December 21, 2017 Show with Jeremy Walker on “The Incarnation” AND “Life in Christ: Becoming a Disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you a happy Thursday on this 21st day of December 2017, and I am so delighted that we have a returning guest who's become one of my very favorite guests, and amazingly even though he calls in from the

UK, his phone connection is clearer than anybody it seems that calls in from the

United States. I'm not certain why that is. Maybe that's just a reason for giving cheers to the

UK telephone companies out there, but Jeremy Walker is our guest today, pastor of Maiden Bower Baptist Church of Crawley in West Sussex, England, and he's an author and a blogger at Reformation 21 and the

Wanderer. Today we are addressing two themes, the first with Christmas approaching, in fact with Christmas Day arriving on Monday of next week.

This is the second -to -last interview that we're having before Christmas of 2017, so we're going to have a program on the

Incarnation for the first hour, and during the second hour we are going to be discussing one of Jeremy Walker's books,

Life in Christ, Becoming a Disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Jeremy Walker.

Thank you very much Chris, I'm delighted to not only be doing all of that but championing British engineering and telecommunications.

Well I'm just speaking the truth brother, it's just I always can relax when I know you're calling because I have no fear of technical difficulties with phone lines or over modulation or muffled voices or anything like that.

Well even though you've given our listeners this information again, the audience of Iron Trip and Zion Radio seems to be growing constantly and we have new listeners contacting us almost every single day, so therefore

I want you to explain Maiden Bower Baptist Church, primarily for their sake since they may be discovering you for the first time.

Okay, so we are in a town called Crawley, which is in West Sussex, which is just south of London in the

United Kingdom. If people are flying in and out of London they'll often come into Heathrow on the west or Gatwick on the south, and we're just a few minutes from Gatwick, so we sometimes get some international traffic as it were as well.

The church was planted and formally constituted then in 1975, and I'm a co -pastor of the congregation at the moment with my father who is formally retiring in March of this coming year after 43 years of service in the same congregation, so that will be a big change for us.

Crawley's a fairly cosmopolitan town and we've got a delightfully cosmopolitan congregation and the

Lord has been smiling on us, blessing us over many years. I always say it's kingdom life in a fallen world, so it's got its blessings and its beauties as well as its burdens and its blights, but God is good to us and we seek to serve him.

We're a confessional Baptist Church and we hope that God will continue to supply all our needs and help us to glorify him in Crawley and beyond, certainly for our lifetimes and we trust among beyond them.

Well forgive me if I've already asked you this, but are you familiar with my former pastor

David Campbell who is now pastoring the North Preston Evangelical Church?

I do know him, yes, we've had the opportunity to speak on several occasions and I esteem him very highly.

Yes, he's a dear brother and I miss him very dearly even though I love my new pastor John Miller here at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, I still miss my dear friend

David Campbell. He was a very rare and unique man and loved his preaching, loved his friendship and look forward to an opportunity to see him again at some point if the

Lord allows, since I've never been to England so I don't know if he ever plans on visiting the

States again. I'm sorry brother? You have to visit the UK sometime.

Yeah, I do want to and hopefully that will happen and I have been on a

UK radio program, Unbelievable, perhaps you're familiar with that. They interviewed me on the same day that they interviewed a

Roman Catholic who was a former Anglican. They interviewed me because I was a former or am a former

Roman Catholic who became a Bible -believing Christian Protestant and they also interviewed a former

Anglican who became a Roman Catholic and then the discussion developed into a debate which is something that I did not know beforehand but I think

I handled myself fairly well, a lot better than I thought that I would have since I had never engaged personally in a public debate before.

Even though I've arranged nearly 30 of them I have not actually debated before.

But I'm gonna just give a little plug to my friend and former pastor's website that's

North Preston Evangelical Church in Preston, United Kingdom and that website is npec .org

.uk. N P E C for North Preston Evangelical Church dot org dot

UK and in fact Pastor Dave told me not long after relocating to the

UK a young man showed up at the worship services there at the

North Preston Church one Sunday morning and said that he heard about the church from Chris Arntzen and Iron Sherp and Zion Radio so it's a small world you never know who's listening to this program.

Yeah great, I hope you'd have some people come and see us. Yeah well I'm going to be repeating that information as well so in fact let me do that right now anyway.

M A B A C H dot org is the website for the Maiden Bower Baptist Church where our guest today is pastoring.

M A B A C H you can remember that for Massachusetts Bach even though that's not what it's supposed to stand for as far as the

URL it's an easy way to remember it M A B A C H dot org. Well the first thing that we are discussing today is the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

This is a monumental event in the history of the universe because God did something that he had never done before Jesus Christ having been already in existence from all eternity past in addition to all eternity in the future he was always the second person of the

Godhead but he became fully man as well as being fully God that is quite a remarkable occurrence in the history of the universe and the history of God.

You care to mention anything about that brother? It's one of those, it is simply one of the most staggering truths imaginable.

The wonder of the incarnation, Immanuel, God with us, the fact that God becomes man without ceasing to be

God but becomes truly man. There's two natures in one person in order to accomplish the work of redemption which he'd have been purpose and before the foundation of the world.

It ought to overwhelm us. It ought to astound us. We need to be careful with it.

We need to make clear for example that when the Son of God took humanity to himself there was no change in his

Godhead, in his Godness, but that he became truly man in order that he might be that one mediator between God and man, the man

Christ Jesus. And I think in some ways it's a shame bordering on a tragedy that so often we relegate the incarnation,

I'm not saying everybody does this, but I think it's easy to relegate the incarnation to a few days or sometimes even a few hours in the year.

Yes and you know we who are Reformed Christians and most

Bible believing Christians regardless of what denomination they are in or what theological camp they find themselves, most conservative

Bible believing Christians believe in the immutability of God that God is not changing.

But can you not categorize this one thing as a change that occurred with God?

I mean it didn't change in God's will or God's mindset towards things.

It's not like he changed his mind about something and it's not the incarnation was an afterthought that he did not already know would happen or anything like that, but it was a change that occurred wasn't it?

There's no change in the nature of God. Right. I think that's an important point. But I think you could almost say that yeah the

Son, there is a lovely phrase, it's one of those phrases you think, is that as helpful as it sounds?

I think sometimes it might be subtraction by addition. That by taking to himself humanity he actually was condescending.

He was stooping down to us. Now there's a new there's a new experience in time and space, but that is his experience as as the

Incarnate Son. So as the God -man, as the

Incarnate Son, yes there is change, there is development, there is growth.

