The New Calvinist Mega-Lie: Obedience and Truth are Separate
“Therefore, Christians don’t obey for the purpose of maintaining our just standard; it is a finished work by Christ that needs no further maintenance. We obey for other reasons….”
Have you ever noticed? The Scriptures NEVER call “obedience” works salvation. We are never told that people are trying to earn their way into heaven through “obedience.” Obedience, in the Scriptures, is ALWAYS associated with the truthful application of God’s word to our lives in how we think and what we do. It is the truthful application of our role in sanctification which is putting off the old self and putting on the new creature (Ephesians 4:20-24). In the Scriptures, truth is always assumed in obedience.
This is New Calvinism’s greatest deception, the idea that one can sincerely seek to apply God’s word to their lives in a truthful way, and at the same time do so to maintain a just standing before God without realizing they are doing so. This invokes a dependance on them, a don’t try sanctification at home mentality. Though they claim that obedience is motivated by fear within the evangelical community, their sanctification formula propagates an unfounded fear that obedience is nothing more than works salvation, in and of itself. The fact of the matter is that works salvation is always based on falsehood.
Unlike the Bible, New Calvinists don’t associate obedience with truth, a love for the truth, and faith. They separate the two, specifically by separating “law” and “gospel.” Law is obedience, whether practiced in truth or not, and gospel is truth. There are many examples of this, but here is the best one I have seen of late:
This is fundamentally no different than Islam! The Gospel offers us freedom from our sin-stained hearts and our obedience-stained garments and bids us rest in the finished work of Christ which is better than us being better!!!” (Jean F. Larroux, III, Green Grass of Grace Southwood blog).
Notice: obedience is obedience whether it is Christian or Islam. Truth isn’t the issue. But the apostle Paul clearly unites the two:
They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:19-24).
Obviously, Paul is calling on Christians to learn truth, and put off what we learn to put off, and put on what we learn that is to be put on. The Bible calls this “obedience” when it is done as biblically prescribed. If I tell my son to take the trash out to the curb, but instead he leaves it halfway down the driveway, that’s not obedience. Unless you’re a New Calvinist. With them, truthful obedience is neither here nor there because it is impossible for Christians to accomplish anyway:
The bad news is far worse than making mistakes or failing to live up to the legalistic standards of fundamentalism. It is that the best efforts of the best Christians, on the best days, in the best frame of heart and mind, with the best motives fall short of the true righteousness and holiness that God requires [notice that there is no distinction between this sentence and the one prior (legalistic standards verses true righteousness)]. Our best efforts cannot satisfy God’s justice. Yet the good news is that God has satisfied his own justice and reconciled us to himself through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son. God’s holy law can no longer condemn us because we are in Christ (Michael Horton, Christless Christianity p. 91).
It is also extremely important here to notice the crux of New Calvinist error in this statement; specifically, the supposed need to maintain justification: “….the best motives fall short of the true righteousness and holiness that God requires…. Our best efforts cannot satisfy God’s justice.” But in sanctification, God no longer requires a just standard to maintain salvation, that has already been accomplished as a finished work. God no longer “requires” perfection that maintains our just standing. Therefore, Christians don’t obey for the purpose of maintaining our just standard/standing; it is a finished work by Christ that needs no further maintenance. We obey for other reasons—to glorify God, to experience the reality of our new birth, to show others the abundant life, and to destroy evil works, to name just a few. And also, our God-given love for the truth compels us to apply it to our lives.
Therefore, New Calvinism fuses what shouldn’t be fused and separates what shouldn’t be separated, turning orthodoxy completely upside down. They fuse justification and sanctification, and separate obedience from truth, while fictitiously calling obedience “law” (whether Christian or Islamic), and encapsulating truth in the “gospel” which is supposedly distinct from “law.” But what would we know about the gospel apart from Scripture? Christ said man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Wouldn’t that include the law? Paul told Timothy that we are fully equipped for every good work by ALL Scripture. Wouldn’t that also include the law?
This fusing of what shouldn’t be fused and separating what shouldn’t be separated is the basis of their Gospel Contemplationism. Law (any effort to obey, whether according to the truth or not) is separate from gospel and impossible for us to obey perfectly in order to maintain a salvation that doesn’t need to be maintained to begin with. The formula? Contemplation on the truth that results in a “Christ formation” within totally depraved, dead jars of clay. Doubt that? reread Larroux’s quote; our hearts are sin stained as well as any obedience we may perform.
