The Clarity of the Gospel (w/ Kelsi Klembara of 1517)

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I have a unique and special podcast for you.

A couple of months ago, we had the opportunity of being interviewed on a podcast on 1517 called

Outside Ourselves, and the host is Kelsey Klimbera. And we had just a wonderful time getting to know her, and she had a lot of questions just about the gospel and clarifying the gospel and love gospel distinction, and even some biographical questions about Justin and I and our history about how we came to know the gospel of grace.

And so it was a great time together. It's almost an hour. We hope you guys enjoy this unique and special podcast as we collaborate with Outside Ourselves and Theocast.

Thanks. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism. Have you ever felt like the

Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy? That you wake up worrying about how well you're going to perform instead of thinking about what

Christ has done for you? It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes

Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope not in what Christ has done but what they're doing.

We have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it, and we're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism,

Reformed theology, really. How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when

Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like? You can download it on our website.

Just go to theocast .org. John and Justin, welcome to Outside Ourselves.

Thanks so much for being here, y 'all. It's a pleasure. Thanks for the invite. Yeah, happy to be here,

Kelsey. Yeah, of course. Well, you guys are my first duo guest. I haven't had any guests yet where there's two of you, so I would love if you want to just tell people why you're both here, what you do together, and a little bit about yourselves.

I got a random email. I don't know Justin. She sent me this email saying she wanted me to come on, so I'm not sick of it yet.

Here you are. Here I am. No, shout out to Daniel. Know Daniel, and he connected us, and so I'm thankful for that.

And Justin and I have become dear friends and ministry partners.

He and I met through, really through social media. If there's anything ever that's come good from social media, it's that I had the opportunity to meet

Justin. Some good things happen on what was formerly known as Twitter. Yeah. I don't know what we call it.

On the X. That's right, on the X. So he and I started a Twitter conversation, but so we're both, I'll introduce myself.

I'll let Justin introduce himself. So I started a church about six years ago called Grace Reformed Church in South Nashville area called

Spring Hill. And four kids, and just my wife, been married for 20 years, and loving ministry.

And the second part of the ministry that I get to participate in every week is Theocast. And so Justin and I have been recording that for over four years now, coming on our 200 episode.

And this will be, I think, right around the like 197, 98 something. I think we're about 199, 200.

There you go. Well, you might be the 200th episode. Who knows? Who knows? We need balloons or something. There you go.

But it's been a wonderful ride because, like your podcast, we really try to help people who are maybe newer in the faith or maybe confused.

We really want to help them find the secure footing in Christ and in the chaos of all the theology that's out there and confusion.

We want to help people find rest in that. And so that's kind of where we're at. And I know that's kind of the direction of your podcast.

Justin, I'll let you introduce yourself. Yeah. So I'm Justin, and I am the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

Our church was planted about eight years ago, and I'm married to Michelle. We have four kids.

And like John said, he and I have been doing this podcast together for about four years. Encouraged by that, you,

I'm sure, are used to the grind of a weekly show and how that can be a thing.

But we've been encouraged by how the Lord has used it. And like John said, our one trick is to point the saints to the sufficiency of Christ for them.

And like your podcast is called Outside Ourselves. That's what we're trying to do, is to point people to Jesus and make it clear from Scripture that His work, what

He's done, not only is it enough to save us all, but it stands unaffected by how we're doing, how we're feeling, how we're performing today, this week, whatever.

And that's what we plan to keep talking about until people don't want to listen to us anymore. That's great.

Well, I know a lot of people that listen to y 'all and have listened to you here and there throughout the years.

Is this message that you guys are proclaiming, which we're going to talk about gospel clarity a lot today.

Is that something that you feel like you kind of stumbled upon? Is it something you grew up with?

How did you come to the point that you're at today?

And then I know that you talked about finding each other on Twitter, but what was that even like, kind of like finding a partner in this and being able to do it together?

You just asked a question that we may run 20 minutes with this. John, you go first.

That's not the meeting part. How we came to it. The whole thing. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. So I guess

I go back and well, yeah, it'd be better if I started, I guess, you know, I was born and raised in a pastor's home and my mom and dad were wonderful parents, loved

Jesus and just, I've got nothing but amazing memories. And I was definitely a rebel, caused a lot of problems and it was, my mom would get angry with me.

I love my mom. She'll probably hear this. So mom, you know, I love you. But she would even say, I don't even know if you're a Christian. You know, it's just bad.

I just had bad moments in my childhood. And but the one thing that was very clear to me was the gospel.

Like that part of it. I was very thankful for, it was always by grace alone. And it was fun watching my dad and my mom change over time in a good way where they grew up extremely fundamentalist

Baptist and then begin to see like the bad cultural side of that. And then we're really drawn towards grace.

And that part was the part as I got older in high school, I saw that. And then my father passed away right before I turned 21.

And that really kind of caused me to rethink all of my theology in general. And so, you know, the shorter version of that is

I ended up in seminary and a really good friend of mine just started challenging a lot of my thought process about the

Christian life as it relates to like sanctification and really the sovereignty of God in relation to like just my salvation in general.

So it was about that time I really started to learn about the historic faith and things like law gospel distinction and the ordinary means of grace.

And you know, I can remember the first time someone asked me to do a study on spiritual disciplines. And I started reading it,

I was like, this stuff is like semi -pagan, like this has these rituals are not connected and grounded in scripture other than read your

Bible. I mean, I guess I can go along with that. But it was at that moment I realized that I had been raised in what's called a pietistic context where it's like your podcast, it's the opposite.

It wasn't outside of ourselves. It was inside. I was always looking to myself and then, you know, just to kind of jump to the podcast thing, when

Justin and I got on the phone, you know, I messaged him and said, hey, man, I've heard some of your sermons. A good friend of ours who was also a host on the podcast years ago,

Jimmy Bueller, is the one who told me about Justin and he said, hey, you should check this guy out. I've interacted with him on Twitter. And so I just messaged

Justin and we ended up on the phone for a couple hours and it was like immediate connection. This guy thinks the way

I do, his personality is different. But as far as like theologically, we couldn't be more close, you know, just in the way that we think about the

Christian life. And so it took us a couple more conversations, but he agreed to come on as a host. So it was a fun ride.

