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Today, we're discussing lordship salvation.
Earlier, I was reviewing an article sent in by one of our listeners, Mark, in Louisiana.
The article is about lordship salvation, and they were discussing theological disputes regarding key questions within evangelical Christianity.
The article mentioned that lordship salvation is the opposite of what is sometimes called easy believism.
Now, that's where we'll begin today.
The term easy believism.
That's what I believe.
I believe in easy believism.
Some shy away from this term. I do not.
That's exactly what I believe, and that's exactly what it is.
Salvation is easy.
The Christian walk, now that's another story.
That's not so easy, but being saved is.
Because the Christian walk has to do with me.
Kind of difficult.
It's hard at times.
But being saved, my salvation has nothing to do with me.
It's my belief on someone who did all the work.
It was hard on him.
But according to the book of Romans, it's a free gift to me.
It's easy believism.
Ephesians 1:13 makes it clear.
You first hear the gospel, then you believe the gospel.
And we're told that it's at that moment we're sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise unto the day of redemption.
Until Christ returns to get what He purchased.
That's me. That's you, if you're saved.
Now that's easy.
And we owe this fact, the fact that it's easy, to God.
He made it that way.
God made it easy.
Man makes it hard.
Religious pride has permeated so many that instead of letting Christ, letting Him have all the credit for doing all the work, they choose to stick their nose in it and claim some of the credit for themselves.
Their problem is they don't make a separation between salvation and Christian living.
Salvation, Christian living.
They couldn't be any more opposite.
Salvation is what God does for you.
Christian living is what you do for Him.
Salvation is easy.
It's easy believism because the work has been done.
It requires you to simply rest your faith in Christ and His finished work.
But living the Christian life, not so easy.
That's a different story altogether.
And the confusion comes from those who don't separate the two.
This wrong teaching is what's led to lordship salvation.
And make no mistake, if you've always believed in lordship salvation and you've never easy believed on Christ, you've never trusted in Him alone, you're not saved.
There's simply no other way to put it.
You're either trusting in Christ alone, that's salvation, or you're trusting in self, and that's not salvation.
That's depart from me, I never knew you.
Actually, a better name for lordship salvation is self-salvation, because that's what it is.
But when you think about it, if these lordshippers actually lived up to the name lordship, they would get self out of the way and be easy believers.
That would be lordship salvation.
Let the Lord guide the ship, because if I'm in control, it'll end up like the Titanic.
Back to the article, quote, As defined by its own advocates, lordship salvation could more properly be called commitment salvation, surrender salvation, or submission salvation.
Since in actuality, the debate is not over the lordship of Christ, but the response of a person to the gospel and the conditions which must be met for salvation. End quote.
Listen, there is only one, only one condition to be met for salvation, don't be fooled.
The one condition is your belief in the gospel.
Easy belief, easy believism.
It's just this simple.
You either believe in easy believism, or you believe in difficult believism.
And if you're in the difficult camp, you don't believe solely on Christ alone.
Your narcissism will not allow you to rest your faith in what he accomplished on the cross all by himself.
Oh, you talk about the cross, but you just give it lip service.
You're all talk.
If you actually knew and believed what happened at the cross, you'd be an easy believer too.
You've let religion bamboozle you into adding your own self-effort, your own performance to the salvation equation.
That's narcissistic pride.
You belong in the Romans 10:3 audience who thought they were really something.
Look at me, look at me.
Read it sometimes. Romans chapter 10 verse 3.
Let me find it, let me find it real quick here.
Romans chapter 10, Paul speaking.
Well, let's start at verse 2.
For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
Verse 3, For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
Hey, that's the lordship salvationist right back here in Romans chapter 10.
Is this you? Do you have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge?
Maybe you're the one that goes on Facebook always talking about God.
They claim it's all about him, but have never submitted to his righteousness.
It's all about their own righteousness, their own good behavior, their own good deeds and what they do
and how that's going to save them.
You're struggling along, toeing the line day by day in your vain attempt to establish your own righteousness.
