Justification By Faith ALONE | Speaker Dr. James White

You constantly hear people that are Calvinist harp on this, God's sovereign, God's sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign.

They just keep repeating it, and they repeat it so much you start to think it's a biblical tree. Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus, he says,

Lazarus, come out! And Lazarus said, I can't, I'm dead. That's not what he did.

Lazarus came out. Does he mean to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ? And then you take lessons from Judas White and Jeff Durbin.

It shows in this kind of sequential format. Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things?

Um, no. Some new

Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.

Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief. A verse like that to him, you know what it would sound like if he were listening to it?

It wouldn't make any sense to him. A self -righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk. And you need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism.

Now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to.

I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge. Don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

You're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat.

There's a reason to have the choice of that meat. Bunker deep beneath the faculty cafeteria in New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's books, we are

Radio Free Geneva. Broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

For those of you who don't know, in 2019, I flew 165 ,000 miles.

I taught in Samara, Russia, Durban, South Africa, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Australia.

Spent two months in London, and I don't fly anymore. And so I get around, and now

I teach over in Conway for Grace Bible Theological Seminary. I'm their professor of church history and apologetics.

And so I drive, and I have a fifth wheel. And last year when

I came here, I really didn't know what I was doing with that. But I've pulled it about 20 ,000 miles since then.

And somehow have not cracked it up. And if any of you have ever done that, you know the toughest thing that I have to do when

I drive that thing is get into a gas station. Because I don't get to go through with the big diesel trucks.

I get to play around with all the cars in the islands. And when you're 47 feet long and 13 feet high, it's lots of fun to get into certain places and try to get gas.

So you happen to be along the path. I was just in St. Charles speaking over the past weekend.

And I'll be in a couple places in Texas a few days on the way back to Arizona. And so I got in touch with the guys and said, hey,

I know it's a Monday. Monday's not the best time for something like this.

But would you be interested if I stopped by? And they're like, eh, I don't know. And they had to talk about it.

And they weren't really sure and stuff like that. But here we are. And CREC, huh?

You should have told me that beforehand. Now I know why you're in the front seat. But I was going to say when he introduced you,

I said, you know how many times I've already pulled my fifth wheel to Moscow? And last time

I was up there, actually, Doug and I did a debate together. And we also ate at Taco Time together, just he and I.

Taco Time is my favorite super cheesy Mexican place to eat. I don't know if you've ever been there.

But their crisp meat burritos, they'll kill you. But you'll feel really good as you're dying.

Because they're just so, so, so, so yummy. So Apologia has great relationships with the

CREC and great debates as well. And that's a good thing.

So Doug and I do sweater vest dialogues all the time and love them and love what the

Lord's doing. So it's great to be with you. I noticed we have five Christmas trees. And so how in the world do you tie that into justification by faith?

Let's do it. Watch how we do it. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 9. Isaiah chapter 9.

Unfortunately, these days I have to put on my old man glasses to get the, let me see how many geeks there are here.

I need to put on my old man glasses to be able to read the codes for the Reliant. One person.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Is that the only person who understands why putting old man glasses on to read the codes for the

Reliant? Nobody else gets that. Wow. You know, Bill Shatner would be very, very sad about what just happened here.

Y 'all need to go watch Star Trek the Wrath of Khan. And then you'll figure out what

I just said. And it's just two of us understood it. You're a little nervous?

Oh, okay. Okay. All right, Isaiah chapter 9. You know the relevance of the text.

You know the prophecy that is found here. In verse 6, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.

And on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of Yahweh of hosts will do this.

We all know this. I hope you know this. It is one of the most beautiful of the Messianic passages in the

Old Testament. And of course, it is a part of what should be the 28th book of the

New Testament called Handel's Messiah. If you do not listen to Handel's Messiah during the

Christmas season, what is wrong with you people? To use an R .C. Sproul phrase there. It is certainly one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written and it's all straight out of Scripture.

So that's why you could sort of stick it in there and it would be okay. But Isaiah 9 .6, to us a child is born, to us a son is given.

It's not our subject this evening, but I just want you to notice that when it says a child is born, the Hebrew terms that are used there are the normal terms for birth of any child.

Jesus was truly born into this world, but then notice, to us a son is given. A son is given.

And when you think about who Christ was and who he was eternally and before the incarnation, the son eternally, he is given.

Nathan is the term that is found there. And notice the names that are given to him.

Wonderful, Counselor, El Gabor, Mighty God. Same term that is used of Yahweh in Isaiah 10 .21,

by the way. Everlasting Father, just real, real fast. That's not making him the father.

It doesn't identify him as the father. Father in the Old Testament is primarily the creator. That is the fulfillment of what we have in Colossians chapter 1 when it is said of Jesus, for by him all things are made, whether in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, and authorities, all things are created by him and for him.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. That's what you have there, the everlasting. It's literally

Aviad, Father of Eternity. It's referring to Christ's creative role. And then this phrase,

Prince of Peace. Prince of Peace. Now we hear that all the time. Again, this time of year with Christmas carols and things like that.

Prince of Peace. How do you have peace with God? How do you have peace with God?

You know, in our day when we have to deal with so many secularists, and that's what we're experiencing in our society, the chaos in our society is coming from the fact that a society that was founded upon the

Christian worldview is purposely rebelling against all of that, rejecting all of that, and embracing a secular worldview.

The result is simple chaos. It is a collapse of all the things that gave meaning and gave coherence to society.

And when you're talking to a secularist, the idea of having peace doesn't make any sense.

If you're nothing but a bag of fizzing chemicals, if you're just a cosmic mistake, the idea of you seeking peace doesn't make any sense.

But the reality is, you're actually made in God's image. And so no matter what you do, always in the back, there is a desire for you to be at peace.

But if you can't recognize that you're living in God's world, then you don't even know how to ask the right questions.

Why am I not at peace? Because if you don't recognize that you are the creation of God, if you don't recognize that you have stamped right on you, made by God, and you've had that stolen from you so that you do not have any transcendent meaning or worth, then you're really left with extremely difficult questions to ask.

Peace with what? With the cosmos? With something that pitilessly could care less whether I exist or not?

Didn't care before I came into existence? Won't care after I've gone out of existence? There's no answers to the real desire to have peace that comes from the fact that we're actually the creatures of God.

And that's why secularism always collapses in upon itself, and this form of secularism will collapse in upon itself, and in my opinion, none too early.

But it's going to be a big collapse when it happens. Let's just put it that way.

I'm not going to get into that subject right now, even though we could talk about it all night long.

How do you have peace with God? How does the Bible say? Because He is the

Prince of Peace. Now, what is the term peace? Everybody knows the

Hebrew term for peace, right? Shalom. Shalom. But what does shalom mean?

Is there shalom in Israel right now?

No. Even the Jews would not say there's shalom in Israel right now.

Why? Because the Iron Dome missile batteries are manned 24 -7, and violence could break out at any point, because you see, true shalom is a wellness of relationship.

It's not just a cessation of hostilities, but it's a wellness of relationship.

And so there's no peace there. So if that's the background of the

New Testament use of the term peace, the Greek term Irenae, how does one have that?

And why doesn't peace exist naturally? Well, we know why it doesn't exist naturally.

There is this reality of something called sin. And man, from his youth, goes astray, and man rebels against God's ways, maybe not in the astonishingly obvious ways that we are doing today, to where we will not even allow

God to define man and woman, father and mother, brother and sister.

We simply reject the idea that God can determine any of our reality at all.

Even before all of that came into existence, there was a fundamental understanding that we need to find a way of having peace with God, because there is enmity between ourselves and God.

And it really seems, when you look back at the time of the Reformation, a lot of people wonder, why was it that people were willing to give their lives, to literally give their lives, for the doctrine of justification by faith?

Most people today, it's a theological, it's something that's interesting theologically, and you might get a little excited about it, but the idea of it being something that consumes your soul, so that you would give your life for it, what led to that?

Well, I would like to suggest to you, when you think about Luther, to give you a little background here before we dive into the scriptures, when you think about what drove

Luther to that need to find peace, it's difficult for us, living in our day, to recognize that everyone who lived back then, had seen death by the time they were a small child.

You would have seen dead bodies, between 1347 and 1351, over half of Europe had died.

You want a pandemic, with not a 99 .9

something percent, way of survival, but that in some cities, wiped out 70 % of the people?

There were forms of what we call today, the plague, bubonic plague, the black death, they didn't call it that, they called it the great mortality, at that time.

There were certain forms of it, that people believed could be passed by looking at someone.

And the reason was, there was a certain form of it, that if it invaded your lungs, could kill you in less than 24 hours.

So you just would have looked at someone, and you could die. It wasn't the looking that did it, they didn't understand that at that time, but it was that virulent, it was that powerful.

And it kept coming back. It wasn't just 1347 to 1351, that was the major time.

