The Two Kinds of People I Knew Growing Up
Growing up, there were two kinds of people in my neighborhood: Christians and Jews.
The difference seemed simple enough to a boy. Christians celebrated Christmas. Jews, as far as I could tell, had a longer Christmas that started earlier.
How a Christian is defined is like, currently, how a woman is defined; it’s become a matter of identification. Of course, this blurs any lines of distinctiveness. Far enough to cover groups whose answers cannot all be true on the most basic spiritual question of all: How is a man saved?
Millions claim the label. Ask someone what separates his version of Christianity from the guy down the street, and he’s likely to suggest that he goes to the “new” church.
First Narrowing: Faith, Not Works
Here’s where I would start my definition of Christian—those who believe that salvation is by faith and not by works.
Ephesians 2:8–9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
That single line excludes a great number of what the world files under Christian.
Rome formally condemned justification by faith alone at the Council of Trent and holds that a man is justified through faith, sacraments, and cooperation with grace. Mormonism teaches that grace saves after all we can do. Both would defend those positions openly. Neither is a misunderstanding to be cleared up; it is a different gospel.
So, I am a Christian who believes that salvation is by faith and not by works.
Second Narrowing: The Five Solas
The Reformers faced the same question and answered with five statements.
I wrote earlier about the Five Solas and why they still matter.
Luther’s protest began with indulgences, certificates promising forgiveness in exchange for money, but his real objection ran deeper: salvation cannot be bought or earned.
What the Reformation recovered was a standard of belief simple enough to state in a sentence and sharp enough to divide truth from error.
Scripture alone is the authority for faith and practice. Faith alone justifies, apart from works. Grace alone saves, unearned. Christ alone mediates, with no other name given among men. God alone receives the glory.
Most churches no longer teach this, and the result is congregations who cannot say what they believe.
So I am a Christian who believes in salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to Scripture alone, and for the glory of God alone.
Where Faithful Men Still Divide
Those statements place you inside historic Protestantism.
Keep the proportions straight before going further. What follows divides faithful men, but it divides them inside a shared house: the Trinity, the deity of Christ, His substitutionary death, His bodily resurrection, the authority of the Word, and the certainty of judgment. What divides them is real. But it is also a fraction of what unites them.
Now the lines. Three of them, and each runs straight through that agreement.
Calvinism and Arminianism. Does God's sovereign choice determine who is saved, or does man's free will make the final call?
Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology. Is national Israel distinct from the Church with a literal future, or is the Church the continuation of one covenant people?
Lordship Salvation and Free Grace. Does genuine faith always produce a transformed life, or can a man be saved, show no evidence of it, and simply suffer loss at the Bema judgment?
These are not hair-splitting. Each one changes how one reads their entire Bible.
I wrote earlier about how to find out where a teacher actually stands.
You cannot audit every sermon, and you do not need to. A preacher can navigate around a hard text for years; a commentary cannot. When an author reaches certain passages, his interpretation goes on record with his name on the cover.
Why bother? Because your teachers do not all believe the same thing, and most of them will never say so outright. Not from the pulpit, not in the introduction to a book, not in the first ten minutes of a podcast. Where a man stands on these questions shapes every text he touches, so knowing his position tells you how to weigh everything else he teaches.
Six verses do most of the diagnostic work.
On Calvinism, John 6:44 turns on one Greek word, helkō: does God draw irresistibly, or merely woo? Acts 13:48 settles anything left over, because the appointing precedes the believing.
On Israel, Romans 11:26 asks whether “all Israel” means ethnic Israel with a literal future or gets redefined as the Church; Revelation 20:4 asks whether the thousand years are literal or symbolic.
On assurance, James 2:17 and 1 John 2:3–4 ask whether obedience is evidence of genuine faith or merely a matter of rewards and fellowship.
