So you're born again... But will you walk with Jesus in white? Part 1

Introduction
On every page of the New Testament you will find scriptures pertaining to the doctrine of rewards. It is therefore to be an important consideration in biblical theology and practical Christian experience! This doctrine cannot be overemphasized. It is the lost doctrine. There is no greater motivation unto godliness than the twin truths of rewards and accountability. God knows how to command our affections. He lays out before the Christian the prospects of intimate companionship with Jesus Christ in the ages to come, sharing the inheritance of the kingdom, and being co-glorified with Him who merited His particular messianic glory by obedience to the death on a cross. God knows that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt 6:21; Lk 12:34). God knows that a heart set on becoming a partaker of the superlative joys and bliss of the coming ages, won by Jesus Christ, and shared by those who are worthy, will pursue sanctification, and hold its confession stedfast and firm until the end. Such activities bring God glory.

When was the last time you saw Lordship Calvinists and Lordship Arminians discussing the great wealth of revelatory material relating to this grand topic? I personally have never read a treatise on rewards by anyone who is, in anyway, Lordship in leaning. Furthermore, there is a great dearth of understanding of the privileges, honors, and glories to be won by faithful, overcoming Christians, and the dire possibility of great punitive loss due to forfeiture at Christ’s second advent by some who consider themselves Free Grace (this is in part due to the inconsistency of their Free Grace position and in part due to their soft-Lordship tendencies). There is a broad and widespread ingnorance of this doctrine, the greatest of all inducements unto personal consecration.


Lordship Salvation handcuffs the Scriptures
Why are Lordship advocates completely missing the mark when it comes to expounding the prospect of the wealth to be won in the coming age and the scriptures warning of severe consequences for failure? Simply put, it is their faulty soteriology holding the Word of God prisoner. Throughout the New Testament we find multitudes of conditional structures guaranteeing various glories, honors, and priviledges to Christians upon fulfilling their provisions, and stipulating great loss for disobedience and unfaithfulness, but they completely gloss over them! Here is where the problem lies for these companion theologies:

Lordship Arminians (LA) consider the rewards of these passages as eternal salvation itself and the failure to fulfill the conditions as tantamount to loss of eternal life and sure damnation. Lordship Calvinists (LC) consider the rewards of these passages as eternal salvation as well, but for them, to attain these prizes one must be a true and genuine believer; failure only manifests the reprobate who had a temporary and spurious faith, not the faith of the elect. Therefore, those chosen by God for salvation are guaranteed to fulfill the provisions of these conditional statements. They are relentlessly and inevitably disposed to endure until the end. Make note that in both cases (LA and LC), failure means hell.

The errors of interpreting the warning passages by the LA and the LC, in a sense, compliment each other. They are both half right and half wrong, but in different parts. The LA correctly identify the intended recipients of these warnings as true Christians, but incorrectly identify the consequence as loss of salvation. The LC correctly understand that the true Christian cannot lose eternal life, but incorrectly comprehend the intended audience, supposing the warnings are only for professors who indeed are not possessors.

When one finds a consistent line of exposition and interpretation that allows him to take the words of Scripture at their face value, in other words, for what they literally say, without the inclusion of secondary assumptions and gratuitous importation, he has found exegetical gold. Such is the Eureka hermeneutics of consistent Free Grace theology. It is only the Free Grace advocate who sees that there are real prospects to be won or lost in the kingdom of the coming ages. They alone see salvation as free and rewards as costly. They alone perceive the sober realities of punitive loss at the coming of Christ. They alone consistently engage the texts with their prima facie reading.

It is a fairly sure sign that a line of exposition is correct when it enables numerous passages to be taken in the simple natural meaning of the terms employed. So long as we cannot accept the obvious sense of words and phrases, but must suppose them to mean something other than they say, we do well to question whether we yet understand them. When Keplar found that the theory of the elliptical orbits of the planets fitted all the known facts of their movements, he felt positive that he had reached the truth upon that matter. The same kind of assurance is gained when a given exposition of Scripture enables numerous and hitherto difficult passages to be understood in their plainest sense, and causes them to give an accordant teaching. (G. H. Lang, Firstborn Sons: Their Rights and Risks, p 117, italics his)

The interpretations of the LC and LA often must argue against the “simple natural meaning of the terms employed” in the scriptures. They will continually render passages meaningless by their ad hoc explanations of them which rely heavily on the inclusion of secondary assumptions not found in the texts. Any number of their doctrines could be falsified by accepting “the obvious sense of [the] words and phrases” of those passages which give their theologies the most trouble.

Lordship Salvation and those with certain Lordship tendencies have handcuffed the Scriptures! So long as the Bible, which is the Word of God, is not allowed to speak for itself, but rather must be understood in the light of the unquestioned traditional and centuries old interpretations handed down through the generations, the prospects for the systematization of a faithful and consistent biblical theology are sadly rendered unattainable.

Lordship theology has taken captive two of the most powerful incentives to godliness: the prospect of vast and sundry rewards and the possiblity of great failure with its grave consequences.


