The Prove Yourself Gospel | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin, and it is Reformation Week in the Year of Our Lord 2022. Here at Theocast, we always seek to clarify the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we find that when we do, people respond to us in very interesting and somewhat predictable ways.

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One of the things that we often get thrown back at us is, well, guys, what about obedience? And people will cite a number of verses that would speak to Christians obeying

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God's Word and obeying God's commands. But what's often done is the focus is taken completely away from Jesus and is put solely on the believer, and we double down on obedience to the extent that we divorce it from Christ altogether, and how a person is performing becomes the determiner of one's salvation.

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Maybe you've experienced this. Maybe you have struggled with these kinds of thoughts and feelings or this kind of church environment in your life.

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If you have, today's episode is for you. We are going to double down on union with Christ by faith in honor of the

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Reformed tradition today. Stay tuned. A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the

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Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org slash give. Welcome to Theocast, clarifying the gospel and reclaiming the purpose of the kingdom.

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Some might ask, are we still encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ? As a matter of fact, we are, and we're doing all of this from a

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Reformed and confessional perspective and hopefully also a pastoral one. Your hosts today are

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John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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John, it's good to be around the microphones with you. I am recording from studio again this week. I'm not offsite.

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So back to the normal backgrounds. It is freezing cold in Asheville, North Carolina.

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I know in Nashville, Tennessee, it is too. It's like it has gone from like, it's kind of fall to like, it's straight winter.

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Yo, like really hurt in a hurry. So I played golf. I'm in a vest. 85 degree weather.

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Yes. Last Friday. And today it's like a 32. Yeah. I mean, we didn't get above like 35 degrees yesterday.

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I know today it feels even colder. I mean, I'm in a, I'm in a waffle shirt and a vest, like a warm vest today.

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I'm like, man, this happened. It like broke my neck. It happened so fast. So anyway, that's not what we're going to talk about today.

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People didn't tune in to hear about the weather. No, even though you and I may be able to, you know, engage on meteorological things in an entertaining fashion.

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It's not what they're here for, John. I mean, my daughter did ask me if there were seasons in heaven. I thought that was a fascinating question.

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It is a fascinating question. One that we're not going to answer today. That's not why we're here either.

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So why don't you tell people what we are here for. Prove yourself. Yeah. Prove yourself gospel. Well, this is going to be

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Reformation week in the year of our Lord 2022. Yes. Welcome to Reformation week. We decided to record this and slide that one, this episode into that, into our schedule.

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So messing up our schedule a little bit, but that's okay. So what I just said about recording offsite is probably not true. You're going to not even know what

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I mean, because it's going to happen next week in your world. Stay tuned. We're just, we're kind of throwing in some matrix stuff going on here.

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So prove yourself gospel and yeah, punchy title, but it's definitely something that we need to deal with.

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It's something that Steelcast has been dealing with for years, but every time we do, we're trying to bring a greater form of biblical clarity here.

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Next week, we're going to be talking about biblicism. So the two will be going hand in hand. And then the week after that, the episode is,

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I don't know if we've titled it yet, but we're going to be dealing with the Holy Spirit and the word of God and truth and all of that.

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So kind of a really just a really good overview of the Christian life in, as we involve ourselves with God's word, but approve it.

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You're prove yourself salvation. It's another way of saying pietism, but there's a historical backdrop to what happened and what

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I think Justin and I in the Reformation is fighting, was fighting 500 years ago and now fighting again.

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It's kind of like we're reliving the same battles, but the point of it is this. Sure, you're saved by grace through faith alone for the glory of God alone.

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Amen. Right? Five solos wholeheartedly. But in order for you to gain assurance, in order for you to maintain assurance, there must be an ongoing evidence of this faith.

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And we'll address that because sometimes, Justin, when people hear us talk, they think we're creating either ors.

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You either obey or you don't obey. That's not how this works. Or there's a false dichotomy.

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Either we're preaching faith with no regard for obedience, or you are rightly emphasizing obedience as effectively the determiner of one's salvation.

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That's the dichotomy that exists in the minds of many. The answer there is no, there's actually a better way that's more biblical and faithful to how the

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Scriptures have been understood through history. And that's what we're talking about today, in effect. The reason

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I mention this is that on social media and on the podcast world and YouTube world, there's this ongoing debate that's happening between myself and Justin and other people that are of the

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Reformed faith. And it's like we keep speaking past each other. And I think it's paramount for the future of our churches and the hope of the gospel that we keep the gospel clear and pure.

