The Law, the Gospel, and Sanctification | Theocast

The Law, the Gospel, and Sanctification

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 gonna talk about those things today.

We're gonna 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 gonna get right to it. Not mess around. Yeah, I'm excited for today's topic. It's gonna be good. I just wanna throw one thing out there.

We often continue these conversations offline in the app. So if you wanna 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 1 ,000 things in that. Is there anything there to discuss? That's right. We are gonna 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 and 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 gonna come through today.

And if you have no idea what any of those words mean, just keep listening. We're gonna be talking about scripture and we're gonna 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. To 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 burned out, exhausted, worn out because we're convinced that it has everything to do with us and we know we're gonna 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, sometimes referred to as the moral law or the law of creation is 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 10 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 diluted 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 five. Cursed is everyone who does not do everything that is written in the book of the law, Deuteronomy 27, 26, right?

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 gonna 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, four and five, right? 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, right? 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 this is gonna, everything's gonna flow. The reason that we started with this, and I know I talked for a few minutes, we wanna 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, and I don't know if the listener cares, but I'm gonna have to share it. Lamentations three, 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 three 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 gonna 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 then the daily part will make sense. The law is designed for you to look at it and say, that's impossible. 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 wanna 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've been 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 two and it's that famous verse that Justin and I quote all the time.

Whoever keeps the whole law but yet fails in one point, he has become guilty of it all. 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. It's just kind of verses 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.

Like 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? And 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, what do I have? And there is what's called good news, right? Of that which has been done. So what's helpful when we think about law, gospel and sanctification, Justin, these two things, the law first 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 and he's going to mention adultery.

And so we'll say, well, I haven't done those things. Obviously I haven't broken those laws. So then we 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 has shown 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 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 chapter five, 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, 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.

That's right. 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 wanna 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 de-emphasizing 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. Well, I was gonna go there, so. Yeah, for people that have never heard of it. Yeah, go for it. So 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. And so 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. So 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, and Justin, I think, would agree, one of my favorite parts of covenant theology is the covenant that's made with David, the Davidic covenant.

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

So 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. And He's like, no, you don't understand.

You're not even close to me. Like 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.

And 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. Because not before salvation we need mercy, but after our regeneration and after our adoption, we still need mercy. 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 gonna handle this. Well, and that's why 1 John, this is why people confuse 1 John. You know, 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. And I've seen people do this. This is why it's so dangerous when someone gives me one verse and they say, give me, you know, what does this mean?

I have this natural bent to wanna apply it the way I wanna apply it, which I would stop them. I'm like, hey, we gotta look at the context. Why did they say that? There's a reason why they said that. But some of these presuppositions is that, like when somebody reads James or 1 John, they can immediately apply it as, well, these are books about what, like you need to be proving your salvation, right?

You need to be proving that you truly are a legitimate Christian. Or if you go prosperity gospel, it's like when John says, or 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 if 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've 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 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, 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 a 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 that'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, Romans 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 will talk about his own internal war. But in the context of that, he says something in Romans 7 .22 that's astonishing. He says, I delight in the law of God in my inner man.

I'm just gonna 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 wanna live a life that reflects it. I wanna, Psalm 1, 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 wanna strive to imitate him. That's what I wanna do. And I'm free to do that because Jesus has handled the penalty and the requirement part. Amen. 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 woof 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. It's a great thing. 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.

Amen. 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 the law is a schoolmaster. And I just think of old school Americans when teachers would walk around with twitches or long rulers and you were doing what you were doing.

Smack hand. Smack your hand. Bloody knuckles. Right, and that's the point of it. It's 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're set free from it and you can look back as one who is not being judged by the law, you can look at it 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 gonna 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.

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 Marrow 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 Reformed through history have referred to people as antinomian, antinomian who denied the passive and active obedience of Christ in the place of the Christian.

Because what they've said, you are against God's law because you are against the purpose for which God gave it. I mean, isn't that astonishing, John? We get shot at, Thomas Boston got shot at, people through history have gotten shot at as antinomian people who preach the gospel, right?

When in reality, the antinomian 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 antinomian if you think you can do it, to your point.

If you're an Arminian, semi-Pelagian, fill in the blank, like you think I can keep the law, you're the one who's denying the law. When in reality, the person who is upholding the law is the person preaching Christ as the fulfillment of the law in every way and then is talking about sanctification, the law as God, but not as threat.

Well, 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 someone reach out to Theocast recently and said that they were warned against us to listening to us because we basically don't emphasize obedience.

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

And I know this individual and I know their background. And in my mind, I'm thinking, they just haven't been led well. They haven't been taught well. And 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 God and Jesus Christ forever. But in the meantime, there's 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 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, 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.

Which I preach first use of 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 gonna talk about now, which is the third use of the 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 could say the same thing about the law. Right, but outside of Christ, the law is terrible.

But 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 really delight in this thing, and I wanna 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 sinners, and we herald Jesus Christ in the place of sinners.

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 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.

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.

And this thing over here is wicked and it's gonna destroy other people, so let's not go there. 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 wanna land, I'm happy for you to jump in on that part because where I wanna land this conversation. Yeah, where I wanna land this conversation, John, is in the Lord's faithfulness to do this work.

That's right. Yeah. Amen. 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 absolutely needed for the unity of the body of Christ and the advancement of the gospel.