Getting the Gospel Right | Theocast (w/ NoCo Radio, The Pactum, and The Heidelcast)

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Hey guys, this is John, and today on Theocast, we have a special and long episode for you.

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Justin and I were just in California at the Westminster Seminary Faculty Conference, and we had a great time connecting with other pastors there, but we also got invited to participate in a podcast.

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There's four podcasts that got together and recorded on the gospel, and it was a lot of fun.

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And so on this episode, you guys will get to hear from Dr. R. Scott Clark, who's part of the Heidelcast, Pat Abendroth and Mike Grimes, who are a part of the

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Pactum, and then Mike Abendroth, who is the host of NOCO Radio.

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And the four podcasts got together, and we covered subjects like Sola Fide, Assurance, Law Gospel Distinction, and Covenant Theology.

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I know we kind of mashed it all in there, but it was a lot of fun. We hope you enjoy. It's full of the gospel.

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It's full of hope, and I'm pretty sure you're going to laugh as well. So enjoy. A simple and easy way for you to help support

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Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org slash give. Getting the gospel right with Theocast, Heidelcast, No Compromise, and the

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Pactum. Gentlemen, thank you for agreeing to do this, and thank you to Westminster Seminary for hosting us. The plan is to talk about Sola Fide, Law Gospel, Assurance, and Covenant Theology as advertised, things that make us tick.

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We have four rounds, hopefully no knockout rounds, but we have four rounds.

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And so what we're going to do is allow each of the different podcasts to kick off one of the different rounds. And so what we're going to do is we are going to draw questions from a hat.

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I want you to know it is a Pactum hat. It is. Shameless plug. Of course it is. But anyway, what we're going to do is we're going to draw from...

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Someone take that from him. Each of the podcasts is going to draw a question, and the questions are directed toward another podcast.

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And when that happens, if you are on the receiving end of the question, what we want you to do is begin to answer the question, but then we'll kick it around amongst us.

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But at least gives us a little rhyme or reason. Mike Rimes is our Sergeant at Arms.

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I've got a timer. I'll cut you off. So if... Move it along, fellas. If Mike says time to pass the hat, it means, okay, hurry up,

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Scott. Are we taking an offering? We're taking an offering, apparently. After 67 stances of just as I am, we'll take an offering.

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So now Mike came on an airplane, so he's probably not armed. There's probably only one Logo guy who is armed, but we won't talk about that.

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It might be fake news. Okay. With that in mind, who wants to draw first? Justin.

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All right. Here we go. We're going to pass that down. And if you draw your own, you've got to pick a different one.

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Yeah. I knew you were going to do it. I knew you would. He actually drew his own.

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I did draw. Take one in four shots. Justin likes some Justin. Yes, he does.

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Dang. All right. Here we go. I'm going to read it as written. Okay. Mike Avendroth of No Compromise.

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We are asking you about law and gospel. Come on. What is law and gospel? Is law gospel and isn't it merely

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Lutheran? Isn't it something extra biblical imposed upon the Bible? And why does so many seem to have an allergy against it?

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How many questions was that, Bob? Hey, I did not write these. Yes, no. Just talk to us about the law and the gospel.

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Yeah. All right. Well, in Massachusetts, it's the law and the gospel. So we have law enforcement people there that pull you over if you're going too fast.

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Lots of times people will say, oh, law gospel distinction is simply Lutheran. Or it's

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Lutheran. Sometimes they don't even say simply or merely. And kind of the fleshly

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Mike Avendroth wants to say, that's just really a stupid statement. But I kind of know how to carry myself once in a while, and so I know my wife will check up on me, so I'll just say, well, what do you mean by that?

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But here's what I would say. Of course, law gospel is Lutheran. It's not

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Roman Catholic. Robert Bellarmine didn't come up with it. The popes don't teach it.

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And so it's Lutheran, but it's not only Lutheran. It is Reformed as well. So you can look at Luther with law gospel distinction.

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You can look at Beza, or as we like to say at home, I know it's, I've said it twice now, but Theodore Beza, he teaches that.

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Olivianus. Shout out to Olivianus. He teaches it.

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William Perkins taught it. And so it's not simply Lutheran. I think sometimes they want to shut us down and say, oh, it's a

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Lutheran thing, therefore Lutheran's bad, and they don't want us to talk about it. I think underneath everything, though, is if we begin to say law gospel is essentially covenant of works and covenant of grace, they don't like the covenant language, and so that's what they're afraid of.

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That's what they're allergic to. Law is simply due, it's a command, it's something that God requires, and gospel is something that God has done.

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There are no demands in the gospel, there's nothing to be done in the gospel, it's something that God himself does, and so law gospel looks at the scripture and says, is this something

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God has done, or is this something I'm supposed to do? And then you can kind of break it down even farther when it comes to law.

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There are three kinds of law, right, moral, civil, ceremonial, and there are uses of the law, and the uses of the law to the unbeliever, it shows them their sin, right?

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It's like a mirror, right? Perfectly love God. Love God and love your neighbor. The hardest thing that you could ever do,

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Calvin said, to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and it exposes their sin so they could look for a

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Savior. It also restrains society, both believers and unbelievers, but the main issue with law gospel in evangelical circles, in my opinion, is the denial of the third use of the law, right?

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So God is holy, righteous, and just, the law is not floating around outside of him ethereally, abstractly, it's a reflection of his character.

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Therefore, since God is immutable, he never changes, his law doesn't change, but our relationship to the lawgiver changes.

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That's the key with all this. When you hear preaching on TV, the radio, your favorite celebrity preacher, do they handle the law that way?

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Preaching from the Father to guide or to steer the Christian into holy living and obedience and striving and sweating.

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And so the law is to guide, it doesn't animate, it doesn't help us obey, it just tells us, right or wrong, stay on target, here's how

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I'm going to guide you, it's good for you, it glorifies God, and it is the personal work of the Lord Jesus sent by the

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Father that gives us the animating power to obey the gospel. So law is due, gospel is done,

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Lutherans and Reformers taught law gospel, don't forget who's giving you the law. My son here is

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Luke, and I don't say to him, if you disobey me one more time, you're no longer going to have my last name.

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I tend to find out that most parents are nicer to their children than they portray God because they don't have the right law gospel distinction, and law from the hand of Christ from the

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Father, which the Marrow Man talked about a lot. So what happens when people confuse law and gospel, like in preaching, or what would be an example, a common example of confusing?

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Well, maybe one easy example, not even in preaching, is we talk about living the gospel. We're going to live the gospel, and only one person lived the gospel, and he told you not to live it, he told you to preach it, right?

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Because he knew you couldn't live it, and so we're going to live the gospel. What does that mean? That's even a command there, live the gospel.

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The gospel is historical, it's outside of us, something Jesus did, whether you lived or died or were never born,

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Jesus was on earth. That's why if you go to Israel, you see the little plaque outside, the stone outside,

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Caesarea Philippi, and it says something about Pontius Pilate. I love to take the pilgrims over to that area and say, why did we love this section here about Pontius Pilate?

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And then I read the creed. Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead, and was buried.

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Because this is history. Machen said every good theologian is a historian first.

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We're talking about real time and space, real person, and so we don't want to live the gospel, that would be one way that we could mess it up.