It was a quick ride. I mean, we really kind of moved fast and getting it up and rolling. But that journey for me, having someone like Justin in my life, he and I aren't just hosts, but we also challenge each other often, like new thoughts, new ideas.

This is where I'm at or when we're discouraged. So it's been fun to just have a partner in ministry, which a lot of people don't get.

And I'm thankful that God has done that for me. For sure. Yeah. So me, I grew up in not a great church environment.

And my parents, yeah, my parents may very well listen to this too. And like John, I have nothing but wonderful things to say about my mom and my dad.

And both of them in God's providence are members of the church. I pastor now. That's kind of, it's sweet, you know, and they're doing really well.

I mean, even spiritually trusting Christ and in the midst of the trials of this life. But my mom was well -intentioned, but just uninformed theologically.

My dad came to faith a little bit later in my life. So we went to churches, plural, that were, they were

Baptistic, right? But they're liberal as far as their theology was concerned. So it didn't so much matter what you believed and they were laced with just moralism, you know, be a good person.

So I meant to trust Christ as a young guy. And there was, from the time

I was probably 10 or 12, I don't know that I ever questioned whether or not Jesus was legit, but I questioned the church and like everything that I had seen in terms of Christianity and the

Christian life. I just thought, man, this is whack. Like, I don't know what to make of this. And that continued through like high school into college.

My college years were good in ways, but it was also just swinging on pendulums between like legalism and licentiousness and just not even knowing what to make of, like, how do

I live as a Christian? Something about Jesus I can't leave, like even if I wanted to, couldn't walk away from, you know?

And yet my Christian life, quote unquote, was a mess and inconsistent all over the place.

After college, I encountered more robust teaching. And yet, like John said, as I was immersed into a more serious minded, like evangelical context,

I still found that there was a lot of inconsistency. So on the one hand, Jesus was preached and, you know, even like God's plan to save a people from before the foundations of the world and like how he's the

Savior and I'm just a recipient of the salvation that Christ has accomplished for me, that was preached and I was encouraged in my soul by that.

But then like John alluded to, and we've acknowledged already, there was all of this, like, look within yourself, evaluate yourself, are you serious enough?

Are you disciplined enough? Are you obedient enough? How are your affections for God and the things of God and all of that?

And I, like many of us that find, I'll just use the word and we can define it, that find more of like a reformation understanding of the faith.

A lot of us have tender consciences deep down and we are aware that, man, if it depends on me at all, like I got no shot here and if my obedience or my faithfulness or my consistency is even a fraction of this equation of salvation, then

I'm damned, like I got no hope. So I always wrestled with that in my heart. And the only things that I ever found comfort in were words from Jesus, like where he would say that I have you and nobody's ever going to take you from my hands,

I'm going to raise you up on the last day. And it's like, thank God that Jesus will never fail me because I fail him day, every day, every day.

And so I think the Lord had primed the pump in my heart for a long time as I began to encounter the doctrines now that we hold dear, this objective understanding of Christ and the gospel that's declarative too, it's done, it's finished, like there's nothing that we need to contribute, nothing that we could contribute anyway, and learning the distinction between the law and the gospel and just the one plan of God that's revealed throughout the scriptures that all centers on Christ and reading the entire

Bible in light of him. Those are things that changed my life over a decade ago and have been continuing to grow and learn in those things and preach those things week in and week out in our local church and get to talk with John every week on a podcast about this stuff.

Last word from me on this is I think we all can tend to boast in the things that we think we understand, but I think for myself, and I'm sure you two agree, my overwhelming feeling about all this is gratitude.

To understand and know something of the sufficiency of our Savior for us is a really sweet thing.

And you're happy to take the bullets from people that don't understand. It's like we're going to keep preaching

Christ regardless of how we might be reviled for that. A couple things, when you're talking,

Justin, about the pendulum, almost like moving from the exterior of your actions to interior,

I think that I relate so much to that. Not so much, I was a goody two -shoes.

I was pretty straight -laced too for a period of my life. Okay, we're on the same page.

But it's that interior swing between pride and despair over and over and over again that I think most

Christians, if they're honest with themselves, really struggle with and don't know what to do with.

They don't have a place to be honest about it. They feel like they don't have a

God to be honest about it too. And that was me, it just felt like I couldn't talk to anybody about it.

And so when you finally realize, that's exactly what He wants you to be talking to Him about, it gives you such a more firm foundation.

I think, yeah, that's super helpful. And then this idea of gratitude is so important.

I was actually going to ask this later, but there's,

I think, a tendency, and I brought this up on the show before, when you first hear this message of, for me at least, my experience was like, this is amazing, why does no one know about it?

And a little bit of even anger. You're indignant, you're indignant. You're like, why in the world has nobody ever said this to me before?

Yes, where has this been hiding? And so then I think pride does actually come after that, or at least it did for me.

In that cage stage, it does. Yeah, and it's like the cage stage or the fire hose stage of like, everyone listen to me and believe what

I believe. Where have you guys, how have you navigated that, and what would your encouragement be to people who kind of find themselves there?

Where they're, I think a lot of times it's like, they want to share the gospel out of the goodness of their heart, like they're truly excited about it, or they want people to know, but I know for me,

I was just turning people off left and right because I was just so strong on it. What's your encouragement for people that find themselves in that place?

I'm going to throw it to John in a second, but if I can just comment briefly on the pride and despair thing you brought up, and maybe we'll talk about it more later, but I think that that's common for so many believers in the church because of the fact that we are pointed to ourselves so often, and so inevitably, that's what's going to occur.

You're going to take pride in the things that you think you can do, and you're going to despair over the things that you know you can't, and I think

Satan doubles down on that strategy. I mean, in that sort of M .O. in the church, whenever we're pointed in on ourselves, that's not of God.

That's not God's ideal for us as believers, and so I do think that many

Christians just kind of swing on that pendulum between self -righteousness and despair, and the antidote to that, to both of those things, is to point the believer outside of themselves to Christ and to fix your gaze on Him for you, and then we're getting somewhere.

But I think your question is a good one, like what's the counsel to people that encounter these things? Because you're right. I think gratitude mixed with indignation is a normal place to be, and talk about hiding a light under a bushel.

