You Say You Want A Reformation? With Dr. R. Scott Clark (Session five: Sola Fide and its Modern Detractors)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

Nicaea, Arianism, and the Need for Confessions

I always think of things that I meant to say that I didn�t say in the previous session, so one bit of housekeeping. One of the arguments that I give for confessionalism to my students is Nicaea. So we go through the formation of the Nicene Creed and the battle over Arianism.

Arius was a Biblicist, and he�s a rationalist. And Arius said, �I believe in Jesus, but I believe He�s the first creature, in effect. The slogan was, �There was when the Son was not. There was when the Son was not.

So he denied eternal begottenness, right? Biblicism can lead one and has led people to deny eternal begottenness. Most recently, that great theologian Mark Driscoll, a paragon of piety and orthodoxy, published a book in which he denied eternal begottenness.

And my response is, and it�s led other people to deny eternal begottenness, who weren�t engaged sufficiently with the creeds and the confessions and the history of the Church, and didn�t know, for example, apparently, the Nicene Creed.

We�ve had this big debate about ESS, the eternal subordination of the Son, right? And so some folks trying to figure out male-female relations appealed to a hierarchy within the being of God and said that the Son is, from eternity, subordinate to the Father.

And apparently, in some cases, they�re saying He�s subordinate in His being. Had they known the Nicene Creed, the only and eternally begotten Son of God, begotten before all ages, God of God, Light of Light, had they known Nicaea and the Nicene Creed, they quite possibly might have been prevented from teaching what is a very serious error if they�re saying that He�s eternally subordinate in His being to the Father.

That�s heresy against the ecumenical faith. It�s contrary to the teaching of the Word of God, as all Christians in all times and all places have understood the Word of God. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Jesus was crucified because He claimed to be consubstantial with the Father. I and the Father are one. He wasn�t crucified because He claimed to be subordinate in His being to the Father. So His doctrine of the Trinity, in effect, got Him crucified.

One of the things that got Him crucified. So, at Nicaea, Arius said, �Well, I believe in Jesus, and I believe in the Bible and the Arians said, �We believe in Jesus, we believe in the Bible which, by the way, would qualify them today as evangelicals, which is problematic, right, because we don�t have confessions that norm who is and what is an evangelical.

And so some people said, �Well, let�s resolve this. We�ll just quote Scripture. So we�ll write a creed that quotes Scripture. Well, the problem is the Arians said, �Well, we believe that and the anti-Arians, the Orthodox, we know them now as the Athanasians, Athanasius wasn�t actually that big a deal at Nicaea.

He will become a big deal, but he�s not a big deal yet. Mainly he�s a clerk, a secretary at this point. But the Nicenes said, �Well, this won�t work because the debate is about what Scripture says. We all believe the Bible.

We all believe in Jesus. The question is, what is Jesus, and what does Scripture actually mean when it says what it says? So they ended up having to confess something about Scripture. That�s another example of why biblicism doesn�t work and the value of biblicism.

It keeps you from denying the eternal begottenness of the Son, and it keeps you from becoming an Arian saying that, in effect, that God the Son was adopted from all eternity or a creature from all eternity or something.

All right, so last topic today is sola fide and its modern detractors. Sola fide. Well, sola fide is Latin for by faith alone or through faith alone. You can translate it either way, right? Now what it�s not is just faith alone.

We�re going to come back to this. But sola fide, notice the singular, by faith alone, and if you went to Catholic schools and you learned Latin, or maybe you went to a public school when they still were teaching Latin, this is in the ablative case.

If you know any Greek, this is like dative on steroids, right? It�s the by, with, and under case. You do things by ablatives, with ablatives, under ablatives, through ablatives, right? It�s like a dative on steroids, a dative of instruments or means.

So by faith alone. It�s not sola fides with an S. You add an S to fides, it changes everything. Sola fides is faith by itself, a lonely faith. We don�t, that�s not what we believe. We don�t believe sola fides.

