David Westerfield

The times I’m the most frustrated and/or miserable in my life, are the times I lack belief that God will fulfill His promises. It is also ultimately a lack of trust in and assurance that God will sustain me, and I assume that by my own strength, I must sustain myself in every way. At these times, in its most basic form, it is unbelief in God Himself, and I operate in my life as a practicing atheist. This is where a good, healthy dose of grace comes in. Because of my proneness to wander into unbelief in areas of my life, I find that the Gospel of grace is the best remedy. Why? Because the fact that I was saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone leaves me absolutely no room to boast or to trust in myself to sustain myself in any form or fashion, including the sustainment of my faith. It is God who gives faith and sustains it. The fact that I turned to God to begin with shows that my belief in Him as well as my turning away from sin was all a gift of God. I cannot boast in these things in any form or fashion. I did not choose to turn to God ultimately, but God opened my eyes while I was dead, and gave me life that I then could not help but turn to Him because He is so irresistable. God had great mercy to turn me from my wickedness and didn’t have to. He could have let me wander further into sin and receive the just fruits of that corruption, His eternal wrath. And how horrible it is! And yet He came to me when I was not searching for Him in mighty power through the Gospel of grace, Jesus Christ, and opened my eyes to see Him.

However, it is no different now than when the Lord opened my eyes to see Him. You see, God’s grace giving rise to our faith in Christ unto salvation isn’t where God’s grace stops, but it is the very thing we all so desperately need to change us and make us more like Christ and put away sin. And God’s grace comes through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I still possess the tendency to stray into sin and unbelief. When I repeat the Gospel to myself, the first thing I see is that in the same way I was helpless, dead, rebellious toward God prior to the Lord turning me around, so also even now, I am helpless to change myself to become more like Christ. I am indeed a new creature, but even though I am regenerated and desire to change, I cannot change myself. The agent that changes me must come from outside myself and it is God’s Spirit alone who can do this through the Gospel. The Gospel saves us as well as rid us of sin. The grace of God, appropriated through the cross, is the only thing that can turn my heart from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh that is responsive to God. This is why I must preach Christ crucified to my dead heart everyday! I have nothing to offer Him, nothing I can do that is of any worth. And how freeing this is because Christ has done what I could never do on my own! I cannot merit any more favor with God than Christ has already merited for me by His stripes and wounds on the cross. The times I’m most miserable are the times I forget this wonderful truth, and lack a total falling back on God to sustain even my faith that I may turn from my unbelief. We are helpless before Him of our own strength, and yet when returning to the cross, He gives us strength and power to perform that which we cannot do on our own. Christ Himself said, “You can do nothing apart from Me.” Man is that true, and I see it is true because of these experiential times I’m miserable and lack faith in Christ and His promises to me. Lord, by your mercy and grace, through Jesus Christ, help my unbelieving, dead heart that I may glorify You and marvel at the cross! Lord, help my unbelief!

“The principle of sola fide [by faith alone] is not rightly understood till it is seen as anchored in the broader principle of sola gratia [by grace alone]; . . for to rely on one’s self for faith is not different in principle from relying on one’s self for works.”
– Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will, p.59

Salvation by Grace Alone, in Luther’s estimation, was the heart of the Reformation. What is it Rome had done that required this radical departure from the Catholic church during these times? They had stood in the way of the door, that is, Christ Himself, and made salvation dependant upon something man had to contribute to the price of his salvation. This is salvation by merit, doing good deeds to get a good outcome. And in fact, Rome went even further into antinomianism and had made it to where people could purchase indulgences, or purchase the ability to sin! What was called Christianity during that day had become utterly grotesque and a radical departure itself from authentic, Biblical, God-wrought Christianity. It had become a man-made religion and departed from the God-wrought covenant of grace, appropriated through faith in Christ. Rome had constructed all forms of idolatry, made it to where people had no access (or ability to read) the inspired Scriptures, and had taken away the very thing people needed to save them: salvation through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. It had become salvation by works. And thus comes the Reformation.

