Largely incoherent
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To paraphrase Chafer, the violence done to the understanding of scripture by confusing Israel and the Church is incalculable.
MacArthur starts this book describing how its thesis was derived through a multi-year study of the Book of Matthew. With Matthew in the front of his mind (a book almost exclusively designed to document Jesus as the bona fide Messianc King, and with only a handful of veiled references to the Church), he derived the core of his soteriology. No wonder the result is nonsense.
Given that the topic is essentially a battle over the definition of the word "grace", I was shocked that there was almost no mention of it. He should have at least presented his own outline of the fundamental concepts behind grace. If he had such a disagreement with "free grace", he should also have been able to refute Chafer's definition of it in detail. Instead, though people like Chafer were mentioned in passing, his treatment of grace was largely ignored.
I would have expected that, if MacArthur's view of salvation were legitimate, he would have been able to find numerous examples of saved people throughout the New Testament who followed his scheme. Of course, he couldn't because they aren't there. Other than the incestuous believer in 1st Corinthians, who he discounts as a believer because he can't imagine that a believer could do such a thing, he spends almost no time showing how his theory played out with the characters of the Bible.
He could have mentioned David (but he was an adulterous murderer, and Christians would never do such a thing), or Nicodemus (but he was a "secret believer", and such a thing doesn't fit with his all or nothing approach), or the Ethiopian official of Acts (but, since he makes no comment about a plan for lifelong dedication, this wouldn't really help his argument). I'd have been interested to hear how he explains Paul sending letters to scores of people he still considers Christians though they are gossiping, slandering, engaging in orgies, stealing, etc. Or for that matter, how does he explain people clearly identified as Christians whom God punishes through death due to disobedience. None of this is seriously addressed.
The logical fallacy is this: How can something that happens chronologically years after a decision for salvation (which is grammatically described in Greek with a perfect tense, meaning it is absolutely established forever) affect the decision? His position would be much easier to defend if he believed a person could lose his salvation, but he does not. Instead, he tries to point to a sort of genetic defect that was part of the salvation decision, and which only manifested itself long afterwards. How, as 1st John puts it, is anyone supposed to have any confidence in their salvation?
The only fairly solid part of the book was his chapter on Justification. There were a couple of holes in it, but I wish the adherents to Lordship Salvation would sit down and just meditate on what he wrote on this. The sacrifice has already been made, and the moment of salvation results in position with Christ. How can your ignorant commitment improve on this?
