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January 10, 2018:
Marc Grimaldi, a pastor @ Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, NY, will address the theme:
“LET YOUR GENTLENESS BE KNOWN TO ALL: Rethinking Biblical POLEMICS”
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. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with 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 hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arns.
Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arns and your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 10th day of January 2017.
And I'm delighted to have back on the program my most recent ex-pastor. It's a bizarre way of saying it. My latest pastor that is not currently my pastor. Pastor Mark Rimaldi, who is one of the two pastors at Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island located in Merrick, New York.
And before relocating to Pennsylvania, he was my pastor along with Pastor Doug Totter. And today we are going to be addressing a very important theme, a theme that I wish we did not have to address because it's really a timely theme that unfortunately those professing to be Reformed, and even more specifically professing to be Reformed Baptist, have gotten involved in something that I believe warrants this discussion today because of public rhetoric and polemics that have gone beyond the biblical approach to polemics, gone beyond Christian demeanor, and have entered into just pure nastiness and slander.
And it's time for us to rethink biblical polemics, I believe. So today we are going to be addressing the theme, Let Your Gentleness Be Known to All, Rethinking Biblical Polemics. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip.
And Zion Radio, Pastor Mark Rimaldi. Thanks Chris, always a pleasure brother, appreciate it.
And if anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.
Please only remain anonymous if this is about a personal and private matter and I could see a topic like this easily lending itself to someone having a personal or private question. Especially we don't want you to name names during this program because we don't want to be guilty of the very thing that we're trying to oppose today.
So we would love to hear from you with your questions and your input at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. But first of all, Pastor Mark, since there are many people joining the Iron Trip and Zion Radio audience since you were last on, in fact, I'm getting emails nearly every single day and sometimes for long stretches every day from people who are new additions to the Iron Trip and Zion Radio audience.
I'm really delighted to see that God is actually using something that I'm doing in a worthy fashion and the guests and topics that I'm having on this program seem to be of interest to a lot of people.
So for their sake especially, if you could tell our listeners who might not be familiar with you or Grace Reformed.
Baptist Church of Long Island, tell us about that church. Yeah, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in New York. We are a Reformed Baptist church. We would hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 would be the confession that our church stands upon.
That's not what I.
Heard. I'm only kidding. Just kidding, just kidding. And the Deductions of Grace, of course,.
And the Five Solas of the Reformation would probably be the most, the five pillars. GraceReformedBaptistChurch .com, Reformed with an ed there, church .com. If you'd like to access our website, we're also on Sermon Audio.
Certainly, if you have any questions or anything like that,.
You can reach us. Great. And just for those of our listeners who are unfamiliar with the 1689 London Baptist Confession, there are some of our Christian brethren who immediately scratch their heads when they hear something like that.
Wait a minute. I thought you were Bible-believing Christians. Why do you adhere to some old, outdated, antiquated document that was written by men? Well, it's really the 1689 London Baptist Confession, also known as the Second London Baptist Confession.
It's really just a summary of teachings that Reformed Baptists believe that are in the scriptures. These aren't man-made rules that they are listing in this document. These are things that we believe to be biblically true, and the formers of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, since they already had their own confession, the First London Confession, before even the Westminster came into being, they purposely nearly duplicated the Westminster because they wanted to show camaraderie and brotherhood and fellowship with the Presbyterians.
They wanted to make it clear that they were not some weird cult. Am I off base on anything I said?
No, yeah. The Baptists no longer wanted to be drowned by the Presbyterians for being a cult. So they aligned themselves pretty well to show that, look, we're pretty much on the same page. Basically, everything is identical.
Confession of Faith is like a condensed version, a meaty and weighty condensed version of a systematic theology of what the scriptures teach, and church history shows very well how much we need that. And it would be also.
Including some things that were in existence in the Savoy Declaration, which is the creed or the confession of the Congregationalists. People hear that word, and they immediately might think of the very liberal or even apostate church down the road called First Congregational Church or something.
Not that all Congregationalists church are liberal, but the United Church of Christ, which is the predominant denomination where local churches call themselves Congregationalists, they're predominantly from that denomination, which is for the most part totally apostate with some remnant of believing churches in there.
But the old style biblically faithful Congregationalists of the Savoy Declaration that the drafters of the 1689 borrowed from, and there would be a lot in harmony also with the three forms of unity that the Dutch Reformed folks adhere to.
And why don't you tell our listeners, before we get into our topic, about some of the books you have written, just so in fact that they can look those things up, those resources up afterwards, and perhaps make use of them.
Sure. The two that are out right now that are actually in print is one that's out of head tank. The one that's to the print is called Evil and Suffering in a Sovereign God's World, and we've actually done two interviews on that topic on our own shop, Zion Unite.
That's one, which you can find at Amazon .com, or probably a lot of the Barnes Nobles and so on. And the other one has to do with obsessive compulsive disorder, which also we've done interviews about, at least two or three on that, and it's called OCD, Finding Hope.
On the Edge of Insanity. Yeah, we had to do at least three interviews to get it right. It had to be perfect. We have 175 scheduled in the future. But now, how do our listeners get a hold of that material?
Yeah, they can get either one of those books at Amazon, certainly. Also, if they wanted to, go to Amazon, look at the publishers, and I'm not sure what the price difference would be. Amazon is usually pretty fairly priced, but they probably have them at Barnes Nobles and those kinds of places, too, so you can find them there.
And if you want to hear our former, or previous, I should say, interviews with Mark Romoldi, just go to the search engine of the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio archive at ironsharpensironradio .com, and where it says Past Programs Podcast, you can type in the search engine Grimaldi, G-R-I-M-A-L-D-I, and I'm almost certain you're the only Grimaldi I've ever interviewed.
So all of those interviews would come up. I do know a pastor, Dominic Grimaldi, who's a Reformed Baptist. I don't think I've interviewed him, though.
He'd be a good interviewer. He's a nice guy.
Well, I wish I could have you on the program under better circumstances. One of the reasons why I think you even wrote the article we're going to be discussing is because on the internet lately, especially Facebook and Twitter, there has been, unfortunately, a group of Christians who profess to be Reformed, and I think most of them profess to be Reformed Baptists, who are attacking other Reformed Baptists in a manner that is, I think, clearly unbiblical, in fact, wicked to some level, when the posts or the tweets go beyond brotherly critique and enter into slander and mockery for mockery's sake, where the intention is clearly not even to, in love, correct a brother if you think that brother needs correcting.
I'm not even saying that the corrections were warranted, but if you think that you have a problem with your brother or your brother is doing something inappropriate that might even be sinful, you're supposed to go to them privately first, and then a couple of witnesses, and then take it to the church.
But there is a lot of immediate steps being taken by so-called Christians to immediately take things public in order to immediately bring into question the character and motives of other Christians because of, in this case, what we've been seeing lately, it's more involving procedures and strategies than it is actual theological content or doctrinal content.
So if you could pick up where I just left off and tell us about the article that you have written, which has the title, Let Your Gentleness Be Known to All Rethinking Biblical.
