September 28, 2017 Show with Phil Johnson on “The Limits of Evangelical Unity”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host. Good afternoon. 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. This is Chris Arnsen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 28th day of September 2017, and it is my delight to have back on the program after just one day, Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You Ministries, the media ministry of John MacArthur.

Phil has been one of my most frequently interviewed guests in the history of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio going back to 2005, and we just had him on Tuesday, and we have him back on the program again, this time to discuss the limits of evangelical unity, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Phil Johnson.

Thank you, Chris. It's good to be back. And in studio with me is Pastor Josh Miller, who is a visiting special guest co-host. Pastor Josh Miller pastors the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and it's great to have you on the program for the very first time,.

Pastor Josh. Well, Chris, it is an honor to be here. Thank you for inviting me. And since you.

Are a first-time participant on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I'd like you to give an abbreviated testimony of how the Lord providentially drew you to himself and saved you, starting with the religious atmosphere, if any, of your youth, your childhood, how you were raised, and what eventually led you to Christ, and then how you realized you had a call upon your life by God.

To become a pastor. All right, well, thank you for asking. It's my privilege to give honor to my Lord and Savior. I grew up in the home of a faithful pastor, a minister of the gospel, in Hudson River Valley of New York.

My dad was a pastor for 15 years, an independent Bible church there in New York. He also church planted in Maine for seven years. So I heard the gospel at a young age. I can recollect vividly that moment as a young child.

I was six years old when I became aware of my sin and separation and need of a Savior. But I can say that there was a measure of taking for granted, in a sense, the preciousness of the gospel and that culture that was such a glorious privilege to be raised in.

But it was later on and through the process of God's drawing me where I was able to see clearly the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and the beauty of the gospel and coming to a fuller understanding of salvation.

And I often say that my testimony is Ephesians chapter 2, that I was dead in my sins and I was following the course of this world, but God, by his grace, rescued me. I can't point to that moment, I would say, where I bowed the knee, but it was certainly through the gradual drawing and the continual hearing of the message of salvation and how God saved me.

It's very often harder for a person raised in a Christian home, a real, vibrant, actual Christian home filled with regenerate people, it's very often harder for someone raised in that atmosphere to pinpoint a moment in time when they came to Christ because it's typically not an overtly picture that is black and white from darkness to light and so on.

And it's something to praise God for, for his preserving the children of his elect who are also, in some cases, such as yourself, the elect themselves, preserving them from having to.

Go through some of the darker experiences in life. And being raised as a pastor's child, I did see the dark side somewhat of the church, the backbiting. And I went to college with one objective in mind, and that was to not be a pastor.

I wanted to pursue anything else besides being a minister of the gospel. I actually got involved in a lot of parachurch ministries, a detention home ministry, and it was almost not a complete process of elimination, but that was certainly part of it, where you're trying to hold out hope and you're realizing it is the gospel and it is the instrument of the church that Jesus Christ uses to minister his gospel to the world.

And I just kept coming back to the power and the significance of the local church. I had aspirations of being a lawyer and ridding the world of protecting those who can't defend themselves and in ridding the world of injustice.

And I remember the conversation I had with my dad in years of college, and he was just saying, if you want to change people for eternity, it will be through the gospel and it will be in and through the church that this happens.

And nothing other than I could say that the movement of the Spirit through his word and through faithful men who were in my life discipling me, that I just had an increase of an affection and love for the church.

So coming out of college, I was like, I want to serve Christ through the church. And for me, at that stage of my life, that meant seminary and being trained. And it was while in seminary that I actually met our guest today, Phil, and through his ministry there at Grace Community Church and the Grace Life Fellowship Group, where he leads.

And the Lord used men around me just to affirm my giftedness in teaching and preaching, and the Lord has just directed me now to Pastor Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Bible Fellowship Church is a small denomination of about 60 churches.

There's 10 church plants right now. The best way to describe that, probably for your listeners, is more of a Reformed Baptist group of churches.

Coming out of an Anabaptist background or a Mennonite type of background originally.

Yeah, that's right. So it was Mennonite Brethren in Christ, and then the denomination in the 1950s accepted brand new articles of faith that were Calvinistic in their understanding of soteriology and really made an about face in their understanding of the application of salvation and the Holy Spirit being the only active agent in the application of salvation.

