Jeremiah Nortier Vs Matt Salih :: Should We Hold to Sola Fide?

Alright, thank you for joining me in this episode of the gospel truth. I'm your host Marlon Wilson, man. It's been a while man.

I think this is the first show within the last week. I haven't had one in quite some time, but I'm glad to be in front of you today today.

Thank you for joining me on the gospel truth. We're engaged in the culture of Christ that's true. That's what we do in the gospel truth and we do the engaging by debates interviews and Bible lessons and we have another debate for you today.

Should we hold to Sole Fide? I have Matt Saley and Jeremiah Nortier and we're going to be debating that but before I bring my audience in I do want to go ahead my not my audience, but my interlocutor should

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That said I have a whole bunch of shows coming up here on the gospel truth soon. So let me go over a couple of shows and before we bring

Matt and Jeremiah in. All right coming up Wednesday, January 22nd.

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So I thank you guys for joining me. Let me bring my my interlocutors in Jeremiah Nortier has been on before I I cannot remember who he debated but he did a great job.

I do remember that if I remember one thing, I remember he did a great great job. He was able to communicate.

I think he debated a Mormon dude. I think he played a Mormon cat. I can't remember his name, but he did a great job.

I really appreciate Jeremiah. So I reached out to him to see if he come back on and tackle tackle. Mr. Matt Saley Matt Saley been on the show a couple times.

Actually, he did a two -on -two debate and he did a solo debate. So this is going to be a great debate man.

Once again, the topic is so late should we hold the solely fetus? I expect these guys to really perform. So let me bring these guys in so they can introduce themselves.

What's up guys? What's going on? Which I got doing doing good.

Good. How things over there Jeremiah what you got going over there man? It's cold.

It's too cold down here in the South in the South man the South man. You said he would weather down there man.

That's what's up. What's going on Matt? What's up with you on your side man, man, you know things are definitely cold up here.

You know, I think the only warm thing is love, you know, just did a recent shout out to just being married, which is a wonderful thing, you know, and just Happy New Year to everybody.

Yeah, other than that. Oh, and also I recently gotten a really new and amazing job just working with internationals and foreigners and you know, the money is so great that for the first time ever.

I'm going to be a homeowner, you know, just kind of save up that much and it's just a blessing and it's timely.

So that's what God is good. You know, amen. Amen. Good stuff, man. I appreciate you guys for joining us on this episode of gospel truth.

That said, I always like to give introductions man. So I'm gonna allow you guys to give you guys a chance to introduce yourself to the audience as always share blogs.

Make sure you share your if you got a YouTube page, make sure you let them know what you got going on where all your content is so they can come follow you or read some of your content man.

So that said Jeremiah, if you don't mean if you don't mind go give a quick introduction yourself, man. Yeah.

Thank you everybody for tuning in this evening. My name is Jeremiah Nortier. I attend a church here in Jonesboro, Arkansas called 12 five church.

So I just want to encourage you to please go to our website at 12 five church .com.

That's the word 12 the number five church .com. So I've been married a little bit over five years now.

My wife Allie Nortier is definitely my better half and I love her with all my heart.

She is definitely my rock and I just I love studying God's word.

Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and we are called to share the gospel. So that is my main objective today is just to share the gospel in clear terms, especially how the scripture defines what the gospel is.

So thank you all once again for tuning in. I'm really looking forward to this discussion with Matt. Like he said,

I'm anticipating good vibes. I know we're going to have a really good conversation this evening.

All right. All right. Thank you, Jeremiah. All right, Matt, give a quick introduction to yourself, man. Hey, what's going on, everybody?

I'm Matthew Sully, a .k .a. So Real is my poet name just from the

Pittsburgh area. Sometime around this time last year, I had launched a ministry called

The Father's Well. And so far there have been people just from all over all over the country who just tune in every

Sunday and also Wednesdays just for some open Bible lessons. I'm trying to add some new things in there like an hour before we start that we will go ahead and go through some prayer.

You know, we also contact each other just throughout the week. It's more than just a Bible study. It's a

Bible journey. Also, there have been just some good testimonies that have been on my recent or not my recent, but other

YouTube channels. So real. And, you know, we basically had a testimony about how everything's been and also opened up The Father's Well YouTube channel.

And I just released a lot of things that we have went over just throughout the past year.

Not everything, though. But if you want to know more about it, then just email me at ssoreal at gmail .com.

Other than that, you know, I am recently married. Autumn Scott is my rock.

She is, you know, the woman of my life, my journey, my dreams, my destiny.

Where would I be without her? I can say so much more things. But yeah, other than that, in terms of church,

I'm definitely looking for a church home. So that's something a little new to me.

You know, I'm always rock solid and just basically staying with a church for 18 years and whatnot, but, you know, just going through some new chapters.

And I'm really looking forward to just seeing where, you know, the Lord just wants to plan is next.

But other than that, I'm just ready to have a beautiful discussion just on the topic before Jeremiah.

So thank you. Thank you, Mark. So we're going to jump into this real quick. And then we'll jump into this debate.

And once again, the topic of this debate is should we hold your solar fee day?

All right. So that says there'll be 10 minute opening statements, five minute rebuttals. We're going to follow that with a 15 minute cross -examination.

First 30 minutes will be 15 minutes each to ask questions. The final 20 minutes, it will be 10 minutes each to ask questions.

And then we'll follow that with five minute closings and then Q &A from the audience. And that Q &A, each participant will get one minute each to respond to the question.

So that said, Mr. Jeremiah Nortier, you're arguing the affirmative in this debate. So you are up first for your opening statement.

Let me know when you're ready, as then I will start your time. All right, I'm good to go. All right,

Jeremiah, you got it, man. Justification by faith alone is the article on which the church stands or falls.

And this was famously said by Martin Luther. The question we are discussing today is should we hold to solar fee day?

And my answer is firmly yes, because historically the doctrine of solar fee day, which is

Latin and translated into English as faith alone, this teaches us that man is justified before God by faith apart from works.

So by way of analogy, imagine that you have a table and on the table you have an apple and you have an orange.

Take the orange off the table and the apple is left standing alone. So on the table of justification, you have two things.

You have faith and works. Take faith off the table and it's faith alone that justifies us before God.

I believe the scriptures clearly teach us this doctrine. My primary passage of scripture is going to be

Romans chapter 4 verses 2 through 6, and then I want to present to you three major points.

So our passage says, for if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about but not before God.

For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness.

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believe him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one whom God counts righteousness apart from works.

So my first major point is understanding the word faith. The Greek word for faith is pistis, which means conviction of the truth and it's coupled with trust.

We must understand that faith internal and of the heart. Faith is not able to be seen by the human eye.

It's immaterial and so it cannot be weighed or measured. That is why God ultimately sees the heart of man.

Faith is also firm trust according to Hebrews 11 verse 1. And this cannot be understood to mean as mere intellectual assent.

Firm trust is so much more than understanding facts but it's firm trust. And firm trust will compel the will to do love and to do good works and to love one's neighbor and ultimately have a loving relationship with God.

And so my second major point is understanding the word works. Paul uses two different Greek words that can be translated into English as works.

Back in Romans 4 verse 2, once again we read, Paul, for if Abraham was justified by works then he has something to boast about but not before God.

Here is the Greek word ergon, which means any general action or conduct of man.

And so it would seem that Paul's use of the word ergon, he's being abundantly clear and he's condemning any idea of human working to help justify us before God.

But it's as though he's anticipating an objection where someone could say, well yeah general works don't justify us before God but it must be our specific works that have a particular goal in view that will contribute to our justification.

And so Paul refutes that idea when he says may ergod my in the

Greek. When he says may, this is one of the strongest uses of negation possible. And then he says ergodza my.

This means to work, to earn by commitment of exercise, performance, trade, or labor.

Listen to what he says again in Romans 4 verse 5, and to the one who does not work may ergodza my, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly.

His faith, pistis, his firm trust is counted as righteousness.

So Paul is completely obliterating any system that is dependent on human works to obtain a right standing with God.

Rather it is inward faith that trusts in the Savior and his finished work alone.

That is how we are justified. This would directly refute Second Temple Judaism's interpretation of the

Hebrew Scriptures that righteousness can be obtained by works of law. Paul's teaching on justification would strongly rebuke the

Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholicism's teaching that in order for a person to obtain justification, you must perform an action of faith by the sacrament of holy water baptism.

This is to conflate faith in works, blurring the lines, and not understanding the distinctions.

Romans chapter 4 clearly teaches us that pistis, inward trusting faith, inevitably will produce works as an effect, but works are in no way the instrumentation of receiving righteousness and declaring us right before God.

This was never the case even with Abraham who was before the law, not with David under the law, and not with Christians after the law's fulfillment.

It has always been on the basis of faith in the promise of the God who cannot lie.

So my third and final major point is understanding the word justification. This Greek word is defined as an act of God declaring men free from guilt.

This is a legal forensic courtroom term in relation to crime. One way to demonstrate this is by utilizing the

Greek septuagint. To justify is often used in the court of law dealing with legal ramifications of lawsuits and instructions of justice, and Paul uses the same terminology in Romans 4 verse 5.

Listen to this carefully again. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

The way that Paul uses the word counted here is really crucial to our conversation. He's using this in a way of legal transaction.

Listen to the immediate context. He uses words like justify, works, wages, and the use of his due.

The Greek word for counted means to pass to one's account, to impute. And so that's huge.

He's talking about imputation. Imputation is a legal forensic declaration that establishes a new legal status.

A good example of this is when a minister declares to a couple, husband and wife, they are now legally married.

They were not married when they walked in, but the moment after the minister declared that. And so very similarly in Romans chapter 4,

Paul is painting a courtroom picture where God the Father is judge and Jesus Christ pays our debt and then he intercedes for us.

He pleads for us like a defense attorney on our behalf. The judge literally declares us not guilty because of Jesus's righteousness credited to our account by faith apart from works.

And so Paul, without question, brings this back to the courtroom setting in Romans chapter 8.

Listen to the legal terminology that he uses. And those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he justified.

And those whom he justified, he also glorified. Who shall bring a charge against God's elect?

Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died and more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

So please listen carefully to me here. If Paul is using legal forensic terminology, then that means we receive

Jesus's righteousness by imputation. It is impossible to understand that Paul in the book of Romans is saying that our right standing before God rests on our own achievement.

And one of the most amazing passages in the Bible comes from Isaiah chapter 53 that prophesies about Jesus Christ suffering and dying on our behalf.

The text says, he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

And by his wounds, we are healed. Hopefully you hear the substitution language that the prophet is using.

The servant is suffering not for his own sin, since he was sinless, but as a substitute for sinners.

Now Isaiah concludes the chapter by saying this, and I want you to hear the legal terminology that he uses, the righteous one.

My servant will justify the many, for he will bear their wrongdoings because he poured out his life unto death and was counted, imputed with wrongdoers.

Yet he himself bore the sin of many and interceded. You hear that interceding again like a defense attorney for wrongdoers.

It is so important for us to understand how the scripture uses this type of legal terminology.

Even in Jesus's final moments on the cross, he said, it is finished.

This phrase is translated from the Greek to telestai. This is an accounting term, which means paid for in full.

Jesus paid in full the consequence of our sin debt to the father, therefore negating any possibility of anybody else coming and adding their works to the already finished work of Jesus purchasing our salvation.

So in closing here, I just want to end with the scripture declares that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that sin debt earns for us eternal death.

And this is the gospel truth, that when you look to Jesus in faith, apart from trusting in yourself or your works or anything else in this world, but by trusting in him alone, the just judge of all the earth imputes

Jesus's perfect obedience to the law and his atonement for sin to your account.

The judge can look to you and legally declare, you can go free, my son, because someone else has paid your debt in full.

Thank you, Marlon. All right. Thank you, Jeremiah, for that open statement. All right, Matt, you're up for your 10 minute opening.

Cool. All right. Just a moment. Let me go ahead and share my screen here.

You share your screen. I'll show you screen.

I will start the screen and start. All right.

All right. Can you guys see this? Yes, we can. Just a second.

Okay. So that was a blessing. That was a blessing here.

So this is basically what I have. Two things that I really want to talk about is identifying faith and salvation.

And are there three parts of salvation? Are the interdependently all together?

If justification, sanctification, and glorification are separate and independent from each other, and if faith is separate and independent from works, then sola fide is true.

But if the Bible repeatedly preaches and teaches otherwise, then faith alone is false.

Faith is a belief that you live by. Faith alone is a belief that you adopt.

That's true. You adopt it. But is there more to that than faith alone?

Is there more to faith alone? For if there is more to faith alone, then faith alone is false.

Everything I'm about to share with you can be summed up in this little parable I made up, literally.

Two men saw a magic loaf of bread. One man said, let's eat it.

The other man said, okay, I'll slice it up. But it's magic bread, the other man said.

The other man sliced away carefully as he could, but the bread simply came back together.

How about we just eat the bread now? Are you done? The other man said, not only am

I done, but I'm starving. While eating, the other man asked why the bread could not be sliced.

The other man replied, I suppose whoever made this bread didn't make it to be eaten alone.

And I'm just going to let that linger. Faith and good works are both just as important and required for salvation.

