Covenant Theology vs Neonomianism (Part 3)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is

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Mike Abendroth, and today we have part three, Covenant Theology versus Neonomism.

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When I was a guest on Pastor Aldo Leon's show called Gospel on Tap, also known as Kingdom Polemics, he serves down in Miami.

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We have kind of the same background theologically, went to some of the same schools, and I was talking a lot about law, gospel, sanctification, assurance, et cetera.

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So this is a show of when I was on his show, but we're playing it now on No Compromise Radio because we think you'll be blessed.

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One thing I wanted to add to this is, and you're saying this as a

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Baptist pastor, so I think me asking you this question is very important because, you know,

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I think people tend to think that covenant theology is exclusively a

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Presby thing. So why is covenant theology and, you know, covenant of works, covenant of grace, why is that so vital to us being protected from all of this confusing and this combobulated view of faith and grace and works, all that stuff?

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Like, what is covenant theology so important because a lot of people deny this stuff.

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And it's funny, when you, I'm quoting Scott Clarke again, I argue with Scott Clarke, and I quote

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Scott Clarke, you know? Yeah, but do you like Scott Clarke? Huh? But do you like Scott Clarke?

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I do. I think he's just always mad at me because I'm post -millennial. But I was going to say, he says, when you deny the covenant of works on the front end, it will always show up on the back end.

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That is very, very, very, very, very insightful.

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So yeah, what does this covenant theology stuff matter with this conversation, Mike? Okay, before I answer that, and I will,

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I'm not trying to zip things around. I just was thinking about this verse when you were talking about Romans 1 and obey the gospel and all that.

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It says in John 6, 29, Jesus answered, the work of God is this, to believe in the one who he has sent.

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And when you think about the word law, it can mean first five books of the

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Bible. It can mean instruction Torah, or strictly speaking, it's here's the revelation of God's character, do this.

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That's law. Same thing with gospel. Gospel could be Calvin called New Testament gospel, Old Testament law.

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The gospels is a genre. It's all Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and what's contained, even imperatives therein.

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But strictly speaking, gospel is good news about the Lord Jesus. When I say

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Jesus, of course, that means the father sent him, the unbegotten father sends the begotten not made son, et cetera, et cetera.

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And so therefore, when people talk about obey the gospel, here's this verse or two, I always think to myself, no, no, we don't do theology like double assists.

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We don't have a system of theology and go, well, what about that verse? You know what, they do the same thing,

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Aldo, with quotes. So I'm not some great guy, I just thought everybody has

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John Owen, they never read him. Sinclair said, if you ever find a set of John Owen, buy it, it'll be cheap and it'll be unmarked because nobody reads it.

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I thought, I'm going to read it. So I'm six volumes in, almost seven finished.

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And I understand volume five, which I read, is about justification by faith alone against Baxter, who adds stuff to the backend.

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And therefore, when somebody gives me a quote about Owen, I say, wait a second, the corpus of Owen teaches us about saving faith.

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You're giving me some obscure quote that A, could be 20 years earlier in his writings. I wish

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I could go back and correct some of my stuff. But also that's not how we do theology. We say analogy of faith, here's what the

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Bible teaches. And when I come to the passage that says, Jesus said, I'm less than the father, the father's greater than I am,

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John 14, I don't read the one, I don't read the many in light of the one, I read the one in light of the many.

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I have to think in a systematized analogy of faith way. And it's the same thing. Now you're speaking my language, that's covenantal stuff, man.

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I know, I know. So regarding covenant theology, when, why it's important. When we say law and gospel, we're talking about terms that help us understand do and done.

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We're helping us understand, is this a command or not? It's a hermeneutical tool, but it's really shorthand for covenant of works law and covenant of grace.

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So if I can get people to buy into law gospel, I know they're buying into covenant theology. I just say law gospel because I have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

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If I can get them to think in categories, it's better. And so when I begin to think this way, it helps because think about the world.

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Here's the world, the Catholics say, you know what, how do you get into heaven? Well, it's all law because gospels combined with law.

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And now you're in, what do you need? More law. For the Wesleyan dispensationalist

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Arminian, the law is proclaimed, it shows sin and misery. Jesus is presented.