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Love God is law or gospel? It is law. So you go to churches, and you have a banner in front of the church, and they're advertising their church.

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Sometimes in the Midwest, it might be turkey squirrel boils, and they have free squirrel.

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Everybody can come at five o 'clock. Maybe in North Carolina, Justin. Don't put that on us.

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Definitely not in Tennessee. You've never seen that in Nebraska. Squirrel boils. Squirrel boils. We have in New England bean suppers.

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So if you want a free bean supper, you can come to church, and we might talk to you about the law. And so we advertise our churches, and so when

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I see a church that says, we're all about loving God and loving neighbor, I just say to myself, usually out loud, law. Law church.

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Law. They're all about the law. We love the law, but you want to know what our church is about? It's about the proclamation of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. T. David Gordon said, bring somebody from Tibet in your church that's never been to church ever.

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They know nothing about Christianity. Let them listen to the sermon and ask them the question, what is Christianity all about?

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And inevitably, they will say, do be good. And so that's law.

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That's not gospel. We want to talk about the person and work of the Savior. I think it should be a topic he was excited about.

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Yeah. No kidding, right? That's right. Right. I hope that everybody actually really listened to that.

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So honestly, this is from my heart, if you don't take anything else tonight home with you, right?

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Take that. That's right. Right? What he just gave you. That's hard one stuff.

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This is not, you won't hear that very many places, and you won't hear it articulated that well.

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From a Baptist, no less. Hey, I'm going to say amen to that.

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And that came from no cast. That's right. Right? That came from no account cast.

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You will not hear it articulated that well, that concisely. Right?

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That's the whole reformation right there. And anybody tries to take that away from you, you just tell them, get thee behind me,

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Satan. Right? That's the truth. That's God's truth that you just heard. So then, Mike, why do people call you an antinomian?

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You know, you used to stick up for me. You're nine years older than me. And you'd go after - Notice how he did take a dig at your age.

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Mike would go after the bullies to protect his younger brother, and now sometimes I want to protect my older brother, my older brother, because he's called an antinomian.

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Are you an antinomian, and why do people call you that? Well, of course, you know, the word anti is against, anti -Christ, against Christ, and anti -nom, anti -law, where we're against the law.

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In my little five -minute description, did I sound like I was against the law? No. No. But I'm against using the law unlawfully and trying to put people back under the covenant of works if it were possible to use your line.

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In order to gain acceptance with God. We love the law now because we have been accepted by God for Christ's sake alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, which leads us then to love the law.

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If somebody after justification, logically after, says, well, I don't have any place for the law, well, that's a problem.

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That's antinomianism. And that person needs to repent, and if they're persistent, then we say, listen, you need to repent and believe in Jesus.

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Because if you really believed in Jesus, you would love his law, but not in order to be accepted with God.

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That's again, that's the whole fight that Paul was having with the Judaizers. It's the whole fight that we had in the

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Reformation, and it's the fight we're having with the nomists today, and there's a lot of nomists. Well, we try to get people to obey, so what do you do?

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If you just tell them, this is the God who loves you and has sent his Son for you, maybe they don't think they'll obey out of gratitude that way, so then we try to put people under the law and to say, if you don't obey, you're going to be condemned.

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If you don't align yourself with God, then somehow you're going to be condemned. And so that's not what we do. That's not how we treat our own children, that's not how

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God treats us. All your sins are forgiven, right Christian? Every single one. We believe in justification by faith alone.

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All of our sins have been paid for, past, present, and future. Our name's written in the book, but our deeds are not because they're paid for by Jesus.

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And so since he's done that, we want to obey, and I want to encourage you to obey, but not to increase your standing like Scott said, not to keep your standing, but because of your standing.

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Right? If somebody would love you like that, what would you do in response? Hopefully you'd say, I want to honor you, and when you don't say that, we say, please forgive me,

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I'd like to honor you more, I repent. And to answer your question, I'm not an antinomian. But when a neonomian calls me that,

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I'm happy. Romans chapter 6, right? That's right. That's right. So they set up a test where, if you're not a gnomist, in other words, if you're not using the law as your way of gaining favor with God, or gaining final acceptance or final salvation.

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By the way, anybody talks to you about final justification, final salvation, again, run away.

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That's right. Right? There's only one. That's right. And either you have it or you don't. Yeah. And you have it by grace alone.

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So if you're justified now, if you're saved now, you are as justified and saved as you will ever be. You're either in Christ or you're not in Christ.

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Right? Amen. Yeah. So the idea that then, you know, you're initially justified, but you're going to finally gain approval or finally be delivered from wrath through your law keeping, again, that's not from Jesus.

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No. No. That's from someplace else. And I don't care what famous preacher says it. I don't care how big his church is.

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I don't care how big his social media following is. If anybody, an angel, an apostle, right?

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Some big Eva star. Even if they're from Nebraska? Even if they're from Nebraska.

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He has a killer mustache. Tells you, right, that there's a final stage.

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You're provisionally right. You're out on bail. Right?

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Mike knows about being out on bail. Hey, hey, hey, this is my segment.

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Come on now. I'll just add one thought to that. When you do collapse the law and the gospel and you've had a heavy diet of that, this is one of the things that I learned from Scott early on years ago, is that when you decide to pull the gospel out of the law, that's when you start getting accused of being an antinomian.

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And when it comes to the gospel, we are antinomians. We pull the law as far away from the gospel as we can.

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But when it's been glossable for so long and you say, no, no, no, you've got to separate the law.

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It's at that moment they're like, well, you're an antinomian. It's like there cannot be any law in the gospel. So when it comes to the gospel,

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I am an antinomian. But in one sense, no, no, oh, no, you didn't. Right?

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Because you're not, John, because you know Christ fulfilled the law. That's right. So the law is actually there. That's right.

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See, this all works together because preachers are going to preach about the law one way or the other. And they're either going to focus on Jesus, the law keeper, and Jesus, the one who paid for the law breakers.

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Are they going to focus on the congregation's obedience? He will talk about obedience one way or the other. So Reformed Pastor, a good book?

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No. No. Because it says the opposite of what we've been saying, right, and what the gospel teaches.

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And people may not know that, but you should tell them who the author of that is. So Richard Baxter was against John Owen and they had it out because Owen was standing for justification sola fide, and Baxter thought somehow it was faith and works.

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And so when somebody says read Richard Baxter, I would say run. Run. Run. Not helpful at all.

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It's the anti -Reformed Pastor. Not helpful, but... Baxter wrote, published aphorisms on the doctrine of justification.

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And you can find those. Those are available. You can read those. And I've written about them at length on the

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Heidel blog, written about everything at length I know. But if you look, for example, at the heidelblog .net

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slash resources, and there's a whole resource page on justification, and essays on Baxter.

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He's an enemy of the gospel. And all these people out there promoting Richard Baxter, it's like, really?

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It's like, if you were worried about arson, would you promote an arsonist?

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Say, you know, yeah, he was an arsonist. Or he's a mass murderer, but, you know, in the other parts of his life he was great.

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Really? He never stole anything. Seems to me like being an arsonist or a mass murderer is kind of a defining characteristic, sort of disqualifying for the rest of what you have to say.

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Well, what happens too, Scott, is, as you know, it crushes people's assurance. And so...