Polemics. Yeah, yeah, Chris, I'll tell you, it's definitely been a journey of just observing a lot of things, as you said, online, especially on Facebook. There's different groups and things. I've actually withdrawn from most groups at this point.
I might be in one just because it's just sickening to see the way people treat each other, the way people address even error or potential errors, and like you said, it may be true, and it may even be a place to address it publicly if something has been said publicly and it's a serious doctrinal issue in some way that they believe or whatever, but really it comes down to the way it's done.
When you're dealing with polemics, and by the way, let me just say real quick that polemics, in case people say, well, what the heck is polemics? It sounds almost like something in the robotic industry, but really it's similar to apologetics in a lot of ways, right?
Apologetics, we think of as the defense of the faith, and generally with apologetics, we deal with unbelievers, right? We're defending why Christianity is true and who the one true God is, the divinity of Christ, etc.
Polemics is similar in a certain sense that you're dealing with and confronting error, but it's more often than not, polemics is addressing those who are within the realm of Christianity or within your own realm of your common faith in that sense, and so it is, by its very nature, confrontational, and that's understandable because you're seeking to point out errors and so on that are out there, and the question is that with dignity, with humility, is there an attitude that ought to accompany how you address the concerns that you have with others and their teachings and their doctrines and so on, especially when dealing with brothers, but even when people on the outside, there's a way to address people as well on the outside that the scriptures address also.
So I think that that's really where I'm coming from, especially as you see the arrows turned to each other within the realm of Christianity, even reformed brethren turning arrows against each other and just attacking, and the way it's done, it's not, again, just proving the point or showing exegetically, but really just arrogant behavior, mocking, just language that is very offensive, but really just tears down and separates brethren.
I mean, I've seen many brethren just offended and divided and back and forth just on the way that things have been handled with trying to correct one another and so on, so that's the big issue to me is how do we how do we utilize the exercise, you know, a careful watchfulness over what people are teaching and mutual edification and correction, how do we do that with the right attitude, with the right heart, does the movement does very clearly.
I find it interesting the way that the apostle Paul phrased this in Galatians chapter 5 when he's writing to the church at Galatia, and Galatians 5 starting in verse 11, brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted?
In that case, the offense of the cross has been abolished. Actually, I went to the wrong verse, I'm sorry. Chapter 5 verse 5, for though the Spirit, through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.
The only thing that counts in faith is expressing itself through love, and here it is, this is what I was really going for, in verse 13, you my brothers and sisters were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh, rather serve one another humbly in love, for the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one commandment, love your neighbor as yourself.
If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. That's what I was looking for, I don't know why I was wandering around there. But those are pretty strong words about those who profess to be brothers in Christ devouring one another and destroying one another.
Yeah, yeah it is, Chris, and you'll find that kind of language all throughout, especially in the epistles and the teaching scriptures about attitude. If you look at much, in fact, you could say a great majority of what is addressed toward Christians, to those who are in the faith, through the letters written to different churches, through even the Lord Jesus Christ addressing his apostles in the end of John's gospel and his farewell discourse, there's so much of an emphasis on maintaining unity, on keeping the body together, on not being divided, on how they treat one another.
You see, even the disciples sometimes they scuffle a bit or they argue about who's better and things like that, and the Lord is always rebuking them about that, and he's getting back to, look, you know, he's washing their feet, I'm showing you this as an example, be one, you know, he's praying to the Father that the church would be one even as he and the Father are one, so that the world will believe that he's sent, God has sent his Son.
And you go through all the letters and you see this constant emphasis on treating one another in love, fulfilling the law, the love commandments, loving God and loving a neighbor, fulfill all the law hangs on those two commands.
Again, the emphasis on unity, that's the way Christ's church prevails, that's the way Christ is revealed is in that kind of attitude. And so when you have Christians firing at one another in a way, attacking one another, even over disagreements, which are going to be valid, there's going to be valid things to address, but just attacking and going back and forth in this division, the world looks at that and sees and says, well that's Christianity, you know, what kind of a Christ is this, because we represent him.
And even from a Reform standpoint, there are those who are Arminian, who are not of the Reform faith, who would say, well look, there they go, look at what doctrine does. And I'm not saying Arminians don't like doctrine, but there is that sense where some will say, hey, doctrine divides, and look at where it's getting them.
These guys are just fighting over every little thing, even over the color of their toothbrushes, you know, these guys can't get along on anything, look at them. And it really, unfortunately, doctrine is what takes the bullet in all this.
It's not us, we deserve it for fighting the way we are, and not loving one another, and not having humility and grace, not being gentle, not having the proper tone. We're the ones at fault, but doctrine is the one that takes the hit, and doctrine is what changes lives, doctrine is what matters.
So it really is serious with dividing one another, as you said, Corinthians, Paul's rebuking them because they're talking about, I'm with Paul, I'm with Apollos, all this division and attack, and how they're handling things, and it's so destructive, and that's what's going on amongst Reform people who are Calvinists, you know, that they're killing each other out there, standpoint, just shooting arrows, you know.
Darrell Bock. And we have to make it clear that if you were to take the broader picture of modern-day evangelicalism as a whole, one of the most serious problems is the lack of polemics. I mean, the softening of what false teaching actually is, and the consequences of it, and the ecumenism, the rampant ecumenism with churches, so-called, that deny the gospel, and just the softening of a lot of things.
Even the sin of homosexuality seems to have become a unique category that would make the people who are practicing that damnable behavior, and not only damnable, but even physically deadly behavior, that puts them in some kind of a category where they are to be treated with more respect than just your average person who is sinning in some other capacity.
There is a lot more tiptoeing around that sin than anything else, it seems, in the Christian church these days. Well, there's a lot of reasons why polemics is certainly necessary, and in fact, for instance, perhaps you could respond to this.
I have Roman Catholic friends who get upset with me when I will say things, even in public, such as, I love you, you are a great friend, you're a wonderful person, you are probably superior to me in many areas of life, you may be a better person in many spheres of living than I am, much to my shame, but I cannot call you my brother in Christ because you deny the gospel that I believe in.
You deny the one thing that I believe will enable sinners to enter into heaven for eternity with Christ, and for that reason I cannot call you my brother. And people have said to me that that is an improper use of polemics, that's nastiness, that's mean-spiritedness, that's bigotry.
How do you respond to something like.
That, what I just said? Yeah, yeah, Chris, I think you're dead. You're hitting an element. There are two extremes, right? And as you said, one is we can say that polemics should be thrown out the window, it's contentious, it's confrontational, let's just all get together and hold hands and sing we are the world, you know, and let's just be accepting and loving because that's what God is and Christ is and he came to die for everyone and so on and all that, which is not true, right?
And so there's that danger of diminishing the importance of holiness, diminishing the importance, and we want to be careful not to go to that extreme. As you said, there are people out there who would, many people in many compromises and soft evangelicalism, where they're allowing things that are just a reproach for God, that are an attack on God's holy character, and so we should fervently be against that.
But at the same time, as we seek to be polemicists or to address error, and especially those kinds of significance, all the more is important as well. It's how we do it. If you didn't, you know, go to...
Oh, you read that post.
