This book is a must-read for every Christian. Zane Hodges taught New Testament Greek at Dallas Theological Seminary for twenty-seven years. He very clearly presents the purity and simplicity of the gospel message to any reader who honestly seeks truth.
Let me approach this review from a different angle and share a recent personal confrontation last month with a pastor of a very large church in Colorado who holds a "lordship salvation" view of the gospel.
First, some personal background information to put this all into better context. I was raised as a Roman Catholic who often stated that I "was born a Catholic and would die a Catholic". I once told someone from another faith that when your church has been around 2,000 years, come and talk to me. However, God had a different plan for my life. I was saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ almost 20 years ago. It was not an easy decision for me to put faith for my eternal destiny (which every human being should obviously take very seriously) in the hands of Jesus Christ alone. Not in a church, not in any human works or attempts at being good enough, but to trust solely in Jesus Christ for my eternal salvation and His atoning death on the cross. All of my sins (past, present and future)were taken away at the moment that I put my faith in Jesus Christ, accepting God's free gift of salvation. This is anything but "easy believism". That term is a reprehensible insult to God, because as I later told this "lordship salvation" pastor, there was nothing easy about Christ's death on the cross.
It was also not easy to have my parents later boycott my wedding, or the sister whom I was always closest to say that she'd rather have a homosexual for a brother than a d@mn protestant,...and that she never wanted any ba%tard protestant children in her home. We had been taught under Roman Catholic theology that it isn't possible to be married in the eyes of God unless married in the Roman Catholic church, so any resulting children would be considered illegitimate.
At around the same time that I became a Christian, God brought the woman who would soon become my wife out of Seventh Day Adventism, in which she was raised.
Today, as evangelical Christians, we understand the critical importance of sound Biblical doctrine and the need to always be on guard against the doctines of men perverting the Gospel of Christ.
We recently started attending a church in Colorado that we thought was strongly evangelical. However, I heard the pastor one morning very emphatically state from the pulpit that "It is not enough for someone to put his or her faith in Jesus Christ to be saved, but one must also become a disciple of Christ." A red warning flag immediately went up in my mind that this was clearly not Biblical teaching. I e-mailed the church to see if I misunderstood this pastor's comment. I copied and pasted the doctrinal statement of faith from Dallas Theological Seminary into my e-mail and asked if the church's statement of faith differed. The pastor through his secretary stated that the subject was too complicated to discuss in an e-mail, so my wife and I set up an appointment to meet with him. We knew next to nothing about the lordship salvation controversy, but prayed prior to meeting with this pastor and prepared as best we could.
I have been in business for over 20 years and have met many types of people. The pastor of this huge, supposedly evangelical, church was one of the most prideful, arrogant and condescending individuals that my wife and I have ever met. He acted as though his distorted message of the Gospel was historical fact and accepted in every part of the church as true. He acted as though my wife and I were just totally lost. He even claimed that Dallas Theological Seminary would also agree with his view of the Gospel, which is obviously nonsense. Meeting with this individual was not a positive experience.
My wife was upset by this meeting and confused as to how anyone could distort the simple Gospel message and then preach this perversion to a huge church congregation. I asked her if she felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in this meeting. She said no. As an observation only, since only God knows if this pastor is actually saved, I asked her if she felt the presence of God in this man at all. She said no. In fact, she works in an intensive care unit with surgeons who are often known to be "full of themselves", and she stated that this pastor was more arrogant and prideful than any surgeon that she had ever met. Hodges book helps to explain why this is the natural result of those who adhere to this distorted view of the Gospel, since lordship salvation "...promotes a judgmental and pharisaical spirit within the church."
We grieve for those in this church and for their children who are being misled. However, it reminds us that all Christians must continue to contend for the truth of the Gospel and to continue to grow in our knowledge of Christ. I set aside my secular readings and purchased this book, along with "So Great Salvation" by Charles Ryrie and "The Knowledge of the Holy" by A.W. Tozer.
Hodges book is a Godsend.
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Grace is God's free gift in salvation and all through our Christian life.