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They respond with saving faith and now they go to churches and that's just all law. Here's more to do, do, do, do, do.

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And for us, it's different. We hear the gospel after the law has convicted us that we believe and now we understand still law and gospel aren't commingled, but they go together in terms of the proclamation of Jesus and what he requires in terms of us as third use.

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And so what I need is I need a good covenant theology that says before the fall, no grace, simply the covenant of works.

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He Adam was to merit, to earn, to obey, not for himself.

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This is super important. Jesus was already righteous. Jesus had an inherent righteousness.

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Jesus was going to obey for other people. That's going to be something really key that's holding over there because I'm talking about one

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Adam and I'm going to get to that second Adam in a second. Adam was to obey and merit righteousness, to do the right thing.

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Adam sins. Now grace appears. You don't need grace before the fall. You don't need grace in the intra, ad intra in the

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Trinity either. Goodness, certainly grace, no holiness, certainly wrath, no, but now we have the covenant of grace.

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Immediately instituted after the fall. Immediately. Genesis 315, God shows us goodness and kindness and we have the covenant of grace.

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So here's what happens when you blend. And here's the answer to your question. When you blend law and gospel,

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I think Horton said at first or somebody glossable. It's this mixture. And once you start getting one part of law into any parts of the gospel, think

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Romans 11, six, everything becomes law. So now the federal visionist says, okay,

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I only have one covenant and that's grace. Yeah. But what do we do with all the law that gets jammed in there too?

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Now I'm on this perpetual treadmill, the chutes and ladders. You're climbing up and then you add this ladder and then you find the chute of disobedience and down you go.

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Why is covenant theology important? It gives us categories. It explains sacred scripture.

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It helps me when it comes to looking to the last Adam, the Lord Jesus, who essentially was under not the covenant of works, but a covenant of works type of covenant of redemption.

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And everything just falls into the place. I keep law and gospel separately and I don't co -mingle the two because the co -mingling champion of the world is called

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Rome. And you'll see Rome in federal vision, in final justification, in all these errors.

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T. David Gordon once said, listen to most sermons today. And if you sat next to Martin Luther, he would say, oh, blue lights, fog machine, nice optical things, but that's a

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Catholic sermon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. All right.

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Next. Next. We got, we got three more like helpful points. One is, okay, so when we talk about this covenant of grace and assurance based upon the object of work of Christ, not this emphasis and reversing on the subject of consequences, though, obviously we did acknowledge that, you know, one time

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I was talking to someone, I was like, you should never ground your assurance and your works.

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But I said, if you have no works with your faith, then you should never think you're a

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Christian, you know? So it's like, it's like, it's like this, it's this mysterious thing.

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Like you, obviously I never ground my, my salvation in my works, but if there is no fruits in your life, yeah, you probably, you probably should, you should read, you know, first Corinthians six, you know, none of those people that are defined by this slavery to to lawlessness are part of the kingdom of God.

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But I think one of the reasons why nomism becomes such a thing is because we, we, we want people to change.

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We know they're supposed to be different and they're supposed to do right. And so this becomes, you know, this conditionality, this legislation of things that, you know, competes with the work of the gospel, it's a means to an end to get people right.

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So I would like you to, you know, I'll pitch to you and swing to start us off.

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Like why does grace, grace as we're talking about in the covenant of grace, why does that distinctly transform and actually transform what, what,

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I mean, I know we, people say grace transforms, but, but why does it specifically, why does, why does it do so?

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I thought you're going to go a certain direction with that, but you want a different one. So I was,

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I thought, I know what he's going to ask me. So I was drinking my plant -based protein drink here. I've become, you know,

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I'm a soy boy now, I guess with the plant -based protein. Well, what happens with, with grace and how does it motivate?

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Obviously, when you just think big picture in Romans or the Heidelberg Catechism, how guilty we are, and then how gracious God is, you know, the old hymn, grace greater than all our sin.

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And then what's the response to the person that's really been forgiven, to the person that's been reconciled, the person that has the wrath of God that we have earned.

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It's assuaged and exhausted by the second person, the Trinity, the Lord Jesus. How's that person going to respond?

