Read Part One.

Was part one of this two part series tongue-in-cheek?   In one way, yes.  I think there is something wrong with Victoria’s Secret models.  I do.  Most fundamentalists and maybe even a majority of evangelicals would say they’re wrong too, but what I wrote is what they should say, if they were consistent.  They don’t tell you what modesty is.  They either don’t know what it is or they can’t say.  They can’t say because either they don’t want to offend anyone, they think it might cause disunity, it might hurt some bigger, more important issue, or because they think it would be a detriment to church growth.  Or, they really don’t think there are any visible, external standards of modesty.

Really.  What is the Victoria’s Secret model not covering that is supposed to be covered?  Exactly what?  The evangelical and fundamentalist no longer have a standard for modesty.   If they do, I’d like to know.  But they don’t.  It’s relative.   They don’t want to judge.  They can’t judge.  Everyone really can dress like they want.  And if they can’t, what are you going to tell them?  There’s nothing to say.  Scripture isn’t definitive.  It’s all very subjective.

People come to mind when I write this — some I’ve had interaction with recently.  Fred Butler.  Dissidens at Remonstrans.  Bob Hayton.  Bob Bixby.  Steve Davis.  Will Dudding.  Webb Bailey.  Joel Tetreau.  Phil Johnson.  I know there are men far worse than some of these on these issues.  They’re just who I think of first.  Someone will say, “Wow, Kent, you’ve just smeared men who would definitely not approve of Victoria’s Secret models.”  I don’t think they would approve.  They would say they don’t approve.  I don’t think they have any legitimate reason to disapprove.  Just keep reading.  The following particular statement said to me recently sticks out:

The answer to that is never going to be across the board for everyone and in every place. Even at our best effort, we cannot know what God has not revealed to us directly.

Here are some other applicable verbiage:

It’s really a matter of conscience.

They minimize the Gospel by means of excessive separation. In elevating every lesser thing to the position of a hill to die on, they make the Gospel and the core fundamental doctrines which comprise it, just another thing to fight over.

That being said, I think that doctrinal issues, and the teaching in Scripture about loving the brethren and welcoming one another, should challenge us to be accepting of a variety of styles and forms and seek to minister to a variety of generations and people types in and through a shared, blended worship style.

Not at all to digress, my point for writing about Victoria’s Secret models was for consideration of what people call “cultural issues.”  You’ve got Bible teachings.  They have to be applied.  They’re applied in and to the culture, but now they’ve become impossible to apply to the culture any more because of evangelical and fundamentalist gobbledygook that’s an obvious result of postmodernism.  Almost nothing is sacred any more.

A lot of the Bible has to be applied to culture without any explanation how.  Scripture assumes you will know.  I call this “truth in the real world.”  God’s Word implies certain knowledge without definition, because God expects us to know.  And we do know.  We know that we know, because God said it.  History illustrates that we know.  Christians have practiced scripture for millennia with some record and tradition that says people knew what they were doing.  Those details of application allow you to easily point out what’s wrong with Victoria’s Secret models.

Evangelicals and fundamentalists want to convince you that you can’t know any more.  You can’t be certain.  You’ve got an overly regulated conscience.   Too many scruples.   You’re tilting at windmills.   Projecting your own fearfulness on others.  You’re a weaker brother.    Many more.  So that maybe you’re thinking they might be right.   Maybe whatever it is, is just a feeling, an illegitimate one, that you’ve been harboring most of your life in a deceived fashion, so that Victoria’s Secret models are not the problem — you are.   You hear that you’ve just got to learn to let it go and relax.  In essence, they are saying that either the old applications were wrong or now are outmoded.   They’ve got none to replace those old ones, so really those passages don’t even apply any more.  They don’t mean anything, if you take what these people say is true.  What’s ironic is they know, they know, you’re wrong.  A burst of certainty.  They’re sure you’re wrong about being sure about the application of scripture to culture.  So what’s right?  “I don’t know.  But I’m sure you’re not.”

Let’s take Victoria’s Secret models again as an example.  What specific verses of scripture give anything definitive about what is wrong with how they dress or undress?  Almost all evangelicals can’t tell you one.  I’m not talking about an unwholesome infatuation with their bodies, or something like that, that is, a psychological problem that will be damaging to their spirit.  I’m referring to how much of body parts shouldn’t be exposed.  Most fundamentalists have nothing to tell you either.

