The Bible says that we must believe in Jesus alone—not self—for eternal life. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and others say that we must contribute our works—not believe in Christ alone—for eternal life. There are stories about Catholic and Orthodox saints performing miracles, so does that mean that they were saved? The short answer is “no.”[Read More]
The Cross
The False Gospel of Woke Evangelicalism
If you are a Christian, then you are almost certainly concerned about the underprivileged. Nobody wants any minority group to suffer, but Christians want much more for minorities than the secular world could possibly hope for. Since everyone is born spiritually dead and on a path to hell, Christians want people to receive eternal life. Unfortunately, the world has an ideology of wokism that is in conflict with the Gospel. What is worse, some evangelicals have fallen for wokism. Woke evangelicals keep people on the path to hell in two ways: first by distracting the church from evangelism thereby preventing the unbeliever from hearing, understanding, and believing the Gospel and second by distorting the gospel itself. This second problem, the woke perversion of the Gospel, is the topic of this post.[Read More]
Works-Universalism: Contradiction or Middle Ground?
We have developed a quadrant model for describing soteriological compromises. The biblical message of salvation is summarized as Faith Alone in Christ Alone (FACA). Two ways to reject this are by rejecting the sufficiency of FACA or the necessity of FACA. Each of these two sides has differing extremes: On the side that rejects sufficiency, a near alternative is Works-Assisted Condition while a distant alternative is Works-Assisted Merit; on the side that rejects necessity, a near alternative is Christian Pluralism while a distant alternative is Christian Universalism.[Read More]
Book Review: Zane Hodges Did Not Change His View on the Gospel
Kenneth Wilson has written a book entitled Heresy of the Grace Evangelical Society: Become a Christian Without Faith in Jesus as God and Savior. There are legitimate criticisms to be made of GES, but you will not find many of them in Wilson’s book. Indeed, he actually had the opposite effect from what Wilson wanted. The day it was released, Grant Hawley of Free Grace Alliance disavowed Wilson’s work, which is no surprise since Wilson called Hawley’s views heretical. Several of Wilson’s fans have come out to say that this book caused them to question his other works, which is quite reasonable. Kenneth Wilson is most well known for his studies on church history. I appreciated an article that he wrote last year for SBL and even quoted it positively in our recent volume on current issues in soteriology,1 but having seen how poorly he represents his contemporaries, we are left wondering how well he deals with theologians of old. In the same volume, I criticized Christian Pluralism, which is the position that Wilson takes, so in retrospect, I would have loved to interacted with his book there, but perhaps that is a discussion for another day.[Read More]
We are spiritually dead before we sin.
There is room within orthodoxy Christianity to disagree over points in hamartiology, but an orthodox Christian should recognize immediately the false view that we spiritually earn a death sentence when we first sin. The biblical doctrine of spiritual death will be considered here from two angles: first the Godward side and then the manward side.
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Four Examples of Colossians 4:2–6
It is unlikely that you will argue over apologetics with an atheist until he becomes a believer. There are many benefits to apologetics in evangelism, but in the end, an unbeliever needs to accept what is written in the Bible. Namely, he needs to believe in Christ for eternal life. If he does not believe that God exists or that Christ is risen, etc., then he will not accept Christ’s offer of salvation. Even if he does believe in fundamental apologetic truths, he can still reject the Gospel and instead rely on his works for eternal life. We must use the Bible in evangelism.[Read More]