Theological Term of the Week

lordship salvation
The doctrinal stance that saving faith includes not only trust in Christ as Savior but also repentance (defined as a change of heart that results in turning from sin) and commitment to Christ as Lord, and that saving faith always produces a changed life.

• From scripture: 

  [I]f you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. (Romans 10:9-10 ESV).

  Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out…. (Acts 3:19 ESV)

  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV)

• From The Westminster Shorter Catechism:

  Q. 85. What doth God require of us that we may escape his wrath and curse due to us for sin?
  A. To escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin, God requireth of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life, with the diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption.

  Q. 86. What is faith in Jesus Christ?
  A. Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.

  Q. 87. What is repentance unto life?
  A. Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience.

• From Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem: 

  When we realize the genuine saving faith must be accompanied by genuine repentance for sin, it helps us to understand why some preaching of the gospel has such inadequate results today. If there is no mention of the need for repentance, sometimes the gospel message becomes only, “Believe in Jesus Christ and be saved” without any mention of repentance at all. But this watered-down version of the gospel does not ask for a wholehearted commitment to Christ—commitment to Christ, if genuine, must include a commitment to turn from sin. Preaching the need for faith without repentance is preaching only half of the gospel.  It will result in many people being deceived, thinking that they have heard the Christian gospel and tried it, but nothing has happened. They might even say something like, “I accepted Christ as Savior over and over again and it never worked.” Yet they never really did receive Christ as their Savior, for he comes to us in his majesty and invites us to receive him as he is—the one who deserves to be, and demands to be, absolute Lord of our lives as well.

Learn more:

1. Grace Community Church: An Introduction to Lordship Salvation
2. William Webster: Lordship Salvation: Biblical or Heretical?
3. Gary Gilley: Lordship Salvation
4. Earnest Reisenger: The Lordship Controversy and Repentance
5. Phil Johnson: The Lordship Salvation Controversy (mp3)
6. James White: Lordship Salvation (video)

Related terms:

• faith alone
• non-lordship salvation
• repentance
• Sandemanianism
• saving faith

Do you have a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Theological Term of the Week

Sandemanianism
The system of beliefs of a sect founded by John Glas and his son-in-law Robert Sandeman in Scotland in the mid-18th century, which included the distinguishing tenet that justifying faith is no more than “bare belief of the bare truth,” or mere mental assent to the facts of the gospel; also used loosely of any system of beliefs that teaches that saving faith is no more than mental assent to certain propositions about Christ.

• Scripture used by Sandemanians to support their view: 

  And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness…. (Romans 4:5 ESV).

• From Andrew Fuller in response to the Sandemanians in The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume III:1

  [The term ungodly in Romans 4:5], I apprehend, is not designed, in the passage under consideration, to express the actual state of mind which the party at the time possesses, but the character under which God considers him in bestowing the blessing of justification upon him. Whatever be the present state of the sinner’s mind—whether he be a haughty Pharisee or a humble publican—if he possess nothing which can in any degree balance the curse which stands against him, or at all operate as a ground of acceptance with God, he must be justified, if at all, as unworthy, ungodly, and wholly out of regard to the righteousness of the mediator.

• From Sandemanianism by Michael Haykin: 

  In a genuine desire to exalt the utter freeness of God’s salvation, Sandeman sought to remove any vestige of human reasoning, willing or desiring in the matter of saving faith. He was convinced that if the actions of the will or the affections are included in saving faith, then the Reformation assertion of ‘faith alone’ is compromised. Thus, in the Sandemanian system, saving faith is reduced to intellectual assent to the gospel proclamation about Christ. To be fair to Sandeman, it should be noted that he was quite prepared to admit that affections come into play once a person believes. But at the time of conversion, they play no role in saving faith. 

  It should occasion no surprise that many of those who embraced Sandeman’s intellectualist view of faith became stunted in their Christian lives. For instance, Christmas Evans (1766-1838), an influential Welsh Baptist leader, adopted Sandemanian views for a number of years in the late 1790s, but eventually found himself dwelling in ‘the cold and sterile regions of spiritual frost’, and in the grip of ‘a cold heart towards Christ, and his sacrifice, and the work of his Spirit’.

