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Featured The Gospel According to Jesus

Discussion in 'Baptist Theology & Bible Study' started by evangelist6589, Jun 18, 2014.

  1. Revmitchell

    Revmitchell Well-Known Member
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    God requires that they understand their sin is what put Him on the cross and their life is no longer their own.
     
  2. evangelist6589

    evangelist6589 Well-Known Member
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    #22 evangelist6589, Jun 20, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 20, 2014
  3. SolaSaint

    SolaSaint Well-Known Member

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    I'll check my editions in the morning and try and reply tomorrow.
     
  4. Revmitchell

    Revmitchell Well-Known Member
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    Hey! Maybe when everyone gets their editions checked an actual conversation will take place.
     
  5. JamesL

    JamesL Well-Known Member
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    Go start your text own thread.

    Troll
     
  6. JamesL

    JamesL Well-Known Member
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    John,
    I think I may have used some terminology that didn't resonate. I'll try to use phrases which convey my point from the Lordship mindset.

    In the eyes of a Lordship proponent, there is a distinction between "faith" and "saving faith"

    And saving faith has several synonyms - genuine faith, real faith, true faith, and maybe others.


    In the eyes of Boice and Packer (And Mac), faith is a bare intellectual assent to facts. Then, when coupled together with a commitment, the sum is "saving faith"


    You wrote:

    I didn't miss it, I was trying to highlight the nature of faith, which Packer had already stated is the heart of the issue, with which I agree.

    Here is a quote from me:
    To which you responded:

    You agreed with them that "faith" is a mere intellectual assent. But that intellectual assent becomes "saving" when it is coupled with works.

    That boils down to a view that facts + works = saving faith

    But faith is not adherence to facts, even if it is coupled with works


    Facts, even if coupled with a commitment, do not save. Facts are facts. There are certainly facts about Christ, but knowing the facts, and trusting HIM are not the same thing
     
  7. Yeshua1

    Yeshua1 Well-Known Member
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  8. JamesL

    JamesL Well-Known Member
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    John,
    I forgot to add...

    The reason I started with the two Forewords (I think i mistakenly referred to them as Prefaces) is that they both offer a summary of the issue at hand.

    I know they're not exhaustive, but they both used the same verbiage to convey their idea of what faith is or is not. And they agreed with Mac.

    This is the foundation of the entire debate, and must be addressed first
     
  9. evangelist6589

    evangelist6589 Well-Known Member
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  10. evangelist6589

    evangelist6589 Well-Known Member
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    I will address your comments when get home to my Mac and the book so stay tuned. Also do not worry about Mitchell and others whom post and do not have the book.
     
  11. SolaSaint

    SolaSaint Well-Known Member

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    Ok guy's, I'm already lost. My edition (2008) is lacking the forwards by Packer & Boice. This makes no sense. We are using The Gospel According to Jesus correct? My copy has three Prefaces all my MacArthur, which are very good reads by the way.

    I'm very interested in this discussion, so please let me know if I'm supposed to be using Hard to Believe instead. Thanks
     
  12. JamesL

    JamesL Well-Known Member
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    SolaSaint,
    We are using "The Gospel According to Jesus"

    The '88 edition has two Forewords, which I erroneously referred to as Prefaces. If you want, I can post both full Forewords tonight, so that you can read them.
     
  13. SolaSaint

    SolaSaint Well-Known Member

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    Sounds good
     
  14. JamesL

    JamesL Well-Known Member
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    Foreword by J.I. Packer

    That man should not separate what God has joined is a truth about more than marriage. God has joined the three offices of prophet (teacher), priest, and king in the mediatorial role of Jesus Christ, and directs us in the Bible to relate positively to them all. God has joined faith and repentance as the two facets of response to the Savior and made it clear that turning to Christ means turning from sin and letting ungodliness go. Biblical teaching on faith joins credence, commitment, and communion; it exhibits Christian believing as not only knowing facts about Christ, but also coming to Him in personal trust to worship, love, and serve him. If we fail to keep together these things that God has joined together, our Christianity will be distorted.

