In Practicing the Way, Comer says, “And through apprenticeship to Jesus, we can enter into this kingdom and into the inner life of God himself.” But even if we were to adopt this approach—doing all the things Jesus said—that is not salvific. Jesus taught that a person enters the kingdom through the new birth, which is an entirely supernatural gift of grace (John 3:1–8).
In attempting to refute one heresy in a recent op-ed in Christianity Today, Michael Horton, a typical representative of modern Reformed Calvinism, introduces two.
The first of these heresies is the gospel by regeneration, rather than the gospel through faith. For while it is absolutely true that regeneration is necessarily involved in the conversion of human beings to trust upon Christ Jesus, regeneration occurs at the transcendent level of God’s Sovereignty to which human creatures are not directly privy. Knowledge of our regeneration is hinted in “The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8, BSB).
It is largely indirect knowledge through artifactual evidence. Being in the autumn of my life, I now perceive in hindsight how God choreographed my life. John Calvin also came to appreciate later in life that the Spirit’s intervention did not occur at or near the moment of his conversion. Rather, God had been at work in the many years preceding, “demolish[ing] arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
But through an extra-biblical conclusion via human reasoning of the existence of an Order of Salvation (ordo salutis) in the third chapter of John, Reformed and Calvinistic circles conceive that the first part of the chapter temporally and logically precedes that which comes later, namely the necessity of faith upon Christ
But literary precedence is no necessary indication of cause and effect. It is written of Esau and Isaac, “the older will serve the younger” (Romans 9:12).
This is not to say that ‘faith precedes regeneration,’ any more than the Reformed declaration ‘regeneration precedes faith.’ It is to insist that at the immanent level of God’s Sovereignty, the one to which God interoperates with humanity, the Gospel in its most reductionist form is explicitly expressed by the God of Scripture as “believe upon (epi) the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).
everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes into (eis) Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes into Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed into the name of God’s one and only Son.
– John 3:15b–18
Reformed and Calvinistic circles have long been guilty of conflating the transcendent and immanent levels of God’s sovereignty, often operating presumptively at the level of God’s Sovereignty, to which no man is directly privy, while neglecting the immanent level.
Hence, scant mention about trusting upon Christ is made by Horton, this being the instrumental vehicle by which a human being is justified and saved, (these two elements of Christian soteriology not being the same). For even as divine election is true at the transcendent level, we are informed about such realities, not to operate upon them.
The gospel of Regeneration
This improper overemphasis on the transcendent has facilitated, not necessarily caused, a false gospel. The fundamental problem with “‘the plan of salvation’ tracts,” which Horton mentions, is not merely reductionism and oversimplification. These tracts are heretical.
These tracts call for God in Christ to enter a person’s heart (re: regeneration) without satisfying the terms by which God can justly do so, namely for a person to trust and rely upon the freely given lifeblood sacrifice of Christ Jesus as a proper substitute that scrupulously satisfies all the attributes and principles of an exact and exacting divine and natural justice.
For an amnesty scheme was established by the Atonement of Christ upon which a person must lean in order to place him- or herself in a proper juridical status before God, who proclaims “righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne” (Psalm 97:2, 89:14, NKJV). The gospel of “born-againness,” whose saplings are traceable as far back as the First Great Awakening, conflates the transcendental and the immanent levels of God’s sovereignty. The “gospel of regeneration” diminishes, denigrates, even neglects the scandal of the Cross.
Even if this was not the deliberate intent of Reformed/Calvinistic circles, it is logical for the authors of such tracts to advocate the “gospel of “born-againness” if, indeed, “regeneration precedes faith.” But neither can faith logically or temporally precede regeneration because of anthropological inability, nor can regeneration logically or temporally precede faith due to the due process principles of justice. For God cannot grant the Sentence of life eternal, which is irrevocable, before the moral/juridical authority (exousian) to do so, which requires the conscious consent of a potential convert to accept the terms of the amnesty scheme provided from out of the Atonement of Christ Jesus. A convert enters into a Covenant, which, by definition, is a form of agreement, which, by definitional nature, requires consent.
But to all who did receive (elabon) Him, to those who believed into (eis) His name, He gave the right (exousian) to become children of God.
– John 1:12
The receiving of Christ Jesus is not passive. The Greek verb is in active voice, (the one doing, rather than it being done to him/her). It speaks of aggressively grasping Christ through trusting upon Him by which one has juridical right and authority to become a child of God.