That is my position. Some traditional Protestants believe this, but disagree on how it's expressed.

Why? Because they separate justification, sanctification, and glorification.

It's called deification for Roman Catholics, theosis for Eastern Orthodox, that's me. But does a

Bible do this? No. And I'll prove it shortly, or at least in my rebuttal.

But first things first, I want to go ahead and read a quote from John Piper, who talks about faith alone.

And in all caps, is basically my response to what I'm understanding. He's from desiring

God that faith alone doesn't mean the same thing when applied to justification, sanctification, and final salvation.

It's very interesting. Paul would affirm all of this because he said in Galatians 5, 6, in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision or uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

The only kind of faith that counts for justification is the kind that produces love, according to him.

So the only kind of faith that counts for justification, according to John Piper, is faith with works, or faith that works.

Because it's the only kind of faith that produces love, or produces anything.

He continues, the kind that bears the fruit of love, that the faith which alone justifies is never alone, but always is bearing transforming fruit.

So faith alone justifies you, but the faith you have is not without works and later fruit, which are the very things, you know, that you need your faith to have in order for it to be the kind of faith that justifies or produces fruit.

So if these works and fruit are things that are required of you in order to have this right kind of faith, then you are not justified by faith alone, unless I'm misunderstanding something that he's saying.

So when James says that these controversial words, a person is justified by works and not by faith alone,

James 2, 24, I take him to mean not by faith, which is alone, but faith, which shows itself.

He says, Paul calls this effect or fruit of evidence of faith, the work of faith.

He calls all these scriptures to say what it is, but I'm here to tell you that when you actually look at those passages,

Paul doesn't even have this in the context or concern. If you don't believe me, we just walk through it together.

Just ask me during the Q and A or whatever, I'll show you. Another one, and the obedience of faith, same thing.

These works of faith and the obedience of faith, these fruits of the spirit that come by faith are necessary for our final salvation.

Oh, I see. So faith alone isn't what finally saves someone.

He's finally says, no holiness, no heaven, right? Hebrews 12, 14, without holiness, no one will see

God. In other words, if you downplay your sanctification process, then no heaven for you, basically.

Finally, he ends up saying, so we should not speak of getting to heaven by faith alone in the same way that we are justified by faith alone.

Do you see the issue? The issue is, is that a lot of times, and I could be wrong about this, but a lot of times when you have to constantly split things up so much to make your doctrine consistent, that lets me know that there's something not very consistent about it.

Because I thought that if you're justified by faith alone, you're good, you're fit for heaven, that's it.

But if that kind of faith doesn't get you to heaven and something else does, then that lets me know that faith alone,

I guess according to them, faith alone saves you, but faith alone doesn't get you to heaven. So there's more stuff that you have to do, and that kind of gets into my little category here.

So I'm hearing a lot of Protestants saying, and I know that John Piper does not speak for everyone,

I know that, but I thought he would be the most consistent. If he's not, then please show me some things where all these things weave together.

What I decided to do, I decided to look at all the verses, starting with Jesus, where it seems like he's talking about faith alone, but then after that, you look and he says some other things.

Because I only have so many minutes, obviously I can't go, so I'm going to go ahead down to the one

I think can stand out the most. This is John 15 verses one through six, and it says,

I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener. Okay, that's cool.

He takes away every branch that does not bear fruit in me.

Branch, that's usually us, where the branch is, and of course we're in Christ, that's a phrase that we find everywhere, mainly because of Jesus when he says stuff like this, in me.

So here's people that are in Christ, they're a branch, but the father is doing something to these individuals who are in Christ, who are branches, but they're not bearing fruit, and the father takes them away, and wherever he takes them,

I don't think it's heaven. He says he prunes every branch that bears fruit, so that it will bear more fruit.

Pruning is when you take away any excess leftover branches, so that way the fruit can grow in its place, more fruit grow in its place.

And so finally he says, you are clean already because of the word that I have spoken to you.

Remain in me, now this is the part where Jesus is talking, right? Remain in me, this is his part, and I will remain in you.

So that's something that we have to do, right? Just as a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, in me.

You can't bear fruit apart from me, right? So neither can you unless you remain in me.

I am the vine and you're in the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing if anyone does not remain in me.

Notice that the key verse, the key word is remain. You know, if you choose not to stay, two minutes left, if you choose not to stay, right?

You choose not to bear fruit, you choose to just go ahead and be apart from him. This says, he is thrown out like a branch and dries up and such branches are gathered up, that's not a gathering you want to be a part of, and thrown into the fire and they are burnt up.

So you can see the father doing some things and he's a bit more direct and the son is giving some warnings about what happens.

And so when you put it together, you know, you do see that there is a fruit bearing process, right?

A give back to God that he's looking for, right? And also it's not just these external good works, no, but these good works bear fruits that actually change you, or in other words, sanctify you.

You go through this process where, as in Romans, where it says you're conformed to the image of the son.

That's a real thing that you have to go through. That's what it's talking about in bearing fruit. It's just not loving your neighbor, looking out for the poor.

It's also internal as well. And so tons of other things that Jesus talks about.

I can't read all these because I don't have time, but if you look on the right, he does talk about the

Eucharist and he says, if you go ahead and do this, you'll live forever. Now notice that grace is now being imparted in this act.

I thought that faith was supposed to be the thing that saves, but Jesus, just like all the apostles and everyone else

I could show later, end up talking about these things. Oh, okay. Yep.

All right. That's time right there. All right. So now we're going to go ahead and transition to our rebuttal round of this debate.

Once again, it's five minute rebuttals. Start with Jeremiah, man. You're up for your five minute rebuttal. Let me know when you're ready and then

I'll start your time. All right. I'm ready. All right. You got it, man. I just want to thank you two for talking with me here.

You had a lot of really good points. I'm not going to be able to cover them all, so I'll try to cover what

I can remember and I was able to jot down. Now I think you're right. Something that I, on my side of things,

I see distinctions between justification, sanctification, and glorification. I don't see it all being lumped into one thing and it's mainly because the scripture sees these as different categories.

Now they're all really important and at the moment of salvation and the rebirth being born again,

I think there's a lot of things going on as an instantaneous miracle. We'll probably get more into that, but I think there's a deeper rooted issue, not just recognizing those three categories, but is

Paul in the book of Romans using forensic terminology? Is he making a legal declaration about our right standing before God or is it an ongoing process?

I think that's going to be the deeper issue that we talked about. So one place that I want to point out to you,

Matt, and you're asking maybe you're wrong on some things, maybe you can get clarifications. Romans 8 and the golden chain of redemption at least shows us the difference between justification and glorification.

And I think sanctification is also in the context. So starting in Romans 8, verse 29 to 30 says, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

So there's going to be a sanctifying process that happens in the lives of God's children.

But then the golden chain goes on to say of those whom he predestined, he also called, those who he called, he also justified.

And then he goes on to say that they will also be glorified. So the apostle Paul utilizes different terminology there.

So we'll get more into that. Since we're limited on time, you touched on Galatians 5, verse 6, faith, working, love.

I love this scripture because true living faith, pistis, always is going to have external results.

Works is always going to flow from a heart that loves the Savior. So the thing you got to keep in mind is that we are justified, declared righteous by faith apart from anything else that we could do in this world.

That's what we mean by faith alone, not by bringing in our works, not by partaking in sacramental works.

We got to understand that Jesus did all the works necessary on the cross to purchase our redemption.

So maybe we could talk more into the effects of faith, which is loving works, absolutely with the fruit of the

Spirit. He said, faith alone saves you, but doesn't get you into heaven.

So when we say salvation, salvation can be used in multiple contexts.

And I would say salvation could be understood in those three categories that you talked about. But we're talking about the initial point of justification.

What must we do to be justified before God? We must put our internal trust, faith in the

Savior and Him alone. So that's what we're saying. And then God does a wonderful work of regeneration that changes our heart, that compels us to desire to be obedient.

Hopefully we can get into that. That's what John Piper was talking about. So we got just a little under two minutes.

You brought up John chapter 15. I love this parable, this imagery that Jesus uses.

So when he says, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. So absolutely, there are a lot of people that are in the church building that appear like they are a

Christian. And so you can be in the vine. And interestingly enough, it was

John Piper that told me, is there a way to be in the vine and not actually be a true, regenerate, born again

Christian? We see him at church every single day. We can't see him, but God knows the heart. So he's using imagery here.

And we know that Jesus is not going to contradict himself using this parable. Earlier he said in John chapter 6,

I believe it's verse 37, where he says, all that the father gives to me will come to me and whoever comes to me,

I will never cast out. Jesus is using clear didactic language there.

And in John 15, he's using imagery to show that professing Christians that don't have internal faith in the

Savior, eventually they're not going to produce the works and they will be condemned on not having their sins forgiven.

So Martin, I think that's all the time I have. All right. Thank you, Jeremiah, for that rebuttal. All right,

Matt, you're up for your five minute rebuttal. Okay.

All right. So let's see. There were a few things that you said, but I'm trying to find the first thing to go through.

I think one thing that I will say is that when people talk about salvation in terms of a courtroom scene, the problem is that you rarely find one.

So far, I would love to find a courtroom scene. Someone could show it to me. That'd be great.

It is true that you have justification paradigms that are definitely used by scripture, but the problem is you don't really see a courtroom scene really.

There are other scenes that are more of a personal relationship. And so you see certain scenes between God and man are not like courtroom, but more like friendship with Romans 5, 9 or James 2, 23.

Or you kind of see things like with marriage and widowhood with Romans 7 verses 1 through 4, right?

That's how Paul ended up viewing people who are coming into faith and all of a sudden they let go of the law and also they married

Jesus. That was a paradigm he showed with the Jews. There's a bomb woman, free woman type of paradigm, right?

There's a relational way where it talks about that in Galatians 4, 21 through 31, right?

Of course, there's a legitimate son and the unlegitimate son type of paradigm with Hebrews 12, 8.

You also have a Jew and Gentile type of paradigm where he makes the 2, 1 and all those kinds of things.

And you have that in Galatians 2 verses 11 through 21. I think that's

Ephesians. That's one of them. And of course you had the, this is the biggest one of all, which is sort of sanctification, but it's more of glorification when you read

Romans 8 and that's the adoption paradigm. Romans 8, 15, all the way through verse 23, right?

When we're being adopted as sons. So you see all these example paradigms of how

Jesus and the apostles are expressing what one looks like and what things are going through in the spirit realm when one is saved.

And everything I named was in scripture, but no courtroom saved, you know?

And so that's the reason why we can't just take a definition of a term like justify, and all of a sudden we read it in Thayers and say, oh, well, this term was used for legal, this and this and that.

But the problem is how do they use the term? I use this example all the time.

During our Q &A, we can look at the word religion with James.

If you pull up a Thayers, it'll tell you exactly what it means. But then when you ask

James, he'll say, this is true religion, to keep yourself pure and to look after, you know, the fatherless and the widow, you know, and to keep yourself separated and pure from the world.

That's not what the lexicon said. So it's how they use words like justification, you know, that are found in the text.

And is a text yielding something that is, you know, legal? Or relational?

And if it's more relational than legal, then it's like, you got to kind of reconsider like, hmm, like, wow, there's a lot of relational stuff, you know, but not so much legal stuff, you know?

Now, I already know I spent four minutes. He also said that, I believe he spoke about how works are basically condemned.

And you look at, I believe it was Romans chapter four. And so the issue is, is that when you look at how

Paul talks about works, he never condemns good works themselves. He never just condemns works.

He'll condemn works of the law. He'll condemn works that you try to boast about, right?

Like in Romans four, he'll condemn works that you try to go ahead and put somebody in debt for, right?

He'll condemn those types of works. But to go ahead and condemn good works themselves, he never did that.

So of course, if you go ahead and use works, and of course, in this context in Romans four, he's talking about works of the law.

That's all throughout Romans three. So he's continuing that. If you're going to go ahead and try to use works to say, hey, you owe me, then that is not the way that goes ahead and justifies you.

Plus, if you try to say, well, you know what, I still don't believe you, then it can basically contradict

Romans chapter two. This is one of my scriptures I wanted to pull up where he says that, where people seek salvation by good works and they seek immortality and eternal salvation through good works and those types of things.

Why would he say that? And that was Romans chapter two, I believe verses five through 11.

And we can read that. We could take a look at it and compare it. Is Paul contradicting himself or is he being contextual with the word works here, the type and nature of works?

Now, another thing that you said, this is another big one about imputed righteousness, imputation to reckon.

This is a whole nother separate debate. All right, Matt, that's time right there.

All right, guys. So now we're going to transition to our cross -examination, the most favorite part of every debate, the cross -examination.

All right. So let's make this a real good one. Let's make sure we're interacting back and forth. Let's try to make our responses too long winded because I'm sure your interlocutor appreciates time to ask this question.

So let's make sure the responses are short as possible. So with that said, Jeremiah, you're up first for your 15 -minute cross -examination.

And Matt Saley. Matt, I love your attitude, man.

And so I'm really looking forward to just going back and forth and hopefully we can sharpen each other through this process.

I want to start by saying one thing, the Protestant position is we've seen two themes in scripture.

We see that there's a legal aspect before God and we see that participatory relational aspect as well.