You're just like, what have we been doing in the church for however many decades, and what is going on?

And I think some of that reaction's okay, but you want to be winsome in the ways that you engage. So, John, give us the wisdom, man.

Tell us how we should. Yeah. I'll just tell you how I feel. You know, I did have a moment.

I remember talking to one of my mentors and pastor at the time that I was so angry about some of my former professors and mentors about how they just misled me, and then

I parodied everything that they said, and I misled so many people. And, you know, he just reminded me.

He's like, look, man, look at the Apostle Paul, and Peter, and the disciples, and just how

God brings us through experiences so that we have perspective at times, and that God in His sovereignty understands that this is part of the plan for us to learn.

And that was helpful for me to not remain in my anger, understanding that, okay, maybe

I do have a perspective that people will understand now, and it'll allow me to be a little bit more gracious and patient towards people who tend to be legalistic.

Because I was, my wife and I laugh. We were telling the kids about the other day when we were in high school, and we had just met, and the things

I would say is like just, it was horrible. You know, I was just such a legalist, and all the things

I said I would never do, which I ended up doing in college, which is just a shame to me. But it is interesting where what helped me a lot, so if you're in this stage where you kind of feel like you got to take over the world and change everybody's mind immediately, it's healthy to read history at times and understand that you're not the first one that's taken up this mantle and this mission.

And that it's not, just hear me out here, it's not one, or two, or three conversations.

I have to say this to people all the time. Multiple times in scripture, we are commanded, not suggested, we are commanded to speak the truth in love.

And love, if you understand the word, it is selfless, sacrificial, and it is long -suffering.

That's how it's described, which means you're going to have to be extremely patient over and over and over again, and be okay with people not changing right away, because that's what love does.

Love endures, right? So it's understanding that this is a journey, I've rarely met anybody who hasn't had a little bit of a traumatic experience coming to grace, right?

And so I often tell people, just be there for that person when they get there. It might be a slow fade where they slowly come over here, or it might be something where you're there to help pick up the pieces after the tragedy.

And, but what does Paul say in Romans 15, one, those of you who are strong in grace, in faith, have an obligation to deal with the failings of the weak.

And he says obligation, that's another way of saying, speaking the truth in love. So I always just encourage,

I have a lot of spouses who one or the other will be either entrenched in, yeah. I was going to mention that seems to be the common thing is it's between couples.

Sorry, go ahead. No, no. And it's, you know, for my church, it's been a lot of charismatic theology that one spouse has come out of and the other one is still in it.

And I had guys in my church that I could see their, you know, their teeth clenched when I told them, hey, brother, the one thing you're going to hear me say for the rest of your marriage is you got to be patient.

You got to let God do his work because if they don't see it, then you can't force it upon him.

And so I think that command from our Lord is so important that love is always the vehicle that this grace has to come to people because you cannot force it upon them.

All three of us have tried it and it's blown up. It doesn't work. I'm not going to repeat everything that John said, though.

I agree with it all. I think some other things to keep in mind when you're encountering these things is to first remember the nature of the gospel and in the fact that we are recipients of mercy.

And so what do we have that we've not been given? And so that should humble us all.

I agree with John's encouragement to read history and also humble yourself to realize that you are not the first human being to thoughtfully engage these things, that people have thought really hard for a long time and have even given their lives to these truths.

And so that should calm us all down a little bit. And remember that if we're getting all of it worked up and indignant, we're typically dealing in the realm of justice and what people deserve.

And I'm going to treat you poorly because you have spoken things to me or you've not said things to me that have been helpful.

And just, we should all remember that if we're dealing in the realm of what we deserve, we don't deserve anything good from the

Lord as sinners. And Christianity is a religion of mercy and mercy is better than fair. And so just remember those things.

I think that should humble us all. But then I think that our theology, understanding how the fall of Adam has wrecked us all and how that means that by nature, we don't understand anything well, that should produce compassion because there were so many things that we didn't understand for a time, though we,

I think, wanted to understand, we didn't. We meant well in what we were trying to do.

So I think extend compassion toward your brothers and sisters and don't impugn their motivations, assume that they mean really well, but they might be misguided.

And so then ask yourself, what is actually going to be fruitful and winsome and useful?

Well, it's for me to be kind and warm and gentle. And I always encourage people in our church because all of our people are coming from content, well, not all, but many of our people are coming from contexts that are different.

They're coming from a more generally evangelical background. And a lot of these things that we're talking about, the nature of the gospel and how

Christ's work is objective and outside of us. And though they agree with that generally, they've never been taught that really well, or the distinction between the law and the gospel and that there is nothing whatsoever in the gospel for us to do.

That makes people really nervous and they're having to learn all these things. But when the light bulbs go off, people are disoriented and they're kind of like, what do

I do with this? And I always encourage people in our church, if you are understanding these things and you're interacting with people that are newer, that don't yet understand them, just major on Jesus.

Talk about Him a lot. Like point people to Christ and talk about how He is such a mighty, sufficient

Savior, and just make much of Christ all the time and let that be your song and let that be your line, rather than getting all worked up over these other areas of doctrine that are important, but might actually distract from the main conversation we're trying to have.

So I think that's generally useful. And I try to do that myself whenever I'm having conversations with people that understand that where I am theologically and where they are theologically is different, and they're a little bit nervous about where I am.

I just talk about Christ a lot and say things about Jesus that I don't think they can disagree with. And then we just reason from there.

That's such great advice because it's like you can pull out your confessions or, you know, for us or Book of Concord, but yeah, it's useful.

But for a lot of people, they're like, no, I don't think so. I don't, I'm not super interested in that.

Yeah. Don't make, don't make a law of the gospel is so important.

And, but it's harder to do than I think we realize. So this has all been, this is great advice and super helpful.

And I think one thing you guys are so good at is being so clear about doctrine in a very winsome way, in a gracious way.

And I know you guys, I think recently did an episode all about this, but I'm curious if you could just define for us, what is gospel in simple terms?

How do you define that? How do you teach people what the gospel is? Because again, you think it's simple, but there's, there tends to be a lot of confusion about what exactly is going on there.