I’ve got a thought.  The evangelicals and the fundamentalists are the real legalists in this, or at least how they use the word “legalist.”  What do I mean?  I mean that they get their “standard” relative to the world.  They think they’re better because they are more modest than a Victoria’s Secret model.  Let’s say the Bible has a definitive standard that the Victoria’s Secret model doesn’t keep.  Obviously.  However, you the evangelical or fundamentalist are not keeping the standard either.  But you’re closer to the standard, which makes you right.  Does it?  Are you better because you don’t blow the standard as badly?   You lie.  You just don’t lie as much.   They wear smaller amounts of clothing than your shorts or tank top.  You wear a tight little swimsuit and they wear a string bikini.  This is the sides of the scale method of righteousness.  You weigh your modesty against a Victoria’s Secret model and win, so you’re OK.  It’s like the works salvation person who weighs his righteousness against a serial killer.  If they have any scruples of modesty at all, this is how evangelicals usually go about them, and now most fundamentalists do too.

Does that mean the Bible has nothing to say about how Victoria’s Secret models dress?  No.  God’s Word is clear enough.  But evangelicals and fundamentalists are no longer comfortable with drawing any lines.  They might have a personal standard, but they can’t agree that it is anything you could require of anyone else.

In effect, you can’t practice scripture any more.  Too ambiguous.  And with that, God can’t and won’t be honored and obeyed.  But like Jason Collins, the homosexual NBA basketball player, you still call yourself a Christian.  Wait a minute.  You wouldn’t say homosexuality is right, nothing like that.  No, you’re still saying that’s bad, because on your sliding scale, that’s still bad.  You say, “The Bible is clear about homosexuality.”  Yeah.  It was also clear about Victoria’s Secret’s models at one time too.

When I say RAM, I’m not talking about random-access memory, but about what is called Religious Affections Ministries, which is essentially Scott Aniol, with some help from a few like-minded men he has recruited to help with blog posts.  Scott has written at least two books on the subject of worship, and one of them is required reading in a class I have taught.  Recently online a RAM truckload of criticism has been dumped on RAM (so far here and here), which RAM has answered (so far here and here).  There are a lot of background occurrences that have stirred this recent flurry of conflict, so I’m going to weigh in on everything, because I have some analysis that could be helpful, I believe (after I started writing this, I noticed that Aaron Blumer has provided a pretty good background for the conflict here).

            So,
that is our discussion.  Who has
the better of it?  More
importantly, whose position is Scriptural?

–TDR

Love rejoices in the truth, so let’s rejoice.  As Jesus said in Luke 9:50, “Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.”  And I’m talking about Dan Phillips, pastor of the Copperfield Bible Church in Northwest Houston, TX, one of the writers at Pyromaniacs.  He has promoted a practice of biblical separation.  Now he didn’t call it that, but that’s what he’s talking about in his post, an essay that went almost uncommented.  Despite the massive audience at Teampyro, it was almost the tree in the forest.  Did it make a noise?  Dan is talking like not much to none.  Why so little interaction about Dan’s suggestions?  He’s as good as talking in Klingon to an evangelical audience.   It’s Calculus II to a remedial math class.  Blank stares all around.  Some might say that he got 74 comments, but if you scan them, there’s nothing actually about what Dan wrote.  Nothing.  The most intense are “wow, that’s too bad.”  There’s nothing that talks about why someone shouldn’t do this.  Dan doesn’t get into what the Bible says about it either, but, again, we’re rejoicing in what there was about it, and his theme is a scriptural one.

So what’s Dan opining about?  Chuck Swindoll has hosted a great many folks through the years, including Chris Anderson, on the blogroll at SharperIron, but he had at his Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, TX the modalistic singing group (which I had never heard of), Phillips, Craig, and Dean (PCD).  I would guess that a group named Phillips would catch the attention of Phillips.  The theologian Phillips asks about the singers Phillips:

I asked how a man can held up (sic) as a Christian leader in any sense when he is not crystal-clear on such fundamentals as the Gospel and the nature of God. And so I now am asking again: how can singers lead in worship if they are in any way unclear as to their understanding of the nature of God and the Gospel? Hello? what does “worship” mean? Does it matter what god we’re worshiping, whether we are worshiping the same god as the worship-leaders? Does it matter what we are conceiving of as the basis of that relationship that underlies our worship?

