The doctrine of double imputation

Open Air Theology Introduction and Show Setup

You can say what you want, but you won't around me. Sheep among misfits. A misfit in the trailer park at night. A misprint with the six cents. Been sick ever since my brother died of an O .D. My two cents never made sense.

Either to me or anyone else inside of the sheep fence. My knife slipped on my right side. A misprint with the six cents. Either to me or anyone else inside of my John Hancock on the dotted line. Tell me what's the bottom line.

The bottom line is I'm not right. I'm not left, but this elephant won't fight. There's nothing left but the spotlight. Hold my beer. You can find me in the moonlight. You can say what you want. All right.

I figure I'll cut it short tonight. Got a deep, deep, deep topic. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Open Air Theology. We are a show. We are not a podcast. We are a show, apparently. My name is Jeff, and I am one of the pastors of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church.

We meet here in Tallahoma, Tennessee. If you're ever in the area, please stop by and check us out. And I'm here with my good buddy, Haps, and Brayden. Brayden, tell us who you are, brother.

Yeah, I have the privilege of being the pastor of Valley Baptist Church in Hagerman, Idaho. If you live in the area, I would love to see you this Sunday. We're going to be starting in the book of Haggai this week, so I'm looking forward to it.

I also have a YouTube channel called Reformed Ex-Mormon. I would encourage you and love for you to come check out the videos on there. And it's a blessing to be here with some awesome brothers in Christ on Open Air Theology on the show, podcast, hour to talk, whatever we want to call it.

So I'll pass it over to you, Haps.

Well, howdy doody, y 'all. This is Pastor Happy with Olive Branch Ministries. And I'm also the host of R &B Studios with my brothers from another mother right here. And I'm excited about tonight, man.

And, you know, maybe we can help clarify some things in this doctrine and maybe we can learn some things. You know, there's some things I want to learn, too. So I'm excited.

Double Imputation and Justification by Faith Alone

Yes. So tonight we're going to be talking about double imputation, the doctrine of imputation. And, you know, we'll get into some Lutheranism, Arminianism, churches of Christ, and that that Dougie Doug Fresh guy, Doug Wilson.

Dougie Fresh. Yeah, we hear that he's causing some trouble and check it out. He's always. When is he not right? Yeah. Yeah. But we love him. So we're going to we're going to with every one of them that we're going to talk about tonight, whether it be Arminianism, Lutheranism, the churches of Christ.

And oh, yeah, that Doug guy, we want to be gracious. This is not a ministry that chases down people that that says stuff that we disagree with and throw them into the mud. Now, the reason why I pose this conversation to my good buddies here, partners in this ministry, is because like I kind of walk on both sides of this fence because.

You know, like so Theocast, which is a good podcast, which I listen to, which I support, love the guys, they really come out hard against Doug Wilson, but also against John MacArthur and against John Piper.

And there and what they have to say, you know, I agree with because, you know, I have issues with with final justification concerning John Piper. I have issues with the lordship salvation concerning John MacArthur, but they're really hammering hard on Doug Wilson.

And there's some things about Doug Wilson. I'm not here to to take up for Doug Wilson. Doug Wilson is a big boy. There's things about Doug Wilson that I 100 percent disagree with. Right. He's Presbyterian.

I'm Baptist. He you know, for some reason, there is a whole lot of controversy around him. I try to stay away from controversy. Like, I think he needs to tone it down some. I think he needs to un-money the waters.

I don't like the fact that he changes, like he gives stuff a new title, like concerning the theonomy movement. You know, he's taking the general equity, like if you are reformed, you owe to the general equity.

But he's come and he's come into the mix and he's calling it general equity theonomy. And we want to say that we love theonomy because that's what it means. It means God's law. But theonomy was was was was basically established as something else, which was Christian Reconstructionism back in, I believe, the 80s.

And so it already has a definition that is, you know, that someone has taken God's law and they framed it as something. And so now he's saying, well, we're we're theonomous, but we're general equity. And by doing so, it muddies the water.

Why can't we just say we're, you know, we are reformed and because we're reformed, we're general equity. We don't have to give it a name that we have to necessarily explain, explain the name. So there's things about Doug that I disagree with.

And if this quote that I'm going to say later has, you know. I think taking out of context, like if I take this quote out of context, like like it really makes me mad, pisses me off if I'm honest, right?

