Hi, I'm David Bercot. And for the next two nights, we're going to be talking about how to harmonize Paul and James. To this end, I'd like to read to you two completely true infallible statements from Scripture. The first one says this," Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar?" Do you see that faith was working together with his works? And by works, faith was made perfect.
And the Scripture was fulfilled, which says," Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith only. That's James 2:21 through 24. But now let me read you this other passage from Paul. If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. But to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. That's from Romans 4 verses 2 through 5. Well, certainly at first glance, those two passages seem to be in direct contradiction with each other. In fact, both writers quote the same passage from Genesis, yet they seem to be trying to prove exactly opposite things from that.
Now I realize that most evangelical Protestant Christians don't struggle with this seeming contradiction. And that's because all of their commentaries, study Bible notes, and other literature simply explain James away. By the time they get through with James, they've basically canceled out everything that he says. But I assume that you, who are listening to me tonight, are different. You're not comfortable just ignoring the clear, plain statements that James wrote under inspiration.
You're wanting to know the real truth about the matter. And the truth is that this is no small issue. I'm not exaggerating in saying that much of the essence of Christianity is intrinsically involved in how we harmonize Paul and James. Because it boils down to the issue of the gospel of Jesus versus the gospel of man. And sadly, most of us are so intimidated by the huge mass of commentary, study Bibles, Sunday school materials, and other books out there that we're afraid of standing up for the gospel of Jesus.
Because if we dare to believe what Jesus taught and to speak out about it, we know that evangelical Protestants will call us heretics. They'll say that obviously we aren't saved. They'll say that we're preaching a work salvation, that we're trusting in our own righteousness instead of the righteousness of Christ. In fact, even if you attend a conservative Anabaptist Church, you might well face those same accusations if you try to preach the gospel of Jesus.
Well, if those things intimidate you now, I hope by the end of tomorrow night, they no longer will. Because those of us who dare to believe the gospel that Jesus preached don't need to apologize to anyone or hide in corners off by ourselves. We have the firm witness of the New Testament. I don't mean just a handful of verses here and there, but the New Testament taken as a whole.
And we have the undeniable record of history that the gospel that was handed down to the Church by the apostles was the gospel of Jesus Christ, not the gospel that Martin Luther preached or the gospel of evangelical Protestantism. I'm sure it would come as a surprise to most professing Bible-believing Christians today that throughout most of the history of Christianity, practically nobody thought there was any contradiction between Paul and James.
Practically speaking, the issue didn't really exist until Martin Luther came on the scene. He created the contradiction by taking New Testament Christianity, which the Catholic Church had severely twisted one way, and then he gave it a whole' nother twist the other way. The result was Christendom was like a giant pretzel. And kingdom groups, like the Anabaptists, stood at the crossroads between the two halves of this giant pretzel.
There were several corrupt methodologies that Luther, Calvin, and the other Protestant Reformation leaders followed. Now, in this respect, they were merely carrying on the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, which had followed these same methodologies for centuries. In fact, these are all basically the methodologies that the Gnostics had invented back in the 1st and 2nd century. Okay, what were these corrupt methodologies I'm talking about? Well, there are four major ones.
Number one, and perhaps the most important, is relegating the teachings of Jesus to the back closet, that Jesus didn't really teach the theology of Christianity, that we have to go to Paul to get that, okay? So, shoving Jesus in the back closet, that's the first one. The second one, which is nearly as bad, is proof texting.
Now, what we mean by proof texting is to establish a theological position by picking and choosing verses from the New Testament, or from the Old, that fit this particular theology that you want to promote, and ignoring a bunch of other verses that don't fit that. Now, we're all so used to this. We think that's a normal way of life. I mean, that's what I knew growing up as a boy. The Bible was, to me, a collection of proof texts. And it's been that way most of my life.
It wasn't until I read the early Christian writings that I realized that you've got to read the whole thing. You've got to take the whole New Testament. And the model you come up with to explain any particular position needs to be able to fit all the verses, rather than fitting some of them and the rest of them being shoved under the rug. Number three, the first one was relegating Jesus to the back closet. The second was proof texting.
Number three, turning the writers of the New Testament into theologians, which they were not, and changing the ordinary, everyday words that they used into specialized theological terms. Again, we're so used to hearing things presented that way, we think that that is normal. Okay, and the last one of these corrupt methodologies, number four, are dishonest Bible translations and reference works.
And what we have to be on guard is to recognize that even though the Bible is the inspired Word of God, translations are made by imperfect humans who have their preconceptions and their positions to maintain. And so our Greek lexicons and Bible commentaries, Bible dictionaries, all of the reference works that we use. Now it's because of these corrupt methodologies that Christians today imagine that there is an apparent contradiction between James and Paul.
So I want to talk to you for a few minutes about the need to start with Jesus. Christianity is the only religion, or even philosophy I know of, where so many of the professing adherents of this religion or philosophy generally ignore the teachings of the founder and go instead to the teachings of one of the disciples of the founder. I say that because the simple truth is, most people who profess to be Bible-believing Christians today go to Paul to explain what Jesus supposedly taught about salvation.