Did he say “fundamentals”?  Why haven’t “fundamentalists” latched on to this and praised Phillips?  I know why evangelicals are strangely silent.  They don’t know Ferengi.  But fundamentalists are just running the opposite way.  They don’t want to be called separation Nazis.  They don’t want to be mistaken for fundamentalists.  But it’s clear that what Dan is saying here is that Swindoll should have separated from PCD for its modalism.  He should not have fellowshiped with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reproved them.  That, my friends, is separation.

As you read what Dan wrote, he is thinking like at least a fundamentalist, which is why evangelicals wouldn’t want to touch what he’s writing with a twenty foot pole.  How do you practice biblical separation? (by the way, get our book to get solid exegesis and application about this doctrine)  He’s saying, at least, that men should not be leading in worship, singing or preaching, who are not orthodox on “the Gospel” and “the nature of God.”  He goes further to say that you’ve got to be worshiping the correct God or it is false worship.  He’s making worship a separating issue.  And Dan doesn’t get links to this one.  He doesn’t get mentions.  He doesn’t get favor.  He’s just wondering why it is that everyone makes a big deal about MacDonald and Driscoll inviting T. D. Jakes to the Elephant Room, but crickets about Swindoll inviting PCD to his church.  He doesn’t write this (I don’t think), but isn’t having modalists in your church worse than bringing one to neutral ground for clarifying discussion?  Dan is just thinking and then expressing and questioning based on true principles in his theological construct.

I’m not saying that Dan Phillips is a fundamentalist.   However, what he is saying that Swindoll should have done is what a fundamentalist would say he should do.  If Swindoll did it, he would be acting like a fundamentalist. Fundamentalists take it further, but what Phillips writes about is Fundamentalism 101.

You who read might ask, “Aren’t you not a fundamentalist?”  That’s is correct.  I’m not one.  But I’m not one for a similar basis as Phillips is arguing, that is, I don’t think the Bible allows me to be one.  I’m not core or gospel centered in my fellowship, but boundary directed.  The boundaries of biblical doctrine guide unity and fellowship.  That’s how the Bible teaches it.  But Phillips is arguing in the right way here.

How does Phillips differ from an evangelical here?  An evangelical would handle it like James White did.  I’m not saying that he was bad.  He pointed out error.  That’s good.  Evangelicals, at least conservative ones, will point out error.  They will expose it.  They will call for discernment about the error.  They might write a book or several books about it.  You know that what so-and-so believes is wrong.  And then it stops there.  Conservative evangelicals walk around saying, “Bad, bad, bad, bad.  It’s bad.”  Fundamentalists take it at least one step further, “Bad, bad, bad, bad.  It’s bad.  We’re separating from it.  We won’t fellowship with that.”  Fundamentalists actually take it a step further.  “Bad, bad, bad, bad.  It’s bad.  I won’t fellowship with them.  I won’t fellowship with those who will fellowship with them.”  As Kevin Bauder calls them, “They’re indifferentists.”  He quotes Machen about separation from the indifferentists, those who are indifferent to the corruption of the gospel.

That previous paragraph relates to Billy Graham.  Billy Graham was an indifferentist.  He was actually worse, but in the original separation from him by fundamentalists, it was because he was bringing Roman Catholics into his crusades.  Bauder would say, and I would agree, that indifferentism confuses the gospel, actually itself corrupts the gospel.  Of course, it disobeys God’s commands to separate too, but that’s another post.  Swindoll, however, is an indifferentist here.  He is indifferent to the modalism of PCD.  It’s probably just a “grace awakening” on his part, being very broad in his mercy, which he might say is like the character of God.  He’s showing mercy to PCD.  Or as the new evangelicals said about Billy Graham, “He didn’t believe like Roman  Catholics.  He was just employing a strategy to reach them.”  What Finney would call, “a new measure.”

Fundamentalists today seem to be ashamed of separation, so even they don’t catch the amazing thing that Phillips writes about.  It is very different for an evangelical.  It is out-of-the-mainstream.  Phillips is just being honest, again, with principles that are innate to his study of the Bible.  Perhaps he’ll keep going with that.  Fundamentalists wouldn’t have PCD.  Neither would they have Chuck Swindoll, because he had PCD.  And evangelicals would call that “secondary separation.”  “If you start separating from people who won’t separate, then where does it stop?”  That latter is their argument.  It’s not really an argument, mainly an excuse.