And praise the Lord for that, and it's been my blessing and privilege to be ordained in the Bible Fellowship Church these last 10 years. Great. By the way, do you know Lyndon Unger?

Yes. He goes by the nickname the Mennonite, but he's a Calvinist, and I know that he's familiar with Dr. MacArthur. But, well, it's interesting that Phil Johnson unconsciously was also the one that brought us together and one of the reasons that you're on the program today.

And you are having a conference on September 30th featuring—oh, actually it's September 30th through the 1st of October—featuring our guest Phil Johnson at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg.

Why.

Don't you tell us about that? Yeah. So the conference is, yeah, this weekend, Saturday, all day Saturday. Anybody who's in the area is welcome. It'll actually be from 1 o 'clock to 530 Saturday afternoon.

We are going to be doing something on Sunday as well. I would assume that people will be worshiping and fellowshipping at their own local bodies. But on Saturday, we are going to have kind of a Reformation celebration conference.

The title of it is Semper Reformanda, and that Reformation motto always being reformed. In some ways, that was selected somewhat with a negative reason. I just hear that phrase being used more and more.

Yeah, liberals actually borrow that or steal that phrase to justify the apostasy that they're going.

Through. Yes, exactly. And so there was somewhat of a frustration behind choosing that. But understanding that as a body of believers, as a church, we are to be consistently and constantly being conformed to the Word of God and use the Word of God, even evaluate where we have deviated from the truth to repent and to return.

So there is a sense where we are being reformed by the Word of God continually. And also just inviting Phil as he just has his finger on the pulse of what's out there and where the church is deviating from the truth and where we do need to repent, both as a warning to the people that will gather as well.

Well, we'll be repeating this information.

Later, but if you want to attend this conference, go to GraceBFC. That's GraceBFC for Bible Fellowship Church. GraceBFC .com forward slash conference. And it gives you all the information that you need, and God willing, we'll repeat that.

But Phil, why don't you tell us what exactly you'll be speaking on at this conference? You know, I have to look it up. I know that one of.

My subjects is what we're talking about today, unity. That's sort of the starting point. That's.

The message that's... You know, going from the theme Semper Reformanda and how that has been abused by those who will justify their apostasy by saying, we are just continuing a reformation, we are valiantly defying the customs and traditions of men and pressing forward into where we believe God is leading us to ordain women and to ordain homosexuals.

And tell us about your understanding of a right view of Semper Reformanda, because if you don't believe that we are continually reforming according to the Word of God, not according to your whims or to what makes you feel comfortable or to the ways of the world, depending upon what era of time you're living in or what geographical region you're living in, you know, we ought to be always conforming ourselves to the Bible, to the Word of God.

And at the same time, if you are coming up with something, if you are starting to develop a belief that has been scarcely mentioned, if perhaps, perhaps not even mentioned at all in the record of church history, don't you have to be very cautious before you start moving forward, embracing this novel idea as if it is God-breathed truth?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, people who.

Think that the key to reformation is theological novelty, well, none of the Protestants believe that they will redesign or reinvent and get back. And, you know, Calvin, he made the comment that it was not their decision, and that he said that he believed had were the writings of every doctrine he taught, and I think he's right about that.

Nothing of doctrines like, you know, purgatory.

Yeah, I just was involved recently in a debate. It was a conversational debate on the unbelievable radio program in the UK. I was invited by Justin Brierley onto his program to give my testimony as a special Reformation Day program, where he had me giving my testimony of conversion out of Catholicism into Reformed Protestantism, and he also had a British attorney who also leads a Roman Catholic apostolate in Great Britain.

He gave his reverse testimony of leaving Protestantism, and in his case it was Anglicanism, and entering into the Roman Catholic faith. And I did not know it was going to be a debate until we got in the midst of the discussions and the heat began to rise a bit.

But the Roman Catholic participant, as much as I thought he was a likable fellow and might want to have lunch or dinner with him sometime if I'm ever in the UK, or if he ever visits this country, I don't mean to speak ill of him at all, but his criticisms of Protestantism were all the rote, already hashed out, repeated, often regurgitated lines that Roman Catholic apologists are accustomed to making.

And the idea was given by him that Luther, if he was right in regard to justification, then Christianity did not begin on the planet earth until the 16th century because no one believed what Luther did prior to Luther in regard to justification.

And I had to remind him that one of the reasons that the Reformers made such great headway, apart from obviously the grace of God in the invisible realm behind the scenes making these things occur, but the things that the means by which God brought great revival during the Reformation is that the Reformers were using the arguments, very often,.

Of the Church Fathers, the patristic evidence. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, in fact, you just go back to the debates between Augustine and Pelagius, and it would be hard to argue that Augustine's view of medieval Roman Catholicism, he saw, you know, decades and it had been heaped.

On to Catholic teaching. Yeah, and this actually is very much involved in our discussion today. And to remind you, our main theme today is the limits of evangelical unity. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Phil Johnson, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA, and only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter over which you are asking.

Perhaps you disagree with your own pastor on theology. Perhaps you're a member of a church or denomination or fellowship that you are considering leaving, or any other kind of a reason like that where it would be unwise, in your opinion, to identify yourself.

We can understand that. You can remain anonymous. But if it's not about a personal and private issue, then please, at least, give us your first name, your city and state, and country of residence. This is a topic that I have dealt with on Iron Trump and Zion Radio a number of times, but I don't think that it could be played out or overstated, especially when it's coming from the different perspectives of different guests.

But first of all, what compelled you to originally write an article about this and want to discuss this? Why is this such a primary issue in your mind right now, the issue of unity and how evangelicals are to approach this subject, which is very touchy, sensitive, and controversial, because different branches of what has been identified as evangelicalism have very different approaches to this in our.

Modern day? Yeah, well, it's called, in practical terms, one of the most difficult issues you face in a position of church leadership. Obviously, unity is very important. It was very important to Christ in his high priestly prayer in John 17.

He prayed for unity at least five times. He prayed that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. So he's praying for the kind of unity that exists within the Trinity, and that puts a very high value on unity.

And then, you know, love among the brethren. And if you don't love the brethren, the Apostle John says, you know, you ought to examine yourself to see if you're right. And Jesus said, the most convincing apologetical argument, that the word unity and love on that, and you mustn't do anything to minimize that.

And yet, Scripture is also full of commands. You know, for example, in the Church, who caused dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you've learned, you've got Galatians 1, which pronounces in two, a double curse on anyone who would come with an alternative gospel.

And the Apostle John says, if somebody comes to you in the name of Christ, but they're not a firm receiver into your house, don't even give them a greeting. You participate in their evil deeds. So you've got these two sets of commandments, one for us to seek unity with the brethren, and the other for those who are not true brethren.

And somewhere in the midst of that, you've got to make a decision. Who is who? Who do I seek unity with? And who do I separate? The evangelical movement, that's why the ecumenical movement, there's so much pressure for a kind of organic and ecumenical, and in fact, shared commitment to some amount of fighting.

You know, and then I say that people cringe. Fighting? Yeah, Scripture compares what we're doing to spiritual warfare. We're tearing down these schools of lies and falsehoods. We're fighting for unity, which is not at all the way to achieve unity.

And you see a mirror of that even in the secular society right now. It's in all these postmodern values, and yet you look at the state of modern discourse, and it is as uncivil and angry as it's ever been.

We're not achieving true unity by saying, let's just pretend we agree. If we don't come to actual agreement, we can't have pursuit of unity requires us to deal with the truth, sometimes debate the truth, sometimes fight for the truth, and so it may not look like unity in the process to achieve.

Unity. In fact, Pastor Josh Miller of Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the very denomination of which he is a part, involves people who united together over what they believe to be biblical truth, which involved them moving away from other brethren who had a different view on issues.

Maybe you could even just touch on that a little bit. Yeah, I don't.

Know if I'm the most qualified to speak on the history of our denomination, but certainly anytime you take a stand on the truth and you say, you know, this is the clear understanding, particularly with the application of redemption.

I think we may have lost Phil. Are you there? Well, hopefully.

Phil will call back. I don't know what happened, but Phil, I heard a crashing noise, and hopefully he'll be calling us back momentarily. But in the meantime, you could continue your thought. Yeah,.

But anytime you take a stand for the truth, you are going to have to be able to deny what is false and to turn away what is false, and to be able, as you deepen your conviction, to be able to call, I know we don't like to use this word, but to call heresy heresy.

And Phil mentioned John 17 and Christ's prayer for unity. Welcome back, Phil, by the way. I don't know what happened.

Yeah, thanks. I don't know what happened there. I just lost you. But anyway. Yeah, but Phil.

Mentioned there John 17 and Christ's prayer for unity. Not only is that a specific unity, the spiritual unity, but it's also for a specific people. There in John 17 in verse 11, and I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world.

And I am coming to you, Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. So, it's not only a specific kind of unity, but it's for a specific group of people.

Who are the they and the them that Christ is praying for that they would experience that unity? And, you know, I don't know. We probably don't have time to preach a sermon here on John 17, but there are specific standards of unity that are given there in John 17.

And if you're not a part of the they and the them, you're not the object of Christ's prayer.

Well, if you wanted to go through some of those pinpoints, it's up to you. But we're approaching a break right now, and I would like to leave you with a thought, Phil, that you could respond to when we come back from the break.

Don't you think it is very disingenuous in the 21st century, and not even as light a word perhaps as disingenuous, but an out-and-out fraud that many of those who identify themselves as liberal are not even really liberal, but they are actually leftist totalitarians, either in the religious or the secular realm.

The liberals used to want just to have an equal say on the table of discussion, and they thought that everyone's voice was equally valid, or at least that everyone's voice, no matter what side of an issue you happened to be a representative of, your voice had an equal right to be a part of the discussion.

And now you have liberals or self-identified liberals acting as leftist totalitarians who really do not want the voice of the conservative, the voice of those who have a historically genuine understanding of what the Bible actually teaches.

They don't want you to even have a voice anymore. In every realm where the left gains more and more control, the more they want to just snuff out the opposing voices. So there's a danger of the liberals, the self-identified liberals who are actually leftists, seducing people with the understanding that they are more loving, patient, compassionate, and tolerant, when they are demonstrating very much that they have no tolerance at all for us.

And perhaps you could respond to that when we come back from the break, Phil. All right, and if anybody would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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We are now back to our discussion with Phil Johnson. He is the executive director of the radio, television, and literary ministry of John MacArthur. We are discussing the limits of evangelical unity. In the studio with me is Pastor Josh Miller of Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a church that is hosting a conference with Phil Johnson this Saturday.

Phil, if you could pick up where we left off, I asked you for your response to my comments that liberalism is very sneaky and cunning because it comes under the guise of being the more compassionate, forgiving, patient, and loving element of the professed body of Christ, and I stress or emphasize the word professed, and when they get a foothold, they really very often, most often, show their own intolerance and reveal that they are actually leftist totalitarians and not merely just liberals,.

Wanting an equal say. Yeah, I mean, to me, that's an obvious truth, and it's true. What's true in the political realm is also true in the spiritual realm in that sense, and just to illustrate, you can look back over the history of American politics in my lifetime, going all the back into the 1960s, and those who talk the most about love and peace and unity are the ones who are most prone to widespread violence.

You look back into the 1960s at every riot or incident of widespread violence in America, and it's the political left, the ones who are talking about peace and love, and generally are the perpetrators, usually right-wingers who cause three-wide riots, like we had with the Democratic National Convention in 1967, I think it was, or 68, in Chicago.

All the way up to today, the most recent incident that's made a lot of widespread news coverage was last month when Ben Shapiro was going to speak at Berkeley. So you see that phenomenon a lot. You can't assume that because someone talks about unity and peace and nonviolence that that's really what he's interested in.

And it's true in the theological realm. Argue for tolerance and diversity and discover that if you want to get a forceful negative feedback, the easiest way to do it is just if someone feels about something, and you're going to get pushed.

Clarify one thing, too. When I said, you know, that some fighting is necessary to achieve and maintain genuine unity, I'm not talking there about Turkish. I'm talking about, you know, fighting for the truth, taking a stand, and being steady, and in the process doing what Paul described in 2 Corinthians 10, verse 5, tearing down the strong, as Paul portrayed, wrong ideologies are bondage, and it's tear down those strong.

It doesn't look like unity when you're tearing down someone's stronghold to true unity, to liberate people from we all agree on the truth. That's when true unity will be achieved.

