I want to welcome you to the next segment in Deconstructing Calvinism and in fact this will be our last session. Today's topic is the Perseverance of the Saints. This is the P in the acronym TULIP. Now recently I was asked by my now five-year-old what was the meaning of the word luck and to be honest I struggled trying to define it without using other terms like fortune that she also would not understand. Luck is one of those words that's fairly pervasive in our vocabulary but it's not easy to explain in very simple terms that a child could understand. Another similar word is the word love. It's a word we use all the time but it's very difficult and I think that is the reason that the Apostle Paul described in 1 Corinthians 13 what love looks like rather than attempting to actually define it. In contrast to the term love or the term luck, I think the word believe is not difficult to define but as we're going to see today there's a lot of controversy surrounding the definition of the word believe and this term is at the heart of the doctrine Perseverance of the Saints I said that in the very first session the importance of words and over and again we've seen that how words are defined has great import when we discuss Tulip Calvinism and it's no different here now at the beginning I want you to be aware of one thing in the Greek in our New Testaments The terms translated faith and believe are generally the same term. That is, faith is the noun form and believe is the verbal form of the same root word. Now in plain everyday English, the noun faith is defined, and you could find this in any dictionary, confidence or trust in a person or thing, belief in the truth of a statement or doctrine. Similarly, the verb believe is defined to mean to have confidence in. trust, rely through faith on, be persuaded to the truth or reality of a thing within, to have belief in, credit, accept as true. In our New Testament the Greek word typically translated as faith is the noun Pistis. The word typically translated as believe is the related verb Pistouo and according to the leading Greek lexicon BDAG the verb Pistouo has primary meaning to consider something to be true and therefore worthy of one's trust or believe. The noun pistis has the primary meaning of that which evokes trust and faith, and then as a secondary meaning, the state of believing on the basis of the reliability of the one trusted, trust, confidence, faith. So what does it mean in Tulip Calvinism? What's the significance of this notion of faith in Tulip Calvinism? Well it's like this, a bedrock principle of Reformed theology is what we call sola fide in the Latin, only faith or faith alone, that people are saved by faith alone in Christ alone and many evangelicals would agree with that they would say faith alone in Christ alone is all that is necessary for salvation but that phrase is very confusing because it does depend on what we mean when we say faith if faith merely means trusting believing or having confidence in Christ that's one thing but if faith means something more then there's more to this notion than just being saved by faith alone. Merely trusting in Christ for salvation is, for some people, what we would call dead faith, head faith, or spurious faith, but not genuine faith, heart faith, or living faith. Merely trusting in Christ without more is the essence of a false profession. It's the heresy of easy-believism. For those who define faith as something more they're merely trusting or believing. And so this is such an important issue for us to take a look at. The reason, they would say, is that faith that saves is never alone. That is, it must be accompanied by a wholehearted commitment to faithfully serve Christ. And since God gives each elect person their faith, a faith that includes the wholehearted commitment to faithfully serve Christ, it is the faith alone that saves, but it will always produce a life of fruitfulness. The person whose life is unfruitful or ends in unfruitfulness had only a false profession because if they had the quality of faith that God gives to the elect, their life would have looked different. The life of fruitfulness is the Perseverance of the Saints doctrine. After we look at how Calvinists define Perseverance of the Saints in their own words, we need to return to this very critical issue of defining faith because this really is at the root of the doctrine. Now let's go, as I said, and look at Perseverance of the Saints for a moment through the words of the Calvinists before we come back to this issue of faith. Wayne Grudem defines perseverance this way, "...the perseverance of the saints means that all those who are truly born again will be kept by God's power and will persevere as Christians until the end of their lives, and that only those who persevere until the end have been truly born again." I agree with what he says. In other words, what Mr. Grudem has said and what I've read to you is Those who are truly born again will be kept by God's power, which you may have heard is called eternal security, or once saved, always saved. And we need to understand at the beginning that is not the issue in front of us in this topic. I wholeheartedly agree with eternal security, but I'll part ways, as Mr. Grudem continues on what he says, but I want to point something out very important here. Many Calvinists in our time define the P, the perseverance of the saints, as preservation of the Saints, that is mere eternal security and with them we're in wholehearted agreement but there's a certain amount of confusion among the Calvinists themselves as to whether the P is merely eternal security or something more in the older text the P is something more and in many of the Calvinist texts today the P is more than merely eternal security and so there's inconsistency but also confusion then about what the term means What we're going to be addressing today is the meaning of perseverance of the saints traditionally given that is in fact more than mere eternal security. Wayne