I see people saying this, �Well, I believe in sola fides. And I always think, I don�t, and Protestants don�t, and you don�t know what you�re talking about. It�s not sola fides, it�s sola fide, by faith alone.

What does that mean? This is one of these important steps in the creation of the Reformation, in the recovery of biblical truth in the Reformation. And Luther achieves this in the spring of 1521, so that at the Diet of Worms, he�s able to say, �My conscience is captive to the word of God.

It doesn�t come easily for him. In fact, when he was first challenged, he said, �Can I have some time to think about it That part of the story doesn�t always get told. And when he entered the hall, they kept him across the street in a hotel, put him up in a nice hotel across the street.

He comes in to the hall, the Imperial Hall, and there are these Spanish soldiers. So imagine special forces, all tacked out, with all their tactical gear, like they�re about to make an assault. And so he comes in, and the Spanish soldiers are saying, �To the flames, to the flames, to the flames.

Like, �I�m it, I�m toast, literally, I�m about to be toast. They�re going to tie me, they�re going to convict me, they�re going to tie me to a stake, and they�re going to roast me, because that�s what they did to heretics.

So they said, �Are these all your books And he said, �Yes, but they�re various kinds. And he began to argue like a scholar, doing a little deconstructing. And he said, �Give us a straight answer.

�Well, can I have� He�s challenged, �Can I have some time And so, �Yeah, you can have some time. So they sent him back across the street in his hotel room. Comes back the next day, they put him on ice.

You know how the opposing coach calls a timeout, so that your kicker gets nervous? They kept him there all afternoon, and he�s just sweating. Comes back across, and they stick the books on the table, �These are all your books.

And he starts to quibble, and his interrogator says to him, �I want an answer without horns. And so, Luther says, �Well, he knows I�m done. It�s time to be a martyr. I�m going to die for the gospel, die for Jesus.

And so, he says, �I�ll answer without horns and without teeth. He said, �Great. Luther�s just, he�s not right about everything, but I wish people would read him, because he�s so, that�s just brilliant.

You�re about to die, and he comes up with this line, �I�ll answer without horns and without teeth. �No, I�m not going to fight anymore. And he says, �Here I stand. He doesn�t say, �Here I stand.

He should have said, but he said, �My conscience is captive to the Word of God. And he�d already said this in a letter about a month earlier, because this is April 21st. That�s when we should celebrate Reformation Day, April 21st, I think it is, of Orms, instead of the 95 Theses, but they didn�t ask me.

All right, and so, that was Sola Scriptura, and Sola Fide is what he recovers in 1519, Sola Fide, by faith alone. And we need to recover faith alone, we need to know faith alone, because it�s the teaching of the Word of God, Romans 5 .1.

Literally, it says, �out of faith. Right, not of works, out of faith, or by faith is a good English translation. In 328, that famous passage, it says, �Pistei Coris Ergon. By faith, without works.

And I�m going to come back and go through some of these passages, so we�ll get there. And the Reformation faith is summarized beautifully in the Heidelberg Catechism. Question 60, �How are you right before God

And the first answer is, the first part of the answer is, �Only by true faith. That is, although my conscience accuses me that I�ve never kept any of God�s Law, and I�ve always broken them, and the accusation is correct.

Nevertheless, God imputes the righteousness of Christ to me, and it treats me as if I had done everything that Jesus did. If only I accept such benefit with a believing heart. Only by true faith, Sola Fide.

Faith is the only instrument, the sole instrument. Why? Because faith is an empty hand, and it looks to Christ, it receives Christ, it rests on Christ, it trusts Christ, it leans on Christ. These are the verbs and the participles that we use.

And faith has three aspects, as I said, I think, last night. Knowledge, assent, and trust. You have to know who Jesus is, you have to know something about the Christian faith. You can�t be a Christian if you don�t know anything about Christianity and about Scripture.

