July 27, 2018 Show with Maurice Roberts on “Finding Peace with God: Justification Explained”

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 27th day of July 2018, and I am so thrilled to have back for the second time on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Morris Roberts.

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He is, or was, I should say, the editor of the Banner of Truth magazine from 1988 to 2003.

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He is the author of The Thought of God, The Christian's High Calling, Great God of Wonders, and Can We Know God?

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He was the moderator of the Free Church of Scotland Continuing's General Assembly in 2007, and he is a lecturer in Greek and New Testament at the

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Free Church Seminary since 2002. Today we are addressing his book, Finding Peace with God, Justification Explained, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Morris Roberts.

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Thank you sir, my privilege to be here this evening. Oh, the pleasure is all mine, and I'm sure my listeners as well, brother.

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And I apologize, ladies and gentlemen, that we started the program a little late, but for some reason I had a problem connecting with the

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UK on the phone, but we were eventually successful and we thank God for that. Well, what

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I'd like to do, Morris, is have you basically define two very important words that we have in this theme today that is also the title of your book,

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Finding Peace with God, Justification Explained. First of all, I'd like you to define what it means to have peace with God, because no doubt there are many people who are unregenerate, who are tragically lost and heading for hell, who think they have peace with God just because of the way they feel.

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They may feel very comfortable and happy entering into the doors of a church, and they may enjoy singing hymns to God, and they may feel perfectly fine talking about God, hearing about God, and they think they have peace with God.

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But I know that that is not what you're talking about. No. Being at peace with God must be defined correctly, otherwise it's worth nothing.

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And the definition we must give of being at peace with God must be based on the teaching of the

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Bible, which is the inspired Word of God, which He has given to us to teach us how we may come into a right relationship with Himself, with God.

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So to be at peace with God is nothing to do with how we may feel in and of itself.

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It is based upon the teaching which the Bible gives us, and I quickly say two things.

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First, the Bible makes it very clear that all men and women are born sinners.

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From our mother's womb, God judges us to be sinners. That is to say, we are regarded as being unworthy to enter into heaven.

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So to be right with God and to have peace with God means that problem is solved.

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And that the great issue is, how can we have that position and problem solved?

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How can we be right with God? So that really is the substance of it, not what we feel or what we think about ourselves.

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It's not our own ideas. It's we must go to the Bible, which is the inspired Word of God, and there

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God tells us what we need in order to be at peace with God. Now, one might think, and I believe that this would be correct, that the opposite of peace is war.

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If you are not at peace with someone, I believe that the opposite of that would mean you are an enemy of someone and or that particular individual.

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Does not having peace with God imply that we are indeed at war with God and that he is our enemy?

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It does, though many people do not realize that until they come to the experience of becoming at peace with God through faith in Christ.

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The truth of the matter is, as the Bible tells us, that by nature all mankind hates

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God and tries to escape from God, and they invent all sorts of pseudo -scientific theories to try to explain how we can escape from God.

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One of them is, of course, atheism, that there is no such thing as God, so we don't need to worry about it. But the important thing is, we must get right with God, because if we're not right with God and at peace with God, then we can be absolutely certain we shall never enter into heaven, and even during this life, we must understand that God is angry with us all the time.

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His wrath or anger will sooner or later bring us down to eternal punishment if, in this life, we do not get right with God in the way the

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Bible teaches us to get right with God. Amen. And now the other word that is used in different ways, depending upon what situation or context a person is speaking about or writing about, justification.

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But what is the specific meaning of the term justification that you are specifically speaking about in this very important booklet,

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Finding Peace with God, Justification Explained? Yes, the word justification is a biblical word, an extremely important word, and it means believing in the

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Lord Jesus Christ so that the righteousness of Christ is given to us as a gift from God.

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We can't earn it, we can't pay for it, we can't buy it, we can't merit it, but God has laid down this as the rule.

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To get right with God, we must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the

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Savior, the Son of God, and as soon as we do put our faith in Christ, God promises he will immediately forgive all our sins, and he will reckon the righteousness of Christ to us as a free gift, so that in this life,

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God is no longer angry with us, he is now our Heavenly Father, and when we die as believers in Christ, we shall most certainly go to heaven and to glory forever.

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Amen. And there have been, as you know, obviously you have ministered with the wonderful ministry

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Banner of Truth that has been such a blessing, a tremendous gift from God to the body of Christ for so long, so of course ministering with a publishing ministry that you know full well that there are many books, large and small, some even massive, on the topic of justification.

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Why is it that you felt a need for a new volume that people can have access to, both believers and unbelievers alike?

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That's a very good question. There are excellent books on justification, certainly, such as, for instance,

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William Cunningham's Historical Theology, R .C. Sproul has a book on faith alone,

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Philip Eveson has an excellent good one on the Great Exchange, and many others,

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John Owen, the Puritan, has a wonderful book on the doctrine of justification by faith. These and other books are very, very excellent.

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Why then is there the need for me to write a little book today? Well, if I may explain two things.

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First of all, it's my longing to see the man in the street, if I can call him that, saved by the blood of Christ.

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And if I may respectfully say so, the average person today is not likely to read a big, thick book written by the

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Puritans. What a pity they don't. They would be much benefited by doing so. But today, people are not great readers, so I wrote this little book of about 30 to 35 pages, very simple, very clear, and trying to make it as simple, clear, and obvious to the modern reader as possible, so that not only the academics and the university people will be interested and get the benefit, but that the man in the street, so to say, would also get the benefit and come to that faith in Christ whereby he should know peace with God in time and in eternity to come.

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Amen. Well, this, even though this book is brief, it has contained within it a lot of very essential and core issues regarding the subject of justification.

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And I'd like you to start with, even though we already gave a background, or should

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I say you did, in regard to the fact that we are indeed enemies of God until we are justified by him freely by his grace, you have the first chapter of the booklet explains our relationship to God as a very necessary theme within this very important subject.

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And even though you may be a little bit repetitive here, because we've already said some things in the beginning of the program about this, why don't you continue with a little more of an elaboration about what you have provided about our relationship to God in the booklet?

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Certainly. Well, our relationship with God is the most important thing in life.

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There's nothing more important than our relationship with God. And sadly, the educational system very often, not always, sometimes it does, but very seldom these days in our country of Britain, very seldom emphasizes the importance of this right relationship with God.

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And because people are very fond of this world and the pleasures of this world, they often do not sit down and think, what do

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I need to make sure I am in a right relationship with God? So the

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Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, came into the world to do for us what we could not do for ourselves.

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And that is to say, we need therefore to get into the position in which we believe that the

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Lord Jesus Christ is the only Savior of the world. And as we come to the

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Bible and study the Bible, we realize why it is that Jesus Christ did come into the world.

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It is because God in his love sent him into the world to take a human nature and to live for sinners like us and to die for sinners like us.

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And he suffered upon the cross in order to pay the penalty for the sins which we have committed.

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And our relationship with God therefore is extremely important. And our duty is to seek

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God at all our heart. And the promise of God is, if we seek God at all our heart, then we shall find

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Christ as our Savior. And if we do not find Christ as our Savior in this life, it's too late.

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Once we die, our soul goes to the place of punishment, and certainly not to the place of eternal life.

