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

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Conference Title: You Say You Want A Reformation? Speaker: R. Scott Clark Session Five: Sola Fide and its Modern Detractors

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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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
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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.
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her
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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Ebendroth. I always think of things that I meant to say that I didn't say in the previous session, so one bit of housekeeping.
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One of the arguments that I give for confessionalism to my students is Nicaea. So we go through the formation of the
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Nicene Creed and the battle over Arianism. Arius was a biblicist, and he's a rationalist.
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And Arius said, I believe in Jesus, but I believe He's the first creature, in effect. The slogan was, there was when the
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Son was not. There was when the Son was not. So he denied eternal begottenness. Right?
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Biblicism can lead one and has led people to deny eternal begottenness. Most recently, that great theologian
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Mark Driscoll, a paragon of piety and orthodoxy, published a book in which he denied eternal begottenness.
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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
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Nicene Creed. We've had this big debate about ESS, the eternal subordination of the Son, right?
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So some folks trying to figure out male -female relations appealed to a hierarchy within the being of God and said that the
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Son is from eternity subordinate to the Father. And apparently, in some cases, they're saying
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He's subordinate in His being. Had they known the Nicene Creed, only an eternally begotten
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Son of God, begotten before all ages, God of God, Light of Life, had they known
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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
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Father. That's heresy against the ecumenical faith. It's contrary to the teaching of the Word of God as all
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Christians in all times and all places have understood the Word of God. In the beginning was the Word, the
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Word was with God, and the Word was God. Jesus was crucified because He claimed to be consubstantial with the
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Father. I and the Father are one. He wasn't crucified because He claimed to be subordinate in His being to the
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Father, right? So His doctrine of the Trinity, in effect, got
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Him crucified. One of the things that got Him crucified. So at Nicaea, Arius said, well,
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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.
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And so some people said, well, let's resolve this, we'll just quote Scripture. So we'll write a creed that quotes
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Scripture. Well, the problem is the Arians said, well, we believe that. And the anti -Arians, the
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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.
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Mainly he's a clerk, a secretary at this point. But the
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Nicenes said, well, this won't work because the debate is about what
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Scripture says. We all believe the Bible, we all believe in Jesus. The question is, what is
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Jesus and what does Scripture actually mean when it says what it says? So they ended up having to confess something about Scripture.
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That's another example of why biblicism doesn't work and the value of biblicism, it keeps you from denying the eternal begotteness of the
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Son and it keeps you from becoming an Arian saying that, in effect, God the Son was adopted from all eternity or a creature from all eternity or something.
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All right, so last topic today is sola fide and its modern detractors.
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Sola fide, well, sola fide is Latin for by faith alone or through faith alone.
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You can translate it either way. Now what it's not is just faith alone, we're going to come back to this.
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But sola fide, notice the singular, by faith alone, and if you went to Catholic schools and you learned
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Latin or maybe you went to a public school when they still were teaching Latin, this is in the ablative case.
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If you know any Greek, this is like dative on steroids. It's the by, with, and under case.
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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.
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So by faith alone. It's not sola fides with an S. You add an
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S to fides, it changes everything. Sola fides is faith by itself, a lonely faith.
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We don't, that's not what we believe. We don't believe sola fides. I see people saying this, well,
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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.
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Not sola fides, it's sola fide, by faith alone. What does that mean?
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This is one of these important steps in the creation of the Reformation, in the recovery of biblical truth in the
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Reformation. And Luther achieves this in the spring of 1521, so that at the
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Diet of Worms, he's able to say, my conscience is captive to the word of God.
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It doesn't come easily for him. In fact, when he was first challenged, he said, can
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I have some time to think about it? Right, that part of the story doesn't always get told. And, you know, when he entered the hall, they kept him across the street in a hotel, put him up in a nice hotel across the street.
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He comes in to the hall, the Imperial Hall, and there are these Spanish soldiers, right? So imagine special forces, all tacked out, right, with all their tactical gear, like they're about to make an assault.
