Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Grace in Focus. This is a radio and podcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Today we are responding to a question about discipleship and salvation: how will a person’s view of the gospel impact the way they view and teach discipleship? Learn more about us at faithalone.org, including our upcoming national annual conference, held at Camp Copass in Denton, Texas. Our theme this year, “Believe in Jesus for Life.” Get all the registration details at faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, Bob, we’ve got a question on discipleship and salvation. This is from Philip. You’ve got two questions. The first is, do you know of any good discipleship programs that have a free grace perspective? And we might get to that one second, because this first question is, do you agree that a person’s view of the gospel impacts the rest of their teaching, for example, how to be a good disciple? 

BOB: Yes, that’s a great question. My answer would be absolutely. In other words, if someone believes in lordship salvation, what they’re going to say is your assurance of everlasting life is based on a combination of your works, an inner feeling you have from the Holy Spirit and the promises of God in the Scriptures to the believer. But you’ve got to look at all three. And the lordship salvation person would ask you to constantly look at your life and see if you have the marks of a true believer. What that does is that hinders your discipleship. Even if you’re a person who has believed and is sure of your salvation, at some point, you’re going to stop being sure if you listen to that kind of teaching. And that’s going to have a negative impact on your discipleship. 

SAM: Right, because for them, there’s no separation between salvation and discipleship. If you’re a believer, you’re already a disciple. You can’t have one without the other. 

BOB: That’s a good point. In fact, I taught at Multnomah one year, and I ended up getting in a debate with one of the other faculty members over saving faith. The person I was debating held to lordship salvation. The head of the theology department, Dr. Al Baylis, said to me, “Bob, the difference is you believe salvation and discipleship or justification and sanctification are separate,” and he put his hands an inch or two apart. “But the person you’re going to be debating believes they’re intertwined,” and he put his hands together with his fingers overlapping and interlocked. And he said, “That’s how he views salvation and discipleship or justification and sanctification. For him, if you’re justified, you are sanctified. For him, if you’re not sanctified, that proves you’re not justified.” And he said, “But for you, a person can be one hundred percent born again, one hundred percent justified, and yet not be walking in fellowship with Christ, not beyond the path of sanctification.” 

So yes, an answer to his second question, which we’re treating first, does one’s view of the gospel impact the way they teach discipleship—absolutely. And by the way, people who believe in works salvation or lordship salvation rarely say anything about eternal rewards. John MacArthur would occasionally mention rewards and things, because he did come from a dispensational framework. 

SAM: The other issue there, when you have discipleship inseparable from justification, discipleship becomes the means of maintaining your salvation. If you have a lordship salvation view, then the reason it’s not optional is because if you stop living like a disciple, you are now either at risk of losing your salvation or proving that you were never saved to begin with. But the difference is, for us, because we are saved, because we’re born again, because we are eternally secure, we know that we can never lose our everlasting life. We now have the opportunity to become disciples, to become more like Christ, to live a life pleasing to Him with our eyes fixed on Him, fixed on the reward that’s laid up for us in heaven, rather than scrambling to make sure I can never commit a sin so bad that I’ll be on salvation. I got to make sure I meet all the sacraments. I got to make sure I do all these things. There’s no focus on Christ in that. It’s focused on what am I doing, but when our eyes are fixed on Christ, then we will do the things that He called us to do. 

BOB: Good point. We can take our eyes off, Christ, but as long as we don’t, well, then we’re going to be walking in the light. I agree with you that assurance of my eternal destiny is foundational to sanctification. 1 John 5:9-13 suggests this. The epistle of 1 John was written for discipleship, 1 John 1:1-4, and he has a section on assurance in 5:9-13 because assurance is vital to our walk with Christ. But here’s how the lordship salvation person thinks—assurance is detrimental to following Christ because if you’re thinking that you’re eternally secure in a matter of what you do, then you’ll probably stop giving to the local church. You’ll stop going to church. You’ll probably become an alcoholic or a cocaine addict. You’ll become an immoral person. You’re going to go out and live like the devil because you realize you’re eternally secure. Well, we think just the opposite. If I know I’m eternally secure, I’m highly motivated to live for God because I am so grateful for what he’s giving me. I want Him to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I want to please Him. 

ANNOUNCER: It’s coming, it’ll be here before you know it. What am I talking about? The Grace Evangelical Society’s National Conference 2026, May 18th through the 21st at Camp Copass, an absolutely beautiful campground in North Texas right on the lake with lots of recreation, great food, a great place to stay, wonderful fellowship, and wonderful Free Grace Bible teaching. Information and online registration now at faithalone.org/events. First timers waive registration fees. Faithalone.org/events.