So there you have it.  Kudos, bravo, to Dan Phillips, an evangelical proposing separation!

Read Part One.  There is important introductory information there.

God created us for a relationship with Him.  He is a Spirit.  The relationship with God will be a spiritual relationship.  Satan would like people to be fooled about their relationship with God.  A way that Satan fools people is by causing them to think that a feeling they’ve experienced is from God, when it isn’t.  Since a person can’t see God, he depends on a feeling as signal of God’s working or presence.  There’s nothing that Satan would like people to be fooled about more than worship.  He doesn’t want God to be worshiped, but if people feel like they’re worshiping God, when they’re not, and even just the opposite, they’re dishonoring Him, that would nicely accomplish Satan’s goal.  It’s also possible that some don’t even care that God is honored, as much as they get to entertain and then have people express how wonderful they are, and then the combination of entertainment and spiritual experience comes together in music.

Charismatics developed a very complicated superstructure of fake spirituality over a number of years, until they had an elaborate theology and group of go-to experiences to validate their reality.  Many have been fooled by that.  The same type of deceit or modified forms of it have fooled and are fooling other self-professing non-charismatics.  Anyone can be deceived.  Please think about it.

Feelings can replace true spirituality.  Men who need God replace it with feelings produced by their music, videos, sports excitement, and personal relationships.  Faith doesn’t depend on feelings, but faith lacks the preferred pseudo-confirmation of a feeling.  Judging spirituality is controversial.  People don’t want their spiritual experiences invalidated.  They react with anger to that.

On the other hand, people want their feelings validated.  They want their feelings to be accreditation of their spirituality.  They like the feeling.  Since they like the feeling, it would be great if the feeling would count as spirituality.  Deceit works better when there is a fleshly appeal to it.

Music can produce feelings.  Certain rhythms and chords interact with the flesh for a pleasant feeling.  The popularity of rock music and related genres occurred because of the feelings they gave.  The Charismatic movement started mixing that music with their concocted experiences.  The feelings synthesized with their version of Christianity.  The Charismatic movement boomed.  That part of the movement flowed into evangelicalism.

Let me take a step back, because Charismaticism didn’t initiate the incorporation of feelings into Christianity.  That started with revivalism.  Finney and then Moody used music to shape audiences.  Their theology called for human means to meet divine goals.  Moody’s music wasn’t as bad as the rock of today, but it shifted things that direction.  The Charismatics stemmed from revivalism, becoming revivalism on steroids.  This was the original gospel music, because music was a method to lead to a desired outcome.  All of what I’m writing is true.  Some of the same people, who rely on the exact methods of Finney, savage the operation of Finney.  It’s rank hypocrisy.  Worse than that, it’s fooling people just like Finney did.  Finney proclaimed that he was manipulating people.  The new evangelicals deny it.

Billy Graham experimented with all sorts of means in his crusade to draw a crowd and to prime their emotions to move at an invitation.  Men all around copied him. These methods “worked” and were imitated even more.  It became the norm.  It had a “history” to it.  Any critics were marginalized.  “They were emphasizing second tier doctrines.”  “They were judging in areas that scripture was silent.”  “They were legalists.”  “They are divisive.”  “They are fundamentalists.”  I was called a liar recently for calling it what it was. Whatever.

The Jesus movement used these methods to merge a segment of a generation in the 1960s.  Even a conservative evangelical like John MacArthur called it a genuine revival.  That movement brought Christian rock mainstream into the church.  Many evangelical radio programs start with their own Christianized version of bumper music.

People confuse the feeling they get in “worship” as some kind of spiritual sensation.  They’re getting in touch with God somehow, are on His frequency.  At times, they even send up their hands, like raising the antennae.  Those feelings are not spiritual.  They’re flesh.  So what is flesh they think is spiritual.  This is spiritual deceit.  People think they’re spiritual, when they’re not.  When they operate on these terms in their “worship,” they’ll take that lack of discernment to many other areas.  And they do.

The worst result is the loss of worship.  Instead of worshiping God, the participants are serving themselves.  They like the feelings, and now they are justified as worship.   It is more insidious and evil than if it were just a straight secular rock concert.

