Pastor Brad Strand Exposes Lordship Salvation

Romans 10:9-10, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

One of my favorite Bible teachers is Pastor Brad Strand. I was delighted last year to learn that Brother Strand authored a helpful study Bible. The project was his heart's passion for 33 years, in which time he invested over 30,000 hours of labor to write this masterpiece. I was glad to learn that he faithfully contends for the Christian faith, exposing the Devil's lie of Lordship Salvation. Romans 10:9, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Pastor Strand writes concerning Romans 10:9 on pages 1858 and 1859:

Sadly, some “Lordship Salvation” advocates will use this verse to prove their point that JESUS must become your “Lord” before you can be saved. They claim that unbelievers must count the cost of discipleship and decide if they are willing to pay the price in order to obtain eternal life. One such advocate has written a book in which he gives the following answer to the question “What [is] the minimum amount of doctrine or belief a person [has] to have to be a Christian?” He notes:

The minimum amount a person must believe to be a Christian is everything, and the minimum amount a person must give is all. I say, “You must give it all. You cannot hold back even a fraction of a percentage of yourself. Every sin must be abandoned. Every false thought must be repudiated. You must be the Lord's entirely.” —SOURCE: Montgomery Boice, James. Christ's Call to Discipleship. Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1986. Print.

What this man is advocating is that a person cannot be saved until he makes Jesus the “Lord” of his life. However, this verse is not teaching us that we must make Jesus our Lord in order to be saved; it is teaching us that Jesus is “Lord” and if we are to be saved, we must accept the fact that He was God in flesh on earth (Jn 5:17-18 & 10:30-33). Jesus said to the Pharisees in John 8:23-24, “Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins (i.e., go to Hell): for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” Jesus said that salvation is based on two things (Mt 3:2):

1. Who we are (Lk 5:31-32 & 13:1-5 and Mt 27:3) — God tells us that we are “sinfully” sick and in need of the Savior and that we cannot save ourselves (Rom 3:10, 23).
2. Who Christ is (Mt 4:13-17 & 11:20-24, Mk 1:15, Acts 3:12-19 and Acts 2:38a) — Christ is God (Lord — Jon 8:24, 58-59), not a god. Christ is the only Savior (Acts 4:10-12).

Lordship Salvation doctrine hinders unbelievers from being saved because it presents them with a distorted view of the Gospel of God's grace. 

SOURCE: Pastor Brad Strand, 'The Strand Study Bible,' pp. 1858-1859; ©2009, Rood Scholar Press

Bravo to Pastor Strand. The Devil's a liar and the father of all liars (John 8:44). It may seem like a trifle matter to most churchgoers today to embellish the Gospel. Literally, you can attend a dozen different Bible colleges or churches and you'll hear multiple different plans of salvation. But we know from the inspired King James Bible that there is only one Gospel. Galatians 1:6-7, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.” So how in the world did we end up with nearly every church today preaching something different than what the inspired Holy Bible teaches?

I think the answer is simply that 99% of churchgoers have always blindly followed whatever their pastor tells them, instead of doing as the Bereans did in the Bible, whom the Apostle Paul said, “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” The Bereans didn't just take it for granted that they were being told the truth, they went to verify from the inspired Word of God whether those things were so. If people would simply study the Bible they would quickly find that Lordship Salvation is a fallacy, a counterfeit plan of salvation.

God wrote the Gospel of John as His Gospel tract. The word “believe” is found 85 times in the Gospel of John. In the book of John we don't find anything about making Jesus our “Lord” to get to Heaven. Pastor Curtis Hutson wisely said: A good rule to follow when interpreting the Bible is to never use an obscure passage to contradict a clear one. Advocates of Lordship Salvation often cite obscure passages of Scripture, wresting the Bible to their own destruction. Yet, they totally ignore the Gospel of John, which according to John 20:31 was written to show us how to get to Heaven, “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”