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So our relationship with God is all -important, and we must make it a matter of concern each one of us to be assured that we are in that right relationship with God through Christ.

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And not to derail the main theme here, but when you just said that once a person dies, if they are lost, they will go to the place of punishment,

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I believe you would teach and believe yourself that when a person dies, although they will be in the presence of Christ if they are saved immediately, or they will be in a place of punishment immediately if they are lost, or if they are reprobate, or not a

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Christian, if they're not regenerate, they will go to this place of punishment.

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But at the same time, these are not the ultimate places where either of these individuals will wind up.

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But is there not a more glorious eternity with Christ even awaiting them after that initial experience of being present with Christ after death?

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And then, isn't there even a more horrific place awaiting them after they die if they do not have the covering of Christ's blood?

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That is true. The way to look at it is this. Between death and the end of the world, which we can call the

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Judgment Day, in that period we refer to that as the intermediate state.

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That's between when a person dies and when he or she appears before Christ in the

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Day of Judgment at the end of time. That's the intermediate state. Now when a believer dies, his soul immediately goes to glory, his body into the grave, until Christ returns for the

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Judgment Day. At that point, Christ raises the dead body and reunites it with the soul, because the soul has been in glory for those days, weeks, or years.

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And when the body and soul are reunited, after the Judgment, Christ will take all believing people into the ultimate state of glory.

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That will be the most perfect state imaginable, full of glory, reward, and blessing forever with God the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's now the condition of the believer. But the condition of the unbeliever sadly is this.

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When the unbeliever dies, his soul immediately goes into eternal punishment, in what we call the intermediate state of that punishment, between death and judgment.

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His body, meantime, is in the grave. When Christ returns at the end of the world, on the Day of Judgment, Christ will raise the bodies of the dead, who are unbelievers, and reunite their bodies and souls, and after the judgment being passed upon them, their body and soul will be cast into eternal punishment, which is fire and darkness forever.

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A very terrible condition indeed. Well, that leads us to our need of justification.

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If we do not want to spend our eternity in that horrific place of punishment, we need justification.

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And once again, if you could explain in more detail than what you said at the very beginning of the program, this is a very important issue that divides true and false

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Christianity, as you I'm sure agree. This is the primary issue that sparked the

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Protestant Reformation. It's the primary issue that separates the Church of Rome from Reformational Protestantism, and we would also add to that, more importantly, it separates

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Rome from Biblical Christianity. And not only Rome, but there are a whole host of organizations and churches that would claim to be

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Christian, that also deny what we would call justification by faith alone, and forensic justification.

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So if you could, please go through an explanation of, first of all, what is forensic justification?

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Well, we would define it like this. It is God imputes the righteousness of Christ to the sinner who believes in Christ our

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Savior. And the moment that righteousness is imputed by God to the sinner, immediately the sinner's sins are immediately all forgiven.

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Now, that doesn't mean to say the sinner has no more sin in his nature. He does, until he goes to heaven at last, after death.

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But the imputation of guilt to the sinner is now removed.

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So God looks upon that sinner as having a condition of legal or forensic righteousness.

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That is to say, God no longer imputes to him the sins that he has done, or the sins that he will do in this life, but God forgives them all.

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And the reason why God can do that is because when we are justified by faith in Christ, as soon as we believe in Christ, God imputes to us the whole righteousness of Christ.

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And that consists of two things. First of all, it means all our sins, all our sins as sinners, are forgiven immediately.

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And the righteousness which Christ has achieved by his perfect life and perfect death, these are imputed to and reckoned to the sinner.

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So we are then forensically justified, and that means we are right with God immediately, as soon as we believe in Christ.

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And when we die, as we said earlier, the soul goes to glory and awaits the resurrection from the dead.

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Amen. And one of the things that you mentioned earlier about Jesus Christ being our one and only

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Savior, and that we must trust in him alone as our one and only

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Savior, unless someone gets the false idea that they can say, well,

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Jesus is the only God I worship and that he is the only one that I trust,

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I don't pray to false gods, I don't have any false deities, I believe in Jesus alone.

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But they may, unconsciously, they would probably never say that they are viewing themselves as a

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Savior alongside of Christ. They may not say that they view Mary and the saints alongside of Christ as saviors.

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They may not put it in those words, but we have very clearly examples of those who are misguided and have a false gospel, who believe either that they themselves are helping to save themselves in some way, or they are even not only including themselves, they are also including the mother of Jesus, the saints, and other

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Christians who are now in eternity with Christ. They are thinking that this treasury of merit provided by the the wonderful lives of these humans that are now in heaven, they think that these people have somehow helped

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Christ to attain salvation for them. But this is really a very wicked and damnable way of thinking, isn't it?

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Yes, that's right. The great necessity is we must define justification as the

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Bible teaches it, and in no other way. And to put it very simply, it is this.

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The Bible teaches a sinner is justified by faith alone, in Christ alone.

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Nothing must in any way be added to our concept of how to receive that justification.

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It's by faith alone, in Christ alone. And sadly during the

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Middle Ages, for a long time, this doctrine was spoiled by adding things to faith as necessary for justification.

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So it was the terrible mistake of the Middle Ages to think that we can teach a sinner that he could be justified if he venerates a saint as well as lives a pious life and spends time in prayer and fasting in a monastery or something like that.

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And therefore in doing that we are adding our own good works, as we call them, not that they are good works, but we're adding what we think are good works to faith alone in Christ.

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But the biblical teaching is very, very simple. Paul puts it like this, by grace are you saved by faith, not of our own good works.

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He puts it again like this, he says we are justified by faith in Christ to have peace with God, and it's purely and simply by faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. By grace are you saved by faith, by faith alone.

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So the great emphasis we must make is we are not going to be justified until and unless we cast aside all thought of our own goodness and our own merit, or anything of that sort, faith alone in Christ alone.

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That is the formula God gives us in the Bible, and the only way whereby the sinner can become at peace with God.

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Amen. And we have a listener in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, named

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Michael, and he asks, do you think the recent attempts to rethink this doctrine is due to not looking to the

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Reformed confessions? All the standards are clear on the matter. Could it be that if there is something we are contributing to justification, it becomes more palatable?

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That's very true, it does. Human nature would love to make a contribution to its own salvation.

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It's very flattering to think that if I want salvation, I can believe in Christ, but in addition to that,

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I can add my own good works to it. My prayers, and my almsgiving, and my veneration of the saints, and so on.

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But that's a tremendous mistake. If we think of adding any merit of our own to what

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Christ has done, we are detracting from the perfect merit of Jesus's work.

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When Jesus died, he said, it is finished, meaning our salvation is perfectly achieved by his life and by his death, and therefore we must understand what the

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Apostles teach is, by grace are you saved through faith, not of works that any man should boast.

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So to put it simply again, we must by all means receive the gospel without any thought of trying to add to Christ any good works or merit of our own.

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Amen. Well, thank you, Michael, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. You have won a free copy of the book that we are discussing right now with Morris Roberts, Finding Peace with God, Justification Explained.

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Compliments of the publishers, Banner of Truth, and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be mailing it out to you at no charge to you or to us.

