Duplex Gratia (from Colossians) Part 1

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry and our new introduction, There Goes Galatians 2. We still love Galatians 2. My name is Mike Evendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry coming to you from the campus, multi-campuses.

Here we have the church, Bethlehem Bible Church, West Boylston, Massachusetts. I kind of like that music. That's multi-campus music right there. Elevation Church right there. No, campus just means field, I believe in Latin.

And so we have a building here and we have some property. And I record at Bethlehem Bible Church, bbcchurch .org. You can write me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. House cleaning. I will be in Omaha, Nebraska this October for a conference with the Bactam.

I will be in Israel soon, hopefully with the Bactam. I just did a quad podcast with the Bactam. Hope to be with my friend Kofi here in June in Medford, Oregon. And you can go to, I can't remember what Kofi's church's name is.

Christ Church, Community Church, Bible Church. But I link that information on the show sometime. I don't do show notes. And Gospel Assurance, the larger version has Audible now. I'm thankful for Audible.

David Martin read that very well, by the way. And we also have Kindle and Print. And if you want to order a bunch of them, great. And if you're a podcast host and you want to listen to Audible, I have a few free ones to give away.

Mike at nocompromiseradio .com. I give them to you. You listen to the book and have David on or have me on or something like that. All right. Today, I want to continue to talk about who Jesus is and what he's done.

Isn't that odd? We've gone from discernment ministries to talking about the Lord Jesus. And really, once in a while, we'll talk about something that needs discerning, maybe final justification or federal vision or redeeming the city.

Or, I mean, you see, the list just goes on and on and on, does it not? I decided to teach through Colossians a chapter a week. I'm kind of almost having some regrets with chapter two. Chapter one wasn't that difficult.

Paul has a prayer of thanksgiving. He wants the church there, and of course, everybody who'd read that letter, including us, to walk in a manner worthy, fully pleasing to the Lord. And he gives some modifiers.

What does that look like? What does it look like to walk worthy? It looks like this, if memory serves. I'm not looking at my notes. Bearing fruit, enduring, increasing in the knowledge of the Lord. Those two are switched.

And then being thankful. That's what it looks like. Then Paul goes on to talk about the preeminence of Jesus in chapter one, verses 15 through 20, essentially. And then later, he talks about proclaiming Christ.

He moves to chapter two. In this book, Christ is all you need. If chapter one was Christ is supreme, chapter two is Christ is sufficient. So today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, I want to show you from the book of Colossians.

I don't think I'll do this much in the sermon, so you can go ahead and listen today. I want to show you that No Compromise Radio, when talking about duplex gratia, Christ for pardon and Christ for power, Christ for sanctification, Christ for not just justification, not just, you know, you're saved and now get onto your own work.

I want you to see that it's in fact, right there in Colossians. It's all kinds of places, of course, but I want you to see that it's in Colossians because I want you to know the truth.

You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers? I want the truth. You can't handle the.

Truth. Well, there he is. I don't know why that doesn't get old. I don't know why that doesn't get old. Well, let's talk about duplex gratia, Christ for pardon, Christ for power. Nick Batzik wrote an article called The Secret of Sanctification.

He quotes Walter Marshall there, and he understands that it is Christ for pardon, that is justification, Christ for power, sanctification, God, the triune God is a sanctifier, and of course, Jesus gives the Holy Spirit, one just like him.

And Paul has writing in chapter two, which is really a continuation of chapter one. He says four, right? In chapter two, it starts off with four. He's been talking about proclaiming Christ and teaching and admonishing with wisdom and working really hard at it.

And then he wants to slide into more discussion of that, for I do not, excuse me, for I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you. He just got done talking about struggle. And for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me, literally in the flesh, ESV says, face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, right?

Their mission control centers might be encouraged, be knit together in love, so to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and knowledge of God's mystery in the Greek comma Christ, ESV, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

I say this in order that no one may delude you or deceive you with plausible arguments. For though I'm absent in the body, or absent in body, right? He's in prison, yet I'm with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and firmness of your faith in Christ.

So before we get to the Christ for pardon and Christ for power, the key verse in Colossians chapter 2, which is verse 6, before we get there, just a little discussion of what Paul is doing. Paul is talking about how he wants them to be encouraged and fortified and certain, so they're not going to vacillate.

Paul wants to make sure that these people that are spouting secret knowledge and secrets about angels and secrets about God and secrets about things, for initiated folks, only big secrets. He says, well, do you want secrets?

