The article "Only disciples are saved," showed that according to biblical theology a disciple is one who follows Jesus because he alone promises one a fulfilled future. Protestantism, however, has not always defined saving faith this way. In its very beginnings the early Luther described faith like this. But two decades later in his Galatians commentary (1535) he shifted to declaring that saving faith consists only of receiving the gift of God's forgiveness made possible by Jesus' finished work.

Two centuries later during the Great Awakening Wesley and Whitefield urged people to "pursue holiness without which no one shall see God" (Heb. 12:14). But the Scottish religious sectarian, Robert Sandeman (1718-71), taught that a person is saved simply by acknowledging that Jesus died on the cross for people's sin. The text he felt proved his teaching was Rom. 4:5 "To him who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked his faith [in Christ's finished work] is credited for righteousness."

And this disagreement in Protestantism about the nature of saving faith keeps surfacing. In two prominent debates since the 1950's, (Everett Harrison and John Stott; John MacArthur and Charles Ryrie ), the difference turns chiefly on questions of (1) meritorious works, and (2) the assurance of salvation. Key Bible passages supply the corrective to positions taken in these debates. They are summed up in an analogy very helpful to understanding the relationship between discipleship and assurance of eternal life.

In 1959 Everett Harrison, charter member of the Fuller Seminary faculty, urged that "salvation is a gift. It does not depend on our works. It does not come to us as a reward for our faithfulness." "As we come to Christ, our hands must be empty to receive His gifts. He does not expect them to be filled with counter gifts as though to anticipate that, after all, we must do something to be saved."

As for the assurance of salvation he declared that "When we come to Jesus simply as receiving [his finished work], the blessed Spirit comes into the heart to create those impulses of love which will make us desire above everything else to acknowledge Christ as our personal Lord and in all things be conformed to him. If we linger [before making Christ Lord] we can [still] say meanwhile with glad and humble hearts that we are His and He is ours. . . . The ground of the assurance of salvation is endangered if surrender to Christ's lordship is part of the ground for being a Christian." (Eternity, Sept., 1959, pp. 14ff.

In the same article, however, the Rev. John Stott of England (a Payton lecturer at Fuller Seminary in 1961), took issue with Harrison. He argued that to be saved a person must have "turned from idols to serve the living God" (1 Thess. 1:9), and have produced "fruits worthy of repentance" (Lk. 3:8). His way of keeping such works from being meritorious was to affirm that "There is no merit in either faith or works. Both are gifts of God. God 'grants' repentance just as much as he gives faith (Acts 11:18; Eph. 2:8)." Consequently, "in the great manifesto of grace and faith, the Epistle to the Romans, the 'obedience of faith' is mentioned at the beginning and end (Rom. 1:5; 16:26), and so the call of God in the gospel is not just to believe in him, but to obey him" (pp. 17ff).

Stott concluded, "To say that only a confession of 'factual lordship' is necessary to salvation, without any subjective submission to him as Lord, is to encourage. . . a faith without works, as dead and sterile as that rejected by James in his epistle." Stott acknowledged that Christians sin and even have times of rebellion against God. But -- and this is a troubling omission in his teaching -- he said nothing about how such people retain the assurance of being forgiven during such times when the heart reverts to idolatry.

In The Gospel according to Jesus (1988), radio preacher John MacArthur affirmed that true faith must be like that of the returned prodigal son. "Observe the young man's unqualified compliance, his absolute humility, and his unequivocal willingness to do whatever his father asked of him. . . He had made a complete turnaround. His demeanor was one of unconditional surrender, a complete surrender of self and absolute submission to his father. That is the essence of saving faith" (p. 153).

Then citing Jesus' statement, "Any one of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple" (Lk. 14:33), MacArthur declared, "No matter what the rich young ruler believed, since he was unwilling to forsake all [Lk. 18:12] he could not be a disciple of Christ. Salvation is for those who are willing to forsake everything" (p. 78).

Meritorious works? Theologian Charles Ryrie, however, objected that saving faith cannot include submission to Jesus' lordship because it destroys the reformation principle of salvation by faith alone. According to his So Great Salvation. What it Means to Believe in Jesus (1989), "If surrender is something I do as a part of believing, then [surrender] is a work, and grace has been diluted to the extent to which I actually do surrender" (p. 18).

Foreseeing this objection, MacArthur opened the preface to his Gospel according to Jesus by saying, "Let me say as clearly as possible right now that salvation is by God's sovereign grace and grace alone. Nothing a lost, degenerate, spiritually dead sinner can do will in any way contribute to salvation. Saving faith, repentance, commitment, and obedience are all divine works, wrought by the Holy Spirit in the heart of everyone who is saved. . . . Real salvation cannot and will not fail to produce works of righteousness in the life of a true believer" (p. xiii.)

This sounds like a valid way for MacArthur, and Stott before him, to avoid salvation by works in teaching the need to submit to Christ as Lord. But it raises the question of how MacArthur can urge a person to serve Jesus and in the same breath say, "But do this only as God impels you to; otherwise you will dishonor God by doing a work in which you boast."

The Assurance of Salvation? Ryrie also objected that MacArthur's teaching all but destroyed one's assurance of salvation. Calling attention to MacArthur's disclaimer that "no believer will obey perfectly" (p. 174), Ryrie asked, "How do I quantify the amount of defection that can be tolerated without wondering if I have saving faith?" (p. 47). "Every defection, especially if continued, would make me unsure of my salvation" (p. 48).

In fact MacArthur had said virtually nothing about one's assurance of salvation in his 1988 book. So in his Faith Works (1993) he acknowledged that "I barely touched on the subject [of assurance] in my earlier book, [but] the subsequent dialogue has seemed inevitably to converge on [this] question . . ." (p. 158). Thus in a chapter devoted to the subject he declared that the objective ground of assurance is "the finished work of Christ on our behalf, including the promises of Scripture that have their yea and amen in Him (2 Cor. 1:20)" (p. 164). The other essential basis for assurance is evidences that a believer's life reflects Christ's glory through the nine fruits of the Spirit -- love, joy, peace, and so on (Gal. 5:22-23). Our reflection of this glory, however, is sometimes dim (p. 165) because we are not always kind and happy people. But the Holy Spirit's witness to our spirit that we are God's children (Rom. 8:16) assures us despite our times of grumpiness (p. 171).

For MacArthur, the evidence of the fruits of the Spirit is the center piece for a Christian's assurance; basing assurance primarily on Christ's finished work, as Ryrie and Harrison teach, can open the door to a "false assurance," where people claim to be eternally secure while nevertheless behaving in a non-Christian way (Tit. 1:16) (p. 162).

Ryrie agrees that changes in one's behavior do strengthen the Christian's assurance. "That these [changes] have come into my life, whereas they were absent before, gives assurance that new life is present" (p. 143). But the real basis for being assured of the forgiveness of sins is Jesus' work on the cross. "If I have believed [in Jesus' finished work], I am secure forever. . ." (p. 143). Eternal security applies apparently even to a deliberate apostate. "What grace it is that . . . the Giver will never renege on his gift! Nor can we ever give it back even if we try" (p. 144).

In Ryrie's thinking Jesus' work on the cross is profaned by saying that one must do anything more than receive it once. Yet according to Heb. 10:29-31, outrageous behavior from those professing faith in Christ is so serious that, far from remaining eternally secure, they will be punished by God's eternal wrath. So a faith in Jesus that honors his atonement must also include the mandate to pursue holiness (Heb. 12:14).

MacArthur emphasizes this in no uncertain terms. But his terms are not as clear in answering Ryrie's question of how full assurance is maintained when one doubles back from pursuing holiness. His thinking, it seems, needs the corrective supplied by Heb. 6:11-12: "Each of you should revive your original earnestness in realizing the full assurance of hope until the end, in order to. . . imitate [the good works] of those who through faith and patience will inherit the promises [and be saved]."

This key passage teaches that it takes full assurance to fuel the patient persistence in well doing that is essential for receiving eternal life (Rom. 2:7; Gal. 6:9). A similar passage is Heb. 10:35-36 "Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that you may do the will of God and receive what is promised." But these passages also supply a corrective to Ryrie's thinking by emphasizing the need to keep on diligently renewing one's sense of full assurance. It teaches that full assurance is not maintained by harking back to the "decision" one made at some previous time to "accept Christ" and fighting back every doubt about the lasting forgiveness one then received. It is maintained instead by daily fighting against an evil heart of unbelief by claiming God's promises (Heb. 3:12-13; 10:23). In early writings Martin Luther spoke of assurance in this way. He likened it to the confidence a patient places in his doctor.

Send comments to dfuller@fuller.edu (Daniel Fuller)