You have to know something. You have to agree that it�s true, and you have to believe and trust that it�s true for me. There�s a personal appropriation of the truth of Scripture, of the Christ of Scripture, of the teaching of Scripture.

You have to do that personally. It�s for me. Those are the three aspects of true faith. Now, that�s just basic Reformation Christianity, foundational Reformation Christianity. Despite that fact, in the modern period, we have, as I sketched last night, had a series of crises in both broader evangelical Christianity and in Reformed Christianity over the doctrine of Sola Fide.

Justification by Faith Alone Against Faithfulness and Works

So last night I mentioned that at a preeminent conservative Presbyterian seminary in Philadelphia, they had an eight-year debate over whether you can say justification is through faith and works, or finally, through faithfulness.

And there are lots of evangelicals who think when it says, �Pistes it means faithfulness, our faithfulness. They want to conflate works or obedience with faith, eight years. That�s extraordinary. Can I read for you Westminster Confession, Chapter 11, to which all of those faculty members had written their name, had subscribed?

Westminster Confession, Chapter 11. It just could not be any clearer than it is. There it is. I have this little confessions app. It�s a beautiful thing. Christian Creeds and Reformed Confessions or something like that.

It�s a free app. I highly recommend it. Those whom God�you�ll forgive the 17th century English. Those whom God effectually calleth, He also freely justifieth, that�s important, freely, not conditionally, not by infusing righteousness into them.

That�s Rome. Rome said you�re justified by the infusion of righteousness. You get an infusion in baptism, you get an infusion in communion in the mass, you get an infusion in absolution or in confession, you get an infusion in marriage, you get an infusion if you�re ordained to the priesthood, you get an infusion in last rites or extreme unction.

They have the seven sacraments. You�re constantly being infused and you�re being filled with grace and you cooperate with grace and you have a faith that goes from being unformed to formed and it�s formed, it�s made a reality by your cooperation with grace and the formation of virtue and sanctity within you.

If you get enough of that, then you get to go to heaven. If you don�t, and none of you will in this life, you go to purgatory, you burn off all the sins, it�s a temporal punishment that you have to pay for and burn off all your sins so you can be sufficiently, inherently, personally righteous and able to finally go to heaven and be finally justified.

You�re initially justified in Rome at baptism and finally justified through sanctification because in Rome, sanctification is justification. In Rome, sanctification is justification. In Rome, sanctification is justification.

In the Reformation, justification leads to sanctification. In the Reformation, justification leads to sanctification. In the Reformation, justification leads to sanctification and it�s by grace alone, divine favor alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

In Rome, grace is a medicinal substance with which you're injected. It's like putting gas in the gas tank, like getting a flu shot. It's an injection. It's an infusion, right? We use infusion in cancer treatment, right?

You go for infusions. There's a church in my hometown that used to be a Reformed church, and they call themselves infusion. I always laugh when I see that. Our whole Reformation was a Reformation against infusion, at least infusion for justification.

Some of our writers talked about infusions of grace in sanctification, and that's in some of the standards, and that's a different thing, and that's fine. God infuses us, as it were, with his favor, not with a medicinal, magical substance, but by his favor, they picked up the traditional language and said he's filling us with his favor and thereby conforming us to the image of Christ.

So, when the Westminster Divines explained all this, they did it very compactly, it needs to be explained, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and accounting and accepting their persons as righteous.

Now watch this, not for anything wrought in them, that's spirit wrought sanctity, right? That was the Roman plans, right? By grace and cooperation with grace, which is works, cooperation with grace is works.

By grace and works, that was the Roman plan, and if it's by grace and works, then it's really by works. What does Paul say in Romans 11, verse 6? What does Romans 11, 6 say? Pardon? If it's by works, then grace is, right?

Grace is no longer, so grace is one thing, it's the favor of God, works are something else. Those are two principles. When it comes to justification, right? We need works for justification, absolutely, you are justified by works.

Anybody who doesn't get that doesn't understand the gospel. You are absolutely justified by works. You can't be accepted by God apart from perfect, personal, perpetual obedience, it's just not yours, it's just not yours.

Jesus, as I said last time, well, I guess it was last night, Jesus provided that perfect, personal, perpetual obedience, and that perfect, personal, perpetual obedience is imputed to you. In medieval terms, Jesus had condign merit.

If you have a Roman background, you went to catechism, you might remember a priest talking to you about, oh, faith, now you need condign merit, don't you know, and you need to accumulate condign merit by receiving the holy sacraments and cooperating with grace, right?

Condign merit is worthy merit, merit that God has to accept, it meets the test. You don't have any of that, you never will, you never have. Jesus had that, his condign merits, and so when we talk about merits, sometimes people say, oh, I believe in grace, I'm opposed to merit, well, you're confused, because Jesus has had merits, and all his condign merits are credited to you.

We believe in merits in the Reformation, we believe in Jesus' merits, we just don't believe in your merits, or my merits, we don't have any merits, and we certainly don't believe in congruent merit. Congruent merit was God helps those who help themselves.

There's a medieval theologian who said, to those who do what lies within them, who capitalize on their natural ability, divinely endowed ability, God will not deny grace, that was what Luther was taught, it's a kind of Pelagianism.

And the Reformation says, ah, we don't believe that, that's Pelagianism. All right, so the Westminster is responding to all that, not for anything done by them or wrought in them, but watch this, but for Christ's sake alone, nor by imputing faith itself, who said that?

Who said that our faith, our faith is imputed to us? Anybody know? Jacob Arminius and the Romonstrants said that our faith, the act of faith, the existence of faith, so they tried to take us back to the medieval church by turning faith into a virtue again.

No, faith is not a virtue in that sense, in justification, it's an empty hand. What makes faith powerful is not our sanctity, our obedience, it's Christ, the object of faith. So faith is not imputed to us for justification, right?

The act of believing is not imputed to us for justification, or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness, right? So none of that counts for righteousness according to the Westminster Divines, chapter 11.

But by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receive, now watch this, watch these participles, listen, they receiving and resting on Him. What is true faith in the act of justification?

They receiving and resting. Luther called that passive righteousness. What he means is receptive righteousness. We actually, some of our writers talked about fides recepta, faith, a receiving faith, right?

That's what faith does, it receives, and it rests for justification on Christ. That's sola fide. And His righteousness by faith, which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God. If you look at the second section, faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ, again, just in case you missed it the first time, receiving and resting, not working.

Faith doesn't justify because it works. That's faith formed by love. That's the very thing we rejected in the Reformation. Faith doesn't justify because it works. Faith justifies because it receives Christ.

It rests on Christ. That's why faith justifies, because it's Christ who justifies, and the instrument, the sole instrument is leaning, resting, receiving. The Belgian Confession says leaning and resting.

The Westminster Confession says receiving and resting. Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification. How on earth did we have an eight-year fight over whether it's proper to say justification through faith and works or through faithfulness?

That's crazy. That's insane. Look, it's right here, is the alone instrument. There's no works. There's no faithfulness in the instrument. The works and the faithfulness are a consequence of new life, true faith, union with Christ.

It's a result of justification. It's clear as day in the Westminster Confession. Yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied. So we were driving around yesterday looking at beautiful New England, looking at the Basketball Hall of Fame, and looking at Northampton, interesting Northampton, and lots of things we could have seen, didn't see.

I accompanied Pastor while he was driving. I wasn't Pastor Mike. I'm not Pastor Mike, won't be Pastor Mike, but I was with Pastor Mike. There's a difference between is and with. And a lot of the confusion that we're having today over justification, sola fide, is because we don't know the difference between is and with.

We need to go back and take, I don't know, seventh grade grammar or something. Is is something that is, right? With is something that's next to is. But is and with are two different things. Is that complicated?

It doesn't seem complicated. I'm just a dumb kid from Nebraska. I'm just stubborn. I graduated 250th out of 500 kids in my high school. And it was a fine high school. It was not a brilliant academic institution.