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And so he comes in, and the Spanish soldiers are saying, to the flames, to the flames, to the flames, right?
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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.
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And he said, can I, 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, can
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I, you know, give us a straight answer. Well, can I have, he's challenged, can
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I have some time? And so, yeah, you can have some time. So they sent him back across the street in his hotel room, right?
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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?
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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,
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I want an answer without horns. And so Luther says, well, he knows
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I'm done. It's time to be a martyr. I'm going to die for the gospel, die for Jesus.
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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.
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You're about to die, and he comes up with this line, I'll answer without horns and without teeth, I'm not going to fight anymore.
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And he says, he doesn't say here I stand, he should have said, but he said, my captive, my conscience is captive to the word of God.
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And he'd already said this in a letter about a month earlier, because this is April 21st.
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That's when we should celebrate Reformation Day, April 21st, I think it is. Vorms, instead of the 95
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Theses, but they didn't ask me. All right, and so that was
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Sola Scriptura, and Sola Fide is what he recovers in 1519.
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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.
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Romans 5 .1, literally it says, out of faith. Not of works, out of faith, or by faith is a good
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English translation. In 328, that famous passage, it says,
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By faith, without works. And I'm going to come back and go through some of these passages, so we'll get there.
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And the Reformation faith is summarized beautifully in the Heidelberg Catechism. Question 60, how are you right before God?
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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.
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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.
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If only I accept such benefit with a believing heart. Only by true faith, sola fide.
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Faith is the only instrument, the sole instrument. Why? Because faith is an empty hand, and it looks to Christ, it receives
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Christ, it rests on Christ, it trusts Christ, it leans on Christ. These are the verbs and the participles that we use.
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And faith has three aspects, as I said, I think, last night. Knowledge, assent, and trust. You have to know who
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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.
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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.
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There's a personal appropriation of the truth of Scripture, of the Christ of Scripture, of the teaching of Scripture.
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You have to do that personally. It's for me. Those are the three aspects of true faith.
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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
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Christianity and in Reformed Christianity over the doctrine of sola fide. So last night,
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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.
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And there are lots of evangelicals who think when it says pisteis, it means faithfulness, our faithfulness.
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They want to conflate works or obedience with faith. Eight years.
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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?
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Westminster Confession, Chapter 11. It just could not be any clearer than it is.
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There it is. I have this little confessions app. It's a beautiful thing. Christian creeds and Reformed confessions or something like that.
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It's a free app. I highly recommend it. Those whom God... You'll forgive the 17th century
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English. Those whom God effectually calleth, He also freely justifieth.
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That's important, freely, not conditionally. Not by infusing righteousness into them. That's Rome.
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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.
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You get an infusion in absolution or in confession.
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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.
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They have the seven sacraments. You're constantly being infused, and you're being filled with grace, and you cooperate with grace.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You're initially justified in Rome at baptism and finally justified through sanctification because in Rome, sanctification is justification.
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In Rome, sanctification is justification. In Rome, sanctification is justification.
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In the Reformation, justification leads to sanctification. In the
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Reformation, justification leads to sanctification. In the
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Reformation, justification leads to sanctification, and it's by grace alone, divine favor alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
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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.
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It's an injection. It's an infusion, right? We use infusion in cancer treatment, right?
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You go for infusions. There's a church in my hometown that used to be a
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Reformed church, and they call themselves infusion. I always laugh when I see that. Our whole
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Reformation was a Reformation against infusion, at least infusion for justification. Some of our writers talked about infusions of grace and sanctification, and that's in some of the standards, and that's a different thing, and that's fine.
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God infuses us, as it were, with His favor, not with a medicinal, magical substance, but by His favor.
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They picked up the traditional language and said, He's filling us with His favor and thereby conforming us to the image of Christ.
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So when the Westminster divines explained all this, they did it very compactly.
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It needs to be explained, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and accounting and accepting their persons as righteous.
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Now watch this. Not for anything wrought in them, that's spirit wrought sanctity, right?
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That was the Roman plans, right? By grace and cooperation with grace, which is works, cooperation with grace is works.