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Intentionally. Yeah, and I don't want to steal the assurance talk tonight, but it's just like, it's so... And even as a seminary student, we were required to read

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Reformed Pastor by Baxter. And I thought, I could never do this. And then the first few years when I didn't do it,

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I thought I felt so bad because I never measured up. You were a failure. But what Baxter was doing is going house to house to make sure they were keeping the laws of the

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Bible, plus the extra laws that the celebrity Pastor Baxter from Kidderminster gave so everybody would do the right thing.

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How much do I have to obey? Whatever the celebrity says. And in order to gain acceptance with God. And keep it. That's good. Mike, how are we doing?

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You guys are doing good on time. I'm just watching. You've got like a minute left. Oh. Oh. Hey. You know, I'm surprised.

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Shocked, really. Make sure this translates law gospel into even parenting.

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Because we're built with the law. And so there's nothing wrong with telling your children, sit down, be quiet, shake your hand, shake the hand firmly, no running in the church, don't eat with your mouth full, no elbows on the table, push your chair in afterwards, tell mom thank you for the dinner, help clean off the plates, law, law, law, law, law.

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That's all fine. But we need to make sure we parent our children like God fathers us.

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It's law and gospel. Not just to get in, but also as God sanctifies us.

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And so it's law and gospel, the motivation. So I love you. I hear a book coming. Gospel parenting.

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It's 20 ,000 words done. Oh, good. Very good. Yes. And so, don't forget, that's how we deal with our spouse.

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If we're not careful, all law. We give them a honey -do list, and it's not, here's what I think you are and how

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I love you, et cetera. So don't forget in your daily lives, see, this is my practical, relevant

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K -love moment. Don't forget about law and gospel. With a blouse. In your love, man. In your parenting and your marriages.

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We need a honey -done list. I know. There you go. I tried to patent it. Anything else anybody wants to say about law and gospel, we're going to wrap it up.

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I'm sure we'll have other opportunities. I'm sure we will too. Okay. We'll just come down the row here. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, a primer on rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

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slash primer. John Moffitt, Justin Perdue of Theocast.

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We're asking you about assurance of salvation that already kind of came up, but what is the biblical basis for assurance?

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What kind of Christian deserves to have assurance and why? Did you hear that? Repeat that one more time.

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What kind of Christian deserves to have assurance and why? And why do so many seek to rob

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Christians of assurance? Talk to us about assurance. I mean, it's a simple answer. If you just make Jesus Lord of your life, you can have assurance.

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There it is. That's right. Yeah. Sorry. This is not a Pisces episode?

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That's Pisces. I'll let you start. Alright, so assurance.

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What kind of Christian deserves assurance? Well, none of us deserve it. That's right. Right? Nobody could ever earn it before the

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Lord. We were talking about the law and the gospel just a minute ago. One of the most provocative things that we can ever say is that the gospel contains nothing in it whatsoever that we are to do.

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It's completely what Christ has accomplished, and we receive what Christ has done completely by faith.

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And so no one deserves assurance, but we have it because of the Lord Jesus Christ and because of Him alone.

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We talk a lot on Theocast. You guys talk on your podcasts about these things as well. One of the things that occurs often in churches across this land, lamentably, is

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Christians are pointed back in on themselves somehow. We're pointed to Christ, at least in part, believe the gospel, trust in Jesus, maybe even for your righteousness and your acceptance before God, but then somewhere the law is slipped back in, and it's not slipped back in as a guide, in a good sense, the third use of the law, but it's brought back in as a piece of our standing before the

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Lord. And then any thoughtful, sane human being, anyone with a tender conscience is going to examine himself or herself and say,

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I don't meet the test. Which is why many, many people in churches all over the place really don't have assurance because they hear things like final justification, that I'm going to need to do enough to supplement what

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Christ has done, or even if they're told Christ has done it all, I'm still going to need to do enough to prove myself a legitimate follower of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And then when we press in and say, well, how much obedience, how many good works, what kind of works, no one can define that.

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It's very amorphous, it's very ethereal. Or when people will say to us, you need to not live a life characterized, because they collapse the law and the gospel in passages like Galatians 5 or whatever.

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We need our first John, a letter that's meant to comfort the saints is often turned into a litmus test of, are you legitimate or not?

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We take passages and people will say, instead of preaching the law and the gospel rightly, the first use of the law as we should, well, you shouldn't live a life, you can't live a life characterized by A, B, C, or D.

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You need to see a certain kind of trajectory in your life, a certain kind of improvement in your life in order to have peace with God.

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And again, we say, well, how much improvement? What exactly does that trajectory need to look like?

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And no one can tell you. These are common things. John, go ahead. No, that's good. One of the things I think that helps me is that we disassociate assurance from the affections of God, the love of God towards us.

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We love because he is the one who set his love upon us. And so what

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I love about this is that John sets this up, right? God loves you not based upon his reaction to your love, you're reacting to his love.

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And the question is, how good are you at loving God? Well, if you come to the conclusion that everybody should come to,

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I'm not really good at it, Paul then says, there's nothing that's going to separate you from that love you're enjoying.

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And it's important to understand that our responses to God and our obedience to God is grounded in our assurance.

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I don't know how else you read Romans and not walk away with going, God loved me so much, he did not leave me in my state.

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The thing that would cause further separation and anxiety in my own heart, he took on himself in his

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Son, and then guaranteed that there is nothing that can remove this. We were talking about final justification when

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Jesus is on the cross and he says, it is finished. That which could separate you was completed on the cross.

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Therefore, your sin and required righteousness is all granted to you by the love of God in his mercy and in his grace.

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You see the love of God in his mercy and in his grace. And then how does the Bible describe the love of God?

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It's boundless. How does it describe the grace of God? It's an ocean that you cannot dry. So when we think about assurance,

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I think what frustrates me the most, and obviously Theocast has really kind of built its ministry around this, is that it's hard—we're literally having this conversation in the car today—it's hard if a soldier doesn't know which side he's on, he doesn't know where to point the gun.

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So he often points it at himself, like, well, I'm just going to take myself out of this. And what's so comforting about Scripture is that we have this firm and solid foundation of Christ our

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Rock, and we have every reason to realize it's not my performance, what I do right or wrong, which is not a justification to go do something wrong, but it's the love of God that comes and it fuels me so I know where I'm supposed to run, where I'm supposed to go, because I know what side

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I'm on. I'm on the side of my Father who adopted me, unconditionally loves me, and will take care of me to the very end.

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So what happens with an assurance is that we emphasize what we're doing, those who deserve it.

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You'll never do—if you're trying, like, okay, I'm going to do this list of things to assure myself that I know

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I'm right with God, it'll never happen. But if you can say, well, this is what Christ did, this is how God fulfilled these promises, and this is how

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I know it's true because I believe these, I have every reason then to go produce fruit because it's based upon the confidence of Christ versus my own work.

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So it's rightly said that the Reformation was a recovery of the biblical doctrine of assurance. Good. And that's not something that John Calvin or Martin Luther or anybody else came up with.

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They're getting this from Scripture. I mean, think about, beginning in Romans 5, we were talking about final justification in a moment. I don't know what you do with Romans 5, 1 and 2, or even

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Romans 5, 1 to 5, if you're going to argue for a final justification perspective. Because Paul says, having been justified by faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, we now have peace with God. Right? And then he says, he gives this very forward -looking language of, we now rejoice in a number of things, including the hope of the glory of God.

