An Anabaptist View of Salvation — David Bercot — Ep. 078

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here in Southern Pennsylvania with David Burso. You've wrote numerous books about Anabaptism, early Christianity, and we're going to dive into an interesting topic today, particularly the topic of salvation, the Anabaptist view of that. It's a little bit unique, maybe some would say, and so to kind of lay a foundation, explain the—obviously you're going to have to abbreviate some of this—but the dominant views in both the Protestant and the Catholic theologies. And that's always a little tricky when we talk about the Catholic view because there's a difference often between what the official teaching of the Catholic Church is and what the typical Catholic in the street might believe.

So I just want to make that distinction as we go. Now, and let me maybe contrast it with another view. I would say a very common view out there that obviously we would disagree with and evangelicals disagree with, and it's not biblical, is this idea if you're just a good person, then you get to heaven. And I'd say most unchurched people, if they believe in God, that's what they think on salvation. If I leave a good life, you know, that's fine. And there's a lot of nominal Catholics who might think that as well. Now, the Catholic Church itself would teach, you know, we're saved by faith and grace, but how we live also plays a role in that.

It would actually be somewhat similar to the Anabaptist, except now in the Middle Ages and until Vatican II, you also had to be part of the Catholic Church. There was no salvation outside the Catholic Church. Now, that's changed since Vatican II on that aspect. And it's also tied in more to the sacraments that, let's say, have a mortal sin that you have not confessed to a priest, and you die with a mortal sin that, and you have not been, you know, given penance by the Church or forgiveness, then you're lost. It would have been the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. It may not be now, I'm not sure, but that's generally been the teaching in that respect.

Okay, then along comes Luther, and he's not so much reacting to the official teaching, but the man in the street in the Middle Ages, it was all about almost earning your salvation. You know, if I can be wicked, but if I give money to this, this and that, then I can, you know, get my way into heaven. And whether that was the official teaching or not, it's how it worked out. There was not sufficient teaching filtering down on grace that and God's mercy and forgiveness. So Martin Luther was just overwhelmed with, you know, his own sin and, you know, how can I ever be good enough to get into heaven and that sort of thing.

Now, I don't know what kind of sin he had in his life. I kind of suspect it was more than what the average Christian is dealing with, the fact it was such an issue with him and the extreme that he went to. So he overreacted, which this is the story of almost every doctrine in Christian history. Someone goes, drifts, either they drift, the Church drifts this way in the wrong direction, or somebody comes along and teaches it, and people overreact to the exact opposite extreme. And so he went from, instead of getting it back to, okay, let's have a balanced perspective, it was, it's all of faith, you know, nothing you do except believe. So you're, and then he gave works kind of a bad name, works meaning not works of the law that, you know, Paul talks about that are worthless as far as salvation, or even works of the Catholic Church like going on pilgrimages, those are worthless too.

But he was saying just to being Christ, you know, he called that works, you know, to live by Jesus's teachings, you know, that has no role in salvation, you know, and if you think it does, then you're not saved. And so he went to the opposite extreme of salvation by faith alone, grace alone, this teaching that none of us can be righteous, it's Christ's righteousness is transferred on the books of heavens to us. We have no actual righteousness of our own, you know. So that's the Protestant teaching that it would still be the dominant view today among evangelicals. Unfortunately, a lot of this is filtered into the Anabaptist Churches as well. So yeah, we probably need to talk at some point about, yeah, what the actual Anabaptist teaching is.

Well, yeah, that's what I was curious of, because so we have two options. It's like a pendulum. It was swung one way, and then you had a reaction swinging the other way. The Anabaptists, I've heard it called the third way. Yes. So they obviously historically chose something quite different from those two options. So obviously say what that is, but then also compare it with the early Christian, like following Christ, what the early Church would have believed as well. And you're exactly right. There's a third way. Most people don't even know there's a third way. You know, they just know these two extremes of, you know, trying to be good or, yeah, be a good person or earn your way or, yeah, it's all just belief and nothing else.

Well, yeah, there is a third way. And I'm going to start with the early Christians because that was my journey. You know, before I was an Anabaptist, I discovered, okay, what is the faith from reading the early Christian writings, going back into the scriptures from there. And what I liked about their view, the evangelical view, and I, you know, was a member of an evangelical church for 10 years. You know, they had their list of proof texts, but I couldn't help but notice, wait a minute, there's all these other verses. How come we don't pay any attention to these verses, you know? And then other people take those other verses and they ignore some of the teachings on grace that are essential part of it.