    "Lordship Salvation" is a name for the view that upholds these unities. The name sounds esoteric and slightly uncouth, and its novelty would naturally suggest that the view labeled by it is a novel product, manufactured only recently. But in fact it is no more, just as it is no less, than the mainstream Protestant consensus on the nature of justifying faith, and the real novelty is the position of those who coined this name for the view they reject and who break these unities in their own teaching. That teaching reinvents the maimed account of faith given by Scottish Sandemanianism two centuries ago, well described by D. Martin Lloyd-Jones in his book The Puritans. Like Sandemanians, those who reject "lordship salvation" choose to keep works out of justification. To this end, like Sandemanians again, they represent faith as simple assent to the truth about Jesus' saving role, and thus their teaching becomes vulnerable to the criticism that it exalts faith in a way that destroys faith. Simple assent to the gospel, divorced from a transforming commitment to the living Christ, is by biblical standards less than faith, and less than saving, and to elicit only assent of this kind would be to secure only false conversions. So the gospel really is at stake in this discussion, though not in a way that the opponents of "lordship salvation" think. What is in question is the nature of faith.

    Dr. MacArthur has written this book in order to show from the records of Christ's own ministry what saving faith in him actually amounts to. I find his demonstration conclusive, and I thank God for it. It is a fine book - clear, cogent, and edifying - doing for us what is nowhere else done so well, and that is very much needed at this time. I wish it a wide circulation and a thoughtful readership. It will render the Christian world great service. I commend it enthusiastically.
     
  15. SolaSaint

    SolaSaint Well-Known Member

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    Thanks James, so are you in agreement with Packer and Mac? Do you feel a truly saved man will show his faith by works? Can simple mental assent save anyone? By the way I feel we have many filling the pews today that fit that description (mental assent only) or as Hank Hanagraff states as a Said Faith.

    Have you ever seen Ray Comfort's DVD called True and False Conversions?
     
  16. JamesL

    JamesL Well-Known Member
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    Foreword by James Montgomery Boice

    I have always had great admiration for John MacArthur. He has given himself to the arduous task of pastoring a large and growing congregation. He has done so for a long period of time. Moreover, he has based his ministry on careful Bible exposition, modeling much of what is best in faithful verse-by-verse teaching of large portions of the Word of God. Since I am a pastor myself, I very much respect these qualities and achievements.

    But my admiration for John MacArthur grew by quantum leaps as I read The Gospel According to Jesus. This is because the book reveals a man whose conscience is clearly taken captive by the Word of God. It reveals one who knows how to read the Bible for what it actually says (without filtering it through his or anyone else's prejudiced theological or cultural grid), and who is then fearless in proclaiming that Word to our wicked and needy generation.

    Even more! In The Gospel According to Jesus, MacArthur is not dealing with some issue or issues external to the faith, but with the central issue of all, namely, What does it mean to be a Christian? His answers address themselves to what I consider to be the greatest weakness of contemporary evangelical Christianity in America.

    Did I say weakness? It is more. It is tragic error. It is the idea - where did it ever come from? - that one can be a Christian without being a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. It reduces the gospel to the mere fact of Christ's having died for sinners, requires of sinners only that they acknowledge this by the barest intellectual assent, and then assures them of their eternal security when they may very well no be born again. This view bends faith beyond recognition - at least for those who know what the Bible actually says about faith - and promises a false peace to thousands who have given verbal assent to this reductionist Christianity but are not truly in God's family.

    How did this happen? No doubt the motives of those who have fallen into this profound error have been good. They want to preserve in its purity the gospel of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. They know that adding works to faith is a false gospel, and they rightly want to avoid that heresy. But preserving the gospel is precisely what they have not done. They have warped and in some cases utterly destroyed it.

    These scholars, pastors, and Bible teachers need to learn:

    - that there is no justification without regeneration. It was Jesus who said, "You must be born again" (John 3:7).

    - that faith without works is a dead faith and that no one will ever be saved by a dead faith. James said, "Faith without works is useless" (James 2:20).

    - that the mark of true justification is a perseverance in righteousness - to the very end. Jesus told His disciples, "All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved" (Matthew 10:22).