Everything is found in Christ, and we are going to be proclaiming Him. I want you to be strengthened, and I'm not going to be able to strengthen you with asceticism or legalism or things like that. Later, we'll see that.

I'm going to have to strengthen you with the Lord Jesus. These are people, by the way, have already become Christians. They've already been given by grace, the gift of repentance, the gift of faith, and they've been made alive.

We don't really know all the heresies going on in Colossae, but angels are great and knowledge and some Jews, maybe Judaizers, Gnostics. You want full assurance. It's not going to be found outside of Christ, and that goes for the Christian faith.

That goes for you as well, dear Christian. You're not going to go deeper in your Christian walk than you are in your Lord Jesus and union with Him. Maybe I didn't say that well, but you know what I meant.

What I'm after is Christ Jesus, the sanctifier, in Christ Jesus, in Him, over and over and over in chapter two, especially in Him. You need to realize are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

You want wisdom. You want knowledge. People are running around today saying, I'm going to give you the inner wisdom and inner knowledge to these things. Oh, it goes back to Christ. You want to listen to false teachers.

It's not going to do you anything good. Knowing Jesus on the flip side will help you recognize false teachers and false teaching because there's nothing really new under the sun. Paul wants them to not be tricked by smooth talkers.

Isn't that interesting? Verse 4, no one may delude you with plausible arguments, persuasive arguments. Huh. These false teachers, they're slick. These false teachers, they know how to turn a phrase. These false teachers are good orators.

And before you tell me that Paul purposely didn't try to use oration because of 1 Corinthians 2, 1 -5, he didn't try to use oration as the mode, but he wanted to say things about the gospel well. These people want to just say false things about the gospel, and they're trying to delude with plausible arguments.

It seems almost right, right? You're like, huh. And then you look up on the internet. This is the problem with the internet. It's a problem with podcasts too. You can find anyone that you'd like. So, if you have a particular biblicistic, idiosyncratic, egocentric, kind of eclectic, I'm trying to think of other words like that, that it's your little pet peeve doctrine, your little pet doctrine.

Remember Pet Rocks came out, Pet Doctrines? Then you're going to be able to find your pet doctrine on the internet. The other day I was asking this weird question I ask. I found some tuna here in the church, not in the can, but they have these pouches, these, I don't know, aluminum little pouches, and they had barbecued chicken tuna, Starkist.

And I wanted to know if I could still eat it, best by January, 2022. So, that's a year old or then best by, well, that doesn't, I mean, if I'm out there in the middle of nowhere, I'll eat it of course, but for a dollar pack of tuna, I don't want to get sick.

And so, I asked the question, can you eat tuna out of a pouch that was best by, by January, 2022? Somebody else had already asked the question. They basically said, I ate it and didn't get sick. I thought, well, that's really anecdotal.

That's not going to help me. So, I didn't eat it. I just was hungry, went home starving. You can find whatever you want. Lots of times, by the way, this is just, this is just for free. False teaching websites usually are pretty hokey.

Now, sometimes they're slick. I get that. They've got a lot of money. They poured into what they're doing. But, but in this particular case, so many times I'll see false teachers on websites and they just have the wonky stuff.

It's kind of like King James only people have just bad fonts. They don't know what to do. Watch Tower Magazine. It's just kind of weird pictures of people in creation and stuff like that. Weird pictures of Jesus too, which is not Jesus and not even Kenny Loggins like.

Don't fall for smooth talkers. I'd rather have somebody that wasn't a smooth talker that told me the truth. I don't want to be led away. And Paul knew that these folks, by the way, were standing against this.

He was glad, rejoicing, verse 5, to see your good order and firmness of your faith in Christ. This is language of armies. These are metaphors for military, discipline, stability, rank, order. They were being attacked, this church, from Gnostics, proto-Gnostics, angel worshipers, pagans, astral worshipers, Judaizers, a mixture of Gentile Jewish stuff.

Those and everything in between. We don't know exactly. And Paul knows they are staying in an orderly rank and they're not going to budge. This is like Easy Company at Bastogne. The Germans should be sad that they have surrounded Easy Company because Easy Company is really going to fight hard.

They were holding the line. Matter of fact, I need to get this on the show and I could probably play it in my little blurbs here. Three weeks from now, I will be harvesting my crops. Imagine where you will be and it will be so.

Hold the line. Stay with me. If you find yourself alone, riding in fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled for you are in Elysium and you're already dead. Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity.

