10. Chapter 9: The Plan Of Salvation According To James Dobson

Chapter 9 The Plan Of Salvation According To James Dobson

Dr. James Dobson is one of the most well-known figures in Christianity today. Dobson does a lot of good in many areas of Christian service, and the things he teaches can change your life for the better. Dobson is the founder of Focus on the Family, which is a non-profit organization whose aim is to help people of all ages by giving them sound, bible-based advice to aid in all of life’s issues. Dobson is serious about being a disciple of Christ and about living according to Christian principles, which is something you don’t see very much of, today. His radio programs can be heard in over 160 countries and are translated into 27 different languages. He is a licensed psychologist and a marriage, family and child counselor. Dobson has numerous honorary degrees and awards, and he is a best-selling author of many superlative books ranging on a number of different topics. He is an achiever, to say the least. He has done a lot of good for a lot of people, and I admire Dr. Dobson very much for his helpful insights and hard work toward the betterment of family dynamics. We were introduced to the teachings of Dr. Dobson during junior high at the Christian school I attended, and to this day I remember feeling comforted by his warm, caring voice. In sum, I cannot say enough good things about this incredible man. Reader, I want you to know something: it hurts me to have to do this, but the purpose of this chapter is to show you that the plan of salvation presented by Focus on the Family is different from the plan of salvation that is given to us by Christ Himself in the bible. I would rather not have to write this chapter because, I fear, that my work may be equated with the work of others whose aim is to merely throw stones of malicious, hateful libel at a man who is only trying to do his best. I can assure you that I am not in their league, and that I do not count myself among their number. Far be it from me to do such an unholy thing toward Dobson or any other leader who follows their convictions; after all, has Christ called true believers to employ tactics of self-absorbed, opinionated and slanderous hostility toward someone in order to get His message out? No, He would not. Although Christ wrecked the tables of the money changers, and even though He called numerous Pharisees a bunch of snakes on another occasion, He did so without sin and was, in fact, within His right to do so; however, the sole purpose of this chapter is to present to you both the plan of salvation according to Dr. James Dobson (and nothing more as far as he and his organization is concerned) and the plan of salvation given to us by Jesus Christ in the bible. In the end, you will have to choose which plan you will trust for the eternal salvation of your soul. In this chapter, I will provide for you some of the key verses that Dobson uses to support his stance and I will paraphrase for you his version of the plan of salvation. Please visit the Focus on the Family Website and look for an article entitled “Coming Home: An Invitation To Join God’s Family” in order to read what they have to say word-for-word. Again, the following information has been paraphrased to avoid any potential copyright violations. At this time, I would now like to share with you the plan of salvation according to Dr. James Dobson himself vis-à-vis the plan that is outlined for us on the page entitled, “Coming Home: An Invitation To Join God’s Family” which can be found on the Focus on the Family’s Website. To begin with, Focus on the Family’s salvation statement starts immediately under the categorical “What Must I Do?” heading with the following three assertive bible verses:

Next, they tell you to trust Christ as both your Lord and as your savior in order to become a Christian. Although they say this step is simple enough for children to do, they also say that we cannot trust Christ on our own or by our own will, alone. They ask if you, the reader of their plan, are ready to make this “commitment” to Christ and that you should first carefully calculate the cost of serving Christ.

They say that you should acknowledge the fact that you are a sinner and that you are, at this time, separated from God because of the fact that you are a sinner. They use the following verse as proof:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Next we read that no amount of good works can help us to earn our way into heaven, that we are all self-willed and stubborn, and that we need a savior. They state that Jesus is the only provision for our salvation, that we must believe He died for us, that He wants to be our Lord and Savior, and that He wants to both possess us and to rule us.