He grows in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and men. And in that sense we can talk about change, but I think we need to be very careful to defend against any suggestion that there's a change in the nature of God by him becoming man.

Amen. I'm going to give our email address in case anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own. It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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USA. And please only remain anonymous if you are asking about a personal and private matter, such as you may disagree with your pastor on something we're talking about, or your own spouse, or you perhaps you're a member of a denomination that denies what we are talking about, or in a cult of some kind, and you don't want to identify yourself.

We fully understand that and we will grant your request to remain anonymous, but other than that please identify at least your first name, city, and state, and country.

Well let's move into one of the globally known parts of the

Bible that are even known, or that is even known, by many who only have a cursory knowledge of the

Bible stories, people who aren't even Christian. And that's the story of the visitation of Mary by an angel who was announcing to her what would occur in her womb.

If you could tell us a little bit more about that story. Sure, well

I think I had an opportunity recently to speak at a local school about the

Incarnation, and one of the points that I wanted to make to them, and you've hinted at this in a way

Chris, that for a lot of people this story as it were springs out of nowhere. It's almost a story without context, and it's quite a striking, even a shocking, perhaps to some an unbelievable story.

But it's important to remember that what we read in this narrative in our

Bible, this history, is actually the fruition of a glorious plan that was established from the foundation of the world, well from before the foundation of the world, and that is explicitly identified that in Genesis chapter 3, that the seed of the woman will come forth as a champion for fallen mankind.

And all the way through the Bible you see a sequence of what you might call unusual hopeful births.

Women who you'd have thought, wow she could never have had a child, she's been barren for so long, or whatever else it might be, but over and over again

God gives to these women a child, often a son, and a son who does sometimes wonderful things in the kingdom of God.

And what you have in Luke chapter 1, which is one of the classic passages dealing with this, is the, as it were, the highest and the most marvelous expression of that pattern, where Mary is, she certainly, she herself is confused, because when the angel comes to her he says, you have found favor with God.

I think it's important there to perhaps to emphasize, and you would know this as a former

Roman Catholic, that Mary is a woman who will herself express her dependence on Jesus for her righteousness before God.

But when the angel approaches her, he tells her that she will bring forth a son, that he will be great, the son of the highest, the

Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, the reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

And that's rich phrasing that's just drawing this wonderful web of scripture promises into one glorious point.

Mary's obviously astounded by this. I don't know a man, I've had no sexual relationships with any man up to this point, and the angel says to her that this will be the work of the

Holy Spirit in her womb, who will knit together a body for God, God the

Son, and the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. So you've got now this final wonderful demonstration of God's saving purposes coming to fruition as he brings forth a son now from the womb of a virgin, that the virgin conception, probably more accurately to say than the virgin birth.

Amen. And I actually arranged a debate recently here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the

Carlisle Theatre between Dr. Tony Costa, who is professor of apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary, and another friend of mine who's a

Roman Catholic, Robert St. Genes. Robert has been a part of several debates that I have arranged over the years, primarily with Dr.

James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, but this last one was with Dr. Tony Costa. And during this debate

Robert St. Genes made the startling proclamation that without Mary there's no salvation, because if Mary had not given her permission to be impregnated by the

Holy Spirit immaculately, that if she had had turned down this opportunity and told the angel, no

I'm sorry I'm not going to do that, or if she told that to God, then mankind would have been doomed and we would all be in hell.

Now to me, first of all, that was an absurd statement because even if you wanted to take that strange look at things where the the virgin that would conceive the the

Christ child had to give her permission, you would think that God would have had a plan

B if Mary said no, and he would have found another woman to be immaculately conceived in her mother's womb as they claim

Mary was. A lot of people think the Immaculate Conception was involving the conception of Christ, and although that might be considered an

Immaculate Conception, the doctrine that the Roman Catholics are referring to is Mary's own

Immaculate Conception in her mother's womb. But you would think that you would think that God would have had a plan

B, but beside that, there is nowhere in the text where Mary is being asked for her permission and where she's granting permission.

She is being given a prophecy of something that would be soon happening to her, am I right? Yeah, that statement as you've represented it there is just seriously confused.

First of all, I would be very unhappy with the language of impregnation for the

Virgin Conception. It is not in that sense a sexual act.

Of course, and I know that the Catholics don't believe that, and I'm sorry if I used an improper word.

I say that because there are other religions that are profoundly confused about the nature of the

Virgin Conception and the Virgin Birth, so I think that's always maybe a point worth making.

But yeah, you know, again, this does not happen by accident. The Lord has been at work in the heart of Mary before this, so she has this wonderful statement at the end of that particular portion where she says,

Behold the maidservant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word. Here is a woman who is already, she's trusting the

Lord, she is obedient to Him as His maidservant. And as you say, there are sovereign acts taking place here.

If I can put it this way, humanly speaking, we might say that the Lord has prepared the ground. Everything is properly in place.

He is securing these things. So yeah, this is not something that is forced upon Mary.

It is something that she is humbly willing to embrace, and it is

God's plan and purpose. You know, on one level, you could say...a

number of episodes in the Incarnation narrative. So what if Herod had got there in time and had managed to...yeah,

but this is God's sovereign purpose. He's working these things together for the glory of His name and the good of His people.

So yeah, I think you're right there, Chris. The idea that this somehow hinges upon Mary, rather than upon the

Lord God, is to savagely misread that portion of Scripture. Yes, and even though Mary was willing, this was not forced upon her, just as, unlike the

Arminian caricature of what Calvinists believe about our own faith, we are not forced into heaven or dragged there kicking and screaming against our will.

We are made willing to follow Christ. Go ahead,

I'm sorry. Yeah, God draws us to Himself. He'd drawn

Mary to Himself. He'd worked in her that sweet disposition of soul, so that she was ready and willing to serve by...I

mean, let's not downplay this, on the other hand. What an honor! And Mary is honored.

You know, she is favored among women. There's no doubt about that, but that does not make her in any way a savior with, or instead of, or alongside of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. That favor is favor that the

Lord shows to her. It is gracious favor. It's not merited favor any more than it is in any other sinner.

And yet, nevertheless, you can speak of her as someone, or she speaks of herself, as someone who rejoices in God, her

Savior, who has regarded the lowly state of his maidservant. And behold, from this time forth, all generations will call me blessed.

