Aug. 5, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Dr. Bill Webster on “The Gospel of the Reformation”

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this fifth day of August 2015.

I'm very excited about today's guest because he's a dear friend who's been with me through thick and thin and been with me and supported me and encouraged me and comforted me during some very serious and dark trials in my life, and he is also a brilliant theologian and historian, a prolific writer, and a phenomenal speaker that I highly recommend that you not only purchase his books and his recordings of messages, but also

I eagerly urge you to invite him to speak at your church, power church ministry, or other venue.

His name is Dr. William Webster, apologist, pastor, author, and founder of Christian Resources, and the website for that ministry is christiantruth .com,

and he has written a number of books which include Behold Your King, Prophetic Proofs that Jesus is the

Messiah, Holy Scripture, the Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, which is a monumental, groundbreaking three -volume set that he co -authored with our mutual friend

David King on the historicity of the Sola Scriptura in the

Patristic Age, before the Reformation, proof that the Church Fathers, many of them, believed in the principle of Sola Scriptura, that Scripture is the sole infallible and inerrant rule of the faith, but before the

Reformation ever occurred. He's also the author of Saving Faith, How Does Rome Define It?,

The Christian Following Jesus as Lord, Must Jesus be Lord to be Savior?,

the Matthew 16 Controversy, Peter and the Rock, the Old Testament Canon and the

Apocrypha, the Church of Rome at the Bar of History, and also the book that we are discussing today,

The Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin, and that's a key word that we're gonna find out why in a little bit,

Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, but to the for the first time on the all -new

Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. William Webster. Hi Chris, thanks for having me on.

And since you have been awarded your doctorate from Whitfield Theological Seminary, am

I the very first person to publicly announce you as Dr. William Webster? Yeah, yeah you are.

Is that anticlimactic that I am the one that was the first? Tell us something before we even go into this very deep and weighty discussion for the next two hours.

Give us some information about the church where you pastor in Battleground Washington, and also about your ministry

Christian Resources. Well, for the last, let's see, 13 years

I've been pastoring a church here in Battleground Washington. Battleground is a little community just north of Portland, Oregon.

We're in the state of Washington across the river from Portland, Oregon. We're a small

Reformed church, great group of people, very committed to the

Lord, committed to His Word. Christian Resources is the ministry

I started back in the 90s. It was out of a commitment to the

Reformation and a desire to basically clarify for people why

I, as a former Roman Catholic and now a committed Evangelical, could never fully embrace what was going on in such a strong way back then.

I think it's probably still a movement ecumenically for Evangelicals to move back into the

Roman Catholic Church to repudiate the Reformation, and the problem that I had with that is that the more

I studied history and the more I studied the Word of God, the more clear it became that the truth of the

Reformation was an absolute essential. It was a necessity because of the truth of the

Gospel and the need for a clarification of that truth, a saving clarification in the light of much tradition that had distorted and perverted the actual

Gospel of grace in Roman Catholicism over time. And as I studied history,

I knew that, you know, for many Evangelicals, church history is just kind of a dark hole.

It's one of those black holes that, you know, that the history of the church began with Luther.

There's very little known prior to that, and what I found fascinating is that what the

Reformers taught at the Reformation is that they were bringing the church back to the authority of the

Word of God, and to what it had actually been almost universally taught with respect to the

Gospel throughout the patristic age, that what they were teaching was not a novelty, it was in fact a reaffirmation not only of the

Word of God and what the Scriptures teach, but also of historically what the church had stood for, and that it was in fact the

Roman Catholic Church that had departed from the truth of Scripture and from the consistent teaching historically of what the church had stood for, especially with respect to the authority of the

Word of God, the final authority of that Word, its sufficiency, and then the

Gospel that came out of the teaching of that foundation. And as I studied,

I thought it would be very helpful to put articles, audiotapes of teaching that I had done on these various issues related to the development of Roman Catholicism going back into church history and demonstrating the continuity that exists between what the early church taught and what the

Reformation teaches, and to show why Roman Catholicism as it stands, as it stood in the

Reformation and as it stands today, is truly not in true conformity with what the

Word of God teaches, and it is an aberration historically from the patristic age, and that's basically the basic thrust of the website

Christian Resources and the ministry. It's a defense of the Reformation, primarily.

And it's not all negative, I mean, it is positive because you'll find other articles on there about, you know, what is the

Gospel, why is it important, and then how to live the Christian life. Well I know that this is not the subject of your book, but I did want you to just touch briefly on perhaps a little bit more deep description of your three volume monumental groundbreaking work that you co -authored with our dear friend

David King, Holy Scripture, the Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, which, as I mentioned earlier, shows patristic evidence that the church believed in the doctrine of sola scriptura, even if not by that name, long prior to the

Protestant Reformation. This was not an invention of Martin Luther and the Reformers. And I understand that this three -volume set, one of the reasons why it's such a groundbreaking work is that much of it was translated into English for the first time, and the thing that I found interesting is that at least for the first several years after it was in print,

I don't recall any Roman Catholic apologists having any meaningful response to it.

So if you could just touch on that before we go into our main subject today. Well the book, if you deal with these issues from a historical standpoint, you realize that when you deal with Roman Catholicism, you're dealing with two major issues.

One is the issue of authority, the other is the issue of salvation. Both are related, obviously, but when you talk about the

Reformation, what you are witnessing is a great revival of the Spirit of God in the church of that day, one of the greatest revivals ever to take place in the history of Christianity.

And the foundation to that revival was these men, these incredibly bold and brave men, standing up to proclaim the truth of the

Word of God and the ultimate authority of that Word over men, over every institution, that there is no organization, there is no individual who is above the

Word of God, we are under the Word of God. And there was a recovery in that day of the truth of Scripture, and these men proclaim with great boldness the sufficiency and the ultimate authority of the

Word of God, but what's interesting is as you go back into the history of the church, what you find is that that is precisely the view, it's a universal view.

Sola Scriptura is the universal patristic view of the church fathers throughout their history.

The development of tradition from a Roman Catholic perspective is really gnostic in origin in terms of its view of oral tradition as a second vehicle of revelation with authority equal to the written

Word of God, and it is out of that that you find so much error within Roman Catholicism.

But what I wanted to do was to look at this from an historical standpoint to show the continuity between what the

Reformation teaches, what the Reformation taught, and what those who are true to the history of the

Reformation in our own day, why we stand upon the ultimate authority of the

Word of God, because you go back in a continuity historically right through the patristic age right into the age of the

Apostles and the ultimate writing of those scriptures, that is the foundation to everything.

It is the ultimate authority over us, over every institution, it's the foundation for every ministry, it's the revelation of the true and living

God to us, and that is how the church began and that is how the church lived for centuries, and it is documented in these volumes that we spent years researching and writing.

Volume one deals with a biblical defense of sola scriptura, the second volume is the one that I wrote, my friend

David King wrote volume one, volume two is the historical defense of sola scriptura, and then volume three is basically just a compilation of patristic quotations that relate to the ultimate authority and sufficiency of the written

Word of God. Now of course Roman Catholics may be listening and chuckling and saying, this guy claims to believe in scripture alone as his own authority, and yet the title of his book is flawed because the

Bible says that the church is the ground and pillar of our faith, and here he's saying that scripture is.

Now where did that title come from? That title comes from a quote from Irenaeus, the church father in the second century.

Yeah, that's why I wanted you to see it. What he basically states is that the truth of the gospel has come down to us from the

Apostles, who at one time he says preached publicly, that is orally, but at a later time he says by the will of God, that which they preached orally was inscripturated, it was put in scripture, and he says this, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.

Yeah, and since this is the primary issue that Rome attacks, especially when you're coming from the apologetic realm, obviously your average

Catholics don't necessarily do that, but that is the key issue, sola scriptura, probably even more so than sola fide in many ways, that they go on the attack with, against, because of the fact that they claim that there's zero evidence from history that the

Christians believed in sola scriptura, or that scripture alone is the sole infallible authority of the church, and that the

Bible clearly doesn't teach it in their minds, and you certainly believe that they are very wrong on both points.

Oh, totally wrong. Thomas Aquinas makes the statement sola canonica scriptura es regula fide, that's

Latin for canonical scripture alone is the rule of faith, and that's the 13th century.

