August 19, 2022 Show with Dr. David Lawrence on “Discovering Sovereign Grace While in the Church of Christ’s Halls of Academia” (Part 3)

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

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

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. 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 Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 19th day of August 2022.

Today, I am thrilled to have back a returning guest for part three of a discussion that we began a number of weeks ago.

I have enjoyed discussing this issue with this guest so much that there, who knows, there may be even a fourth and fifth edition to this conversation.

And I am looking forward to what he has to say today. His name is Dr. David Lawrence.

He is former professor of history at Lipscomb University and currently the scholar in residence at Stevens Valley Church of Nashville, Tennessee.

And this is part three of Discovering Sovereign Grace While in the Church of Christ's Holes of Academia, the

Theological Journey of a Professor in a Prominent Church of Christ University. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

David Lawrence. Thank you very much, Chris. It is my privilege to be back with you. And for the sake of our listeners who did not hear you the last two times you were on, in fact, we even aired part one of this discussion as a rerun

Wednesday, two days ago. So some of this may be fresh in the minds of some of our listeners who listened to that rerun.

But for the sake of our listeners who are unfamiliar with Stevens Valley Church of Nashville, Tennessee, tell our listeners about that congregation.

Stevens Valley Church is reformed. It is independent. And we say, and I believe, it is biblical.

We do follow the standards, Westminster standards, also the

Heidelberg Catechism. Our worship is, let us say, more traditional. The music is beautiful.

The preaching is excellent. And I am privileged to be a part of that church. I was a part of the establishing of that church a number of years ago and still teach

Sunday school class right now in the Gospel of John. And just to clarify for our listeners who may have wrongly thought you were bragging about yourself when you said the preaching is excellent.

No, I'm not bragging about myself. I have preached.

I started to preach quite a bit at the beginning. And then we called Jim Bachman, who was formerly a preacher of the

Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville. And so I now have an assistant pastor.

He's cross. I'm not doing any preaching right now. I miss it. I enjoyed it when

I did it. But my work there is confined primarily to my cross. Well, if anybody lives in the

Nashville, Tennessee area or you're visiting the Nashville area or you have friends, family, and loved ones who live in that area, go to StevensValley .Church.

And Stevens is spelled with a P -H -S -T -E -P -H -E -N -S -Valley .Church.

And I hope that you pay them a visit if you are providentially capable of doing that.

I think it might be a good idea to very briefly recap on especially how you first, as not only a member of the

Church of Christ, which is also known as being a part of the 19th century restoration movement, led by Thomas and Alexander Campbell, father and son, and also

Barton Stone, who was far more aberrant in his theology than the previous two men

I mentioned. And it is still a mystery why Alexander Campbell had fellowship with him and those who were

Barton Stone's disciples when the differences were quite dramatic. But they have been nicknamed, and it is usually used as a pejorative term, but they have been nicknamed the

Campbellites. I know that unlike Calvinists who seem to wear that badge proudly, for the most part, not all, those in the

Church of Christ do not like to be called Campbellites. That's correct. So tell us about that part of your life, being in the

Church of Christ as a minister and also as a professor at a prominent Church of Christ university, and your discovery of the

Doctrines of Grace and some of the fallout and pushback that occurred after that.

And then we will move forward to our third edition of the show that will delve into some things that we may have overlooked the last two times.

Well, I try to make this very brief, but I started out in the

Disciples of Christ Church and through the influence of a friend joined the Church of Christ and found myself in the emerging non -institutional slash anti part of the

Church of Christ, very, very legalistic, and continued in that for a number of years, preaching in Missouri and in Arkansas, moved to Kansas, and there where I was preaching in a church that, let us say, was extremely legalistic, the full -fledged legalism, and I saw the evil of it.

I went to a, I'll say, mainline Church of Christ in Wichita, Kansas, and at the same time

I was in Wichita, I was teaching at the Wichita Collegiate School, and there were many there on the faculty and in the administration who were

Reformed, and consequently Reformed people were invited to the campus, including

R .C. Sproul and John Gerstner, and we had a gentleman, Jerry Medetix, who was actually employed on the faculty for a while.

So I think that's where I began to assimilate Reformed ideas.

When I moved to Nashville, which is in a way the capital of Church of Christ, I thought I was getting away from any

Reformed influence. I was sadly mistaken in that. Well, I'm happily mistaken in that now.

At that time I was a little bit chagrined because I was confronted with doctrines that I had repudiated previously, such as the doctrine of predestination, both by a student at Lipscomb by the name of Kyle Jones and by an elder in our church,

Church of Christ in Nashville, Smith Springs. And as a result of that, let's say it was a study.

It was attending a Ligonier conference. It was a continued study with elders in that church.

And then finally, considering myself fully Reformed, along with a number of others, and I continued to teach at Lipscomb with some, yes, you said pushback, some resentment,

I think, but I didn't end my tenure at Lipscomb with any hard feelings, I think.

It's a wonderful school, and I had a great time there. But I retired in 2011 at the same time there was a change in pastors at Smith Springs, and my wife and I intended to stay there a little longer, but we felt that was our time to leave.

And first going then to Covenant Presbyterian, and then from Covenant, Stevens Valley was established where I am now.

Very short, I hope, summary of a number of years. And if our listeners want to get a more detailed description of this journey of my guest,

Dr. David Lawrence, just go to ironsharpensirenradio .com, and in the search engine type in David Lawrence, and you will have the previous two interviews come up, and you could listen to them at your leisure to find out in more depth about David's history in the

Church of Christ and his discovery and journey into sovereign grace, also nicknamed

Reform Theology and nicknamed Calvinism. And I also want to make it clear, especially to those who are currently in the

Church of Christ, that I am not intending in any way, shape, or form, and I'm sure that David would be in agreement with me, we're not trying to broad brush this entire movement because I have learned over the years, having been in regular contact and having friendships, in fact, some extremely close friendships, with Church of Christ ministers and authors and those who just regularly attend congregations in the

Church of Christ, I have discovered that there is a lot wider a spectrum of beliefs, and some of those beliefs would be very much within the pale of Christian orthodoxy and biblical faithfulness, and not everyone in the

Church of Christ is a denier of the necessity of grace, a full -blown

Pelagianist, somebody who believes that they have to earn favor with God by their performance, their deeds.