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By grace and works, that was the Roman plan. And if it's by grace and works, then it's really by works.
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What does Paul say in Romans 11, verse 6?
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What does Romans 11, 6 say? Pardon? If it's by works, then grace is no longer grace.
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So grace is one thing, it's the free favor of God. Works are something else. Those are two principles when it comes to justification.
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We need works for justification. Absolutely, you are justified by works.
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Anybody who doesn't get that doesn't understand the gospel. You are absolutely justified by works.
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You can't be accepted by God apart from perfect, personal, perpetual obedience.
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It's just not yours, just not yours. Jesus, as I said last time, well,
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I guess it was last night, Jesus provided that perfect, personal, perpetual obedience. And that perfect, personal, perpetual obedience is imputed to you.
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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?
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And you need to accumulate condign merit by receiving the holy sacraments and cooperating with grace, right?
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Condign merit is worthy merit, merit that God has to accept. It meets the test. You don't have any of that.
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You never will, you never have. Jesus had that, his condign merits. And so when we talk about merits, sometimes people say, oh,
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I believe in grace. I'm opposed to merit. Well, you're confused. Because Jesus had merits, and all his condign merits are credited to you.
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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.
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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,
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God will not deny grace. That was what Luther was taught. It's a kind of Pelagianism. And the
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Reformation says, ugh, we don't believe that. That's Pelagianism. All right. So the
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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.
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Who said that? Who said that our faith, our faith is imputed to us? Anybody know?
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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.
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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
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Christ, the object of faith. So faith is not imputed to us for justification, right?
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The act of believing is not imputed to us for justification or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness, right?
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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.
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What is true faith in the act of justification? They receiving and resting.
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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?
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That's what faith does, it receives, and it rests for justification on Christ.
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That's sola fide. And his righteousness by faith, which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.
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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.
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Faith doesn't justify because it works, that's faith formed by love, that's the very thing we rejected in the Reformation.
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Faith doesn't justify because it works, faith justifies because it receives Christ, it rests on Christ.
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That's why faith justifies, because it's Christ who justifies, and the instrument, the sole instrument is leaning, resting, receiving, the
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Belgian Confession says leaning and resting, the Westminster Confession says receiving and resting.
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Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification.
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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?
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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.
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The works and the faithfulness are a consequence of new life, true faith, union with Christ.
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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.
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So we were driving around yesterday looking at beautiful New England, looking at the
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Basketball Hall of Fame, and looking at Northampton, interesting Northampton, and lots of things we could have seen, didn't see.
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I accompanied Pastor while he was driving. I wasn't Pastor Mike, I'm not
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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.
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We need to go back and take, I don't know, 7th grade grammar or something. Is is something that is, right, with is something that's next to is.
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But is and with are two different things. Is that complicated? It doesn't seem complicated.
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I'm just a dumb kid from Nebraska. I'm just stubborn. I graduated 250th out of 500 kids in my high school.
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And it was a fine high school, but it was not a brilliant academic institution.
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You could be pretty mediocre and get through high school. I got a, I don't know what
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I got on my ACT, was not distinguished. I got into a fairly mediocre academic university,
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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.
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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, 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.
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This isn't about being clever, this is just about not being stubborn, and mule stubborn and blind.
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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.
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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,
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Rome changed that to faith formed by love. That's a huge difference. You hear the difference between working and formed?
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In other words, Rome says faith works, makes faith what they are, love, charity, caritas, makes faith a reality.
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No, Christ makes faith a reality. Christ makes faith powerful. But true faith does work.
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True faith has consequences, it has evidence, it works itself out.
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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
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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.
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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.
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There's not two stages of justification, there's only one. There's justification and vindication. Again, this is where the confessions help us.
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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.
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It will be declared to the whole world what we really were, despite whatever they think or say. We will be vindicated.
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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.
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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.
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I'm already justified, and I have been saved. I don't know about you, but I have been saved.
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I've already gone through the Red Sea in Christ. I've been delivered from Pharaoh.
