October 31 will mark the 500th anniversary of the day Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany, touching off the Protestant Reformation. A great many people will be celebrating the anniversary who have no business doing so.
The fact is that justification by grace alone, through faith alone- the central tenet of the Reformation, and the teaching Luther regarded as "the doctrine whereby the Church stands or falls-" is by no means held, as a practical matter, by all "Protestants." John Wesley chose to unbiblically define "sin" as an "intentional" violation of God's law despite the fact that the Bible abides no such qualification, even providing in the Mosaic Law for sacrifices to atone for unintentional sins! By lowering the bar on the law, Wesley set the stage for his bizarre doctrine of "Christian perfection," a teaching which he spent the rest of his life backing off from but which he never renounced. The torture that teaching has afflicted on earnest Christians in the Wesleyan and Holiness traditions down through the years has been enormous. Even more tragic is the degree to which it has taken the eyes of believers off of Jesus and His substitutionary life and death on their behalf and fixed it instead on their own ethical performance, raising doubts in people's minds about their own salvation when they predictably failed to live up to the promises of moral transformation their churches made to them without any biblical justification whatsoever.
Dr. Rod Rosenbladt (see the video below) has written and spoken quite eloquently about the tendency in "Evangelical" churches of all stripes, once people have been converted to faith in Christ through the preaching of the Gospel, to never say another word about the forgiveness of sins, but instead to feed people a constant diet of exhortation to holy living. The effect is the same. People begin to doubt that they will be saved because they can see such little progress in their moral lives. Their eyes are taken off of Jesus and directed- permanently and repeatedly, Sunday after Sunday- to themselves and their own performance.
Roman Catholics are fond of claiming- erroneously- that the Bible never says that we are saved by faith alone. While it's true that he never actually uses the word "alone," Paul asserts over and over that we are saved "apart from works" (Romans 8:28), "not by works" (Ephesians 2:9), "not according to our works" (2 Timothy 1:9), "not on the basis of deeds we have done in righteousness" (Titus 3:4-5)-- in other words, by faith alone. I have limited myself here to the passages in which Paul specifically excludes works from any role in justification, and does so emphatically enough to make the proposition that it is not faith alone which justifies wholly untenable. There are, of course, many other verses in which Paul ascribes justification to faith rather than works, but without specifically excluding works from any role in justification as he does in these passages.
But that doesn't stop all too many "Protestants" from buying into the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification. In fact, it would probably be accurate to say that if questioned about how they understand the ordo salutus- asked to explain in their own words how we are saved- most "Evangelicals" would give an answer closer to the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification than to Paul's and Luther's! Certainly, as Dr. Rosenbladt points out in the video below, when Lutherans of all flavors were questioned in a massive survey called "A Study of Generations" back in the 'Sixties even Lutherans gave essentially Roman Catholic answers to the question of how we are saved!
A Wesleyan or Arminian understanding of human nature as not totally corrupted by sin and still retaining enough power after the Fall to accept Christ on its own initiative- in other words, to paraphrase Ephesians 2:1, sort of a little under the weather in trespasses and sins- inevitably means that salvation is not entirely by grace, but also to some degree by one's own volition. Even faith becomes a "decision-" an act of one's own will whereby one becomes a believer. As a practical matter, of course, the emphasis on holiness of living after conversion which characterizes "Evangelical" preaching, creating further doubt as to whether faith even conceived of as one's own decision is really adequate to guarantee admission to heaven, makes it very difficult for a person subsisting on such a homiletical diet to trust in Christ alone for his or her salvation, apart from one's own performance.
And it gets worse. John Piper, an allegedly Calvinist Baptist preacher, has fallen off the Reformation wagon completely, making a false and wholly unbiblical distinction between "justification" and "salvation" and effectively buying totally into the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification/salvation by faith and works. Pastor Piper's possible fall from grace (and Galatians 5:4 would seem to put it precisely in those terms) only underscores the degree to which contemporary American "evangelicalism" finds itself at odds not only with Paul but specifically with the Reformation it will be celebrating in a few weeks.
These are serious matters. If justification is indeed "the article by which the Church stands or falls," and if Galatians 5:4 is telling the truth, they could hardly be more serious. In fact, that there could be substantial doubt about whether the Gospel itself is believed by a large segment of American Christians constitutes nothing less than an emergency of the first magnitude.
Dr. Rosenbladt's presentation below is intended to address the plight of the countless Christians who have been driven out of the Church by the making of promises the Bible doesn't make concerning the transformation of Christian's personal lives in this world and the habit of teaching them to focus, whether by preaching discipleship without preaching forgiveness and grace just as strongly and just as often to people who are already believers or by rank heresy such as Wesley's or Piper's, on themselves and on their own performance rather than on Jesus. It's a problem which urgently demands our attention and merits it especially as we draw closer to the anniversary of a movement concerning whose central issue more "Evangelicals" and other alleged "Protestants" than realize it actually side with Rome rather than with Wittenberg.