So I know that that is not an accurate description of all in the

Church of Christ, and there are even those that would not tell those who have not been immersed in water by a

Church of Christ minister or a member of a Church of Christ with the exact intention of that minister or church.

I know that there are those in the Church of Christ who do not tell folks they are damned because of that, and I know members of the

Church of Christ who even embrace as their brothers and sisters Presbyterians who have only been baptized as infants, which is obviously a clear departure from Church of Christ understanding of baptism as well as Baptist.

And I also, just to let my Church of Christ friends and listeners know, that I frequently on the show,

I am a Reformed Baptist, and not only do I have programs and guests where we critique our own fellow

Reformed Baptist brethren over issues that have arisen amongst our own fellowship, and I'm talking about very serious critiques.

I know that in the Baptist spectrum of things, there is a wide variety.

There are Baptists who I would not even identify as my brothers in Christ because they are in liberal churches that have become apostate, even though they still remain with the name

Baptist, and there are also Baptists who are in congregations that are very cultic in the way that they instill fear in their members.

If you leave this congregation, you're damned, you know, that attitude. So I hope that you who are listening don't think that I am bashing, as the popular term is, or unfairly picking on the

Church of Christ. And as I've said before, the reason why I'm even doing this program is that I owe a great debt to the

Church of Christ because, having been raised Roman Catholic, before my conversion to Biblical Christianity, the

Church of Christ and its ministers and members was the first Christian group that God used to instill within me a fascination for the

Bible and love of the Bible and zeal to explore and learn what the

Bible taught. So I always love to hear about good things that occur in that movement, and one of them is knowing that there are people who are still in congregations that have

Church of Christ on the shingle who believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace. Have I misspoken in any way there,

David? You're exactly right. If I could comment a little bit on the... I was in the anti -movement, and the antis are the non -institutional groups, that is, institutionally they mean they do not believe in supporting orphan homes or anything like that, but they would warn about what we call the mainline

Church of Christ, that they're liberal, and that they are changing and progressing.

Well, indeed they have been, and some, very few, have moved away from belief in the

Bible, and what Chris said is exactly right. There's been a constant upholding of the integrity and inspiration of the

Bible, but what has happened in recent years is that many churches have studied the

Bible more objectively, more honestly, more openly than they ever had, and are beginning to see concepts of grace, and many of them...

I've used the term sometimes grace -oriented. They've become grace -oriented. They haven't gone all the way to realize that grace means that salvation from start to finish is the work of God.

They still have that place for man in it, but the changes in the recent years are significant, and more and more churches are bringing out doctrines of assurance, doctrines of justification, doctrines that will say that salvation is ultimately the result of God's grace, and I think that is perhaps more characteristic of churches east of Mississippi.

Historically, Churches of Christ in the West, and in the West the main center is

Texas, they tend to be more legalistic, but from the beginning, and particularly through the influence of David Lipscomb, he's the man after whom the university where I taught is named,

David Lipscomb always had a view that was much more grace -oriented, let's say.

He was not so fixed on baptism as being the be -all and end -all of salvation.

His statement was, we are baptized in order to please God, and he didn't hold onto this for the remission of sins idea, and he for a long time was the editor of the

Gospel Advocate, and so as Tennessee developed, it began to startle the

Church of Christ brothers in Texas. They felt that the Nashville churches had gone far away, much more toward the, as they would say, denominations, so they actually sent preachers to Nashville, including

Foy E. Wallace, who took over the Gospel Advocate in order to correct its errors, let's say, and put the

Tennessee churches more in line with the Texas churches. So at that point, there was a kind of a reversal going back toward legalism for many years, and that was evident particularly through the 50s and 60s, but then in the last few years, it has returned to a more biblical posture.

So I think we need to recognize that, and I've seen changes happen just within the last few years, even while I was still at Lipscomb.

I saw changes in many of the faculty, positive changes, and that spread throughout the city of Nashville and other places, but I know certainly about Nashville, there are several churches here that would not at all be in fellowship with the more strict viewpoint.

So yes, I think you're right, Chris, I think this is a point we need to make, and certainly to support people who have this view.

I'm thinking of some students with whom I dialogued when I was at Lipscomb, and they came to accept

Reformed theology, but they did not choose to leave the Church of Christ, and the churches that they now attend do not cause them to make any compromises in their

Reformed beliefs, and that I think is a wonderful thing. And I might as well throw in there, for those of our

Church of Christ listeners who did not hear any of the previous programs, there are some things that I still really love from my memories of visiting

Churches of Christ during my own journey after leaving

Catholicism, especially because my brother Bob was once a member of a

Church of Christ on Long Island. But I still, to this day, love and prefer a cappella music in the

Church. In fact, I conducted a three -part interview with a

Reformed Baptist, of all people, who wrote a book that I found very convincing, called

Old Light on New Worship, and this Reformed Baptist is making the case that the best way we can worship biblically and remain faithful to the

New Testament in regard to music is to be a cappella, and a great hero of Reformed Baptists, Charles Spurgeon, believed in that strongly.

And there does exist a division amongst Reformed people where there are some who are exclusive psalm singers who are also exclusively a cappella, but John Price, the

Reformed Baptist pastor I interviewed, he is not an exclusive psalmist.

He believes in singing non -canonical hymns, but he believes that these hymns should be sung in worship services, in the corporate gathering of God's people, sung a cappella.

