ANNOUNCER: Does either John 3:16 or John 3:36 support Lordship Salvation? Must a person continuously believe in order to maintain salvation or continuously obey to prove that they have that salvation? It’s a great discussion just ahead. We’ll talk about these questions. We’re glad you’re joining us, friend, here on Grace in Focus, a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. There you can find out about our subscription-free magazine, published six times per year, bi-monthly, full-length, full-size, full-color, and great articles for you. We want you to have it for free, all except if you live outside of the 48 contiguous United States, you need to pay the postage. Otherwise, free. Glad to provide this for you. Find out about it at our website, faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s discussion, here’s Bob Wilkin along with Sam Marr.

SAM: All right, welcome in everybody. This is a part two to our previous episodes. So if you haven’t heard it, I encourage you to go back and listen. Just to catch you up to speed, we’re kind of responding to a video called “Free Grace versus Lordship” from a YouTube channel called the Smart Christians channel. And to give this guy credit, I think he is a smart Christian, but I think he’s off on a lot of these passages, and I think it’s led him to wholly misunderstand the promise of everlasting life. 

BOB: Right, and he’s a Christian in the sense that he is professing faith in Christ, but whether he’s born again or not is a separate question, because based on what he says in these things, he doesn’t currently believe that simply by faith in Jesus, at the moment I believe, I’m secure forever. He seems to hold to a faith plus works message, which I think will come out in our session today because what are we going to talk about, John 3:16, John 3.36, and Ephesians 2:8-9? 

SAM: Yep, so these are some pretty big, heavy hitting passages. He acknowledges in his video, he thinks 2:8-9 is like the core Free Grace passage. He acknowledges this is very important for the Free Grace message, which I’d agree with, but I think I’ll talk about it later in the video, but I don’t really like that framing and I’ll explain why. 

So, John 3:16 36, here’s what he says: he says he must believe and obey, it must be continuous belief. That’s not a quote, but that’s the summation of what he says. 

BOB: And also continuous obedience, right? 

SAM: And continuous obedience, but the way he frames it to make it not faith plus works is he says, you have to believe. So, the belief is what saves you. You believe, you receive everlasting life, and if that really happened for you, then you will obey, you will continue in good works. It’s not optional. 

BOB: Okay, so let me respond to that point. Anything that is necessary in order to achieve a certain result is a condition for that result. So, let’s say I say that in order to have everlasting life, you have to be a human being. Okay, that means that dogs and cats and horses and angels, even unfallen angels, can’t have everlasting life. Unfallen angels can be forever in the kingdom, animals can be forever in the kingdom, but they won’t have everlasting life. So, if one of the conditions of having everlasting life is being a child of Adam and Eve, or one of their descendants, then that’s a condition.

Remember in John 11:26, Jesus said, “He who lives and believes in Me shall never die”? Well, one of the conditions is you have to be a living human being. Let’s say someone came to believe after they died that if I had believed in Jesus while I was alive, I would have been in the kingdom forever. Well, it’s too late because one of the conditions is you have to be a living, human being. And if one of the conditions is you must persevere to the end of your life in faith in good works, then those are conditions. He can say, well, those are results, but doesn’t the Smart Christians say that if we stop believing, then we’re not going to make it? What does he say—you lose it or you prove you never had it.

SAM: Right, he’s the second part. If you stop believing, you just weren’t saved in the first place, and he doesn’t really offer much in the way of an encouragement to those kinds of people, because he’s wholly convinced that real Christians are righteous. They’re holy. They will not do. He is strongly convinced that yes, once you believe you can’t stray from the faith. 

BOB: Okay. So wouldn’t logically, if what he’s saying is true, from the moment of new birth to the moment we died, we would never sin. 

SAM: Right. He doesn’t give an answer for that. 

BOB: Because why would we commit even one sin? If God is guaranteeing that our lives are going to be overflowing with good works and we’re guaranteed we’re going to keep on believing, then a believer would never have doubt. In other words, if you ever had any doubts about your salvation, you would immediately prove you weren’t born again, because you have to have continuous belief, right? If the belief ever stops, you just proved you weren’t born again. 

Also, if you ever had any sin of any kind, and by the way, that’s the group I grew up with, Sam. I was taught that at the moment you were saved, you had to have turned from all your sins, committed your life to Christ, and then you had to live a sinless life from then until death. And they taught if you committed one sin after the new birth, you lost your salvation and could never regain it. That’s what I call Lordship salvation. 

What these other people are teaching is something else, because they’re saying, Oh, no, no, you can sin. You can even sin a lot. You just can’t sin continuously. Now what they mean by continuously is kind of odd, because it seems to me, if you sin every day, that’s continuous, don’t you think? And what if you sin every hour? I don’t know how often we sin. I don’t know how often I sin. I’m aware of the sins the Holy Spirit convicts me of, but it would be naive of me, don’t you think, to think I’m aware of every sin I commit? 