The fact is that justification by grace alone, through faith alone- the central tenet of the Reformation, and the teaching Luther regarded as "the doctrine whereby the Church stands or falls-" is by no means held, as a practical matter, by all "Protestants." John Wesley chose to unbiblically define "sin" as an "intentional" violation of God's law despite the fact that the Bible abides no such qualification, even providing in the Mosaic Law for sacrifices to atone for unintentional sins! By lowering the bar on the law, Wesley set the stage for his bizarre doctrine of "Christian perfection," a teaching which he spent the rest of his life backing off from but which he never renounced. The torture that teaching has afflicted on earnest Christians in the Wesleyan and Holiness traditions down through the years has been enormous. Even more tragic is the degree to which it has taken the eyes of believers off of Jesus and His substitutionary life and death on their behalf and fixed it instead on their own ethical performance, raising doubts in people's minds about their own salvation when they predictably failed to live up to the promises of moral transformation their churches made to them without any biblical justification whatsoever.
Dr. Rod Rosenbladt (see the video below) has written and spoken quite eloquently about the tendency in "Evangelical" churches of all stripes, once people have been converted to faith in Christ through the preaching of the Gospel, to never say another word about the forgiveness of sins, but instead to feed people a constant diet of exhortation to holy living. The effect is the same. People begin to doubt that they will be saved because they can see such little progress in their moral lives. Their eyes are taken off of Jesus and directed- permanently and repeatedly, Sunday after Sunday- to themselves and their own performance.
Roman Catholics are fond of claiming- erroneously- that the Bible never says that we are saved by faith alone. While it's true that he never actually uses the word "alone," Paul asserts over and over that we are saved "apart from works" (Romans 8:28), "not by works" (Ephesians 2:9), "not according to our works" (2 Timothy 1:9), "not on the basis of deeds we have done in righteousness" (Titus 3:4-5)-- in other words, by faith alone. I have limited myself here to the passages in which Paul specifically excludes works from any role in justification, and does so emphatically enough to make the proposition that it is not faith alone which justifies wholly untenable. There are, of course, many other verses in which Paul ascribes justification to faith rather than works, but without specifically excluding works from any role in justification as he does in these passages.
But that doesn't stop all too many "Protestants" from buying into the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification. In fact, it would probably be accurate to say that if questioned about how they understand the ordo salutus- asked to explain in their own words how we are saved- most "Evangelicals" would give an answer closer to the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification than to Paul's and Luther's! Certainly, as Dr. Rosenbladt points out in the video below, when Lutherans of all flavors were questioned in a massive survey called "A Study of Generations" back in the 'Sixties even Lutherans gave essentially Roman Catholic answers to the question of how we are saved!
A Wesleyan or Arminian understanding of human nature as not totally corrupted by sin and still retaining enough power after the Fall to accept Christ on its own initiative- in other words, to paraphrase Ephesians 2:1, sort of a little under the weather in trespasses and sins- inevitably means that salvation is not entirely by grace, but also to some degree by one's own volition. Even faith becomes a "decision-" an act of one's own will whereby one becomes a believer. As a practical matter, of course, the emphasis on holiness of living after conversion which characterizes "Evangelical" preaching, creating further doubt as to whether faith even conceived of as one's own decision is really adequate to guarantee admission to heaven, makes it very difficult for a person subsisting on such a homiletical diet to trust in Christ alone for his or her salvation, apart from one's own performance.
And it gets worse. John Piper, an allegedly Calvinist Baptist preacher, has fallen off the Reformation wagon completely, making a false and wholly unbiblical distinction between "justification" and "salvation" and effectively buying totally into the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification/salvation by faith and works. Pastor Piper's possible fall from grace (and Galatians 5:4 would seem to put it precisely in those terms) only underscores the degree to which contemporary American "evangelicalism" finds itself at odds not only with Paul but specifically with the Reformation it will be celebrating in a few weeks.
These are serious matters. If justification is indeed "the article by which the Church stands or falls," and if Galatians 5:4 is telling the truth, they could hardly be more serious. In fact, that there could be substantial doubt about whether the Gospel itself is believed by a large segment of American Christians constitutes nothing less than an emergency of the first magnitude.
Dr. Rosenbladt's presentation below is intended to address the plight of the countless Christians who have been driven out of the Church by the making of promises the Bible doesn't make concerning the transformation of Christian's personal lives in this world and the habit of teaching them to focus, whether by preaching discipleship without preaching forgiveness and grace just as strongly and just as often to people who are already believers or by rank heresy such as Wesley's or Piper's, on themselves and on their own performance rather than on Jesus. It's a problem which urgently demands our attention and merits it especially as we draw closer to the anniversary of a movement concerning whose central issue more "Evangelicals" and other alleged "Protestants" than realize it actually side with Rome rather than with Wittenberg.
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