And if anybody wants to look up those interviews, they were conducted in September of 2017 and December 5th and December 12th of 2017, just type in John Price in the search engine at irontreponsirenradio .com

and you will see Exclusive A Cappella Worship Defended, Parts 1, 2, and 3, and again, the full title of John Price's book is

Old Light on New Worship, Musical Instruments in the Worship of God, a Theological, Historical, and Psychological Study.

And I know that my guest today does not any longer have that view, but I do, believe it or not, even though I'm in the congregation where I am a member, does not hold that view.

That's correct. That's a good point, Chris. As you were explaining that, I'm sitting here thinking in a legalistic orientation, the externals are matters of fellowship, but Reformed people, and I'm very grateful for this,

Reformed people understand that it is what we believe that is most important, and sometimes the expression of what we believe may differ.

And you gave a very good example. Obviously, nothing wrong with worshipping a cappella. In your opinion, it's best.

With me, I certainly enjoy the organ, and sometimes we have more string group, and we've had even trombones there.

We've had all kinds of musical instruments. But it is beautiful, and it's done in a way that glorifies

God. Another thing that we would obviously differ on, with you being a Baptist, and essentially we are

Presbyterians, is the mode of baptism. But we can accept each other without quarreling over that.

We can discuss it, but it's, as one person used to say, an in -house conversation and not a matter of division.

But that's the beauty of Reformed theology. It allows for a wide variety of practice within a doctrine that is biblical and holds us in unity.

Yes, and being grace -centered and grace -focused, you would hardly ever find,

I mean, they may exist because there are nutty Calvinists out there, but you will very rarely, rarely find a theologically

Reformed person who believes the music issue, a cappella versus instrumental, is a salvific issue.

And if you either include instruments or bar them, that you're damned, which unfortunately too many in the

Church of Christ have that severe of a view. Yes, too many.

And I guess probably, well, the majority of Churches of Christ, of course, still are non -instrumental.

But more and more churches are introducing instruments. And the way they usually do it is to have one service that is instrumental and one service that's a cappella.

And that way it seems to satisfy all people. But that is happening more and more. And I also want to end very quickly so we can move on to the main discussion.

I want to make it clear that I am not opposed to musical instruments for any reason.

I love going to Christian concerts and things. And the church where I'm a member, they use musical instruments in the worship.

So it is not such a vital issue to me that it would compel me to leave where I am worshiping.

But I just wanted to make sure that I do. In fact, I love listening to good

Christian music on Christian radio and listening to CDs and all that kind of thing.

And I have a number, quite a number of friends who are musicians who perform and record

Christian music. So I just wanted to make that clear as well. And I will say, you mentioned

Stevens Valley. And we would be delighted to have anyone in the Nashville area or going through Nashville to stop and worship with us.

First of all, I'll say the location. We are in the southwest part of the city. And we are in the area known as Bellevue.

And it is close to Franklin. But let me say in regard to music that we have an excellent music director.

His name is David German. And he provides – we have a lot of talented people as well.

But under his direction, the music is absolutely beautiful. It's a great experience. So I would say that to visitors who might want to come.

That would be a treat I think you'd find at Stevens Valley. Well, before we go to our first break,

I just want to let our listeners know that when we return, we're going to be entering into the first answer to the first question in the

Westminster Shorter Catechism, what is the chief end of man. And we're going to have

David basically dissect the answer to that question.

And basically it will help steer some of our discussion where we compare and contrast grace from legalism.

So if you have any questions, send them to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

As always, please give us your first name, at least your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you are in a

Church of Christ and you are starting to have different views on theology and practice than you are experiencing in that Church of Christ, and you'd rather not draw attention to your identity at this point.

We can understand things like that would compel you to be anonymous. In fact, you might even be a minister in the

Church of Christ and you are starting to disagree with what was traditionally believed and practiced in the congregation where you are shepherding.

Well, we would understand all of that would be very valid reasons to remain anonymous. But if it's just a general question, please give us your first name, at least city and state, and country of residence.

We'll be back with David Lawrence right after these messages, so please don't go away. The Boys of Megatown James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here, excited to announce that my long -time friend

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royaldiadem .com today. We are now back with our guest, Dr. David Lawrence.

And as I said at the outset of the program when I was introducing him, he is a former professor of history at Lipscomb University, which is one of the most prominent

Church of Christ universities in the nation. And today he is currently the scholar -in -residence at Stevens Valley Church of Nashville, Tennessee.

We are addressing part three of Discovering Sovereign Grace While in the Church of Christ's Halls of Academia, the

Theological Journey of a Professor in a Prominent Church of Christ University. If you have a question, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city, state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And by the way, David, while hearing a commercial for Grace Church at Franklin, a church that you are fully familiar with since you live near there, the music in the background of that ad is acapella, although the church is not an exclusively acapella church.

They specifically requested acapella music behind that ad, and it reminded me of a hymn written by a

Church of Christ member. It might have been a minister. I can't remember right now.

But it's a hymn that I love and miss that I don't think is available in any hymnal that is not specifically a

Church of Christ hymnal, Our God, He is Alive. I love that song. Do you love that song still?

Oh, yes, yes. It's a very good song. It's quite popular in the Church of Christ circles and meetings.

And some very good songs have come out of Church of Christ writers. L .O.

Sanderson, who used to preach in my hometown of Springfield, Missouri, has written a number of songs that are very popular.

So that's been a great contribution. Yeah, and I love the chorus. There is a God, He is alive. In Him we live and we survive.

From dust our God created man. He is our God, the great I Am. I just love that.

And it goes well in acapella, where people are singing parts. Yes. Yeah, it's really hauntingly beautiful to hear acapella.

In fact, it's the only way I've ever heard it. But before the break,

I mentioned that you were going to discuss the answer to the first question of the

Westminster Shorter Catechism. What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify

God and to enjoy Him forever. And this is something that even a lot of very sour and depressing

Calvinists have to remember, that we are supposed to enjoy Him forever. But tell us how you would address legalism and the grace preached by historically

Reformed churches coming from this first question of the Shorter Catechism.