We have to say, yeah, Mary's a blessed woman. She's the mother, humanly speaking, she's the mother of the

Incarnate Son. And that is a fearful and a wonderful thing, and it's

Mary's privilege and God's good gift. Amen. And so let's get more into the actual virgin conception of Jesus, and the fact that this is where Jesus Christ first arrives on the scene as a man, not the first time he came into existence, which is actually the

Oneness Pentecostals, at least the United Pentecostal Church International believes, and I believe most modalists and anti -trinitarian groups that claim to be

Christian believe, that Jesus Christ actually did not exist in eternity past, and that he came to be in the manger.

They believe that he took upon the role of the Father, or the role once held by the

Father as the one God for all of humanity, but they don't believe that there was a second person of the

Godhead before, it was only God the Father that existed in the Old Covenant. So they have a, even though they still would claim to believe in the deity of Christ, unlike the

Jehovah's Witnesses and some others, they have a very heretical understanding of this incarnation, because they believe this was day one for Jesus Christ's existence.

Yeah, maybe a new phase or a new mode of divine being or divine existence.

One of the things I think that's very helpful in addressing those kind of questions, Chris, many of your hearers might already be aware that of the four

Gospels, three of them are typically called the Synoptic Gospels, they're looking at events in a similar way.

That's Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and then John is a little later than the others, and it again looks at the same person, the

Lord Jesus, looks at the same work, but does so from a very different angle to the others, and with a slightly different purpose.

And I think of John at this point, maybe an illustration will help.

In a theater or something like that, there's typically a lot of action that goes on in the audience, and you can see the actors moving around, you can see things happening.

What you tend not to see are almost the mechanics, the hidden mechanics of the show.

And I think there's a sense in which John almost gives us a glimpse into the hidden workings.

So Matthew, Mark, and Luke give us, if you like, the full performance.

John takes us behind the scenes and shows us what's taking place that we can't normally see.

So you have in John's Gospel these wonderful statements, and they're repeated statements, both

John's own inspired testimony and Christ's own words.

So John begins by telling us that the Word who was

God Himself and with God, that Word became flesh.

You have Christ who says explicitly, I have come down from heaven. And so you've got a

God who is Himself God, and yet also with God, and who comes down from heaven to do the will of the

Father who sent Him. So there's this classic Trinitarian theology that's just woven into these narratives, that you have the

Father, the Son, and here as well, very evidently, the Holy Spirit is at work upon and in Mary in order to create a body for the

Son of God to have. Again, so often, in order to make these kinds of mistakes and draw these wrong conclusions, you've really got to read with one eye half open and the other eye firmly shut.

You have to actually deny other things that the Bible says in order to reach those sorts of conclusions.

Now one thing, I brought this up recently and I apologize if this wording or this language is offensive to some of our listeners, but I think that our listeners should be aware of some important things that people who are opponents of historic

Protestantism believe. I believe that this is a diminishing of the humiliation of Christ, or the lowliness of Christ when

He became incarnate. The Roman Catholic Church seems to agree with us on many core things, other than the gospel of course, but they do,

I believe, diminish the lowly state of the Son of Man by requiring, first of all, in their own theology that Mary be a virgin forever, and also that she be sinless in order to carry

Him, but they even go as far as saying that Mary did not lose her hymen when

Christ was delivered, that that was some kind of a miraculous thing, that that Christ was able to be born physically from her without any breaking or removal of that part of the female anatomy, and this is really when you're getting into superstition about this event in history, and do you agree that it is in some way, unconsciously on the part of the

Catholics, diminishing the humiliation and the sacrifice that the second person of the

Trinity did indeed encounter and willingly participate in by becoming man?

Yeah, if I remember rightly, there's a curious medieval picture, and I can't remember whether or not it's something, it may be

Christ emerging from Mary's belly button or something like that. Wow. It was maybe the

Holy Spirit at work, I can't recall the details, but I think the tragedy of something, one of the tragedies of something like that,

Chris, is that yes, on the one hand, you diminish the central event, which as you say, is the humiliation of Christ that is here, but I actually think you don't add to the wonder of it, you diminish the wonder of it, because you use the word superstition, and I think that's absolutely right.

If you feel the need to clog up the supernatural with the superstitious, then you actually lose sight of, and even threaten to undermine, the supernatural event itself.

So unaided human reason is always going to buck at this kind of statement.

We need the illumination of the Holy Spirit in order to grasp, to see, and believe

Christ as the incarnate Son of God coming to the world to save sinners. But if you add to it these kinds of nonsenses, you don't embellish, or adorn, or illuminate that supernatural act.

What you actually do is make the whole thing ridiculous, rather than miraculous, if I can use that kind of distinction, and that's tragic.

You've got this pure, glorious reality at the core of it, and if you dress it up in these kinds of rags, you not only lose sight of that humiliation as you've described, but you actually really cloud the whole event, and you make it harder to see it, rather than easier.

Yeah, and ironically, the Roman Catholic Church claims that the woman giving birth in Revelation 12 is

Mary, and I'll just read that first part of the chapter.

And then a great wonder appeared in heaven. There was a woman who was clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet.

She had a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out with pain because she was about to give birth.

It is interesting that the Roman Catholic Church says this is clearly Mary, the mother of Jesus, and yet they do not believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, had any pain when she gave birth to Jesus.

This is another thing I think that removes the humiliation aspect of the whole incarnation and virgin birth story.

Yeah, I think we have to insist that this incarnation story is,

I think, it's earthy. That may be the best adjective for this. This is real stuff.

This is real life. This heavily pregnant young woman makes her way to Bethlehem.

Now whether or not, you know the little donkey song, I don't know, you know, there's no record in the

Scriptures of a donkey, but however she got there, I mean, what a journey for a heavily pregnant woman to make.

And then the stresses, the distresses, the pains of that labor and childbirth, the shock of these shepherds arriving off the hills.

Maybe sometime later the magi, the wise men, arrive.

Wherever they're staying, it's certainly cramped. There's not a great deal of room there.

It's real life. It's down and dirty life. It's close to the knuckle.

There's nothing here that is glamorous, even though there is much that is wondrous.

Amen. And of course the Roman Catholic Church has no explanation as to why a sinless mother was required for a sinless

Savior, if the sinless mother did not have a sinless mother. Yeah, I mean, just the logical traps that you end up catching yourself in are quite impressive in that sense.

Well we have to go to our first station break, and by the way, Pastor Jeremy, I forwarded you an email with a question from our friend

Joe in Slovenia, who is a faithful listener of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, so you should have that in front of you.