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So it's very clear that if we have been united to the Lord Jesus Christ and presently justified, we will be finally saved.

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Book it. It's done. Right? And then Paul continues to talk about the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, which

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I'm sure we're going to talk about more later, and how Jesus, it's legitimate that Jesus represents us all.

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We're going to talk about covenant theology later. That's what Romans 5, 12 to 21 is about. Adam clearly represented us all in the garden.

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It's legitimate then that Christ would represent everyone who's united to him. But then there's this question, all right?

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If where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more, and if we're counted righteous on account of Christ, well, we can just sin then.

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Right? And Paul says, by no means. But it's interesting how he answers that question. He does not go to the law immediately and say, well, remember what the law says.

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He says, no, saints, you have been united to Christ. You've been baptized into Jesus.

27:04

You've been set free from the tyranny of sin. And you're no longer under the law for your justification, for your standing, but you're under grace and you've now become obedient from the heart.

27:14

But then we get Romans 7, which are some of the most true words ever penned. We all resonate with it.

27:21

That I now, the law is good and holy. There is nothing wrong with the law. But the law, for a sinner, it shows us the depth of our corruption.

27:28

And it shows me how horrible sin is. And so now I have to look outside of myself for righteousness.

27:36

But then Paul acknowledges that even as a Christian, I am often finding myself in this position where I want to do good and I'm not doing good.

27:44

I want to flee from evil, but yet I find myself doing evil things. And he cries out like we all do, you know, wretched man that I am.

27:52

I delight in God's law and my inner man, he says, which by the way, you can't say that. You can never say

27:57

I delight in the law and my inner man. If the law is still your death sentence, that's right.

28:02

No one rejoices in what is his or her death sentence. Only a person that's been justified, forgiven and absolved could ever say such a thing.

28:10

But then we cry out wretched man, wretched woman that I am. But then what is our peace? What is our stay?

28:16

Right? Thanks be to God through the Lord Jesus Christ, right? And there is therefore now no condemnation. For those who are in Christ, and we learned that what

28:24

God meant to do and did do through the Lord Jesus Christ was something that the flesh could not accomplish because it was weakened by sin.

28:31

And now through Christ, the righteous requirements of the law are fulfilled in us, which John Calvin says in his commentary on Romans 8, 3 and 4, that people who even point to Romans 8, 3 and 4 and say that what's being depicted there is our spirit empowered obedience.

28:47

That person is introducing a gloss that is foreign to the Apostle Paul. What Paul is talking about there in the early verses of Romans 8 is the imputation of the righteousness of Christ who has fulfilled the law for us.

28:58

So that by faith in the Lord Jesus, it is as though we have been as perfectly obedient as he was. This is the bedrock of assurance.

29:05

I talk for a long time. You know what, Justin? Are you preaching at your church on Sunday or are you traveling? You just got your sermon out, man.

29:12

That's right, man. He got it out. We're local. Right? That's right. This is good. We should have multiple…

29:17

Get preachers behind the microphone. It's dangerous, man. Right? There you go. You guys, tell us a little bit about heavy -handed, law -only preaching when it comes to assurance driving either to despair or self -righteousness.

29:30

That's right. You know, they're going to give you the gospel. Most if they're evangelical, you're going to hear, well, no, you're saved.

29:39

You're saved by grace alone. But what ends up happening is that they're worried about you being lazy or they're worried about you not doing your part.

29:48

And you know, like any other parent that maybe has not been introduced to the gospel, you use fear tactics to manipulate people.

29:58

And that word is a very strong word, but it's true. You use fear tactics to manipulate people, then to act righteous, like as if God's love is not enough to motivate us.

30:08

We're going to use God's law and the dread of God's law instead. I'll give you an example.

30:15

I would love to see someone who's a heavy -handed law preacher preach Genesis 3, right after Eve and Adam fall.

30:22

What obligation does God give them? None. There's nothing.

30:27

He's describing what he's going to do, and Eve is realizing, hey, this might be the… She's looking for something outside of her…

30:33

Her eyes are not on her, so they don't walk out of the garden thinking, I need a garden well, I need to love my…

30:39

No, they're looking for the promise of God to be fulfilled. They're looking for the promise to be fulfilled. There was no question of what

30:44

God was going to do, and so I think you can look at the first gospel mission, which comes from God to Adam and Eve, and their hope is outside of themselves, and the assurance of that.

30:53

And every gospel message that's going to come after that is not law -based. It can't be law -based.

30:59

But yeah, I mean, all of us around this table have experienced at one point either preaching, unfortunately, law -heavy sermons, or been under those teachings.

31:09

And if you walk away and you think to yourself, I must do this in order for God to do that, you need to ask yourself why.

31:19

And if the answer is not for His glory and not my gain, that's fine. But if it's for me to gain assurance, or it's for me to…

31:27

If it has anything to do with my standing or affections or blessings from God, it's wrong. And that's heavy law preaching, and unfortunately there's too much of it in the

31:36

United States. Sure. I think you get a lot of law preaching in places John touched on this, because underneath every holiness movement in the history of the

31:43

Church is the fear that if we tell everyone that literally everything you'll ever need, now and in the future, to be right in God's sight, for God to look at you and pronounce, just,

31:54

Christ has accomplished it. If we tell people that, then there will not be appropriate skin in the game, and people will not be properly motivated to pursue holiness.

32:02

That's underneath a lot of it. And we would say, well, you know, if this was a human endeavor, you might be on to something.

32:09

That's right. If this was natural, you might be on to something. But this is supernatural. Yeah. We're talking about union with Christ by faith, and having been united with Christ, we will pursue, by the

32:20

Spirit's work in us, we will pursue conformity unto the law, imperfectly but sincerely.

32:26

Justin, I like what you said about this is a Reformation issue as far as recovering assurance, and maybe it would do us all better, serve us well to study

32:34

Roman Catholic theology a little bit. Sure. Like the Council of Trent, for example. And the anathematizing of assurance.

32:40

Right. And so here, maybe I'm gonna preach as a Protestant, and I sound like a Roman Catholic, even though I say

32:45

I'm not. Yeah. So, Council of Trent, 15, what, 45 to 1563.

32:51

There's a historian. Right? Whoa. That's close enough. Right. Close enough. And so, thank you.

32:59

You're close enough. So, Council of Trent, you have Session 6, Canon 24. Right?

33:04

So, the canons of Trent are the doctrines of the Council of Trent, right? So, Session 6, Canon 24 says something to this effect, that anyone who says that obedience, fruit, good works, or good works, excuse me, or obedience are fruit of justification received, but are not, here are two words, also serve to preserve and increase that justification, let him be anathema.

33:30

I don't think any Protestant out there, any Evangelical out there is telling people that they will increase their justification through their good works, but there are a boatload of them who at least imply that you will maintain your right standing with the

33:43

Lord through your performance. No, there are some people saying it. And, blooded, that is Roman Catholic doctrine. No, there are people saying it just that way, that you, there's a statement, an elder's statement that I'm thinking of, a prominent church in the upper

33:58

Midwest, where the elders say... In a state that starts with M. Yes.

34:04

Yeah, right. There's a couple of those though. Is Mexico a state? That's right. It rhymes with Innesota.

