Theological Term of the Week: Lordship Salvation

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

• From scripture:

. .. but [I] declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance. (Acts 26:20 ESV)

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, [18] and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6:17-18 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 Lordship Salvation by William Webster:

The Bible clearly teaches that salvation is a gift of God and not of works lest any man should boast (Ephesians 2:8,9). Conservative evangelicals emphasize and rightly so, that no man can work his way to heaven. They preach consistently and forcefully against good works as a basis for salvation. They preach the need of turning by faith to Christ alone as the Savior, resting in his finished work and in the merits of his shed blood and righteousness. We commonly hear, ‘Baptism will not save you, church membership will not save you, tithing, witnessing, your moral life, your good deeds, your fastings, your prayers, indulgences, etc. None of these things can give you a standing before God.’

There must indeed be a turning from all self–righteousness if one is to come to know Jesus Christ as Savior. However, many of the same evangelicals who preach the need to turn from self–righteousness in order to be saved will not preach repentance from self–will and self–rule. Why? Many wrongly believe that demanding men to turn from self–will adds works to the gospel of grace. The question is this: What is the difference between turning from self–righteousness to Jesus as Savior and self–will to Jesus as Lord? If the one is a form of works then so is the other.

The fact is, neither of them is works. Repentant, saving faith is a gift from God. Faith is a gift from God (Eph 2:8) as is repentance (Acts 11: 18): ‘When they heard these things, they held their peace and glorified God saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.’

Jesus Christ is both Savior and Lord. He cannot be divided. If a man comes to Jesus he comes to him as he is, as both Lord and Savior. There must be a turning from self–righteousness for Jesus to be Savior and there must be a turning from self–will or self–rule for Jesus to be Lord. This is not a form of works but true biblical repentance which is a gift from God.

Learn more:

1. Got Questions: What is lordship salvation?
2. J. I. Packer: Understanding the Lordship Controversy
3. Gary Gilley: Lordship Salvation
4. Andy Naselli: Must Jesus Be Lord?
5. William Webster: Lordship Salvation
6. S. Lewis Johnson: How Faith Works
7. Derek Thomas and Robert Godfrey: Does Jesus need to be our Lord as well as our Savior? (video)

Related terms:

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

 Filed under Salvation

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Theological Term of the Week: Justification

justification
A judicial act of God “in which he declares [a believer] righteous, forgiving [their] sins or imputing or reckoning to [them] the righteousness of Jesus Christ.”1

• From scripture:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

27 Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. (Romans 3: 21-28 ESV)

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith…. (Philippians 3:8-9 ESV)

• From The London Baptist Confession, 1689, Chapter 11: 

Of Justification

1. Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing Christ’s active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness by faith, which faith they have not of themselves; it is the gift of God.

2. Faith thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.

3. Christ, by his obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are justified; and did, by the sacrifice of himself in the blood of his cross, undergoing in their stead the penalty due unto them, make a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice in their behalf; yet, inasmuch as he was given by the Father for them, and his obedience and satisfaction accepted in their stead, and both freely, not for anything in them, their justification is only of free grace, that both the exact justice and rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners.

• From Systematic Theology by Robert Letham, page 677:

Justification refers to our legal standing with God. It is the obverse of the condemnation we were under due to sin. Justification is a forensic act; to justify means to declare righteous. The ground of justification is the righteousness of Christ imputed, or reckoned to us, not the righteousness of Christ imparted or infused … .

Justification is only by faith. When a person believes … he or she is therby justified on the grounds of Christ and his righteousness, whatever his or her past state may have been. However, while justification is only by faith, sinse it depends on the work of Christ, is is a constitutive act. Those declared righteous are truly righteous (Romans 5:19). This is not legal fiction, since by union with Christ, his righteousness is ours too. 

• From Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof, page 513-514

The following points of difference between justification and sanctification should be carefully noted:

1. Justification removes the guilt of sin and restores the sinner to all the filial rights involved in his state as a child of God, including an eternal inheritance. Sanctification removes the pollution of sin and renews the sinner ever-increasingly in conformity with the image of God.

2. Justification takes place outside of the sinner in the tribunal of God, and does not change his inner life, though the sentence is brought home to him subjectively. Sanctification, on the other hand, takes place in the inner life of man and gradually affects his whole being.

