Can Christians Struggle with PTSD? (w/ 1517) | Theocast

All right, we're going to do our normal welcome for those who are listening, and they may not be aware of 1517, but we're going to make sure that they are.

So welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

Christian life from a Reformed pastoral and confessional perspective. Sometimes a Lutheran one. Sometimes a very

Lutheran one. That's right. Your hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

And we have two guests, one that you are familiar with, he's been on the pod before, I'll introduce him in a second, but new to Theocast and excited to have him on today is

Scott Keith, who's the executive director of 1517. You also may know him because he's one of the hosts of the

Thinking Fellows, which is part of the 1517 podcast network, which is a robust network.

You guys have a lot of podcasts. We do, yeah. We're ambitious. I love it. This is awesome.

And then most of you probably know Chad Byrd, he's been on the podcast several times, resident theologian at 1517, and also a host of 40

Minutes in the Old Testament, and a couple of other podcasts. Yeah. How many do you have now?

I lose track. No, two weekly, one's 40

Minutes in the Old Testament, which I don't know if you know is the most downloaded of the 1517. Oh, my Lord.

Oh, my Lord. That's that theology of glory coming through. I'm just going to adjust the marketing budget and put it all towards Thinking Fellows.

I can do that. Backpedaling now. The other one is

Hidden Streams. It's a devotional podcast on the Psalms with a reading of the Psalm, a devotion by myself, and then original music composed for that Psalm.

So we have those, and then we also have one which is a standalone to finish podcast called Field Guide to the Bible that Dan, Eric, and I did years ago, maybe 2020, something like that.

Anyway, it's a survey of the entire Old Testament and New Testament. I know that a lot of people ask, what are some good podcasts to listen to?

All three, four of these are great, I encourage you to do so, and both these men have multiple books they have written, and if you've not read them,

I encourage you to do so. You can just go to 1517 .org and go to their bookstore there,

I guarantee you will not be disappointed. Chad, what was your newest book that you just wrote? So Hitchhiking with Prophets is coming out in July, that'll be my next release, and it's a survey of the entire salvation story of the

Old Testament. There you go. But my latest one release was called Limping with God. That's right, Limping with God.

And I know a lot of people have recommended and really appreciated your book on fatherhood, and so if you've not grabbed that, you need to.

Yeah, being dad, buy 10 copies. Father's Day will be here soon. I always say buy two copies of a book because I'm sure most likely you're going to like it, so you have a second copy to give away.

That's right. So there you go. Justin, that's enough of the niceties. If this is your first time listening to Theocast, there's a lot more going on with our ministry.

You can go to our website and find that out. We're not going to do that today. I want to jump right into the topic because we need as much time as possible to cover this.

So JP, tell us what it is that we're talking about today. It's great to be here. Thank you guys for the hospitality, and it's always great to be able to partner with people from different traditions, and so we're thrilled to be here.

We typically like to tee up the topic when we have a conversation on the podcast, and so we're going to do the same thing today.

I don't know how many of you are on social media. Christian Twitter, it never lets us down in terms of controversy.

If you are fueled by controversy, just get online and check out what people are talking about.

You'll find something to stoke that flame and fan those flames for sure. So this week,

Christian Twitter, particularly for us in the kind of evangelical reformed -ish world,

Christian social media is ablaze over whether or not mental illness is a real thing, in particular things like PTSD, ADHD, OCD.

There's a hot debate going on as to whether these things are legitimate categories or not. So we don't want to talk completely about mental illness today, but we thought it would be good to talk together about a robust understanding of the fall and even a theology of suffering in a

Genesis 3 world, and what that should produce in us by way of compassion towards our fellow man holistically.

But then we want to pivot, since we're here at a Lutheran conference, and talk a little theology of glory and theology of the cross, and talk about how a theology of glory ruins everything.

It just does. It produces nothing good. I mean, in some of us, it produces pride and self -righteousness.

In many, it leads to anxiety and despair because your takeaway is, well, clearly Christianity hasn't worked for me.

If I'm supposed to just be getting better all the time and it's just onward and upward, that's not happening in my life.