Yeah, Justin, I think we could break this up into two part, um, our cleansing and then our inherited righteousness.

I think that might be an easy way to break that up. And I'm also fine for you to just give us the goods and then I'll do my best to follow up.

Okay. It sounds good. I preached this sermon recently and, and I really tried to focus in on this.

Uh, Paul makes this radical statement in first Timothy four, one that in a lot of times the church is going to be swayed and it says by the doctrines of demons, which means demons are teaching these things and you go on to realize what he's talking about, he's talking about, uh, uh, half gospel where they're going to come and they're going to sound right.

Like they're going to think about a lie is that a lie is, uh, about 99 % truth.

Right. So when we're talking about clarifying the gospel, which is really what theocast loves to do is making sure that we keep it clear, uh, because there is an attack on the gospel.

And sometimes we don't understand that attack is just leading half of it off. That's the attack, right?

Giving just half the truth. Which, you know, there's a lot of things in life that won't work if you only have half of it.

So the, the gospel in and of itself, this is an important understanding that the word means good news.

And the nature of news is that it's past tense. It's not present or future, right?

It's telling you what has happened. And so that's, what's so important is that there's no potential to the gospel.

There's no future to the gospel. Then that also means there's nothing to do with it because it's, it's a, it's a part of history.

That's what's so important to understand. And so what is that history? Well, that history is, uh, in the past.

You, you were condemned the moment you were born, you were condemned under God as, as being a rebel. You came out rebelling and the, that's the bad news.

And that you, you should be held accountable for that because your, your rebellion is such an offense. And here's the past tense part of it is that, uh,

God in his love sent his son to, to pay for your rebellion so that you would no longer be under that condemnation.

This is why the cross is so radically offensive because it's a picture of how radical your rebellion was.

That's why it's so beautiful, right? It's so beautiful because look how much God had to pay for through Christ.

And, and that was, that was his mercy upon us. So the gospel has mercy, but the also the gospel has what's called grace.

So mercy is to not receive what you deserve. And grace is to receive what you don't deserve. And that's the second part of the gospel.

And that's Jesus's life. What people don't understand is that Romans three says, for all have sinned, we've rebelled against God.

And then we fell short of something. He says, we fall short of the glory of God. What that means is to be in God's presence, you have to be righteous and therefore righteousness allows you to enter into his glory.

And so I love this, that we are told that the righteousness of Christ is our righteousness at new birth.

And that righteousness is what gives us the right to be in the presence of God without fear and without any kind of requirement.

So the two parts of the gospel is that we don't have to pay for our sins because we can't, that's mercy.

And that all of the works that Jesus did from the moment he was born to the moment he rose from the grave, all of those works were proofs of righteousness, were proofs of his goodness.

And Jesus says, they are yours. It's a really powerful word, one that if it's new to you, you should learn this.

There's so much good writing on the Reformers and Lutherans on this. It's called union in Christ. What that means is that you become one with Jesus.

You would hear a word like clothed in Christ, right? Clothed in his righteousness.

So the good news of the gospel is that everything you could ever need to be with your father is gifted to you by forgiveness of sins and the giving over of Christ's righteousness forever.

And that means when Paul says, if you're going to boast, proudly put on his righteousness and boast in the

Lord, that would be our explanation of the gospel. And the most important part of that is just like, well, how do I know this to be true about me?

Like this news is true about me. And it's great because Jesus says, if you believe, you know, it's true about you.

Hey guys, real quick. Some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions. So where do you go?

How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the

Theocast Community. We're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there, and you can share it and ask questions.

You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. I want to double down on this whole news thing that Christianity is the only religion in the world based on news, on something that has been done, that's accomplished.

And we've said this already. We're going to say it again, because I don't think this is something that we intuitively understand well as human beings, but there is nothing whatsoever for us to do when it comes to the gospel.

The gospel is only about what Jesus Christ has done. And we don't live the gospel.

We don't do the gospel. All we're ever told is to believe it, to receive it, and to preach it.

And so that said, we'll set this over here. But what is the good news? Well, I mean, it's

Jesus for us for the forgiveness of sins. So he paid that penalty.

It's for Jesus for the absolution of our guilt. So we are no longer counted guilty, right?

It is Jesus for righteousness, meaning as John already articulated, Christ perfectly fulfilled

God's holy law. So Jesus fulfilled the law in every way that we are under it.

And so everything that the law demands of us, Jesus did it. And what he did is counted to us by faith.

And then it's Jesus for eternal life by virtue of the fact that we've been absolved and forgiven and declared righteous in Christ.

We now are heirs of eternal life with the Lord forever in Christ.

And it's the greatest news in the world. And so we can say to people, when they ask, how would

I be righteous before God? You're able to say, well, even though I have broken every single one of God's commands, which you have, and even though I have never kept a single one of them, which you haven't, and even as a

Christian, I'm still inclined toward all evil, by the way, because I drag that old corrupt nature around.

You know, the dead man floats, as Martin Luther would say. You drag the corpse of your fallen nature around with you all the time.

So even being a Christian, I'm still inclined toward all evil. So even though I've broken all of God's commands,

I've never kept one, and I'm still inclined toward all evil, yet God out of sheer grace and mercy has counted to me the perfect righteousness, holiness, and satisfaction of Christ.

And it is as though I have never sinned or been a sinner, and it is as though I have been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me.

And I just receive that by faith. It's given. I don't earn it. I don't achieve it.

I receive it. And that's gospel. And anything else is, we're venturing into the realm of law.

And the law is not bad, but the law can't save. Yeah. And I will add one aspect to this because some people, as you already know,

Kelsey, they probably come and question you about this. There is an aspect of the good news of the gospel that because he brings us to life, that he has promised to us the thing that we want to do, which is to obey him.

He is going to grant that to us, right? It's part of the gift that's to us, but that is a result of the gospel.

And people need to understand where that goes is that there is how you come into a direct relationship with God and then the effects of it.

And at times we bring the effects into the gospel and you can't do that. Yeah. And that's where the danger comes.

Or implications of the gospel are not the gospel. That's right. Right. Yeah, exactly. And I think

I see a lot of times, and I really struggle with thinking the implications or the good works that are promised to follow the gospel are some, in some way, quantifiable or measurable.

