Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Are you a professor or a possessor? Has anyone ever asked you that question concerning your eternal salvation? How much do we need to be testing ourselves constantly to see if we are born again? We started this conversation yesterday. We will pick up and conclude it today. And we are delighted you are joining us, friend. This is Grace in Focus. We are a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Find us at faithalone.org and YouTube Grace Evangelical Society. Short videos release there a couple of times a week. Please subscribe and like those. And once again our website for more information about us, faithalone.org. 

Now with today’s continued discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Steve Elkins. 

BOB: Steve, last time we talked about a sermon by an elder at a church in Illinois named Marty Lyons about testing ourselves to see if we’re born again. And that was part one. Today we’ll look at part two. I’ve got another clip from him. He recognizes that the term brothers or brethren occurs a lot in James. Because he’s saying that James is trying to get his readers to doubt whether they’re born again or not, to see if they’re a possessor, not just a professor. He has to comment on that and he takes an interesting spin. Play clip number two. 

CLIP NUMBER TWO: Let’s open our Bibles to the book of James this morning. Let’s look at chapter one, verse two. “Count it all joy, my brothers.”  Again, chapter two, verse one. “My brothers.” Again, in chapter three, verse one, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers.” Using the term brothers signifies that this letter is addressed towards people that claim to be believers. There’s no gospel presentation in the book of James. Why? Because he is assuming that the readers of this letter are professing believers. 

BOB: What did you think of that Steve? Isn’t that interesting? 

STEVE: It’s very, very, very sad. You know, the word brother’s used 345 times in the New Testament. It’s a big word. But all through the Gospels, it almost always refers just to a literal brother like Judah and his or Jacob and his brothers. 

BOB: Or Jesus’s own brothers. 

STEVE: Yeah, James and John. 

BOB: But in the epistles, brothers, unless it’s referring to Jewish brethren, it’s always referring to people who are in our family, spiritually, fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

STEVE: That’s right. And even in the epistles, it doesn’t refer that often to Jewish brothers, but in Acts, it does quite often to Jewish brothers. But in Paul’s writings, brethren or brothers takes on a technical meaning of meaning any believer in Christ and of course John’s writings and Luke-Acts, etc. 

BOB: Okay. Now in James, the term adelphoi is used 14 times. 

STEVE: 19, 19. 

BOB: But I mean, in terms of addressing the readers, where he addresses the readers, I think it’s 14. It might be 15 though. 14 or 15 times. And yeah, is it 19 total times that it occurs? But many of the times he says my brethren, my beloved brethren, and as Marty points out in his message, he does this for a reason. And he says the reason is because he knows he’s talking about professing believers, not necessarily possessing. And then he makes this interesting observation. He says James never evangelizes his readers. Well, I’ve often used that argument to say, doesn’t that show that brethren indicates fellow born again people, but he’s saying it indicates the opposite. 

So here’s his basic argument. If I’m the pastor of a church, and I realize that maybe half my church are professors, but not possessors, then I want the people in the church to examine themselves to see if they’re possessors, not professors. So therefore I need to give them some method of determining if they’re possessor, right? 

STEVE: Right. 

BOB: Therefore that’s how I evangelize them, isn’t it? 

STEVE: Sure. 

BOB: I say, this is how you know you’re born again. The fact that the author never says, these are the ways in which you know you’re born again, proves that he’s wrong. But let’s take a look at a few of the verses where brethren is used. 

STEVE: Okay, let’s do. One of the main ones, in James we’re talking about, is James 2:1. “My brethren do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory with partiality.”

BOB: The point is, these brethren have faith. There’s no question but 2:1 has faith. How about 1:16 through 18? 

STEVE: 1:16 through 18. “Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights with whom there’s no variation or shadow of turning. Of His own will He brought us forth,” talking to brethren, “He brought us forth by the word of truth that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.” In context, that certainly seems he’s referring to him and the brethren that he’s addressing. 

BOB: And “brought us forth” is another mention of the new birth. 

STEVE: Exactly. 

BOB: And so the brethren here are born again people. 

STEVE: No doubt. 

BOB: It seems to me that what Marty is doing here is actually undercutting his whole argument. Because, here’s the point. If you’re afraid your own children are professors, not possessors, wouldn’t you tell them what they need to do to be born again? 

STEVE: Absolutely. 

BOB: Wouldn’t you make it crystal clear? 

STEVE: You’d make it clear and if this is an issue it should be an issue in every epistle, but it’s not. 

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BOB: In fact, I would argue most people who look at the epistles from a Calvinist perspective would say all of the epistles are written to a mixed audience of professing and possessing believers. But the truth is all the epistles are written to born again people. Let’s go and look. 

