March 2, 2023 Show with A. M. Brewster on “The Nature of Biblical Unity”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father

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This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own question.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth.

We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this second day of March, 2023.

I'm thrilled to have back a returning guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

In fact, not only is he a returning guest, he is now a featured monthly guest and also a sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

His name is A .M. Baruster. He is president of Evermind Ministries, a biblical counselor, an author, podcaster, and conference speaker.

And today, we're going to be addressing a very vital theme within the body of Christ, the nature of biblical unity.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, A .M. Baruster.

Thanks a lot, Chris. I am very excited about today's topic. It is something that has just been permeating my life as of late.

Amen. Well, for the sake of our listeners who perhaps were not tuned in the days that you've been on, tell our listeners about Evermind Ministries.

Yeah, so Evermind Ministries was started back in 2007, and it has slowly grown over the years to become a broader and broader,

I call it a family of ministries. The idea is that these individual little ministries in the broader

Evermind Ministries are designed to help keep God's Word at the center of the human experience.

So there are a lot of human experiences we have. That's why Truth, Love, Family was created to keep

God's Word at the center of the family experience specifically, and we deal a lot with parenting, but we also work with children to understand how they are supposed to fit in the family, and we deal with marriage and all the topics that affect the family.

Then there's the year -long celebration of God that focuses primarily on our personal discipleship with the

Lord, deals with the concept of worship, what that really is in terms of the

Christian life, and it's really more about me personally, you personally, following along with the year -long celebration of God as we grow in Christ.

However, oftentimes we have issues where we need help. We need help from the outside, and Faith Tree Biblical Counseling and Discipleship is our crisis counseling side of things.

People come to us who are struggling with addictions and really big issues in their lives, and then

AM Brewster Ministries is where I go out and I speak and I preach and I travel and connect people with God's Word in that way.

So those are kind of an overview of the various ministries that are all part of Evermind Ministries. And I know one of your websites is

TruthLoveParent .com. TruthLoveParent .com. Any other URLs that you care to offer?

Yeah, so TruthLoveParent .com was the first, and right now it's kind of the hub. We're working on EvermindMinistries .com

and so on and so forth, but CelebrationofGod .com is another website you guys should definitely check out.

And because you guys are listening to this show, I want to encourage you to go to TruthLoveParent .com forward slash iron.

And there you'll see all of my conversations with Chris, the past ones and this present one. And what

I have there for you is a bunch of related resources. We can't always talk about everything we want to talk about in the span of the show.

So a ton of other related resources for you to dig deeper into the concepts that we're talking about today. Great.

And today, as I even mentioned in the introduction to the program, the nature of biblical unity, obviously that major theme could involve many things.

It could involve marital relationships, parental relationships with children.

It could involve relationships or unity or disunity within specific congregations.

It can also involve the tension that exists where churches may be too free with unity, where they are linking arms and having ecumenical relationships with organizations that actually deny the gospel.

Or you could have, on the other end of the spectrum, churches that have become islands unto themselves, very cultic in their behavior towards other churches and congregations, may even warn people in the congregation never to visit any other church.

So you have those opposite ends of the spectrum, and you have many varying degrees of unity or disunity in between those two.

So what was the main issue that you were interested in discussing today?

It might be all of them for all I know. Yes. So I think the truths that we're going to talk about today literally could apply to every single one of the things you just mentioned.

I do want to deal with specifics. So if any of your listeners want to write in and have specific questions about unity in any of those contexts that you brought up,

I'd love to talk about that. But in lieu of that, I do want to really talk about some big picture concepts which will apply to unity across the board.

I will say that for me personally, this started as a result of two concepts.

One of them was I've moved around a lot, and in the past decade or so,

I have heard so many calls to unity from the pulpit. Oftentimes this comes when we've lost a pastor, he's moved on for whatever reason, and we're getting a new pastor, and there's always this, you know, we need to be unified, we need to be unified.

But very often, the details of that really, they don't go into too much detail about that.

And then in addition to that, I have recently put together an online course which will be available to all

Iron Sharpens Iron listeners if they go to truthloveparent .com forward slash iron at a significant discount.

I'll talk a little bit more about that later. But it's an online course about family unity, how to achieve biblical family unity.

So that's been a big focus of mine. I've been traveling and speaking on that topic and putting together this online course. So that's kind of the genesis of this for me.

Recently has been just this talk that people have about unity.

I mean, even the world today, our politicians, they always, you know, the new president gets voted in, and we're talking about how we need to be unified.

And you hear it a lot in Christian circles, talking about unity, but very rarely are we talking about the context of that unity.

So actually, this might sound strange, but I really want to, I want this to be a freeing conversation, and I have three goals for today that I really want in the big picture.

Number one, I want us all to achieve some level of freedom from the pursuit of what I'm going to call perfect unity.

If we're pursuing that on this earth, we're never going to achieve it, and it's going to drive us crazy. And we're probably going to be, we'll probably sin in the process if we're not careful.

Secondly, I want to give us freedom from the shallow concepts of Christian unity, and we want to talk about what real

Christian unity is and what it isn't. And then the third one is I want to give us freedom from the angst that comes from what

I call the spectrum of functional unity. There's a lot of angst involved with that, because we just don't know where we stand oftentimes.

And I want to kind of free us from that angst. So free us from the pursuit of perfect unity, free us from the shallow concepts of this idea of Christian unity, and then free us from the angst that comes from this spectrum of unity that we're all engaged in on a daily basis.

That's kind of the main goals, obviously, and to answer any questions that may come up from your listeners. So do you want to jump right in, or do you want to throw in your oar?

Well, let's just jump right in. Actually, let me give our email address to our listeners in the event that they have questions of their own, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. And I know that whenever we have a counselor on the program, that seems to lend itself for people who want to remain anonymous to ask questions, because they often do involve personal, private, intimate kind of things.

So we understand that, and we'll grant your request to remain anonymous. But please, if it's a general question on what the

Bible has to say about unity, a theological question, a doctrinal question, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

There's a key word in your theme that you have chosen, the nature of biblical unity, because you have those on the one side of the spectrum, the more left -leaning side.

Unity is desired, it seems, between anybody who will have some kind of respectful, tolerant attitude towards the differences that exist with those seeking to be unified.