And again, to my knowledge, nobody ever thought of doing such a thing before Martin Luther, except that is for the Gnostics, and to some degree, Augustine. This would be like someone going to a Jewish rabbi, let's say before the time of Jesus, and saying," I'm convinced that you Jews worship the one true God, and I would like to become a Jew. Who is your foremost teacher?" And the rabbis would say," Well, Moses is." And so this person says," Well, I would like to know more about what this Moses taught.
Can you give me something to read?" And then imagine the rabbis saying," Yes, we've got a scroll here," and handing him the scroll of Joshua, or Judges, or the scroll of Ezra? Well, of course they wouldn't do that. They would hand him one of the scrolls of Moses, Deuteronomy, or Exodus, or one of the other books of the Pentateuch. Or it'd be like a student going to a philosophy professor and saying," I'd like to know what Plato taught.
What book should I read to get to know the thoughts and teachings of Plato?" And the professor, instead of directing you to one of the writings of Plato, like the Republic, he suggests you begin by reading Aristotle, who was a student of Plato. Well, this is essentially what Luther did, and practically all Protestants have followed in Luther's footsteps. Although normally, they are totally unaware of why they're taking this approach.
It's just the approach that was presented to them when they first became a Christian. When Luther translated the Bible into German, he stuck a preface in front of each of the New Testament books and an overall preface before the whole New Testament, so that anyone who would be reading the New Testament would get flavored by his vision. They would be reading it through his eyeglasses, so to speak, before they actually got to the text of Scripture. And this is what he wrote in his preface to the book of Romans.
He said," This epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest gospel, and is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word by heart, but he should occupy himself with it every day as the daily bread of the soul." Therefore, it appears that St. Paul wanted to comprise, briefly, in this one epistle, the whole Christian and evangelical doctrine. Well, he goes on to say a whole lot more.
In fact, his preface to the book of Romans is about half the length of the epistle itself. Let me read to you some excerpts from his preface to the New Testament. Luther writes," From all this, you can now judge all the books and decide among them which are the best." See, Luther didn't put them all on the same level. He said some of the books of the New Testament are more important than others. He writes John's gospel and St. Paul's epistles, especially that to the Romans.
And Saint Peter's first epistle are the true kernel and marrow of all the books. They ought rightly to be the first books, and it would be advisable for every Christian to read them first and most. John's gospel is the one tender true chief gospel far, far to be preferred to the other three and placed high above them. So too, the epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter far surpass the other three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In a word, this is still Luther, St. John's Gospel and his first epistle, St.
Paul's epistles, especially Romans Galatians and Ephesians, and St. Peter's first epistle, are the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and good for you to know, even though you were never to see or hear any other book or doctrine. Therefore, St. James Epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to them, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it. Now why did Martin Luther shove Matthew, Mark, and Luke to the back burner while praising the gospel of John?
Well, for one thing, neither the Sermon on the Mount or the Sermon on the Plain are recorded in John. And of course, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount directly contradicts Luther's gospel. Furthermore, Matthew uses the Greek verb to believe, pisteuo, only ten times. Mark likewise uses it only ten times, and Luke only uses the verb nine times. What about John? Oh, he uses it 99 times. So see Luther's gospel of easy believerism.
Just believe that Jesus died for your sins, and that you can do nothing good, and you will be saved because you believe that. That's why he liked those books. And you may say, well, yeah, but we don't follow that kind of thing. Oh, yes you do. You stop and think about what books are given the most prominence by Protestant evangelical printing houses. Isn't Romans the one? You've heard the expression the Romans road to salvation. You've seen tracts put out by campus, crusade, and that sort of thing.
Invariably, they take you to Romans, or they'll take some verses out of the Gospel of John. Sometimes missionaries, or evangelists, will hand out little booklets that have part of the New Testament. And what part do they usually hand out? It's usually John, and if not that, Romans. There are exceptions. I've known ones who've handed out Luke, but generally it's John or Romans.
We do that because Luther is the one who started that, and we follow in his footsteps, even though most evangelical Protestants have never read a single word of Luther. Actually, what Luther did was a strict violation of Jesus' teaching at Matthew 23:9 and 10, where He said," Do not call anyone on earth your Father. For one is your Father who is in heaven. And do not be called teachers.
For one is your teacher the Christ." Now we usually apply that only to the situation of calling our minister Father John or something like that, which is a correct application. But Jesus means a lot more than that. We shouldn't elevate any human to the status of teacher or theologian that somehow he eclipses Jesus Christ, or that we make Jesus Christ fit Him instead of making Him fit Jesus Christ. But that's exactly what Luther did.
He set Paul up as the great theologian and his letter to the Romans as the heart of the gospel. According to Luther, Paul was the primary teacher we go to in order to learn the gospel of Christianity instead of going to Jesus, and that's still the general practice today. In fact, Luther was so audacious as to say that we can know everything we need to know about Christ and the gospel without ever having heard or read the Sermon on the Mount, or the rest of what Jesus said that's not recorded in John.
Now, the early Christians took a bold stand against that kind of nonsense when the Gnostics tried to do something similar. And the original Anabaptist took an equally bold stand against Luther when he tried that nonsense. Today I'm afraid, though, that most Anabaptists don't. Probably without realizing it, they're essentially saying that the original Anabaptists actually were heretics.
Today's Anabaptists are basically saying that Luther and Zwingli and Calvin were the ones who correctly understood and taught the gospel of salvation. That indeed Paul is the great Christian teacher, not Jesus. They don't use those words, of course, but that's the result of their methodologies. But I'm not just speaking to Anabaptists.
