December 9, 2016 Show with Brian G. Hedges on His Books “Christ All Sufficient” and “Christ Formed in You”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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

Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen your host of Iron Sharpens Iron wishing you all a happy Friday and this is the ninth day of December 2016.

I'm delighted to have for the full two hours on Iron Sharpens Iron today a guest that I've never interviewed before,

Brian G. Hedges who is lead pastor at Fulkerson Park Baptist Church in Niles, Michigan and he's the author of a number of books including

License to Kill, a publication of Cruciform Press and numerous articles published in periodicals and online.

He's also a blogger at brianhedges .com and today we are addressing two of his titles published by Shepherd Press, Christ All -Sufficient and Christ Formed in You.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Brian G.

Hedges. Thanks for having me today, Chris. And let me right off the bat give our email address for those of you listening who want to join us on the air with a question.

My email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence whenever you write to Iron Sharpens Iron with a question for our guests.

And before we go into the two topics at hand, I'd like to know something about yourself personally,

Pastor Brian. I'd like to know what were the circumstances that the Lord providentially used in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

Something about your childhood as well, what religious atmosphere you were raised in, if any.

Yeah, I was, in God's grace, was raised in a Christian home and my dad is now and was from the time

I was six years old or so, a minister and a pastor for most of that time. So I was raised in a very

God -centered home, a very Bible -oriented home. Almost from the time

I could read, we were reading scripture regularly. Regularly, and I don't remember the age now, but sometime in my growing up years, there was a kind of a rule in the household that we didn't watch any

TV at all until we had done our daily Bible reading. And then, of course, the

TV itself was, you know, pretty limited. But that just built in a habit of reading scripture at a very young age so that,

I guess, by the time I was 18 or 19, I'd read through seven or eight times. And that was just a discipline from the household.

There's no virtue of mine. But the Lord certainly used his word and I think

I had probably read through the Bible before I was even saved or converted. But in my teen years, really came into a keen conviction of sin and embraced the gospel and began pursuing the

Lord. And pretty soon after that, felt a call into ministry. And so from the time

I was 16 or 17, I had a desire to preach the gospel and be an expositor of scripture.

And so that's been the path I've been on for most of my life. And I started preaching when

I was 18 and I pastored two churches. I'm in my second church now. I've been here for 14 years almost.

Wow, that's quite a long time. And as it happens with many sons of pastors, did you happen to part company with your dad over any theological issues?

You know, there are some minor differences that we have, but my dad was an unusual pastor,

I think, in a lot of ways. He was a reader of old books. And so I grew up seeing

Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd -Jones and John Owen and the Puritans on his shelves.

And in our family devotions, we were often reading from Spurgeon's checkbook of faith or morning and evening, things like that.

So I kind of cut my teeth on Spurgeon and on John Bunyan, the Pilgrim's Progress, Jonathan Edwards, and those kinds of writers.

Those lightweights? Right. I mean, but they're, you know, so good. I think the

Pilgrim's Progress, it was a children's version, the first thing that I read through. But it still got the story, you know, blazed into my mind.

And so I've never really departed from that Reformed heritage. I think that has been,

I think my viewpoint has broadened in certain aspects. And maybe in our ecclesiology and our understanding of the church, my dad and I would be a little bit different, but in our basic doctrine of God and of salvation and of Christ, in all of those crucial areas, we're still pretty close together and continue to have a good relationship with each other.

Praise God. And I want to let you know, I'm not even sure you knew this, but the last time

I had the Iron Sharpens Iron radio pastor's luncheon, where we have these luncheons at least twice a year, it may even escalate to more,

God willing. But this was a luncheon that my late wife came up with the idea for it about 25 years ago.

And she said to me, you know, since you work in Christian radio and have worked in Christian radio for so many years, most of your friends are pastors.

And I haven't met anybody that knows as many pastors as you do. And every Christmas, instead of us exchanging gifts, why don't we treat your pastor friends to lunch?

And we started doing that about 25 years ago, at least 25 years ago, maybe even a little longer than that.

And that was in New York where I used to live. And that grew and grew and grew.

And to the point where we had nearly 100 pastors attending and we have publishers, nearly every single major publisher,

Christian publisher all over the United States and the United Kingdom, each donate nearly 100 books, 100 copies of a certain title that I select to give out to the pastors.

So each pastor leaves with a sack of 30 or 40 books, hundreds of dollars worth of free books.

Yeah, that's wonderful. And last year, my very last pastor's luncheon,

I should say, the book that Shepard Press sent us to give out to every pastor was

Active Spirituality. So every pastor, every pastor got a copy of that book.

Oh, that's great to hear. Yeah. Thanks for promoting that book for me. Yeah, and I hope that those men have been and are still being blessed by that book.

So tell us more detail about Fulkerson Park Baptist Church in Niles, Michigan. We're a small, independent,

Reformed, Evangelical, Baptistic congregation. We probably run around 200, 175 to 200 people on a

Sunday morning. And we're in a small community.

Niles, Michigan is kind of a small community that's just north of the

Indiana -Michigan border. So our congregation is a mix of Michigan and Indiana people.

We call it a Michiana congregation. And it's kind of an interesting mix of a lot of working -class folks.

There's also a couple of parachurch ministries in the area, so we have a lot of parachurch ministry families in our church.

And then we're just about six miles north of Notre Dame University and about eight miles north of Bethel College in Milwaukee, Indiana.

And so we have quite a few college students, both undergraduate students and also graduate students and their spouses.

And occasionally we have some professors and college teachers, instructors that are in the church.

So it's an interesting mix of people. But really at the heart of the church is a real love for the

Gospel and a hunger for the exposition of Scripture and for a church life and community that's rooted in the

Gospel. And as I mentioned a few minutes ago, I've been here almost 14 years, since 2003.

And it's a wonderful church. We're very privileged to be a part of it. And for those of you listening who want to look up more details on that church, either later or while you're listening, it's fulkersonpark .com

is the website. F -U -L -K -E -R -S -O -N -park .com.

That's F as in Frank, U -L -K -E -R, S as in Sam, O -N as in Nancy, park .com.

And we are going to be discussing one book per hour today.

The first title we are going to address is Christ All -Sufficient. If you could tell us about what was the motivation behind you writing this exposition of Colossians.

Well, I am a preacher first and foremost before a writer. And most of my writing has been born in some way either directly or indirectly out of my teaching and preaching ministry.

But that was especially true of this book, which is an exposition of the book of Colossians. And so this book was really born out of a couple of sermon series on the book of Colossians at our church.

And I guess when I was preparing that, I was captured by that book. I love the book of Colossians because of how it exalts

Christ in his supremacy as Lord of creation and also his sufficiency in all of his saving work.

And so the idea of a book was there and Shepherd Press was gracious enough to jump at it.

So it was my first attempt at an exposition. My other books have been very different in their form and theme.

So this was a different kind of book to write. I want to read a couple of endorsements for it because they happen to be written by folks that I know very well and folks who have been on this radio program.

My friend of many years, Tom Askle, who is pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, wrote of this book, helpfully highlights the supremacy of Christ, a wonderful introduction to this

New Testament letter and will serve pastors, teachers, and students very well.