SAM: So I was going to save this for later, but he at one point in the video says, if you see someone living ungodly, you would not say they’re a believer. And then he says, if you do, then that means anyone can be a Christian. 

BOB: That’s correct. 

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BOB: Let me throw this out. True story from my experience at Dallas Seminary. One chapel service at Dallas Seminary, the Seminary said, we want you to go out and evangelize people in the community. So a friend, he and I went to Exall Park in downtown Dallas. And there was a man laying down on a bench, drunk. It was my turn to talk. I said, could we talk to you for a minute? He said, sure, and he had a bottle of wine there, he at his side. I said, could we talk to you about Christianity? He said, sure. And I explained to him a little bit about what we were doing. And he said, well, you know, I’m from Oklahoma, and I was a part of a Baptist church. And I was taught the message of John 3:16 that whoever believes in Him will never perish, but has everlasting life. And I believed in Jesus and I was saved and I’m still saved. And I know I’m saved forever. And he said, frankly, I’m ashamed of the way I’m living. I left my wife and kids in Oklahoma. And I’m struggling with alcoholism, but I know I’m saved. 

And I said to him, if what you’re telling me is true, then indeed you are my brother in Christ, you’re born again, but you’re not enjoying the abundant life Jesus wants for you. You’re not laying up treasure in heaven. You need to get your life back on track so that you can be pleasing to the Lord and you can lay up treasure in heaven. And you can experience the abundant life that God wants for you and your wife and your kids. I would highly recommend you go down to Union Gospel Mission. It’s just about a mile down the road here. Just go down here, they’ll take you in and they even have a discipleship program you can get involved with if you show interest. And so we prayed and the guy walked, started, left his bottle of wine behind and started walking toward Union Gospel Mission. 

The funny thing is afterwards, I remember Joe and I got to talking about it and Joe said, how could you call that guy a believer? Because Joe at the time was a five-point Calvinist. Well, later Joe came around and Joe became a Free Grace person as well. I think he was a Free Grace person when we were on staff with Crusade. And then when he went to Dallas Seminary, he came over to the Lordship position. And then he came back to the Free Grace position. 

But it’s very easy for a Free Grace person to see someone who’s an alcoholic or an immoral person or an angry person and say, yeah, this is my sister in Christ, this is my brother in Christ as long as they profess that simply by faith in Jesus, they’re born again. John 3:16, whoever believes in him, it’s not talking about continuous belief. If I’m talking to anyone who believes in him, I know they’ll never perish. John 3:36. John 3:36 are the words of John the Baptist. And he says, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life.” It doesn’t say, he who believes in the Son will get everlasting life if he keeps on believing. If that were the case, nobody on earth would have everlasting life unless they’re in the grave. 

SAM: Right. And that’s the problem with the message that this guy is sharing with people. And again, we don’t want to dog on him too much, but the Lordship theology mindset, the guy that you were talking about would have no hope, no chance, in the message that they are sharing with people. And someone came up to him and said, he said, Oh, I believed everlasting life, I believed John 3:16, I can never be lost. I’ll never perish. And it’s someone told him, oh, man, you got a lot to learn about the Bible. Don’t you know that you have to, if you’re still getting drunk and you’re still sleeping outside, then you haven’t believed yet. What is he ever supposed to do? He has to overcome every single sin in his life before he can finally believe that he has everlasting life? That’s a hopeless message because anyone is capable of falling back into sin. 

BOB: I know, and you know, the sad thing about this is if you grew up in a home that was pretty dysfunctional, which I did, then you don’t start the Christian life at the same place as somebody that grew up in a Christian home like you did, Sam. You grew up with a lot of advantages that a lot of the rest of us didn’t have. I grew up in an alcoholic family. I wasn’t a darling child. When I was in the cult, when we went on trips around the United States, we numbered the boys. I think we were all in eighth grade, between one and thirty six. I was number thirty four, likely to make it to heaven. Number one was the most likely to make it to heaven. It was a really strange cult. 

But the point is, I didn’t start the Christian life as a darling. I started the Christian life as least likely to succeed. It seems to me that’s what God is doing. He’s calling the poor of this world. He’s calling the people who are not the best educated, who are not the geniuses. We haven’t had a chance to get to Ephesians two eight nine, which is one of the verses he cites. So we’ll do that next time. And I would encourage all of you to check out this Smart Christian channel and his message on Free Grace versus Lordship salvation. 

And in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus. Amen. 

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Now on our next episode: looking at Ephesians 2:8-9, are works required for salvation? Come back and join us again, and in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.