We are then instructed to “truly desire” Christ as our Lord and savior and to ask Him into our hearts, to turn from ourselves to God, to trust that He will forgive us, that He will make us the type of people He wants us to be, and that we “receive” Christ as an act of our wills through a prayer of faith. Here is a verse they use as a proof text:

“If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

We are told that God is looking at our attitudes in this process, and we are urged to consider very carefully the “demands” that God makes concerning our becoming Christians. Their prayer of salvation suggests that you should first agree with what God has said in the bible concerning the fact that you are seen by Him as a sinner, that you should acknowledge the fact that Christ died for you, that you should “count the cost” of following Christ, that you should “repent” and “turn away” from past sins and “open the door” of your life to receive Christ as your “Lord” and as your “savior.” The prayer finishes with a humble plea to Christ to have Him make you into the type of person that He wants you to be. That, reader, is the plan of salvation according to Dr. James Dobson. At this time, before I explain Christ’s plan of salvation in all of its superb clarity, I would like to share with you an amusing personal story that is inexorably linked to the greatest essential truth of all concerning salvation via the use of a very special bible verse. As I write within this chapter on this particular day, I wanted to share with you a unique experience that I had earlier this evening with my two rambunctious little nephews, Hunter and Zach. I actually played tennis for the first time in many years. Do you like tennis? I’m not very graceful at this game, but tennis is a lot of fun, especially when I can successfully return a serve in my ungainly manner. Bjorn Borg I’m not! Still, the whole point of the game is to enjoy yourself and to get some much needed aerobic activity into our all-too-often sedentary lifestyles; however, as I missed numerous times those yellow spheres zipping passed me, I began to think of the definition of sin, which is “to miss the mark.” One could literally say that each time I missed a ball that was lobbed to me, I “sinned.” With this mental picture that I have created for you in which you see me out on a tennis court swinging a racket and trying my best to knock balls back across the net toward two very lively children, I would like for you to consider both the love that God holds for humankind as well as the seriousness of one sin when compared to His character by sharing a very special verse with you from the book of Romans. The gravity of this verse and its implications for all of us should be carefully considered, and at the same time we should believe it in the same manner that a little child trusts the words of his or her mommy or daddy; after all, what parent in the world would lie deliberately to their small, helpless, completely dependent offspring? I would dare say not a one who is of sound mind. Again, with the mental vignette of playing a poor game of tennis coupled with the unequaled love of a parent for his or her little child, I want you to let the sheer weight of this verse sink deeply into the core of your understanding.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” That verse is Romans 6:23, and it is of special importance that I present it to you along with those aforementioned mental pictures. Notice, if you will, the singularity of the word “sin” in Romans 6:23. Sin, which means to “miss the mark,” refers to only one sin, not many sins. The word “wages” refers to payment. When you work each day in a place of business you earn payment in the form of money; likewise, as an unsaved person sins, he or she earns degrees of punishment that will one day be levied against them to determine the severity of the sentence they will receive at the Great White Throne Judgement. Although the only sin — the unpardonable sin — that will cause a person to be cast into the lake of fire is the sin of unbelief (of not trusting Christ alone as savior), the wages earned during a lifetime of sin will be factored into the final sentence to each unsaved individual who appears in His court despite the fact that Christ paid for all sins for all time by His death, burial and resurrection from the grave. As believers, our sins have been completely wiped away “for us” by what Christ Himself, with His own blood, did for us on the cross. It has nothing at all to do with what “we do for God” — it is all about what “He did for us.” Quite literally, there is now “no condemnation” for those who have trusted in Jesus Christ as their savior, but because we possess both the old nature of Adam and the new nature imparted to us (by grace through faith in Christ) by Christ, we still sin willfully or ignorantly by acts of commission or omission, respectively, yet our standing with God never changes because He sees us “as righteous as” His Son because of what He did for us. The opposite is true for the unsaved person. Like a sum of money in a bank account, the lost person’s sins draw interest. The interest is compounded over his or her lifetime. According to the book of Revelation, when the “books” are opened and they are judged according to their misdeeds, a level of punishment will be assigned against each unsaved person by Christ the Judge. You see, each one of us will face Christ as either “Savior” or as “Judge.” If you stand before Christ even with only “one sin” you will not go to heaven, according to Romans 6:23. Now, notice the part of the verse that says “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Did you happen to notice the word “gift” in this verse? Must one earn a gift? Of course not. God gives each of us the gift of everlasting life with Him in heaven when we place our faith (trust) in Christ because he paid for our sins by Himself (without our help). When you read “through Jesus Christ our Lord” in this verse, it is implying not only that Christ is deity, not only is He the promised Messiah who would pay for the sins of the world, but that the very remedy (the gift, the pardon) of our sin is found in Him alone. Take a solid look at this verse again.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). In the most elemental sense possible, God is telling us through this verse that we are all guilty of crimes that have earned us the death penalty, but that Christ paid the death penalty for us, and that when we believe He paid for our crimes by His death on the cross, we receive the free gift of everlasting life in heaven with Him. This, my friend, is one of many ways that God says we cannot earn heaven by our good works, behavioral changes, promises to change, willingness to change, or by our commitments to follow Christ as disciples. All of these things involve human efforts, yet, have we not already established the fact from this verse that a gift cannot be earned? How then could any church pastor or bible teacher lead us to believe that we must earn a gift? Do any of them really understand the gift of God according to Romans 6:23? Sadly, based upon the evidence they provide each time the issue of salvation is addressed, the answer is an emphatic no.