You could be pretty mediocre and get through high school. I got a, I don't know what I got on my ACT, it was not distinguished. I got into a fairly mediocre academic university. I ended up getting a pretty good education, but mainly because I did it myself.

I had a couple of profs that helped me, had one or two, three in particular, that helped me. Mostly I just did it myself because I figured out they weren't actually going to try and teach me very much.

But they had books, and that's all you really, once you learn how to read, you don't really, you can do a lot if you know how to read, as it turns out. This isn't about being clever, this is just about not being stubborn and mule stubborn and blind, right?

It's about distinguishing is and with. Yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love. But it's not the working that makes faith what it is, it's Christ that makes faith what it is.

The working, right, faith works by love, Rome changed that to faith formed by love. That's a huge difference. You hear the difference between working and formed? In other words, Rome says faith works, makes faith what they are, love, charity, caritas, makes faith a reality.

No, Christ makes faith a reality. Christ makes faith powerful, but true faith does work. True faith has consequences, it has evidence, it works itself out. But the working out doesn't make faith what it is, and if you get the difference between sola fide and faith formed by love, that's the difference between the Reformation and Rome.

There are a lot of so-called evangelicals who are teaching faith formed by love, and they think that they're teaching sola fide, and they're not. They're corrupting sola fide. Now evidence is absolutely necessary, it's not necessary as an instrument, it's not necessary as a ground, and there aren't two stages of salvation, there's only one, there's not two stages of justification, there's only one, there's justification and vindication.

Again, this is where the confessions help us. We are justified now by grace alone through faith alone, in Christ alone, on the basis of his righteousness alone, and we will be vindicated at the last day.

It will be declared to the whole world what we really were, despite whatever they think or say. We will be vindicated. We're not going to be justified. Those are two distinct concepts in our case. In Jesus' case, we could say he was justified slash vindicated in his resurrection, it was proven what he was, and there's a sense in which that's true of us.

But our sanctity and our good works are only going to be evidence. They're not instruments and they're not grounds, and there aren't two stages. I'm already justified, and I have been saved. I don't know about you, but I have been saved.

I've already gone through the Red Sea in Christ. I've been delivered from Pharaoh. I'm not on probation, right? I'm not waiting trial. Trial's already taken place, and Jesus has already said, it's finished, and the Father's already accepted his perfect righteousness on my behalf, and his condi merit, his perfect righteousness, his perfect perpetual righteousness is credited to me as if I did it.

As opposed to my Roman friend who says that she's planning on standing before God on the basis of her best efforts, and God crediting perfection to her best efforts, right? The best she has is congruent merit.

I have condi merit. I'll take that bet 10 times out of 10 times. It's not really a bet, but you know what I mean. All right. So why are we having a crisis? Why do we argue for eight years over whether it's okay to say justified through faith and works or through faithfulness?

Because we've totally lost track of sola fide. The stuff I'm telling you would blow people's minds. I'm sure it's old hat to you guys. You hear it from pastors. You know this stuff, right? This is a commonplace for you.

I'm just reminding you of stuff you already know and encouraging you in this. But lots and lots of places never hear this stuff. But I guarantee if I did this at Lakewood, right, they've never heard this and don't know this.

It's a totally foreign concept. And the default mode to which people fall if they don't have sola fide firmly planted in their minds is to present themselves to God on the basis of their work. I used to do...

I was an authorized trainer of evangelism explosion. Went down to Dell City, Oklahoma, and I took a week-long course in evangelism explosion. We went and knocked on doors. And then when I went back to Kansas City, I did that.

Knocked on doors, stood in parking lots, did evangelism explosion. And there's a lot now that I would not do and that I would now criticize about E .E., but one of the things I like about it is the diagnostic question.

If you were to die today and you found yourself standing face to face with God and He said, why should I let you into my heaven? What would you say? That's a great diagnostic question. And you know what I get 90 of the time when I ask that diagnostic question?