34:12

Yeah. So, the elder's statement says that we preserve, maintain our justification.

34:22

It's almost like the Council of Trent wrote that sentence. Right? So, this is what happens when you lose track of this stuff.

34:32

You know, Heidelberg Catechism solves so many of our problems. And Heidelberg is so good on assurance.

34:38

Question 21, which I just had here, says, what is true faith?

34:45

It's a certain knowledge, right, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His word, but also a hearty trust, which the

34:53

Holy Spirit works in me by my good works. Hmm. Is that what it said?

35:00

No? I was about to say, what? That was kind of tricksy.

35:05

Uh -oh. Edit button. You thought the Heidelberg Catechism was reformed, which the Holy Spirit works in me by the gospel.

35:12

Amen. That not only to others, but to me also, the forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness and salvation are freely given, not conditionally given, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits.

35:23

And then 86, somebody, so somebody's listening to this and they're screaming at their phone, their iPhone, or their

35:31

Android. They're probably, if they have an Android, they're probably screaming at that for another reason. Well, yeah. So, they're screaming at their phone saying, what about Heidelberg 86?

35:41

Well, what about Heidelberg 86? Since then we are redeemed from all our misery by grace, through Christ, without any merit of ours, why should we do good works?

35:53

Because Christ. That's right. Mm -hmm. Ding, ding, ding. Right? This is, uh, right.

36:00

Right? Because Christ. This is getting piping hot right now. I know. Having redeemed us by His blood also renews us by His Holy Spirit after His own image, that with our whole life we show ourselves thankful to God for His blessing, and also that He be glorified through us, then also that we ourselves may be assured of our faith by the fruits thereof, and by our godly walk, when also others to Christ.

36:23

So there is a place, secondarily, but you start with Christ, you start with the promises, you start with the objective, you don't turn first to yourself, because you'll never have assurance that way.

36:38

We can have our assurance bolstered by the good works that we do, but our good works are never the ground of our assurance.

36:46

When I look at myself, I don't know how I could be saved, Luther said. That's right. When I look to the Lord, I don't know how I could be lost. I don't know how I could not be saved.

36:51

That's right. You take credit for your own birth? That's right. But technically speaking, Rome did allow assurance for Paul because of special revelation and for Mary.

37:01

It's a supernatural... Because she's Mary. Right. It's a miracle, basically. Yes. And assurance is what they set it up to be.

37:06

And it's not a miracle, it's not a second blessing, there are not two classes of Christians, and assurance is of the essence of faith in itself.

37:14

We don't always experience it because of our own sin, our own unbelief, but faith in itself, by definition, entails assurance.

37:24

That little book by Burkoff is quite helpful. Assurance of the Faith. A couple parting shots? Yeah, just a couple.

37:29

We're going to wrap up this one. All right, super quick. These are related to things we've been talking about. It's important for us to know when we're talking about the law, the law cannot empower sanctification, it can only guide it.

37:39

Right? But what is the power of sanctification? It's union with Christ. And so the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments is what will do the job over the course of the

37:48

Christian's life, needs to be said. And the preaching of Christ never caused anyone to sin. It just needs to be stated, right?

37:56

I mean, you didn't need any help sinning, nor did I, and the preaching of Christ is not going to cause people to sin.

38:01

So we need to just put that nonsense to bed. You heard it here. All right. All right. Let's pass the hat.

38:06

Here we go. You're up. We need some special music. How come he's not wearing headphones?

38:14

He doesn't believe in it, apparently. I don't know. He was trying to be a trendsetter. How come you're sitting on a seat that's higher, trying to dominate me by your position?

38:23

I have a seat cushion, so I'm comfortable. This kind of sounds like it could be a joke, you know, five Baptists in a

38:29

Presbyterian walk into a bar. It is true. And six walkout

38:34

Baptists. And the Presbyterian's a teetotaler. Oh! That might be the problem.

38:41

Okay, this is to Scott Clark of the Heidelcast, and we're going to ask you about Sola Fide.

38:48

What is Sola Fide? Why is it so vital? And thirdly, why does it seem so trendy for Protestants to miss the mark when it comes to Sola Fide?

38:59

So first up, what is it, then what is vital? Sola Fide is a Latin expression.

39:04

So are you ready for some grammar? It's in the ablative case, right? This is what you came for tonight.

39:11

I have to, hold on, I'm going to Google that. Ablative. Ablative case. So it means it's in the instrumental case.

39:17

That's what it means, right? Ablative means, in this case, it means instrumental. So Sola Fides is in the subject case.

39:26

Sola Fide is in the ablative case. Hey, you just used most of your time, so come on. Semper Fi.

39:33

He doesn't know the answer, so he's just talking about grammar. Pat's got an attention span of like 27 seconds.

39:46

So we said it that way to say that faith is the soul, the alone only instrument by which we apprehend

39:56

Christ and His righteousness. Because in the medieval church, we'd come to say that you apprehend

40:02

Christ through faith. Trusting was part of it, but obedience was also part of it.

40:08

So that they turned, in effect, they turned faith into faithfulness. That's why I gave a Latin lesson, because people don't know this stuff anymore.

40:17

So we expressed it that way specifically. You won't actually see our guys saying

40:22

Sola Fides, right, very often. People, you know, occasionally, but rarely.

40:28

Sola Fides is a different thing. That means faith alone. That's right. Right? Here we're talking about the instrument by which we receive

40:35

Christ and His benefits. So in the Belgian Confession, we say that faith is the only instrument.

40:41

And I just read Heidelberg 21. Faith is the only instrument. So that's, we articulated

40:46

Sola Fide precisely that way for precisely that reason. Martin Luther, as he's struggling through his, basically, metamorphosis from being a sort of fairly mainstream medieval theologian, he got some funky theology even by medieval standards when he was in university.

41:08

So he's reading Augustine as he's lecturing through the Psalms, and he's turning into a young, restless, un -Augustinian.

41:16

That's the first stage of his theological development. He's realizing, I'm not good.

41:22

I can't do what I'm being asked to do. I'm dead in sins and trespasses, and grace is sovereign. Grace is free.

41:28

So that's what he grasps. One of the things he, the last thing that he grasped in his development between 1513 and 15, basically 19 or so, is

41:40

Sola Fide. And it was through lecturing through Galatians, lecturing through Hebrews, and then lecturing through the

41:47

Psalms again. And he said in 1519, so looking back on his life, late in his life, in a preface, he said, 1519 is when

41:55

I grasped that, and it was after those three lectures. And he realized, there may be a sense in which faith is a virtue in sanctification, as a consequence, but in the act of justification, he figured out that faith is the instrument that is an empty hand that lays hold of Christ, because it's

42:19

Christ that makes faith powerful. Your faith isn't anything. Christ is everything.

42:26

And faith is that thing that God has designed, that gift with which he has endowed us, that looks away from self, and away from sanctification, away from obedience, away from your good works, and looks to Christ, lays hold of him, his righteousness, his obedience, his merit, right?

42:44

And that's why sola fide is so important, because he realized that the just shall live by faith, hitherto had meant, people had understood it to mean, the just shall live by faithfulness, by covenant fidelity, right?

