It’s really something when we’ve got people claiming to be saved but evidence says otherwise. There’s always this clamor that fruit inspectors are “Pharisees”. Please, Matthew 7:14-20 says that by their fruits you will know them. Discipleship and discipline are done for new converts and backsliders but not apostates. One of the characteristics of being saved is a degree of holiness. Sure, nobody becomes 100% holy at the moment. We can’t expect instant sanctification in the faith. Sure, Christians aren’t perfect but there’s always going to be some degree of holiness. It’s easy to say one is OSAS but can the evidence back it up? Even worse, when evidence is asked, such people start their usual Ad Hominems and red herrings in the form of name callings and unsubstantiated accusations.
With John Piper’s Desiring God devotional today, I also remembered diligently reading John F. MacArthur’s controversial book The Gospel According to Jesus. Controversial because it challenged the easy-believist mindset which creeps in our churches today. How many times do we hear that one can be saved and still live like the devil? What happened to God’s holiness and repentance of sin? Yes, salvation is a free gift but it’s a life-changing free gift. I decided to investigate the whole book myself and found MacArthur wasn’t teaching works salvation. I started to investigate more of Paul David Washer’s preaching and he wasn’t teaching works salvation. Instead, even while I wasn’t a Calvinist (which I’m one now after the pandemic), me and non-Calvinists can both agree that any true faith, while it may falter, will endure to the end.
I looked into several Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) church abuses again. At first, I thought the charges against the late Jack F. Hyles were just phony. However, the fruit of the ministry such as the perverted son-in-law Jack Schaap or David Hyles as a serial adulterer are there. These churches have a flimsy stance on holiness and sanctification. What a lot of Christians don’t know today (if ever) is that Jack Hyles was also a dictator pastor. The whole First Baptist Church in Hammond placed pastors on the pedestal. I even ran into a Hyles apologist who called me a “Jesuit” (HUH?) after I addressed that if a person is OSAS–the fruits of being OSAS involve holiness.
If you’re saved, always saved, then the path to holiness is inevitable. The context of Hebrews 12 also involves God’s fatherly discipline. God never disciplines the Devil’s children. If God spanks wayward Christians then can they live like the rest of the world? If a parent lovingly spanks their wayward children then can such children live as wantonly as spoiled brats? In John 15:1-8, we read also of the vine and the branches. Fruitless branchess are thrown away. Those fruitless branches were never saved. Meanwhile, those branches that display even the slightest fruit are taken, pruned, and taken care off so it will become fruitful.
Quoting from MacArthur’s book The Gospel According to Jesus (p. 211), again this isn’t salvation by works but salvation will always result in some degree of works:
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “Do we realize that if we truly understand the doctrine of justification by faith we have already grasped the essence and the nerve of the New Testament teaching about holiness and sanctification? Have we realized that to be justified by faith guarantees our sanctification and that therefore we must never think of sanctification as a separate and subsequent experience?” (emphasis added)
Scripture challenges those who define salvation as a purely judicial act with no practical consequences. Hebrews 12:14 speaks of “the sanctification without which no man will see the Lord.” The King James Version renders Hebrews 12:14, “Follow… holiness, without which no man can see the Lord.”
The verse does not make holiness a prerequisite for justification, but it recognizes it as a sure result. In other words, sanctification is a characteristic of all who are redeemed, not a condition for their receiving salvation. Those whose faith is authentic are certain to become holy, and those who lack true faith can never be holy. They have no hope of seeing God, except to stand before Him in judgment.
One timeless truth should never be ignored. It’s true salvation isn’t by works. I do works because I’m saved. I’m submitting to the Lordship of Christ because I’m saved. How can a person claim to be saved but never submit at all to the Lordship of Christ? As a good saying goes, “Only fake converts believe they’ve got a license to sin. True converts will seek to live differently as a result of salvation.”
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