This form of fake spirituality is described in a paragraph by Peter Masters as

gathering thousands of young people annually, and featuring the usual mix of Calvinism and extreme charismatic-style worship. Young people are encouraged to feel the very same sensational nervous impact of loud rhythmic music on the body that they would experience in a large, worldly pop concert, complete with replicated lighting and atmosphere. At the same time they reflect on predestination and election. Worldly culture provides the bodily, emotional feelings, into which Christian thoughts are infused and floated. Biblical sentiments are harnessed to carnal entertainment.

He continues:

In times of disobedience the Jews of old syncretised by going to the Temple or the synagogue on the sabbath, and to idol temples on weekdays, but the new Calvinism has found a way of uniting spiritually incompatible things at the same time, in the same meeting.

Many who agree with Masters have given up the fight on this.  They have concluded that it isn’t worth it.  They don’t like it, but they don’t want to minimize their influence by bringing it up.

Masters isn’t the only evangelical saying this kind of thing.  In his biography on John MacArthur, Iain Murray has the gall to spend a few pages criticizing him for this.  He’s not as harsh as Masters or me, but he brings it up, in his biography no less.  He writes (p. 57):

I want to add a measure of regret that MacArthur does not seem to have given fuller attention to an issue connected with all these controversies. The contemporary decline in public worship bears a relationship to antinomianism, with the charismatic movement, and with the practice of the Church of Rome. . . . A lost consciousness of the majesty of God has turned worship into providing what people desire.

When I watched the “worship” at the recent Shepherd’s Conference of Grace Community Church and MacArthur, joined by hundreds of pastors, if not thousands, on display was the acceptance of this fake spirituality on a massive level.  This is where people are at today.  Some might say that they accept it, because it is in fact acceptable.  It’s not wrong.  It’s even a superior spiritual experience.  “We’ve reached new heights of spirituality with it.”  No.  It is the same fake spirituality that Jonathan Edwards criticized in his Treatise on the Religious Affections.  Of course, what Edwards bemoaned and rejected, was much more tame than that produced by evangelicalism (even conservative), but it was what he was talking about.  All of this is tell-tale of rampant fake spirituality, when its “conservative” leaders gather to be fooled by it themselves.

I can’t talk about everyone on this, but there is an interesting synergism between evangelicalism and revivalist fundamentalism here.  What you hear at Lancaster Baptist Church and West Coast Baptist College and then at Grace Community Church are amazingly the same.  They are almost identical in their feelings.  They are producing the very same fraudulent spirituality.  How could they be so much the same?  What Murray wrote, pragmatism, is the common denominator.  They’re both moved by success.  This stuff works.  And when it works, the sense is that it must be the “power of God.”  You hear both Paul Chappell and John MacArthur talk about the power of God.  They even have a similar take on it.  The charge in their power is seen in their music.

I don’t know if these churches can or will turn back from this.  Once you’ve gotten where they’re at, it’s tough.  Giving it up is like weaning yourself off of caffeinated beverages.  It doesn’t feel very good to let it go.  They would lose a lot of people if they did, and that wouldn’t be worth it.  It would be to admit their “worship” is wrong.  That’s a heavy admission.  What I predict is that it will  all just get worse and worse in the next generation.  It’s very much like our country moving from FDR to Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama in our addiction to spending and debt.  The feelings will mount and the deceit will grow without a stark, clear repentance and willingness to call it what it is.

When Jesus talked to the rich young ruler, as recorded in Luke 18:18-30, what did he think Jesus was talking about?  We really don’t have to have any doubt about this.  Look at what Peter says to Jesus in v. 28:  “We have left all and followed thee.”  Unlike the “certain ruler,” Peter and those with him had relinquished their possessions to follow Jesus Christ.  When Jesus said in v. 22, “Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me,” Peter understood him to be saying, “Leave all and follow me.”  That’s how it reads.  And we know this is dealing with salvation, because in v. 26, “they that heard it said, Who then can be saved?”

It’s impossible for an unbeliever to sacrifice.  He can’t do it.  Jesus talked about that in His parable of the soils back in Luke 8, when speaking of the rocky soil, He said:  “They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.”  In time of temptation fall away.  In the Matthew account in Matthew 13:6, it reads:  “And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.”  This hearer doesn’t have genuine faith, a legitimate profession, and so he can’t sustain any kind of profession when some kind of sacrifice is called for, as represented by the sun scorching.  He has no root.  Jesus tested the profession of the “certain ruler,” and his profession could not sustain the test of Jesus’ commands in Luke 18:22.  If he really did believe in Jesus Christ, He could give up his stuff, even as Abraham could offer up Isaac by faith.