43:01

And you hear people saying this, right? There are lots of quote -unquote evangelicals out there talking about covenant loyalty, covenant faithfulness.

43:11

Allegiance. Allegiance. Allegiance, right? So you get this from the

43:16

New Perspective on Paul. You get this from the Federal Vision. You get this from lots of evangelical nomists, some of whom one day sound like Protestants, and the next day they sound like Roman Catholics, because they don't know this distinction, right?

43:32

And so there are some guys, and you guys know who I'm talking about. You're reading this guy, it's like, wow, that's really good.

43:38

And then you pick up the next thing, it's like, oh, that's really bad. That's horrible. Well, why is it so bad?

43:44

Why can't... Right? Either you can ride a bicycle or you can't. Why do you keep falling off? What's wrong with you? Because you've never actually learned the doctrine of justification sola fide, what faith is in the act of justification, right?

44:00

So that's why that's so important. So when you read

44:06

Paul talking about faith, Galatians 3 .28, for example, it's why Paul added alone to his translation, because he said,

44:16

I have to add alone. The Roman Catholics said, you can't do that. You can't add the word alone. And Luther said,

44:22

I certainly can, right? You guys can't read Greek. I can read Greek. You people are

44:28

Pope donkeys, he called them. Something like that. He said some other things that we don't want to say to you.

44:35

In this particular passage, he calls them Popstaisel. He calls them Pope donkeys, right? I can read

44:41

Greek, and I'm telling you that the way to get into German, what Paul is saying here is to add the word alone in our translation so that we understand what

44:51

Paul is actually saying there. So in our Belgian Confession, which is an actual Reformed Confession that Reformed Christians hold, we actually included the word alone in our definition of faith and in our translation.

45:07

So when it quotes Galatians, or Romans 3, 28 there, it uses alone.

45:13

So that's our official translation, right? And even if you wanted to go about it a little bit different way, as a recovering

45:21

Biblicist, Romans 4, 5, he justifies the ungodly. So if we're ungodly when we're justified, faith must not be virtuous.

45:30

So Pelagius said, well, ungodly means you've just started believing, but you're not very sanctified.

45:36

That's what they did. And so that becomes, to some degree, the medieval way of getting at that.

45:43

But you're right. You're exactly right that what Paul is saying is what you just said, that God justifies not the sanctified.

45:53

So remember, for a thousand years, the church said you're justified because and to the degree you are sanctified.

46:01

And you can never have assurance because you're never sanctified enough. It's by grace and cooperation with grace. You have to understand that.

46:07

They all said by grace and cooperation with grace. Trent says by grace and cooperation with grace.

46:13

So when we say they teach justification by works, that's an inference. We're right about that, but that's not the language they use.

46:20

So that's why Sola Fide is so important. And that's an acid test when you're talking with people.

46:28

Oh, I love Jesus. Great. What did Jesus do for you? Well, he made it possible for me to do my part.

46:34

Right? Well, you've just turned him into a facilitator, and you've made him—we actually say this in the Belgic—you've made him but half a

46:41

Savior. That's right. Amen. Scott, talk to us a little bit about repentance. So it's faith alone.

46:47

Obviously, the Bible teaches repentance, and sometimes you'll see Peter tell people to repent. How do we work through repentance if it's

46:53

Sola Fide? Yeah. So repentance is, in a sense, the fruit of belief.

47:01

Unbelievers don't repent. That's right. Right? So now you have to distinguish here between the pedagogical order and the theological order.

47:10

So pedagogically, when we're talking to people, we preach the law to them, and we say, look, this is the greatness of your sin and misery.

47:16

You're in deep doo -doo before God, right? God is angry with you every day. You're under the wrath of God.

47:22

Is that German? Yes. That's how John says it. That's in the ablative. That's the ablative.

47:29

Abs. Ablative. Technically, it would be in the dative, but that's okay. It's donkey German. Yeah, it's very late

47:38

Latin. Late Latin. So you are in a lot of trouble before God, and you're under wrath, right?

47:49

And so we say to people, you need to repent. You need to reckon with the greatness of your sin and misery. So again, the

47:54

Heidelberg Catechism says, what things do you need to know in order to experience this comfort that we talk about in question one?

48:03

Three things. First, the greatness of my sin and misery. Second, how I'm redeemed from all my sins and misery. And third, how

48:09

I'm to be thankful to God for such redemption. There's a whole Christian life and a whole Christian faith right there. So how do you, from where do you know the greatness of your sin and misery?

48:16

Out of the law of God. So when we call people to repent, we're preaching the law. And so you go to Acts 17, for example.

48:23

Paul preaches the law to the Athenian philosophical society. And then he preaches the gospel of the resurrection, right?

48:30

The objective accomplishment of redemption and the vindication of Jesus. And he calls people to faith.

48:35

So repentance is absolutely necessary. Anybody who has an impenitent faith has a false faith.

48:42

Don't tell me you believe if you're impenitent. If I come to you and say, listen, brother, it's been, somebody's come to me with some serious allegations and evidence that you're having an affair with your secretary.

48:55

Right. This is a conversation. You boys have probably had this kind of conversation. I had this conversation with a man who'd been an elder in the church.

49:02

It was a long time ago, many years ago, far, far away. And I went to this guy and he said, brother, you need to repent.

49:11

And he told me to pound sand. Right now. And I told him that if you're not, if you're impenitent, you're under the wrath of God.

49:20

We ended up having to read a sentence of excommunication for him. Right.

49:25

Because he demonstrated that he was impenitent. So I'm not talking about a faith that is, but repentance is not faith.

49:32

Faith is looking towards Christ. Repentance is about your sin, recognizing your sin.

49:39

Right. But faith is turning away from yourself and embracing Christ. But you're not justified because you're, you're penitent.

49:46

You're justified by grace alone through faith alone. Not through repentance or penance.

49:54

But a true faith is penitent. That's a, that is a consequent condition, a consequent of being given new life to faith and union with Christ.

50:06

That's right. Right. And Scott, you were talking earlier about how faith is the instrument. That's important clarification sometimes because people, we say we're saved by faith.

50:14

What we mean, we're saved by Christ. And we receive what Christ has done through faith.

50:20

And that distinction really does matter because like you said it, Christ is everything. He's our righteousness. He's the satisfaction for our sins.

50:26

Faith is simply the vehicle through which we receive the merits of Christ. And that matters a ton for our assurance and our peace before the

50:34

Lord, because a lot of times, even if we talk about faith, many people will rise up and say, well, how much faith?

50:41

To which we say any faith. So the minute people start talking about the quality of your faith, they have lost the narrative.

50:48

That's right. So the medieval church said that you have to have a faith formed by love, which is not what

50:55

Paul says. Paul says faith working through love. That's the consequence of true faith, working through love.

51:01

That's why Calvin said, right, on that passage, he said, when we come to this passage, when we come to justification, we don't talk about love or good works.

51:11

Right. Jesus' love, Jesus' good works, but not ours. That's right. Relative to justification. So the medieval church said, and Rome taught, a faith that's formed by love.

51:22

And love was code for obedience. So that your obedience was making faith what it is.

51:29

That's not true. Christ is what makes your faith what it is. That's right. Because faith lays hold of him.

51:36

He is the object. That's the power of it. Faith is just an empty hand.