Well, that is a very significant question in the Catechism. It is the first, as you say. And I think

I heard Bill Sasser quote it during the break. And I think all Reformed churches, if they're not fully confessional, at least are in accord with the

Westminster standards and would agree to this. And I'm thinking about how much in the

Bible relates to it, about Christ Himself glorifying God and making sure that point is stressed.

I'm teaching right now in the 13th, 14th, 15th chapters of John, the

Upper Room Discourse. And Jesus is telling His disciples, I am going to glorify God in the

Atonement, going to the cross. God will be glorified, the Son will be glorified. He will say this in John 17,

I have glorified you. John 12, I've glorified you, Father, and I will glorify your name.

I will glorify it. So the chief end of man simply means that is the essence of man, the duty of man, the purpose of man is to glorify

God and to enjoy Him forever. In regards to glorifying God, besides the many passages in the

New Testament relating to Christ and the Father, in the Old Testament you find in Psalm 115, not to us,

O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory for the sake of your steadfast love and faithfulness.

Well, if we accept that the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him, I'm going to make the statement, the assertion, that legalism, and I say legalism because we're not specifically talking about Church of Christ, I'm talking about all churches that believe that man is saved by virtue of what he does, by virtue of keeping a law.

And I would say legalism destroys both. It's impossible to glorify

God if the salvation that you claim is the result of your own effort.

And it is also impossible to enjoy Him. And why would I say that?

Because people who trust in legalism, and thus in themselves, can never be sure that they are right with God because they know their own weaknesses, they know their own sins, they have to.

And so consequently, when you ask a person, do you think you're going to go to heaven when you die, they would say, well,

I hope so if I've been good enough. And there's never a confidence there. And I can recall preaching in different churches, and even in the last church

I preached here in Nashville, at Church of Christ, people who just did not manifest any joy in their lives.

There was no real happiness. There was always this tension about not being sure that they had done the right things.

I think it was Francis Schaeffer who said, if you beat yourself a hundred times, you don't know if you need to beat yourself a hundred and one times.

You don't know ever how much you have to do. So ultimately, legalism is anathema to both glorifying

God and enjoying Him forever. Now, we can say in both systems, and this would be the

Pelagian system and the Arminian system, in those two systems grouped together, and then in the

Reformed system, in all of them, you have a situation where some people are saved and some people are not saved, only exception being universalism.

And thus, some people saved, some people not saved, but in one system, that is

Pelagian -Arminian grouped together, in that system, ultimately, man receives the glory because man is responsible.

And then in the other system, God receives the glory, which is right. I keep thinking about this young man

I think I mentioned before. He was a student who came in my office and said, Dr.

Lawrence, guess what I did Saturday? And I said, I don't know what you did. And he said,

I got baptized. And he felt I should, I suppose, hug him or congratulate him in some way.

And I just asked him, what part did God have to play in this? And he said, oh, none whatsoever. And so that reflects,

I think, really the understanding that people have. It's because I have made a choice and pursued that, as I'm saying.

So the chief end of man is to glorify God cannot be attained within the context of legalism.

Now, I know some people might say, well, the

Reformed faith has its five steps. And these five steps, or five points,

I should say, and these points involve the work of God primarily.

And the Church of Christ, by the way, has five steps. That's where I wanted to start. And they often say they don't have a creed, but they do have a creed.

It's not a written creed. It's this unwritten creed. But five steps in order to be saved.

And those five steps are to hear, believe, repent, confess, and be baptized, baptism being the final step that puts you into Christ.

And then they will say, and by the way, these are all steps that men take.

Man decides to hear the gospel, puts himself in a position to hear it. And then he decides to believe.

And oftentimes that's defined as you consider the pros and cons and you make a decision as to which is better for you to believe, what advantage it has.

And then you decide to repent and confess and be baptized. So all of these steps really originate in the mind of man or are carried out by man.

And then they often will say, well, Calvinists have five points as well.

And that's true. There's nothing wrong with systematizing your faith. And everybody does it to one extent or another.

But the five points, with the exception of the first one, are all acts of God. The first point in Reformed theology is total depravity.

Now, God's not responsible for that. Man is responsible for that. He was responsible in the Garden of Eden for that. And as a result of that one sin,

Paul will say in Romans 5, condemnation has come upon all men.

And the only way to deal with that condemnation is by atonement of Jesus Christ.

And thus we see the five points of unconditional election, definite atonement, sometimes called limited atonement, effectual calling, sometimes called irresistible grace, and perseverance or preservation of the saints.

Those are acts of God. And so thus it is God through Jesus Christ, God's sovereignty carried out through our

Savior, that results in man's salvation. And I think that provides a good contrast.

Yeah, the very frequently embraced understanding of the nature of man held by those in the

Church of Christ very frequently, but not entirely because, as I've said before, there are a wide spectrum of differences that exist.

I'm so happy to hear, or should I say read, on the websites of a growing number of Church of Christ congregations that they believe that man is born in sin and has a sin nature inherited from Adam, and they cannot do anything to please

God in that condition or merit their salvation. I'm so glad that that is founded in the websites of a growing number of Church of Christ congregations.

But there are also those that still perpetuate the unbiblical concept that we are born perfect, with a clean slate.

And that is not what the scriptures teach. And when we discuss total depravity, which we believe as Reformed Christians is a very biblical concept, really a lot of it is coming from Romans 8 .8,

that they are in the flesh, cannot please God. Total depravity doesn't mean that human beings are as bad as they are capable of being.

It means that every fiber of their being, every sphere and area of their lives is ruled by sin.

Am I correct here? Yes. We don't believe in utter depravity. John Gerstner used to say, we believe that there's still room for deprovement, and man can get worse and worse and worse.