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And that's the intention of this, is that if the gospel is clear and pure, then there will be an endless stream of hope for the believer.

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But when we muddy it, then you remove all of the power and the strength and the joy.

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As David says, restore to me the joy of my salvation. The joy of knowing that I am saved by a power and object outside of myself.

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Are we talking about objective realities where the object of our faith is

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Jesus? Or are we talking about objective realities where the object of my faith is Jesus and my obedience?

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Justin Perdue And in that case, the latter case, we've actually turned it into a very subjective thing, which is unhelpful.

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A couple of historical remarks before the one that I'm going to make in a minute, just because I think this is helpful for people.

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The Reformation effectively was an effort by a large number of people to recover the clarity of the gospel.

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So that's obvious. And they're going back to the scriptures, they're going back to various sources through the history of the church in order to do that.

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In the aftermath of the Reformation, though, you have a number of other things that happened. Even the

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Marrow Controversy is something that we've talked about before, which is a couple hundred years after the Reformation starts, so the early 1700s in Scotland.

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There is again a controversy over the nature of the gospel, and there are a number of people, a number of brothers in ministry, called the

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Marrow Brethren, who are seeking to clarify the gospel and clarify the law in the gospel.

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We find that in our own day, that battle continues on because there are always those who rise up with good intentions, and we trust well -motivated concerns, but the concerns raised and the things said often do clutter the gospel or obscure it, throw clutter on it and obscure it so that Christ is less clear, the gospel is less clear, and the saints never profit from that.

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I'll start us off with this before I make another historical observation. It's an observation of mine, and we're going to go back and forth on a few of these things.

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The issue here really is one of focus and emphasis. I know we've referenced a number of different theologians in our contemporary setting.

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I'm not going to name any names right now, but there was a gentleman who was asked one time in an interview a few years ago, is continuing on in goodness a consequence of our salvation, or is it the cause of it?

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This theologian, this pastor's answer to that question was the ambiguous kind of humorous yes.

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In other words, it's both. Continuing on in goodness is both consequence and cause of our salvation, to which we would respond charitably and humbly that is wrong.

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That is not biblically true. There are things that we have to hold an appropriate tension in the

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Scripture, no argument there, but this is not one of those things. The Scripture could not be more plain that salvation is grounded upon the work of Jesus Christ alone in the place of the sinner that we receive by faith, and we are united to him so that everything that is his is ours.

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We'll come back and double down on this in a minute, but the emphasis and the focus is the issue. Whenever we talk about obedience or continuing on in goodness, we have to talk about it as a consequence of salvation.

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We have to talk about it as an outflow, a necessary outflow of salvation, of life received.

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The Christian life is the given life. It's a received life, and then there are outflows, there are implications, there are all kinds of things.

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There are consequences of that life received. That's how we need to talk about obedience, and we're going to contend today that that's how not only theologians through history have talked about it, that's how the apostles also wrote about it.

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John, I've said enough to at real quick.

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I put something out the other day, and I actually use social media as a form of research for where is the theological water.

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I use it to test things out and see how people are thinking. I put this particular one out.

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It says, The Gospel According to Pietism says you are saved by grace alone through Christ alone. Now you better make sure that is true by your performance.

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That's a great definition of pietism. The Gospel According to Jesus says, I am the one who saved you.

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I lose none. Now rest in my power to save and spread the light of the kingdom.

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The good news is secured, and then from that Jesus says, here's what

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I want you to do. My burden is light, my yoke is easy. It's the outflow of it. I'll start with this as well.

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It's a ground of where we're arguing from, and then we're going to compare this to history and what's going on in history.

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John 3 is a great example. What must I do to enter the kingdom of heaven? What must I do?

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Jesus tells Nicodemus, you have to be born again, which means you can't born yourself again. It's a beautiful illustration from Jesus.

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Obviously, it's from God. You have to receive that life. That's right. He's like, well, how am

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I to re -enter into it? He goes, no, no, you don't understand. You have to receive it from the Spirit. It's important that we get the flow and the order correctly, because if you don't, you're going to credit your salvation to your obedience.