So our position is that there are both. Now, here's an illustration I want to get your thoughts on.

So you have a couple that's unmarried and then they get married legally and they can do new things as a result of their marriage.

So that's how we see the Christian walk. When we are before God, we bring our filthy rags, our works before us.

Even when we try to do good things, God sees it as detestable. So we need a perfect righteousness that's not our own.

And that's where we get imputation. And I think this is a huge part of this conversation because if there is forensic language, then it has to be imputation.

And that's the initial point, justification and sanctification. So my first question that I want to set up is, would it be problematic for your position if you were convinced that Paul was using legal terminology?

That's a good question. Would it be problematic? I don't think so.

I think it could be problematic in the sense that I do know that Protestants, because of the

West, is really heavy on status. And that's like a theological inheritance.

Rome, a little bit there, but they're not so heavy on status anymore. But when you look in a word, it's more on process.

And there are plenty of scriptures I like to go through for that. So I would definitely say that if it was expressed legally without all the examples in scripture that we can walk through right now, then

I wouldn't even be having this debate. What I would be doing is going through all the scriptures that show this constant, ongoing legal that goes beyond just look at what this word in the lexicon means.

Go to scripture to show their examples. And that's the point where the word is used.

I want to agree with you that I think the West has overemphasized legal status over the relational status.

And I'm over here saying, we need to get back to the scripture that affirms both. So there's a little bit of agreement that we have there.

So I just want to affirm that the relational aspect absolutely found all throughout scripture. But one question is on the table of, is there still that legal status?

Because all of my reading of Eastern Orthodoxy denies legal transaction, legal forensic terminology.

So you asked for a few examples. So I thought this would be a good part of our discussion. So you're familiar with the

Greek Septuagint, correct? Yes. Now I want to agree with you.

We can't just isolate words out of their context and then just look at the syntactical domain and cherry pick one and say, that's what

Paul is using. But I think if we look at the Greek Septuagint, we understand church history, the early church,

I'm talking about the church of Acts. They mainly had a Greek Septuagint, a Greek translation of the

Old Testament. So here's legal terminology. I think you will agree with me. And if you want to turn there, turn to Exodus chapter 23, verse seven.

This has a particular context that deals with instructions of lawsuits, general exhortations of justice and honesty, but it's legal.

And verse seven says this, keep your distance from a false charge. Do not kill the innocent, the righteous, for I do not justify the wicked.

And you can stay on that one, but Deuteronomy 25, verse one, it's literally in a courtroom setting.

And that one says, if there's any dispute between men, they go to the court and the judge will decide their case and they will, or they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked.

And there's other examples of that. So, but if you look in the Greek Septuagint, Paul uses the same

Greek terms that's used in the Greek Septuagint. So that provides a slight foundation in scripture for legal status carrying over into the

New Testament, but that's not it. So this is where I want to get some of your thoughts. If you look at Romans chapter eight,

Paul uses the same word justified in the past tense. This is the same root word in the

Golden Chain, right? For those whom he called, he justified and those whom he justified.

And then I think to me, this is the most inescapable language. And I want to get your thoughts on this. What then shall we say to these things?

If God is for us, who can be against us? And verse 33 says, who shall bring any charge against God's elect?

It is God who justifies. So do you think that that could be alluding to a courtroom setting?

He's talking about a charge and it's talking about God who justifies. What's your response? I definitely would say that, yeah, you could look at that word charge and say, hey, you know what?

That right there is a courtroom term. And, you know, it's a legal term right there.

And so, hey, look, there it is. You got your courtroom. The problem is, is that he's not even saying where he is or he's not even saying that this is a place in a courtroom scene.

Like I can use a word charge and I don't have to be in a courtroom scene. The other thing is, is that I think it's interesting that, you know, just a few verses above, you know, we go to same chapter, right?

Few verses earlier, um, he's talking about, you know, us being adopted as sons, you know, once again, there's that personal kind of language thing, you know?

And so he's using all of these terms. And so far, you know, once again, there, there was no legal courtroom when he said, you know, where we were adopted, you know?

Um, and, and of course, if he's talking about being saved, you don't have to be in a courtroom to be saved, you know?

So you, you see, like, you see basically, um, he's not, I don't see a courtroom setting.

At most, I can see like courtroom language, right? He's saying charge, but in the context of what, where, where are they at?

If they're out in the desert somewhere, you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

So let me, just so you understand, I forgot,

I forgot what it was. So yeah. Now you got to think we're not saying you have to be in a courtroom setting, but if God is expressing our justification in legal terms, then that means that by his declaration, we can be declared right and no longer guilty.

So that's why this is an important conversation. And I get that that's not convincing to you that Paul is using a

Greek Septuagint term that is definitely used in the court of law. And Paul is using identical language in this setting, but I get what you're saying.

It doesn't say courtroom. I'm just saying all he has to do is use legal terminology. So hopefully you better understand where we're coming from.

But now I want to kind of switch gears. I want to talk about works. So is it your understanding that...

You know, before you talk about works... Okay, go ahead. Yeah. Before you talk about works, one little tiny quick thing.

Maybe later on, we can look at the area where Paul uses that word justified, right?

But instead, he uses it in a baptism setting where he says, you were washed, you were sanctified.

I cannot wait for you to ask me about that. I can't wait. Okay. All right.

No, because that's a good, I think a good counter, but we'll definitely get into that. So when you go to Romans chapter four, in my opening statement,

Paul uses two different words for works. Now, I get what you're saying.

Anybody can just grab a word from a lexicon, but I'm saying, look at the context. So this is, I want to get your understanding of the word ergazomai.

This from the Thares Greek is a specific work so you can obtain something in return.

So what is the beginning point of deification? And if you could make this really short,

I'm not sure how much time I have left, but what's the initial point of deification on your view? I mean, basically, like I said,

I remember when I was hearing about how... I forget his name.

Yeah. John Wesley. How in the world I forget his name. He started looking at church fathers and he came up with this term, total sanctification.

Earlier before that, it was just called deification. And before that it was just called theosis.

And so today it's called glorification. Basically what it means is, is that you become like by grace, what

God is by nature. And so it means that you become immortal like God.

It means that you become basically incorruptible like God.

Also it means that you become, of course, holy like God.

And so that's what it means. I got more of a specific question. Okay. Sorry, there's a slight lag.

I don't want to cut you off, but do you have to be water baptized in order to step into that relationship like you said?

No, you do not have to be water baptized in order to,

I guess, be saved or step into that relationship with God.

I always end up saying that a lot of things are valid, but they're just not normative.

So you can find people who have professed Christ and things like that, but maybe for certain circumstances, they just never got baptized, like the thief on the cross or something like that.

But the thing is, is that that was never taken as an example by the apostles or anyone and shipped around as an example.

But when you look at baptism and how Jesus and the apostles talk about it, they talk about it in ways that I don't think

Protestants would. Why would Jesus say, he that believes and is baptized will be saved? Or you have

Paul or Peter saying, baptism now does save you. And that gets into basically the means of grace.

But I know we ain't got time. You have questions. I would love to talk about that. That's okay. And I appreciate your response to that.

So your position is you don't necessarily have to be water baptized in order to be made right with God.

You're saying maybe you can step into that relationship. And for whatever reason, you may not be baptized yet, but you are saved in the sight of God.

Am I understanding you correctly? Most definitely. But again, when you look into scriptures, baptism is encouraged.

And according to Peter and all that, it's almost commanded. I think the difference is that when we talk about what baptism does, then all of a sudden there's a divide.

Let me ask you this real quick.

What's in your mind, what's the major differences between faith and works? If you're talking about faith in this,

I mean, man. Okay, let me offer something. So there is no difference.

At least to my eyes, it seems like there really is no difference between faith and works.

To me, they seem that intertwined. Now, if you say faith in the sense of belief, creed, confession,

I can understand faith in that sense. But I think the real question is how is faith expressed in the scriptures?

And is it just alone or is it always connected to other stuff?

I thought about this earlier. You have people for whatever tragic situations where they are in a state where they cannot respond with their body, but they can respond by blinking their eyes and they are awake and they can hear you.

But they can't do any works. Can that person hear the gospel and believe it in their heart and be declared right before God?

Or are they going to have to do some type of external works? So what it seems like what you're saying is there's no distinction.

I'm saying maybe we can agree faith is internal and works are external. And I agree with you, true living faith that's internal will always produce external works.

So what do you do for the person that can't do works for whatever tragic reason? Yeah. I mean, when it comes to them,

I don't think that they'll go ahead and be judged by any works that they can't do.

I mean, think about it. You have even the same issue with infant baptism, because you have babies that are there, or if you have retards that are there and they're not able to confess anything.

You know what I'm saying? They're not able to do that, but the priest will go ahead and baptize that individual and they won't have to be required to go ahead and say, okay, well, this is what

I believe and things like that. It's that if they go ahead and are baptized, then it objectively does something.

But I would definitely say if someone's not able to do that work, then - All right. That's time right there? Yeah. That's time right there?

Yeah. All right. Matt, you're up for your 15 -minute cross -domination of Jeremiah. Got it.

Before I even say that, I did want to say one other thing too. It's interesting that baptism, based on Laconia Paul's writings, is linked with circumcision, which happened on the eighth day and the baby didn't really get a choice to do that.

But he's saying those who are baptized in Christ had put on Christ.

That's an extreme position for baptism. Like, wow. So baptism does do something. So my question is, and I have this here.

I'm going to pull this up. I'm not going to share the screen because I know that we don't have a lot of time.

This is my whole thing. If I am believing in Jesus, let's just say

I hear the gospel. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

I hear the gospel and my heart is moved. God's grace is working in me.

I'm feeling a preview of love that I've never felt before in my life. God's grace is working, and it is waiting for me to say yes.

So finally, I say yes. I end up saying, I believe, and people do this in his prayer.

That's not found in scripture, but that's okay. They're like, you know what, man?

I feel totally different. Then all of a sudden, let's just say, hypothetically speaking,

I know this is highly unlikely, but if the person never does any works, if the person never prays, if they never fast, if they never choose to undergo any kind of suffering and things like that, they try to avoid it.

I'm talking about Matthew 5, when you're ridiculed for righteousness sake and things like that. They don't do anything else except,

I believe, but that's about it. They just live their life like a regular life.

Will that person go to heaven when they die?

So you kind of lost me in your question. Do you care to ask it again, just maybe real short?

Sure. If there's someone that hears the gospel, and all of a sudden, they confess, and they get saved.

They confess, and they're good. But once again, they never get baptized. They never worship.

They never pray. They never fast. They never do any. They never do good works.

They never go out of their way for somebody. They just kind of live their life just regular. When that person dies, will they go to heaven or somewhere else they don't want to go?

Okay, gotcha. They will go to hell because they would have died in their sin.

Based on what you described, their whole life is giving evidence that they never trusted in Jesus.

They may have said it with their mouth like James 2 .14 says, but their heart was far from God.

It wasn't transformed and did not have a relationship. Works are a good testing to see what the heart looks like, but only

God can truly know the heart. Just because someone says to me, yeah, I'm a Christian. I prayed that prayer a long time ago.

I'm thinking, I have no idea what their relationship before God is like. On my understanding of the

Apostle Paul, it is faith that declares us righteous before God. Faith is not merely knowing facts or saying words.

Faith is an internal trust. To answer your question again, they would go to hell based on what you told me.

Right. Let's just pause right there. The faith is an internal trust.

Let's just say that they really did internally trust in Jesus.

They believe that Jesus is Messiah, just like the demons do. They believe all that.

They're trusting in their belief. They're not trusting in anything else. To the point where they don't do anything else.

Okay. Now you mentioned trusting him like the demons do.

Did I hear you correctly? Yes. Okay. I actually think that's a problematic question.

I don't think the demons trust in Jesus. I think they have head knowledge, but they don't trust in him as Savior.

If someone trusts in Jesus, then the works will follow necessarily.

That would be the reformed Protestant view. Okay. Thank you. You did it right there.

We looked at belief, and we looked at trust, and both of us were like, demons trusting?

No. Demons believing? Okay. That's fine. Once again, you have faith, and that you're trusting, and you're saying that this is the issue

I have. If they truly do have trust, they will produce these things that we all say are good works, and fruits, and all these things.

Again, now it's like, and this was in my opening statement a little bit, that when it comes to faith alone that justifies, you won't really know if you really are justified until you begin to do and see some works produce in you, through you.

That's why I'm saying now, there it is. Yeah, yeah.

Go ahead. Yeah. I believe to have assurance of one's salvation,

I think a mature Christian can look back on their life, and see all the work that God has done in their life.

I think that's one way of knowing that you're saved, the way that 1 John 5 13 says, that we can know that we have eternal life.

I do think it's problematic if you think you can lose your justification, but that's kind of another topic. I will say this.

You can know for yourself if you are saved. If you love Christ, that cannot be of anything else that is human.

There's a lot of other people that make a profession that they love Christ, but I can't know their heart. I can know in my heart if I love

Christ, because that could only be granted to me by God. So you can have an assurance that you are saved, and you don't have to analyze the works.

They will necessarily follow according to Scripture, but it's faith that gives us that assurance.

