The Whole Christ (part 1)

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Are You A Mature Christian? (part 2) - [Hebrews 5:11-14]

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For the next 10 lessons, Corey and I are going to work through this book. This is called The Whole Christ, Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance, Why the
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Marrow Controversy Still Matters. Of course, I was driving in, and I saw the church sign that says, are you mature enough as a
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Christian or something? I was like, well, we're teaching on the Marrow Controversy, which is 300 years old. So hopefully, this will be something that will encourage us to be mature
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Christians. I put this together this morning as a lesson that really encourages crowd interaction.
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So if I ask a question, please attempt to answer it unless your name is Corey, because he's read the book.
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So that would be cheating. OK. Who here has heard of the
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Marrow Controversy? Corey's raising his hand.
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Pastor Bob has raised his hand. Good. OK, so a couple people. All right. That's good.
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So what we're going to do today is we're going to really look deeply at some of the core fundamental belief ideas that contribute to the two sides of this controversy.
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And we're going to define some words that we've heard before. And I think some of these definitions are things that we almost take for granted.
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And I think it'll be valuable for us to really look deeply into what some of these things are to get a very good understanding, biblically, of what they mean.
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So the name of the book, The Whole Christ, Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance.
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So we're going to start with legalism, because I'm unoriginal. Who would like to define legalism?
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Let's all not shout out at once. Someone. Give me a definition for legalism.
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Keeping rules. OK, good, good. Anything else? Wes?
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Being righteous by keeping rules. There's a nuance in that that I like. Well, you know what
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I mean. Salvation through law. Good, good. So this is the definition from the
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Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology. The term legalism commonly denotes preoccupation with form at the expense of substance.
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While it is now used metaphorically in all areas of human life, it appears to have had a theological origin in the 17th century when
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Edward Fisher used it to designate, quote, one who bringeth the law into the case of justification.
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No equivalent term exists in the biblical languages. However, the idea is found in both
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Testaments. There's two things in that definition that I think are really, really interesting and are really worth it for us to dig into.
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And the first one is preoccupation with form at the expense of substance.
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What does that mean? Who can put that in kind of the vernacular for me? Preoccupation of form at the expense of substance.
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What does that mean? Right, right, exactly.
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Can anyone think of examples in Scripture where we might see this kind of thing explained?
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I have both Old Testament and New Testament examples here for you. Healing on the
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Sabbath, and specifically the condemnation of healing on the Sabbath, right? Right, anything else? Let's turn to Matthew 23, shall we?
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Would anybody like to read? Do we have any reader volunteers? I already talk enough. Anyone?
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Mark, start Matthew 23, verse 23. Go through verse 28, if you would.
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So there's this kind of triad of woes in this passage, right? And the first one talks about, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, right?
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So that's very much like the theological version of Pennywise pound foolish, right?
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Where you're scrimping and you're trying to cut corners wherever you can, but then you go out and you lease a car or some other bad financial decision, not to knock on people who lease cars.
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And then the second one we see in verses 25 and 26, you blind
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Pharisee first clean the inside of the cup and the plate, and then that the outside might be clean.
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So this would be a lot like ordering a cup of coffee from your favorite coffee place and not caring whether what's inside is
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Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks or Pete's Coffee, right? I know, I'm making waves.
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But be more concerned about the fact that it's a fancy -looking mug, right? That's exactly what that is.
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And then the third one here, oh, I'll tell you a story. This was very personally convicting to me.
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As many of you know, I am a bowler. I have been bowling for 30 years. That means
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I'm old. It doesn't mean anything else. And I still get lessons. I bowl in a very competitive league because it makes me the worst one in the league.
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And I get lessons from one of the guys who's one of the captains. And so we went through this whole thing and we were doing all this stuff and adjusting nonsense you don't care about.
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But there's this idea called posting up the shot, which basically means that at the end of your delivery, you're balanced.
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You're not falling to the left or the right. You're able to use your body mass to drive force into the bowling ball. And so he says to me, he's like, you know, you're really concerned about posting up the shot.
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You look great at the finish. But the ball, I'll use the word garbage, looks like garbage going down the lane.
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And so as I was going through this, all I could think in the back of my head was the
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Pharisees are posting up the shot, but the ball looks like garbage. And of course, so I fixed some mechanical stuff and the ball looked great and I literally almost fell over.
