Topic : Lordship Salvation
Bring Forth Fruit
There are so many stony ground hearers who receive the Word with joy that I have determined to suspend my judgment till I know the tree by its fruits.
Do you think any farmer would have crop of corn next year unless he plowed now? You may as well expect a crop of corn on unplowed ground as a crop of grace until he soul is convinced of its being undone without a Savior. That’s the reason we have so many mushroom converts, so many persons that are always happy! happy! happy! and never were miserable. Why? Because their stony ground is not plowed up; they have not got a conviction of the law … they fall away … That makes me so cautious now, which I was not thirty years ago, of dubbing converts too soon. Now I wait a little, and see if people bring forth fruit; for there are so many blossoms which March winds blow away that I cannot believe they are converts till I see fruit brought forth.
- George Whitefield (1714-1770)
Quote
- We are saved by faith, yet faith is one With life, like daylight and the sun.
Poem
Unless they flower in our deeds,
Dead, empty husks are all the creeds.
To call Christ Lord, but strive not to obey,
Belies the homage that with words I pay.
Resource
- Bibliotheca Sacra, v. 143, # 569, p. 37, “Does the Bible Teach Lordship Salvation? “ by Livingston Blauvelt, Jr.
Conversion Means?
I doubt, indeed, whether we have any warrant for saying that a man can possibly be converted without being consecrated to God. More consecrated he doubtless can be, and will be as his grace increases; but if he was not consecrated to God in the very day that he was converted and born again, I do not know what conversion means.