You're not saved, just lost in your religion.
You can't submit to easy believism.
Self won't allow it.
You can't get out of your own way.
You see, easy believism is not a derogatory term to a saved individual.
We know better.
We're happy to be called that.
I'd rather be labeled that any day of the week than to be called a lordship legalist, one who trusts in self, those who rely upon their own self effort.
They're living a lie is what they're doing.
They know their true self.
They know how wretched they really are.
They may fool a few, but not everyone.
Some see right through that mask.
And they're definitely not fooling God.
Listen, God is well pleased when someone decides to give up on self, stop struggling, turn it over to Him, and become an easy believer.
Salvation is easy believism, and it has been for almost 20 centuries now.
It's only man and his perverted religious system that has come along and poisoned the good news,
took the spotlight off Christ and His crosswork and His resurrection, and repositioned it to self.
That dog won't hunt.
Hey, that dog won't even fetch.
Christ already met the physical conditions for you and I, and salvation comes by belief.
Faith.
Faith alone in Christ alone.
I can't add anything to it.
You have to come to the end of your self-righteous rope to see this.
Easy believism is the gospel that saves.
You and your performance means nothing to God when it comes to your salvation.
Now good works should follow salvation, but good works don't determine salvation.
The gospel is what saves.
So what's the gospel?
1 Corinthians 15, we preach this good news all the time.
Verse 1, Paul says, I declare unto you the gospel.
That's what we're looking for.
The gospel by which ye are saved.
Oh, here it comes.
Verse 3, here's the gospel that saves, How that Christ died for our sins and that He was buried and arose again the third day.
It's my belief, my faith, my leaning into that good news, that's my salvation.
My salvation is found in Christ and His accomplishments, not my own.
That's the gospel.
That's the gospel that saves.
Now it's up to you.
Where's your faith?
If it's been in anything other than Christ and His work, if your faith is in what you're doing, thank God you're still alive and able to hear a clear presentation of how to be saved today.
Thank God you're alive.
There's still hope.
You can change that right now.
Faith starts with done.
D-O-N-E.
Some want us to believe that we're forgiven of all sins unless we sin.
That's illogical lunacy.
His blood took away my sin.
Oh, I mean, unless I sin?
Baloney.
Jesus didn't say, I forgive you of your sins until you commit one.
It's funny how the lordship legalists have a legal pad to track everyone else's sin but their own.
I watch a television series called Body Cam, and I was thinking, how about we put a body cam on some of these lordshippers?
And let's see how well they do.
Let's see if they pass inspection.
Salvation has to come before works, not the other way around.
You working on stopping your sin won't save you.
It's a good thing to do after you're saved, but it won't save you.
You can turn from it, run from it, get the victory over it, but it won't save you.
Lordshippers have it backwards.
Hey, a duck naturally quacks.
It's natural for a duck to quack.
But what comes first?
The duck or the quack?
Does a duck have to quack before becoming a duck?
Or does he quack after becoming a duck?
You see, it's not the quack that makes the duck.
It's the duck that makes the quack.
And it's not the work that makes a Christian.
It's the Christian that makes the work.
Lordshippers got it backwards.
Cart before horse.
And cart before horse goes nowhere.
It's a struggling mess.
And that's what some of professing Christians' lives look like.
A struggling mess.
Trying to work to be saved instead of working because they are saved.
Do you consider yourself a Christian?
I do.
Oh yes, I am.
Uh, yes.
Yeah.
Yes, sir, yeah.
Absolutely.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
I was raised in Christianity.
Do you believe that you're going to heaven?
Oh, I don't know.
That's not up to me.
I do my best.
Do you believe that you're going to heaven?
Um, I can't say if I am or I'm not.
I'd like to think so.
Well, I'm hoping for that, yes.
I don't know.
Hopefully.
How good would you have to be in order to get into heaven?
Um, yeah, I don't know.
I believe that there's steps, though, to get there.
Do you believe that you contribute anything to your going to heaven?
Yeah.
