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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John Fletcher, Fletcher’s 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).
Dr. Harold Lindstrom, Wesley and Sanctification (Zondervan, 1984).