Grudem continues, on the other hand, the second half of the definition makes it clear that continuing in the Christian life is one of the evidences that a person is truly born again. It's important to keep this aspect of the doctrine in mind as well, lest false assurance be given to people who were never really believers in the first place." It's this issue of works evidencing salvation that's the problem because what many will say is that a Christian must have a life of works, a life of works bearing out their salvation until the end. So we might have a hypothetical person who has the appearance of serving God for many decades but who at some point in their life seems to stop and then years later they pass away having had a law in their life, a period where they did not have the appearance of Christian works in their life, and under this doctrine, we would say they were never saved to begin with. They had spurious or head faith in the beginning. I reject that position, but that is where the perseverance of the Saints, as it's traditionally understood, would lead us. Let me quote from the Calvinist Hakema, who himself is quoting from another writer, John Murray. John Murray makes a strong plea for retaining the express perseverance rather than preservation. The term perseverance, he says, guards against the notion that believers are spiritually secure regardless of the extent to which they may fall into sin or become careless about their way of life. It is simply not biblical teaching to say that believers are secure regardless of how they live. The doctrine we're considering is the doctrine that believers persevere. It is only through the power of God that they are able to persevere to be sure but they do persevere. The security of believers is inseparable from their perseverance. Did not Jesus say, he who stands firm to the end will be saved? quoting Matthew 10 22. Murray in fact puts it as strongly as this, Perseverance means the engagement of our persons in the most intense and concentrated devotion to those means which God has ordained for the achievement of his saving purpose. End of quote. So what they're doing is they are equating perseverance of the Saints with a lifetime of fruitfulness, a commitment to Christ that's evidenced in works, and they're definitely saying it is more than merely saying eternal security. Dabney likewise requires this outward showing of works as evidence of genuine salvation, and I'll quote from him, "...this perseverance does not imply that a man may be living in habitual and purpose sin, and yet be in a justified state, because he who is once justified cannot into condemnation. We heartily join in everything which can be said against so odious a doctrine. It is impossible because the living in such a state of sin proves that the man never was, and is not now, in a justified state, whatever may be his names and boasts." Augustus Strong said it this way, "...the Scriptures declare that in the virtue of the original purpose and continuous operation of God, all who are united to Christ by faith will infallibly continue in a state of grace and will finally attain everlasting life. This voluntary continuance on the part of the Christian in faith and well-doing we call perseverance. Perseverance is therefore the human side or aspect of that spiritual process which is viewed from the divine side we call sanctification. It is not a mere natural consequence of conversion but involves a constant activity of the human will from the moment of conversion to the end of life. what we're hearing from Strong is a continuing in well-doing, and that's what he calls perseverance. So we're talking about Christian works throughout the life of the believer. In Culver's more recent Systematic Theology he says this, The true doctrine, and then in parentheses, not the caricature often rejected by opponents of the supposed doctrine, means that the believer is kept in faith and obedience. Partial and temporary lapses notwithstanding, it means that final apostasy does not take place, that sins committed in moments of neglect of the means of grace will be repented of rather than continued in, those who live scandalous lives have no basis for assurance and are not to be received as Christians by the churches." Thus it's evident that there's much more to perseverance of the saints than merely eternal security or the notion of once saved always saved. It should further be pointed out that there are Calvinists that would only hold to eternal security and not the rest of this doctrine. Interestingly, most Calvinists that accept the traditional view explained in all the quotes that I've given you would defend their position as a natural and necessary conclusion from the doctrine of unconditional election which all Calvinists hold to. Thus, there seems to be a certain irreconcilable conflict among Calvinists as to this doctrine, much as there is regarding limited atonement. Now, our purpose here today, though, is limited to addressing the traditional doctrine in its proof text, but before we turn there, I want to go back to this issue I started with, which is this issue of faith. Faith is at the center of it, because if the faith must be given to a person by God, and if the faith has injected within it a commitment to a lifetime of works, then we would expect Perseverance of the Saints to be true. That is, that people would having had their faith with works injected into it given to them, forced on them by God, to then live out a life of fruitfulness. Now, let's look at the definitions of faith. According to Robert Culver, there are at least three elements of faith, and it's the third one I want to read to you. A third element in saving faith is commitment to Christ, and that is exactly what a contrite sinner does, having been convinced in mind that Jesus is indeed the Savior. and having received the Savior to himself, he commits himself, his hopes, ambitions, and things to Jesus." It's this third element that makes saving faith mean