Yeah, you know, you're slime and, you know, the heck with you, you're all going to hell, you know, there's a way to address it, and I think that that's why the Ephesians 4 passage, when Paul talks about how the Church grows and every part doing its share, he talks about how the Church grows by the body speaking the truth to one another in love.
And so you have that balance there. Yes, we must speak the truth and we cannot compromise the truth, and even with dealing with other Christians, even over issues that we may debate about, it's okay to have some wrestling with even peripheral things, to an extent.
You know, again, we don't want to go too crazy, but there's a place to wrestle over peripheral issues, let alone issues that are really... But it needs to be done in love. There needs to be a motive in us as we do that to seek the welfare and the betterment of those who we're addressing, to seek to edify, to seek to build up, to seek to see the Church built up, and especially when dealing with brethren, you know, brethren all the more, there has to be a spirit of love in bringing that truth.
So both come together. There is speaking the truth, we're not going to throw that out the window, that's for sure, that's God's truth, representative of His character, His nature, His revelation, and it's speaking that truth in love.
And when we don't speak the truth in love, in reality, it's representing the truth by presenting it with the wrong attitude. We're presenting grace in an ungracious way. You know, it just compromises the very truth that we're teaching if it's not being lived out of us or expressed how we present that truth.
So both of those are important in what we do and how we deal with others. So like you said, in that situation, you're 100 right to say that. They need to know, look, on the no uncertain terms, I want you to know I love you, I care about you, but you're on dangerous ground.
You know, you don't have the gospel, you're trusting in your works, and the Bible very clearly says that it's through Christ alone and by His shed blood that we are saved and we can't trust in ourselves.
And I tell you this because I care. There's a big gap in the bridge that you're trying to cross and you don't see it, but if you cross now and come to Christ, you're going to go the way of those who are damned and I care about you and that's why I can't call you brother.
So there's a loving way of presenting that and a loving way of presenting truth in general and I think that's the big issue is dealing with how we present the truth. And like you said, Chris, even with the slander, it's not only the attitude and the arrogance, but sometimes it gets so heated that, you know, the natural man, we can go too far in what we say and because we're angry, because we're now motivated not by love but by our own pride and our own arrogance and we wind up saying things that aren't even true against the other person.
Now we're dealing with slander that's added to it as well and we've seen a lot of that on, you know, some of these websites and, you know, these Facebook pages and even on a radio program. I'm going to read a question to.
You and then we're going to go to a break and you can answer it when we come back. CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York says, wouldn't a perfect example of what you're talking about be the God hates fags cult?
How they will publicly carrying signs and mocking homosexuals or those supporting them just saying God hates fags over and over again and condemning them to hell and yet offering no hope to them if they repent and flee to Christ.
There is no gospel presented, there is no message that is given in love hoping for the person involved in that sin to repent and turn around by God's grace. They are merely openly mocking them and condemning them and we'll have you respond to that.
Obviously the listener is talking about Westboro Baptist Church where Fred Phelps, the late Fred Phelps, was the pastor and it's ironic that his own congregation, which are all members of his family, excommunicated him before he died because he was too nice apparently.
But we will return on that note when we come back from our commercial break. If anybody else 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. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.
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Well, now we are back with Pastor Mark Romaldi. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question about our theme today, let your gentleness be known to all rethinking biblical polemics. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
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C .J. from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York brought up the God Hates Fags cult, also known as Westboro Baptist Church, where it seems that the only motive that they have is to publicly declare that homosexuals in any way that they think are supporting them or making life more easy for them in any way, shape, or form they think are going to hell.
And of course, unrepentant homosexuality is a sin where people will certainly be damned if they do not repent of that sin. But they don't even offer the hope of the gospel to these people. They just want to, with much delight, tell the world that these people are going to hell and it seems to be for the only purpose of publicly condemning them and mocking them.
And they take much joy in it, even violating what God himself, how God himself views the death of the wicked. He does not delight in it, yet these people delight in it. But if you.
Could comment. C .J. Yeah, Chris, the God Hates Fags, the movement and the cult, like you said, it's a very small minority of alleged professing believers, but not even near what Christianity is all about.
They run under the assumption that homosexuality is basically an irrepentable sin. You can't repent of that sin. So that's why they don't offer the gospel. They would see it as that they're condemned.
They would say that that's their judgment. There's no hope for them. And so what they shout out and really do much more damage than anything, they ignore 1 Corinthians 6, 9 and following, which says that even though homosexuals and so on will not enter the kingdom of God, Paul goes on to say, such were some of you, but you were washed, you were cleansed.
And so there were people, even though Paul was writing to a Corinth, who used to be homosexuals, who had repented, who had found grace in Christ, just like thieves and murderers and fornicators and everything else.
They found the same grace and were forgiven and they were washed. And so they're definitely not representative in any sense of Christianity. And they're very, yeah, they're very hateful. And I would agree with the person who sent you that email that they just, and they're the ones also stand out there, I believe, right when soldiers have a funeral for.
A soldier, they're out there protesting. Yes, because the United States does not legally penalize homosexuals for their activity. So therefore, if you are fighting for a country that has devolved to that state of wickedness, you too are someone who God hates and they rejoice at the death of soldiers for enlisting.
And much to our, I don't know what the word I'm looking for is, much to our anger, I guess is the best way of saying it, they claim to be Calvinist. In fact, they claim to be adherents to the 1689 Latin Baptist Confession.
And one thing that they would have in common with some of the unhinged polemics that is going around today on the Facebook and internet is they too believe God hates Arminians. And they believe that all Arminians are damned as well as probably everybody outside the walls of their church.
Yeah, yeah, that's correct. And that is the tendency, Chris, with some of the people who are, it's not surprising that, again, in the right way.
Well, thank you, C .J. and Lyndon Hearst, Long Island, and please continue spreading the word about Iron Trump and Zion Radio and Lyndon Hearst and beyond. So when we do have disagreements with our brothers, first of all, let's start with our brothers now, because in this case that we are responding to, it's ironic that there is such bitterness and nastiness and ad hominem being used against people by people who claim to share the same confession of faith and the same soteriological doctrines.
And the same, you could probably almost go doctrine by doctrine, line upon line, precept upon precept, and you would find very much agreement, almost symmetrical agreement. But it's the approach that is being disagreed on for the most part, and also what is viewed as an inappropriate extension of the embrace of brotherhood to people who disagree and deny Calvinism.
How do you respond to that level of hostility when you are talking about brothers in Christ for whom Christ died?
Yeah, it's completely unjustifiable to ever address Christ in the way that I do. Again, very mean-spirited slander there. And then when you see people trying to correct them in a gentle way and say, look, you know, it's not that what you're saying, there may be some validity to that, maybe it's something to consider, but you've got to back up and consider the way you're saying this, just the kinds of things you're saying, the way that you're insulting the individual and attacking them in a very personal way.
And what they'll respond is, oh no, here's the Tome police, here's the Tome police, that's their thing. And then they'll have other people who will jump in and, you know, the Tome police are here, and they would say that like as if Tome doesn't have any relevance to anything, like it doesn't matter.
And they see themselves in some ways as martyrs, like they're the John the Baptist, they're out there spreading the truth, and they would equate people who would question them and say, look, just you're not doing this in the right way, they would equate that with, like what you said before, Chris, like the extreme of like liberalism or allowing, you know, things to go on in the church that are an abomination because, you know, it's this soft, you know, snowflake, that term that's out there, snowflake, you know, millennial-type behavior.
They would lump all that together and find no sensible, wait a second, yeah, we don't want to be, you know, we want to have a sense of dignity and a sense of saying, yeah, we need to be men and, you know, gird up our loins and all that, but there's still a way to respect each other and to treat each other with love and respect, not only for the benefit of the person that you're dealing with and trying to bring correction, but also for others.
You know, the leaders among these groups, there are men who are obviously who are more in a leadership position. What they probably don't realize, and you see this, is that they're creating a cheerleader atmosphere and they're actually, they're training others to see that as a viable way of addressing people, and so they're sending out others to do the very same thing or have the very same tone and attitude toward other people they would address, and you can see it happening, like you can see other people doing that, even on the internet, and it's, and they're following these people who they look up to like cancer, and it really is going to be destructive of, it could be a large group coming up, and they're being reared in this kind of way, and they're thinking that these guys, they're thinking that they're the Puritans and they're the Reformers and the great martyrs and the John the Baptist, and they're going to deal with all the, you know, the people who are, you know, get rid of all these, you know, these wafer, you know, soft, sensitive people who are Calvinists, who are moderate Calvinists, they're not real Calvinists, and in reality, what they're going to do is just create a great division, a great schism, and it's going to be something that it's going to come back to bite us as a whole down the road, because there is a growing number of people who are finding that to be the right, the right attitude and the right means, and are justifying it falsely by a false understanding of scripture, because they're following these people who have great influence, and so the guys who are leading this pack, who are leading this, who have 12 ,000 followers and likes and all this on Twitter and whatever, 15 ,000 or more, these guys, and will find themselves hopefully under the shoe of God in this lifetime, so that they don't have to give account for it in.
The next, I would hope. Now, the theme that you developed for your article obviously comes from Philippians chapter 4 verse 5, let your gentle spirit be known to all men, the Lord is near. If you could explain why is it important that our gentle spirit be known to all men?
Obviously, I believe that this is addressing all people, even outside of the faith.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and what I did, Chris, and what I wrote in the paper that I wrote, is I have about four sections in there other than the introduction. The first section I address the whole concept of what would Jesus do, because a lot of them would say, and we'll get into that, I'm sure at some point in the interview, about just, well, look at how Jesus responded to the Pharisees, and how he wasn't gentle, and they would say things like that, so I deal with that whole issue of Jesus, and then I get into the mark of the true Christian, which is a gentle spirit, where we deal with specific teaching didactic texts, not looking just at historical narrative and saying, look, well, Jesus did this on this occasion, and saying that we necessarily should be doing that.
We're not always to do what Jesus did or John the Baptist. We're not always to do that. We're not the same. We're not in the same position. There's uniqueness to their ministry and circumstances, and also we don't want to say that that's all they did, but there were reasons for why they did what they did and so on at different times, but there are very clear teaching texts in the teaching didactic portions of Scripture that would tell us what the mark of a true Christian is, and one of those texts is Philippians 4, when Paul says in Philippians 4 -5, as you said, Chris, let your gentleness be known to all men.
The Lord is at hand, and there's two parts to that text. One is that it's not just to just say that we are humble, because anybody can say, look, I'm humble, and so on, but it should be perceived in those who are around us, and amongst all people, like you said, Chris, unbelievers and believers alike should get the general perception from us that we are a people who are gentle, that we are people who are humble, that we are people who have a self-control, who have a tone that's respectful.
Again, not compromising the truth, not going against the truth. There's a big difference. Stand upon the truth, be uncompromising with the truth, while speaking in a tone and living in a way that presents ourselves as gentle, and the Lord is at hand is kind of the motivation of that verse.
It's kind of the drive to say, look, be gentle. Let it be known to all people. Let all people see that and perceive that in you and recognize you as a gentle person when they identify you and see your demeanor, and what should drive us is to know that, look, even though we don't see the Lord, and there's two ways you can look at this second part of the verse, there's two ways of interpreting, but one is even though we don't see Him, we have to consciously remind ourselves in all of our, you know, contexts and conversations and all that we do, that Christ is right here.
He is present with us, and as we address people, our Lord and our Savior is there with us and among us and sees what we're doing. We need to have that that reality of His presence needs to be forever in our hearts, and then secondly, we can also think of it as the Lord's return at hand, right?
His coming and His return again. We're soon going to see that He's going to gather His people, right, and bring us to the final judgment, so in light of that final end, in light of the fact that all this that we're living now is temporal and is going to be wrapped up one day and we're going to stand before Him, let's ensure that we are seen as gentle to all people, that they perceive a genuine gentleness in us.
So really, a sobering text given at Philippians 4 -5. And we're going to be going to our midway break,.
And I hope that you take advantage of that time to also write questions for Pastor Mark Romaldi on rethinking biblical polemics, and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.
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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Mark Romaldi of Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, in our discussion on rethinking biblical polemics. One sure way all Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers.
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First of all, the G3 conference, which is returning to Atlanta, Georgia next week, January 17th through the 20th at the Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, Georgia, is going to be featuring a really phenomenal lineup, a phenomenal roster of speakers.
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And that's also the email address where you can send a question to Pastor Mark Rimoldi of Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, on the theme we are discussing, Let Your Gentleness Be Known to All, Rethinking Biblical Polemics, chrisarnzon at gmail .com.
Pastor Mark, you had brought up the fact that some of these folks who are crossing the line from responsible polemics over into wickedness, they are using the Lord Jesus Christ himself as allegedly their example because he has called the Pharisees brood of vipers, hypocrites, whitewashed sepulchers filled with dead men's bones, and the Apostle Paul has called the Galatians fools because they were being seduced by the Judaizers, and so on.
How do you respond to these folks when they use men, and of course Jesus Christ being the God-man, when they use these figures as their examples for what they're doing?
Yeah, good question. Let me preface my answer with this just to show even the severity. I was involved with an interaction where one man had become, and he had just said, look, I'm concerned about your calling to the ministry to be gentle, and that the person then responded to that individual by saying Jesus was not gentle, and I don't think he realized at the time, and I commented, and he wound up deleting the whole section right after I commented.
On it. As the church lady used to say, how convenient. Yeah, well, I said to him, I don't.
Know if you realize, but you just disqualified Jesus from the ministry, you know, by saying, you know, the guy quoted scripture from 1 Timothy saying, look, one of the qualifications is gentleness, and then his response was, well, Jesus was not gentle, and I'm like, why?
You're contending with 1 Timothy and using Jesus as an example to contend with 1 Timothy. Do you realize that you just disqualified Jesus from the ministry? And then after that, like I said, somehow it just got lost in cyberspace, that issue, but it just shows you the extent to where just where these guys are in many ways, just how hardened they can be in their view of this, and one of the claims is that you'll see coming back and forth is, well, look, Jesus Christ, you know, look at him, he wasn't always gentle, and there were times when he, you know, let them have it, the Pharisees and so on, or John the Baptist, and then they'll maybe talk about Martin Luther or people from the Reformation and so on, and one of the things I say with Jesus is say, well, look, you know, you can't look at the biblical narrative of all of Jesus's actions and words and think that we are to copy everything that he does and emulate everything that Christ does, right?
One of the problems that we have with the, what would Jesus do with his morality and so on, and definitely as our great example, but there are certain things that we should not do that Jesus did, certain things that were a priority and a privilege that belonged to him as the God-man, and so I prefaced my response to the whole issue of whether we should follow Jesus in how he handled the Pharisees by saying, look, you need to consider, first of all, that Jesus is unique.
Jesus is God, the Son in flesh, that we ought not to speak. There were times when he said, I, you know, you have heard it said this way, but I say to you, you know, speaking as God in flesh and as one who had the authority of not only as God and as a prophet, and we don't have the right to do that.
Also, Jesus knew the hearts of people in a way that we don't, and in John chapter 2, verses 23 to 25, you read that text and it's actually quite sobering because it says there that there were people who believed in Jesus, who were professing that they believed, and Jesus didn't give his time to them, it says.
He basically walked away from them, and the reason was that he knew the heart of man, he knew what was in their hearts, and so he knew that their profession was not sincere because he knew their hearts.
We don't have that ability to know the heart, and so we're going to give our attention to people like that who make a profession because we don't have the ability to discern the heart when it's not revealed in a more, right, a more evident way that Jesus does, and so he could factor that into how he responds to certain people at different times.
But also, we need to be careful that we don't, again, use historical narratives and those kinds of unique events in looking at the history of Jesus as the priority in defining how we ought to live. We have to, especially when it would disagree with what we see in the very clear didactic teachings of Scripture.
We ought to ask, are there didactic teachings, are there clear teachings in the epistles and in other areas that tell us that we ought to have such and such an attitude? If that's the case, that ought to be first what affects how we live, and then we ought to interpret what Jesus did and so on in that light to see if A, he is fulfilling that directly, or B, he is acting in a unique way, dealing with unique circumstance.
So people tend to go right to the historical narrative, and they violate their hermeneutics, what reformed hermeneutics we would do in any other case. We would say, no, let the didactic teachings interpret how you interpret historical narrative, how you understand historical narrative.
Didactic teachings take the priority, but for some reason, these guys look at the historical narrative and think that that takes the cake. But also, noting with Jesus as well, again, we're not Jesus. Secondly, we have to understand that Jesus' harshest words were spoken not to his brethren, not to even the disciples, right?
Oftentimes the disciples woe you of little faith, things like that. Of course, he was, of course, the God, again, God in flesh, but it was to the self-righteous, unregenerate, pride-filled, money-loving, Holy Spirit-blaspheming, maliciously evil Pharisees and Sadducees who were steering people away from the grace of God, who were not promoting any avenue of forgiveness or hope for sinners, who were condemning everyone who was self-righteous.
That's who Jesus is speaking to when he's called them whitewashed tombs and hypocrites and so on. And so we've got to consider his audience. He wasn't speaking to his brothers and to others who were even professing Christians.
He's speaking to the Pharisees. And then thirdly, lastly, with the issue of Jesus as well, with considering his example, Jesus, his overall attitude, I would say, was the example par excellence of gentleness.
To say that he was not gentle to me is blasphemy. It's slander, because we look at how he treated the Pharisees and try to take that and now label that as the entire way that he was in his whole ministry, that that's the kind of way that he spoke to everyone, is absolutely absurd.
To broad brush that what he did in those circumstances when he's dealing with those hypocrites and those people who were anti-Christ and say that that's how his general demeanor was is absolutely, to me, is an offense.
Jesus is the one who said, come to me all you who labor are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle, I am meek and lowly in heart and you'll find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Sinners felt comfortable going to Jesus. He ate with them. Prostitutes, tax collectors were welcomed by Jesus. He treated them with love and grace. Women who had defiled themselves in the most atrocious of ways of all kinds of men.
Yes, he spoke the truth to them, but he did so in a gentle and restorative and loving way, never mocking, never with arrogance. Even toward the Pharisees, there was never mocking or arrogance. It was always with the right and genuine intent of preserving and edifying his people.
Again, the woman by the well, right? Jesus tells that woman, tells it like it is. You know, you've had several husbands, right, until now, but he gently leads her to himself and she goes and tells others and so on.
And so to accuse him of not being gentle and to parade Christ as ungentlemanly because of the way he responded to the Pharisees, to me, is the equivalent of any kind of false doctrine that we can name out there.
It's a harsh and wrong view of Scripture. In fact, I think that these are very sobering words regarding what we're talking about in 1 Corinthians 6, starting with verse 9, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
Such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of God. A reviler is someone who assails others with contemptuous language and they speak of them abusively, and that is listed among some pretty horrific and grotesque sins.
And it seems that there are many Christians, or professing Christians, who wink at this. They don't really view this as something that's wrong, it's not really a sin. Oh, come on, give me a break, you're exaggerating when you rebuke me for doing this kind of a thing.
This is listed among some pretty hideous things, isn't it? Yeah, and that's because,.
Chris, that's because it's divisive, it splits up the church, it does a lot of harm, a lot more harm than people realize. Some of the greatest sins, or the greatest sins that affect, that cause the most damage, believe it or not, are not adultery as serious as adultery is, it's terrible and murder, all those things are horrible.
But some of the sins that affect the church in the worst of ways are sins that are done with the tongue. Those kinds of things cause more damage to the church in many ways than even some of the more personal, deeper and more serious.
And it's so easy, as you said, Chris, to take those things lightly and to brush it aside and to try to see it as something that's not really that big of a deal, it really is. And I've seen it, like as I said, on those, I see people going back and forth and just being, just angrily, you know, yelling back and forth at each other and it's just creating animosity and really just causing problems amongst.
The people of God. So it is, it is very serious. And of course, slander is a big part of this problem. There are people who are publicly accusing their brethren in Christ for believing certain things that they don't believe and for having motives for certain things that they don't have.
I even was being accused of being a sycophant of Dr. James R. White, my dear friend, going back to 1995. Someone was accusing me of sucking up to him because I get personal gain out of it in some way.
And this individual must not have known that I knew Dr. White for decades, in fact, before he was really all that well known at all. I mean, he was relatively unknown outside of Reformed Baptist circles at one point, when I first became a friend of his.
So these kinds of slander is never okay. In fact, I thought this was kind of, I have to admit it, I found it humorous, even though it's pretty horrific, when I rebuked someone who was defending saying anything negative about Muslims, for instance, that you could come up with.
Any kind of nasty rhetoric was completely fine as far as this person was concerned, because they're Muslims after all. And I said, well, what about the command that we're not supposed to bear false witness against our neighbor?
And the person actually said, Muslims are not my neighbors. So basically, he was saying, it's okay to bear false witness about them because they're not his neighbors. Now, as I've used this illustration before, but if you are a witness for the prosecution in a courtroom, somebody's on trial for murder, and you know for a fact, because you saw the person kill one person, he murdered someone, one individual, it is still slander and bearing false witness if you say, even about this murderer that you know is a murderer, that he killed two people.
I mean, the command against bearing false witness, that's not just referring to kind and wonderful and lovable people, it's regarding.
Anybody, isn't it? Yeah, in fact, the popes of old used to go back on their word when dealing with, when John Hoos was called to the council, he had guaranteed that he would be safe, he'd be able to return back home if he went.
He gave himself up and went because they guaranteed him safe return. And when he went there and they immediately locked him and threw him in a dungeon and people began to question the pope and it led to a great uprising with the Hussites and so on.
But the pope said, well look, I don't have to give my word, giving my word to a heretic, I don't have to do that. I can be dishonest because he's a heretic. And so they used that kind of excuse as well to do the damage that they did.
Well, look, if he's a heretic, it doesn't matter. And Islam, right? And a lot of, and some of the people within Islam would say, wait, you have the right to lie, you know, within a society, if you're, if you're in a minority, the majority, you know, so that, that kind of logic is not Christian.
It's wrong. And I think one of the things just to commend Dr. White on, by the way, as I, in my listening to some of his material, he's always trying to present a fair case, even for those who are against him pretty severely.
Like he's, he's very careful to ensure that even those who he opposes, who have terrible doctrines or heretics, that if they're in the right about something, he's very anal. And I say that in a positive sense about ensuring that he does not misrepresent them.
And if they are misrepresented, he'll be the first one to, to defend them and say, look, that's not true. We got to be careful where we go. And I think that's a very important thing to, to maintain the.
Integrity of somebody who is a Christian. Yeah, I mean, people are viewing this as if there is no hope for any Muslim to become saved. They're treating the situation as if, who cares, these people are reprobates, as if they could know not only the hearts and minds of men, but as if they could know who God's elect are before they are regenerate.
And, and who are the reprobate. So, you know, for us to besmirch the body of Christ and the Christian church by lying and being careless about facts, you are, why would anybody other than a miracle of God believe in anything else you have to say?
I mean, when I hear someone starting to uh, uh, bring a, a bring Calvinism for instance, or describe Calvinism as a caricature and slander it and twist it and say all kinds of nonsensical things about it.
And even laughably nonsensical things about Calvinism and the doctrines of grace, my mind shuts off as far as anything else they have to say. I'm not like, I'm not hanging on their every word anymore.
When, when I know that they don't even know what they're talking about. So if you are evangelizing lost people and you're misrepresenting the teachings of the religion, or even perhaps the beliefs of the individual that you're, you're evangelizing, they're not going to take you seriously.
Yeah. I agree a hundred percent, Chris. And even from the other sense from, from within our own camp, when Calvinists go after Arminians, um, and again, I'm not talking about, you know, critiquing or even wrestling with them about things and showing the truth.
Cause I think that our doctrines are beyond precious. You know, I wouldn't trade them for the world, but sometimes these draw about Arminians and the blanket statement described them. I say, you know, that's not what they believe that.
Yeah. There's inconsistency within Arminianism. There's no question. There's an inconsistency there, but that's what they, that's that inconsistency is the very thing that keeps them, keeps them into a place where they're safe, you know?
Um, but they go beyond that. Some Calvinists, hyper-Calvinists and attack and just assume the worst, get to the worst case scenario and they accuse them of all kinds of things. And that's why they're heretics and they're not brothers.
And, um, so from both ends, you're right. I, I just, those kinds of people, I just have little tolerance to listen to. I don't, I, but thinking about this, I just, when these guys claim to be of the ilk of a John the Baptist, cause I've heard that, well, this brother is, you know, you're called to this calling and people are called to this.
And this brother is called to be of a ministry similar to like a John the Baptist to kind of go out there and kind of like, you know, let people have it, so to speak, which John the Baptist didn't do.
And John the Baptist happened to be one of the humblest people that lived in the entire face of the earth at the time. But yes, he did confront the sin of the King. He did confront the Pharisees. Um, but they throw out the rest of his entire life and his general demeanor.
Um, but I think there's a difference between somebody who speaks the truth sobering in a sobering sense, even fervently someone like, I think of like a Paul, modern day Paul Washer, right? I could listen to Paul Washer and he'll preach a message and it could be real heavy and it can be, it will hit you between the eyes.
I mean, it will hit you hard, but I can tell by the way, by how he says what he's saying, this man loves you. This man is speaking fervently. He's speaking very strongly. He's speaking in a fiery way, but it's done in love, right?
Al Martin, people like that. It's done in love. They're not arrogant. They're not mocking like they're the equivalent of a fiery preacher by doing what they do. And I'm saying, no, don't put yourself on that ilk.
Don't put yourself with a Paul Washer and Al Martin or guys who speak, you know, with that real fiery passion and severity. Those men are not mocking or arrogant nor was Christ nor was John the Baptist.
Um, it's, it's a completely different ballgame the way these guys are flippantly arrogant, mocking, um, just the things that they say. Even just, I've seen people even inquiring on a, on a thread, just asking a question and just interacting a little bit and say, well, what about this?
Just trying to make sense of it all. And just getting beat down. I mean, just the door slammed in their face, like basically to the extent of like, well, what's wrong with you? Like if you understood anything about theology or, or if you had any, you know, if you had any kind of an understanding of anything you would, you know, like just not even working with people and reasoning with people, it's, it's across the board.
You know, these guys are just, will just throw bobs and it's, it's.
Wrong. And we have to go to our final break right now. And if you'd like to join us on the air with your own question, now's the time to do it before we run out of time. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.
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We're speaking about Let Your Gentleness Be Known to All Rethinking Biblical Polemics. We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, Are we to be devoid of humor whenever we address people with opposing views?
Some of them are so bizarre and nonsensical and laughable, I cannot prevent myself from at times being sarcastic or humorous when describing what they believe. Is this never to be practiced by.
Faithful Christians? Yeah, I would say that to this brother that I would think in general, but it's not a good idea. And believe me, you're talking to somebody who loves humor. In fact, Chris, you too.
You're well known as a man of humor too, so we love to enjoy humor. But I think when you're dealing with people who are responding to people, even if they say something that's kind of outlandish or out in left field, you've got to ask the question, well, what can I do?
What's the best response to give this person that would be unto the glory of God? You know, God says in His Word, whatever you do, even if you eat or drink, do it in His glory. If I respond to this guy in a mocking way, or even if it's ridiculous, or this person, is that going to bring edification to those who are around me?
Is that going to train them to know how to respond to others, even if they come up with these ridiculous things? What's it going to do for that person's soul? Is it going to make them want to see Christ, or to turn away from their errors?
So you do better to invest your time in trying to invest on bringing restoration, correction, those kinds of things, as opposed to mocking. So I would say that humor really should have as little part as possible.
I don't know, maybe there's some place for it, but I don't see much of a place for it. I don't see it really in the ministry of Christ at all.
Let me give you an example of what maybe Arnie is talking about. Let's say there is a Christian who has a radio show or a TV show, and he says that he has a New Testament that is being added to the Old and New Testaments, a new word of God that was brought to him by Martians.
A spacecraft landed in his backyard, and the Martians gave him this scroll that has new teachings from God. Now, if something is that insane, are we not to be able to say anything in a humorous light about it?
Well, Chris, if it's you saying that, we should definitely say some real humorous and crazy things against you. That I would have no problem advocating that. No, I agree. I mean, again, I think there's also a difference between you listening to the radio and you hear something like that, and you're with a couple of friends who are of the same mindset, and you kind of crack a couple of jokes.
We all do that about certain things. I'm not saying throw that all out the window. I'm thinking more along the lines of, again, if you're on the internet, you're on Facebook, and somebody puts a comment on there, and there's obviously some ignorance to the comment, and then you respond to that person in a way that might embarrass them in front of everyone else.
I think that the context is important. Yeah, if somebody came on the radio, and again, you have even these guys like these Benny Hinns, these guys who are just evident false prophets who are malicious, there's a place to say some things about these guys that's strong.
So I think there is a place for that, and that's where maybe the application of Christ speaking to the Pharisees and so on would come into play as well. But I just think we need to be cautious that we don't carry that over into dealing with individuals who may be ignorant, who may be young in the faith, who may say things at times that are just really off the wall, and just maybe need to try to lead them in the right way.
So yeah, I think this could be a place. And of course, that has nothing to do.
With the circumstances that led to our discussing this topic today. There's nothing that is outlandishly comical about those who are being slandered and belittled, and having their characters assassinated in public that would involve this.
In fact, some of those who have been, for instance, belittling Dr. James R. White, my dear friend, they have made use of his ministry in the past. They've invited him to speak at their churches. They've had conferences where he was on the roster.
So you're talking about people who recognize that he is doctrinally faithful, who really have a personal bone to pick, or they are taking a disagreement over strategy into a whole different sphere and level of disagreement where it becomes wickedness.
Yeah, I mean, more than likely James White has probably not said anything that's outlandish. And I would say that I think, again, without getting too specific, I think with the issues surrounding James White, and I know people have different opinions and so on, there's been an ongoing just observation of his ministry, and that's gone on all the way back to people questioned in the past.
And I think that some of these guys just are by attacking him. I don't agree with everything 100 that James White does or anyone does. I don't agree with a lot of things that I do. I mean, the reality is still, how would I handle that?
And I certainly have a lot of respect for Dr. White in many ways, and in probably most ways of what he does. And I use his ministry often. I listen to all of his church history, lectures, and so on. But there are people who are just they're just looking for anything they can to jump on him, you know, because they have gripes from the past.
And so now that's their pet peeve. And it's just, to me, they're losing valuable time on being able to do anything productive. Also, it creates a problem where he loses valuable time, where he could be doing a lot of things he's doing, and he has to spend time now addressing these things.
And it's just the Reformed Baptists, you know, are in cockpits against each other. And there's so much that can be done for the kingdom of God. So yeah, so I think that there's what's going on is, it's just so wrong.
Step back and start trying.
Well, I want to make sure that we didn't leave any stones unturned. And I want you to address some things that I might have overlooked to ask you today.
Sure. One other thing I'd mention, Chris, too, is because some people would say, as well, some of these guys would say that, okay, well, as a polemicist, or as an apologist, or as a minister, you know, there's a little more liberality to be able to respond in ways that are more, you know, more harsh and so on.
And I want to respond to that as well, because I think there's many great texts that we can go over that I've skipped, just for the sake of time. But I think one of the texts that really stands out to me is in 1 Timothy chapter 5.
And if you remember, in the context of 1 Timothy, which, in God's grace, I just preached through recently, Paul is, throughout that book, one of his main goals is to encourage Timothy to deal with some of the falsehoods that have been intruding the church at Ephesus.
So Timothy is at Ephesus, he's there, and Paul is trying to, you know, embolden him and encourage him and exhort him to stand firm and to not be shy and, you know, not to let anybody, you know, look down upon his youth and etc.
And so Paul is encouraging him to clean house, you know, while he's there, to deal with these errors that are in there, and these fables and misuses of the law. But it's interesting in all of that, when Paul talks to Timothy, and, you know, orders him to do those things, he says in 1 Timothy 5, 1 and 2, critical instructions that really, I think we need to see as applicable across the board.
And if they're applicable for Timothy as a leader in the church, as a leader above leaders, they're certainly applicable to all of us. And it says here, he gives us the general way, a general pattern that we ought to look to in our treatment of...
And he says this, do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father. Younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity. And so when Paul says this to Timothy, first of all, the word rebuke there, let me just say right from the outset, is not the same word for rebuke that we see, that's what we're to do positively, right?
We're all called to rebuke one another in love and so on. That word there means harshly rebuke. It's a different word, it's actually a different word in the Greek, and it means don't sharply rebuke an older man.
And Paul gives Timothy general instructions on how he's to deal with the whole family of God. And he's saying, look, when you're dealing with older men, Timothy, even as you're in charge, as you're a leader there, and you have to clean house and deal with these issues and deal with them fervently, he says, don't harshly rebuke those who are older than you, like older men in the church, but exhort him as a father.
So exhort him, correct him, but treat him as you would a father. So there's a respect there in the attitude and the tone that you use. And then the younger men, he doesn't say, okay, younger men, you can be harsh toward them.
He says, younger men as brothers, treat them as you would brothers, older women, as mothers, younger women, as sisters with all purity. And so in there, we have a general demeanor across the board. How do I treat all of the people who are with me in this walk of faith?
Well, I need to ensure that those who I know who are older in their years, that I have a certain level of respect for them. And I treat them like a father, even when correcting them, even when exhorting them, even when leading them.
When I deal with older women, that I treat them like mothers. And when I deal with those who are younger or equal to my age in that area, I treat them as brothers and sisters. And I think that gives us a general picture of how we ought to present ourselves to those who are in the church.
This is dealing specifically with brethren, how we ought to show a gentle attitude, even when correcting. Because again, Timothy is half the clean house in Ephesus. He's got a lot of garbage he has to weed out, and it's doctrinal.
It's all doctrinal stuff. So if we're going to be polemicists, and we're going to address people, we have to have that mindset that's familial in our correction, that treats others as brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers, and corrects them with a tone that's appropriate to how I would treat, or I should treat a father or mother or brother and sister.
So I think that that's a great text. The qualifications for the elders in 1 Timothy, Paul says that they're to be gentle. He goes on to talk about, to Timothy, over and over. He says that a servant of the Lord is not to be quarrelsome, or the person who is to be qualified in ministry, but gentle.
He says, but you, O man of God, flee, pursuing riches and so on. He says, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness. So again, Timothy, a leader in the church, is to pursue actively, consciously, consciously pursue gentleness.
And so I think that that would speak pretty strongly to the issue of polemics, how we ought to handle those we disagree with, and even when we find error. Because the reality is, Chris, as you know, in the best of cases, in people, the smartest of people, and the most theologically astute people in this world, if we stick around them long enough, especially if they're in the public eye, they're going to have faults.
We all have faults, and they have faults too, and they're going to be seen. They're going to have tendencies. They're going to have pride. Should it shock me when I see somebody in the public arena actually show some kind of pride?
Why am I shocked at that? What do I think, that they're already sanctified to the fullest extent? You do a debate, and debate somebody else publicly, and see if no pride comes out of you, or no, I mean, it's in all of us.
So we have to be gracious and respond to these things in a way that's edifying, that's in love. So that's kind of a, you want me to repeat that, Chris?
We have, let's see, we have Bibi in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, Can you give some counsel on a wise way of retracting some unnecessary, harsh, or sinful things that someone may have said in public, while not giving the appearance that you are caving in to the opinions, or practices, or beliefs of the one being criticized?
That is, let me just say that that is an excellent question, and the person who did that,.
I really appreciate that question. That's Bibi in Cumberland County.
Okay, what do you do now when you've spoken in a way, or you've put a comment on Facebook, and now everybody sees it, right? Hundreds and hundreds of friends, and they have friends, without, when you want to deal with that, realizing the way you did that was with an inappropriate tone, how do you deal with that without compromising on whatever it is you're addressing?
Excellent, excellent question. What I would say is, you can, I would put out a general comment, if it's on a Facebook thread, or whatever way you can speak to the audience, or the potential audience that could have been affected by it, as best as you can.
I would say after praying, I would just express and say, look, I might even contact the individual if it was directed toward an individual. Let me just say that. I might contact them privately first and say, look, I want to let you know that while we disagree on this issue, and while I still think these are some things we should discuss, the way that I had addressed this with you was wrong.
It was not in a Christ-like manner. It was not in keeping with what the Scriptures say about the attitude I ought to have, and I'm asking you for forgiveness for sinning against you, because it was wrong.
And I'm going to, publicly, I'm going to put out a post that expresses, well, again, while I'm not saying that we're in agreement, but that my attitude and the way that I addressed you was wrong, and that I'm asking for forgiveness from you, you know, in a public setting.
I had to do that in a public setting in the church years ago. I mean, there was a time when I had, you know, said something that was offensive to someone, and that I actually stood before the whole church, and I said, look, I want to let you know that when I spoke, and again, I didn't agree with the issue necessarily.
I was still in disagreement, perhaps over the issue, but I said, I want to let you know that the way that I addressed that person was inappropriate. It was wrong, and I asked that individual for forgiveness, and I want to ask you for forgiveness.
And that goes a long way. I mean, people, that in itself is a ministry. Not that you want to intentionally do wrong so that it will lead to that, but that's a great ministry, because people see that and say, wow, that's not natural.
That's not normal. How could that, I would never have done that. You know, this person just basically humiliated themselves in doing that. It goes a long way, and I think it also having that practice will lead us more to a place where we learn how to put on humility, and we learn the next time, because I don't want to embarrass myself like that again, to be careful with my words.
So I think that's what I would do. I would address it personally, and if it's something that was done publicly, if it was in a public setting, I would definitely seek to address it, at least in a public sentence, and say, look, we may not agree on all these things, but I want to let you know that some of the things that I said to so-and-so were definitely inappropriate, were wrong, were sinful, just in the attitude, and I've asked for forgiveness for him, and I ask you for forgiveness.
Nothing wrong with putting that out as a post. And for those of our listeners who are using Martin Luther and his mockery of his opponents as an example that they claim to be following, it is interesting that at the Diet of Worms, or Worms, when Johann von Eck was cross-examining Martin Luther on the second day of the trial, and von Eck asked Luther if he defended all of his books, Luther did admit that the books against his popish opponents were too vitriolic.
He did admit that. So that's one thing that we should remember, that he did not even stand by his own actions all the time in every word that he spoke. He was honest enough to say that he.
Went overboard in his language at times. And we have to keep in mind, again, too, Martin Luther, two things. One, unique time, unique circumstances. So I would be slow to criticize him to an extent and recognize what he's dealing with, but also I personally would not see him as the greatest example of the particular issue we're addressing.
There were times, and again, the Lord used him in great ways in spite of that, and if I were in his shoes, who knows, maybe I would have done worse. There were some things that he said, especially toward the end of his life, that I cringe even to read, that were horrible and offensive.
And so I would say you have to take, even Martin Luther, with the great things how God has used him, he still is a man, and even the best of men are men at best. I would say you still have to hold him up to scripture and say, okay, I'm not going to let that, my ultimate guide is not Martin Luther, except for insofar as he is following what I see taught in the didactic, clear teachings of scripture.
And so that's where I would look at with Martin Luther. I would have to look at the very clear teachings of scripture and see and assess that. I wouldn't look to him as the greatest example, let's say, in that vein, but at the same time I would also say that we have to appreciate the time that he's coming from and what he was dealing with.
Even the Apostle Paul, real quick, in Acts, you remember when he stood before the council, the Sanhedrin, and he at one point called the high priest, he didn't know it was the high priest, but he called him a whitewashed tomb.
And they said, hey, do you not know you're speaking to a high priest? And Paul kind of pulled back and said, oh, I didn't realize that was the high priest. You know, even he, the Apostle Paul, dealing with the Pharisees, dealing with the high priest, who was an ungodly man, who was corrupt in every sense, even Paul pulled back and said, wait a second, I realized that that was, I didn't realize that it was.
Well, you have about 90 seconds if you could.
Summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.
Yeah, let me just, as Chris said earlier, because it does take hard work and it does debate and so on, it's important. We need those who love truth. However, we want to adorn our polemics with a gentle heart that is in keeping with those who would seek to truly represent Christ in any effective ministry that will bear the mark of the Holy Spirit.
And so harsh, arrogant, careless polemics, even if it's accompanying biblical truth, is of the flesh. And we need to examine ourselves and seek to ensure that we're adorning ourselves with gentleness.
So we want to make sure we are men and women of truth, and men and women who are gentle and gracious in presenting.
That truth. Amen. Well, I want to make sure that our listeners have all the information that they need to know about you and Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York. First of all, the website for Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island is gracereformedbaptistchurch .com.
Gracereformedbaptistchurch .com. Is there any contact information or resource where someone.
Can read your article that you wrote on this subject? Yeah, that's a good question. Certainly, I have access to it. You know, I have it on Facebook. I've sent it to people. I have a copy of it. So if anybody would like a copy of the article, they can either, if you can contact me through our church website, go to the email, email the church, and just say that you would like to get a copy of the article spoken about on Orange Harp and Zion from Pastor Mark Romoldi.
Just whatever, say something like that, and I'll gladly send it to you. You could also call our church, 516 -379 -2408, 516 -379 -2408, and I'd be glad to provide you with the information on how to get that article or any other questions you might have.
And Chris, you have a copy of it, too, on hand. I think you have it. I sent it to you as an e-file. Yes, I did. I'll get it to you. So any way, any of those avenues would be sufficient. Well, I want to thank you so much,.
Pastor Mark Romoldi. Please extend my warm greetings to my brothers and sisters at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, whom I love and miss dearly, and I look forward to you coming back on the program.
If you could hold on just for a minute so I can give you a proper goodbye before we go, or should I say after we go off the air? And I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in.
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.