3. Justification takes place once for all. It is not repeated, neither is it a process; it is complete at once and for all time. There is no more or less in justification; man is either fully justified, or he is not justified at all. In distinction from it sanctification is a continuous process, which is never completed in this life.

4. While the meritorious cause of both lies in the merits of Christ, there is a difference in the efficient cause. Speaking economically, God the Father declares the sinner righteous, and God the Holy Spirit sanctifies him.

Learn more:

1. Simply Put: Justification 
2. Ligonier Ministries: Justification
3. Leon Morris: Justification
4. Tom Schreiner: The Righteousness of God in Justification
5. John Murray: Justification
6. Philip Eveson: The Doctrine of Justification
7. Here at this blog: Quiz on Justification

Related terms:

• active obedience of Christ
• double imputation
• imputation
• passive obedience of Christ

1 Systematic Theology by Robert Letham, page 669.

 Filed under Salvation

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Theological Term of the Week: Irresistible Grace

irresistible grace
God’s saving grace effectually applied to those he has chosen to save, causing their natural enmity toward him to disappear so that they willingly repent and believe in Jesus. See also effectual call.

• From scripture:

For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:44 ESV)

One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.  (Acts 16:14 ESV)

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:3-6 ESV)

• From The Canons of Dordt, Head III-IV, Article 11: 

[W]hen God … works true conversion in [his chosen ones], he not only sees to it that the gospel is proclaimed to them outwardly, and enlightens their minds powerfully by the Holy Spirit so that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God, but, by the effective operation of the same regenerating Spirit, he also penetrates into the inmost being of man, opens the closed heart, softens the hard heart, and circumcises the heart that is uncircumcised. He infuses new qualities into the will, making the dead will alive, the evil one good, the unwilling one willing, and the stubborn one compliant; he activates and strengthens the will so that, like a good tree, it may be enabled to produce the fruits of good deeds.What is the communion in glory with Christ, which the members of the invisible church enjoy immediately after death?

• From Living for God’s Glory by Joel Beeke:

Unfortunately, the term irresistible can suggest capricious force or violence to a sinner’s will. To some, it conveys the picture of a mother sitting her child at the kitchen table with spinach and liver and saying, “Eat!” But that is not the meaning… Though the irresistible grace of God in calling sinners is forceful and compelling, it works in such a way that the sinner’s will is so renewed that he comes to Christ gladly and willingly. If you are a believer, you know that when grace took hold of you, it brought you willingly and lovingly to what God had predetermined for you. No one in history has ever done anything more willingly and more lovingly than those who receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Think of Lydia (Acts 16:14-15) and the Philippians jailor (Acts 16:30-34); they were not saved against their wills.

On the other hand, God must work within the sinner to make him willing to come to Christ. John 6:44 says that unless the Father “draws” him, a sinner will not believe the gospel. The original word for draw implies a certain compelling force. Is is used in John 21:6-11 of fishermen dragging a net. Elsewhere, it is used of Paul and Silas’s being “dragged” by a mob. (Acts 16:19) and of the “dragging” of poor men into court by rich men (James 2:6). The idea is that a superiour force is so exerted upon an object or person the the one doing the dragging is successful.the intermediate state, believers are not simply in contemplative repose. Nor are they lost souls wandering throughout the realm of shadows or crossing back and forth over the river Styx ferried by Charon. Rather, they are made part of the company assembled at the true Zion, with “innumerable angels in festal gathering” and “the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Able” (Heb 12:22—24).

Learn more:

1. Simply Put: Irresistible Grace
2. Got Questions: Irresistible Grace - is it biblical? 
3. R. C. Sproul: Irresistible Grace
4. Sam Storms: 10 Things You Should Know About Irresistible Grace
5. Joel Beeke: What Is Irresistible Grace?
6. Matthew Barrett: Is Irresistible Grace Unbiblical?
7. John Murray: Irresistible Grace

Related terms:

• effectual call
• external call
• grace alone
• limited atonement
• monergism
• perseverance of the saints
• total depravity
• unconditional election

 Filed under Reformed Theology and Salvation

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Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured as a Theological Term of the Week? Email your suggestion using the contact button in the navigation bar above. 

Clicking on the Theological Terms button above the header will take you to an alphabetical list of all the theological terms.