Actual Lord Jesus Christ
For faith to be saving faith, the person must place the faith in the actual Lord Jesus Christ. This means He is the Christ, not an impostor. It is not saving faith if it does not direct toward the saving object, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. Accompanying this necessarily, the faith must attune to the Person of Jesus Christ. He is not Christ if the said “belief” does not acquiesce to the reign and lordship of Jesus Christ and relinquish the personal will and way. This is in essence the offering of “self” or one’s soul to God. Scripture explicates all of this paragraph.
Believing that Jesus is the Christ is not something arbitrary. He becomes the Christ to the person who believes in Him. That means the one believing in Jesus Christ abdicates his throne to Jesus Christ. The person who believes in Jesus Christ is not on the throne of his own heart, but Christ is. When the Apostle Paul received Christ, he said immediately, “What wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6)
Count One’s Life as Loss or Deny Self
When the Apostle Paul later testifies about his conversion, he says that he counted everything as loss and dung that he might win Christ (Philippians 3:8). Paul is saying that you do have to count you and the best of you as loss and dung. This is the denying self of Luke 9:23. You can’t believe in Jesus Christ and yourself. Jesus can’t be put on an altar with all someone’s other gods, including himself.
The way of Jesus Christ is in contradiction to the way of you. You’ve got to leave you in order to have Him. You can’t have both. This is the same challenge of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16-22 (Mark 10:17-22, Luke 18:18-30). You don’t need to give all of your money to the poor to be saved. No, but if you believe in Jesus Christ like he said he did, then you can give up everything for him. If you don’t, then you don’t believe in Him. You can’t serve idols and Jesus both.
People conflate what I’m explaining to “salvation by works,” even “frontloading works.” Works aren’t involved at all. This is just biblical faith. Saving faith is exclusive. It must be in Jesus Christ, so He must be Jesus Christ. If He is Jesus Christ, then He is Christ and He is Lord. Christ and Lord means control and ownership. You are giving yourself up, so that He is the owner. This is the commitment of believing that is the volitional aspect of faith.
More Than Intellectual Assent to Facts
Faith is more than intellectual assent to facts, essentially head knowledge alone. This is like the check in the box. As I explain the above and state that saving faith is not just intellectual or even worse, just emotional, what is different about faith that includes volition? This goes along with two things Jesus said that are parallel or synonymous with saving faith: (1) Follow me, and (2) Lose your life for my sake. Jesus said among other places in Matthew 16:25:
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.
“Lose it” or “shall lose his life for my sake” is not meaningless. It’s not that we can’t know what Jesus is talking about. We should assume we can know. This is that relinquishing of your will or your way. It dovetails with repentance. You can’t keep going your way and get to heaven. Anyone who comes after him must deny himself (Luke 9:23).
When Jesus talked about the gospel or salvation with the woman at the well in John 4, He told her that God the Father sought such to worship Him and to worship Him in spirit and in truth. What does worship have to do with salvation? The first act of worship is the offering of your soul to God, what Psalm 23:3 and Psalm 19:7 call the restoring of the soul or the converting of the soul. God takes the real you and restores you or converts you, but to do so, He must have you. He wants you. Faith offers the soul to God. This is believing He is Christ and Lord.
More to Come
This is crucial indeed. Pastors need to preach “Lord and Savior” and not just “Savior”, but maybe they don’t believe what you just explained. It’s clearly there in the Bible and I think it’s very serious. If He isn’t Lord, He can’t save us from our sins. If He is Lord, then we must realize we’ve been sinning against Him, and repent and receive Him.
I think what I said sounded a little like oneness heresy, so I’m sorry. I’m still learning, and I should be careful what I say. But it is tragic how professing Christians knowingly or unknowingly undermine the lordship of Jesus Christ. We don’t just believe in his work on the cross and a handful of Bible verses, we also believe in who he is, the Lord, and therefore his authority through his word and the Holy Spirit in our lives. Anyway, thanks for the teaching.
I didn’t see it, Andy, a oneness heresy. It was fine.
Ok, thanks.
Kent,
Do you make any distinction between salvation and discipleship? How would Romans 12;1-2 fit into what you said about denying and giving up oneself? Is there a sense in which you do it at salvation and then you continue to deny yourself?
Do you think in Luke 9:23 you have a situation where Christ is explaining faith to the crowd? In your article you are taking a passage to describe faith but I don’t think Christ is giving a gospel explanation in Luke 9 in a similar way that you give to someone on the door.
I think Luke 9 has application to Christians too, not just to a lost person. Like in Romans 12 the believers need to present themselves, so believers need to regularly deny themselves.
Hi John,
God doesn’t call unbelievers to present their bodies for perpetual worship, because they can’t do it. Those offering their bodies already have offered their souls to God even as seen in the first eleven chapters of Romans. Luke 9:23 is salvific. Coming to Him is salvation language. Salvation passages do have an application to saved people, because whatever is true at the moment of conversion does not stop. This is akin to Jesus in his preaching of the Sermon on the Mount, when he speaks of entrance requirements and outcomes. He presents the outcome up front for an understanding for a person, whether he is saved or not and to count the cost.
Watch this gospel presentation to understand how this all fits together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DLV1EnefY.
Yes, in the New Testament, discipleship and salvation are the same. His sheep follow Him. The formatting needs to be sharpened up, but see this: https://kentbrandenburg.com/2017/01/27/acts-1126-all-christians-are-disciples/
Brother Brandenburg,
I’ve been wondering if you’ve ever had a well-known figure from the revivalist/IFB movement (Hyles, Sword of the Lord, PCC, West Coast, Van Gelderen, etc.) engage you personally in serious dialogue on this topic to defend their position? I know many of them have written straw-man books and take pot shots in their sermons, but I don’t know that I’ve ever heard them engage in serious conversation with someone who believes and teaches true repentance.
Thanks
Hi David,
They don’t tend to defend a position. That was the common Hyles credo. No defense. When I have talked, they don’t have an exegetical soteriology. What the Bible says isn’t big to them.