Transcript
>Article: The Spirit of the Antichrist: Decoupling Jesus from the Christ
My topic, as you know, this morning is the spirit of antichrist, and my subtitle is decoupling Jesus from the Christ.
Recently as I was discussing lordship salvation with a fellow Grace person, I was asked a very interesting question. The question was, “Are we winning?”
The essence of my answer was, “Absolutely.” Of course I was not talking in terms of popularity polls. Even if we could take a poll or a vote, who would be allowed to participate? All Americans? All professing Christians? All Protestants? All truly born-again people? Hey, counting is obviously irrelevant here.
Unfortunately many Grace people are not aware of the tremendous impact that the Grace movement has had and continues to have. But here in Dallas, both at the GES offices and at the offices of UnViva, we are kind of at ground zero. We have more information about the impact of the Grace movement around the country than just about anybody else.
What I have seen and heard in the last few years is enormously encouraging. Fundamentally God has been at work with His truth. The number of people who have been liberated from false gospels is very large as far as I can tell. My information is based on telephone calls, letters, face-to-face encounters. Anecdotal to be sure. But for every person that contacts us, you can assume that there are many other people who have been similarly benefited.
The reason we are winning, however, is because we are being led by an all-conquering Captain, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. All true victories of Grace truth are His victories, and they’re not really our victories. He is accomplishing His own purposes.
But having said this, we must also admit that the Grace movement faces some significant dangers. And I want to think about those dangers together with you this morning for a few minutes.
Part one: The danger of not being open to God’s word.
It may seem strange to say it, but the Grace movement may face the danger of not being open to the word of God. Most Grace people probably feel that openness to God’s word is a highlight of the Grace movement, and to a great extent it is. After all, we are willing to allow the Scriptures to speak even when they contradict traditional views or long-held positions.
The doctrine of rewards, for example, is one of the areas in which the Grace movement seems fully prepared to let the Scriptures speak clearly. And I certainly agree that this has been a strong point of the Grace movement up until now, and I hope it will continue to be.
But there are some warning signs.
First, the doctrine of repentance. One of the central issues in the lordship debate has been over the doctrine of repentance. This doctrine obviously occupies a critical place in the whole discussion.
I am concerned that the Grace movement not allow itself to become vulnerable by maintaining a position on repentance that really cannot be sustained from Scripture. Lordship people do not tire of telling us that in the New Testament repentance is basically repentance from sin. They say it does not mean merely a change of mind from unbelief to faith. And in my judgment they are absolutely right.
There is not even one clear passage in the New Testament where repentance does not refer to repentance from sin. By contrast, there are many clear passages where it does.
Now I have confessed before, and I’m going to do so again, that I myself once held the change-of-mind position. But I have changed my mind about repentance meaning simply a change of mind. And not surprisingly, my views on the subject are presented in the new book Harmony with God, which we are very privileged to be releasing at this conference. It’s the best kind of venue to release a book in that I can imagine.
For in UnViva we pray that God will use this book to clarify an issue on which even the Grace movement seems to manifest some measure of confusion.
But the question is this: Can Grace people still search the Scriptures honestly when some traditional view of their own is called into question? Are we open to the word of God whether it agrees with us or not? That’s a good question that we all need to answer.
Second, fudging on the simplicity of faith. There is another area where we need complete openness to God’s word. That area involves the amazing simplicity of biblical faith.
I am convinced that some committed Grace people are still a little scared by the simplicity of believing in Christ. They are eager to avoid the charge that we teach mere intellectual assent. It is hard for people like this to agree that faith and salvation occur when the core message of the Gospel is simply accepted as true.
Instead they wish to hedge this position with the requirement that faith must include some personal element like trust, or that I must make some personal appropriation of the saving offer. This is the perspective that rapidly leads to urging, or even requiring, a prayer of faith.
Now I have argued elsewhere that trust can often be used as a synonym for faith. But when trust is viewed as an improvement on the word faith, or as an improvement on the word believe, the door to confusion is open.
What often results is a two-step view of faith: step one, believe the facts; step two, trust Christ for eternal life. The Bible knows no such distinction as this.
At the conclusion of John chapter 9 the Lord Jesus says to the former blind man, “Do you believe in the Son of God?”
The former blind man replies, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?”
Jesus responds majestically, “You have both seen Him and it is He who is talking with you.”
Then the former blind man says to Him, “Lord, I believe.”
This is an impressive passage. The issue of concern is in no way what believe may mean. Rather, the former blind man feels only a need for information. The term “Son of God,” of course, was a functional equivalent to the term “Christ,” as John 20:30 and 31 show.
The blind man understood that Jesus must be telling him that the Christ was present somewhere. His confidence in Jesus is so high that he needs only to find out who Jesus is referring to. Jesus informs him that He is referring to Himself. So the man believes. That is, he believes that Jesus is the Christ, and is thus born of God in conformity with John 20:30 and 31 and 1 John 5:1.
But if the former blind man had been a twenty-first century Evangelical, he might have said, “Lord, what do You mean by believe?” Or he might have said, “Do You mean personal trust? Do You mean intellectual assent? Do You mean commitment of the whole person?”
I hope you can see that in the context of John 9 such statements are actually theological nonsense. They are the result of failing to take the biblical treatment of faith at face value.
When it comes to believing something, the Bible does not contradict normal usage or common sense. Theologians, however, have been known to do both.
I hope you see that in the context of John 9 there is no excuse really for not seeing the simplicity of biblical faith. The question is, however, whether we are open to this aspect of the biblical testimony about faith, or will we continue to hedge our view of faith with alternate expressions and with unbiblical provisos?
To put this another way, can we present the gospel so clearly that we can actually ask someone, “Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ?” And would we be satisfied if they said, “Yes, I do”?