WesleyGospel Ministries

The snake asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?”…The snake replied, “That’s not true; you will not die. God said that because he knows that when you eat it, you will be like God and know what is good and what is bad.”
–Satan in Genesis 3:1, 4-5 (GNT)–

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Who am I to question
Every day to understand
This precious beginning
Now fading, passing
This is the feel of sadness
Where will solace find me?
Where will peace begin?
Where will peace begin?
I have the call to be true
Find a way for you
The peace be inside
Follow safely home
In my God, in His smile
Nothing is impossible
Every day brings an awesome hope
Grace will lead the way
And joy will follow
My heart leaps at the sound of Your voice
Calling my name
And You are so perfect
In every way
A testimony of creation
Beautiful is Your Name
I can’t wait to see Him when I wake
Fresh and new
Simple and true
Formed by mercy
Formed by grace
Earth and sky
In Your eyes
Blessed
Pure
You’re more than I deserve
You’re my blessing
You’re my wisdom
You’re my freedom
You’re my mission
I live for His glory

–Living Sacrifice, “Reach for the Sky”–

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A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (Wingspread, 1982).

Leonard Ravenhill, Why Revival Tarries (Bethany House, 1979).

Basil Miller, George Muller: Man of Faith and Miracles (Bethany House, 1972).

Dr. Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline (HarperOne, 2018).

Disfigured, bloodless exit
Soul embraced, soul in pain
With a burning existence, eternally separated
Savior lost, Heaven lost
Tortured within, what could have been
Separation, this afterlife in death
In one breath
Could it be this darkness
Is a product of my design
My choice of self over God
I took what’s mine
I denied, denied

Father of Lies
Burn with your legion
Suffer inside eternal Abyss
God has terminated my soul
The committed:
“I want to dwell within Your Embrace.”

I had a dream of this reality
My decision to live by my means
I took what’s mine, never regret, until now
Separation from the love I took for granted
Separation from the truth revealed to me

–Living Sacrifice, “Separation”–

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There are people in other religions who…
belong to Christ without knowing it.
For example, a Buddhist.
–C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
(HarperCollins, 2009), pgs. 208-209–

FALSE PROPHET.

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John MacArthur, The Gospel According to the Apostles (Thomas Nelson, 2005).

Dr. John R. Rice, The Unequal Yoke (Sword of the Lord, 1946).

If the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.
–Ezekiel 33:6 (ESV)–

As for me and my house,
we will serve the Lord.
–Joshua 24:15 (ESV)–

These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
–Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (ESV)–

²² Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ²⁶ that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, ²⁷ so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. ²⁸ In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, ³⁰ because we are members of his body. ³¹ “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” ³² This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. ³³ However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
–Ephesians 5:22-33 (ESV)–

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William Gouge, Building a Godly Home, 3 vols (Reformation Heritage Books, 2013-14).

Richard Baxter, The Godly Home (Crossway, 2010).

J. C. Ryle, Duties of Parents (Evangelical Press, 2023).

John Wesley, “On Family Religion.”

WHOA.

Why do you make the imperfection of Christian obedience an argument against Christian obedience at all? Does the inability of fallen human beings to merit or earn salvation by good works, mean that they’re released from the responsibility to love God and keep His commandments? NO WAY! We’re not initially brought into right standing with God by the merit of any of our works, but neither does the grace of the Gospel of Christ authorize us, permit us, nor excuse us, to the point of continuing to knowingly live in willful, intentional, and blatant mortal sin that we can actually do something about.

The same Lord Jesus Christ who forgives sinners also calls them to Bible holiness. The same faith that receives the righteousness of Christ must work by love (Galatians 5:6). Don’t confuse your inability to earn or merit salvation because of your imperfection:–with the total absence of needing to obey God in your life! (Romans 15:18). Nor should you falsely assure a man into a false security of salvation, who stubbornly holds onto his beloved vices: that simply because he’s convinced Jesus is real, and says that he believes in God’s existence, that this somehow makes his final salvation from Hell totally certain, regardless of how he lives his life or doesn’t live his life for God (James 2:19). Preach free grace to the unconverted sinner! Yes sir! But preach the Bible grace that leads people to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts (Titus 2:11-14).