Many of you come from evangelical or non-denominational backgrounds, and very likely, a lot of you have had so much of Luther's teachings crammed down your throats that you've found it difficult to stand up for the gospel that Jesus preached. Now, the rest of this evening, we probably won't be mentioning Paul or James again, even though the title of this topic is Harmonizing Paul and James. That's because I want to demonstrate to you how you should examine the scriptures on any topic.
So what we're going to be doing is walking together tonight and tomorrow night, looking at the totality of what the New Testament teaches on salvation, beginning with what our Master Jesus Christ taught. Now time's not going to permit us to read every verse of the New Testament that pertains in some way to salvation, or even most of them. But that's really what you need to do. So that's why we're including a third CD with this set. The third CD is not something you can listen to, so don't put it in your CD player.
Instead, insert it into your computer. It should start playing on its own. If it doesn't, just go to Windows Explorer, find the disk on the directory there, and double-click on the file that's entitled" Paul hyphen James." And this third disk, that file when you open it, contains all, or virtually all of the scriptures in the New Testament pertaining to salvation.
And I really encourage you to take the time to read all of those New Testament passages, and if at all possible, read them at one sitting, that is, all in one evening, or all in one Saturday afternoon, so you can get a feel for the totality of what the New Testament teaches on the subject of salvation, instead of this piecemeal verse here verse there sort of feeling.
Now when we get to the end tomorrow night, I think you'll agree with me that there's no conflict between Paul and James, and that they both taught the same gospel as Jesus Christ. So let's begin by taking a look at the gospel of Jesus. In the four gospels, there are several long passages in which Jesus explains the things we need to know about salvation, that we need to know about being a Christian, alongside a hundred or more shorter passages.
And all of these together help us to fully grasp his doctrine of salvation. Now, one of the longest passages in which he discusses the essence of salvation, the essence of Christianity, is John chapters 14 through 17. So even Martin Luther would approve of us using these chapters. These chapters are particularly important because this was Jesus' last time to talk at length with his apostles before he would be arrested and crucified.
I'm not going to read the whole section there, John 14 through 17, although I would certainly encourage you to do so. But let me read to you the middle section of that, John chapter 15. We'll read the first 19 verses, John 15:1 through 9. He says," I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.
Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit. For without me, you can do nothing. If anyone does NOT abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
By this, my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, so you will be my disciples. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one in this than to lay down one's life for his friends.
You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends. For all things that I heard from my father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give to you. These things I command you, that you love one another.
If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Let's meditate a moment on that passage. Here are some of the key things I noted. Number one, that Jesus describes an ongoing life relationship, our life being tied into His life. Our spiritual existence and our power come from Him through this relationship.
We can do nothing apart from Christ. Something else I gather from this passage, and I'm sure you have too, is that we must bear godly fruit, or we're going to be pruned off of the vine. He made that crystal clear. And then He said," We abide in Christ's love only if we obey His commandments." But He's not our taskmaster. He's our friend and a loving gentle master.
Finally, a third point that I noted was," If we abide in Christ, we will be separate from the world." Now, I've heard literally hundreds of presentations of the gospel message of salvation from various preachers and evangelists. And you know, I've never heard even one of them read this passage of Jesus as part of their message on salvation. I've never heard one of them use this illustration that Jesus used about being branches on a vine.
Well, how might we sum up what Jesus said in that passage that we've just read? To me, the best way to sum it up is that Jesus tells us that in order to be saved, we must maintain an obedient, love, faith relationship with Him, an obedient, love, faith relationship. I remember that concept from the four letters, OLFR, obedient, love, faith relationship, and think about only left from right. To be saved, just know only left from right, obedient, love, faith, relationship.
Now let's look at some of the more common alternate systems that humans have put forward. Actually, all of the doctrines and systems of salvation that have ever existed in the Christian faith can be categorized into two groups. You can divide them all off into two sections. And what are those two groups? Well, you may be thinking to yourself," Oh, work salvation and salvation by faith." Well, that's because we've all been trained to think that way. But the answer that I would give is this. There are two kinds.
The first one would be a system that requires an obedient love faith relationship with Christ. And the second kind is everything else. Anything else anybody puts forward as a way to be saved that does not require an obedient love-faith relationship with Jesus Christ, they can be all lumped together because they're all just as useless. Let's look at what some of these have been. Paul in his day had to fight against Christo Judaism.
That was basically a system of believing that Jesus is the Messiah and Savior, and that He's even the Son of God. But also, you have to keep the law of Moses in order to be saved. Well, no, that's not Christianity. It's this obedient love relationship with Christ. It's not going back to the Mosaic Law. The system the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, and all of them have put forward is what I would call sacramentalism.
Basically, receive the sacraments through the Church, attend mass regularly, don't die an unconfessed mortal sin, and be a loyal member of the Roman Catholic Church, or the Eastern Orthodox Church, and you're saved. A third system you might call meritism. That is, live dutifully by all of the commandments in the New Testament, and you'll be saved. You don't have to have a love relationship with Christ. That would be essentially creating a second Mosaic law.