Wow, wow, that's something. Well, that is not our subject today, but I do want to urge everybody who is listening to order that at ChristianTruth .com,

ChristianTruth .com. You can also order all of William's books from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Services, which is one of our sponsors.

Their website is CVBBS .com, that's CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service dot com.

They already have a number of Bill's books in stock, and they can easily order them, and I'm sure

Bill doesn't mind when people order your books from other sources because they still have to order from you to get the books, right?

Right. And so, and of course CVBBS is one of our sponsors, as is

Solid Ground Christian Books, which is Solid -Ground -Books .com, Solid -Ground -Books .com,

and I want to announce that the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books is my guest on Friday.

But I am very enthusiastic about today's subject, which is the Gospel of the

Reformation, and perhaps you Roman Catholic listeners who are tired of hearing

Iron Sharpens Iron beat up on Roman Catholics, which we don't actually do that, but many many have caricatured this program that way, and me that way, which is which is why it was ironic that I got some complaint about my interview with Robertson Janis.

But anyway, today's subject is the Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the

Guilt and Power of Sin, and before I even go into the questioning specifically about this book,

I just have to read John MacArthur, a quote from the foreword that John MacArthur wrote for the book.

I recommend this book to anyone, Catholic and Protestant alike, who wants to have a clearer understanding of gospel truth.

As you read this work, may your spiritual eyes be opened as never before to the bright light of the gospel of God's grace.

That's some powerful endorsement by a very prominent figure and highly respected brother in Christ like John MacArthur, and that is just one sentence out of his foreword to the

Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin. And the reason why

I told our Roman Catholic friends listening that they need not worry that we're going to necessarily focus on them and their heresies, this book was largely written, was it not, to correct the departure of the evangelical church from our own history and from our

Reformed forefathers in the faith. It is. I have obviously a great desire for a clarification of the gospel as far as Roman Catholics are concerned, because that's what

I was raised in. That's my heritage. I have a great love for Roman Catholics, and the issue is not personal.

The issue is truth. It's historical truth and biblical truth. But I am equally as concerned for the gospel that is represented by present -day evangelicalism, and I do believe with all my heart that one of the greatest needs today in the church is for a new

Reformation. Only this time it needs to be to the evangelical church, because I believe that the evangelical church has departed in many, many ways from the truth of the

Word of God with respect to the gospel, and it's seemingly across the board.

Obviously you don't want to broad -brush everything and over -generalize, but I would say that the real heart behind this book is for there to be a clear enunciation, articulation, proclamation of what the true gospel is on the basis of what the

Word of God reveals, not only from the epistles of the New Testament, but from the teaching of Jesus Christ in the gospels.

And I understand that you've already written a couple of books that may touch on the subject of the gospel of the

Reformation. You have written The Christian Following Jesus as Lord and Must Jesus be

Lord to be Savior. How is the gospel of the Reformation different from those books which touch on some of the same issues?

The Christian Following Christ as Lord really has to do with what is the

Christian life. How do you live the Christian life? And obviously the Christian life, the foundation to that is the gospel itself, so they're going to be overlapped to some degree between what is written in the gospel of the

Reformation and what is written with respect to the Christian Following Christ as Lord.

The Christian has to do with, once you know Christ, what does that look like, and what does it mean to know

Him? Because that is an issue that is greatly misunderstood in the day in which we live.

To know Him and to walk with Him, what are the fundamental characteristics of what that life looks like?

That's what that book is about. The other book, Must Jesus be Lord to be

Savior, just deals in a very direct way, in a particular way, with one application of the gospel.

Because of the day in which we live, and this would have primary application to the

Protestant Evangelical Church, the gospel, because we come out of the

Reformation, the gospel focus in so much of the teaching of Evangelicalism today has to do with justification by faith.

Not that that's not important, it's extremely important, but the problem is that tends to be the sole focus of what it means for a person to enter into salvation and reconciliation with God, and there is a decided lack of understanding of what real salvation means.

Justification is an extremely important truth to understand, because that is one very important aspect of salvation, but it is not the only aspect of salvation.

And what faith means, what does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ?

And that gets into the whole issue, then, of the work that Christ has accomplished at the

Calvary, and the sufficiency of that work to deal with the guilt of sin, but then you get into the whole other issue of, if I'm coming to this one who saves, how do

I enter into a relationship with him so that I experience salvation? And what much of Evangelicalism has done today is divorce, saving faith with respect to the work of Christ at the cross at Calvary from his person in personal relationship with him as Lord.

And what I'm trying to demonstrate is that the teaching of Jesus is clearly a call to men to enter into a radical transformational commitment relationship with him as Lord.

And as you get into the exegesis of those passages where he deals with a call to men to become a disciple, that's the most fundamental understanding of what he's calling men to.

You understand why there is such a difference between what he teaches and what is prevalent in the

Evangelical Church today, because what the Evangelical Church today has done is redefine what

Jesus teaches so that becoming a disciple and submitting to him as Lord is a secondary issue.

It is not a primary issue for entering the kingdom of God. That, however, is utterly contrary to what

Jesus actually teaches. It is very much a primary issue, because if that has not taken place, a man does not know him.

You cannot be a Christian in the biblical sense of the word and not be a follower, a disciple of Jesus Christ, where your life has been submitted to him as Lord.

It is as Lord that he saves, and it is that issue you were mentioning a minute ago with the subtitle of the book from the

Gospel of the Reformation. He not only saves from the guilt of sin, he saves us from the state, the power, and the dominion of sin.

And that's where the Lordship issue comes in, and that's what I was trying to define in terms of the application of salvation and the understanding of what saving faith means in relationship to repentance, and then also demonstrating that this is consistent with the teaching of the

Reformation, that the Reformers never taught that you could enter into a relationship with Christ by simply believing in his work on the cross and not have a transformation of heart and life and be a sanctified man or woman.

And I want to give our email address if you have a question for Dr. William Webster.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. And I have some good news for you if you're listening.

The first four people who email us a question that is good enough to be read on air that is actually related to the subject we're speaking about, you'll receive compliments of The Banner of Truth, the

Carlisle, Pennsylvania office. You'll receive a free copy of one of Dr.

Webster's other books, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History, which is a book

I mentioned earlier in my announcements. It is a powerful book. It is a book that you need to own and read and reread and give away, especially if you have

Roman Catholic family, friends, neighbors, and loved ones. And this is a mind -blowing book that will,

I'm sure, even educate not only Roman Catholics but evangelicals who don't even realize how truly evangelical the

Catholic Church with a small c was in its ancient history and that many of the practices of Rome for the last five, six, seven centuries, many of them are manufactured inventions of men that have no place not only in the

Bible but even in church history. And so if you have a question that is relative to our subject and it's good enough to be read on air, you'll receive a free copy of that book,

Compliments of Banner of Truth. And please so include your mailing address if you're sending in a question on today's subject, which is the

Gospel of the Reformation. And since the word gospel is the first word in the title, it's the second word if you include the, if you could define the gospel for us,

I think that that would be an excellent way to set the pace for the rest of the interview.

Well, the gospel, I'm sure most people know this, the word gospel means good news.

It is the message that you find inscripturated throughout the Old and New Testaments, but in particular with respect to Christ, the

Lord Jesus Christ and the New Testament, the gospel is the message that God has given to be proclaimed throughout the earth, as Paul says in Romans 1, it's the power of God to salvation.

It is an understanding given to us by God of our need for reconciliation with him and how that reconciliation can be achieved between sinful men and a holy

God. And the issue then has to do ultimately with where you will be in eternity.

That's why this is such an incredibly important issue. There's nothing more important than getting this right and understanding this, because ultimately the only thing that matters when a man dies, and we're all going to die unless Christ returns and we are then translated by him to be with him in eternity.

The only thing that matters in that day is whether a person knows Christ. In all of life, everything that we're engaged in in this life, and not that there are other things that are not important, but nothing, absolutely nothing can begin to approach this in importance because this is dealing with eternity.