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I'm not on probation. I'm not waiting trial. Trial has already taken place, and Jesus has already said, it's finished, and the
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Father has already accepted his perfect righteousness on my behalf, and his condign merit, his perfect righteousness, his perpetual righteousness is credited to me as if I did it.
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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?
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The best she has is congruent merit. I have condign merit. I'll take that bet 10 times out of 10 times.
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It's not really a bet, but you know what I mean. All right, so why are we having a crisis?
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Why do we argue for eight years over whether it's okay to say justified through faith and works or through faithfulness?
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Because we've totally lost track of sola fide. The stuff
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I'm telling you would blow people's minds. I'm sure it's old hat to you guys. You hear it from pastors.
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You know this stuff, right? This is a common place for you. I'm just reminding you of stuff you already know and encouraging you in this.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Evangelism Explosion. And there's a lot now that I would not do and that I would now criticize about E .E.,
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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
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I let you into my heaven? What would you say? That's a great diagnostic question. And you know what
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I get 90 % of the time when I ask that diagnostic question? Well, I've been a good person.
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We are, as Dr. Horton says, Mike Horton, my colleague and friend says, we are wired for works.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And so we lie to ourselves and we say, yeah, we basically met the test, which means we don't know the test.
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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.
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Congruent merit is grading on a curve. When I grade the exams, you know, the software always has a slider.
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It says, what percentage do you want to grade? I pull that bad boy down to zero. There's no curve.
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Either you got it or you didn't get it. It's a covenant of work. I tell my students, schoolwork is a covenant of works.
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Work is a covenant of works. It's called work, by the way. You don't, oh, I have a grace.
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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.
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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.
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I got fired for my first job, fired for my second job. I had one job for,
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I don't know, not even 72 hours. I was delivering flowers. And I thought I knew my hometown pretty well. Turns out
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I really didn't. I was really late delivering flowers. I didn't even get them all delivered. I couldn't find places.
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That's a pretty serious disqualifier for delivering flowers. Can't find places. I got fired for washing dishes because I overslept the next day, right?
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He had me working 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.
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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?
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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?
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You want grace, go to church. You want grace, go to the Lord's table. You want grace, believe in Jesus.
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That's where you find grace. Those are two different principles, right? So Sola Fide is receiving
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Jesus by grace alone through faith alone. And so we're having this crisis. Daniel Fuller's, you know, he's worried about antinomianism.
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So he starts whacking away at Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, and he wants to put dispensationalists back under a, he doesn't, he's discovering aspects of covenant theology, but he doesn't get it.
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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,
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Paul is really saying, you know, that 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.
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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
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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.
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Tom writes as 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.
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And I, he says quite plainly, I don't read anybody else. I can tell Tom, I can tell he's the, he's the principal advocate for the new perspective on Paul.
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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 and you finish by works.
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And that's, right, that's bad news. If you had to present yourself to God on the basis of your performance, right?
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Today, on the way home, right? Pastor was telling me about somebody who got hit by a car.
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It's a terrible, terrible story about when you get, you know, a believer and his son got hit by a car, got hit by a car, and he had to stand before God.
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And he had to stand before God on the basis of your personal performance or even your personal cooperation.
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Have you cooperated with grace sufficiently? Are you sufficiently sanctified?
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This is a problem with two stages of justification. The final stage ostensibly on the basis of your sanctification.
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Well, how sanctified? On the basis of your good works, right? There's a Desiring God Ministries published a tweet.
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You are not saved by faith alone, period. Be killing sin, period.
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I said, and I said, I don't know about you. I am. Good luck with that. How many good works?
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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
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God's people back to the medieval church, back to the, to the system that Luther rejected.
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And you don't even know it because you don't know what you're talking about. Just making stuff up because they're
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Biblicists to go back to the last hour. They don't, aren't connected to the confessions.
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You can write biographies about great spiritual leaders till you're blue in the face. You still don't understand what they were talking about.
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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.
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And that's how you get there. That's how you get to two stages. Are you, does that make sense?