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This is why people say, I'm always crediting it to Jesus. No, if you have to look to your performance, then you are crediting your salvation to your obedience.

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We are not antinomians, so hear us clearly. Those who have been justified will be sanctified.

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It is a part of the New Covenant promise. Those who have received the love of God will give the love of God.

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That is a promise, but it is not the means or the ground of your justification.

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Justin Perdue It's not the cause of anything. Jon Moffitt That's right. Because he uses birth,

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Justin, how do I know that you're alive? I'm talking to you. I see that you're breathing and you're moving, but you didn't cause that birth.

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I can see the evidence of it. Justin Perdue You see the evidence of the life that I have, but I didn't do anything to produce life in myself.

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It's something that I've been given by God in terms of this physical life, and the spiritual life is no different.

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Jon Moffitt That's why he said you must be born again, except for this time it's a spiritual birth. Justin Perdue Then beautifully, he concludes that whole piece by saying, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the

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Son of Man be lifted up. This is how people will be saved and forgiven of their sins.

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I will handle it. I'll do it. That's always been the purpose of God from eternity past, that I would save my people and this given life will come only through me.

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How beautiful. A gospel picture there, and even just a presentation of the new birth. Jon Moffitt That's where we're arguing from.

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We're going to add more to that, but let's talk a little bit about history and how we've got a balance. Justin Perdue We're going to particularly be making an observation here.

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I'm going to make a historical observation from our tradition. Jon and I subscribed to the

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Second London Confession, oftentimes referred to as the 1689 London Baptist Confession, because that was the year it was publicly adopted in the

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General Assembly. This confession was actually finished in 1677, but due to the environment in England, it was not publicly adopted in the

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General Assembly until a dozen years later. There's all this. The reason I say this is because I was doing some reading last week.

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I had a study week where I was doing a lot of reading on particular Baptist history and ecclesiology and reading documents from the early

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General Assemblies and the like. It was interesting to me. We've not really talked about baptism or the administration of baptism on this podcast in any number of ways, but I recently, in the last couple of years, wrote a paper for our elders about how we administer baptism, whether we baptize younger people or not, etc.,

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because amongst serious -minded Calvinistic Baptists in America for 150 years and even in the

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UK, even in Spurgeon's era, Baptists were very hesitant to baptize anyone under 18.

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I think there's a historical reason for this. That reason, as I assess history, is you read someone like Benjamin Keech in the 1690s before the awakenings and revivalism as a thing.

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You read Benjamin Keech, talk about how he sees no reason to withhold baptism in the

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Lord's Supper from children. He's not talking about infant baptism, but he's talking about the baptism of young people. He's advocating for this.

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There are records in London churches from the 1690s where they had members as young as 12 years old who had been baptized and admitted to the table, and again, are members of the church.

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That sounds insane to modern Calvinistic serious -minded Baptists. The reason for that,

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I think, is there was such a reaction to revivalism that began to really show itself on the world stage in the first Great Awakening, so -called, in the

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UK and in America in the 1720s, 30s, and 40s. Then you have the so -called second

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Great Awakening in the early to mid part of the 19th century, 1820s, 30s, and 40s, primarily.

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In a reaction against the bad fruits of revivalism that became all about conversion and a decision for Christ and internal intensity and fervor within the believer and an intense commitment to Christ and all of these things, and then moral transformation of life, there were a lot of people who made professions of faith.

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It's like, yeah, this isn't taking. It's not legitimate. It doesn't seem to be real.

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We still see this in our day, walking an aisle and praying a prayer or getting baptized on the stage in a firetruck or whatever it may be, mass spontaneous baptisms where we plant people in the crowds to encourage people to come forward.

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There's all kinds of nonsense going on still. I fear that many in our day, as has been true for a while, in responding to all of that, have swung too far and have fallen off the other side of the horse.

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We think that the way we combat nominalism, Christianity and name only, that's the problem from the perspective of many.

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The way we combat that is to double down on obedience. What we do is we tell people that unless you are obedient in these ways, unless you do all of these things, you should question your legitimacy because we are going to make the gauge, the measuring stick, the metric.

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It's all about your obedience and your faithfulness because that's how the true believers will prove themselves legit.

