4. R. B. Thieme, Apes and Peacocks or the Pursuit of Happiness (Houston: Thieme, 1973), 23.
He Condemns a Hardened Heart
pponents of lordship salvation admit that one of the reasons they exclude obedience from their concept of saving faith is to make room in the kingdom for professing believers whose lives are filled with sin. "If only committed people are saved people, then where is there room for carnal Chris tians?" one leading advocate of the antilordship view pleads.1
This eagerness to accommodate so-called carnal Chris tians2 has driven some contemporary teachers to define the terms of salvation so loosely that virtually every profession of faith in Christ is regarded as the real thing.3 Anyone who says he has "accepted Christ" is enthusiastically received as a Chris tian, even if his supposed faith later gives way to a persistent pattern of disobedience, gross sin, or hostile unbelief. One antilordship writer perfectly distills the utter absurdity of his own view: "It is possible, even probable, that when a believer out of fellowship falls for certain types of philosophy, if he is a logical thinker, he will become an 'unbelieving believer.' Yet believers who become agnostics are still saved; they are still born again. You can even become an atheist; but if you once accept Christ as saviour, you cannot lose your salvation, even though you deny God."4 That is a damning lie. No one who denies God should be deceived into thinking that because he once pro-
1. Charles C. Ryrie, Balancing the Chris tian Life (Chicago: Moody, 1969), 170. 2. Paul's words to the Corinthians, "Are ye not carnal, and walk as men?" (1 Cor. 3:3 KJV) were not meant to establish a special class of Chris tian ity. Th ese were not people living in static disobedience. Paul does not suggest that carnality and rebellion were the rule in their lives. In fact, he said of these same people, "You are not lacking in any gift , awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confi rm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 1:7 – 8). Nevertheless, by having taken their eyes off Christ and created religious celebrities (3:4 – 5), they were behaving in a carnal way. Contrast Paul's words about the incestuous man in chapter 5. Paul calls him a "so-called brother" (v. 11). Because of the man's pattern of gross immorality, Paul could not affi rm him as a brother.
3. In an otherwise positive review of Zane Hodges' Th e Gospel Under Siege, J. A. Witmer noted Hodges' "failure to recognize that profession of faith can be less than saving faith." Bibliotheca Sacra 140 (January – March 1983): 81 – 82.
4. R. B. Th ieme, Apes and Peacocks or the Pursuit of Happiness (Houston: Th ieme, 1973), 23.