Here’s the comment I submitted in response to a YouTube video titled “Free Grace Theology EXPOSED” (by Matt Mason, Lion of Fire Ministries). I wrote:
“You said that after salvation the Holy Spirit comes to live inside the believer, and that transformation leads to ‘a transformed life, to whatever degree.’ That statement of yours (that admission) disproves your entire premise that Free Grace theology is false, because think about it: ‘a transformed life’ to 1 degree is statistically zero!1 (I’m speaking metaphorically to make a point.) That kind of change can’t distinguish a saved man from an unbeliever, except in the eyes of God alone. You brought up the example of Hitler. But based on the statement of yours that I quoted, he could be 99% evil and at the same time still be a saved man. That’s according to your own logic! I talk about this in more detail (not about Hitler specifically, but in general) in my blog post article titled ‘Charles Ryrie on Repentance and Faith, Pt. 1’. Thanks!”
Note:
1 In other words, there’s basically no behavior change.
Matt Mason's admission that salvation leads to "a transformed life, to whatever degree" (!) highlights the incongruity of the Lordship argument. John MacArthur has made statements much to the same effect. Commenting on this, Charles Ryrie writes the following in his book So Great Salvation (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1989):
ReplyDelete"The lordship response, in spite of its stringent demands on the nature of what the view calls saving faith, must either say (1) that a disobedient Christian loses his salvation, or (2) that some leeway exists for disobedience within the Christian life. Since many lordship people hold to the security of the believer, they opt for the latter.
So we read a statement like this: 'A moment of failure does not invalidate a disciple’s credentials' [John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1988, p. 199]. My immediate reaction to such a statement is to want to ask if two moments would? Or a week of defection, or a month, or a year? or Two? How serious a failure and for how long before we must conclude that such a person was in fact not saved? Lordship teaching recognizes that 'no one will obey perfectly' [Ibid, p. 174], but the crucial question is simply how imperfectly can one obey and yet be sure that he 'believed' in the lordship/mastery salvation sense? If 'salvation requires total transformation' [Ibid, p. 183] and I do not meet that requirement, then am I not saved? Or if my transformation is less than total at any stage of my Christian life, was I not saved in the first place?" (Ryrie, So Great Salvation, 1st Edition, pp. 47-48, brackets added.)