Free Grace and The Lordship Salvation Controversy
In the 1980s, Hodges and John F. MacArthur presented differing views over the gospel through various books, generally known as the "lordship salvation" controversy. Hodges defended the Free Grace Theology position, which teaches that the free gift of eternal life is without cost to the believer, that it comes through simply believing in Jesus Christ. A distinction is recognized between believing (which results in receiving eternal life) and submission to the Lordship of Christ (which is part of the sanctification process). Free Grace Theology also teaches that once a person believes in Jesus Christ, they cannot lose their salvation. MacArthur defended the Reformed view of salvation, and argued that the faith that saves invariably results in works, and that a true Christian would not continue sinning without remorse but would instead obey God's commands to do the good works that God has. MacArthur viewed Biblical faith as always including the notion to surrender and obey, while Hodges' taught that Biblical faith was the agreement that something is true.
Read more about this topic: Zane C. Hodges
Famous quotes containing the words free, grace, lordship, salvation and/or controversy:
“The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his faults, and in spite of his beauties too. He will hit the nail on the head, and we shall not know the shape of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth and heart, which is greater than to offer one the freedom of a city.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... it is use, and use alone, which leads one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion of grace or any sense of the fitness of things, to tolerate ... the styles of dress to which we are more or less conforming every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of the Hottentot seem today.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or possessions.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We are constantly thinking of the great war ... which saved the Union ... but it was a war that did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before—a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union, it was the rebirth of the Union.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)