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I'm not saying that's all that's going on. I think it's a significant factor though. It's just interesting as you read eras of history that predate the awakenings and revivals in the

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West in the last 500 years. It sounds different, and there's a different perspective.

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We're going to come back and talk about the antidote to nominalism and the bad fruits of revivalism later in the show, but for now, that historical observation is significant.

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John, if the listener is going to hear anything, it's that the problem in the minds of so many people is fake

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Christianity. It's Christianity and name only. What we need to do is smoke those people out, and we're going to do that through the standard of obedience.

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We almost called this podcast Obedience Alone as a play off of faith alone or grace alone because the way that some talk, the gospels assumed of Jesus, but really where we determine who the believers are is through obedience.

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Justin Perdue I want to take something to the extreme, and then we'll come back because I want to talk about some historical aspects of that. Justin Perdue Why not live in the extremes,

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John? That's more fun anyway. Yeah. People ask this question, and so I'll answer for Justin and I.

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People say, John, are you saying that Christians are not required to obey? I don't like the word required because that's like saying, are you saying human beings are not required to breathe?

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I'm like, that's a weird question. What do you mean?

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It just doesn't make sense to me because according to Scripture, if you're in the new covenant and you're alive in the new covenant, and you have a new heart, according to Ephesians 2 and Ezekiel and Jeremiah, we will walk in his ways.

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So it is always the fruit. It's always the presence of.

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The difference is that somehow we have used this. So this is the extreme.

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Somehow we have gotten to the point where it's like, if you want to make sure you get to heaven, you better or else. My response to this is always, if one is alive, if one truly is alive in Christ, you don't have to demand obedience from them.

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There's going to be an agreement with God that sin is wrong and holiness is glorious.

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Sin is death and holiness is life. It's wonderful. That becomes the focus of one because I just can't get enough of Philippians 2.

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If there's any encouragement in Christ, there's any comfort of love, any participation of the Spirit, what is he doing?

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He's saying, hey, look, there's the evidence of your salvation. If that's true, then go lay your life down.

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How many times in Scripture do we have to read this line of thinking? The point of it is that if the gospel becomes something other than news, and when you add a command on it other than you need to believe this, but you add a command of any type of into it, it is no longer faith alone.

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I don't care if you want to yell at the top of your lungs, faith alone. Justin, if you say to someone, you must look to your good works to determine your justification, that is adding works into it.

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If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest.

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And if you struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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

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slash primer. Justin Perdue If you preach the gospel and you say,

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Jesus died an atoning death to make satisfaction for your sins and fulfill the penalty of the law.

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Jesus lived a perfect life to fulfill the requirement of the law. He was raised triumphant for our justification and to guarantee our bodily resurrection.

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You can say all that and you receive that by faith, but then you say, and. As soon as you've said, and, we've given it all away because you have put something beside Christ.

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Implications, outflow, and consequences of that glorious gospel, we're here for it all day. We'll listen happily and we'll proclaim it joyfully, but as soon as you say,

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Jesus, and, we've run into the problems that existed in the Galatian churches, that existed in the

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New Testament clearly. That's concerning. I've said things like this before on this show and in my own church.

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The gospel contains nothing in it whatsoever that we are to do. Then you stop and just let it sit awkwardly silent for about five seconds.

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Everybody's instinct is to be like, yeah, but. We've got to add, but once the gospel is received, then

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A, B, C, and D. I'm like, look, I probably am going to agree with what you're about to say, but can we not allow the saints to receive

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Christ and rest and live there for a moment before we take the focus off of Jesus and put it back on us?

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Jon Moffitt Yeah. I have to quote this. Hebrews 12, looking unto

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Jesus, the one who started our faith, the founder, and the one who completes our faith.

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I've used this illustration in the past, but I'm going to go ahead and use it now again. When my brother and I were little, we used to go to this

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Air Force base. We were walking through the base and my brother, bless his heart, he loved to watch himself run.

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The sun is setting and he's running and he's looking at his shadow and he's very impressed with how he's running. He runs headlong right into a tree and falls right on his butt.

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Unfortunately, it was really funny to me, but not to him. If his eyes were focused on where he was running, he wouldn't have ever run into the tree.

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This is exactly what people are being told to do. Take your eyes and look at how you're running.

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If you're not running well, then you should be worried that you're even running at all. Jesus is the focal point.