Learn more:

1. Wikipedia: Glasites
2. Michael Haykin: Sandemanianism: Andrew Fuller and the Sandemainians
3. Tom Ascol: Old Error Rediscovered
4. John Piper: Holy Faith, Worthy Gospel, World Vision: Andrew Fuller’s Broadsides Against Sandemanianism, Hyper-Calvinism, and Global Unbelief (mp3)

Related terms:

• antinomianism
• faith alone
• justification
• legalism
• saving faith

1I found this quote in Holy Faith, Worthy Gospel, World Vision: Andrew Fuller’s Broadsides Against Sandemanianism, Hyper-Calvinism, and Global Unbelief by John Piper

Do you have a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Theological Term of the Week

Holy Spirit
The third person in the Trinity, who is God, but also distinct from the Father and Son.

• From scripture: 

  The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all (2 Corinthians 13:14 ESV).

  [T]hese things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual (1 Corinthians 2:10-13 ESV).

• From the Belgic Confession:

  Article 11: The Deity of the Holy Spirit

  We believe and confess also that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son— neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but only proceeding from the two of them. In regard to order, he is the third person of the Trinity— of one and the same essence, and majesty, and glory, with the Father and the Son. 

  He is true and eternal God, as the Holy Scriptures teach us.

• From Salvation Belongs to the Lord by John Frame: 

  [L]et’s focus in on ourselves more narrowly and ask what the Spirit does in the lives of believers. There are a great many things the Spirit does for us and in us. … To make a long story short, the Spirit does everything for us that we need in our life with God The atoning work of Jesus occurred in the past, objectively, definitively. The work of the Spirit is present, on-going, often subjective. This is not to separate the work of the Spirit from the work of Christ. The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. Christ is in him and he in Christ. … But the main emphasis of the Bible in the Spirit’s work is that he gives us what we need for our present, continuing walk with God. 

  Indeed, he did the same for Jesus during Jesus’ earthly ministry. Remember how the Spirit descended on him like a dove at his baptism (Matt. 3:16). The Spirit filled him with power for preaching and for working miracles (cf. Isa. 11:2-3; 42:1; 61:1; Luke 4:1, 14, 18; John 1:32; 3:34). Well, if Jesus needed the Spirit’s ministry to him, we certainly need the Spirit as well. He is the one who equips us to serve God (Num. 27:18; Deut. 34:9; Judg. 3:10), to preach (Acts 1:8; Rom. 15:19; 1 Cor. 2:4), to pray effectively (Rom. 8:26; Eph. 2:18). He regenerates us (John 3:5), gives us new birth. He sanctifies us (Rom. 8:4, 15-16; 1 Cor. 6:11; 2 Thess. 2:13; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 1:2), makes us holy in thought and deed, putting to death the sins of the body (Rom. 8:13; 7:6; Phil. 1:9). He is grieved when we sin (Eph. 4:30).

  The Bible seems to put a special emphasis on the work of the Spirit to create unity and peace in the body (2 Cor. 13:14; Gal. 5:18-20; Eph. 2:18, 4:3; Phil. 2:1-2; Col. 3:14). He is the one, after all, who enables us to cry “Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6) and thereby establishes the church as God’s sons and daughters together in a family.

  Of course, the Spirit is the great teacher of the church. The writers of Scripture, both testaments, were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write God’s truth (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21). The prophets and apostles spoke God’s truth because the Spirit came upon them and enabled them to do it (Matt. 22:43; Acts 1:16; John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13). And the Spirit comes not only upon speakers and authors but also upon hearers and readers. The Spirit illumines us, enabling us to understand the Scriptures (Ps. 119:18; 1 Cor. 2:12-15; Eph. 1:17-19) and persuading us that the Word is true (1 Thess. 1:5).

Learn more:

1. GotQuestions.org: Who Is the Holy Spirit?
2. GotQuestions.org: What Are the Names and Titles of the Holy Spirit?
3. Blue Letter Bible: Who Is the Holy Spirit?
4. Blue Letter Bible: Is the Holy Spirit a Person?
5. Edwin Palmer: The Holy Spirit
6. Greg Herrick: Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit
7. Charles Hodge: The Holy Spirit
8. Gary E. Gilley: A Study of the Holy Spirit (pdf)
9. George Smeaton: The Deity of the Holy Spirit
10. Arthur Pink: The Holy Spirit
11. Joel Beeke: Study of the Holy Spirit by Dr. Joel Beeke (15 mp3s)

Related terms:

• being
• economic Trinity
• ontological Trinity
• perichoresis
• person
• Trinity

Do you have a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.