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So make sure we have your full mailing address there in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Thank you very much for joining us on the program with an excellent question.

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Again, going back to what we were discussing, imputed righteousness, the

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Church of Rome would say that the righteousness that we receive from Christ is infused in us, that we are actually innately made worthy of heaven rather than it being based on the sole merits and righteousness of Christ, and they would even go further, unless you are one of those rare individuals in the

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Church of Rome, that the Church of Rome would believe to be sinless on this earth before they depart from this earth.

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Most people, the vast majority of people, in their thinking, go to a place called purgatory because Christ's death did not fully cleanse the saved person from their sins.

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They have to be punished themselves for a period that is unknown to them.

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The Roman Catholic Church never fully explains this as far as the length of time a person will remain in purgatory, but this is also a mockery of the cross of Christ, isn't it?

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It certainly is a great distortion of what Christ teaches, and it is very harmful and dangerous to those who are taught these wrong ideas, because if people don't know the true doctrine of justification, of course, the terrible consequences may be eternal punishment, because they haven't gone about seeking

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Christ in the right way. So we must make it very clear, when we are defining the doctrine of justification, we must do so only by going to the

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Word of God. And the teaching of the Word of God, put simply, is we are saved and justified only by putting our faith in Jesus Christ and trusting him as the

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Savior who lived for us and died for us. Morris, are you there?

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Well, we're going to go to our official break right now, and hopefully when we return,

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Morris will be back on the line with us. Our email address, if you'd like to join us, is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside of the

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USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Don't go away God -willing, we'll be right back with Morris Roberts and more of our discussion on justification.

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Well, I believe we have Morris Roberts back on the line, correct? Yes, I'm here again, thank you. Well, before we got cut off, we were talking about the heresy of purgatory, and how this is a mockery of Christ.

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And our suffering, whether in this life or in the afterlife, is in no way helping to satisfy the wrath of God.

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It is in no way making us more acceptable before a righteous and holy

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God. That is solely the place of the blood of Christ, Christ's death on Calvary, his perfect redemptive death that enables sinners to enter into heaven.

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Is that not correct? That there is nothing that we can experience or do, whether good or bad, that can enable us to enter into heaven.

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Yes, what you say is absolutely right. The important thing to bear in mind is this always, that no one will enter into heaven unless they are clothed with a perfect righteousness.

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We must be clothed with a perfect righteousness. Now, that perfect righteousness is something we cannot produce.

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And even supposing we were 99 % righteous, it would not be sufficient to get us into heaven.

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We must have a 100 % righteousness. And the only way in which we can have that as sinners is that Christ's righteousness should be imputed to us.

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And the righteousness of Christ is 100 % perfect. He is both

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God and man. And he took his human nature in a miraculous way through the

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Virgin. So that he would have a virgin birth with a human nature undefiled by sin.

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And had Christ had two parents, as we all do, the sin of Adam would have been imputed to Christ and he would have been born a sinner as we are.

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So he had to have a miraculous birth so he could be our Savior with a perfect divine nature as God and a perfect human nature without the imputation to it of Adam's sin.

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Now, because Christ is absolutely perfect, his obedience to God in keeping the moral law, the

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Ten Commandments, was perfect. And his sufferings upon the cross was of such infinite value, dying for us, that he is able to wipe out the debt which we owe to God because of our sins.

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And he can clothe us with the robe of his righteousness as the eternal

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Son of God. We contribute nothing whatever to this process except only faith.

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We must believe in Jesus and what the Bible teaches about his death, that he died for sinners like us.

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But we contribute absolutely nothing. And when we enter into a state of death, there's no such place mentioned in the

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Bible as purgatory. That is something the Bible does not speak about because it does not exist as a heaven for the righteous, a hell for the wicked, and there's no intermediate place like that whatsoever.

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So it's essential to understand if we are to go to heaven, we must get right with God now in this life, because if we die and go to anywhere else but to heaven, then we shall be placed with the wicked in eternal damnation.

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And that is good of the teaching of the Bible. Now, before, in the earlier part of the program, in the very beginning, you mentioned a book, when you were going through a list of books on justification, you mentioned one titled

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The Great Exchange. And that is actually a very central theme to what we're talking about here, is it not?

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Because not only is Christ's righteousness imputed to us, our wickedness, our sins, are imputed to him.

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Isn't that true? Yes, it is. Our sins are imputed to him. That's right. And he was reckoned to be responsible for the sins of his people who would believe in him.

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And he was punished, not for any sin of his own, for he had none. He was the one who took the responsibility for the sins of his people who would believe in him.

38:00

And Christ died a death under the wrath and judgment of God for our sins.

38:07

That's why he died. And his soul went into a state of death for those three days.

38:13

But as soon as our Lord died, immediately he died, he paid the full price for the sins of all his people who would believe in him.

38:23

So his perfect life and his atoning death are both absolutely essential to the justification of poor sinners like us.

38:34

And our duty then is to believe what Christ has done, and to cast ourselves at his feet and trust in him, because he promises whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

38:47

Amen. And some people might wrongly think that the pain, the physical suffering at the hands of wicked men who tortured and executed

39:05

Christ, that this is what specifically redeems us.

39:11

But it's actually much more than that, isn't it? Most importantly, the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ that involves the

39:21

Father pouring his wrath on his own Son, the wrath that we deserve. Yes, it is.

39:28

That's right. It is the imputation to Christ of the guilt and sin of all believers of all ages of the history of the world, from the beginning to the end.

39:41

The guilt of all those believers from the beginning of time to the end of time has been imputed to Christ when he was in this world on the cross, and he paid the price as the

39:53

God -man which is of infinite value. He atoned for all the sins of those whose sins were imputed to him, and he has made a reconciliation with God for all those who now are believers in Christ.

40:10

That's the way to look at it. Amen. We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, and Bobby says,

40:20

When we say that we are justified by faith, do we not need to take great caution when we tell this to people?

40:29

Because very often, Christians have the wrong concept of what that means.

40:35

They believe that they are actually helping to save themselves by offering to God a faith that comes intrinsically from them that pleases

40:45

God. In other words, through their unfettered free will, they have come to make the right decision and follow

40:52

Christ, and therefore that is the final switch that seems to be turned on in order to determine the eternal destiny of the lost person.

41:05

But this is not really what you're talking about. Is not faith itself, as we read in Ephesians, a gift from God, so we can't even boast of it as even the

41:15

Apostle Paul said under divine inspiration? Yes, absolutely correct.

41:22

The fact of the matter is that faith is the gift of God, and no man has true faith until he or she has been born again, because no man has faith before he or she has been born again of the

41:42

Holy Spirit. The new birth is the act of God which enables the soul of the sinner to trust in Christ.

41:52

So there is this order in the application of salvation to the souls of men and women.

42:00

First, we must be born again, and as soon as we are born again, immediately we shall believe in the

42:08

Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. Now it's possible for someone to stand up and say, I believe in Christ, but that means nothing until there is evidence in the life and behavior of that person that their life is transformed and changed as a result of a new birth experience.

42:29

So the new birth experience is what brings the souls of sinner to trust truly in Christ.