But then in cycles, it would keep coming back. So for example, there was a period of time, where it came into Zurich, and Ulrich Zwingli, the pastor there, one of the great reformers, risked his life to minister to his flock, and he got it, but he survived.

Calvin did the same thing when he was in Strasburg, and he refused to flee, because what most people would do, is once it came into the city, you just got out of town.

They pretty much figured out, if you get out of town, you're pretty safe out in the countryside. But he refused to leave, and he stayed.

He didn't get it. Luther, when he went to school, to go to the city was to risk your life.

And so you would see death. The average woman, in the time period up to the Reformation, would have to have 10 live births to get one child through to maturity.

That's how high infant mortality was. Calvin lost the only child born to him.

Luther lost children. Pretty much everyone experienced the reality of death.

We don't even talk about death in our society. We hide death from our children. We don't take them to funerals.

It was only a few generations ago that you would live in the same house for generation after generation after generation, so you'd see your great grandparents and your grandparents die.

So you knew that you were going to die. It was a lesson in mortality.

You recognized life is not going to go on forever. You stop looking at death and talking about death, and all of a sudden, you've got these people running around thinking,

I don't have to worry about eternity. I don't have to worry about life and death. I'm going to live forever.

It's the foolish pride of life. I think that's one of the reasons that the doctrine of justification by faith is more of a curiosity to people than it is the lifeblood of the gospel because when you think of the

Reformation, there was the material principle and the formal principle. The material principle of Reformation was that which was being proclaimed, and that was you are made right with God by faith and faith alone, justification by faith.

The formal principle, which gave the form and the foundation of the proclamation, was sola scriptura, scripture is the sole and fallible rule of faith of the church because as soon as Luther discovered, again, it's not that he was the first one to come up with this.

You can find all sorts of the early church fathers who believed the same things in regards to justification.

In fact, some of the earliest Christian writings, Clement's epistle from Rome to Corinth, clear section on the imputation of Christ's righteousness, justification by faith, the epistle to Diognetus.

These are all within less than 70 years of the time of the apostles, maybe even closer.

But it had become covered over by tradition, and when

Luther begins presenting this, he's immediately hit with pushback. Well, but the councils have said and the popes have said, and that's what forces

Luther to find out, to dig in and realize, oh, this is the only thing we have that is theanustas, the only thing we have that is

God -breathed. The councils and the popes, they're not God -breathed. And so, sola scriptura comes to the fore at that point in time.

And so the question that everyone must ask, and some of you know that for many, many years,

I have been involved in doing debates with Roman Catholicism, with Roman Catholic apologists, and in that process, when talking about the gospel, we always come to the issue of how do you have peace?

How does a Roman Catholic believe you have peace? I'll never forget, one of the guys that I've debated, I've debated him five times, he's a really nice guy.

You've probably seen him on television. His name is Father Mitchell Pacwa. He is always on EWTN.

I don't know if that's on around here. I imagine it's on pretty much everywhere. But we did a debate in,

I think it was January of 1991. How many of you were not yet on the planet in January of 1991?

Okay, there you go. That gives you, that gives you an idea. I think I'm gonna sit down now because I'm feeling a little old.

January of 1991, we debated, we did two debates over two nights, the mass and justification.

And during the debate on justification, I asked Mitch this question. Now again, brilliant guy.

12 languages, 12 languages. Okay, he's a smart guy. And because I knew that he could read

Hebrew and Greek, I said to him,

I said, how do you have peace with God knowing what peace means in light of the fact that the greatest commandment is to love the

Lord your God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength? And in Roman Catholicism, I gotta give you some background here that I could just assume with him.

Not everyone understands. In Roman Catholicism, you have different kinds of sin. You have mortal and venial sin.

And mortal sin destroys the grace of justification. So in Roman Catholicism, you can be right with God, you can be justified.

But if you commit a mortal sin, you lose that grace of justification, and now you're the enemy of God. And you have to go through the sacrament of penance and be reconciled so you can become the friend of God again.

So you can be justified and unjustified, justified and unjustified within Roman Catholicism. You're initially justified by baptism, but then once you commit a mortal sin, then you have to be re -justified through the sacramental system of Rome.

And so the problem is, what's a mortal sin? There's a lot of disagreement.

There's a lot of disagreement. But basically what I said to him was, if you know what peace means, and yet at the same time, you believe that before your head touches the pillow tonight, you could commit an act that would destroy the grace of justification and make you the enemy of God, no longer at peace with him.

Knowing what shalom means, so shalom means cessation of hostilities, wellness of relationship.

Knowing what shalom means, how can you say you have peace with God? And I use the basis of this,

Romans 5 .1, we'll get there a little bit later on. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. When he first answered, he struggled a little bit and he gave some background and he didn't really directly answer the question.

Thankfully, I had the opportunity of redirecting. And so I zeroed in on the meaning of peace as he understood it to be.

And the one thing I loved about Mitch, unlike almost all the other folks that I've debated from that particular perspective, he sat there quietly for a moment and said,

I don't know. He was honest. He recognized what the problem was.

And so that's the question for all of us. That's the question I ask Protestants. That's the question I ask the people in my own fellowship.

You know your own heart. You can put on, you can pretend for all the rest of us.

You can put on your good Baptist vibes or your Pentecostal vibes or whatever else, but you know your own heart.

You know the thoughts you have had, the lusts, the anger.

And if you really understand the holiness of God, you know that in and of yourself, you could not possibly ever stand in the presence of the thrice holy

God of eternity because he would know everything that you know about your own mind and your own heart.

In 2013, I had the opportunity of doing something I never ever dreamed I would ever do.

And I encourage you to look this up on YouTube because it's available. But I did a debate on how we are made right before God with Shabir Ali in the

Abu Bakr Asidic Mosque in Erasmus, South Africa. And as we debated that issue,

I stood right in front of the Qibla. The Qibla is the point in each mosque that is oriented directly toward the

Khaba, the place of prayer, the black stone in Mecca.

And so I was standing right where the imam had just led the prayers. And the Muslims were all sitting on the floor.

The wimpy Christians are in chairs because the Muslims are used to sitting on the floor. And so they can do that for hours, and the

Christians couldn't do that. And so the Muslims, they're closer to me than this front row is. And to be able to look at them and to say, you know your heart.

You know the thoughts you have had. And if God is truly holy, as both of our scriptures say that he is, then how can you have peace?

The only way I have peace with God is because the righteousness of Jesus Christ has been imputed to me.

I am in him. The wrath of God finds no place in him.

The wrath of God will carry everyone else away. The only place that will ever be safe is for those who are in him.

The look on their face was amazing. I'll never forget it. I'm so thankful to have had that opportunity. But that's a question for everybody.

I don't care what your church background is. I say this to Baptists and to Evangelicals.

Why do you believe you have peace with God? Because really when we have the

Lord's Supper together, that's another thing that I really strongly emphasize. An apology at church, we do it every week. And a part of my, when

I have the opportunity of introducing the Supper, is I say to people, this is given to us to remind us of the great price that was paid so that we might have peace with God.

It was not something we did. It was something that was done in our place. We need that reminder.

We need that reminder. Let's look to Scripture. Let's look to Scripture. The Book of Romans is the gospel according to Paul.

Paul knows all roads lead to and from Rome. So if you establish a solid church in Rome, the gospel is going to go out.

That's how, for example, the church at Colossae had been founded. Paul spent three years in Ephesus because Ephesus functioned for Asia Minor the same way

Rome does for the entire Roman Empire. It was a major port, and it was a major city where people went inland from there through all of Asia Minor.

And so when Paul wrote to the Colossians, for example, he had not been there. He had not found that church. But it was naturally founded by the fact the gospel went out from Ephesus.

And so Romans is a thought -through presentation of how we have peace with God.

And so if you think of the flow of the book, it's amazing that after the introductory material, the next major section is all about sin, the one thing we miss today, the one thing nobody wants to talk about today, the one thing even in seminaries people are taught to diminish and put down, which we can't do because you cannot tell someone how to get saved when they don't know they're lost.

And so the bad news is what makes the necessity for the good news.

We want to skip that part, but we can't. So when you read Romans chapter one, one of the most amazing texts

I have, when people ask me what's one of the main reasons you think the Bible is inspired, I'll say Romans one.

Because beginning of verse 18 to the end of that chapter, you have a description of mankind that holds true for all of mankind everywhere, in every age, in any language, in any culture.

It's the most insightful description of man and where he is that has ever been penned.

And what it tells us is all men know God exists and they suppress that knowledge and they rebel against him.

Now we're not going to have time to open that text up, but it continues in chapter two to say to the Jews, now you're sitting there going, yeah, you get them

Paul. But the problem is I'm talking about you too. Simple possession of the scriptures, of God's law does not make you right with God.

Because you know it's not right to rob temples, but you rob temples. You have the law, but you don't do the law.

There's a lot of connections there to what Jesus experienced in dealing with the Pharisees. So you get into chapter three, and what does he do?