But now, instead of it being the laws of Moses, it's the laws of Jesus. Just keep these laws, and through that merit, you'll be saved. No, that doesn't work either. I'll use another one. I'm making up a lot of words here," goodism." Just attend church and be a good person, and you'll be saved. That's what nearly all liberals believe, is probably what most Catholics believe as well. Old Orderism. This would be something pertinent to Mennonite's Amish.
And by that, the system of believe the basic doctrines of that old ordered church you belong to, remain in it all of your life, and conform at least outwardly to its standards, many of which are New Testament commandments, and you'll be saved. A love relationship with Christ is not required. The last system, the most common that we all run into, is evangelical Protestantism. Accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and have a born-again experience.
Believe that you are saved by faith or grace alone, and that obedience is not necessary for salvation. If you believe that obedience is essential for salvation, you're teaching unsound doctrine, and you're probably not even saved. Well see, all of those you can lump together, because none of them require an obedient love faith relationship with Jesus Christ.
I realize that evangelicals talk a whole lot about a relationship with Christ, but they imagine that they can have a love relationship with Him without being obedient to Him. Now let me explain something right now, though. And it's to say this, there are thousands and thousands of Christians who belong to various churches who would hold to one of those man-made systems that I've talked about, that their church would teach that.
And yet, that particular individual does have a genuine, obedient love-faith relationship with Christ. I've met many, many evangelicals who have such a relationship. I've met people in the old orders of the Amish and the Mennonites who have that relationship. Reading the works of various Catholics through history, it seems fairly obvious that those particular people had such an obedient love faith relationship. In short, having the right answer isn't what's going to save you.
It's actually having the relationship that saves you. So you can say," Well, this is how we're saved," and it'd be totally wrong, but you really are saved because you're abiding in Jesus Christ. You have this obedient love-faith relationship. That's what counts. Now, of course, we don't want to spread wrong teaching that would then stumble other people and cost them their eternal life.
Well, in objection to this teaching of an obedient, love, faith relationship, someone once asked me," Well, David, if obedience is necessary for salvation, I want you to tell me how much obedience is necessary." Because obviously nobody is 100% obedient. Well, he really thought he had me stumped on that because I couldn't say," Oh, well, it's 75% or it's 65 or something." But I just brushed it off because he was using a fallacious form of argumentation known as the fallacy of the beard. Let me ask you a question.
How many whiskers does it take to make up a beard? One? If I have one whisker on my cheek, would you say I have a beard? No, I don't think so. What about two? No, would three be enough? Four. Well see, we could keep going, and there is no spot where you could say, ah, yeah, 67 doesn't constitute a beard, but once you go to 68, yeah, now you have a beard. No, there is no magic line there. And yet the truth is, some people don't have beards, and some do.
You can't define it, though, down to a specific number of hairs, or to a specific length that the hair has to be on a man's cheek and chin. You see, not everything in life, and not everything in Christianity, in fact, not most things in Christianity, can be reduced to a formula. Now, some things can be reduced to a formula. Like, you know, how do you make water? Well, it's two parts of hydrogen, one part of oxygen, H2O. Or at what temperature does water boil at sea level?
Those things, yes, you can give an exact definition. But there are many things in life. No, there's no exact definition. What constitutes long? What constitutes short? What constitutes cold? What constitutes hot? Can you name a specific degree that it's cold if it's 49 degrees, but it's not cold if it's 50? Or it's hot if it's 90, but it's not hot if it's 89? See, so many things don't lend themselves to drawing a magic line, and yet they are just as real as things that can be defined precisely.
And relationships cannot be ever reduced to a formula. And according to Jesus Christ, what we've just read there, salvation is acquired through a relationship, not through a formula. It's abiding in Jesus Christ in His love. Alright, let's analyze this obedient love-faith relationship a bit that he just described. As we said, Jesus likens the relationship to our being a branch on His vine. Now, when he talks about a vine, he probably had in mind a grapevine, not a watermelon or squash vine or something like that.
Now, just like a branch in a grapevine, or any other vine, really, cannot produce fruit. It cannot even live unless it's attached to the stalk that's coming out of the ground. Likewise, as he said, we can do nothing without his power. That is nothing that's going to be lasting, that's going to be right and eternal. We are dependent upon Him. Our eternal life comes through this relationship with Him. We cannot save ourselves. But secondly, and very importantly, he shows that salvation is not a one-time event.
We are saved by maintaining a continuing love-faith relationship with Jesus. We have to abide with Christ on this vine. And what is required to abide in His love on the vine? He said it's keeping His commandments. So we are totally dependent on Him, and yet we play a vital role in our salvation, because if we do not keep His commandments, then we don't love Him. And if we don't love Him, we don't abide on the Vine. We've broken the relationship.
But as we've mentioned, this isn't a harsh taskmaster slave relationship. It's a joyful love relationship. In fact, he even calls us friends. Something else we should note, he chose us, not vice versa. We didn't attach ourselves to his vine. He put us there. Furthermore, it's a matter of God having first loved us before we loved Him. And a final point. If we are abiding on this vine, He makes it clear that we will be different from the world, and the world will hate us.
That doesn't mean that every single person in the world is going to hate us. He didn't say that. But the world will always be at odds with God's people. What we stand for, it hates. Now, there are several things I think we can deduce from this explanation that Jesus has given us. One of the things is that there are past, present, and future aspects of salvation. Now please don't say I have been saved from the penalty of sin. I am being saved from the power of sin, and I will be saved from the presence of sin.