But but but we're not going to take it out of context and we're going to be gracious to Doug. I think I can say for every one of us, you know, we still believe he's a Christian.

Oh, yeah. I love Doug, man. Yeah, I love him, too. I listen to him often, often. Yeah. And he helps clarify a lot of things. Yep. Absolutely. He does. I think he does a great job on a lot of areas. Yeah, absolutely.

And like I appreciate what you said, though, and I know we'll talk about it later, but like that's the that's the hard part. When somebody takes a quote out of context, it just mingles those words up way, way too much.

And so I will we'll get into the context of what's being said there, I'm sure, later and discuss those things and and look at it. Because that's the I'm sure each one of us have had things that we've said in the past that have been taken out of context, manipulated and then made it sound like it's not what you were saying.

Right. Right. Right.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like I was saying, like, like, I'm good with both groups. Like, you know, you have the fight, laugh, face group, the can impress group. You know, I love them. I'm good with these guys.

But then you have the guys that they are against the Theocast group. And I'm good with these guys. Like I love the guys on both sides. And and so, you know, there's a lot of things that I agree with on both sides.

And so but I just want to be fair. And so the reason why I want to bring in, excuse me, Armenianism, Lutheranism, churches of Christ is to kind of un-muddy some water here in a little bit. But first, let's let's get into the doctrine, the doctrine of double imputation.

Brayden, would you mind giving that a stab? Yeah. And we'll walk through it, talk through it.

Yeah. So is it OK if I want to read two things real fast? I want to read first 2 Corinthians chapter five, where I think that each one of us would go to at first to discuss this topic of double imputation.

But 2 Corinthians chapter five, verse 21, it says, he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. And I think that the next place I'm just going to read to help us understand that that verse right there, other than what it says, and it's very clear and what the implication of it is, is chapter 11 in the 1689 paragraph one.

It says those God effectually calls. He also freely justifies. He does this not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sin and accounting and accepting them as righteous. He does this for Christ's sake alone and not for anything produced in them or done by them.

He does not impute faith itself, the act of believing or any other gospel obedience to them as their righteousness. Instead, he imputes Christ's active obedience to the whole law and passive obedience in his death as their whole and only righteousness by faith.

This faith is not itself or is not self-generated, excuse me, not self-generated. It is the gift of God. And so that's really a quick, good little definition of justification. But with that double imputation, it's the thinking that my sin has been imputed into Christ's account and Christ paid for it on the cross.

He who knew no sin, who never sinned, never broke God's law. He paid the penalty of my sin very, very literally on the cross. And then that righteousness from that active life of him obeying God's law, never violating it once, that active obedience is then therefore imputed into my account, thus being a double imputation of both a positive and a negative going towards the other individual.

Yeah, it's kind of like this idea of, you know, like most all Christendom would say that Christ died for our sins, right? But not all of them would say that he lived for us. I would say that he actually died for my sins because he actually lived the life for me.

Yeah. Like with me, I don't see how it can be any other way, right? Yeah. I mean, OK, because I and I've probably said this before. I know this is something that I say whenever I'm preaching the gospel.

Let me first read a quote from the beloved R .C. Sproul, the Baptist. Ha ha ha. Yeah, because R .C. Sproul, when he used to talk about John the Baptist, he would say, I call him John the Presbyterian.

So now that he has passed, I call him R .C. the Baptist. Yeah, that's pretty good. So so this is a quote from him. He says, without imputation, there is no justification and without justification, there is no gospel.

That's R .C. Sproul. Read that again. Without imputation, there is no justification and without justification, there is no gospel. All right. This takes us to the the incarnation. All right. Jesus being the the God man, truly God, truly man.

In order in order for the Bible's clear that man cannot keep God's law and that God cannot die. Right. God cannot die. And man, because of sin, we're born into sin. We we Adam is our covenant federal head of Romans chapter five.

He brought death and sin into the world. We're born dead in our trespasses and sin. Ephesians two. Yes. We cannot keep God's law because we're sinners for all have sin and fallen short of the glory of God.

How do we know we sin because we're going to die? The wages of sin is death. Death is the paycheck for our sinning. So in order. So so Jesus, the son of God, enters into creation, the incarnation. He becomes a man.