    - that faith in a Jesus who is Savior but not Lord is faith in a Jesus of one's own devising. The Jesus who saves is Lord - there is no other - and it was He who said "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?" (Luke 6:46).

    - that if anyone wants to serve Christ, "he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow [Him]" (Luke 9:23).

    - that "without holiness no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14).​

    Well, that is the problem MacArthur tackles in this book, and those are the answers he gives. He gives them very well indeed. Besides, he does this charitably. Those who distort the gospel in the way I have described are not always charitable to those of us who insist on Christ's lordship. We are accused of teaching "lordship salvation," a term we do not use ourselves. And we are often called heretics. I am not aware that John MacArthur has called any of his opponents heretics; nor have I. But they are mistaken - dreadfully mistaken in my opinion - and they need to be shown their error from Scripture, which is what this book does. They also need to be shown that their view has never been the view of any major Bible teacher or theologian in the church until our own weak times. MacArthur shows this in the book's second and very valuable appendix.

    Why is today's church so weak? Why are we able to claim many conversions and enroll many church members but have less and less impact on our culture? Why are Christians indistinguishable from the world? Is it not that many are calling people Christians who are actually unregenerate? Is it not that many are settling for a "form of godliness but denying its power" (2 Timothy 3:5)?

    If MacArthur's book succeeds in turning many from this weak gospel and false confidence, as I believe it will, The Gospel According to Jesus may be one of the most significant books of the decade.
     
  17. JamesL

    JamesL Well-Known Member
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    I have not seen Comfort's DVD.

    As for "simple mental assent", that is what I was addressing in post #14, then John responded in pose #22, then I responded in posts #26 & 28

    But as you can read in both these Forewords, the same verbiage is used, such as "bare" (or naked) mental assent. The natural implication is that this "mental assent" needs to be joined together with commitment.

    But that is nothing but facts and works, neither of which save.

    If faith minus works is equivalent to bare mental assent, then *true* faith would necessarily amount to mental assent coupled with works.

    I do not believe a mental assent - whether it is coupled with works or not - amounts to faith.

    I agree that many are filling the pews with a mental assent to some facts, but it is not works they are missing, it is hope in Christ. They are missing full assurance of God's promise, found in His Son. They are missing confidence in His finished work.
     
    #37 JamesL, Jun 21, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 21, 2014
  18. evangelist6589

    evangelist6589 Well-Known Member
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    Tomorrow I will look at the book an reply. Today I was reading the Gospel According to the Apostles which was a real feast and I looked up many verses as Mac nailed the coffin that LS is completely biblical.
     
  19. SolaSaint

    SolaSaint Well-Known Member

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    I would agree with you here. I don't feel Packer or Boice either one is representing what you have said though. Do you agree? Boice is more clear on his intro, but I have read much of Packer and in no way would he believe in simple mental assent plus a commitment to represent true saving faith.
     
  20. evangelist6589

    evangelist6589 Well-Known Member
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    Oh yes because those whom hold to the Free-Grace position have redefined Faith, and believe. Mac explains this perhaps in more detail in the Gospel According to the the Apostles which I was reading yesterday. But no question about it they have not done as good of a study on the terms as Mac.

    Faith is not just an intellectual assent of the facts. Faith leads to repentance and of which has deeds that prove that faith is real. No one is saved by their works, but they do show evidence of a true conversion. Just look at what the Bible teaches on this subject.

    Acts 26:20b(NIV,1984)
    I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.

    Also it is God whom grants repentance.

    Acts 11:18b (NIV,1984)
    So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.


    I don't think so as God grants repentance as the verse above indicated, and repentance is indicated by deeds, but deeds do not save anyone. Repentance just shows fruit in deeds.

    Yes I agree as even the devils know the facts but they are not saved. Turn to page 28 of your book and look under the heading The Abandonment of Jesus's Gospel and look at what the first paragraph says. I can type out the whole paragraph but I want your view on this paragraph. Since I am using the 1991 version of the book perhaps your version has this on another page but just try and find the heading.
     
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