And that that is what then tells me where I'm standing and how I'm doing. And I think that that's really hard for people because we want some sort of measurement and we want some, again, we want some sort of firm foundation as we've kind of been talking about.

So we go there because that's what we're doing. That's the thing we know to go to.

So this is all super, super helpful. I, you know, there's a few places

I think I've seen people struggle with this. I think one is this idea that, and especially today,

I would say, and maybe for like my generation, like you don't want to hear that you're a sinner.

People really don't like that. They all, there's also a lot of baggage that comes with that from people who have grown up in the church and have heard that over and over again and, but haven't been given the gospel.

So I think that that is one place. And then the other place seems to be this double imputation or the lack of preaching, the lack of,

I guess, information, theological conversation about being closed in Jesus' righteousness.

It seems like it kind of, the buck stops at your sins are forgiven. Now go obey. I'm curious, have you guys found those to be sticking points or are there other points?

Where do you see this go wrong for people or start to get really confused for people most commonly?

I mean, you said a lot that we could comment on for a little while. I'll start with the last thing you said about the double imputation and being counted with and clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

Not being preached as clearly. I agree with that. I think the church, and I'm talking about whatever we want to call it, the evangelical church in America, broadly speaking,

I think Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, like Jesus dying on the cross for our sins is preached pretty clearly.

Now there's a lot of confusion and collapsing of categories that we could maybe talk about later, but I think the cross and Jesus for the forgiveness of sins is communicated pretty regularly, pretty consistently.

But I do agree. I think the gospel in terms of the work of Christ is very often cut in half. You never get the fact that not only did he die for your sins and even die as a substitute for you to take the wrath of God you deserve, but you don't get that he fulfilled all righteousness and that his perfect life, his obedience, his law -keeping is counted to you as your obedience, as your righteousness.

As your perfect law -keeping. Because we're not told that, I do think you're right.

The street -level takeaway is, all right, Jesus did his part. Now you go and do yours.

Jesus died for your sins. You've got a clean slate now. Now let me give you a pat on the backside and go out there and don't disappoint

God. That's effectively how many of us feel like we need to live. We're always looking then to evaluate our performance because we think implicitly somehow that we've got to contribute to righteousness.

I think the church has doubled down unintentionally on that message by not preaching the righteousness of Christ as our righteousness from the rooftops as loudly and clearly as we can.

That's one. John, interact with a little bit of what Kelsey said. I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

I'm doing a series on spiritual warfare. One of the things that I have really come to conclude while discussing this with people is we're such physical beings.

There's a part of the gospel that we are okay with. People are okay with being forgiven.

That part seems like, okay, God, I messed up and I really appreciate you being kind to me and forgiving me. Yeah. That part mostly is okay if you're a

Christian. The world, at times, I'm with you. They're like, what do I need to be forgiven of? What I'm doing isn't wrong.

That part is where the law really has to come in because the law is there to break them down and crush them. We want to use the law in that way.

The law is beautiful in that way because it just destroys us.

We're thankful for the law because the law shows us Jesus. You can have the law or you can have

Jesus. We're like, we'll take Jesus. But there is a disconnect to the supernatural nature to the relationship we have with God.

I mean, just think about this for a moment. If you say you're a Christian, just think about this from a non -American, pagan perspective.

You walk up to somebody and you're like, I have a God living inside me. Yeah. Just think about that for a moment.

It's weird. It is weird. You're like, wait, what? Yeah. His name is Spirit. He lives inside me.

It just sounds crazy. You're like, what are you talking about? And you know what? He gives me a connection to God where I can actually talk to him right now.

But he's up there. I mean, he's everywhere. He's up there. He's everywhere. But I can talk to him. And people are like, dude, you have lost it, man.

And so there is a radicalness. When Paul says that the world calls it foolishness, well, we're still part of the world.

And that fallen nature within us is like, it feels like there's still something

I've got to do. So I want to be able to see my faith. I want to be able to see my relationship with God.

And when the Bible says, blessed are you who do not see yet believe, there's a blessing upon the believer who finally can sit down and go, this entire relationship is not like anything else on this world.

And that, I think, if you could help the believer understand, regain the supernatural nature of our

Bibles and of our faith. Because everything about it is physical. What I don't do, what

I don't eat, what I don't say. So we find the security of our relationship by looking at our hands and our eyes and our mouths.

And God's like, you cannot do that because it's fallen. Your entire relationship with me is based on that which you can't see, but only experience.

Which means when it says His Spirit ministers to our spirit, and this is how we know, there's that nature where it truly is by faith that God is accepting me, not based upon my future obedience or my past obedience, but He is accepting me based upon His terms.

So I would tell people, you have to emphasize the promises of God and how

God has been faithful in His promises. And remember that this is a supernatural relationship.

This is not a human relationship. So if you try and compare human relationships with God, it will never work.

I'll give you an example. When we think about the word love, not all three of us, none of us have a love for other humans like God has a love for us.

I'll give you an example. His love is unconditional. We have limits. I'm telling you right now, we have limits to our...

Because listen, if someone becomes so abusive that it puts us in danger, there's a separation that has to happen there.

There's an experience of that love, but that's not true with our Father. He doesn't love us that way.

So His love is unconditional in the truest sense. And it's sacrificial. I mean, what does

Jesus say? No greater love than this, than a man laid down his life, right? So we often take human experience and we cast it upon God.

And it's incumbent upon us to know that scripture says your relationship with God is not like any other relationship.

It cannot be. And you have to listen to God's promises and the way that God acts, because God is not human like we are, you know?

So His ways are not like our ways. So that part of the gospel, if you don't really emphasize the supernatural and the unwavering promises of God, it's hard to embrace this concept that I am accepted based upon God's terms and not based upon my performance.

For me, I have watched more and more people relax and rest once they embrace that my relationship with God is supernatural based upon His terms and not mine.

If I can double down on that, the obedience thing, and like you said,

Kelsey, we want to do good works. We want to see things in our lives. We want to see that we're transforming, that we're changing because of the fact that we've been united to Christ.