And they think that unity is more important than biblical truth.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have those who are actually denying the brotherhood and sisterhood of true

Christians over issues that are of secondary or tertiary or even lower on the rung of the ladder of importance of seriousness.

So tell us, right off the bat, about some of those things that involve the very nature of biblical unity.

Yeah, well, first of all, I just want to—the very first freedom I want to give us is this idea of this freeing us from this pursuit of perfect unity.

The reality is, on this earth, it is impossible for us to be perfectly unified.

And when I say perfectly unified, I mean point for point unified with every— not just point for point unified with people, but unified with all people.

It can't happen, it won't happen. And if you really want to go a little bit more extreme with this concept, even in eternity, there won't be perfect unity.

Yes, those of us who are Christians with Christ for all eternity will be perfectly unified with him. It'll be an amazing thing, but there will be billions and billions of lost souls separated from God for all eternity in hell, and there is no unity with those people.

They're just as much alive as we are, though that's an eternal death. And there is no unity with them.

So, I mean, there really is, outside of the Godhead, this concept of perfect unity, this all -encompassing unity with all people at all times and all ways is an impossibility, and the people who are pursuing it are not pursuing a biblical unity.

Well, let me ask you something to clarify that. You made it clear that there will be no unity between those in heaven and those in hell, but will there not be perfect unity for all those who are saved with Christ for eternity?

There's not going to be any reason for tears. There's not going to be anything involving sin.

Pride will evaporate. So where would there be any cause for alarm for those who believe that there will be perfect unity in heaven?

Well, this is going to be a little bit of a semantics game, and I definitely don't want to play that, but it's important to define our terms.

I really came up with this term of perfect unity to describe an impossibility, and I'll use the Trinity as the best example of this.

If we are going to define perfect unity as a point -for -point identical nature, right, we're not just unified.

We are identical to the degree that there are no differences between us whatsoever. Well, that's not even true in the

Trinity. Though God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all one God, there is a distinction in their role, there's a distinction in their personality.

They are co -equal and co -eternal, however. Exactly, very true. Yes, 100%, yep, 100 % agree with that.

And yet they're in function, the Spirit submits to the Son, the Son submits to the Father, the Father was not the one who died on the cross, the

Son was, so on and so forth. And so if we're demanding that we be identical, if that is our understanding of perfect unity, it will never be achieved.

But if we want to soften our terminology and we want to picture a sinless unity, a beautiful, wonderful, perfect in the sense that it's exactly what it should be unity, we will definitely achieve that in glory with God for all eternity, and I look forward to it.

Amen. So where in the whole realm of unity would you like to begin as far as the specific area of life where Christians should be seeking unity and trying to repair, by the grace of God, disunity?

Great question. Before I jump into that too specifically, there's just three more things I want to share really quickly about all unity in general.

Sure. This is true of all unity, and this is important that we use this in our jobs, in our churches, in our families, whether we're interacting with believers or unbelievers, okay?

Unity really does require, despite what I just said earlier, unity does require similarity.

I'm going to illustrate these points momentarily. Unity requires similarity to some degree or another.

Unity also requires specificity, and unity requires separation.

This last one we're going to talk about a little bit more later, but for right now I want to just illustrate this idea of unity requiring similarity and specificity.

I'm going to use an illustration. I went back and forth about the wisdom of this particular illustration because probably a lot of your audience members aren't going to resonate with it.

But if you have any beekeepers out there, they're going to be like, what, a beekeeping illustration? I can't believe it, and they'll be so tuned in.

But everyone else, stick with me here. You'll get where I'm going. I'm a beekeeper. I've been keeping bees for over 10 years.

I love keeping bees. The moment that I meet another beekeeper and that information is exchanged, we're beekeepers.

There is a unity that we experience, all right? It's similar if you have a favorite basketball team.

It's similar if you graduated from a university as somebody else, right? There is that similarity, and we feel unified.

We're relating to that person on that way. However, the more detailed, the more specific

I become, there's opportunities for increasing unity or increasing disunity. For example,

I start telling people that I'm a Langstroth 10 -frame equipment user, right?

Well, the people who aren't Langstroth 10 -frame equipment users, people who use top bar hives or people who use other hives, well, all of a sudden,

I don't have as much unity with them as I do the people who use the Langstroth 10 -frames. When I go a step further and I tell people that I don't use deeps, right?

That blows most people's mind. I learned to beekeep in Illinois, and the Illinois super, the medium super, is what I use, and so the people who don't use mediums are like, oh, how does that work, right?

But the people who use mediums, there's a deepening unity there between us. Now, what's really funny is

I can tell people that I don't use chemicals in my hive. I can tell people all sorts of things. I can tell people that my preferred species of bee is the carniolan, right?

But the thing, if I'm on a beekeeping like a Facebook page or whatever else, the thing that has gotten the most disunity, the thing that I tell people about how

I keep bees that really seems to bother people more than anything else is that when I keep bees, I don't use a veil.

I don't use gloves. I don't use a bee suit. I always just go out there wearing whatever

I'm wearing, and for some reason, that just gets under some beekeepers' skins. It gets under their veils, right?

It's a bee in their bonnet, and they just annoy them. It's funny. Like we're beekeepers. We love using the same bees.

We use the same equipment, but the fact that I don't go out there with that protection on bothers them, and all of a sudden, the unity is broken.

Is that because of jealousy over your courage? I know. I've tried to figure it out.

I'm not really 100 % certain, but maybe, maybe. So the point I'm trying to illustrate here, and I think you guys see it, is that the more similarity there is, the more unity there is.

The more specificity there is, the more unity there is. Now, does that mean that the most similar and the most specific unity is the best types of unity?

No, not necessarily because unity does require separation. We're going to talk about that. So with that concept in mind, that's all unity across the board, right?

It requires those three things. Let's jump into this idea of Christian unity. Let's work on our second goal today of kind of saving us from these shallow concepts of what it means to be unified as Christians.

Now, I do want to say that I grew up in fundamental Baptist independent circles.

I still consider myself to be an independent fundamental Baptist, all right? That's where I am because I believe in the fundamentals.

So it's interesting that we became really good separatists. There was the ecumenical movement where you had all these professing

Christians siding up for the sake of the gospel, even though that's impossible, with Catholics and with Muslims and with other ecumenical movement people coming together and praying and so on and so forth.

We separatists did a really good job of separating from that. The problem is that in human nature, once you start separating from things, it's hard to stop.

We eventually got to the point where we had no one left to separate from but ourselves. So we just started separating from ourselves.

We kind of became split personality in the process because once I'm separated from everyone else in the world, the only person left to separate from is myself, literally.

That's kind of where a lot of people ended up, especially in the 80s and 90s. So we want to understand this biblical balance of how do we unify and how do we disunify?

How do we detach from people? So in my study of the scriptures, specifically as it relates to family unity, but again, this is true of all people,

I turn to the book of Ephesians. Families come to me as a biblical counselor.

They come to me because there is disunity, and we know why there's disunity. We know that sin separates. We know that sin causes division, right?

So these families come to me. They're divided. They're broken. They want help, and family unity is always one of the things we focus on or is one of the blessings of dealing with the sin issues.

And every single time, nearly every single time, this family and I are going to go to the book of Ephesians because the book of Ephesians is a fantastic book for many, many reasons, but it deals with this concept of unity.

In fact, kind of one of the middle chapters in chapter 4 has that beautiful passage everyone's familiar with.

There's one body, one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one

God and Father of all who is over all and through all and all and all, right? It's as beautiful. It's this hinged spot talking about unity.

And so working through and studying through the book of Ephesians, I started to see a number of requirements for being unified in Christ.

And I call these the foundational requirements. This is foundational unity. This is what it means, biblically speaking, to be unified in Christ.

And there are six things. I'll go through them. I'll just name them off and we can talk about them as questions come in or as we have opportunity.

But from the book of Ephesians, we see that true unity in Christ requires redemption. If we have not been redeemed by God, there is not unity in Christ.

There can't be. We have to be in Christ to be unified in him. Number two, new life. We see that in Ephesians chapter 2.

This new life that God gives us enables us to be unified with others who have this new life in Christ.

But it's more than that. Unity isn't just I'm saved and I live however I want. No, there's submission.

There's submission to who God is. He's our king. He's our Lord. He's our Savior. And there's this submission to him that is required for a

Christian to be unified with other Christians. I can't be unified with another Christian who is not submitting to God.

Now, as we all know, Paul gets more and more and more specific as he works through the book. And as we get into chapter 4, we start seeing this concept of cooperation.

After what I just read, we talk about how there are pastors and teachers and they have their job in the body and the rest of us, what are we doing?

We're speaking the truth in love. We're building each other up. We're cooperating together as each of us is being fitted and held together by the joints and we're growing up in the body and being built up in love into the head who is

Christ. So this cooperation as we are working together to be who God wants us to be, as we're working together to submit to him, we are becoming more unified.

Then there's imitation. It goes on to chapter 5 talking about be imitators of God. Specifically, what are we submitting to?

What are we cooperating in? We are called to imitate Christ. As we are sanctified and grow in him, we will become more unified.

And, you know, most people following with me through there, they're tracking, they get it. They're like, yeah, I see it. If you're not born again, if you don't have new life in Christ, if you're not submitting to God and cooperating together as we're all imitating

Christ, there is no foundational unity in Christ. But here's the one that throws people off. Number six.

Unity in Christ requires war. It requires it. And obviously, we're familiar with the wartime analogies and the language in Ephesians chapter 6.

But the reality is this. If I am unified with Christ, I am against. I must not be unified with the things that he is not unified with.

That's sin, Satan, the world system. That's everything that stands against who

God is. And that's what goes back to those points I made earlier about all unity requires similarity, specificity, but it also requires separation.

You basketball players, right, you have your favorite teams. You unify together against the other teams.

Those of us who experienced 9 -11 recognize the unifying effect that that conflict had.

But we weren't just unifying together. We were unifying against something else.

And that is inherent in all unity, but specifically in the foundational unity in Christ.

And this is where the people who get swept into the ecumenical movement, these people who have this idea that we're just supposed to tolerate everyone and everyone just be unified, they're missing a really key biblical concept that unity in Christ requires us to be at war with other things.

And that's something I think is severely lacking in our understanding of this foundational

Christian unity. Well, we have a first question from a listener who has obviously become a huge fan of yours,

Brother Brewster. And I think you'll recognize the name since he seems to email a question every time you're on.

Ramon in Taguig City in Metro Manila in the Philippines.

And once again, Ramon, if I am mispronouncing Taguig, please let me know.

By the way, Ramon and I have recently started playing chess together on chess .com, and I'm pretty certain he's going to beat me in this first game.

I'm just saying. Well, he made that evident because one of his comments in this email is let him know that it's his move on chess .com.

But he says, If perfect unity is not possible here on earth, does that mean

Jesus' prayer in John 17, 21 failed? Oh, definitely not.

Great question, though. In the high priestly prayer, Jesus is praying that we would be one as He and the

Father are one. But as we already established, Jesus and the Father are one, perfectly co -equal, yes, God. Again, I don't want to risk heresy by means of trying to make clear what we're saying here.

But God the Son is God. God the Father is

God. We recognize that. And the complexities of the Trinity and the different personalities is something that we cannot conceive of.

I want to put that out there right off the bat. But Jesus Christ is not the

Father in that Jesus Christ had a different role. Jesus Christ has a different part in the justification process.

And He is a unique personality, dissimilar from the Father, though co -equal with Him.

Again, this is something our brains don't completely understand. So as Jesus prayed to the Father, may they be unified, may they be one as we are one,

He was requesting the most perfect thing. The best unity we have is going to contain diversity.

That's something I really hope to talk about a little bit later in the show. Unity does contain diversity. God created it that way.

It's a good thing. Now, that diversity keeps us from striving to be identical.

You have to dress like me, talk like me, listen to the music I listen to, part your hair on the same side I part my hair, whatever the case may be.

That's not what God was calling us to, and the people who are looking for that being identical, that unity as being identical, those people are not understanding that to which

God has called us. So no, Christ's high priestly prayer definitely has come to fruition. As we are unified in Christ, these foundational concepts

I just listed out doesn't require absolute being identical, but we still are unified in our diversity.

And I want to make certain to our listeners, I'm sure you believe that there is perfect unity in the

Godhead, and that there are Christians who perpetuate a heretical understanding of the differences between the persons of the

Godhead where you almost have a scenario where the

Godhead is playing good cop, bad cop. You have

God the Father being bad cop and Jesus Christ being the good cop. Somehow they have different desires for an outcome, but Jesus straightens out the

Father because he's more merciful and loving and tender and compassionate and forgiving.

But that's a completely heretical understanding of the Godhead. Amen, definitely.

And I recognize that any number of things I've said today could be misunderstood or misconstrued, and we definitely don't want that.

I'm talking about the inappropriate thought that unity demands that we be identical.

That is not a biblical concept at all. If that's your definition of perfect unity, the

Godhead doesn't even have that. But true what we'll call perfect unity, unity without disunity, doesn't require that we be identical.

It requires that we be unified in what truly matters. And obviously the Godhead is a perfect example of that, and we

Christians are called to have similar unity amongst ourselves. Well, by the way,

Alexander in Goldenrod, Florida, please be patient. We'll get to your question right away when we return from our first commercial break.

And if anybody would like to get in line behind Alexander, our e -mail address is

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We are now back with our guest today, A .M. Brewster, and we are discussing the nature of biblical unity.

And as I mentioned, we have a listener, Alexander, in Goldenrod, Florida, who's actually writing to us from Orlando, Florida.

And I might as well tell you who he is. I normally don't do this, but since he heads a very important ministry, and I know

Alexander personally, I want to give him a plug. He is the president of vesselsforchrist .org,

vesselsforchrist .org, and I hope that all of you look that up and take advantage of that ministry and support that ministry in any way you can.

And Alexander writes, My wife and I have known a professing Christian for almost two years. After examining this person's life and the fruits of their life, we suspect they may not be a true believer.

According to the Scriptures, we know there is nothing wrong with calling out someone who may be a false professor of the faith, but we would like to do this in a sensitive and God -honoring way.

My question is, what is A .M. Brewster's advice regarding this situation? That's a great question.

It's a necessary question. It's a situation I actually find myself in a lot.

I think when I was growing up, it was very taboo to ever question or call into question another person's profession of faith.

I think easy -believism was sweeping the nation at the time, and the idea that you pray to prayer, you did this one thing, you're done, you know you're going to heaven, and that was all it took, really was something that was out there for quite a bit.

In fact, when I was working at Victory Academy for Boys, I was talking with some young men who had come up to be mentored, and I mentioned this exact topic we're talking about, that your question's bringing up, and one of the guys just kind of recoiled at the idea that you might actually suggest to a person who professes to be a

Christian that maybe they're not. But, you know, my friends, we have to. I think the perfect example is the

Apostle John. We picture John as being one of the sweet ones, right, the one who reclined on Jesus' breast, the friend of God.

One of the inner three, right? But John's first letter, why

I should say first John, that is, is really so incredibly harsh, if I want to put it that way.

I mean, multiple times in that letter, he just reaches out and calls people liars. He said, and basically it boils down to the fact that if you believe you're born again, but your life gives evidence to the fact that you are not, because, you know, we know from the book of James that, you know, it's not just about faith.

We'll produce works, period. We don't work our way into salvation, but if we are born again, we will work out our salvation.

And so, and John says, if you believe that you have a relationship with God, but you don't have those works of repentance, you're a liar.

You're lying to yourself, you're lying to everyone else. You tell them. And so, I don't generally suggest that approach.

I don't recommend going up to your friend and saying, you're a liar. But what I do recommend is this. I many times have been working with people, and first of all,

I want them to know that I love them. I said that unity requires war, but Ephesians chapter 6 tells us that our enemy is not flesh and blood.

This person is not your enemy, right? And you know that. But we go to this person, and hopefully they know that we love them and we have this relationship with them.

And we couch it that way, right? I found that it's very difficult for people to be angry at you when they believe that you love them.

They may disagree with your conclusions, they may disagree with some of the things you say and do, but the reality is if they honestly believe that you have their best interest in mind, that you genuinely love them, it's desperately hard for them to be mad at you.

So you go to this person, and you share this idea, and you say, listen, I just have some questions.

I see some things in scripture, and then I see some things in your life, and I'm just curious if you would help me to understand what

I'm seeing. Now, there's no script for this, okay? There really isn't. But Ephesians 4 .15

tells us that we speak the truth in love. Wanting their best interest, submitting to God, seeking only

His glory. We're speaking the truth. And I think there is wisdom in knowing the person you're talking to.

As the Proverbs say, I'm probably going to mess up the verse, but the idea is that those apples of silver or apples of gold and pictures of silver, the idea of choosing the right words for the moment for the person is very important.

But I think if you go not proclaiming you are not born again, but go asking questions.

Go bringing 1 John along, bringing other passages along. Say, you know, the scriptures say that if we're born again,

A, B, and C. Is that true in your life? Well, what about this? And again, keep bringing it back and reclarifying, hey, this is not a me against you thing.

I just have some questions. And you can even be honest and say, you know what? I'm not perfect. I said all the time. Maybe there have been things that I've said and done in the years that you've known me that maybe have made you question my salvation.

And, you know, I recognize that we are imperfect, but I just love you so much. The most important thing

I want for you is to have a relationship with God. And if it's possible that that's not the case, let's talk about it.

And again, I can't script it. Everyone's different. But I do believe it's an important thing to do.

If you honestly believe you're looking at the scriptures, that this person that you love is not born again.

Yeah, you should say something about it. And if you conform your speech, your communication to God's expectations for your communication, you can know even if they reject you, even if they hate you for calling their salvation into question, you can know that you did what was genuinely best for them, what was loving for them.

You glorify God in what you did, regardless of how they respond. Well, I think that was an excellent answer.

Thank you very much, Alexander, and many blessings to you with Vessels for Christ.

Let me allow you to give another point before we go to our midway break, and then we'll pick up where you left off.

You have about four minutes to start another segment of this heading here.

Yeah, great. Well, OK, so we've got the foundational unity, right? We understand that to be unified in Christ requires that we be born again.

We've been redeemed. We have new life in Him. We're submitting to Him as King and Lord of our lives.

We're cooperating together as we're all imitating Christ, and we are warring against those things.

We are unified together against the things that God has commanded us to stand against, which, again, flies in the face of ecumenicism and progressive

Christianity that just wants us all to agree to just tolerate each other.

But then I want to move into this idea of – and this is that third thing I wanted to kind of save us from – freedom from the angst that comes from the spectrum of functional unity.

Foundational unity is set in stone. These things must be the case for us to be unified in Christ. Functional unity are the things that go beyond that.

OK, like I said, one beekeeper and I can be unified in that. But functionally speaking, if we work with different bees or we have different concepts about how to treat

Varroa mites, right, we're not going to have unity in those ideas. But that's

OK. That's not a problem. And I guess the truth I want to put out here before we go to break is this.

As a conciliator, somebody who works in reconciliation and helping people come together, mend their relationships as a biblical counselor,

I constantly am talking with people about biblical conflict resolution. And one of the very first steps of biblical conflict resolution is getting our heads right, our hearts right.

And one of the things that we so often just mess up is we don't see the beauty of disagreement.

Because the reality is this, my friends. Listen very carefully. Disagreement is not inherently bad.

It's not. Now, yes, disagreeing with God is always a sin. Right. But disagreeing in areas of liberty is not a sin.

You guys can't see us right now. I can see Chris sitting at his desk and Chris can see me. I'm wearing a hoodie. Maybe you pictured me in a suit and tie.

I'm not. Sorry. I'm a long sleeve t -shirt and a hoodie. Chris is sitting there in a really classy button up shirt.

Right. But we're not dressed the same.

And that's OK. Chris has the liberty in Christ to wear what he's wearing and I have liberty to wear what I'm wearing. That's a silly example.

But the reality is there are other things. One of the biggest arguments, not one of the biggest, but one of the silliest, stupidest, biggest arguments my wife and I have gotten in the past is that she is desperately passionate about washing mushrooms before they're chopped up and put into food.

I don't care. Aaron has little specks of dirt on it. I don't care. But you know what?

My wife and I allowed that disagreement to come between us. We had sinful conflict in our lives because we disagreed about mushrooms.

That's ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing on that point.

And there are so many things that there's nothing wrong with disagreeing. In fact, it's the disagreements that really make us valuable.

Chris has a ministry I don't have. I have a ministry Chris doesn't have. And it's maybe not our disagreements, but it's our differences that have made us good at what we do.

And so disagreeing in areas of liberty is not a sin. Sinfully disagreeing on any topic, of course, is a sin.

That's conflict. But there isn't anything wrong with disagreement. Now, I'm going to stop right there is one of the point I want to make about that.

But let's go ahead and get that commercial break in. Great. And keep in mind, folks, this is the longer than normal break in the show.

Try to respond to as many of our advertisers as you can, because they keep this program on the air.

Don't go away. We're going to be right back with A .M. Brewster right after these messages. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I have been preaching, teaching, writing about and defending in live public debates for most of my life.

The sovereignty of God. I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Votie Balcom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

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Chris Arnson, I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd at the

G3 National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on the sovereignty of God. Make sure you stop by the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnson while you're there.

Go to G3Min .org and enter promo code G3ISIR for your 30 percent discount off the registration fee.

If you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers.

One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Arnson is doing is

Daniel P. Patafuco, serious injury lawyer and Christian apologist.

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. This is

Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio financially.

Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

Lord Jesus Christ. And of course the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and always.

Getting a driver's license, running a cash register, flipping burgers, passing 6th grade.

Do you know what they all have in common? They all require training, assessments, and certifications. But do you know what requires no training at all?

Becoming a parent. My name is A .M. Brewster. I'm the president of Truth, Love, Parent, and host of its award -winning podcast.

I've been a biblical family counselor since the early 2000s. And what I've discovered is that the majority of Christian parents have never been biblically equipped to do the work of the ministry in their homes.

That's why Truth, Love, Parent exists. We serve God by equipping dads and moms to be the ambassador parents

God called and created them to be. We produce free parenting resources, train church leaders, and offer biblical counseling so that the next generation of dads and moms can use the scriptures to parent their children for life and godliness.

Please visit us at TruthLoveParent .com. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.

They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

God in spirit and truth. Grace Covenant Baptist Church endeavors to maintain a

God -centered focus. Reading, preaching, and hearing the Word of God, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, baptism, and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship, performed with faith, joy, and sobriety.

Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at GCBCNJ .squarespace

.com. That's GCBCNJ .squarespace .com.

Or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.

Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor.

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has had a long -time partnership with our friends at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the NASB.

I'm Pastor Nate Pickowitz of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmont and Ironworks, New Hampshire, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Rich Jensen of Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Sule Prince of Oakwood Wesleyan Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the

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Church in Friendship in Hockley, Texas, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

Here's a great way for your church to help keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew

Bibles tattered and falling apart? Consider restocking your pews with the NASB and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Quorum, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before I return to A .M. Brewster, I just have a couple of quick announcements.

Please, folks, if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

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Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate. Now, last but not least, if you are not a member of a biblically sound church,

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So if that's you, you are without a church home that is biblically sound, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to AM Brewster.

We are talking about the nature of biblical unity. And, Brother Brewster, if you want to bring up the point that you wanted to discuss when we return from the break.

Yeah, I'll do that in a minute. I just want to, if someone's just joining us or they weren't listening earlier,

I want to point out that if you go to truthloveparents .com forward slash iron, you can get a bunch of free resources that will help build on the topics that we've talked about today, including a link to Chris's and my previous conversation about friendship.

That's definitely a part of this bigger concept of unity. We have articles, we have podcasts, we have a number of episodes specifically about family unity.

Even my notes that I'm using today to talk through this will be on there. And that's, you know, that's invaluable really.

But the thing I want everyone to know about is the fact that we have an online course that we just created called

A Family United in God. And it's a nine -part course. It's like one half of a biblical counseling session.

It comes with life work for everyone in the family to do together. It's really focused on helping your family achieve true biblical unity in God.

And I'm really excited about it. There's been some great reviews of the material. And here's the thing. So this online course is going to cost $50.

But right now we're running a special where it's 50 % off. It's only $25 to get this course. But if you go to truthloveparent .com

forward slash iron and you click on the link there, it will take you to an even further discounted version of this course.

Instead of it being $25, you're going to get an additional $15 off.

It's only going to cost $10. Just $10 for this online course specifically for you, Iron Sharpens Iron listeners, if you go to truthloveparent .com

forward slash iron. And I'll also say, I'll throw this in there, part of this bundle, the people who pay the $50 price, they get the online course, but they also get a free complimentary 30 -minute counseling session with me, whether it's somewhere in the middle of the family going through it together or it's at the end when they've all kind of come to the end.

That's just something, a special thing that we're doing for a limited time, and that would apply to all the

Iron Sharpens Iron listeners who would like to spend only $10 on this particular resource.

The resource is growing and expanding and will be changing and morphing, and if you get locked in, you get to have all those future updates as well.

So I just want to throw that out there, a wonderful resource specifically in regard to family unity in God that builds off of the book of Ephesians.

With that said, we were talking about the fact that disagreement, it can be a beautiful thing.

It's not inherently a sinful thing. In fact, there are some disagreement that is completely appropriate and encouraged in the church, but the reality is that we're oftentimes so prideful and so egotistical that we think that our way is the only way, and that's just not the case.

People don't have to live exactly like me to glorify God, and that's a wonderful thing for you guys who don't want to live like me.

But the other point I was going to make is that we need to remember that disagreement is not inherently bad, but we're commanded by God to be thankful for disagreements.

Man, oh man, does that change the conversation about biblical unity. There are people in my church who do not see life the way

I do, and it's not in a sinful way. It's just in a different way, and I actually need to be thankful for those disagreements because God intends to use those disagreements to sharpen me, mold me, mature me.

God wants to use even sinful conflict, so a disagreement that has sin involved in it.

Sinful conflict, God wants to work through that situation for my greatest good too. So though I'm not thankful for the sin involved in sinful conflict,

I am thankful for what God wants to do. So this is a really important concept as we're considering this idea of this functional unity.

So Chris and I and you guys who are listening to this, who are born -again believers, we're unified in Christ because we're redeemed.

We have a new life. We're submitting to God. We're cooperating together as we seek to imitate Him. We're engaged in discipleship, and we're warring against that which stands against God.

We are unified in Christ. That is the foundational thing that God requires of us. Functionally though, there are going to be degrees of unity, and that's okay.

You don't need to feel angst because you're not quote -unquote best friends with everybody in your church.

You don't need to feel all angsty because people don't view life and live life the same way you do.

That doesn't mean that you're failing in regard to biblical unity. I've been in too many churches where they were pushing this concept of unity to such a degree that it was almost like any disagreement at all was breaking the unity of the believers, and that is not the case.

So within the context of this functional unity, I want to bring up an idea that we've probably all heard before in one degree or another, but it's really important for us to remember.

It is important that we be unified about what matters and not unified about what doesn't, and we can be unified about the things that don't matter.

It's just it's not as important. When it comes to the commands that are clear biblical mandates, those don't change.

We have to obey them. We're unified around submitting to God. We're unified around imitating Christ and the clear commands.

Principles are something that are generally drawn from examples. For example, the

Bible says, Reprove a wise man and he will love you. This verse doesn't command us to love people who reprove us, but the principle is clear.

If I'm a wise person, someone reproves me, I will love them. Now commands and principles, they come from the

Bible. However, everything else I'm about to list, they're not. When it comes to the commands, we have to rightly divide the word of God.

We have to submit to those. Maybe I have a conviction, a conviction about something in the

Bible. It's a personally held belief that I base on biblical commands, that I base on biblical principles.

I have lots of convictions about the clothes that I wear when I go to church, my music preferences, the food that I eat, all grounded in what

I believe to be biblical commands and biblical principles. Now the conviction itself is not commanded. It's not even technically a principle, but I have rooted that conviction in those things.

An example, I was having a conversation with somebody, an example of this, one that I don't agree with. God tells us clearly in Ephesians 6 -4 not to provoke our kids, right?

And I've met a person who believes that criticizing their child's weight, how much they weigh, would be provocative and would be against that particular verse.

Now again, that's an example of a belief that's extrapolated from a biblical truth in their mind. It's their conviction.

So that's how, that's what they believe about. Now again, I don't believe that that's a correct application of Ephesians 6 -4.

I have episodes about what Ephesians 6 -4 is talking about. So I have a conviction, and in order to live out that conviction in my life,

I have a standard. Standards are the rules that we create to help us keep our convictions. So this person who believes that it's provocative to correct their children on their health and their weight, they believe that they should never say anything negative about their children's weight.

These are standards they have. They only let the doctors handle it, right? Now again, God doesn't tell us to do this, but someone may feel convicted about it, so they create a standard.

By the way, this happens often when we mix our feelings and our personal experiences. People who refuse to speak negatively about their children's weight oftentimes had negative experiences when they were young, people commenting rudely on their weight.

Again, before I continue, I want you to know that I don't personally have this conviction. In fact, I have the conviction that it would be very unwise not to be frank with my child about their health, but that's my conviction

I've come to using biblical principles. My personal conviction isn't stated in Scripture either. Okay, so we have commands and we have principles.

Beyond that, though, we've got convictions and standards that we put into our lives to keep those convictions, and then there's another category called preferences.

These preferences are the things that we believe please God, but for which we have no biblical basis at all.

For example, I prefer not to shop at Target. That would be a preference. I just know biblical basis necessarily for that.

I mean, I have reasons that I believe are biblical for why I don't do that, but that's a preference. Some people like to add the idea of hang -ups, which they kind of say are kind of like the negative version of preferences.

These are things that actually become sinful. There's no biblical basis for it, but we're so hung up on it that it hinders our relationships with others, and that's what we're talking about here.

The idea that unity doesn't need to extend to preferences. It doesn't need to extend to standards.

It doesn't need to extend to convictions. We need to be unified around God's commands and principles. However, we also have to realize the fact that if there is somebody in our church or a family member or friend who they hold the same convictions we do, they follow the same standards we do, they have the same preferences we do, yeah, there's going to be a stronger relationship with them.

There's going to be, we could say, greater unity. Now, again, I have lots of friends who don't share these things, and we're very close, but the reality of the situation is that the people who eat the same foods

I eat and watch the same things I watch and do the same things I do, there is a natural functional unity between us that is beautiful and wonderful.

It's nice and it's great, but it's not necessarily the definition of Christian unity.

The definition of Christian unity is always going to go back to that foundational unity where God lays out these are the things you must do.

Beyond that, you can be unified and be diverse. You can be unified and disagree, and that's okay, and you can just really appreciate the people who you are unified more with in your beliefs.

That's a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful thing. We shouldn't run from it. We shouldn't be all angsty because we don't have that same unity with everyone in our church.