But utter depravity would be as totally bad in every regard. What we're talking about with total depravity is that man is so fallen, sin has so permeated man's being, his heart, his will, that he cannot choose

God. And this is the consistent teaching of scripture. I'm thinking of 1

Corinthians 2 .14, the natural person does not accept the things of the

Spirit of God. Now, by natural person, Paul means the person in the flesh who is not regenerate, who is not born again.

And he does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. The word accept there means to make a decision after thorough consideration.

And the point is that a person who is unregenerate, who is not born again, will consider, look at all sides, and he will never accept the things of the

Spirit of God because of sin in his nature. And Paul goes on to say, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

He can't understand. And Jesus, talking to the Jews, said, why do you not understand what

I say? And he's really saying there, why do you not understand my language? Well, we don't understand the language of the

Spirit until the Spirit is with us. And that is a result of being born again.

Thus, Jesus will say to Nicodemus, except a man be born from above, he used the word anothen, coming from above, except a man be born again, he cannot see, meaning he cannot understand the kingdom of heaven.

Now, this is vital. This is absolutely essential. Someone said, and I believe this is true, if you miss the fall, you miss it all.

That's a great line. I never heard it. If you miss the fall, you miss it all.

And if you start with this premise, that man comes into this world as a blank slate, which really was

Pelagius, and you can ride on it either way, and either you do so many good things, or you go to heaven, and if you do bad things, you can go to hell.

That's really the Islamic viewpoint. But if you take that viewpoint, then of course, really, you don't even need

Christ. It's all left up to you. But on the other hand, if you are born in sin, and if sin permeates your being, then obviously there's no other way.

In fact, we have to go to our midway break, and we'll pick up right where you left off. Please be patient with us, folks.

The midway break is always the longer break in the show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break so that they can air their own public service announcements and local things in Lake City, Florida, while we air our globally heard commercials.

Please be patient with us. Send in your questions for David Lawrence to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

We'll be right back after these messages. Yeah, yeah

Back together again Attention all men in ministry leadership.

You're all invited to my friend Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon Thursday, September 22nd, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, featuring me,

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You read from Romans 3 and I read earlier the passage from 1st

Corinthians 2 where Paul said the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they're fully their folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they're spiritually discerned.

In other words the Spirit of God is necessary, in other words the new birth is necessary, regeneration is necessary, and that means the acts of God, it means that God acts first.

And I would just simply say how could a person by his own free will come to accept the things of the

Spirit of God when Paul says he doesn't? How could he understand them when Paul said it's impossible to understand them?

How can he see the kingdom of God when Jesus said he cannot without the new birth?

And then let me read another passage from 2nd Corinthians 4 and I really ask your listeners to consider this very carefully, even if our gospel is veiled it is veiled to those who are perishing.

In their case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.

Now let me stop there, that's 2nd Corinthians chapter 4 verses 3 and 4.

If the devil is able to blind an unbeliever to the point that he cannot see the light of the gospel, how is that person going to come to Christ?

How is that person going to believe in Christ if he is thus blinded? And then Paul goes on to say in verse 5, for what we proclaim is not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.

And verse 6, for God who said let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And what Paul does here is make an analogy between the creative act when

God said let light shine out of darkness to the act of salvation.

Now until God said let light shine there would be darkness. If God had not said let light shine there would never have been light.

And that's what Paul is saying. There can't be light in your heart. He says it's the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.

And I would just ask people to stop and think for a moment. How can you possibly believe in Christ if you are blinded by the devil?

If you are in the darkness, you don't have the power to dispel it. Only God can do that and that's what

Jesus is telling to Nicodemus. That's what is a consistent teaching of the Word of God. And I think people just need to stop and consider on this matter.

I understand that people move in the direction of grace, and that's good, that's admirable, and they need to continue in that, but you don't really embrace grace by giving it a different definition, by saying grace is simply

God being kind to me if I ask him to be kind to me. That isn't it. He is going to take the initiative and that's what grace means.

And isn't this so important? One of the many reasons it's important is that it is an utter mockery of what

Jesus Christ endured on Calvary to offer a perfect sacrifice for the sins of his people and to fully accomplish their redemption.

It is such a vile insult to Christ and his work to say, in essence, and I think this is what would logically be born out of any system that says man must include his own goodness in order to be worthy of heaven, what you are saying in essence is, thank you

Jesus for helping to pave the way, I'll pick it up from here. Yes, and I read something,

Chris, in preparation for my class Sunday. The gospel, or you can say the cross, is like a bridge over a chasm, and that bridge goes the whole way, and it misses by an inch, and that inch being man's part, the whole thing is going to collapse.

It has to be Christ all the way, and man simply cannot come up with the kind of goodness that would be necessary to be equal to what

Christ has done. What Christ did is perfect, it is complete. And we do have an anonymous listener who says, on one of the last interviews that Chris conducted with David Lawrence, they compared how close a connection there exists between Roman Catholicism and the

Church of Christ. Of course, not in the ritual and the pomp and the ceremony, not in the statues and the robed priests and the incense, but with key doctrinal teachings that involve the nature of man and involve man's cooperation with God in order to help merit his own salvation.

I was wondering if the Church of Christ has ever been challenged by this in ways that you know, seeing that they typically, rightfully, claim to have a strong opposition to Roman Catholicism.

Well, they certainly do have a strong opposition to Roman Catholicism, and that is consistent, but I think they don't see that similarity.

Catholicism does repudiate Pelagianism, I have to give them credit for that, they are

Arminians, they say Pelagius was a heretic. That's on paper, but they very often live as if that condemnation never existed.

Absolutely, absolutely, and I think that's what Luther observed and the other Reformers observed in the 16th century, is that it had progressed in that direction.

You go back into the Middle Ages, many of the great scholars of the Roman Catholic Church, the

Church, the only Church it was then, but the scholars of the Middle Ages, many of them affirmed the same doctrines that Reformed theology does.