BOB: One other thing you mentioned discipleship, people who say it must be maintained in order to either retain your salvation or prove it. That’s true with the Arminian. The Arminian believes you can lose your salvation and you have to be walking in discipleship at the end of your life or you’re not going to make it. 

That’s also true of the new Calvinists. The new Calvinists say you get initial salvation at the moment of faith and you’ll win final salvation if you persevere to the end. That’s people like Tom Schreiner and Ardel Caneday or John Piper, but the old Calvinists say what you were saying. If you don’t persevere in discipleship, you’ll prove you were never saved in the first place. Either way, their view of the saving message distorts their understanding of discipleship. Let’s go to that other question. What was the other question again? 

SAM: Do you have any recommendations for discipleship programs that have a free grace perspective? 

BOB: I do. What are we working on right now? We’re getting ready to publish a Bible study, a student guide and a teacher’s guide on what, well, two books actually, one will come out first, which one’s first? 

SAM: Yeah, Revelation is first, based on John Claeys’ commentary on Revelation, and then it’s in the same style as your Gospel of John study guide and teacher’s guide, and then Ken Yates converted his Hebrews commentary into the same style teacher guide/student guide. They’re 12 weeks. That’s like a semester and the idea is to use these in churches or Bible studies or Sunday school and to have a group and one person leading it. They don’t need to be seminary qualified. The teacher’s guide is there to help you answer the questions and the whole point of that is so that we can dive deeper into Scripture with a strong foundation. 

From talking to people like my parents or other people that have been involved in churches, especially children’s ministry or other things, is they find these resources that they really like, but then there’s just always one or two things off where it’s like, I don’t know, that sounds kind of sketchy. Everything sounds great and then they start using the ABCs of faith or something like, well, it’s really just the “B” of faith. We don’t really need the A and the C there, but so things like that. And so the idea with these is start with a strong foundation and be able to disciple more true to Scripture. 

BOB: And we also have an interest in developing discipleship material for children. We’ve just been talking about it in the office, but we’re seeing if we can start working on material, right? 

SAM: Yeah, I think Kathryn’s got a good group of people. We’re still in the brainstorm phase, but that’s the intention is to develop similar studies like these, but for kids like for Sunday school, for kids classes, maybe in some VBS stuff. But then another great discipleship program I can think of is the GES Seminary, which is a little bit of a higher level, but essentially the same purpose is to train people and equip them for ministry, whether that’s being a pastor, a Bible study teacher, missionary, whatever it is, gaining a deeper understanding of Scripture from a firm foundation to help you on your journey and discipleship, but ultimately, the mark of a good disciple is one that makes other disciples, and so teaching how to teach. 

BOB: Well, let me throw out one more thing. One of the purposes of our seminary is to plant churches in cities all over the United States and hopefully around the world. What we want to see is home churches spring up. It doesn’t have to be 50 people. It might be eight people meeting in a home or six people meeting in a home and then it may grow over time. One of the things, I was on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ in campus ministry for four years and our philosophy was you need to be in small group discipleship, right? So we would have these action groups with students and Navigators had the same philosophy and a lot of people in Christianity think, if you’re not in a small group, you’re not being discipled. I consider that terribly misguided. 

Where discipleship is meant to occur is the local church and so you need to find a local church that solidly proclaims the Word of God. If you can’t find one, start one in your house, but you need that and that’s where people get discipled as they hear the Word of God taught week in and week out. In my mind, discipleship is not done in groups of two or three or four people. That can occur like, for example, Aquila and Priscilla bringing Apollos aside and clarifying things for him. 

But the primary way the New Testament describes discipleship is our minds are being renewed as we hear the Word of God taught. Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 3:18 or 1 Peter 2:1-3 we need to be like newborn babes longing for the pure milk of the Word which we hear in our local churches. And so let’s not neglect that part of it. 

Fantastic question Philip. I think we’ve probably said more than one here, but I hope you find that helpful and look in our magazine. I think isn’t the Revelation commentary coming out in March 2026? 

SAM: Yep, that’ll be in March as well as the Old Testament commentary volume one. That’ll be pre-sold in that and Revelation should be in print. Bible study and teacher guys should be in print in March and the Old Testament commentary volume one on the Torah should be in print by May, but you can buy it 30% off if you get it in March or April. So check out our magazine. 

And in the meantime, what are we going to do Sam? Keep grace in focus. 

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We do say thank you for joining us all this week. As we welcome you to the weekend, we hope you have a nice one. Come back and join us again on Monday and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.