And so when I was reading the early church, it's like, oh, they take it all. You know, there's no verses they're trying to hide. You know, we're saved by faith. I mean, we cannot earn our salvation that without grace we couldn't possibly be saved. On the other hand, works is not a bad word. God wants us, requires us to live an obedient life, not a perfect life, but an obedient life. He gave us commandments, and there are commandments. A lot of evangelicals were saying, oh, there's no commandments in the new covenant. Well, Jesus certainly gave a lot of commandments. The early Christians took them very seriously and that, yes, you've got to live a godly life.

You have to live obediently to Jesus Christ, but God doesn't expect perfection. He knows our makeup. And so he's a merciful God, but he does expect confession and repentance. Yes, he will forgive over and over and over if we're repentant, but to think that we don't have to ask forgiveness of our sins. And I was told that as an evangelical, look, once you're saved, not only are all of your past sins forgiven, but every sin you're ever going to commit in the future is already pre-forgiven, you know? And that is false doctrine. It's terrible doctrine. So you have no sense of repentance. No, you didn't. Yeah, I mean, now many evangelicals do. I mean, there are plenty of godly, you know, evangelicals.

I'm not, you know, trying to paint a picture here of everybody. I remember the first time I was with some evangelicals and we were praying, and I prayed the Lord's Prayer. It's just part of my prayer, you know, or at least a modified version of it. And part of that is, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, you know? And when I was finished praying, they said, David, you don't have to ask forgiveness of your sins. That was already done. You know, I mean, that's already been done. You don't have to ask that every time you pray.

Oh, okay. You know, and I kind of bought that for a while until I read the early church. It's like, no, I mean, they prayed the Lord's Prayer three times a day. You know, I mean, they really took that seriously. And Jesus said, pray this way, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. So there has to be that, and not just saying the prayer doesn't, or praying it doesn't do anything. It has to be inside. One of the verses they quoted that, you know, of course we all had read, but that I saw, this is really central to the idea of salvation is John 15, which gets ignored too much. And that's where Jesus talks about, I am the vine, you are the branches.

And he talks about bearing fruit. That parable almost has it all because he says, without me, you can do nothing. Okay, that's kind of the evangelical part of things that, yeah, without Christ's power, without the Holy Spirit in us, without all he's done for us, yeah, I mean, we can't save ourselves. We can't even walk in Christ's way. I mean, he has to be living in us. But then, unless you produce fruit, it isn't automatic or he wouldn't be giving this dire warning. If you don't produce fruit, he said, you know, you know, you will be lopped off and thrown in the fire. I mean, so that is a dire warning that, you know, it wasn't all done when you got saved.

I don't think you really appreciate grace until you do have a commitment to live by Christ's commandments because you see how much you fail and you realize, wow, without grace, I'm lost. We have to produce fruit. So the way I describe it is a love-face relationship with Jesus Christ. There's not a formula for salvation. It's not, oh, you say this prayer or you, you know, this many works or something like that. It's a relationship, just like a relationship with husband and wife or children. I mean, you can't define some line. It has to be a faith, a relationship of faith and a relationship of love. And Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

So if we're not keeping his commandments, we're kidding ourselves if we think we love Christ because we don't. We don't appreciate what he did on the cross. If we're not even willing then to walk by the teachings he gave us, and we can say, oh, thank you, Jesus, for all you did. It's so wonderful. But hey, don't put any burdens on me. I don't want to do anything. Yeah, that's not loving Jesus Christ. That is almost exactly what the Anabaptists taught. I mean, I don't know that there is any difference between the early church and the original Anabaptist teaching. And the only reason I say original is, like I say, we have led a lot of the Protestant Luther's teaching come into our churches and affect us that way.

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So kind of two questions rolled into one. First of all, what you just said, what difference does that make? And then also, how have other church groups responded to these things that you're saying? The difference it makes is how it affects we live. It's not a matter of Jesus on Judgment Day is going to hand us a quiz and, okay, now you explain salvation and if you put it down wrong, then I'm not going to let you into heaven. You know, he's already told us on Judgment Day, he's going to look at our life. You know, Matthew 25, you know, if you have the idea that Christ doesn't care whether you obey, that it's all of grace, that there's no point even, you know, trying to live a godly life because you can never be good enough anyway, that tends to affect how you live.

And that's what I've seen with the Protestant churches. Like they used to take a strong stance on divorce. You know, no divorce in their churches. I mean, that was not originally a particular distinctive of the Anabaptists that we had a more strict, you know, teaching on divorce than, say, the Presbyterians or those churches. You know, we were all the same. The difference is because as Anabaptists, we recognize how essential it is to obey Jesus Christ. He gives us specific teachings on divorce. So we obey them even when there's a sacrifice involved. Whereas the Protestant churches have all caved in on that because, hey, you know, you're saved by grace. It's not going to affect your salvation.