faith plus something else, namely this commitment of oneself to Christ. Obviously, and without question, every Christian should commit themselves to a life of obedience to Christ, but the issue at hand is whether they must do so in order to be saved in the beginning, or whether the commitment is part of the sanctification process that comes after that moment of salvation. Wayne Grudem gets to the same place as Culver in defining his faith as well, but he does it a little different way. I agree with how he defines faith, but when he gets to the end of it, he adds an extra component, which is repentance, he says, that's necessary. So to quote, repentance is a heartfelt sorrow for sin, a renouncing of it, and a sincere commitment to forsake it and walk in obedience to Christ. So while Grudem doesn't inject this commitment to obedience within the word faith, he adds it on the top of it by saying you need faith plus repentance. We'll come back and deal with repentance later. I want to stick to faith now, but functionally Grudem's in the same place. Hodges likewise says that faith necessarily leads to good works and also speaks of a saving repentance as entailing, quote, grief and hatred of sin, a resolute turning from it unto God, and a persistent endeavor after a new life of holy obedience," end of quote. Strong affirms that faith includes a voluntary component, the so-called fiducia in Latin, which means, quote, surrender of the soul as guilty and defiled to Christ governance, end of quote. So again, we have this focus on the works, the commitment to works, the commitment to obedience that must be there at the moment of faith. And this starts raising, of course, immediate questions like, well, how does someone commit to that which they don't yet know? If you think of the person who's totally new to things of the Bible, things of the word of God, they've heard the gospel, they express faith, and you say, well, wait a minute, that faith needs to have a commitment to a bunch of commands. And, of course, they don't know it yet, but these are issues we'll come to. R.C. Sproul says that saving faith always produces works. Here's a quote. At issue here is the question of genuine faith. The Reformers taught that justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. True faith is never alone. It always manifests itself in works. Works that flow out of faith, however, are in no way the ground of our justification. They contribute nothing of merit before God. The only ground or basis of our justification is the merit of Christ. Nor is faith itself a meritorious work or the ground of our justification. Faith is a gift of God's grace so it possesses no merit of its own." J.I. Packer says the following about true faith always bearing fruit. The truth is that though we are justified by faith alone, the faith it justifies is never alone. It produces moral fruit. It transforms one's way of living. It begets virtue. This is not only because holiness is commanded, but also because the regenerate heart of which fiducia is the expression, desires holiness and can find full contentment only in seeking it." Well, now what we want to do is turn to thinking about where this retooling of faith comes from. Why is it that faith is not simply believing or trusting as it's actually translated in every Bible translation? Instead, faith must include this extra commitment to obedience to Christ. The primary proof text is James 2, so we're going to go there. It's James 2 and verse 14 in particular. R.C. Sproul, in commenting on James 2, says the following, James is asking, what kind of faith is saving faith? He makes it clear that no one is justified by a mere profession of faith. Anyone can say he has faith, but saying and having it are not the same thing. True faith always manifests itself in works. If no works follow from faith, then the alleged faith is dead and useless. Abraham demonstrated his faith by his works. He showed he had true faith, thus justifying his claim to faith. Abraham's profession of his faith is vindicated in his demonstration of his faith in Genesis 22. At issue here is the question of genuine faith. The Reformers taught that justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. True faith is never alone." Similarly, we read from John MacArthur's commentary on James, the question, can that faith save him, is not offered to dispute the importance of faith, but to oppose the idea that just any kind of faith can save. The grammatical form of the question calls for a negative answer. No, it cannot save. A profession of faith that is devoid of righteous works cannot save a person no matter how strongly it may be proclaimed. As already noted, it is not that some amount of good works added to true faith can save a person, but rather that faith that is genuine in saving will inevitably produce good works." Some Christians have a tendency to automatically read the word save to always be in reference to save from a sins penalty or save from hell and so as we embark on this issue of looking at James 2 and in particular James 2.14 I want to pause for just a moment to think about this word save because James 2.14 doesn't say what the saving is from we'll have to glean that from context but we cannot assume that the saving is saving from hell in J.B. Hickson's work he writes this The terms save, Greek sozo, and salvation, Greek soteria, carry the primary meanings of rescue and deliverance, respectively. The context must determine whether the deliverance in question is temporal in nature, such as deliverance from sickness or danger, or eternal in nature, that is, deliverance from the penalty of sin, namely hell. For instance, the verb save, Greek sozo, occurs 109 times in the New Testament. Only 41 of these occur in the context of eternal salvation. The remaining occurrences refer to temporal deliverance from physical harm, sickness or danger 50 times, eschatological deliverance into the Messianic Kingdom 15 times, or eschatological deliverance at the Bema