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Are you with me? So in my, 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, you're united to Christ.
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You're elect, you're regenerated, you're justified, you're adopted, and you get to keep all, it's like a game show.
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Here's what's behind door number one. You get election and regeneration and union and justification and adoption.
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But to keep the prizes you've won, here's what you have to do. So I had a guy tell me that, that Esau was elect, but he forfeited it because he wasn't faithful.
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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.
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Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated.
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Esau was never elect. 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.
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Baptism is a sign. It's not the thing. Baptism doesn't create realities. It simply recognizes reality.
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It simply testifies to truth. Baptism isn't salvation. It is a sign of salvation.
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It's not justification. It's a sign of self justification. It's a seal. It's a promise to those who believe.
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It's not magic. The federal visionists have gone back to the medieval magical system that we rejected in the
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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.
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And John Piper says, oh, it's no big deal. This is what happens when you baptize babies. Well, why does he, I finally figured out why he said it was no big deal.
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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.
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So they can't, YouTube can't wipe it out where he said he's sitting and somebody's asking him about Doug Wilson.
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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.
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Well, I couldn't, 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.
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The only thing is that the Wilson adds a baptismal conferral of these benefits.
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But they both have us finally justified through sanctification or obedience. I don't care which one you say.
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They're both wrong. But DGM and Piper says explicitly, finally saved and justified through works.
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In some respects, the federal visions are actually a little better because they actually have some idea of grace being conferred to us.
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So this is, that's what he means by future grace and, and a final salvation through works, right?
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One of the problems of the whole lordship salvation controversy, right?
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And here I agree with John MacArthur when he says, and this is a quote, salvation is solely by grace through faith, right?
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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.
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And he recognized that he wasn't clear. And he says in the second edition, I wasn't clear enough. And he adds a chapter on justification that I thought was helpful and good.
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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.
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They're essentially teaching faith formed by love. They don't know they're teaching the medieval definition of faith, but they are.
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And the answer is, no, it's not faith formed by love. It's faith that produces love.
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So if you, if you look at, at James chapter two, this is actually not that difficult.
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If you understand what the issues are in James two, if you go down to verse 14, the issue is that the
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Christians, Jewish Christians, probably in Jerusalem, right? This is perhaps the first New Testament epistle, are gathering on,
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I believe the Christian Sabbath, Christian Lord's Day, in a Christian congregation.
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And they're saying the Shema, Deuteronomy 6 .4. This is a practice from the synagogue. Probably their liturgy is probably following the practice of the synagogue.
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And so they are confessing the faith in the Shema. And what, excuse me, what
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James is saying is anybody can confess the Shema, right?
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Anybody can confess the Shema. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith, but does not have works?
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Now, is James saying that works make faith what it is? That's the question, right?
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Now, read the next clause. People always omit this next clause. Can, and I would rather translate this, such faith save him?
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We do have a doctrine of true faith. What is true faith? It's a certain knowledge and a hearty trust that Jesus came for me.
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Jesus obeyed for me. Jesus died for me. He was raised for me. And I have all and a righteous by grace alone through faithful.
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I have all that. If only I accept such benefit with a believing heart. That's Heidelberg 21. It's a very rough paraphrase of Heidelberg 21.
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And, and what James is going at is you people have a historical faith. You people have a temporary faith.
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You people don't have, I'm concerned that you people don't have true faith. This is where distinguishing law and gospel can help you.
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James is preaching the law to people who, who think of themselves as Christians, who call themselves
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Christians, but who do not give evidence of true faith. And that's why he excoriates them.
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He's preaching the law to teach them the greatness of their sin and misery, to drive them to true faith in Jesus, their only
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Messiah, and as a consequence out of that should flow and will flow normally and ordinarily by the grace of the
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Holy Spirit, fruit and evidence. But there are people who attack
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Sola Fide, who are not satisfied with fruit and evidence and want to put you back under a covenant of works so that you can present yourself to God on the basis of your, of your performance.