He says, oh yes, that the Jews have a great advantage. They've been given the scriptures.

It's wonderful. But then, verse nine, what then? Are we Jews any better off?

No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin as it is written.

And then beginning in verse 10, you have what's called a catena of passages all the way through verse 18.

And I don't know if you've ever spent much time with it, but it's sort of depressing. I mean, it is a collection of passages from the

Psalter. There's an unrighteous, no, not one. No one who understands.

No one who seeks for God. There is no God seeker. I always wondered what the seeker -sensitive movement thought of that particular verse.

You're trying to reach the people that don't exist. Oh, but I've met many people. May I suggest to you that outside of the work of the

Holy Spirit in someone's heart, what you're seeking are the benefits of God without God. You want the benefits

God can give you, but you don't want to deal with the God that would give you the benefits. There is no

God seeker. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.

Their throat is an open grave. And may I say in our day, that would include the fingers. Tap, tap, tap, tap.

Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips.

Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.

Got any Planned Parenthood locations nearby? In their paths are ruin and misery and the way of what?

Peace, shalom, irene. They have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Wow, we could spend a long time there. But we can't tonight. So what happens?

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God for by works of law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

Here's the picture I want you to see. I don't watch almost any television any longer.

I just don't have time for it. But I do remember, you know, I was hospitalized about six, seven years, well, right at six years ago now.

And I was stuck having to watch whatever was on TV. And you have those shows with the, you know, like Judge Judy and stuff like that, right?

And you'll have these people come in and they are, they're very filled with themselves.

And they're accused of something and they've got an excuse for everything. Their mouth is just going.

And Judge Judy would be one of those that would finally just say, would you just shut up? Because it's just, just excuse for everything.

Notice the picture here. So that every mouth may be stopped. Because sometimes what you see are the people that come into the court of law and their head is down.

There's no defiance. There's no excuses. There's no self -righteousness.

Yes, Your Honor, I did those things. Yes, I should be punished.

I recognize what I have done. That's the person who's ready to hear about justification.

That's the person ready to find out about peace. As long as the mouth is just going, that person is not ready.

And so when we cut out the bad news part, oh,

I was driving home from, forget where it was with all the driving I do anymore, but I saw a big old sign.

It was in Arizona. And what was it? Oh, God believes in you.

God believes in you? Well, he made you, so I suppose he would have to believe in you, but that's not what they were communicating.

It was this idea of, well, you've seen it. Try Jesus. Try Jesus.

Jesus said, if you'll be my disciple, deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow me.

That's not trying him. Jesus isn't something you add to all your other self -help methodologies.

And the person who we bring into the church without challenging them on their sin is the person whose mouth is still doing this and will always be doing this because they've never gotten that point,

I am guilty before God. I need to have peace. I need to cast myself on someone else.

Only once the mouth has stopped do you then have, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

Now, why does it say all who believe? It's amazing. I was raised in a church. I'm very thankful I was raised in a church, but when

I memorized Romans 3 .23, and most of us in here,

I bet, have it memorized. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, right?

How do we use that? Well, it's every single individual. Well, there's truth to that, but what's actually going on in the context?

When it says there is no difference at all, it's talking about Jews and Greeks. It's talking about Jews and Gentiles. It's saying there's only one way of salvation.

There's not one way for the Jew, another way for the Gentile. For all, it's by faith in Jesus Christ.

For all who believe, there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

God put forward as a propitiation by His blood. Propitiation. Liberal scholars don't like that term.

You know why? They don't like it because propitiation refers to a sacrifice that brings about forgiveness, but that also deals with the wrath of the offended party.

There is a, if I recall correctly, British theologian in the last century, which

I know very well because I was in the last century too, and C .H.

Dodd hated the term propitiation. He preferred expiation because expiation has no reference to wrath.

He just could not believe in a wrathful God. And I'm not going to develop this sermon here right now, but I've said many, many times, if you look at the cross of Christ and all you see is love, you're not seeing it as deeply as you should.

When you look at the cross of Christ, you must first and foremost see the wrath of God against sin that then provides the foundation of this self -giving love that then provides redemption from that sin through the giving of this perfect one's life.

We turn the cross, in American evangelicalism, we've turned it into an emotional experience, sticky sentimentality.

It was not a pretty sight, but it was necessary.

Jesus said it was necessary. Why? Because God's law had been broken and God's law represents

God's character. So, whom

God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show

God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier, the one declaring righteous, the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of our boasting? It's excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works?

No, by a law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, the Gentiles also. Since God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law.

That is, we demonstrate what its real purpose was. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham?

Chapter four. Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh. For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

What does the scripture say? And then you have one of the most commonly cited texts from the Old Testament. The most commonly cited is what?

What's the most commonly cited text from the Old Testament? Oh, I'm waking everybody up. Very good.

God's favorite Bible verse, the 110th Psalm. Psalm 110 .1. But right behind it is

Genesis 15 .6. Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned or counted to him as righteousness.

Now, dig in with me here. Normally this is, I chose not to do the

PowerPoint thing or the keynote thing or something like that because I'm traveling, I'm wearing jeans.

Didn't even change my shoes from driving today. And so bringing computer and setting all this up, no, can't do it.

Normally this is where I put it up there because there are two 180 degree opposite positions placed here.

Now to the one who works, literally to the working one, his wage is not, and it's the term, legitimized to be reckoned to, to be imputed to someone.

It is not counted as a gift. Literally it's according to grace, but as his due or what is owed to him.

And all the terminology there is commonly used in the Greek papyri of the day of business transactions.

So the idea is, to the one who works, if I work to gain something, if I'm working to earn something, then the wage that I get, it's not counted as grace, but as what is due to me.

And of course, even in our day, you put in 40 hours and someone refuses to pay, you've got a legal claim against them.

But notice verse five. And to the one who does not work. Use the exact same phraseology, the working one, just you put the negation term in there, to the not working one, but instead the believing one, the one who believes in him, who does what?

Justifies the ungodly. Justifies the ungodly. His faith is counted as righteousness.

His faith is counted as righteousness. Not as what is due, because he believes in what?

The God who justifies the ungodly. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, never understood the grace of God.

Never understood the grace of God. He thought he was a prophet, and so he had the right and ability to change the Bible.

So you know what he did this verse? This didn't seem right to him, and so he changed it, and to the one who does not work, but believes in him, who justifies the godly.

I'm sorry, I skipped down one. He put the not in, so that he turned the verse exactly upside down, to the one who does not work, but believes in him, who does not justify the ungodly.

The Mormon God does not justify the ungodly. Guess what? That means there's no hope, because you're the ungodly, and so am

I, and if God doesn't justify us, we're doomed. He literally changed it.

You can find it in the Joseph Smith translation. Turned it upside down. So, then

Paul wants to give us an example, and he goes to Psalm 32. But what's really interesting here, sometimes we zoom over this, but zero in with me.

Just as David also speaks of the blessing, to the one, to whom

God counts, or imputes, legitimi, righteousness, apart from works.

Apart from works. So here's Paul saying, hey, David gives us an example of what it means to have righteousness imputed to you, not based upon what you do, but then look at the verses he quotes.

Where did righteousness go? Where did receiving something go?

You see, Paul defines this counting as righteous, apart from works, as the forgiveness of sin.

And he says, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered over, and then blessed is the man against whom the

Lord will not count his sin. It's literally, against whom the Lord will not impute his sin.

Now think about that for a second. My Roman Catholic friends like to say that justification by faith is the fiction of forensic righteousness.

It's something you made up, because what you're saying is God treats you as something you're not.

And God doesn't deal in fictions. You may be aware of the fact that, and I can't prove it, it's one of those things where Luther may have said it, may have not have said it, but I think this one he did, because it's very earthy.

Luther likened the difference between justification and sanctification to a dunghill, a pile of fertilizer.

They didn't have the fertilizer you can buy, which is becoming very expensive now, because the World Economic Forum's trying to kill us all, but they used farm animal refuse to fertilize their fields.

And so you had to pile it up someplace, you know, and by the end of the season, the flies certainly knew where it was, and it smelled, especially when the wind went the wrong direction.

But then, the first snow of the fall would come. And you know,

I remember, I live in Arizona, so snow doesn't have any meaning to someone who lives in Phoenix, okay?

None at all. You can go up north and see it, but not where I live.

But I was born in Minneapolis. We had snow. And that first snow that would come, remember how beautiful it was?

It's not like the snow in March. You know, it's got all the black, and oh, it's just disgusting. But that first snow of the fall, it covers everything over.

There's no tracks in it. And it covers over that pile of dung, too. And the flies, bye -bye flies.

And the smell, the smell's gone. It covers everything over. And what Luther said was, the righteousness of Christ is that snow that covers over the pile of dung.

We are the pile of dung. We are offensive to God and of ourselves. And it's something else that takes away that offense.

It's not changing us. Because in Roman Catholicism, it's the infusion of grace that changes us and makes us objectively pleasing to God.

