The NXR Podcast - October 27, 2022


QUESTIONS - What Is Your Position On Lordship Salvation？ ｜ John MacArthur


Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

165.4568

Word count

1,869

Sentence count

124


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, real quick, before we get started, I have a small request.
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00:00:22.600 Gian, or Gian, I'm going to say Gian, from Gian the Baptist,
00:00:25.720 what is your position on Lordship Salvation? It seems to me that Lordship Salvation,
00:00:29.720 as presented by John MacArthur, for example, contradicts the 1689. I know he's not confessional
00:00:35.880 just as an example. It's a good question. Yeah, it just, a lot of it depends on how the person
00:00:44.580 is presenting it. There are certain elements of John MacArthur's lordship salvation that
00:00:49.900 I probably would not have worded the way that he did. But I mean, the general premise, right,
00:00:57.260 If we're just talking about the basic idea that somebody who is genuinely born again is going to submit to Christ as Lord, and that's going to be evidenced in their life, yeah, that's absolutely vital.
00:01:13.940 I think, you know, one thing we have to remember is that nobody's doing theology in a vacuum, right?
00:01:19.500 All of us within God's providence have been placed into a specific place, specific time amongst a specific people.
00:01:26.360 And a lot of what you see with theologians, both those who are living, like John MacArthur,
00:01:31.300 or those who are long dead, is that they're all products of their time.
00:01:36.420 In the sense that there are certain things going on in their day, and they were faithfully,
00:01:43.700 by God's grace, to the best of their ability, opposing those things.
00:01:47.600 Those things that contradicted the truth of God.
00:01:51.360 Everybody has that.
00:01:52.600 Right? So whether it's Luther against Roman Catholicism, you know, or all these different
00:01:58.300 examples that we find throughout the ages. And I think for MacArthur, he's had multiple fights,
00:02:03.380 but he's had a few big ones, right? The lordship, salvation being one of them, inerrancy,
00:02:08.300 controversy in terms of the view of scripture, that's another one. And he's joined the fight
00:02:14.020 against social justice and those kinds of things. And so as it pertains to lordship,
00:02:20.100 I think you have to, again, realize MacArthur's not in a vacuum.
00:02:23.640 What's going on here?
00:02:24.640 What's the context?
00:02:25.580 The context is MacArthur's coming on the heels of Billy Graham.
00:02:29.960 And within Billy Graham Christianity, whether Billy Graham ever said this or not, you know,
00:02:35.960 still the assumption by many that the effect of his ministry for many was that I could
00:02:44.620 walk down the aisle at some revival meeting, some crusade, evangelistic crusade, and I can say a
00:02:52.720 specific prayer, the sinner's prayer. I can ask Jesus into my heart, right? MacArthur's lordship
00:02:58.040 stuff, it's the same as Paul Washer. Paul Washer has, you know, one of his viral videos is where
00:03:03.240 he says that, you know, the greatest heresy or the most frequent heresy, most common heresy
00:03:09.340 is that if you invite Jesus into your heart,
00:03:12.280 he will most certainly come in.
00:03:15.040 And Washer's saying that that's not true.
00:03:18.380 You can invite Jesus into your heart
00:03:20.020 and Jesus declines to accept your offer.
00:03:23.300 He refuses your offer.
00:03:25.300 And you can walk around the rest of your life
00:03:27.040 until you die thinking that you have Jesus in your heart
00:03:29.480 and yet you don't.
00:03:30.400 And so I think on the heels of Billy Graham
00:03:32.400 and then the seeker sensitive movement that we had
00:03:35.380 with doctrine and the scripture and the gospel
00:03:38.860 was so watered down. I think that's what MacArthur is combating. And in some aspects,
00:03:43.660 he may have worded things. He may have overcompensated. But I understand your
00:03:49.720 question. I see the sentiment. I see what you're getting at. Because the reality is that, well,
00:03:54.920 I'll say it like this. This is the reality, theologically, if we're just speaking in
00:03:58.540 theological objective categories. Jesus is Lord of everyone and Savior of some.
00:04:06.100 and see we that's that's the truth see we what we've done is we've reversed that we say you know
00:04:11.540 like um there's a lot of people who have jesus as savior but do they really have him as lord
00:04:15.980 right that's so your billy graham i'll say it like this your billy graham kind of thing is
00:04:19.860 um you know a lot of people have jesus as savior few have him as lord macarthur's combating that
00:04:25.040 and saying if you don't have him as lord you also don't have him as savior and then what i'm saying
00:04:29.060 and i believe this is what the scripture says is actually ironically every human being has jesus
00:04:34.400 as Lord. You either love him, hate him, bless him, curse him, but he is your Lord. I would say that
00:04:42.300 what we don't need to ask people to do is we don't ever need to go and ask someone to make Jesus
00:04:47.280 their Lord. What we're doing is we're commanding people upon the authority of Christ that they
00:04:52.400 would actually submit joyfully to his Lordship, but no one makes Jesus Lord. God, the Father,
00:04:58.960 made Jesus Lord by raising him from the dead. Jesus is Lord. He is God's anointed one. I have
