“I feel like the man has shown his true colors. His true colors prove that he is unbalanced. The man believes that works are required for salvation.”
The above quote, copied verbatim from a public forum, is by a ministry leader and a former friend. For years, he published a number of my teaching articles in his ministry magazine, articles in which I consistently taught that the biblical gospel is a call to repentance, a living faith, and a new life of obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit.
I still possess all of my former friend’s personal written correspondence to me in which he only encouraged and complimented me. However, some of his hyper-grace friends began complaining to him about my articles. I suspect some were financial supporters. And he did a 180-degree turn. Suddenly, he was publicly writing that I am a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and a “false prophet.” He began telling people that I had hidden from him my true doctrine (that he published for years). He was a victim of my deception and control. He became a liar.
I, of course, confronted him. He ignored me. In his public comments about me, he pretends that we never had any friendship. Now I am “the man.”
In any case, regarding the above-quoted public accusation in which he finds me guilty of “believing that works are required for salvation,” I plead guilty. Gratefully guilty as charged.
Tragically, he believes, like so many others who claim to be Christians, that works are not required for salvation. The fact is, if that were true, it would make Jesus, Paul, Peter, John, James and Jude all heretics. Although all six of them certainly believed that current salvation (forgiveness of sins, the new birth, and so on) is available to the unholy, future salvation (inheriting God’s eternal kingdom) will only be granted to the holy. Scores of scriptures could be cited to prove this.
Paul, for example, plainly wrote to the Corinthian believers (who were all “saved” when he wrote to them):
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10, emphasis added).
Clearly, Paul believed that certain “works are required for salvation.”
He similarly warned the saved Ephesian and Galatian believers:
But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints…. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience (Eph. 5:3-6, emphasis added).
Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:19-21, emphasis added).
So, again, it is irrefutable that Paul believed “works are required for salvation.”
Jesus, as I have already stated, believed the same. His longest-recorded sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, makes that abundantly clear throughout its entirety. He enumerated many works that are required for future salvation. Within His summary at the end of that sermon, He warned:
Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter (Matt. 7:21).
It could not be clearer.
Again, there are scores of New Testament scriptures that could be cited. When people criticize me, as does my former friend, for advocating that works are required for salvation, I am tempted to ask them, “Is the New Testament in your Bible?”
The truth is, it is heretical to claim that works are not required for future salvation. And the heretics who are preaching that heresy have no scripture on which to stand on other than what they twist or pervert. They also rely on false definitions of the word “grace” and employ horrendous logic that can only fool the ignorant.
God’s grace in salvation is not a license to sin, but rather a temporary opportunity to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who do are graciously forgiven, set free from sin’s power, born again, and indwelled and empowered by the Holy Spirit to live righteously. To be saved in the end, they must continue in the faith that saved them at the beginning. Salvation is not a “one-and-done” event. It is a process to “work out with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12-13). It is a race that must be run with endurance (1 Cor. 9:24-27; Heb. 12:1-2).
Don’t be fooled!
