re already born again, but the point is He did evangelize a lot and the people of Israel knew His message, that the message was well known in Israel that Jesus promised to save or to give eternal life to all who believed in Him and even at the cross people were mocking Him about that. 

Matt, this is a great question and it shows that Matt is a person who’s seeking the truth. We all should be praying about these matters, not just assurance of eternal life, but everything related to the Bible because ultimately it’s the Spirit of God that opens our eyes so that we can understand the Word of God. 

SAM: Amen. 

BOB: All right. Well, thanks so much. And remember, keep grace in focus. 

ANNOUNCER: Be sure to check out our daily blogs at faithalone.org. They are short and full of great teaching, just like what you’ve heard today. Find them at faithalone.org/resources/blog. We would like to thank all of our financial partners who help us keep this show going. All gifts are tax deductible and very much appreciated. If you’d like to find out how you can be a financial partner, visit us at faithalone.org.

On our next episode: questions about the end times. Please join us for that and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.