Because if you don’t do this, then you’re as guilty as sin, a total false teacher, and criminally insane enough to say that unchanged and unrepentant sinners–not born again of the Holy Spirit–will inhabit Heaven with the holy God that gave us life, men and women completely unchanged in their hearts–fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, girly men, homosexuals, thieves, greedy, alcoholics, mean people, swindlers, witches, fight pickers, people without self-control, antinomians, universalists, agnostics, atheists, evolutionists, jealous people, murderers, partiers, people who never share Christ with the lost, pimps, pornographers, human traffickers, and habitual liars–that all these people will definitely go to Heaven when they die…simply because they believe Jesus is real. NO! You’ve got to be joking. Your theology is laughably false. Such people will “have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone” (Revelation 21:8; rf. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21).

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Taken together, the writings below argue that God’s grace does not abolish God’s moral law, excuse deliberate sin, or remove the believer’s responsibility to live in obedience to Jesus Christ. John Fletcher’s Checks to Antinomianism, John Wesley’s two Dialogues Between an Antinomian and His Friend, Daniel Steele’s A Substitute for Holiness, and Martin Luther’s Against the Antinomians all challenge the idea that justification by faith makes obedience, holiness, repentance, or the moral commandments unnecessary for the Christian life. They emphasize that salvation is not earned by good works, BUT genuine saving faith produces a changed lifestyle. The believer is called to resist sin, pursue holiness, obey God’s commandments, and continue in faith. Dr. Harald Lindstrom’s Wesley and Sanctification further explains Wesley’s understanding of sanctification, emphasizing the transforming work of the Holy Spirit and the believer’s growth in holiness. The central Wesleyan-holiness message is that we are saved by grace through faith, not by good works, BUT we are saved from the power of sin, and are NOT given permission to just continue living in it on purpose.

The remaining works apply these principles to the modern Lordship Salvation controversy. Mark Jones’ Antinomianism argues that Christ is not merely our Substitute for justification, BUT ALSO our example for sanctification, and that God’s moral law remains a guide for Christian living (that is, the third use of the law as taught by John Calvin). David Cloud’s “Repentance and Lordship Salvation” challenges any type of evangelism, that leaves out the call to repentance, or separates receiving Christ from acknowledging Him as your personal Lord. John MacArthur’s The Gospel According to Jesus and his “15-Year Retrospective” both argue that genuine saving faith always includes repentance, submission to Christ’s authority, and a transformed life; obedience is always the fruit of salvation, just not its initial purchase price. Robert Lescelius’ Lordship Salvation: Some Crucial Questions and Answers defends this teaching against common objections. Their collective warning is against any false assurance of salvation, that’s based on a superficial profession of faith, while deliberately continuing in unrepentant sin. Although these authors differ in their theological traditions, they share the conviction that grace and holiness cannot be separated, that real repentance from vice matters in salvation, and that genuine saving faith produces sincere but imperfect obedience to the commands of Jesus Christ, and is never to be separated from His atoning blood.

While the Calvinists would lean towards John MacArthur (Grace to You), David Cloud (Way of Life), some conservatives in the Southern Baptist Church (SBC), or the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)–the Wesleyan-holiness advocates like myself would lean towards Church of God (Cleveland), Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church, the Bible Methodist Church, the Free Methodist Church, Church of God (Holiness), the Evangelical Methodist Church, the Christian & Missionary Alliance (A. W. Tozer people), Assemblies of God (David Wilkerson and Leonard Ravenhill people), the International Pentecostal Holiness Church (IPHC), and the Foursquare Church. On the Calvinist side, it would be the Master’s Seminary to train Calvinistic lordship preachers; on the holiness side, it would be God’s Bible School & College, Wesley Biblical Seminary, and the Pentecostal Theological Seminary that would have the strongest alignment against antinomian ideas.

John Fletcher, Checks to Antinomianism (Beacon Hill Press, 1948).

John Wesley, “A Dialogue Between an Antinomian and His Friend” (1745).

—. “A Second Dialogue Between an Antinomian and His Friend” (1745).

Daniel Steele, A Substitute for Holiness: Antinomianism Revived (Schmul, 1980).

Mark Jones, Antinomianism (P&R Publishing, 2013).

Martin Luther, “Against the Antinomians.” Luther’s Works, vol. 47 (Fortress Press, 1971).

David Cloud, “Repentance and Lordship Salvation” (Way of Life, 2010).

John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus (Zondervan, 1994).

—. “A 15-Year Retrospective on the Lordship Controversy” (Grace to You, 2003).

Dr. Harold Lindstrom, Wesley and Sanctification (Zondervan, 1984).

Robert Lescelius, Lordship Salvation (Revival Literature, 1992).