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He's our reward. He's our hope. He's our guide. He's everything. Yet we're being told to take our eyes off the object of our faith, what is actually saving us, and we're being told to put our eyes on us, which is subjective.

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How am I doing? Listen, the confession is very clear, and I agree that obedience is a means to encourage and strengthen our justifications and our assurance.

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Justin and I have both at times. I can see this, and it's encouraging to me. I called my wife yesterday.

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I was really struggling with something, and I finally just said, Lord, I'm going to pray about this and ask you for wisdom. I'm going to give it over to you.

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God answered it the next day. I just called her and was like, wow, how kind is God to answer such an amazing request that I had over the anxiety of my heart?

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It assured me. It gave me hope, but it wasn't the confirmation of my salvation.

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It wasn't why I was saved. Justin Perdue Well, I want to clarify. Your illustration is helpful.

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I want to be very plain about what we're talking about here. We're talking about the ground of salvation. We're talking about assurance.

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Don't look at you primarily. You cannot do that. Your focus has to be on Jesus. When it comes to the

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Christian life, somebody might rightly ask, how do we know how to live? Of course, we look to the law, but we're not looking to the law as the ground of our standing.

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We're not looking to the law and our conformity unto it as the cause of our justification or our final salvation.

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We, in Christ Jesus, in freedom, look to the law, agreeing with the Lord that it's good, and then we seek to live that way.

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That's a very different thing. Before anybody misunderstands us and says, we need to assess our lives and how we're living.

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Assessing our lives and how we're living, knowing we're not condemned, knowing we've been set free with our eyes on Christ and then appropriately on the law, is a very different matter altogether than what everybody on Twitter, for example, is advocating for when they are saying, you must live like this and this needs to be your focus.

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If this isn't your focus and you're not meeting this standard, whoever defines it, then you should call everything into question.

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Justin Perdue It's almost like we add a section to the gospel because we think we need it. I'm like, no, that is actually the gospel.

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Let me explain. The gospel is this. You're a sinner and you've been condemned.

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The gospel is you're a sinner and you've been condemned by this sin and you need righteousness in order to receive

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God's love and favor and blessings of eternal life. The good news of the gospel is this. The good news is that Christ provides that payment and he provides that righteousness.

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The good news of the gospel is this. If you agree with God about your sin and you agree with God about his solution, then you know that you are saved.

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If you agree with God, I am a sinner, and you agree with God with his solution, then you know that you are saved.

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The problem is that people are like, but no, then you have to add this in. You can't agree that you need a

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Savior and then think you can remain in sin. That's not an agreement with God.

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When people hear us preach the gospel, they think we're saying, you just need to believe and then you can live however you want.

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No one has ever said that. Paul says, may it never be.

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This is why there's confusion because people always say, but you do believe you have to obey. Why do you feel the necessity?

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That is part of the gospel. Part of the gospel is, I agree with God about my sin. I've sided with God against my sin, and we do believe that Christians will obey.

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That's the right way to say it. You believe that Christians are required to obey. I believe

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Christians will obey. I believe Christians will be sanctified because that's what the Scriptures say.

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While we're here, let's talk about how the apostles write. You already mentioned Paul by no means. That's the watershed text for me.

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When it comes to the last bastion of defense, when it comes to this whole conversation, I'm like, what did

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Paul do? This objection has been raised from the time the gospel began to be preached.

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We can just sin, right? What about sin? People are just going to abuse grace if you say these things.

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That's been the cry of every holiness movement through the history of the church. How does the apostle Paul respond?

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He does not double down on obedience. He doesn't double down on the law. That's not his emphasis.

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He doubles down on union with Christ, baptism into Christ, and freedom in Christ from the condemnation of the law, set free unto righteousness.

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That's how he presents the whole thing and says we've now become obedient from the heart because something's happened.

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Then he's going to go on, of course, to talk about the internal war that now exists only for the believer because in your inner man you love

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God's law and you want to do good, but your flesh wages war against that. Then he's going to assure us all that there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and he's going to talk about life in the

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Spirit in Romans 8. That, to me, is the pattern that we need to uphold.

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Even the language of Paul elsewhere, I'm almost finished. In Colossians or Ephesians in particular,

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I'm thinking about those two letters. There's all this language of put off the old man, put on the new man.