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And he's like, eh, that'll come. But it's the content first and it's the delivery. Because let's be honest, at the end of the day, do we care about what the cup looks like?
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Or do we care about the content of our character? And when I go home, what do I share on Facebook?
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I don't share the video of me falling off. I share the two whatever I shot. So I don't really actually care about posting up the shot at the end of the day.
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I care about the content of the game. And it's exactly the same here. We should not care about how it looks if the content is bad.
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But the Pharisees did. And then this last one, this is the one that we think of immediately, the whitewashed tombs.
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Outwardly beautiful, inside filled with bones.
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And like I said before, this is not a new idea. We see this in the Old Testament as well. We can look at Proverbs 15, for example, 15 .8,
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where it says, listen, the sacrifice of the wicked, the sacrifice, right? This is a thing that is commanded in the law.
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The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. But the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.
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The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. But he loves him who pursues righteousness.
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It's not the sacrifice, even though we see the commandment for sacrifice, the commands for sacrifice in the law.
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They're clear. But it is the prayer. It is the love of God.
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Now, obviously, we're talking about what's the word we're talking about to make sure people pay attention?
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Legalism. Just a little check. Legalism, we can't separate legal from law, right?
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These are two things that are consistent with each other. So when we look at the Old Testament, we see the
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Mosaic covenant. We see the law, right? It's the law. I mean, there's obviously legal ramifications to the law.
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But first five books of the Old Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, that's the law, right?
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Listen to this. This is the end of Deuteronomy 26, where the law has all been delivered to the nation of Israel.
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And then we see some of the curses and things that would come after that. Listen to this. This is awesome. Deuteronomy 26, verse 16.
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This day, the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules. I deliver to you the law. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul.
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You have declared today that the Lord is your God and that you will walk in his ways and keep his statutes and his commandments and his rules and will obey his voice.
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And the Lord has declared that today you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep his commandments, and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honor, high above all nations that he has made, and that you shall be a people holy to the
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Lord your God as he promised. Did you catch what it said there? You shall therefore be careful to do them with what?
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All your heart and all your soul. When we talk about the four
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W's, who is God? Who is man? Why did Jesus have to die? And what's the fourth one? What should our response be?
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We've delivered the law. He's delivered the law through Moses. You should be careful to do them with all your heart.
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That's internal. With all your soul. That's internal. And so when we talk about legalism, when we talk about this idea of preoccupation at the form of substance, it's hollow obedience.
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And it's in disobedience to Deuteronomy 26. Now listen to this.
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Actually, would somebody else like to read? We have more people. Maybe someone would like to read. Tom, Tom raises his hand first.
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First Samuel 15, starting in verse 17, going to verse 22.
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That last line right there, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.
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Sacrifice commanded by the law. To obey is better than that. And the fat of rams, that suggests there that this isn't some leftover whatever.
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The fat of rams, this is a choice animal that has been sacrificed. Even if you sacrifice and you pick a good animal, but you're not doing it in obedience, you're missing the point, is what he says here.
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And Saul's people, they took of the spoil. They took the best of the things.
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And they did all this stuff, and they didn't obey. The why is so much more important.
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Sacrifice is commanded, but the why is so much more important. So that was the first part of our definition from,
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I don't even remember. I haven't written down that definition of legalism, preoccupation with form at the expense of substance.
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And the other part is really interesting. It talks about a legalist being one who bringeth the law into the case of justification.
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One who bringeth the law into the case of justification. What does that mean? Corey's smiling at me.
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We might have talked about this last night. Yes, that is right.
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That would be justification by what? By works, exactly. Where do we see this most commonly in the
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New Testament? The Judaizers. I have seeds in the crowd, not really. But that is the correct answer.
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So who were the Judaizers? Primarily, the Judaizers that Jesus had an issue with were like that.
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There were some who merely preferred to obey Jewish law because they were more comfortable with it.
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By the way, is there a problem with that? Exactly, right. You're both right. We're all right, no, no. Right, as long as you don't consider it salvific, right?
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If this is, you know, we have freedom in Christ and it turned out if you want to follow a list of rules, okay, right?
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Yes, absolutely. And we see that in Galatians where it says, and I read the chapter,
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I read the verse, that's not helpful. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I, Paul, opposed him to his face because he stood condemned.
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For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles, but when they came, he drew back and separated himself fearing the circumcision party.
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Circumcision party is the Jews. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even
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Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. When I saw that the conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel,
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I said to Cephas, who is Peter, right? Upon this rock, I will build my church.