This understanding produces a conundrum for Reformed/Calvinistic circles, who insist that regeneration must ontologically precede faith due to the total inability of the natural man to trust upon Christ. There is a complicated solution to this riddle, which is beyond the scope of this essay. The short answer is that REGENERATION IS FAITH, the former an operation at the transcendent level of God’s sovereignty, while the latter the immanent manifestation. This conception is much easier for a former IT professional to get his head around. The complementarity of light as either particle or wave, but which cannot be perceived concurrently in both manners, is one didactic help. The Mind–Brain Identity Theory, although erroneous, is another. Neither does regeneration precede faith nor faith precede regeneration, resolving the endemic ontological-juridical conundrum.
Nevertheless, the call of this heretical gospel of regeneration to ‘invite Christ into our hearts,’ instead of ‘trusting upon Christ,’ not merely in the talisman of His lifeblood, but in His entirety, is rooted in Reformed/Calvinistic misunderstanding.
Conflating Justification With Salvation
Salvation in all its limitless magnitude is secured, so far as human responsibility is concerned, by believing on Christ as Savior. To this one requirement no other obligation may be added without violence to the Scriptures and total disruption of the essential doctrine of salvation by grace alone.1
The second serious soteriological heresy, one with formal 20th century origins via Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871–1952), but one which has bedeviled Protestant streams from its 16th century inception, is in truncating (a.k.a. cutting short) the terms of Salvation. That truncation is rooted in conflating Justification, the formal juridical basis underlying a believer’s salvation, and Salvation, which is its ontological reality.
It’s interesting that you [Trevin Wax] shift from justification to salvation there because, though those aren’t the same thing…we have to train ourselves to use words accurately . . . The word “salvation” and the word “justification” are not interchangeable.
In conflating Salvation with Justification, as many Protestant Evangelicals do, such are susceptible to believe that one is saved, merely by trusting upon the talisman of the lifeblood of Christ Jesus. Some venture that because one “sincerely” assented to these terms but once, perhaps in a one-night Altar Call hookup, one is thereby forever wed to Christ, regardless of how unfaithful the whore one thereafter acts.
Much more then, being now (nyn) justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
– Romans 5:9 (KJV)
Scripture attests to this semantic distinction. For that which has occurred in past and is now present (re: justification) cannot semantically be the same as that which will be (re: salvation). From the perspective of God’s transcendent sovereignty, Justification is premised upon His moral/legal authority (exousian), Salvation upon His omnipotent power (dunamis).
The Terms of Justification
Because God is formally committed to govern the cosmos with moral authority (Latin: auctoritas), buttressed with hierarchical authority and omnipotent power, all that He does must conform with the attributes and principles of righteousness and justice. (There exist ‘things morally indifferent,’ which permit latitude of action: Francis Schaeffer’s ‘freedom within form.’)
God as the Sovereign and Judge of the cosmos cannot therefore exonerate moral criminals (a.k.a. sinners) without first scrupulously satisfying the attributes and principles of Justice. (Justice, like righteousness, ontologically flows from His being yet remains epistemologically distinct from that being.) The Sovereign of the cosmos is not akin to a capricious Roman Caesar with a Nixonian complex,2 whereby “the sovereign is not bound by the laws” (Ulpian), even those of his own making. God would otherwise come under His own condemnation (Matthew 23:3, 7:2; Romans 2:1, 3, 19–21). Moreover, if the Sovereign of the cosmos is willing to bend his principles in the here and now, even if for benevolent cause, what subject of this Sovereign could reasonably trust that such a capricious despot might not bend his principles in future, whenever the whim overcomes him?
Hence, God cannot reasonably and justly grant any moral criminal amnesty apart from scrupulously satisfying all the terms of an exact and exacting Justice. If God, for instance, forgave a person with one sin to his/her name, why not a person with two sins. And if with two sins, why not three sins, and so forth in infinite regress. The divining line between the sheep and the goats would become arbitrary and capricious. Hence, God devised a just means by which moral criminals could be exonerated through exploiting the infinite ontological value of Christ Jesus, the God-man, as a proper legal substitute for the mass of humanity who come to believe upon Him, including and especially the terms of His amnesty scheme. How the Atonement of Christ scrupulously and comprehensively satisfies the exact and exacting attributes and principles of Justice is beyond the scope of this essay. But in short, under the juridical principles governing substitution:
- The substitute must be of like kind as that which is substituted, hence the incarnation of Christ in human form. (Hebrews 2:14–17)
- The substitute must be without blemish, without any sin. (2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 4:15)
- Under penal justice, the substitute must suffer the same qualitative kind of sentence as that which is substituted. In biblical terms, death is defined as full severance from the Godhead.