You know, in fact, the church I was attending as it was a Bible church. I remember even reading what Dallas Theological Seminary said and our church was tied into them. That's our pastors all came from Dallas Theological Seminary. And they had a strict teaching on divorce. You know, this is sin. It is not God's will, you know, to get divorced. But if you're truly saved, it will not affect your salvation. Well, that's all people wanted to hear. Oh, it's not going to affect my salvation. So like in the church I was, I'd say when we started going there, I was in my late 20s, I would say easily 75% of the couples that were my age are now divorced or divorced and remarried.

That's the problem when you have the wrong view of salvation. It's not that God's going to give you a quiz. It does affect how you live. I mean, there's a lot of things that, yeah, a lot of us would rather just ignore that teaching because it's hard. But we know these aren't suggestions. These aren't commandments. I mean, we can stumble and ask for, you know, forgiveness, but we can't just ignore them. And I'm sorry, Jesus, I'm not going to obey that. You know, that's not an option for a Christian. Yeah. And we kind of see this with the whole love your enemies thing too in the Protestant church. It's just like, well, you know, that's for another time or for whatever.

But we, you know, we're going to be okay with the military. Yeah. And I'm like, well, how does shooting your enemy loving them? Like, well, you know, and it makes for a very awkward situation. Like, do you take your Bible literally or not? Now, your second question was, how have people responded to this teaching? Or maybe a better way, how popular is this? It is not popular, as you can imagine. It wasn't popular when the Anabaptists taught it. Now, they got a lot of people did convert to the Anabaptists because there are a lot of people. I mean, they saw the ungodliness in the evangelical churches. They saw they were not obeying Jesus's teaching. So, yeah, people, there were a lot of people becoming Anabaptists.

But in general, it was still a very small, and it will always be a narrow way compared to, hey, you can live however you want as long as you say this prayer, you acknowledge I'm a sinner and all of that. Well, of course, that is more appealing, particularly when it comes with this guarantee. And you are guaranteed heaven and you can never lose your salvation. Well, people want to believe that and they've got proof texts, you know, to go along with it. Yeah, the narrow way, Jesus said, it's going to be a hard way. There's going to be a lot of sacrifice and it's not going to be appealing. And so, yes, people are always going to go for a doctrine, a way of life that's easier to follow.

So they don't like it that I bring up what the early church believed or try to reawaken the Anabaptists, you know, and say, hey, we need to contend for the faith that was once for all handed to the saints. Our forefathers got it correct on salvation and we have slipped. We have let our Protestant doctrine infiltrate our churches and we need to get back to the truth. That's not always a popular message. You know, I'm not saying these things because it's like, wow, this is going to really make me popular or all of that. I'm deeply concerned because once people embrace Luther's doctrine of salvation by faith alone or grace alone or whatever, they are not going to go for the heavy teachings.

Dressing different, you know, modest dress, whatever's going to be hard, that's going to make you different from the world and people around you. If none of this matters for our salvation, then that kind of says, well, it must not matter that much to Christ either. You know, I've noticed in our churches, once they embrace Protestant theology on salvation, if nothing else, just on salvation in a generation or two, you know, they're basically Protestant. They're not playing any longer. They've lost the teaching on divorce. They've lost so many of these things. No, it doesn't make them happy for me to, you know, kind of be a spoil the party and say, hey, this is wrong teaching.

You know, we need to get back. On the other hand, there are a lot of Anabaptists, you know, who have been very supportive and I've appreciated that. And a lot of people who aren't Anabaptists who will listen to one of my messages on that and they say, yes, that's what I've been seeing in the Bible too. And I thought, you know, was I the only one seeing this? You know, and so I've gotten lots of feedback from people saying, thank you, you know, for putting this out there because that's what it seemed to me the Bible was saying. And to know this is actually the historic faith, yeah, has meant a lot and has helped people then to cement that down and to, yeah, make the sacrifices that Christ expects us to make to be one of his followers.

So one thing that I've heard people ask is if salvation actually causes a true lifestyle change, a deep change in your life versus, you know, God just changing some record in heaven or something. How does that work with possible imperfections? Like when we do fail, when we slip up? And I get asked that a lot.

Some of the ways it's sometimes worded to me is I'm saved and then now I've committed this sin. So does that mean now I'm not saved and I've got to get saved over again? It's like playing ping pong. It's like, what side are you on? Am I in and out? And it doesn't work that way. And that's why I like using that term an obedient love-face relationship, you know. The relationship doesn't end up, let's say, with your spouse. Okay. You do something inconsiderate, you know, unselfish, unbiblical, whatever. And it might cause, you know, a strain there in your relationship. And if you don't ever repent of it, yeah, that strain is going to remain there.