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Remember that guy? If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a
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Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? P .S.,
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that's verse 14. In verse 15, right, so Paul tells this little story and then he turns around and he says in verse 15, we ourselves are
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Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.
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So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law, no one will be justified.
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It is no coincidence that verse 15 and 16 follow verse 14. Right? So when
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Paul writes this in 15 and 16, we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.
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Why is he doing that? Because from 11 to 14, he talked about this issue that he had with Peter and the suggestion that Peter's actions were that we were justified by the works of the law.
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That's the whole reason why he puts this in here. Right, right, and we'll look at that in a minute. We'll look at James 2.
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Actually, why don't we just do that now, why not? So, why not? So let's turn to James 2 and we'll read through this just a little bit and then we can talk about this briefly as well.
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Starting verse 14, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
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Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warm, be filled, without giving him the things he needs for the body, what good is that?
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So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works, show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works.
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You believe that God is one, you do well, even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
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Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works.
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And the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness and he was called a friend of God.
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You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way, was not also
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Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
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So, this is really interesting. I actually read some Catholic blogs last night because I figured if anybody's gonna make a case for James too, it's gonna be them, right?
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And they just took like a million different passages out of context and I just gave up on that. But I don't know if we look at James two, and this is one of the reasons why
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I wanted to take a step back and define legalism and antinomianism, which we haven't gotten to yet, and really assess what these words mean.
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Because when we look at James two, we say, okay, well, you know, this is about justification, justification by faith, justification by works, how do we reconcile these two things?
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Does James agree with Paul or not? And this kind of stuff, right? But I don't think we look at James two, or at least I don't, and think he's talking about legalism.
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I don't, maybe you do. And I think that one of the reasons why that is is because justification by works and justification by faith is an easy thing for us to wrestle with.
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It's like higher order Christianity. Oh, we can talk about these things with big words and whatever. And I also think that a lot of Christians have kind of a hypersensitivity to the word legalism.
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Right? It's like, well, listen, Corey, I don't want to sound like a legalist, but, right?
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Have you ever heard that said, right? We have this idea like, don't want me in with the legalist people.
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That's a different thing, right? So we have this sensitivity to this word legalist, and we don't, we really want to like push it away and disassociate ourselves with it.
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But remember what I said, form without substance. Guess what? Faith without works.
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What is that? It's form without substance, right? That's legalism. And so when we look at this, what
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James is talking about is no different than what Jesus is talking about when he pronounces woe on the
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Pharisees. When he says, you have all this stuff, you claim to have this big faith, but what's inside, right?
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That stuff that's inside comes out of your mouth, right? Right, when James talks about the tongue being a fire, he's talking about what's coming, what's inside coming out.
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And it's the same, it's the same exact idea here. It's no different than the Old Testament priests who
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I think of the book of Malachi, right? Who would conduct all the ceremonial work, and yet they would commit all these sins, and they'd be like, well,
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I can go back and sacrifice again, right? Whatever, right? I know the writ on how
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I get out of this thing, so I'm gonna do what I want, and then I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna cry on the altar, and I'm gonna weep, and all these things.
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It's the same, right? Form without substance. So that's legalism.
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That's definition number one. Name of the book, Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance.
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Now, antinomianism is a big, fancy word, right? I just, again,
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I wanna make sure that we come to this text all on the same page, right? That's basically what
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I do for work. I just try to get people on the same page. Just opposite side of the same page is fine, same page.
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Heard cats on the same page. But I think we're doing okay. So we talked about legalism. Now let's talk about antinomianism.
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Who would like to define this word, antinomianism? What you do doesn't matter. Sure, sir, right.
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Right, and so there's a lot of different, Mr. Cooley, Pastor Cooley, sir, freedomists.
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Who was I talking to? Somebody I was talking to today said that they're going on the Freedom Trail today. So maybe they're freedomists.
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Said they picked the wrong day to go on the Freedom Trail. I was walking in and I was, brutal.
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I don't wanna be walking around Boston today. I'll stay in here, thanks. Freedomists, antinomians, freedomists.
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Back to my handy -dandy biblical theological dictionary. This defined antinomianism as,
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I love this, a form of spiritual anarchy. Okay, don't hold back, right?
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Which rejects the laws having any place in the Christian life, whether as instructor or as assessor, that's important.