Well, I've been a good person. We are... As Dr. Horton says, Mike Horton, my colleague and friend says, we are wired for works. We were created in a covenant of works in which God said, do this and live.

And we are still under by nature that do this and live principle. That's why Paul says in Romans 2 .13, it's not the heroes of the law, it's the doers of the law. Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything which is written in the book of the law.

We all know that by nature. We know there's a judgment. We know we're going to have to stand before God. And we know we have to be good. We know we have to meet a test. And so we lie to ourselves and we say, yeah, we basically met the test, which means we don't know the test.

We've lowered the standard. We've cheated. That's the whole point of congruent merit. You haven't actually met the test, so we'll grade on a curve. Congruent merit is grading on a curve. When I grade the exams, you know, the software always has a slider that says, what percentage do you want to grade?

I pull that bad boy down to zero. There's no curve. Either you got it or you didn't get it. It's a covenant of works. I tell my students, schoolwork is a covenant of works. Work is a covenant of works.

It's called work, by the way. You don't, oh, I have a grace. I have to go to grace today. No, it's called work for a reason, because you have to show up and you have to do work. If you don't do work, what happens to you?

You get fired. I know that. I've been fired. I've probably been fired more than most of you people. Yeah, I got fired for my first job, fired for my second job. I had one job for, I don't know, not even 72 hours.

I was delivering flowers. I thought I knew my hometown pretty well. It turns out I really didn't. I was really late delivering flowers. I didn't even get them all delivered. I couldn't find places. That's a pretty serious disqualifier for delivering flowers.

You can't find places. I got fired for washing dishes, because I overslept the next day, right? He had me work until midnight. I was 14 years old, washing dishes. Go home, go to bed, get up Saturday morning, supposed to come in and wash dishes again.

And I overslept. I called him up. I said, do I still have a job? He said, no. I said, thank you very much. And that was the end of that. Right? Because I didn't meet the covenant of works. I didn't meet the test.

Do this and live. Do this and keep your job. Right? You want grace, go to church. You want grace, go to the Lord's table. You want grace, believe in Jesus. That's where you find grace. Those are two different principles.

Right? So, sola fide is receiving Jesus by grace alone, through faith alone. So we're having this crisis. Daniel Fuller, you know, he's worried about antinomianism. So he starts whacking away at sola fide, sola gradia.

And he wants to put dispensationalists back under a... He's discovering aspects of covenant theology, but he doesn't get it. He doesn't get the Reformation, and he wants to put people back under a covenant of works.

The new perspective on Paul sets it up so that, well, Paul is really saying, you know, we all misunderstood the rabbis, and the rabbis were really saying, you get in by grace and you stay in by cooperation with grace.

And the advocates of the new perspective think this is really clever, and that the works of the law are really ceremonies. Well, this isn't new, and it's not clever. This was a standard medieval interpretation.

All the new perspective has done is taken us back to pre-Reformation Christianity. And they don't know it's pre-Reformation Christianity because not a one of them knows anything about the history of the church.

Tom writes, says, I know a little of Luther, not much from what I can tell. And he says, I know a little bit of Calvin, not much as far as I can tell. And he says quite plainly, I don't read anybody else.

I can tell, Tom. I can tell. He's the principal advocate for the new perspective on Paul. It's a radical revision of what Paul is supposed to be saying. Turns out, according to these guys, that you get in by grace, and you stay in, you finish by works.

And that's, right, that's bad news. If you had to present yourself to God on the basis of your performance, right, today, on the way home, right? The pastor was telling me about somebody who got hit by a car.

It's a terrible story about a believer and his son who got hit by a car. He got hit by a car, and he had to stand before God, and he had to stand before God on the basis of your personal performance, or even your personal cooperation.

Have you cooperated with grace sufficiently? Are you sufficiently sanctified? This is a problem with two stages of justification, the final stage ostensibly on the basis of your sanctification. Well, how sanctified?