Certainly St. Augustine did, Bernard of Clairvaux did, and many others, but if we look at it as it developed in the days of Luther and even subsequently, the emphasis is on the externals, and sometimes material things.

And when you put an emphasis on the externals, you have taken away from the spiritual element.

That is exactly what the Church of Christ does, if they don't realize it perhaps, but these five steps that I mentioned earlier, hear, believe, repent, confess, be baptized, and remain faithful unto death, and attend church regularly, and so forth, when they are set down in that way, they become externals.

And the more you emphasize that, the less you're emphasizing what the grace of God really does.

And you look at Roman Catholicism, and you see the images, and you see the various pictures, and amulets, and crosses, and crucifixes, and such like, prayers to saints.

And even during the 18th century, 17th and 18th centuries, when

Baroque was developed as an art form, it was developed as propaganda. Churches were embellished with these beautiful artwork, and statues, and images, relief sculptures, that would even be incorporated into the architecture.

And it's fantastic, because it gives you this feeling of being in heaven or something. But that is an external thing, and they use that, particularly

Jesuits did, to attract Protestants back to Catholicism, away from the very plain worship of Reformed churches.

So yes, I think there's a lot that's similar to it. Ultimately, it comes down to how

I have lived, what I have done in my life, and of course, the concept that Catholicism has is that the grace of God, yes, we're saved by the grace of God, they would say that, but the grace of God comes to us, flows to us, from the seven sacraments.

So it is sacramental in nature. And just like we find these,

I say grace -oriented churches, we do believe in grace, but when it comes down to it, it's a redefinition of grace that means

I have made the decision, and it ultimately comes to me as the ultimate reason that I'm a

Christian. To the Catholics, they would say, yes, we believe in salvation by grace. Well, grace comes when you attend and participate in the sacraments, and sacraments have two parts.

There's something that's said, there's something that's done, and it must be done correctly, it must be said correctly, or else it is invalid.

And I read something about a priest recently who did not perform the sacrament as he should in the

Communion, in the Mass, and he was concerned that all the Masses that he performed were going to be invalid.

So yes, the similarity is there, and it is true with them, it is true with any

Arminian church, because ultimately there's that man's part, there's that, again, that bridge across the chasm, and part of that bridge is man, and it cannot stand, it cannot possibly carry you all the way across.

Jesus either gives us a finished salvation, a complete salvation, or we have no salvation at all.

We have another anonymous listener who says, I have heard people in the Church of Christ, and also

Catholics and Arminians, accuse Reformed Christians of teaching that God turns men into robots.

How do you respond to this? This is hilarious, because a very good friend of mine, he may even be listening,

I don't know, he's a Roman Catholic, Bob Posh, if you're listening, love you brother, but Bob used to have parties at his home.

He used to invite purposely Roman Catholics and evangelicals so that they would eat, drink, and argue, and I loved these parties, and Bob and I were the only ones left every time, still in his living room, going back and forth, and he said the very same thing to me.

He said, your Calvinism is ridiculous, it turns men into robots, and I said, well, explain that to me.

He said, if you do not have the free will to either choose or reject

Christ, you are a robot, and I said to him, what is your greatest goal in life?

And he said, well, to go to heaven, and I said, well, you must then have a goal, a great goal in life to become a robot, and he said, what are you talking about?

I said, are you gonna have the free will to sin and reject Christ in heaven? And so he was totally floored by that.

Wasn't expecting that. Right, so that is not a definition of a robot, and that would actually be saying that God himself was a robot, because God does not have the ability to sin and disobey his own laws as a righteous, infallible deity.

I mean, doesn't that make sense? Yeah, I've heard that, of course, too.

My colleague who preached with me together at Smith Springs several years ago, he's now with the

Lord, but his comment was, if I'm a puppet and I'm God's puppet, that's fine.

If God's pulling my strings, I don't have any objection. But that really is not a good analogy to talk about puppets.

Hank Hanegraaff, who used to have the Bible Answer Man program, I think he now is

Orthodox. Eastern Orthodox, yeah. He used to say that if I believed in predestination, that would make

God guilty of cosmic rape. Yeah, and I believe he got that from Norman Geisler, I think that Geisler coined that, if I'm not mistaken.

Okay, so we borrow our phrases from people. But the point is this, we're not robbed of freedom, we're given freedom in Christ.

Jesus gives us freedom from sin. And when we are in sin, Jesus said a person in sin is a slave, a bond servant to sin.

That's not freedom. And if we are under the control of sin, we can't come to God, we can't be saved by Christ.

So that's the absence of freedom. But he gives us freedom, and we have the freedom to do what we want, because God has changed our hearts, given us, done a work in our hearts that enables us to be free of that bondage of sin.

So it is the contrary. We're not puppets, we are free. And that's a tremendous truth.

Yeah, we have the ability from our creation through the time of our death, we have the ability to choose things.

And before we are regenerate, since our minds and hearts and souls are enslaved to sin, we are always going to choose something that is self -serving.

Even if it's a good deed, there's going to be a taint of sin because of ulterior motives and seeking glory and that kind of thing.

Exactly right, Chris. God always insists that we have the freedom to do what we want.

Now that's anybody, anytime. People can choose what they want, and they do what they want.

And so we're not saying that you lose that ability to choose what you want. But the point is, as you have correctly said, until we are born again, until we are regenerate, sin has so permeated our being that we're not going to choose

God. That's the last thing we would want. And thus, when we're born again, we do freely choose

God. If, indeed, we could be saved apart from God acting in our heart, then

God is robbed of His glory to that point. Yeah, in fact, even anti -Calvinist fundamentalist

Baptists will often hurl at us, whosoever will may drink of the water of life freely.

And the issue is, yeah, I agree, but who will? I mean, they seem to think whosoever means anyone is capable.

