TILL HE COMES Blog

I was able to attend two panel discussions today at the Free Grace Alliance National Conference. On one of them, I had to be there since I was a panel member.

The panel which I only attended was related to the issues of assurance, eternal security, and justification. The basic question was “Does a person have to know that what they get from Jesus can never be lost in order to receive it?” Of the three panelists, I heard one, Tim Nichols, give a clear answer “Yes” and the other two were a little more evasive. This was not really their fault since many of the questions from the audience were not really on topic. Some questions were related to the death and resurrection of Jesus, or the deity of Jesus, and other things. The last question, however, was very revealing. It was “If you are witnessing to an unsaved person, and you want to tell them how to be saved, what would you say?”

1. Dave Anderson answered first with two words: “Free Grace.” I’m not sure what he meant by that.

2. George Meisinger said that he tells as much of the gospel as he can to the person in the time he has. If it’s on an airplane, he is able to tell them lots more than if he is sharing with someone on their deathbed. I don’t remember quite how he answered the question.

3. Tim Nichols answered similarly to George Meisinger, but emphasized that the message we share with unbelievers must come from the Gospel of John.

The second panel discussion I attended was the one I spoke on. It was was whether a person had to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus in order to be born again. The following are terribly poor summaries of the views presented:

1. Ken Wilson basically said “Yes. We don’t believe in Jesus for everlasting life, but we have to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God who takes away our sins.” I’m not sure who in Christendom (including Catholics) doesn’t believe this, but maybe I misunderstood him.

2. Tim Nichols basically argued that since nobody would ever dream of not presenting the death and resurrection, the question doesn’t really matter. This is true. Sometimes, Satan’s greatest ploy is to get us talking about theology rather than living out the theology we do know.

3. Larry Moyer basically said “Yes, because the death and resurrection is central to the Gospel, and we must always share the Gospel when telling people about Jesus.”

4. Tom Stegall argued similarly to Larry Moyer, but more emphatically.

5. I certainly do believe that the death and resurrection of Jesus are central to the Gospel, and that without the death and resurrection of Jesus, there is no Gospel. All the truths of the Gospel (of which there are dozens-if not hundreds) are for the purpose of getting a person to believe in Jesus and so receive everlasting life. So I always present the death and resurrection of Jesus when I witness to people. So I argued similarly to Tim Nichols–that it’s a mute point.

However, I did point out that we do have examples of people in Scripture who believed in Jesus and received everlasting life, but did not know about the death and resurrection of Jesus, and even when presented with these truths, did not believe them (cf. Matt 16:31-32; Mark 9:31-32; Luke 9:44-45; 18:31-34; 24:19-26; John 20:9, 24-30). There may be some examples from Acts and the Epistles as well, but it’s almost 2 am, and I’m tired. But just one example: One reason Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 15 is to persuade and convince the Corinthian believers about the resurrection of Jesus. It sounds like some of them had believed in the resurrection, but had turned away from it, but there apparently were others who had heard about the resurrection, but denied it as fiction. Paul is correcting these believers in Corinth about this.

So apparently, there are people who believe in Jesus, and lots of correct things about Him, but don’t have all their theological ducks in a row, but who are still considered by Biblical authors to be regenerate. I think it is possible there are people in the same category today. I may have talked with one a few weeks ago, which I mentioned in a previous post.

Due to the number of panelists, and the limited time, only one question from the audience was asked, and that one had nothing to do with the questions that I had come up with which I hoped to receive answers to. So I still don’t know how Tom Stegall would answer those questions. I refuse to speculate how he might answer them, because if there is anything more dangerous that theological speculation, it is theological speculation about someone else’s theology.

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Lark News, the Christian satire website, posted this article today:

Emergent leaders call for ‘missional re-understanding of Jesus-followership and Christ-focus imbued with passionate creativity and emotional authenticity,’ whatever that means

    CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — At a recent conference-like “gathering” of emergent church leaders, various factions sparred over competing visions for the future of the movement.
    Leaders on one side called for “deepening and continuously beautiful efforts toward emotionally true self-divulgence and confession.” Other leaders countered with a call for “a theological re-purposing of our objective and subjective missionality within a framework of God-love.” Because few in attendance actually understood what either side meant, both ideas were tabled.
    The sides did agree that emergent leaders should continue to take every opportunity to make casual, cool cultural references to popular television shows, movies and Internet phenomena to introduce quasi-intellectual spiritual points about the state of the American church.
    They also pledged to maintain their reputation for being “more spiritually honest than the millions of people who attend institutionalized churches every week and blindly go along with the programs, sermons and mindset that make American Christianity the colossal failure it is today.”
    After toasting themselves with various hyper-cool micro-brews, the audience adjourned to begin 7- and 8-hour theological bull sessions in their hotel rooms and local bars.
    Conference organizers say they will meet again to do the same thing next year.

I laughed at this for several reasons. First, it’s funny because it’s true. I have read (and am reading) a lot of the books by this new group of church leaders, and it seems that when they don’t have a word to describe what they are trying to say, they just invent one. One term being thrown around today not mentioned in the satirical article above is “glocal” which refers to how Christians must be both global and local in their missions mindset. There was a time about a year ago, when I thought that if I heard the word “missional” one more time, I was going to throw up. Now, I have somewhat resigned myself to the fact that it is a term that is going to stick, and to a large degree, I am trying to live “missionally.” One term that still gets me queasy is “Imago Dei.” It’s Latin for “Image of God,” which I don’t mind at all. My question is, “Why use Latin, when the English is just fine?” unless, of course, you’re trying to sound smart and cool.