42:37

There is such a thing, of course, as worthless faith, as James talks about in his epistle. And worthless faith is the faith which springs out of the action of man to make himself good, or to give himself some sort of faith.

42:51

But real genuine biblical faith is the result of the new birth, where Jesus said, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

43:03

So the new birth comes first, and true genuine saving faith is the fruit of that new birth experience.

43:11

Amen. In fact, we have, oh, by the way, thank you, Bobby, for your question. You also are getting a free copy of the book that we are discussing,

43:21

Finding Peace with God, by Morris Roberts, Compliments of Banner of Truth and Compliments of CVBBS .com,

43:27

so please give us your full mailing address there in Hartsdale, New York. We have a question that involves something that you were just saying now.

43:40

We have Bibi in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says that we constantly hear from the

43:49

Roman Catholic friends that if you do not believe that works are involved in our salvation, that necessitates you believe that one can live like Satan himself unrepentantly, perhaps even for decades, and that person will still enter heaven when he dies because he at one time had faith that saved him.

44:14

And since we who are Reformed do not believe a truly born -again individual can lose their salvation, that means that we can live unrepentantly and as wickedly as we please and still be accepted by God on the day we die.

44:30

But this is not what Reformed people have historically believed, and if you can explain how believing in justification by faith alone does not require that you believe in licentiousness being acceptable to God.

44:48

There are three dimensions we could mention about justification, and they're all very, very important.

44:55

We are justified meritoriously, that means the worth and the merit of our justification comes from Christ's life and death.

45:07

So the merit of justification is entirely dependent upon Christ's perfect life and atoning death.

45:16

Now secondly, there is the means whereby the sinner receives this justification, and the means whereby any sinner receives justification from Christ is by faith alone, in Christ alone.

45:33

But then, and here's the third point most relevant to the question, the sinner is justified declaratively by his good works.

45:46

In other words, what I'm saying there is, how do we know if a sinner has truly believed in Christ?

45:54

He may say he does, but the evidence of a person's truly believing in Christ can only be gathered from a person's changed life.

46:04

And a person who has a changed life loves God and loves the things of God. He's not perfect, but he sincerely desires to commit himself to God and to live a life of obedience to God as long as he's in this world.

46:21

So that's the third point here. If a person says, oh I don't mind how I live, get drunk, commit all the sins you like,

46:29

I believe in Christ, what he's saying there is, he has no idea what true faith is, because genuine faith always works together with obedience to God.

46:41

When a person is born again, their supreme desire is to live to the glory of God in an obedient life.

46:48

And if a person shows no attempt at an obedient life, but lives in drunkenness and wickedness, they're simply saying they have no true faith at all.

46:59

Well thank you, B .B. You've also won a free copy of the book, Finding Peace With God, and that is

47:06

Compliments of Banner of Truth and CVBBS .com. Please give us your full mailing address so that can be shipped out to you at no charge to you.

47:13

We're going to our elongated break right now. This is a longer break than normal because it's required of us by Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, because they air their own commercials and public service announcements during this longer than normal break.

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So please be patient with us. Please write down questions for Morris Roberts during this break, and also write down the information provided by our advertisers.

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Our email address, if you'd care to join the others waiting to have their questions asked and answered, is chrisornsen at gmail .com...

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chrisornsen at gmail .com. Don't go away, God willing we'll be back with Morris Roberts and Finding Peace With God right after these messages from our sponsors.

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That's l -i -y -f -c .org. Chris Sorensen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here.

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I want to tell you about a man I have personally known for many years. His name is Dan Buttafuoco.

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Dan has a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer, but not the type that typically comes to mind.

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Dan also has a master's degree in theology. Dan handles serious injury and medical malpractice cases in all 50 states.

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He represents many Christians in serious injury matters all over the country. Dan is an exceptional trial lawyer.

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He wrote the test for the National Board of Trial Advocacy and currently his firm has over 100 cases that have settled for 1 million dollars or more and in approximately 10 different states.

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Dan Buttafuoco's number is 1 -800 -669 -4878. 1 -800 -669 -4878 or email me for Dan's contact information at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. My name is

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Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.

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I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the Doctor of Ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

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I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students Andy Woodard serves as the pastor.

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It's called New Covenant Church NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist Church that meets in Midtown Manhattan.

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You can find their service times and location on their website which is www .ncc .nyc.

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They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

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If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

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New Covenant Church NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc

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Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we just have a few important announcements as far as special events that are coming up.

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First of all, August 2nd through the 4th, we have the Fellowship Conference New England returning to the

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Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine, and the speaker, the speakers,

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I should say, at this important conference are Pastor Tim Conway, Pastor Mack Tomlinson, Pastor Jesse Barrington, and Pastor Nate Pikowitz.

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These are all fine men of God, excellent communicators of truth, powerful proclaimers of the gospel.

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They have all been on my radio program, some of them even many times, like my dear friend

59:53

Pastor Mack Tomlinson. If you would like to be there at the Fellowship Conference New England, August 2nd through the 4th in Portland, Maine, go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com,

01:00:05

fellowshipconferencenewengland .com. Then the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual

01:00:11

QuakerTown Conference on Reformed Theology, November 9th and the 10th at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in QuakerTown, Pennsylvania.

01:00:19

The theme is the glory of the cross, and the speakers include David Garner, Ray Ortland, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Winn.

01:00:28

If you would like to register for the QuakerTown Conference on Reformed Theology, go to alliancenet .org,

01:00:34

alliancenet .org, click on events, and then scroll down to the QuakerTown Conference on Reformed Theology.

01:00:42

Then coming up in January of 2019, the G3 Conference returns to College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, at the

01:00:53

Georgia International Convention Center. The G3 Conference stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory.

01:00:59

It is a Reformed Conference, and I am looking forward to being there manning an exhibitors booth for the third time for the third year in a row at the

01:01:09

G3 Conference. I hope you join me there, and I hope you join me not only as an attendee, I hope you join me with your own exhibitors booth if you have a ministry or business that you would like to have promoted amongst the crowd of between four and five thousand people that are expected to be there at the

01:01:25

G3 Conference. The theme this January is the mission of God, a biblical understanding of missions, and the speakers include

01:01:35

Paul Washer, John Piper, Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Conrad M.

01:01:42

Bayway, Tim Chalies, Phil Johnson, who is the executive director of John MacArthur's ministry, grace to you,

01:01:48

Josh Bice, who is the founder of the G3 Conference, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, Stephen J.

01:01:56

Nichols, who is the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late Dr. R .C.

01:02:02

Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, and many, many more are on that lineup. If you'd like to join me there at the

01:02:08

G3 Conference, go to G3conference .com, G3conference .com. Please tell all of these organizations, if you contact them, that you heard about them and their events from Chris Arnsen on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio.

01:02:21

Last but not least, if you love this show and you do not want it to disappear from the airwaves, please donate to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio as much as you can and as often as you can by going to IronSharpandZionRadio .com,

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ChrisArnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line. And by the way, if you are not a member of a local

01:03:34

Bible -believing church, and you're not prayerfully looking for one, you are living in rebellion against God.

01:03:40

I can help you find a church. I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world, and I have already helped a number of my listeners find good faithful churches in their area.