Yeah, you're still married. I mean, the relationship is still there. Christ doesn't just cast us off every time we fail. That's why he told us to pray, you know, forgive us our debt. So he knows that we are going to sin. We are going to fail on a daily basis. And that's why we ask forgiveness on a daily basis, but also why we forgive others, you know, their sins. Because he said, if you don't forgive others, I'm not going to forgive yours. But he did say at some point, if you're not bearing fruit, you're cut off the vine. So it's not a matter of you can commit a heinous sin. I mean, you can be committing adultery.

You can commit a, you know, a terrible crime, even murder somebody. And that doesn't mean necessarily you've been cut off the vine at that point. He gives you time to repent. It's not that any sin is so bad, except the sin against the Holy Spirit, that you can't be forgiven and that suddenly you're not saved anymore. You're still in that relationship until at such point, you know, he cuts you off the vine. And that's something that happens in eternity. I mean, in heaven, I mean, we don't necessarily see it. You maybe get the picture when you kind of see that someone has drifted away from Christ. But I myself would never make that decision. Okay.

Yeah. They've been cut off the vine. I'm going to assume. Yeah. I'm going to assume they're still on it and they can be, you know, revived back. And he said, you know, my father, he's the vine dresser. He's going to be working. He doesn't want to lose us, you know, if we persist in disobedience and we don't repent. Yeah. At some point we're cut off. And if not in this life on judgment day, yeah, we are not going to enter the kingdom of heaven, you know, the heavenly kingdom. We're in the kingdom now, but we're not going to enter the heavenly part of it. But yeah, we don't have to despair. Oh no, I've lost my salvation.

It doesn't work that way. Yeah. Like you're saying with this relationship with Jesus, an obedient, loving relationship with Jesus, if you're still trying to live out of that, you know, you won't do it perfectly all the time, but your intent, you're at the core of who you are, you still want to be obedient to Christ. It's almost like someone's not just going to lose their salvation unless they're just like, you know what, I'm not even interested in following Christ anymore.

Is that maybe a way of saying it? Yeah. And people, that happens and sometimes they can't be brought back. You know, Hebrews does talk about that. And that's why we need to be very careful, you know, about trampling on the blood of Christ. You know, just the forgiveness is there, but let's not take it for granted. We want to have that healthy fear. On the other hand, understand there is grace. You know, we do serve a loving master, a very forgiving and understanding Lord. People think, yeah, that if you don't believe in eternal, you know, unconditional eternal security, then you're always in insecurity. No, I would say only if you don't have a real love-face relationship with Christ.

That's the only time you're going to be having that insecurity. And if you're feeling that insecurity, then yeah, you need to either you haven't ever been saved or you need to understand how that works, you know, that relationship. So would you have anything else you would like to share? Yeah. If you've embraced Luther's theology, I mean, please understand, hey, you have drifted not only from the Anabaptist faith. I mean, we don't worship our Anabaptist forefathers or feel like we can't question anything they have. You've drifted from the historic faith, the faith handed down to the saints and what the Bible clearly teaches. Right now I'm working on a commentary on Matthew, not my commentary, but what the early Christians believed, what the Anabaptists believed.

And Jesus, it's overwhelming how much he talks about how we live over and over and over. You can't read Matthew without and think, oh, Jesus doesn't care whether you obey his commandments or it's not necessary. In fact, Luther, the only way he could promote his theology was to say Romans is the chief book of the Bible, he said. And if you never read, I'm, this is something he actually said. I have it right here on my bookshelf. Even if you never read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you would have all you need for salvation without reading those books. And he said, you know, Romans and Ephesians and Galatians are far, far above Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Well, wait a minute. Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain most of Jesus's teachings. You're saying we can be a Christian without even knowing what Jesus taught? And so that's the problem. Yeah. Go back and read Jesus if you have a problem with this. And the same way, if you're listening to this, you're not an Anabaptist and you're thinking, well, this David is pushing, you know, work salvation, whatever. Go and read Jesus and see what he said about salvation. Go to Matthew, read the whole book, read all of Luke, read all of John, not just little proof texts, you know, you know, John 3:16, but read everything, including John 14, John 15, where Jesus really goes into this about obedience.

And you'll see, hey, this is the teaching of Jesus Christ. And if I truly love Jesus, if I truly do appreciate what he did for me on the cross, then why would I not obey him? If I really love him, if I really appreciate that he did this for me and he suffered for me, and yet I'm not willing to be inconvenienced for him, then yeah, I must not really love him. Thank you so much for the time you spent in studying with us. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you, Reagan. I've enjoyed the discussion. Yeah. This is very good. Thank you.