I think when we begin to understand that even our sanctification is supernatural, that this is a work of God, not a work that we perform,

I think that helps us and we're on the right track. Because it's very clear that we tend to think in very natural human terms about even the

Christian faith, because the tactic of so many preachers out there when it comes to obedience for the

Christian is to preach Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and justification and all that kind of stuff.

But then when it comes to sanctification, it's like, well, we've got to have some skin in the game in order for people to be appropriately motivated to pursue obedience and holiness.

So you get this kind of obey or else, dot, dot, dot. You're just going to prove that you're a faker. You've probably been a faker all along, and we're just going to kind of smoke that out over time.

Christianity is only for the serious amongst us and only the strong survive. That's the kind of message that comes out, and that feeds into our natural tendencies to think that we need to work for it.

When biblically speaking, sanctification is a supernatural thing that Christ does through the work of His Spirit in us, and it's all grounded in our union with Him.

So the sanctification of believers, our growth in holiness and godliness and all that, it has the same foundation and comes from the same source as our justification, and that is our union with Christ.

We've been united to Him by faith. We've been baptized into Him. We've been freed from sin's guilt and now thereby freed from its dominion, and we've become obedient from the heart.

Here's the thing. If this was a human endeavor, we could measure our progress in ways that seems reasonable to us, but given that the

Lord is the one who will do this over the course of a lifetime, we are often very poor evaluators of how we're growing.

I sometimes tell people, you're not going to see it in a clean, linear way the way you want to. It's kind of like the grass grows.

I don't really see it growing, but I know I've got to cut it on the weekend. I mean, that's kind of how this is going to happen. Yeah. So I think that's one comment that we all just need to stop thinking in such human quantifiable ways about our growth in the faith.

That's just not helpful. It's not how the Lord works typically. You made a comment that in our generation, I don't know how old you are compared to me.

I'm just going to say our. I feel good about saying that right now. Love it. In our generation, people don't like to hear that they're sinners.

I think that's probably always been true, but I understand what you mean in a unique way today. Humans have always had too high of an opinion of ourselves, and that's clear that it's true in the church.

And I think one of the problems, John kind of touched on this already, is that we don't actually preach the law the way that we should.

Right. You know, we dumb the law down. We collapse categories. We soft pedal the law.

It's this kind of easy listening legalism where, yeah, like God's holy and his law is holy, but we kind of lower the standard enough to where it's almost like we could do it.

And we need to just be living in dedicated fervor, in trying to do the works of the law to an adequate level, whatever that is.

Nobody can define that standard. And I think the cure there for all of us is that we would preach the law in all of its holiness.

And we would say, like, miserable sinner, because we all are. There's no other kind. We're all miserable sinners.

And we say, have you considered Mount Sinai? You know, when God gave the law and how the mountains shook, and there was lightning and smoke.

If you touch the mountain, you die. It's like, do you think that you're going to ascend the side of that holy hill and make your way to God?

Like, there's no way in the world that can be done. And so then I think preaching the law in all of its holiness, and like Jesus in the

Sermon on the Mount, greatest sermon on the law ever preached, by the way, where he crushes everybody.

He tells us not only that he came to fulfill it. I mean, that's huge. But then he says, you've got to have a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.

It's like, oh, really? And you've already said, don't kill somebody. But I'm telling you, if you've been angry, you've broken the law. In other words, everybody's a lawbreaker.

Exactly. Yeah, I recently, I did a little, a talk on, that was based on the

Sermon on the Mount for Mockingbird. And I cannot tell you, I was at, I live in Dallas.

I was at DTS, which actually has a great library, like pretty extensive. And the number of commentaries, even

Lutheran, that were like dumbing down the Sermon on the

Mount and saying that be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect is not what

Jesus actually meant. It was astounding to me. I was very - It's crazy, isn't it? I was shocked.

I think I found like one or two that were pretty strong on that.

So I think you're totally right. You get the same thing in like passages in Romans too. But the Sermon on the Mount, like we've been talking about this lately in my own church, just really quickly, because it's all, it's good for us to hear.

At the end of the sermon, like in Matthew 7, the narrow way is not your discipline.

Right, yeah. And you're going to work your way. Like you're going to stay on the straight and narrow. The narrow way is there's one man who's kept the law.

He just preached the law and crushed everybody. And now there's one who's kept it. And the only way to the Father is through him, right?

That's a narrow way understanding. Or the people that come and Jesus paints the picture. There will be many who say to me,

Lord, Lord, look at all the wonderful things we did in your name. And he says, I never knew you, depart from me. He calls them workers of lawlessness.

Well, where's their confidence? They're pointing to all the things they did. And he is saying, in fact, all of these good things that you're appealing to, you're a worker of lawlessness.

You're a lawbreaker. Because you're still pointing to these things that you think are good works, but they will not save you.

Then he tells people that if you hear what I'm saying and live accordingly, you're like the person who built his house on the rock.

And my word there is, dear believer, that rock on which you will build your life is not your obedience.

I promise you. It is Christ the solid rock for us. So a law and gospel understanding of the

Sermon on the Mount in that way is very liberating. And it actually makes all kinds of sense, rather than sounding schizophrenic.

Well, apparently I can't keep it, but I need to. And maybe I guess God grades on a curve and whatever.

And I need to discipline myself to stay on the straight and narrow and then hope that this turns out well in the end. That's slavery.

That's not good news. It is. I mean, this is the point of the sermon, really. Because Jesus is like, right, here's this big weight of the kingdom.

And he starts placing up all of these roadblocks that funnel down into him. And he goes, okay, the narrow, do you see my face?

This is me. This is how you get here. Please. It's simple, really. And narrow in a good way.

He's funneling you down to himself and they never see it. He says this to him. He's like, you're standing in front of the presence of God and you still don't believe.

John 6. Right. I want to go back really quickly because I thought what you guys were saying about the supernatural was really interesting.

And I maybe have a little bit of a Lutheran twist. You guys tell me what you think about this from your perspective.

But there's something to be said, I think, as well. To having the sacraments is kind of this inversion of the supernatural.

This touch point where we see things that are very common.

And yet God is giving them as his gifts in a way to say, this is different.

I'm making this different through my word. And this, if you are doubting, if you are lacking assurance, you're not sure of whether you have faith or not.