Jesus had to be truly God in order to keep the law. Yeah. Right. And he had to be truly man in order to die for our sins. Right. The life that he lived, we're saying that the life that he lived as God, keeping the law.

That life is counted to us the same way that our sin is counted to him at his death, at his punishment. So in the same way that he took on himself, sin became sin. We take on become his righteousness.

Right. I would say you cannot have one without the other. And that's and that's why there's this inconsistency in in Christianity. Even those I would say even those who don't believe in the act of obedience of Christ still share in the benefits of the act of obedience of Christ.

Yeah. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? Because we don't have to have perfect knowledge of theology to be saved. Yeah. And this is why I want to bring in, you know, these other we're reformed. Right. Every one of us were 1689 reformed Baptist, 1699 Federalist covenant theology.

We're not dispensational. We, you know, we, we, we, we, we believe in the Bible and we have a confession that that leads us and gives us a small systematic theology. So. Now, one of the things that I fear is taking place here, like the reason why people deny this is because they don't want to believe that a believer cannot lose his salvation.

Right, because if Jesus actually did live the life for me, that means that I cannot lose the life that he lived. If I'm credited with his righteousness to say that I can lose salvation is to say that the life that he lived wasn't good enough.

And so I think that's a big reason why it's denied. They deny it so they can hold to their belief that Christians can lose their salvation. Any thoughts?

The Active Obedience of Christ and the Incarnation

Yeah. You know, I would just like to add, you know, I wrote down a couple of things. It's really going on the same lines as the both of you and everything, you know, that, you know, the, the, the sinners declared righteous because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

And that righteousness of Christ both includes his active obedience in a band of law, as well as his passive obedience for pain for our sins with his vindication at the resurrection, which we also get, you know.

And, you know, I was like, I was reading, you know, getting ready for the conference, you know, the open air theology conference up in Tennessee, you know, this, this February and stuff. I've been like way into John Owens right now.

I'm reading his book on the Holy Spirit and it's just like twisted my cat back. But I came across, you mind if I read this real fast? Go ahead. This is from John Owens, man. Oh my gosh, man. It just was the way he says it right here on a double imputation.

Just was awesome. He goes, and then this is from his book of, of, of communion with God. Volume two in the chapter of works, page 176. He says our absolution from the guilt of sin, that our disobedience be not changed upon us.

This we have by, by the death of Christ, our sins being imputed to him shall not be imputed to us. Second Corinthians 521, Romans 425, Isaiah 5312. And he also goes on to say imputation of righteousness that we may be accounted perfectly righteous, perfectly righteous.

You know, that's what got me right there. Perfectly righteous before God. And this we have by the life of Christ. His righteousness is yielding obedience to the law as imputed to us. And thus is our expectation with God completed being discharged from the guilt of our disobedience by the death of Christ and having the righteousness of the life of Christ imputed to us.

We have friendship and peace with God. And this is that which I call our grace of expectation with God, where we have communing with Jesus Christ. And I was just like, wow, man, that is, that really just twisted my cat back, you know, as I was studying for tonight and everything.

It's just, I'm going to go back and actually read that, that book. But yeah, I think that, that, you know, if we don't understand original sin, we were talking about this earlier. If we don't understand original sin and we don't understand the ramifications of that and we don't understand why God had it come in the flesh and why he had to live a perfect life and why he had to completely and totally keep all the commandments of God.

And that he took our sins and he took the very wrath of God upon himself so that we might have, he that knew no sin became sin so that we might have the righteousness of God. And I think that if we don't, we don't understand the double imputation, we don't understand original sin also in the life that Christ lived.

Then we can go off into what we were, you guys were discussing last week and that's pietism. You know, you can go off straight up and, and then the self-righteousness comes up and the next thing you know, you're living a life of false piety, actually, you know, because now it's dependent on us and my performance.

And then it just becomes workspace and it's not, um, pointing it to the, the, um, the final work on the cross to tell us die. It is finished.

So, yeah, right.

No, I completely agree with that. There's a couple different Bible verses that are popping in my mind, you know, because we, we also retain that, that Christ is living today at the right hand of the father.

And that even according to Ephesians chapter two, uh, when we were dead in our sins and trespasses, he made us alive together with him. And, uh, it says that, um, let me turn it to it here real fast. So I don't misquote it.