It's quite long, which is why I forwarded it to you. And when we return from the break, we will have you address that question.

If anybody else would like to join Joe in Slovenia with your own question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away, God willing, we're gonna be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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cvbbs .com. And now we are back with our guest, Jeremy Walker.

We are talking about the Incarnation right now, and then in the second hour we're going to move on to Life in Christ, Becoming a

Disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And Joe in Slovenia sent us this question.

Is the Incarnation the ultimate expression of the absolute inability of mankind to orchestrate his own acceptance before God?

I'm asking this in light of the whole of the Old Testament salvation history in which Israel repeatedly showed time after time that mankind could never accomplish the fulfillment of the promised redemption beginning in Genesis 3 15, running through the

Noahic covenant, Abrahamic covenant, and the Exodus, Sinatic covenant,

Judges, Davidic kingdom, and promised renewed kingdom of the post -eclectic prophets.

In light of the whole of the Old Testament, isn't the Incarnation a logical and painfully obvious necessity for God himself to fulfill his covenant promises because mankind clearly demonstrated that they could not produce a

Messiah or a redemption of their own? Next time, brother

Joe in Slovenia, make it a little easier for me to read your question. I'm only just quickly tidy up, well maybe not tidy up, but put to one side the question the necessity of the

Incarnation and crucifixion of Christ. That's, in some senses, that's almost a moot point that we cannot tell the answer to the question, is there some other way that God could have saved his lost people?

If there were, then certainly I don't think we could ever have ever conceive of it or have conceived of it.

That's one of the wonders of what God does in the gospel. We would, we could never have come up with the scheme that God did for salvation, and even if we had, who would have dared to suggest to the

God of heaven that he might save us at the cost of his own son?

In terms of the bigger question, the key one that Joe is asking about the

Incarnation as the ultimate expression of mankind's inability to orchestrate his own acceptance, he tries to put that in the context of the whole scope of Old Testament salvation history, that the covenants of promise running on from Genesis 315.

I think I would want to turn it around a little bit in the sense that I don't think

I want to call it the logical and painfully obvious necessity for God to fulfill his covenant promises.

In some ways it's of the very essence of God's covenant promises that he would do this.

If you go back, if Joe were to go all the way back to the passage he quoted in Genesis 3, not only does

God declare that he is acting in this, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed, and almost at that point the picture telescopes out to consider these two great representative portions, as it were, of mankind, and then zeroes back in again, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

If you drop down toward the end of that chapter, I think,

I hope, that when Adam calls his wife's name Eve, because she's the mother of all living,

I think there are some grounds for believing that that is a response of faith to God's promise of a

Savior. And the Lord then makes tunics of skin for Adam and Eve in their nakedness, and God clothes them,

God covers them. So from the beginning there is a divine intent and there are divine acts that foreshadow what

God will do in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. So if Joe is suggesting that somehow this becomes a necessity because of the failures of mankind to produce their own

Messiah, their own salvation, I'd want to say actually God promised from the beginning that he would provide a

Messiah, that he would give a Savior. What you've really got in the course of human history is man's attempts to bypass or supplement or reject that man's determination to produce his own salvation, or his own

Savior, or to be his own Savior. In the sense of, is it necessary that God should act because man is not capable of saving himself?

Absolutely. But is God, as it were, obliged to do this because of the failures of men to accomplish it?

No, from the beginning it is God's purpose to do these things, and man's attempts to save himself are in essence a rebellion against God's gracious promises.

Yeah, in fact, I'm not saying, I don't want to put words in Joe's mouth, and I'm not saying or accusing him of believing this, but if I'm not mistaken,

I believe a great portion of dispensationalists almost view it in that way, that the cross was plan

B because the Jews rejected their Messiah. Are you familiar with it?

Yeah, I know, I can't speak to that specifically, but I know that there are some who believe almost there are different ways of being saved in different stages or dispensations of God's dealings with mankind.

But I think it's quite clear, not least in the New Testament evidence, as well as some of the signs and the pointers of the

Old Covenant, the Old Testament, that people are invariably saved through trusting in God's promised

Savior and his salvation. From the beginning, everyone who's ever been saved is saved because they are trusting in Jesus Christ.

Now, they may not have known his name, they may not have known the details of what he did, they may have been looking forward to what he would do rather than backward at what he has done.

But everybody who is saved, from the beginning to the end of this world, is saved through faith in God's promised

Redeemer and the redemption that he will accomplish. Well, I'd like you to wrap up this hour by summarizing in about four minutes time what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners regarding the

Incarnation, the reason we celebrate Christmas. Okay, well that's a beautiful question and quite a big answer.

I think what we must understand, Chris, and what men and women need to grasp, is that this is not a fairy story, this is not superstition, this is not some invention of man's imagination.

That the only Savior that we need, and the only

Savior we will ever find, is a Savior who is both

God and man. And the marvel of the

Incarnation, the wonder of the Incarnation, is that God enters time and space.

He takes to himself real humanity, and he then carries out what is needful for sinners to be saved.

He actually accomplishes salvation by coming, living a perfect life, dying an atoning death on the cross, that is, he takes away our sin, he takes to himself the wrath of God that sin deserves, exhausts the punishment that our sins demand from a holy

God, and provides in himself a righteousness that makes us acceptable with God.

And the only person who can provide a divine righteousness that is divinely acceptable is

God himself. And so we have God the Son come as man who provides what we need, and yet we need someone who can stand in our place, and who can take the punishment that we deserve and do so with justice, so that God can be just, as Paul says in Romans 3, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

And so when you come to the Incarnation, here if you like is, to use

Joe's language, here is necessity. It is necessary, it is needful that my

Savior, your Savior, the Savior of any sinner, be one who is both

God and man. And as I said, who would have dared to dream or to suggest that that is the way that this gulf between God and his holiness and man and his sinfulness would have been bridged?

And yet here comes God the Son, born of a virgin, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law.

And it is in his person that he carries out the work.

And the work could not be done by any other person than the one who has those two natures together,

God and man. And that's the wonder and the glory and the marvel and the gracious, gracious provision of the

Incarnation, that here now is that Savior, the seed of the woman who can accomplish for us what we could never have accomplished for ourselves.

And we need to see him. When he spoke to the Jews in his day, they said, we know this guy, this is the carpenter's boy, this is

Joseph's son, who does he think he is? And Christ is saying, you need to see and believe that I am the one who has been sent from heaven.

