#58 - A Truth B Truth - Seeing Distinctions between Salvation and Discipleship

Charlie spoke at an FGA conference about seeing the distinctions between salvation and discipleship. This was taken from his book Grace, Salvation, and Discipleship where he breaks it down into A-Truth B-Truth...salvation truth (justification) and discipleship truth (sanctification).

Distinctions make a big difference in the Bible, even down to the letter or word and if you're not careful you can end up down a theological path that leads to poor application. So seeing distinctions in scripture is critical. 

One of the potential dangers is that the Gospel becomes corrupted. Lordship Salvation for example, says that a person must surrender and show obedience in order to be saved. They have taken discipleship truth and ported it into salvation truth. They go so far as to say every true Christian is a disciple, they have to be, otherwise they aren't saved. Reformed Calvinism and the idea of perserverance of the saints says that unless you continue to work and die in the faith, you were never saved to begin with. Arminianism does this as well, if you unbelieve or severely sin you can lose your salvation. Likewise, legalism is simply the idea that you have to do something in order to please God. 

Needless to say this confuses people and ends up making them questions their salvation. A person cannot have assurance of salvation if it's based one's performance. "Performance based salvation" includes everything from commitments made, obedience, one's surrender, or anything that has to do with one's attempt to please God. This is a challenge to anyone who says you can have assurance and holds to performance based views.  The lie of the devil is do good and God will love you. But the fact of the matter is, you can't do good, yet God already loves you; so much so that he sent his son to die in your place and satisfy the payment for sin.

So let's keep the gospel clear so that we can preach it to the world freely and make that critical distinction between salvation and discipleship. "Only when we clearly understand what God says can we effectively share a clear gospel, be assured of our salvation, and grow in our relationship with Him."- Norman L. Geisler, Ph.D.

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For further reading see Charlie's GraceNotes, Are Disciples Born or Made?