00:05:07.840 set my anointed one on Zion. The kings of the earth kiss the sun, bow to the sun, bow to the
00:05:16.780 king of kings, lest his wrath be quickly kindled and you perish in the way. Jesus is Lord. He has
00:05:24.380 been crowned Lord, not by each individual person saying a prayer. He's been crowned Lord by his
00:05:30.920 father and he is King of Kings. He is Lord of Lords. So Jesus actually is in objective theological
00:05:38.780 categories. He is Lord of each and every human being, everyone, universal Lord, right? We're
00:05:46.000 not universalist. So we don't believe that Jesus is universal savior. That's a heresy. People die
00:05:51.500 and go to hell. But we do believe in Christ's universal lordship. Now, that doesn't mean that
00:05:56.220 everybody is joyfully submitting to his lordship, but he is Lord of all. So we could say Jesus,
00:06:03.480 I think what's biblical to say is Jesus is Lord of all, Savior of some. Lord of all, Savior of some.
00:06:11.900 And I think what Billy Graham kind of said is Jesus is Savior of many and Lord of even fewer.
00:06:19.200 MacArthur is coming and saying, no, no, no.
00:06:21.560 He is only Savior for the same group of people who make him Lord.
00:06:26.560 If he's not Lord, he's not Savior.
00:06:29.180 But technically, objectively, we would say, no, I think the Bible actually says Jesus
00:06:33.740 is Lord of all, whether they like that Lordship or not.
00:06:36.540 They can bless him or curse him, love him or hate him, but Jesus is their Lord.
00:06:41.260 Jesus is Lord of all, but he is only Savior of some.
00:06:45.820 And so, with the Lordship salvation, that whole battle, the reality is that repentance, so if Jesus is someone's Savior, you're going to see sanctification, right?
00:07:00.140 If someone has been justified, they will be sanctified.
00:07:04.140 The question, though, is sanctified in what areas, to what degrees, at what speed?
00:07:11.300 Those are three important questions that we need to ponder.
00:07:14.300 All individuals who have been justified by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone will be sanctified.
00:07:20.900 Not just will be, but are being sanctified.
00:07:23.000 But the question is, sanctified in what areas?
00:07:28.040 To what degree?
00:07:29.840 At what speed?
00:07:31.740 Meaning, not everyone.
00:07:33.380 Everyone is equally justified.
00:07:35.800 They're either wholly condemned or wholly justified.
00:07:38.860 And there are no different degrees of justification.
00:07:41.420 there are different degrees of sanctification some people for whatever reason will be sanctified
00:07:49.740 less than others and some people will be sanctified in one area but not another and one of the things
00:07:56.600 that i've had to learn pastorally in regards to my ministry as a local pastor is sometimes there
00:08:02.520 are certain areas that i want to say this is the measure of sanctification and therefore this is
00:08:08.520 the determining factor for justification, right? Because you haven't been justified if you're not
00:08:13.040 being sanctified. That's true. But then what we do is we hijack sanctification, or I should say
00:08:18.340 we truncate sanctification. So I haven't been justified unless I've been sanctified, but then
00:08:23.120 we truncate sanctification and say, and sanctification means this area to this degree
00:08:29.480 at this speed. And that's where I think we get in trouble. We can over-purify the church,
00:08:37.480 maybe unintentionally, but we can over-purify the church because we say, well, this one area
00:08:43.320 is the quintessential area where Christians need to grow in righteousness. And if you're not growing
00:08:49.860 in this area, then you're not being sanctified. Whereas the reality is that the Spirit of God
00:08:53.780 could be sanctifying them in a number, you know, 15 other areas, but we just have deemed those
00:08:59.660 areas as less important than this one quintessential area. And so, even though they're
00:09:04.040 being sanctified over here. They're not being sanctified over there, but there is what we have
00:09:09.460 truncated the entirety of sanctification to be. And because we don't see sanctification there,
00:09:14.520 we then begin to make claims that the person hasn't even been justified.
00:09:20.140 So you just have to be careful. But all that being said, in terms of MacArthur,
00:09:24.380 I'm grateful for MacArthur. And MacArthur, like Joel and like anybody else, is not doing
00:09:30.120 theological work in a vacuum. He's a specific man in a specific time to specific people.
00:09:37.200 He's in a context. We're all doing ministry. We're all doing the Christian life. We're all
00:09:41.200 doing the work of theology in a context. And I think MacArthur's coming on the heels of Billy
00:09:46.140 Graham and the secret sensitive movement, Robert Shuler, all these kinds of things.
00:09:50.620 Bill Hybels, right? Willow Creek. And he's pushing back on that and saying,
00:09:55.460 you don't get Jesus as savior while rejecting him as Lord. And that sentiment is true.
00:10:03.580 It's just objectively, we would say, no, Jesus is Lord of everyone, whether they like it or not.
00:10:08.860 And he saves some. So, but what MacArthur, I think is trying to do is a good instinct.
00:10:16.640 Oh, hi. I didn't see you there. Thanks for sticking around. I've got an important
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00:11:17.260 God bless.