And it basically has to do with the truth of who God is, the law of God that he has given to reveal to us the purpose for our existence, the reality of our state of being as human beings, that we are rebellious against him, that we are sinners, that we need reconciliation with him, and that he has provided that way of reconciliation of salvation in his son, the

Lord Jesus Christ, the one who is God and man, through his person and his work that he has accomplished to deal with our sin, to deliver us from that sin and from the eternal consequences of that sin, and to bring us into a relationship, a reconciled relationship with him where we truly know him.

We become one with the true and living God in Jesus Christ and our lives are transformed by his grace.

The scriptures represent the incredible miracle of salvation as being nothing less than a man being raised from the dead, his blind eyes being opened, and receiving an entirely new life in the

Lord Jesus Christ and having the hope, the absolute certainty of eternity, eternal life in the age that is to come when

Jesus Christ comes to inaugurate that eternal age.

But that gospel is a message from God, it's authoritative, it is given by him in his word, and it needs to be fully understood because it is the gospel by which men are saved.

And if that is distorted in any way, it will result in false assurance given to men that they know

God, that they know Christ, that they have salvation when they do not. And that's why this is so important to clarify and to understand.

We're going to be going to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please include your address, and by the way, I have to make another disclaimer here as far as the free books.

I'm sorry to my overseas listeners and Canadian listeners that this offer is only being made to residents of the

United States because of our sponsor who is shipping these books out at no cost to Iron Sharpens Iron.

They cannot accumulate a gigantic overseas shipping bill because we are more and more frequently giving away free books.

But we do encourage anybody from overseas to send in a question anyway.

We've been enjoying getting questions from you from all over the world, and we look forward to getting those in on our

Canadian friends as well. Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And remember, the first four that we read on the air that are related to our topic will receive a free copy of William Webster's book,

The Church of Rome at the Bar of History. We're going to be right back after these messages with more on our discussion on the

Gospel of the Reformation, and so we urge you not to go away.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns, and if you've just tuned us in, my guest today is Dr. William Webster, the founder of Christian Resources.

His website is christiantruth .com, christiantruth .com.

Dr. Webster is an apologist, pastor, author, and he is our guest today speaking about his book,

The Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin.

And it's that word power that seems to be the most missing aspect of the evangelical gospel in our modern age.

And if you have a question, we've already got a couple of questions waiting for us, but if you have a question regarding the topic that we are discussing, email that to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And before I move on to some of our audience questions,

Bill, if you could, one of the things that confuses the issue is that it seems to me that both the

Church of Rome and the modern evangelical church, they both blur things involved that are under the umbrella of salvation, if you will.

The Catholic Church blurs things together in their own way involving faith and works, and the evangelicals blur things in their own way in regard to regeneration and salvation and so on, where they don't adequately or rightly separate these terms that are under the umbrella of salvation.

Maybe you could go into that for a little bit. First of all, am I correct in that analysis? You are.

As you go through, I don't know how many people have actually read the Council of Trent, and that extremely important Roman Catholic document, the council in the 16th century that was the definitive answer to the

Reformation. You will find theologically, as you go through that, is they define what the issues of salvation are and what salvation means.

There's a blurring of theological distinctives, specifically with respect to justification and sanctification, for example, and regeneration.

There is not a clear understanding in Roman Catholicism. In fact, there is a very decided bias against, a prejudice against, the actual teaching of the

Word of God with respect to justification. Roman Catholicism has officially declared anathema.

It has condemned the teaching of imputed righteousness with respect to justification, meaning that we are not justified formally, it says in Canon 10 on justification.

We are not formally justified by the righteousness of Christ himself. That the righteousness whereby we are justified is actually the righteousness of the believer, where the believer cooperates with grace that has been infused within him through the church and its sacraments and priesthood, and that the individual then is given the ability to do works of sanctification, which become the basis of justification, and it is all related to merit, that it is by grace that a man works in order to merit his eternal life.

Jesus did not accomplish a full and finished eternal work, a sufficient work at the cross of Calvary.

What he did was he purchased for us the grace of salvation, which is then channeled to the individual through the church and her sacraments, and then it is by that grace that an individual cooperates with that grace in order to save himself, is what it comes down to.

So that it is under the rubric of grace, what you're bringing in the back door is legalism.

Salvation ultimately is all about you and your works. Jesus helps you save yourself.

That is very much a blurring of the distinctive of what justification means in the

New Testament and the Old Testament, because justification is not equated to sanctification, the two are different, and that's the blurring that you referenced just a few moments ago, because in Roman Catholic theology justification is equal to sanctification.

It is not a separate distinct work in its own right accomplished by Jesus Christ that is sufficient and complete, which through his righteousness, through his fulfilling of the law on our behalf, that is a work that is done independent of anything we could ever do.

There is absolutely nothing that any man can do to justify himself, either outside of Christ or even in Christ.

We could never justify ourselves before God, because God demands perfection, absolute perfection, in obedience to the law of God.

And if you don't have absolute perfection, all you can look forward to is the judgment of God.

The soul that sins shall die. Therefore, that's why salvation is by faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone.

He alone has accomplished that work of justification on our behalf. That's why justification is a gift of God.

It is not a process. It is not based on our works. It's based on the work of Christ.

He alone merits that justification. But because of that blurring where the term justification is equated with sanctification, and there's a denial, a condemnation even, of the truth of imputed righteousness, that in Christ we are given as a gift a righteousness that is perfect, that justifies us for all eternity.

Instantly, the moment a man is in union with Christ, he is instantaneously and for all eternity justified, completely apart from anything he could do or be.

There are no works involved in that at all. That doesn't mean that there are no works, because obviously, as we'll talk about here in a little bit, sanctification is the fruit of that relationship with Christ.

You cannot be justified and not be sanctified, because the same

Christ who justifies also sanctifies. And if I'm not sanctified, I've never known

Him. I'm not justified. So these truths go together, but they need to be distinguished, because they are separate works of the work of salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ.

But that work of justification is not equated to sanctification. They are two separate works.

The Evangelical Church has blurred the true meaning of the gospel as well in a different way.

Rome, the Roman Catholic Church, basically is legalistic in its approach.

On the other side, the other extreme, you have the Evangelical Church, where you have the problem of antinomianism.

And one point that I would make is if you have a legalistic system, such as you have with Rome, wherever you have a promotion of legalism, you will always end up with antinomianism.

Even though you have men who are religious and moral, they are still antinomian, because the only way to be delivered from an antinomian state, which is what we are in sin, is to truly know

Christ. And if I have not repudiated legalism, and I am somehow holding on to the hope that I can somehow merit, even by the grace of God, my salvation, and it's not

Christ alone, then I cannot know Him. And therefore I will be an antinomian, even with the legalism.

The other side of that is that you have the Evangelical Church coming out of the Reformation with sola fide, and the understanding of justification is not by works, but what happens here is a diminishing of the understanding that Christ is not only a deliverer from guilt and the consequences of sin, from an eternal hell, but our justification before God is based upon His person,

His work, and the righteousness imputed to us as a gift.

But that He not only will deal with the guilt of sin, but He also deals with the power and the dominion and the state of sin, so that a man in salvation is not only justified in coming to Christ and knowing

Him, he is also regenerated. He has a new heart in life, and he is sanctified.

He is set apart to God. He has repented of sin, and He has come into a relationship with the living, risen

Lord of glory, who transforms that life. That's what Romans 6 is all about.

How should we who have died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?

If we've been baptized into His death, we've been raised up with Him in the likeness of His resurrection, that we would walk in newness of life to be slaves of righteousness.

But in knowing Christ, this is the major issue with evangelicalism. So much of the understanding of faith has to do with just trusting

Christ as Savior. And what we've done is we have taken His teachings on discipleship, and we have completely distorted what

He teaches, so that it's not necessary that an individual in coming to Him be a disciple in order to enter the kingdom.

Saving faith has nothing to do with that kind of commitment. And that is a, I would say, within evangelicalism today, that is the absolute dominant view, that discipleship is a separate work that applies only to true believers.

That you become a Christian, and then as you grow in your faith, you will eventually, hopefully, become a disciple.

But when Jesus gave His great commission, He commanded that we go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.

And that term, make disciple, is how He defines what a convert is.

We tend to say that making a disciple means you baptize, you know, make a disciple of all nations, baptizing them, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, lo

I am with you even to the end of the age. The problem is, baptizing and teaching does not define making a disciple.