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None of that language is condemnatory. He's already affirmed these saints in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. He's written of the gospel to them. In both cases, he's giving a clear vision of the person and work of Christ, especially to the church in Colossae, as the thing that will protect them from false teaching and false practice.

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Then he's going to say live like this. Remember, too, he's writing to mostly a

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Gentile audience who have no context for the law of God, who used to live in all kinds of crazy ways.

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He says now that you have been united to Christ, you used to be this. Now you're this. Don't live like that anymore.

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Live like this now. Put off that old man that was crucified and nailed to the cross and live now in newness of life in Christ Jesus.

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But somehow we turn that into a threat. That's the problem. Jon Moffitt Well, the whole

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Galatian heresy, he says you've begun by the

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Spirit, and now you're going to perfect yourself by the flesh. If it's faith that saves us, he says it's faith that sustains you, and it's faith that sanctifies you, and it's faith that glorifies you.

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Faith in what, Justin? Not faith in performance, but faith in the one who performed.

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We're putting faith in Christ for our salvation, and we're putting faith in Christ for our sanctification.

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Let me just say it this way. The reason why I agree with God that I need to pursue holiness is because I am putting my faith in my

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Savior. Because I believe in Christ, I obey.

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Not perfectly by any sense of the word, but the difference, Justin, is that if we're not careful, and people are like, you guys are splitting here.

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This is a nuanced conversation. Justin Perdue These distinctions make all the difference in the world. Jon Moffitt It does, because what ends up happening is if your faith for justification and your faith for sanctification is not in Jesus, then you're going to be on shifting sands.

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Because if your faith is, okay, well, I got in by Jesus, but I need to maintain my flesh obedience.

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You'll never have enough. Justin Perdue That actually is what Rome taught, by the way. In by grace, and you maintain your justification through good works.

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Jon Moffitt That's right. Justin Perdue That's session six, canon 24 of the Council of Triumph. Jon Moffitt I'll just mention this, according to the history,

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Justin. When you think about revivalism and it created this easy believism, and we're

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Christian by name only, and there's no evidence of it. There were three movements that have formulated out of that over the last 50 years, and those would be

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Christian hedonism. Now, I would even say 40 years, maybe 30 to 40 years.

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Christian hedonism, for those of you that may not know Desiring God, that book, you read a lot of it.

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There's a sovereignty of God and salvation in there. But then towards the latter part of the book, all of a sudden, wait a minute, there's a focus on if you do not love

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God above anything else, then you should question your salvation. There is a sustainability, which is a total influence by Andrew Fuller.

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But this is the two -tiered justification, two -tiered salvation, where you're in right relationship with God by faith alone, but to get into heaven, one must perform.

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Again, it's a category of confusion, and it matters. I'm going to say it this way.

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The light of the kingdom is becoming dimmer and dimmer because Christians, instead of exploding, sharing the light of what they've received, are more concerned about making sure their light is on by performance.

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It's really sad because instead of seeking first the kingdom of God because we have found our residence within the king, we're trying to seek first our entrance into the kingdom.

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It's completely a flip. Another one of these is lordship salvation. We have talked about this.

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You can go listen to our episodes, but lordship salvation is definitely geared at the person who says, I am a

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Christian, but I won't make Jesus Lord of my life. I'm not going to get into that, but just an observation.

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The last one would be federal vision. They're looking at a dumbed -down version of the church. It's watered down.

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We're not taking things seriously. We're not taking obedience seriously. We're not taking fidelity to the covenant seriously.

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Again, all of these are adding in a required righteousness in order to enter into the final rest of Christ on the day of his return.

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That is a two -tier step that is adding to the gospel, and it's dangerous at different levels.

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I need to be careful here. Some of these are confusing. They're not another gospel.

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I think it's confusing it when it comes to lordship salvation and some of what Piper says. The reason

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I make these observations is the reason why Justin and I are fighting for this. If you lose this, you are dead in your sins.

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It's very clear we have to get the gospel clear. This is why we do these types of podcasts.

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If we don't have the gospel clear, then nothing else matters. Nothing. Justin Perdue.

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That's true. Maybe as a parting shot here to reiterate, what's the antidote to the fact that there are plenty of false professions out there that nominalism is a thing and revivalism is born bad fruit?

