Remember when the evangelical gatekeepers in Australia roundly condemned us for questioning the official COVID-19 narrative?
Well, what happens when one of their own questions the biblical truth that there is no salvation apart from faith in Jesus Christ? Well, nothing, apparently. And that should tell you everything you need to know about their loyalties and priorities.
A recent debate between Edward Schuller of Red Union and Mark Leach, founder of Never Again Is Now and an ordained Anglican minister, highlighted this unfortunate truth for all of us.
While both men affirm that salvation comes through Jesus Christ, Schuller rightly pressed for clarity, questioning his opponent and asking whether a person must actually believe in Christ to be justified—to be saved.
Leach, who is himself a Jew, described his position as “a sort of soft inclusivism”—which is not only a departure from historic Anglican and Protestant teaching, but from the Bible itself.
He said:
“Technically, I’m arguing for a soft inclusivism. So, the distinction you need to make… is, is the condition of getting into heaven… a conscious decision to accept Jesus that is what gets me into heaven?
So, I think you can be saved through Messiah Jesus. Absolutely. I have no problem with that. I think any person who is embraced into the eternal family of God through the life and death and resurrection of the second Adam. One hundred percent. As in Adam all sin, so in Christ all shall be made alive.”
Leach affirmed that ethnic Jews are saved the same way as everyone else, which is “through Christ,” but when Schuller asked whether someone practising modern Judaism, rejecting Christ throughout their life, could nevertheless be saved, Leach said yes.
Although the debate was supposed to be about whether Australian Christians have an obligation to the modern nation of Israel, the whole thing turned to a much more serious issue. Are Jews saved despite rejecting Jesus?
It’s one thing to say that Christ alone accomplished salvation. It is quite another to say that a person can receive eternal life without consciously believing in Christ.
But Leach went even further, saying: “I have no trouble for God continuing to love people who deny him. Granting them eternal life.”
He also left the door open to the same possibility for Muslims. When asked whether a practising jihadist Muslim who denied Christ throughout his life could still be saved, Leach couldn’t say with any meaningful degree of certainty.
The best he could say was that the “data seems to indicate no. So I would say don’t bank on that.” He then went on to distinguish between Muslims and Jews, saying, “I think Jewish people are in a different category.”
So, while he is uncertain about whether a Muslim who rejects Christ can be saved, he is confident enough to say that a Jew who rejects Christ throughout his life will be.
“They are still God’s covenant people, and they are loved by him. And there’s a mystery to that sets them apart,” he said.
The problem, however, is not whether God loves people who reject him. Christians affirm that God shows extraordinary patience and mercy towards sinners. The question is whether God justifies—declares righteous—those who remain in unbelief.
Historic Anglican doctrine answers that question quite clearly. An ordained Anglican minister ought to know.
Article XI of the Thirty-Nine Articles teaches:
WE are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings: Wherefore, that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification.
Yes, Christ is the ground of salvation, but faith is the means by which the sinner receives Christ and his saving work. Leach’s argument, however, blurs that distinction. While affirming the former, he denies the latter and hides behind the cover of “mystery” and obscurity—as though that resolves his problem.
Nor does pointing to the fact that Christians have sometimes denied Christ help. Peter denied Christ and was restored. Judas denied Christ and was condemned. Peter’s denial is fundamentally different from arguing that someone may reject Christ throughout their entire life and still receive eternal life—and that merely on the basis of their Jewish ancestry.
What Leach doesn’t seem to understand is the necessity of being found righteous before God. The Bible tells us that apart from faith, the only basis on which a person could stand righteous before God would be their own perfect righteousness—perfect obedience to God’s law. Paul is emphatic: no one can attain the righteous requirements of the law.
Indeed, that is part of the law’s purpose. God is perfectly righteous, and we are not. Hence it is necessary that we have a perfect High Priest, offering a perfect sacrifice and interceding perfectly for us before God. That cannot be found outside of faith. And, according to the Apostle Paul, even the law testifies to this.
Abraham believed God, and his faith was credited to him as righteousness. Abraham was justified by faith in God’s promise—not by his bloodline. That is true for Abraham; it is true for the Gentile, and it is true for the Jew.
As Paul testified in Romans 10:1–4:
“Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
As Jesus put it in John 3:18:
“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
So again, Australian evangelical leaders wasted no time condemning those who contradicted the decrees of the state during COVID-19. How long will it be before they condemn a mate who has contradicted the Gospel?
I won’t hold my breath.
You can watch the full debate below. We’ve barely scratched the surface of the deeply problematic position Leach is peddling: