The Law, the Gospel, and Sanctification | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, John and I have a very simple, a very frank, and a very free conversation about the law and the gospel and sanctification.

If we're honest, the law and the gospel are often confused, the gospel ends up sounding really hard, and sanctification ends up sounding really terrible.

If that's the case, something's amiss, something's wrong. And so John and I are going to talk about those things today. We're going to talk about the work of Christ and what he's accomplished for us and what that means for our peace and our rest, and how that turns not only the law into something that's obviously good for us, but turns sanctification into a joy.

And then in SR, we talk about good works. What are they, defined biblically, and how are good works talked about poorly in the church?

We hope that's clarifying for you. Hope you enjoy the episode. Stay tuned. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. Your hosts today are

John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

We have met on this Wednesday morning to podcast after some hiatus, some time away from the microphones, for various reasons that we don't need to disclose right now.

But we are somewhat happy to be back, and we are praying and asking the Lord to be with us, as we always do.

And we trust that this will be a helpful conversation for the listener, and we hope encouraging for our own souls, even as we try to lay this down,

John. So, how are you, man? And why don't you tee up the topic for today? We're going to get right to it. Not mess around.

Yeah, I'm excited for today's topic. It's going to be good. I just want to throw one thing out there. We often continue these conversations offline in the app.

So, if you want to come over and join the SR community and join that conversation over there, we'd love to have you.

So today, Justin, as the title most likely will say, we try to title these ahead of time,

The Law, the Gospel, and Sanctification. And that could be, we could talk about a thousand things.

Is there anything there to discuss? That's right. We are going to have a frank and yet very free conversation about how all three of these often get into a tangled ball of yarn, and it becomes of no value to anyone because you can't distinguish sanctification in the law and the gospel.

And most people walk away discouraged and frustrated where they should be encouraged and find strength in the midst of our weakness.

Law gospel is supposed to help us in our sanctification. And unfortunately, because those two are mixed, they don't.

So, Justin, let's start with explaining the law. Sure. Law, gospel, and a covenantal framework, man.

So, we're confessional reform guys, and we're coming at it from that perspective. And that's going to come through today.

And if you have no idea what any of those words mean, just keep listening because we're going to be talking about scripture, and we're going to be talking about very simple things, high -level truths from the

Bible. And so we trust you'll be able to track along with us. So, John, to your point, man, there's a lot of confusion out there.

And I agree completely that people, when we talk about the gospel, the law, sanctification, it all becomes a jumbled mess.

And instead of being comforted, people are afraid. Instead of being encouraged to endure because God is faithful, we get absolutely burnt out, exhausted, worn out, because we're convinced that it has everything to do with us, and we know we're going to fail.

And so, yeah, what can we say to these things? Let's begin with the law itself and how the

Lord intends for the law to be used and how it relates to the gospel in the most primary sense. So the law of God is sometimes referred to, the law that we're talking about right now is sometimes referred to as the moral law or the law of creation.

It's written into humanity. It's written into the world that God makes from the very beginning and then is summarized and given to Moses on two tablets of stone, otherwise known as the

Ten Commandments. So when we're saying the law right now, we're talking about the moral law of God, just to be very clear.

What man has done throughout history, it's very obvious. The biblical record bears this out. We have turned that moral law of God into something that we can keep in order to be saved.

We have deluded ourselves into thinking that we can do it. Now God, in his word, does say things like, do these things and you will live,

Leviticus chapter 18 and verse 5. Cursed is everyone who does not do everything that is written in the book of the law,

Deuteronomy 27, 26, right? Like these things are real from the Lord. The problem is that man has taken those verses so literally on the surface of them to think that we can actually keep

God's law well enough to merit eternal life. There was one opportunity for man to obey and merit eternal life that occurred in the

Garden of Eden when God made a covenant with our first father, Adam. And Adam failed to keep that covenant and was therefore cursed and was driven out of the garden by the

Lord himself, away from the presence of the tree of life, because he would no longer be able to earn eternal life.

And so now, as we fast forward through the history of humanity, the history of the world, the history of redemption, a man named

Jesus of Nazareth shows up on the scene and preaches a sermon on the side of a hill that's pretty famous. It's called the Sermon on the

Mount. And what he does in that sermon, amongst other things, is to teach people as the

Lord himself, like he's the Lord in the flesh, he's going to teach people how they are to understand and apply the moral law of God.

And he crushes everyone in that sermon. He makes it quite plain that no human being is able to do this.

And right now, you may be listening to me and you're thinking, bro, you ain't said a good thing yet. Like everything you're saying so far sounds condemning and it's not hope -filled, it's crushing my soul, and I'm here with you, and here comes the good news.

Jesus of Nazareth, God the Son incarnate, came and placed himself willingly under that same law.

Galatians 4, 4 and 5. At the right time, Christ was born of woman, born under the law in order to redeem those who are under the law.

Well, how did he do that? He came and he placed himself under that law and he died under that law.

He paid the penalty that a lawbreaker deserves. Though he had never broken the law and did not deserve to die, he died as the representative of all who would ever trust in him.

He died as the representative of all of his people from all time. And when he did that, because he is

God and therefore infinite, he is able to atone for all of the law -breaking of everyone who he represents.

So that's huge. The penalty of the law has been fulfilled. The justice of God in the law has been fulfilled in full by Christ for his people's sake.

So we are free from the condemnation of the law. Huge. Second thing that he did, he fulfilled all righteousness.

He kept the law perfectly his entire life. He did and kept his father's every word.

The law he followed perfectly. So all God's pleasure he secured for us.

All this and more he earned for me. And as a song we sing in our church goes, because his righteous life is mine and all his merits now

I own, I am a child of God on high. I am adopted, loved, and known. So Christ has secured all of that for us through his own righteous life that is counted to us by faith.

So in a nutshell, law and gospel in its most primary sense, the law in its first use is to show us our sin and drive us to Christ because Christ willingly subjected himself and put himself under the law to die under it for us, to fulfill its penalty, and to live under it for us to fulfill its requirements.

And he's done both. And so what that means, John, is that we're free from the condemnation of the law and all of the requirements of the law have been met in Christ for us.

So everything that he did, it's as though we did it. It's as though we've already died. Penalty paid.

It's as though we lived a perfect life. Righteousness earned. Though we've not done any of it, he did it for us.

And that's the gospel. It's about what Christ has accomplished for us. So everything's going to flow. The reason that we started with this, and I know

I talked for a few minutes, we want to be super clear out of the gate. Here's the requirements of the law as a covenant of works for righteousness, and Christ came to fulfill its penalty and fulfill its requirements.

So we are now free in him. We're acceptable to God. We have peace, and we have rest because of Jesus.

Received by faith. Come on, brother. I could tell your heart and soul was ready to get rid of that.

That was good. I don't know what my heart and soul was ready for when we started recording this podcast today, but it's just really good.

Very quick personal interjection here, John, that you didn't ask for. Lamentations 3, right?

Everything's terrible. I mean, in my life, there's been a lot going on lately, even circumstantially here with our church and people like sickness, and it's just been a hard start to 2022.

And that said, I don't feel very much as a human being. I feel flat and gray and all that kind of thing.

It's a very Lamentations 3 situation for me right now, though, because I'm calling to mind things that are true.

I'm calling to mind things that the Lord has revealed in his word. And it's like if there's ever going to be hope for a wretched sinner like me or you or anybody listening to this podcast, it's that God has done some stuff and he's revealed some stuff to us that has everything to do with our eternity and has everything to do with our peace.

And we would do well when we're not feeling it to just remind ourselves of the truth and trust God. Amen, brother.

Well, going back to the law, one of the things that is helpful is understanding the point of the first use of the law, why the law was originally given.

And the law should be used daily to remind us because, well, let me say this and the daily part will make sense.

The law is designed for you to look at it and say, that's impossible. There's no, and not just the law like do this, the intentions of the law, like why the law was given.

And the intentions of the law was two things. You want to see if you can earn my favor, here's how you do it.

And then the second intention of the law was to prove no one can earn the favor of God.

To shut everybody's mouth. That's right. A great example, I'm recently preaching through James. You can go to our church's website if you want to listen to that.

But I just preached James chapter 2, and it's that famous verse that Justin and I quote all the time.

You know, whoever keeps the whole law, but yet fails in one point, he has become guilty of it all. That's James is summarizing the intentions of the first use of the law.

You know, it's interesting of why James says that. Most people don't know why he says that's just kind of versus quoted often.

And I would even say out of context, James is dealing with an issue within the churches where they're showing partiality.

And the reason they're showing partiality is because of their own, they are justifying their sin.

They don't see what they're doing as being hurtful, and not only that, ungodly. So James comes in and goes, you don't understand.

You have missed the whole point of the gospel. The law comes in and shows you that you have absolutely violated it, and you're violating it now by showing partiality, and you need the mercy of God.

Because the next thing he says later down is he says, so speak and so act as those who are judged under the law of liberty, which means those who have been set free from the law.

Another way of saying this is you need to show mercy because you've received mercy.

That's what the first use of the law is for. You should never look at the law and think to yourself, oh, man,

I failed God. I need to try harder. You've missed it. You're supposed to look at the law and say, man,

I have failed God. What am I going to do? Where am I going to look now? This is as Justin said.

If you rightly feel the crushing power of the law, you should be ground into powder, blown away, saying

I have no strength. Then you turn and say, what news do I have?

There is what's called good news of that which has been done. What's helpful when we think about law, gospel, and sanctification,

Justin, these two things, the law versus use, often is lowered. We ignore what

James says. It's like, yeah, we relativize it. It's like, yeah, well, you know, I haven't done, as he says, he's going to mention, he's going to really quote

Jesus. He's going to mention murder. Then he's going to mention adultery. So we'll say, well, I haven't done those things, obviously.

I haven't broken those laws. So then we've created what's called the acceptable sins clause, right, where we can be vicious with our words and our actions and ungracious and not show mercy, and yet we still consider ourselves to be acceptable in the eyes of God because I haven't done a comparative sin, which is the big ones.

If I can briefly interject here, while you're talking about the law and how we relativize it,

I alluded to this in my comments, but I just want to make a clear comment on this. What people have done, this includes the

Jewish people in the Old Covenant and even in the era of Christ as the Messiah is showing up on the scene, and this also includes people in our day.

We have an overly literal hermeneutic. We have an overly literal approach to the Scripture where a person would read, you know, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, et cetera, and then would just take those words at their value and say, well,

I haven't killed someone. I'm doing well. I haven't had sexual relations with someone who isn't my spouse.

I'm doing well. And Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, takes those two commandments and says, you've heard it said this, but I'm saying to you, here's how you need to understand that.

If you've been angry with somebody, you've broken the sixth commandment about murder. If you have lusted after someone who's not your spouse, then you have broken the seventh commandment about adultery.

And so a lesson we can learn from that is that there are spiritual meanings and applications to things that are not on the surface of the text, you know, in a commandment, for example.

There's a way that we should rightly unpack and exegete, to use a technical term,

God's law. And people have often not done that, John. We codify everything and we put it in these human terms that are achievable, and we delude ourselves into thinking that we're doing a lot better than we're doing.

So going back to this law and gospel, the only thing that can set you free,

I'll say the statement now and we can unpack it, but the only thing that can set you free and motivate you is the gospel.

Now, before we go into this, I want to go back and tie what James says. If you fail in one point of the law, you fail in all of them and go back to the covenant of works.

This is why Justin and I would say covenant theology is the most Christocentric, freeing, so helpful in glorifying

God and singing praises to his work and deemphasizing the work of man.

We love the covenant of works. If you've not done our course online, it's on YouTube and on our website on covenant theology, we'd encourage you to do so.

Justin, I'm sure you had something right there. Brief summary of covenant theology. I was going to go there. For people that have never heard of it, there's a covenant that God makes in eternity past, the father and the son called the covenant of redemption.

They plan to save a people through the work of the son. He will represent them. God makes a covenant of works with Adam in the garden.

Do this, obey, and you will earn eternal life. Adam failed. Christ came and kept a covenant of works for us, fulfilled its penalty, fulfilled its requirements, and his merit is then given to sinners by faith in the covenant of grace.

Covenant of redemption works in grace, the tri -covenantal framework of the scriptures. We've done a lot of other stuff on that elsewhere.

We'll do more on it in the future. Back to John. Amen. When we start looking at scripture and you compare what the flow of scripture is, you learn right away that no one can keep the law.

One of my favorite parts of covenant theology is the covenant that's made with David, the

Davidic covenant. In that covenant, the psalmist says it this way, that there is a promise that's been given.

In that promise, that the son of David that sits on the throne and perfectly obeys my law will earn for everyone eternal not only righteousness but entrance into the kingdom.

You have to understand when Jesus comes and he perfectly obeys the law and you have people who are standing up to him saying, well, yeah, no,

I'm obeying the law. He's like, no, you don't understand. You're not even close to me. You should be grabbing onto my feet as the prostitute did.

You should be clinging onto me for dear life because your righteousness cannot match my righteousness because one sign of guilty is a sign of guilty altogether.

This is why James comes in and says, we live as people under mercy and so we have to show mercy.

Every day we live as people under mercy. This is why I love when Hebrews says that we can boldly run into the throne room of God and ask for what in a time of need?

Mercy and grace. Before salvation, we need mercy, but after our regeneration and after our adoption, we still need mercy.

Justin Perdue That's a big thing, John, that so many people seem to struggle to understand. It's like I needed a lot of grace and mercy on the front end and now

I'm just going to handle this. Jon Moffitt That's why people confuse 1

John. I said this on Sunday, Justin. We have presuppositions when it comes to Scripture.

We can easily lay them down on top of the Bible. I've seen people do this. This is why it's so dangerous when someone gives me one verse and they say, give me, what does this mean?

I have this natural bent to want to apply it the way I want to apply it, which I would stop them. I'm like, hey, we've got to look at the context.

Why did they say that? There's a reason why they said that. But some of these presuppositions is that when somebody reads

James or 1 John, they can immediately apply it as, well, these are books about you need to be proving your salvation.

You need to be proving that you truly are a legitimate Christian. Or if you go prosperity gospel, like when

James says in James 2 .8, if you are really obeying the commandments of love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well, they can apply that as a transactional relationship.

Like God will bless me. You're in the Lord's favor. That's right. If I'm doing an obedience.

James isn't using it like that at all. And neither is John. James and 1 John both use it in this way.

Look to the law, first use. You are not even remotely close because you can't do it perfectly.

Now look to the cross. What did you receive? Mercy. Now look to your brother.

Give him mercy. It's always in that order. But Justin, what we tend to do is we kind of somehow loop it back up to the law and say, okay, law failed, mercy.

Now I need to go back to prove that I'm. No, it ends at the cross.

And so this is kind of where I think we should, if you're ready, go into this idea of law, gospel, then sanctification, and not mix those two.

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called faith versus faithfulness, a primer on rest.

And if you struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a reformed confessional perspective.

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer. Maybe a really quick insertion between, before we get to sanctification proper, two things

I want to do really quick. I want to interact with your Davidic covenant comment, because that's huge. And then I want to talk for a second about how

Christ and the gospel sets us free to love the law. And then we can move into the sanctification bit, maybe for the rest of our time.

So the Davidic covenant bit, a couple of comments there. Second Samuel chapter seven is where that covenant is formally given to David.

God promises that there will be one of his sons who will sit on his throne forever and reign in righteousness, provided that he keeps the law.

So that's a lot of conditions there, but the Lord is telling him, this is what will occur should your son obey.

Well, then we have the prophet speaking, most notably to me anyway, the prophet Jeremiah speaks, though Isaiah has language about this too.

Jeremiah in chapter 23 and chapter 33 speaks very clearly about this righteous branch that God is going to raise up for David, who will execute justice and righteousness in the land, and who will be called the son of David.

This righteous branch of David will be called the Lord is our righteousness. So that's insane.

I mean, all of that stuff to unpack how the Davidic covenant is very clear that this righteous son of David will come and not only execute justice and righteousness, but will be the righteousness for his people that they need.

It's really, really incredible stuff. That is hope giving that this has always been the plan of the

Lord to accomplish righteousness in our stead because we can't. So that's the

Davidic covenant piece. It's really helpful to my heart. Second thought, I'm thinking about Romans six and seven and thinking about the law and how we're no longer under it as a covenant of work.

So it doesn't condemn us anymore and it doesn't threaten us anymore. So it's not scary anymore. Like we've been

Roman six, we've been united to Christ and we've been delivered from the dominion of sin and we're no longer under the law, but we're under grace.

So that's a huge thing. And then Paul in Romans chapter seven, we'll talk about his own internal war.

But in the context of that, he says something in Romans seven 22 that's astonishing. He says,

I delight in the law of God and my inner man. I'm just going to go ahead and say the only person who could say such a thing is a person who has been justified, forgiven and absolved.

You would not rejoice in something that is your death sentence. You would only rejoice in something from which you have been set free.

And you would rejoice in something that is holy and good and righteous on its own merit. And you would say, praise be to God who not only is so holy and righteous that he gave such a law, but that he gave himself in my place to keep this law and to fulfill its punishment because I haven't kept it.

And now I can look at it and say in my heart, in my regenerate part of me, my inner man, the law of God is really good and I delight in it.

And I want to live a life that reflects it. I want to, Psalm one, Jesus, the blessed man meditates on the law of God day and night.

He lived every moment in light of the law of God. I want to strive to imitate him. That's what

I want to do. And I'm free to do that because Jesus has handled the penalty and the requirement part.

And so now I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to die, but I can look to the law and rejoice that it's good and seek by the spirit, by God's grace to live a life in conformity to it.

And so that's a big, big piece of the sanctification conversation because John, I know that you agree with me so often, even in contexts that claim to be reformed or whatever, claim to be gospel centered or pick your buzzword.

The tone and tenor and the, you know, to use an old language, the warp and the wolf of everything that occurs, the preaching, the teaching, the culture of the church, the vibe you get whenever it comes to obedience, whenever it comes to sanctification, it just sounds hard and threatening and exacting and, you know, obedience and law ends up sounding like a trip to the

DMV or it sounds like going to get a tooth pulled or something. It sounds like something terrible when in reality, that's not at all how believers should think about it because we're safe and secure in the

Lord Jesus Christ. We can delight in the law of God now because it is good and we're called because we've received mercy.

Like you said, because we've been given grace because we've been given righteousness. We now show mercy and love and we forgive other people.

And this is what we spend our lives doing. That's right. It's a great thing. That's right. And the

Lord's faithful, which I know we're going to get to so we can even rest in our sanctification that God's going to see it through.

That's so good. Yeah. I want to circle back and kind of grab what you said and keep moving forward. You know, Paul says, um, the law is a school master.

And I just think of old school Americans when teachers would walk around with twitches or long rulers and you, you were doing what you smack your hand bloody.

Right. And that's the point of it is like you should look at the law as a sinner and the law is not good.

Law is bad. It just smacks you around. And it says over and over guilty, guilty, guilty.

Right. But when you set, when you're a set free from it and you can look back as one who is not being judged by the law, you can look at as one who's been justified and cleansed and set free.

And James uses this phrase, the law of Liberty, which means you've been set free.

It's amazing. The law becomes something that is beautiful and glorious because it's no longer barking condemnation upon you because you're clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

You don't hate the law. You love the law. It's a complete switch. I'm going to say this,

Justin, and it might be confusing and you can correct me, but I think the actual most antinomian thing you can say is that the law is achievable because what you're doing is lowering the law.

That's actually anti -law. You always want the law to be unachievable. You want it to be that thing that smacks you around and says, you are a 100 % guilty failure, and you'll never be able to live up to the expectations and requirements of the law.

That's what makes the gospel so amazing. So going back to that threatening, yeah, go ahead.

You're not wrong. Through history, reformed people. And so right now

I'm thinking very pointedly of Thomas Boston's notes. In the marrow of modern divinity.

So marrow of modern divinity written by Edward Fisher in the 17th century, republished with the extensive footnotes of Thomas Boston, who lived in the 18th century and beyond.

And so in our modern versions of the mirror of modern divinity, we have Boston's footnotes, which are extensive and Boston makes the claim in a portion of this book where they're discussing the work of Christ in fulfilling the penalty of the law and the righteous requirements of the law.

The reform through history have referred to people as anti -nomian, anti -nomian, who denied the passive and active obedience of Christ in the place of the

Christian. Because what they've said, you have destroyed, you are against God's law because you were against the purpose for which

God gave it. I mean, isn't that astonishing, John, we, we get shot at Thomas Boston got shot at people through history of getting, have gotten shot at as anti -nomian people who preach the gospel, right?

When in reality, the anti -nomian is the person that's denying the passive and active obedience of Christ and fulfilling the penalty and requirement of the law.

That's right. And you're an anti -nomian. If you think you can do it to your point, if you're an Armenian semi -Pelagian fill in the blank, like you think

I can keep the law, you're the one who's denying the law. Yeah. When in reality, the person who is upholding the law is the person preaching

Christ as a as the fulfillment of the law in every way. And then is talking about sanctification, you know, the law is

God, but not as threat. and then the whole reason I think you're entirely right. Yeah. The whole reason we're having this episode is so that Justin and I can create some clarity, pull some clutter off.

I had a, someone reached out to Theo Cass recently and said that they were warned against us to listening to us because, you know, we, we basically don't emphasize obedience.

And, and, and look, I understand there's confusion out there. I don't get upset. My wife and I were having this conversation about some of that.

We, you know, they had put on their profile. She, you know, she, they, or whatever, just a kind of a gender.

And I, I know this individual and, and I know their background and I, and I, in my mind, I'm thinking I'm, I, they, they just haven't been led.

Well, they haven't been taught. Well, in our hope and joy is that someone would hear and see the news and embrace it and be liberated from it.

Justin and I would have no greater joy than to know, as Paul says, that you would walk in truth and that truth being this, this is where we're getting to the final section, the ultimate end and goal of the law and the gospel while on this earth, because you have to understand the

Supreme goal is our sanctification, right? Those whom he, I'm sorry, our glorification, those whom he justified, sanctified, and then glorified.

So the ultimate goal is glorification to live with, with God in, in, in Jesus Christ forever.

But in the meantime, there is a remaining work to be done. And that work is not only the advancement of the gospel, but he uses the means of sanctification as the way in which he advances the gospel.

And this is where the confusion becomes is that somehow sanctification becomes the, the confirmation of one's salvation.

Sanctification is not the confirmation of one's salvation. That's when things become threatening, man.

I can't tell you how many sermons are being posted inside the Facebook group that are sent to me. And you will hear someone who should be preaching joy and hope.

And they sound threatening and they sound that the tone is always one of a judgmental framework.

As if Justin, they were preaching the first use of the law, trying to condemn people.

Yeah. Which I, I preach first use the law. And so do you every Sunday, right? We come, we confess our sins and we receive mercy from God.

It is necessary, but there's a difference between preaching the first use of the law under condemnation.

And what we're going to talk about now, which is the third use of law and sanctification completely different.

But even in preaching the first use of the law, we preach law and gospel, right? Like you don't just preach first use of the law and then sit down.

You preach first use of the law and you herald Christ as the fulfillment of the law. Right.

I'm mindful of Richard Sibbes quote, where he said outside of Christ, God is terrible. And you could say the same thing.

Seriously. You say, right. But outside of Christ, the law is terrible. Yeah. But in, in Christ, the law is good and the law is guide and the law is our kind advisor.

Right. And we can look to it and not be condemned by it. And therefore we can say, yeah,

I, I really delight in this thing and I want to live this way. And so it's so important that we have a law and gospel hermeneutic.

Like we said, we've talked about covenant theology, but we need to talk about sanctification and obedience in light of all these truths.

That's right. And so to maybe pile on what you were saying about preaching the first and third use of the law and getting things confused.

We preach the law to crush centers and we herald Jesus Christ in the place of centers. But then to the

Christian third use of the law, we preach the law as guide. But we don't ever do that in a way that's threatening edgy and harsh.

We do that in the way that I think we're about to have this conversation that look at, look to Christ, consider what

God has done for us in Jesus. We're free now. We believe the law of God is good.

Now let us encourage one another and stir one another up toward love and good works and conformity to the law by the spirit.

That's what we get to do in the church. That's right. So it's very much a, Hey guys, Hey friends, let's do this because it's so good.

How good is the Lord to us? And he's told us this is good for our lives. Let's pursue that. And this is obviously honoring to the

Lord and good for us. Let's do this. So good. And this thing over here is wicked and it's going to destroy other people.

So let's not go there. You know, that's how we should talk. And so we're motivated by Christ.

We're motivated by love and joy and gratitude. We're not motivated by fear and dread. And where I want to land,

I'm happy for you to jump in on that part because where I want to land this conversation. Yeah. Where I want to land this conversation,

John is in the Lord's faithfulness to do this work. That's right. Yeah.

So this is where sanctification historically and confessionally becomes very important. We need to understand what the purpose of it is.

We have an episode we'll put into the notes here. It's called your sanctification is not for you. It is not for you in that it's your means of clarifying, proving or justifying yourself.

Sanctification is needed, absolutely needed for the unity of the body of Christ and the advancement of the gospel.

So the more that we trust in, and even clarifying what sanctification is I will say we're going to do an episode on this.

We decided to postpone it for later, but the reformed has all have always had a monergistic.

That means one working view of sanctification versus other forms of theology that seem to all some summarize and being synergistic, dualistic to working you and God working together.

No, we believe that God uses the spirit by the use of means within the ordinary means of the church to, to draw us closer into a deeper faith.

That's what sanctification is, is a greater strange strengthening of our faith in Christ.

And from faith comes obedience. I think it's very interesting that Paul does not say obey the law as evidence of your salvation.

He actually says things like this walk by faith, right? If you've been regenerate walk by faith or walk by the spirit.

Why would he say that? Because we are no longer underneath the condemnation of the first law use of the law.

We're not being judged by it. We've been set free. So we walk every day, looking to that and using that as our motivation.

As I quoted this beforehand to Justin in James chapters two, he says this in starting off the soul section of rebuking them on this strong partiality.

He says, if you really fulfill the Royal law, that means the ultimate final law, love God, love neighbor.

According to scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. You are doing well. I love this.

It's the same thing that you and I quote all the time. First Peter two, no, second

Peter one, when he says you are ineffective and unfruitful, which means our obedience is an effective way of bringing encouragement and strengthening.

But Justin in James chapter two and in first or second

Peter one, both of those are motivations of mercy and the gospel.

James says it this way. He says, let me just read it to you here. Verse 12.

So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty, meaning that there is no judgment.

There is only mercy. You've been set free from it. So your words and your actions are that of one who lives according to the mercy received.

Same thing in second Peter one, nine. He says, if you are not increasing and showing these first or sorry, the third use of the law, the love of God and love of neighbor.

He says, you've forgotten that you have been cleansed from your former sins. James and Peter are using mercy.

Let me use one more. This is Philippians. I'll turn this over after you, Justin. This is

Philippians chapter two. He says this in verse three, do nothing for selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility can others more significant than yourselves.

Why? Well, otherwise, if you don't, you're going to be proved that you're not a Christian. He doesn't use a fear tactic here.

No, he doesn't use dread. He uses delight. Let each one of you look not only to his own interests, but also the interests of others.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who was, what's the motivation though?

He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped. And he goes down to talk about all the way to verse eight and being found in human form.

He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death. Even death on a cross. He's saying all of us have that same mind.

We're considering our each other more significant. We're loving each other. And why?

Because our minds are unified in what? The mercy we received in the cross, the gospel.

All right. So to double down on this, and then I'm going to pivot. Romans 13, eight to 10. Oh, no one anything except to love each other for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

So this is third use of the law as well. Right. Because Paul has been super clear in Romans already, what Jesus has done. And now he's talking to people at a horizontal level.

Like, how are you to act with one another? So love each other. And if you love each other, you fulfill the law. Verse nine for the commandments, you shall not commit adultery.

You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not covet. And any other commandment are summed up in this word.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

That's really good. Like, so this is what we've strived to do and how we strive to live with one another. And we're keeping the law.

We're living in conformity to the law of God when we love our neighbor. And we could do a whole episode and I don't want to get off on this tangent right now,

John, because I know you and I agree on this. It's very interesting that people that often beat the drum of obedience have created all of these good works that aren't even in the scriptures that we need to do, you know, and then, and then this piece of love neighbor, it's just kind of assumed at best, if not neglected altogether.

So another podcast for another day. Romans 15, five and following.

God is called a couple of things. He's called the God of endurance and the

God of encouragement. What wonderful words those are. Cause I don't know about you, but like when I'm feeling low and when

I'm really struggling and feeling flat and gray or whatever, I have no hope within myself whatsoever that I'm going to be encouraged in my spirit.