And so perhaps the problem is with me. So we can speak to the grace and the peace that the gospel brings, and then pivot to what's a better way forward in terms of theology of the cross and how there will be weakness, but the

Lord is with us in it, and how he is so good to work in the midst of our frailty and through it. So that's our hope for the conversation.

Before we hit record on this, Scott, you were talking with us about your history in dealing with mental health.

So we'd love to give you just first dibs here, man, and speak to this. It's kind of funny.

Help us all. I don't have a personal history of dealing with mental health. It's just a fact that I know of.

You can ask my wife. We could. Ask my wife, see if that statement's true. But for a lot of years, before I kind of got into the theology game full -time, and even while I was finishing up my graduate work in theology,

I worked in what could just kind of broadly be called youth programs, sort of summer camps, after -school programs, that kind of thing, on the director of a multi -program site level.

And then after that, even after I finished some of my graduate work, when I got hired at Concordia University in Irvine, my job was two -part.

I taught essentially two sessions a semester, which is about half -time teaching.

But my other job was I was the associate dean of students, which meant that for residential students at the university,

I was kind of like the last word, both in their everyday life, discipline issues, and even sort of some of the mental health issues.

And I got a big insight into what the state of play is today, and how many diagnoses there are, and how many people come into situations, even from childhood, into middle school, into high school, and then into the university, having dealt with being diagnosed with a mental health disorder or mental health issue from the time they're very young.

And so I believe the controversy, I'm going to just name him. I believe the controversy you guys are talking about was from statements that John MacArthur made.

I'm not on social media for the most part. I have an Instagram account.

Please don't try to find me. It's not my name. You won't. I look at trucks, skateboards, mountain bikes, and that's about it.

I'm on there. So just pictures of those things I like to look at. And so I was wholly unaware of this until we went to dinner with some people the other night, and they were talking about this

Christian Twitter thing. And to me, it seems like, and I was telling these guys ahead of time, one of the things we're seeing in Christianity today is that people are just terrified.

They're just terrified. It's not like the spiritual warfare that we're under right now hasn't always been the case for Christians.

It has. It's promised in the scriptures that it will be the case. But it seems to be just very visible right now.

And every time you turn around, it seems like there's a new thing that you're going, give me a break.

That's just ridiculous. And then when you hear kind of what people like John MacArthur will say in response to that, and sort of an attack of mental illness diagnoses and whatnot, it just seems like a reaction to being afraid.

And so when somebody is reacting when they're afraid, look it,

I'm diagnosing him. The reality is that that reaction often becomes an overreaction.

So you can say things like, oh, mental illness doesn't exist, and then you start listing examples.

And inevitably when you start listing your examples, you're going to list some things that may be very true, some things that are a little true, and some things that are just ridiculous.

So if you say PTSD doesn't exist, I want you to have a conversation with about 30

Iraq and Afghanistan vets who came home and watched their buddies get blown away, or limbs blown off, and look them in the eyes and say,

PTSD is not real. Because you're not going to go very far with that.

But then if you say something like ADHD is overdiagnosed, okay, it probably is.

Or it seems like to me, back when the movie Rain Man came out, nobody really heard of autism, and now it seems like one in three kids is diagnosed by being on the spectrum in some way.

That seems a little weird. We can have a conversation about that, and maybe reasons for that, and is that being diagnosed more than it was, and why.

But to just make these blanket statements, to say something like, these aren't real, this is just sin, from the

Christian theological perspective, you can say, well, yeah, right? This is all just sin.

Any time anything goes wrong in the world right now, in a relationship, in the way that we deal with one another, in our inability to deal with one another because of this, that, the other,

ADHD, PTSD, bipolar, depression, whatever, this is, it's completely accurate to say this is just sin.

But it doesn't mean that it's also not something else connected to that too, that that sin hasn't caused there to be another issue too, right?

So we're all steeped in a world with sin. Any time I have a fight with my wife, right, and I'm inevitably right and she's inevitably wrong, it's just sin, right?

It's just sin. It's my self -righteousness that makes me make that statement, which is sin, right?

It's the righteous indignation that we both had that led to the argument in the first place.

That's just sin. But there are other things at play there. There are the ways she comes about things, the way

I come about things, our history, how we were raised, our genetics play a part of that, where this sin manifests differently in both of us.