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Paul's teaching that Christians are free from the law is sometimes misunderstood as antinomian. But Paul reveres
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God's law and teaches believers who are free from the law as a system of salvation to keep it out of gratitude for salvation freely given and because holiness, as defined by the law, is the
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Christian calling. Antinomian comes from anti, right?
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That's basically that alpha privative, a. Nomos, law, against the law, anti -law. Mr. Bertrand already solved that one for us.
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This is the free grace controversy, easy believism. It's been called a lot of different things over the years.
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The term, according to Grebner, was actually coined by Martin Luther, thought that was interesting, during the
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Reformation to criticize extreme interpretations of the new soteriology that came out at the time.
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He actually, Luther did, wrote extensively about the issue of antinomianism, see, it's a big word.
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Here's what he said, he said that on the one hand, what has been called the second use of the law, that is the law's use as the
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Holy Spirit's tool to work sorrow over sin in man's heart. Remember what Paul said in Romans, he said what?
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That the law came in to do what? To increase sin, right? Because before the law, was there death in the world?
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Yes. Or was there sin before the law? Yes. But there wasn't a concrete stone,
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I guess, time commandments, stone, let's not say concrete, thing against which we could put our actions and say, are they right or wrong, right?
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We didn't have that structure, it didn't, it wasn't, it was just kind of the natural understanding of the way the world works.
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And so, the law was given, and the reason why the law is, you know, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, it's like these enormous books with all this detail and all this stuff, right?
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To increase sin, to make people more aware of their disobedience against God. And so, it makes sense when
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Luther says, the law is the Holy Spirit's tool to work sorrow over sin in man's heart, thus preparing him for Christ's fulfillment of the law offered in the gospel.
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The more we recognize that it is impossible for us to keep the law, the more thankful we are to Jesus Christ for keeping that law, right?
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I watched the wrap -up of the Red Sox game this morning on MLB TV, that's how
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I was getting ready for Trish and I. I mean, I did watch it, but that's not how I was getting ready for church. And Chris Sale was pitching last night.
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And Anitra makes fun of me a lot, because I usually say things about a half a second before the announcer does. And Chris Sale, I mean, he's a great pitcher, right?
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He's throwing these sliders, these left -handed sliders. And I'm like, this isn't fair, this is ridiculous.
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Like, look at this, the ball's all the way out there, and then it's over the plate, and you got to strike out. I mean, this isn't fair to these guys.
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I almost felt bad for the Yankees, imagine that, right? And... No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no.
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You're right, but then we look at the law, and then we look at the commandment. It's like, are you kidding, this isn't fair.
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This is not fair, we can't do this. Rafael Devers' grand slam, first inning. He wasn't hitting against Sale, but anyway.
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But the great priest, the great high priest, the great sacrifice, the God -man
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Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter if it's not fair, because he can do it. And when we look at...
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I can't hit in a batting cage, nevermind trying to go up against someone like this. It's like out of my realm of my ability to fathom, right?
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When I look at the impossibility of hitting a, you know, I don't know, 91 -mile -an -hour
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Chris Sale slider, it's not gonna happen. And then I see people do it, I'm like, whew, right?
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When we look at the law, when we look at this law that was brought to increase sin, like, there's no chance,
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I can't do it. I couldn't even tell you all the law in Leviticus, and I know I can't do it, right? And yet Jesus did.
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So it increases our thankfulness. Luther also refers to the third use of the law, which suggests that the
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Ten Commandments, when considered not as God's condemning judgment, but as an expression of his eternal will, that is of the natural law, the expression of the law that was before, also positively teach how the
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Christian ought to live. So there's this kind of idea within the context of antinomian belief, and this is where it gets really dicey, that Christians would want to submit to the law because their hearts have been changed.
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But they would say they don't have to, right? Free grace. And so that's where, whew, that's where it gets dicey.
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Ultimately, what happens is that this idea, whether Christians are to obey the law or not, whether they need to obey the law or not before being justified, this antinomian perspective of free grace that they don't, has huge, huge, like it sounds like this minor thing, right?
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The marrow's inside the bones, we can't see it, whatever. It sounds like this kind of minor thing, but it leads to huge consequences in our preaching of the gospel, both here and out there, right?
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It leads to huge ramifications to our foundational belief system, right?
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Condemnation of those who don't adhere to the law in the Old Testament I think is probably pretty clear, right?
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I mean, he gives the law, he tells you what the consequences of not obeying the law are but there are references that we can look at in the
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New Testament regarding free grace and whether or not free grace is a real thing, right?
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The classic example of this is where? Anyone? Even Corey can answer this question. The question is, where is the classic example of the
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New Testament scriptures disputing the idea of free grace? Romans six.
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Yes, Romans six, verse one. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?
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That's free grace, right? That's the antinomian belief system. They forgot verse two, by no means.
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Don't do it. How can we who died to sin still live in it? It's simple, it's there, but throughout the corpus of scripture, it seems very difficult to understand even though it has huge ramifications.
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It affects our idea of the order of salvation, the order salutis, and I know that we're gonna talk about that.
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Also, I did a five -part sermon series, Sunday school series on the order salutis. I found out it was two years ago.
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Two years ago, is that what I said two years ago? It was a long time ago. It was a long time ago. Anyway, you look it up. We'll talk about it in a couple weeks,
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I think. It hugely affects the order of salvation. It hugely affects our assurance, right?
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Question, if we need to obey the law to be justified, how assured would you be in your salvation? Who would be assured in their salvation?
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Yeah, me either, right? We wouldn't be, we would not, and probably because we in this room have a right view of our ability to obey the law, right?
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So that is really the preamble to talking about the book.
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I got 10 minutes, we're good. So, the
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Marrow Controversy. It's a little history lesson on the Marrow Controversy. This is not for Pastor Bob, but sorry.
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Early 1700s, right, like I said, 300 years ago, the church in Scotland is dominated by the
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Presbyterian Church, okay? Presbyterian Church, not unlike a lot of other organized religions, has this kind of structure to it.
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You have the local congregations that were led by elders, then they, a few local congregations would come under a presbytery, a series of presbyteries would come under a local synod, and then there was the
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National General Assembly. So you have these sort of different tiers, and if there was an issue, you know, it's like you could raise it to the higher court kind of idea, right?
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The S -C -O -P -C, right? Supreme Court of the, whatever.
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For a minister to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church, they must undergo some testing. This is good, right?
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They had to preach, they had to present church exercises, they had to complete a dissertation. Sometimes they had to do some more stuff.
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They had to do some, like back in 1700s, they had to get quizzed in Latin and all these other things. No thanks. At the end of 1716, in the well -known town of Octorouter, Scotland, there was a minister a man named
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William Craig. And our friend, William Craig, wanted to become a minister, or felt called to become a minister in the
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Presbyterian Church. During the examinations, not unlike we've seen here when
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Pradeep was ordained, and I think Pastor Steve also, I remember that, that was a long time ago when
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I was young and thin and all those things. They get asked these questions, and sometimes it's kind of a formality, but some of those questions are challenging, they're difficult questions.
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And one of the questions that was brought to William Craig, I almost said Daniel Craig, that's a different person. One of the questions that was brought to William Craig was presumably an innocent question, but it became sort of so legendary it actually became known as the
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Octorouter Creed. So if you were to Google Octorouter Creed, you would get this question.
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I'm gonna ask you this question, and see if you can even understand the question because it's very poorly worded, especially since it's 300 -year -old
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Scottish English. I believe, this is in theory a yes or no question,
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I believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ and in stating us in covenant with God.
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Now who even followed along with that? I've read it like 10 times, which is probably the only reason why
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I could follow. I'll read it again for you. I believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ and in stating us in the covenant of God.
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Now for all the regular human beings in the audience, I will restate this question in the vernacular so you can actually understand what it says.
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I believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to come to Christ and initiate us in covenant with God.
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That's a little easier to understand. I'll read that again too. I believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we forsake sin in order to come to Christ and initiate us into covenant with God.
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Who would affirm that statement? Who would say it is not sound and orthodox to teach that? Who would say that it is sound and orthodox to teach that?
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It's a tricky question, which is why there was one hand combined between both answers, and I don't blame you.
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But here's what happened. This guy who was well -schooled, he answered the question.
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He was licensed to preach. Then he kind of thought about it some more. He's like, wow, that was a really lousy question. Came back and offered an argument to support basically,
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I think, switching what he said, and his license to preach was revoked.
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But that wasn't the end of it, so I'm gonna read. By the way, Sinclair Ferguson, tremendous writer.
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This book is fantastic, highly recommend. Go get one. I'll send you my Amazon affiliate link after the message.