51:41

That's all it is. It doesn't do any... There's nothing in faith. There's no intrinsic power in faith.

51:47

Oh, I have a really strong faith. Yeah. Well, tell me about that when you're on the bed, in the hospital and they got tubes and beep, beep, beep, right?

51:57

Tell me about your faith and you're sweating. You got the cold sweat because you know you're about to die and you don't want to die and you're scared.

52:06

Right. Now tell me about the quality of your faith and I'll talk to you about the quality of your Savior. Amen. That's right.

52:11

And when that was happening to me and I talked to Clark, what did he say to me when I was in the hospital, thought

52:16

I was going to die? Are you evangelizing the nurses? How is your Bible memory? How's your quiet time?

52:23

Right. He said to me... Really quiet. Jesus loves you. That's right. And Jesus has you.

52:29

Amen. And there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus and you're going to be fine. I got an illustration.

52:35

None of us got here from our prospective states based upon faith. It took a plane. Right? We put faith in that plane, but it was the object of the plane that carried us here.

52:46

And I think that's part of what we have to remember is that the gospel is, it's the object of Christ and his work that we put our faith in that object, not just faith alone.

52:54

Machen said faith is only as good as its object. That's right. All right. Scott, there's only one left to go.

52:59

I wonder who you're going to ask. I wonder. I wonder. You guys are doing great. Hang in there. We have things to give you if you make it to the end.

53:06

If you persevere. If you endure. If you endure till the end. You'll be justified with Pactam gifts. For the

53:12

Pactam. Well, look at that hat. There's no more questions. That's a special one -off.

53:18

That is a one -off. There's a little more swag up front here. Yeah, that's a different one. That's something there. All right. Pat Abendroth and Mike Grimes of the

53:25

Pactam podcast. We're asking you about covenant theology. What is covenant theology?

53:32

What isn't covenant theology? Who is afraid of covenant theology and why?

53:38

Who's afraid of the Big Macs? Who wrote this? Who did write this? I just read the questions.

53:44

That's right. I report. You decide. And finally, why is covenant theology so important?

53:51

And add one just on your own. And tell us about the continuity of the covenant of grace.

53:58

I knew it. I knew it. I was a betting man. This is Westminster Seminary, California.

54:03

And there's time. There it is. Just invite

54:09

Abraham into your heart and everything will be good. Abraham is not Moses. He's not standing at the door.

54:15

I promise you. Scott, I just want to know, what was the best credo baptism service you've ever experienced in recent days?

54:24

It was yours. I was in Omaha in December. I saw Scott and his wife walk in.

54:30

I thought, awesome. I hope they sit within the splash zone. The splash zone. It was particularly splashy that Sunday.

54:37

We were sitting right where Reformed people should. Way in the back. In the back. Back row.

54:43

Back against the wall. Back row against the wall. Hey, well, don't cut yourself short. We've got time. Answer the question. You know what? We've got time.

54:49

On the lighter side, it is so much fun to do something like this because even though we have theological differences, all of us do, what unites us is, in fact, justification by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of the finished work of Christ alone.

55:02

In so many ways, we share a sweeter fellowship than we do with people sometimes in our own circles because it's just a wonderful thing.

55:11

It's why we're friends. I praise God for that. Amen. That's why I go and worship with Pat because he preaches the gospel. Amen. And the law.

55:18

And the law. And I put up with the praise song. Hey. Come on. I mean. Hey. Come on, Mike.

55:23

That's it. Shoot back, Mike. Shoot back. Now, to Mike's defense, Scott did say also the last time he was at Omaha Bible Church, he said, you do it about as good as you can.

55:33

That's right. Technically, I said. As good as it can be done. As good as you can do. As well. As it's not really counting.

55:39

As well as it can be done. As well as it can be done. Okay. Fair. And I've been in Nashville, but they have a cooking band.

55:46

I mean, if you're going to have a band, community Bible Church, right? Yeah, but my church doesn't.

55:51

We just have a guitar. All right. All right. All right. What is covenant theology? Covenant theology, yeah. Mike, you want to cover this one?

55:57

Go for it. All right. I'm here for kicks and giggles. All right. I want to say covenant theology is the biblical way to interpret the

56:06

Bible. It is. That's right. Drop a mic right there. It sounds arrogant, but it's the biblical way to interpret the

56:12

Bible because we have an inspired interpretation of the Bible, and we have an inspired interpretation of all of human history, and it's in Romans 5.

56:20

So if you follow me there in Romans 5, 12 and following, the Apostle Paul, remember, under divine inspiration, explains all of human history, and he does it through federal headship.

56:32

Remember, that comes from the Latin word for covenant. So we have covenant headship in Romans chapter 5.

56:38

We have the first Adam, and if I can borrow from 1 Corinthians 15, we have the last Adam. So all of human history as far as God's dealing with humanity, it's through covenantal headship.

56:50

And so Adam was supposed to obey. That word is in Romans 5. It's describing

56:55

Christ, but Adam was to obey so he would be justified, right? And not just himself.

57:01

He was to be justified and all of his, to use the old language, all of his posterity, all the people he represented.

57:08

So that's federal headship. That's covenantal headship. And then we know that he didn't. We know that he,

57:14

I used to say, you know, crashed the train or something like that, but we have a train conductor in our church. We had bus drivers for a while too, so I would say, you know, he drove the bus into the ditch.

57:22

I can't do that either. Anyway, we know how it went. The fall happened and it led not to justification for all he represented, but it led to condemnation.

57:30

And then we have Jesus who obeyed. He did this, right? He obeyed in Romans 5, it says, and it leads to justification for all he represents.

57:40

It's federal headship. And so covenant of works, we call it for a label or shorthand.

57:46

It's the do this and live principle. Remember Luke 10, also Leviticus 18.

57:51

And in principle, it's throughout the whole Bible. If you do everything right, personally, perfectly, and perpetually, you'll be justified.

57:58

Romans 2 .13. Romans 2 .13. And we can't do it because we're in Adam, but principally it's still true. So covenant of works is the label for it.

58:05

If you don't like that label, you can come up with your own, but that's kind of cult. That's cultic. People need to get over it.

58:11

Amen, brother. Covenant of works. Say it louder. Covenant of law, covenant of nature, covenant of life. It's all the same thing.

58:17

If you don't like that, I think that says something about your theology. It does.

58:22

It does. Get over it. It's a covenant of works. You have to obey in order to enter into eternal blessedness. I'd like to know what

58:28

Scott thinks. So always remember justification is by works, right? It has to be.

58:33

It always will be. It's just not our works. That's right. And so there's that. And then we can look at the covenant of grace and say, well, and even aside from the debates, every

58:42

Christian who has a Bible should be able to at least agree to the fact that there's only one way to be saved, there's only ever been one way to be saved, and it's by grace alone, through faith alone, in the finished work of Christ alone.

58:54

It's not like covenant's not in the Bible. I mean, I'm looking right here at Genesis 6, 18, but I will establish my seven dispensations in that book.

59:07

Right. Okay, I want to go there in a second. I want to go there in a second. You jump ahead. Jump ahead. It's in the Bible. I want to go there.

59:13

It's 270 times in the Old Testament and 27 times in the New Testament. So at least remember, classic covenant theology is bicovenantal, right?

59:21

You've got covenant of works, covenant of grace, and it fits with law and gospel. So they're both important.

59:27

Don't blend the two or you ruin both. And so covenant of works, covenant of grace.

59:32

We can debate about covenant of grace minor issues in one sense, some major issues, but it's only ever, always, and always ever will be that we are in a right relationship with God as sinners through grace and grace alone.

59:45

So if I can just win you over at least to that part, covenant of works, covenant of grace, and when people are mono -covenantalists, they're going to blur the two and ruin both.

59:55

And so it's justification by faithfulness, justification by law and gospel. Explain why it ruins so that people understand.

01:00:03

So let's say, you know, I'm a leading evangelical, a big Eva theologian, and I say,

01:00:10

I just don't like this category, covenant of works. You know, I'm influenced by Daniel Fuller and I just don't like this language.

01:00:18

In a state that rhymes with Midahole. No, actually, I was thinking of that again. I'm back to Innesota. Innesota, yeah.

01:00:25

Many apples, many sodas. So if you read Dan Fuller's book, The Unity of the Bible, John Forward, John Piper writes a forward to it and makes fun of the covenant of works.

01:00:34

Well it's no wonder that John Piper has such a weird unbiblical anti -Protestant view of Romans 2 .13.

01:00:40

Or at least he used to. Because if you don't have this category, this robust, important category that God justifies not the hearers, but the doers,

01:00:48

Romans 2 .13, you're going to end up getting justification wrong. It's going to be by faith and works. So you end up turning the covenant of grace, were it possible, into a covenant of works.

01:00:57

You end up bringing works in through the back door. It's like, well, I got rid of the covenant of works and now you're in a covenant of grace.

01:01:04

Except the way they construe the covenant of grace is, you've got to meet a bunch of conditions up on the front end in order to be right with God and inherit the blessings.

01:01:18

So it's not really a covenant of grace anymore. So you're going to hear people like Andrew Sandlin, who's kind of a hip old guy these days.

01:01:25

People like to invite him to Moscow, Idaho and Arizona to their conferences. He's a law gospel blurrer.

01:01:32

He doesn't like these distinctions we're talking about. Is this the guy who wrote a doctoral dissertation against S. Scott Clark?

01:01:39

That key Andrew Sandlin, is that the guy? You know what? He's all the rage. What's the name of the place?

01:01:47

When I did my doctoral work - Who were the theonomists in Arizona? Oh, I don't know. Yeah, Durbin.

01:01:53

Durbin. Durbin guys. They all love Sandlin. Apology of radio. He gets this exactly wrong. Exactly anti -Protestant.

01:01:59

The first thing I had to do as a doctoral student was learn to spell Casper Olivianus. That's basic to my doctoral work.

01:02:07

Okay, so there is one other one that we talk about and we talk about the covenant of redemption. And so we're going to have the intra -Trinitarian covenant,

01:02:16

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Ephesians chapter one. There's other passages as well that the Father would send the Son, the

01:02:21

Son would redeem the elect and the Holy Spirit would apply the work of the Son to the elect. So shorthand, we call it the covenant of redemption.

01:02:28

It's behind, right, before history. It's everything. Atemporal. That's right. So it's behind the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

01:02:35

And Jesus came into history to God, the Son became incarnate in history to fulfill the works part and to make a covenant of grace with us sinners.

01:02:46

And so we're starting to run late and I don't want to be a liar. But let me at least say this, if you don't like classic covenant theology, aren't we nice?

01:02:58

Haven't we won you over? I think Scott wrote an article about it. It is what safeguards the gospel invariably.

01:03:06

And I just invite you to take a deep dive into studying the doctrine of justification and you'll come out,

01:03:12

I would guess, more than likely, hopefully, 90 % affirming covenant of works, covenant of grace.

01:03:18

The people who have protected it and defended it and people we are thankful for, like John Owen, it's because of these kinds of categories we're talking about.

01:03:26

Read the book of Hebrews. It's true. I mean, Gerhardtus Voss wrote a little commentary and he titled it

01:03:32

Hebrews, the epistle of the DFAK, the epistle of the covenant.

01:03:38

Hebrews is a covenantal book from beginning to end. So you tell me I don't like covenant theology. I tell you then you clearly have never read the book of Hebrews.

01:03:45

At best, you're going to be weak on justification. At best. Sure. Yeah. No, you actually answered my question.

01:03:50

So you're good. Okay. I mean, I think that's the rabbit hole. You want to go down when pastors say, what should I do? I want to help the congregation.

01:03:57

Go down the justification rabbit hole. And you won't be able to unsee it because it's active obedience of Christ, active obedience of Christ, fulfilling the law, and it ends up being kind of a no -brainer.

01:04:08

Give us some books that would be good on justification and may be good for lay people that some of us could recommend to those in our church on these topics.

01:04:16

So I think the latest volume by J .V. Fesco on the covenant of works is excellent.

01:04:22

It's very readable. Yeah. It's clear. He engages the old arguments and the new arguments.

01:04:29

So that's one benefit. You know, Buchanan, I like a lot, but he doesn't engage N .T. Wright. So I know you like that book as well.

01:04:35

But I think Fesco's book is quite helpful on that topic. That's maybe where I would start. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff and we could talk about more of it offline.

01:04:44

Yeah. Yeah. All right. What do we do? Oh, you know what? Here, at least for the pactum, we would like to get you all to help us with our outro.

01:04:51

Sure. Yeah. Are you guys willing to do that? Okay. You don't even know what you've volunteered for yet. You don't even know.

01:04:57

You should be careful. So what we want to do is we're going to spin our mics, but what we want to do is I'm going to say, and we'll see you next time on, and you're going to go, what?

01:05:07

The pactum. Oh, the pactum. We want it to be loud. Let's do a practice round. Right? Okay. And we'll see you next time on.

01:05:14

The pactum. All right. That was awesome. Let's do one more. Ready? And we'll see you next time on. The pactum.

01:05:20

The pactum. Less time in purgatory for all of you folks. You did a great job. Great job. All right. So you guys want to do one of some sort?

01:05:27

Yeah. Oh, sure. We don't do one. We don't. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, sure. All right.

01:05:32

So we'll see you next time on. The pactum. Well done.

01:05:38

One try. That was great. All right. You're going to do one? They don't want to. Scott knows

01:05:43

Latin. He doesn't want to do it. That's right. You want to do anything? Yes. Let's do it for the No Compromise Radio.

01:05:48

All right. I'll see you next time on. No Compromise Radio. That's a lot of syllables.

01:05:54

I think you need to try one more time. I'll see you next time on. No Compromise Radio.

01:06:00

Just a quick question. I thought about changing the name of the show to Duplex Gratia. And I have duplexgratia .com

01:06:07

that I own now. Do you think it's a good idea? How many people think it's a good idea to change the name of the show? Wah, wah, wah.

01:06:14

All right. I'm going to just stay a discernment ministry then. All right.

01:06:23

Scott's got some stuff over here for Heidelcast. There's some Theocast material over here. And the

01:06:28

Pactom has some things. It's kind of first come, first serve. We really are thankful that you all came. We had fun.

01:06:34

We hope you had fun. Hey, thanks for coming. Thanks for being here. See you all. Hey guys, thanks for listening.

01:06:43

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01:06:52

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01:07:01

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01:07:14

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