The Lordship Controversy occurred in the last two decades of the twentieth century. It was a debate largely between dispensational theologians regarding the nature of salvation and the place of repentance in the life of true believers. On one side of the Lordship Controversy was a company of “Free Grace” theologians who denied that repentance and obedience are necessary in the Christian life. On the other side of the controversy was a group of Calvinistic theologians who taught that although salvation is based only on God’s sovereign grace, God requires the evangelical response of repentance and faith in our reception of the gospel. The latter emphasized the importance of the lordship of Christ in reaction to the denial of the need for repentance and the fruit of obedience in the teaching of the proponents of the Free Grace movement. By undermining the place of repentance and good works in the life of a believer, proponents of the Free Grace movement essentially advanced an antinomian view of justification. Although there was enough uniformity on each side of the debate to label these two different positions, there were also nuances in the way in which individual figures articulated the dynamics of both the Free Grace and the Lordship Salvation approach to the doctrine of salvation.
During the final two decades of the twentieth century, certain dispensational theologians began to propagate the idea that one could be in a state of salvation and lack entirely the fruit of repentance from sin and obedience to Christ. Their particular form of soteriology came to be known as free grace–a title coined by Zane Hodges. Some of the other more well-known adherents of the Free Grace movement were Louis Sperry Chafer, Miles Stanford, and Norman Geisler. Hodges became a particularly well-known proponent of the Free Grace theology because of his 1981 book The Gospel under Siege. In his May 1991 Tabletalk article “Understanding the Lordship Controversy,” J.I. Packer wrote:
If . . . you had told me that I would live to see literate evangelicals, some with doctorates and a seminary teaching record, arguing for the reality of an eternal salvation, divinely guaranteed, that may have in it no repentance, no discipleship, no behavioral change, no practical acknowledgment of Christ as Lord of one’s life, and no perseverance in faith, I would have told you that you were out of your mind. Stark, staring bonkers, is the British phrase I would probably have used. But now the thing has happened. In The Gospel Under Siege (1981) and Absolutely Free! (1989), Zane Hodges, for one, maintains all these positions as essential to the Christian message, arguing that without them the Gospel gets lost in legalism. Wow.
Nor is this all. Hodges lashes the historic reformational account of the Gospel, which he labels “Lordship salvation,” as a form of works-righteousness, because it affirms that repentance—turning from sin to serve Jesus as one’s Lord—is as necessary for salvation as faith—turning from self-reliance to trust Jesus as one’s Savior. Such repentance, says Hodges, is a work, and justification is through faith apart from works. To preach and teach in reformational terms is to compromise the grace of the Gospel. It is vital, says Hodges, to see that there is no necessary connection between saving faith and good works at any stage. . . .
[Hodges] might not have attracted much notice had not a distinguished fellow-dispensationalist with a Reformed soteriology, John MacArthur, Jr., attacked his view in The Gospel According to Jesus (1988), a strongly worded book with forewords by Boice and Packer. Absolutely Free! was Hodges’ reply to MacArthur.
The debate centered on both the necessity of repentance and the necessity of good works in relation to personal salvation. The Reformed had always emphasized that Spirit-wrought good works are the necessary evidence that one possesses saving faith in Christ. These good works are not the basis of salvation, which is Christ alone, but if one does not have them at all, one has not really trusted in Jesus alone. The proponents of the Free Grace movement denied this biblical teaching because they believed it made personal assurance of salvation impossible. For instance, Hodges wrote, “A man who must wait for works to verify his faith cannot know until life’s end whether or not his faith was real” (The Gospel under Siege, p. 79). This is a radical departure from the historic Reformed and Protestant understanding of the role of good works in the life of believers. The members of the Westminster Assembly included an entire chapter on the subject of good works. In that chapter, they wrote, “Good works, done in obedience to God’s commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith: and by them believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that, having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life” (Westminster Confession of Faith 16.2). In other words, we do not have to look back on our lives at the point of death in order to see if we truly believe; rather, good works are one evidence, in the present, that we are united to Christ and heirs of eternal life.
In short, the Free Grace movement has rightly been critiqued as a “hyper-grace” movement. John Gerstner once noted that it is essentially an antinomian movement. The Free Grace movement’s presentation of “grace” does not in fact square with the biblical doctrine of grace. The Apostle Paul wrote, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:11–14). Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, but when God saves us, He continues working in us such that we manifest good works (Eph. 2:8–10).
Both sides proclaim that God’s grace is absolutely free, that justification is absolutely central, that faith is absolutely necessary for salvation—and that the other side’s account of what it means to be a Christian is absolutely wrong. Hodges calls MacArthur’s position “a radical rewriting of the Gospel,” “Satanic at its core,” which has “turned the meaning of faith upside down,” destroying the ground of assurance and producing doctrine that the New Testament writers would find unrecognizable. MacArthur calls Hodges’ position a “tragic error” that “destroys the Gospel,” “promises a false peace,” “produces a false evangelism,” and “offers a false hope.” What, we ask, is the point of cleavage that so drastically divides men who seemed to agree on so much? The question is not hard to answer. It has to do with the nature of faith.
J.I. Packer
“Understanding the Lordship Controversy”
Tabletalk magazine (May 1991)
Good works are not necessary for us to earn our justification. They are never the ground basis of our justification. They are necessary in another more restricted sense. They are necessary corollaries to true faith. If a person claims to have faith yet brings no fruit of obedience whatsoever, it is proof positive that the claim to faith is a false claim. True faith inevitably and necessarily bears fruit. The absence of fruit indicates the absence of faith. We are not justified by the fruit of our faith. We are justified by the fruit of Christ’s merit. We receive His merit only by faith. But it is only by true faith that we receive His merit. And all true faith yields true fruit.
R.C. Sproul
“Works or Faith?”
Tabletalk magazine (May 1991)