Now, I don't know if I just say, I don't know if I repeat this every time I discuss this issue of unity, ecumenism, and things related to it, but it is a issue or a text that comes up so often when I am discussing this with people who take a position further to the left than my own, that see that our arms of fellowship should be much broader than mine would be.

They typically will bring up Luke, the Gospel of Luke, and that would be chapter 9, and let's see, we would start with, let's see, Luke chapter 9, and I know it's near the 50th verse, let's see, oh here it is, an argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest.

Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. Then he said to them, whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me, for it is the one who is least among you who is also the greatest.

Master, said John, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he is not one of us. And Jesus said, do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you. I have people bring that up to me, and they are saying, look, unless you are talking about a group of people that is vehemently opposed to your church or what you're saying, and they're trying to stamp you out or whatever, you should just be tolerant of them and welcome them into the family of God and not be so nitpicking and fussy as you are,.

Chris Arnson. How do you respond.

To people using that text? The key is, who is not against me. If someone is teaching a doctrine that corrupts the core of the gospel, then he is against me. Jesus also said, whoever is not against you is for you, and what he was saying basically is,.

You're either with him or you're against him. It's more than just the person saying, well, I'm not against you and I am for you. It's more than them just saying that or.

Having an ecumenical, mushy-gushy, love-fest attitude. Right. Just to take this, disciples were complaining about is that someone was doing miracles, casting out demons in Jesus' name, and they said, because he does not follow along with us.

In other words, Jesus was saying, look, the fact that somebody is not part of you is a sufficient reason to reject him if he's not against me. That is, if equal to my name and teaching, no reason to oppose him just because he's not part of your group.

That's a valid human enemy. Yeah, and then the content of what that person believes is very crucial in this context, though. Everything hinges, and that's all very clear in the words Jesus uses there.

If he's not against you, he's for you. If he's teaching a different doctrine, then he is against you, and there's plenty of scriptures that make that clear, not the least of which is the Apostle Paul in Galatians 1, where he goes after the Judaizers, because they were wanting to put, you know, champion of unity today would say is kind of insignificant, it's not a big deal, but Paul said, look, it's a different gospel, and because it's a.

Different gospel, let them be anathema, let them be accursed. Well, this brings up the other topic, Phil, of the other rut, the other extreme is sectarianism, and keep dividing, keep isolating because of your standards of truth and your convictions to the point that you're left alone.

So, where's the balance of protecting yourself against that attitude of sectarianism and keep.

Dividing? Yeah, well, you know, if you find that all you're doing is being a contrarian and constantly...that's all you ever do, nothing edifying, but you're constantly just a critic of other people's views, then maybe you ought to step back and take a hard look at it.

But the truth is, in the evangelical environment today, I just don't think sectarianism is the biggest...I don't see people wantonly causing divisions where no divisions should be caused. The great push today is for a kind of organic unity where we don't even agree on the basics.

You know, that's what all the efforts to unite Roman Catholicism and behind all of that, we don't agree on the central point of the gospel. Is a sinner justified by grace through faith alone? It's necessary.

If you don't agree on that, it's a different gospel. Those are two different ways of salvation, and to say, well, we ought to just set that aside and get along with one another doesn't matter.

I agree with you as far as percentage-wise, but I have come across a number of people that would be very sectarian in a scary kind of way. Well, that's true, and they tend to be noisy on the.

Internet, but honestly, I don't think that's a large percentage of evangelicals. In fact, one another, and that movement today, that many identify them. There are some out there.

Oh, yeah. I know a church that broke fellowship with another church because during a softball game, the men on the opposing team, some of them wore shorts on a hot summer day,.

And they were disfellowshipped. Yeah, Chris, and what I have found with that is when people are theologically unaware of the core truths that unify us in Christ, everything can become a threat because they're so unstable on what is the central truth of the gospel.

Everything becomes a threat, even if it's a threat to your little culture, your little niche. You see it as a slippery slope, and everything becomes something to divide over when you're not willing to stand for the truth.

Yeah, that's exactly right, and that's what Jesus.

Was addressing in Luke 9 there, where he says, if they're not with me, if they're not against me, they're with me. By the way, it's Luke 11, 23, where he says the exact opposite, he who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.