Luther came along, and saw the beauty of Romans 5:1; “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He saw the beauty of the argument in Romans 4 preceding the great statement above, and the book of Galatians, that no man shall be justified by works of the law. No one! These passages amongst several others showed that the heart of salvation rested in the doctrine of Justification through faith alone in Christ alone. But Luther even went on to say that the heart of the Reformation itself had to do not merely with the doctrine of Justification by faith alone, but the doctrine of Grace Alone, or that man in no way contributes anything to His regeneration (the new birth). This is where the argument actually starts. Justification by faith alone is a pillar doctrine that was very pivotal in the Reformation, but the argument begins even before this. Being that all of us are dead in our sin, resistant, rebellious toward God, that no one wants or desires anything of God apart from this new spiritual birth, no one willingly places their faith in Christ for salvation. Luther and many other reformers argued from Scripture that in order to see Christ (let alone trust Him for salvation) your vision must be restored, your deaf ears made able to hear, and your heart surgically transplanted with a new living heart that is responsive to the calls of God unto salvation through Christ. Rome had argued that regeneration came after your faith (along with the works you contributed). But the reformers went back to the Scriptures themselves and showed that in fact regeneration precedes faith. We are first born of the Holy Spirit and then given the life and ability we need to willingly trust Christ for salvation. Apart from this new birth, no one comes to the Father.

If anyone has a problem with this doctrine and believes that we do contribute or cooperate in the regeneration of our souls, I have to ask you a simple question: why did you believe while someone else you know that heard the same Gospel message, didn’t believe? Were you smarter, wiser, more in tune with spiritual things naturally than the other person? (John Hendryx) If you say yes, I was more in tune with God, then you are taking credit for something you added to the price of your salvation. In fact you are saying that you had something within you naturally during your unregenerate state! If you answer no, there was nothing in you that made you a more worthy recipient of God’s grace, then you must affirm with me that a desire for Christ had been wrought in your heart by the Holy Spirit alone prior to your belief, and that apart from this work, you never would have come in the first place. You see, if you do not agree that salvation is all of grace, Grace Alone, then you have something to boast about: “I chose Jesus while this other sinner over here didn’t, and he’ll get what he deserves. But I’m saved because I chose Jesus.” Really? Do you think people will be talking like that in heaven? I think not … But don’t you understand that the only reason you chose has nothing to do with anything you initially did, but it rests on the work of God alone in your heart to make you willing, obedient, and responsive to the Gospel that you then believed?

You see, this is the heart of what the Reformation was about: Grace Alone, Sola Gratia. This is a huge doctrine of Christianity those of us in the church must return to. It strips us of all pride, all trust in ourselves for anything we could ever bring to God’s presence. And something I’ve been thinking about more recently is that people who adhere to synergism, that man cooperates in the work of regeneration, really have more in common with Catholicism than Protestantism. The Reformers admitted that salvation = Grace Alone through Faith Alone in Christ Alone. Catholicism says that salvation = faith + works + grace, administered through the Lord’s table by the priests. Most evangelicals today state that salvation = grace + faith alone in Christ alone. I would say obviously I agree more with the last statement than the Catholic statement, but there is a gigantic key element missing from the statement uttered by most evangelicals: Grace Alone. Most people will affirm four out the Five Solas of the Reformation: Faith Alone, Christ Alone, Scripture Alone, God’s Glory Alone. But many have forgotten the one doctrine that Luther himself said was the heart of the Reformation itself: Grace Alone. Is this not worthy of our thorough examination? Why did any of us place faith in Christ to begin with? If someone believes through faith alone in Christ alone, it is owed purely to God’s grace regenerating their heart of stone to believe in the first place. Otherwise, they would never have turned to Him, but would have continued in their unbelief. Why did you believe while someone else didn’t? God’s grace is all we can answer; anything other than this is boasting in something we did. This is huge and totally changes our worship and love for Christ and His work to give us life and restore our relationship to God Himself! It is indeed humbling to deal with, but it’s in the Scriptures. I challenge any of you who disagree to study it … http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/a … _grid.html We have nothing to bring Him but our brokenness and He will indeed heal us by His wounds. Just as God spoke into existance all of creation from nothing, so also God creates in the souls of sinners that which was not there: a desire, love, willingness, the vision, the hearing, indeed the ability, to believe in the risen Christ unto salvation. Let us return to this foundational doctrine that we may praise God for His grace bestowed upon awful, rotten sinners like us!

More pertaining to this:
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/a … sages.html
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/a … views.html
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/a … short.html

It’s a tragedy that today so many people within the church in the West view heaven as a materialistic haven of sorts, where every possible desire for earthly things will be perfectly fulfilled. I’ve heard pastors and teachers of various sorts state that heaven will be a place where you can always be playing golf, jumping off clouds, swimming into the depths of the ocean without a scuba tank, we’ll get to ski down mountains at 200 miles an hour, a place where we’ll basically get whatever we wanted here on earth, and it will be better. In this view it seems heaven is viewed as some sort of divine Disney land where we get to do whatever we want all the time.