Which brings up the second reason I found the article funny. One of the criticisms leveled at traditional churches by the “emergent/emerging” crowd is that they use too much technical language, theological terms, and Christian jargon that nobody understands. They say we should root out of our vocabulary words like “justification, sanctification, glorification, dispensationalism, eschatology” and other similar terms. But ironically, they have gone and created their own vocabulary that nobody understands except those who are “in.”  And yet, people who are excited and intrigued by what the emerging/emergent churches are doing are willing to learn the terminology and begin using it themselves.

You know what this means? Getting out message heard is not about weeding out tricky terminology. It’s speaking and writing with a passion and excitement that others are not only willing to listen, but also to learn and adopt the language. Look at text messaging as an example. Text messengers have developed their own entire language. I understand very little of it, but those who want to communicate with other cell phone users have learned the language and terms and created their own sub-culture.

So can you use words like justification and sanctification? Sure! They’re more BIblical than words like “emerging” and “glocal.” But whatever terminology you use, don’t speak and write in a way that is dispassionate and cold toward God, His Word, and all those in the world (whether believers or unbelievers) seeking direction. While we want to be as clear as possible, if you use terminology that people don’t understand, they will try to learn that terminology if they catch your passion and vision.

In other words, if you cast a vision you are passionate about, people will follow, even if you use words like “glocal,” “imago dei,” “missional,” and “justification.”

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I sometimes hear pastors say that they don’t have systematic theology, they have pastoral theology. As a pastor myself, I used to nod my head in agreement. I too am concerned with the way some theologians seemed too caught up with dotting every theological “i” while neglecting the task of serving others. However, in recent years, I have come to develop some reservations about the pastoral theology concept.

With today’s postmodern mindset, a person who claims to have a pastoral theology is often just saying that his theology is not fixed, but adjusts it to the pastoral concern being faced. This approach often leads to contradictions in theology. Like the situation ethics of the 70s, many pastors have a different theology depending on the situation they find themselves in. It might be better to call it situational theology.

This was brought to my attention through a recent conversation I had with a regional leader of a particular denomination. He and I did not see eye to eye on certain issues of soteriology, and it was not long before I caught him in some serious logical contradictions. When I pointed these out to him, he said that he lived with these contradictions because he had pastoral theology, not systematic theology.

When pressed to explain the difference, he relayed the following story which he said actually happened to him:

I was in my office and a man came in who was a serial adulterer. He shared that although he is married, for the past seven years he slept with at least one different woman every month. I asked him if he thought he was a Christian, and the man said, “Yes, I accepted Christ as my personal Savior when I was in high school. They told me I was secure forever, and so I know that even though I’m sinning, I’m still going to heaven.”

I would have stopped and asked the man for further clarification on what he thought he had done in high school. Why did he say, “They told me I was secure forever”? Why didn’t the man point to Jesus’ promise? And what did he mean when he said, “I accepted Christ as my personal Savior”? Until these questions are answered, it is still uncertain whether or not he has believed in Jesus Christ alone for eternal life. But this leader thought that answer was fine, and so his story continued:

In such a case, my pastoral heart tells me to put the fear of hell into the man. I told the man that if he was ever saved, he certainly wasn’t saved now. Such adultery was a serious pattern of sin. Unless he repented of his sin, and returned to a monogamous lifestyle, he would not enter heaven.

This is classic Arminian loss-of-salvation theology. It was a little surprising for me to hear these words coming from this man who claimed to be a Calvinist. But he continued his story:

Later that day a different man came into my office. He too admitted to being an adulterer. He was married for seven years, and in that time frequently looked at pornography and had committed adultery twice. He sat in my office with tears streaming down his face, worried that he had lost his salvation and that God would never forgive him.

But I saw that this man had a repentant heart, and he knew that what he had done was sinful. He was a genuine Christian, not in need of chastisement and the fear of hell, but in need of love and forgiveness. I told him that God still loved him, and Christ died for all of his sins—past, present, and future—and that there was nothing which could separate him from God. He was secure in the hand of God. Of course, I warned him that he needed to turn from his sin, or else it may prove he was never saved in the first place.

So in one day, this man’s pastoral theology led him to espouse Arminian theology to one person and Calvinistic theology to another. The two systems are in blatant contradiction, but he didn’t care, for his theology was pastoral. He admitted the two views were contradictory, but only if viewed apart from the individual situations. He molded his theology to fit what he thought the person in front of him needed to hear. This was his pastoral theology.

Far from actually helping his congregation, such contradictions will only lead to confusion. Such pastoral theology does more damage than good, because it allows love for people to drown out the truth of God’s Word. And when truth gets neglected in the name of love, love dies too. It is not loving to tell a lie in a kind way, even if we think the lie is what a person needs. It is far better to “speak the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). It is also far better to be Biblical, rather than pastoral.

Consider the first man. Not only was he not given the clear saving message, but he was given a false message. If this man was indeed unregenerate, he went away with a message in his head that would make it harder for him to be born again. How practical, how pastoral, was that? Doesn’t God know best?

And what about the second man? He also was given a false message. He may have gone away feeling better, but if he wasn’t already born again, he left this encounter more confused than ever. So this situational approach to theology is neither loving, nor pastoral.

What is the loving thing to do? Give people what God said! For example, Jesus gives everlasting life to anyone who believes in Him, and a life of obedient discipleship is important for fellowship and rewards. That is an encouraging, loving, and pastoral message. Best of all, it’s true. 

-appeared in the Sept/Oct 2007 issue of Grace in Focus

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I wrote an article for Chafer Theological Seminary Journal about three years ago, and it just now got posted online for people to read. We often hear that while works are not required for justification, they are the necessary result of justification and true saving faith. I argue that this makes works a condition of eternal life. Here is the article so you can read it:

 Are Works the Necessary Result of Justification?

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