That's why he wants to take us to heaven. And Luther said, that's sanctification.

That comes later. That's something else. Justification is that perfect righteousness of Christ that covers us over.

Now the Roman Catholics go, ah, it's just fiction. But here's the problem. In Roman Catholicism, you are a pile of dung, and then you're baptized, and boom!

You're now a pile of gold. And see, God takes piles of gold to heaven because they're pleasing.

But here's the problem. What if you commit a venial sin?

Well, a venial sin doesn't destroy the grace of justification, but you start getting flecks of dung on the gold.

And so before you go to heaven, you've got to go to purgatory to burn off the flecks of dung from the gold.

But what if you commit a mortal sin? Back to a pile of dung. Then you've got to go through the sacrament of penance, the reconciliation, pile of gold, but flecks of dung on it now.

But if you commit another mortal sin, back to a pile of dung. And here's the problem.

In Roman Catholicism, you can never know which one you are. You can never know which one you are.

That's the sin of presumption. You can never know whether you've fulfilled all the conditions which are necessary for achieving justification.

Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. That's why

Mitch Pacwa couldn't tell me that he had peace with God. So they may mock

Luther's idea, but theirs leaves them with no peace. No peace.

So here's the question that I've been asking Roman Catholics for years. And write it down if you want to see how this works.

It's one thing to come in here and say, hey, I did this once and this was the result. You can go watch.

I debated Father Peter Stravinskas on the subject of purgatory. Long Island, 2001.

He had three PhDs. He had not read a word

I'd ever written. I had read everything he had ever written on the subject of purgatory. You can tell how the debate went from there.

During the cross -examination, I got into Romans chapter 4 and I asked him this question.

I said, Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. And I asked him the question, who's the blessed man?

Who's the blessed man in Romans 4 .8? His first response was

Jesus. So Jesus is the blessed man because God won't count

Jesus' sin against him. That's sort of a problem.

Since Jesus has no sin to be counted against him. He had obviously never even thought about it or been challenged on it.

And so I said, Yeah, I don't really think that works because Jesus doesn't have any sin to be imputed to him in the first place.

So you want to try that again? And he said, Well, I hope to be the blessed man.

I hope to be. He didn't know. He couldn't know.

Rome does not have a finished work of Christ in the first place if you understand the doctrine of the mass. And because of his doctrine of justification, he couldn't know.

He couldn't know. So I ask you, are you the blessed man? If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you're the blessed man.

That's his whole point. His whole point is blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.

Is God being unjust? No, because he already counted that sin on Christ, our sin bearer.

He made him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

It's the great exchange. Now, there's a couple of you theologian types out there.

And you're going, you haven't read any N .T. Wright, have you? Why don't you go, why don't you go listen to the debate that N .T.

Wright and I did on this subject on the Unbelievable Radio broadcast. You find out that I have. And that Wright's understanding of that passage is extremely problematic, as is

Romans 4. That's where the real issue is. So is this blessing then only for the circumcised or also the uncircumcised?

For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised?

Here's something important. Write this down. When we do the Q &A, oh my goodness, is it seven o 'clock?

I don't know how that happened. But when we do the Q &A, we're gonna talk a little bit about James 2.

Because there's somebody sitting out there going, yeah, but there's James 2. And here's the problem.

We can look at James. Got a little book here. God Who Justifies wrote it, oh, coming up on 20 years ago now.

It's the only hardback book I've ever had, so this one's sort of special to me. There's a 34 -page chapter in here on James 2 that I would invite you to look very carefully at, because I spent an awful lot of time on it.

And I believe there is perfect harmony between James and Paul on this subject when you allow them to speak in their context.

But here's the key. How then was it counted to him?

Was it before or after he had been circumcised? You see, in Roman Catholic theology, you can be justified, then unjustified, and then justified, and then unjustified.

And so they'll try to find three different justifications in Abraham's experience alone. What does that do?

That makes them an arguer against Paul. And when you're arguing against the apostle, you're probably on the wrong side of things.

Your tradition has gotten in your way. And let me tell you something. Roman Catholics are open about tradition.

They speak about the necessity of tradition. They deny Sola Scriptura. But there's a bunch of folks that think they believe in Sola Scriptura.

The reality is you've got a tradition just as big and just as thick as the

Roman Catholics do. You just won't admit it. And because of that, you can never examine it on the basis of Scripture.

And it's your ultimate authority, not Scripture. And if your tradition tells you that Paul isn't quite dealing with it here, then your tradition is contradicting

Scripture. And you can sit there and go, yeah, you go ahead and debate those Roman Catholics, those papers, they've got all sorts of unbiblical stuff.

Well, you've got an entire tradition that exalts the abilities of man and it ain't biblical either.

It's your tradition. And it's got you enslaved. It's got you enslaved.

Keep that in mind. So read through the rest of Romans chapter four because he talks about the fact that to be, for salvation to be of grace, the hand that embraces that salvation, you can't bring anything in it.

You can't come to God and say, oh God, I'm truly in need.

I know I can't make it myself, but I'm gonna put these filthy rags in my hand.

I'm gonna give them to you. You have to have an empty hand of faith.

You have to recognize you can't bring anything. Your sin makes it necessary for Christ to be the perfect savior.

You've got nothing to add to what he does. And that the only hand that will ever grasp that hand of grace is an empty hand.

That's what the rest of chapter four is about. And then the big conclusion, chapter five. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. There's the peace. There is the peace. The prince of peace, how did he bring about peace?

By his self -sacrifice. When I stand before God, the only righteousness I'm going to stand in is the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to me.

Anything that I do does not add to his righteousness. It glorifies him.

It's his purpose. He wants to conform me to the image of Christ. But my peace with him is solely based upon that righteousness, which is mine by faith and faith alone.

And if I try to add anything to that, Paul has some really strong words over in the book of Galatians.

And yet that's what mankind wants to do. Man wants to add to that.

And that's why the strongest language in all of Scripture is plainly found.

It's either in Matthew 23 or it's all through Galatians.

Depends on how you define roughest language. But when

Paul speaks about the Judaizers that have come in, he calls them pseudedelphoi, false brethren.

And he says, we didn't stand for them for an hour so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you.

He made this the very issue of defining the gospel. You know what? My life would be a lot easier if he hadn't done that.

It would be a whole lot easier for me to get along. It's so popular today to have mere

Christianity where it's, well, it's all based on believing the

Trinity and the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. But you can't ask what the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus actually accomplishes because then you get into the gospel and everybody starts fighting.

And so we're going to minimize everything down. And that means

Protestants and Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, we can all get together and we're all just good. We're all happy because we left the gospel out.

And that would make my life a whole lot easier. You know, I've got Roman Catholic friends and I wish that I didn't have to be constantly talking about this.

Because very often we come to the very same conclusions, especially with what craziness is going on in this world right now.

But I have to talk about this. I'm betraying them if I don't talk about this. And that's why in the last chapter, when

Paul's talking about don't be enslaved again, he says, I wish that those who are troubling you would let the knife slip.

He's talking about circumcision. That's in Scripture.

Wow. That's how serious it was. That's not how serious it is for most of us today.

That's something we can have a talk, we can go over to Starbucks and have a nice chat about it, right? This is how you're made right with God.

This is how you're made right with God. And Paul said, there's only one gospel.

And those that are perverting the gospel at this point, they are anathema under the curse of God.

Now he's talking about people who are purposefully doing this. And I hope and pray that there are people, you know, people said, you're saying that every single

Roman Catholic is going to hell. And I've never said that. I sat down with a man that I would call my friend, and he's a

Roman Catholic priest. And he will tell you, we have gone in depth.

I have proclaimed the whole counsel of God. And he knows it's because I love him.

He's a special guy. He really is. And he fully understands what I'm saying. He gets it.

And he understands what my position is. My position is a Roman Catholic who does have peace with God, has that peace with God, not because of what

Rome teaches, but because they don't accept all that Rome teaches, because they've accepted the gospel in its place.

And I hope there are a lot of people like that. I really do. But you can't just hope you're going to slide in the back door when you have the clarity of what we have in Scripture.

You can't. So if we love them, we have to speak to them with clarity.

We have to speak to them with clarity. Now, it's already seven minutes past, and we're supposed to do the

Q &A stuff and all the rest of that kind of thing. There's so much more I could add. But I'm not sure how long the break is supposed to be before we do the five minutes, right?

Yeah, one bathroom in the back, five minutes. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I've seen that one before.

Well, we'll call it five minutes. It won't be. We'll call it five minutes, and then we'll get back to it with the

Q &A. So thank you for your attention. Let's take our quick break. Well, I just want to tell you a little bit about myself.

My name is Jeremiah Nortier, and I serve as a pastor and elder here at 12 Five Church. And, Dr.

White, I have a lot of love and appreciation for apologetics. So you've been very influential in my life.