The truth: we are declared righteous and are righteous, though hindered by the flesh. Though our striving falls short of perfection, we know that can’t affect our righteous standing that has already been declared based on the finished work of Christ. And that cannot be revoked. As we strive, we also long for the day when we can obey our Lord perfectly without hindrance. So like Paul, we cry out, “who will deliver me from this body of death?”
Our striving creates that thirst, experiencing both the blessings of that truth and the failures that prevent the full experience. Peter states clearly that we are to strive for a “rich entry,“ not the beggarly entry that comes from let go and let God theology.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
Paul.
A question just occurred to me that might help to explicate your position on salvation being a “done deal.” When you talk about salvation, are you only talking about justification or is salvation something that is much broader than that in your view?
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Paul,
Funny thing, I was aware of most of those verses before you posted them. In fact, I probably know them from memory. What I fail to understand is what point you are trying to make. Help me out here,
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Randy,
Per the English language, I wasn’t making a point, I was asking a question. The question mark at the end of the sentence might be your first clue.
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If you are talking about my statement about justification, all your verses prove my point, Not once in talking about forgiveness of sins and Christ’s priestly work to accomplish that forgiveness do those verses ever mention justification, Justification is a forensic term that involves guilty people or innocent people, judges, lawyers etc. Priests don’t really have any place in that scenario, The Epistle to the Hebrews represents the sinner’s plight not terms of a forensic situation in which he is either guilty or righteous, but in terms of being barred from or being given free access into the presence of God. Rather than being represented by a lawyer, we are represented by a priest. It is the same forgiveness, it is simply cast in a different literary milieu.
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Again, I don’t have time to play word games. Hebrews 9 frames the old covenant in context of a legal will. That’s not legal jargon? Stop wasting my time with nonsense.
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Paul,
Thanks for the clarification concerning interrogative punctuation. I probably wouldn’t have understood without your help. My point was that you have cited a bunch of verses that have nothing to do with the nearest antecedent statement.
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Randy,
I Don’t have time to play word games. The forgiveness of sins based on Christ paying the penalty for us has always been associated with the doctrine of justification.
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Paul,
You must have a lawyer. Asking him if the disposition or execution of a will is the same thing as a finding of guilt or innocence in court. Words mean things remember? It is simply that justification is not one of the themes in the Book of Hebrews. If you don’t have time for truth, I can’t help that.
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Randy,
Heb 2:2 ForG1063 ifG1487 theG3588 wordG3056 spokenG2980 byG1223 angelsG32 wasG1096 steadfast,G949 andG2532 everyG3956 transgressionG3847 andG2532 disobedienceG3876 receivedG2983 a justG1738 recompence of reward;G3405
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Paul,
You wrote,
“The forgiveness of sins based on Christ paying the penalty for us has always been associated with the doctrine of justification.”
If the writer to the Hebrews didn’t associate the forgiveness of sins based on Christ paying the penalty for us with the doctrine of justification, I guess it hasn’t ALWAYS been associated with it has it?
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Daily Double: What’s a “just retribution”?
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Paul,
“Legal jargon” and “justification are not the same.” At some point you are going to need to study the accepted meaning of theological terms like “Total Depravity” so that you will stop making wild and unfounded accusations. “Words mean things,” as a friend of ours continues to remind us. It is not “playing word games” to be precise in the words we use. Just last week you observed that I had said something about justification in someone. I don’t recall the exact statement. You rightly observed that justification is not IN anyone. I accepted the correction because you were right. We both knew I did not mean it in that sense, but I corrected myself anyway.
Observing that the Book of Hebrews doesn’t treat salvation in terms of justification is not a word game. It is an important fact enabling us to understand the teaching of the book. The justification scenario simply doesn’t fit the material. Your attitude is characteristic of the imprecision that has plagued the Church for decades. We want everyone to be precise but the preacher. We don’t like imprecise barbers, surgeons, musicians, chefs, carpenters, jewelers, etc, but we want the preacher and the theologian to be haphazard and imprecise. Please don’t feed that beast; it is sufficiently obese already.
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So you want to teach me that “Vile enemies of God” are not “totally depraved”? No thanks.
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I still need an answer to this question:
A question just occurred to me that might help to explicate your position on salvation being a “done deal.” When you talk about salvation, are you only talking about justification or is salvation something that is much broader than that in your view?
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Sorry Randy, not only am I and other readers here weary of answering your same questions multiple times, I reject the premise of the question.
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Just retribution is punishment righteously inflicted on law breakers out of a sense of righteous indignation and holiness contradicted. Does that question have a point?
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Paul,
Perhaps you can direct me to the place where you have answered my question once.
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Randy,
No. And therefore, I can now direct you to a place where I answered one of your questions: here.
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