Man without a wedding gown (Matthew 22:1-14)
When a man is given eternal life, he is born into privilege. As the firstborn in the Semitic culture, so is the child of God: possessing of great inheritance possiblity. But as displayed in both Esau and Reuben, these rights can be forfeited by neglect and unfaithfulness. The firstborn sons were trained and capacitated for the responsibilities and privileges of heirship. Their childhood was a time of training for those things to come. In the absence of successful preparation or in the aftermath of great failure the position and rights would be lost.

When one is born into the family of God, he is transported into a new relationship of steward/servant with Christ as His Lord, as well as becoming the child of God. Coming with such responsibility is the high calling to co-glory with Christ – the glory of which He won by faithfully enduring the cross (see Phil 2:8-9; Heb 12:2), and of which He desires to share with His companions (Heb 3:14).

The parable of the Wedding Feast is a sober illustration of the rejection of Christ by the Jewish nation, the destruction of Jerusalem, the temporal and eternal destruction of those who reject the offer of entrance and inheritance in the kingdom, and the tragic loss of the superlative joys of co-glorification with Jesus Christ by a Christian who did not prepare himself for that privilege.

Correspondences of parabolic elements to spiritual realities:
King — God
Son — Jesus
Banquet — intimate, inner fellowship of Jesus Christ in the kingdom of God and the joys associated with it; made up of the companions of Jesus in the ruling aristocracy
Invited guests — the Jewish nation
Servants of the King — prophets, apostles, and evangelists
The city — Jerusalem
Those found in the highways — Gentile nations
Invitation — the upward call unto the prize of co-heirship and co-glory with Christ
King’s gaze at the wedding guests — The Bema; The Judment Seat of Christ
Wedding Garment — the preparation for conditional, superlative eternal glories consisting of a faithful and consecrated life, stedfast until the end
Bound hand and foot — restriction from the prerogatives and glory of co-ruling with Christ, and from the intimacy of Christ’s band of co-heirs
Outer Darkness, or better translated, “the darkness outside,” in other words outside the well lit-banqueting hall, still on the estate of the King — Removed from the joys and glories associated with those who are worthy of such by merit
Weeping and gnashing of teeth — An Oriental expression denoting sorrow (in this case, over lost privilege), remorse (over wasted opportunity), and inner anguish over such loss.

Interpretive Synopsis
God has joy prepared for the Son, likened to a lavish wedding banquet. In Him, God was fully pleased. Jesus, the Son, desires to share this glory with companions, as a bridegroom wishes to share the joy of his wedding with his guests. Israel was God’s chosen nation where the invitation to such joy and glory was first proclaimed by the prophets. These messengers were spitefully treated and many were put to death. In God’s wrath, Jerusalem and around one million of its Jewish inhabitants were destroyed in 70 A.D. by Roman armies. Starting through Peter and continuing through Paul this invitation to the glories of co-heirship with Christ has been preached to the Gentile nations. From such, a wide array of people (“both good and bad”) respond positively to the invitation, not in RSVP only, but fully prepared for privilege and glory at Christ’s coming. Singled out for our consideration is one who responded affirmatively to the call to glory with Christ yet arrived before Him unprepared. Such is restricted from the privileges of Christ’s intimate companions, and from co-ruling authorities and glory with Christ. The same, for a short while, will feel the sting of his bitter loss. Yet as we know with all grief cycles, there is a normal duration for such. Eventually all tears will be wiped away by God (Rev 21:4).

What is interesting in this picture is when the man without a wedding garment is confronted with his lack of preparation for the joy of this feast that he is speechless. This is quite expected. For when the unfaithful Christian, now sinless, is met with the judgment for his actions, he will experience the shame of knowing that such consequence is commensurate with his infidelity (he has no sin nature to rationalize or justify his past behaviors). He will not try to talk his way out of it, for he knows all too well that his life merited such. Without so much as a word, this man will “receive the things done in [his] body” which were “bad” (2 Cor 5:10).

But contrast this with the ‘Christian’ who didn’t enter through the narrow gate (Jesus alone) and didn’t do the will of the Father (believe in Jesus), but rather trusted in his works (Matt 7:22). This one will be anything but speechless: “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” Do you feel the sincere despair in this man’s voice? He is not some conscious charlatan trying to dupe Jesus. He is all too serious. This one thus prevented from kingdom entrance is all too vocal while the Christian restricted from the superlative glories and honors of being co-heir with Christ has been silenced – much in the same way that someone is who has been confronted with his wrongdoing wherein he has hurt a loved one.

Is there any corroborating evidence to this interpretation? Can it be maintained that the wedding garment in this parable corresponds to the preparations that one takes in this life for the contingent glories of the next? The realities contained in the spiritual truth of this parable concern Christ’s kingdom which He will institute upon His second advent. We may expect to find some things worth noting in the book of Revelation. And, as a matter of fact, we do. But you will have to wait a couple of days to see them.

(to be continued....)