The tragedy lies not merely in the fact that none of these perceptions of heaven in any way come from the Scriptures, but most of all that none of these perceptions in any way involve God, the glorified Christ, and the fact that He is the highest value to obtain for all eternity, not perfected possessions. In heaven we could have nothing to possess, no material objects, and yet be rich for all eternity because we possess Christ as our treasure. Where is Jesus in any of the ideas modern people profess as heaven? The only reason heaven is great is because Christ is there. If He wasn’t there, and we had all the greatest possessions God could possibly create, it would be void of any joy. The only reason we have enjoyment in anything God has created here on Earth is because He gives it significance. This is no exception in heaven. Even though things will be perfected, if He is absent from giving those things significance, what is left of worth in those things? God gives anything any worth at all, and more specifically Christ holds all things together by the power of His word.

So what is the best part of heaven, or what is the best part about our salvation? Many would say it’s the fact that we’ve been reconciled from the wrath of God that is even now being revealed against the world. Many would say it’s the fact that we’ll have new perfected bodies at the end of the age, that creation will be restored back to perfection. And I would indeed affirm that all these are priceless, incredible benefits of our salvation and of heaven. Yet Scripture speaks of something even better. Let’s look at Romans 5:6-11. As you read this, pay attention to how Paul reveals the benefits of our salvation, how they build upon each other.

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die– 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Starting in verse nine, Paul shows that because we are justified by the blood of Christ through faith, we shall be spared the wrath of God. What an incredible benefit this is! For those of us who have placed faith in Christ, we have been saved from eternal torment in fires of hell. What a blessing! How incredible is this!? And yet Paul continues. Even better than being rescued from hell, we are saved by the very eternal, infinite, priceless life of Christ Himself! How wonderful! … And yet he continues and states that even “more than that”, the greatest blessing of all, of everything accomplished by the work of Christ on the cross, is that we are reconciled to God Himself! The greatest blessing of Christ’s work is that we have God once again as our treasure! We get Christ for all eternity, the very one through whom all of creation was spoken into existence. How much great is the Creator through whom the creation came to be!? There is nothing greater in all that exists, in all of the benefits of our salvation even, than the fact that we are reconciled back to God Himself, the Author and Founder of all creation, the Author and Founder of even our faith. We get God forever!

Heaven is the place where this great Sovereign God and King of the ages resides. And so I would submit to anyone who has seen heaven as an eternal playground (the way so many people portray it), that the only reason heaven is great is because Jesus is there, because this is where God Himself resides. Could there be anywhere greater than where God Himself lives? There is nothing greater than obtaining God Himself as your treasure forever. All meaning, significance, reality and value is found in God Himself, through the Gate of Jesus Christ. What a wonderful thing we have to look forward to, that we get to spend forever with Christ, getting to know the depths of God for all eternity!

Many read through the Sermon on the Mount and seem to portray what Jesus said in such nice terms. But if you really think about what He was doing, He was raising the bar of the law even higher to where it’s impossible for us to even begin to keep any of it at all. So instead of thinking that Jesus’ sermon on the mount was just a nice talk He gave, and merely a “good moralistic teaching,” really it should cause us to despair of doing anything right in ourselves and strike fear in our hearts.

For instance, in Matthew 5, Jesus will state a law, by saying in verse 27 for example, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ and then He comes along behind that and refines that law, by saying in verse 28, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Whoa. The deed is already done in our hearts even if we don’t commit the physical act! And He does this with several laws. If anyone is angry with his brother, he has committed murder in his heart! Man, what a defeater. And that’s the point! We should indeed despair of doing anything right in ourselves and see that Christ Himself did everything right and that when we trust Him to be our perfect law-abider, then we are freed from the judgment we all fall under because of our law-breaking.

This is exactly what Jesus taught in Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”Christ came to do what we could never do, perform and fulfill the requirements of the law perfectly on our behalf. Praise be to God for the person and work of Jesus Christ, that He was able and in fact did obey the law perfectly, that when we place our faith in Him, we gain His perfect record on our behalf. And through this we then gain power by the Holy Spirit to actually begin to do what the law says, not because we have to out of duty, but because we want to, and the desires of our hearts are changed. What a wonderful and gloriously free gift!