And so the book you mentioned earlier, The God Who Justifies, I was able to read this in preparation for one of my debates a couple years ago against a

Greek Orthodox. I know they have a little bit different view than Roman Catholics. But your chapter on Romans chapter 4 really emphasized that double imputation.

And who is the blessed man whom God will not impute sin? You really brought out the fact that God will never impute that sin to you, this double emphatic negation.

Amen. That was very impactful. And so with that, we also had a debate that we hosted here at 12

Five just a couple weeks ago. Brother Adam Carmichael, he debated a

Church of Christ. And so I want to tell you a little bit about our community here in Jonesboro.

The Church of Christ are everywhere, and my heart is to evangelize the Church of Christ because they vehemently oppose justification by faith alone.

Now something you said over and over again is we believe in justification by faith. And they will say yes all day long to that, but there's a redefining of what faith actually is.

And so one of the common objections, especially that came out in Adam's debate, was, well, James 2 talks about faith only is a dead faith.

And so I believe it was chapter 20 in your book that talked about, well, hey, yeah, James does address an empty kind of faith.

But I wanted you to speak to that a little bit because I would really like for somebody that's of the

Church of Christ conviction to hear this properly articulated how James 2 and Romans 4 are actually compatible.

So what is that dead faith that James 2 is talking about? I think it's really important, and we have to be very brief.

And so I've done entire sermons on this, entire presentations on this.

I think the last time I did it was in London. It was a fairly lengthy discussion, so you might be able to track some of those things down.

Who knows what's posted out there these days? But I think it's really important to recognize that James is most definitely speaking of a dead faith when he says in James 2 .20,

do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless, or there is a textual variant there in the

Greek. Dead, without worth. And then he uses Abraham as our example.

And a lot of people will go to that and say, see? Well, first of all, a lot of people go to that and say, this is James disagreeing with Paul. So you just need to be aware if you go looking at commentaries and stuff like that.

There are a lot of people who teach in seminaries and things like that that do not believe in the consistency of the

New Testament or of the Bible as a whole or doctrines like that. If you believe that the

Bible as a whole is a consistent testimony from God, you're in a small minority worldwide.

You really are. That will help you to understand when you read the tweets from the quote -unquote progressivists and you go, where did they come from?

Well, they don't believe that the Bible actually tells you what you would need to know and it's in a consistent fashion.

And once you realize that, then you start going, oh, okay. Now I get it.

But when we look at James 2, you have to go back to verse 14. You have to get context.

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

Can that faith save him? Can that faith save him?

It is a said faith. It is a faith that makes claims. But then when you look for evidence of its existence, all it is is it exists in word.

And we aren't saying, and this is important. Well, this is important for me, but this is where, watch your toes, okay, because I'm about to step on a few of them, all right?

Not yours, honey. I would never step on your toes. I would never do that. But I'm going to step on some other toes.

If you don't believe, if in the first written debate of the

Reformation, which was between Martin Luther and the Dutch humanist scholar,

Roman Catholic priest, Desiderius Erasmus. Now Erasmus was a great guy.

I'm thinking we're going to see Erasmus in heaven. But he was very much still a part of that mindset.

You know what the first debate of the Reformation was on? The freedom of the will. Erasmus defended the freedom of the will.

Luther defended the bondage of the will. And from that came the emphasis, which is found in Scripture, that saving faith is the work of the

Spirit of God in his elect people. So the faith that saves is a supernatural faith.

The faith that saves is the work of the Spirit of God, who raises us to spiritual life, and in the words of the

Old Testament prophet, takes out the heart of stone and what? Gives you a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel, Jeremiah, that picture is used more than once. And by the way, there has never been a stony heart that wanted to be taken out.

That is a radical action of grace by God to raise us to spiritual life, take out that heart of stone, and give us a heart of flesh.

So the faith that saves is a Spirit -born faith.

And the reason it perseveres is because Christ said, that I have come down from heaven, not through my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

And this is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given me, I lose none of them, but raise them up on the last day.

If you don't believe that God can save perfectly in and of himself, you don't believe what

Jesus said in John 6 .39. You just don't. If you have a synergistic position, it doesn't matter whether you're

Church of Christ or a Southern Baptist. If you have a synergistic view, you're standing on the other side of the

Tiber River arguing against Martin Luther, and I would say you're arguing against the Apostle Paul. And so when we talk about James 2, when he says, can that faith save him?

We say, nope, because it's a said faith. It has no reality to it.

It's not the result of the supernatural work of the Spirit of God in a person's life. And so, as far as I know, the only people who can give a balanced understanding of Romans 5, justified by faith, peace with God.

Romans 8, we have a mediator that stands in the presence of the Father, and therefore no one can bring a charge against us.

Who will bring a charge against God's elect? If Christ is standing in the presence of the

Father in my place, who can make a charge stick against me when Jesus says,

I've paid it all? No one. No one. But if you don't believe that Christ has a special people, if you don't believe that a special people, not because of anything in them, but because of God's mercy has been given by the

Father to the Son, and the Father says to the Son, you will be their perfect Savior. My will for you is that you save every last one of them.

That means Jesus has to be a perfect Savior. He has to have the capacity and ability in and of himself to save perfectly.

That's the Savior I need, because I'm going to tell you something. If it's a cooperative effort between me and Jesus, and He's dependent upon me,

I'm doomed, and so are you. Well, thank you for sharing all that.

Because verse 18, you spend a lot of time in your book, James 2 .18, talks about, show me. Demonstrate that faith.

But we're not in Missouri anymore. We're not in Missouri. It's not that far away. It's not that far away.

I crossed the state line today. So you're saying it's not a mere said faith, because a mere said faith is what a dead faith actually is.

But the justified by faith also live that faith out. And that's what James 2 is talking about.

The world will see this true living faith put on display. And so you spend a lot of time in the book, and I definitely recommend the

God who justifies. So we want to transition now. If you have questions, please make your way to this microphone, and we're going to do that now.

So please don't be scared. This is your maybe one shot. That microphone is right next to me.

I can stare at anyone. Yes. Oh, we're done, huh? Okay. So I have another question for you.

We have one victim, I mean one person coming up from the back. Yeah, we got a couple. And so as the line continues to grow, because this takes a second,

I want to ask you another question, Dr. White. Not only are the

Church of Christ in Jonesboro, but we have a lot of the evangelical churches. You already started alluding to this.

I'm talking about the churches that are very synergistic, Arminian leaning. And so you just got done talking about the perfect righteousness of Christ being imputed to our account.

Now these systems kind of see, well, I've got to walk that aisle. I have to pray a certain prayer.

I need to help God finish his plan of redemption. And so my question is, are these types of evangelical churches able to be consistent with justification by faith alone?

Well, that's the problem. As soon as you walk away from the foundational reality that salvation is of the

Lord, that Christ is a powerful Savior, every place where you look in Scripture to look for assurance, what do you find?

Even in Hebrews 6. You know, Hebrews 6 is a place where people go, see, there you've got apostasy.

They did all these things, and then they fell away, and there's no way to renew them again to repentance. You go to the end of that chapter.

First of all, not only does the author say, we are convinced of better things concerning you, things accompanying salvation. But the end of that chapter, you have one of the most astonishing pictures where Christ has gone into the holy place, in our place.

He is our anchor in the holy place, that line that goes right into the presence of God that keeps us, and it's in Christ.

As long as we look to ourselves, we will never have assurance, because we're not the ones who save ourselves.

When you look to the passages about Christ, what does it say in Hebrews 7? Because Christ has unceasing life, because He never dies, and because He's in the presence of the

Father, He is able to save to the uttermost. He is able.

Not we enable Him. There is a vast difference between saying,

Christ makes salvation possible, and saying Christ actually saves.

And if you listen to much of the preaching, I was in a church, big, massive,

Southern Baptist church, 20 ,000 members. We could ever find more than 7 ,000 at a time, but there were 20 ,000 people on the rolls.

And even at the time, we joked that to get off the rolls of that church, you had to present your own death certificate in triplicate.

But I remember clearly hearing from the pulpit, you want to know how to understand the doctrinal election?

Here it is. God votes for you. The devil votes against you, and you've got the tie -breaking vote.

Think about that for a second. Is that found anywhere in scripture? You walk through Ephesians 1,

Romans 9, you're going to get that? No. It's a way to get around the reality that God the

Father has given a people to the Son. And John 6 says, no one can come to me unless the

Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

Because there's a lot of people that go, oh, yes, we've got to be drawn by the Father. You bet, sure, fine. But what is actually said there is, no one can come to me unless the

Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. All who are drawn by the

Father to the Son are raised up by the Son. So you don't run off to another chapter and go, well,

God draws everyone, because that's not even what the other chapter is talking about in John 12, 32. So the answer is, can they consistently do so?

And the answer is no. And partly because what you have in a synergistic system is an attempt to bridge that gap.

Luther said to Erasmus, when he wrote his On the Bondage of the Will, you of all my opponents have put your finger upon the hinge upon which all this turns.

