Dr. MacArthur says at 1:20 that if a Christian has a genuine DESIRE to KNOW GOD, to be LOVED BY GOD, to LOVE GOD BACK, to HONOR GOD, and to OBEY THE WORD OF GOD from the heart, then that person is genuinely saved. On this last point, the flesh struggle of Romans 7 is brought to bear, and the bottom line reason why people often question the status of their salvation. Then he says that ALL born again Christians experience the conflicted flesh struggle of Romans 7: “join the club” he says. At 6:30 he says that some people have been “taught wrongly” that you can lose your salvation; and “that generates a certain amount of fear.” My response: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Php. 2:12, KJV). Then he comes back to saying that “unregenerate enemies of God don’t have those desires” to know God, love God, honor God, and obey the Word of God from the heart.
My response:
1. I agree with MacArthur that Scripture teaches a truly Spirit indwelt Christian will want to know God, love God, honor God, and obey the Word of God. Matthew 5:6: “Blessed are they that HUNGER AND THIRST AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS, for they shall be filled.” I also believe that Scripture says there is more to salvation assurance than this…
2. The WORKS OF PIETY and the WORKS OF MERCY will flow out of your heart, as you have the opportunity to act them out: public prayer, family prayer, private prayer, the Lord’s Supper, Bible study, fasting, feeding the hungry, clothing the needy, entertaining godly strangers, visiting prisoners, visiting the sick, and preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost (see Matthew 25:31-46). Wesley: “We go on from grace to grace, while we are careful to “abstain from all appearance of evil,” and are “zealous of good works,” as we have opportunity, doing good to all men” (“The Scripture Way of Salvation” 1.8). These are not meant to be viewed or used as an earning system, a point system, or logging in our labor hours with God, but rather should only be viewed as signs, marks, or evidences of a true and genuine inward work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of a real Christian born of the Spirit. The Articles of Religion say, “Although good works, which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, can not put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s judgments; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and spring out of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree is discerned by its fruit.”
3. These outward physical actions, or good works, will come from the inward impulses called THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22-23, KJV). THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT, as a presence of fire within, confirming the Word of God as a sign following (Mark 16:20), as the disciples on the road to Emmaus: “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked with us on the way and while He opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32, KJV), and Wesley: “I felt my heart strangely warmed,” he said, as he was listening to someone else read Martin Luther’s Preface to Romans, “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins.” The Holy Spirit took up residence in Wesley’s heart; and made his presence known by fire and love: “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Romans 5:5, KJV) and a sense of forgiveness and adoption into the kingdom of God: “Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Romans 8:15-16, KJV).
4. KEEPING A CLEAN CONSCIENCE: “Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck” (1 Timothy 1:19, KJV). Notice the conditional nature of this verse: if you hold on to your faith (in penal substitutionary atonement), and in addition to that, maintain a good, clear conscience before God, then you’re to be understood as living in a state of salvation before God; but on the other hand, if you previously had all that–faith in the atonement and a clean conscience–and then through a deliberate, premeditated, movement of rebellion, decide to “put away” your faith in the atonement and a clean conscience, now you’ve moved your soul into such a dangerous state that this can be said of your condition: “concerning faith have made shipwreck.” Try to make eternal security hold up to that in a court of law! It wouldn’t be able to: you’d have to be intellectually dishonest in order to make unconditional eternal security work after reading and understanding that. This is a genuine warning against apostasy: and is a warning that’s completely incompatible with the “if saved, always saved” concept, because the keeping power here is not attributed to the Holy Spirit in this text, but to the human will: to the act of YOU holding onto your faith in the cross and a good conscience. Keeping power is not attributed to God holding onto you as in John 10:28, but to your own act of holding onto your faith tightly and keeping a clean conscience. And what happens when you stop holding onto the cross? God lets you go: “If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries” (Hebrews 10:26-27, KJV). So it should be clear, that whether we’re considering Old Testament examples like Samson, Saul, or Solomon, or New Testament examples like Judas, Hymenaeus, or Alexander, this remains a real possibility; and not a theoretical one: keeping is not simply a matter of God’s Spirit holding you in John 10:28 like a Shepherd that holds his sheep, but its also a matter of you as a human being continuing to hold onto the atonement and a clean conscience in 1 Timothy 1:19. John Wesley and his preachers win that argument with no contest after all the Scriptures have been considered. Martin Luther also saw things that way. Both of them would consider the Presbyterians and Baptists to be gravely wrong on this point! Guilty as sin too! Since they’ve been studying the Word of God for so long; and after four hundred years or so, still maintain such a lazy approach to so misguide souls into perdition, this most often being the case: all for the sake of alleviating people’s anxiety, and being more popular! Matthew 16:26: “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Critical error! –J.B.
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Dr. French Arrington, Christian Doctrine, vol. 2 (Pathway Press, 1992), ch. 10.
Dr. Kenneth J. Collins, The Scripture Way of Salvation (Abingdon Press, 1997).
—. Wesley on Salvation (Zondervan, 1989).
J.B., The Gospel of Jesus Christ (Kingsley Press, 2015), chs. 3-4.
J. Matthew Pinson, ed. Four Views on Eternal Security (Zondervan, 2002).
Adam Clarke, Christian Theology (Schmul, 1967), chs. 7-12, 30.
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