Yeah, I try to make sure at least, uh, I try to make sure that I make some kind of an impact on someone every day.
How would you react if I were to tell you that your salvation doesn't depend on your works?
It depends on what Christ has already done.
Well, I can agree with that, but it also depends on how you live your life.
Do you follow what God's guidelines are.
Do you believe that man is basically good by nature?
Yes.
Yes, I do.
I think we can be.
Well, I'd like to say yes to that.
Yeah, by nature, they are supposedly in the Bible.
You was all deemed good until, you know, some people got corrupt.
We have the opportunity to be good.
It's a God given trait.
We are created by God and we as humans are gods.
There are evil and good, you know, and, um, we just have to get all on the right path.
Hi, my name's Will and I'm a legalist.
Actually, I'm a recovering legalist.
A legalist is someone who uses external measurements, performance, behaviors, religious activities to gauge how spiritual they or other people are.
Legalists are not much fun to be around and they expect typically everyone to think like they do and believe like they do and worship like they do and live like they do.
If they don't, they judge them.
And I was, for the better part of a lot of my adult Christianity, a flaming, out of control, not happy legalist.
And what was worse about my legalism was that I didn't live up to what I was imposing on everybody else.
I would preach stuff and say stuff and write stuff and expect people to act certain ways.
And in my own life, I wasn't even doing it and wasn't able to do it.
I was not just a flaming legalist, I was a flaming hypocrite.
God busted me of my legalism.
And it took a decade because I'm so thick in my skull and slow to learn.
But he did bust me and free me from my rule keeping and my judging of others and introduced me to the wonderful, healing, freeing concept simply known in the term as grace.
And it's profoundly changed how I live and how I view others.
I hope I'm extending grace not just to myself, but more importantly to other people as well.
Confessions of a recovering legalist.
My name's Will.
I'm a recovering legalist.
The teachings of Lordship Salvationists will have you confused, unsure, uncertain, lacking confidence, unstable in your ways, left with more questions than answers.
Never quite sure of where you're going when you die.
It's a false gospel that markets the lie, the one that says, you gotta be good to get in heaven.
But it never tells you how good.
Don't be deceived by Lordship Salvationists, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.
They give lip service to the cross, but deny its power.
Romans 1:16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power.
And that's the power they're denying.
The power of the gospel, the cross, the finished crosswork of Christ.
They deny its power and rely on their own.
Those ensnared by Lordship Salvation make one massive mistake.
They focus on the exterior, the external, instead of the interior, the internal.
When someone does this before establishing a proper mindset, the end result is disastrous.
Mindset is key, so we must first allow God's Word to do its inner work.
It must work in us before we can work it out.
We need the Word of God to effectually do its work before truly understanding how to live out the grace life.
When we keep our focus on the cross of Christ, we're better equipped to stay consistent in our thinking.
Our mindset is the key foundational principle to living the grace life.
One reason I'm adamant about mindset is it's at the head of your success, but it's also at the head of your failure.
Your grace life success, your long-term consistency hinges on getting self out of the way and allowing the Christ in you to do His work.
Some teach a little-by-little gospel. I teach a once-and-for-all gospel.
The gospel Jesus revealed to Paul to preach on this side of the cross.
The once-and-for-all gospel allows us to take the salvation issue off the table.
We then put it behind us and we're done with it, never doubting our salvation again.
Now we can move forward living out the grace life.
Colossians 1:13 and 14, forgiven of all sins, once and for all.
Colossians 2:13, forgiven of all sins, once and for all.
1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 and 4, forgiven of all sins, once and for all.
See the pattern here?
2 Corinthians 5:19, forgiven of all our sins, once and for all.
They're no longer even being imputed.
Ephesians 1:7, forgiven of all sins, once and for all.
Oh, this is good news. Christ died for our sins one time.
He was buried and has risen one time.
This is not complicated. It's easy believism.
But you'll have to humble yourself to see it.
You have to submit to easy believism.
And the only way to do that is to remove self from the equation.
Hey, remember, you only get two educations.
The one you're given and the one you give yourself.
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