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What's the knee jerk to that? And I think we forget things like Ephesians chapter one, that sentence there in chapter one, verses three through 14, one sentence.

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And it is Paul going ballistic in a good way, praising the father for the work of his choosing, the son's redemption and the spirit sealing.

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And you know what I always think about? Somebody told it to me. I've never forgotten it, although that was 25 years after Damascus.

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25 years. And therefore that is the motivation for Paul to then say,

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I know there's an imperative and I think in 2 .11 in Ephesians, but that's the motivation for Ephesians chapter four, for him to say,

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I want you to walk in a manner worthy. There's all the weight on the one side of the scale.

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Chapters one, two, and three, who you are in Christ. The fulcrum here is four, one, walk in a manner worthy.

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So now I want you to start becoming who you are and living out who you are. And you are now in Christ.

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And so therefore act like it. And he gives all these imperatives, but they're not divorced from the other.

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And so I think we've lost great guilt, grace, gratitude, because we think what you said earlier, people are going to go crazy.

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They're going to say, do you mean to tell me that all my sins past, present and future are forgiven?

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And no matter what I do, there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Do you mean to tell me that? And Paul is saying right after chapter five, yes, that's exactly what

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I'm saying. You could sin that grace might abound, but you shouldn't. How could you betray love like that?

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And so I think we've forgotten that the motivation for obedience is never law apart from the law giver.

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Law is an abstract. Remember, it's not floating around there. So we have to do this kind of Paul Washer thing and hammer people.

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So they think, you know what? I better obey just to obey. And short term, you probably can do it. A duty ethic, you could probably do it for a while.

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But this is out of gratitude. And so we say with Paul, I was just thinking about this with Galatians, you know, but the life

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I live, I now live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. It was my friend who came up with it, not me.

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But he said, law is a GPS on target, turn around, you know, stay, stay the course.

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But it doesn't get you there. You need to get to your child's soccer game. It doesn't get you there. You need an engine.

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The engine is the gospel and the engine takes you there and the law guides you. But that's it.

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The motivation to obey the law is the engine. Even in 1 Corinthians 6, how does

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Paul motivate sleazy, sinful, sexual sinning Christians?

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Yes, three imperatives. Don't be deceived. Flee sexual immorality. Glorify God with your body.

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But what else does he do? Do you know what? You were washed. You're sanctified. You're glorified.

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Union with Christ. Resurrection of the body. Bought with a price. And so Paul motivates obedience with the person and work of the

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Lord Jesus. Because when the grace of God appears, he teaches us to live righteously and to deny ungodliness.

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Yeah, and as you were saying that I was thinking about this book I read a long time ago,

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Walter Marshall, The Mystery of Sanctification. And that to me is like, it's a hard read, but it's the best book

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I've read on that question, in my opinion. And he says some very insightful things.

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And some of these things, maybe I'm importing in my own thoughts and I'm mixturing. But he said, how do you know that all the things that you can lay hold of to change are actually yours?

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And he said, you will not exercise something vigorously if you don't know it's yours, right?

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You know, like when you use something that you're borrowing that you don't know if it's you're not going to really exercise it very heavily because it's just yours.

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So what lets you know that all the things of God are yours to use so you can change? He's like the gospel, the works of Christ, lets you know what you have in Christ, what belongs to you so that you can use them and therefore change.

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Going back to Calvin, well, why would grace make you more holy? Because I am now motivated to do things that are imperfect.

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That would be like if you're if you're ever like in a relationship where the person is never, ever happy, you just throw up your hands and say,

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I'm just going to quit and not do something. But if the person is actually pleased by what you do, it motivates you to do something.

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So my question is, how are you going to actually please a God who you've come to know in his holiness and his law standard?

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How are you going to actually be motivated to do things that make him happy? Well, it's only going to be through that high view of grace where I am motivated to do things that are less than worthy of his glory because the highness of grace makes the imperfection of this to be a motivation.

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Repentance, turning away from sin and turning to God is how we are growing in holiness.

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Why would I turn to a God and confess my sins so that I can turn away from my sins if I don't know that he's propitiated himself towards me?

