I’ve been thinking a lot, once again, on how many in the evangelical and Reformed churches have constructed a Gospel that emphasizes law-keeping and performance as the means by which a so-called genuine Gospel reception has obtained in a person’s life. In other words, I have been thinking about how the Law (which is really culturally conditioned categories on a sliding scale) has sublimated the Gospel, such that it isn’t possible to distinguish the two any longer. People like John MacArthur, John Piper, Paul Washer, Steven Lawson, and that whole ilk have presented an ethos in the Church, when it comes to the Gospel, wherein the only way someone can supposedly really know that they are saved is if they have some modicum of a transformed life. And yet, they never indicate what in fact the ‘bar of transformation’ is in order for the seeker to know whether or not they have experienced a genuine salvation or not. Note John MacArthur:

. . . They’ve been told [Christians in the typical evangelical church in the West] that the only criterion for salvation is knowing and believing some basic facts about Christ. They hear from the beginning that obedience is optional. It follows logically, then, that a person’s one-time profession of faith is more valid than the ongoing testimony of his life-style in determining whether to embrace him as a true-believer. The character of the visible church reveals the detestable consequence of this theology. As a pastor I have rebaptized countless people who once “made a decision,” were baptized, yet experienced no change. They came later to true conversion and sought baptism again as an expression of genuine salvation.[1]

This is contrariwise to the actual Gospel. What it takes to be genuinely saved, according to Scripture, is to simply believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. That’s it, period.

There is a history to JMac’s et al. Gospel, it can be found in precisianist Puritan origins (on the Protestant side), and back further, of course, in medieval nominalism and even in many of the Church Fathers. Here Theodore Dwight Bozeman comments on the ‘precisianist’ background to the frame that people like JMac are thinking from (even if he/they don’t know that):

English penitential teaching expressly echoed and bolstered moral priorities. In contrast, again, to Luther, whose penitential teaching stressed the rueful sinner’s attainment of peace through acknowledgment of fault and trust in unconditional pardon, several of the English included a moment of moral renewal. In harmony with Reformed tendencies on the Continent and in unmistakable continuity with historic Catholic doctrine that tied “contrition, by definition, to the intention to amend,” they required an actual change in penitent. For them, a renewal of moral resolve was integral to the penitential experience, and a few included the manifest alteration of behavior. They agreed that moral will or effort cannot merit forgiveness, yet rang variations on the theme that repentance is “an inward . . . sorrow . . . whereunto is also added a . . . desire . . . to frame our life in all points according to the holy will of God expressed in the divine scriptures.” However qualified by reference to the divine initiative and by denial of efficacy to human works, such teaching underscored moral responsibility; it also adumbrated Puritan penitential and preparationist teaching of later decades.[2]

This teaching is so far removed from the simple Gospel message found in Scripture that it should not be entertained as a genuinely in-formed Gospel teaching. The sin of Pelagianism is never far from the human heart. We always want to have a part in our ‘salvation,’ even if we attribute ‘our part’ to the work of Jesus. We want to have a sense of self-sanctification by our natural human nature, but this is anathema. We need to recognize and quickly repudiate such Law based nomist Gospels, and simply repose in the fullness of God’s all-pervasive graciousness that He has provided for Himself, for us, in the grace of His life for us, in Jesus Christ. Rest and worship.

[1] John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus,  17 [brackets mine].

[2] Theodore Dwight Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain,  20-21 [italics mine].