Repent and believe in Jesus Christ that you may be saved, because you definitely cannot count on out-weighing your good with your bad, mainly becaise there is no good within any of us at all (when compared against God’s standard of righteousness displayed in Matthew 5 here)! We are sinners. We fall short continually and yet in Christ, we can be presented perfect before the Father because of Christ’s perfect work on our behalf. How amazing …

John Piper – The Wrath of God Against Ungodliness
http://www.westerfunk.net/publicsermons … usness.mp3

John Piper – Gods Wrath, Vengeance Is Mine, I Will Repay, Says the Lord
http://www.westerfunk.net/publicsermons … 20Lord.mp3

This is not a popular doctrine, nor has it ever been. To even consider the possibility of anyone we know, or myself, or you even, experiencing anything like Dante’s Inferno, it should cause us to tremble in terror at the eternal weight of our sin and it’s deserved punishment. And yet how much worse is hell than the description given in Dante’s Inferno?! Fire, worms, brimstone, gnashing of teeth, eternal darkness, etc, these are all images of how terrible it will be. But how often do any of us use imagery to describe something that we have a hard time describing in words? Don’t all of us use imagery to describe things that are utterly amazing, beyond words, or utterly awful, beyond words? For instance, when trying to describe the beauty of my wife (I’m borrowing this illustration from Piper :), she is as beautiful as a diamond. I’m trying to convey to you in an image something that cannot be conveyed in words. She is so beautiful that I cannot describe it you, except in imagery. That’s the best I can do. If I were to say she’s as beautiful as a piece of rotten wood, how many people would be utterly shocked and probably appauled? And yet in the description Scripture gives us of the pains of hell, it uses imagery.

And yet how often do so many people say, “Oh it’s not that bad is it, it’s just imagery, right?” Exactly! It’s so much more worse than this imagery! The words of Jesus, Paul, John, Isaiah, and many others are simply trying to convey something so terrible, so awful, that a lake of fire, gnashing of teeth, brimstone, worms that do not die, is the best they can do. Many ask, how could a perfect and holy, loving God punish people with eternal torment, where “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched”? Because God is just, and to be just means He must punish sinners. He is the eternal God, the offense against Him is eternal, and so is the punishment against us, that is those of us without a shield, without Christ. Scripture is clear on this point of wrath and yet I hear this doctrine being taught less and less these days in this alleged Christian land. There are those who seem to only preach this point without any of the grace of Christ, but I’m talking about mainstream Christianity, mega-churches, etc, that talk about God only in terms of love. How can you understand His love without the back-drop of what you’re being saved from? What does salvation even mean if there is no wrath to be saved from?

Why do any of us who believe in Christ need to return to studying hell, judgment, and wrath? Because we are so prone to forget what we have been saved from. And we are so prone to think we are in God’s favor by our merits, sinfully. In studying wrath, you see that God did not have to have mercy on you. He did not have to change the desires of your heart to love Him and give rise to your faith in the all-satisfying Savior. He did not have to save you. He could have let you go into the depths of eternal torment, into the lake of fire, deservingly, and yet in Christ, that torment was taken from you and put upon Him on the cross. At the cross, Jesus bore the debt of sinners who believe in Him, and that debt is hell, torment, eternal pain and shame forever. The worst part of the cross was what Jesus had to experience from the hand of His Father: wrath that was our due. How incredible and glorious is this work of Christ on the cross!?

Something that’s really been striking me lately is how important it is for people who claim to be Christians to check whether they are actually in the faith or not. If they are not in the faith, this means they rest under the wrath of God, even now. What do I mean, you say? Our Christian culture is permeated with the idea that if you did this one little thing, “asked Jesus into your heart,” or prayed a little prayer, you are definitely saved, even if you turn away to another religion, rejecting Christ, and living with no regard or care for the things of God. It’s called being a Carnal Christian. Isn’t someone that claims to be a believer supposedly converted? And what does conversion mean? Is it not a heart change from being in total rebellion against God to at least having some concern or care for the things of God? Now that’s not to say that you will be perfect in your desires for the things of God, because we do believe in an idea known as simul iustus et peccator (simultaneously justified and sinful at the same time). But is there any care at all? If you reject the truth altogether, it proves something about the condition of your conversion: it’s non-existent. If someone claims Christ as their Lord and Savior (which aren’t these one in the same because He is indeed both of these, is He not?) and then doesn’t care to do anything that He said, with a willing, joyful heart, then were they converted at all to begin with, or just paying lip service to God? The Israelites did that, and God said, “With their lips they acknowledge me, but their hearts are far from me.” Jesus said a good tree bears good fruit and a bad tree bad fruit. Can a good tree bear bad fruit, and vice versa? No! Conversion is receiving a divinely regenerated heart by the Holy Spirit alone as a result of the work of Christ in His life, death, and resurrection, that desires, albeit imperfectly, to follow God’s commands willingly! But if someone claims Christ and doesn’t care for anything concerning Christ, lives just like they did before their supposed “conversion experience” or that isn’t convicted at all for their sin, it shows and proves that there has been no genuine conversion to begin with and they are just paying lip service to God. And this is my main frustration and point about Carnal Christianity teaching: To teach that someone can come to faith, but later reject Christ altogether, and yet state they are still saved, is teaching that essentially coddles unconverted souls straight into God’s eternal fury.