Making a disciple is what it means to come into the kingdom of God in relationship with Christ in that kind of a commitment, as He defines it in the gospels.

There is no other true Christian, according to Jesus, than the one who is a disciple.

Once a person is a disciple, it is those that you baptize and then teach.

They are now followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. But what we have done in evangelicalism is we have taken this meaning of faith and have eviscerated it from the true teaching of Jesus with respect to what it means to repent of sin and to understand that He is

Lord, that He is God, and that when He calls men into relationship with Himself as He does, for example, in Mark 8, if any man wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

He said that is a call to conversion. He says, for whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it.

The word lose there, which is in the context of His call to men to deny self, take up their cross, and follow

Him, that word lose is the Greek word apolumi, which means perish. So that if a person has not committed their lives to Him to be a follower, they have turned from the autonomy and the independence of their own life, where they rule their life and self is at the center of their life, and they humiliate themselves before Him in terms of turning from that rebellion against God, and they submit their lives to Him as Lord to be

His follower. If that has not occurred, then that person does not know

Christ. He will perish. And that's where the real cutting edge is today in terms of the need within the evangelical church.

We've got justification by faith. We've got that down pretty well. We understand this is an exclusive work of Christ.

It's not by works. But what we have done is redefine the teaching of Jesus so that we have eliminated the understanding that to know

Him requires a radical commitment. And that radical commitment means dealing in a radical way with sin in my rebellion against God, so that I understand that when

I come to the Lord Jesus Christ, I am turning from a lawless antinomian heart and life to give

Him my heart and my life. And as John Calvin says, if you want to know the righteousness, if you want to receive the righteousness that Christ gives by which you're justified, you have to possess

Christ. And you cannot possess Christ unless in coming to Him you also possess

His sanctification. And that's what this is all about. It's all about turning from rebellion against the law of God in my relationship with God and in my relationship to His will and my behavior to submit my life to Christ as Lord to be

His disciple and to become His slave. One of the other ways that many evangelicals today blur things together when it comes to the whole issue, the umbrella issue of salvation, is they'll equate election with regeneration or being born again.

And the non -Calvinist will say, you know, you're elect by believing.

That's what makes you elect. And they therefore are putting the whole issue of being one of the elect of God in the power of the will of man.

Am I right on that? Well, you've got two issues here.

You've got, it's very clear from the Word of God, you cannot read Romans 9 and come to any other conclusion than the fact that God is a sovereign

God. That man is dead in sin. There is absolutely no hope for any man apart from the sovereign grace of God to open his eyes to see and his ears to hear and to give him that grace because faith and repentance are gifts of God.

It's the power of God. The gospel is the power of God to salvation.

It's in Ephesians 2, Paul talks about man dead in sin, hopeless and helpless.

He says, but God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sin, raised us up with Christ and united us with him, raised us up from the dead.

Well, you know, you could speak to Lazarus in the grave from here to eternity.

Lazarus isn't coming out of that grave until Jesus Christ by his power calls him forth.

And he, he will then be brought forth. So yes, election is an absolute certainty, but you always have to keep that in balance because you have the two truths that go together as you read in Romans 9, election

Romans 10 has to do with human responsibility. So that where God, God uses his gospel, he is sovereign in saving men.

He saves men by the power of that, of his power mediated through the proclamation of that gospel.

But men are responsible to respond in faith and repentance to the call of that gospel.

And that's a mystery. So where I think, I think where some in the reform camp tend to get into an extreme is where they put all the emphasis on election and they fail to call men appropriately to human responsibility, to turn from sin and to turn to Christ in faith.

There's not a real preaching of the gospel to men on the other hand, you have those within the

Armenian camp who put all the emphasis on man. And quite honestly, what they do is they dilute the truth of what that response to God is to be.

And in both cases, you can end up with men who profess, who have a form of Christianity, but who do not truly know the

Lord. You got to keep these things in balance. Men who think that they can save themselves by their faith, they are terribly misguided.

You come to Christ with empty hands. You do come in faith, but you come in the realization of utter poverty of spirit.

You have absolutely no ability. You have nothing that you can do to save yourself.

It is Christ alone who can save. So the focus is on Christ and the promise of God of what he will do to the man, for the man or the woman who truly comes to him in repentance and faith.

Yeah, they are putting their faith in their faith, not in the source of salvation, who is

Jesus Christ. That is a problem. It can be a problem.

I would say that, I don't know that, you can't broad brush this.

I mean, there are Arminians who would put their faith in their faith. You can't say that would never take place, but on the other side of that, there are those who are

Arminian, who were genuinely converted, who are not trusting in their faith at all.

They realize that their faith is not meritorious in any way. I know them.

They are genuinely converted. I know, obviously, people in the reform camp who genuinely are converted.

They know the Lord. The problem is where you get into the extremes and you've always got to have the balance.

Your faith is in Christ. The object of faith is always Christ. He is the Savior. The promise of the word of God is that if you come to Christ in the way that he has said to come to Christ, you will know eternal salvation.

Yeah, and there are even, even though it would be a minority, a tiny minority in the church today, but there are even hyper -Calvinists among the primitive

Baptists, for instance, and I don't want to broad brush them either, but who equate or blur the distinction between election and regeneration to such the point where they don't believe that all whom

God has elected will come to saving faith? That's just absolutely heresy and is perhaps even more dangerous than any

Arminian heresy, correct? Yeah, I mean the hyper -Calvinist is just blatantly disobedient to the word of God.

Yeah, they're really hypo -Calvinists in some ways because they're really teaching less. They don't seem to believe, at least this segment of hyper -Calvinists, because there are differences between some of them, but they are denying the perseverance of the saints or even the effectual call in their lack of completing the story about what

God will certainly do to all he elects. Now the thing today, just to remember,

I mean there's a mystery in all of this. You know, we are told what to preach to men, and what we preach to men is the gospel.

You hold Christ up before men. You hold his teaching up before men, the

New Testament teaching before men of what it means to know the Lord Jesus Christ and to call men into that relationship with him.

God will use his word, and as you preach the word of God, as you teach the word of God, your confidence, if you truly understand the word of God, is not in men to respond.

Your confidence is in the God who can raise the dead. I mean,

God told Ezekiel as he took him to that valley of vision, the valley of dry bones, and the question he asked him, can these bones live?

Well, from a human perspective, no. I mean, they're dead. They're bones. And Ezekiel wisely said, well,

Lord, you know. And the Lord told him, he says, just preach, Ezekiel.

And he spoke, and God's power was manifest to raise the dead, those dry bones to life.

And that's what salvation is all about. It's all about the living God empowering his word to impact men, to bring them out of the darkness of the kingdom of Satan into the light and the love and the life of his kingdom in relationship with his son.

And that is our hope. Our hope is utterly in the sovereign power of God to raise the dead.

We have to go to a break right now, and we will get to all of you who have been patiently waiting, who have sent in emails with questions.

I believe that we have room for at least one more winner. If you want to send in an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please include your address so we can ship you out a free copy of the

Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin. And we urge you, even if you're overseas, even though you can't win a book, we'd love to hear from you with a question anyway for our guest,

Dr. William Webster. We're going to be right back after these messages, so don't go away. It's easy to put off saving for retirement, but it's just as easy to start.

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Lynbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Lynbrook, Long Island, is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.

Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people in healing.

We're a diverse family of all ages enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship, play, and together.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Lynbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Lynbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402 or visit lynbrookbaptist .org.

That's lynbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen and if you just tuned us in, our guest today on Iron Sharpens Iron is

Dr. William Webster, apologist, pastor, author, and the founder of Christian Resources.

Their website is christiantruth .com, christiantruth .com. We're discussing

Bill's book, The Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the Guilt and Power of Sin, and we have been addressing that the aspect of being saved from the power of sin has been the issue most sorely lacking in the evangelical gospel of our modern day.

And we do have a listener in White Plains, New York, Bob, who writes,

If I'm a Christian, I am covered by God's covenant with Abraham.

Is my family covered and saved as well, or are they just sanctified and not justified?