Luther recognized the Reformation was about this, and yet most of the people who call themselves

Protestants today actually disagree with Luther and agree with the Roman Catholics on this subject.

I forgot I was up here. I thought I was listening to another radio -free Geneva, so thank you for that fire,

Dr. White. So we're going to do the audience Q &A, and so how we're going to do this is, please don't preach a sermon.

Just ask a simple question. We have muting power back there, so if we need to mute you, we will.

And we strategically placed Adam Carmichael to assist you back to your seat if we need to.

So hopefully we won't have to. And you may actually just fly back to your seat. Not ever touching the floor. It's great.

Okay, go ahead. I'd like to hear you expound upon... Need you to get a little closer?

I'd like to hear you expound upon... He that works, what he gets his wage, it's not grace.

So a lot of the, what they call, anti -lordship salvation people, you know, the

Stephen Anderson type, and the pre -grace, now they'll use that text. Don't try to connect poor old

Stephen Anderson to... I mean, I've debated Robert Wilkins. Let's just use him, because attaching

Stephen Anderson to almost anybody is a little bit of an insult for everybody. Some of you who don't know who we're talking about, just go to YouTube, and you'll go, okay, yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, yeah. So go ahead, I'm sorry. No, yeah, no, he's definitely on the fringe. But there is this anti -lordship salvation segment, and so their idea is if we're justified by faith alone, they would say, well, that means not even repentance is required.

You don't have to do anything. In fact, you could be an atheist after being a Christian. So I'd like for you to elaborate on your position versus theirs, if you would.

Yeah. For a much fuller discussion, like I said, I did debate Robert Wilkins in 2009, 2010, somewhere around in there on this very issue, on that very subject.

So it's available on YouTube. It was a frustrating debate, but at least the issues would be laid out.

But again, the only balanced way to do so is from the

Reformed understanding of the fact that saving faith is the gift of God, and it is not alone in what is given to the individual.

So the issue is, what brings about justification? What brings about justification is faith and faith alone, but is justification all that happens within us in the plan of God?

Because when you read Ephesians 1 and you hear about the eternal predestination of people and the fact that they are to be adopted into the family of God, and you look at Romans 8 and the great golden chain of redemption, what's the purpose of all that?

That we might be conformed to the image of Christ. And so to be conformed to the image of Christ is going to involve all that sanctification, all that work within ourselves, but that's not what justifies us.

What normally happens is that people think of, and I was raised this way. I wasn't introduced to the language that helped me to understand what we call the ordo salutis, the order of salvation.

The fact, in my mind, justification was the same thing as just being saved, but sanctification was the same thing as being saved and adopted the same thing as being saved.

The fact is, Scripture distinguishes between these things. And so when we talk about justification, we're talking about that act whereby upon our regeneration, we are given the gift of faith.

We believe in Christ. We continue to believe in Christ. We continue to be looking at Him because we've been made new creatures.

And as a result of that faith that does not bring anything in its hand, we are declared right.

I didn't have time to do it, but if you really want another, just if you want to see how to connect these things together,

Romans 8, after the golden chain of redemption, you have the picture of the law court.

Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God's the one who justifies. Who's the one who condemns? Jesus Christ who died, yea rather, who was raised.

He intercedes in our behalf before the Father. So who can bring a charge against God's elect?

No one can. There's no grounds to do so. The Father has declared us righteous. The Son has died in our place.

He intercedes in our place. What more do you need? Why would you think that your puny work's going to add to that?

But that doesn't change the fact that the purpose of all this is that we might be made conformed to the image of His beloved

Son as He might be the firstborn amongst many brethren. And that means there's a whole lot more the Holy Spirit of God does amongst us.

And so those people that say you just get your ticket punched, you go to heaven, become an atheist, do anything else, have completely missed that the whole reason that saving faith is given to anyone is so that they might be made like Jesus.

And it's a lifelong process. However long God gives you, it's a lifelong process. And that's why we're still here.

Otherwise God could just simply save us and then take us off the planet. That would be the easiest way to do it, but that's not how

He does it. Yes, thank you for that question. Yeah, I'm in agreement, you know, that we're justified before God at the point of faith.

That James is the demonstration, the outward demonstration before man of that faith.

I just would like your commentary on how would you respond. One of the passages that makes me kind of toss around in my head and just kind of, okay, what's being said here, what's going on here, is

Cornelius. So Cornelius is told by the angel, your prayers and your alms have come up as a memorial before God and to send men to Joppa and that you're going to receive basically words by which you and your family will be saved.

I couldn't get my Bible up. There's no service here. But anyway, something like that.

So I just wanted your commentary on that passage. Well, there's a number of things in the Book of Acts.

For example, you have in those early periods, you have people who do not receive the

Holy Spirit until the apostles come down and lay hands upon them. That's not how it happened in Corinth.

That's not how it happened during the rest of Paul's missionary. So what's going on there? Those very, very early chapters are establishing the very boundary markers of what the church is going to look like.

And with Cornelius, you're dealing with God -fearers that interestingly existed all across the

Roman Empire thanks to the Jews establishing synagogues in many places. And they were people who didn't become circumcised and didn't become part of the congregation, but they were attracted to the morality, the monotheism, et cetera.

And obviously, that became a very fertile field for the early Christians to bring the gospel to.

But the point is that the reason that part of the reason that Cornelius has to do what

Cornelius has to do is so Peter has to do what Peter has to do. In other words, why is

Peter up on the housetop and has to be called down and immediately have an application of the vision he had?

So part of it is just the unique situation that you're still dealing with a Peter who's still got very strong Jewish traditions that even though he walked with Jesus and heard all this stuff still had to have his head beaten around with a fry pan a few times before he figured all these things out.

And we still don't even know. In fact, I think we probably do know that Peter still withdrew table fellowship from the

Gentiles in Antioch. And Paul had to face him face to face Galatians chapter two. So part of it was not so much for him, but for Peter.

But the other aspect is if you've ever read Spurgeon's discussion of his conversion, there was a lengthy period of time when

God was dealing with him before he feels that he was actually brought to regeneration.

And so the American experience often is sudden conversion on a certain day, boom.

And that's what most people's normative experience is. But there are others that that's not their experience at all.

And so when we see God working with someone and then using means to bring the message of the gospel and stuff, we're like, well, that's not the normative way.

Well, the acts acts up through about 14 isn't normative.

And then once you get the establishment of churches, you start seeing things changing. I'm not sure if anyone's ever noticed, but there's a whole lot more miraculous at the beginning of acts than there is at the end of acts.

And in fact, once you get into the epistles, it should strike all of us. It's a little strange.

You've got the situation with Paul's traveling companion who has fallen ill and Paul leaves him behind.

Well, Paul, why didn't you just heal him like you used to do? Well, because there's a transition taking place.

And so I guess the fundamental commentary is making the experiences in the first half of acts normative for the rest doesn't even work with acts, let alone with the rest of the epistles.

So that's how I'd answer. And I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. I believe Calvin, but he wants to ask a question.

Calvin made the case that Cornelius was regenerate under Old Testament standards. And so I didn't know if you could maybe speak to that or how he developed.

I've not read what Calvin said about that John Calvin stuff. So as long as there's no rules against it,

I'll do this Ligonier Ligonier Q &A style and I'll stay here. What's wrong with you people? But so you kind of touched on debating

Catholic priests who seems to hold to Scripture to the authority of Scripture a little bit.

Well, you mean Mitch Pacwa? Well, just just in general, you said you have Mitch Pacwa is about the only

Jesuit that I know of who actually believes that Scripture has authority in itself. So yeah, yeah, that was unusual.

Unlike on a normal scale, I've I've had Catholic friends, Catholic co -workers, such, you know, and such that don't hold to the authority of Scripture.

So as far as the imputation of of seeing they're not even Orthodox Catholic if that's the case.

I mean, look, look, Roman Catholicism has everything in it. OK, they have just as wide a range of viewpoints as Protestantism does.

But but the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church do fundamentally subjugate

Scripture to tradition. But they to be an Orthodox Roman Catholic, you cannot question the supernatural nature of Scripture and its authority.

I know that Roman Catholic priests and things do that. That's one of my arguments.

I say to I say to I say to Roman Catholics, when you guys start kicking the people out of your church that don't believe the things you actually teach in your dogmatic statements, then

I might start taking you seriously. But you don't you don't do that. And right now, how can you? Your pope doesn't believe a lot of those things.

So that's the real problem with that point. But but I think it's important that we recognize that, you know, the

Roman Catholic dogmatic statements is that Scripture is is inspired and authoritative.

And it wasn't until Vatican II that you start getting wishy washy about that kind of stuff.

And you you look at the papal biblical commission and it's filled with leftist progressivists. It really is.

And that's what's made me laugh over the years. Sorry to do this, but I did a debate with Jerry Matitix on the papers.