One caution worth repeating: these three divisions are independent of each other. Where a man lands on one tells you nothing about where he lands on the others. R.C. Sproul and John MacArthur agreed on Calvinism and on Lordship Salvation, and parted only at Romans 11:26. You have to check all three.
[Link to What is your teacher’s theology?]
So, I am a Christian who holds that God draws men to Himself effectually rather than merely inviting them; that works never achieve salvation but always evidence it, so that a profession leaving a man unchanged was never genuine faith; and that God's promises to national Israel stand, with Israel still holding a role in the consummation of His kingdom.
A Necessary Qualification About The End Times
Someone will ask where amillennialism and post-tribulationism fit.
They are actual positions, but they do not form a fourth division. Two separate questions are getting confused.
The first is the millennium. Are the thousand years of Revelation 20 a literal future reign on earth, or a symbol of our present age?
The second is rapture timing, chiefly pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, pre-wrath, and post-tribulation.
The second question only exists within the first. Only a premillennialist has anything to time. An amillennialist has no tribulation-then-millennium sequence for a rapture to fall within.
As for rapture timing, it is an argument among premillennialists that settles no gospel question. A pre-trib and a post-trib dispensationalist will read John 6:44, Romans 11:26, and James 2:17 identically.
The three divisions change how a man reads his whole Bible. Rapture timing changes his calendar.
One outlier is worth knowing. Historic premillennialism sits in the gap between the systems. Spurgeon, George Eldon Ladd, and Francis Schaeffer all expected a literal earthly reign of Christ without holding a hard Israel and Church distinction. So if Revelation 20:4 reads a man as Dispensational, confirm it against Romans 11:26 before concluding anything.
Can The Bible Be Understood At All?
If godly men divide this way, an obvious objection follows. Maybe the book itself is unclear.
It is not!
I wrote earlier about the question that eventually surfaces in every Bible study: how can so many people read this book and walk away with different answers?
The hidden assumption is that disagreement proves the text is unclear. It does not. A hundred wrong answers to the same math problem do not make the problem unsolvable; they indict the students.
Several passages build the case.
Scripture is breathed out by God and given to equip (2 Timothy 3:16–17). The Spirit was given that we might understand (1 Corinthians 2:12). The natural man cannot receive it, because he finds it folly (1 Corinthians 2:14). A man with three doctorates and no new birth is not underqualified; he is disqualified.
But illumination is not interpretation. It gives you the capacity to receive spiritual truth; it does not hand you a finished reading.
Paul concedes we know in part (1 Corinthians 13:9), and Peter admitted parts of Paul were hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16). That is why MacArthur and Sproul, both indwelt and both diligent beyond what most of us will manage, still disagreed about Israel.
So two conditions, and neither is optional.
Be saved, because the natural man finds it folly.
Be diligent, because 2 Timothy 2:15 commands the workman to handle it rightly.
Skip the first and you get a scholar who cannot see. Skip the second and you get a believer who never learns to handle the book he already owns.
[Link to Understanding the Bible post]
Why Does This Matter?
Many believers will encounter these divisions for the first time.
Pulpits carry much of the blame, having traded doctrine for encouragement and left congregations unable to state what they believe and why. But the Bible sitting unopened on the shelf is nobody's fault but its owner's.
That leaves you exposed twice.
The first exposure is in the pew. False teaching rarely announces itself. It arrives warm, fluent, and biblical, sounding better than the truth. If you cannot state what you believe, you will not notice when a teacher contradicts it.
Acts 17:11: describes the Bereans: "they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so."
They were not cynics; they received the word eagerly. Then they checked it against Scripture, and Luke calls them noble for it.
The second exposure comes without warning. Sometimes a question, sometimes an opening; a coworker, a neighbor, your own grandchild, and you have one chance to answer.
1 Peter 3:15: “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”
The command is preparation. Not cleverness nor credentials.
Know what you believe. Know why. And know it well enough to hand it to someone else.
To His Glory,
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“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”
Revelation 12:11 KJV
Love these five Solas!!