I know that's what the seminaries teach, but the New Testament says no such thing. And Jesus says absolutely nothing about that. In fact, that totally contradicts what he did say. But the past aspect that he reveals is that somehow, at some point in time, we became attached to this vine. Maybe a better way to say it is a new shoot was birthed out of that vine. That was us. We began this salvation relationship with Christ.
So there was a past aspect of our salvation, a time that we can say we were saved and are now living on this vine. But there's a present aspect as well. Right now, if we're walking in the Spirit, we are abiding in Jesus on this vine. This is a present aspect of salvation. It's a breathing, living, ongoing thing. It's just like a branch on a tree that has a constant inflow of life-giving water and nutrients drawn in from the roots of the tree.
If you cut a branch off of a tree or a vine, it will normally die within a matter of days, or sometimes hours. Well, what's the future aspect? Well, if we don't produce fruit throughout our lives, Jesus says we're going to be cut off of the vine and thrown in the fire. So just because we're on the vine right now, doesn't mean we're still going to be on the vine next year or the year after that. So to say that the past aspect is that we've been saved from the penalty of sin, that contradicts Jesus. He said no.
If you don't bear fruit, you're going to be cut off and thrown in the fire. So the penalty of sin is still there. But it's a good illustration of what I call Emperor's New Clothes Theology. I think we all know the children's story about the emperor's new clothes. The shrewd conmen managed to convince the emperor that they had this special, wonderful cloth that was invisible to anybody who didn't deserve to hold the post that he was holding.
Well, as the story goes, everyone pretends that they see this cloth because they don't want to be shown to be incompetent and not worthy of their post. Now in theology, it usually works in reverse. That is, we all pretend we can't see the emperor's clothes, even when he plainly has them on. In other words, we develop selective blindness. Pretending the Bible doesn't say the things that any sixth grade child could see that it plainly does say, just like in the story of the emperor's new clothes.
It was finally a little boy who said," Well, he's not wearing any clothes." That's why so often the truth of Christianity is hidden from the wise and intellectual, as Jesus said, revealed to Babes. Because it's right there. It takes somebody more learned to come up with all of these reasons of how to explain away what it just clearly says.
A good example is what we mentioned here about Jesus' words that if we don't bear fruit, the Father will cut us off of the vine, and then we'll be cast into the fire and burned up. Now it doesn't take a lot of intellect to be able to see that, therefore, there is no such thing as unconditional eternal security. That once you're on this vine, you're on it to stay.
Because he just said," No, it's not that way," and he spent quite a bit of time giving warning of what we must do to abide on it, and that is to keep His commandments. And so, that's what all the seminaries teach, right? And all of the learned commentaries and all that. No, it's the Emperor's New Clothes. It's like, did you see that passage in John? No, I didn't see it. Did you? No, uh-uh. I didn't see it. No, there's nothing in there about getting cut off a vine. No, I didn't see it.
And that's what you have back and forth, everyone playing this game, as if somehow that's going to change the laws of eternity. And here Jesus takes the time to tell us how it's all going to work, and we develop this blindness where we refuse to see what he's told us. Okay, we've talked about the first problem that I enumerated earlier, and that was of pushing Jesus' teachings to the back closet, like what people have done to this passage in John. You hardly ever hear it preached on.
Now let me say a few more words about that second corrupt methodology, and that's proof texting. You know, I can produce a proof text for every single one of those formulas that I read to you earlier, these various methods man has come up with to get saved outside of an obedient love relationship with Christ. Like I say, there's at least one verse for every one of those, and probably I could come up with quite a few verses. And there's proof text for formulas we didn't even talk about, like universal salvation.
I can think of three or four passages in Scripture that would seem to support that. Well, what's the alternative to proof texting? It's you take everything the New Testament says on a subject, and you give full weight to every verse. You don't just take it all and then say," Well, now what Paul says, that's above everything else, and everything else has to be made to fit that." No, you give equal weight to everything. You don't shove anything in the closet.
Now you start with Jesus Christ, and you read His disciples in the light of what He has taught. If there's any seeming contradiction, you never make Jesus' statement subservient to something that Paul or Peter would say, it would be the other way around. But normally, that issue isn't there because they taught what their master had previously taught. And so if you're going to come up with a summary or model of any theological teaching such as salvation, it needs to fit everything the New Testament teaches.
That is, it'll fit it without having to shove verse after verse into the corner. Well sure, there may be occasionally a difficult verse that doesn't seem to fit in with the whole tenor of the rest of the New Testament, but it should be an unusual situation.
Now part of this total New Testament approach is realizing that every time Jesus or one of His disciples said something that concerns salvation, it doesn't mean that they were intending that their statement summarized everything that could be said on the subject. Not even the extended passage that we read there from John. It doesn't cover every single detail. I'll give you an illustration. Years ago in Texas, our family met a family who had moved to Tyler, Texas from Pennsylvania.
And they were from Amish background. And I remember one day, the wife was telling my wife about shoofly pie, which I'd never heard of before. And she told my wife," You make it using king syrup." That's a brand of syrup, K-I-N-G. Well, I walked away from the discussion, thinking in my mind, that's what the whole pie was made of, except for the crust. Just this king syrup. And so I was picturing something that would be extremely gooey, sickening, sweet.
