John mcarthur believes Christians are selected by God and not saved by faith.
Yeah, I am really, really conflicted with John. In everything else, he is a spot on, really great Bible teacher and preacher, I’m just not a Calvinist, and its weird because Calvinists and reformed people tend to talk more about Calvin than Christ. And there is a reformed movement sweeping evangelicals, even in the Baptist church. But it is just not Biblical. As quoted above, “If you declare that Jesus is Lord, and believe that God brought him back to life, you will be saved.” A lot of Calvinists want to argue that it is more complicated than that, that their study and education has revealed to them much much more that is part of salvation, but that hardly squares with Jesus stating that unless you have the faith of a child, you could not be saved. In other words, salvation by faith is as simple as a child’s faith.
I think that what John has stated is a sign of growth of a Christian, and that we should strive for each one of those things to be part of who we are as followers of Christ. But I don’t believe that is a salvation checklist. You could be saved, and not have developed in those areas like you could have, but that would be your loss on missing out to have a deeper, richer experience for Christ, and to enjoy the fruits of living that experience for Christ.
Finally, many great Bible teachers like Norman Geissler, Frank Turek, Adrian Rodgers have clearly shown that the elect refers to nations, or people called to ministry, but not to salvation. Salvation is to all people, not just some that God arbitrarily picks to be saved.
He is a Calvinist, but no Calvinist would reject Sola Fide; it is one of their basic principles.
So far as being selected by God, even free-will Christians believe that. "Those He foreknew, He predestined."