And what I have said in response to that is, imagine you walk into a crowd of Christians, Orthodox Jews, and devout

Muslims, and you say to them, whoever wants to come to my pig roast is more than welcome to come.

Who's going to come? You know, and that's what the issue is.

Who is willing? Who wants that? And same thing with eternal life.

And so it's, and again, even this,

I'm not saying that anybody who rejects Calvinism is by virtue of that damned, but even the belief in these things that we are affirming today can only come to us by grace as well.

Am I right? Right. I'm thinking of, I might attribute this to John MacArthur, I'm not sure, but if he didn't say it, whoever did say it,

I apologize. But the point is, whosoever will, what good is whosoever will in a world of nobody can?

And the passage you read from Romans 3 essentially says, there is none who does good, so nobody can.

Whosoever will. There has to be something given to man, it has to be a work in his heart that enables him.

And another good analogy of this, I think gets the point across.

You sit down before a person on the table, the garbage from last night, one choice, and on the other choice is a steak, a wonderful steak, nicely cooked.

And you say to a person, well, what are you going to choose? You can choose the garbage or you can choose the steak.

Well, the unregenerate person will choose the garbage every time. And that's the point.

You can choose what you want, you will choose what you want, you are, of necessity God insists that you choose what you want.

Jonathan Edwards says, man always chooses from his nearest desire. You choose according to what you want.

A choice is a reflection of what you want. And until you want

God, you're not going to choose God. Yeah, that's an excellent way to put it.

And one other text here, and of course there are many others, but I think a classic text, if you believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, how you could read

John chapter 10 and walk away, someone who rejects

God's sovereignty over salvation is beyond me. Where we have, let's see, if we go down to, in John chapter 10, if we go down to the 20s, let's see, let's start at 24.

The Jews then surrounded him, meaning Jesus, and began saying to him, how long will you keep us in suspense?

If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, you do not believe the works that I do in my father's name that testified me, but you do not believe because you are not of my sheep.

My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

My father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the

Father's hand. Now, that is proof that we do not become a sheep by believing.

We believe because we are sheep already. Absolutely, absolutely. We are already sheep. The sheep believe, the sheep understand, but he's saying to these people, you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.

Very simple. And it's also dispelling the false belief of many, if not most, of the

Church of Christ and Roman Catholicism and Five -Point Arminianism that a regenerate, born -again believer can lose his salvation because it says right here,

I give them eternal life. Now, if you have eternal life, how do you lose something that's eternal, number one?

And he says, they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Now, of course, the standard response is, oh, you could jump out of his hand yourself. Oh, yeah, that's comforting, isn't it?

But it says before that they will never perish, so that rules out jumping out yourself.

Yes, it's very clear. There's no modification, no condition there. I give them eternal life, they will never perish.

Or in the Romans 8 passage, nothing can separate us, not in all creation, from the love of God and Christ.

Those passages are absolute. And again, as you said that about jumping out of his hand, that's a frequently offered excuse.

And I still remember this student when he said, Dr. Lawrence, I can just walk away from Christ.

And I said, do it. Just show me that you can do it. And he looked at me and he said,

I can't do that. And I'm just challenging you to prove what you said is true.

Well, quite obvious. And one thing that we have to repeat, because I believe in our second interview, we made sure that no one was misunderstanding us.

We're not saying, as many in evangelicalism say, who are guilty of believing in the heresy of a distorted and twisted understanding of once saved, always saved.

We do not believe, you and I, and neither does any Reformed Christian who is truly

Reformed, and Reformed in a historic and biblical sense. We do not believe that just because somebody raises their hand at Bible camp or goes forward at an altar call, or even is baptized, even baptized biblically, is a guarantee that that person is a genuine

Christian. And if somebody is demonstrating that they are an unrepentant rebel against Christ, they are demonstrating that they're not a good tree.

They are a bad tree. They are unregenerate. Just as James says, a faith without works is dead.

That doesn't mean works cooperate with salvation. It means that works are an evidence. They're a fruit of somebody who is truly saved.

All right? And John will say, they went out from among us because they never were of us. Exactly.

Why would he even say that if a truly regenerate person could lose his or her salvation?

And just to wrap that thought up, I have heard from various people professing to be

Christian, and people who are genuinely Christian, who wrongly believe you can lose your salvation even if you're genuinely saved, they will say that the teaching of Reformed theology and perseverance and preservation of the saints will lead people to apostasy, to abandon the faith, to licentious living.

And the fact of the matter is, I have met many people from the

Church of Christ, from Roman Catholicism, and from five -point Arminianism, and legalistic churches, who realize,

I can never be good enough, and they abandon the faith. They just give up. They see this as a treadmill that they could never keep running on.

And so to say that Reformed theology has some kind of a market on producing licentiousness is just not true.

Now, Chris, if the only thing that keeps us faithful to Christ is fear, that's not the right motive.

John said, perfect love casts out fear. Fear involves punishment. The motivation is the love of Christ, and that keeps us in Him.

And I've documented this point, because I heard it quite often in the Church of Christ.

If you teach, once saved, always saved, they use that expression, then that is going to be a license to sin.

I recall one time when I was meeting with a number of students, they'd come out of the Church of Christ, or some of them still in it, but they had come to accept

Reformed theology, and the idea that we are indeed secure in our salvation.

And I just asked them the question, I said, how many of you feel like once you have learned this truth, that your salvation is secure, does that cause you to want to sin?

And every one of them said, no, it causes me to want to do God's will, it causes me to want to live a

Christian life. And one person even said, how can I spit in the face of a God who loves me like that?

Wow, amen. And one thing that we've, in this whole vein of what we're discussing, we cannot forget also what the

God -breathed words of Scripture say through the Apostle Paul. Apostle Paul in Romans 6, what shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be.

How shall we who died to sin still live in it? And why would

Paul even bring that up if there wasn't a likely misunderstanding of what we are teaching as Reformed Christians about grace?