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Okay. Here we go. In the months that followed after his license was revoked, through a process of appeal against the presbytery decision, the issue of the
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Octorata Creed came back to light. Before the next meeting of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the fathers and brethren of the
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Kirk condemned the Creed and declared their, quote, abhorrence of the foresaid proposition as unsound and most detestable doctrine as it stands and was offered by the said presbytery to the said
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Mr. William Craig. The presbytery of Octorata was ordered to restore his license.
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So they appealed to a higher court. It went through a bunch of different levels, and the higher court said, that presbytery, they were wrong.
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They shouldn't have done that. They restored his license to preach. This is the genesis of the Marrow Controversy.
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Is it necessary for us to forsake sin in order to be justified? That's the controversy. Well, we have nine more weeks.
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I gotta build up to it. Right, exactly right. So, here's what happened.
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So, the General Assembly changes, overrules the decision of the presbytery. There's a big kerfuffle, and two members of the
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General Assembly are having a conversation afterwards. A man named John Drummond, and a man named
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Thomas Boston. I'm gonna read again. I think this is really interesting.
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I'm sorry if you don't. Thomas Boston wrote, there's like the works of Thomas Boston, it's a big, long thing.
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I'm not gonna read all of it, don't worry. But this is what he wrote. He wrote, the Octorata Creed was all at once at that diet, that meeting, judged and condemned, though some small struggle was made in defense thereof.
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And poor I was not able to open a mouth before then in that cause, though I believed the proposition to be truth, how be it not worded.
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Not well worded. And isn't that the worst, by the way, when you're on a meeting, and you're like,
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I'm 100 % sure I don't agree with you, but I can't articulate why, so I'm gonna be quiet, and then afterwards you come up with all the good reasons.
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Like, man, I wish I said those. That's Thomas Boston. We can identify with him. And here namely in the condemnation of that proposition was the beginning of the torrent, that for several years after ran in the public actings of this church against the doctrine of grace under the name of antinomianism.
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Meanwhile, at the same time sitting in the assembly house and conversing with Mr. John Drummond, minister of Creef, one of the brethren of that presbytery mentioned above,
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I happened to give him my sense of the gospel offer, with the reason thereof, and with all to tell him of the marrow of modern divinity.
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Marrow is a book kind of like Pilgrim's Progress. It's an allegorical work. It explores some theological themes with some characters.
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There's Neophytos, a young Christian. There's Evangelista, a pastor. These are, obviously their intents are well couched in their names, right?
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Gnomista and antinomista, a legalist and an antinomian. This got so heated that the
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Church of Scotland formally passed an ordinance to forbid the reading of this book, the marrow of modern divinity.
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And to the knowledge of Ferguson, who has spent a lot more time in the Presbyterian Church than me, that ordinance is still in effect.
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Probably because it's one of those, like, Bostonian laws that they forgot about, like you can't, I don't know, drag your ox down the street or something like that,
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I don't know. So maybe it's one of those things. But you can see from some of our conversation and obviously the fact that this simple question 300 years ago, 301 years ago, we're still talking about, right?
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That this is a big deal. It has a lot of ramifications as we really explore it and as we talk about the ordo salutis and what's our relationship with God like?
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How does this stuff work? It's a big deal, right? Obviously, I think it's easy for us to say, okay, the full -blown legalists are wrong.
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Full -blown antinomians are wrong. But there's gotta be a balance somewhere in the middle, right? What is that balance?
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And you had these men that became known as the Marrow men who were kind of clashing up against the
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Orthodox Presbyterian Church and they were going back and forth and this debate raged on and on and the
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Marrow controversy does still matter, even if we don't call it the
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Marrow controversy, right? It's still something that is really important and I think it will be very helpful for us as we learn more about it.
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I certainly have enjoyed this study to get a better sense of where we stand, our right understanding of things like the ordo salutis and why it is that we believe what we believe and how it is that we are saved.
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So I think we will, I think we'll end there. It's 9 .45, it's a good time to stop. And then Corey will be picking up next week.
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Rock on, Corey. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, thank you so much for this time where we could look at your word, we can look at just some examples in scripture where we are reminded that you are our
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God. Thank you, Father, for forgiving us of our sins, for saving us from our sins before we knew to repent and changing our hearts that we might come to you in repentance.
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I just pray for Pastor Mike and his preaching this morning, for our fellowship afterwards and that you would make it a rich time that we can worship and glorify you.