This is the big battle. This is Maximus in the line. This church is holding the line. They're not falling prey for smooth talkers. And we want to make sure we keep that up, right? We don't want to be deceived by people that speak well, but they cause problems and confusion and disorder and they lead people astray.

Remember when Jacob went to Laban, right? He wakes up the next morning and it's not Rachel, it's Leah. What is this you've done to me? Did I not serve you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me? Genesis 29.

That's the language here, talking someone into something. Instead, we, like the Church of Colossae, you, like the Church of Colossae, need to be stiff, need to be unflexible, need to be non-compliant with false doctrines about Jesus.

And I'm not calling the people who don't believe duplex gratia false teachers, but I do think it's a false teaching to detach Jesus from sanctification, to somehow think, okay, we've come to faith because of Jesus's life, death, burial, resurrection, and we're thankful for his ascension, his session, and we're looking forward to his soon return.

But sanctification now is on us. Most pastors wouldn't say that, but practically when they preach, if you listen to this show for any time, you know I talk about that a lot because I see it in myself.

Probably still now to some degree, it's mostly dead. But years ago, I'd hate to have those on my website, pulling up sermons with just getting after people. I know someone who has taken down, in light of this very topic and these topics related to it, law, gospel, Christ-centered preaching, has taken down all their sermons when they preach the other way.

I respect that. You've got everything you need with Jesus, chapter one. I mean, this is who he is. He's Lord of creation. He's preexistent. He's Lord as sustainer. He's Lord in redemption. Why do we want to go for anyone else?

And so, therefore, now we come to the key point for the show today. Matter of fact, what do I have here? Anything good? No, I don't think I have anything good. We're coming up to the key part of the show.

Here's the key to Colossians 2, according to S. Lewis Johnson. Working on the commentary big time. I'm hoping before summer it will be out. My job is going to be done sooner than that. Hopefully within a month or six weeks, then off to typesetting and everything else.

Colossians commentary. I'm on it. I want to get this thing finished. I started working on it, then I had to go to the hospital. So let's hope there's not a repeat of that. Therefore, Colossians 2, 6, we're thinking about duplex gratia, Christ for pardon, Christ for power, Christ for justification, Christ for sanctification.

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and establish in the faith just as you were taught abounding in thanksgiving. That's the Christian life. You know who Jesus is.

He saved you. And now you progress in the Lord Jesus, walk in Him, knowing He's all sufficient, knowing He's supreme, advancing in the life of faith, as S. Lewis Johnson calls it. You've received Christ by works, then work hard.

Is that what he's saying? No. You've received Him by faith. You established Him in faith. And so keep walking in Him. And the implication is walk in Him and with Him by faith. You've received, which is kind of technical transmission, like 1 Corinthians chapter 15, you've received Jesus, somebody passed the baton to you.

You understand that He's the Messiah. You understand who Jesus is, sin bearing, not for His own sin. You understand bodily resurrection. You understand soon return. You understand the gift of the Spirit.

Keep walking. You're saved by faith, so walk by faith. Saved by the Word, you walk according to the Word, as Wiersbe says. Why would you go do anything else? Why would you now give up on Jesus to go do TED Talks or follow false teachers?

Notice He's called, Jesus is called here, Christ, Jesus, and Lord. And you're once for all rooted. You're permanently rooted. Therefore, keep being built up, keep being strengthened, keep overflowing with thankfulness.

Don't buy these other smooth talkers. Okay, let's make it very practical and very personal. You, dear listener, if you're a Christian, somebody taught you about Jesus. They taught you about who He is and why He came, why the Father sent Him.

They taught you about His sinless life. They taught you about His death on the cross. They taught you about the resurrection. They taught you about what Jesus did. You look at Matthew, for instance, and you see Jesus healing lepers, and you think, well, there's a greater healing that this is all pointing toward.

Someone taught you that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament and that He was the culmination, the substance of all those shadows and types. Somebody taught you that. And now false teachers come, and what are you going to do?

Remember Christ, Jesus, the Lord, that someone formally taught you, and don't abandon Jesus and think somehow He's not sufficient for everything you need. Don't be duped. By the way, this is a good reminder for you to be at worship every Lord's Day, sitting under Christ-centered preaching, to be reminded of what you first were taught, clinging to the Lord by faith.

Is not Jesus the wonderful Savior? Is He not the infinite Savior? Is He not the all-sufficient Savior? Is He not the supreme Savior? So, don't go anywhere else. Verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty the seat, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, not according to Christ.