People against Lordship doctrine claim we’re adding to faith alone, nullifying this precious doctrine. However, this is non-sense mainly because we’re not saying the works save you at all, or that they are even apart of salvation in any respect, but that if you are saved and converted through faith alone, your faith will never be alone, but genuine care and desire for the things of God WILL follow your conversion, though it is an imperfect process over time called sanctification. If no desires follow at all, then you need to check the genuineness of your faith; you can have no assurance that you’re actually saved because conversion produces fruit, inevitably. Will you still sin? Of course! We’re fallen sinners even as believers! It’s not about perfection, but direction. Does your life in any way point the way to Christ as your Savior? As John Hendryx says, the key to this whole debate is what one believes concerning the doctrine of regeneration, or the new birth. Anti-Lordship people are awesome for wanting to defend Faith Alone, but they’re leaving out a huge doctrine that impacts this whole debate: Grace Alone. I believe that we are saved by [u]Grace Alone[/u] through Faith Alone in Christ Alone. Anti-Lordship people and many other’s believe we are saved by grace + faith alone in Christ alone, adding faith as something we contribute [u]of our unregenerate human nature[/u], to the price of our salvation. So really it is them who are adding requirements to salvation.

Lordship Salvation emphasizes that a love for Christ springs from our new nature (granted freely by God) which desires to believe the gospel as well as submit to Jesus Christ as Lord over one’s life. Both faith and obedience are the result of God’s invincible and indelible grace, not the cause of it. The so-called ‘free grace’ movement rejects the inward call of the Holy Spirit to the elect and thus, like Romans Catholics and other synergists, mistakenly ascribe belief in Christ as something within the ability of the old nature. So while they may appear as antinomian after salvation, they are guilty of semi-pelagianism prior to it. An odd mix, but naturally we all are tempted to try to contribute something to our salvation. This is where the fall off the horse away from historic Chrstianity by rejecting the biblical doctrine of salvation by grace ALONE in Christ alone. By not giving glory to God for their faith they add conditions for their salvaiton.

The biggest obstacle to the “no-Lordship” position is its misapprehension of the work of the Holy Spirit in giving rise to our faith and affection for Christ. For HOW CAN AN UNREGENERATE MAN SEE CHRIST’S BEAUTY, EXCELLENCY OR ANYTHING TO DESIRE IN HIM AT ALL. One must have a new heart and the mind of Christ in order to understand and love spiritual things. It erroneously views the Lordship position as having added a contribution of commitment, and thus works, instead of recognizing that they themselves are doing this very same thing by making faith itself a contribution to the price of their redemption. i.e grace + faith. But those of us who embrace a “lordship salvation” believe faith and obedience are the result, not the cause of of the new birth. Unless the Holy Spirit changes the disposition of our hearts from hostility to affection for Christ, no one would exercise saving faith. Any “faith” which exists apart from the work of the Spirit is spurious and of the flesh (Luke 8:4-15). God alone does the work of regeneration which infallibly gives rise to a spiritual faith that desires to obey and commit itself to Christ. In this case God gets all the glory. But the “no-Lordship” position would have us believe that one could produce faith from our unregenerated human nature. The question is, why do some believe and others resist? Are some more wise or humble? Isn’t it grace itself which makes us wise and humble? The Scripture says, “What do we have that we did not receive”. So, in fact, while the “no-Lordship” position is admirably attempting to protect the doctrine of “faith alone”, but in the process it has cast aside the biblical doctrine of “grace alone”. “No-Lordship” may believe in a salvation by grace, but not salvation by grace alone (sola gratia). That man must somehow cooperate with God to be born again, as they hold, is to say that some men innately have the natural capacity to believe, independent of God’s action of grace, while others do not. How is this different than salvation by merit? So in reality the burden of proof to explain belief apart from grace alone, is on those who hold to “no-Lordship”. Different understandings of the work of the Holy Spirit in our regeneration is the key to the debate..