While Dobson mentions the verse John 3:16 in an earlier portion of his salvation statement, it seems as though he dismisses the true meaning of the verse by ignoring Christ’s “believe-only command” to Nicodemus when he asked Christ how he could be born again. As you well know, John 3:16 is as follows: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Does Christ tell Nicodemus to believe and become a disciple? No. Does Christ tell Nicodemus to believe and make Him his Lord? No. Does Christ tell Nicodemus to believe and determine with all of his might to keep the law of Moses? No. Does Christ imply or allude to the concept of doing any works or deeds of any kind, including discipleship, for Him in this verse? No. If those things were necessary, Christ would have told him so, and He would have told us so, as well.

You see, when anyone, no matter who they are, says you have to trust Christ the way they say that you have to do, then watch out. Ask yourself, “Does what they say match with Christ’s “believe-only command” that He gave to Nicodemus in John 3:16?” If it does not, reader, then you know based upon Christ’s authority that their plan is not His plan. When Christ told Nicodemus to believe on Him alone, He was referring to the fact that He was the promised Messiah that all of Israel had been looking for, that He would die for our sins, and that He would rise from the dead. Nicodemus believed this, and he was saved; however, Nicodemus, as far as we know, never became a disciple. This is of great importance for you to realize: Nicodemus believed in Christ alone and it was counted unto him for righteousness, i.e., he was saved by grace through faith in what Jesus would do for him by His death, burial and resurrection from the dead. On the other hand, Judas was a disciple, but Judas never believed on Christ alone for his salvation. What we have here is a bible-based refutation of the fact that one has to become a disciple or follower of Christ in order to be born again because Judas was a “disciple” who never trusted Jesus as his savior and Nicodemus believed on Christ alone and was born again, apart from all the good works he was doing as a Pharisee, even though he never became a disciple “in order to” be born again nor did he profess “with his mouth” before the Sanhedrin that he had trusted Christ as his savior.

Jesus saves a person the very instant they believe on Him alone for the gift of everlasting life. When you add anything such as good works, deeds, law keeping, or discipleship to what Christ alone has accomplished for “whosoever believeth in him” by His death and subsequent resurrection from the dead, then you are calling Christ a liar. If you do it “your way” and not His way, you will be among the number who stand before Christ at the Great White Throne Judgement, which Christ said would be like this:

“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity”(Matthew 7:21-23). In that passage, Jesus was telling us what He will say to all “Christ PLUS works” people at the Great White Throne Judgement. And what happens to these people whom Christ has just addressed? Look at this:

“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-15). The “will of the Father” is not for you to become a disciple or to do wonderful works in His name “in order to” be born again. On the contrary, you are saved the instant you trust Jesus as your “savior.” Jesus said in John 6:40 that the “will of the Father” concerning our salvation is trust His Son alone for the free gift of salvation. Look for yourself where Jesus says, “And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day”(John 6:40).

Reader, of the two plans of salvation I have presented to you in this chapter, one of them is wrong.

One leads to everlasting life in heaven, the other leads to eternal death in the lake of fire. It is up to you to decide which one is correct and which one is incorrect. My prayers are with you as you decide between the two plans offered for your consideration in this chapter.