And that's what seems to be, that's sort of the thing that, and then

I'll shut up. I swear, this is a thing for me though. The thing that kills me about our particular era is that while things can be overly nuanced and that's bad, in order to get people's attention, you have to drop all nuance whatsoever.

You have to, in fact, acknowledge that there is no nuance ever. And you just have to say things as brashly, as bluntly, and as offensively as possible so that you can get enough attention.

Because at the end of the day, like I said, you're scared. You're worried that if you don't say it that way, and you don't do it in as offensive a manner as possible, nobody's going to listen because the world is just full of people screaming.

So if you're not one more person screaming, nobody's going to pay attention to you. And that's especially true on social media.

And I will say, not a very Christian way to act. And that's coming from a

Lutheran. So you talked about how there's a lot more going on.

To say that it is sin, that these things happen because of sin, is a true statement for sure.

But there's a lot more going on with it in terms of a robust understanding of what the fall has done to us all.

We live in a Genesis 3 world where trauma is an undeniable reality. You spoke to that. Where there is a condition and a state into which we're all born that manifests itself in all of us differently, like you said.

How is it that having a right understanding of those things would produce not maybe this kind of anger,

I need to stand on the wall and scream at everybody and mow everybody down kind of posture. But rather, it ought to produce compassion, should it not?

To our fellow man? Yeah. It should. You'd have to realize that you're in there, though, to have compassion.

So, you'd have to realize that sin is affecting you in such a way and it's affecting the way you think about things.

Again, I'm diagnosing again. The way you think about the world such that it's causing you to have this fear and it's causing you to make these kind of statements that are inevitably not going to win anybody over to your side.

The only people that are going to agree with those statements are the people that already think that anyway. Yeah. But it's just, this is your sin, too.

But I just even mean, like, I think this resonates with everybody in the room. There are thoughts, fears, cravings, desires, you name it, that just pop up, that just come up as if from nowhere.

There are things that we struggle with. There are proclivities that we have. There are bins in our frames that none of us signed up for.

And as soon as you stare that in the face, any sane person assessing him or herself rightly, it's like, hey, that's also true of you, bro.

And it's true of my wife. It's true for my children. It's true for my friends, for the members of our church.

And that should affect how we interact with one another, how we speak over these things. Yeah. Well, I think, too, when you start thinking about just humanity and our faith,

I think Paul's probably the greatest example of this, where Paul identifies a weakness in himself, and he's asking the

Lord for help, and the Lord does not provide that for him. And in response, says, my grace is sufficient. So there's a physical problem that is met with a spiritual solution.

In the theology of cross, really, it tells you, like, this is a life of suffering. And then comes the moment where there's the release of the pressure, of the pain of life, and then we're restored in the new heavens and the new earth.

But until then, there is an expectation of not only spiritual suffering, but physical suffering, right?

This is why Peter even says to your point about, some of it's just stupidity of sin. Peter's like, look, you're going to suffer twice as much as nonbelievers, because the nonbeliever suffers just from the fall, but you're going to also suffer for your faith.

Like, you're going to stand up for the gospel. You're going to suffer for that. He goes, so don't suffer for being stupid, you know, for being sinful.

Don't do that, right? But there is a part of the suffering where we have to acknowledge at points that there is a limping with God.

There is a moment where I'm not quite sure what this is or why this is happening, and I've prayed and asked the

Lord, and it just seems there's a... And to have someone tell you, you could have been past this.

You could have gone through that and been on the other side, if you would have done X, Y, and Z.

At times, it's not to sit back and just say, I need to acknowledge your pain at first. Because at times, we can do this.

I don't know if anybody else in the room is like this, but I'm a problem solver. It drives my wife nuts. She'll stop me at times and say, don't talk, just listen.

Because she's coming to me with her struggle. And she's like, John, I just need you to hear why I'm suffering, why

I'm struggling. And my sin is I set a timer. You've got three minutes. A lot of this, it seems to me, just listening to you guys talk, it's like we're trying to oversimplify the complexity of human fault.

That's a good way of saying that. As if everything is kind of in these nice and neat categories, and everything that's wrong with us is something that can be repented of.