My Father has sent me here. I'm the bread of heaven and the bread of life. I'm the one who's come down to redeem.

And you must take me as the Incarnate God if you are to be saved.

That's why it's so rich, and that's why it's so vital. Amen. And coming up after our midway break, we're going to be switching our topic to Life in Christ, Becoming and Being a

Disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, a book by our guest Jeremy Walker. So don't go away.

God willing, we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. Iron Sharpens Iron welcomes

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnsett. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with one hour to go, is our friend

Pastor Jeremy Walker, and he is the pastor of Maiden Bower Baptist Church, which is located in Crowley in West Sussex, England, and he is discussing, for this hour,

Life in Christ, Becoming and Being a Disciple of the Lord Jesus, which is the title of his book published by Reformation Heritage Books, one of his books published by RHB, and we are going to be discussing that very important topic any moment now, but before we do so,

I just have a couple of important announcements to make. The G3 conference is returning to Atlanta, Georgia, and I am going to be there,

God willing, with an Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth, and very providentially, the theme of the

G3 conference this time around is Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship, which is the very subject of our program for the second hour today in regard to Pastor Jeremy Walker's book, and this is no doubt going to be a phenomenal conference.

I hope you can join me at this conference, and if you do come to the conference, I hope that you greet me at the

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth, January 17th through the 20th. The conference begins on the 17th in the daytime with a

Spanish -speaking edition of the conference, and then in the evening of January 17th, the

English - speaking portion of the event begins with a kickoff event, which is a debate that Dr.

James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries will be having with a Muslim apologist. That will be approximately 7 p .m.

on January 17th. Then the actual conference part of the

G3 in January begins on the 18th and continues through the 20th with such speakers as Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B.

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g3conference .com, and please make sure that you tell them that you heard about them, that you heard about the event from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And now I do have to rattle my tin cup and ask you for money. I hate doing it.

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But money is a requirement to do things like I'm doing, and we are in genuine jeopardy of going off the air if you do not help us out with donations and with advertising.

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And if you could afford to do it every month or twice a month or every week, that would be wonderful. But please never ever ever siphon money out of your regular giving that you're accustomed to to your local church, and never siphon money off of your family's dinner table because we don't want to have you violating the commands of God which are to provide for your home and for your church.

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If you want to advertise with us, we would love to launch an ad campaign with you as long as whatever it is you're advertising is not diametrically opposed to the theology we express here.

If you want to advertise, send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

and we will help you to launch an ad campaign because we surely could use the advertising dollars from that.

Well now we are back with our discussion with Pastor Jeremy Walker of Maiden Bower Baptist Church. We are going to be discussing for this last hour of the program his book,

Life in Christ Becoming and Being a Disciple of the Lord Jesus. And before we actually do that, our friend in Slovenia just had a clarifying statement to make in regard to his question.

He says, my idea is that we look back on the Incarnation in light of salvation history in the

Old Testament. We should, as the Jews should have, expect it to be just as God had promised and prophesied.

So anything to say about Joe in Slovenia's clarification,

Pastor Jeremy? Sounds good to me. Okay. And our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

chrisarnsen at gmail .com if you care to ask a question about Life in Christ Becoming and Being a

Disciple of the Lord Jesus. And by the way, Joe in Slovenia, you have won a free copy of this book, compliments of our friends at Reformation Heritage Books and also compliments of our friends at cvbbs .com

who will be shipping that out to you at no cost to you or to Iron Trap and Zion Radio. Well first of all,

Pastor Jeremy, what was the inspiration behind writing this book to begin with? The book actually grew out of a number of different opportunities to preach in different countries where I was invited to go and try and plot out something of the experience of salvation.

And as I did that on different occasions, the book sort of began to gel as an idea.

The focus of the book is not so much on God's acts in themselves as on our experience of and response to the acts of God.

So what does it look like and feel like to be saved? What are the, if you like, the manward or the human experiences and responses that we undergo?

What can I expect in coming to Christ, trusting in Christ, walking with Christ, and then finally going to be with Christ?

What will that look like and feel like as I walk through this earth? And there is a debate even amongst

Bible -believing, or should I say professedly Bible -believing evangelicals, about discipleship itself.

Some will say that discipleship is a wonderful thing, it's a grand thing, it's a very fruit -bearing and productive thing, but they will not say that being a disciple is something that will automatically happen or by necessity will happen if one is a truly born -again believer.

And there are those on the other side of that debate, many of whom are in the

Reformed camp, although not all of them are, who insist that being a disciple is a natural good fruit of one who is truly born again.

But why don't you even define disciple first before we even go into that dispute? Well, the simplest definition,

I think, of a disciple is a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that means someone who not only enjoys the benefits that Christ brings as our

Savior, but also loves him and keeps his commandments. So in that sense, the idea that you could be a

Christian but not a disciple would be, biblically speaking, a nonsense. Every true follower of Jesus Christ is a disciple.

Having been saved, they walk in his ways. There's a beautiful picture that the

Lord Jesus uses in John's Gospel in chapter 10, where he says, my sheep hear my voice and they follow me.

And that's a lovely image of true discipleship. I believe it was the

Anglican Bishop J .C. Ryle who says of that, that Christ's sheep are marked in the ear and in the foot.

And that's the true disciple. He has heard and believed Christ Jesus and therefore walks in his ways.

That's an excellent quote. I did not remember that quote by Ryle, and I will have to make note of it. Now, of course, the individuals that I mentioned that deny that as being something that is a litmus test of genuine rebirth, they will take the truth, the

Reformation truth, of Sola Fide and they will distort it into something that the

Bible and God himself never intended it to be. And they actually will fulfill the accusations of Roman Catholics and others who deny

Sola Fide, saying that this is a necessary consequence of that teaching. They will say that one, as long as they for an instant believes in Christ, that they could immediately even lose faith in Christ, as even someone as renowned as Charles Stanley wrote in his book on eternal security.

Someone could immediately abandon Christ to live like the devil the rest of his life, perhaps for decades, and that person will still enter through the gates of heaven because of the fact that they accepted

Jesus into their heart, as they say. Another phrase which is nowhere to be found in the

Bible, but this is ludicrous, isn't it? There's nothing biblical about this whatsoever.

Yeah, I think there's a tragic confusion of tenses, and I'm not trying to belittle the issue, but to say that a

Christian is not someone who has believed, in the sense that at some point in the past I once believed.