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That's not what James is doing. Can such a faith save him? Well, no, that kind of faith, the faith that simply says the
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Shema, but has no evidence, that kind of faith doesn't save because it's not true faith. And there's no, and we know it's not true faith because there's no evidence.
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How do we know there's no evidence? Because you've got brothers and sisters who are poorly clothed, people in the congregation, he's not talking about the community.
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He's not talking about the drug addict on the street. He's talking about people in your congregation who need stuff and we were ignoring them.
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We were saying to them, be warmed and filled. And James is saying, if you're a Christian and you believe in Jesus, you've been rescued by his grace.
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You can't say to your brother with whom you're bound by the blood of Christ, you share the Holy Spirit, you're in the same body of Christ.
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You can't say to that person, be warmed and filled. You have to warm him and fill him. That's all he's saying.
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This isn't that complicated. You can't, so also a naked faith, faith by itself, the
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Latin text actually says sola fide. Now, this is what's interesting and people have seized on that. There's a smart aleck named
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Steve Schlissel, he's an advocate of the federal vision. He said, the only time the Bible ever says sola fide is in James 2 .17
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and it condemns it. No, what's condemned is sola fides, a naked faith and a faith without evidence.
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It's not evidence that makes faith what it is. It's not good works that makes faith what it is. It's not sanctification that makes faith what it is.
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It's Christ that makes faith powerful, but true faith that's united to Christ does produce good fruit.
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And so a fruitless faith, an evident faith, something other than true faith, right?
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A naked faith is dead. And that's his whole case as he goes on.
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I don't have time to go through the whole thing. But that's his case. That's what he's doing. James is not that complicated if you understand what the issue is.
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So we believe in the moral, logical necessity of fruit and evidence.
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Good works as fruit and evidence. Sanctification is by the grace of God and it produces good works.
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Good works is not sanctification. Good works is evidence of sanctification. Good works are evidence of sanctification.
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Good works don't justify us, but they are evidence that we are justified. And so if you're willing to be satisfied with good works as fruit and evidence, you are a
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Reformation Christian. If you're not satisfied, you want more than that, well, I've got an address for you.
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It's called the Vatican. And the Vatican is waiting for you because Rome isn't satisfied either.
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And if you're not satisfied with fruit and evidence, good works as fruit and evidence, the Vatican is your home because she has a system and it's a lot better than your system.
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I'd rather be in the Vatican than I would be in a system that says you're finally saved through your good works.
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Because at least in the Vatican, they're going to inject me with grace five or six different ways.
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So I have a fighting chance to cooperate with grace. The other one leaves me naked.
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I'm just out there on my own. I got a worse chance of making it than in the Vatican. Because at least in the
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Vatican, they still believe in sin. At least they used to. I don't know about the current Pope. Oh, they're, oh, faith, he's the vicar of Christ.
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What are you saying? I'd love to see the high Orthodox traditionalist
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Catholics going after the Pope. And I keep saying to him, you know what, I got a place for you to move. It's called Wittenberg.
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You want to be a Protestant, come on over. He's the holy vicar of Christ. You've got to submit to him.
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You can't complain about him. He's the representative of Christ on the earth. Unum Sanctum says if you don't align yourself with the
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Pope, you're going to hell. 1305. They don't even know their own tradition.
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All right. Sola Fide. So this is a huge Reformation breakthrough. This is transformative.
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Right. This is why there's only one stage. Right. As I say, Sola Fide is not
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Sola Fide. It's not a naked faith. Right. That's James 2. Look, I got to, I know
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I got to quit here. I'll do, I'll quit here in just five minutes. I promise. Five minutes.
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There's a difference in antecedent conditions and consequent conditions. The antecedent condition for justification is faith in Jesus.
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Herman Witzius said he'd rather talk about an instrument. Westminster Confession says soul instrument. Belgian Confession says the soul instrument.
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But what they meant by condition, the condition of the covenant of grace is faith, is they meant it's the soul instrument.
