Oswald Chambers on Salvation By Faith
The October 28 devotion in Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest risks leaving people in the dark about what he meant. I think Chambers is making an important point about the basis of our salvation, but he does it in a potentially confusing way: I am not saved by believing—I simply realize I am […]
Keith Giles on God’s Wrath
I was reading up on house churches when I stumbled across this post from Keith Giles (whom I am not familiar with, but who has written about “organic churches”). He argues that wrath is not one of the attributes of God. That’s clearly wrong. Wrath is definitely one of the attributes of God. If God […]
The Overcomer Won’t Be Hurt by the Second Death (Revelation 2:11)
I recently wrote a blog on the NT concept of overcomers (see here). That blog led to this question: The problem with this logic is that Revelation 2:11 does not make sense if only victorious Christians are overcomers. I need you to address this verse specifically: “‘He who has an ear, let him hear what […]
A Free Grace Response to John Owen’s Conundrum
This past spring was one of the wettest on record. That might be why we had tons of flies around the house. As the kids ran in and out of the house, flies would get in, so we set an electric bug zapper on a kitchen counter to deal with the problem. One day, my […]
Beware of How You Harmonize 1 Cor 11:5 and 1 Cor 14:34
I just came across an article entitled “What Paul Really Says about Women in Ministry” It is at the Assemblies of God website. You can see their article here. The author, George Wood, argues for the egalitarian position, which is the view that men and women, while having differences, are to have equal teaching and […]
Watchman Nee on the Eternality of Eternal Life
Charles Ryrie famously said that if eternal life could be lost, it has the wrong name. He wasn’t the first to make that point. Watchman Nee, the well-known Chinese theologian (whom I consider to be an early proponent of Free Grace theology), said the same thing way back in 1937: The Bible shows us that […]
Evangelical Leaders Who Deny Certainty of Salvation
Dr. John Niemelä called today and asked me if I had a list of quotes from Evangelicals who deny absolute assurance. Well, I didn’t have the list, but I did have many such quotes. So, I’ve pulled them together for this blog. Robert Peterson: Protestants do not claim the ‘absolute’ certainty that Rome rejects. The […]
“No Pure Gospel”?
“There’s no pure gospel in the world.” Recently, I took a class at an Evangelical seminary when someone made that statement. He continued: “In fact, I’d be really afraid if someone thought that he had the pure gospel!” It was not clear what he meant by “pure gospel.” Did he mean “no one really knows […]
John 3:16—A Thick Reading
John 3:16 is well–loved for good reason—it’s the gospel in a nutshell. If someone believes it, he has everlasting life. Of course, you don’t have to understand and believe it all to be born again. It’s possible to believe that promise in a basic way without having a very deep understanding of what it means. […]
The Overcomers
Here is a hot question from my inbox: I enjoy reading your blogs. I need a little clarification on a statement you made in the penultimate paragraph of this post. You used the phrase “only overcoming believers.” Are you suggesting that there are some believers who will not “overcome”? Many Evangelicals say that all believers […]