- The ontological value of the substitute must be equal or exceed the (collective) ontological value of that which the substitute substitutes.
- For conscious beings, the substitute must give free consent to act as that substitute (John 10:17–18). It is injustice for a judge to order an innocent party to recompense for the crimes or misdemeanors of another. However, there is no injustice if that innocent party freely offers to compensate (and, just as critically, the moral criminal accepts the terms of that free offer).
The Gospel as it pertains to Justification, which grants the formal juridical basis for a believer’s salvation, rests upon the ontological merits of Christ alone. Nothing can be added or subtracted from Christ alone. Under the strict juridical logic of Justice, if one adds conditions to the terms of Justification, every condition must be perfectly satisfied. No mortal can perfectly satisfy every condition that is dependent upon him or her. Moreover, in adding any condition to Christ alone, one is inadvertently suggesting that the infinite ontological worth of Christ is insufficient. Justification is premised upon the lifeblood of Christ alone. (“The life is in the blood,” Leviticus 17:11).
The Terms of Salvation
For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but to all who crave His appearing.
– 2 Timothy 4:6–8
However, just as Justification is not semantically the same as Salvation, nor are their respective terms. For salvation in this life involves a trust upon Christ Jesus which endures to the end of life through many dangers, toils, and snares. (“But the one who perseveres to the end will be saved,” Matthew 24:13) For while God preserves those whom He has elected at the transcendent level of His sovereignty, it is incumbent upon a person who would be saved to premise or base his/her life and operate his/her decisions and actions upon the tenets of that which they subscribe, the philosophical definition of faith as provided by James 2:14–26.
Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling (the immanent). For it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose (the transcendent).
– Philippians 2:12b–13
For it is not the person who trusts and relies upon the talisman of Christ Jesus’s lifeblood in His atonement who shall be justified, but the one “who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26), in His completeness, upon His person, assertions, command counsels, and promises. For while the lifeblood of Christ Jesus suffices, in itself, to scrupulously and completely satisfy the exact and exacting Justice of God, granting formal juridical standing before the Divine Judge and Sovereign, these other elements in Christ serve as instrumental means by which one’s faith endures to the end, even faith in the talisman of Christ’s lifeblood. Herein, one does not need to be perfect. One only needs to retain a genuine, unwayward, and discernible trust upon Christ, even if tattered and faint. It is the existence of the conduit of trust that matters, not its thickness.
Hence, Michael Horton is wrong, and heretically so, when he insists that “Discipleship is not the gospel. It is the fruit of the gospel. For discipleship is part and parcel of the Gospel.
Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them: He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid his foundation on the rock. When the flood came, the torrent crashed against that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears My words and does not act on them is like a man who built his house on ground without a foundation. The torrent crashed against that house, and immediately it fell—and great was its destruction!”
– Luke 6:46–49. Cf. Matthew 7:24–27.
For God in Christ is a metaethical consequentialist. The ethical and prudential good are deliberately intended to produce the ontological good in the context of the telos of each covenant. (The Old Mosaic Covenant was never intended as a way to personal salvation via works or retained membership (a.k.a. covenantal nomism). That covenant was a social covenant, purposed for the survival and thriving of terrestrial community (Deuteronomy 4:5–8).
The deliberate unwillingness to abide by the full counsel of God insidiously enervates and imperils any faith that exists. Faithful abidance insidiously strengthens and solidifies any faith that exists. But unlike the juridical “mechanics” undergirding Justification, this is a psychological dynamic. For as one, who has walked the path to the Celestial City, has observed, violation of even the most peripheral of biblical counsels has an insidious habit of redirecting its efforts towards undermining one’s faith in the essentials of the Faith (re: Yeast Principle: Galatians 5:9; 1 Corinthians 5:6; Matthew 16:6, 12).
So, while the ethos of obligation is not directly imposed under the New Covenant, there is a way by which abidance is “naturally” enforced.
The Pilgrim’s Progress
This understanding is not new theology. While I have yet to find a formal treatise which makes this distinction and dynamic between Justification and Salvation, it is implicit within John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678).
HHumanity is, by virtue of its sin and injustice, exiles from Eden, the land of Milk and Honey, or the Kingdom of God. This expulsion is not merely a matter of justice, but also of prudence. Allowing unrepentant moral criminals to reside within a pristine environment allows that pristine environment to be corrupted and eventually destroyed.
The atonement of Christ provides God with a justamnesty scheme allowing exiles the legal authority to immigrate to Kingdom of God. Justification, the formal juridical basis of Salvation, accomplished through the atonement of Christ, is appropriated from out of faith. Yet, that convert must still endeavour to come to that Kingdom. Mere assent hardly brings the immigrant to Ellis Island, so to speak.
Hence, an exile begins an arduous and perilous journey to that Promised Land, just as Bunyan’s Pilgrim sets his course on the narrow and winding path to the Celestial City. Herein, Justification by Faith serves as the Wicket-gate. It becomes the badge of legal authority which grants legal entry into the Kingdom.
CHRISTIAN: Then why did you not enter at the Wicket-gate which is located at the beginning of this way? Don’t you know that it has been written, “He who does not enter in by the door, but climbs up some other way, that same person is a thief and a robber?”3
However, if one lacks a committed faith in Christ in the whole of His being, in His assertions, counsels, and promises, one is liable to turn back (apostasy), go off course (heresy), fall into one of the many traps (persistent sin), or become distracted along the way (re: Vanity Fair). One shall never reach the gates of that Celestial City and may even lose the badge of legal authority on the way. In all who fall away, there exists some critical deficiency in their faith.
This is not “works righteousness” nor “Lord Salvation.” One is neither justified due to works. Justification requires resting upon the finished work of Christ alone. Yet, Salvation is instrumentally accomplished through one’s works and their natural cause-and-effect ontological consequences, in order for one’s faith to endure unto the end, including keeping practical faith in Christ’s atonement for one’s Justification.
Reformed Soteriology
Horton’s understanding, typical of that within Reformed and Calvinistic circles, assumes that once one genuinely accepts the Terms of Justification, a manifestation of regeneration or born-again-ness, that convert will just magically follow the example of Jesus as the fruit of the Gospel. But there is no rational basis or dynamic by which that convert must follow the example of Jesus under Reformed/Calvinistic soteriology. Herein, there is and has long been a hole in the Protestant Gospel.
Or do such folks think that that God, the wise Sovereign of the cosmos, would leave Himself exposed to a lawless grace?
The best Protestant Evangelical minds acknowledge that this riddle remains inadequately explained.
I would want MacArthur to go deeper in his analysis of the nature of saving faith until he discover not only that it must yield obedience, but why it must…The reason that is important is that we will guard best against the accusation of salvation by works if we can show that something in the nature of faith itself produces obedience, rather than merely saying that it is always somehow accompanied by obedience.
Rather than the convert willfully pursuing holiness and peace, without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14), the Reformed/Calvinistic acolyte is liable to passively await upon some stirring within him- or herself in order to do that which is biblically incumbent. Herein, that acolyte is in soteriological peril. For it will be found that such a convert’s faith, if not corrected, does not effectively and ultimately rest upon the God of Scripture, but upon the priestly mediator of his- or her psyche.
This is not some straw man assertion from one who belongs to another theological stream. It emerges from one whose heritage was Reformed Baptist, which is at the intersection of European Protestantism and American Evangelicalism.
This misplaced trust is best manifested by the poor sods who are presented the false “gospel of born-again-ness” in which that acolyte “invites Christ into his heart.” For not only does God, who is scrupulously committed to righteousness and justice, have no juridical authority to grant the Sentence of eternal life via regeneration prior to the Verdict of “justified.”
“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”4
That poor sod finds that his/his epiphanic moment with the (Neoplatonist) One does not seem to take. That person may try and try and try as J.D. Greear did. More often, such “converts” will abandon a “gospel” that has proven to fail, often with derisive contempt, sometimes with committed hatred for having caused psychospiritual pain and waste of time.
Copyright © 2026 John T. Hutchinson
- Lewis Sperry Chafer, “The Terms of Salvation”, Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 108, Oct-Dec 1950, p.389. ↩︎
- Richard Nixon, Nixon/Frost Interviews, Part 3, May 19, 1977, edited by David Frost, Monarch Bay, California: David Paradine Productions, 1977. “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” ↩︎
- John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678; [REPRINT] Buffalo, NY: Geo. H. Derby, 1853, Chapter 11. ↩︎
- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, London: MacMillan, 1865, Ch. 7. ↩︎
