"Always remember, when somebody comes up with something new,
it's usually wrong. We are to be plagiarists of the same information that
God gave the first Christians." -- Dr. Matthew McMahon, aPuritansMind.com

 

23 January, 2006   comments: (0) Sound Doctrine   Should We Judge The Salvation of Others? Recently several blogs were discussing the pit falls of labeling professing Christians as unbelievers. I've been on the receiving end of this kind of abuse myself, as some in the seeker-driven camp have emailed to inform me of my eternal destiny. But some pastors and church historians say that we may be doing more harm than good if we create a moratorium on all such judgments. One leader even said "THE biggest problem in the church is its inability and unwillingness to distinguish true Christians from false. It's literally killing the church". To further explain my concern, I'm going to turn the rest of this page over to John MacArthur from a page where he interacts with Iain Murray's book Evangelicalism Divided: The main issue facing the church is the lack of discernment [see YouTube video]. The church doesn't distinguish between truth and falsehood. It has a defective immune system. It has a case of spiritual AIDS. It does not have the ability to fight error because it doesn't know the truth. It doesn't have enough truth antibodies to fight off error. The church is ignorant. It is blissfully ignorant and consequently it is victimized easily by error. ... And what makes it worse is that there is a movement to say that the tolerance of [serious error] is the purest expression of Christian love, right? ... Now let me go a little deeper into this issue. ... But of all of the issues that are important, there is one that is at the top of the list. ... If we're going to be discerning about anything, there is one thing we have to be discerning about and it's this...who is a Christian? That is the most critical issue of all. At the top of my list in this matter of being discerning is we need to know who the true Christians are because if we don't, then we've invited the enemy into the camp. ... The issue of who is truly a Christian is at the very center of the church's life and ministry. This has to be protected. There isn't any fellowship between light and darkness, is there, 2 Corinthians 6? There isn't any concord between Christ and Satan. Two can't walk together unless they be...what?...agreed. You have to come out from among them and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing. [In the book Evangelicalism Divided] Iain Murray says, and I think he's absolutely right, he says: The inability of the evangelical church to distinguish between a Christian and a non-Christian is quote: "The greatest failure of professing Christianity in the English-speaking world in the twentieth century," end quote. Murray understands the implications. If you redefine non-Christians as Christians you obliterate the distinctiveness of the church and you therefore create an environment in which you have to tolerate error because these people represent error. He further writes, this is very important and insightful, "The health of the church," and he's speaking as a historian here, having tracked it very carefully . . . "the health of the church has always been in proportion to the extent to which the difference between Christian and non-Christian has been kept sharp and clear." He's absolutely right. The starting point for the church is to be absolutely clear about who is saved and who is not. If we're not clear about that, then we don't know who's on our side and we don't know who we really need to reach. From the time that God began to form a people for Himself, Satan endeavored to intrude. From the time that the demons cohabitated with the...with the daughters of men in Genesis 6, Satan has been trying to pollute and mix...all the way down to sowing tares among the wheat. And it's really true. Iain Murray says: "The most insidious opposition to the Gospel has come from within worldly churches." I'll say this as simply as I can. The gospel is more often attacked on TBN than it is on NBC. This has been the legacy of liberalism which has been embraced by quote/unquote "evangelicals." This has been the legacy of Charismaticism where theology (and I'm not speaking about all the people but for the most part) where the Movement tolerates anybody's view. This has been the legacy of the seeker-friendly pragmatic movement. This has been the legacy of evangelical ecumenism which wants to re-embrace orthodoxy and Catholicism and everybody else. And the confusion goes from the grass roots right on up to the top. I've talked to the evangelical brain trust, if you will, and they aren't even willing to commit to who's a Christian. Even my conversation with J.I. Packer, so capable and gifted a theologian and writer, when I asked him...what is the line by which you determine a true Christian? All he could say was, "That's a good question." ... And we can't obviously know the heart. We can't be sure about everyone. That's not within our capability. We can't always distinguish between the true...the wheat and the tares. But it is true that even Jesus said, "By their fruit you can...what?...you can know them." ... Ian Murray again writes, "When churches have recovered from apostasy, historically, such as at the time of the Reformation and the eighteenth century evangelical revival...that's from Wesley to Jonathan Edwards...when churches have recovered, it has always been...I love this...by a return to such discriminating preaching and practice." What he means is when there's ever a recovery from a time of apostasy, it has come when preaching has become discriminating. What does it mean to discriminate? ... It means to discern. ... And Murray says, "Given the great decline in the English- speaking churches of the twentieth century, the chief need again was the reassertion of the meaning of being a Christian." Wow! The chief hope for the church is discriminating preaching primarily directed at the issue of who is a Christian. ... When you try to be discriminating or discerning or biblical or clear, theologically precise, you really do expose the vulnerability of those in error. But you must do it for the sake of the truth and the sake of the souls of men and the sake of the purity of the church. It's been a long siege, you know, for the truth but we continue to proclaim it and shall continue. Related Articles and Resources: Mark Dever: "Should We Question Professions of Faith"? Listen to a 3 minute audio clip from John MacArthur on this topic In the command to be not yoked with unbelievers, it's implied that we are to judge their salvation in order to make such a determination Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.178   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism