Charles Stanley is Lordship

Perhaps you are talking about two different things concerning Stanley and MacArther's description of Lordship. Stanley believes one must repent and commit to the Lordship of Christ. It is Stanley's definition of OSAS that concern many Christians. Stanley believes that a True Christian, after repentance and committment (Lordship), can then stop believing and die in an unbelieving state of belief, and still go to heaven. Most doctrine of eternal security Christians believe that a True Christian cannot or will not stop believing.

 

We would also believe that one cannot deny the faith, as it is a Gift of/from god, and that our new natures in christ will keep us always in relationship with God...

the Cross is the basis/anchor of our salvation, so even IF one could lose faith, god has already eternally secured us by the Cross, but we would still lose out fellowship and rewards!

 

Yes, this "Lordship Salvation" business confuses me too. It's not a term I hear much here in the UK. In fact I have only come across it on the Baptist Board. There are plenty of Christians who say (as I do) that you cannot have Jesus as your Saviour without also acknowledging Him as your Lord. But (here in the UK, at least), easy believism is much more likely to be found among the people who believe that you can have Jesus as your Saviour without Him being your Lord.

 

What is interesting about this whole issue is this from the biblical perspective, when one receives jesus, he will be already both their Lord and saviour, just up to the Christian to affirm that fact and apply it to their lives!

 

I also have always had a problem with the phrase "easy believism".

What is the alternative to "easy believism? "Difficult believism"?

Believing in Jesus Christ is one of the easiest things I know how to do.

The root of this issue is (IMO) a failure to distinguish between justification and sanctification.
There is a practical aspect (as well as positional) of sanctification that can and is often times difficult and a struggle for the believer.

Hebrews 12:4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.​

HankD

 

If Charles Stanley is "Lordship" then everybody is Lordship. (That is, unless he's recently changed his beliefs.) He believes that the "outer darkness" is not hell, which is an idea that even the vast majority of "free grace" people I'm familiar with reject. This is related to his view of OSAS as noted above.

The whole controversy, at least at first, was a quarrel between dispensationalists, with the "free grace" camp being strongly influenced by the teaching of Lewis Sperry Chafer on this topic, and Dallas Theological Seminary in general until about the 1990's.

Generally speaking, there are essentially two camps in the free grace movement, which is called no Lordship or easy believists by their detractors. The first camp is Ryrie's which usually says that the believer will bear fruit somehow, somewhere and at some time but that it may only be visible to the Lord. The second group is exemplified by the late Zane Hodges and the Grace Evangelical Society. They basically say that the believer need not bear fruit at all and must only believe. In recent years, the minimum content of faith was so reduced that others in the Free Grace community accused GES of adopting a "Crossless Gospel." IIRC the idea was that one only need to understand something like "Jesus saves" and that that you didn't even have to believe that Jesus died on the cross to be saved.

The Lordship types say you must submit to Christ's Lordship (albeit in an imperfect but general sense) or you are not really saved. A lot of the heat in this discussion was because sometimes the Lordship advocates did not always clearly articulate the truth of Justification by Faith Alone and seemed at times to confuse justification with sanctification.

Stanley here (in the printed summary) says that if you do not submit to Christ's Lordship, then your spiritual growth will be stunted. The latter is essentially the free grace position and would not go nearly far enough for someone like MacArthur. It is not an articulation of Lordship Salvation, which basically teaches that at least the general tenor of your life must reflect submission to Christ's Lordship, holiness, etc. or else you will end up in hell.

The Lordship people accused the Stanley types of believing that sanctification was optional and noted that they appeared to make an extreme dichotomy between salvation and discipleship that is foreign to the Scriptures. In other words, they were accused of teaching that discipleship and sanctification were optional with regard to salvation, whereas Lordship basically equates discipleship with being a believer. But as noted above, sometimes in reaction to this sharp separation between justification and discipleship, the teaching of the Lordship men appeared to obscure any distinction between justification and sanctification. And you can still see this today. There's a church in my local area that has a Lordship Salvation clause in its statement of faith that appears to me to be contradictory.

The more traditional Protestant view (and perhaps especially, Reformed view as well as the apparently unquestioned Baptist view prior to the 20th century) was that we are justified by faith alone but it is by a faith that is never alone. In other words, one's faith is demonstrated by one's works.

Hope that helps and doesn't obscure things even more!

 

Good points!

However we view this issue, we must affirm the biblical view that faith alone is the way to access the grace of God that saves, but once saved, we will reflect SOMETHING different to SOME degree, as new creatures now in christ!