Someone who can have confidence of the glory to come is not someone who can look back to some momentary or temporary experience and say, well there was a point in the past where I seemed to have some relationship with God.

Anyone who truly has believed is also believing.

We have faith in Christ, and that faith is a living bond. It's God's gift to us, and it brings us into union with the

Lord Jesus Christ, and keeps us in union with Him, so that it is as continually believing and repenting sinners, that we live in Christ Jesus.

And that's the motif. It is life in Christ. It is not something that...it's

not some detachable blessing, as it were, that is lobbed out apart from Jesus.

It is a life that is in Christ, in union with Him, by means of that faith which

God gives, and which is the abiding reality of Christian experience.

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania has an excellent question. It's actually a comment,

I guess more than a question, but it involves a question. She says, don't you think that it is dangerous for us to view the term disciples, and those who are described by that term, only as those who physically walked with Christ on the earth?

Often when we refer to or hear the term disciple, we are not thinking of anything contemporary, but only are thinking back to the days of Jesus, such as His apostles and the crowds that followed

Him. Isn't that a dangerous way to look at things? Yes, and it may be that I've given that impression by using this language of walking with Christ, or following after Christ.

When the Bible uses the language of walking, that is often an image of the pattern of our lives, the whole tone and tenor of our existence.

And so when I talk about walking with Christ, I mean about a life that reflects and reveals that union with Him.

So she's absolutely right to say that a true disciple is not simply someone who lived in the physical presence of Christ before His ascension, before He went up to heaven and spent time with Him.

In fact, Christ explicitly tells those people to go and make disciples of all nations.

So they're certainly not the end of the chain, in a sense they're the beginning of it. They are the ones who are to call others to then follow

Christ and to walk with Him by faith and not by sight. So yeah, we must understand disciples in its fullest sense as all those who are following Jesus Christ, walking with Him, not necessarily in the immediate physical sense, but as those who hear

His voice in the Scriptures and who do His commandments. Thank you,

Susan Margaret. You've also received a free copy, or you will, I should say, you'll also receive a free copy of Life in Christ, Becoming and Being a

Disciple of the Lord Jesus, complements of Reformation Heritage books and complements of CVBBS .com.

We'll be shipping that out to you. Please give us your full mailing address. One thing before I go into some specific chapter headings in your book,

I think to make this relevant to Christmas, that there are multitudes of people, even outside of Christendom, who view the

Christmas story as a precious, wonderful event. They look upon a

Jesus who is safe, a Jesus who is an infant, a helpless and harmless infant, cooing in a manger with adoring parents hovering over Him and being approached by shepherds, and also in some erroneous accounts of nativity scenes, the three wise men, which did not visit

Jesus until he was a young boy, and he was already in Joseph's house and no longer in a manger.

But the point is that they view Jesus from a perspective of a safe place, and being a disciple is what is required for any of these people who rejoice in their minds the birth of the

Savior. They cannot really, or they should not really, have any comfort and joy from this story if they are not a disciple, if they are not surrendering all to follow

Him or be willing to surrender all to follow Him, if they are not publicly identifying themselves as His disciples in light of the fact that they could lose spouses, lose relationships with children, lose employment, be fined financially, and who knows what's ahead for both us in the

United States and you over there on the other side of the pond in regard to prison sentences that could be awaiting us.

We already have brethren in other parts of the globe who are being tortured and murdered because they are disciples of Christ.

Isn't this a very sobering thing for anyone to remember who thinks that they are adoring this harmless and helpless infant?

Yeah, I think that there are indications of that right there in the

Incarnation histories in the Bible, Chris, even the fact that when those wise men find that baby or that infant, maybe by that stage even a few weeks or months old, they don't just chuck him under the chin and go, ooh, itchy, itchy, itchy, whatever it is.

They fall down and they worship Him. They recognize that this one is worthy, this infant is worthy of worship because of who

He is. And as you said, this is the one, you cannot afford a sentimental

Jesus. This child who came into the world is the one who would eventually say, and I'm quoting here from Mark's Gospel in chapter 8, whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the

Gospels will save it. For what would it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?

Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the

Son of Man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

Now anybody who has a Christ who doesn't or wouldn't say those words or doesn't have such a

Christ, who comes to live this sinless life, die this sacrificial death in order to make peace with God, you may have a sweet baby who makes you feel warm and oogie inside, but you don't have a

Savior. And we have to go, believe it or not already, we have to go to our final break, and before I go to the break

I am emailing you or forwarding to you, Pastor Jeremy, another excellent question, but also rather long question from our friend in Slovenia, Joe, this time on the subject that we are discussing, being a disciple.

So you'll have that in front of you and you can look that over during the break. And this is our final break, it will be briefer than the last one, so please be patient with us and we look forward to receiving your questions at chrisarnsen at gmail .com

if you want to get in line because we are rapidly running out of time. chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back,

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And this way you can help two of our sponsors at the same time. Well, now we're back to the conclusion, or the concluding portion,

I should say, of our discussion with our guest today, Pastor Jeremy Walker, and before the break we had another question from Joe from Slovenia that I forwarded it to you, and he says, this evening

I was blessed by Book 1 Chapter 14 of Calvin's Institutes, Treatment of God's Ministering Angels, and you just mentioned the angels just moments ago,

Pastor Jeremy. As disciples of Jesus Christ, assisted by and protected by ministering angels, we are truly in a position of privilege and blessing beyond anything the world might offer.

Does Brother Jeremy touch on these blessings in the life of Christ? What types of blessings in God's providence through the activity of ministering angels should we take comfort in?

What types of warnings should we heed regarding the inappropriate or erroneous understandings of ministering angels?

Thank you both for encouraging us today in our privileges and blessings in Jesus Christ. Are you there,

Pastor Jeremy? I am afraid to disappoint Joe, there is not a great deal about angels in life in Christ.

I think Calvin's treatment... You mean in your book, Life in Christ, not in the actual life in Christ.

Calvin's treatment is excellent. I think if I remember rightly, Dabney has a fascinating section on this in his systematic theology that's published, if I remember rightly now, by the

Banner of Truth, and also there's a British publisher called

Evangelical Press that a few years ago, I don't know if it's still in print, produced a book by Roger Ellsworth called,

What Does the Bible Say or Teach About Angels? That if Joe wants to look into that a bit more detail, those are good resources, and the reason why they're good,

Chris, is, as you'd expect, that they restrict themselves to what the

Bible clearly teaches, and they avoid flights of fancy that can, again, so easily become just empty imagination or empty superstition.