That is okay. It's really a wonderful, beautiful thing, and we shouldn't be bothered by that, even if these are people in our own homes.

My son dresses very differently than I do. It's hilarious, and the hilarious thing is that to see the two of us,

I would probably be the more slovenly one. I would be the one who I work mostly from home, so I'm in jeans and a t -shirt, throw a hoodie on or whatever.

My son prefers to wear button -up shirts. He just does. He's like the

Michael Keaton character from that show Family Ties. Maybe I'm dating the show.

Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. Yes, exactly. He dresses up in ways that I oftentimes don't, and sitting around the house.

He's homeschooled, and he comes out with his – I swear I wouldn't be surprised one day to see him come out in a suit and tie just to do homeschooling at home because he prefers that, and that is 100 % okay.

I think you guys see where I'm going with this. The practical application of working this out in our relationships is a lot dicier, but again, the unity that God requires is rooted and grounded in God's Word, rightly dividing the

Word of Truth. Beyond that, that functional unity is a spectrum with a lot of beautiful relationship possibilities on that spectrum, but we don't have to feel the necessity to agree with everybody and be identical on all the points.

By the way, I meant to say Michael J. Fox's character, not Michael Keaton. Ah, yes.

Okay, that makes sense. In regard to everything you said,

I'm assuming you think – I don't want to speak ill of my father, who passed in 1998.

He was a wonderful father in many ways, but when I was a little boy, it may shock our listeners, but I was very underweight as a young boy.

I was skinny as a rail. And my father, to embarrass me at the dinner table, even if there were guests there, to finish the food on my plate, he would call me,

Hey, Biafran boy, finish your food on your plate. And I don't know if anybody listening, if that word

Biafra triggers anything. You might be too young, but in the 60s and 70s,

Biafra was routinely on the news because there was a famine there, and they were regularly televising images of young children that were very, very skinny, skeletal skinny.

So my father used to mock me in that way. And I'm assuming you don't agree with that, even though you believe that there's nothing inherently wrong with trying to get a child to eat either more or less, and to exercise more, etc.,

etc., that you don't believe mockery is appropriate. Of course. And I think that would fall under the clear commands of Scripture.

We're supposed to speak the truth in love. We're supposed to be kind, gentle, compassionate, all those things.

So I think that's a really important part of what you're saying. Again, sometimes in these concepts, we like to conflate things.

Is it inherently wrong to correct my children in their health choices? Obviously not.

I'm their parent, and I've been called to rebuke them in love, but they're spiritual choices. Same is true of their physical choices.

But I need to do that in Christ -honoring ways. So what I say to my kids about their health might be that may be a point of disagreement.

So that's fine. But the way I have that conversation needs to be in submission to God's Word.

Now, there's something very inverse in my family. And I did an episode called

Family Joking. What's okay and what's not. In my family, I have, since my children were very young, have terms of endearment that most people would not consider to be a term of endearment.

So for example, since my son was a little boy, I have regularly called him a dork.

But I don't. I know it sounds terrible. Well, I have something in common with your child.

There you go. I hear that all the time about me. Yeah. But the reality is that we don't have the time to go into it today, but the reality of it is is that the relationship that the person has is going to completely dictate how things are said.

That's an important truth in relationships. And my son, that term has literally been a term of endearment.

There is nothing that is offensive or bothersome about that at all. I have other things that I've called my daughter over the years.

Actually, her big one is shorty. She's always been the shortest one. She's actually going to be surpassing my wife here anytime soon.

But she'll still be shorty to us. All right. Now, somebody cruel and unkind intending to hurt calls her shorty.

That's going to hit differently, sound different in her ear than if I call her shorty, if her brother calls her shorty.

So the reality that I'm trying to point to here is that no, we obviously have to all of the time obey

God's commands. We're supposed to be kind. We're supposed to be loving. We're supposed to be encouraging and uplifting.

And it just so happens that within the Brewster household, my son can be loved and encouraged and built up by being called a dork.

And that might surprise, that might confuse you and you might think I'm a terrible person. But I guarantee you there are things that your friends say to you.

And there are things that I wouldn't prefer that that wouldn't be something I would want. And that's again, the beautiful differences between us that doesn't steal from our unity in Christ, but just makes it more varied.

And we have an anonymous listener. The anonymous listener says,

I have heard a slogan and I was wondering if you agree with it.

The slogan is, if you find a church where everyone is in complete agreement with one another, you have found yourself a cult.

Do you think that that is a fair assessment of that saying? Yes and no, only because those little slogans, those little sayings are intentionally general.

And it's kind of like the phrase, let go and let God. Depending on how you interpret that, that can be biblically accurate and it could also be biblically false.

Pull off yourself by your own bootstraps. In the realm of theology, it's heresy. In the realm of getting a job or something, it's completely inappropriate.

Exactly. So, yeah, I think that if you find a church where you guys are agreeing on the foundational unity, you're agreeing on the fundamentals on the faith, you're agreeing on the commands of Scripture and the principles of Scripture, you have found a beautiful thing, stick in that church.

If you have found something where there is a demand on everyone that they be identical in their convictions and their standards and their preferences, then, yeah,

I'd say, whoa, the people who are leading that church, the people who are in that church are pushing for something that is not biblical and that is very dangerous.

I could be considered cultic for sure. Yes. In fact, I have been insulted at times.

People know that one of my dearest friends is Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries and they have falsely claimed that I worship him as an idol and that I agree with everything that he says.

That's not true at all. We disagree over whether or not I am saved. So there's one disagreement.

I'm just kidding. Wow. I'm just kidding. But I do have healthy disagreements with him.

I don't have a lot, and I have healthy disagreements with the elders in my own church.

I don't have a lot. I don't have significant disagreements, but it would be kind of freaky if I asked somebody, do you agree with everything your church teaches and practices?

And they said, every single thing I agree with, yes. That would get me a little unnerved if there wasn't any kind of healthy disagreement.

It would make me wonder if the person is truly Berean and testing the scriptures and so on, but that's just my two cents in there.

Yeah. And when I hear something like that, I actually think to myself, whether they realize it or not, they're not telling the truth, because I'm sure if I listen to even one sermon from their pastor and then watch their daily life, they're not living it out perfectly.

And they're not living it out perfectly because in that moment, they decide to do something different. They're disagreeing on what's the best course of action, and that's what the foundation of sin is.

