Getting back to his blog post titled "Confess and Believe (Rom 10:9)," my concern is that Mounce seems to promote the false teaching of "Lordship Salvation" (as in the John MacArthur brand of "Lordship Salvation"). Mounce seems to entertain the possibility that in order for a person to really be saved, he or she must continue to follow Christ for the rest of their lives and if they don't, then apparently Mounce thinks that "they never were true Christians or lost their salvation".
After I read Mounce's article I submitted the following comment in response to his post. Here's what I wrote:
Hello Dr. Mounce,
Very interesting blog post! It seems to me that it touches on a number of different theological issues including the long-standing debate between Free Grace theology and what is called by some "Lordship Salvation". I'm surprised the post has not sparked more discussion in the comments. There is so much that I would like to discuss, but let me just pick out one statement to respond to if I may. You said, "I wonder if Paul would agree that a person could come to a point of faith, and later deny his faith, and still be saved. I can find no such teaching in Paul." Those who adhere to Free Grace theology like myself would not see it quite that way, since we do find such teaching in Paul's writings. For example, when he says, "If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself." (2 Timothy 2:13, NASB.) My understanding of the previous verse (v. 12) is that Paul is talking about rewards and the loss of rewards, i.e. if we deny Christ (like the apostle Peter did, for example), Christ will "deny us" some rewards that we otherwise could have had.
6 comments:
Great post! I was waiting for quite a long time for you to make another post! You should post more often!
could you do a blog on KJV onlyism next? It's an unfortunately pervasive false teaching. And while it's not keeping anyone from being saved, it's quite annoying at times, and proponents often fearmonger with conpiricy theories. thanks!
Thanks for the encouragement!
You know, I've been thinking about KJV-onlyism for a little while now. I recently found out that Dr. Ralph "Yankee" Arnold is KJV-only. He's Free Grace you know, so I agree with him on a lot of things, but not on KJV-only. I've been thinking about maybe doing a post on that issue and giving some examples of how the KJV mistranslates the Greek. For example, the KJV calls the Holy Spirit an "it" in Romans 8:16. The KJV gives the grammatical gender instead of the natural gender. It's a mistake a beginner might make. Today, even a first year Greek student would know not to do that. I guess we've come a long way in our understanding of Greek grammar since 1611.
Indeed we have
It has been 400 years of advancement in the field of Biblical translation after all.
When will your next post be? i would like you to post more often.
Thanks,
I probably won't wait 4 months like I did before this post...I'm thinking a week or two maybe, before I post again. I appreciate your thoughts.
I've been linking people to your site, Expreacherman and GraceLife(Dr. Bing's site) when witnessing to people but....i'm worried Bing may preach the Crossless Gospel, at least it seems like it when I read his stuff.
I'm not sure what statements by Dr. Bing you're referring to, but as far as I know, he doesn't preach the Crossless Gospel. The search feature on his website searches several Free Grace websites including the Grace Evangelical Society website, but as far as I know, Dr. Bing doesn't agree with the GES on that particular issue.
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