Healing the Split in the Church Concerning Lordship Salvation

The Church is split over the Lordship of our Lord Jesus Christ. On the one hand, a subjective test of just how much fruit a Christian has produced (often misdefining fruit from "love, joy, peace, etc." to "giving, going to church, praying, reading the Bible, etc."), and on the other hand, a conviction that any thought of obedience is identical with basing salvation on works, and on both these hands, we find error.

Salvation is one thing.  God produces fruit in us (and not we ourselves, per se, though we certainly submit to His production of it in us).  We yearn toward God the best we want to, and we pick up as much of the yearning of the preacher that we desire, and this sets our level of involvement in our God's kingdom.  Even the least Christian has already, by the definition of salvation doctrine, already demonstrated enough yearning toward Him to qualify for salvation.  Fruit inspectors need to know that their level of acceptibility is way beyond God's minimum and also that God's type of acceptible fruit that "proves" salvation is their obedience to the mandate to verbally confess "Master Jesus" DUE TO BELIEVING the tenets of the gospel as found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8.  This combination of belief in those specific things about Christ and the confession of Master Jesus is the answer to interpretation of "Not all who say 'Lord, Lord' will enter" when that true statement is interpreted by fearful Christians who are trying to see whom they can call their siblings in Christ by outward appearances (knowing that no such testing is useful or appropriate enough to reconcile them with their siblings who have backlashed against their inspection tendencies by saying that any consideration of sin must all be that false works-for-salvation error they've been so stringently warned against).

Like Paul explained in Romans, we don't keep ourselves from keeping from evil as a means of accepting God's grace, we keep from evil because it's our nature now!  How much pressure is relieved by that realization!  I'm glad Paul told us.  Take heart, dear Christian, and try - try to do what He says just like you would any authority figure, especially the ones who are close to you, right?!  You can experience the benefit of obedience, and your obedience has its basis in your belief that God raised Jesus from the dead.  The same Spirit Who raised Him from the dead and Whose goodness drives Him now works in you to drive you to do goodness just as He has caused new life in you, making you a new creature when you did those things necessary for salvation by believing and confessing Master Jesus.  You might be a slovenly, inadequate slave, but a slave you are, and you'll have a better time of it if you try to go along.

Let's come together from both sides and see that the divide was illusory.  There is only a single Church, and Master Jesus Christ knows who irrevocably has always continued to belong to it since before the World began, because His - our - Father has made certain of our destiny to belong to our Master as a gift to His Son, and (like Paul was convinced) nothing can change that - not even our own hearts!!!  It's a lovely thing.  It's a firm thing.  It's a basis to be moving on now.

A true self-assessment uncovers pain in the flesh.  The more you are built up spiritually by hearing the Word (reading the Bible) in prayerful contemplation of Christ, the more you will use the pain that comes from uncovering fleshly desire as an impetus to cry out the more to Master Jesus, asking Him and asking The Holy Spirit to remove the uncovered evil from you - then read the Bible some more, thinking about and hating your evil and waiting on His answer to slowly fill you up, until you hate that evil enough that it is no longer a problem sitting in your flesh and poisoning your soul.

Going to church on a semi-regular basis and tip-toeing around on the church's softball team might be a symptom of burning flesh and evidence of shying away from sin instead of dealing with it.  On the other hand, the practice of never going to church cannot be taken to be an indication of a lack of salvation, and so going irregularly or only at Christmas and Easter cannot, either.  We have to see that there are stages and complexities, but salvation, itself, is simply chosen.  That's not to say that it is easily chosen, and the difficulty that comes with working out our own salvation results in the complexities.

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