The NXR Podcast - October 27, 2022


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

Topics
lordship salvation
Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
John MacArthur Billy Graham Christianity Paul Washer Gian Jesus Lord Joel Webin Roger Shiller Willow Creek Bill Hybels Jamie White Joseph Boot Gary DeMar
DAILY TRUTH - The Danger of Apostasy QUESTIONS - How Can I Know If I’m “Elect”？

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

165.46

Word count

1,869

Sentence count

138

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, we discuss the theology of John MacArthur and how it relates to Lord's Salvation. We discuss the role of theology in our culture, and the role it plays in our understanding of God's Word.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Hey guys, real quick, before we get started, I have a small request.
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00:00:22 Gian, or Gian, I'm going to say Gian, from Gian the Baptist,
00:00:25 what is your position on Lordship Salvation? It seems to me that Lordship Salvation,
00:00:29 as presented by John MacArthur, for example, contradicts the 1689. I know he's not confessional
00:00:35 just as an example. It's a good question. Yeah, it just, a lot of it depends on how the person
00:00:44 is presenting it. There are certain elements of John MacArthur's lordship salvation that
00:00:49 I probably would not have worded the way that he did. But I mean, the general premise, right,
00:00:57 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 I think, you know, one thing we have to remember is that nobody's doing theology in a vacuum, right?
00:01:19 All of us within God's providence have been placed into a specific place, specific time amongst a specific people.
00:01:26 And a lot of what you see with theologians, both those who are living, like John MacArthur,
00:01:31 or those who are long dead, is that they're all products of their time.
00:01:36 In the sense that there are certain things going on in their day, and they were faithfully,
00:01:43 by God's grace, to the best of their ability, opposing those things.
00:01:47 Those things that contradicted the truth of God.
00:01:51 Everybody has that.
00:01:52 Right? So whether it's Luther against Roman Catholicism, you know, or all these different
00:01:58 examples that we find throughout the ages. And I think for MacArthur, he's had multiple fights,
00:02:03 but he's had a few big ones, right? The lordship, salvation being one of them, inerrancy,
00:02:08 controversy in terms of the view of scripture, that's another one. And he's joined the fight
00:02:14 against social justice and those kinds of things. And so as it pertains to lordship,
00:02:20 I think you have to, again, realize MacArthur's not in a vacuum.
00:02:23 What's going on here?
00:02:24 What's the context?
00:02:25 The context is MacArthur's coming on the heels of Billy Graham.
00:02:29 And within Billy Graham Christianity, whether Billy Graham ever said this or not, you know,
00:02:35 still the assumption by many that the effect of his ministry for many was that I could
00:02:44 walk down the aisle at some revival meeting, some crusade, evangelistic crusade, and I can say a
00:02:52 specific prayer, the sinner's prayer. I can ask Jesus into my heart, right? MacArthur's lordship
00:02:58 stuff, it's the same as Paul Washer. Paul Washer has, you know, one of his viral videos is where
00:03:03 he says that, you know, the greatest heresy or the most frequent heresy, most common heresy
00:03:09 is that if you invite Jesus into your heart,
00:03:12 he will most certainly come in.
00:03:15 And Washer's saying that that's not true.
00:03:18 You can invite Jesus into your heart
00:03:20 and Jesus declines to accept your offer.
00:03:23 He refuses your offer.
00:03:25 And you can walk around the rest of your life
00:03:27 until you die thinking that you have Jesus in your heart
00:03:29 and yet you don't.
00:03:30 And so I think on the heels of Billy Graham
00:03:32 and then the seeker sensitive movement that we had 0.71
00:03:35 with doctrine and the scripture and the gospel
00:03:38 was so watered down. I think that's what MacArthur is combating. And in some aspects,
00:03:43 he may have worded things. He may have overcompensated. But I understand your
00:03:49 question. I see the sentiment. I see what you're getting at. Because the reality is that, well,
00:03:54 I'll say it like this. This is the reality, theologically, if we're just speaking in
00:03:58 theological objective categories. Jesus is Lord of everyone and Savior of some.
00:04:06 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 like um there's a lot of people who have jesus as savior but do they really have him as lord
00:04:15 right that's so your billy graham i'll say it like this your billy graham kind of thing is
00:04:19 um you know a lot of people have jesus as savior few have him as lord macarthur's combating that
00:04:25 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 and i believe this is what the scripture says is actually ironically every human being has jesus
00:04:34 as Lord. You either love him, hate him, bless him, curse him, but he is your Lord. I would say that
00:04:42 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 their Lord. What we're doing is we're commanding people upon the authority of Christ that they
00:04:52 would actually submit joyfully to his Lordship, but no one makes Jesus Lord. God, the Father,
00:04:58 made Jesus Lord by raising him from the dead. Jesus is Lord. He is God's anointed one. I have
00:05:07 set my anointed one on Zion. The kings of the earth kiss the sun, bow to the sun, bow to the
00:05:16 king of kings, lest his wrath be quickly kindled and you perish in the way. Jesus is Lord. He has
00:05:24 been crowned Lord, not by each individual person saying a prayer. He's been crowned Lord by his
00:05:30 father and he is King of Kings. He is Lord of Lords. So Jesus actually is in objective theological
00:05:38 categories. He is Lord of each and every human being, everyone, universal Lord, right? We're
00:05:46 not universalist. So we don't believe that Jesus is universal savior. That's a heresy. People die
00:05:51 and go to hell. But we do believe in Christ's universal lordship. Now, that doesn't mean that
00:05:56 everybody is joyfully submitting to his lordship, but he is Lord of all. So we could say Jesus,
00:06:03 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 And I think what Billy Graham kind of said is Jesus is Savior of many and Lord of even fewer.
00:06:19 MacArthur is coming and saying, no, no, no.
00:06:21 He is only Savior for the same group of people who make him Lord.
00:06:26 If he's not Lord, he's not Savior.
00:06:29 But technically, objectively, we would say, no, I think the Bible actually says Jesus
00:06:33 is Lord of all, whether they like that Lordship or not.
00:06:36 They can bless him or curse him, love him or hate him, but Jesus is their Lord.
00:06:41 Jesus is Lord of all, but he is only Savior of some.
00:06:45 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 If someone has been justified, they will be sanctified.
00:07:04 The question, though, is sanctified in what areas, to what degrees, at what speed?
00:07:11 Those are three important questions that we need to ponder.
00:07:14 All individuals who have been justified by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone will be sanctified.
00:07:20 Not just will be, but are being sanctified.
00:07:23 But the question is, sanctified in what areas?
00:07:28 To what degree?
00:07:29 At what speed?
00:07:31 Meaning, not everyone.
00:07:33 Everyone is equally justified.
00:07:35 They're either wholly condemned or wholly justified.
00:07:38 And there are no different degrees of justification.
00:07:41 there are different degrees of sanctification some people for whatever reason will be sanctified
00:07:49 less than others and some people will be sanctified in one area but not another and one of the things
00:07:56 that i've had to learn pastorally in regards to my ministry as a local pastor is sometimes there
00:08:02 are certain areas that i want to say this is the measure of sanctification and therefore this is
00:08:08 the determining factor for justification, right? Because you haven't been justified if you're not
00:08:13 being sanctified. That's true. But then what we do is we hijack sanctification, or I should say
00:08:18 we truncate sanctification. So I haven't been justified unless I've been sanctified, but then
00:08:23 we truncate sanctification and say, and sanctification means this area to this degree
00:08:29 at this speed. And that's where I think we get in trouble. We can over-purify the church,
00:08:37 maybe unintentionally, but we can over-purify the church because we say, well, this one area
00:08:43 is the quintessential area where Christians need to grow in righteousness. And if you're not growing
00:08:49 in this area, then you're not being sanctified. Whereas the reality is that the Spirit of God
00:08:53 could be sanctifying them in a number, you know, 15 other areas, but we just have deemed those
00:08:59 areas as less important than this one quintessential area. And so, even though they're
00:09:04 being sanctified over here. They're not being sanctified over there, but there is what we have
00:09:09 truncated the entirety of sanctification to be. And because we don't see sanctification there,
00:09:14 we then begin to make claims that the person hasn't even been justified.
00:09:20 So you just have to be careful. But all that being said, in terms of MacArthur,
00:09:24 I'm grateful for MacArthur. And MacArthur, like Joel and like anybody else, is not doing
00:09:30 theological work in a vacuum. He's a specific man in a specific time to specific people.
00:09:37 He's in a context. We're all doing ministry. We're all doing the Christian life. We're all
00:09:41 doing the work of theology in a context. And I think MacArthur's coming on the heels of Billy
00:09:46 Graham and the secret sensitive movement, Robert Shuler, all these kinds of things.
00:09:50 Bill Hybels, right? Willow Creek. And he's pushing back on that and saying,
00:09:55 you don't get Jesus as savior while rejecting him as Lord. And that sentiment is true. 0.98
00:10:03 It's just objectively, we would say, no, Jesus is Lord of everyone, whether they like it or not.
00:10:08 And he saves some. So, but what MacArthur, I think is trying to do is a good instinct.
00:10:16 Oh, hi. I didn't see you there. Thanks for sticking around. I've got an important
00:10:20 announcement to make. That's the Theonomy and Post-Millennialism Conference. 2023, May 5th,
00:10:26 6th, and 7th, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Theonomy and Post-Millennialism. We've got the
00:10:32 speakers that we've already had lined up. That's Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar,
00:10:38 non-doctor Pastor Joel Webin, but we also have a bonus speaker, and that is Dale Partridge
00:10:43 from Real Christianity. Perhaps you've heard of him. If not, you should start listening to his
00:10:47 podcast. It's fantastic. Dale Partridge is going to be joining our team. We're going to have live
00:10:53 panels on Friday night and Saturday night where you'll be able to write in questions and get them
00:10:58 answered. We're also going to have a catered barbecue, Texas-style barbecue meal on Friday
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00:11:08 you do it. Go and register right now at rightresponseconference.com. Again, that's
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00:11:17 God bless.