I was asked to comment on this article:
http://www.christcovenantcolorado.com/if-justification-is-immutable/
What these theologians fail to realize is that by using this argument, they undermine the doctrine of sola fide. Scripture is clear that the entrance into justification is by faith alone and the barest minimum of faith is enough to justify (Luke 17:6). There is no biblical distinction made between “faith” and “saving faith” or between “head” and “heart” knowledge. Nowhere do we find biblical authors teaching that justification comes about only if a person really, really, really believes. In this regard, those who hold to the doctrine of the loss of justification are far more consistent in regards to sola fide than that those who believe that it is immutable.
This argument isn’t convincing. Think about the Jews that knew the God of the Bible existed but chose to disobey him. They clearly knew what Yahweh said was true, but they simply didn’t care (Jeremiah 2:5, Hosea 4:7, Exodus 32-34, and Psalm 106:20). There is already a sense where everyone believes in God and knows him, but man’s sin has him suppress that which they know and believe (Rom 1). It seems rather plain that everyone knows that God exists but some have the heart to believe it. We also have James 2 stating an apparent difference between “faith” and “saving faith” or between “head” and “heart” knowledge.
An immutable justification means that the removal from the covenant community (the final step of the process of church discipline) has no teeth. In fact, if one who has been excommunicated retains his justification, church discipline might actually seem like a better situation for the person who has been removed from the church. If justification remains intact, life without membership in the covenant community might actually be attractive to some folks.
The most ironic thing about this is he makes Church attendance a necessary condition of justification. So, in his attempt to safeguard sola fide he ends up abandoning it. There are important parts of the Christian life, but none of them other than faith is required for justification. Church discipline isn’t for deciding whether one is saved, but rather a tool God has given the church to bring someone to repentance. That covers whether they are or aren’t a Christian. This is a common understanding of Church Discipline:
The purpose of church discipline is the spiritual restoration of fallen members and the consequent strengthening of the church and glorifying of the Lord. When a sinning believer is rebuked and he turns from his sin and is forgiven, he is won back to fellowship with the body and with its head, Jesus Christ.
The goal of church discipline, then, is not to throw people out of the church or to feed the self-righteous pride of those who administer the discipline. It is not to embarrass people or to exercise authority and power in some unbiblical manner. The purpose is to restore a sinning believer to holiness and bring him back into a pure relationship within the assembly.
https://www.gracechurch.org/about/distinctives/church-discipline
Let’s continue:
Every single redemptive covenant between God and man has included the obligation to full compliance and faithful obedience on the part of the people of God (Genesis 2:15-17; Exodus 24:7; Jeremiah 7:1-7) and that includes the New Covenant (John 14:23). This commitment to faithfully obey all that God has commanded is the minimum requirement for the people of God – not as a means of earning or meriting justification (Galatians 3:11) – but as a means to maintain that state of justification. If were impossible to lose justification, then there would be no obligation for obedience. This is Paul’s point in Romans 6:1-11: one who has entered justification through faith must now die to sin.
This is pure pelagian nonsense. The notion that we maintain our justification by works is to contradict Paul when he states that ” Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.” in Gal 3:21. The point is that eternal life is given through faith. If eternal life could have been had by works, then God would have used the OT law to impart life. He doesn’t and therefore it can only be had by faith.
Ironically, Rom. 6-7 gives reasons to reject his position. Take Paul’s initial question:
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!
These questions make sense if Paul held to reformed theology. If Paul held a view that would motivate these questions. There is no reason to think if his theology was true that Paul would be asked if we should sin in order for grace to abound or antinomian question because ongoing justification requires further deeds so you remain in the faith. Furthermore, Paul simply points to our regeneration as the reason we won’t go on being reprobate dogs. He doesn’t warn us that we will lose our justification.
There also seems to be confusion on what it means for these things to be “optional”. They are optional on both views given the fact that the person could just choose to apostatize in his worldview. On my view, Christian’s works are judged by God and those who serve him will receive their just desert. David was a Christian and he did some pretty bad things, but God “justifies the ungodly”.