And also John Kratz, who happens to be the pastor of my former pastor on Long Island before moving to Pennsylvania.

My former pastor's parents are members of John Kratz Church or the church where John Kratz is the pastor,

I should say. And John Kratz says, a rich, clear exposition of this ancient letter, making modern applications of God's eternal truth to the false ideas of our day.

This book has the power to help spiritually hungry individuals and groups to biblically transform their thinking and living.

That's Pastor John Kratz, pastor at Faith Bible Church in Sharpsburg, Georgia.

And let me once again announce our email address. If anybody would like to join us on the air today, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Well, the letter to the Colossians is obviously an important book, as is all of God's own breathed out words.

And this letter to the Colossians deals with the power of the gospel.

And if you could explain further on that. Well, Paul, you know, in some ways we could say that all of Paul's letters are about the gospel or the practical outworking and application of the gospel to the lives of churches and individual believers there in the first century.

This is certainly true of Colossians, and that's signaled for us, I think, in the opening verses of the letter, where Paul's writing here to a group of people that he had not met.

The church had been planted by Epaphras, and Paul alludes to that in his opening words from this first paragraph, and he mentions the gospel.

And he says that the gospel was bearing fruit and increasing both in the world, and also he says it's doing this in you.

It's bearing fruit and increasing among you. And throughout the letter, you really see

Paul's application of the gospel in this way. He's arguing for and urging upon the

Colossians' spiritual growth and fruitfulness and fullness of life and everything they need, but it's all rooted in the saving work of Jesus Christ.

And it's a letter that's written as something of an apologetic against all of the alternatives and the competitors and the false ideas that were encroaching on that church, where false teachers were evidently saying they needed something else to supplement

Christ. And Paul is saying, no, as you received Christ Jesus the

Lord, so walk in him, and emphasizes again and again and again the sufficiency of Christ in his work as it's disclosed in the gospel.

We have a listener in Slovenia named Joe, who says, it seems to me that Colossians is a crucial book for us to teach thoroughly today.

If I'm understanding correctly, there are many corollaries in our contemporary context to the context that Paul addressed in Colossae.

I'm thinking of the widespread emphasis on angel worship by New Age mystics, supposed visions from God promoted by NAR leaders, and I believe that is

New Apostolic Reformation leaders, and the fleshly minds of prosperity and doomsday preachers.

Please comment regarding your insights about the relevancy of Colossians for our day and context.

And he ends with this quote, let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self -abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God, Colossians 2, 18 -19.

And thank you, Joe, for quoting from the New American Standard Bible, sponsors of the Iron Sharpens Iron program.

But if you could comment on that, brother. Yeah, well, every false teaching is in some way either an attempt to add something to the work of Christ or take something away from the work of Christ.

And we can even go so far as to say that any addition to Christ does end up being a subtraction.

And that was certainly true in the Colossian church and the heresy that Paul was combating there.

And as this brother made reference to, Paul refers to their veneration of angels.

He refers to visions and also to very severe kinds of self -denial and asceticism.

He refers to that in Colossians 2, and then also to legalism. And all of those would be various attempts to add something to the work of Christ, whether that's through the worship of angels or the invocation of angels or having certain kinds of mystical visions or experiences or going back to an observance of the

Jewish law or some synthesis of those things. And I don't think it's hard to see the connecting points to the various forms of spirituality that are on offer in our culture today.

So we live in a very spiritual world. We live in a very spiritual culture. Even as secular as we are, there's a hunger for spirituality, as long as it doesn't have the traditional trappings of Christian doctrine.

But those various forms of spirituality are really just distractions from the gospel of Christ and take away from the gospel of Christ and will lead us, as Paul says in Colossians 2, they have an appearance of wisdom in promoting self -made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they're of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

So I agree with Joe that the book of Colossians is relevant to today with the false teachings that are surrounding us today.

And by the way, Joe, you have won a free copy of Christ All -Sufficient, an exposition of Colossians by our guest

Brian G. Hedges, compliments of Shepherd Press, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

who will be shipping this out to you. Keep your eye open for a package that says cvbbs .com,

and we thank Shepherd Press and cvbbs .com for providing these gifts to our listeners.

And the thing about the gospel being the power of God unto salvation, it is more than convincing men intellectually to believe in the truths of Christ and our need for his sacrifice.

Isn't the proclaiming of the gospel in and of itself a powerful tool that God uses as an instrument to bring about the miracle of regeneration?

It's the preaching of the gospel. Isn't it not used by the

Lord to basically break apart a stony heart, destroy it, rip it out of our chest and replace it with a heart of flesh?

Isn't it the gospel that is not only a set of intellectual and historical facts, but isn't it a tool for miraculous power?

Well, Paul certainly calls the gospel the power of God for salvation. Paul also says in 1

Thessalonians 1, as he's writing to the Thessalonian believers there, that the gospel came to them not only in word, but also in power and in the

Holy Spirit and with full conviction. So what I would say is the gospel is powerful when it is wielded by the

Holy Spirit. So under the blessing of the Spirit, the gospel is the means that God uses to bring about faith and repentance, to bring about an understanding of the truth of what

Christ has done, and also to change the heart so that the heart embraces that truth and leading to a genuine conversion.

And what are the importance of prayer and thanksgiving that are the importance that is found in Colossians regarding those two things, prayer and thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving, of course, is a theme that just runs through the book of Colossians. So there are references to Thanksgiving in all four chapters in this letter.

But I think you're referring specifically to the second chapter of the book, Christ Self -Sufficient, which focuses on Paul's prayer and thanksgiving in chapter one.

And it's a prayer, really, for spiritual maturity in the believers.

He's praying for them to grow in spiritual wisdom. And that wisdom, of course, is centered in Christ.

So he wants them to not be distracted and not be seduced by what sounds like perhaps wisdom from the false teachers, but rather relying on the

Spirit, relying on Christ to grow up into a full understanding of the wisdom that is in the gospel.

And he's praying for the outworking of that in their lives as he prays that they would walk worthy of the

Lord, that they would please him in every way, they'd be fruitful in every good work. And that connects back to what he already said earlier, in Colossians 1, that the gospel was increasing and was bearing fruit.

So here he's just praying for the continuing work of the gospel in the hands of the Spirit in the lives of these believers.

We have Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker in Greensboro, North Carolina, who says,

Our men's group is working through Colossians right now. What would you suggest that we place particular emphasis on to focus our men to carefully consider so that they can benefit our local church today, so that they can benefit our local church body's spiritual health?

Thank you for your hard work on this great epistle. Thanks, Brother Chris, for this great guest. If you could comment on Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker's question.

Yeah, well, the letter to the Colossians is all built around the person, the work of Christ.

And so that's where I would place my focus, is the person of Christ, the work of Christ. And you can almost break down the letter into three segments.

So in chapter one, there's a focus on the supremacy of Christ, especially in that great

Christological passage from chapter 115 to the end of the chapter.

Then chapter two focuses on the sufficiency of Christ. And this is where Paul really takes the gloves off and goes after the

Colossian heresy. He goes after this false teaching and is warning the believers there not to turn away from Christ, but to hold fast to Christ who is the head.

And so that's really the focus of chapter two into the beginning of chapter three. And then about, oh,

I guess right around verse five in chapter three to the end of the letter, Paul gets very practical in the application of everything he's already said.

And we could summarize that as a focus on the lordship of Christ.

And so this is where Paul starts talking about how we deal with sin. He talks about how we relate to one another in the

Christian community. He talks about our households and the phrase running through those, that part of the epistle is over and again, a focus on Christ as Lord.

So the lordship of Christ. So I would say those are three pillars kind of holding up this letter, the supremacy of Christ, the sufficiency of Christ, the lordship of Christ, and helping men to just see how that works itself out throughout this letter would be helpful.

You know, there are people, as you know, who roll their eyes whenever folks like you and like me and like other guests that I've had on this program, basically are saying that the doctrines that the reformation was battling, were battling over are still issues that divide us from Rome and all of the other world religions for that matter today.

And people roll their eyes thinking that these are trivial issues.

They think that these are issues that we don't need to resurrect from the past.

They're relics and they are secondary or tertiary importance, inimportance.

But the sufficiency of Christ is really at the heart of the reformation, isn't it?

The supremacy and the sufficiency. You may have Roman Catholic clerics and apologists and theologians and scholars and individuals boldly claim that they believe in the sufficiency of Christ, but they cannot really make that claim and be logically consistent and honest with the fact that they add so many things that are required on top of Christ and his finished work, in order for someone to be right with God, according to their own theology and sacerdotal system.

Isn't this true that they really do great offense to not only the supremacy, but the sufficiency of Christ?

Well, I'm certainly no expert in Roman Catholic theology, and so my hope is that there are people in the

Roman Catholic Church that are better than their theology, but certainly to any degree that the

Roman Catholic system or any other system pulls us away from trust in Christ and his finished work for our justification and our sanctification.

To whatever degree we're pulled off of that, that's dangerous. And so my understanding of the

Roman Catholic system is that there's a reliance upon the sacraments and not just baptism and the

Lord's Supper, which they have a very different understanding of each of those and how those are used, but also the other sacraments, so a focus on those as a part of our justification.

And I certainly agree that that's a serious error because it takes our focus off of Christ and his righteousness and his obedience and his finished work on our behalf, and it has us looking either at ourselves or at our law -keeping or at our performance or at some ritual or looking to the church rather than looking to Christ.

So yes, in answer to your question, when we are distracted from Christ or when we are not looking at Christ and looking to Christ and his finished work, that's a big problem.

Yes, and obviously they don't believe in the sufficiency of his death on Calvary because not only will those who are redeemed according to the

Catholic Church, not only are they going to, most of them, the vast majority anyway, suffer in purgatory because the atonement provided by Christ on the cross was insufficient to totally cleanse one of the sins that are preventing him from entering heaven.

But they also heap upon the merits of Christ. They heap upon not only the merits of individuals themselves, but the merits of Mary, the merits of the saints, and you can go on and on.

I mean, it really robs Christ of so much of his glory, in my opinion. This is a very personal thing to me because I was raised

Roman Catholic. Okay, well, you have a deeper understanding of it, I'm sure, then, from having come from the inside.

We have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, whose question we'll get to when we return from the break as we're going through our first break right now.

And so be patient, Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, we'll get to you. If anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we're going to be right back with Brian G. Hedges. I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests,

Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to. Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV, and occasional guest on Chris's show,

Iron. Criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called.

Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

It is going to be a bang -up conference called the G3 Conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people.

We hope to see you there, learn more at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

Thanks, Todd, I think. See you at the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's booth.

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Well, if you've just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is Brian G. Hedges, pastor at Fulkerson Park Baptist Church in Niles, Michigan, the author of a number of books, and we're discussing two of them today.

The first hour, we are discussing Christ All -Sufficient. The second hour, God willing, we'll be discussing

Christ Formed in You. And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, says, Do Reformed Christians have a higher view of the cross due to penal substitutionary atonement?

Do they, repeat the question, do they have a harsher view? No, a higher view. Hollow? No, higher, h -i -g -h -e -r, higher, more profound.

Yeah, I could understand a higher view. Well, I think that the

Reformed understanding of the cross is the most biblical view in its emphasis on not only penal substitution, but all the various metaphors that are used in scripture.

So I wouldn't want to pit penal substitution against the Christus Victor understanding of the cross or some of the others.

I think all of these various perspectives are taught in scripture. The problem I see with other viewpoints is the denial of penal substitution, which, of course, affects our understanding of what was accomplished in the atonement and in justification.

So I guess I would answer yes. It would depend, I suppose, higher than who, but certainly higher than a perspective or theology that denies penal substitution, which would be deeply problematic in my view.

Yes, and there are many Christians today who say that they believe in penal substitutionary atonement, but they don't really believe in it because they believe multitudes whom

Christ substituted for will be in hell anyway. So he really couldn't have been their substitute if they are going to hell.

So, in fact, I have heard a clip of a Wesleyan -Arminian professor at a

Nazarene seminary chiding his Arminian brethren for using that term because he was logically correct that they have no business using it.

It really can only logically and consistently be held by those who believe that everyone for whom

Christ substituted will be in heaven. Does that make complete sense to you?

Yes, I think I would probably nuance that a little differently. Again, I'm not an

Arminian. I'm a five -point Calvinist, so I'm all the way there. But my understanding is that some

Arminians would say that Christ's death was a true substitutionary death but made effective only for those who believe, and that the difference between a

Calvinist and Arminian would be in how is it that someone comes to faith, and that's why

I would say the Calvinist perspective is more consistent in holding together the purpose of God in election and the purpose of Christ in his substitutionary death and in the work of the

Holy Spirit. So I don't know if I would want to go so far as to say that Arminians are denying substitution.

But again, I'm not an expert in Arminian theology. Yes, well that's why

I was saying that there are Arminians who with full -throated conviction will say that Christ died as their substitute, but I don't think that they can logically hold that because I don't think it's consistent with what it means to be a substitute.

If Christ was a substitute, then there's no punishment required for those for whom he substituted.

And anyway, that's the way it seems to me that it's inconsistent. But well, thank you very much,

Tyler. And guess what? If you give us your full mailing address, you're getting a free copy of Christ All -Sufficient by our guest

Brian G. Hedges. Compliments of Shepard Press and Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service cvbbs .com

cvbbs .com We have Murray in Kinross, Scotland, who says,

In your introduction tonight, you were thankful to be a part of the church at Fulkerson Park.

Would such thankfulness be a right appropriation of Colossians 1 verse 18 so that we find ourselves attracted to a church where Christ is acknowledged as head and given the preeminence and are thankful to be there?

Paul commends the Colossians in chapter 1 verse 4 for their love for all the saints.

How can we show this practically today? So if I'm understanding the question correctly, it's how can we practically show our love for the saints?

Yes, that is the crux of what Murray in Kinross, Scotland was asking.

Well, to just keep our thoughts rooted in Colossians, we could go to Colossians chapter 3 where Paul describes the inner workings and the spiritual dynamic of the

Christian community. And I'm thinking specifically of Colossians chapter 3 verses 12 through 17, where he tells us to put on as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, to put on compassion of hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another.

If one has complained against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive.

And then above all these things to put on love, which bonds everything together in perfect harmony. When I've taught on those verses,

I've often pointed out that some of those commands you can't even obey until someone has sinned against you or someone has hurt you or someone has done something to tick you off in the church.

To bear with one another and to forgive one another presupposes that there's something to bear up under and there's something that needs to be forgiven.

And so that's a very practical way for us to demonstrate love for the saints and love for the church is to live out these one -another commands that God has given to us in Scripture.

And I think unfortunately people can pay lip service to their love for the church while they're not really connected in any kind of practical way.

So a mere Sunday morning attendance of a church without any actual connection to an involvement in the

Christian community, it seems to me, makes it really hard for us to live out those one -another commands.

And what do you mean when referring to this letter to the church in Colossae? What do you mean by a charter of Christian freedom?

Yeah, in chapter two is where Paul really goes after the false teaching in the church.

He warns them not to be deluded with plausible arguments. He wants them to be established in the faith, to continue to walk in Christ as they have received him.

He warns them that no one would take them captive by these false teachings. And as he does that, it's really interesting,

I think, how Paul words everything. There's a recurring phrase through those verses in Colossians 2 from verse 6 down through especially verse 15.

It's the phrase, in him. And so woven throughout these verses is the doctrine of our union with Christ.

And Paul is telling us that in him, we have received all these things that we need.

In him, we've been made alive. In him, we have fullness. In him, the hopefulness of deity dwells bodily.

We have been filled in him. He's the head. And so I think the charter of Christian freedom here, that's a phrase actually borrowed from Peter O 'Brien's commentary on Colossians.

But it's a way of describing Paul's exposition of the gospel and specifically the spiritual blessings that are ours through union with Christ in his death and resurrection, which is really right at the heart of the argument of Colossians.

Now, we know from what we've already said, some things about the Colossians. We know that there was a tendency to be involved in a heretical worship like the worship of angels and so on.

What else can you tell us specifically about this people that Paul was addressing?

Well, you mean the Colossians themselves or the Colossian heresy? The Colossians themselves.

You know, what was the background of this church? Okay. Yeah, well,

Colossae was this church that was founded in the Olkis Valley. It was a church founded,

I think I mentioned earlier before, it was founded by Epaphras. So he was really the church planter.

He's the one that founded this group of people. And, you know, the scholars are actually fairly divided.

I mean, there's not real unanimity on exactly what the Colossian heresy was, but it seems like it was some kind of syncretism that was combining

Jewish legalism with elements of mysticism and asceticism and angel worship and so on.

And so it seems that because of the background of this church and the culture and the context in which they live, they were especially susceptible to this.

And so the emphasis of Paul throughout the letter then is to remind them that wisdom is found in Christ, that fullness is found in Christ, that life is found in Christ, forgiveness is found in Christ, everything they need is found in Christ himself.

So he just keeps taking them back to the doctrines of our union with Christ and really the heart of the gospel, what

Christ has done for us in his death and resurrection. And, excuse me, we have

Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who wants to know when the letter to the church in Colossae addresses the worship of angels, is this referring to the practice that we would see very much today within Roman Catholicism and perhaps even

New Age mysticism, where people are praying to invisible entities that they really don't see or hear, or was it that these

Christians were worshiping angels that were actually manifesting themselves physically before their eyes?

Yeah, I don't think there's any reason to think that it was the actual manifestation of angels.

It was probably one of either two things. If the Colossian heresy was mostly rooted in Jewish legalism, which some scholars argue, then

Paul's reference to the worship of angels could be that they were giving an undue attention to angels as the mediators of the

Mosaic law. So there's some who, that's the basic argument, that they were venerating these angels over Christ because they were clinging to the

Jewish law. It could be similar then to the argument in Hebrews chapters one and two, where the author to the

Hebrews is arguing Christ's supremacy over the angels and how

Christ has this position, this exalted position as the son over the angelic realm.

The other possibility in the Colossian heresy is that there was a fair bit of cultural mysticism and superstition among these people so that they were invoking good angels in order to protect themselves against evil powers.

And so it was something more like superstition and that would be closer of an analogy to the invocation of saints or kind of the mystical reliance upon angels that we may see in our culture today.

And there are some good reasons to think that that may have been going on. Clinton Arnold has written a book on the

Colossian heresy, I think it's called Colossian syncretism, where he uncovers some artifacts, archaeological artifacts, and things of that nature, inscriptions on amulets and such from that region of the

Lycus Valley that would indicate that there was something like this kind of mysticism that was part of the culture of that day.

I don't spend a lot of time on those options in the book. What seems clear to me is that however people are attracted to angels, if a focus on angels becomes in any way a distraction from Christ, where people begin to be superstitious or start pursuing mystical experiences or encounters with angels or looking for some kind of a spiritual mystical experience, rather than focusing on the personal work of Christ, what scripture has clearly shown us is the work of Christ in his historic death and burial and resurrection and in the ministry of Christ through his

Holy Spirit, through his Word of Day. To whatever degree we're distracted from that, we are veering into dangerous territory.

Well, thank you, Harrison, and you also have won a free copy of Christ, All -Sufficient, an exposition of Colossians by our guest

Brian G. Hedges, compliments of Shepherd Press and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

So keep your eye open in the mail for a package from cvbbs .com.

Thank you very much for contributing to the program with your question. What do you mean in Chapter 7 of your book by the new humanity?

I essentially mean the church as understood in terms of new creation.

So the work of Christ for the church was accomplished through his death and his resurrection.

And as Colossians Chapter 1 tells us, he's the firstborn from the dead. So that means that he was the first one to be raised from the dead.

There are all kinds of parallels in Paul's letters, including in Colossians, but also in places like Romans 5, 1

Corinthians 15, between Adam and Christ. So that Paul can call

Christ the second Adam or also the last Adam. So he is the head of a new humanity.

He represented his people in the same way that Adam, our first father, represented his family, represented the human race.

So when I'm talking about the new humanity, I'm talking about human beings as they are redeemed and then reconciled to God and regenerated by the

Spirit, transformed by the Spirit, as they are renewed in their relationship with Christ.

And then the corporate dimension, of course, is the church. So an example of this would be in Colossians Chapter 3, where Paul says in verse 9, do not lie to one another, seeing that you've put off the old self.

The word self there is the word anthropos, so it's the word for man or for human being.

And it could have a corporate dimension. So that could very well be read, do not lie to one another, seeing that you've put off the old humanity with its practices and have put on the new humanity or the new man, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Here, there's not Greek and Jews circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarity and city and slavery, but Christ is all and in all.

So that's essentially what I mean by the new humanity. It's human beings as they are saved and redeemed and related to Christ as the head of new creation.

05 .05 .20 We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who asks, if Christ is the first fruits of the dead, why is it that there were those who were raised from the dead before him when he was crucified?

You know, that miraculous occurrence that was going on when the temple was torn? 05 .05

.20 Right, in the Gospel of Matthew. That's a great question. I don't know the answer to that.

Is that okay to say on the air? Yeah, sure it is. Obviously, we don't want you to lie.

And there is not a single Christian theologian that I know that can answer every question.

So I could speculate a little bit and brainstorm a possible answer. It's whatever the resurrection was, it was certainly by virtue of what

Christ had accomplished. So even if it happened prior to Christ's resurrection, it would not have happened without Christ's work.

I think we could safely say that much. Yes, that's basically the explanation that I have heard from others when that question was posed to them.

That his resurrection is such a preeminent one that it didn't matter if chronologically something occurred similar before, that this was the reason why that those being raised from the dead were even capable of doing so.

Right. And I really want you to, for the next five minutes, before we go on to our next hour and our next topic, to really summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners about Paul's letter to the

Church of Colossae. Well, I think what

I would want people to walk away from this book and from this letter grasping is that Christ is all in all, that Christ in us is the hope of glory and that everything we need for life, for salvation, for fullness, for spiritual maturity and growth, everything we need is found in Christ.

That means that there's no gold membership in Christianity that's only attained by an elite few.

If Christ really is sufficient for us, then we don't need all of the extra isms, we don't need legalism and mysticism and asceticism and monasticism and so on.

If Christ is sufficient, and he's all we need, then we don't need anything else. But it also means this, that if Christ is all sufficient, we need all of Christ.

We can't, to use Calvin's words, we can't divide

Christ in pieces. So we need Christ as Savior and Lord, we need Christ as justifier and sanctifier, we don't need half of Jesus, we need the whole

Jesus, we need Christ in his meekness and majesty, his suffering, his glory, his crucifixion, his resurrection, the incarnation, ascension.

We need 100 % of Christ, and he is 100 % of what we need.

All of our needs are met in Christ, but we need him.

And so we should not be complacent in any way, we should be placing all of our faith and all of our trust and all of our hope in Christ.

And I think the letter to the Colossians will challenge us in a couple of directions. It will challenge us to examine whether we are trusting in other things rather than in Christ, and it will also challenge us whether we have really embraced the full

Christ, whether we've embraced Christ in all of his work so that in union with him, we are living these lives that are redeemed and reconciled and made new by the

Spirit. Well, thank you so much for the discussion that we've had on Colossians, and we're going to be switching gears to your book,

Christ Formed in You, The Power of the Gospel for Personal Change.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

We already have a number of people waiting patiently for their questions to be asked and answered, and God willing, we'll get to as many of you as we can before the end of the program.

If you'd like to join them, please try to send us an email as quickly as you can at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We will be right back after these messages with Brian G.

Hedges. So don't go away. Chris Arnzen here, and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia.

And here's my friend, Dr. James White, to tell you why. Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

I hope you join me at the G3 Conference hosted by Pastor Josh Bice and Praise Mill Baptist Church at the

Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19th through the 21st, in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. I'll be joined by Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Vody Balcom, Conrad M.

Bayway, Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what

G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory. For more details, go to g3conference .com.

That's g3conference .com. Thanks, James. Make sure you greet me at the

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibit booth while you're there. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a

Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750.

Or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV program entitled,

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Or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is Brian G. Hedges.

For the next hour, we are going to be discussing Christ Formed in You. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And before we return to our guest, I want to announce once again that the

Iron Sharpens Iron Pastor's Luncheon is going to be held, God willing, on Thursday, January 12th from 11 am to 3 pm eastern standard time in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the gorgeous catering facility known as the

Carlisle Vault. This is an early 20th century bank that has been transformed into a catering hall, a gorgeous catering hall.

And we thank the folks that own the Carlisle Vault for making this a very, very affordable event for us to have, knowing that this is exclusively for men in ministry.

And we also are going to be dining on a sumptuous meal. And we are going to be giving probably 30, 40 books, a large sack, sturdy canvas sack of books by Christian authors donated to us by the major Christian publishers all over the

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Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven or Sinner Saved by Grace, tickets are $5 a piece.

It's going to be held at the Carlisle Theatre, a gorgeous old early 20th century theatre that has been restored.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com and put Mary debate in the subject line and we'll get back to you with all the details that you need.

And once again, as I said before, I began announcing those events.

We have on our program right now Brian G. Hedges. We're talking about Christ Formed in You and we do have our listener in Slovenia again, our friend

Joe in Slovenia, who says, I was encouraged to see that the central claim in Christ Formed in You is that it is

God's purpose to change us by progressively making us more like Jesus and that this happens only as we understand and apply the gospel to our lives.

Please contrast this Christ -centered focus with so much of what we see in the seeker -driven models of self -help and moral therapeutic deism that is so common in many areas of the visible church today.

Well, that's a wonderful question from Joe. And again, I would just agree that so often what people hear and what we see when talking about how to change is something like a

Christianized version of self -help literature. Where the focus is mostly on what we do, on making some kind of practical or moral or behavioral change in our lives.

But there's a serious neglect of the person and the work of Christ in the ministry of the

Spirit and the gospel and the word of God. So the focus of Christ Formed in You is on the power of the gospel for personal change.

That's the subtitle of the book. And what I'm trying to do in that book is right from the beginning show that it's the gospel itself which is the key to change.

The gospel is the key to our justification as we embrace Christ and his righteousness through faith alone.

And the gospel is also the key to our sanctification as we learn to live in fellowship with Christ and out of the riches that are ours through union with Christ.

Now that being said, I do think it's important to stress that there are things for us to do and that Christian teaching and this is certainly true in the

Bible has much to say about our behavior, has much to say about morality and ethics and there are things for us to do.

So what I'm advocating is nothing, it's not antinomianism, it's not kind of let go and let

God, kind of spirituality, but it is rather Paul's vision in Romans 12 that we are transformed through the renewing of our minds and that only as we've understood the mercies of God as revealed to us in Christ and in the gospel.

Well thank you Joe again for submitting that other question and we're going to send you off a free copy of Christ Formed in You as well.

Thank you for providing an American mailing address for these books. We'll have these shipped to your daughter,

God willing, in a week or so by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service and we thank again those who provided these books,

Shepherd Press, for their generosity. Yeah, when we come to these kind of topics, don't we have to make it clear that we believe that justification and sanctification are two very important and necessary elements of a person's salvation but they're not interchangeable and that we are not accepted into heaven by God on the basis of our transformation.

It's by his imputed righteousness alone but those whom he justified will certainly be transformed and we will be sanctified and we will bear fruit, etc.

Going back again to the whole crux of the issue of the debate between Rome and the

Reformers, isn't this a necessary distinction when we're talking about this? It is.

It's a necessary distinction between justification and sanctification and it's also necessary that we keep them together.

So I like the way John Calvin described it. He called this the double grace and I think the key to it is keeping our thinking about justification and sanctification firmly rooted in the person and work of Christ himself.

So we might say it this way, and I'm probably repeating what some others have said better than I before,

I'm thinking especially of Reformed teachers like Sinclair Ferguson, we could say it this way that really what we get in the gospel is

Christ. It's not so much that we're just getting benefits from Christ. We can't separate the benefits or the blessings of the gospel from Christ himself.

He's not a genie who's just dispensing blessings of justification and sanctification and so on to us.

What we get is Jesus Christ himself as Savior and Lord and then

Christ works in our lives in these various ways. As our

Savior and as our Lord, Christ imputes his righteousness to us by which we are justified, but he also gives us his

Spirit and he unites us to himself in his death, burial, and resurrection and he gives us new life so that as Paul could say in Romans chapter 6, we are buried with him in baptism and we are raised to walk in newness of life and therefore a change in life will necessarily follow a true faith in Jesus Christ, but it's because of who

Christ is and because of what he does for us and in us when we are united to him by faith.

That's an excellent clarification that we actually receive Christ and it really highlights the bankruptcy of the word of faith movement, the name it and claim it prosperity gospel of many heretical charismatics and Pentecostals and I'm not broad brushing there are many charismatics and Pentecostals who reject those heretical notions as much as we do and perhaps are even more embarrassed by them because they're affiliated, unfortunately, with them when people broad brush those movements, but they want stuff, you know, they want money, they want health, they want things and it is

Jesus Christ that we should be wanting more than anything when we are saved, isn't that?

Yeah, that's right, absolutely. And tell us more about specifically what you mean by the title

Christ formed in you. Well, I'm drawing that phrase from the

Apostle Paul in Galatians chapter 4 verse 19 where he talked about how he was in travail for his brothers there in the

Galatian churches until Christ was formed in them. But the key phrases there, the key words in that phrase are the word

Christ, of course, and the word formed, which connects us to the biblical language of transformation.

And so what I have in mind is the transformation of the believer into the likeness of Christ, into conformity to Christ.

So a key verse, both for my life and for this book, is 2

Corinthians chapter 3 in verse 18, where Paul says that with unveiled face, we behold the glory of the

Lord and as we behold his glory, we are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next.

By the Spirit of the Lord. And in many ways, that verse is the key verse for this book as we're talking about how the

Christian is transformed into the likeness of Christ through the power of the

Spirit as we behold the glory of Christ in the gospel. And we have

Bibi in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, uh, is your book dealing with the heretical easy -believism that is rampant amongst modern evangelicals who rightly believe in justification by faith alone but have distorted it to a, to become a lie that the

Bible never intended that those who are born again can live any way they please without fear of retribution or damnation and without transformation.

Well, I would say the book addresses that implicitly. So that particular viewpoint is not really in my crosshairs in this book, so I'm not addressing it directly, at least not often.

What I'm trying to do, rather, is just build from the ground up a somewhat comprehensive understanding of a biblical doctrine of sanctification.

So beginning with understanding what it means to be made in the image of God, and then that image to be distorted and marred through our fall into sin, and then

God's purpose in sending Christ, His Son, and then in sending

His Spirit, God's purpose to redeem us and to renew us and to lead us into new creation.

And so those, those big movements in the Christian worldview of creation, fall, redemption, restoration, that kind of forms the backbone of the book.

And I outlined that in the first chapter. And then begin looking very specifically at what the gospel is and how the gospel is applied to us in our lives.

And all of this is just laying the foundation, the groundwork for understanding a biblical doctrine of sanctification. And so in the book, there's a chapter on justification, there's a chapter on union with Christ, there's a chapter on the regenerating work of the

Spirit in our hearts, and there's a chapter on holiness. All of that is in part one of the book, and that's just laying the foundation for then understanding the practical aspects of living a holy life as we deal with sin and as we grow in likeness to Christ.

By the way, B .B., you have also won a free copy of Christ Formed in You, The Power of the Gospel for Personal Change by Brian G.

Hedges. Please give us your full mailing address in Cumberland County so we can have that shipped to you.

If you could, tell us about the fact that the curse is canceled.

Well, the curse, of course, is God's judgment on sin.

And so when Adam, our first father, fell into sin, he plunged the entire human race into the curse of sin with him.

And in the book of Galatians, Paul tells us that everyone who does not live according to the law, that does not do everything that the law requires and commands, is under a curse.

And then gloriously, Paul tells us that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

As it is written, cursed is everyone who's hanged on a tree. And so I'm using that language of the curse being canceled in Christ Formed in You to really give us a window into the doctrine of justification and how through faith in Christ, the righteousness, the obedience of Christ is made ours and deals with the problem of guilt and releases us from the curse of the law and renders us righteous in the sight of God because of what

Christ has done for us. So that's the sense in which the curse is canceled.

The curse was the judgment of God and it was fully borne by Christ on the cross on behalf of all those who believe in him.

So for those who believe that curse is canceled and the guilt is removed and we are righteous in God's sight.

And you also discuss the cure has begun. That's a phrase from C .S.

Lewis's book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. And our listeners who've maybe read that book will remember the story of the little boy who was transformed into a dragon and then through Aslan, the lion, is kind of the

Christ figure in that book. This boy is undragoned. And I use that as an illustration in this chapter for how

God in his grace has begun the process of transformation.

And he's really done that through regeneration. So that's the beginning of our sanctification.

Regeneration, I think Richard Lovelace is the one who said regeneration is a beachhead of sanctification in our lives.

So there's a little phrase in Lewis's book where he's describing this little boy who has been changed but is still in the process of change.

And he says essentially he still had a long ways to go but the cure had begun.

And I think something like that is very true for Christians. If we are in Christ, we are a new creation.

The old has passed away and the new has come. And that is a reality for everyone who's in Christ. But at the same time, we are still in the process of putting sin to death and putting off the old and putting on the new and learning to live true to our identity, our new identity in Christ.

And you know, this may seem like a simplistic question and people may scratch their heads while I'm even asking it.

But sometimes when we do a program like this and we talk about deep theological truths, sometimes we take it, or at least sometimes

I take it for granted that everybody listening is a

Christian, is theologically sound, is in a biblically solid church. They know what we are discussing when we use words like the gospel.

And sometimes I have to remind myself, as I have discovered, sometimes we have Muslims listening to this program.

Sometimes we have people of all kinds of religions or agnostics or atheists listening. If you could just tell us what the gospel is that we are discussing today.

Yeah, thank you, Chris, for asking that question. That's such an important question and a great question and one that I love to answer.

The word gospel means good news and it really is good news. It's the good news that God, out of his great love for us, has sent his son, the

Lord Jesus Christ, into the world to live a perfect life on our behalf. He lived the life that we should have lived but didn't.

And then that Jesus died the death we should have died so that in his death on the cross in Calvary, he bore the judgment of our sins.

He bore the penalty of our sins. He died as our substitute, as our representative. And then he was raised again bodily from the grave, raised in new life and resurrection life and power and then ascended to the

Father's hand where he sends the Spirit to us to apply all that he did for us in his death, burial, and resurrection to apply that to our hearts.

The key passage that I would go to for defining the gospel is 1

Corinthians chapter 15, verses 3 and 4, where Paul is reminding his readers of the gospel that he had received and that he had preached to them.

And the essence of it is that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

So the good news of God's salvation of us through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

That's the gospel. And the wonderfully distinctive thing about that in contrast to all of the other religions of the world is that the gospel is not about man reaching up to God.

It's about God reaching down to us. It's Christianity is a religion of grace, not of works.

It's not what we do. It's what Christ has done for us on our behalf. And the gospel tells us that that work is finished.

It's accomplished. And the invitation is to us to believe into embracing, to embrace

Christ and to embrace the gospel. Amen. And I remember reading the great

Calvinist Episcopal Bishop or Anglican Bishop of the 19th century,

J .C. Ryle, who is at least Amaroldian, if not Calvinist.

He basically was urging people when they are in the depths of sadness, despair due to illness or tragedy that reflecting on our love for Christ is very dissatisfying.

That the only way we're going to find peace is when we look to Christ's love for us.

Because Christ's love for us is perfect. And our love for him is sadly something that is very insufficient and inconsistent.

And it's very beautifully unfolded in the gospel that you just provided us today.

And we're going to be going to our very final break right now. If you would like to join us on the air with a question for Brian Hedges, we have a couple of people still waiting.

But if you'd like to join them before we run out of time, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state and country of residence. You may remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

But otherwise, please at least identify yourself by name, city, state and country.

We're going to be right back after these messages, God willing. So don't go away. Hi, I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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That's lynnbrookbaptist .org. I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and here's one of my favorite guests,

Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to. Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV and occasional guest on Chris's show.

Iron, criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called. Hoping that you can join

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Learn more at G3conference .com G3conference .com Thanks, Todd.

I think. See you at the Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth. Hi, I'm Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Harvey Cedars, where Christ finds people and changes lives. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every

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For those of you who have been hearing my ads about the G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, this

January 19th through the 21st, there is an update that some of you may be unaware of.

On the 18th of January, the day before the conference begins at the same hall there, the convention center in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr.

James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries is going to be debating Roman Catholic apologist

Trent Horn, who is on the apologetic team at Catholic Answers and they are debating on the topic, can a

Christian lose his or her salvation? And for more details on that, go to aomin .org.

That's aomin .org. It stands for Alpha and Omega Ministries. aomin .org.

Or you could go to g3conference .com. g3conference .com.

And I hope to see many of you there at the debate and the G3 conference. I will be manning an exhibitor's booth there.

So please, if you are going to the conference, come to the booth and say hello. And also, if you're registering, please tell the folks at the

G3 conference at Praise Mill Baptist Church who are running that conference, please tell them that you heard about it from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And once again, as you heard earlier, I am running a debate as well between Dr.

Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary and Robert St. Genes of Catholic Apologetics International on January 13th.

That's at the Carlisle Theatre in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at 7 p .m. Tickets are $5 to that.

And for more details, email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And please put a Mary debate in the subject line. The theme is

Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven or Sinner Saved by Grace. We are, if you just tuned in, we are discussing

Christ Formed in You with our guest Brian G. Hedges, who has been our guest for the last 90 minutes.

Our guest for the next 20 minutes or so to come. And our email address if you have questions is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. What do you mean, Brian, about sanctification and closing the gap?

I mean, closing the gap between who we are in Christ, so our identity in Christ and our actual practice as believers.

So you might think of the words position and practice. So positionally in Christ, we are righteous.

In Christ, we are new. We've been made new through the work of the

Spirit in regeneration. And we are justified. And we are even sanctified in the way

Scripture often uses the language of sanctification. We are set apart in a definitive and positional way.

We're already sanctified, notwithstanding the presence of indwelling sin and ongoing struggles in our lives.

And so there's something of a gap between our position and our practice. And I use in the book an illustration the day that I got married, which was 1996,

August 17th, 1996. As soon as I said I do and placed the ring on my wife's finger and kissed the bride and was pronounced man and wife, positionally,

I was her husband. But I've been learning how to be a good husband ever since.

And I'm still in process of learning to be who I am in position.

And you're never going to stop learning that, are you? Right. But the same is true in our

Christian lives. We are positionally, we are in a new position if we are united to Christ by the

Spirit through faith. We are righteous before God. We are sons and daughters of God.

We are indwelled by the Spirit. Our eternal destiny is sure in Christ. We are new creation.

And yet the reality, and we all know this if we're honest, the reality is that we continue to struggle.

We still have flesh. We still have indwelling sin. We live in a fallen world and we live in fallen environments and in families and in churches that are marked by that fallenness.

And so we're all learning to close the gap between who we are positionally and the character that God wants to work in us and changing us, making us more like His Son, conforming us to the image of Christ.

And there's not a Christian alive who cannot make further progress. All of us can and should.

And so that's what I mean by closing the gap, closing the gap between position and practice. And what do you mean when you describe holiness as captivated by beauty?

Hello? Brian, are you there? I think we may have been disconnected.

Brian, well, I'll tell you what. We are going to a break and hopefully we'll be reconnected with Brian.

Somehow we got disconnected from him, so hopefully he'll call us back. And in the meantime, give us an email if you'd like to join us on the air at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we will be right back after these messages, God willing, with Brian G.

Hedges. Hi, I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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Iron Sharpens today. Charles Hedgens Pershing once said,

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I believe we have Brian Hedges back on the line. Do we have Brian on? And we don't have

Brian on. I'm not sure what's happening here. So we're going to go to one more break and hopefully Brian will be connected with us.

And hello, Brian. Can you hear us? Yes. I don't know what happened there, brother. I don't know.

I just realized after a minute that I've been talking and there was no response. Yeah, and I heard dead silence and so did our listeners on the other end.

So it was kind of strange. I asked you about holiness being described in your book as captivated by beauty.

That's right. Yeah. So essentially what I mean by that is that in the

Old Testament, we have these descriptions of the holiness of God in terms of the beauty of holiness, the splendor of holiness.

You have the language of beauty and light and glory and all of that's connected to the holiness of God.

You might think, for example, of Isaiah's vision in Isaiah chapter six. And so there's something wonderfully captivating about the holiness of God.

There's also something very threatening about the holiness of God. And that paradox is, again, what drives us to the gospel, where we see the supreme revelation of God's holiness in Jesus Christ himself, who is the holiness of God incarnate.

So we see holiness in human form in Jesus Christ. And Christ, of course, in his character, is our model, our example.

And conformity to Christ is what God has chosen us for. And that's what the spirit is now working in our lives.

You also talk about killing sin, otherwise known as mortification.

And that's obviously something to do with another book you've written, License to Kill, I believe.

But if you could discuss that. Yeah, so if I could just back up a little bit.

Sure. One of the important things that I've seen in scripture and I've learned in my reading of other wonderful authors on this is that the gospel itself gives us a pattern for life.

So the gospel, as we defined in the last half hour, is really, in its essence, is the death and resurrection of Christ.

He died for our sins, according to the scriptures. He was buried and he rose from the dead on the third day, according to the scriptures.

And in the death and resurrection of Christ, we have both our salvation, our justification, happens through Christ's death and resurrection.

But we also have the pattern by which we are sanctified. So as Christ died to sin, as Christ died for sin, so we are called to die to sin.

And as Christ rose from the dead, we are called to walk in newness of life. And you see that pattern, for example, in Romans chapter six or in Colossians chapter three, or in other passages as well.

And so when we start connecting the dots then between this gospel story, death, resurrection of Christ, and what we are now called to do, dying to sin and living in righteousness and holiness, there are some very practical disciplines to which we are called.

And one of those is this discipline of putting sin to death or the old

Puritans called it mortification. And Paul describes that again in multiple passages, but Romans chapter eight, if you by the spirit put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

And also in Colossians chapter three, where he tells us to put to death these passions and desires and sin and ungodliness and so on.

And so that's what mortification is. It's putting these things to death in our lives. And I want to make sure that I read this really wonderful commendation for this book by Stephen J.

Lawson, who has been on this program, who is also going to be one of the speakers at the G3 conference in January that I will be going to.

I'm looking forward to seeing him again speak and preach. Stephen J.

Lawson writes, Brian Hedges has done the church a great service in writing this book, which reveals the

God intended path of sanctification. The ultimate goal in spiritual maturity is to transform believers into the image of Christ.

Those who apply the message of this insightful book will by God's grace find themselves growing into authentic Christ likeness.

And for those of you who didn't or do not win a free copy today, please seriously consider purchasing this book from our friends at ShepardPress .com

ShepardPress .com and of course our sponsors, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com

CVBBS .com has a very wide assortment of Shepard Press titles in stock.

So we urge you to go to their website as well. And this, in fact, there's a listener we have.

We have Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, is taking up our cross and following Christ about this mortification you speak of?

I think that mortification is an aspect of taking up the cross.

In its original context when Jesus told his disciples if anyone would follow me he must deny himself and take up his cross daily, come after me, he was literally calling disciples to leave all to follow him and to live lives of self -denial.

And taking up one's cross in the first century essentially meant being willing to accept a death sentence.

Someone carried the cross to the place of their execution. And so something analogous to that is true for every

Christian. That when we are called to follow Christ, we are called to die to sin. We are called to die to ourselves and to deny ourselves and to follow

Christ. And one aspect of that is putting sin to death.

That's what we might think of as the mortification of sin. I think I'm right in saying that John Calvin actually saw two aspects to our mortification.

And so he included repentance and putting sin to death as one aspect. But he also included the afflictions and the suffering that attend the

Christians in following Christ. So that's also an aspect of mortification.

And that would be the other aspect of taking up our cross to follow Christ is to choose a life that at times will invite suffering.

As Paul said in 2 Timothy chapter 3, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

And thank you, Christopher. And you're also getting a free copy of Christ Formed in You if you give us your full mailing address in Suffolk County, New York.

Thank you very much. You discuss growing in grace and you describe it as vivification if you could explain further.

Vivification or growing in grace would be the second counterpart to this gospel pattern of sanctification.

So just as we are called to die to sin, so we are called to walk in newness of life or to grow in grace.

An easy way to think about this is just Paul's use of the put off and put on language in his epistles.

So we have several places in Ephesians chapter 4, in Colossians chapter 3, in Romans chapter 13.

And then Peter uses similar kind of language in his first letter. You have these places in Scripture that tell us to put off and then that's followed by a whole list of vices.

So put off impurity and sensuality and immorality. Put off covetousness and idolatry.

Put off these sins. And then we are called to put on certain virtues or character qualities that we see supremely in Christ.

So we are to put on, as God's chosen people, compassion and kindness and patience.

And we are to bear with one another and forgive one another in Colossians chapter 3. So that's the pattern you see over and again in Scripture.

There's always a negative. There's something for us to do in regards to sin. And then that's followed by a positive counterpart.

There's a way in which we are to live as we imitate Christ, as we depend on his

Spirit to bear the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. And that's what the old Puritans called divification.

So it's the positive counterpart to sanctification. You go on to talk about something that I think that we who are theologically reformed need to hear about more often.

The quest for joy as our motivation. It's funny how we who are reformed have may have a tendency to be dreary and depressing people to those around us.

And not all of us, but many of us, unfortunately, live up to the caricature that has been painted of us.

And we forget the fact that the very first question in the shorter catechism is that the chief end of man is to adore

God and to enjoy him forever. And you have, as this next portion of your book, the quest for joy as a motivation, if you could comment.

Yeah, Chris. And, you know, I really owe almost all of my thinking on this to three or four people, and one in particular, and that's

Dr. John Piper. And I'm sure many of your listeners will be familiar with John Piper's books,

Desiring God and Future Grace. And he actually dared to use the word hedonism, didn't he?

He does. He does. He goes so far as to use the phrase Christian hedonism.

So his book Desiring God is subtitled The Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. And that book was really life -changing for me when

I read it for the first time, I think it was around 18 years ago. And in the introduction to his book,

I quote this in Christ Formed in You, he actually puts a unique spin on the

Westminster Catechism, which you just quoted, and says that the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.

Amen. So his basic thesis is that the way we glorify God is by being deeply satisfied in him, and not so much in his gifts, the things that he gives us, but in God himself.

And Piper builds a wonderful case for that in his book. That awakened me to the language of joy and satisfaction and pleasure in Scripture, as well as in other writers, such as Saint Augustine and C .S.

Lewis and many of the Puritans as well. And I do think it's the lynchpin in our sanctification, because if we still believe that there's going to be more joy and more pleasure found in sin, then there will be joy and pleasure found in following Christ where the heart follows its desires.

And so one of the great battles, I think, in our lives is the battle for joy and the battle against this deception that would cause us to believe that there actually is lasting joy or satisfaction to be found in sin.

And the reality is that sin always brings misery. Sin leads to death. And joy and freedom and life and satisfaction, those are found in communion with God through his

Son, Jesus Christ, in the ministry of his Spirit, as through the Word and through the means of grace,

God conforms us to the image of Christ. And that's why one of the fruit of the Spirit is joy.

And so that's what that chapter is about. And it's just using some of Piper's material, but then also digging into the text of Scripture itself to show that Scripture holds out this promise of joy and satisfaction and happiness and pleasure in God, holds this promise out as the motivation for the pursuit of a holy life.

And of course, we are to enjoy him forever. And our chief end is not to achieve personal happiness at all costs, which seems to be a message of the modern evangelical pulpit.

It is, unfortunately. And the problem with the message, or at least one problem with the message, is that it actually is so self -defeating.

Because when people pursue personal happiness at all costs, it proves to be very costly because they will start looking for satisfaction in places that ultimately will not give it.

So one of the passages I work with in that chapter is the description of Moses in Hebrews chapter 11, who forsook the pleasures of sin for a season because he saw the greater riches, the greater joys and pleasures that would be found in suffering with Christ and the people of Christ.

And we need that same understanding. And since we're running out of time, if you could very briefly talk about the refiner's fire and how suffering is a part of our sanctification, very briefly, if you could.

Yeah, so that's in the last part of the book where I talk about the means of personal change. And there really are three ways that God brings about holiness in our lives.

So spiritual disciplines is one way, the church is one way, and then suffering or the refiner's fire is one.

And that chapter is really just a meditation on God's purposes in suffering. And how he uses suffering to make us more like Christ.

And one of the authors I quote there is the Puritan Thomas Watson. Oh yeah.

Said that the rod is God's pencil to draw the image of Christ more lively upon us.

Yeah, and Banner of Truth has some excellent books republished by Thomas Watson, so.

Yeah, that's right. Well, I thank you so much for your wonderful contribution to our program today.

And I know that Shepherd's Press or Shepherd Press, I should say, their website for those wanting to order your books is shepherdpress .com,

shepherdpress .com. And the Fulkerson Park Baptist Church website is fulkersonpark .com,

F -U -L -K -E -R -S -O -N, park .com. I want to thank you for being on the program.

I want to thank all of our listeners who listened today, especially those that made the effort to write in questions.

I hope you have a blessed, safe, and joyful and Christ -honoring weekend and Lord's Day. And I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.

We look forward to hearing from you and your questions next week for our guests on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.