01:03:50

So send me an email if you have a hard time finding a church to ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

01:03:57

And put on the subject line, I need a church. That is also the email address where you can ask a question of Morris Roberts.

01:04:06

That's ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

01:04:12

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

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Dr.

01:04:26

Roberts, Reverend Roberts, I should say, are you still with us? Yes, I'm with you, yes. Oh, thanks be to God for His grace upon us that we didn't have a technical issue again.

01:04:35

Indeed. We have a listener in the United Kingdom who is anonymous, and this listener says,

01:04:43

I am accustomed to people explaining justification as just as if you never sinned.

01:04:51

Somehow that phrase never sat comfortably with me. I always felt there was a lot more to it than that.

01:04:57

As I studied myself, I read that in justification, God, the righteous judge, pronounces us acquitted of the charge.

01:05:06

According to the Oxford Dictionary, to acquit means to free someone from a criminal charge by verdict of not guilty.

01:05:17

It does not mean, nor does he say, we are innocent because we are not.

01:05:23

We are not condemned but declared to be acceptable to God. What are your thoughts on that, please?

01:05:30

Just as if we never sinned. Yeah, I've heard that before as well, but is that an appropriate way of looking at justification?

01:05:40

Well, I suppose the only merit it has is that it is very easy for somebody to remember that.

01:05:49

It's got a similarity to the word justification, doesn't it? But it doesn't have the merit of being a clear definition.

01:05:58

The best definition is that justification is an act of God's free grace in which he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his own sight only for the righteousness of Christ which is imputed to us and which is received on our part by faith alone.

01:06:21

Now that's an accurate definition of what justification is and I think

01:06:27

I would leave that other one you referred to in the dustbin because it's not good enough and it's such a serious subject.

01:06:34

We're not really talking about an amusing subject. Justification is the most serious subject on earth.

01:06:41

To be right with God is absolutely the most important thing in life.

01:06:47

So we can't afford to have cheap and poor and flimsy definitions. So I would say don't go by the just as you are one that you were quoting earlier on.

01:06:58

Go by a much more accurate one. The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Catechisms, they provide excellent definitions of justification.

01:07:07

I do recommend those for people to take and read and learn. Amen. Well Anonymous, I understand that you know someone here in the

01:07:17

United States that can get you this booklet that you've won because we don't ship out the books to winners who live overseas or should

01:07:27

I say to the listeners that live overseas because of the great expense that cvbbs .com

01:07:33

will accumulate by sending out books overseas every week. So we only reserve these for United States listeners and we thank you for providing us with someone who lives here in the

01:07:48

United States who will get the booklet to you. Well there are, I want to get to some more of the chapters in this booklet before we run out of time because this is a very, for a brief book as I said earlier, this is really a wealth of information.

01:08:05

If you could tell us more about God's gift of righteousness because I think that this is something that we have to keep remembering that salvation is completely a gift and just saying that is not enough.

01:08:21

You have to really believe and understand what that means because there are many people outside of the

01:08:27

Reformed faith who will say things like salvation is a gift and so on but they really if they when they explain themselves you very often are hearing that they are in some way even if unconsciously taking some of the credit for their salvation but this is totally a gift isn't it?

01:08:46

Yes we must emphasize that above everything else that if we truly wish to be justified we must set aside all thought of doing anything to bring about our own justification.

01:09:03

We must realize that Jesus Christ is both God and man in two distinct natures and yet one person and therefore is the

01:09:13

God man. If he had not taken human nature he could not have died on the cross for us that's why he took human nature.

01:09:23

He both lived a perfect life for 33 years and completely fulfilled the ten commandments on our behalf as sinners and then he paid the price for our sins by dying on the cross being under the curse and damnation of his heavenly father as one responsible for the sins of his people.

01:09:45

So there must never be any thought whatsoever in our minds either of contributing by our own good works to what

01:09:52

Christ has done or by adding anything which comes from other saints or Virgin Mary or anything like that.

01:10:03

Our faith must be in Christ as the eternal son of God the savior of the world who died for sinners and we must realize too that if we do not believe in Christ we shall perish eternally in eternal darkness and in the fire of God's wrath and curse.

01:10:24

So this is extremely serious the most important issue in life and we should therefore not be surprised if our conscience tells us we must not go on any longer without getting down on our knees and crying out to God to give us grace to believe in Christ because of ourselves we can't believe.

01:10:43

Faith is the gift of God and yet anyone who sincerely desires to believe in Christ and truly wishes to be reconciled to God by faith in Christ God promises he will give him the ability to believe and faith is indeed the gift of God.

01:10:59

So the offer is to us all whosoever will let him come and take the water of life freely that's the promise of God.

01:11:07

Amen. Now we already addressed quite a lot about salvation by faith alone but there's one thing that I wanted to add to it in this discussion is that there are ministries parachurch ministries

01:11:26

Christian organizations that in their efforts to be in their minds more loving and kind and acceptable to those that may disagree on certain points of theology that they very wrongly think are of secondary or tertiary importance but they

01:11:47

I have known and seen organizations that have actually in their statement of faith in order to be welcoming to Roman Catholic participants they in their statement of faith will remove the word alone and they think that it is acceptable and and they are quite content with having in their mission statement that they believe in by faith but this is a very dangerous thin ice to be treading on isn't it when you start playing fast and loose by removing the word alone because really the word alone is just as important as the word faith isn't it?

01:12:25

Absolutely right and that's how in Latin the great reformers used to say sola fide which is the

01:12:34

Latin for by faith alone they strength and they strongly emphasize that sola fide by faith alone because as soon as the sinner begins to think of adding something of his own merit to Christ immediately he closes the door on his own justification there's no way any sinner will ever be justified if he thinks he's going to add something to what

01:12:57

Christ has done it's faith alone and Christ alone and we can't stress that too much it's no kindness to redefine the doctrine of justification it is simply to shut the door on the poor sinner and to confuse him into thinking he can be saved by both

01:13:12

Christ and something he does himself that is not true we must make it clear we can only be saved by faith in Christ and his finished work on the cross dying for sinners like us add nothing whatsoever to it faith and faith alone amen well this is something that you cover in this booklet that is of that is disputed greatly between evangelical

01:13:39

Protestants and Roman Catholics it's in regard to the teaching on justification in the early church there seems to be this understanding that is promoted by Roman Catholics that justification by faith alone is an invention of Martin Luther and the

01:13:59

Reformers that it never existed within Christendom for centuries other than perhaps by a few heretics here and there but they would say that is nearly absent from any gospel presentation or creed or or any confession of the scriptural gospel until the 16th century but this is this is a myth and it's actually a lie isn't it quite correct the fact is that there are quotations we should be gathered which can be gathered from the church fathers which show that that was the doctrine of justification prior to the coming of the

01:14:44

Middle Ages the doctrine of justification underwent a terrible alteration for the worse during the

01:14:52

Middle Ages because people departed from the teaching of the Word of God the Bible but there are easy quotations which we can find from the church fathers perhaps

01:15:04

I might just give one or two as indications as to what are to be found in the early church fathers take

01:15:14

Irenaeus one of the church fathers he says but now without the law that's the moral law the righteousness of God is manifested being witnessed by the law on the prophets for the just shall live by faith and the just shall live by faith is exactly the doctrine of the