He actually two debates when the pope came to World Youth Day in 1993 in Denver and Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid of Catholic Answers the night

I was debating Jerry Matitix at Denver Seminary did a debate with two fundamentalists. And they just wiped him out, just wiped him off the planet.

It was it was just terrible. But one of the questions they asked was, how do you know Matthew wrote

Matthew? And the fundamentalist responded, because in the King James Bible it says the gospel according to Matthew, which isn't really a good answer.

But it would have. I would have loved to have been able to be there because most of the people on the papal biblical commission don't believe

Matthew wrote Matthew. So there have been changes in Roman Catholicism.

So you have to differentiate between the dogmatic teachings, which would still affirm, at least dogmatically, the inspiration of Scripture versus what you're experiencing.

And that is, man, there's just you can find anything amongst Roman Catholics, especially amongst

Jesuits. Yeah, so it's it's mostly just a lack of being able to answer something is what

I'm what I'm more getting towards. So would you have any pointers to somebody with that individual who does not hold when you present

Scripture to them and they're like, well, I don't I don't believe that sin was imputated to Mary.

You know, they believe that Mary was sinless. You point out that, OK, for all for all of sin fallen short of the glory of God.

You know, there are none who please him, there are none who righteous. How do you how do you work with somebody like that who doesn't hold to that?

But but even as a Roman Catholic, they believe that Adam's sin is imputed to them.

So I don't. OK, they can say there's an exception to Mary. We can get into Mary on on all sorts of other grounds.

I wrote a book called Mary Another Redeemer. It's on Kindle. It's available in various places. But but from Roman Roman Catholic respect, that's not relevant to them.

Adam's sin has been imputed to them, so they still have to deal with it. So it almost sounds like you're dealing with people that just pick and choose.

They call themselves Roman Catholics, but they're picking and choosing. Yeah. And even even Pope John Paul II spoke against cafeteria style

Catholicism where you pick and choose what you want to believe. So there being an inconsistent Roman Catholic and they may not care about that.

Yeah. In our in our day, where truth is just a whatever you want to make it to be, it can be very difficult to deal with that, just like with a secularist.

And so at that point, you're really just dealing with a lost person. And as you're dealing with secular lost people, you press the image of God upon them.

You press them for consistency. And that's same thing you do with an atheist or anybody else.

Thank you. Thanks. Acts 238.

Oh my. Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

The word for is often disputed in regards to what exactly that word means in that verse.

So is there anything in the media context that would just help our case to that would help us understand that it means because of just in the context,

I would like to say that anybody who can do three nights of debate on one verse probably isn't actually dealing with the text anymore, but their own traditions.

And the reality is the the key thing to keep in mind in Acts 2 is that you're dealing with Peter's first presentation of the gospel to the

Jews. And he has just said to the Jews, you crucified by the hands of the

Gentiles, your Messiah. And what normally gets lost, especially, you know,

I don't know that I've to be honest, it's not like I've spent a whole lot of time reading him, but I've never heard in these never ending debates with Church of Christ folks in Acts 238, a recognition of what's actually going on in a covenantal context because they don't have a covenantal theology.

They don't know what covenants are. They don't understand the language that's being used. And so,

Peter has demonstrated for David did not ascend, for David did not ascend to the heavens, but he himself says, the

Lord said to my Lord, sit by our hand until I make your own injury footstool. Again, God's favorite Bible verse, because he keeps repeating it from Psalm 110.

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both

Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart.

Why? You crucified your Messiah. And they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

Who's the we? So almost all the time, the conversation is, you know, this is, this is general means of salvation for everybody is to be baptized, so on and so forth.

These are Jews saying to fellow Jews, because they call them men and brethren. We've crucified our

Messiah. Is there any hope for us? Is there any hope for us?

That's the that's the context. If that's not central right at the beginning, then we're not actually dealing with the text to begin with.

And so the answer has to be understood. And I don't think that it is a matter of.

Of dealing just with Greek prepositions, because repent, be baptized, every one of you, the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of the forgiveness of your sins, and you'll receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit. What was that saying to Jews who are literally staying there going, we're toast.

There is no hope for us. We could never be saved. There may have been people staying there who had yelled out, crucify him.

But they certainly recognize that at least the federal principle that their leaders had crucified the

Messiah, and therefore they stand guilty of what their leaders have done in their place as their representative.

So they're thinking, I have no hope. And Peter says, actually you do.

Repent. And to be baptized as a Jew is to do what?

That is a public proclamation of your identification with Jesus, not only as the

Messiah, but what is the method of, what's the baptismal formula?

Baptized into the name singular of the Father and of the Son and of the

Holy Spirit. That's recognizing that Jesus is more than merely a prophet or anything like that.

That's identifying him with divinity. So to be baptized in that way, what we're saying to you, brothers, is that you can have salvation, but it's only in Jesus Christ and it's no half -hearted commitment.

This is just addressed to the Jews as to what they can do. This isn't a discussion of the mechanism.

You want the mechanism? Go to the places where Peter and Paul lay out how salvation takes place.

This is dealing with a single question, a single historical context. And that is the people who are going, oh, no, we are hopeless.

Nope, actually, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, Jesus the

Messiah. We think Christ is Jesus' last name. It's not. I think it's much better to render that as Jesus the

Messiah because that is a statement of confession for the forgiveness of your sins.

They needed to have forgiveness of sins and they're not going to get it from the temple. Once you know who Jesus is, those sacrifices do nothing.

You go to Christ, you repent, you be baptized, every single one of you, and you will receive the gift of the

Holy Spirit. They are sitting there going, we're doomed, and in one sentence, you will receive

God's gift of the Holy Spirit. The way is still open for you for, this gets skipped, the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, who?

Everyone whom the Lord our God, what? Calls to himself.

That's who the promise is for. Everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

Now, me and my Presbyterian brothers lock horns on this one because my

Presbyterian brothers, I'm going to have to pick on you because I've got the microphone and you don't. Okay? But my

Presbyterian brothers go, for the promise is for you and for your children. After that.

No, you and your children. That is you and your children. You have not been cut off.

The wrath of God is not going to abide upon you. It will upon those who don't repent and believe and in approximately 40 years, it was really going to come down heavy in AD 70.

But the promise is for you and for all those who are far off, who's that?

The Gentiles. As many as the Lord our God will call to himself.

It all comes back to God's sovereign calling. And you recently preached many sermons on baptism and this was one that I'd recommend go look up the sermon on as many as the

Lord calls to himself because you deal with this. Yeah, well, yeah. I did a series on the ordinances of the church.

We did five on Lord's Supper and about 13 on baptism. And so I covered every single reference to baptism in the

New Testament and then we dealt with all the covenantal issues in regards to the Old Testament and that's because I listened to Doug Wilson and so I know what

I have to do. In the area of justification, are there any similarities between Roman Catholicism and Christianity?

Like is there any who are truly saved in Roman Catholicism? And if there are, how come they don't just abandon

Roman Catholicism altogether? Because it seems like when I think of Roman Catholics and stuff like that,

I put a big X in my mind because I'm like that's definitely a no -no. But it seems like when I scroll past a video or something and a

Roman Catholic is talking, what they say almost sounds like it sounds really good and biblical, but they're wearing a collar and it's just like, so are there any...

It's not just Roman Catholics that wear collars. You want to just do these last two. So anyone who comes up behind you, kick them in the knee.

Got it? Okay, all right. Okay, so here's my answer to you, brother.

You walked away, but hopefully you'll be able to hear me. Okay, all right, good, all right. First of all, there's nothing wrong with collars.

There's nothing about in the Bible about it, so we need to be careful. I make the point, I've written a book on this subject called

The Roman Catholic Controversy, and one of the things I pointed out is I have Anglican friends who wear collars, who believe in justification by faith, and sola scriptura.

And they even cross themselves. Okay, now at the Reformation, there were people...

Zwingli was a classically trained organist. When the

Reformation took place, he got rid of all musical instruments in the church. Okay, there are some people that go there.

But I think God made those things to glorify him, and so I think that instruments are beautiful.

They were used in God's people in the Old Covenant. So we have to be really careful to make sure that we realize that the issue with Roman Catholicism fundamentally is it doesn't have a gospel that gives peace.

The sacramental system, and especially their doctrine of the mass, they have no finished work of Christ.

And so that's the issue. Now, papacy? Very important. Denial of sola scriptura?

Calling a priest and alter Christus, another Christ? Very important. Purgatory? Oh my, there's all sorts of issues.

There's no question about it. But there are all sorts of issues outside of Rome as well.

And so when you ask, how could anyone be saved who is a Roman Catholic?

My response is the grace of God. You go, but they don't believe the right things.

There are certain things that need to be believed. And like I said, if anyone within the

Roman Catholic communion is going to receive eternal life, it's not going to be because what they were taught specifically by Rome, but by the things they heard in other contexts, maybe just reading the

Bible. I've met people that honestly, they went to the Roman Catholic Church, but then when they told me what they thought

Rome taught, I'm like, how did you get that? And I realized they were reinterpreting what they were hearing in light of what they were reading in the

Bible. Now, is that extremely common? No, but I hope it's more common than I think it is.