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It means the same thing. But there are consequent conditions. And consequent conditions mean, it's like, this is a story
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I always tell. You come home, you went to a party, you had way too much to drink and like an idiot, you got in the car, you drove home, it's snowy, you've slid into the neighbor's front yard, into his car, destroyed his car, and you're so black out drunk, you didn't even remember it in the morning.
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Right. You're a felon. You need to go to jail. You're a drunk, drunk driver, destroyed property. You need to be prosecuted.
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You broke the covenant of works a lot of ways. Right. That's, that's works. Grace is this.
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The neighbor fixes his yard, replaces his car, replaces your car, gives you a million dollars, doesn't prosecute you.
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You didn't earn it. What did you earn? You earned jail time. You're a drunk driver. You're a menace to society and a menace to the neighborhood.
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Grace is he, he does, he repairs it all and he gives you a million dollars. And what, what is a sensible person going to do when the neighbor graciously gives you a million dollars after you are a jerk?
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You say in the immortal words of Bob Dylan, what can I do for you?
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That's the, that's the response of a Christian. What can I do? How can I respond? How can
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I ever thank you? That's right. There are three parts to the Christian faith, guilt, grace, and gratitude.
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Three parts to the book of Romans, guilt, grace, and gratitude, right? 118 to 320 is guilt.
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321 to the end of 11 is, is grace. And 11 and 12 through 16 is gratitude, guilt, grace, and gratitude.
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I used to tell, I used to tell this to the kids at Wheaton and they, they thought it was amazing. Never heard this before.
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It's the coolest thing they'd ever heard. This, I said, that's a whole Christian faith, guilt, grace, and gratitude.
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Uh, good, true faith produces good works.
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As I say, it's not sola, fi, deis. There are, and that gratitude, that's just consequent conditions.
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What can I do for you? And so the neighbor says, it, you know, as a consequence of the grace you've received, here's how
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I would like you to conduct yourself, not in order to, not in order to, but because of, you see the difference between an order to and because of, it's the same difference as is and with, good works are with, they aren't faith, but they are with faith.
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It's the difference between in order to, that's covenant of works, because of, that's covenant of grace.
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Is that, is that clear? Does that make sense? The Reformation is, is just that simple, just that plain.
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You, you, I have to go through this quickly. Um, Romans, uh, uh, five, one, right?
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Ec pisteois, out of faith. Romans 3, 28, pistei, by faith.
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Uh, and it gets even clearer. Romans 3, 22, dia pisteois, through faith, right?
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Uh, uh, 3, 30, ec pisteois, uh, and, and then he goes on to, uh, to use as a synonym, dia pisteois, by faith, from faith, through faith.
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That's why we talk about sola fide, because that's what Paul is teaching when he says, out of faith, by faith, through faith,
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Ephesians 2, 18, right? Galatians 2, 16, through faith, Ephesians 2, uh, 8, sorry, through faith.
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That's why faith is the sole instrument. Faith isn't the thing. Christ is a thing. Faith lays hold of Christ, but scripture very clearly and deliberately and precisely makes faith the instrument.
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It does it by putting it in the ablative, right, or the dative, whatever used to be ablative, now it's dative.
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And it does it by using the preposition, ec, plus the genitive, from faith, dia, plus the genitive, through faith.
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It's in the grammar. We're not making stuff up when we say sola fide. We're recognizing the grammar of the word of God.
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We're driven to it by the teaching of the word of God. This is not a Protestant novelty. This is the teaching of the word.
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And you'd see this sometimes in the early fathers. They're not facing what we faced in the Reformation. So they don't always speak the way we spoke because they weren't facing the same challenge.
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But when they do say it, they say it pretty clearly because they see it in the scriptures. We lost that.
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We recovered it. And now people are whacking away at it again, trying to take it away from us.
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Don't let, don't you let them take it away from us, however well -meaning they may be, right?
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Guilt, grace, and gratitude. If people grasp that, it would solve so many problems. We could have avoided so many needless controversies, right?
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If we just grasp guilt, grace, and if we were willing to, to give up our perfectionist dreams.
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With Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Bethlehem Bible Church is a
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Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.
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You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.