How can one apostatize if the state of justification cannot be lost? According to modern popular theology, a person is either justified permanently or he was never justified in the first place. The problem is that this then makes apostasy into a hypothetical occurrence with no basis in reality. In this system, a person who is justified cannot fall away and a person who falls away was never justified in the first place, therefore no one can fall away from anything. So then why is apostasy even mentioned in Scripture? Can a person fall away from non-faith? The person who does not have justification cannot lose something that he does not have and the person who has justification cannot lose it . . . Who exactly is being warned? …
One of the most compelling passages on the reality of apostasy is in the letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3 where we find warnings of the following:
The removal of a lampstand (Revelation 2:5)
Injury via the second death (Revelation 2:11)
That Christ might “war against” them (Revelation 2:16)
Church members being struck dead (Revelation 2:23)
That Christ might come at them like a thief (Revelation 3:3)
Soiled garments (Revelation 3:4)
Being blotted out of the Book of Life (Revelation 3:5)
One’s crown being seized (Revelation 3:11)
Being spewed out of the mouth of God (Revelation 3:16)
This is original:
http://spirited-tech.com/2021/05/19/can-a-christian-lose-salvation-2/
http://spirited-tech.com/2019/05/20/can-a-christian-lose-salvation/
Rev 2:5, 11
Christ warns the church at Ephesus that if they don’t change their unloving and sinful ways then he will relocate the Church. The Church was apparently good on doctrine but short on love and obedience. This just leaves the Church with those who are “victorious” or “overcomes” such as those that are actually keeping the faith.
Revelation 2:16
The church of Pergamum is a church that stayed faithful through persecution but it has allowed false teachers to remain in their midst. I think it is also being ignored by the author of this that these are corporate groups of people. Take a similar warning to the church in Rome:
13 Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry 14 in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. 15 For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? 16 If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches.
17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, 18 do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. 19 Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” 20 That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. 22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. 23 And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. 24 For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.
Are we to suppose that every Jewish person to ever live was originally a believer that merely came to reject his faith? The reason these statements are general warnings to a corporate group. That means what is true of the parts isn’t necessarily true of the whole. I won’t go through all of them because I think they make the same errors for the most part.
One of the roles of a biblical church is to define the parameters by which we both gain and maintain our justification. These parameters or limits of justification are based on the church’s interpretation of Scripture as the pillar and buttress of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15). …
When the role of the church in justification is mentioned, there are many who respond by saying that their justification is the result of their being “in Christ” and by “in Christ” they mean some sort of mystical or metaphysical union with the person of Christ. However, if “in Christ” is biblically defined, this idea only serves to increase the role played by the church in justification because “in Christ” has a very specific New Testament meaning, that of “In the visible, local church.” (Biblically speaking, a person cannot be in the universal church without being in the local, visible church.) Since the church is the Body of Christ, a person cannot be “in Christ” unless he is in the church.
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. – Colossians 1:24
And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. – Ephesians 1:22-23
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. – Ephesians 5:23
I have a view similar to Dr. John Piper:
I’m saving my definition of union with Christ, which he asked for, for the end. It hangs in great measure on what the word “in” means in the phrase “in Christ.”
We would be totally unwarranted to think that the idea of being in Christ is used the same sense in every case. For example, Paul says, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22).
Well, “in Christ” is like “in Adam.” What kind of “in” is that? Is that the same meaning as the branch is in the vine in John 15? I doubt it. I think John has a different conceptuality of what he’s talking about as he recalls the way juices flow from the branch to the vine. That is different from the covenantal idea that Paul had in mind with “in Adam” and “in Christ.”
So, the point is that there is not just one meaning of union with Christ.
https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-union-with-christ
It seems union with Christ isn’t connected with being in the “church” (at least in the way he means it) but rather by having faith. Rather, the “universal church” just is a way the scriptures refer to all believers and in that sense union with Christ is related (Gal. 3).
Eph. 1:13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,
Hebrews 4:2 For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.
Col. 2:12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
Rom. 6:5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
I John 5:13 tells us that we can be confident in our possession of eternal life. But since most pastors and churches characterize those who fall away as never having had justification in the first place and we cannot know who might or might not fall away, pastors should never speak of a person as being justified for fear of being shown to be a liar.
There is a difference between a lie and a mistake. This is like saying you shouldn’t listen to your article because you might be a false teacher.
Yet we find the Apostle Paul doing exactly that in 1 Corinthians 6:11 where he tells the Corinthian believers that they are justified. If Paul believed that justification were immutable, he would have had no reason in the future to relay any biblical commands or to exhort those believers to be reconciled to God, right? Paul does exactly that in 2 Corinthians 5:20 where he begs the Corinthians to “be reconciled to God” and then in the next chapter, he tells them that “now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). Paul knew that the Corinthian believers were justified in his first letter, but by the time he wrote his final letter to this church, they had lost this state of justification because of persistent sin.