01:15:36

Reformation that's Irenaeus's teaching we can come on to Cyprian another of these early church fathers he said if Abraham believed in God and it was imputed unto him for righteousness then each one who believes in God and lives by faith is found to be a righteous person you see what is saying there is

01:16:00

Abraham was justified by faith and that is the pattern for everyone who is justified by faith and you notice here there's no reference whatsoever to the question of works or human merit take

01:16:13

Athanasius Athanasius puts it like this not by our works but by faith a man is justified as was

01:16:24

Abraham now I could give you more of these quotations but just give you one more of the several that I could give you which

01:16:33

I have put in my little book about justification I like very much the one by Jerome he was the one who translated the

01:16:41

Bible into Latin which has been extensively used in the Roman Catholic Church so he will be greatly respected in Roman Catholic circles the

01:16:50

Vulgate translation of the Bible as we call it was done by Jerome and this was Jerome's doctrine he said this

01:16:56

I'm quoting him when an ungodly man is converted God justifies him through faith alone not on account of good works which he possessed not otherwise on account of his ungodly deeds he ought to have been punished so notice that he says when an ungodly man is converted

01:17:19

God justifies him through faith alone not on account of good works and you get the same teaching in Chrysostom one of the church fathers and you get it in the great

01:17:30

Augustine who is perhaps the supreme the great theologian of the early church Augustine I'll finish with this one of the quotations all who are justified through Christ are righteous not in themselves but in him and I give these quotations to show that the early church taught justification by faith alone which is the biblical teaching of the

01:17:55

New Testament and the Apostles of the New Testament and it was only during the Middle Ages that that was distorted but it was recovered the doctrine was recovered correctly by Martin Luther and John Calvin and the

01:18:09

Reformers by the way I'm sure you wouldn't mind if I plug a book especially since it was published by banner of truth but an excellent book that involves the early church is the

01:18:22

Church of Rome at the bar of history and written by a

01:18:29

Bill Webster William Webster and yes please do recommend it yes and it shows the novelty of many of the teachings of the

01:18:40

Roman Catholic Church that are in that that militate against what the scriptures teach and even militate against what the church fathers teach and William Webster has also other books that involve the patristic evidence of what the fathers believed in regard to the gospel and other things and they have much more in common with the reformers than many people would believe now isn't it right that the one of the reasons that the the the

01:19:17

Reformation was enabled to spread obviously first and foremost by the grace of God but humanly speaking is that not only did they refer to the scriptures but they also did refer to the patristic evidence for what they believed did they not they certainly did yes and it was the view of the early church that we're justified by faith alone in Christ alone and Christ has done everything necessary we need to add nothing to it and it was a terrible mistake which crept into the church and became almost universal in a medieval church that we must either have baptism or we must have help from the

01:19:56

Saints and the Virgin Mary and all of these additions destroy the doctrine of justification you mustn't add anything to the doctrine of justification which is by faith alone in Christ alone full stop amen well we're going to our final break right now it's going to be briefer than the last one so don't lose heart we will be back very soon and please if you have any questions that you'd like to ask now is the time to do it because they're rapidly running out of time our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:20:29

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

01:20:37

USA and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter don't go away

01:20:43

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Andy Woodard serves as the pastor it's called new covenant church NYC they are a reformed

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Baptist Church that meets in midtown Manhattan you can find their service times and location on their website which is www .NCC

01:25:45

.NYC they believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel if you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching which is simply biblical preaching in New York City I'd like to recommend that you visit

01:26:02

New Covenant Church NYC again their information can be found at www .NCC

01:26:09

.NYC have a great day hi

01:26:16

I'm pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every

01:26:22

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE radio www .wlie540am

01:26:32

.com we bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions our time will be lively useful and I assure you never dull join us this

01:26:45

Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor welcome back this is

01:26:52

Chris Arnzen and that was the voice of Bill Shishko formerly the pastor of the

01:26:58

Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square which happens to be the church where I first heard our guest

01:27:03

Morris Roberts and I know that you have a great fondness for Bill Shishko as do I yes most certainly and so please listen as often as you can to a visit to the pastor's study every

01:27:14

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time you can hear that globally on the via live streaming at WLIE540am .com

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in the New York tri -state area and even parts of Pennsylvania Rhode Island and Massachusetts every

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Saturday 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time we are now back to the final half hour of our program today with Morris Roberts on the subject finding peace with God justification explained and if you'd like to join us on the air our email address is

01:27:50

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com ChrisArnzen at gmail .com well you have a chapter errors and falsehoods to be avoided now

01:27:59

I'm sure that we have already addressed some of them but if you could add anything to that subject that you'd like to discuss now well there's so many areas that people can add indeed to the doctrines of the

01:28:16

Word of God but tradition is one of the mistakes that many people make they're attached to the idea that churches have traditions and they make the authority of tradition to become more important than the authority of the

01:28:34

Word of God and this is what Christ warns against he explicitly warns the people of his day and therefore warns us also to beware of the leaven of the

01:28:45

Pharisees and the Sadducees that's in Matthew chapter 16 the leaven means the false teaching the error the confused teaching so the leaven of the

01:28:56

Pharisees was they added to the Bible and the leaven of the Sadducees was they subtracted from the

01:29:03

Bible and the Bible warns very severely at the end in chapter 22 of Revelation if any man will add to these things in the

01:29:13

Bible God will add unto him the plagues that are written in the book and he goes on to say if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy

01:29:21

God shall take away his part out of the book of life Revelation 22 so one thing we must never do is we must not add to the

01:29:32

Bible or take from the Bible if we do that then these judgments will be waiting for us in a coming day a terrible day we have a listener in Clifton New Jersey named

01:29:44

Joey who says here Reverend Roberts can you explain in John chapter 6 verses 28 through 29 why

01:29:54

Christ uses the language of works in regard to faith quoting the

01:30:00

English Standard Version then they said to him what must we do to be doing the works of God Jesus answered them this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent and that's again in John chapter 6 verse 28 through 29 right well what the

01:30:23

Lord Jesus Christ is doing there is he is saying what is the only way whereby we may be justified we must believe in the

01:30:34

Lord Jesus Christ and that is simply another way of defining faith he is there defining faith in a rather specialized way this is the work that we are to do we are to believe in the

01:30:48

Lord Jesus Christ so if you want to define faith as a work then that's legitimate but of course when people usually talk about our works they mean our good deeds our prayers our fastings our going into a monastery our worshiping the

01:31:05

Virgin Mary our being baptized our taking the Lord's Supper so as long as you understand that Christ there means here is the one and only thing we must do it is to believe in him and in his finished work on the cross then all is well but it's just that Christ words it in a manner which you could misunderstand if you weren't careful enough but we must always define what the

01:31:30

Bible says by reference to other passages in the Bible and when you take the other passages in the

01:31:36

Bible it's perfectly clear that Jesus is saying what Paul and Peter and the others are saying is that we are justified by faith alone and that's the only legitimate work whereby we should be justified by faith alone thank you

01:31:51

Joey give us your full mailing address in Clifton New Jersey because you have also won a free copy of finding peace with God thanks to our friends at the banner of truth and also thanks to our friends at CVBBS .com

01:32:03

we'll be shipping that out to you let's see here well we have another chapter in your booklet the classic statement what is the classic statement right the classic statement is what really you could say is comes from the

01:32:23

Westminster Confession of Faith that is the wonderful teaching and the

01:32:29

Westminster Confession of Faith is something which comes from the golden age of theology in Britain the reformers laid the foundation of biblical doctrine but then it took two or three generations for it to mature and you could say that the maturest time in the history of the development of theology in the

01:32:51

UK was in the 1620s and 30s and 40s that was the

01:32:59

Golden Age that period and it was in the 1640s that these wonderful documents called the

01:33:05

Westminster Confession to Faith and the catechisms were put together brilliant divines they were called

01:33:12

Westminster divines they were mainly English but there were also some Scotsmen there too men of profound spirituality and so justification they defined as God's imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ to somebody and imputing means there's no work accompanying it which merits it or deserves it but it is an imputation of something meaning

01:33:41

God's reckoning by his sheer grace to the person who exercises faith so we're talking then about that period of church history when the

01:33:52

Reformation had reached its maturity sometimes referred to as a second Reformation and therefore we must always be careful to make sure that we do define justification in a way which is fully consistent with the teaching of the

01:34:07

Word of God praise God yes and of course those of us who are

01:34:15

Reformed Baptists our 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith yes nearly nearly identical to the

01:34:22

Westminster oh it is yes yes by design by degree by design and also the

01:34:28

Savoy Declaration was made use of in the in regards to the developing of the 1689 this is a an issue that there's there's a lot of confusion over this next issue a healthy fear of God there are professing

01:34:45

Christians that that boast that we should never be afraid of God and there are others on the other extreme that want to put their congregations in a constant state of terror always thinking that God is just waiting with a raised fist to smash them with some act of chastisement or punishment and of course you even have some who believe that a genuinely born -again person can lose their salvation and of course there are different reasons that different churches and individuals give for how a person in their minds could be damned after they were truly born again but what are you specifically talking about when you speak of a healthy fear of God yes a healthy fear of God is love for God which so conditions our mind our affections our emotions our conscience that we make it our duty to live our life in all aspects of it in obedience to the revealed will of God in Holy Scripture putting that very simply we can talk about the moral law the ten commandments now let's be clear we are not saved by keeping the ten commandments we are saved by faith alone as we've said many times in Christ alone but when a person is born again when they are justified then the question arises what is the rule of life whereby we must order our conduct and our behavior and the answer which is given by the

01:36:29

Bible is what Christ said think not that I've come to destroy the law or the prophets

01:36:34

I came not to destroy but to fulfill and then he puts it another way if you love me keep my commandments and so the

01:36:42

Apostle Paul makes it very clear too that when we are born again our duty is to keep the ten commandments of the rule of life now it is in that way therefore that a person's life reflects a genuine sincere love for God's person and God's ways so that's the simple way of looking at it

01:37:07

I believe in the light of your question yes and even a child if there is a healthy and biblical relationship between parent and child that child should have a healthy fear of his own parents that doesn't mean that he is in a constant state of terror if he is in a constant state of terror there's something greatly disturbingly wrong with the parental process there but uh that does not diminish the love and mercy and kindness and goodness of a parent just because the child may have a healthy fear of that parent know and do perfectly true and indeed love for God must be reflected in a healthy fear of God the two things go together the fear of the

01:37:57

Lord is the beginning of wisdom and a healthy love for God is always manifested by a genuine fear of displeasing

01:38:06

God our fear is in case we do something which displeases him or dishonors him we are afraid to bring dishonor upon him or shame upon his cause because if we live lives which are inconsistent with our professional faith the consequence could very well be that we offend the world and the world thinks of Christianity with contempt and disgust so if we love

01:38:29

God we want to honor him as much as we can which involves obedience to his revealed will well you have a chapter titled justification the way to glory if you is not the final stage of the

01:38:54

Christians redemption or salvation there are stages and these stages are told very clearly to us in the

01:39:04

Bible justification is being put right with God in this life but it is preparation for being put right perfectly and eternally justification means that the one who is a true believer in Christ has the righteousness of Christ imputed to him

01:39:26

God is no longer angry with him God forgives all his sins that person is now ready for death because when he dies it will go to glory but that's not the end of everything what will happen is this when the believer enters into a state of death as a believer he enters immediately into the state of glory the intermediate state is between death and judgment and the final stage is between judgment and all that happens thereafter so when a believer comes to a state of death he immediately enters into glory and that is the perfect happiness and the thing we should all be aiming after to come to a condition in which we see

01:40:12

God in all his majesty imagine that to live in the presence of God and to see him in all his majesty to have the love of Christ poured upon our soul

01:40:21

Christ treating us as his own beloved brothers and sisters to all eternity the angels themselves will be less privileged than we are as Christians in glory because they are not the sons of God as we are as Christians so there's no doubt about it justification is what we need in this life but when we die and leave this world and after the resurrection day there's the final condition of eternal glorification and that is the last stage of this wonderful process of God's redemption amen will you offer suggestions for further reading in the if you could explain what you would recommend to our listeners yes

01:41:06

John Owen is one of the great Puritans and I would recommend that they should read

01:41:12

John Owen on the doctrine of justification and I would recommend also they should read

01:41:20

James Buchanan the doctrine of justification as banner of truth

01:41:26

Philip Eveson has a book the great exchange

01:41:31

R .C. Sproul has faith alone Baker books William Cunningham historical theology a banner of truth and Thomas Goodwin's justifying faith all those are banner of truth so all of these are just a small number of the available books on the subject of justification but we must make sure the books we read are faithful to the great confessions and faithful above all to the

01:41:57

Word of God amen and I have one of my own that I'd like to recommend dr.

01:42:04

dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries he is a reformed Baptist and a confessionally reformed

01:42:10

Christian he wrote an excellent book called the God who justifies that is published by Baker books so I just thought

01:42:16

I'd throw that in there and we have an anonymous listener anonymous listener from New York who says that I have heard differences of opinion expressed as to whether we should view our

01:42:36

Arminian friends as lost or as brothers in Christ I am somewhat disturbed by some of my reformed brethren and I believe that they are a minority who would say that all

01:42:48

Arminians are lost after all I don't see the great heroes of the faith making such claims including

01:42:56

Charles Haddon Spurgeon and even George Whitfield who had a great ongoing close friendship with John Wesley even though they had very strong disagreements on predestination and other issues that divide

01:43:10

Calvinists from Arminians what is your guests opinion as to how serious is the heresy or the errors of Arminianism my view is that it is perfectly possible for an

01:43:26

Arminian to be converted and on his way to glory and the quotations are very interesting yes

01:43:34

Whitfield and Wesley that is a very valid way of expressing it I'm sure that Spurgeon never for a moment would accuse every

01:43:41

Arminian of not being on the way to glory Arminianism is in my respectful view a failure to understand clearly the whole substance of the doctrine of the

01:43:57

Bible but it is possible that a person who doesn't see the whole substance of the teaching of the

