Is Salvation Dependent upon Your Obedience? | How Pietism Affects Assurance

A lot of what we're trying to highlight is this emphasis on your improvement and you need to be examining yourself

And if you're not continually improving you should be afraid and you should be concerned because your legitimacy is now called into question

This kind of onward and upward we're just continually getting better thing. I think that is everywhere in American Christianity Sometimes it takes a very obvious like here's seven steps to better finances or seven steps to a better marriage

Presentation or in more serious minded contexts where the Bible is taken very seriously and oftentimes they're conservative and Calvinistic You get this this emphasis on personal growth to where you become maybe not prosperous materially

But you become so spiritually strong That you're kind of impervious to the challenges and trials of life and and you are spiritually able to just take on whatever you encounter

You know, there's an almost not place for weakness anymore if someone were to ask you John What is pietism?

I've kind of heard this word and I've seen the product of the little book over there on the table and But what's pietism and I will say before I answer this question

I think you need to understand how vitally important your question is because it has changed the trajectory of my life and my ministry

Forever I was I grew up in pietism and being liberated from it has been a great joy

Pietism though. It's a confusion in my in my opinion and it's this It's taking that which is biblical which is the obedience of the believer and Putting it in the wrong category with the wrong emphasis in the category.

It often gets put into is acceptance and blessings of God in other words how well

I perform and obey is whether God accepts me as a believer and Whether he will continue to protect me and bless me

For instance often one's assurance will be called into question Depending upon their performance again their obedience, right?

Am I doing enough on my behalf to prove the evidence of my life is a true believer?

And so all sermons and reading and really the interior of their Christian life becomes the most important thing about the

Christian Are they performing well enough? The emphasis of our preaching and our teaching and our conversations in life in the local churches is one of looking inward in self -examination pointing the

Christian in on himself to Examine everything that's going on in our hearts and minds rather than always being pointed outside of ourselves first to Jesus We kind of implicitly if not explicitly point the

Christian toward his obedience to know that he will be saved Christ should always be the focus Christ should always be the foreground and that the

Christian life is only understood in light of him and as a Backdrop to what he alone has done and in pietism that kind of gets inverted the

Christian life is in the foreground Christ is in the background in pietism Typically our identity is derived from what we do or what we don't do whereas for us as confessional

Protestants We would invert that and say that our duty what we do is derived from who we are if you don't believe the work of the

Spirit is the one who comes in and Regenerates the sinner and then the believer then is Transformed by the works of the

Spirit through the means of grace if you don't believe that then you're going to put Emphasis not on the power of the

Spirit and the means of grace You're gonna put emphasis on the individual acts of the person which when you look at revivalism

Sure in the history of it This is what pietism was birthed out of if you're not emphasizing the work of Jesus on our behalf

You're going to emphasize your own works And so I think this is important because when I say a matter of emphasis you emphasize the wrong thing people start working on the wrong stuff

How do you know if you're in a pietistic context if you're listening and you're newer in pietism typically the gospel is like the entry

Point to the Christian life, you know, it's back there It's like that well I trusted Jesus and the gospel was was back there and now

I've kind of entered into the Christian life and I'm about living the Christian life now and and the gospel was then this is now

Secondly is even like how the gospel is preached is the gospel preached to the

Saints or not Right. So just the centers. Yeah, because typically I think the understanding in a pietistic context is that unbelievers need the gospel

Christians need something else which is being told how to live effectively Rather than understanding that the

Saints need the gospel all the time and that the power For their living only comes from Christ in a pietistic context the tone tends to be kind of threatening and exacting

It's this kind of like obey or else dot dot dot It's that kind of feel the posture default posture of the preacher and most of the

Christians is yet Most everybody in the church is probably a fake. That's right probably a faker and so we need to smoke those fakers out and make sure that only the strong survive and the serious types

Are the real ones and last one that I really want to draw attention to though is the sacraments and how the sacraments

Are viewed in a pietistic context the sacraments are made more about our faithfulness and obedience to God Than they are

God's faithfulness to us. This is why The Lord's Supper in particular is one of those anxiety -producing times for many

Christians in their churchgoing experience because it's a time of hyper introspection and Hyper self -examination to whether or not

I am worthy to come to the table and worthy in their minds means have I done well enough rather than understanding that the sacraments are about God's faithfulness to us primarily and that they're given to us because we're needy because we're weak

Worship in one sense is a dialogue between us and God. God has spoken. We respond. God has acted we respond

I think Pietism has messed us up in terms of how we even think about what we do on Sundays together in the gathered church

They will they will pound the desk sola fide, sola fide, faith alone, faith alone, faith alone for justification

But then there's this constant Boogeyman that they're chasing that is running throughout the congregation, you know telling people they can live however they want

And so they're trying to scare him out of the house Look at the way the Lord is transforming you by his spirit.

Look at the fruit that is being born in your life and be encouraged Have your assurance strengthened.

That's biblical. But instead what we often get told is how do you know you're a believer?

Examine your life That's and that is that is we have completely left the realm of being encouraged by my obedience to now looking to my obedience

As the ground of my standing and that's a problem. Pietism turns the whole entire light

Structure off of Jesus and puts it on you and you're so blinded by you You end up hurting people you judge them you plow into them you criticize them and or or Justin you're so blinded you go hide because you're so Overwhelmed by how much of a failure are because the lights on you instead of Jesus Right looking unto

Jesus the author and finisher of our faith Where are we looking looking unto me the author and finisher of my faith? Maybe and maybe

Jesus is the author but I'm the finisher because I try to do my part, you know That's right. And when Jesus said it is finished.

He kind of meant that His part was done now It's your part when the writer of the Hebrews says, you know that he has perfected for all time

Those are being sanctified. He kind of meant that you know it and all we're trying to do is is come back in here

Take the clutter off the thing and say no it is Christ always and only He is our whole and only righteousness today and tomorrow and forever and it's always gonna be

Jesus and you are not Gonna look within to find the ground of anything before the Lord You're gonna look without to Christ always and so there's an emphasis on his objective work that stands unaffected by how you feel and how you're doing and how well you obeyed today and how well you'll obey tomorrow and how hard you'll

Fight sin tomorrow. You will be righteous in Christ Reconciled to God in him and you can bank on it and that is going to change your life

Over the long haul and it will be because you have fixed your gaze on the Savior Not because you have been looking at yourself and navel gazing at other people all the time

Yeah, like that's just not a way to live I always love asking people how many good works is it gonna be enough for you to come to a moment where you feel justified?

Like you're then putting in to find that no, you're putting your faith in your works The only thing that's gonna comfort any of us at the end of it all we know this is true is to look to another

Who has accomplished our salvation? Thinking Colossians even just really briefly here the whole length of language of put off put on You know that you get in a number of Paul's epistles that is completely it's a union with Christ identity in Jesus argument

You're not that anymore. No, you're this now in the Lord Jesus So yeah, you carry the corpse of the old man around with you, but put that thing off and live like who you are now

That's his argument over and over and over again. It's not calling their identity into question it's pointing them to their new identity in the

Lord Jesus Christ and then that being The reason and the fuel in one sense for how they live

Every time Paul motivates the believer to obey every time he uses grace every time not fear

I know it's a it's always a motivation of love versus fear If you're not being motivated by love you're in pietism flat -out if you're being motivated by fear, that's pietism.