Judgment 3 times. Similar data exists for the noun salvation." End of quote. When you're reading the Gospels and Jesus heals somebody and indicates they're healed, that's the word saved, the same word we'd use to mean saved from hell is used as saved from some disease or ailment, or translated as healing. When Paul is shipwrecked in the book of Acts, God saves him, but he saves him from drowning, not from hell. So this word, save, means to rescue or deliver. Context determines from what, and that is so critical here in the book of James, where the Reformers always assume it's saved from hell, because it's convenient to their theology. As we also look in James, I want to begin in James 1 and 21. And the reason I want to start in James 121 is that's the first of several instances of the use of the word save in James's epistle. Note what James 121 says, he says, "...wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness and receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your souls." Now 15 times in the book of James he refers to his audience as brethren which would mean Christian brethren It's also to be noted that nowhere in the book of James does he merely present the gospel. There's nowhere where he says, listen guys, you may not be saved, you need to trust in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Never happens. But he does use the term save several times, and I'm gonna suggest he's using save to save people, and so we need to look very closely and not merely assume what he means by the term save. Before explaining James 121, I want to look back at Matthew 16. I know this seems like we're digging to one place or another, but the reason is this. The epistle of James is the first epistle written in the New Testament. We think it's written around 44, 45 AD, the earliest one. And James is not sitting there looking through the epistle of the Romans and the other stuff Paul wrote or the stuff Peter wrote and then writing. He's writing on a fresh slate, but in his background, is primarily spending years traveling with his older brother Jesus Christ himself and you find throughout the book of James that his teachings draw heavily on the things we read Jesus saying in the Gospels and in particular this issue of saving seems to find its background in the teaching that we find in Matthew chapter 16. So we'll turn back and look there and then come back forward to James. In Matthew 16 In verse 13 it reads this way, When Jesus came into the coast of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And they said, Well, some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. That's a fabulous statement, it's his confession of faith When you read the book of John, he tells you in the second to last chapter that he's writing so that you would make that profession yourself, so that the reader would accept Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. But Peter makes it here. There is no doubt that Peter is regenerate. Look what Jesus says in the next verse, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood have not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I also say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. After this profession of faith, look what happens in verse 21. From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan, there art an offense unto me, for thou savest not the things that are of God, but those that be of men. So Peter, who made this great profession of faith a few verses earlier, is now rebuked, even called Satan. And why? Because he wants to stand in the way of the cross. He wants to stand in the way of Jesus following the will of the Father. It's on the basis of that rebuke that Jesus says what he says next, and this will help us understand James chapter 1. In Matthew 16 verse 24, Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." Now, let's pause there just for a moment. This word, life, is the Greek psuche, also translated often in our Bibles as soul, especially in the King James, but it almost always has more to do with the idea of life. It rarely has to do with the notion of spirit, but it's the same term, and it gets used both here in verse 25 as well as in verse 26. Verse 26 says, For what is a man profit if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Same word, suke, translated life, in verse 25. Jesus isn't changing topics. He's not talking about what a man has to do to save his spirit, that would be work salvation, and he's talking to his disciples who, at this point, don't need saving of their spirits. That's already been dealt with. Peter's made this great profession of faith. He's representative of where the group stands. They are regenerate. What he's talking about is discipleship, because Peter wants to stand in the way of the cross. He wants to stand in the way of doing the Father's will, because it's going to cost Jesus. And Jesus tells them, you've got to take up your cross if you want to be a disciple. He says, if you, you men will come after me, in verse 24. He doesn't mean spiritually come after him, he's talking about literally following him as a disciple. He says, you want to follow around and be a disciple of mine, you're going to have to take up your cross. There's going to be some suffering on the road. And so in verse 25, when Jesus says, whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it, what's he talking about? The saving of a life. A life well lived, a life lived with one foot in heaven's door, a life lived for Christ doing kingdom works is a life it translates into eternity. It's a life of eternal value. We have presented before us as believers two different lives that we can choose. One's the plan we would have for ourself, and it may include big cars or career ladder, houses. You put whatever you want there. Then the other is the plan Jesus has for us. It's the disciple plan where there's going to be some high cost. And the one is packaged the way the world packages things, and Jesus says, If that's the one you