STEVE: It’s not just brethren, he calls them, especially Paul, they’re holy ones, they’re saints, you know, etc. 

BOB: Right, exactly and they’ve received the Holy Spirit. Well, let’s go to the conclusion that Marty has where he offers a sinner’s prayer. He has them, people raise their hands if they’re not sure if they’re a possessor. And so some people raise their hands and then he says, “let’s pray.” Play clip number three if you would, which is his conclusion. 

CLIP NUMBER THREE: If you haven’t put your faith in Jesus or if you’re wondering is my faith truly an imitation faith I think it might be not a true saving faith. Just slip your hand up in the air. Thank you. Let’s pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you dear God we know that You are a righteous and just God and a merciful, gracious God who extends His mercy and His grace to us. And dear God we just pray for those that slipped up their hands, those that don’t know You as their Lord and Savior. We just pray dear God that You would be with us. We admit we are sinners. We know that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father except Him and dear God we put our faith in Him. And we know it’s not just a prayer that saved us, it’s our faith that saves us. And dear God we ask that you cleanse us of our sin, remove from us our unrighteousness. Take our sins away as far as the east is from the west and dear God create in us a clean heart. And Father I just pray for this congregation as we go through the study of James that we would look at our faith, we would test our faith, we would examine our faith, and we make sure it’s a faith that is a true saving faith and not a counterfeit or imitation faith, but it is a faith that results in our hearts being fully bent to You dear Father. We pray that You would be with us, we pray again for the families that are dealing…

BOB: Now as I’m listening to this trying to listen to it from the standpoint of a person who doubts his own salvation. here’s my question. What was he saying that the reader needs to do to be a listener I mean needs to do in order to be sure that he’s a possessor? I came up with five things did you hear? 

STEVE: No, no, tell me what what they are. 

BOB: Okay, here’s the five I came up with. Number one, I need to believe I’m a sinner and 1B is I need to admit to God that I’m a sinner. Okay, step two, I need to believe that Jesus is the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father but by Him. Number three, I need to know that I need to put my faith in him, whatever that means, he doesn’t explain what that means. He says I put my faith in you. Number four, I need to ask him to cleanse me, remove my unrighteousness, and create in me a clean heart. It seems to be something about the fact that I’m surrendering to him, I’m yielding to him, I’m committed to following. And then the fifth point seems to be for the rest of my life I need to examine my faith and make sure it is genuine and not false faith. In other words, I’m going to do this for the whole rest of my life. 

I remember I heard Dr. John MacArthur in 1989 speak at the Evangelical Theological Society in San Diego, and I got a chance to ask him a question, because he said the same thing—we’re to examine ourselves. And I said, “Dr. MacArthur, are we supposed to do this more than once?” He said, “Oh yes, at least as often as we take communion.” I said, “Well if we take communion, let’s say every week, then we’re to at least examine to see if we’re born again every week.” He said, “Sure, this is an ongoing thing.” Well, what this guy is saying is the whole Christian life should be a life of uncertainty, right? That’s a sad way to live isn’t it?

STEVE: Oh, it’s terrible and the crazy thing MacArthur is actually departing from Calvin on that because Calvin’s position on 2 Corinthians was that it’s not about examining your belief but examining whether you’re in the faith as we talked about. It’d be a terrible way to live.

BOB: So, I get the fact that this elder at this local church, Marty Lyons, and by the way I want to commend the church for having someone other than the pastor preach. I think it’s great that you have a lay person preaching and he’s obviously articulate and he’s obviously a smart guy. But unfortunately, he’s trying to defend an indefensible position, which is that the way we know we’re born again is not by believing what Jesus says in John 3:16 or John 5:24 or John 6:47, or what Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-9 or whatever,  but instead the way we know we’re a possessor is by looking at our fruit. 

STEVE: One of the things too that Marty does is, and we, any of us can be guilty of it but he glosses passages, he proof texts with passages that don’t really refer to what he’s talking about, like all the examining verses, he just pulls in a bunch of—he could have gone to his concordance for that matter, and looked at words for examine or test and that’s very dangerous. 

BOB: Yeah, and that occurs a lot, and we here on Grace in Focus try very hard not to do that. If we quote a verse, we want to say what it means and explain why it means what it says. Well, I would encourage you all, whenever you hear a message like this, to prayerfully examine the scriptures in light of what the person is saying. Remember Acts 17:11? 

STEVE: Absolutely.

BOB: The Bereans were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica for they searched the Scriptures daily to see if these things are so. 

STEVE: Amen.

BOB: Well, thanks everyone for tuning in, 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: Did Gentiles receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost? Come back for that and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.