That's an excellent question because it's actually very relative to our topic, I believe, Bill. Not in the sense that this would involve a modern evangelical heresy, but it does have a fairly old heresy attached to it called presumptive regeneration, where people believe that they are truly

Christian just because they have been perhaps baptized in a Christian home, have Christian parents and Christian grandparents, and nominal

Christianity or Christianity in name only, dead, lifeless, false

Christianity has spread rampantly globally, and you will have even churches that may have some semblance of theological truth, but the walls of the church are filled with dead men's bones, if you will.

If you could comment on Bob's specific question. That's a good question because he takes us back to an understanding of the covenant in the

Old Testament with Abraham. The Jews all through the

Old Testament are called the people of God, and there is an aspect in which, as a nation, they have been called of God, set apart by God for a specific purpose, but within that nation, and this is what

Romans 9, 6 basically says, not all Israel are Israel, and what that means is that just because an individual

Jew was a descendant of Abraham did not mean that he was saved, because there are the physical aspects of the covenant, the

Abrahamic covenant as a nation, and then you have the spiritual application of that covenant, which has to do with salvation.

What you find as you read through the Old Testament over and over again is the fact that only those who were truly converted, who had come into relationship with the living

God the same way Abraham came into relationship with God, only those individuals were truly participants in the covenant with Abraham, so that just because they were

Jewish, just because they were circumcised was never sufficient, because the call of the

Old Testament to individual Jews was to salvation. It was to a circumcised heart.

It was to a love relationship, an exclusive worship relationship with the true and living

God, even to those who were the covenant people of God in the physical nation of Israel, and that's why if you read in John 3,

Jesus' word to Nicodemus, Nicodemus is the teacher of Israel. He's a

Pharisee. He is a Jew, and Jesus told him, Nicodemus, unless you're born again, that is, unless you have a circumcised heart, you will not enter the kingdom, and that brings us back to the importance of the gospel and the preaching of the gospel.

The covenant in the New Testament is never divorced from the gospel, so you can have a family, and you may have the head of that family who knows the

Lord, and he's saved. That is absolutely no guarantee for his wife.

It's no guarantee for his children, because there is nothing in the New Testament that would even remotely suggest that children, because they have a heritage and a

Christian family, are under the covenant in the New Testament. That's the error that the

Jews had made that Jesus addresses in John 8 with the Jews. They said, we are of our father

Abraham. We know God. We are in the kingdom. Jesus told them bluntly, you don't know

God, and yes, you are the descendant of Abraham, but actually your father is

Satan, and these are children of the covenant, so you can never divorce the covenant from the truth of the gospel and its application in the life, and that's why it is so important for ministers, preachers, pastors who have the responsibility of teaching the word of God to make sure that people understand that, and that they are consistently preaching the gospel to their people.

One of the great grievances, for my own heart, it just grieves me no end, is the realization that there are so many churches today where the gospel just isn't preached anymore.

There is a presumption that because we have our children, and we are raising them in Christian doctrine, and there is this thought that, well, they've been baptized, and therefore they are in, and they will be brought into the kingdom, but they are never truly confronted with the need to respond to the gospel.

I've been in churches like that, and it is very grieving. It is an error, and it is a tragic thing to see.

We can never presume like that. There is always the personal responsibility for men to turn to Christ in salvation.

It is a personal thing. It is never something that is just automatic within families or within a church, for example, or an organization.

Now, how is an unbelieving wife and children, how are an unbelieving wife and unbelieving children sanctified in any way by the believing head of the household?

Well, obviously, the believing head is going to be somewhat of a protector there, because his life is going to be an influence.

And where the children are sanctified, where the wife is sanctified, it doesn't mean salvation.

It simply means that this man, because of his relationship with the Lord, will have an influence upon his children and upon his wife.

But he has to pray. I would just say to those who, you know, for your children, as a father, the most important thing you can do is pray and ask

God in his mercy and his sovereignty to work effectually in the heart of your family, to open their eyes and to bring them into the kingdom.

I guarantee you, I mean, I'm 67 years old. If I have five kids, if I had to do over again, go back in time,

I would be spending a whole lot more time in prayer for my family than I did.

We have another listener in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. We have

Ted, who says, your guest made reference to the need for a second reformation, but did not elaborate.

This is a term that's heard from time to time from emergent types, who are frequently very soft on Sola Scriptura.

What does your guest think of the idea of a second reformation? What does that mean to him?

And why would he think it is necessary or unnecessary? That's a very good question. Although I took it for granted that everybody knows who you are, and they would know what you mean by a second reformation.

But even Robert Shuler, I think, might have even used something similar to that term in a book that he wrote years ago, and he meant something entirely different than you meant.

What he meant by it was building up people's self -esteem and stop informing them about their sinful condition.

Yeah, I know. No, that's hardly what I mean. The Reformation, if you just go back historically, what's the

Reformation all about? It's all about the Gospel. It's all about bringing people back to the fundamental authority of the

Word of God. That's what we need today. And I'm talking here about the

Evangelical Church. When I say a second reformation, I'm talking about the need for the

Gospel to be clearly proclaimed and the authority of the Word of God asserted in the churches and Evangelicalism across this country and across the world.

And what I mean by that is that there needs to be a coming back to a full understanding of the

Gospel message that is clearly revealed in the New Testament with both the teaching of Jesus and the

New Testament epistles, and in particular with the Apostle Paul. Justification by faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone, that's

Reformational teaching. It's a particular application of the Gospel. It's not the totality of the

Gospel. Justification is one aspect of the work of Christ to save men from the guilt of sin and the consequences of sin.

We absolutely must have a work done by Christ that fulfills the law of God.

Justification is a forensic work. By that I mean it's legal. It has to do with man's state under the law of God in accountability to the judge of the universe.

Man in sin is under the wrath of God. And what

Jesus has done in the atonement is he has fulfilled the requirement of the law against sin.

You know, cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them.

That's where men are. They're under a curse because we have rebelled against the law of God.

Jesus it says became a curse for us. He's bearing the curse of the law of God at the cross of Calvary.

The wrath of God is being poured out upon him. He is a propitiation for sin. He is bearing the judgment of God, fully bearing that judgment.

It's an all -sufficient work. It is done once for all. It cannot be repeated because he cannot die again.

The soul that sins shall die. That is the judgment of the law of God. Jesus Christ has borne our sin.

It's been imputed to him and he laid down his life and death as a payment for that sin.

That's fulfilling the law of God and it is by his blood then that we are justified.

That is, it is his righteousness in fulfilling that law as well as the righteousness of his life that he lived under the law of God that is imputed to us as we are united to him in personal relationship.

We stand in his life. We stand in his righteousness and that is a gift of God given to us.

That was an absolute truth that was needed to be proclaimed at the day of the reformation.

It's that particular application of the gospel in the day that the reformers were raised up by God to clarify that gospel in light of the many years of tradition where that gospel had been distorted and perverted unfortunately by the

Roman Catholic Church to make it a legalistic work. Well today in the

Evangelical Church what we need is a reformation the same thing because what is proclaimed from so many pulpits is a false gospel.

It's not that it is not proclaiming certain aspects of truth.

It is and when you talk about justification that it's not by works that is in Christ alone.

It's by grace alone. What is happening in Evangelical churches is there is a diminishing of a preaching about sin and what sin is and the need for repentance and how that relates to faith and what it means to come into a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ as Lord not simply as one who will deliver by the cross a

Calvary from guilt. I need deliverance from sin. Sin as a ruling power in my heart in life that's what's missing in so much of the teaching and preaching of Evangelicalism today is what we call easy believism.

You just give an intellectual nod to Christ you admit you're a sinner. There's no understanding of what sin is.

Sin is not just B .B. Warfield said we tend to think of sin atomistically. That is it's issues of behavior and so well you know murder, thievery, lying all of these are behavioral issues that are sinful.

Immorality you can go down the line of behavioral issues that are contrary to the word of God and the will of God.

But the issue with sin with respect to salvation is that I need to be delivered not just from the behavioral issues

I need to be delivered from my nature from what I am not just from what

I do. And it's that issue that has direct application with the lordship issue because when

I come into submission to Jesus Christ as Lord my heart is changed.

I receive a new nature. I'm raised from the dead. I become a new creation in Jesus Christ and unless that root issue of self is dealt with I have never repented of sin as sin.

I can turn from behavioral issues and never repent of sin. And that terrible deception that he speaks of in Matthew 7 where you have the broad gate and the broad way in contrast to the narrow gate and the narrow way.

The broad gate and the broad way leads to destruction. The narrow gate and the narrow way alone leads to life.

And it is that narrow gate of what it means to enter a relationship with Jesus Christ.

You have to deal with legalism. There's absolutely no way you can know him and hold on in any way to some form of merit or works.

That has to be under repudiated. Paul makes that very clear in Philippians 3 that he had to count everything lost in order that he might know

Christ and be found in him and not have the righteousness not having a righteousness of his own derived from the law but that which is through faith in Christ.

But that required the utter repudiation of legalism. Well if I am coming to Christ who is

Lord, he saves me as Lord. I'm entering into a relationship with this person.

I cannot know him unless I'm submitted to him as Lord because that's who he is and that's his call.

He calls men into submission to him because he is the living God. And so we are called in to turn from sin as sin.

That is my rebellion against the law of God where I am in control of my own life.

Self is the center of my life. Christ called to me as to a discipleship relationship to a slave relationship just like he had with his father.

That he is a slave of the living God. That's what he is as a man.

When a man truly comes to know Christ he is brought into submission to him as Lord.

And people need to understand this. They need to understand what sin is. They need to understand repentance means turning from it.

So that your life then in Christ is brought back into conformity with the law of God and by the power of the

Spirit who indwells you, you are now able to obey the law of God by his power.

And you are delivered from sin and you are made a slave of righteousness as Paul says in Romans 6.

So that you are a new creation. You're completely different from what you used to be.

Your heart's changed. But that has to be proclaimed to men. And this whole lordship issue has to be brought back front and center to men where men are told this is what it means to know

Christ. Yes you must turn from legalism. But if you have not turned from sin and become a disciple as Jesus defines it in Luke 14, in Mark 8, in Matthew 16, in John 12, in Luke 9, where he calls men into the kingdom of God in relationship with himself as Lord to be his follower, then that man will perish.

He does not know Christ. And that's why there's a new reformation that needs to be proclaimed to the evangelical church which is engrossed in antinomianism as opposed to legalism.

Antinomian for those of our listeners who think that's something from Star Trek or something that just means against the law antinomian.

And that was an excellent answer to a very excellent question by Ted because even the homosexual evangelical movement so called is using terms like a new reformation and so on.

And what they want to do is really destroy any reformation that occurred and start something completely new under the same label of Christian.

But yeah it's interesting what you were just saying Bill because Paul in Romans 9 he talks about the two different vessels that God who is the potter is manufacturing or creating.

And one is a vessel of honor and one is a vessel of wrath or destruction.

So obviously these two vessels cannot possibly appear to be identical for all perpetuity and be different vessels if they are identical correct?

Yeah because what you have if you go back to Matthew 7 where Jesus is defining the issue in the day of judgment.

He said not everyone who says to me Lord Lord is going to enter the kingdom of heaven. Alright there you have a profession of faith.

It has to do with those who are truly professing Christ. I mean a

Buddhist doesn't say Lord Lord to Jesus Christ. A Mohammedan or a Muslim doesn't say that.

A Jew does not say that. We're talking here about professing the Christian church those who profess

Christ. And the warning that he is giving in the light of he says beware of false prophets in that same passage is that you have two gates that are presented to men.

You have two ways which are in his name but they go in to two very different destinations.

One ends up in life the other ends up in destruction. He said there are going to be many in the day of judgment who will say to me

Lord Lord did we not prophesy in your name and your name cast out demons in your name perform many wonderful works. And he said

I'm going to say to them I never knew you. They didn't know him.

He says depart from me you who practice lawlessness. That's the issue lawlessness.

And see that comes back to what is lawlessness. First John 3 4 sin is lawlessness.

It's rebellion against the law of God. That's what we need to understand that Jesus Christ saves you from rebellion against the law of God.

And if you're living in lawlessness if you have ever repented of that attitude of heart and life you have entered through and you have been given assurance by false prophets.

You don't have to repent of this. You don't have to make this radical commitment to Christ as Lord that he seems to be suggesting in the word of God.

It's a broad gate. You can come in and be accepted by God. You don't have to deal with sin.

You don't have to deal with the law. You can walk in lawlessness. You may be religious.

I mean after all Jesus is speaking there about men who profess him as Lord. They say Lord Lord that's a doctrinal statement a theological statement.

He is Lord. He is God. But they did not submit to him.

They did not do the will of God. And that's the distinction. You have men who have professed

Christ but their life has never been transformed by his grace to become godly and righteous where they have dealt with sin and repented of it and entered a narrow gate and are walking a narrow way of obedience to Christ submission to him where they actually do the will of God.

And that does not mean ministry because these people that Jesus speaks to are involved in ministry in his name.

They preach. They do many wonderful works in his name. That's not the issue.

The issue comes back to has my life been transformed by his grace so that I become godly and righteous.

I become a sanctified man and I walk in holiness. It's what first Peter says.

We shall be holy. God says you shall be holy for I am holy. We are to be holy in all of our behavior from from the inside out in our heart all the way to the external in our outward behavior.

So what you are expressing there in Romans 9 is that you have two types of people.

You have those who are truly saved, who have been called by God, raised up by God, and who have been transformed by the grace of God.

You've got the other who have rejected the gospel, who have not responded to the true gospel, and that is a whole different circumstance because they are still under the wrath of God.

Yeah, it'd be absolutely absurd to call an unrepentant, lascivious, licentious, openly depraved, unrepentant individual a vessel of honor.

It doesn't even make any sense. The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.

It cannot be clearer. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, he says not everyone who says

Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of thy father who is in heaven.

You do the will of God. Those who do the will of God abide forever, 1 John 2.

That is part of the deliverance and salvation that Christ effects in the heart of a man who's truly saved.

He's entered a narrow gate. He's walking a narrow way. He's been transformed by the power of the risen Christ so that he walks as Jesus walked.

He's conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. He's like him. Well, all you got to do is go read the descriptions of what

Jesus says about himself. They are radical. I mean, Jesus Christ to be conformed to the image of Christ is the utter antithesis of what so much is proclaimed in the day in which we live in the evangelical churches of what it means to be a

Christian. There is absolutely no way a man can live in sin and be a Christian. No way.

That is an impossibility, and that's why Paul says in Romans 6, shall we continue in sin that grace might increase?

May it never be. Will not happen because of the power of God to raise the dead out of sin.

Lazarus is raised out of the grave. He's not going back into the grave. He has a new life.

And for those of our listeners who may be out there either listening live or who are listening to a recording maybe years after it was broadcast, we have people who may be under the heading of the most despicable and disgusting and wicked people who may be hearing this broadcast, and they may say, well, if all this is true,

I have no hope then because I know I'm not a vessel of honor. I know that I'm not going to live up to any of these standards that are being upheld to me, and I know that I'm hopeless and powerless in my sin, whether it's adultery or homosexuality or drunkenness or drug addiction or whatever the case is.

What do you have to say to these people that are listening, Bill? That's the whole purpose of the gospel.

Christ came to save sinners. I mean, and the whole issue is acknowledging the fact, coming to an understanding of the fact

I'm a sinner. I need salvation. I need to be reconciled to God. I'm headed to an eternity in hell, separated from God forever.

But that's the hope of the gospel. The gospel is good news. There is a way of deliverance, but you have to repent.

You have to acknowledge this is wrong. God is not going to accept me in my sin.

He is not going to save me and let me stay a sinner. He transforms the sinner into a godly, righteous man or woman.

And this teaching that is so prevalent today that you can come to Christ and know eternal life and continue to live for the world and for yourself and for sin is an utter heretical teaching.

It is taking men to eternal destruction. But the hope here, you know,

Paul says the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God, and then he gives a list of those sins.

He says in Romans 6 verse 9, do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers shall inherit the kingdom of God.

Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God. That is the hope. Jesus said,

I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger. He who believes in me will never thirst. You come to me.

I am the resurrection and the life. I will deliver you from death. I will deliver you from judgment.

I will transform your life. I will give you a new heart. Come to me, and I will deliver you from sin, and I will give you a new life, and you will have the hope of eternal life, and you will become a new creation.

That's the hope, and that's the glory of the gospel. God can save, he can transform a life, but he delivers from sin.

He doesn't just deliver from hell. Glory to God. Praise God he does that, but that's just a small part of what true salvation means.

You're delivered from sin, reconciled to God, you were brought into a real relationship with the true and living

God and Jesus Christ, so that you actually know the true and living God.

This is life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

That is what Christianity is all about and what the gospel is all about.

It is hope for the sinner, that I can be changed and transformed and made new and reconciled to God.

Amen, amen, and we're going to be going to our final break. We have room for one more book to give away, and we already have somebody who's patiently waiting for me to ask you their question, but our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please include your address if you're writing for the free book, and please ask a question relevant to our discussion.

And please, if you're overseas or in Canada, write us anyway, because we would love to hear your questions, and we love to hear from our global listeners often, but we just apologize that we cannot send you a free book due to shipping costs.

Anyway, we'll be right back with Dr. William Webster and the Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the

Guilt and Power of Sin, right after these messages don't go away.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen, if you've just tuned us in. We have been for the last 90 minutes or more been discussing with our guest,

Dr. William Webster, his book, The Gospel of the Reformation, Salvation from the

Guilt and the Power of Sin. And we've been stressing how much of the evangelical church at large today has been violating, especially that last aspect of the gospel is that salvation is from the guilt and the power of sin, not just from the penalty of sin.

And we have one more book to give away, if you'd like to join us on the air. We actually have two more books to give away, but we only have one more in addition to the person waiting to have his question answered.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com is our mailing, is our email address.

Include your mailing address when you're emailing us so we can send you the free book. And before I move on,

I also want to welcome as our new sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron, our latest sponsor,

Providence Baptist Church in Norfolk, Massachusetts. And I apologize to those who live in Massachusetts if I'm butchering the name of your city or the pronunciation of your city.

Providence Baptist Church in Norfolk, Massachusetts, their website is Providence Baptist Church MA, as in Massachusetts, dot

ORG. Providence Baptist Church MA dot ORG. And we thank Pastor Mark Lukens and the whole congregation there for thinking enough of Iron Sharpens Iron that they deem it worthy of supporting the ministry here, the radio broadcast here, with their financial help.

And we thank you so much. We can never thank you enough. And before I forget, since I heard the voice of a mutual friend of Dr.

Webster's and mine, Dr. James R. White, who was just reading the ad for the

New American Standard Bible, I just want to remind you that right after this show today at 6 p .m.

Eastern Daylight Time, Dr. White will be hosting his own program, The Dividing Line, at AOMIN dot

ORG. That's A -O standing for Alpha and Omega. M -I -N standing for Ministries dot

ORG. A -O -M -I -N dot ORG, immediately following today's

Iron Sharpens Iron. And of course, Dr. White's program does not always air at the same time or the same day, so that's just for today.

And let me go to our questioner, Mike, from Fort Myers, Florida.

He asks, Hello, Bill. Like yourself, I too am an ex -Roman Catholic. Thank you very much for all of your resources in dealing with Roman Catholicism, as I have often cited your body of work with those who are still bound to Roman Catholicism.

Respective to your work, the Gospel of the Reformation, have you had any Roman Catholic apologists or otherwise directly interact with you on it?

If so, what has been the major point or chapters of contention? I've actually never had a

Roman Catholic interact with me on the Sola Scriptura series and never had a

Roman Catholic interact with me on the Gospel of Reformation. I think I'm a bit of an anomaly to them because of my heavy emphasis on the necessity for repentance from sin and a transformed life, and the emphasis on works correctly understood with respect to what that means biblically.

As James said, if you don't, you can have faith, you can profess, but if you don't have works, it's dead.

It's dead faith. And so, the tendency within Roman Catholicism is to misrepresent the

Reformers, and it is to misrepresent the teaching of the

Gospel that is really proclaimed by those who are true to that Reformation. There is absolutely no

Reformer, not one, who ever denied that works are necessary as a fruit of salvation, that sanctification is an absolute necessity.

I know they try to put Martin Luther in a certain box with respect to that, but if you read

Luther's comments, it's very clear what he says is we have no problem with works. We're not against works.

He said what we're against is the merit of works, where you make this a legalism. And anyone who is true to the

Reformation is going to be true to what the Word of God teaches about the necessity for repentance from sin and for a walk of holiness before God, of obedience to the

Word of God. And there are two aspects to righteousness with respect to the understanding of the

Gospel, and Calvin brings this out and a whole host of other Reformers, that in salvation you are not only given the imputation of righteousness, which is perfect in Jesus Christ, you're also imparted with righteousness, so that you are simultaneously justified and sanctified.

And there's that double aspect of righteousness, which you find in the book of Romans, where the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

In the first part of Romans, in chapter 1, Paul's talking about the Gospel being the power of God to salvation.

The righteousness of God has to do with justification and the imputation of Christ's perfect righteousness.

But going on to Romans 6, it also has to do with a transformed heart and life, where you're raised up from the dead in union with Christ as a living person, and you become a slave of righteousness.

And that's where the issue of righteousness there and works is a fruit of a relationship with Jesus Christ, just as justification is a fruit of a relationship with Jesus Christ.

In Romans 6, 22, Paul sums up that chapter where he says, therefore having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, that's the lordship issue.

You become enslaved to God. You derive your fruit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.

See, that's salvation, a deliverance from sin. You were justified eternally before God, but you're also converted.

You are sanctified. You were adopted into the family of God. You're regenerated.

And then the day is coming when a true believer will be glorified with Jesus Christ as a co -heir with Christ, and he will enter into an eternal inheritance.

But I've never had a Roman Catholic seriously engage me. They always misrepresent. Well, all you believe is imputed righteousness, sola fide, therefore you have a total denial of works.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It's just understanding what the relationship of works is in this whole process of salvation, and in this work of salvation that is accomplished by Christ.

To enter a relationship with Christ, you cannot come with legalism. You repudiate all works because it's by him alone.

But you come in repentance, turning from sin, with a desire to be a man or a woman of God, to be godly and righteous.

He transforms your life in union with him. And then the fruit of that relationship will be godliness and righteousness by the power and the grace of God.

Romans 7 .4, we have been made to die to the law through the body of Christ, that we might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit for God.

See, there you come back to the relationship with a living person joined to him.

Romans 6, we are made one with him, baptized into Christ. That's not water baptism.

That is spiritual union. That is a work of God in bringing us into relationship with the person of Jesus Christ.

And out of that relationship, we're sealed in him, in Ephesians 1 it says, as we respond to the gospel.

And the fruit of that then is we're justified for all eternity. That's an instantaneous work that is eternal.

And then we are sanctified. Our lives are set apart. We are no longer ungodly.

We are godly. We are no longer unrighteous. We become righteous, and our life will be manifest in fruit that is born through the power of the

Spirit of God in us. We walk in the Spirit, no longer in the flesh. Now, as we summarize over these next 14 minutes or so,

I just want to go, even though we may be a bit repetitive here, because you've addressed all these things, but I want you to just go step -by -step with brief definitions, as briefly as possible, just so we can summarize appropriately what we've been talking about.

If you can start with, as briefly as possible, a definition of justification once again.

Okay, justification has to do with the guilt of sin. The issue is sin. You have the person of God.

That's where you have to begin. There's a creator, right? The true and living God exists.

He has created us for a purpose. That purpose is defined by the law of God. Well, man has rebelled against that law.

We've rebelled against God as a person, and we've rebelled against His will in how we live.

The law has two aspects to it, two components. There is the aspect of a personal relationship, the first commandment, the greatest commandment, you should love the

Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's relation, relationship. We're called to be in an exclusive worship relationship with the true and living

God. We are to live exclusively for Him, to serve Him. He is to be the center of our life.

Well, man and sin has rebelled against that, which is the center of man's life itself. It's you and me.

That's the greatest idol of all. And then we have the world, and we have individual sins that we commit, that we're in bondage to, and then we have the idolatry in other aspects of our life where other things take

God's place in our life. Well, that's our rebellion, and that's our state. Well, the law of God has a consequence.

If you rebel against it, if you can keep it perfectly, you don't need salvation. You can earn it.

The problem is we are born in a state of sin and rebellion against God. Therefore, we need to be saved. We need to be reconciled to God.

We're sinners in rebellion against God, as defined by the law of God. The law of God requires perfect obedience to be accepted by Him.

It requires death for transgression. Justification is dealing with that aspect of sin.

Where we have sinned against God, we have guilt before God, there are consequences to that sin, which means there are eternal consequences to the judgment of God.

We're under the wrath of God. Jesus Christ lived a perfect life under the law for you and me.

He never sinned. He lived that perfect righteousness that we are required to live but cannot live.

Then He went to the cross to bear the penalty for our sin. Our sin was imputed to Him, and He took that sin in Himself.

Then the wrath of God was poured out upon Him. He bore the judgment of God against our sin.

In justification, when we come to Christ, we come with empty hands, in poverty of spirit, and we come in dependence upon Him in faith, believing what the

Word of God tells us that He will do for the sinner. He will justify us for all eternity.

That means we are declared righteous by God. We are acquitted from the penalty of the law, the judgment of that law against us, so that we are set free from all condemnation and all judgment for all eternity in Christ.

That's why the Word of God gives hope when it says to us, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, none, because Jesus bore it all.

Okay, that's the aspect of guilt. Justification means I stand in Christ, united to Him.

His life is my life. His standing before God is my standing. His merit before God becomes mine.

His righteousness is given to me, imputed to me as a gift. That's why Romans 5 calls it the gift of righteousness.

That's not something I earn. I cannot do it. That is something that is given, and it is perfect.

The absolute perfection of the law has been fulfilled by Christ, and that is what is given to us in Christ.

We stand forgiven, reconciled, justified under the law, but we're no longer under the law.

It cannot condemn us ever because of Christ and His salvation. But the other aspect of salvation then has to do with the state of sin, the power and the dominion of sin within me.

As a rebel against God, I not only have guilt, but I have this state of being that I have to be delivered from, and Jesus Christ is a deliverer from sin.

That's sanctification and regeneration. That's conversion. That's where a man is transformed from being ungodly and unrighteous to becoming godly and righteous in Jesus Christ.

He is made submissive to the lordship of Christ.

It is as Jesus is Lord reigning in the heart of an individual, but the back of sin is broken, and a man is set free from the power and the dominion and the state of sin, and he becomes a new creation in Christ.

He is made alive to God in Christ, and then his life now becomes conformed to the law of God in both those aspects of the law that I mentioned in relationship with God and in behavior.

So that in relationship with God, what I have in my heart is a first love relationship with the true and living

God in Jesus Christ, and that's where this whole teaching on discipleship is so important, because Jesus says in Luke 14, if any man comes to me, he must hate his father, his mother, his wife, his children, his brothers, his sisters, yes, and even his own life, or he cannot be my disciple, and what he's doing there is applying repentance.

The first commandment of the law of God is you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. He's dealing with idols, and he's saying that if you're going to come to me for salvation, you have to deal with the idols.

I have to become first love in your life, because I am God who created you, and that's part of repentance, and that's where this whole issue of discipleship and understanding his teaching of discipleship is understanding this is a call for men to repent of rebellion against the law of God in their relationship with God as a person and in their rebellion against his will and their behavior.

But in Christ, that man then, where that man truly repents and comes to Christ, and that kind of a commitment, it's a radical commitment, but it is a commitment that is born of the grace of God in the heart of a man.

If that message is preached, God takes that message and applies it to the heart of a man and gives him the ability by his grace and power to turn in that kind of a repentance to Christ.

There is no other legitimate Christianity but that. Jesus does not know anyone who is a true believer but a true disciple and one who is fully committed his heart to him and has repented of sin.

That's the deliverance that is brought in our life by the Savior Christ, and then the ultimate issue, the ultimate then is going to happen in eternity where we are delivered from the very presence of sin and we are glorified with him and made like him in perfection.

And definition of faith, because there's obviously a big debate even within evangelicalism of what that means.

Some believe that just means mental assent to the true facts of Scripture about Christ.

That's where you have to come back to what the Reformers did. They came back to the Word of God. They defined the gospel by the

Word of God, and they preached that gospel to men which flew in the face of the tradition that they had been raised in for hundreds of years.

They stood against that stream of tradition and boldly proclaimed what the

Word of God teaches. If Jesus says, if you are not a disciple, you will perish, we need to proclaim that to men because that's what the

Word of God teaches. Intellectual assent, as James says in James 2, is dead faith.

If you have just this intellectual assent to Christ that you admit you're a sinner and you acknowledge certain fundamental basic truths intellectually and you need the intellectual,

I'm not diminishing that at all, but if that's all you have and it has not moved in your heart to where you actually turn in repentance from your sin and have committed your life wholly to Christ as He has defined that, then you do not know

Him. That's where the error of evangelicalism is so prevalent today because we have redefined the teaching of Jesus to mean this is not necessary, it's a second step.

What you have in Christianity is a two -tiered Christianity. You've got those who have professed

Christ and they are supposedly believers. They're not disciples, but they're saved.

They can be given assurance of salvation and then you have the truly committed who are really disciples.

It's these who are fruitful and it's these who you want to disciple. That's where all the programs about discipleship come in.

They're in complete error because the only person who's a true believer is one who has fully committed his life to Christ as He has defined it in being a true disciple, and as Paul says, is one who is enslaved to God in Romans 6 .22.

If I'm not enslaved to God and that means the word doulos, if that has not happened in my heart and life,

I've never been set free from sin and I'm not going to have the fruit of sanctification. Yeah, even the demons know the truth about God, as James says, and they tremble and they have more of a proper response to knowing that than many people do because you will have people online for an altar call who are not trembling at all, and yet that trembling even isn't giving that those demons a pathway into heaven.

So even the mental ascent and even the trembling isn't what deems a person worthy of heaven, and yet many demons have a more proper response to the gospel than humans.

Well, I mean, the kind of gospel that is preached to men today is very palatable to the heart of man because you don't have to deal with anything.

I mean, all you have to do is, who wants to go to heaven? Just raise your hand. Well, you just give mental ascent to Jesus.

Well, how is that offensive? Who doesn't want to go to heaven? If you start preaching, though, when you start preaching the real gospel the way

Jesus preached it, you're going to get a reaction from people, but that's what is so desperately needed.

When the Reformers preached the gospel in their day, they got a reaction. They got opposition, but they also got salvation, conversions.

There was a mighty movement of the Spirit of God. What we need today is the same thing.

We need a full, bold proclamation of the true gospel by men who don't fear the face of men, who couldn't care less what men think of them, who are going to be true to the

Word of God no matter what it costs them. They're going to stand and proclaim to men what sin is and the need for repentance and the hope of the gospel, but they're not going to give men a false assurance that if they've just given some intellectual nod to Jesus that they're going to be in.

The warning of Matthew 7 should ring in all our ears. That day is coming when many will say,

Lord, Lord, and they will be cast away because they never entered an arrogate. They never walked in their way.

And finally, if you could touch on the gospel and evangelism, we only have one minute for you to do that.

Well, what is evangelism? Evangelism is a faithful proclamation of the gospel.

The gospel as it is clearly defined for us in the Word of God, that's evangelism.

You've got to be faithful to the truth of the Word of God. The whole issue with evangelism is that men need to be reconciled to God.

That is the issue. They need deliverance from sin. They need to understand they were made for the glory of God and that they are sinners headed for an eternal judgment of separation from God, and they desperately need to hear this message.

That's evangelism. And if it's true, it will result in the salvation of souls, but it's also going to result in the antagonism of men and the opposition of men.

Amen. And we want to apologize to Anna in New York City. We didn't have an opportunity to get to your question, but we are sending you a free book.

And I thank you from the bottom of my heart, Dr. William Webster, for being my guest today, and especially for being a faithful friend through many trials in my life.

Thank you so much for being our guest today. Thank you, Chris. And Dr. William Webster's website is christiantruth .com,

christiantruth .com. Remember to tune into Dr. James R. White at AOMIN .org

right after this program at 6 p .m. Eastern Daylight Time. That's the dividing line with Dr.

James R. White right after this program. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. Please tune into Iron Sharpens Iron tomorrow with our guest