take, that's all you get. But if you'll lose that one and take the life I have for you, you'll save it. And what does he mean? Save it as it's translated into eternity. We don't have to guess at this. As we read on, he says, what is a man profit if he should gain the whole world but lose his own life? That's what he's talking about in verse 26. Or what shall a man give in exchange for his life? If you want your life to last into eternity, not to end at the time when your body and soul separates, you want it to have eternal value where God rewards you with the Bema, and it has eternal consequence, you've got to live it Jesus' way. Verse 27 makes this very clear, "...the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He shall reward every man according to his works." This is what he's talking about, the saving of a life, being rewarded according to works. And that's back in James 1.21 when James says, Wherefore, lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted Word, which is able to save your souls. Who's he talking about? Well, we back up to verse 19 where he starts the thought that continues there in 21. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, he's talking to believers. Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath. He's talking to believers just like Jesus is in Matthew 16. Verse 20 says, "...for the wrath of man work, if not the righteousness of God." And then in verse 21 he says, "...the Word is able to save your soul." What's he talking about? Putting aside sin, living out the Word of God is able to save your soul. He's talking about exactly the same issue Jesus was when He said, "...save your soul." And soul is the word life, psuche. It's not the soul in the sense of your spirit. Otherwise, he would be expressly teaching work salvation. What he is saying is that you can save your life. What you accomplish in this lifetime as a believer, these kingdom works you can do, those will be saved. And we're going to look at how they'll be saved in James chapter 2. So look at James 2 and 14. This is our proof text that Reformers used to redefine faith. It said, What doth it profit my brethren? So he's talking to believers. Though a man say he have faith and have not works, can faith-saving. If he knows he's talking to believers, and he says it in this verse, my brethren, why on earth would he be talking about being saved from sin's penalty? In any event, if we back up a couple of verses, what we see is the clear context is the Bema Judgment, the only judgment we know about in the New Testament for believers. We read about it in places like 1 Corinthians 3, 2 Corinthians 5, it's where believers are judged for the works, not with a view to going to heaven or hell but with a view to being rewarded for kingdom works by Jesus Christ what we read is in verse 11 is for that he said do not commit adultery he said also do not kill now if thou commit no adultery yet if thou kill thou art become a transgressor of the law so speak ye and so do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty verse 12 the law of liberty in James is the law of loving one another he says if you commit one violation of the law, you're guilty of all." But he also would teach what Jesus said, that all the law is summarized in this, love God and love others. And so he talks about the law of liberty. What he says in verse 13 then is, "...for he shall have judgment without mercy, that if shewed no mercy, and mercy rejoiceth against judgment." That is, the person who's a believer who lives an unmerciful life, that is, they are not characteristically loving, carrying out and fulfilling the law that was summarized in the command to love others, they're not going to have mercy at the judgment. Well, what judgment? We don't work our way into heaven by being loving people, but when we're at the Bema and Jesus says, you're going to account for your time, what did you do for me? Were you an obedient disciple or not? If that judgment how we treated people, whether we lived out the law, whether we lived out being characteristically loving of one another, is precisely what's an issue. And that's why he asked the rhetorical question in verse 14, what doth it profit, my brethren, if a person says he has faith but doesn't have works? Faith won't be the issue at the bane of judgment. Everybody at the bane of judgment's a believer. Everybody has faith. But not everybody will have a life of Christian works upon which they can be rewarded. That's why when James says, can that faith save him, the answer is no it can't. Save what? Save his life. Save him. Save his life. It's the same thing from chapter 1 verse 21. The same thing from Matthew chapter 16. He's talking about the fact that faith alone will not be sufficient at the Bema because it's Kingdom Works. It's a life that's an issue of being saved. A life of Kingdom Works will be translated into eternity as it's rewarded. and a life of just doing what we wanted to do, what satisfied us, will not. It'll burn up. If you read 1 Corinthians 3, it'll be wood, hay, and stubble, and it would burn up. The examples he gives, as you read on through the rest of James 2, make this clear. The very next verse says, in verse 15, If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you saying to them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled, notwithstanding you give them not those things which are needful of the body, what doth it profit? See, he's talking about the very same thing he was talking about in verse 12 and 13. He's talking about being merciful, showing mercy to people, living out the commands to love one another. It's like the Good Samaritan. Are you the one that walks by or the one that shows mercy? The one who shows mercy will profit at the Bema because Jesus is going to reward that person. In verse 17, even so, faith, if it hath not works, is dead being alone. Dead doesn't mean that it's non-existent, it means it's non-productive, it's being alone. If it's faith with works, then it's going to be faith that at the bema will produce rewards. Verse 18 introduces a hypothetical objector. This is a common device in the New Testament literature. Paul used it often. He'll introduce an objector and then answer the objection. Where people get messed up on this is they don't know where the objector starts and stops. But look closely at 18 and 19, and you'll see that both 18 and 19 are both the objector. And then in verse 20, James says, But wilt thou know, O vain man? He's answering the objector. 