This is where you look. And I think that that's a cool connection. I was just thinking about it from the way that you guys were saying.

It's not completely like we have this ethereal relationship with God.

That's right. He is bringing his word down to us in a way that we can understand and grab hold of.

Well, Christ is not far off. Think Romans 10. He's near. And how is he near to us?

Well, he comes to us through his word and through his sacraments. And so that's how we tangibly experience

Christ in this life as a gathered body of believers. I think the observation about the sacraments is excellent.

I mean, even though we're in a different tradition than you, we too are going to uphold the real presence of Christ in the table and in the waters of baptism.

And John and I, like you, now, again, we may administer the sacrament of baptism differently, but we too are going to use the language of remember your baptism and look to the fact, yeah, you're wrestling with assurance.

You're doubting. Remember that you have been united to Christ and that your baptism is significant of that.

And then as we come to the table every week, at least in my context, we do come to the table weekly in our services.

And we always, in leading people to the table, remind them that this supper is not for the perfect.

It's for the weak. It's so that we might receive all, like in the bread and the cup, surely as you hold these things and you put them in your mouth,

Christ died for you and all of his benefits are yours. And you're going to receive from him everything that your faith and love might lack.

And so it's even these sacraments are about our union with Christ and they are about God's faithfulness to us, not our faithfulness to him.

He gave them to us for our benefit. So I think your observation is excellent, Kelsey, in that the Lord always has worked.

Yes, this is supernatural and it is spiritual. And the Lord gives us these tangible things at the same time because he's made us physical and because we need them.

And we're weak and feeble and all that. Well, in almost everything that's related to the church, we have commercialized it and turned it into a show and really de -spiritualized it.

I tell my church, you can't replace the promises of the

Lord. When he says the word is preached, that is God's voice coming to his people through a broken vessel.

When we think about baptism, do not miss the point when Jesus says, baptize them in the name of the

Trinity. What that means is you are giving this sign as a means of acceptance, because that's what it means to do in the name of.

If you say, pray in the name of Jesus, you're praying on the behalf of the acceptance of Jesus. So the moment you're receiving baptism, it's like God's acceptance is being put upon you.

And the same thing when you're brought to the table, you're being reminded of a supernatural, real, real interaction with the

Spirit that lives within you as it continues to feed you. What does Jesus tell

Peter? Feed my sheep. And part of that is the ministration of the word and sacrament.

That's how you feed the sheep. Anyways, yes, all of this is to encourage assurance.

It's all this is to encourage the relationship that you have with Jesus so that you can do his work. Justin Perdue And to nourish our souls.

I mean, this is a whole other podcast for a whole other day. But I will say this, that the work of finding your assurance was never given to the believer.

It's so wrong. It was the work of sharing your assurance, not finding it.

And we say a lot, and this is not unique to us. I mean, the reformers all use this language that assurance is,

I mean, it is the ground. It is the basis. It is the essence of the Christian life, not the pursuit of it.

You're not chasing after it. You have it. Now, you might feel differently about your assurance every moment, every hour, every day.

But that changes not at all the fact that Christ has saved you. And I think to John's point,

I think in the church in our day, we de -spiritualize things, but then we over -spiritualize everything, too. We turn things that are not spiritual into spiritual matters, meaning everything becomes an issue of spirituality that might not actually be.

And so then people are just confused categorically left and right, where you make everything a spiritual and moral issue that might actually just be a wisdom call.

And we can talk about that another day, but that's all a part of throwing clutter on top of the gospel.

Yes. Because people don't know what's the most important thing. Yeah, that's actually, I know we've kind of been hopping around, and I want to be aware of y 'all's.

No, I think this is awesome. I want to be aware of y 'all's time.

But that was kind of my last question for y 'all, is there's,

I feel like there's so much right now, there's, because of the stats and the way that church attendance is going, and nuns are on the rise in America and all this stuff, and this is a pretty common topic for me on this podcast.

There's so much critique of the church. There's diagnosis, there's prognosis. People are saying, these are the reasons people are leaving.

This is what we need to do about it. But so much of that, to me, seems to miss just the gospel.

Like, it just, sometimes I think it could be helpful. Sometimes it's very practical, and that can be good to an extent.

But what are your thoughts on that? Like, what do we, do we need to do anything about the stats?

Do we need to be concerned? And what is the answer in your mind for what people are missing, and why people are just not showing up?

Like, why it's, it seems like it's disappearing. Jon, go first, because I might get, I was having a conversation with a guy from church the other day, and I might get geeked up on this.

Well, I think Justin and I are going to say, we're going to say the same thing from different perspectives, which I, what I love about Justin is that he and I, we think the same, but we say things differently.

His is definitely with a more Southern accent, which I love. I wish I could say it like him. This is a

California boy right here. So, I'm going to go back to, because the gospel and our relationship with God is supernatural,

I think a lot of people long for that at times. I know I said that, like, we are bent towards the physical nature, but we're trying to get to as an experience, an experience, a spiritual experience.

And so, we have so commercialized Christianity, and it's so introspective that people get exhausted by that.

It's so fake. You show up and you have a smile on your face. And so, they look at the Roman Catholic Church, or they look at, you know, traditionalism, and it's appealing to them because it feels sacred, right?

It feels godly. That's what it feels like. Or they're still turned off by it.

They just leave altogether. But they're going towards spiritualism, though, because spiritualism is on the rise.

Mysticism is on the rise in the United States, big time. And so, I think that what has happened is that we stopped paying attention to the spiritual warnings of the

Bible. Paul's like, hey, listen, Ephesians 6, you're not wrestling with the flesh, guys.

You're wrestling against principalities and powers. Peter's like, he's a roaring lion seeking him who may devour.

And what does Jesus say he wants to devour? It says, I have come to give life, and I am truth.

And Lucifer, Satan, has come to kill, destroy, and to deceive, right? So, he has put an absolute bomb in the truth, in the churches, and is destroying churches.

And pastors don't realize that it's happening right underneath their noses. And so, instead of trusting in the very thing that Paul calls

God's power, he goes, this is God's power. And it destroys strongholds. It brings people to life, and it protects them.