Where is the justification for thinking that Paul knew everyone in Corinth was a believer? He making the same error as he did with corporate bodies again.
Throughout Scripture, God’s relationship to His people is the marriage covenant. The principles of human marriage as given in Scripture are the same as the principles of our marriage with Him. God’s redemptive relationships with His people have always been governed by these principles. Under the Old Covenant, God called Israel His wife (Isaiah 54:5), when they were unfaithful, He called them a whore (Jeremiah 3:6-10) and eventually He divorced His wife, Israel (Revelation 5:1-14, The Transfer of the Kingdom from the Jews to the Church). Likewise, God’s relationship with His people under the New Covenant is governed by the same marriage covenant, but this time we enter by faith and baptism, not ethnicity and circumcision.
The marriage motif is just a motif. If there is this marriage covenant, then how is God going to consummate it with all of us? Furthermore, this motif about unfaithful Israel is to illustrates how evil the Jews were and how faithful God has remained to them. We see this also with the Prophet Hosea.
Furthermore, the idea that God is switching his covenant people is a misplaced understanding. The people of God is actually have expanded beyond Israel:
In this passage, Paul makes one of the clearest statements on the relationship of the gentiles who have come to faith in Christ to the Jews and to Israel herself. We must keep in mind the intracovenantal nature of Israel that Paul has laid out between visible and invisible Israel – ethnic Israel and spiritual Israel. That is those that are part of the covenant community, circumcised into the promises, and those who have ratified that faith unto themselves and are circumcised of heart. Paul makes this principle clear in passages like Rom. 2:28-29 and 9:6-7. In our present passage, Paul reminds the gentiles of their prior relationship to Israel, prior to their new life in Christ. When they were separated from Christ, prior to their conversions, Paul marks them out as being:
– Excluded from the commonwealth of Israel
– Strangers to the covenants of promise
– Having no hope
– Without God in the world
For Paul, pagan gentiles (those who have not been regenerated in Christ) are ontologically separated from Israel and her God, and thus have no rights to the promises and benefits of the covenant, leaving them without any hope. It is only when they come into Christ and are covered in his blood, that they are “brought near.” What does it mean to be brought near? If previously they were far from God because they were excluded from Israel, they are “brought near” in the blood – this overcomes the prior state of exclusion into a new state of embrace.
In order to maintain space, let me simply summarize v14-18 as Paul saying that in Christ, the walls of division have been torn down and that God was doing something to build both Jew and Gentile into one body – a unity between the two in Christ. But what does this look like? Are Jews plucked from Israel and Gentiles plucked from the nation and both brought together into this new third thing known as the church? Paul tells us starting in v19.
Now that the gentiles have been “brought near” in Christ, and have equal access to God via the Spirit, Paul tells us the features of their new state. The gentiles are now:
– No longer strangers and aliens (foreigners)
– Fellow citizens with the saints
– Members of God’s household
– A temple built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ as the corner stone
– That temple is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit
https://freedthinkerpodcast.blogspot.com/2018/10/why-im-not-dispensationalist-eph-2-and.html
Let’s continue:
Is the final judgment a rubber stamp of approval or disapproval? Is the final judgment just an empty exercise, a mere formality? Or will our faithfulness really be judged? Were Jesus, John, Paul and Peter serious when they wrote or said the following? If those passages are not enough to prove that the final judgment will be a real evaluation of faithfulness, then you are on the verge of questioning the veracity of Scripture.
There are some who believe that the final judgment will only consider whether a person had “faith” or not, but Matthew 7:21-23 tells us that this judgment will evaluate more than just belief. There will be many at the final judgment who have intellectual faith – they believe in Christ – but they will be condemned because they were “workers of lawlessness” and did not “do the will” of the Father. They were selective instead of comprehensive in their obedience.
This just shows no familiarity with the notion of penal substitutionary atonement. The elects sins are really punished every single one. Just those have been imputed to Christ and that is why Eph. 1:4 is in the Bible. What is the will of the Father? John 6 provides a comprehensive answer:
29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”
38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. 39 This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”
Notice in Matthew 7:23 what Jesus states :
23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’
People are judged by their works. Both believers and unbelievers will be accountable to God. Those unbelievers that were worse than others will endure worse punishments than others.
The Council 