18 and 19 are not to be quoted to prove anything about this passage in the sense of what James is teaching. 18 and 19 are the objector. It's the person who's got it wrong. And then in verse 20, James corrects him. Verse 18, Yea, a man may say, there's our hypothetical objector, a man may say, quote, Thou hast faith, and I have works. Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works. The hypothetical objector says, look, faith and works really aren't related. And then the hypothetical objector 19 wants to give an example of how faith and works aren't really related the way James says they are. Thou believest that there is one God. Thou doest well. The devils also believe and tremble. He says, look, James, you believe there's one God, the Shema of Israel from Deuteronomy 6. Demons also believe, and they tremble, and so these things aren't related because in the demons it doesn't produce anything but trembling, it doesn't produce something else. But the point is this is the objector who James is going to say is wrong, who doesn't get it, that faith and works do have this relationship. It's at this point that Reformed theologians typically missed the fact that James is quoting the hypothetical objector or interlocutor and they argue that the demons illustrate spurious or non-saving faith. This argument is silly because Jesus did not die for the demons, there's no redemptive plan for the demons, and the verse plainly tells us that it's belief that God is one that's an issue here and not the gospel. If saving faith in the sense of saving from hell were in view, I don't think we'd be looking at an example of whether God's one or not. But James is using this for a particular reason. James' response in 220 uses singular verbs by the way, and that's why we know without a doubt that he is only addressing and is directly addressing the hypothetical objector when he says, "...but wilt thou know of vain men that faith without works is dead?" In response to his example of the demons, James offers to his audience the examples of Abraham and of Rahab. And so with regard to Abraham, we read in verse 21-24, Was not Abraham our father justified by works, but when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled with, Saith Abraham, Believe God. And it was imputed unto him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, not by faith only. The answer to James's rhetorical question in verse 21 is obviously yes, Abraham was justified by words when he offered Isaac. But James has not used the term justified in the way Paul would years later in epistles like the book of Romans. We know from Genesis 15 6 that James quoted in verse 23 that Abraham was a genuine believer decades before he went up on the mountain to sacrifice Isaac, and moreover that righteousness was imputed to him on the basis of faith those many years ago. The episode involving Isaac in Genesis 22 is much, much later. And we have to ask ourselves, are we to understand that notwithstanding God's statement in Genesis 15, that Abraham wasn't really saved until Genesis 22, decades later? Well, of course not. Between those chapters, there's many years and many failings by Abraham, but what happened is he matured in his faith to the point that he could say to his party as he and Isaac went up to the mountain in Genesis 22, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you." Genesis 22, 5. He had faith for many decades at this point and had been justified before God, who alone can see hearts no later than Genesis 15, verse 6. But we know that by Genesis 22, he had reached a point of maturity where his faith was visible before men. In that sense, he was justified before men. The sort of faith that is visible before men is the sort that produces works that are rewarded to Bema. In his second example, James recalls Rahab from the book of Joshua. Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works when she had received the messengers and had sent them out another way? The writer of Hebrews acknowledges that Rahab had faith when she received the spies, we read that in Hebrews 11 verse 31, but James refers here to her tricking the king and sending the spies out another way, like the elder Abraham's faith when he went to sacrifice his son Rahab's act of courage was faith that people could see. Rather than distinguishing between saving and spurious faith, James simply addresses what will matter at the Bamon, the sort of faith that will be profitable there and will result in the deliverance of our soul life at that time. One final comment is that James, if his concern really was saving versus spurious faith, wouldn't he have said somewhere in here, here's the gospel? And of course he never does. Now, there are other verses that are used for this redefining of faith, and we don't have time here to go through all of them. They are covered in the text, but that said, I do want to turn back to this issue of faith and look at a different definition of it. Charles Ryrie writes this, Faith means confidence, trust, to hold something as true. Of course, faith must have content. There must be confidence or trust about something. To have faith in Christ unto salvation means to have confidence that He can remove the guilt of sin and grant eternal life. Robbie also states that saving faith is, quote, a reliance on the truth of the gospel as revealed in the Word of God, end of quote. Another writer, Charlie Bing, explains it this way, Let's be clear about what it means to believe. To believe something