01:44:03

Bible can be right on the main things if I may be personal for a moment I when

01:44:09

I was first converted about 60 odd years ago I was an Arminian for some years simply because I hadn't studied enough theology but I was just as saved as though I was a fellow bred

01:44:22

Calvinist so I think it's going far too far to say that a person who's an

01:44:27

Arminian cannot be justified and cannot be saved I do not share that view at all amen

01:44:33

I agree with you wholeheartedly and we have Harrison in Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania who says for the life of me

01:44:42

I cannot reconcile Martin Luther's belief in justification by faith alone and yet simultaneously believing in baptismal regeneration how are we to look at Luther as a figure from history is he our brother are our friends who are from the conservative

01:45:02

Bible -believing Lutheran denominations such as the Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod and others are they our brothers in Christ I got the impression that it was being said that Luther believed in baptismal regeneration yes that's what the listener said yeah oh well

01:45:21

I would need to double -check that I don't think I realize that that is what he said if that is what he taught

01:45:27

I'm learning something I didn't hear before no I don't believe that that is what

01:45:33

Martin Luther thought I believe he was he had some points which he wasn't strong enough and clear enough on but on the doctrine of justification is absolutely right and I don't think the thing that's been alleged there is correct well for the sake of argument can somebody believe in something in your opinion that is that seriously wrong and still have enough of the gospel that they will be they'll meet us in heaven one day

01:46:03

I mean if I'm not mistaken I think Augustine may have believed in baptismal regeneration even though he had a lot in common with us because in fact he was a hero of John Kelvin people may have serious errors that is true it's very hard to define which others are so fatally serious and which are not baptismal regeneration is a very serious error certainly whether Augustine had that view or not

01:46:32

I would need to be made clear on but it is possible for a Christian to go astray on some things and to be misled on some things and many people are but that's not to say they couldn't truly have their faith in the

01:46:47

Lord Jesus Christ I have met Roman Catholics who I believe probably are born again it's just that they they've been brought up in a

01:46:57

Catholic religion and by the grace of God they've come to adopt a true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and they believe in his righteousness and they have not been given a correct theology but in their heart of hearts they truly do believe in Christ and truly love him and such people of course will be saved amen thank

01:47:17

God for his mercy but well before before we go I want our listeners to be somewhat more informed about some of the ministries that you have participated in for many years

01:47:29

I know that you were at one time editor of the Banner of Truth magazine if you could let our listeners know something about that magazine yes the

01:47:41

Banner of Truth magazine began I think in the 1950s it was done by the

01:47:47

Reverend Ian Murray who is still living E .N .H. Murray and Ian Murray was the one or one of the ones who started the work of the

01:47:56

Banner of Truth which has done a tremendous work in giving excellent books to people all over the world in different languages too one of the influences in the

01:48:06

Banner of Truth magazine at that time was the presence of Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones in London who was a world -famous and outstanding preacher of course a thoroughly informed man so the books the magazines have been brought out

01:48:21

I think just about every month since then there have been a number of editors Ian Murray was the first I was one of those who came later and thankfully we still have the magazine going every month as it used to do and very well received by different parts of the world and some of the other books that you have written if you could just give us a summary of what these books involve you have first of all the thought of God if you could explain a little bit about that book it's not so easy to summarize that because these books that I wrote originated as articles in the

01:49:02

Banner of Truth magazine of which I was then the editor and so what happened was after a year or two of writing these editorials they were put together into a book form what

01:49:16

I can say about them is that they're all dealing with experimental practical

01:49:22

Christian living it is an attempt really to say what the

01:49:27

Puritans did in their generation to try to apply the Word of God to various aspects of one's home life or one's work life one's fears one's doubts one's uncertainties to try to be practical experimental and doctrinal at one on the same time so all the books whose titles you mentioned there they're all doing that same thing dealing of different subjects but all dealing with it from a practical experimental point of view yes

01:49:58

I know that our friend dr. Joel Beakey is very fond of introducing and proclaiming experiential or experimental

01:50:08

Calvinism to his listeners and basically that is in contrast to dead orthodoxy is it not where it's where people would just have a said faith or a an academic faith or something that they believe mentally but it's not really vibrant and living in their lives and if I may just for a moment say this

01:50:31

I was shocked to discover in an American magazine recently that it is alleged that a lot of professing reformed

01:50:40

Christians actually watch naughty things on television and true godliness requires that we must never allow ourselves to watch anything on television or read anything in books which is spiritually or morally wrong because to do so of course is to fill our minds with ideas which are very

01:51:05

God dishonoring so the attempt that I made in the books that you quoted and similar books was really to try to encourage the

01:51:14

Christian to live the godly life as sanctification as well as justification is extremely important amen and so if anybody wants to get a hold of some of the other books that Reverend Roberts has written let me tell you the or mention the website of the banner of truth that's banner of truth .org

01:51:40

banner of truth .org and some of those other booklets are listed there and of course also we just mentioned dr.

01:51:51

Joel Beake a few moments ago his publishing ministry Reformation Heritage Books has published a booklet that we already addressed on the air in a previous interview our first interview with Morris Roberts how do

01:52:06

I develop heavenly mindedness and spiritual conversation and that's available from heritage books org heritage books org and you can also get everything that Morris Roberts has written from CVBBS .com

01:52:22

it's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service CVBBS .com and they have a very huge inventory of books by banner of truth and by Reformation Heritage Books and by solid ground

01:52:35

Christian books and all of the finest of reformed publishers I would like you now

01:52:41

Reverend Roberts to just summarize what you most want etched on the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

01:52:50

To make it the number one duty in life to sit down and ask ourselves are we right with God if suddenly

01:53:04

I take ill with a heart attack or stroke or whatever or an accident on the road am

01:53:11

I right with God will I be sure to go to heaven nothing can possibly be more serious than that we should be right with God and if we are not sure about it and we're unclear as to whether we're right with God or not then to make this our number one priority to turn to the

01:53:32

Bible and to the best teaching like the Westminster Confession of Faith and catechisms to get to study of the doctrine of justification and to give ourselves no rest but seeking with all our heart praying to God for it that he'll give us the grace both to trust in Christ and be justified and with that to give us the assurance of being justified because it's possible to be justified and not to be assured of it but we need to be both justified and also assured

01:54:06

I would say make that number one priority in life praise

01:54:11

God amen well I wanted to do also let our listeners know that if you want more information about the denomination to which our guest belongs the

01:54:23

Free Church of Scotland continuing you can go to free church continuing org free church continuing org and I also want to remind our listeners that on Monday we have

01:54:37

John Fesco JV Fesco returning to the program and he is going to be discussing his book reforming apologetics retrieving the classic reformed approach to defending the faith that's coming up this

01:54:51

Monday on the 30th of July God willing I hope that you all have a very safe happy and blessed weekend and Lord's Day I want to thank you so much

01:54:59

Reverend Roberts for being such a wonderful guest for the second time an iron sharpens iron radio and I look forward to you returning many times in the future as often as God will permit as long as you are enjoying yourself and desirous of returning

01:55:13

I hope that you come back often thank you sir I'm very honored by what you say I trust by God's grace

01:55:20

I will help again at some point in the future thank you great well I hope that you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater