Academic Discontentment with Truth

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. Well good afternoon and welcome to The Dividing Line. Today we have hopefully an interesting program.

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I certainly think there are some folks that are listening with a lot of interest. We're going to be looking at 2

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Corinthians 5, verse 21 and what I call academic discontent with truth.

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2 Corinthians 5, verse 21. But before we look at this very, very important subject, I would like to mention yet once again the fact that right on our website you will find an advertisement for our upcoming apologetics cruise.

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And right now it is my understanding that we have on the line waiting to talk to us someone who is going to get to enjoy the next number of days on the very same ship,

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I believe, that we're going to be going on in December of this year.

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And I hear in the background they're already making announcements about what they're supposed to be doing there on the ship.

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And Mike O 'Fallon is on the line with me. Mike, are you actually on the Zondom right now?

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Yes, I'm on the Zondom and they are giving directions right now for our life jacket drill.

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Oh, great. This is great timing that we planned this out. And I've also just gone deaf because the

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Disney Magic right next to us just blew its horn. Doing well.

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But yes, absolutely. We still have a special on. We talked about this the last time that Dr.

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White, you had me as a guest on your program, that for the next month or so there is a special that Holland America is running which is allowing us to pass on the status to you, which is a $150 discount per person, per birth, on the

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Holland America Zondom, which from first -hand testimony right now is an absolutely beautiful ship.

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It's absolutely stunning, extremely clean. And I had just gotten back from the buffet restaurant a few minutes ago and I can hardly move.

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And I did test -taste the hamburgers and they are excellent. Oh, well, I'm on it then.

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We're there. Yes, absolutely. And right now, it's amazing from where I'm looking right now,

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I can look across and see the Disney Magic, but then also right behind it there is the

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Space Shuttle Containment Building and the launch pads for the Space Shuttle. So you're at Cape Canaveral then?

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I am in Cape Canaveral right now. That's correct. Excellent. We're right next to NASA. And you all are just about to take off and when will you be back?

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We'll be back next Saturday of the same itinerary that the Alpha and Omega crews will be on in approximately ten and a half months.

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So you're going to be our cruise guide in more than one way because you'll actually know exactly where to go and what to do and so we'll have someone who is absolutely omniscient about everything we need to ask, right?

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I wouldn't say omniscient, but I do the best I can. Okay, sufficient knowledge over against infallible knowledge.

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How's that? That's correct. That's correct. But we would say that I just took a look at the conference rooms that we'll be using.

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They're going to be fantastic. Once again, we will have a system that we can plug your PowerPoint up into and project on the screen.

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We'll have an entire room unto ourselves and we'll also have use of the Erasmus Library.

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So we will have a special King James only presentation. Do you think we'll be the only people on the boat that will know what his first name was?

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Mr. Derrius? No. I'm sure. I'm sure. But no, it's going to be a fantastic time, folks, and if you have not cruised before, this is a wonderful opportunity to take part in the savings.

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And secondly, if you have not actually been with Dr. White and some of the staff at Alpha Omega for their presentations live and being able to ask questions of them, this is a rare opportunity.

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So please do take advantage of it. And James, I guess that's about it from here. Well, okay.

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Mike, now, has your wife put you on any limitations as to how many entrees you can do in the evening?

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Well, let's put it this way. We just went to the Lido restaurant and I had a taste of the

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Grouper Milanese as well as the Roast Pork Loin. And then they do have a 24 -hour ice cream sundae bar, which is great.

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As well as they have all sorts of a cacophony of different desserts and that kind of thing out here.

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Pizza 24 hours, taco bars, blah, blah, blah, specialty restaurants. Did you hear that I just got a new

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Cybex incline bench in my gym at home? Oh, that's what I forgot to talk about. Of course.

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I just was up for a tour of the gym. The gym has all Cybex equipment in it. Oh. And it has free weights up to 70 pounds.

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Much, much better than the plastic stuff that we ran into someplace else, huh? It was fantastic. I mean, no shot at the other boat.

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The other boat we were on was beautiful. But the gym on this one is first class. This will be an Alpha Omega throw around the weight party.

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We will have fun. Well, either throw around the weight or put on the weight, one of the two.

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Well, in the right way. Building muscle tone. Amen. All right. Well, you and the wife have a wonderful time.

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And I'm looking forward to next, you know, who knows, maybe you'll be close enough next Saturday to let us know how it went.

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Absolutely. We'll try to give you a buzz in. Okay. Thanks a lot, man. Have a good time. God bless. Bye -bye.

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That's Michael Fallon. He does all the work in putting together these cruises for us and does so as a ministry.

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Loves the Lord and loves his truth. And that's why he's doing what he's doing. And, of course, right now he's going on a cruise.

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And I obviously would enjoy being with him. But they're off on their own.

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And I suppose, I imagine they probably need to do at least one of those for every one of the others.

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He works so hard during the time we're on the boat that he needs a vacation after doing that,

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I would imagine. So I've heard from a bunch of folks who are very interested in going. Folks, whatever you do, if you've had any interest in it at all, contact

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Mike. Obviously, he's not going to be answering your emails for a week. Even though you can get your email while you're on the boat as well.

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But, anyways, contact Mike. Do it now. I mean, it would just be silly to miss the $150 savings because you waited for five days or something like that.

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It just doesn't make any sense. So now's the time to get in touch with Mike. There's a link on our website.

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Go there. I saw a thing about, you know, I'm just picking on one particular group.

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Catholic Answers did a cruise recently. And I think we cost like a third. Of course, they have a $5 .5

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million budget. But our trip costs like one -third of what theirs does.

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So it's just a wonderful time of fellowship. So if you get a chance, now's the time to do that.

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Thanks again to Michael Fallon for calling. You can hear the wind. I don't know what it is, why it's so windy on boats even when they're not moving.

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I mean, they haven't left their berth yet. And I remember the last cruise, I was up on deck before we left.

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And it was just, and it's gorgeous and stuff. But it's still interesting. Yeah, AOMN is asking if UPS will pick up from the boat because he has orders to fill.

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Well, we're just going to have to make sure we're all caught up before we leave. And then just let folks know, hey, for a week or so, not going to be filling orders.

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That's just all there is to it. So anyways, that's going to be a lot of fun.

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All right, let's shift gears and move away from that particular subject at the moment, though that is the purpose why we go on such trips is to study the word of God and things like that.

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That's going to be on the subject of Islam will be our discussions, of course, answering

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Islamic objections, salvation, and things like that. So it's all very much related to what we do regularly anyways.

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But a much more difficult subject to address now, a subject that unfortunately is sowing a tremendous amount of discord in the body of Christ.

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I went to, for my first master's degree, I went to Fuller Theological Seminary's extension here in Phoenix.

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And obviously, Fuller is way off to my left theologically, even though back in the 1980s it was not as far off to the left as it is now.

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And the assigned readings in the various classes, studies of Paul, studies of various and sundry theological issues, required the reading of a lot of material that, from my perspective at the time, was somewhat of a waste of time.

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What I mean by that was it came from a perspective that lacked one particular element that rendered many of the conclusions of the writers that I was reading irrelevant, as far as truth was concerned.

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And that is, Fuller had already abandoned a belief in inerrancy, a belief that the scriptures, as they were written, are the theanoustos revelation of God, and therefore are consistent with themselves.

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Now if you have never studied the writings of theologians who do not believe in inerrancy, let me tell you that inerrancy is sort of the bugaboo subject.

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If you're a conservative, you affirm it, and yet there are many, many, many in the academy, that is, in Christian academia, who, while they may, in one way or another, affirm belief in inerrancy, they don't want to do so overly openly, because the

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Christian academy, the formal academy of Christian scholarship, has embraced one particular perspective that unfortunately has made it ashamed of truth.

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And what I mean by that is that the Christian academy wants to be accepted by their peers in secular scholarship, and therefore there are certain beliefs that are inconsistent with that acceptance, and as a result, there is embarrassment on the part of many, because they want to find that acceptance with those outside of Christ, in essence.

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Fuller had abandoned a belief in inerrancy, and I often had discussions about that with various seminary professors in the classes, and even once remember very clearly expressing during a

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New Testament class the fact that I felt like, from Fuller's perspective, I was the token fundamentalist, the individual who is just out of the backwoods, not really up to speed, and I really felt talked down to, looked on as being somewhat of an artifact of history, somewhat of a dinosaur, shall we say.

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And I certainly learned, during my seminary experience, the tremendous impact of denying inerrancy upon one's theology and upon one's exegesis.

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When you look at how you handle Biblical passages and Biblical texts, if you believe that the text of Scripture is

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God -breathed, that it is God speaking through the words of men, without error, then the range of possibilities as to the meanings of passages is limited by the concept of consistency.

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You cannot interpret the Scriptures so as to be inconsistent with themselves. If you do not believe that, then you can interpret the

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Scriptures in all sorts of other ways, and in fact you must begin looking for external parameters whereby you can make heads or tails out of what

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Scripture is actually saying. And, of course, it is always the desire of quote -unquote scholarship to come up with external parameters, come up with new ways of looking at things.

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Because, you see, the fundamental idea in scholarship is, for example, to do a doctoral dissertation you must come up with a new way of adding to scholarly knowledge.

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And that can be good or bad. It can be good in the sense of there's all sorts of things that have not yet been really unpacked and examined to the depth they need to be examined to.

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But that newness can also involve coming up with, well, you know, we just can't view things the way that we've traditionally viewed them.

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We need to come up with something new. And when you're talking about the deliverance of divine truth, newness is frequently a denial of that truth.

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It's some way of coming up with some interesting way of inculcating heresy amongst the people, in essence, is what it ends up being.

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And when I was at Fuller, you know, Barth was almost divine.

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Schleiermacher, Schweitzer. I had to take, of course, the obligatory classes on the search for the historical

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Jesus and all the other things that go along with that. Cranfield was seen to be almost too conservative.

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In fact, Fuller was seen to be too conservative by many. For example, United Methodist seminaries and things like that.

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It was an interesting world to do my studies in. There's no two ways about that. And I hasten to say that I certainly did get to learn all sorts of neat things, and it's turned out to be good for me.

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I mean, when I had to study Gerhard von Rath, that certainly helped to prepare me for such groups as the

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Jesus Seminar and things like that. But what prompts me to mention all of this is our study today, and that is academic discontent with truth.

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And what I mean by that is there seems to be, and I've mentioned this before, a discontentment amongst many people within what is broadly called

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Protestantism. And in fact, I will limit my comments today to conservative

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Protestant groups. There seems to be a discontent with truth. There seems to be an overwhelming desire to come up with something new, something better, something fresh.

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And of course, I am not one for sticky tradition. I am not one to be bogged down in the traditions of men.

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But there obviously is a line that must be walked between the traditions of men and the clear conclusions of the

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Scriptures. For example, I would not say that a belief in one true

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God is a tradition of man. It is the clear conclusion of the teaching of Scripture. And while we may restate that belief in a number of different ways, when we may in fact have to explain that belief in light of new challenges all the time, the fact is that those truths are true, and we do not need to come up with new ways of saying them.

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We do not need to start questioning the foundations of, for example, Biblical monotheism.

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And so when we talk about this discontent with truth in academia,

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I want to use as illustration today an examination of 2

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Corinthians 5 .21 as it is being treated by N .T.

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Wright. Now, N .T. Wright is an Anglican scholar. He, of course, is very popular.

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He appeared as the one semi -conservative person in the Jesus Seminar materials back on ABC a while back.

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And obviously he has become very central to the movement called

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New Perspectivism. And New Perspectivism was certainly something I was exposed to, not so much with those words, back in seminary.

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I had to read Sanders, and I had to read James Dunn. And I'll be honest with you, as a conservative,

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I read those things, went, oh, that's interesting, okay, I understand what they're saying. But these men do not believe in inerrancy.

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They start from a flawed foundation. And it didn't seem overly relevant to me, any more relevant than anything from Bultmann or Barth or any of the others, outside of, okay, this is what people to my left think is very important.

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This is how they're thinking. But as far as dealing with conservative, reformed individuals, it struck me that this was stuff that was really outside of that area.

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But over the past number of years, it is very obvious that Wright especially has been making great inroads amongst individuals that I never expected that he would, as far as his perspectives and beliefs are concerned.

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And so, this concept of new perspectivism, the new perspective on Paul, has become something that has been very much discussed.

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And I'd like to just summarize some of the aspects of it. From Wright himself,

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I have his book in my hand, entitled,

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What St. Paul Really Said, Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? This is from Eerdmans.

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And what I'd like to do is to just read briefly his summary, his own summary statements, what he summarizes in regards to Paul's doctrine of justification, just to give you an idea of where he's going.

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And then I want to look specifically at the exegesis of 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and contrast my dinosaur way of doing things, my exegesis of 2

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Corinthians chapter 5, with what N .T. Wright says about it, and then take your phone calls and so on and so forth.

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I think this is very important, because let me just explain to you why this is so important, even before I read his summaries.

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There is a, and I knew I needed to stick a little note on it here, or I was going to lose it.

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There is a little section here in the book on justification as the ecumenical doctrine.

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Justification as the ecumenical doctrine. This just gives you an idea of why, you know, why are you discussing about, why are you even talking about this, the ecumenical task.

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This is on pages 158 and 159 from Wright's book. This will give you an idea of why we're discussing this, okay?

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I'm reading from page 158 of N .T. Wright. The ecumenical task, Paul's doctrine of justification by faith, impels the churches in their current fragmented state into the ecumenical task.

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It cannot be right that the very doctrine which declares that all who believe in Jesus belong at the same table,

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Galatians 2, should be used as a way of saying that some who define the doctrine of justification differently belong to a different table.

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The doctrine of justification, in other words, is not merely a doctrine which Catholic and Protestant might just be able to agree on as a result of hard ecumenical endeavor.

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It is itself the ecumenical doctrine, the doctrine that rebukes all our petty and often culture -bound church groupings, and which declares that all who believe in Jesus belong together in the one family.

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Of course, there will still be difficulties. Of course, we must still have doctrinal debates. But until Christians grasp the message of Galatians 2, not to mention

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Romans 14 -15, Ephesians 1 -3, and some other passages, they will still be at first base as far as true earthing of Paul's theology is concerned.

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The doctrine of justification is, in fact, the great ecumenical doctrine. After all,

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Galatians 2 offers the first great exposition of justification in Paul. In that chapter, the nub of the issue was the question, who are

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Christians allowed to sit down and eat with? For Paul, that was the question of whether Jewish Christians were allowed to eat with Gentile Christians.

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Many Christians, both in the Reformation and in the Counter -Reformation traditions, have done themselves and the

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Church a great disservice by treating the doctrine of justification as central to their debates, and by supposing that it describes the system by which people attain salvation.

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They have turned the doctrine into its opposite. Justification declares that all who believe in Jesus belong at the same table, no matter what their cultural or racial differences, and let's face it, a good many denominational distinctions, and indeed distinctions within a single denomination, boil down more to culture than to doctrine.

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Because what matters is believing in Jesus. Detailed agreement on justification itself, properly conceived, isn't the thing which should determine

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Eucharistic fellowship. If Christians could only get this right, they would find that not only would they be believing the gospel, they would be practicing it, and that is the best basis for proclaiming it.

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So, you may be going, what? What was just said there?

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Well, you need to understand that for N .T. Wright, the gospel and justification are two different things. And if you read a historic

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Protestant understanding of justification, or, for that matter, a historic Roman Catholic idea of justification, into what

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Wright is saying, you won't understand a word that he's talking about. So, let me give you the summary that he himself gives in regards to the meaning of justification, and then you'll have an idea of where he's coming from, and then you can see why all this is very, very important.

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From pages 131 and 132 of Wright's work here, let me sum up Paul's doctrine of justification.

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We had better take this carefully, step by step, according to the three key categories I mentioned earlier, namely the covenant law, court, and eschatology.

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Number one, covenant. Justification is the covenant declaration which will be issued on the last day, please notice that's future, in which the true people of God will be vindicated, and those who insist on worshiping false gods will be shown to be in the wrong.

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Let me just note, stopping the quotation at that point, that in essence, the emphasis, one of the key emphases of New Perspectivism is a removal of the emphasis of Historic Protestant Orthodoxy, and that is justification is something that we look back upon,

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Romans 5 .1, therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God. Our peace with God is based upon the present existence of the declaration of justification on the basis of faith.

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That is the Historic Protestant position, New Perspectivists deny this, and that is part and parcel of the emphasis.

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Now, one thing to recognize is that most of these writers will always say, well, you can still have what you believed before, but the emphasis will always be on this, and one of the things that's very frustrating is,

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I'm talking to many people in channel who will say, oh, but you can still have that, and I want to go, okay, but if Romans is gone, and Galatians is gone, and 2

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Corinthians is gone, and Philippians is gone, and all those passages actually have to do with eschatology, exactly how would you establish that to someone who denies it?

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How would you establish that in a debate with Robert St. Genes? How would you establish that in a debate with a Mormon, or with a

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Jehovah's Witness, or anybody else? You're left with no passages upon which to do that, and I just, I believe last night, was asking one particular individual, who

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I know is listening right now, okay, if you're going to affirm a present justification, give me a text.

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I have not received an answer, because no answers are forthcoming, even in reading right.

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So I go back to page 131. Number two, law court. Justification functions like the verdict in the law court.

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By quitting someone, it confers that person the status righteous. This is the forensic dimension of the future covenantal vindication.

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Now, if that's somewhat confusing to you, that's because, again, this involves a complete redefinition of what you're accustomed to hearing in regards to justification.

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But one thing that this should not be understood as stating, is that there has been an imputation of an alien righteousness, the righteousness of Christ.

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That is definitely not what he is referring to. Number three, eschatology, this declaration, this verdict, is ultimately to be made at the end of history.

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Through Jesus, however, God has done in the middle of history, what he had been expected to do, and indeed will still do at the end, so that the declaration, the verdict, can be issued already in the present, in anticipation.

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The events of the last days were anticipated when Jesus died on the cross, as the representative

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Messiah of Israel, and rose again. This was Paul's own theological starting point. The verdict of the last day is therefore now also anticipated in the present, whenever someone believes in the gospel message about Jesus.

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Therefore, and this is the vital thrust of the argument of Galatians in particular, but it plays a central role in Philippians and Romans as well, all who believe the gospel of Jesus Christ are already demarcated as members of the true family of Abraham, with their sins being forgiven.

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There is the allegedly present element. That is, you're in the family of God.

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You're in the true family of Abraham. Your sins have been forgiven. That's what it means to be justified.

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And before we take our break, let me just give you a little further analysis of that, from pages 132 and 133.

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I must stress again, this is right, this is W -R -I -G -H -T, it's not

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R -I -G -H -T, I must stress again that the doctrine of justification by faith is not what

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Paul means by the gospel. It is implied by the gospel.

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When the gospel is proclaimed, people come to faith and so are regarded by God as members of his people.

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That's justification for him, by the way, I go back to the quotation. But the gospel is not an account of how people get saved.

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It is, as we saw in an earlier chapter, the proclamation of the lordship of Jesus Christ. If we could only get that clear in current debates, a lot of other false antitheses, not least in thinking about the mission of the church, would quietly unravel before our eyes.

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Let us be quite clear, the gospel is the announcement of Jesus' lordship, which works with power to bring people into the family of Abraham, now redefined around Jesus Christ and characterized solely by faith in him.

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Justification is the doctrine which insists that all those who have this faith belong as full members of this family on this basis and no other."

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So that's where N .T. Wright is coming from. That's his view of justification.

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When we come back, let me sort of start with what got me thinking about what he was saying again in the current context.

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We'll be back right after this break. The History of the

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Christian Church The history of the Christian Church pivots on the doctrine of justification by faith. Once the core of the

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Reformation, the church today often ignores or misunderstands this foundational doctrine. In his book,

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The God Who Justifies, theologian James White calls believers to a fresh appreciation of, understanding of, and dedication to the great doctrine of justification and then provides an exegesis of the key scripture texts on this theme.

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Justification is the heart of the gospel. In today's culture where tolerance is the new absolute,

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James White proclaims with passion the truth and centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith.

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Dr. J. Adams says, I lost sleep over this book. I simply couldn't put it down. James White writes the way an exegetically and theologically oriented pastor appreciates.

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This is no book for casual reading. There is solid meat throughout. An outstanding contribution in every sense of the words.

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The God Who Justifies by Dr. James White. Get your copy today at AOMN .org.

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More than any time in the past, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals are working together. They are standing shoulder to shoulder against social evils.

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They are joining across denominational boundaries in renewal movements. And many Evangelicals are finding the history, tradition, and grandeur of the

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Roman Catholic Church appealing. This newfound rapport has caused many Evangelical leaders and lay people to question the age -old disagreements that have divided

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Protestants and Catholics. Aren't we all saying the same thing in a different language? James White's book,

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The Roman Catholic Controversy, is an absorbing look at current views of tradition in Scripture. The Papacy, the

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Mass, Purgatory and Indulgences, and Marian Doctrine. James White points out the crucial differences that remain regarding the

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Christian life and the heart of the Gospel itself that cannot be ignored. Order your copy of The Roman Catholic Controversy by going to our website at AOMN .org.

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This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the Gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church.

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The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day.

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The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45.

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Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7.

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The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.

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You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at PRBC .org

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where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

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And welcome back. I guess Steve ran out of breath there for a second. He rarely does that.

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We are talking a little bit about 2 Corinthians 5 .21 and what got me thinking about this was an article, an interview with N .T.

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Wright in Reformation Revival Journal. This is Volume 11, Number 1, Winter 2002.

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And what I'm going to do is I'm going to read you some of Wright's comments and then I'm going to, in essence, read you my own exegesis of 2

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Corinthians 5, verses 17 -21 and then look at Wright's comments in the same passage as a means of contrast in methodologies and in conclusions as well.

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This is what caught my eye. The person who was interviewing N .T.

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Wright says, Well, I think there is the practical question of people who are in subscription to confessional standards.

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The new perspective comes in and makes you ask, Is that a denial of the imputation of Christ's righteousness? That's practical.

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I think maybe even behind this idea, and arrogant is probably too strong a word to use here, is the question again that we have all of a sudden been able to decode the code 2 ,000 years later, to which

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N .T. Wright responds, But you see the joke is this. That is precisely the question

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Martin Luther faced in his time. It was the big question throughout the 1517 -1530 period,

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Where have you been for the last 1500 years? If that's what Paul meant, why didn't the church notice it before now?

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Luther was saying, God's word, God's word, here I stand. And thousands of people were saying, yes, yes, yes.

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So this is always the puzzle. Then it's back to this methodological issue. I do think that God has new light to break out of Holy Scripture.

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But it's not new light in the sense of throwing away all that's good in the past. People are always frightened that a reformation or a proposal for a new way of doing things will go this way.

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My aim here is freshness. Something even better than what we've got. Now let me stop for just a moment.

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This is page 129, by the way, of that particular issue of Reformation Revival Journal.

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I want you to hear what he's saying. My aim here is freshness. Something even better than what we've got.

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You need to understand, N .T. Wright is talking about something better. Something different than what we've got.

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And what we've got, folks, is the historical doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone in Jesus Christ.

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What we've got is the imputation of Christ's righteousness. The imputation of my sins to Christ and his righteousness to me.

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We need something better than this. And if you stop and think for a moment, that raises the whole issue that I've been discussing with a number of folks.

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How can something be better than that? I mean, people are asking, why is it so many folks, even conservative folks, are buying into this stuff?

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And one of the responses I've had is, a heart that has truly beaten with passion for the truth that I stand before God clothed in the righteousness of another is not going to be looking for this stuff.

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So those that are grabbing onto this must not have ever had that passion. For how could that be exchanged for something else?

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I don't know, but I continue on with Wright's comments. Listen to this very carefully.

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The imputation of Christ's righteousness is one of the big sticking points, for sure. Well, I'd hope so.

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I think I know exactly what the doctrine is about, and I believe you don't lose anything by the route

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I propose. The force of what people have believed when they have used the idea of imputation is completely retained in what

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I have tried to do. Why? Because in Christ we have all the treasures, not only of wisdom and knowledge,

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Colossians 1 and also 1 Corinthians 1, but in whom we have the entire package, meaning sanctification and wisdom as well as righteousness.

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So Paul's theology of being in Christ gives you all of that. But the fact that it gives you more than that does rock you back on your heels a bit and prompt you to ask, listen carefully, have we made too much of this one thing called righteousness?

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The key text, which is 2 Corinthians 5 .21, has been read for generations, ever since Luther at least, as an isolated, detached statement of the wondrous exchange.

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When we do this, we forget that the entire passage, with the three chapters that lead up to it, and the chapter and a half that follow, chapter 6 and the beginning of 7, are about apostleship.

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These are all about the strange way in which the suffering of the apostle somehow is transmuted into the revelation of God's glory.

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In the middle of this, the statement occurs that God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

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After this, I started to read Decaiusune Theou, the righteousness of God, as covenant faithfulness in Romans.

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I then suddenly thought, wait a minute, what about 2 Corinthians 5 .21? And then I realized that the whole thing here in 2

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Corinthians 3, the new covenant, God has made us ministers of the new covenant. We are embodying the covenant faithfulness of God.

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I can see how frustrating it is for a preacher who has preached his favorite sermon all these years on the imputation of Christ's righteousness, from 2

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Corinthians 5 .21, to hear that this is not the right way to understand it. But I actually think that there is an even better sermon waiting to be preached.

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You can always preach one on 1 Corinthians 1 .30, as long as you do wisdom, sanctification, and redemption.

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All three. Well, I started thinking about that and going,

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So, is he saying that what's going on in 2 Corinthians 5, is that the apostles demonstrate the covenant faithfulness of God?

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Is that what 2 Corinthians 5 .21 is about? Because if it is, then Protestants have been completely off track for a long time.

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And see, Wright doesn't present his position in such a way that you see how radical it truly is.

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This isn't fresh. I mean, this is like saying indulgences are a fresh way of looking at the cross to a

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Protestant. I mean, we're talking about a radical difference here. But he doesn't present it in that way.

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He says, Oh, you can still have all of that. If you want to have all that, you can have all of that.

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But there's this new perspective. And you need to understand righteousness is really

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God's covenant faithfulness. It's not this idea of the great exchange that Luther was talking about.

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Luther was wrong. And you also need to understand that from Wright's perspective, he thinks he's the conservative here.

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He's actually saying that Dunn and Sanders and the others who really are the ones, Stendhal and others, who started the new perspective movement, he's actually thinking he's sort of trying to correct them.

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It's sort of like Barth trying to correct German liberalism, but in the meantime still having so much error involved in the foundation that it ended up causing all the disaster you see in German Protestant churches to this day.

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They've been gutted. There's no gospel left there. And so I started going,

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Well, is that what he's saying? And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to present to you my own interpretation of 2

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Corinthians chapter 5. I'd like to ask you to read along if you'd like. And I'm looking at the clock and this is taking quite some time.

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We may need to do two weeks on this. And that's fine. Wait a minute. I'm going to be in Connecticut next

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Saturday. Well, we'll do it as we're able to do it. Maybe I won't be busy at 4 o 'clock and I can do it from there.

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I don't know. But I don't want to rush this. I know right now, and I've already seen this.

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Since I haven't read every word N .T. Wright has ever written on every subject that N .T. Wright has ever written on, there are people who dismiss anything that I have to say.

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I mean, I can be very careful in reading his own words and quoting him and I can track down other articles that he himself refers to.

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That's never enough for some folks. And so if I rush through this, you're just treating him like your debate opponents treat you.

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So I'm well aware of that. 2 Corinthians 5, verses 17 -21, in case you're not familiar with it.

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So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. What is old has passed away, see, what is new has come.

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And all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. In other words, in Christ, God has reconciled the world to himself, not counting people's trespasses against them, and he has given us the message of reconciliation.

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Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. Though God were making his plea through us, we plead with you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

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God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us. So that in him, we would become the righteousness of God.

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Now, again, consider the context. N .T. Wright is correct in identifying the overarching theme to be that of Paul's apostleship.

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Of course, you could say that of all of 1 and 2 Corinthians, for that matter. One of the first problems

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I have with his assertions is that, in reality, when we look at this passage, 2

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Corinthians 5 began with another subject. He talks there about our earthly bodies, our earthly tent.

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And the key emphasis in each section of Wright that I have read on 2

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Corinthians 5 is his assertion that, well, if we read it in the old -fashioned way, this is just simply sort of a hanging discussion.

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Actually, you read through 2 Corinthians 5, and Paul will frequently make statements that are prompted by a term that he has just used.

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When he writes to Titus, he uses the term God, and then he goes on and discusses God our Savior. Then he returns to his subject.

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He does that in Romans all the time. It amazes me that a man who is considered a Pauline scholar would actually make an argument that, well, this can't be about justification because this whole section is about apostleship.

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Paul frequently will bring up issues of the atonement and the cross in the middle of a completely different subject because it's all relevant to the centrality of Christ.

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And so I find that argument, and I will interact with that argument a little bit more as well, to be completely vacuous, extremely liable to refutation.

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Anyways, let me give you, and if you have my book, God Who Justifies, I'm just going to use this as an outline, read sections of it for that matter, whole sections of it.

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If you don't, that's fine. The relevance of this passage comes, of course, from the appearance of dikaiosune theou, the righteousness of God, in verse 21.

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The brevity of verse 21 seems to indicate it's a summary statement, one well known to the expected audience in Corinth.

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Paul does not expand upon it. He's not introducing some new concept. This is part and parcel of his regular teaching.

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Its importance is heightened by a number of other considerations, including the close connection of reconciliation to be reconciled in the immediate context and also the direct assertion that the purpose of Christ being made sin is so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

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Important as well is the parallel of not to impute sin in Romans 4 .8

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and here in 5 .19, not reckoning transgressions, the non -imputation of sin. As such, it provides a vital complement to the fuller passages that I examine throughout the text of the

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God Who Justifies, especially those in Romans and in Galatians. Look at verse 17,

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This passage is surely one of the most precious in all of Scripture, one which many of the saints have put to memory and for good reason.

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Prior to this passage, Paul has been explaining the relationship of the death of Christ to the life of the Christian. Using strong substitutionary terminology,

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Paul speaks of the union that exists between Christ and His people and the one who has died with Christ yet lives, echoing Galatians 2 .20,

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is described negatively as one who does not live to himself but instead lives for Him who died for them and was raised.

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That's chapter 5, verse 15. This is a tremendous picture of true Christian living. The focus of the

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Christian is Christ's life, not self -life. This Christ -centeredness is the background of a new creation here in verse 17 of chapter 5.

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The first truth spoken is that all who are in Christ, whosoever, experiences this new creation.

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To be in Christ is to be a new creation. There is no such thing as a person who is in union with Christ who is not a new creation.

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By the way, I might just note in passing that that assertion is relevant to other popular movements today outside of New Perspectivism.

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The two are coextensive, the one descriptive of the effect of the other, while some interpreters have taken new creation in an exhortational sense, that is, let him be a new creation, this is not

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Paul's thrust. Paul is describing the effect of God's work in Christ and the words that follow, what is old has passed away, see what is new has come, are stating a fact, not simply something that is hoped for.

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The meaning of new is filled out by the following phrase. The term can also mean unpolluted as well.

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But it is indeed the sense of newness of life in Christ that is in Paul's mind. The new creation harkens back to Old Testament promises, such as Isaiah 65, 17, but it also points forward to eschatological fulfillment, such as Revelation 21, 5.

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Here in Paul's words, however, the reality is now. To be in Christ is to be a new creation, to have passed out of death into life.

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Resurrection life is, in some wonderful and fascinating way, new. We have not been given new life so as to merely go back to our old ways of living.

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There is a fundamental change for the person who has been born again and now experiences Christ's life being lived within.

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This change is described as the old things, or the former things having passed away.

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This is a past action. In the same way, new things have come, sees this transition into the

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Christian life as a past event with present effects. Many are familiar with the reading of the

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King James Version. All things have become new, but as the textual data shows, the reading of the

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New English Translation is best at that point. This passage is fully representative of Paul's insistence that soteriology and Christian living are aspects of one whole.

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To be in Christ is to experience newness of life, newness of the Spirit. It is the

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Father's will that all who are in Christ will experience his life as a new creation.

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Verse 18, And all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

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Paul's theocentrism, his focus upon God, finds strong expression when he affirms that all these things are from God, that is, being in Christ, the newness of life, the new creation.

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Salvation is a divine work from first to last. There is never any reason for human boasting.

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While Paul will speak of us as fellow workers with God in preaching the gospel, in chapter 6 verse 1, never does the apostle view his chief and most glorious work, the redemption of his people, as a cooperative effort.

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And that is extremely important as well, in light of recent programs we've done on Dave Hunt.

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The divine nature of salvation is likewise the theme of Paul's description of God as the one who reconciled us to himself through Christ.

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Reconciliation is a divine work. God the Father takes the initiative in reconciling sinful men to himself.

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The participle that Paul uses here, reconciling, has God as its subject and the redeemed, us, as its object.

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But even more, God reconciled us unto himself. As sinners, our relationship with the

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Holy God was severed. The very heart of grace is that the offended majesty is the one who reconciles wretched sinners to himself.

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He does not merely make a way of reconciliation available, but he actually, actively, and powerfully reconciles.

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Yet, as the Holy God, he could not bring about reconciliation without dealing with the reason for the disruption in relationship, and that is sin.

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So this reconciliation takes place by one specific means, which again flows from the initiative of the

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Father. It is through Christ. Jesus constantly taught that he was sent by the Father. And while Jesus did voluntarily make himself of no reputation,

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Philippians 2 .6, the Scriptures represent him as the sent one. Here, Paul only mentions

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Christ as the means. In 5 .19 and 21, the exact nature of Christ's provision of the grounds of reconciliation will be laid out.

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The message of what the Father has done in Christ is likened to a ministry wherein we are privileged to proclaim to others that the

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God who is justly wrathful over sin is found to be gracious in and through the work of Jesus Christ.

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The next verse restates this thought, as he has given us the message of reconciliation.

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While there is an immediate and special application of the apostles, all who proclaim the gospel as ambassadors for Christ are likewise entrusted with this message.

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Verse 19. In other words, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting people's trespasses against them, and he has given us the message of reconciliation.

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The New English Translation takes 5 .19 as an expansion and restatement of 5 .18, and this is surely the best understanding.

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Therefore, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself would be the expansion or explanation of God who reconciled us to himself through Christ.

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While some have seen references to the incarnation, etc., in the phrase, in Christ, there is no reason to take this as anything other than another way of stating diakristu, by Christ, from verse 18.

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God was, by means of Christ's sacrificial death, reconciling the world to himself.

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In both phrases, the repetition of healto further strengthens the identification of 5 .19

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as a parallel explanation of 5 .18. This is a reconciliation to himself.

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God is the reconciler. In the next phrase, we meet both an explanation of the how of the reconciliation, as well as a passage we have seen before in regards to the non -imputation of sin.

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How can the Holy God heal the rupture of sin? The assertion is literally, not imputing to them their trespasses.

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The extent of them and their is limited by what has come before.

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These are those who are in Christ, verse 17, a new creation, verse 17, who have been reconciled to God, verse 18.

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The NET rendering is somewhat unclear, not counting people's trespasses against them, when there is no generic word peoples in the text.

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The Greek text is literally, not imputing to them. Imputation is specific and personal, not general, since trespasses is likewise a more specific rather than generic term for sin.

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God reconciles men and women to Christ by not imputing their trespasses to them. Well, how can this be?

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A person who commits a sin by all rights must be held accountable for that sin. The guilt and punishment of the sin must be borne by the one who committed it, or by a substitute.

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It is just here that the answer to the problem of sin is given. God's justice does demand that the penalty of sin be paid, the guilt and judgment borne.

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But if the sin of those in Christ are not imputed to them, then to whom are they imputed?

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They are, of course, borne by Christ, verse Peter 2, 24. This is the direct assertion of 521 and the implication of 519.

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It is the work God the Father did by means of Jesus Christ that makes it possible for any man or woman to be freed from the debt of sin to experience the non -imputation of their trespasses.

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The technical term non -imputation may not thrill the soul at first glance, but anyone who truly understands what it means that one's sins are imputed to another and not to himself can find in this term the most joyous truth of the good news itself.

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The NET is rendering, He has given us the message of reconciliation, literally could be translated, and has placed within us, or among us, the word of reconciliation.

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It is possible to understand this as to refer to a place where the message of reconciliation in the hearts of believers, but in light of the next verse, it is probably best to take the traditional understanding in the sense of committed to us this message.

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The us could be understood as the apostles of the group, and by extension, those who function as ambassadors in the next verse, those who proclaim the message of Christ.

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Verse 20, Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, though God were making His plea through us, we plead with you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

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Since the message of reconciliation the message of the cross has been entrusted to the church, and it is the message itself that is powerful to save,

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Romans 1, 16 -17, those who proclaim that message speak with divine authority as ambassadors or representatives.

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There are a number of important points that flow from this statement. First, the authority of the preacher comes from the message preached.

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Fidelity to the word of reconciliation guarantees that the authority of the preaching is God's authority, for Paul says that it is as though God were making

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His plea through us. So frequently it is asked, Does God speak today? Paul's answer is,

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Yes, He surely does. When the gospel is preached, God is speaking that message of reconciliation, and He will do so until the last of His elect is gathered in.

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Hence, the nature of the gospel itself precludes the need for further revelation in the sense of fulfilling the desire for a continuing revelation.

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The gospel meets the needs of God's people in all places and at all times.

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It would likewise follow from this that there is only one word of reconciliation in which God speaks and makes

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His plea. That is, God does not speak in false gospels. God has freely chosen to limit

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His plea to only the proclamation of the gospel and to nothing else.

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What does it mean that God is making His plea? Well, the Greek term, parakaleo, can have as gentle a meaning as urge or request, through the slightly stronger console, all the way to invite and summon.

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There are two opposite contextual clues as to which direction we should see this term going. First, the ambassador was an official representative, vested with the authority of the one who sent him.

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And second, when the message is given, it is, we beg you, we implore you, on behalf of Christ. This would be a strong term of exhortation, showing a sincere desire.

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So how are we to understand these words? Most often they are taken as a general evangelistic statement. Yet Paul is addressing the

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Corinthians as believers in this passage. And within only two sentences he will write, Now because we are fellow workers, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain, for he says,

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I heard you at the acceptable time in the day of salvation. I helped you, etc., etc., 2 Corinthians 6, 1 -3.

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So attuned are most evangelical ears to a very limited and specific use of the word salvation that this use may cause confusion.

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In many churches, salvation and evangelism are outward and never inward. Yet it is the duty of ministers to exhort all hearers to be reconciled to God, both in an initial sense, as well as in the continuous sense of living the

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Christian life and embracing daily the promises of God. Just as we would not dream of telling someone to love

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God once, but not for the rest of one's life, or to believe only once, but not daily, so too it is the regular exhortation of the ministers of the gospel in the church that we must all live in the light of forgiveness, reconciliation, and grace.

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As Charles Hodge noted, Be reconciled unto God. This does not mean reconcile yourselves unto

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God. The word is passive. Be reconciled, that is, embrace the offer of reconciliation.

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The reconciliation is effected by the death of Christ. God is now propitious. He can now be just, and yet justify the ungodly.

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All we have to do is not to refuse the offered love of God. Calvin remarks that his exhortation is not directed exclusively to the unconverted.

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The believer needs daily, and is allowed whenever he needs to avail himself of the offer of peace with God through Jesus Christ.

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It is not the doctrines of scriptures that the merits of Christ will only avail for the forgiveness of sins committed before conversion, while for post -baptismal sins, as they are called, there is no satisfaction but in the penances of the offender.

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Christ ever lives to make intercession for us, and for every shortcoming and renewed offense there is offered to the penitent believer, renewed application of that blood which cleanses from all sin.

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Christians need to hear about, understand, and dwell upon the means by which we have been made accepted in the beloved one.

01:00:26

They need to know the promise is ever new, always theirs, forever valid. Well, that leaves only verse 21 in my own exegesis to offer, but we've come up against the clock yet once again, so we're going to take our top of the hour break, and on the other side we'll look at verse 21, and then look at the offered interpretation given by N .T.

01:00:46

Wright. We'll be right back. Such a rarity today, so many stars...

01:00:59

What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book Chosen But Free? A New Cult?

01:01:05

Secularism? False Prophecy Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called

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Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.

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In his book, The Potters' Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, But the Potters' Freedom is much more than just a reply.

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It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself.

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In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme

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Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Potters' Freedom, a defense of the

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Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen but Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomen .org.

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Millions of petitioners from around the world are imploring Pope John Paul II to recognize the Virgin Mary as co -redeemer with Christ, elevating the topic of Roman Catholic views of Mary to national headlines and widespread discussion.

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In his book, Mary, Another Redeemer, James White sidesteps hostile rhetoric and cites directly from Roman Catholic sources to explore this volatile topic.

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He traces how Mary of the Bible, esteemed mother of the Lord, obedient servant and chosen vessel of God, has become the immaculately conceived, bodily assumed queen of heaven, viewed as co -mediator with Christ and now recognized as co -redeemer by many in the

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Bible calls blessed among women and an invitation to single -minded devotion to God's truth.

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You can order your copy of James White's book Mary, Another Redeemer at aomen .org.

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Incorporating the most recent research and solid biblical truth, Letters to a Mormon Elder by James White is a series of personal letters written to a fictional

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01:03:54

Here I stand On the ones who all delivered me

01:03:59

On the Word It's all Above His Holy Name Here I stand

01:04:08

Welcome back to Divided Mind My name is James White and we are looking at 2 Corinthians chapter 5 today and I was offering my exegesis that I offered in The God Who Justifies and so looking at verse 21 specifically now

01:04:23

God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.

01:04:30

The offered reconciliation is based upon a divine act. While the NET inserts the word God the

01:04:36

Greek is simply He made. The referent is the Father. The Father undertook this action. But what did He do?

01:04:42

He made to be sin the one not knowing sin. The innocent one. The pure one.

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Christ. Here the Father acts with reference to the Son who did not know sin. Surely the

01:04:53

Messiah who had faced the insane hatred of the Pharisees knew what sin was. Surely He who had said to the woman caught in adultery go and sin no more knew the nature, character and extent of sin.

01:05:04

In fact it could be rightly said that the Son of God knew sin better than anyone else as He alone became incarnate lived as a sinless and pure Messiah in the midst of sinners, touched them ministered to them, loved them.

01:05:15

So obviously this is not the sense of know that Paul is using here. Instead he speaks of the kind of knowledge of sin that we as sinners possess.

01:05:24

We know sin because we experience it. So the main thrust is that the Son was not a sinner.

01:05:30

He was, as is the testimony of all of scripture, the pure, spotless blameless Lamb of God.

01:05:35

The pure one was made sin. Simple words cannot express the depth of such a divine mystery.

01:05:42

Obviously the meaning is not that Jesus committed sin nor that His perfect holiness was stripped from Him. The key to understanding made is seen by hearing the entire sentence.

01:05:51

He is made sin so that we would become the righteousness of God. Hodge put it well, quote

01:05:58

He was made sin we are made righteousness. We are made righteousness. The only sense in which we are made the righteousness of God is that we are in Christ regarded and treated as righteous.

01:06:10

And therefore the sense in which He was made sin is that He was regarded and treated as a sinner.

01:06:17

His being made sin is consistent with His being in Himself free from sin and our being made righteous is consistent with our being in ourselves ungodly.

01:06:27

In other words, our sins were imputed to Christ and His righteousness is imputed to us.

01:06:34

End quote. This is surely the proper meaning in light of the use of Legitimi imputing in verse 19.

01:06:41

Christ is made sin in His role as the all sufficient sacrifice for sin via the imputation of the sins of His people to Him.

01:06:49

He then bears as the divine substitute their sin in His body, becoming sin on their behalf, taking the punishment due to those transgressions.

01:06:57

He bears what is not personally His by nature, our sins, so that we might bear what is not personally ours by nature, the righteousness of God.

01:07:07

Every word is filled with deep meaning. Salvation flows from the fountainhead of the

01:07:12

Father's mercy. This action begins with the divine initiative. God is the one who accomplished salvation through the work of Christ.

01:07:21

Christ's sacrifice has a distinct purpose and given that God does not fail in His purposes, we can conclude that it has a specific effect.

01:07:30

His death results in men and women being made the righteousness of God. That is, the death of Christ is said to have a specific purpose that is fulfilled in the justification of sinners.

01:07:41

This falls directly in line with the Apostles' teaching in Romans 8 .30 And those God predestined

01:07:46

He also called. And those He called He also justified. And those He justified He also glorified.

01:07:53

Christ's work never fails. Substitutionary atonement is the means by which justification is secured.

01:08:00

Christ is made sin for us, huperhimon, a term of substitution. There is no biblical doctrine of atonement that does not see the central aspect of substitution.

01:08:10

Many of the errors in soteriology that one can find in church history can be traced directly to a shallow and biblical view of atonement, one that did not recognize this vital aspect of penal and personal substitution on the part of the

01:08:22

Lord Jesus Christ. The righteousness of God is the possession of those who are in Him. Union with Christ is not an ancillary concept, one that may or may not be realized in the life of those who are justified.

01:08:34

All who are in Christ are justified. All who are justified are in Christ. To be in Christ, one must possess

01:08:41

God -given righteousness. And all who are in Him cannot fail but to receive that very gift.

01:08:47

And may I stop just right here and make reference to those who, in today's context, even in Reformed circles, are saying that you are placed in Christ by your baptism, need to wrestle with this issue.

01:09:01

Those who are asserting that baptism places you in the New Covenant, in Christ, must likewise say that you are justified by baptism.

01:09:12

Otherwise, you are tearing asunder the very fabric of Reformed theology. That's one of my main problems with those who are promoting what

01:09:21

I call Hyper -Covenantalism. To be in Christ is to be justified. Stop quoting

01:09:27

Romans 8 and the Golden Chain of Redemption if you're going to say that baptism unites you with Christ.

01:09:35

If you're not going to allow the fact that there are hypocrites in baptism, that that's a reality, then well, you've got a problem.

01:09:44

And you need to deal with it. So I finish with this. So we can see that the Protestant doctrine of double imputation is indeed biblical in nature, and that this truth is tied directly to the substitutionary nature of the atoning death of Christ.

01:09:58

Substitution and imputation are inextricably linked. Therefore, when it is said that our sins are imputed to Christ, this is nothing more than to say that Christ took our place substitutionarily.

01:10:08

This touches on the very heart of the Gospel, the means by which any believer stands clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

01:10:16

Well, there's my presentation on 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21.

01:10:24

Now let me turn to N .T. Wright. And this is a it's obviously not the same depth.

01:10:33

I've been trying to find something that is to the same depth in regards to 2

01:10:40

Corinthians 5. But on pages 104 and 105 and again, let's be honest with Wright, he says,

01:10:47

I've gone into depth elsewhere. I've tried to go elsewhere. I've got one elsewhere that I've managed to obtain.

01:10:54

And there are more elsewheres that I yet need to track down. But God's righteousness in Paul's letters is the subtitle here.

01:11:06

And Philippians 2 is the text.

01:11:11

And there's only a few paragraphs here, so it's fairly short.

01:11:17

Middle of page 104. In 2 Corinthians 5 20 -21, a famous text,

01:11:23

Much Beloved of Martin Luther. Paul rounds off his argument about his own apostolic commission.

01:11:31

We are ambassadors for Christ, though God were making His appeal through us. We appeal on behalf of Christ. We reconcile to God.

01:11:36

God made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the Dikaiosune Theou.

01:11:42

I have left the last critical phrase untranslated. This time it is certainly the righteousness of God, and generations of readers have taken it to be clear evidence for a sense in the lower half of the diagram, most likely

01:11:56

B1a. Well, what in the world is that? Well, obviously on page 101, he gives a chart with options of the key term of the righteousness of God.

01:12:07

A is God's own righteousness, B is a righteousness given to humans, and B1a is imputed righteousness.

01:12:15

So, he's saying people have generations of people, of readers, have taken it to be clear evidence in the sense of imputed righteousness.

01:12:25

I have pointed out in detail elsewhere, however, that Paul is not talking about justification, but about his own apostolic ministry.

01:12:34

That he has already described this in chapter 3 as the ministry of the new covenant. That the point at issue is the fact that apostles are ambassadors of Christ, with God making his appeal through them, and that therefore the apostolic ministry, including its suffering, fear, and apparent failure is itself an incarnation of the covenant faithfulness of God.

01:12:53

What Paul is saying is that he and his fellow apostles in their suffering and fear, their faithful witness against all the odds, are not just talking about God's faithfulness, they are actually embodying it.

01:13:05

The death of the Messiah has taken care of their apparent failure. Now in him, they are the righteousness of God, the living embodiment of the message they proclaim.

01:13:15

This reading of 2 Corinthians 5 .21 ties the verse so closely in to the whole surrounding context, that it thereby demonstrates its correctness.

01:13:23

If, however, you insist on reading 2 Corinthians 5 .21 with a meaning in the second half of the diagram, that is imputed righteousness, you will find as many commentators have, that it detaches itself from the rest of the chapter in context, as though it were a little floating saying, which

01:13:38

Paul just threw in here for good measure. The proof of the theory is in the sense it makes when we bring it back to the actual letter."

01:13:47

Well, what do we say in response? Is Paul...

01:13:54

Let's start with the first thing. In each of the sections in the

01:14:00

Reformation Revival Journal, in his own What St. Paul Really Said, and then in the bibliography of What St.

01:14:07

Paul Really Said, when you look up his own works, you will find a listing, this is on page 191, for those of you that are very specific about citations.

01:14:18

N .T. Wright, that we might become the righteousness of God, Reflections of 2 Corinthians 5 .21 in Pauline Theology, edited by D .M.

01:14:26

Hay, Fortress 1993, Volume 2, pages 200 -208, examines a key text of the righteousness of God discussion.

01:14:34

Alright, well, thanks to the research of Mark Ennis over on the other side of the nation,

01:14:44

I have pages 200 -208 of that particular text, and he says the same thing there that he in essence says here, just in a lengthier fashion.

01:14:54

We'll look at that as time allows. In each of these presentations on 2

01:15:02

Corinthians chapter 5, it is very obvious that a central aspect of his argumentation is, look, if the overarching theme of 2

01:15:13

Corinthians 3, 4, 5, 6, and into 7 is apostleship, therefore this must be about apostleship.

01:15:24

I would invite you to simply look at those passages and see how many sections cannot be simply slavishly tied to apostleship.

01:15:37

I mean, does he not in discussing the issue of apostleship make reference to the fact that we will have a heavenly body?

01:15:49

That there is going to be a greater glory? Yes, he ties it to apostleship. But what if we tried to interpret the beginning of 2

01:15:57

Corinthians chapter 5 in the way he's trying to force 2 Corinthians 5 21 to be only about apostleship?

01:16:04

Indeed, is this not the theological novum? He admits that many generations have not read it this way.

01:16:10

Were they just not brilliant enough to get this? Is this new revelation that's come out? One indeed does have to wonder.

01:16:20

And so he's saying, well, if you interpret it this way, it just becomes this saying. Wait a minute.

01:16:27

Titus chapter 2. A whole summary of the gospel found in Titus chapter 2. In the middle of extremely pedestrian things about the church.

01:16:39

About how the church is to do certain things. And yet you have this whole summary of the gospel. Are we to somehow reinterpret all of that to make it fit in a slavish fashion with some alleged overarching concept and context?

01:16:53

Or can we as everyone I thought always had recognize that Paul will very frequently tie in grand themes.

01:17:05

And then say, see, we should do these things in our Christian life because of these great grand things that God has done.

01:17:14

How can anyone seriously look at Paul and say, well, Paul would never do that. Of course he does it all the time.

01:17:21

He does it constantly. So the main element of his argumentation against the historic reading has no merit.

01:17:34

It has no merit at all. Not only that but by focusing solely upon what righteousness of God means

01:17:44

I allege that N .T. Wright is engaging in gross eisegesis. What do

01:17:50

I mean by that? Well, look at the passage itself. When you're looking at 2

01:17:56

Corinthians 5 .21 and you want to know what the righteousness of God is, shouldn't you maybe notice first, before you come up with all these overarching concepts, shouldn't you maybe just look at the sentence itself?

01:18:14

I mean, it is in a Hinnah clause, is it not? It's a purpose clause so that we might be made the rice of God in him.

01:18:22

Now, it sounds to me like he's saying this we is just the apostles and in fact in his article he limits it to Paul himself.

01:18:30

As if the Corinthians would just be going, oh well, you've been made the righteousness of God in Christ. You, Paul, are the embodiment of God's covenant faithfulness because you have stuck it out as an apostle.

01:18:44

And I look at that and go, wow, using the first person plural, bringing his audience in, that doesn't quite sound right, does it?

01:19:00

But again, going back, it's a sentence and this is a Hinnah clause. And don't you think the meanings of terms in the

01:19:08

Hinnah clause might be determined by what came before that? Yeah, me too.

01:19:15

He made him who knew no sin to be sin in our place. I don't see any discussion of substitutionary atonement in anything that he's written in this.

01:19:25

That's not in the article from Hay's book. It's not in what St. Paul really said.

01:19:31

It's not in Reformation Revival Journal. In fact, there's no discussion of what it means that Christ was outside of,

01:19:43

I'll take that back, outside of a discussion of Well, Hamartian in, after Huperheimon, he made him to be sin, should be a sin offering.

01:19:55

There is a discussion of sin offering, but nothing about the substitutionary nature of Huperheimon made, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin on our behalf, in our place.

01:20:08

Nothing. Zip, zero, nada. And so what we've got is we've got these, well, you know, what

01:20:17

Paul's really saying. How do we find out what Paul is really saying?

01:20:23

I mean, that is the title of his book, What St. Paul Really Said. I would suggest that you first stick with the text and interpret it consistently.

01:20:35

Remember, you don't believe in inerrancy, and N .T. Wright does not. He is not an inerrantist.

01:20:44

You don't have to worry about consistency on that level. You can talk about grand themes, and you can create all these structures, and Schweitzer did it, and Bultmann did it, and Dunn does it, and Sanders does it, and N .T.

01:20:58

Wright does it, but that doesn't make it consistent, because the one thing that's consistent for all those people is none of them believe in inerrancy.

01:21:06

And folks, you would not have new perspectivism if everyone believed in inerrancy.

01:21:13

Absolutely, positively, no question of that. I can't believe that anyone would ever argue that. New perspectivism is based in toto upon research and conclusions that have become a part of the quote -unquote academy that did not come from individuals who were engaging in exegesis based upon a belief in the inerrancy of the text or scripture.

01:21:36

That's what makes me just sit here and shake my head when I see folks that I thought were conservative, reformed individuals just going all goo -goo over this stuff.

01:21:47

But I also have to realize most of these folks didn't go to Fuller Seminary. You didn't get this kind of garbage shoved down your throat on a regular basis so that you didn't have a taste for it.

01:21:59

Maybe there's something new about it. Maybe they're, oh, it's fresh. I don't know. It ain't fresh to me.

01:22:06

This is just the old stuff repackaged. I mean, N .T. Wright may be a nice guy.

01:22:13

N .T. Wright's very conservative for an Anglican. Yay! That's good. That's wonderful. Encourage him in his conservatism but don't stop there.

01:22:22

Say, hey, you know, I know it's really, really unusual in Britain today to even believe in something called inerrancy and you might not get your you might not get your positions in various sundry schools if you said you believe that and there's no question about that.

01:22:42

I mean, there's absolutely no question about it at all. But, you know, there's a reason to believe it.

01:22:50

You don't have to leave your brain at the door. It actually goes back to the very nature of Scripture and it ends up determining the means by which you interpret

01:22:59

Scripture. If you're an inerrantist, you don't have the right to just sort of go, oh, well, you know,

01:23:09

I feel that Paul's real emphasis is this. No, you have to give a reason for that.

01:23:17

You have to give a reason for that. You know, a question was asked prior to the program. I quoted, and I read earlier in the program from the ecumenical section where Wright says that, let's see here, the doctrine of justification, in other words, is not merely a doctrine which

01:23:44

Catholic and Protestant might just be able to agree on as a result of hard ecumenical endeavor. It is itself the ecumenical doctrine, the doctrine that rebukes all our petty and often culture -based church groupings, which declares that all who believe in Jesus belong together in one family.

01:23:56

And it talked about coming to the Eucharistic table and, yeah, because what matters is believing in Jesus.

01:24:04

Detailed agreement on justification itself, properly conceived, isn't the thing which should determine Eucharistic fellowship, page 159.

01:24:11

And the question was asked, so I would assume that reasons why it should be relevant to that will be given.

01:24:19

Yeah. Because Wright is wrong. Justification is at the very heart of the gospel.

01:24:26

Luther didn't blow it. Calvin didn't blow it. Westminster didn't blow it. Edwards didn't blow it. Warfield didn't blow it.

01:24:31

Hodge didn't blow it. Folks, you've got to realize, if you buy this, what you're saying is, they were all so wrong that they were wandering out in the middle of nowhere.

01:24:45

That the entire presentation of the gospel by Protestants for the past 400 years has been so far off base that it's absolutely, positively ridiculous.

01:25:01

What is the grounds upon which we have Christian fellowship with one another?

01:25:09

Is it because we bear some external symbol? That's what the

01:25:16

Jews thought. That's what circumcision was. What makes us the people of God?

01:25:27

Is it not the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit? And in whom does the Holy Spirit dwell?

01:25:33

Does the Holy Spirit dwell in one who has not been brought to peace with God?

01:25:42

Through that divine act of justification? What are we celebrating in the supper?

01:25:58

Yeah, there's a whole lot of reason why it becomes a determinative factor. It's the gospel.

01:26:06

N .T. Wright says, it is not the gospel. Have a choice to make.

01:26:14

If he's right, then I think there needs to be a big old meeting conference made, a meeting center built in the middle of the

01:26:25

Tiber River, and we can all just get together there and sing kumbaya.

01:26:31

Let's just not ask any specific questions about what it means to believe in Christ. And one thing that's very obvious from what

01:26:40

I've read today on the air, is the gospel is not merely the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah.

01:26:47

I didn't hear much about the crucifixion. I didn't hear much about substitutionary atonement. In fact, I heard nothing about either one in what was said, in what

01:26:54

I read. Not from mine, obviously, but from N .T. Wright. The cross is the focal point of history.

01:27:05

And there is a... There is, in Paul's theology, in that cross, that uniting, yes...

01:27:13

And this is one thing that has to be recognized. New perspectivists will speak words that are true.

01:27:19

They'll say, Paul was concerned there could not be two churches. I said that in my book. That's been said for ages.

01:27:27

You can find that in early Christian writings. It's no big deal. Everybody sees that.

01:27:35

Yes, there must be one body. That's what Ephesians 3 is all about. No question of that.

01:27:42

But to turn justification by faith into an ancillary concept that is not even definitional of the gospel, that was mainly there to promote

01:27:50

Paul's attempt to make the church unified, is completely missed the point. In Galatians 2, when

01:27:55

Paul is rebuking Peter because he's sitting at the other table, he's saying, you are not walking in accordance with the truth of the gospel.

01:28:06

Not just justification. Why? Because if a person can do something to be more right with God, then you're not justified solely by faith in Christ.

01:28:25

Well, it's an important issue, and I didn't even get to the article. And I mentioned earlier in the program, next week

01:28:33

I'm going to be in Connecticut and I don't know what's going to happen next week. I'm going to try to make it so we can try to do something.

01:28:38

I just don't know. I'll have to find out when I get there. I'm not sure if I'm going to be traveling or speaking or what

01:28:44

I'm going to be doing at this particular point in time. But you can always tune in and find out one way or the other at 2 o 'clock

01:28:50

Mountain Standard Time. Thanks for listening today. I know it's a tough subject. But it's one that needs to be addressed and there aren't too many folks seemingly addressing it.

01:28:59

So we sidled up to the bat and hopefully gave you something worth thinking about today on The Dividing Line. God bless.