I mean, it is a very sweet pie, but other things go into it other than king syrup. She wasn't meaning that was the only ingredient. And it's that way with so many passages of the Bible. What is said is true, but it doesn't mean that that's everything that can be said on the subject, and that therefore you exclude things that add to that. The fact that that recipe for shoofly pie includes king syrup doesn't exclude the fact that molasses also goes into it, and flour, and things like that.
Now, my proposition tonight is that the passage we just read there at John 15, which teaches that we are saved through an obedient, love, faith relationship with Jesus Christ, that it's a model or summary of what the New Testament teaches on salvation.
Now, if I'm right, if this is truly the kernel of the gospel as far as salvation, that is, we should find that nearly every passage we can come across in the New Testament supports this view, that it fits into this model of an obedient love faith relationship with Christ. There shouldn't be a whole list of problem verses that we're going to have to explain away. So let's begin by going through the rest of Jesus' teachings to see if this really is the kernel of the gospel.
Does Jesus say other things that would make it clear that, no, this isn't really a summation of salvation. When we're through with Jesus, and only after we're through at looking at Jesus, then we'll look at the writing of His disciples. Now to begin with, if we're going to take this John 15 passage as our model, and this is the first thing, let's say that we've read in Scripture, there's some unanswered questions that we'll be looking for answers in other passages we read.
Number one is, how do we get on this vine in the first place? How do we become a branch? Jesus doesn't explain it there. What is the fruit that we need to bear? He said several times," If we don't bear fruit, that will be cut off the vine." What fruit is it? He said," If we love Him, we will keep His commandments." What are the commandments? The only one discussed in that passage is to love one another. Is that the only commandment that He gave?
Well, these are things that we would expect the rest of the New Testament to clarify. If we start at the beginning of the New Testament at the first chapter of Matthew and go forward, the first significant amount of teaching we get from Jesus is the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with Matthew 5. Now, again, we're not going to have time to be able to read all of that, although I would really encourage you to do so.
But here are just a few excerpts from it I'd like you to think about that relate to what Jesus said there about growing as a branch on His vine. Matthew 6:14," For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Now, I had stated earlier that this idea that when we are born again, we have been saved from the penalty of sin.
I didn't mean to imply that we are not saved from the penalty of our past sins, because our past sins are forgiven in the new birth. But forgiveness after that is on a daily basis. But even I think the forgiveness of our past sins is a conditional one because of what Jesus said here." If you don't forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours." And the illustration that He gave the parable of the servant who had had his huge debt forgiven by the king.
But when he went out and wouldn't forgive his fellow servant, then the king reinstated the debt that had been forgiven, so it was a conditional forgiveness. All right, let's go forward. Matthew 7:1," Judge not that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged." Do you see the flexible, living relationship that's here, our forgiveness, the way we're going to be judged is so dependent upon what we do. It's not an inflexible thing that was done. It's all finished.
Christ's death is all finished. But as far now as having this relationship, it's an ongoing thing. And it's not an easy thing. Matthew 7:13," Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it." A whole lot of people have found the gospel of easy believism, which alone pretty much disqualifies it as the narrow way that few will find.
Again, he said Matthew 7:21," Not everyone who says to me,' Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day,' Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them,' I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.' Again, back to obedience.
If we practice lawlessness, it doesn't matter how much we profess the degree of love we have for Jesus. He's going to say," I never knew you." Then he concludes the Sermon on the Mount by saying," Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine, that's what he's just taught there, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it did not fall for it was founded on the rock.
But whoever hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell. And great was its fall. Now please note that the obedience that is required is obedience to his teachings on the Sermon on the Mount. He makes it very clear there in those verses. And of course, it would be obedience to other commandments that he gave in addition to those.
But, you know, a lot of professing Christians today participate in this great, big, huge cop-out. And what is that? It's this. I get subjective feelings in my head. Ah, this is Jesus giving me commandments, that He wants me to do something. So I imagine that I'm being obedient to Him because I follow these subjective impressions in my mind when perhaps I'm living in total disobedience to His genuine commandments. Now, don't misunderstand me. I do believe that God gives us guidance.
We wouldn't pray daily for His guidance and for the Holy Spirit to show us the way and help us make right decisions and all of those sorts of things. But he said that he and his father would dwell with those who love Him, who abide with Him, and He made it clear," If You do My commandments, My Father will abide with You, and I will abide with You." So if we're not keeping the commandments that He gave there in the Scriptures, we shouldn't imagine that He's giving us new commandments.
As He said," He who is faithful in what is least is also faithful in what is great." He's not going to give us special personalized commandments when we can't even keep the ones that apply to everybody. I know of several instances of people who've said God has told them to do something that is directly, directly opposed to what He has said in Scripture. So when Jesus talks about being obedient to His commandments, if we love Him, He's talking about the ones given in Scripture. Let's be obedient to those.
And then if we truly are following the commandments that apply to all Christians, yes, we can believe that He'll give us further directions and personalized instruction, but they'll never cancel out the laws of eternity that He's given us in the New Testament. All right, let's look at a few more. In Matthew 10:32, he says," Whoever confesses me before man, him I will also confess before my Father who is in heaven.