It's an issue of sin. Yeah, it's just an issue of sin, repent of that, and then God forgives you, and now you're okay.

And so it's not taking the second step and saying, yes, the reason you are this way, the reason you're suffering this, is because you're a sinner and you live in a broken world.

And it's because of genetics, or it's because of something that you experienced in war, or it's because of a disease that you contracted, or trauma as a child.

I mean, it almost seems like it's a lazy way of approaching the problem.

Like we don't want to really grapple with the difficulty of everything that's messed up in us.

And so we oversimplify it. And I'm sure part of the reason, like you pointed out, is because that's the way you get attention.

I mean, we're talking about it, right? Christian Twitter is talking about it. We're talking about it because somebody makes an outlandish statement, and that tends to be the way it works in social media.

You know, whoever yells the loudest is the one who gets everybody's attention. And that then, at least,

I will put it this way, at least then that does open up these kind of conversations, right? Where we can take it past an oversimplification of anthropology to talking about, okay, what all is wrong with us?

And what can be addressed through practical means, or through medical means, or through psychological means?

What can be addressed through repentance and confession? And what are simply some things that, unfortunately, then you just got to live with, you know?

You can't repent of grief. You can't repent of cancer. That would be wonderful.

You know, you got to some way learn to bear the cross, to keep taking steps forward, and to know, you know what?

This cross on my back ain't going away. And if you see people, and again, for Christian Twitter or all

Twitter, I want to acknowledge that there's a high degree of over -diagnoses right now.

There just is. I've seen it in real life. There's a lot of damage happening. And also, I use the word, you know, childhood trauma.

There's an overuse of the word trauma. Everything becomes trauma. I was talking like real stuff, like beatings, and sexual abuse, and that kind of thing.

But there's a point at which this just gets into, you know, how bad do you think the fall is?

How bad do you think sin is? When we say total depravity, what do you think that means, right?

Do you think that this means that there are parts of this that you sort of easily escape, and parts of it that you don't, and that you can just sort of overcome all of this?

The reality is, this has been overcome. It's been overcome for you in Christ.

But the promise now is that you will see complete fulfillment of that overcoming for you in glory.

And until that point, you will live this life as a saint -sinner who still struggles, but your struggle does not have the ultimate consequence that the struggles of the non -believer do, right?

Your struggles, though they are still hard, will still result in your life, because of what

Christ has done for you. But that does not take away the struggle.

And there's a way that you can see this with people trying to get help for these things, whether you think they're overdiagnosed or whatever, that they really are just trying to do better in their relationships with other people.

Because at the end of the day, when you're talking about mental illness, what it usually affects is your relationship with your neighbor, those people that God put into your life that are your vocation, right?

In some cases, your parents, your teachers, your spouse, your children.

These are your vocation in your life. However this sin is affecting you personally, is really affecting your ability to deal with them in a loving way, because most of these cause a certain elevated level of self -centeredness in some way.

And you're trying to get help to do better at that, to be better at that, to function better with the neighbors that God has put in your life.

Even if you don't agree the way they're going about it, you can at least look at the sentiment and say, your heart's in the right place.

Hey guys, real quick, some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions.

So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources?

We have started something called The Theocast Community, and we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there, and you can share it and ask questions.

You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. Well, and even acknowledging, sometimes people just want to hear someone else say, yeah, this is painfully and hard, and I'm going to acknowledge your pain.

You're not crazy. Whatever steps we take forward, and this is kind of what we wanted to talk about, is that if you have a proper view of the theology of the cross in the fall, it should demand of Christians to be sympathetic and compassionate, right?

And we might even disagree when someone says, I have this, and we look at them and we're like, I don't know if you really have that, but I'm still going to be, whatever you are struggling with,

I can still be compassionate with as a sinner, and as someone who struggles with my own flesh, I'm going to have a compassion with you.

And as Paul says, at that moment when I find out about your burden, I'm going to help you carry it, right? At least in the world that we hail from, one of the things that torpedoes compassion, it is a theology of glory, but it's kind of subtle.

I think for many evangelicals anyway, the prosperity theology is easy to spot. It's like, okay, dead giveaway,

I know what that is, that's bad, I need to stay away from it. But there's this kind of easy listening spiritual prosperity stuff, where it's like if I'm diligent enough, and I'm disciplined enough, and I do my devotions well enough, and I meditate well enough, and I pray enough, and I repent enough, and I'm sincere enough, whatever, then

I can just become so dadgum spiritually strong, that I'm just going to live above the fray, right?

And then it's this posture in the church that comes across, like, well, you should be better by now.

And if you were more like me, you probably would be, you know, if you were more disciplined, if you were more sincere.

I think we've seen this a lot, at least in the places where we've come from. And it really does rob the saints of an ability to just sit with each other and have this kind of compassionate posture as fellow strugglers.

And like, Chad, you know, the paradigm of limping with God, and God limping with us, is something that we need to, you know, whatever, reclaim, make great again.

At least, again, in our circles, which is part of what we're trying to do, even through the podcast. I, for the first time in my life, have,

I'm not going to get into too many details in case somebody ever hears it, but personal experience with what you just said.

I've been helping out with a sort of broad spectrum evangelical Bible study.

And in a lot of ways, it's been amazing. I mean, truly amazing. Experiences that I, being a lifelong confessional

German Lutheran, you know, we just don't, I just like, wow. Sometimes you venture out, right?

You're very nice people. That's right. This is a lovely home, and you're very hospitable.

How odd, you know? So, in some ways, it's just been absolutely glorious, and their invitation to have me come in, and it has been amazing too, right?

But I've picked up a lot of what you just said, and sometimes it scares me, you know?

It scares me because I wonder, I always wonder how long, like, it seems just from my experiences in my life of other people, it seems like this could break, you know?

And that there's a potential, there's a fragility possibility here. And it does for many. Yeah, it seems like it's kind of the idea that, rather than keeping the tension of sinner -saint, it's like if you're spiritually disciplined enough, you put in enough effort and obedience and prayer and all that kind of stuff, that the sinner decreases and the saint increases.

If you're doing it right, then temptation's going to be easier to resist, and all the other fallenness of the world is not going to affect you quite as much because you're kind of arming yourself up with these spiritual disciplines.

And in the end, what you're doing is engaging in this kind of a prolonged self -delusion that is going to be very painful when you crash.

Because you can easily delude yourself into thinking that you're so strong that when temptation does come along and you give into it, you plummet into despair because you never saw yourself doing that.

It takes you by complete surprise. I thought I was a better Christian than that. No, you weren't. You just thought, you deluded yourself into thinking that.

You said this before, that so often our virtue is just an absence of temptation. It's all it is. That's right.

And we act like we can sanctify the old man. And that's false.

I think we try to be super clear on this. The inner man is sanctified. Amen. And the regenerate part of us, the

Lord grows, nourishes, sustains, strengthens. But when it comes to the old man, that dead man that we drag the corpse around with us all the time, that dead man that floats, he's a good swimmer, as Luther said.

When it comes to that, we do not sanctify that old nature. It's with us.

Yeah. The part that gets lost in the sinner -saint distinction is the simultaneous.

That's right. So I think anybody can talk about the fact that Christians are sinners and saints, right?

And like Chad said, in the circles that you guys run in, I'm sure, the goal is to smush the sinner and increase the saint, right?

And you kind of, if you're doing it on a line graph, you want to see the saint getting bigger, right?

And sinner getting smaller, which is it. So that's a noble endeavor. You should try that. I can tell us how it goes.

No, you really should. That's right. I'm not even, I mean, you should try that. But the reality is that when we talk about sinner -saint distinctions, we're talking at the same time.

That's right. And this is the part that gets hard, right? That even your good works are sin.

And you say that and people go, what are you talking about? It was good. I'm like, yeah, it served your neighbor. Right. But the old man in you was clinging to every good thing you ever did and was taking credit for it.

Yeah. Even if you sort of didn't think of the credit in the moment, the minute you walked away, you're like,

I think somebody probably, I think that person probably saw me do that over there. Put me in for neighbor of the year award.

That's right. It's like, yeah. I think it's healthy when Paul says, who's going to save us from this body of death?

Yes. And he points to the resurrection, our resurrection in Christ, right? So the earth is groaning, we're groaning.

And I love what you're saying, because this was really helpful for me. There is a decision that is made by a believer every day when you wake up, because you have two powerful poles at you, and they never cease in their power.

You have the power of the spirit. We walk by the spirit, will not fulfill the lust of the flesh, which means that the flesh stays in its power.

And it's now listen, there's, this is where I know a lot of Calvin Jellicle Calvinist out there.

I've never heard that. There you go. I'm so, I'm so insulated. It was originated by theocastle.

Anyways, I'll give you credit when I steal it. There you go. I probably won't, but it's all right. Feel free. There you go. That they hear this and said, oh, but, but because of our faith, because of the spirit living within us, the old man is put to death and we have this new man.

And that is true. We have for the first time in our lives, the ability to walk by faith and obey by faith and to see

God's work in us. But that doesn't mean, this is why I love the idea. He says, you're a new, you're a new kind of creature that's never existed before.

Yes. We've had those who were perfect. We've had those who were fallen. And now we have a mixture. That's good. Yeah. So when you acknowledge that and you wake up every day going, today isn't going to be easier than yesterday.

That's the lie I fell into. Today's going to be easier than yesterday because I did all the right things yesterday. Were you married when you fell in there?

No, I was in college. Did you have kids? Did you have children? I was very young, but it's also the lie.

It's also the lie though, that in five years it's going to be easy or in 10 years, it's going to be easier.

And it's like, brother, sister, dear saint, you may find that your battle against the corruption of your flesh is just as strong or stronger in 20 years than it is today.

And that for one second doesn't mean that you're not Christ. That's right. Yeah. It just means you're getting older and the weaknesses of which you're prone change.

They do change. Yeah. I'm no longer tempted to stay out till 3 a .m. You're too tired. Because I like to go to bed at 10 o 'clock.

You're too tired. It's not my virtue that's keeping me home at all. That's right. I just don't want to wake up with a hangover at 10 in the morning.

That's right. So, yeah, a lot of times it's not because we're overcoming these temptations.

It's because, you know, we're past that. But now we're tempted by pride.

Yeah, exactly. Or by greed or by whatever it is. I mean, the spiritual attacks never cease.

Right. But they're refined to wherever we're at. I mean, it's different when you're married.

It's different when you have kids. It's different when you're on vacation. It's different when you're at work. I mean, they're going to attack you and your flesh is going to be susceptible for lots of different reasons and lots of different occasions.

I did believe that lie though. But when I got married, things would be better. That's funny. I always see this like, you know, those posters at like a construction site where it's like, 78 days since our last accident, right?

I think there are probably two types of managers that put up those boards. There's the guy that's like, awesome, 78, can't wait to hit 178.

And there's me that walks in and I'd be like, looking at every rafter that's above my head, like looking for every nail on the ground.

Because I'd be much more comfortable with like one day since our last accident. I'd be like, did somebody die? No, good.

We got it out of the way. Let's keep going. You know, because this is the thing. Like, if you treat your

Christian life like that poster board, what happens when you've made it 10 ,500 days since your last accident?

And then, you know, then you do something terrible or somebody does something terrible to you or, you know, you have a tragedy in your life.

Are you just, are you shook to the core because now your streak is broken? You know, and you got to call

OSHA and what do you do at that point? And I just think it's probably a dangerous way to run a job site and forced on them by OSHA.

But at the end of the day, it's a really dangerous way to live a Christian life because that number is always going to be very low.

And so, guys, this is one of the things when people hear us talking this way, it makes it sound like we're making light of sin.

Like, well, you're going to sin, so whatever. You know, wake up and try harder the next day, which is not what we're saying, right? There's a difference between where you put your faith.

Because the reason why the crash is so hard is that the self -righteousness just got ran over instead of,

I can't believe I just sinned against my God. I can't believe I did that to Him. And I'm going to go to Him for His forgiveness. Because I've heard people say these words,

I can't forgive myself. It's like, well, it's not up to you to forgive yourself because you didn't sin against you. You sinned against your

God. Does that make sense? Yeah. A lot of times it's an externalization of sin too. We only think of, you know, these crashes that we have as if all sin is just something

I do. That's right. Not my pride. Yeah. And we don't realize, no, you didn't make it a single hour without sinning, much less a day.

