I was watching the above Q&A video in which after 16:42 minutes the question was asked, “How are the people of the Old Testament saved?” At 17:22 minutes John MacArthur begins answering that question as follows:
“I think we know what it says in Romans 4: Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. There has only been one way of salvation in all of God’s redemptive history, and that is faith alone.”
According to Calvinism maybe, but not according to the Bible! Abraham was saved because he kept God’s commandments. He was approved of God because he “obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws” (Gen. 26:5). God’s own words to him was, “By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.” (Gen. 22:16–18) And James agrees: “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar?” (James 2:21)
So we now have the testimony of two against one! We have James and God saying one thing, and Paul saying another! If I have to choose between the two, I choose James and God! John MacArthur then continues:
“People in the Old Testament are not saved by works, they were not saved by offering sacrifices, they were not saved by feeling badly about their sins.”
Keeping the commandments of God is not quite the same as “works”. “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not bear false witness” etc. are not “works”. You are not doing any “work” by not killing anybody. You are just keeping God’s commandments. You would be doing a lot more “work” by going out and killing somebody, than sitting at home doing nothing. But you would be breaking God’s commandments if you did. We are saved by God when we do what he says. That is not the same as “saving ourselves,” or being “saved by our own works”.
The whole of the Bible, Old and New Testaments, from the beginning to the end, says that we must keep the commandments of God to be saved. If I have to choose between what Paul says (or appears to say), and what the rest of the Bible says, including the direct words of Jehovah in the Old Testament, and of Jesus in the New Testament, I know which one I would choose. He continues:
“They were saved—and maybe the best illustration of this is the publican in Luke 18, by pounding on their chest, looking at the ground, realizing they had nothing in themselves but judgment coming, and saying, God, be merciful to me a sinner. That is the kind of repentance that mark an Old Testament true believer, and a cry for God to save him, simply because he believed and trusted in God.”
That parable is being misapplied, and is not relevant or applicable to the situation under discussion. The purpose of the parable was not to differentiate between “faith” versus “works”. Jesus gave that parable in order to condemn the pride and self-righteousness of the Pharisees. The “publicans” were considered to be sinners by the Jews (Matt. 9:10-11; 11:19; Mark 2:15-16; Luke 5:30; 7:34; 15:1-2), for which they were greatly despised; whereas the Pharisees considered themselves righteous (although they weren’t). They were hypocrites. Their “righteousness” was a pretense. They “tithed mint and rue” and “anise and cummin,” but omitted the “weightier matters of the law” such as “judgment, mercy, and faith” and the “love of God” (Matt. 23:23; Luke 11:42). Outwardly they made a show of piety, but inwardly they were full of evil and wickedness. In the New Testament Jesus repeatedly condemns their hypocrisy, dishonesty, deceitfulness, and false pretences. That was not the situation of the Old Testament prophets and patriarchs. Abraham was neither a sinner like the “publicans,” nor a hypocrite like the Pharisees. The Old Testament says nothing about Abraham “pounding his chest”. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, Noah, Enoch etc. were all approved of God for their righteousness. Enoch “walked with God” (Gen. 5:22), and he had “this testimony, that he pleased God” (Heb. 11:5); and that is how he was approved. Noah likewise was approved because he was a “just man and perfect in his generations” and he “walked with God” (Gen. 6:9), and that is how he “found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen. 6:8). He wasn’t “pounding his chest”. He was righteous, and that is how he was approved. Job was approved because he was a “perfect and an upright man,” and one that “feareth God, and escheweth evil” (Job 1:8; 2:3). He wasn’t “pounding his chest” neither! On the contrary, he stuck to his guns, and protested his innocence to the end—and was vindicated. The same goes for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the rest. The Bible says that they were righteous, and that is how they were approved. John MacArthur wants me to disregard all of that, disregard the whole of the Old and New Testaments, disregard all the direct speech of Jehovah in the Old Testament, all the direct speech of Jesus in the New Testament, and consign 99.9% of the Bible to the dustbin of Calvinism, in order to maintain a twisted version of a few controversial passages of Paul to preserve a false and heretical theology. Not going to happen. He continues:
“That faith, that penitent kind of faith, was counted as righteousness; and righteousness was imputed to him based upon a sacrifice there was to come in the person of Christ which reached back all the way to the beginning of redemptive history, as it reaches forward all the way to the end of redemptive history. Only one way of salvation throughout all of redemptive history, and that is by faith.”
He got that partly right. He got the “faith (alone)” and the “imputed righteousness” bits wrong. It is never “faith alone;” and “righteousness” is not “imputed” to anybody. The Atonement of Jesus Christ is actually able to make sinners righteous, through faith, repentance, and the keeping of God’s commandments, by which they obtain a remission of sins, and are sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, and become holy and blameless before God. Righteousness is not acquired by “imputation”. It is acquired by actually becoming righteous through the atonement of Jesus Christ. The Book of Mormon explains how that happens:
Moroni 10:
32 Yea come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ. And if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.
33 And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot.
Alma 13:
12 Now they, after being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, having their garments made white, being pure and spotless before God, could not look upon sin save it were with abhorrence; and there were many, exceedingly great many who were made pure, and entered into the rest of the Lord their God.
The Atonement of Jesus Christ is actually able to make us holy. It is not just by some kind of “imputation,” like it says in the abominable heresy of Calvinism. He then continues:
“And that is the whole point that Paul is trying to make both to the Galatians and the Romans. It is faith alone, faith alone. The Judaizers came along and said, Look, faith is not enough, you got to circumcise the Gentiles, and they have got to adhere to all the traditions, and all the ceremonies of Moses; and he makes the simple point: was Abraham justified before he was circumcised or after he was circumcised? Before he was circumcised. That had nothing to do with his justification … no work ever does, no work ever does. He was justified by faith. It has always been faith … it is a faith that recognizes the sinner’s sinfulness, and recognizing nothing good in the sinner, that he can do to gain God’s forgiveness and God’s favor. He throws himself at the mercy of God.”
Wrong! It is not “faith alone”. It is never “faith alone”. It is repenting and keeping God’s commandments. Keeping God’s commandments is not the same as “saving ourselves,” or being “saved by our own works”. We are saved by God when we do what he says. Abraham was not justified by “faith alone”. He was justified because of his righteousness and willing obedience to the commandments of God (Gen. 22:16–18; 26:5; James 2:21). Let us suppose that Abraham had rebelled, and refused to be circumcised after God had commanded him to. Would he have still been “justified”? Of course not. His justification came because of his faithfulness and willingness to obey God, not “faith alone”.
After that at 19:24 minutes Julius Kim enters the conversation and adds the following:
“And another wonderful chapter that describes exactly what Dr. MacArthur said is Hebrews chapter 11; and in this wonderful chapter you have all these testimonies of these Old Testament Saints, and to the faith they had in the promise to come, and God reckoned to them righteousness. It doesn’t say that specifically, but that I think is really the argument, not only of chapter 11 of Hebrews, but the whole book of Hebrews, as Jesus is better, Jesus is better than the Angels, Jesus is better than the priesthood etc.; and so I think that is exactly right.”
That is not right either. Hebrews chapter 11 is not about “salvation by faith alone,” nor about how righteousness is “reckoned” to, nor “imputed” to anyone. It is about actionable faith; it is about active faith. It is about how faith is exercised, and what can be accomplished by faith. It is not a vindication of “faith alone,” or of “imputed righteousness”. It is a description of what faith is, how it is exercised, and what can be achieved or accomplished by it.