But whoever denies me before man, him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven." You see the contingent relationship that this is? It's an ongoing relationship. We may at one time confess Jesus Christ, but later on in our life deny Him, or we may deny Him by the way we live. He says," He who does not take His cross and follow after Me is not worthy of me. He who finds His life will lose it, and He who loses His life for my sake will find it." This is how great a commitment that He requires of us.
This obedient love-faith relationship is something that has to take precedence over everything else and every other person in our life. At the same time in Matthew 11:29 and 30, Jesus said," Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." See, this is the love part of all of this. Jesus commands everything of us to even lay down our life for Him. And yet his yoke is not heavy.
When you read in the Scriptures, in the book of Acts, and you read Paul's letters and the letters of the other apostles and disciples, it's obvious they were joyful. The yoke was easy, even though it meant enduring tremendous hardship. And every one of the apostles either suffered or laid down His life for Jesus Christ, and yet they all did it willingly and joyfully. I'm going to pick just a few more here for special comment. Luke 13:6-9 says he also spoke this parable.
A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard," Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down. Why does it use up the ground?" But he answered and said to him," Sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around it and fertilize it.
And if it bears fruit, well, but if not, after that you can cut it down." This relates again so directly to that illustration he gave of us being branches on the vine. It's nice to know that he gives us some time. If we don't bear fruit, he doesn't just, we're off the vine. He gives us time. Here he mentions three years, he would give up to four years. And I don't know that that is intended as a literal time measurement or not, but it's obvious it's not indefinite. At some point, we get cut off.
But he doesn't do it hastily. And he will try to feed us. He will try to do things to help us to produce that fruit unless our carnal nature just blocks out His Spirit. Luke 24:46 through 47," Then He said to them,' Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
See, it was Jesus' plan from the beginning that His gospel would be preached to all nations. It's not something unique to Paul when he went to the Gentiles. Jesus had already talked about this to His apostles, that they were to go out and preach to all the nations. There are just two more passages I'd like to read.
John 3:3-5 says," Jesus answered and said to him," talking to Nicodemus," Most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus said to him," How can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered," Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." So, okay, now we learn there's this new birth that has to take place before we're going to be on a branch on that vine. I want to read John 3:14 through 21, a passage that will be very familiar to all of you, at least part of it will.
He said," And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned.
But He who does not believe is condemned already, because He has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Well, that's usually about as far as most preachers ever go. They stop there or maybe they stop just with John 3:16. Look, just believe in Jesus. No, He didn't come to condemn anyone, just believe, and you won't even be judged or condemned. But let's hear the rest of it out.
Verse 19, Jesus says," And this is the condemnation that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. Ah, it does get back again to what we do, what we love, how we live.
If we continue to practice evil, we're only kidding ourselves if we think that we believe in Jesus Christ. Because either we come to the light because we want to practice righteous deeds, or we continue practicing evil because we hate the light. And we can profess our love for Jesus from now to the end of our life, and it doesn't mean a thing. Before leaving John 3:16 in that passage in which it's contained, let's talk a moment about this word belief.
There are two closely related Greek words that are often translated in English as" believe." One is" pisteuo," which means to believe, to trust, to place confidence in. The other is peitho, which is sometimes translated to believe, but other times it's translated to obey. So in Greek, the concept of believing is closely related to the concept of obeying. It typically means more than just giving mental assent to something. Now, interestingly, did you know that the root of our English word to believe is to love?
Now, my Webster's dictionary gives two definitions for the word, the verb that is, believe. One is to suppose or think. The other is to have confidence in a statement or promise of another. Let me just quickly illustrate these two kinds of believing. The first one, that merely means to suppose or think, I can say I believe the moon produces no light of its own. It only reflects the light of the sun. Now this is what I was taught in school. I've never done any experiments to prove it, but I believe it.
I suppose that's true. It requires no action on my part. There's no loss or reward to be figured. Now, the second kind of believing to have confidence in a statement or promise of another does require some sort of action. There is a loss or reward that's usually involved. I'll give you an illustration. Suppose I live here in Pennsylvania and work as a lower-level manager for Johnson Industries, a large, privately owned company.
Walter Johnson is the owner of the company, and he lives and works in Colorado, where the company has its headquarters. As a result, I've never met Mr. Johnson. In fact, I've never even seen a picture of him. But one day out of the blue, a man walks to my office and says," Hi, I'm Walter Johnson." Well, at this point, the first kind of believing is sufficient. OK, I believe you're Walter Johnson doesn't cost me anything one way or the other.
But then he says," Even though you don't know it, I've been following your progress in the company for several years. And David, I'm aware of the quality of work you're turning out. In fact, I've decided to make you an officer of the company in two years and move you out to Colorado. When that happens, we're going to quadruple your salary, and we're going to cut your work week back to 30 hours a week. Well of course at this point my head is spinning.
I'm hoping this really is Walter Johnson and not just some prankster. However, he then adds," Listen, I'm going to be going overseas to Asia for the next two years, and I'm going to be out of touch.
During that time, I want you to scrap the new warehouse project that's been started." And I reply," You mean you don't want me to continue to tear down our present warehouses in order to build bigger ones?" He says," That's right."" Okay." I say," Well, are you going to tell my supervisor?" Because he's going to be pretty upset if I do this on my own initiative. And to my surprise, Walter Johnson says," No, I'm not going to speak to your supervisor.