And I have no hope whatsoever that I'm going to endure because I'm like, I don't even feel like a Christian right now, you know?

And so it's a tremendous comfort to the saints and always has been that picking up on what you said earlier, that God is the one who sanctifies his people and he is the one who is faithful utterly.

Even when we are faithless, like he will not deny himself and he will accomplish the work that he has set out to do in us.

And this does not in the lives and hearts and minds of the saints does not produce apathy and a lack of concern for obedience.

It comforts us in our pursuit of it. And so I'm comforted to know that God is utterly faithful, that he will complete the good work that he has begun in me, that first Thessalonians five, two that was

Philippians one, six first Thessalonians five, 23 and 24 that, you know, may we be sanctified completely and that the one who has called us is faithful.

He will surely do it. God is the one who is faithful always.

And God is the one who ultimately does the work of sanctification in and through us by his spirit, through the means that he's given.

And that doesn't mean that we don't participate. Of course we do. We apply means we pray, we strive, we do all that stuff by virtue of the fact that we've been given life from God and by virtue of the fact that we've been united to Christ by faith.

And so there's more, I'm sure that we could say about that. I want to give you opportunity. No, I do. I've got regular episodes over to say something about that and then we'll head over to SR.

Yeah. I've got a couple of things and I got some stuff for us for SR. One of the things that's hard is that the motivation to keep trying as we fail.

I know I fail as a father, as a husband, as a pastor, as a neighbor, all of the time. Every Sunday, I look forward to the moment where we confess our sins together to receive mercy together.

Right? James five, confess your sins to one another tonight, men's Bible study. We're going to gather together, encourage one another, confess our sins to one another.

It creates equality because there is no one to whom God shows favor upon based upon their own works.

Our favor comes because of Christ. This is a great section of scripture that I put out on social media the other day.

This is first John four 17. He says this by this love perfected with us so that we may have confidence.

Let's listen to that words. James says confidence, right? Not fear, not dread, not wondering, not weary confidence for the day of judgment.

Because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love cast out fear for fear has to do with punishment.

And whoever fears has not been perfected in love. Then he says this, we love because he first loved us.

He's like, don't be afraid. You're in love. You have the love of the father. There's no judgment coming onto you.

And then, then he says, now go love somebody because you have no fear. You have no dread.

You have no worry. Imperfectly go love people. That is how sanctification should be observed.

If you're struggling in your loving of neighbor in obedience to Christ, in those ways, you don't double down and try harder.

You look longer and harder to what's been done for you in the law through.

So you start with the law and say, yep, I failed. I failed you again, father. I need mercy. What does he say in the time of need run and ask for mercy and grace, and it will 100 % of the time be granted to you.

We always are motivated by the mercy and grace of the gospel. Never fear and dread.

So that being said, one of the conversations I want to have Justin is that a lot of people would agree with us, but then they would add things to this third use of the law.

And I would say works that are not necessarily works that Christians should be focused on yet.

It seems to be the list. So in our confession, they on under good works, I love the, I love how the first thing they say about good works is this.

So this is chapter 17 or chapter 16 .1. God's works are only those works that are, that God has commanded in his holy word works that do not have this warrant are invented by people out of blind zeal or on a pretense of good intentions and are not truly good works.

It is so important that this conversation needs to continue and we will. And separate from Manda, why we tend to emphasize things other than what scripture does as far as what is the third use of the law or good works.

And we send to de -emphasize or maybe ignore the parts of what scripture has encouraged us to pay attention to.

I think that's what we should go with in separate from Manda. I'm here for it.

Take us over. So we're about to go over there to the Semper Reformation podcast. For those that aren't familiar, that's an additional podcast that John and I record every week.

And that is for our Semper Reformanda members, people who have partnered with Theocast financially and in other ways who have locked arms with us to see this message spread as far and as wide as possible.

If you want information about SR as we like to call it for short, you can find all of that info over at our website, theocast .org.

You'll learn more there about the podcast content that you would have access to, but also the app that you can join and the community that you can be a part of.

There's all kinds of things associated with being an SR member. Consider that we leave that to you.

For many of you, we will be having the conversation with you over there in Semper Reformanda. For others of you who might not be joining us there this week, we plan to talk with you in this format again next week.