means that we are convinced or persuaded that it's true. We cannot almost believe something, we either believe it or we don't, end of quote. The New Testament does not distinguish between kinds of faith, but rather the object of faith, and the faith that we might rightly call saving faith is the faith that is placed in Christ alone. Throughout John's Gospel we see Jesus interacting with people and inviting them to believe in Him and He never suggests a commitment to a life of fruitfulness as a requirement for eternal life and without ever mentioning spurious faith. To Nicodemus, Jesus used the illustration of raising the bronze serpent in the wilderness where people only had to look to be delivered. And to the woman at the well, Jesus said, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." John 4, 10. Jesus could have told her to ask for the water and promise a life of faithful service. This surely would have been the place to do it, but Jesus never said that. If the Reformed theologians are correct, the content of Jesus' preaching was inadequate to save the woman at the well. You might be thinking that if a commitment to a life of faithfulness is not inherent in the word faith, that perhaps it's in the word repentance. Now first of all, in us talking just briefly about this repentance issue, Charles Ryrie notes that repentance simply means, quote, to change one's mind, end quote. In context, one must answer the question of what specific concepts we are to change our minds about. Now I have found there's a tendency to take repentance to always mean repent from sin, whatever that is supposed to entail, and In fact, though, in the Bible, we read that God repents. In fact, in the Old Testament, it's common to read that God repents, and so it can't possibly always mean repent from sin. Context will have to determine what the repentance is of, what the changing of mind is, in fact, about. Now, I would note John's gospel was expressly written for evangelism. We read this in John chapter 20, verses 30 to 31. And many are the signs truly to Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life through His name." End of quote. If you think it's necessary for salvation, you must be able to defend it from John's Gospel, because John's Gospel tells us it has sufficient content for salvation. And since it claims for itself sufficient content, it provides us something of a litmus test for notions such as the faith must have inherent within it a commitment to obedience. We should look in John's Gospel and say, where did Jesus teach that one must be committed to obedience to him in order to receive eternal life? Which is a separate issue from being a true disciple, and that's something different. But for receiving eternal life, we would expect when he interacts with the woman at the well, or Nicodemus, he would say it. But he didn't, which means his content of preaching was inadequate on a Reformed view. Well, notoriously absent from John's gospel is also the word repent or repentance. If repentance in the sense that Reformed theologians use the term to indicate sorrow over sin and a commitment to obedience were necessary for eternal life, why did John not even use the word one time? And I'll say something else, sometimes someone will tell me, well, but he uses the idea. Where? There's nowhere in there where Jesus says you have to stop this particular sin in order to be saved or something along that notion. never happens. The word repentance simply doesn't appear there. It does occur several times in the Gospels, typically in reference to Jewish people repenting from their sins because the kingdom was at hand and we do err if we simply assume that all those people are unsaved. Repentance is a common issue in the life of a believer and we have lots of statements in the Bible about repenting to believers, but the issue before us right now is whether some sort of repentance is necessary salvation from sin's penalty, and I'll assert that it is, but that that repentance is not what the Reformed theologians say it is. I'd also point out that 1st Corinthians, where Paul actually spells out the gospel in chapter 15 of that book, also lacks the word repentance. The entire book does not mention it. Now we find the word repentance in actual gospel presentations, primarily in the book of Acts, and I want to mention a couple of those real quick just to get an idea across which is simply this, the notion of repentance as part of salvation is biblical, but context must determine what the repentance is from, what the changing of mind is about. We should not assume every time we read the word repent that the notion has to do with some sort of wholesale turning away from sin toward a commitment to the Lordship of Christ if that's not what the text says. For example, in the book of Acts chapter 17 When Paul preaches to the Athenians, we read this, Paul says that God has now, quote, now commended all men everywhere to repent, and it's in the context of his talking about their polytheism and idols, and it's on the heels of his sentence in the prior verse, which is this, for as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like on a gold, silver, or stone, graven by art and men's device. Paul's point is that these people, who have an idol for everything, they need to repent. They need to change their minds about the notion that people can make gods out of sticks and stones and turn to the only true God that created them. We find in Paul's sermon in Acts 19 that he contrasts John's baptism of repentance to the believer's baptism. Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is on Jesus Christ. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. In Acts 20, 21, Paul characterized his preaching of the gospel as a preaching, a repentance or turning toward God. Listen to what Paul says, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance towards God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, end of quote. So the point I'm suggesting is that the repentance is generally, in a gospel presentation, a turning toward God, and it's a turning from something toward God, and context determines what the turning is from. In Acts 17, the turning was from polytheism. It could be something different, a different passage. When Peter preaches in Acts 2, he preaches repentance. He says this in Acts 2.38, After you look at the context of Acts 2 though, Peter preaches that Jesus had fulfilled prophecy by being resurrected, that he ascended the right hand of the Father, and then he says, Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made the same Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." Their response to this Pentecost sermon in the very next verse, now when they heard this, they were pierced in their heart and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? Why were they pierced in their heart? Because some of these are the same people who heard and rejected Jesus before the cross. They're the ones that sent him there. And it's that issue specifically about who they think Jesus is that they're repenting of. He's not telling these people about all the sin in their life needs to be turned from toward obedience. That surely should happen, but that's the sanctification of the life of a believer. These people listened to Jesus, who said He was the Son of God, they rejected Him and sent Him on to the cross, and that's the issue and context in Acts 2 that they need to turn from. Well, I have said before in this book, and I just quoted a very short kind of definition succinctly of saving faith. And here it is again, saving faith is the belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who died and rose again to pay one's personal penalty for sin and the one who gives eternal life to all who trust him and him alone for it. End of quote. To trust Christ and him alone as the Son of God for the forgiveness of our sins necessarily entails a change of mind about several things. We have to change our mind about the fact that we are in fact sinners. People don't naturally think of themselves as sinners in need of a Savior and so there's a changing of mind. There may be a changing of mind about polytheism as there was for the Athenians in Acts 17. There could be any of a number of things about which one must change their mind. I believe often the term repent is not mentioned in the context of preaching the good news to unregenerate people in the Bible because it's inherent in trusting Christ and Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins. We could try to define a repentance, and I would define it this way, and I'm talking about repentance in the context of salvation. So, to generalize about the concept of repentance and its relationship to salvation from sin's penalty, what we can say is that a person has to change their mind about any and all ideas they have that are directly contrary to what is inherent in saving faith, as I've just defined it a few moments ago. And in that sense, repentance plays a critical role in salvation from sins penalty. So what we've seen is faith really just means believing or trusting. It does not have some sort of component that's a commitment to total obedience to Christ embedded within it. You cannot glean that from James 2, which is really a message to believers about the Bema and about their lifestyle and whether that will deliver their lifestyle, their works, their life at the Bema. And you can't put it in the word repentance either. the word repentance is absent from the Gospel of John, it's absent from First Corinthians. If it has a place in our evangelism, and it can, we need to be clear about what we mean. People need to trust Christ. Saving faith is not based on the quality of the faith, it's based on the content of the faith. And if you have ideas that are inherently different than or contrary to saving faith, those need to be repented of. Now, just before we leave, this topic of faith and repentance, let me be very clear about one of the things, and that is that I am not suggesting that it does not matter how we live. That's always the charge that gets levied at anyone who wants to suggest that you can actually be saved and get eternal life by merely trusting Christ. James' whole point in his epistle is that it matters a great deal in this time and at the Bema. The New Testament teaches a host of adverse consequences for continued sin the life of a believer, including an incapacity to mature in the Word of God, the possibility of God's temporal judgment, including illness and death, a loss of fellowship with God and the fruit of the Spirit, and a loss of rewards with the Bema. Some people like to throw around terms like cheap grace and easy believism, but these labels are red herrings to avoid dealing objectively with the biblical text. The term grace carries the meaning of a free gift, and so it does not make sense to speak of it as being expensive or cheap. The Bible teaches that salvation is free to us because Jesus paid for it 100%. As for easy-believism, what makes believing difficult is not having to commit to a life of obedience, but having to humble oneself at the cross and coming to terms with the fact that we are sinners, hopelessly lost, and cannot do anything toward earning or meriting our salvation. Finally, John MacArthur and others insist that those who do not agree with them are teaching that mere mental assent to the historical facts of the gospel is all that's necessary for salvation. This is a blatant strawman argument. What the dissenters are saying, and what I am saying, is that you must believe the historical facts of the gospel and actually trust Christ for the forgiveness of sins on the basis of his finished work at Calvary. Now with this background we can now look at some of the proof texts for the Perseverance Doctrine, and given the time we're going to do that next time in what will be the second half of this final topic on Perseverance of the Saints, and so with that in mind, I will see you next time.