If he asks you why you're scrapping the project, just tell him that I told you to do that."" Yeah, I replied, but what if he doesn't believe me? He's going to fire me." Well, if he fires you, he'll have to answer to me when I return in two years. Meanwhile, I'm sure you and your family won't starve. You might end up cooking hamburgers at McDonald's, but you'll have enough food on the table and clothes to wear. And once I return, that'll all be of little consequence, won't it?
You'll be reinstated with full back pay. On the other hand, if you don't scrap the project like I've ordered you to, when I come back, I am going to fire you, and that will be a permanent firing. Okay, now you see, I'm in that second definition of belief, to have confidence in a statement or promise of another. It's easy to believe that the moon reflects the light of the sun. There's no consequence to me one way or the other.
But to believe that this really is Walter Johnson, and that he's going to do these things that he said, it's a very different kind of believing. When the Bible speaks of being saved by believing in Jesus Christ, it's talking about the second definition of believing to have confidence in the statements or promise of another. If we believe in Jesus, then we believe Him when He tells us that we, like a branch, will be cut off of His vine if we don't love Him.
And we believe Him when He says," If you love me, you will keep my commandments." We also believe that, despite the teachings of His that seem very difficult at first, that His yoke is actually light. We believe that His commandments are truly in our best interests. After all, nearly a third of the world believes in Jesus Christ in the first sense of the English word, that is to suppose to give mental assent to. They believe He's the Son of God, that He died for their sins.
But if that's all that's required for salvation, then the way of Christianity is hardly a narrow way that few will find. We hardly have to strive to enter into the gate as Jesus said we should. And what He said in the Sermon on the Mount is not true about building on the rock by doing what He commanded in that sermon.
So either we make Jesus a liar, or we recognize that the kind of believing He talks about is the kind that is closely related to obeying, to have confidence in what someone tells you to do, and therefore you act upon it. Before leaving Jesus and His teachings, let's talk for a few moments about Matthew 25. For most of my adult life, I've heard the Protestant evangelism question. If you were standing right now at the gates of heaven and I were Jesus, and I asked you," Why should I let you in?" What would you say?
And of course the person will probably say," Well, because I've been a good person or I go to church regularly." And then the answer is," No." Jesus says that all the good you've done is nothing but filthy rags. And you go on to explain that if you're going to get in heaven, you have to be trusting in Him alone, that you have faith in His death and resurrection, His shed blood has cleansed you from sin, and you're not trusting at all in any actions or righteousness of your own.
Ah, then he'll say," Come right in, welcome to heaven." The irony is that Jesus Himself, when He was here on the earth, talked about that very situation of facing whether we're going to inherit eternal life in heaven or eternal punishment in the lake of fire. And what did he say it would be based on? Did he say," Oh, I'm going to ask you this question. Why should I let you in heaven?" No. He said that at the end, when he returns, he's going to gather all of the people before him.
This is in the what's sometimes called the last judgment. And how is he going to separate them by how they answer that question, why should I let you in heaven? No, he's going to tell them the decision is already made, and he's going to tell them why they're going to inherit eternal life or be sent to eternal punishment. And he says," I was hungry and you fed me. I was sick or in prison and you visited me. I was naked. Didn't have sufficient clothing and you clothed me.
And even though we didn't do it personally to him, to the extent we did it to the least of these, his brothers, he said," You've done it to me." So why do Protestants evangelize using this other fake scenario that Jesus is going to ask you these theological questions, and you better answer them right. And you better not at all have anything that you've done yourself to bring up, just simply that you believed in him.
When he himself, the judge, the one who's going to do this, has already told us in advance what he's going to be looking for. And it's not answers to theological questions. Now, if the Protestant evangelical view is correct, I would have to ask," What kind of Savior is this that we have?
What kind of Lord is this that we're serving?" If the real answer he wants is that," Oh, we don't trust at all in any of our own righteousness, just believing that he died for our sins." If that's really what he's wanting, why would he tell us this other thing that he wants to see if we fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the ones in prison, or who were sick? What kind of twisted person would this be to tell us one thing when really it's the opposite sort of thing that he's actually going to be looking for?
And please don't try to skirt around Matthew 25 by saying that Jesus was talking there about governments or countries, because it says He's going to gather the nations before him, at least in some translations. The word there that's translated nations in the King James is the Greek word ethnos, which basically means people. It can mean a country or nation in the modern sense, but it just as often means people or sometimes in particular the Gentile people.
But after all, governments or countries don't visit somebody in prison or somebody who's sick. And how could Jesus say to governments, as he says at the end of that passage, and these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Do governments, do countries, receive eternal punishment or eternal life as countries? It's just another way to try to get around the obvious teaching of Jesus Christ. Now let me ask you this.
Have any of the passages that we've read tonight contradicted the teaching that we are saved through an obedient love faith relationship with Christ. If you're honest, I think you're going to have to acknowledge they all harmonize with it. And please don't think that I've just put together a group of proof texts. I challenge you read the entire book of Matthew, read the entire book of Luke, read all of the gospel of John, and see for yourself which model Jesus' teachings fit.
His model of being branches on a vine, a living relationship that we can lose, or Luther's doctrine of salvation by faith alone? Do his teachings fit the popular doctrine of once saved, always saved or unconditional eternal security? Well, I can assure you what you're going to find is that his teachings fit his own model that he's given us, not the model Martin Luther has given us.