Men don’t have to give up their money to be saved.  No.  They have to give up everything, their life, to be saved.  That is scriptural faith.  The money was the one thing, however, that the young ruler couldn’t part with, because he was covetous.  He was rebelliously covetous. Only less the number of the commands to “follow me” did Jesus command to give up your life, your self (psuche), in order to have eternal life.  You can’t hang on to your soul (psuche) and expect Jesus to cleanse it for all eternity.  For a soul to be converted (Ps 19), to be restored (Ps 23), it must by offered to God by faith.  Those who hang on to their soul won’t have it cleansed.  The ruler had a certain kind of belief in Jesus to come to Him in the first place, but it was not a saving belief, not a substantive, deep enough faith, to sustain the test of his own possessions.

You can’t believe in Jesus, plus material things.  You can’t serve God and mammon.  You have to make that choice.  And in that choice, the “certain ruler” chose his money.  It’s impossible for a camel to go through the eye of  a needle.  In the same way, it’s impossible for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, when he is trusting in his own riches.

The religious leaders believed that riches were a sign of some kind of good favor with God.  To them, someone who was rich was certainly ready for the kingdom.  Just the opposite, someone who trusted in his riches couldn’t get in.  It’s actually impossible for anyone to be saved except by the grace of God.  It’s impossible for a rich man, but it is possible with God (v. 27).  “All things are possible with God.”

It is worth it to part with riches in order to follow Christ.  You are trading something temporal for something eternal, as Jesus makes clear in vv. 29-30.  Jesus ends v. 30 with:  “and in the world to come life everlasting.”  This is not talking about some kind of life everlasting.  It’s life everlasting.  You get life everlasting by trading in your life for that life.  It is an exchange.  That is faith.  It is repentance.  You leave something for something else.  You leave something temporal for something eternal.  That’s how the exchange comes about.

I have noticed a discomfort that professing Christian leaders have had with the rich young ruler.  Because they don’t like what it says, they twist it around into something that will conform to what they want it to say.   One way they will do this is by making a big deal about the opening question of the young ruler (v. 18):  “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  They point out the “do” and say that is what really manifests the problem of the young ruler.  “He must have believed in salvation by works.”   If that was the major issue there, then why didn’t Jesus then say, “What do you mean ‘do’?  You can’t ‘do’ anything to be saved.  It’s not by works.”  Of course, it’s not by works, but Jesus didn’t deal with “do” because that wasn’t the problem with the rich young ruler.  Sure, you could explain how that it would be a problem.  He didn’t see his sinfulness, so he thought he was good, which means he was trusting in his works.   In that sense, yes.   He wouldn’t place his faith in Christ because he couldn’t turn from his possessions.  He was covetous.

I have no problem saying that salvation comes from obedience.  It does.  It is the obedience of faith.  We obey the command to believe in Jesus Christ.  That command to believe in Him is akin to a command to love Him and to serve Him.  God is seeking for those who will worship Him.  The first act of worship is the offering of someone’s soul to God.  That is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is also loving Him by obeying that commandment.  It is serving Him because it is a sacrifice of yourself to Him.  Can a person be saved who will not yield his self to God?  No.  He doesn’t believe in the Lord.  He isn’t poor in spirit.  He is hanging on to his own life.  He wants his own way.   And more.

Another way that men show their discomfort with the account of the rich young ruler is by saying that what Jesus was doing was simply showing him his sinfulness.  The passage doesn’t say that, “but that’s what Jesus was doing, because if not, then He was requiring him to do good works to be saved, and we know Jesus wouldn’t do that.”  It’s true Jesus wasn’t requiring Him to do good works to be saved.  Good works can’t save anyone.  However, Jesus did in fact call on him to do something.  He had to leave all and follow the Lord.  To leave is to repent and to follow is to believe.

But what about the “sell and distribute” part?  Jesus was God.  If the rich young ruler in fact believed Jesus was God, then He would have no problem leaving behind his possessions for the Lord.  That would have been to believe in Him.  Turning this into a way for him to see his sinfulness, because he was brought to the realization of covetousness with Jesus’ command, doesn’t fit context.  As you keep reading, it doesn’t turn out that way.  Jesus doesn’t give us a tip that would say that’s what He was doing.  This man was trusting in his riches, so Jesus told him to give them up.   In the next chapter, Zacchaeus had the same kind of response to Jesus (19:1-10).

Lou Martuneac in his In Defense of the Gospel, writes:

The error in the Lordship proponents’ interpretation of the passage is this:  they come to the passage requiring a costly salvation because they confuse the cost of discipleship with the free gift of salvation through the finished work on the cross.

So much is wrong with this sentence.  First, I don’t come to this passage with that kind of predisposition.  I don’t go to any passage with a requirement for the passage before I get there.  The passage itself provides whatever the requirement is.  Second, the passage reads a cost in salvation.  In fact, it is no cost, even as Jesus explains in vv. 29-30, because what you give up isn’t worth anything — it’s worthless.  This is how faith operates.  We give up the temporal for the eternal.  You can’t believe in Christ plus all the idols on your shelf.  You can’t both continue in some kind of rebellion against Christ and believe in Him.  You’re either rebellious or you believe — not both.  The rebellion is described as “hold[ing] the truth in unrighteousness” in Romans 1 In Philippians 3, Paul said he counted everything in the past as loss, even as dung, that he might win Christ.  Paul couldn’t keep his old life plus believe in Jesus.  What kind of cost is it, when you give up this world’s goods for eternal life?  It is in fact no cost.  It is faith, however.  This is one of the paradoxes of faith.  It costs you nothing, but it costs you everything.  Everything outside of Christ just happens to be nothing.  Third, the rich young ruler passage is not about the “cost of discipleship,” unless you believe that discipleship is the same as salvation (which is a discussion Thomas Ross had here beginning with this post).  It is a salvation passage.  To make it something other than about salvation is totally to twist it from its context, or, in other words, to come to the passage requiring that it be talking about some after conversion dedication experience (second blessing theology).  This is a perversion of the passage.  We should be taking an example of evangelism from the life of Jesus.

Here is another sentence from the exegesis of Martuneac (p. 184):

Jesus never conditioned the gift of eternal life on this man’s willingness or promise to give away his riches.

Ask yourself the question.  If the man said, “Yes, I will leave all to follow Christ,” would he have had the gift of eternal life?  Is that how the passage reads?  Of course it does.  Martuneac creates a straw man.  Is giving up your riches the means of eternal life?  No.  However, his riches were what were keeping him from eternal life, so by giving them up, he would receive eternal life.  The riches were an idol to him.  He needed to turn from that idol to serve the living God (1 Thess 1:9).  So Lou’s statement is false.  Jesus did condition the gift of eternal life on this man’s willingness to give away his riches.  That’s exactly how the passage reads. Lou might call this salvation by works, but it just isn’t so.  If repentance is a work, then faith is a work, and salvation is by works.  But it isn’t.  Neither repentance (Acts 11:18) or faith (Philippians 1:29) are works.  Turning from your idol of money, turning from your way to Jesus’ way (John 14:6), is repentance.  “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5).

Martuneac goes on to say later in that paragraph:

The Lord brought him to realize that he was a sinner who needed a sacrifice that not even all his riches and good works could buy.

What?!?!  Where does it say that anywhere in that passage?  Nowhere.  This is total fabrication out of sheer cloth.  Lou contradicts himself.  Was it a sin for the rich young ruler not to sell all that he had and distribute it to the poor?  You’ve got to make up your mind here.  Is Lou saying that according to his definition of covetousness, that you have to sell all that you have and give it away, or you’re covetous?  Then we’re all living covetous lives, and 1 Corinthians 6:10 says that no one who is covetous “shall inherit the kingdom of God.”  How could the man be only “realizing he’s a sinner,” when not selling everything and distributing it is not a sin?

The rich young ruler loved his money more than Christ.  He was devoted to his money and not to Jesus.  If he had to give up his money, then he wouldn’t want to follow Jesus.  In other words, he didn’t believe in Jesus.  If he believed in Jesus, he would give up his money.  This is not what Lou is saying.  Lou is saying that Jesus was employing a strategy, a technique, by telling this man to do something that Jesus really didn’t intend for him to do, then he would find out that he really was a sinner who had not kept the law from his youth up. Covetousness was this man’s sin, but in light of his disloyalty to Jesus.

At the end of Jesus’ commandments in Luke 18, He didn’t say, “I really didn’t mean it when I commanded those things.  I was just trying to get you to see your sin of covetousness.”  In other words, Jesus wasn’t lying.  He did in fact want the man to give up everything in order to follow Him, just like He did with Peter, James, and John, when He called on all them to follow Him.  It wasn’t just a clever way to get the man to see his sin of covetousness.

