The following "Question" was asked by an attendee at the 2005 Shepherds' Conference (a ministry of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California), and was "Answered" by John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from "General Session #4 John MacArthur - Q&A." A copy of the CD, cassette tape, or MP3 can be obtained by going to: www.shepherdsconference.org ©2005. All Rights Reserved. Grace Community Church.
Questioner
I am a prison chaplain and a pastor. This is a follow-up to what that brother asked just now. This was a discussion we had at lunch about the presentation from Dr. Sproul. I tell people—I use John 3:16, Romans 10:8-10—I tell people they can be saved if they believe in Jesus Christ. Faith plus nothing else—not works. My question to you is that I don’t explain to people justification by grace through faith—that takes some time—and I can go into when necessary, but I don’t. I just give them some basic stuff. My question to you is this: in regards to a person’s religious persuasion or denomination, can they be saved with just John 3:16, Romans 8:8-10, Ephesians 2:8-10?
John MacArthur's Answer
Yes, I think—as long as they understand the true
meaning of those verses. The meaning of the Scripture is the Scripture. If you
get the meaning wrong, you don’t get the message. So, when you say “Jesus,” –
what Jesus? Who are you talking about? When you say “faith,” what do you mean
by “faith”? When you say “grace,” how extensive is grace? The answer to your
question is that people can be saved by true understanding of the gospel. John
3:16 contributes to that, as long as they understand what that means. Ephesians
2:8-9 contributes to that. Romans 10… If you say to someone, “You have to
confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the
dead,” that opens a whole plethora of things that need to be understood. What
do you mean, “Lord”? What do you mean, “resurrection”? What’s the resurrection
about? “It’s an affirmation of a fitting and suitable and completed offering
for sin.” Well, why was that necessary? “Because somebody had to die for your
sin.” Why? “Because you’re a sinner and you cannot be righteous before God.”
In other words, you can take any of those verses, but you cannot treat those verses in a superficial way, so that people are dealing with terminology that doesn’t have any content, or doesn’t have the full, intended content of Scripture.
Again, I would back up in front of that and say, I really believe that the doctrine that is missing in much of contemporary evangelism is this doctrine of utter inability, this doctrine of total depravity. That’s the real issue here! You know, the modern movement in evangelicalism—you can look at all of the modern stuff, whatever it is, all the sort of “Jesus wants to fix your life and make you happy and fix your marriage and fulfill your life and satisfy you and make you feel better about yourself”—that’s nothing but the human potential movement.
Let me be real blunt: Jesus didn’t come into the world to help you fulfill your purpose. He came into the world to take you out of whatever purpose you had intended and to set you on a course to fulfill His purpose. I’m not trying to be harsh. I’m just saying, look, you have a presentation of the gospel that says, “Just pray this prayer and ask Jesus to come into your heart and forgive your sin… Wow, welcome to the kingdom”—are you kidding me? There’s not enough preaching of law, there’s not enough preaching of condemnation, there’s not enough preaching of eternal judgment, there’s not enough preaching of human inability, of depravity, of the wretchedness of the human heart and its utter inability to do anything to please God. Where is the brokenness, where is the penitence, where is the contrite heart, where is the trembling at my Word—where is that?
And if you don’t have that, then you start talking about grace—and people don’t know what grace is—and even faith can be so superficial. That’s why I wrote the book Hard to Believe. Jesus said, you know, “If any man come after me, let him deny himself.” It’s the end of you; it’s not the beginning of you. It’s the end of you! “Here I am, Jesus. Fix my life, fulfill my dreams…” You know, I don’t know if you’ve seen that book on dreams, you know, “Dream your dream, fulfill your dreams…God put the dreams in your heart…Jesus is here to help you fulfill your dreams.” That’s a big lie! Your dreams are meaningless to him. Is that not true? I’m not being harsh. I’m just saying, look, you come to Jesus and you say, “I deny myself”—the word means, “to refuse to associate with”—“I refuse to associate with the person I am. I’m over. I’m done. It’s the end of me.” It’s not “Jesus fixes your life”; it’s the end of you! You’re done. You’ve been broken and crushed by the law of God. You’re hopeless, helpless, headed for hell, and you reach out pleading—pleading—for Jesus to be merciful. That same book says, “If you want to be a Christian, believe that God loves you and wants to forgive all your sins.” How can anybody know that? How do I know if the sovereign God wants to forgive all my sins? Do I know that? Am I supposed to know the eternal decree? All the sinner can do is say, “I’m crushed, I’m broken, I’m shattered, I’m hopeless, I have no where to turn… God, be merciful to me, a sinner”—and that discretion is with God. There’s no magic words.
So, what I’m saying is, of course those scriptures contribute. Of course. But, I’ve been trying to deal with this issue—I think I said this last year—I never thought when I got out of seminary, I’d spend most of my life trying to defend the gospel from evangelicals, but it’s turned out that way. First I write The Gospel According to Jesus, then I write The Gospel According to the Apostles, then I write Ashamed of the Gospel, then I write Hard to Believe, and—every time I turn around, there’s some weird aberration of the gospel! And again, that’s where we are in that whole Jude thing. We’re talking about a common salvation that’s not common! There’s all kinds of things out there masquerading as the gospel.
So, do those verses indicate truth that’s necessary for the gospel? Yes, as long as you have the content. You can’t use those as formulas. They’re not buzz words, they’re not magic words, they’re not mantras… They have to have meaning. You know, the idea that you could talk to somebody, you know, and five minutes later, get them from being an outright pagan, into the kingdom of God. That’s a stretch! In all honesty, that’s a stretch! Where is that heart work? Where is that soul work? Where is that conviction of the Spirit of God? If I had an hour to talk to someone about Christ, I’d spend 55 minutes talking about their sin and their condemnation, and I’d spend the last five minutes talking about the solution.
I didn’t mean to—thanks for pulling my trigger there.
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