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What's the antidote? Our response, taking our cue from the apostle Paul and other writers in the

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New Testament, is that we double down on union with Christ by faith. We preach the gospel with as much clarity as possible.

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We preach a robust gospel. We don't just preach portions of it. We preach atonement.

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We preach satisfaction being made for sins by Christ received by faith. We preach the imputation of the righteousness and the holiness of Christ that his perfect life in full obedience to the law is counted to us as our obedience and as our righteousness.

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It is as though we were as perfectly obedient as he was in our place. We preach that.

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Then, of course, we preach the triumphant resurrection where he is raised victorious. He's triumphant over the evil one.

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He's triumphant over hell. He leads out with him a host of captives. He ascends to the right hand of God the

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Father, and he's coming back. His resurrection was a validation of everything he did, and it guarantees our resurrection.

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We receive all of this by faith, and we keep preaching that. Then, we're clear on the law.

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We preach the law in all of its uses. We preach it first in its holiness with its standard of perfection to crush us all and remind us all that none of us can do this and merit

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God's favor to drive us anew to Christ. Then we preach the law as a guide. It shows us good and bad in its second use and restrains our corruption.

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Then in its third use, it guides our living in Jesus. We preach the law that way because that's the response to be, but guys, doesn't it matter how we live?

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Yes, we preach the law, but we don't preach the law as threatening to the Christian because Christ has removed its teeth, and we're not under the law.

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We're under grace. Then, finally, we live life in the covenant community of the church where we sit under and we participate in the means of grace, primarily the word and sacraments, but then we also are in a context where church discipline is practiced as a restorative instrument, as an instrument of God's loving discipline to keep his people.

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Without all of this, I understand why people wig out over nominalism and fake professions, but if all of this is being done and all of this is held together as this beautiful cohesive whole, we're on the right track.

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The Lord's given us what we need. We don't need to go elsewhere outside of the scriptures and outside of a confessional tradition to find it.

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We have the tools we need. Any final thought from you, Bro, before we transition? It's so important when

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Paul says there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. According to John 20, how do we know that we're in Christ Jesus?

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I write these things about Jesus that you might believe, and in believing, have eternal life.

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It has to be faith. Then I love this when Jesus says dealing with someone who's not agreeing with God about their sin in church discipline, what is the final step?

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Put them outside the body of Christ and treat them as an unbeliever. What do we do with an unbeliever or a tax collector?

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We preach the gospel to them. We crush them with the law and then we preach the gospel. That's right. I always find it interesting that if you truly believe someone is an unbeliever because there's no evidence of their faith, calling them to require obedience does not change their heart.

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When I say crush them with the law, I don't mean try harder. I don't mean say to them obey better.

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You cannot do this. You are wicked beyond your wildest dreams and your corruption runs deeper than you've ever imagined.

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You are in desperate need of atonement and absolution and forgiveness and righteousness and Christ is it.

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The law should be busted right across the kneecaps and they should sit there and go, I have no way to walk.

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Great, Christ will carry you. That's the point of the law. Now we're getting somewhere. Jon and I are about to keep talking about Jesus and the gospel and all these wonderful things and maybe some more history and stuff that's produced the current moment.

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We're going to do that in a second podcast that we record each week called Semper Reformanda. Semper Reformanda is also the name of a related ministry to Theocast.

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It exists as a network and a community of people who have supported Theocast financially and have partnered with us.

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There's a number of different things that come along with being an SR member. You get access to a second podcast every week.

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There's an app where we all get on there together and encourage each other. We try to ask and answer questions and share all kinds of good things that we're learning.

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We're processing confessional theology together because for most of us we weren't raised in this. There's a lot of things that go on along with being a part of Semper Reformanda.

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If you have questions about that you can find information about it on our website Theocast .org.

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We leave that to you. You're thoughtful people. You know how to navigate a website. I think ours is relatively user -friendly these days.

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There that is. Jon, let's continue the conversation over on SR. For all of you who have listened, we thank you for tuning in.

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We hope you've been encouraged in the Lord Jesus. We'll talk with you again next week. If you haven't downloaded and listened to Everyday Grace, it's five days a week.

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You'll be encouraged in the gospel. Go download it on YouTube and your podcast. There we go.