The gospel is the power of God. We're not preaching the gospel. We're not elevating it, right?

We're elevating moralism. You know, Justin, you talked about hyper -spirituality, spiritualizing. Over -spiritualization, which is basically just moralism.

We're moralizing everything. We're creating moralism where it shouldn't be. And so, instead of believing that the gospel in and out every week is where we are preaching

Christ from Genesis to Revelation, and that Christ literally means Messiah, meaning pointing us to our gospel, our good news.

Yeah, I think my criticism to a lot of churches and pastors when I get a chance to talk with them is,

I don't think you believe in the gospel as necessary for sermons every single week. It's because you've fallen prey to what

Paul says is going to happen. And in latter times, they're going to go on itching ears, and you're going to move from the gospel.

And it's demonic. I'll just say this. It is demonic. They move from the gospel to humanism, and that's not the power of God.

And so, yeah, I think that the gospel is less and less, which just means the church is going to be—they're not being fed, so they're going to be drawn to where they think they're going to be fed.

Obviously, those places don't have the gospel either. Two comments on this.

The first is briefer. Kelsey, you are a confessional Lutheran, and we are confessional

Baptists, but nonetheless, we're all confessional Protestants. We're confessional Christians, and there is an unapologetic otherworldliness to being a confessional

Christian. We understand that we are pilgrims and sojourners and exiles in this life, and that ultimately we're on our way to the new heavens and the new earth that's been promised to us.

But between here and there, there are thousands of spiritual dangers and trials and temptations on every side, and so we need protection and nourishment and sustenance, and that's what the ministry of the church is for.

I think that perspective is compelling, and that sadly is lacking in many churches—in our context, anyway—where we're just a bunch of cultural crusaders and things of that nature.

It doesn't come across like we're exiles and pilgrims. I'm going to illustrate what

I think one of the issues is, a big issue is, related to what you asked. I'm going to use a specific thing that's a hot -button issue right now, but I think it will make the point.

I'm thinking about all of the intramural food fight that's going on amongst believers over Christian nationalism and theonomy, and what is the church called to do in America.

Yeah. All right, so let me just preface everything I'm about to say with this, that God will save his people, and that what the church is called to do is to preach the law and the gospel and administer the sacraments for the salvation of God's people.

So let's just start there. But man, there are so many people, to illustrate the problem, that say something like this.

Well, if the church was the church, then America would look different.

That's what they say. As though the calling of the church is to transform the culture, the calling of the church is to transform the country, this geopolitical entity, in our context anyway, that is the

United States of America. And you want to talk about losing your first love and throwing clutter on top of the gospel and hiding your light under a bushel.

Think about how many Christians in America or how many people, as they think about Christianity in America, associate it with the moral majority in the

Republican Party. Right. Like, it's an absolute categorical confusion of what in the world we're even called to do.

Yeah. And so I think my encouragement to the church, in light of all of the things that you mentioned, is like, can we stop making such a big deal out of all of these peripheral things that are at best a wisdom decision?

That Christians might have the same set of variables and come to a different conclusion about what to do politically or whatever.

It's like, can we just stop talking about that and actually preach Christ crucified for sinners? Yeah.

And let the Lord save His people, and then encourage the saints in their vocation to go love and serve their neighbor and, you know, to use the gifts and the talents and all the things that they have to help better their fellow man as they're able.

But let's not confuse that with the mission of the church, which is about the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of righteousness.

Yes. And eternal life, right? Yeah, that's so good. And I do want to just say, too, it happens on both sides, if we're talking politically.

And I think that's like, I know the conversation about Christian nationalism is very important, and it is, it's an issue.

But I see it on the other side, just as much where all of a sudden, you're in response to that, which is good, like, let's respond to that.

We're getting this moralism that is still very political, and still based on political decisions only, and is not the gospel.

It's completely lacking from, it's set up as loving your neighbor, but it's not.

It's not. It's not. If I could, brief, brief, super brief comment. The reason that's the case, you're exactly right.

We talked about pietism earlier, you know, this kind of inward looking thing. There's also a movement that has greatly shaped

American Christianity called revivalism, which is all about, you know, this conversion experience, and then the moral transformation of life thereafter.

But pietism and revivalism both emphasize transformation at the individual and societal level, and so you can have that kind of transformational emphasis on the left or the right, but it comes from the same place.

Like, you're still missing the point, right, that the thrust of the church's mission is to preach

Christ for us, rather than to be concerned with activism either way. Whatever you think is good, in terms of the pursuit of justice, that's fine, and it's not that we shouldn't talk about these things, but we shouldn't make them the mission of the church.

That's right. Yeah, that's great. A quick plug for Theocast. Yes. We just put out a podcast on pietism, if you don't know what that word is.

Yeah, I know, we do it. Oh, great. We tried to not throw around theological jargon. A new one. Yeah, we'll put a new introduction to it.

Oh, awesome. Yeah, I'll be sure to link to that. I was going to ask real quick, is there anything else y 'all are working on?

I mean, we talked a lot about the podcast, but you guys do a lot. Anything that you've been working on recently that you're excited about and want to tell people about?

Yeah, I have a new podcast that I do, it's about 15 minutes long, just trying to help people understand kind of the supernatural nature between the two kingdoms, right?

We live in this world, but also the kingdom of Christ, and so the podcast is called Kingdom.

And then, yeah, Justin and I, we have, well, we have some things we're working on. We're not really quite ready to tell you about them, so they'll come out soon.

Yeah, I mean, working on some writing projects, and then— I'll tell you this, we are working on a little book on law gospel distinction, so stay tuned for that.

We're hoping to dive into that soon, so. Yeah, and there's always a lot of irons in the fire, like with other—we've got different like teaching content that goes up on our website, different things, but—

Okay, cool. Well, thank you guys so much. This has been awesome. I'm super thankful for your time, so yeah, appreciate it.

Absolutely. Hey, everyone, before you go, Justin and I first wanted to say thank you, and if this has been encouraging to you in any way, please feel free to share it.

But we also need your support, and it's when you give that it really helps us financially reach more people.

So the next time you consider giving to a ministry, we hope that you would pray about Theocast and partner with us as we share the gospel around the world.