But I still have to evangelize them because I want them to know the truth of what, because I don't want them to be pseudo

Delphoi, false brothers. And if you're truly committed, some of you may know there was a young guy who had a

YouTube channel, a Christian apologist guy, who a couple months ago, was it months or weeks?

Yeah, it was very, very recently, converted to Roman Catholicism. Well, I had called that in May or April of 2020.

When I first heard him dialoguing with a Roman Catholic about John six, I knew then, and he just dragged it out that long, didn't have that foundation.

But when someone has professed the truth, and now they seek to deny that truth, that's a different thing than having never professed the truth and maybe believing the truth, just not knowing that you did.

So, I was raised, I'll be honest with you, I was raised within a independent fundamentalist

Baptist context that basically taught me that I actually could judge people's hearts. I can't.

I can only judge what is taught. And so, I can warn about false teaching.

I can't see into the heart. I can hope, and I can pray, but when

I hear false teaching, I am concerned that that is going to lead someone to have a false faith itself, and that's why

I have to evangelize those folks. But I have great love for the

Roman Catholic people. I have no animosity toward them at all. And a lot of them don't believe that because I stand against Roman Catholicism as a whole.

But it's sort of like when I speak on the King James Only issue, you hate the King James Bible. No, I don't.

I hate the misuse of the King James Bible. It's a very different thing. Evening, Dr.

Watt. I had about 100 million questions in my head, so I had to pick the best one. Well, we'll judge as to whether it was the best one or not.

If you get done, they go, that was your best one? That's true. Then you're going to be like, oh, man. Well, it's,

I guess, more prevalent to everyday conversations I have. And in reference to Reformed theology that I've had with some of my friends and pastor friends and everything, 1

John 2, verses 1 and 2 reads, My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

So I'd like to get your commentary, maybe, on the original language of what the whole world is specifically referring to because I've heard in extreme that this is a universalist passage, but I've also heard a provisionist idea of this as well.

Let's not give the provisionists much credit. They haven't been around long enough to bother with.

I know I was a product of your great friend Layton Flowers. Yes, yes. But to be honest with you, you'll get a much more in -depth discussion on this, not only in,

I believe, in the Potter's Freedom, but I have done a number of dividing line programs specifically on this text where I get to spend 45 minutes, not three or four because we're wrapping up here.

But my fundamental answer, aside from the fact that when it says we have an advocate with the

Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, if you understand advocate and what the advocate is doing, that is a reference to particular redemption and to the perfection of the work of Christ from the book of Hebrews that he saves the other most those who deny to God by him.

So there'd be an inconsistency there. But the idea is they're trying to say, well, he is the propitiation.

Now, what is propitiation? That which removes the wrath of God for our sins and not for ours only, but also the sins of the whole world.

Well, if it's actually propitiation, then this doesn't work for a synergist or a provisionist or something else.

It only works the universalist because it means that God's wrath has been removed for the whole world.

If you're reading this through Western eyes, and that's the problem, when we are such individualists, especially

Americans, we read these texts and we read them in such a fashion that we're seeing them individualistically.

That was not the mindset of the writing of the New Testament. They did not see it in that way.

And when you talk about the whole world, the whole world for them is not some extensive, what did we just pass?

Eight billion individuals. It's classes and categories. And so the point of 1

John 2 is we cannot sit and be complacent and apathetic because we've accepted this message.

This has to go out to Jews and Gentiles, to all people, that there is a means of having peace with God.

There is a propitiatory sacrifice knowing that, as Jesus himself taught, no one can come to me unless the

Father who sent me draws him. So who experiences that propitiation? Only those for whom

Christ died. Who is united to him? Those given by the Father to the Son. This text isn't even addressing that.

It's saying, my little children, this is how we should live in light of the theology they've already been taught.

And so I've just noticed, and I've said this many times down through the years, that those who try to come up with these teachings, instead of being able to go to extended sections of scripture that are specifically on the topic,

Hebrews, for example. Man, I do not know why Hebrews is not just one of the most, you know, everybody just loves

Romans. Well, not so much Romans 5, but everybody just loves Romans. But Hebrews is the book of the

New Testament that has the longest extended discussions of the atonement and why the atonement took place and what it accomplishes.

And I honestly think one of the reasons that it's not at the forefront of everyone's thinking is it assumes you know the

Old Testament like the back of your hand. And I have said for a long time, evangelicals tend to be canonically challenged.

We have pretty much only 27 books in our Bible. The other 39 are just storybooks. There are things to keep the, you know,

Daniel in the lion's den and David and Goliath and so on. It's just to entertain the kids.

But a lot of us really do think that the Old Testament's authority is not what the

New Testament's authority is. And so we don't spend much time in it. When you read Hebrews for what

Hebrews is really saying, it gives us extensive, long discussions of these very issues about what the atonement accomplishes and the priesthood of Christ and all the rest of this stuff.

We take those big ones and then interpret the small ones in light of the long discussions.

And the other side tends to take these, read stuff into it and say that stuff just can't be saying that because of this.

And I think that sort of tells you what's going on. Yeah. And like I said, verse one really helps interpret verse two.

And I believe it's 1 John 5, 19 that uses whole world. And another context to show it shows different categories.

Well, John uses cosmos in at least 14 different ways between the gospel of John and his epistles.

So, yeah. All right. One last question. Mr. Randy. You made it. Yes, sir. First of all, kudos on Reliant.

The problem is I can't remember what the code was. I tried to memorize it once but I can't remember.

Do you remember? No. No. But I did reference the sixth movie in my sermon this weekend.

That's it. I congratulate you for that. But do you know who would know that code? Jason Lyle.

Probably so. Jason Lyle is the biggest Star Trek geek on the planet. I can believe that.

He really, really is. He's an astronomer. What do you expect? Well, I think he's looking for the Enterprise up there.

You may not want to get into this. Okay. All right. So we're done. Just say sit down dummy or whatever.

But I only mention this because you mentioned Wright in your presentation. Yes. And I don't know who is familiar with Wright, probably even less with Dunn, probably even less with Sanders.

But this stuff is, seminarians are reading these books, they're being influenced.

So just real quick, I know you're wrapping things up. What would be a quick summary of what he's doing with the gospel and maybe some key phrases that if you hear a preacher say this phrase, you may want to ask them, hey, what's your relationship with Wright?

What is... Yeah. So you kind of get where I'm going with that. Yeah. Have you heard me and Wright?

I'm sorry? Have you heard the interaction between Wright and myself? Staring at you face to face, if I said yes, would you believe me?

I don't know. It's online. No, no. I have not listened to that.

I'm sorry. Okay. All right. Well, I'd recommend it because we did get into a lot of that stuff.

For those that are wondering what the question's about, there's something called The New Perspective on Paul. It's not all that new anymore. Sanders, Dunn, and there's differences between them, a lot of differences between them, and probably the best known modern presenter of this is

Bishop N .T. Wright, who's a brilliant guy. The problem is N .T. Wright knows he's brilliant, and he honestly believes he's come up with a way to heal the schism of the church on the subject of justification, and that is to say that both the

Catholics and Protestants got it wrong and he figured it out, and he really does believe that, and that's sort of hard to deal with, but fundamentally what he's saying is that justification is not a salvific category.

It is a fellowship category. It is about who is in the fellowship of the church. It's not how you're made right with God. Wright actually says that even though he thinks the

Reformation went the wrong way to get to its conclusion, that they got to the right conclusion and that you can get there other ways than the ways they did.

I don't know how he's actually laid that out to do that, to be pretty honest with you, but fundamentally, for example, when

I quoted earlier, he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

For N .T. Wright, that's only about the apostles. That's not about us, and so it is highly problematic, but most of Wright's critics have not actually understood

Wright, and half of that's his fault and half of it's theirs, so it's extremely complicated.

It does tend to attract the seminarian student who is in seminary for the wrong reasons, who wants to be very wise and not necessarily for the right reasons for being wise, ministerial reasons,

I would say, and so what phrases will you hear? Well, I'm not sure exactly what phrases would bounce out of that, but what you will hear is words that sound rather universalistic.

He's not trying to be universalistic, but that's sort of what ends up coming out of it. It's very complicated.

I did a series of programs on the dividing line on it. If you look up N .T.

Wright, it'll probably pull them up. Our archives go back to 2000. We were podcasting before there were pods.

We really were. We literally started online podcasting before the iPod was made, so right around 2000.

In fact, the dividing line, I started in the 1980s, and so there's thousands, thousands, and thousands of them in there, so we have covered it in there at some point.

It should pull up into the front. Dr. White, thank you so much for coming out to 12 .5 Charts. If you would, give a hand for Dr.

White. If you would, do you mind to please close us in a word of prayer?