He is correcting an error before it occurred. His doctrine, the setting forth is justification by faith alone.

And so he's anticipating this situation. And let me say, in dealing with people, and I mentioned before that one of the, previously one of the cardinal precepts of Church of Christ was this, the fact that one can lose one's salvation, and I ran into that several times.

I remember having a discussion with this gentleman, and I tried to reach him. I loved him dearly.

I hoped I could reach him, never could. Because right before he died, he said, he asked the nurse in the nursing home where he was, he said, dear, have you done enough good works that you can go to heaven?

And so he's still believing in salvation by works. And I said one time, the

Scriptures teach that we are saved, and it's forever, and that our sheep, his sheep will never perish.

And I remember him saying, oh, that is wonderful, if I could believe it.

How wonderful, if I could just believe that. I'm thinking, well, why can't you believe this, what the

Bible teaches? But they can. I remember several people saying, it would be great if I could believe it.

Or this one girl that I was dialoguing with, and she went to her elders and told them what

I was teaching, and they said, well, now, we don't believe that. And she came back and told me, my elder said, we don't believe that.

And I said, well, let me ask you, and we're talking about predestination as well as security. I said, let me ask you a question.

What if you could believe it? Her face suddenly became, it just changed, and she said, that would be wonderful, if I could believe that.

Wow. And I nearly cried. I thought, oh, my. And that tells me people would appreciate and would just rejoice and would be very happy that they're forbidden to believe the things that are basic to Christian doctrine, because they're told that they can't believe it.

And we have to go to our final break right now. If you would like to send in a question, please do it immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

Chris Sorensen at gmail .com, don't go away. We'll be right back with David Lawrence right after these messages. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here, excited to announce that my longtime friend,

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. Welcome back, and David Lawrence going back to the listener who was talking about the claims of Reformed theology being a system that turns men into robots.

I'm also immediately remembering Romans 9, where starting in verse 18, the

Apostle Paul says these God -breathed words, so then he, meaning

God of course, has mercy on whom he desires and he hardens whom he desires, and Paul anticipates what the rejecter of God's sovereignty over salvation will say.

He says, You will say to me then, why does he, God, still find fault?

For who resists his will? On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?

The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this? Will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

And he goes on from there with some very important imagery, but if the

Arminian or the Pelagian or the Roman Catholic or the common

Church of Christ understanding of the freedom of the will and salvation were true, why would

Paul anticipate an objection like this? Why does

God still find fault for who resists his will? Why would somebody say that if the unbiblical understanding of free will is true?

Yes, it's amazing how, as you said, under inspiration, Paul anticipates all of the arguments that we hear today.

You mentioned earlier the argument about shall we sin that grace may abound, and then this argument about man being hardened by God, which of course comes from the

Old Testament, God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and there's that passage in Isaiah 6, you go out and preach and they will not listen, and I think it's used four times in the

New Testament. Obviously, there is a hardening that takes place in the heart of a person who is not regenerate, he resists

God in that sense, and he's going to continue to do that until his heart is changed.

I remember taking that passage in Romans 9 and reading it to a minister and his wife at a dinner.

I had been preaching in his church, been asked to preach, and I said some things that he objected to, this was the

Church of Christ, and so I just read Romans 9 to him and his wife, and they looked so startled like they'd never heard it before, and they said, that's the oddest thing

I've ever heard. It's the Word of God. They had never heard it before.

In fact, I had the very same thing happen when I was sitting in my office, which was at the time in the church building where I was a member, and a friend of mine who is not

Reformed came by to pick up posters promoting a debate that I organized with Reformed Baptist scholar

Dr. James R. White, and he said, you know, if only

Dr. White was not a Calvinist. I love everything about him except his Calvinism. He said,

I hate his Calvinism. So I said, all right, I just want to read you something, and he saw that I picked up a

Bible, I opened up to Romans 9, and I read the chapter, and he said, so what do you think about that?

He said, you know who believes that? The biggest cult in the world, the Muslims. I said, do you know that I just read an epistle from the

Apostle Paul in the New Testament, don't you? And he said, no, it's what you read into it. I said,

I didn't read anything into it. I didn't exegete it. I didn't explain it. I just read it.

Just read it, yeah. That's what I did. I just read it. Well, we're out of time, and I know we've got to do part four of our discussion, so when

I send you the recording of this interview that you could do anything you'd like with this recording,

I will include a calendar of dates because I've really got to get you back on if you would like to, and I want to make sure that our listeners have all of your contact information.

First of all, the Stevens Valley Church of Nashville, Tennessee can be found at stevensvalley .church,

and Stevens is spelt with a P -H, S -T -E -P -H -E -N -S, valley .church,

and do you have anything else you'd like to say in about 30 seconds? Just that the doctrines of grace that we have been teaching and we love so much correspond with our experience, and a quote by Calvin, when the truth of scripture agrees with our experience, we perceive more clearly that God takes care of us and that we are guided by his providence.

Amen, and folks, I want to remind you I am going to be tomorrow manning my exhibitors booth for Iron Trip and Zion Radio at High Point Baptist Church in Larksville, Pennsylvania for the

Just Thinking conference with Daryl Bernard Harrison and Virgil Walker, who are co -hosts of the

Just Thinking podcast. They are the two speakers at this conference at High Point Baptist Church, and it's not too late to register, so go to highpointbaptist .com,

highpointbaptist .com, and click on events, and you could register.

I hope as many of you as possible who are listening will attend that event, of course, especially if you live in Pennsylvania or nearby, and please make sure you greet me at the

Iron Trip and Zion Radio exhibitors booth. Also, if you are a man in ministry leadership and you have not yet registered for the

Iron Trip and Zion Radio free pastor's luncheon featuring Dr. James R. White, which will be held in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is

Perry County, on Thursday, September 22nd, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m., send me an email to register for free at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.