Um, so yeah, Ephesians chapter two, uh, verse five and on, it says, even when we were dead in our transgressions made us life together with Christ by grace, you've been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

And so when we, and the other verse that came to my mind where I'm, I'm kind of tying these things together a little bit is, is Romans chapter five, uh, verse 17 and 18. It says for, if the, by, uh, for, if by the transgression of the one death reign through one much more, those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.

So then as through one transgression, the result of condemnation to all men, even through one act of righteousness, their receipt, their resulted justification of life to all men. And so it's so important to understand that the, the active obedience that Christ has given to us is, is secure in the fact that he is resurrected and he's standing at the right hand of the father right now.

He sat us with him in the heavenly places. He's still living the life that I can't live right now in a glorified state. And, and he's my representative in that way. He is active. He is active in that way.

Yeah. So it's, it's important to realize that, no, it's not that he just paid my sins. And now, as long as I keep an obedient life, I'm, I'm, I'm right. No, my, my savior lives. He lived perfectly before he lives today and he's living for me.

And it's no longer I who live, but he who lives in me, right? It's his righteousness. I think that's a really important thing to remember that we can't deny that or else we do fall into legalism. We do fall into a form of thinking that you're justified by faith, but you're keeping that justification by obedience.

That that's not, that's not what happens. No, it's only through a crisis done. Right. You know, right. You know.

Oh, go ahead. I was just, uh, you know, there's like over like a hundred different, uh, verses on, uh, imputed, uh, imputation. I mean, uh, you know, it's, it's mind boggling, but I really liked this one right here.

First Corinthians one 30. It says, and because of him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And I, you know, I, when I, I, I, I just had to teach on this the other night and stuff, but you know, Ephesians chapter one, where you have, you have the active elective work of the father, the active redemptive work of the son and the active protective work of the Holy spirit, you know?

And, uh, and God is active in your life, you know? And, um, it, uh, absolutely. It will take me out of the equation, you know, kind of breaking up a little bit. Haps.

Oh, he's, he's frozen. He just frozen.

Don't believe him. Frozen, chosen, frozen, chosen. Did I break up? It looked like you guys broke up. Um, as far as I know.

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Oh man. You're still kind of frozen, but I can hear your voice.

I say you just keep on going, Jeff.

Let me, let me do my router thing. Hold on.

Covenant Federal Headship and the Two Adams

Yeah. So, um, uh, um, so the Jews have what's called Yom Kippur, the day of atonement and on the day of atonement, they would take, you know, two goats. They had to be the same, you know, um, same age, same weight, same cost, whatever it was, the two goats had to be the same and they would pray the sins on the first goat.

So they would pray their, they would impute their sins onto this goat. Right. You studied the day of atonement and this goat was to basically take away the sins of the people. Now, I won't get into the whole system of it, but, but, but the Jews understood this idea of imputation.

Now, I want to read real quick from second Corinthians and I'm going to go off of what Haps was saying earlier about, about, um, um, the, the, the fall of man. And I want you to understand that the fall of man that we're experiencing, we're not, uh, you know, we don't daily experience Adam eating of the fruit.

But we daily experience what took place moments after he ate the fruit. You see what I'm saying? So in first Corinthians chapter 15, Paul is explaining seeds going into the ground. Unless it goes into the ground, it's not going to sprout.

And in verse 44, he says this, it is to, it is sown a natural body and it is raised a spiritual body. It is, uh, if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written right here.

The first man, Adam became a living being. The last Adam becomes a life given spirit. So it's, it's, it's given us the two, the two Adams, the first Adam and the last Adam. The first was physical. The last is spiritual.

Right. Right. And so, and so these two are going to be our covenant federal heads. Verse 46, but it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust.

And the second man is from heaven as was the man of dust right here. Listen, look for the imputation as was the man of dust. So also are those who are of the dust and as is the man of heaven. So also are those who are of heaven.

Just as we have born the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. This is speaking of imputation. Whenever, because of Adam's sin, sin and death came into the world.

We are born under Adam's covenant federal head. We are born into sin and we sin. You don't have to teach your kids how to sin. They know how to sin. You want to teach your kids about righteousness, right?

You want to teach your kids not to sin. Same way that we are born into sin, that's born again. And the Christian, when he is born again, he takes on the man of heaven. This image of the man of heaven, his righteousness.

That's imputed righteousness. The same way Abraham. Listen, if Christianity is true, Christianity is old. The same way Abraham was saved is the same way that I was saved. In the same way, if the Lord tarries 10 ,000 years from now, it will be the same way that these people 10 ,000 years from now are saved.

And it's by faith. And by faith, you are imputed with righteousness. You are counted righteous. You are not righteous in and of yourself. Amen to that. And so whenever we're saying imputed righteousness, we're saying that God counts us righteous.

We are positionally righteous. Now, a lot of people, they say, well, if you believe that, then I can live however I want to live. No, you can't. Because if you're born again, if you're born again, you are given a new nature.

I mean. That's correct. So imagine. I think Paul Washer gives the image. Imagine God taking a pig and turning him into a man. When he's a pig, he can eat the slop. And in this slop, mud is mixed in with the slop, right?

He's eating mud. He's eating whatever is there, right? He's eating anything. But the moment God turns that pig into a man. And he bends down and eats out of the slop. He's going to be disgusted. And that's how it is when someone is regenerated, born again.

That falls into sin. If there's someone that can actually live an act of sin. Listen. They might have prayed a prayer. They might have signed a card. They might have shook a hand. They might have been held underwater until they bubbled.

But they were not born again. There's a difference. A born-again believer is not going to live in sin. Yes, he will sin. But he won't live in it. He won't walk in it. He can't. The Father will discipline him.

If he doesn't discipline him, he is an illegitimate child. Yeah. You must be born from above. That's right. I've been bringing that to my Presbyterian brothers for a while.

There was a lot that I just really, really liked what you just said. Especially in our Reformed Baptist type of mind. Let me read from the 1689 again. Chapter 11, paragraph 6. And just something that you said, Jeff.

Because I think that this is important for all Christians to understand this. In all these ways, the justification of believers under the Old Testament was exactly the same as the justification of believers under the New Testament.

That's right. And so, again, anybody that was saved in the Old Covenant, during the Old Covenant, was saved because they were members of the New Covenant that Christ made for us. Where he has taken both groups, broken down the barrier wall so there's no distinction between Jew or Gentile.

And he's made both into one group. And according to John, chapter 10, he has other sheep that are not of this fold. He too must gather so that they will be one fold with one shepherd. It's so important, I think, to realize that our justification is not distinct to just me or just to Jeff or just to the people of today.

I think it's so important to remember that anybody that is called gracefully, by grace, to this covenant that we are in, we are saved by the exact same means. There's not one person that was saved in the Old Testament by doing X, Y, or Z things.

No, they had faith in the finished work of Christ. Just like us in the New Testament days are saved by having faith in the finished work of Christ. Right. And likewise, in that same saying, in the Old Testament, they were imputed the act of righteousness of Christ.

Abraham. Amen to that. Abraham was reckoned righteousness. How could he be reckoned righteousness? Right. Because it's a foreign righteousness. It's not his righteousness. It was reckoned to him. Right.

Romans chapter 4, Genesis chapter 15. We can go back and look at these things.

I also heard people say, because I'm coming at this from the idea that the reason, in my head, the reason why people deny this doctrine is because the logical conclusion is that you can't lose your salvation.

And so people say, well, if I can't lose my salvation, if I'm saved and I can't lose my salvation, then what's the point of going to church? What's the point in doing good? Right. Well, with that attitude, it just shows that nothing really happened to you.

What's the point in a man eating slop?

I also think it really lowers the role of the Holy Spirit. You know, that when you think you could lose your salvation, all this kind of stuff. And remember, we're sealed into the day of redemption. You know, that this is the act of work of the Holy Spirit, that you're being sanctified, you know, conformed into the image of God.

It's not like he gets to a certain point and goes, well, you know, I just can't do nothing with this one. He is just, you know, just a little sinner, you know, and I just can't get up. No, you know, the more and more we're being conformed into the image of God and we're, you know, we're, I mean, we have like a new nature and our new nature is to naturally pursue holiness.

You know, to naturally do good works, you know, naturally. I mean, it's just that that's your new nature. And this is the active role of the triune God in your life.

Well, and look, and I mean, these analogies won't go so far, but I have a three-year-old son, right? Am I more, I'm trying to think of a good way to explain this. Am I happier with him? Do I recognize his obedience towards me when I have a prize at the end for him that he's doing it for or when he's doing it because he's listening to my voice?

He's doing it because he's my son and he deserves, he owes the respect towards me to do it because he loves me, right? When we as a Christian have been imputed with the righteousness of Christ and our sins have been forgiven through the imputation of our sin into Christ and paid for there at the cross.

It is only worship if it's done out of a sincere heart. It's not worship out of obligation. If you believe that you have to do X, Y and Z things to be saved. Well, first of all, Christ died needlessly.

Second of all, that's not worship towards God. That's you maintaining your salvation. And that's the reason that you're doing it. If I have a cup of ice cream for my son and I say, son, if you do X, Y and Z things, you get the ice cream.

He's doing it for that reason. However, if I say, son, go and do these things, and if he loves me and he's respectful and honoring to me, he will go and do those things without the reward at the end of them because he's my son.

And so I think that as a Christian that says, well, I can't lose my salvation. I don't need to go to church. You don't have a sincerity in your heart to want to worship the God that saved you, supposedly, and that therefore there's question to your salvation that you're proclaiming.

Right. And I think last week I really liked that quote that you said, Jeff, with fruit isn't an evidence for myself to be saved. Fruit is the evidence for another Christian to recognize my salvation. Right.

My my evidence of salvation is the empty tomb. My evidence of salvation is looking for Christ. Yes. But the other person will see my fruit. And that's a that's a recognition of the sincerity of what Christ has done and the sincerity of a Christian towards God in that way.

Yeah. If I'm living my life, look into Jesus Christ. You know, watch out. You might have a piece of fruit fall off of me hitching ahead. Right. But the moment listen, the very moment I stop looking at Christ, there's no fruit.

Even if I look within and when I look within, guess what I'm going to say? Oh, wretched man that I am. You can rescue me from this body of sin. Listen, that's what anyone John Bunyan said that he had enough sin in his prayer to send the whole world to hell.

God be just. Listen, that's true of every one of us. When you look within, you know how wretched you are. Oh, yeah. All for all have sin. Don't say you are without sin. You make God out to be a liar.

Amen to that. Right. Especially Braden. You just look at that. That's a fact. You know, I could just I could just see it. That's a fact. That's a fact. That's why I don't look at myself. I don't look a mirror.

I just look to Christ. If you really stop and think about it, you know, it's like, what can I add to the finished work of the cross? What could I add? What could I add to the redemptive work of Christ where the father's going to look at me and go, you know?

You know, he's going to just skate right on into heaven. You know, instead of God's looking.

Now, I know this would be little, but imagine if I, if Habs walked up and, you know, like, like, let's just say Braden and Habs. Y 'all went in together and y 'all bought me the John MacArthur commentary set.

I got you. You know, that's 500 bucks, right? And as you were giving it to me, I reached into my pocket and pulled out two quarters and thumped one to each of you.

I would straight up take that John MacArthur set from you and be like, you ain't getting it. Right. I'm going to give Matthew, Mark and Luke and John to Habs. I'm taking the epistles. Peace out.

Damn, I'll take them. It's like I'm trying to give you something for something small for something greater. Now, imagine that when it comes to what God has done for us. Anything that we try to add is way, way, way less like it's our greatest day.

Our greatest work is nothing but a polluted garment to God. It's like handing God a rag with leprosy, bleeding sores on it. Right. It's nasty.

Our greatest work. I, you know, I would even say that. It's. Man, there's a lot that I would want to say on that. I'm just looking at something real fast. Philippians chapter three. Verse seven says, but whatever things were gained to me, those things I've counted as a loss for the sake of Christ.

More than that, I count all things to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them. But poop or rubbish or don't like in order in order that I may gain Christ.

Like if you're saying you need to do X, Y or Z things, you're saying that. Like, seriously, think about this for a moment. Did Christ live perfectly? Yes, he did. Did Christ live the life I can't live?

Yes, he did. When I say I need to do something, that's saying that Christ didn't do enough. That's like saying Christ didn't live that perfect life, that he didn't live what I couldn't. That it's like being given the John MacArthur set, but instead you're taking a dump on it and saying here, I'm thank you for it.