|
← Previous · Home · Next →
2008·10·20 · 7 Comments |
| “Free Grace” Legalism |
I came across the following quote at The Riddleblog:
The biblical picture of a saving experience is masterful in its clarity and simplicity. A single, one-time appropriation of God's gift results in a miraculous inward transformation that can never be reversed.
Since this is true, we miss the point to insist that true saving faith must necessarily continue. Of course, our faith in Christ should continue. But the claim that it absolutely must, or necessarily does, has no support in the Bible . . . . It is sufficient to observe that the Bible predicates salvation on an act of faith, not on the continuity of faith.
—Zane Hodges, Absolutely Free
We advocates of so-called “Lordship Salvation” are called legalists for insisting that genuine saving faith is God’s gift to those whom he has regenerated as new creatures, whose lives are then marked by the new behavior that comes naturally to the new nature. We have the audacity to believe that if God transformed a cat into a dog, it would from that day forward bark, and not revert to meowing.
But observe the inherent legalism of the quote above. Salvation results from the performance of an act. God offers the gift, but the sinner must do something — something that is contrary to his nature, like a cat barking — to receive it. It sounds like “Free Grace” is not “Absolutely Free.” In fact, it sounds Absolutely Impossible.
Observe also the contradiction: performing that act “results in a miraculous inward transformation that can never be reversed,” but we are wrong “to insist that true saving faith must necessarily continue.” Exactly what is this impermanent permanent transformation? Is it something like the Arminian temporary eternal life?
TrackBack URL: http://www.thirstytheologian.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/798
Share this post:
Posted in: Unbiblical Theology
Permalink · 7 Comments · 0 TrackBacks
← Previous · Home · Next →
7 Comments:
Betsy Markman
Why would we even want such a "salvation" that leaves us as it found us, or lets us return to being in darkness? Yes, Heaven is a wonderful hope, but is there salvation in wanting only Heaven, or is salvation wrapped up in treasuring our Lord and desiring Him, believing Him to be priceless in Himself?
Thank God for changing this dead body of sin into a living soul, never to die again!
jb
Great analysis! I love those phrases, "impermanent permanent salvation" and "Arminian temporary eternal life."
Daniel
...It is sufficient to observe that the Bible predicates salvation on an act of faith, not on the continuity of faith...
The bible speaks of salvation as salvation from *sin* (c.f. Matthew 1:21) - sin is what we get saved from, and the idea that Jesus saves us from sin without actually saving us from sinning strikes me as grossly naive theologically speaking.
It is true, that every Christian (both real and counterfeit) struggles with a penultimate problem: If I really am a believer, how come I still sin?
Good theology answers the question by explaining that sanctification is the inescapable consequence of justification, since it is God at work to sanctify the believer, and God is no failure. It follows therefore that the tension between what the believer must do, and what God must provide, is found in the convicting work of the Holy Spirit - who, by indwelling the believer, convicts the believer of both sin, and righteousness, so that the believer, upon receiving conviction either way, not only becomes aware of the conviction, but is given grace by which he or she is able to respond in spirit and in truth to the conviction. The work of sanctification is a work of love, whereby God's indwelling Spirit tirelessly convicts the believer - who is inclined to respond to that conviction either in truth or in ignorance. If in truth, the believer sees the conviction as a profound gift from God (whether it be the conviction of sin, or of righteousness), for God has bent down, as it were, to instruct the believer by that anointing he has received, and the believer who ascertains that God has taken this personal, individual interest in Him, eventually learns to love the God who bows down from heaven to pay such doting attention to him, in drawing him to Himself - for that is the purpose of our sanctification - to bring us into a living fellowship with God here and now, for our joy and His glory. A rightly mentored believer, does not hate conviction, but loves it -and through it learns to love the God who has taken, and continues ceaselessly to take the same special interest in Him. Sanctification happens as we begin to desire the reconciliation that God is working in us. It happens, I say, as we learn to love God - then and only then does the yoke become easy and the burden light.
Bad theology however rejects the notion that God is at work sanctifying the believer - failing on that account because it imagines God's work to be an imposition upon the human will, rather than a wooing conviction of sin and righteousness. Thus, God does not, in this schema, influence the Christian directly, but only indirectly through guilt or sense of duty - and if the Christian fails to respond, it is not a matter of false faith, but rather a question of "losing crowns" in the afterlife.
Free Grace theology messes up justification and sanctification because it has messed up how to be a Christian.
Least that is how I see it. I have been wrong before.
David
Free Grace theology messes up justification and sanctification because it has messed up how to be a Christian.
Yes, but it messes up something else first, i.e., what a Christian is. The idea that one could be “in Christ,” yet still go on as before, contradicts the plain statement that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
Jonathan Moorhead
Thanks for making me sick to my stomach.
David
Hey, Dr. J! Sorry about your stomach. You came all the way from Russia, and that’s what you get. You must think me very inhospitable.
donsands
Zane teaches the unbelievable doctrine that a believer can become an "unbeliever believer".
"The scriptural revelation knows nothing of a doctrine in which Christian love for God is guaranteed by the mere fact that one is a Christian." -Zane Hodges
From St. Paul: "Moreover, brothers, I declare to you the Gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand;
By which you are saved, IF you keep in memory what I preached to you, UNLESS you have belived in vain [eike: without reason, effect]. ....If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema [accursed] Maranatha." 1 Cor. 15:1-2; 16:22