Who Will Tell?

“This book is about the Gospel. And it is also about a Satanic siege of the Gospel in which the simplicity, clarity and freeness of the Gospel message have come under assault. It is an effort to focus the Church on the issues that are at stake in this attack. It is the prayer of the writer that many will be aroused to stand firmly for the true grace of God.” —Zane Hodges

A staggering exposé that reveals how improper interpretation of Scripture has severely weakened many modern day presentations of the Gospel and has crippled the growth of many young Christians—even in solid, Bible-believing churches.

In this book, “it is maintained that the New Testament Gospel offers the assurance of eternal life to all who will accept that life by faith in Christ. The assurance of the believer rests squarely on the direct promises in which this offer is made, and on nothing else.

It follows from this that the assertion that a believer must find his assurance in his works, is a grave and fundamental theological error. It is an error that goes right to the heart of the nature of the Gospel proclamation. It seriously distorts that proclamation and creates in its place a new kind of message that would have been unrecognizable to the New Testament writers.

This is a serious charge. But it is made thoughtfully and with much grief that it is necessary to make it at all.

Preachers and theologians cannot have it both ways. Either a man can be perfectly sure that he is born again and going to heaven at the moment he trusts Christ, or he cannot. If works must verify a man’s faith, then he cannot. It can even be argued that he can never be sure until he meets God. But this is not what the New Testament teaches. It is therefore a falsehood and subversive of Biblical truth.” [pp.121, 122]

“The most telling modern assaults on the integrity of the Gospel do not deny the cruciality of faith in Christ. On the contrary, they insist on it. But to faith are added other conditions, or provisos, by which the essential nature of the Gospel is radically transformed. Often, in fact, a distinction is drawn between the kind of faith which saves and the kind which does not. But the kind of faith which does save is always seen to be the kind that results in some form of overt obedience. By this means, the obedience itself becomes at least an implicit part of the transaction between man and God. ‘Saving’ faith has thus been subtly redefined in terms of its fruits. In the process, the unconditional freeness of the Gospel offer is seriously, if not fatally, compromised.” [p.4]

PROLOGUE

Last night Jimmy accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. This morning he is bubbling with a joy he has never experienced before.

On his way to work he meets his friend Bill. Bill has always claimed to be a Christian. He also reads a lot of books on theology. But Jimmy has never been too interested in theology up until now.

“Say, Bill,” Jimmy begins, “guess what! I got saved last night. I trusted Christ as my Savior. Now I know I am going to heaven!”

“Hmmm,” Bill replies, “maybe you shouldn’t quite say it that way. After all, you don’t really know that you are going to heaven.”

“What do you mean?” Jimmy enquires. “The Bible says, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved,’ and that’s what I did.”

Bill gives Jimmy a wise and knowing look. It is the kind of look all perceptive theologians know how to give the ignorant and the unlearned.

“But did you really believe? Maybe you just believed psychologically.”

“What do you mean?” Jimmy is feeling a little depressed now.

“I mean,” Bill continues sagely, “you can’t know yet whether you have real saving faith.”

“How can I know that?”

“By your works. You’ll have to wait and see if you live a real Christian life.”

Jimmy is dejected. “You mean that if I sin, I’m not a Christian after all?”

“No, I don’t mean that,” Bill assures him. “All Christians fail once in a while.”

“But how much do they fail? I mean, how bad does it have to get before I find out I’m not saved?”

“Well, it can’t get too bad for too long.”

“But how bad? For how long?” Jimmy feels desperate.

“I can’t tell you exactly. But a true Christian doesn’t practice sin. If you find that you are practicing sin, that will show that you didn’t have real saving faith to begin with.”

“What if I do pretty good for several years and then things start going bad?”

“In that case, maybe you weren’t saved to start with.”

“Maybe? What do you mean by that?”

“I mean,” Bill’s tone in solemn, “you’ll probably have to wait until the end of your life before you can be sure you are a true Christian. You have to persevere in good works, or your faith wasn’t real.”

“Do you think I can be sure before I die?”

“Maybe, Listen, Jim, I’ve got to rush to work. We’ll talk about this some other time. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay. See you, Bill.”

Bill rushes off. Jimmy is devastated. All the joy he had experienced since last night has suddenly evaporated. He is now filled with questions and doubts.

Jimmy has become a casualty in the siege of the Gospel!