On the basis of your good works, right? There's Desiring God Ministries published a tweet. You are not saved by faith alone, period. Be killing sin, period. And I said, I don't know about you. I am. Good luck with that.

How many good works? What quality of good works? And they say, oh, you don't understand. And I say, yes, I do understand. You're setting up congruent merit, and you're taking God's people back to the medieval church, back to the system that Luther rejected, and you don't even know it because you don't know what you're talking about.

Just making stuff up because they're biblicists, to go back to the last hour. They aren't connected to the confessions. You can write biographies about great spiritual leaders until you're blue in the face, you still don't understand what they were talking about.

If you're not living with the creeds and the confessions, if they're not in your bones, you just go to them occasionally for proof texts, and you haven't let them teach you and correct you, you're not letting them do what they're meant to do.

And that's how you get there. That's how you get to two stages. Does that make sense? Are you with me? So, in my world, we have this federal vision movement that wants to redefine... You get in by baptism, and by baptism, you're given all the benefits of Christ, they say, and you're united to Christ, you're elect, you're regenerated, you're justified, you're adopted, and you get to keep all...

It's like a game show. Here's what's behind door number one. You get election, and regeneration, and union, and justification, and adoption. But to keep the prizes you've won, here's what you have to do.

So, I had a guy tell me that Esau was elect, but he forfeited it because he wasn't faithful. Really? Yeah, exactly. What's wrong with that? Romans 9, before either of them had done anything good or bad in order that God's purpose in election might stand.

Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. Esau was never elected. There aren't two kinds of elections. There's one kind of gracious, unconditional election in Christ for all eternity. In Christ for all eternity.

Baptism is a sign, it's not the thing. Baptism doesn't create realities, it simply recognizes realities, it simply testifies to truth. Baptism isn't salvation, it is a sign of salvation. It's not justification, it's a sign of justification.

It's a seal, it's a promise to those who believe. It's not magic. The federal visionists have gone back to the medieval magical system that we rejected in the Reformation. And they put us back under a covenant of works where you have to perform in order to finally retain what you've been given in baptism.

And John Piper says, oh, it's no big deal. This is what happens when you baptize babies. Why does he, I finally figured out why he said it was no big deal. You don't believe me, go to the Heidel blog, look up the video.

I've got the, I saved the video so it doesn't get wiped out and go down the memory hole where it's on my server so they can't, YouTube can't wipe it out. Where he said, he's sitting and somebody's asking him about Doug Wilson.

He says, oh, Wilson, he's fine. There's nothing wrong with Doug Wilson's theology. Federal vision is just what you get when you baptize babies. Well, I couldn't for the life of me figure out for years and years why he said that.

That's because his theology and Wilson's theology is fundamentally not any different. The only thing is that the Wilson adds a baptismal conferral of these benefits. But they both have us finally justified through sanctification or obedience.

I don't care which one you say. They're both wrong, but, but DGM and Piper says explicitly, finally saved and justified through works. In some respects, the federal visions are actually a little better in, in, because they actually have some, some idea of grace being conferred to us.

So this is, that's what he means by future grace and, and the final salvation through works. Right, one of the problems of the whole lordship salvation controversy, right? And, and here I, I, I agree with John MacArthur when he says, and this is a quote, salvation is solely by grace through faith.

Right, that's a reformation sentiment. But there were times in that controversy, particularly in the first edition of the book, where it's simply not clear that that's the case. Because there was a reaction to antinomianism.

And he recognized that he wasn't clear, and he says in the second edition, I wasn't clear enough, I, and, and I, and he adds a chapter on justification. That I thought was helpful and good. But I've had lots of conversations with adherents to the lordship salvation doctrine who believe that it's good works and sanctification that make faith what it is.

They're essentially teaching faith formed by love. They don't know they're teaching the medieval definition of faith, but they are. And the answer is, no, it's not faith formed by love, it's faith that produces love.