Thank you, Anonymous, if you're a first -time questioner. Give me your full name and mailing address because you have won a free

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB who always provide our first -time questioners with a free

Bible. What else before we go to our final break would you like to state uninterrupted for several minutes before we have to go to that break?

Well, first of all, I am A .M. Brewster, and the New American Standard Bible is my Bible of choice, so I just want to put that out there.

Well, we have to have you record something for a future ad. Yeah, totally.

Well, hopefully over the weekend you could do that. But anyway, go ahead. What else did you have to say?

We've talked a lot about how it's okay to disagree, and that's totally true in this dysfunctional unity. I do want to go back to the concept of one of the requirements of our foundational unity is a requirement of war.

We're not warring against flesh and blood. We war against ideas. We war against sin. We war against Satan and this world system.

But we have to be warring. We cannot be unified in Christ and accept that and lean into that which he hates.

And my friends, it's easy when I say things like this to be picturing abortionists and the people who are encouraging transgenderism and all of the things that we disagree with.

And you're like, yes, we need to stand against those things. But my friends, listen very carefully. I am saying to you as a brother in Christ, as a

Christian, I am a sinner. I do things I should not do, okay? Those things are sinful before God.

Those are the things against which I should be warring. We all need to recognize, if we're going to be unified with Christ and unified with each other, we need to be fighting that fleshly lust in ourselves.

I love in James chapter 5, it shows both sides of this conversation. It shows the man who recognizes that he's spiritually weak and that he needs some help and he's calling people to come into his life and to help him.

The very last two verses of James chapter 5 talks about if anyone's straying from the truth, we turn that one back, okay, from the error of his ways.

But in the middle of all that, it says that we need to be confessing our sins to one another. Not like someone confesses to a priest, but we're looking for accountability.

We're looking for help. We're humble enough to say this is the sin struggle in my life and I need to war against that.

I can't be unified in Christ with you and I can't be unified with Christ the way I should be if I'm not submitting to the clear commands and principles and scriptures.

And so oftentimes when we talk about unity, we're really focused outward, being unified with other people or really other people being unified with us.

But the reality is we first and foremost need to be dealing with whether or not we're unified in Christ the way we should be.

And let me tell you, help you out here, you're not. You're not because you're not perfect. You have sin in your life that you need to be warring against as you strive to be unified with God and with his people.

And I have the exact same responsibility on me. Hi, this is

John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the

Internet where folk won't be led astray. I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide.

This is a day of great spiritual compromise. And yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time.

And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

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Well, we're going to that final break. If you have a question, send it in immediately before we run out of time. Chris Arnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with A .M. Brewster after these messages from our sponsors.

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One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

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Aaron, I'll give you a quick question from a listener who is anonymous. When should we separate from a church if we are in disagreement with the elders if it is not a salvific issue?

Wow, deep question. The beauty of living in America is that we do have choices, right?

And I'm not going to say that it's inappropriate to align with a church that you can unify with the most, not only on the foundational concepts, but the functional ones.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that. However, I will say, though, that I don't know your heart, but I have interacted with a lot of people who just like to escape discomfort.

They don't want to do the hard work of corporate sanctification. They don't want to rebuke and refute each other in Christ the way he calls us to and the one another's.

So sometimes we just like to pull ourselves out of uncomfortable situations so we can avoid that.

I would say that would definitely be a wrong recourse. I would say, hopefully, you've spoken with your elders. Hopefully, you've talked about this.

Hopefully, if you choose to leave over it, the issue is big enough and important enough to you that it's closer to the principles and convictions side of the spectrum versus just the preferences side of the spectrum.

Again, I don't know your heart. I believe that it's possible to do that in a Christ -honoring way, but I also like to encourage people to do the hard work to reconcile, to agree to disagree where it's okay to disagree, and to not allow that to come and break up the

Christian unity we're supposed to have. Well, if you could, conclude the program with several minutes of your summary of what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

Well, definitely visit TruthLoveParent .com forward slash iron to study this some more, but also to get an amazing $40 discount off of our

Family United in God online course. I hope you guys definitely will do that. You can order one for yourself.

You can order one for a friend. Please check that out. The reality of the situation, Chris, is that we are commanded by God to be unified to Him, to be unified with those who are unified to Him, and to stand against those people and those things that are not unified with Him.

That is a clear thing. Now, again, we want people to be unified with Christ, and so we don't just hate people because they're unsaved.

That's not the point, but the reality is we're not truly unified with unbelievers. We can't be, because true unity requires that we be born again, submitting to God, cooperating together in corporate sanctification as we imitate

Christ and war against the sin in the flesh. But also, please recognize that you're never going to— true

Christ -honoring unity is not requiring all of us to be identical. Stop pursuing that. You're never going to achieve it.

And these shallow concepts of Christian unity, that's an all -or -nothing thing, or that being united in Christ means things that it doesn't mean are unhelpful, they're damaging, get rid of those things.

Unite where God says unite, and recognize the beauty of diversity when He doesn't. And then realize that when there is that spectrum of unity where there are some people in your church you're closer with,

I mean, we know that Jesus had His hundreds, He had His twelve, He had His three, and He had His one, and we see in Scripture that He had different relationships with them.

Jesus, obviously, I think, you know, we talked about His ability to be unified with people, very different from our ability to be unified with people, and yet we see

Him relating differently with people. And within the context of a conversation about unity, that's okay for you to feel closer, to be more unified with people who you have more similarities with, who are specifically more similar with you.

And that's completely okay. Don't be afraid of that. Love those relationships, but also don't run away from the people who are different from you in Christ -honoring ways.

Disagreement is not a problem if it's not a sin issue. In fact, disagreement is being used by God in your life to make

Him more like you, so don't run from people who are different from you. Embrace those. Have those conversations.

Be sharpened by it. Grow in it. And I think you will find that this idea of Christian unity is not a

Pharisaical shackling, but it's really a place for freedom.

Well, keep in mind, folks, if you ever want to find out more about Aaron and his ministry, go to truthloveparent .com

forward slash iron, truthloveparent .com forward slash iron, and that would also include inviting him to speak at your church or any other kind of event that you would like to have him participate in.

And I want to thank you, Aaron. You always do a superb job on this program. I look forward to your next visit to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater