Back to Rome?

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we're answering one of your questions, and a common question we receive quite often, do

Roman Catholics go to heaven? That's a great question. We're going to actually contrast the historic

Roman Catholic perspective and what we would say the Protestant Reformation understanding of justification, and then we're going to change the conversation a little bit to are there evangelicals, and even maybe those who are confessionally

Reformed, going back to Rome, and maybe holding to perspectives of justification that are very close to the

Roman Catholic view. And in the members podcast, we look at this whole entire conversation from a pastoral perspective, and what it is that really kind of boils

Justin and I's blood when we think about this conversation. We hope you enjoy. Hey guys, as a quick reminder, if you'd like to join

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To learn more about how to support Theocast, simply visit theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective. The hosts today are

Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and I'm Jon Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

It's good to be with you today, Justin. We've been having a long conversation before the podcast today, but one of the conversations we had was a particular show we've been watching recently.

So true, bro. Good to be behind the mic with you. Big thing in my life recently.

I don't know. That's an overstatement. Not a big thing, but it's a thing in my life lately. And I've brought my wife into this, is the documentary series on ESPN right now called

The Last Dance on the Chicago Bulls dynasty, Michael Jordan, all of that good stuff. I know that many, many people are watching it, and it trends on Twitter pretty much every weekend because the episodes come out on Sunday, two at a time, and I've really enjoyed it.

When I was young, growing up, I thought Michael Jordan was larger than life.

I can remember. I'm watching this documentary, and I'm telling my wife, like, baby, I remember. I was six years old, and I remember when the

Bulls played the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals in 1989, and I remember all this stuff.

It's just like taking me down memory lane, and I've just thoroughly enjoyed learning things that I was completely unaware of as a young kid in terms of the stuff going on behind the scenes with the sort of distrust of the front office that existed there and some of the drama that was behind the scenes.

I mean, obviously being older now, it surprises me not at all that these things were going on and the kind of ego management that had to take place and all these things, but it's just been a thoroughly enjoyable watch for me.

I love sports. I'm unashamed about that, and the Bulls dynasty in the 90s was, I think, one of the cooler dynasties in sports franchises, certainly in my lifetime.

I mean, maybe in the last 50 -plus years, I think they were unique. Jordan is a once -in -a -generation kind of athlete, competitive off the charts.

Like, I'm a very competitive person, and if we're going to talk about comparative righteousness, I feel a little bit better about how competitive

I am after watching Jordan. I'm even looking at my wife. I'm like, baby, at least I'm not that bad.

I mean, so Mike, thank you for that, bro. Not that you're ever going to listen, but really enjoyed watching him play basketball.

You never know. Really enjoying the series, and I know I'm not alone in that.

Yeah, well, even comparing him with Tiger. Tiger has that same weird drive of competitive nature.

Another thing that was amazing to me, just quick interjection, if you think about Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen both,

Jordan famously didn't make the varsity team in his high school when he was a 10th grader, but grew, kind of physically matured later in high school and became one of the best players in the country in his last two years as a high school player.

Well, Scottie Pippen didn't even get a college scholarship offer. I mean, he's at the University of Central Arkansas as an equipment manager, and they have guys fail out of school, scholarships become available, and they had seen that he could hoop a little bit, and they're like, well, let's just bring this guy on the team.

And then as a college student, between his freshman and sophomore year, he grows several inches and turns into this very long guy that still has guard -like ball skills and everything else.

It's just wild to see that happen so often in sport. You're not that great as a high school player, or maybe early in your college career, and then a guy just explodes physically.

And then all we remember is not that that dude didn't even get a college scholarship. We're like, no, that guy's a

Hall of Fame player. And it's just a neat thought. Yeah, I know maybe some of you aren't nerding out like we are, but we always enjoy a good story.

A couple other things for you guys to know about Theocast. If you aren't on our email list, or on social media, you may not have heard, but we have a new podcast that we started called

Ask Theocast. It's three to five minutes where we answer your questions and common theological questions.

We've answered things like, what is the law gospel distinction? What is antinomianism? What is the redemptive historic understanding of the

Bible? Things like that. And then we're going to have all of your questions, which are coming in, are great.

You can go to AskTheocast .com to ask your questions. Another great announcement. We have two of them.

We have a new service, a new feature available for all of our members. We know for years, for those of you that have been supporting

Theocast, you'd have to go to our website to listen to our premium content. Not anymore. Not anymore.

You can go and download all 300 plus of our archived episodes and listen to them right on your phone through your favorite podcast app.

So that's a new feature that's available. And if you want access to the members podcast and also the archive, you can do that now right on your phone.

Just go to Theocast .org slash members. That feature where you can have all the podcasts on your phone through your podcast app.

I mean, I almost feel like we need to have a moment and just acknowledge the gravity of the situation.

I mean, this is like an Ebenezer situation for Theocast. It is. And if people have been listening to this for a while,

I mean, this has been a common refrain for a minute. So it's exciting that this is now available.

More than a dozen. Yeah. We've had so many people request this. And you know, it's a new technology. It's not available. Not all podcasts have this.

So we've worked about six months to pull this off. And it's because of the membership pieces and everything else that exists.

And then lastly, we have a book. It may be out by now, but we have a book on assurance that will be available.

So it's something we're very passionate about. It's a primer. We started a primer series where we're going to do small books that cover very important topics.

And assurance is one of those. And you can go to the website to learn more about that. Well, Justin, what are we talking about?

Speaking of assurance, what are we talking about today? Yeah, John. Speaking of assurance and speaking of Ask Theocast, we had a question submitted by a listener that we want to address here today on the podcast.

A brother wrote into us and asked how accurate does somebody's theology need to be in order for them to be saved?

And in particular, he had in mind a number of his Roman Catholic friends and people close to him.

Because he said, you know, I have these Roman Catholic people in my life who are trusting

Christ for their salvation and are looking to Him for their standing before God.

But yet, they have these very aberrant views on other issues of doctrine and practice. And what am I to make of that?

And so, in one sense, his question is, will there be Roman Catholics in heaven, or is it a situation,

I should say, where all Roman Catholics, because of the teaching of their church, will be condemned? Well, to answer your question, if there needs to be 100 % accuracy in all our theology, then no one will make it to heaven, other than those who were,

I guess, inspired when writing Scripture. But no, there are levels of disagreement that is okay because they aren't based upon our justification.

And this happens. This is why there's different denominations. We, as 1689

Atlanta Baptist Confession, we disagree with our Lutheran brothers, our Presbyterian brothers, and even some of our

Baptist brothers who are not Calvinist. But those disagreements, I would not call any of them non -evangelical or that their doctrine they're holding to is heretical or anti -gospel because what the ground of their salvation is on is

Christ alone. And therefore, I can say, praise be to God, they are my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

When it comes to Roman Catholic theology, that is a little bit more complicated because if a consistent

Catholic holds to the historic teachings of the Roman Catholic church, they do not believe that one is justified by faith alone.

They do believe in Jesus Christ. They trust in him. If you asked a

Roman Catholic at any level, whether they were Orthodox or new to the faith, do you have faith in Jesus Christ that he died on the cross for sins?

They would say yes. Wholeheartedly, they would say yes. And even, I mean, this isn't a podcast about Mormons, but Mormons would say the same thing.

But the question then becomes, is that sufficient for your right standing before God?

And the answer to that would be no. And so the way I would answer this is that I do believe that Roman Catholics who grew up in the system or it doesn't matter how long they've been in it, that there will be some in heaven because they are going to go against, whether willingly or not, they're going to go against the historic teaching and they believe in Jesus Christ alone to be sufficient for their salvation.

I personally call those people inconsistent Catholics because they're not agreeing with their church's doctrine.

But yet, if they believe in Jesus Christ alone, and to be clear, a lot of the Roman Catholic teaching is very accurate.

I mean, we hold to the same understanding of the virgin birth of Mary, the Trinity, the eternality of God.

I mean, all of that, we agree with. Roman Catholics, by definition, hold to the ecumenical creeds, which we do too.

Exactly. But that would be my answer, is that those who would either knowingly or unknowingly deny the foundation theology of salvation of the

Roman Catholic church, those people will definitely be, according to scripture, justified. Yeah, I agree with you.

You used the phrase, inconsistent Catholics will be in heaven. I think that's helpful. A consistent

Catholic who holds to the official teaching of the Roman church, we would understand to be denying the gospel.

One way I might put it is, there are going to be many Roman Catholics in heaven in spite of the official teaching of their church, where they, in spite of many of the things that their church would formally teach and hold to, they are trusting

Christ alone for their standing before God entirely, and they understand that Jesus has saved them.

This hits close to home for me. My wife is Italian, and her grandfather came over from Italy and died here in the

States as a part of the Roman Catholic church. My wife remembers having a number of conversations with her grandfather over the course of years where he was very clear that he was trusting in Jesus and Jesus only for his salvation.

My wife's parents were Protestants, and my wife obviously is too. These conversations matter a lot to us when we're dealing with loved ones and family members, and so my wife would say,

I don't know, only God knows, but I really think that my grandfather was a

Christian. I mean, he was meaning to trust Christ in spite of the fact that he was in the church of Rome. I think there are many people that would fit that description, but we want to be really clear about the differences that do exist between Reformation theology and Roman Catholic theology.

Five hundred plus years ago, the Protestant Reformation started in a recognizable way as people look back on history.

In 1517 is the year that most people point to with some of the events that transpired there. If we think about the

Reformation itself, it's been said by many, and we agree, that the formal battle of the

Reformation was over sola scriptura. That is meaning that Scripture alone is the only ultimate and final authority for the matters of doctrine and practice, but the material battle, the heart and soul of the

Reformation, if you will, was over sola fide, that being faith alone.

So the answer to the question, how is a sinner saved and reconciled to a holy God? It is by faith alone, in Christ alone, grounded in the grace of God alone.

It has nothing to do with our works or our obedience. It's all about the works and the obedience and the merits of Christ applied to sinners by faith, and so that is the watershed.

That's the real dividing line. When the rubber meets the road, the difference between being a Reformed Christian and being a

Roman Catholic is that we believe we can be assured of salvation in Christ by faith, and we believe that Jesus has done everything, and we don't achieve righteousness, but rather we receive righteousness by faith in Jesus.

What we want to do now for a few minutes is highlight these distinctions using some language from the

Council of Trent, which occurred from the mid -1540s to the mid -1560s in response to the

Protestant Reformation. It was a Roman Catholic ecumenical council, and we want to compare those teachings to Reformation theology as articulated in the 1689

London Baptist Confession. Just a really quick note before I throw it back over to John. The 1689 is worded almost identically to the

Westminster Confession from the 1640s and the Savoy Declaration that occurred in the 1650s, the

Westminster Confession being a Presbyterian document and then the Savoy Declaration being written by those known as independents or congregationalists in the middle of the 1600s, so we're all speaking the same language of the

Reformation from the 17th century. So, John, go. As it relates to justification by faith alone, historically speaking, those who would claim a

Protestant Reformation theology, we are all going to agree on the same conclusions. Lutherans, Presbyterians, independents,

Baptists. Historically speaking, those who would hold to Protestant or those who are protesting

Rome would be primarily in relation to our justification and our sanctification.

Those are the two doctrines. Just to be clarified before we show you the distinctions, one of the issues is that Rome mixed the two, and this is going to become very important later when we bring this up about modern evangelicalism.

Rome mixed justification and sanctification. They became one and intertwined.

You have to separate those categories because if you don't and you don't get the order that's called order salutis or the order of salvation right, then one, you lose assurance, and two, you lose the gospel, absolutely lose the gospel.

So, a good example of what I mean by mixing the two is something that Justin has mentioned in the past.

It is Council of Trent, Session 6, Canon 24. Now, this is not a theology that they have necessarily denied.

There's no document that says we have rejected these canons. We don't believe in this teaching anymore. If you are going to be catechized by Rome, this is what you will learn as part of their catechesis, part of their training.

If you're new to the word catechism, it means training. Catechism is definitely not a

Roman Catholic thing, just we catechize as well. Anyways, to be trained by Rome, it says this, if anyone says that the justice or justification received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of the increase, let him be anathematized, or another way to say that is cursed.

You're going to be cursed by God and by church, condemned as guilty if you believe that you are saved by faith alone and that your works are the fruit of your justification, which is the

Protestant Reformation perspective. We believe that your good works are the works of the

Spirit that are given to you after your regeneration. Rome is saying your good works not only justify you, but they increase your justification or they sustain your justification.

That would be a clear distinction. Yeah, it's critical that we make that distinction, that we understand that good works flow out of justification, that they are in no way a part of it.

We're going to unpack that more in just a moment. Maybe to speak from the positive side of things from our perspective in terms of what is accurate biblically,

I want to turn our attention now to Chapter 11, Paragraph 1 on justification from the 1689

London Baptist Confession. Again, this is going to read identical to the Westminster Confession and the

Savoy Declaration. Chapter 11, Paragraph 1 of the 1689 reads this way, Those God effectually calls,

He also freely justifies. He does this not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and accounting and accepting them as righteous.

That's a huge piece. It's not that righteousness is infused into us and we somehow become inherently righteous.

It's that we are accounted as righteous. How does this happen? The statement goes on.

He does this for Christ's sake alone and not for anything produced in them or done by them.

It's very clear. It's for Christ's sake alone and it's not because of anything that's produced in us and it's not because of anything that we have done that God counts us righteous.

We go on. He does not impute faith itself, the act of believing or any other gospel obedience to them as their righteousness.

Instead, He imputes Christ's active obedience to the whole law and passive obedience in His death as their whole and only righteousness by faith.

These words are precise and wonderful that it is by faith.

The faith is the vehicle. It's the means. It's the mechanism by which the righteousness of Jesus in obeying the law perfectly and the merits of His death where He satisfied for our sin and died under the law.

Those things are applied to us and we are now in Christ Jesus and vitally united to Him by faith, not by anything that we have done.

The last sentence of the paragraph reads this way. This faith is not self -generated. It is the gift of God.

Salvation, in other words, belongs to the Lord. God does it. We don't do it.

We are recipients of the grace of God in Christ Jesus and we receive the merits and the works and the righteousness, the holiness, the satisfaction of Christ by faith alone, and we are saved by Christ.

We are very clear that it is nothing that we do or anything that's produced in us by way of fruit is the groundwork of our justification and standing before the

Lord. It could never be that. We're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called

Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. We the hosts put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

You can get this at theocast .org slash primer. If you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

You can do that by joining our Total Access membership. That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry.

You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

Some of you may be brand new to confessional theology. You may have stumbled across this looking up something or someone referred this to.

You need to understand that we aren't moving from one system that is

Roman to another system. You need to understand that the confessions are what we would say abbreviations of scripture.

It helps systematize and give a brief explanation that is historically accepted by confessing believers.

At the bottom of what Justin just read is if you were to take all of these scriptures and print them out, you would come to the same conclusion.

You have Romans 3 .24, you have Ephesians 1 .7, 1 Corinthians 1 .30, Philippians 3 .8, Ephesians 2 .8

and 9, John 1 .12, Romans 5 .17. You take one paragraph that says what these scriptures are teaching is this, and it helps provide an explanation.

This is the same thing as a sermon. If you were to preach a sermon, you're bringing clarity to all of scripture.

Justin Perdue Correct. What confessions are doing essentially is systematic theology. What systematic theology is, is to survey the scripture in its totality and say this is what the

Bible teaches about this doctrine. In particular, chapter 11 is on justification in our confession.

All it is is a group of men situated in the 17th century looking to other like -minded believers who had also produced very similar confessions, and they all together corporately look to the

Bible and say, what does the Bible teach about justification? How can we, in a very clear way, articulate this in a number of paragraphs to summarize the

Bible's teaching on this topic? It's very helpful because what we're doing is, in going to our confession, we're not saying the confession is the authority.

We're saying the Bible is the authority, and this confession is a helpful, historically tested document that gives us some clarity and sheds some light and illuminates scripture for us.

We are doing the exercise of theology as a corporate group of people who live now, and we're doing it with people who are long dead, and we're looking to the

Bible to understand what it says about, in this case, justification. Right, and that's what sola scriptura means, is that the authority of what scripture means comes from scripture itself, which is contra to the

Reformation or to Roman Catholic theology, where the authority rests within the interpretation of the church, and this is a serious battle that happened.

Right, authority of the Pope. So, just to help you understand, to word it this way, what does the

Bible say about justification? Well, here's a helpful conclusion from all of scripture, and so this is now one of the things, after reading this paragraph, one will say, and this is, of course, what the

Roman Catholic Church will point to immediately, is, well, what about James chapter 2, John, or Justin, or the

Reformation? It's very clear there that James says you have to do works. Well, they have a paragraph that helps explain that.

It's the next paragraph, it's 11 .2. Faith that receives and rests on Christ and his righteousness is the only instrument of justification.

So, just to clarify, and they point to Romans 3 .28 for that. Yet, it does not occur by itself in the person justified, but it is always accompanied by every other saving grace.

It is not a dead faith, but works through love. This is Galatians 5 .6,

and then in James 2 .17. What they are saying is, it is the result of the grace received.

It cannot be the ground of the grace received, meaning that those who are justified, who are regenerate, who receive the gift of faith,

Ephesians 2 .89, from that gift, believers will see the fruit of the

Spirit in their life. It does not say at what level, it just says it will be evident there.

So, that's where we wholeheartedly believe that Christians will do good works.

We're never told to what level, but the evidence of it is there. So, as I said before, what the confession is trying to help the believer understand from scripture is that it is separating how you're standing before God versus your obedience to God.

You cannot mix those two together. That's called order of salutis, right?

It's the order in which you are saved, and part of that salvation is you receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit, faith, you regenerate it, you come to life. Once you come to life, then you obey.

What the Roman Catholic system is doing here and what we're learning, and I'm going to read another counsel here that's going to kind of lead us into the next conversation, is that they're mixing the two and requiring both for right standing before God.

Justin Perdue Let me interject something really quick before you go to Canon 30, John. I think if we're going to talk about the distinctions between us and Rome, Reformation Theology in Rome, a couple of thoughts, and this will transition nicely to what you're going to read for us.

First thought, as we've already mentioned at least once in the podcast, no Roman Catholic is going to dismiss faith.

Any Roman Catholic is going to acknowledge the place of faith and the value of faith, the goodness of faith in Christ.

Yes, I believe in Jesus. I've been taught to believe in Christ. Well, when we read, for example, Paul's letter to the Galatians, it's very clear that in that context where Paul is writing to the church and saying,

I can't believe how quickly you've turned to a different gospel, not that there is another one. He's writing into a situation where it's not as though faith in Jesus has been rejected altogether.

It's that works of the law have been put next to faith in Christ as what's required for righteousness.

So yes, believe in Jesus, but also be circumcised. Yes, believe in Jesus, but also do these works of the law.

Roman Catholicism is another example. There's nothing new under the sun. It's another example of what

I would call Jesus plus theology. Yes, believe in Christ, but also cooperate with the grace of God in the sacraments.

Yes, believe in Jesus Christ, but also do these good works and be obedient in these ways so that you will preserve or increase your justification.

If you're not doing these things or not doing them well enough, then there will be payment required from you in some capacity.

The other thought, second thought, which will transition nicely to Canon 30, the difference in one sense too between us and Rome is that we understand that salvation, the work of redemption is over.

It's completely done. It's finished. So when Jesus on the cross said, it is finished, he meant what he said.

Atonement has been accomplished. Satisfaction for sin has been made. Righteousness has been fulfilled, and now it is counted in its totality, in its completeness.

It is counted to wretched sinners by faith. It has nothing to do with what they've done.

It has nothing to do with what they will do or with what's going to be produced in them. They are saved by me, and it's applied to them by faith, and so it's over.

We talk about the gospel being objective. It's outside of us, and we also talk about the gospel being a declarative reality in that it's done, and Rome does not believe that because there is still something the sinner has to do because it's not really complete.

John, go. That's right. Well, so just to read a section of the next paragraph, which is 11 .3,

it says, By his obedience in death, Christ fully paid the debt of all those who are justified.

He endured in their place the penalty they deserved. By this sacrifice of himself in his bloodshed on the cross, he legitimately, really, and fully satisfied

God's justice on their behalf. Here they quote Hebrews 12 .14, which says,

For by a single offering, which is Christ, he has perfected, meaning that something can't be perfect if it's still lacking.

He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. So, this is the clarification, or this is the explanation that they're giving as relates to Hebrews 10 .14.

Hebrews 10 .14 is a refrigerator verse, man. That's right. Like, that's an epic verse. Right.

So, what we are saying is that scripture teaches that the blood of Christ shed on the cross was sufficient.

It was the final sacrifice. No longer is there needing to be bloodshed by animals.

There's no longer sacrificial systems. It is Jesus Christ's blood on the cross. It's always been Jesus Christ's blood on the cross.

When the gospel was preached to Adam and Eve, it was the sufficiency of something outside of themselves.

It was never the animal sacrificial system. So, the moment that you say you need something else.

So, let me put this back to the counsel of Trent. Please do. This is

Kenneth 30. It says, If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification, the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment is so blotted out to every repentant sinner that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged, either in this world or in purgatory, before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathematized.

So, they make it very clear that they don't believe that Jesus Christ sacrificed.

It's almost like Jesus paid for most of it. Now, you need to do your part. That's how they're wording it.

Because they said, let me just clarify, and it's a little bit older English. It says,

If anyone says that after the reception of the grace, so what they're saying is, after you receive justification, the guilt is so remitted, it's so gone, it's not there, and the debt of eternal punishment, which you still owe

God, is so blotted out to every repentant sinner that no debt of temporal punishment remains.

So, what they're saying is, even after you received forgiveness, you still have a little bit of debt left to pay, and that's what you pay off here while you're here.

If you can't fully pay it off here, then you got to pay it off in purgatory. That is what we would say, not what scripture at large teaches.

The authoritative scripture teaches that we have received full payment when Christ died on the cross.

Full payment, and then also, as we've stated from 11 .1 and 11 .3 from the 1689, it's the payment piece, but it's also his active obedience to the law.

So, the penalty has been paid in full, and all of the righteousness and holiness required has already been counted to us.

This is maybe a good place to transition, John, to some of the concerns that we have about evangelicalism today, and even amongst some who would claim the label of reformed.

Right. The idea that the penalty is fully paid is not that controversial, but then

I think sometimes the truth that the holiness and the righteousness required is already ours in Jesus, it produces some ripples and some waves,

I think, for many people. When you say that, because we say this all the time on Theocast, we're very clear that it's over and Jesus has done it, and all the righteousness and holiness required is already ours, and we're resting in Christ, and there will be fruit of the

Spirit produced in us, and our lives will be transformed. That's true, but we are already safe, and there is nothing left to be done.

There is no work left to be performed. When you start talking like that, people wig out, and they charge you with all kinds of things.

The most common thing that will be hurled at people like us is that we are against the law.

We're antinomian. We don't think that Christians need to concern themselves with how they live, and we're like, it's not what we're saying.

We don't need to go there right now. I want to go back just to highlight a huge problem that I think exists in evangelicalism, even amongst those that might claim the label reformed.

Go back to that Session Six, Canon 24 piece from the Council of Trent, where there's the language about justification and how our good works preserve and increase the justification obtained by faith.

No Protestant, no evangelical is going to say that our justification is increased by our good works, but there is a lot of teaching and preaching and counseling out there that makes it sound a heck of a lot like our justification is preserved by our obedience and good works.

There's a lot of preaching and teaching that's done in a threatening way where it sounds this way.

If you're not obeying appropriately, if you're not dedicated enough or disciplined enough or sincere enough, and if your good works are not there to the extent that they need to be – now, again,

I'm not sure who defines that standard – but if there are not enough good works there, then you may very well not be justified.

You've trusted Christ, but now you better get to work as though there is something left to be accomplished.

In light of the confessions and the clear teaching of Scripture here at Theocast, we could not be more strongly opposed to that kind of thinking and that kind of teaching.

You need to keep yourself in good standing before the Lord through your obedience. Absolutely not.

You are in good standing before the Lord in Christ Jesus by faith. Now live in him.

Of course, we're going to concern ourselves with what the Scripture says about how we're to live. We obey now because we can.

We've been delivered from the dominion of sin, and we're now in Christ by faith and have been vitally united to him and raised to walk in newness of life.

Praise the Lord. But we're not doing any of those things for merit, and we're not doing any of those things to keep ourselves justified.

We're not doing any of those things to contribute somehow to our final salvation. We understand that's secure.

It's absolutely over to the extent that Christ is sitting down in heaven. This always comes from a concern that you won't take serious the responsibility of Christianity if you're assured.

They're coming from a good place. They want people to take serious the holiness of God. They want people to take serious their own holiness, but the mistake that you make is that to motivate people out of fear when the gospel removes all fear and doubt.

There is no doubt. There is no fear. Let me put it in a biblical.

If you want me to quote Scripture to you, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That means you cannot be condemned, which removes fear and doubt, because fear and doubt come from an insecurity.

I don't know. Will I be condemned for this? Can I be counted guilty?

Paul says you will not be counted guilty, not for past, present, or future sins, because if you're clothed in the righteousness of Christ, if you're an adopted child by faith, you have zero reasons to fear or doubt.

You hear this, and Paul even says, now, some of you may say, well, that means I can just test the grace of God and go on sinning, and he says, may it never be.

I understand the motivation behind it. I don't agree with it, but it is logical, and that's what's so hard about Scripture is that Scripture, Chad Burr wrote this book called

Upside -Down Spirituality, because the world thinks you should believe about God this way, and then you read the

Bible, and it's the exact opposite. You must die to live. You must give up all to gain all.

It's this complete contradiction of logic. It's counterintuitive to us.

We think that in order to produce righteous living, there has to be some sort of skin in the game.

There has to be some sort of motivation in terms of escape of punishment or merit, and the Scripture says, no, actually, this is supernatural.

This is something that the Holy Spirit of God produces in those who are born again. The redeemed obey not out of fear and not for merit.

The redeemed obey because they're safe, because they've been united to Jesus, because they're changed, and because they love

God, because it's for their joy and for their good. It blesses their neighbor. I could go on and on and on.

This is why the redeemed obey. I want to make an observation really quickly, John, before I maybe pivot to one last conversation piece for this regular portion of the podcast.

What you said is about Rome that's right. There was a concern that people live morally upright lives and live lives that are characterized by holiness.

This has always been true throughout the history of the church. There have been a number of what I would call holiness movements over the last 2 ,000 years.

They all are concerned with this issue. If you tell people that it's over and that there's nothing that they must do in order to be saved, then people will not live in an upright fashion.

People are going to run off into licentiousness. They're going to send the daylights out of the thing, so we can't tell them that.

We've got to really put some weight on them to obey and to be holy.

I could name all kinds of movements that would be characterized by this. Methodism is one.

Wesleyan theology was a response to Reformation theology. We can't tell people this or they're going to live licentiously and all this stuff.

The entire project of revivalism is all centered around this, and it's critical that we understand that the evangelical church in America hails from all of that.

It is so interwoven with not only pietism, which is something that we talk about all the time, but revivalism is just part of the

DNA of the evangelical church. The evangelical church in America, by and large, is a holiness movement.

It's very concerned with moral transformation. We want to say, look, we're all for moral transformation.

We're all for the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We just are standing on the tabletops and are pounding the desk, so to speak, to contend for the truth of the gospel and the sufficiency of Christ to save sinners.

The next thing, John, that I might make an observation here, and we'll see where this goes and we'll wrap this up soon.

I think we can look back over the last decade and see very clearly some really concerning tendencies amongst evangelicals.

Around 2012 -2013, some may be familiar with this. If you're not, don't worry about it. There arose a really,

I would say, intense, even ferocious debate amongst evangelicals, in particular amongst

Calvinistic evangelicals over the issue of sanctification. The issues were prompted by some moral failures of some prominent pastors, and that doesn't need to be talked about right now.

Then it became this conversation about, well, is sanctification, the process by which we are being conformed to the image of Jesus and being made more holy, is that something where God alone does the work, or is it something where we do work along with God?

Is it monergistic, one worker being God? Is it synergistic, two workers, God and us? I think that many well -meaning

Calvinistic evangelicals became Roman Catholic in how they started to talk about obedience and sanctification during that time.

There were all kinds of well -intended but really unhelpful overreactions to some prominent failures and some of the stuff that was being said and written that I think have just really borne bad fruit in the evangelical church.

Many people don't really have the tools with which to see this stuff. They're not equipped to be able to discern all of these things.

I just think whenever you start to weave works into the groundwork of salvation in any way, you are making your way back to Rome and you are standing against the flow of Protestant Reformation theology.

There were many guys that were writing and saying stuff like that seven, eight years ago and are still maintaining those positions.

You might acquire the right to eternal life by faith alone, but you will be finally saved by faith plus works.

Jon Moffitt Yeah, there is.

The sad part is it's not even over. There are still people writing things like that today.

We've made mention to them in the past and maybe we'll put them in the notes here. We've made comments about just recent articles by Mark Jones and John Piper and even

Kevin DeYoung, just concerns where they are not being clear. Because of their,

I would say, lack of clarity, they cause confusion. Here's the thing.

What's interesting to me is that every evangelical believes that God is sovereign, flat out.

If you deny that, I don't know if you—I mean, it'd be hard to be evangelical if you deny the sovereignty of God.

It'd be really complicated, I think, in your theology. So, that means to be sovereign is to know and do whatever it is that you want.

So, God is all -knowing and he can do whatever he wants. No one can stay his hand, Daniel 439, right?

So, when someone tells me that God has to look to your good works to determine the genuineness of your faith, that means that God doesn't know something, that he is dependent upon you to determine his actions.

So, he will determine that you basically deserve salvation because you did enough good works.

Well, that is a reason to boast. And Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 says that you receive the gift of faith by grace so that you don't boast.

So, at the end of your life, you walk up to Jesus and you say, yeah, I mean, look, obviously

I'm a believer because look at what I did for you. You now have a reason to boast. And this is what

Justin said earlier. Salvation is of the Lord. God knows before the foundations of the world,

Ephesians 2, God knows before the foundations of the world who he chose that would be in him, that would be in Christ.

He never looks to your obedience to determine your justification, ever.

Now, the church looks to your obedience to determine whether your confession meets your regeneration.

This is where church discipline comes into play. This is where Galatians 5 and 6 come into play because, listen, if a brother's caught in sin, go to such a one.

And if they're unwilling to repent, then we have to treat them as an unbeliever, meaning that they need to be treated like they need the gospel again.

God does not need your good works and never will look to your good works to justify you. So, when someone tells me at the end of your life,

God's going to look at you, and this is exactly what has been told by these men that I have mentioned before, that God at the end of your life will look to see if you have enough godliness to determine whether you're his child or not.

I'm sorry, that sounds like a God who doesn't know his own children and knows to whom he has set his heart on to save.

Justin Perdue Yeah, and God does know all of his own. And even Matthew 7, it comes to mind when people come to Jesus and say,

Lord, Lord, I did all these things. He says, depart from me, I never knew you. It's very clear that he knows who his own are.

I think a very good observation about that text could be made that I don't have time to unpack right now, that those people are claiming their good works in Jesus' name as the reason that they should be accepted.

A couple of texts that come to mind, and we'll maybe wrap it up with this, that speaking to the idea of the biblical principle that we are not to boast in ourselves in any way, but boast in Christ and God alone.

You already mentioned Ephesians 2. I'm also mindful of two other passages from the Apostle Paul. One is 1

Corinthians 1, 30 and 31, where he says that because of God, we are in Christ Jesus.

There again, we have the sovereignty of God everywhere. Because of God, we're in Christ Jesus, who has become to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, like smoke.

Jesus is wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Paul's conclusion is, so that as it is written, he cites

Jeremiah 9, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. Like, that is beautiful.

Jesus is absolutely sufficient to save and he's done it all. What does that produce? It produces doxology, praise of God, and it produces boasting in the

Lord and not in anything you've done. Another text, 1 Timothy 1, in verses 15 and 16,

Paul talks about how he is the foremost of sinners and how God has shown him great mercy in Christ.

He says that the mercy and the patience of Christ that was shown to him as the foremost was to display the riches of Christ's patience to all the saints who would ever trust in him for salvation.

So, Paul's point is, I'm the foremost of sinners and Jesus has been patient and merciful and gracious as the day is long to me.

He will be to you also. Where does that lead, Paul? 1 Timothy 1 .17, it leads him to doxology, to the king of the ages, the only one, be praise and honor and glory forever.

This is the point, and this is Reformation doctrine too. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, and it's just clearly there in the

Bible. We have nothing to boast in because we don't do anything besides that God does it and God has saved us, and we praise him and thank him, and we rest in Jesus.

Well, clearly, I have more written on my board that we're not going to get to in the regular podcast. This is why we offer a premium content for our members.

This is just a simple way for you to help support what we're doing here at Theocast, a monthly way in which we continue the

Reformation through all of the different mediums that we have, through books and articles. We have a class that's coming soon, a class that we're putting together that we will announce later, but it's coming in about a month, and we're going to make that a part of our membership as well.

If you want to know more about that, you can go to theocast .org and you can learn there.

We have a lot of free episodes there and also a free book, Faith Versus Faithfulness, which we actually unpack a lot of what we said today.