If we love Christ, that's nothing human of this world. Does that kind of help in our discussion?

It does, it does, but I wanted to ask this question in this perspective too, because it seems that we have a different understanding about works.

A lot of times, and this is my background before I ask my question, a lot of times people will look at Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, and by the way,

I'm Eastern Orthodox by theology. I still am one day hopefully going to get catechized into the church.

I just did want to say that. I should have said it at the beginning. It's in my mind. I forgot. I apologize. The issue is that there's this idea that we are basically trusting in our works to go ahead and be saved.

The problem is that there's nowhere in Scripture where it says that works in and of themselves produce grace, works in and of themselves guarantee your salvation.

Why? Because this gets into another thing, the judgment passages, Matthew 25,

Matthew 12, book of Revelation. You're going to be judged by your works. If I'm going to be judged by my works,

I can't guarantee that just because I do these works, I'm going to be saved. Therefore, I hope in my salvation.

You know what I mean? Doesn't that make sense? If someone's going to judge whether or not that your works truly were ripe before God, just like Matthew 10, there are people who believe for a while, but all of a sudden, something happened and they have proof, but they weren't ripe.

If our works are going to be judged, how can people say that you are trusting in your works to be saved when we say that, you know, faith without works is dead, or faith and works is what

God is looking for in justification to be saved? I mean this with all due respect.

I think this is the problem on your side when you don't see a clear distinction between faith and works.

There's a relationship there, but we will be judged for our works. I don't want to be judged for my works one day, because I will be judged for those, and I will receive hellfire.

However, if I have a perfect righteousness to the law that Jesus Christ did both passively and actively accredited to my account, and if God sees me on that basis,

He can let me in. My whole life can be walking in relationship, growing in holiness, becoming more and more like Him.

Well, yeah, those works are after the fact of justification, and there is a

Bema seat. There's a judgment seat of Christ where we'll be judged for our obedience, but our condemnation was settled according to the book of Romans, because we are under the headship of Jesus and no longer under the headship of Adam.

So I think it's important to see that we cannot bring our works to the table before God. We have to respond with something that humbles us, shows humility, which is internal trust.

We got to be trusting our behavior. So basically, like I said, I hear all that, and what

I do honestly is that I compare it to Matthew 25, just one of many, where you do see where he says, look, when

I was hungry, you didn't feed me. When I was thirsty, you never gave me drink, and we read all this stuff.

And he says, like, Lord, when do we not do that? And he says, well, you didn't do it when you didn't do it with me.

And this is the stuff that he says right before he says, you know what? You didn't do this. So this is where you go.

But to the righteous, he says, when I was hungry, you did these things.

So they're being judged by their works and the things that they've done. So that's why

I'm wondering, people can trust in Christ, but at the end of the day, if you're being judged by what you do with your faith, then how is it you still emphasize, like, hey,

I believe in I'm good. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Jesus, in that same gospel, he says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, right?

Good tree will bear good fruit. So yeah, in one sense, Jesus can look at the works and say righteous, right?

Enter into eternal life that's been prepared before you. And he can look to the wicked and say, look at all of your works, you know, go to everlasting fire, because that stems from a changed heart.

But we can't confuse that our good works are what gains us into heaven.

Because I was studying Eastern Orthodoxy. A lot of my research says you had to be water baptized as the first sacrament to be regenerated through water baptism by the

Holy Spirit. And I'm saying, then you're gaining justification. And that would seem to me to contradict when

Paul says, now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, grace, no longer grace, but as his due.

But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

I'm saying, I don't understand anybody that says, well, you in some way have to bring your good works to the table.

I'm saying not if Paul is speaking legally and forensically. And the scripture talks about walking in relationship.

Both can be true. But the very moment must be when God forensically and legally declares us righteous.

Now from a human perspective, we can see people acting in a good moral way. I think James chapter two is talking from the human to human perspective because he says, you have faith, show me, go ahead.

Okay, so, you know, I think like, we should look at John three right now. And we should look at Romans four, like right now.

But before I do that, I did want to say that, I think that's another issue. When you look in the scripture, people could read the definitional term about, you know, justification, declare righteous.

They can do that all day. But when you read what the scripture says and what God is doing, it's a whole different ball game.

You know, there's all kinds of scriptures, but countless ones where he says that you are made righteous, or that God justifies the ungodly.

Not declare the ungodly just, because then that would be like declaring something isn't it is.

And that's in Romans five, when you have, you know, by one man's sin, many were made sinners.

They weren't just declared sinners. No, they were sinners through and through.

And it's the same thing when he said through Christ, you know, many will be made righteous.

And so that's the reason why that's a whole separate debate. It's basically, you know, impartation versus imputation.

And there's plenty of, from my research, from my scriptural research, there's plenty of impartation, but not so much imputation.

And so the issue is, it's like, when you look at the word impute, logizomai, and you see how it's used.

It literally just means to mentally assess something that actually you're seeing.

I got a question. That's what it means. Okay. Okay, just real quick.

This gets into your Romans four, where it says that, you know, Abraham believed and his faith was counted as righteousness.

In other words, God looked at his faith and said, Oh, that's righteous. There was a righteous quality about his faith.

And that's the reason why it was counted is that it didn't mean like credit card, transfer your accounts. That's time right there.

All right, Jeremiah, you have 10 minutes to cross this out. Okay. Yeah, let's just, let's keep kind of going in this train of thought.

So now it's funny, you know, if you're going to continue to go on a train of thought and can I finish out what

I was saying, if we're going to continue to train of thought. Actually, you'll have a chance to come back in because I got a lot of things that I want to say because you brought up the word logizomai.

Yeah, it's all good. So the thing is, I haven't heard a reason why

I should go with your definition of logizomai versus the way that Paul is utilizing these

Greek Septuagint terms that have been found in legal courtroom terminology.

So I guess to kind of get back to, I had a few questions. Okay. I do want to talk,

I do want to shift gears actually now. So at what point can a person lose their justification?

Well, that's the thing. Like you're talking about what, when can a person no longer be saved?

They can no longer be saved when they walk away from Christ.

When they take off the ring, you know what I mean? That they married him or hey, they can be in his hand like John six where no one can snatch him out, but they can leave or they can depart from the faith.

Or they can choose, as John says, they could choose not to remain in him.

Like that's not anything that Jesus is doing. That's something that they're doing and they're going to be judged by that. And so it's like, yeah, if you choose to do that, then yeah.

It's not that your justification was lost, which is really not really found in the scriptures.

The emphasis is you walked away, like you forsaken. Yeah. I mean like that's what justification is.

If you walked away, you lost your justification. Well, no, no. I would agree in the secondary sense.

In the primary sense, according to like just what the scripture constantly says, you can say, well, no, that person walked away.

They chose to go ahead and apostatize, you know, apostasy.

They chose to walk away. Now you can say because they chose to do that, in effect, it costs them to lose their salvation.

Like you could say that part, but that little part right there, we agree, but it's not anything found to be emphasized in scripture.

You know what I mean? Here's the problem. Let me make this point and I got a follow -up question.

This is the problem with the paradigm that I see with Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism is when you smuggle in works, then you are going to get as a result of your works and your faith, you're going to get justification as you're due.

I'm saying I don't see grace resting on that. And so this is the pointed question to you.

So Romans 5 verse 1 says, therefore, since we have been justified, aorist past tense here, by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So justification is past tense here.

And do you, once again, do you understand justification to be a past action or an ongoing process?

Now, if you're going to say strictly justification in the way that you're saying it, then of course it's a past action.

If you're going to say justification in the same way that you would look at sanctification, glorification, things like that, the whole shebang, especially sanctification, then it's an ongoing process.

Because once again, they were never separated. It was always together. Separated, you could definitely look at it that way.

It's easy to see once separated. But when you put it all together, it even begs the question of, okay, well, this person is justified.

That's great. But this justification is just a part of an ongoing process of being saved.

Well, what do you mean? Now you're getting a sanctification. So there's something I wanted to go through real quick. I wanted to go to Romans 4 to show you something.

Hold on. I want to ask you this question real quick, Matt, and you can ask me that question.

And I don't mean this to be rude. Because there's something that you said. Hold on. Let me ask you a question real quick.

So it's back still in Romans 5 verse 1. So one thing we see in the scripture is justification is past tense, and it's actually tethered to peace.

So since you can lose justification, and you can ultimately lose peace with God, my question is, how can you say you have an ultimate peace with God, true shalom, when in fact the war between man and God could re -erupt at any moment?

Is that truly peace? Well, I think you're reading a whole...

Here's the thing. A lot of times when I hear people say things, the first thing I'm thinking in my mind is, okay, where did

Jesus, Paul, Peter, James ever say anything like that in scripture? Where did they reference that? Where did they look at faith or justification like that?

And the problem is you said, how can you call it true ultimate peace if it could be lost?

Notice that they never said you could have true ultimate peace in the sense that you're saying that once you're saved, that's it, and it cannot be lost.

They're not saying that. Not only that, but when they do end up saying, hey, you know what, there's some that fell away, or there's some that turned away, they don't even say, oh, and they lost peace with God.

But we all know, obviously speaking, that it's like, duh, of course they lost peace with God.

That doesn't mean there's nothing that they had to write, because that's not what they were theologically emphasizing. And the second part is that you said, well, how can they truly have peace if this war between God and man can re -erupt any time?

And once again, that makes me think about stuff like, well, Romans 7, where you could be like Paul, where you're saved, and it's like, the things

I don't want to do, I do. And the things I should do, I don't do that.

Oh, who's going to save me from this body of death? And there are people who still struggle with saying they're saved, but it doesn't mean like, oh,

I'm at war with God. I'm at war with my flesh and myself, and trying to deny myself. I see that in the future, but to say,

I'm sorry, go ahead, I'm sorry. All right, you're fine. And I just want to make a brief response, but then a question.

So I get how we can be at war with our flesh, but I was talking about the piece there in Romans 5 is a peace with God, no longer at war with Him.

But we can bring that up later. Romans 2, verse 13, this kind of is in a similar context of what you brought up about how

He will render according to each one, according to His works, those who by patience and well -doing seek glory, honor, and mortality, and He'll give eternal life.

I'm not denying that the regenerate, those who God has done a mighty work and changed their heart, will live differently and will receive everlasting life.

But in verse 13, we read, for it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.

So my question is, does the doers of the law who will be justified, does that mean by works of law, a human being can be justified before God?

Okay, so before I answer that question, I wanna answer some little things that you said there.

One thing that you said was, is that, listen, once people are justified, they will...

Now, if I misquoted you, please let me know. Once people are truly justified, they will go ahead and produce these fruits or they will go ahead and do something.

And so once again, the issue with that is, is that if that's the case, then there should be no warning passages like we see in Galatians, where you have people that are saved.

And Paul's like, look, I'm telling you, if you do these works of the flesh, you continue to do this stuff, then you're not gonna see the kingdom of God.

But the thing is, if this faith, this true faith that you have just starts truly automatically producing stuff, then there shouldn't even be a warning.

It seems like there's still a choice on their part to do this. So I just wanna say that real quick. I agree. Now, I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, no, I was saying real quick that I disagree that there doesn't have to be warning passages, but I agree that there will be people that respond to the word of God and they will make a genuine choice whether they want to or not, but that will give evidence of something that is internal and within.

So like I said, Romans 2 .13. So I just wanna repeat the question.

A lot of times when I'm talking to a lot of Hebrew Israelites, they'll go in and use this about the law, but what you have to understand is that, of course, the

Roman church was written to Jewish and Gentile Christians in the faith. And of course, we know the story about the

Jewish Christians. They were still a little tight to the law. They didn't let it go quite easily.

And Paul saw that. He was very sensitive to it. And so when Paul is saying, the doers of the law shall be justified, he's only talking to the

Jews. And you read the very next verse, and he ends up saying something about the

Gentiles. So now, suddenly he's saying something about the Gentiles. For the Gentiles who don't have the law, due by nature, their things are contained in the law.

And so that's what he's saying. So it's really not even about the doers of the law be justified, because one, if Paul really meant that, then it would contradict himself saying, well, you can't be justified by the law.

And so he was really saying it. Okay. Chris That's time right there. All right, Matt, you're up for your 10 -minute cross -examination,

Jeremiah. Matt Okay, got it. So I wanna go back to Romans 4, because there's something

I just wanted to say, and I wanna hear what you have to say. Chris All right.

Matt There's this whole emphasis on, like, works and, you know, works that are due, and you looked up the ergasmi, and how he's using that, which makes me wanna look up the

Greek word for good works in Romans 2. I'm curious to see what type he uses for that one. Anyway, this is what it really is.

He's condemning works that you try to go in and hold up a debt to, to God, and works that you go in and try to boast about.

Those are the works that are condemned. He never condemned all good works, period.

No, that would contradict what he said in Romans 2. And so to show that even more, I just wanna go ahead and read this here.

People don't like to read the other parts of Romans chapter 4. Look at what it says. This is starting from verse 18, about Abraham, right, who did more than have faith.

Check this out. Hoping against hope, Abraham, you know, trusted, you know, epistasuism, that he would become the father of many nations.

He did not weaken in faithfulness when he considered his own body, which is already as good as dead.

Being about a hundred years old and the deadness of Sarah's womb, he did not hesitate with a lack of faith in God's promise, but strengthened his faithfulness by giving glory to God, being fully convinced of what

God had promised he was able to he would go in and do. And therefore it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

His faith that he had was reckoned, counted, right, called righteous by God.

You know, and again, that's just like what, you know, imputation means, you know, logizomai.

It means to call something for what it is, what you're mentally seeing. If I got 10 pennies, I'm gonna say, oh, that's 10 cents.

If you give me a dime, let's make sure we're asking questions, uh, instead of the format.

Okay. I apologize. I apologize. Um, so, so basically my, my question is this, um, you even, you even read verses 23 and 24, and it talks about the same thing.

So my question is this, was Paul's belief totally void of obeying

God about this son that he was going to have and doing all the stuff that God told him to do?

Was his faith totally void of that or was it full of those things? So there's a lot of things, you said a lot there.

So I want to respond in light of everything. What is wonderful is that Genesis 15, six, we are told by Paul that it was his faith that was logizomai counted to him as righteousness.

So I actually believe that Paul had a faith earlier back in Genesis chapter 12.

Okay. But then he did do a lot of works and he responded in obedience, but just so we don't get it confused, it was not his works even leading up to chapter 15 that contributed to his justification, but it was still his faith, right?

And so that's really important to the book of Romans because before the law came, Abraham was already justified.

That's why, that's why the book of James tells us that it was fulfilled. We see it from a human vantage point by his works.

So the problem I'm seeing with your position is that you muddy, you blur the lines between faith and works.

I'm saying Paul tells us that is the basis of our justification.

Now that justified faith that is alone will always produce works, but we have something to boast about if we have anything to bring before God in terms of our works.

So yeah, absolutely Abraham worked, but that didn't justify him before God. That's what he says early in the chapter.

He says that works didn't justify him before God. You know, he says, he says that early in the chapter, what chapter of what?

Right. So verse two says, for if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

And then he uses the word ergazimai. So this is the whole point.

If you say that his faith in works earned his justification, I'm saying that totally flips Paul's argument on its head.

Okay. I see. So one thing I did want to say is, is that, and this is the deeper part, even though his belief is being emphasized, and this goes right back to what

I've been saying from the beginning. If it was written in Genesis that Abraham never ended up obeying

God, he did the exact opposite. It just whacks worse and worse. Would the writer even have written, and Abraham believed

God, and it was reckoning. Would he even write that about that as a conclusion? Would he even write that if Abraham never?

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So hypothetically, no, if Abraham was, you know, an unregenerate man and when nothing to do with the

God, it would not have been written. But what is so wonderful is that Paul gives us divine interpretation of Genesis 15 verse six.

So we know that it was on the basis of faith that he was justified and not by ergazimai, not by a works that's looking to receive something in return.

The view that says your faith and works together is what justifies us before God.

Well, you're getting justification as a result of something that you do. And Paul is saying all men stand condemned by our works, but it's those who have faith.

And I believe that there's nothing good in man that could conjure up enough faith in order to be made right with God.

God would have to do a supernatural work within us and change our heart, change our minds, change our desires to look to the

Savior, Jesus. And that is a gospel of grace. That is a gospel that's the antithesis of works.

So I think you probably agree with a lot of that there. Okay. And so again, that's the part where I keep on hammering it and I'm just going to hammer it just one more time now that we're here again.

Again, look at verse two. It says, for if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

And yet in James, it says that Abraham was justified by works, and he also says justified by works, but not by faith alone.

Can I respond to that? Yeah, just a moment. And so if you don't want any contradiction, you have to once again, look at what

Paul means when he says the types of works. He's talking about works of the law, which was throughout chapter three.

He's also talking about works that you actually boast about. He's talking about works that you go ahead and hold it to God as due as a debt.

These are things that Paul, not Paul, these are things that Abraham never did with his works.

The only works that are consistent are the ones in Romans chapter two. If you say that, you know, that it is what you're saying, that once again, you're going to contradict

Romans chapter two, where he says that, hey, you know, people seek, you know, immortality by good works and honoring and things like that, and also going to contradict

James chapter two. And so that's like the issue that I always end up seeing, you know?

Okay. So I just want to know. So two major points. For one,

Romans is talking about a justification before God. He says in Romans three, verse 20, for by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight.

Romans four, verse two says, for if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

Now in James chapter two, he's talking about a vindication before men. That's why you see this person to person dialogue.

And in verse 18, he says, show me your faith. We are justified by works before men, but our works never justify us before God.

So that's the first thing I want to talk about. And let's hypothetically grant that Abraham did works that weren't boastworthy.

Okay. Is he going to gain justification as a result of that? Your view would say yes. And I'm saying, there's no way you can do any types of works that's worthy of boasting or not.

But if you get something as it's due, then it contradicts Paul. We can see is being used in terms of transaction.

So we need a pure righteousness that's not our own to cover us on our account. And that's what Jesus was ultimately getting at by dying on the cross.

So does that make sense? The point about it doesn't really matter in terms of our works.

Yeah, it does. One thing I did want to lay an emphasis on was two things. One, when you talk about before men and before God, and the key question is who is doing the justifying?

Is it men that you're getting all your praise and justification from, or is it

God? And that was the emphasis when he ended up saying that Abraham was justified.

Now, obviously, if Abraham was justified by works, as James 2 says, there's only one person that can do that.

That's Romans 3. He is just and the justifier of those who go ahead and believe.

Of course, faith without works is dead. And that was a harmony that I'm always saying scriptures with that.

I know there's an emphasis on belief, and I'm not denying that at all. But to take belief and go ahead and push it to the exclusion of what you see in Romans 2 or James 2 and try to weasel it in and say, well, it's just talking about before men and not before God, but then who's the justifier?

I'm weaseling it in. No, not weaseling. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that.

I know. I'm just kidding. I just kidding. No, no, no, no. I was talking to you. Yeah, do something else. All right, guys, that's time right there.

That concludes the cross -examination portion of this debate. So now we're going to transition to closing statements. And after that, we have some

Q &A from audience. So audience, get those questions in so you guys will be able to tackle them. That said,

Jeremiah, you're up for your five -minute closing. All right. Thank you, Marlon.

So I'm just reflecting on our dialogue that we just had, and it really, it hurts my heart to see that it's so easy to try to blur the lines between faith and works.

When you listen to Paul in Romans chapter four, listen to him again. For if Abraham was justified by works, then he has something to boast about.

So works, immediately, you could say, I'm glad I made the right decision. I'm glad I put my faith in the right thing.

Anything that you do would warrant boasting, but not before God.

What does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was, la

Godzaimai, counted to him as righteousness. Now, to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

The problem here is works are being used in a way to get something as a result of that.

Matt's position is that, yeah, you have to have faith and your works. And I'm saying the problem is already apparent that you're going to receive justification as a result of something that you do.

But Paul says to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift. So it's no longer of grace.

Romans 11, verse six says, for if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works.

Otherwise grace would no longer be grace. If we are saved by grace, then works play no part in our justification.

Paul goes on to say, and to the one who does not work, it has nothing to do about boasting.

But if you're doing something externally to get something in exchange, then you've earned that.

But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, it's his faith that's counted to him as righteousness.

So when I was talking with Matt, something that he seemed to conflate is belief, which could be understood as just mere intellectualism, knowing facts.

That's not what Paul's talking about here. It's pistis. It's firm trust. That's what justifies us before God.

James chapter two, verse 14 says, if someone says they have faith, can their faith save them?

Well, if you just merely say you have faith, but you deny the faith with how you live, well, of course that doesn't save you.

Even human beings to the tangible eye can see that that is a dead faith. That's actually no faith at all.

So in my closing minutes here, I just want to say the wonderful thing about Romans chapter four is that we read that Abraham, who was before the law, was justified on the basis of faith.

And then it's wonderful because Paul goes into quoting David's 32nd

Psalm. David was under the law, and he said, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man against the Lord, will not count his sin. So clearly this is the legal terminology again.

And I know that Matt doesn't accept the legal courtroom and talk of Paul, but he's quoting from the

Greek Septuagint. It's clearly understood that these are legal forensic terms, meaning that God declares one to be righteous on the basis of their faith apart from works.

And the neat thing is, is that's always been the method of salvation. Even with Abraham, that was before the law.

This is even the case with David, who was under the law. And this is the case for Christians as well.

And so Matt was just about to read the passage earlier, and I was like, man, I can't wait to really emphasize this later.

Listen to how Paul concludes Romans chapter four. That is why

Abraham's faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words it was counted to him was not written for his sake alone, but it was for ours also, for Christians, those of us that live after the law's fulfillment.

It will be counted to us who believe in him, who was raised from the dead,

Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

And I love how the apostle Paul begins Romans chapter five. Upon that basis of our justification, we can have peace with God.

Therefore, since we have been, past tense, justified by faith, then we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. So we can have true peace. We can have everlasting life, and we can know that.

And if we could lose eternal life, then it would not be eternal life. So praise God that we can be saved and have assurance of salvation based on the finished work of Jesus.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, Jeremiah. All right, Matt, you're up for your five minute closing.

If we could lose eternal life, it would not be eternal life.

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt that what he said was, you know, maybe that's not what he was trying to emphasize or truly say, because that would mean that, you know, any kind of eternal life or things like that is based on us.

It's based on whether we receive it or not. No, eternal life is objective. It's there.

Whether we cross into it or not does not determine whether it's eternal or not.

It's going to be eternal with or without you. I'm going to go ahead and read something here, because what actually happened was what

I thought would happen, that we would get into imputed righteousness, which is a whole separate debate, but it's kind of related.

I want to read this from Robert Dabney's Systematic Theology, chapter 23.

This is what it says. Sometimes it is evident that the thing imputed is that which is actually done or personally belongs to the person to whom it is reckoned or set over.

This is what Turrington calls imputation loosely so -called. Sometimes a thing imputed to or was done by another, as Philemon's 1 .8

or Romans 4 .6. This is the imputation which takes place in the sinner's justification. It may be said without affecting excessive subtly of definition that by imputation of Christ's righteousness, we only mean that Christ's righteousness is so accounted to the sinner as that he receives thereupon the legal consequences to which it entitles.

In accordance with 2 Corinthians 5 .21, as well as with the dictates of sound reason, we regard it as the exact counterpart of the imputation of our sins to Christ.

When we attempt to prove this imputation, we are met with this assertion by Arminians and theologians of the

New England school that there is no instance in the whole Bible of anything imputed except that which the man personally does or possesses himself, so that there is no scriptural warrant for this idea of transference of righteousness as to its legal consequences.

We point in reply to Philemon 1 .8 and Romans 4 .6. Now, why did

I read that? Because this guy is acknowledging that there were other people around in his day saying, we hear what you believe about this imputed righteousness transference and that, but we look in the scriptures and that ain't nowhere.

Of course, he did go to the Old Testament to use the statuagen to try to find all the legal areas.

But once again, the problem is, is that it is what this thing means. If it means that it's kind of a legal thing, then it should not have examples that don't have anything to do with legality.

Again, it literally just means you have a mental image of what you're perceiving.

That's what reckon is. It's no different than counting money. One, two, three, four.

You're not counting something that isn't there. That's why God saw

Abraham's faith and counted it as righteous.

In other words, he said, oh, look, oh, that's righteous. That's like me looking at 10 pennies and saying, oh, that's 10 cents.

Or is it 10 pennies? Well, it's both. I just still call it 10. It's still 10 cents. Or it's not a dime, but it's equivalent to a dime.

It is 10 cents. I'm calling it as it is, as we say today.

That's all he did. There is no transference. He read that in the scripture. There's nowhere you find that.

Another thing that I also wanted to read here is, where was it?

I made an emphasis in the beginning that sanctification, justification, things like that were not separate, but they were very fluid.

When you read Romans chapter six, verse seven, there's no way around this.

In the KJV, it says, for he that is dead is freed from sin. You look at earlier

English translations, like Douay Rheims, and it says, for he that is dead is justified from sin.

If you read Romans chapter six, he's talking about baptism. He's talking about people who are already in Christ, but he's using the word justified in a sanctificational way.

That's the biggest no -no of it all, if there really are separate things.

When I say that, well, if it's all together, then faith alone is false, then yes, that does mean that faith alone is false.

By the end of the day, just like I read in Matthew 25 and the other judgment passages that I didn't get to read,

Revelation 22, Matthew 12, and all the rest of the judgment passages that say, look, you're going to be judged by your works, by the deeds that you've done in your body on the earth.

That's where I'm going to judge you by. Then after that, it'll be deciding whether you go to heaven or hell.

I can't put all that together and say, oh, it's just faith alone. It's almost like this.

This is something I thought about a while back. It'd be like me saying, I'm going to give you a ticket to Kennywood.

Kennywood is like a theme park where we have here in Pittsburgh. I'm going to give you a ticket to Kennywood, and the moment I give you this ticket, you're going to have fun.

Two people get the ticket. One person says, hey, you said that I would have fun.

That's time right there. All right, guys, we're now going to transition to the Q &A of this debate.

We're going to jump into these questions real quick. We have a whole bunch of them. I got some super chats to get to as well.

All right. It should be popping up here at the bottom of the screen. There it is.

All right. Thank you for the super chat, Jed and I. I appreciate you. This question is for you, Jeremiah. Why say faith alone if works qualify faith as true or false if works enter at all even to qualify, then faith isn't alone?

Well, I just want to respond with faith and works are related to one another, but faith produced works.

There's a logical progression. When you have a conviction, when your will is moved and you love something, something's going to happen as a result of that.

We could go into the depths of what James 2 is really talking about there. Then Paul makes the point, don't get it confused.

If you ever bring your works into the table, it's your due and it's no longer on the basis of grace.

Paul is just saying, look, it's the internal faith that justifies us and that justified faith will produce works.

That's why we got to see the legal aspect and the relational aspect, but understanding that our justification was never by something that we did, by our works, because those are filthy rags the scriptures tell us.

All right, Matt, what are your thoughts? Romans 11 .6,

but if by grace, it is no longer by works or otherwise, grace wouldn't even be grace.

What does that mean? That means when God chooses to go ahead and save somebody, it's because it's the grace that actually does the saving, period.

That's why I said before that, yes, we can do good works. I mean, that's great, but they don't produce grace in and of themselves.

No, grace comes from God. Now, who he gives it to, well, that all depends.

God chooses to give his grace to those who what? Who believe and also go ahead and do the works that come with that faith.

That's what he chooses to do. When I look at that, that lets me know that it is not works that save, it's grace that saves, and that's all he was trying to get the

Jews to realize because they were so caught up on their works. They thought the works in and of themselves, like, oh, God, you owe me this.

No, that's not how it works. Yeah, you do good works, but no Christian is over here saying, oh,

I've done these good works and I'm all good, even though God is going to judge my works to see if it's fit for him, which is the reason why

I don't trust in my works. I hope, I believe, but not in my works.

I'm hoping God will be pleased. I'm not hoping in my works. You see that?

So that's what he's really saying, but the Jews just didn't get that. They just didn't get it, and that's the reason why he spoke the way he spoke.

All right, all right. Just a reminder for both of you, both of you get one minute each to respond to the question, so just remember that, all right?

Okay, I'm sorry. My next question, another super chat here. Thank you,

Luther. I appreciate the super chat, and the question is, if we are saved by faith alone, how do you understand the warning passages, parables, and God judging our works on Judgment Day in Scripture?

I believe this is for you, Jeremiah. Let me start. So the warning passages are wonderful because the regenerate people of God will look at that, and fear will strike our hearts, and we will desire to do good works that God has begun in us, and we look at the wonderful paradox in Scripture where, yes, we are making decisions from our viewpoint, but Philippians 2 tells us that it is

God who is willing and working in us. So when we see that we are working out our sanctification, we understand with looking at all of Scripture, this isn't the initial point of justification, but this is that point of sanctification, and it's

Scripture that utilizes different words for us to understand the different aspects of salvation.

So we can't just look at salvation as an umbrella term all the time. Paul talks about justification, and glorification in Romans 8, he says is after we die.

So that would be my response, Paul. All right, Matt, any thoughts? I really don't have much thoughts about his question, just being honest.

Fair enough. All right, I have another Super Chat here. Thank you, Jedidiah. I appreciate you once again for the

Super Chat. This is for you, Jeremiah. Can you exegete Romans chapter 6, verse 3 to 7, verse 7, where water baptism is linked to dekikau.

I believe that's how you pronounce it. I messed up my Greek, man. Justification and dekio. Say it again.

Dekio. Dekio. There it is, man. My Greek is jacked up. And the

Greek as well as the instrumental meaning of being united in Christ. All right.

Yeah, I didn't see water in the passage, so I know he assumes that into the text.

But what Paul, when he's talking about, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Of course, this is a spiritual baptism, the moment that we were united with Christ. I would challenge

Matt and whoever else, show me in the context where there's water baptism here.

Let's go to the clear passages that tell us that water is there. And I would say, yes, that is a water baptism.

But what Paul is doing is he's giving us the doctrine behind water baptism. So what he's talking about is being united with Christ.

It doesn't say water baptism plays a part in being united together with Christ. What unites us together with Christ legally is our faith.

And then absolutely we should in obedience respond to that faith with water baptism. That's what Christians ought to do.

All right. Matt, any thoughts? Yes. There is something behind that water.

And you know what I'm going to say. It's the spirit. He that is, what is it?

He believes that baptism has to be saved. You got John 3, where it says that he that is born of the water and the spirit will go ahead and enter and see the kingdom of God.

Of course, born again, elegentia, regeneration. That's the reason why when

Paul wrote to Titus, he said, well, per se by the washing in the water regeneration. So the reason why is because it's not that baptism in and of itself that we're depending on.

No, it is because it's the means of grace that God uses. And God decides to say, hey,

I want you to do this ritual because it speaks a lot about me and I'm going to put my grace in it.

Then that says a lot about me as God, because this is what you mean to me. You're a born again child.

So I want you to go in the water and up the water. And there's something that's going to happen to you, not because of the water, but because of my grace.

But this is the way I am salivatingly expressing myself to you as God between me and my child.

Like that's the reason why people, they miss that, you know, but back in the first century, like none of this stuff was an issue until the 16th century, you know,

I could be wrong, but that's just the way I see it through ancient eyes. All right.

Another super chat coming at me. All right. Thank you Jedidiah for another one. This is for you, Jeremiah.

1 Timothy 3 .16, Paul uses decakowl for Jesus resurrecting. Such was not a mere declaration, but he was made such.

Does this not show Paul using it in a transformative sense? So I didn't get to 1

Timothy 3 .16. My initial thought is absolutely

Jesus. So how did he say it? Paul used it in a transformative sense. I believe that Jesus completely submitted himself to the father's will.

He consecrated himself, he said in John chapter 17. And this is what this whole conversation misses is that Jesus accomplished what we could not accomplish.

So yes, you see Jesus is sanctifying work of being obedient to the law and dying a substitutionary death on the cross.

I wish we could have gotten more into that. How Isaiah 53 uses that terminology about how we can receive that on our behalf.

But yes, I want Jesus's perfection accredited to my account and that will transform my life beginning with the initial point of regeneration.

All right. Matt, any thoughts? Yeah. Before I even say any thoughts, yeah,

I did want to say that, yeah, I was gone because the dinner that I smelled for my wife smelled so good,

I had to go and get up and kiss her twice. I'm sorry. You probably got the same effect, man. You're five years in.

Yeah. Absolutely. Basically. So you have decakowl for Jesus's resurrection.

Was it a declaration? And the whole thing is this, my whole response is, are we declared righteous by God or are we made righteous by God?

If you say, you know what, we're declared righteous, but maybe later on somewhere in sanctification, we're made righteous.

Then that lets me know the purpose of being declared righteous, right? If we're just saying we're made righteous and yet we see all this declare, declare, declare stuff, then that lets me know that the bigger emphasis is always the latter, which is what?

To be made righteous. God is not just going to go ahead and declare someone righteous and all of a sudden they're not righteous.

That would pretty much kind of contradict the whole reckoning thing. So that lets me know that God wants to actually make you righteous too.

That's my whole response to it. I think there's one thing that's being emphasized and another that's not, but the

Bible's over emphasizing it. It's like, Hey, why do you keep laughing at me?

I don't know, man. I'm sorry. All right. All right. So we go transition.

We've got another question for you and Jeremiah, I'm getting super chats and they're all for you. So don't be -

Hold on, wait. Can there be any, I get no love? Now this is from Gabe Lee.

He just gave a super chat. So I want to honor this super chat by posting this question. So this is for you,

Jeremiah. Was Christ's human will predestined to obey the father or was his human will exempt from the predestination apply to the human race?

How does that apply to our debate? No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, right. But it's a super chat. It's a super chat.

I gotta hook my - I know. That is okay. So great question. And I want to say,

I don't understand the inner workings of God's omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence, but I'm reformed.

So I have in my mind, the highest view of God's sovereignty. I believe that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.

That would include Jesus's humanity, his every step, everywhere that he was going to go and what he was going to do.

So in one sense, I believe that it's all determined beforehand. I believe that God had perfect knowledge of what every single molecule in this universe was going to be.

And he chose that particular world and it's going to happen exactly how

God knew it before the foundation of the world. So yeah, even Christ's humanity would have been fully known by the triune

God, which me and Matt would be both Trinitarians. All right,

Matt, any thoughts? Yeah, I'll just cut to the core of it.

When it comes to the - there's nowhere in scripture where it says that God decrees everything that comes to pass.

The closest that you get is, I think it's in Ephesians where it says that God basically works all things according to the counsel of his will.

You look at that. Okay, so he has to work all things to the counsel of his will. Well, I guess if he has to do that, then let's just know that if he just lets his hands free, will they get into the counsel of his will?

No, he has to work things to the counsel of his will. Let's know that those people got some independence going on.

So God's got to do things. Second thing is the counsel of his will. We all know that in Kings there was a counsel before God.

Hey, this guy is a little sinful. What should we do? One angel said this, and another angel said that.

There was this counsel going on. So what is the counsel of God's will? It's not the decree of God's will or the - no, it's the counsel of his will, which really sounds like something that judges do.

So when I look at that, I can't see God's decrees. Oh, things come back.

The language ain't there. It's just not there. They just read it. And it sounds right. But when you slow it down and break it down, it's like, wait a minute, that's not saying that.

But that's just the way I see it. All right. And I have another super chat here from Jedidiah.

Again, appreciate you, man, for the super chat. Jeremiah, why say baptism is at work when

Titus 3 .5 says the bath of regeneration, that is baptism, is not at work, which merits salvation as a wage?

Okay. I'm so glad. Thank you, Jedidiah, for bringing up Titus 3 .5.

So I want to talk about the context that the washing here is not talking about baptism.

I wish somebody would show me in the context that it's talking about water or it's talking about baptism. The verse says,

God our Savior appeared. He saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing and regeneration renewal of the

Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit transforms our heart and cleanses us. That is a work that he does, not by anything that we do.

This is not talking about baptism. And I can prove that from the immediate context and the canonical context.

Impostor Paul is clear. It's not that works that we do because that would allow us to boast, but it's by faith.

That is what justifies us before God. So that washing there is a spiritual cleansing done by the

Holy Spirit. That's what Titus 3 .5 is talking about. All right, Matt, any thoughts?

Yep. Once again, do you notice something interesting? Now Paul heightens it.

He says, we're saved, but don't get it wrong. It's not by our works that are done in righteousness.

Now, dang. Now it's not even like, oh, it's these works that you're going to boast about.

No, no. It's the works where everyone gives a thumbs up on. And Paul still says, don't get it twisted.

That's not what saves us. And that's the same thing that everyone else in the early church has been saying.

I keep saying it. Works in and of themselves don't save.

They don't even produce grace. You know what I mean? You do them in righteousness, and you do it unto

God or unto Christ. Just like in Matthew 25, you do these things unto me. You do it to them.

It's out of service. It's out of righteousness, but that's not what saves you. But of course,

God is going to go ahead and save those who believe, save those who serve him.

And he says that in the Judgment Passage. But yeah, when it talks about baptism and regeneration there, it's playing in the passage.

The same word, the Greek word is always used for water baptism. I don't know what else to say.

I think that's playing. And plus, they link regeneration with it, which is consistent with John 3. If you're born of the water and the spirit, you could see the kingdom of God.

I look at all that cheddar. I can't think to myself like, no, that's not what it really means. It's hard for me to...

Maybe I'm blind. You continue to laugh if you want to. Maybe I'm blind. Help me.

I like the cheddar. I like the cheddar, the cheddar, all that cheddar. You want some?

Good stuff, guys. All right. So Matt, this is going to make you happy. I got no super chat, but this time it's for you, man.

So thank you for the super chat. I appreciate it. Thank you, Josh, for the super chat.

Question for Matt, if a generate man can fall away and lose their salvation, how do you explain Romans 4, verse 8, when

Paul says, blesses the man to whom the Lord would not impute sin? Well, who is a man that he's not going to go to impute sin to?

Obviously, those are people who are saved and who are repentant and he's given their mercy to. Unless I'm reading it wrong,

I would think that that's the only kind of people that God would choose to be like, oh, you know what?

This person's repentant. I'm not going to impute that sin to them. Yeah, they did sin, but you know what?

I'm going to treat them differently because they're repenting. Psalm 51, which is basically where Paul's repentance thing comes from.

I mean, a David's repentance thing comes from. I know about David Bathsheba.

So that's what I would say, you know, in terms of regenerate man falling away, you don't even find those terms in the

New Testament, regenerate man, like that, like just see how to describe his believers falling away.

Like that's what Paul says, they fell away. And what does that mean? That means that they apostatize, adokimos, they decided to just walk away.

That's what they decided to do. You know? So yeah, you can say that they lost their salvation.

Technically they did, but the thing that Bible emphasizes is that they walked away from Christ, you know?

And so, yeah, that's the way I see both those issues. All right,

Jeremiah, what are your thoughts? Well, I just want to first say that this

Josh Gibson fellow sounds like a very intelligent man, and I would love to meet him one day.

But I agree with his point that he's getting. He's talking about the regenerate man. The regenerate man has a new heart and new desires.

And look what the Apostle Paul quoted from Psalm 32. God is not going to impute his sin to his account.

I say impute because he uses the same term, logizima. So you notice though, the unregenerate man, he is in his sin.

So when we start talking about him being unregenerate, we're talking about his innermost being does not love the things of God.

And so that's why the scripture tells us that we do not seek God on our own.

We are not righteous. There's none good, no, not one. And by the way, I know Josh Gibson.

He's a really good friend of mine. So thanks, buddy, for reaching out. Yeah, his name sounds familiar.

All right, guys, another question here. It's from Robert.

Hey, Robert, how's it going, man? Yes. It's for Jeremiah. This one's for me. In the Old Testament, a legal declaration is based on a reality.

Example given, blood, guiltiness in Leviticus 17, one through four. How would this support the reformed concept of imputation?

Yeah. So when we quote from Leviticus 17, and by the way, thank you, Robert. I remember him from our last debate, and we've been able to connect a little bit, and we have a good friendship.

So how I'd respond to you, Robert, is when you look at Leviticus 17, the bigger emphasis here, and I hope this isn't bypassing your question, but I think this is relevant to your question, but life is in the blood.

That's the whole point of that passage. It's building up saying that in order for us to have life or our life comes from the blood.

And I'm reminded of the imagery in Genesis chapter three, where God sacrifices an animal to cover

Adam and Eve. So we see the first type of substitution, and we should have died.

We would have died all in Adam in the garden, but by God's mercy, he provided a substitute.

Something as innocent as an animal was sacrificed on our account. So I think these legal declarations can happen when there's a substitute that is made.

Thank you, Robert. All right. Any thoughts, Matt? I'm not familiar with Leviticus 17, one through four, just going to be honest, but just to kind of tackle this question,

I guess, like I said, I read the reform, well, parts of the reform concept of imputation, and a big emphasis is on transference.

And again, every time I look, I don't see transference.

I like someone to point me somewhere. I always see counting. This is what

I see. I'm going to call it this. This is what I see here. I'm going to call it that. I'm going to count this, count that, one, two, three, four.

You're saying what something is based on what you're saying. That's what it's saying.

So yeah, you have blood guilt and sins. If you say it's a legal declaration, there's actual blood that God is acknowledging.

Can I make another comment, Marlon? Sure. Sure. Go for it, Jeremiah. And this is more back to Robert.

I would just look to the whole Levitical system. Remember, they would send a goat out into the wilderness, right?

This was typology about Jesus taking away the sins of the world.

And I appreciate Matt and him articulating his position, but transfer is all throughout the scripture.

We see blood atonement being made on our behalf, and Jesus is the culmination of all that.

All right. Another super chat coming at you. Thank you, Jeremiah, once again for our super chat.

Jeremiah, this is for you. John 15 says, in Christ, not in the church, since Reformed theology says only the elect can truly be, quote, unquote, in Christ, how does that square?

Yeah. So that's a great question. But the first thing I would point out in John 15 is the fact that he's using imagery.

He's using parabolic language. So we got to look for the common property. And he is saying someone who doesn't produce fruit is evidence that they are not really in him.

Now, in the parable, he's using a tree. So a tree is going to have bad branches and good branches.

The bad branches don't produce fruit. They're cut off and they're thrown into the fire. He's not saying you're losing your justification or salvation.

But since it's a parable, we got to look to more clear didactic text.

And staying within the context of John's gospel, Jesus says clearly earlier in John 6, verse 37, he says, all that the

Father gives to me will come to me. That's going to happen. And then he says,

I will by no mean cast them out. So is he going to cast somebody out or is he not?

John's not going to contradict himself. All right, Matt, any thoughts? Yeah, too many thoughts, but I'll try to be brief.

So for one, he's right. The way he's asking about in Christ was the same ancient first century way that they looked at in Christ in terms of just the

Jews. They were in the old covenant. They were in the nation. And in Romans 11, yeah, they were in there.

But yet, some didn't believe they were broken off. Gentiles are grafted in because they believe.

And guess what? If they did not continue in goodness, once again, that's more like a work, something you do and live by.

Then you were cut off and broken off. When you look at John 15, look, the only way that you are truly not in the faith and things like that and that you're out is because, well, just look at the passage.

You're not producing fruit. The Father sees you're not producing fruit. And so he breaks you off.

And then Jesus just says, look, if you don't remain in me, then this is what's going to happen to you. So there's nowhere in the passage where it says, you know, man, if you're really in the faith, you know, you're really going to go in and if you're like, you don't find those if clauses, it's no, like, no, like they're acknowledging you're in me, but you got to do this.

If you don't, this is going to happen. That's what you find versus whatever it is you've been taught in Reformed theology.

When I look at that stuff, I'm like, yo, like one of these things got to give, you know, and that's just me being honest.

And plus, you know, Christ is the church because he's ahead of the church. So he's, you know, that's the bride.

I just can't see how you separate, you know, Christ in church like that, you know. All right.

All right. All right. This question's no super chat and Jeremiah is for you again, man.

All right. This is for Luther. Thank you, Luther for the super chat. I appreciate you, man. If righteousness is merely imputed, if righteousness is merely imputed, is

God lying when he calls a man righteous? Also, was Enoch righteous, his or one of imputation?

Okay. Can you hear me okay? Can you hear me? Okay. So I'll start my timer.

I just want to start by saying I believe in what's called triple imputation. Now, what that means is that we all died in Adam.

By imputation, God has declared the whole human race as sinners. And the thing is, we desire sin.

We inherited that sin nature. So we desire that. But we can receive the imputation by Christ when we put our faith in him.

So that's that double imputation with him. I know I said triple imputation, but I at least affirm double imputation, right?

I guess that's that original starting point. But to go back to the question, God was not lying.

He can legally declare us righteous if our sin gets put on the cross of Calvary and Jesus's righteousness covers us.

We can legally be declared righteous. Okay. It's a legal term.

It's like when a married couple, when a couple becomes married, that's a legal status.

So we can legally be declared righteous on the basis of faith. And then once somebody is married, then they go on in relationship in that marriage.

Very similar. We can be legally declared righteous before God. Now we can walk in that relationship with Christ in sanctification.

These terms are huge. And real quick, Enoch's righteousness, he would have been saved the same way that Abraham was before the law, or David was under the law, or Christians after the law's fulfillment.

So he would have had a legal, he would have had a righteousness that's not his own.

Does it say that in the Old Testament? No, but we know that that is the case because of Paul's clear didactic teachings.

He is the one that applies Genesis 15 .6 in such a way where it can't be misunderstood.

Legatumai is being used, and I like what Matt said in terms of a transaction or counting. We can be counted and declared righteous because of a perfect righteousness that's not our own.

It's like if you have a bank account and it's on empty, somebody else comes and puts money into that account, into our account for us.

That's the whole point of Jesus dying on the cross. His perfect righteousness. He did everything.

He was perfectly obedient at every point we're sinful. And so that's why he said, tetelestai, it's paid for in full.

So that's another thing that I don't really understand why you think you can bring your works to the table when

Jesus did everything that was necessary. Sorry, that was longer than one minute. All right,

Matt, any thoughts on that? Yeah. Sin actually makes you a sinner when you sin.

Christ actually makes you righteous when you're saved. Again, this transference of Christ's righteousness to mine.

He's trading this off. No, you don't find transference. You find transformation.

That's the whole thing that the Bible is emphasizing. God changes not somebody's status.

He changes their being. It says that we are a new creation in Ephesians chapter two.

If we're made sinners, not declared sinners in Romans five, then something happened and you agree.

Something happened to our nature or whatever it is, corrupted. Then that means in Christ, we were made righteous, inherently, imparted, not imputed, not declared.

Martin Luther said, hey, we're silks and dung, we're covered with snow. No, from within, we're changed from the inside out.

It produces fruits, right? The good tree from the good root, not the bad one that got good stuff covered.

No. That's why I keep on saying, just do the study, man.

I might even just show a video after this or something, but look at what it means. Imputation, to count something that you're seeing and you're making a mental evaluation of it.

That's what it means. You're counting stuff. There's even places where like ease on mine and plenty of scriptures, over 40 passages where it's used, where people are miscounting stuff.

So what do you do with that? That's all throughout the New Testament. This stuff is,

I really didn't get to get into, but it's because it's a debate, not a discussion. But I'm telling you, if you look up that word, you're not going to find this thing about, oh,

I'm going to transfer and transfer and transfer. No, you don't find like, no, I'm going to call it as it is. That's just the way it's always been.

Can I ask him a question? Sure. And Matt, I respect you so much, man.

I really appreciated our interaction, but is this a fair representation? Yeah.

Is this a fair representation of what you're saying? If I love

Jesus and have faith in him and I do some good works, good works, not ones like granting your position worth of boasting, but if I do some good works, do

I then get justification, sanctification and glorification as a result of my faith working in love externally for what

I do? Is that a correct representation? Not only is it a correct representation, it gets into other things that I would love to talk to you about.

One of them is a word that's all throughout the New Testament, which is synergy, where God and man are working together.

Another thing is that you even say, you see where Jesus says, look, if you go ahead and give alms to the poor, then you are clean.

Like, wait a minute. So that's what it means. These good works is what God chooses to funnel his transformative sanctification through.

He wants you to go ahead and do something that will be deemed worthy of him, and that would show a light to the world.

And when you do that, he's going to go ahead and give you his grace that gets you just a little more closer to be like him, a little bit more closer.

That's the whole point. We don't do these things the same, we do these things to be more like him.

All right, we have a couple more super chats, then we're going to close this thing out. So I want to make sure I get these guys in. This is for you,

Jeremiah. Jedediah is back at you again. Thank you for the super chat, Jeremiah. Jedediah, I appreciate you.

If I have a coin plated in gold and have it legally declared a gold coin, that is a lie and legal fiction.

It may actually be gold plated, but the coin is not a gold coin.

How's it different with imputed righteousness? Yeah, the difference is, legatimae is a forensic legal term.

I think it's strange how Matt has not really even acknowledged that it can be termed, if I'm misquoting you here, correct me.

But I think even Matt would agree that to impute could be a legal forensic term.

So that's on the table. I simply disagree with Matt that Romans 8 brings in that courtroom terminology.

Who can bring a charge against God's elect? Nobody can because they're of God and he has declared them just.

He's the just and the justifier. So it's not legal fiction if it's actually a legal judiciary term.

And you can demonstrate that in the Greek Septuagint and Exodus chapter 23,

Deuteronomy 25, and in the Proverbs, to count, to impute. Now, he's saying it's to legitimately acknowledge, oh, he's righteous.

Look at all the good works he's doing. Paul is saying you can't legatimae or you can't do works with a goal in mind in order to be declared righteous.

That's why it really, it's hard for me to listen to Matt say, yeah, I represented his position correctly when

I said, okay, I'm going to do my faith and my good works and I'm going to get justification as a result.

Well, then I earned it. It's my due. It's no longer of grace according to the

Apostle Paul. That's why he said that it must be of faith. Otherwise, it's of works.

He makes that comparison. Faith and grace go together and works and it's due go together.

That's why Romans 11, 6 talks about how if you bring works into the equation, it's no longer of grace.

So going back to the question, it's not legal fiction if it's actually a legal term. The question that we're talking about is what is the context?

Does the context not only allow for legal terminology, but do we get clues that it's terminology?

Yes, it was used in the Greek Septuagint. Look at the context clues that Paul is using.

He's talking about wages. He's talking about works or gods of mine, and he's talking about his due.

These are all legal terms. All right, Matt, any thoughts? Yeah, plenty of them.

I'll try to keep them brief. That's a perfect example.

The gold -plated coin. We all know Martin Luther used his dung analogy on snow, but notice that from my experience,

I have not heard a lot of reformed people use analogies that are consistent like that because it's like, what?

I'm really not changed. I'm really not different. So they won't use examples like that, not even to go in coin, not even dung.

I haven't heard any examples. They'll use a lot of transference. Well, transferring

Christ's righteousness, you and this and that, but they won't say like, you really haven't gone through a change, even though regeneration is something that it's a real interchange.

You're born again. You're an interchange. It's a real interchange. But yet I always thought that that was an instrument of justification that says, no, no, you're still the same.

You're just legally. So I look at that and it's like, no, that's a contradiction. The second thing is that, yeah, it's true that Father George Swarovski said that, yeah, imputed righteousness is a doctrine of a legal fiction that we should expunge from our thinking.

So it sounds like that's what he's saying. But when I look at the imputed righteousness, again, you can't go to the

Old Testament and skip out all the other passages that don't even talk about anything legal when they're just talking about what something is or what something is not.

They're reckoning something that is or reckoning something is not. It's not just legal passages.

And again, the charge thing in Romans 8, again, is that in a courtroom? Yeah, you could use that charge terminology, but in what context are they using it?

Because I could charge somebody. I don't mean I'm being legal with them. That means

I'm being actual with them. I'm just using the word charge. I charge you or basically I'm telling you that this is what you did.

The whole emphasis is that, but they're making an emphasis on this legal stuff that when you just read the scripture, that's not the narrative of the story of what he's striving to say.

I can use elements of anything I want, but what do I mean when I tell them my narrative?

That's what I want you to focus on. Not, oh, he uses legal term, therefore it's legal. It's like, no, no, no, but again, that's what happens when you continue to go ahead and make an emphasis on things that I really don't see in scripture, especially with Abraham.

He stole his faith and he counted it as righteousness. There was no transference of unrighteousness, righteousness.

That wasn't there. That's why I'm still at loss of words unless it's something that I'm missing.

Can I say something real quick, Marlon? Yeah, go ahead. Matt, you'll appreciate this.

I don't really like the dung analogy that Martin Luther used either, but I want you to notice this.

Even your side would acknowledge that when we're in Christ, we're still going to have dung in our lives.

We're still going to sin, and yet there is a transformation. You and I have the transformation at a different place and time.

I'm saying that the unregenerate man does not seek God. There's none good. There's none righteous.

No one seeks after God, but God changes us, regenerates us.

Now we have new desires. So when he works faith into us and we look to Jesus in saving faith and we love him, then we receive his righteousness imputed to us.

I know you reject that, but I'm just saying even your side would acknowledge that there is still dung, right?

There is still sin that we need sanctification for, and I don't think you really believe that we are glorified now.

I wanted to sneak that in there. Right. Yes. All right.

This is our last question of the night, a super chat, and thank you once again, Josh, for the super chat.

This is for you, Matt. Can you explain how 1 John 2 .19 in its context does not contradict his view?

Okay. Well, let me go ahead and look it up. 1

John 2 .19. It says here, is this what

I think it is? They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.

But they went out. What? In order to what? In order that it might be shown that all of them are not of us.

Now, what does he mean in this passage? Obviously, if you look at all of John's talking about who these people are, you will come to the inevitable conclusion that he's talking about the

Gnostics. The Gnostics were real, actual people who believed in some interesting stuff.

From John's experience, just like with Paul, with Judaizers, they came in to spy out the and things like that.

Okay. Well, John, he has the same problem. He's Gnostics. He says, look, if you don't believe that Jesus came in the flesh, you're an antichrist.

So those are the people that came into the church, apparently tried to corrupt it.

The church said, no, we're not having that. And from there, they left. That's the crowd that he's talking about.

That's real different from removing that crowd context. And after that,

I'm going to place in there people that claim that they were saved, but all of a sudden they're atheists now, no longer saved.

I'm going to place all them people into that context. And that's what I'm going to read it as. And man, does that verse make sense.

What? Until what? You decide to actually entertain or actually ask the thought of who is

John talking about? Because if he ain't talking about my group that I'm preaching, I can't say that no more.

And I read the crowd and I'm like, wait a minute. He didn't believe Christ in the flesh. Like, wait, these people once did believe that these jokers here, they never believed it.

And they were in the church. They were trying to go and corrupt it and do all these other things. Church said, no, look, that's what you see.

You even read some of the early church fathers. They'll talk to you about this, this stuff, how these people ended up trying to come into church.

That's the context. But if you don't know that, then, hey, it's any man's game to say what

John means. And so that's, I think that just, that's just plain, you know.

All right. Jeremiah, any thoughts? So I just want to say Josh Gibson, my boy right there.

And let me say something else, Matt. You're right. The Gnostics did possess the spirit of Antichrist, but Antichrist presents a true dichotomy.

You either have the spirit of Christ or you had the spirit of Antichrist. Of course,

Gnosticism possesses the spirit of Antichrist. Guess what? So does all false ideologies and worldviews that deny

Christ. Jesus said, you are either with me or you are against me. This is a true dichotomy.

And so 1 John presents the true dichotomy as well, all throughout 1

John. And I just want to simply point out in 519 of 1 John, he says, and we know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

You got those who are of God, the children of God, but you have unbelievers, the spirit of Antichrist.

They are of the devil, which are the antithesis of who Christ is. So yeah, you have a particular group of people, the

Gnostics that are Antichrist. So are the atheists. They are Antichrist in their own way, but that is the whole world that lies in the lap of the evil one.

So I think this scripture presents a problem for the worldview that says truly regenerate, born -again

Christians can lose their salvation because John is saying, no, they will manifest themselves if they are not truly of us.

Why? Because God's children, Christians, those who are born in the spirit, they will persevere to the end.

All right. I actually have one more super chat here. And this would be the last one.

This comes Jedediah and he's mad. He's going to show you some love, man. He said, what is your take on Romans chapter 10, verses nine through 10?

Oh man, I grew up on that Sunday school that thou shalt confess at the mouth of the Lord Jesus and believe in that heart that Christ has risen from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

I always, in my latter part of my life, always noticed some interesting things. One, confess, right?

That's something that you do. And of course you believe what in your heart that a lot of people try to put all these passages and say, man, your heart is evil and corrupt.

Who can know it? And blah, blah, blah. Well, now all of a sudden, well, he's saying, look, you need to go ahead and believe in your heart.

Just like Jesus says in Matthew 11 or 10, I think you need to forgive with your heart.

So obviously, the heart ain't that bad. Contextually speaking, you have to look at what they mean by this.

It's not so one dimensional flat line. And from there, it says in believing heart that Christ has risen from the dead, then thou shalt be saved.

That's definitely true. This is another thing I wanted to emphasize in the debate dialogue.

Why is it that when I find passages about justification, it talks about, yep, you were saved.

But then when I find passages about sanctification, it'll talk about your what?

Being saved. First Corinthians 15 and all these other ones that I can't pull up right now.

I turned my phone off a little bit. And then, you know, glorification, will be saved, right?

Adoption, we will be adopted. If faith alone is true, they should not be talking about sanctification and glorification like that at all.

Especially sanctification, basically. You shouldn't be talking like that. Leave all the saved language in the justification category.

But instead, they're like, no, this saves you. Like that. So that always has been an issue with me.

And I can go to all passages like that, especially when you have the ritual passages, baptism or the

Eucharist. If you do this, you will live forever. If you don't do this, you have no life in you. Like, Jesus, what do you mean?

Like, you just said that if we believe in you, we'll live forever. But now he's saying some other stuff.

So I'm like, oh, so there's the means of grace that goes through things that Jesus is talking about, you know?

So it gets into a whole bunch of other stuff. But that is my issue when

I look at faith alone, if that makes sense from a sin attitude.

All right. Jeremiah, any thoughts? Yeah. So I just want to say this, so it's really clear for the audience sake.

When you go back to the golden chain of redemption, go back to Romans chapter 8.

Those whom God justified, past tense, that means from God's perspective, it's a done deal.

Those who are justified are also glorified. It is a guarantee. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.

So us people that believe in faith alone, that justifies us. Of course, we will be glorified one day because God is doing the work.

So that was initially to Matt there. And I want to go to the question. For one, great passage, just like Matt said, learned this on Sunday school.

And I started thinking about something that is prevalent on the Protestant side of things is the sinner's prayer.

I believe the sinner's prayer is a work. And a lot of people that really push the sinner's prayer will go to this passage.

And I'm saying, look what it's actually saying, because it's not pushing towards a sinner's prayer. But if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is

Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. But what does confessing mean?

When you look into the word and the context and all of scripture, confessing is much more than saying words.

It's a whole heart transformation. So when you confess something, that is a byproduct of what your heart is like.

And so confessing is not merely just saying a set of words, but it's a heart condition.

I know that that's right because of the next verse, verse 10. For with the heart one believes, that's crucial to my point this whole time because faith is internal and of the heart.

It's not external works. For with the heart one believes and is justified.

That's the Protestant position. I mean, I really do think that is what we are contending for here. And with the mouth one confesses and is saved, it gives evidence of a changed heart.

And yeah, and we can understand the full range of salvation, which is justification, sanctification, and glorification.

It's a guarantee to happen. All right. Marlon, can you grace me?

Yeah, I got you. Because he responded to me. I just wanted to get one or two. Real quick,

I always point this out. If you look at Romans 8, it says, and those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to what?

Be saved? No, to be conformed to the image of the son. He predestined those whom he foreknew to undergo something that is a kind of sanctification.

But the problem is that God only does that to people who are already saved. They're already in.

So whatever predestining is going on is going on to people who jump in.

I'm going to predestine you to become more like Christ, conformed to the image of the son, sanctification. This is what's going to happen to you.

I'm predestining you for that. That's what I'm going to do. Now, I'm going to predestine to save you. No, he's predestining

Christians to go through a beautiful process. That's a gift he has. Plus, when it talks about those whom he foreknew, contextually speaking, this is

Paul doing a backdrop story. He's talking about the faithful Jews. Romans 11 -2,

God has not cast away his people, those whom he foreknew. He's talking about them. That's why we're so encouraged. Look at what he did to them.

Those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he also called, he also justified. Those whom

God did for them. That's why they're so encouraged further downwards. He says, man, we may be led by the sheep to the slaughter, but you know what?

It is all good. That's basically what he's talking about. That's the reason why this is right before Romans 9, which talks about the unfaithful

Jews. It just all lines up. I'll try to be brief.

I will just point out the text does not say of those of what God foresaw, and then all this take place.

It's of those whom he foreknew. Jesus said, depart from me, for I never knew you.

You'll appreciate this point. This is talking about a relational aspect. I think you agree.

He completely knows everything before the world began. This just shows us there was an intimate relationship for those who are going to be in Christ, who he knows in an intimate way.

So foreknow there doesn't mean just knowledge. It's almost foreloving of this intimate relationship.

I'm saying you can't tether that from all of who God is and his omniscience and his being everywhere and him being all powerful.

So I didn't want to press too much on that, but I think that's a crucial point to be made.

Right. Those whom he foreknew. Those whom he was already in relationship with. You know what

I mean? Yeah, that's all I'm saying. Yeah. Okay. All right, guys.

Good stuff. Appreciate you both. Very, very warming conversation. I appreciate you guys for camaraderie, for the proper dialogue.

I've had some rough ones in the past week, man. Had a couple of rough ones, but you guys definitely lighten the load there.

I appreciate you guys. And Matt, I don't think you got your gift yet.

I need an address where I can get that gift to, the gift that I sent you got booted back to me. So we'll talk about that after the show.

And Jeremiah, I think you got your gift, right? I think you got yours, right? Yeah. Where can I order the gospel t -shirt?

The gospel t -shirt. Oh, the shirts? I don't know. I ain't got them out yet, man. I got to work on that production, dawg.

Good stuff, guys. I appreciate you guys. I'll get you some free advertisement. All right, man. Hopefully we can work something out there.

We can work something out there, man. But I thank you guys for coming on the Gospel Truth. I really enjoyed this debate, man.

And I look forward to doing it again sometime. All right. Thank you so much, Marlon. Thank you,

Marlon. It's been wonderful. It's been wonderful, man. I hope we can continue to reach out to one another.

And I love you, brother. And I love talking about God's word. I will. Same here. You are my brother from afar.

I mean that with all my heart. You have an amazing heart and love for Christ. I was seeing it and feeling it through everything you were saying.

I'm serious. God bless you and your wife, man. All right. Thank you. You too. God bless y 'all. All right.

Take care, guys. God bless. All right. Another great debate.

I appreciate these type of debates. These debates are great, right? Where people communicate and they can actually hear each other.

They can actually deal with the arguments. You know, those are the great debates, man. And that's why I like doing this.

This adds to the likability, the enjoyment of hosting these debates because I get to see two guys come on and know how to properly deal with the arguments, man.

And know how to attack the arguments instead of attacking a person. You know, and that makes for a great, great debate.

I'm sorry, everyone. I wasn't able to get to all the questions. I know we had a lot of questions, but the super chats are coming in.

And I'm not complaining, that's for sure. But the super chats do get priority. And so I thank you guys for participating in this debate.

And I just can't close this debate or close the show out without sharing the gospel truth.

We talked a lot about imputation and how Christ, his righteousness was imputed on those who he called out of sin.

And that righteousness is important, that imputation of Christ. We can't do it on our own.

We can't work our way into salvation. This is a working that God does alone.

And he imputes his righteousness on us. He bears our sin. He takes that sin away from us that we are guilty of and he imputes his righteousness on us.

And we can't, and that's the gospel. That's the gospel truth. You know what I mean? That's the core aspects of the gospel.

That's why as believers, we need to be thankful for what Christ has done.

Him choosing us, electing us and calling us out our sin when he didn't have to.

We're all enemies of God. We are all hostile towards God. And it's by his grace and his grace alone that he chose to save some of his enemies and bring them out of their sin.

All right. So I just want to emphasize the importance of the gospel. And I pray that if you're listening to this debate and perhaps

God can use this debate as a means to bring you to his salvation. And I pray that this was a helpful debate and it was a blessing to you.

And that's it. That's all I wanted to say about the gospel, man. So just believe on Christ.

I pray that God does an amazing work in your heart and that God would transform your heart and that you will come to Christ. And, you know, as always, man, you know,

I just want to encourage you to like and follow, please like and follow the gospel truth. Subscribe, please subscribe, support the ministry at the very least by hitting that subscribe button.

If you don't plan on doing any other form of support, just support the ministry by hitting that subscribe button.

That said, I do want to get out of here. Go ahead and enjoy the rest of the evening with my family. I thank you for joining me on this episode of the gospel truth.