This whole section here, it's written so that we say to ourselves, we better be very, very careful and not somehow think I'm going to separate sanctification from Jesus. I've got new tricks. I've got asceticism and legalism and don't touch, don't taste, don't handle.

I've got visions. I've got experiences. I'll go back to the Old Testament and start doing new moons and festivals. That's what I'll do. Really? No, that's not what you should do at all. Michael Horton said, start with Christ and you get sanctification in the bargain.

Begin with Christ and move on to something else, you lose both. Do you not enjoy, as Calvin said, all the benefits of Jesus by faith? The dual graces, justification, sanctification, and you can see that in Hebrews chapter 8, right?

You can see sins are gone from the East to the West, cast behind your back, that kind of language, I'll remember your sin no more, and then the law written on your heart for sanctification. Calvin, by partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace, duplex gratia, namely being reconciled to God through Christ's blamelessness, we may have in heaven instead of a judge, a gracious father.

And secondly, that sanctified by Christ's spirit, we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life. Institutes third volume, section 11 .1. Oh, salvation free, salvation gracious, salvation merciful, salvation only based on the eternal Son's person, salvation based only, and salvation based on the work of Jesus.

Sanctification, do, try, harder, only. Of course, there's doing and trying. We just got done looking at that in chapter 1 verse 29 and chapter 2 verse 1. But it's not only, it's not based on our work.

That's not the foundation. That's not the ground of sanctification. It's not the ground of justification, not the ground of sanctification. You come to Christ by faith, and then you leave him. See where we're going with this?

Paul said in Galatians 6, far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Galatians 2, in the life I now live, I live by faith.

You want to know how I live in the flesh now? I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Back to the Lord Jesus. You want a secret to the Christian life? I think the secret's Jesus, although that's not really a secret.

It's faith, Owen said. We contemplate the glory of Christ as revealed in the gospel. All grace will thrive and flourish in us toward a perfect conformity unto him. Yeah, but Pastor Mike, it's a lot easier to preach law than it is Jesus.

True. It's a lot easier to talk about problems than the solution. True. It's easier to whack people away and make them convicted about sin versus encouraging them with Jesus. True. But like Hebrews 12 talks about, we need our eyes on the Lord Jesus.

Yes, we talk about the Lord Jesus' law through his hand as a guide to children of the Father. That's true. Jesus is sufficient. And therefore, when it comes to the doctrine of sanctification, Paul here in Colossians chapter 2 did not somehow say, well, those false teachers were right.

Just do what they say. He says, how'd you receive Jesus? Well, you received him by faith. You received him as Lord. Well, keep walking in then. I ask you the question. Let's just say, let's pick something.

You've got a struggle in life. Don't we all? Get in line. My struggle is bigger than your struggle. Maybe not. Different times, right? How do you get over the struggle? How do you get over that particular thing?

Maybe you don't submit to your husband. Maybe you don't love your wife. You're like, okay, what do I do? Is the solution outside of Jesus? Huh. Well, I'm anxious a lot. Is a solution outside of Jesus?

Well, yeah, I've already got Jesus. I got eternal life. Now I move on to other things. I just need some behavior modification. I don't have a lot of joy. Is the solution outside of Jesus? Remember what you were taught about Jesus?

Christ, Jesus, Lord. Remember how you received him? By faith. Is the solution to any one of your practical application problems? Having a hard time submitting to my boss. Having a hard time working for the glory of God.

My job's awful. Maybe you're saying that. Is the solution outside of Jesus? That's really the question that's at hand in Colossians chapter two and really at No Compromise Radio. I don't know why I have to keep saying it over and over and over.

We love the law. I teach the law every week. Just listen to a sermon that I preach on Sunday. And I double dog dare you to tell me with evidence that I fall into the historical category of antinomian.

Not just, oh, you don't think I preach the law like you do, therefore I'm an antinomian. Compared to you, I'm an antinomian. That's not what I'm after. Because me compared to you makes you a neonomian.

Of course, we're after people wanting to keep the law. Not for salvation, not to keep salvation. I repeat it over and over and over. But because of salvation, out of gratitude, it glorifies God. It's good for you.

Colossians chapter two, verse six, is the key to chapter two. As you've received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him. No matter what problem you have, you're a Christian. It is related to the solutions found in, don't forget the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, my name is Mike Ebendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. And we are on podcast. We are on Spotify. Tell your friends, give us ratings, do all that stuff, right? Go to Patreon and see who the 10 givers are.

God bless you.