Lordship salvation controversy

The lordship salvation controversy (also called lordship controversy) is a theological dispute regarding a soteriological question within Christianity on the relationship between faith and works. This debate has been notably present among some non-denominational and Evangelical churches in North America at least since the 1980s. The dispute opposes two soteriological visions: "whether it is necessary to accept Christ as Lord in order to have Him as one's Savior. The question then becomes, If someone accepts Christ as Savior without also explicitly accepting Him as Lord, is such a person truly saved?". That is, whether accepting Jesus Christ as saviour necessarily implies one must make a concrete commitment in life toward the Christ such as following a certain behaviour or moral system. The first opinion, that of the lordship salvation supporters, is, as Arthur W. Pink summarises: "No one can receive Christ as His Savior while he rejects Him as Lord. Therefore, those who have not bowed to Christ’s scepter and enthroned Him in their hearts and lives, and yet imagine that they are trusting Him as Savior, are deceived". The second opinion is that of those opposing lordship salvation: that one can accept Jesus Christ as saviour, but does not need to accept the Christ's lordship. "By grace alone" and "through faith alone" are two of the five solae of the Protestant Reformation. Many Protestants affirm these phrases as distinctively Protestant, whereas the Lordship Salvation controversy concerns what grace and faith must include, and what they must exclude, for a person to "have salvation" in the evangelical Protestant sense. The language of what must be included permeates the whole debate and is often transferred from the meaning of the concepts to the status of someone's experience; thus, "As a part of his saving work, God will produce repentance, faith, sanctification, yieldedness, obedience, and ultimately glorification. Since he is not dependent on human effort in producing these elements, an experience that lacks any of them cannot be the saving work of God.