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If I don't know that he's satisfied, if I don't know that he is that I have a rightness with him, if I don't know that I am right with God by some objective means,

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I am not going to go to him. I'm not going to confess things to him. If you confess your sins and the cleansing of 1

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John 1, you will not go to God openly to bring your sins to him to be cleansed if you don't have this robust view of grace.

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What you said was really good. I know who I am, and because I know who

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I am, I therefore am empowered to act in light of who I am. I always say this to our members and our members of class, try to introduce the concept.

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I said, Scripture says, because you are dead, now put off sin.

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Because you are raised, now act new. Because you are righteous, now act righteous.

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Because you are now a child, act like a child. Because you are beloved, act beloved.

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So the more you know who you are, the more you act how you are. But the only way you know who you are is obviously in the

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Jesus narrative that tells you about your new identity. So, I mean, we could talk about this a whole lot, but let's just say you will only go as far in holiness as you go deep in grace.

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Even like, just for example, like let's say you're looking at God's commands and God is saying, you know, consider others more important than yourselves.

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You know, put off and put on. You know, no longer lie and tell the truth.

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Why would I believe that those commands are good things that I should do? Why would

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I trust? Well, I need to trust the character of the person giving the commands. How do

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I trust the character of the person giving the commands? By having a favorable relationship with them, right?

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So unless I see God rightly and enjoy him,

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I will not trust his commands as good things to obey. And until the gospel propitiates, whether the gospel originally coming to him or as you see, unless you realize that God has made you right with him based upon him, you're going to always be suspicious of God.

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You're not going to trust his character. And when he tells you to do something, you're not going to do it. So again, like there is no way to walk the way of holiness apart from like this high view of grace.

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And that's why it's just very all over the place. The grace of God in the present tense teaches us to renounce ungodliness and to live a sober, righteous life in this present age.

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Grace does that. Be strengthened by grace and be empowered by grace.

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On and on it goes. And I believe that the pastors who are least concerned with holiness are the ones that preach the least amount of grace.

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And the ones who are most concerned with holiness are the ones who preach a high view of God's grace.

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But there's something that comes to people's minds as I say this that I think oftentimes diverts us and takes us on like a rabbit trail, which

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I wanted you to ask. Is the preaching of God's grace to the Christian?

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Is it sufficient apart from a preaching of the first use of law, the second use of law, and the third use of law?

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I've heard, let me, I guess, say one more thing before I pitch it to you again. I have heard

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Christians in my church at times and other churches, they say, since grace motivates me, since the love of God compels me to live for God, you don't need to tell me what to do.

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You don't need to preach the law of God because I'm motivated by the grace of God and gratitude.

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And I look at them and I say, would you like to rip out half the Bible? Because those commands are there, not simply to lead us to Christ, but they're speaking to justified

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Christians. I said, you want to rip, you know, half of Ephesians out because that's where I go with your logic.

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So talk to us a bit about the preaching of the first, second, and third use of law.

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You don't have to do all of them, but at least some of them and how that's really important to this grace -centered reality that is so vital.

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Sure. Although one of the things that we do is we define terms.

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And so there's kinds of law, right? There's the kind of law that's moral,

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Ten Commandments, that's civil, Israel in the Old Testament as a nation, ceremonial, pointing to the

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Lord Jesus. And then there are uses of the law. And so we're talking about uses, not kind.

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So uses, use number one, probably the easiest way to memorize it is if you think of mirror, and you've alluded to that earlier.

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And now that I'm older and my eyes are bad at home, I have one of these mirrors and it's got like a 10X or a 5X on it.

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And I think I look pretty good normally. And then I look at myself in that mirror and I see the pockmarks and I see how awful it is.

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I've got hair grown on my ears, my nose, everything. It's horrible. Age is such a bear.

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And so that shows me who I am. And that's what the law does, first use. It shows our sin and misery, that we're lawbreakers, that we need a

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Savior, that we transgressed against God. And that's only for unbelievers.

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I mean, if a believer wants to remember how he used to transgress God and how those are cleansed, and he thinks about the first use of the law, that now he's a

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Christian. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.