You broke the first commandment as soon as you woke up. Yeah. And that's just a constant. Every sin you ever committed, you committed in your head first.

I mean, this is reality. And at that point, that was a sin that kills.

That's right. You know, and it wasn't just a doing. It was the whole kit and caboodle.

Like, I'm a very self -righteous person. I just lean on the fact, and I try very hard most days to be a decent person.

But I just know that Christ's righteousness takes in even my self -righteousness and forgives me for that.

That's right. And so, you cannot, when you are a Christian who is faithful, right, and is trying hard, self -righteousness is going to creep in.

Oh, yeah. It is going to creep in, and it's going to be ever -present.

But you have to know that Christ died for that, too. Yeah. That's right. This is helpful because I want to shift a little bit.

We've got a little bit of time left here. So, we kind of talked about a lot of theology, and what

Theocastle, we try to do is say, okay, well, then how does this play into tomorrow morning when my feet hit the ground?

Like, what's the practicality of this? I'm going to put my shoes on tomorrow. That's right. Yeah. Because there's many of you, if this is new theology to you, that you're listening on whatever,

YouTube or whatever, you might be like, man, these guys are saying words that have been in my head, but I didn't know how to put them together.

Like, this is making sense. So, now what do I do, you know? And this is the part that's been the hardest for people to transition because if you've lived the

Christian life in the flesh, in this constant cycle of, I've got so many days in a row, therefore,

I'm good, versus we walk by faith. Chad, you just said something that is probably the most important thing for people to understand.

There's two parts to our gospel. Christ is the one who has brought our forgiveness, and he's also the one who brought us our favor, which means all of the love and the righteous and the obedience of Christ.

The righteousness of God is put upon us. So, when the Father sees us, his favor is upon us because of Christ.

Therefore, that allows us to try even harder. Because I'm with you, Scott. We need to wake up and try our best, going, my

God loves me. He's forgiven me. He's clothed me with righteousness. I'm going to try and love everybody I can today. But when I fail, I'm going to repent and start over again.

Well, it gives us the freedom to not be worrying about winning God's favor.

That's right. We have it in Christ. We fully have that in Christ. And so, we don't have to worry about trying to win righteous marks with God.

Instead, then we are free to love our neighbor. That's right. Be faithful in our vocations. And yeah, we're going to mess up, but messing up is not going to somehow separate us from God because we're clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

And so, freed, liberated by Christ and receiving his gifts, we're able then to freely love

God's people that he's put into our lives. And we've been talking about this for years,

John, and you guys talk about it all the time too. Peace will never be found by looking within yourself.

We always are pointing people to the great cry of the Reformation. Extranos, you know, one of the great cries of the

Reformation. It's outside of us. We're always looking outside of ourselves to Christ for righteousness and favor, for forgiveness.

We know that those things are ours in Jesus. And so, then we now, like you just said, we're not having to worry about atoning for the sins of yesterday or the sins of this morning or not worried so much about the sins that I might commit later today.

It's like I'm able to now in freedom go and seek to love and serve my neighbor. It's a better way. It's a better way to live.

It's, like we said, the inevitable crash piece. It will happen. Like, if we are living in such a way where we think that just onward and upward, stronger, better, always, and I'm keeping a list.

It's 78 days since I really failed this way. That will crash and implode on itself. And then you have a crisis on your hands.

And people often question their legitimacy. And it's, dear saint, you are legitimate in Christ and in Christ alone.

And now go and love and serve and do. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, those, you said this earlier, Scott, those with cancer, those with...

What this brings for people is that God's favor is upon me even in my suffering.

Right. He still loves me and he didn't withhold healing or withhold relief from pain because I've done something wrong.

I may not. It might just be a part of the fall. Or I may have done something wrong. And he's gonna, for my good and his glory, and the ultimate healing is coming.

But it's healthy to hear that God's not got his arms crossed and said, well, buddy, you're gonna just have to deal with that now.

You know, it's too bad. I think of Jesus seeing the multitudes, you know, they're harassed and helpless.

And he doesn't say, those idiots. Right. They just can't get their act together.

I mean, why didn't they think to bring bread with them? Didn't they know they're gonna be out here for a few days? No, his immediate reaction was,

I love the Greek word, splakonisomai. It's like his gut -wrenching compassion, right? That was his reaction to people's needs.

Not, you know, shaking his finger or not judging them or not calling them a bunch of fools, but rather compassion.

And then how can I meet that compassion with my love? And that's the way he reacts to us today.

That's right. When we're harassed and helpless and suffering from trauma or from physical problems or from loneliness or fear or whatever it is,

Jesus doesn't look at us and say, man, why can't you get yourself together? He said he has compassion.

Especially not... Go ahead. I would say especially not for your salvation. And that's where this gets wrapped up for people.

If I were to bring this around full circle to where we started, I'd say, because you guys brought up the favor of God on account of Christ.

And I love that. The people that listen to your show and wake up tomorrow morning after hearing this should know that they have

God's favor from this point forward until the day they die. And when he brings them into the new heaven and the new earth solely on account of Christ alone, period, the end.

And now they are free to wake up tomorrow morning and to apply whatever tools they want to their lives to make their relationships with their neighbors that God has put in their lives better.

If some of that is some good psychological help for things that they are struggling with, and I will emphasize good there because there's a lot of bad out there, for the sake of making helping their relationships with their neighbor, knowing that it will never earn

God's favor because it's already been given them on account of Christ, knowing that it will never grant them salvation because they already have that, knowing that it's not going to make them a better Christian because they are a

Christian in Christ and in Christ alone, apply whatever you want to that.

You know, exercise, have more time with your spouse and your kids, read good books on whatever subjects you want to improve yourself on.

You're free. This is Christian freedom. Christian freedom isn't licentiousness like it's talked about by the people who don't understand it.

You're free now to be what God has declared you are, which is his child, and to apply whatever you think is appropriate to make those relationships with his other children better.

I think it's important to consider

Jesus. I mean, Chad, you said something a second ago along these lines, and to consider his posture toward his own when it comes to suffering in general or when it comes to a condition like mental illness.

Jesus's posture is not one of wagging the finger. It's not one of you should be better by now, and it's not one of just being distant and removed from his people in the midst of their pain.

But if you read the gospels with an eye for the posture of Jesus toward people who know they need him, it's astonishing how to a man and to a woman it is gentleness, lowliness, compassion, meekness, comfort.

That's what you get from him. And Jesus is moved by the plight of his people, not just there when he is looking upon the multitude and they need food because they've been out there for days, but it's...

And when he goes to heal a deaf man, and he kneels down in front of him, and he sighs, and he looks up to heaven before he puts his fingers in the man's ears and heals him.

I mean, it's compassion because of the effects of the curse, or whether it's weeping at the death of Lazarus and what that's brought by way of grief.

Like, Christ is with us, and he's near. He's not removed, and he is affected by the plight of his people in every good way.

It's good to remember. Yeah. I'll close it with this. 1 Peter 3 and following, he talks about by his divine mercy, he's given us forgiveness and then inheritance and his love and affection.

And then verse 5 says, in this you rejoice. Not your successes, not your healings that you've figured it out, not how well you've done.

You look to what Christ has done, you say, that is a reason to rejoice. So I didn't mention this in the beginning, but for those of you who are listening, we got invited to be here at the

Here We Still Stand conference, which is part of the 1517 Network, which is Lutheran for those of you that don't know. And so we're just excited that you guys invited the two

Baptists to the cool kids party. Thanks for putting up with us. For real. And thank you for listening this week.

Highly encourage you. As you can hear, these men are filled with the gospel. They've been washed in it, and they continue to love to give it to others.

So go listen to their ministries and their podcasts. Thank you, gentlemen. Good to be with you guys. Thanks for having us. Hey everyone, before you go,

Justin and I first wanted to say thank you. And if this has been encouraging to you in any way, please feel free to share it.

But we also need your support. And it's when you give that it really helps us financially reach more people.

So the next time you consider giving to a ministry, we hope that you would pray about Theocast and partner with us as we share the gospel around the world.