JOHN MACARTHUR ABOUT ASSURANCE
- Thread starter Sudakar
- Start date
-
Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.
If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!
To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.
I would read John MacArthur and Phil Johnson's theological commentary to know what their ideas are.
You would probably get a well rounded answer is you drop the requirement for an answer. Up to you though.
Hello Sudakar, I can answer your questions, but I cannot answer them for Dr. MacArthur. You can find the answers you are looking for from him here however: Grace To You. Just use the search feature when you get there.
Would you like me to answer your questions, or were you interested in knowing Dr. MacArthur's answers only (his will, no doubt, be far better than mine)?
~Deut
Hello again Sudakar, I could only answer that after reading/listening to what he has to say. However, I have found myself in agreement with most of what I have read/heard from him over the years.
~Deut
If you love God and all he does for you, repentance motivated by love for him is true repentance. If you force yourself to repent because of law, as the Jews did, you need to repent from that sort of repentance too. It is a reluctant empty repentance. Only love for God is the true motive.
I think he might be right on the new nature instead of two natures held by most. I don't trust him overall because of his Premillennialism.
Why do you concern yourself with what MacArthur or anyone else has to say about these matters?
You have a Bible, and everything is there for you to understand. So what you should do is invest in some good Bible study tools and then get down to some serious Bible study (actually Bible study tools are free on the Internet also). If you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth (if you really want the truth, and not man-made doctrines).
From what I know about John MacArthur, he wants to be a Calvinist and a Dispensationalist at one and the same time. That does not work. Calvinism distorts the true Gospel. Reformed Theology distorts Bible prophecy.
As to assurance, the Bible teaches the eternal security of the believer in Christ.
1) Acknowledge His sin to God and thank the LORD for the Atonement He secured on the cross for the forgiveness of that sin. / sins.
2)Acknowledging that any act or thought one has done against the will of God is a sin in need of the Atonement of the LORD Jesus..
3)By trusting in the righteousness of Jesus and the effectiveness of what He did on the cross to save you.. If you place your assurance of salvation on your feelings of being worthy you will end up losing assurance because you will not be saved..
4) We are saved by Faith in the Atonement of the LORD Jesus.. We should never doubt that what Jesus did saves us from the eternal penalty that is upon sinners..
So what about a christian couple in a church, in a leadership position, in a live-in relationship? What should be the response of the church committee towards them?
Well Jesus set out a general procedure for disputes between Christians .. in Matthew 15..
A representative of the community should go to the couple in private and reveal to them that their relationship is against the will of God and ask them to either Marry or separate..
If the couple will not hear the representative then a group of elders should make a second attempt to resolve the issue with the couple..
If that does not work then the couple should be ejected from the community until such time as they rectify the problem.
Matthew 18: KJV
15 "¶ Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. {16} But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. {17} And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican."
If they are living in sin then they have disbelieved Gods will that a man and a woman should marry before they have a husband and wife type relationship.. They are not Christians if they do not acknowledge that their living in sin is Sin..
What if they say by their faith in His grace their sin is covered and unreckoned as per Romans 4:7,8?
In that context, I think you mean 'As to security', not assurance.
Assurance is simply knowing you are indeed saved.
Assurance comes from seeing Christ in your behavior, your behavior being the outward evidence that Christ really is in you in salvation by the Holy Spirit.
Security, on the other hand, comes from believing in Christ.
Christ himself and his ministry in heaven being the secure thing about salvation.
Not in the case of elders:
"20 But those elders who are sinning you are to reprove before everyone, so that the others may take warning. 21I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism. " - 1 Timothy 5:20-21
Sounds harsh, but Paul makes it clear that is the way we are supposed to handle sinning elders (those in leadership).
I was in a church that had two pastors, back to back, who led lives of serial adultery--one in his church office with various wives of men in the church, and the other through the internet when that became the avenue through which that is done. The elders of the church chose both times to cover up the details and protect them thinking they were doing the loving thing. All that did was cause years of gossip and wondering and, to a degree, divisiveness among congregants because both cases never came to a final resolution because they were covered up in the name of love, not exposed publicly as commanded by God.