I think what's important to take into account is, again, in reacting against excesses, it's always a danger that we will end up denying things that are themselves true.

So Joe is absolutely right to say that God has these ministering spirits, these flames of fire.

I think Calvin draws out the fact that they are, in particular, agents of God for the dispensing of his bounty or his blessing toward his people.

So whether or not I would want quickly to conclude of any particular experience, or that must have been, or even that might have been some kind of angelic activity or intervention,

I think I'd be very slow to make that kind of...draw that conclusion or state that conclusion, but that doesn't mean that we should not anticipate and give thanks for God's ministering to us by means of these angels.

We're not going to necessarily have the Mary or Joseph or Elizabeth or Zacharias experiences of having angels speak to us directly or in dreams.

We won't necessarily have the visions that the Apostle John had. Those things belong to particular times and particular individuals.

But let's not by no means deny that God is powerfully at work in this world, and one of the means by which he works is through sending out these ministering angels.

With regard to the issue of the types of warnings we should heed regarding inappropriate or erroneous understandings, stick to the

Bible. Don't go beyond the Bible. Don't guess at what you don't know. Be very careful about what you claim that you cannot validate from the pages of God's Word.

That would be my response, and I'm just sorry, Joe, that there's not more angels for you in the book.

Well, Joe knows he's already getting the book. And by the way, I have another book to recommend, and I actually had the privilege of writing the foreword to it back in the 1990s.

Angels and Demons, Agents of God and Satan, a biblical study by Victor Knowles.

Victor is not a Calvinist, or at least he was not when he wrote the book way back in the 90s, but it's an excellent book because it's thoroughly biblical.

Just as you were saying, Pastor Jeremy, we have to make sure we keep to the biblical record in regard to subjects like this because there's many fanciful and imaginative and superstitious and heretical and idolatrous understandings of angels and also superstitious understandings of demons that exist and abound, but this is an excellent book.

I don't know if it's still in print, but you could get it on Amazon at least a used copy.

Angels and Demons, Agents of God and Satan, a biblical study by Victor Knowles. Well, let me go to your book itself.

What do you mean in the book by looking to Jesus? Looking to Jesus is the title of the first chapter, and that really is the call of God, and I would suggest that is very much the call of the

Son of God. Look to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth, for I am

God and there is no other. And in that context, looking to Christ means that we are taking our eyes off or turning away from anything, anyone other than Christ that we might look to for salvation and casting ourselves upon him alone in incomplete and willing trust in order to deliver us from our sins.

Yes, and I'm sure you would agree that looking to Jesus isn't some sentimental thing where we just gaze up to the heavens and have some kind of an imaginative relationship with him and have conversations with him like in the very popular hymn of walking and talking with him in the garden alone, but there is much more involved in this, looking to Jesus.

Sure. It's a spiritual looking, if you like, with eyes of faith.

Again, it's supernatural but not superstitious. There's a section in the chapter where I try and summarize a couple of paragraphs of John Owen where he talks about the synonyms for this language of looking to Christ.

So he talks about faith as a receiving of Christ, as a coming to Christ, that means to believe on him for the justification that brings life.

He talks about fleeing to Christ for refuge, leaning on God or leaning on Christ, rolling or casting ourselves and our burden on the

Lord, resting on or in God, clinging, holding fast to or continuing with the

Lord, or in countless places trusting, hoping, and waiting on God.

So this looking is not merely... when I talk about experience,

I'm not talking about a sort of a shallow sentimental thrill, if you like.

Or mystical. Yeah, I mean that there is something that is, that there is something that is beyond our comprehension, something that's properly mystical, but it's not mysticism, if I can put it like that.

Right, yeah, that would have a better way for me to put it, I'm sorry. Yeah, this is a looking to, a resting on, a trusting in the

Lord Jesus Christ. It's taking him as he's presented to us in the Gospel for salvation.

So it's not a shallow sentimental thrill, but it is a profound and substantial reality, a spiritual reality of coming to and casting ourselves upon the

Lord Christ. We have R .J. in White Plains, New York, who says some people are very fearful of the term discipleship, because they hearken back in the minds of many to abuses in cults, and there was actually a movement here in America, perhaps in the

UK as well, called the Discipleship Movement, that was a very abusive way of church leaders that were in reality cult leaders, examining the lives of the congregants with a fine -tooth comb, and having them confess their deepest darkest sins on a regular basis to the leaders, and life became a living hell for these people.

And it was really bordering on, if not crossing the line into works righteousness.

Can you give a distinguishing comment that contrasts this kind of discipleship and what you are talking about?

Yeah, that's a good question. I've not had any personal exposure to that movement as far as I know, but it sounds to me like that is making disciples of men rather than disciples of Christ.

And I understand, what was the gentleman's name? That was R .J. in White Plains, New York.

Yeah, I think R .J. is right to say that the danger is, and sadly it's a typical danger.

I mean, Satan loves to take good words and good notions and to attach to them terrible, flawed, ugly meanings.

So to associate that kind of ill treatment with the idea of a disciple is to bring this horrible and ungodly freight, this awful baggage, and to attach it to what should be a very sweet and delightful idea.

So a true disciple is a disciple of Jesus Christ, and this is the

Christ who said, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Learn of me, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. And he contrasts himself with those who impose burdens on the people that they make disciples.

And in Christ's own day, the Pharisees, they loved to make their own disciples, and they made them.

Yeah, they dragged them down to hell with them. Now, I don't know what this discipleship movement fully involves.

I'm not trying to draw a direct connection between the Pharisees and them without understanding that better, but I would simply say to R .J.

that we should take our definitions of discipleship from the

Scriptures in their relation to Christ as the Great Shepherd of the sheep, and we must be very careful, as he,

I think, wants us to be, not to then bring in these awful notions that really originate with a man -centered discipleship.

Christ says, look to me and follow me, and it sounds as if what

R .J. is describing is really men who are, in effect, saying, you look at me, you follow me, and I will have you under my control, and that is a manipulative control, rather than the kind of discipleship to which

Christ calls us, which is one in which he draws out our hearts after him, and causes us to desire that which is ultimately sweet and pleasant to the heart.

Well thank you R .J., you have won a free copy of the book we are discussing, Life in Christ, by our guest

Jeremy Walker. Please make sure you give us your full mailing address so that CVBBS .com

can ship that out to you, and we thank our friends at Reformation Heritage Books once again for providing these copies of Jeremy's book.

We have, let's see here, we have Christopher in Amityville, Long Island, New York, and Christopher says, that's where I was born and raised,

Christopher says, I am aware of churches that prolong the baptism of those who come to faith in Christ, because they will say that the

Great Commission, in which Jesus says, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, since disciples, or making disciples, precedes baptizing them, they will think that a person has to come to some deeper knowledge of theology and of Jesus before they are given the privilege of baptism, rather than just baptizing them upon the simple embracing of Christ as their only way of salvation.

Do you agree with this prolonged period that many are forced to go through before being baptized, or do you think this is being taken way too far?

I think there are probably errors on both sides. The passage to which

Christopher refers is Matthew chapter 28, where Christ comes as the one to whom all authority has been given in heaven and on earth, and he says, go therefore, and I think the sequence is very instructive, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and behold

I am with you always, even to the end of the age. So the first element in that sequence is the making of disciples, the second is baptizing them in the triune name, and the third is teaching them.

So on the one hand, we need to make sure that we don't change that order, and I think that's

Christopher's concern, that it can become, make disciples of all the nations, teach them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and when you've done that you can baptize them in the name of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And in that respect, I think Christopher's right to say that baptism is a recognition of Christian identity more than it is of Christian maturity, that we baptize those who are made disciples, and then we teach them to observe all the things that Christ commanded that disciples should be and do.

But I also think we need to make sure that we understand that the Lord said, go and make disciples of all the nations, and it's disciples that you baptize.

Now what is a disciple? It's someone who follows after the Lord Jesus Christ, and while we don't expect then somebody in that position to know everything, to be able to rehearse a long confession of faith, to teach a

Bible lesson, preach a sermon, that would be unreasonable, we still need to be able to say with some credibility that this man or woman has what we might call a credible profession of faith, that they are at least demonstrating, if not the full fruits, then at least the green shoots of life in Christ.

And one of the things that I try and deal with in the book is, having been united to Christ in all his unsearchable riches, what does this life actually look like?

And it is someone who is starting to live this life, who is afforded the privilege of baptism.

So I think Christopher is right to say there's a danger of basically deferring baptism to a point of maturity, but that in itself may be a reaction to the danger of baptizing anybody who says,

I trust in Jesus, that we're entitled to say, okay,

I want to see at least some evidence that you're truly a disciple. And of course we do have examples in the

Bible of people being baptized immediately, when they came to faith, like the jailer and so on.

Correct. And I think there are occasions on which you might move rather more swiftly than at other times.

I think you always have to take account of the fact that we are not living in the apostolic age, that we are...

and also that we're in an environment, I think this is worth bearing in mind, often in the

New Testament, when someone is baptized as a mark of their identification with Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, they are nailing their colors to the mask.

That's an old naval phrase, that a ship's colors identified them as belonging to a certain nation, and they would normally be run up and down.

So when a ship was sailing into battle, a particularly ferocious captain might say, we're going to nail our colors to the mast.

We cannot strike our colors. There can be no surrender. We are

British. We belong to the king in those days, whatever it would have been. That's who we serve, and nothing is going to change that.

Now, that is in some measure what baptism is. It's a recognition by the

Church and a declaration by the individual that we belong to Jesus Christ in this particular way, and that the life that is in him is now in us as well.

Now, in the New Testament, for someone to put their hand up and say, I want to be baptized, was in many instances not far of signing their own death warrant.

Now, in our context, still more or less in the modern West, there is very little risk associated with baptism, and in some cases there can even be some kind of cultural cachet, although I think that's drifting away, and we're in an environment where people have been baptized left, right, and center without any real sense of what they're doing.

In that context, I think it's important that we look for something substantial, something that demonstrates real conversion.

Yes, so what you're saying is that there's a vast difference between someone's faith being revealed clearly as authentic, of course nobody infallibly knows this, but where you have more evidence to believe someone because they are actually risking their lives to be baptized, like even many today in Muslim countries would be.

But there's a difference between that and somebody who raises their hand and goes forward to be baptized with the same enthusiasm as they would be waiting on the line at the motor vehicle department, and they're really just doing it because their wife or parent or whoever wanted them to do it.

Sure, I often go back, I think Spurgeon had, and his fellow elders in the

Metropolitan Tabernacle, even at a time when God was bringing people into his kingdom at an unusual rate, they looked for three pivotal evidences of true conversion.

There were three things they wanted to see in a person's life before they would baptize them.

The first was whether or not somebody had a clear and distinct and lasting sense of the seriousness of sin, a hatred of that sin, a remorse of it, a desire to turn from that sin and to stop it, and a recognition that Christ was,

God was willing to receive him through Christ and Christ only. So really this sense of sin as sin and of Christ as the only

Savior. The second thing was did the present determination of the person's soul show a desire and intention to live for Christ and an urgency about seeing others escape from the wrath to come?

And then thirdly, and I always find this quite interesting, knowing his own unworthiness and dependence on God, did the person in question have some knowledge of the doctrines of grace and that mercy was the fountain from which his salvation flowed?

So in those days when you might, I think, have to say that there was an unusual work of God taking place in London through the

Ministry of Spurgeon and others, and in other places in the world. They're still looking for clear evidences that someone has turned from, to use

Paul's language, the Thessalonians. You've turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his

Son from heaven. That's the evidence of discipleship. When someone is doing that, they ought to be baptized and then instructed in what it means to follow after Christ.

Amen. We only have time for a very quick answer to this. Arnie in Perry County wants to know, can you please reassure your listeners that by commanding discipleship,

God was not requiring sinless perfectionism? Absolutely. And again, the book deals at some length with what it means to pursue holiness in the fear of the

Lord, that this is a work in progress in our lives over time.

All righty, well I want to make sure that our listeners are reminded about your website for Maiden Bower Baptist Church in England.

It's mabach .org. I hope that anyone nearby

Crawley in West Sussex, England will visit you, or if they are not near you that they will visit you anyway on vacation or any other reason that they might have to be in there.

We'd love to visit any time, Chris. Everybody is welcome. Great. And of course, the book that we are discussing,

Life in Christ, is available from heritagebooks .org and you can also get it from cvbbs .com,

cvbbs .com, and that's our sponsor, one of our sponsors, so we would actually prefer you get it through cvbbs .com

because it doesn't hurt Reformation Heritage Books at all if you purchase from cvbbs .com. I want to thank you so much,

Pastor Jeremy. I look forward to your return to our program. I want to thank everybody who listened, and I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to receiving your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.