These two very different understandings of Luke 18 or the parallel passages on the rich young ruler could not both be true.  One of them is perverting the teaching of the passage.  This is what makes Jesus’ story of the rich young ruler tell-tale for someone’s doctrine of salvation.

This could be a part two to Monday’s post that dealt with Shepherd’s Conference and Carl Trueman and more.

The Lord Jesus entered Jerusalem to great exaltation, as superficial as it might have been.  It was true.  He was King.  He was Lord.  He had a royal agenda.  He rejected the religion of the day.  That night He stayed in Bethany, fully preparing to come back down to Jerusalem the two miles the next morning to cleanse the temple.  The temple had become something other than its intended purpose.

When Jesus was twelve and in the temple, we heard that His purpose was His Father’s business, which was in the temple.  Jesus didn’t come to attempt to disabuse Israel of Roman dominion.  However, He did go to the temple to cleanse it.  And what was the problem there?

The temple had moved away from its intended purpose, which was worship.  No doubt they had a form of worship.  They had a form, a kind of shell of God’s intention.  However, the temple had become a den for those not there to worship.  What went on at the temple was called prayer.  Everything up to prayer was to get to prayer.  All of the sacrifices were to bring people to the point of fellowship with God, but the end was prayer, communion with God.

The way the religious leaders of Jesus’ day perverted worship in the temple was not the only way it could be perverted.  It was one of the forms that might replace true worship.  Elijah met another kind on Mt. Carmel with the religious leaders there allowed in the land.  Of course, Moses and Joshua came down from Mt. Sinai and heard and then saw another corrupt form.

The temple today is God’s assembly.  Paul says the church at Corinth was God’s temple:  ye are the temple of God.  Paul said that the church at Ephesus was the “house of the living God.”  Can the sacrifices of the New Testament temple become perverted?  Sure.  Instead of a house of prayer, it becomes a den of entertainment and show and self-gratification and inordinate affection.

We can trace what occurred in history to see how it occurred.  We can go back and see how that the temple in Jerusalem became a den of a different kind.  We go back to the mid 19th century and praise became a new measure.  Popular music, albeit more like carnival or circus music, became the draw of the unbelieving crowd in order to arouse them.  Inserted in place of praise was a new measure.  Forms were chosen that would attract and stimulate.  Whether God was pleased wasn’t the consideration.  Men were not sinners who needed cleansing so much as they were sinners who needed kindling or instigation, the right bait, and music, a biblical element could suit that purpose.

You can keep following the path of the above technique or strategy and see how it created a new job set.  Not moneychanging necessarily, but you’ll still find money being changed.  The church growth movement brings in the money for the books, the Christian music industry, the hit songs.  It’s a new kind of priesthood, the invention of an innovative new position to go with a whole new philosophy in the temple of God.  It has perverted the temple of God.

And now we have rap and rock and grunge in church.  Not only do we have the corruption and perversion, but we’ve changed the purpose of God’s house.  You hear the trap set and you have sensual styles and the blues chords.  The attraction has changed.  And people now think it’s the spirit of God.  They defend this stuff like a dog fights for the chow left in the bottom of his bowl.  Don’t touch this music.  It’s about God, ya know.

The people are now destroyed by this lack of knowledge.  They get to the end, the point of the reconciliation, the death on the cross, and the advocacy, the worship, and they miss that for the bowl of pottage.  We’ve turned the temple of God into a den.  The defense is similar to what you see at the end of Luke 19, where the religious folk are angry.  They want to keep it going.  It’s profitable.  It’s successful.  Today it’s entertaining.  It replaces true spiritual worship with a feeling of passion that is very much akin to the arousal someone gets at any rock concert.  You put in Christian words, which happens to be blasphemous to God’s house and name, and the people think it’s the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit doesn’t accept that.  He works, but it is more in the way of indignation, like Jesus had.

Have you noticed that Jesus’ time in Jerusalem began in His ministry with cleansing the temple and ended with cleansing it?  If we are to be transformed by the face of Jesus in the gospels, should the leadership of today’s temple not also be cleansing it?  What particular den has the temple become today?  What corruption has been allowed into the worship?

So here we are.  Who will turn over the tables?  Who will man the whip?