The Problem: An Anemic Gospel | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we're talking about an anemic gospel. In most churches, in most contexts, it's weak, and we don't really see how the gospel is enough to motivate us to obey, and it's enough to transform this world.

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We seem to think that we need other things in the church, and in our messages, and in our pulpits.

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And Justin and I are going to explain how the gospel is very sufficient, and when it is rightly taught, it brings forth strength, hope, and comfort.

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I'm going to show you from the Bible how we can find confidence and stand firm in the gospel and preach it in all its fullness.

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And in the SR Podcast, I talk about a conference that I recently went to, and how I was very disappointed in how the gospel was very absent.

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We hope you enjoy. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

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Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. Well, today, conversations shall be had around microphones by Pastor Justin Perdue of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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I am John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, just south of Nashville.

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Justin, it's good to be with you. My friend, I know last time we had talked about our sermons. Where are you?

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Are you still progressing through Genesis? Where are you? Yeah, I am. And I think last week,

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I may have talked about what I was about to preach, because we recorded late in the week, and I had my current sermon on my mind.

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So now, I'm on the backside of having preached that sermon, and I'm going to talk about that for a brief second again,

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I guess. So preached the account in Genesis where we go from Jacob tending

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Laban's flocks, and he's doing all this stuff with the sticks, and there are spotted and modeled goats and sheep with black on them being born all over the place, and Jacob's possessions are increased and Laban's are decreased.

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And then the famous passage, I think well -known to many, of Jacob wrestling with God.

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And so, it really was a sweet service we had on Sunday, and even just the sermon itself was good.

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Thinking about the God who willingly came down and took on flesh and limited himself and willingly lost to give us the victory.

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So just really sweet stuff for our people, man, and thinking about the depth of the mercy and grace of God, and what

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Christ has done for us, and all of that was a good time. We're still going through our series on the purpose of the church.

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This week was the gathered church, and what we were looking at is what is the motivation that we have.

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So 1 John 3, 16, by this we know love, that Christ lays down life for the church, and we ought to also lay our lives down for the brothers.

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And then looked at Romans 5 as the explanation of that, which we'll get into some of that today, I think as well, but really explaining that John's motivation,

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Paul's motivation, everyone's in the New Testament motivation for loving your brother and sacrificing everything, your time, emotions, money, for the sake of the body, is always our motivations found in Christ.

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I mean, Philippians 2 is a great example of that, where we look at the sacrifice Christ has made on how he lowered himself and humbled himself, and we too lower ourselves, humble ourselves for the sake of, and Paul even says, submitting ourselves to one another.

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So the motivation is always the gospel, which leads us into, you had a gospel sermon last

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Sunday, I had a gospel sermon this Sunday. Aim to every Sunday, amen. You know what? It's fair to say to my congregants, if I ever not preach

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Christ, you have every right to fire me. Fire me. Send me on my way without severance and not a recommendation letter, because if you have not received

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Christ, I have not done my job. Justin, that is what we're going to talk about today.

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So my friend, explain the title and why it is that you and I feel it's so necessary to take our time out of the week and have this important conversation that we want the world to hear.

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Whether the world will listen is to be determined, but we are going to record it.

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We are going to record it. So the title, The Problem, An Anemic Gospel. I think that's what we're going to title it.

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And the motivation behind this, the reason for the title,

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An Anemic Gospel, meaning it's a weak, sickly gospel, is what we understand to be the problem in the church, regardless of what stream of the church we're talking about.

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So John and I, truth in advertising, pull the curtain back, I think we both are coming at this from the same place, but maybe in terms of the portions of the conversation that we're each, respectively, most excited to have are different today.

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And that's good. I hope that benefits the listener. We were just talking about, before we hit record, and I was talking with some of the guys at the church last week about some of this.

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You hear all kinds of things said in terms of the diagnosis of the current church moment.

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There are all these problems that exist in the church. And depending on what stream of church culture you're talking about, the diagnosis is different.

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Maybe in certain circles it's, well, we don't talk enough about obedience, and we don't talk enough about everything that God demands of us, and that's why the church looks like it looks.

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We got all these fakers in the church. Then in another sector of the church, you've got people saying, well, we're not concerned enough about social issues and things going on in the culture, and that's what's ailing the church.

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And if we would just talk about these things better and address them better, then it would cure what ails us. And then in other streams even, you maybe have people saying, you know, we are so concerned with all these things that we really don't need to be concerned about.

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I mean, Jesus, just listen to Jesus. All he told us to do is just to love other people and to do unto them as we would have them do unto us, and we just need to be more accepting.

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And if we were more accepting, then that would cure what ails us and all that. And John and I, with respect to all of this, like pick your issue that you see in the church.

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We talked about this before we recorded, and we're going to say this, and I think make this clear throughout. We are not confident in ourselves that we have everything right.

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Our churches are far from perfect. They have plenty of warts and flaws. And at the same time, we would both stake our ministries and our lives on what we're going to talk about today.

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And we know we're right on this, that the cure for what ails us in the church is to preach the whole

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Christ and to preach a robust gospel. And that's what the church is about.

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It's about Jesus and the people who need him. That's what we gather for. That's what we come on Sundays needing to hear and be given is

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Christ in the Word, Christ in the sacraments, Christ in the service, man.

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And so that's where we're coming from. And we're going to talk about several different trajectories maybe of church culture, sectors of church culture in the

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West today, and maybe try to shed some light on how people think the problem is this, this, this, or this.

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And it's like, nah, homie, the problem is you're preaching an anemic gospel, and we need to preach Christ and all that he's done for sinners.

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And it's amazing, not that the church will be perfect this side of the resurrection, but it's remarkable how transformational that is in a church's life and culture when

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Christ is preached and held out this way. I want to go back to something Dr.

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David Van Druden said to us in the podcast, if you didn't hear on Two Kingdoms, encourage you to go listen to the

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Two Kingdoms perspective, not theology. That's right.

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Never get that one wrong again. That's right. I'm so thankful for his time. That was one of it was you said, you know, that's right.

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He said that pastors are very inadequate. And I love that he said that because when you think about all that a pastor often is put on his plate and what he's asked to deal with to speak about.

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We are not adequate to deal with these subjects and when it comes down to medical, political, social issues that really require education, time, and experience and yet the reason

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I mention this is that when I listen to modern -day pastors it seems to be the one thing according to the book of Acts that we are dedicating our times to the study of the

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Word in prayer so that we might do what Ephesians 4 says to appropriately teach the

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Word of God so that we can equip the church for the work of ministry. We are out of our lane in the emphasis on the gospel.

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If I can interject, NSR, you should talk about your experience going to a conference a few months ago that was dealing with some of these things and you were just like, bro,

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I've been here all day and I ain't heard about Christ yet. That's right. I'll definitely save that for SR.

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When I look at what the church speaks into, what they almost claim professional capacities, and it's sad because one, they're no better than what the world is offering.

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Often the world is better because they actually have education and systems that actually work. The churches and where the church should be focused, we have listened to the world and the world in this particular perspective has dictated what the church then speaks about and what it focuses on.

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When I read something like Corinthians chapter 1 and Paul says, for the word of cross is folly to those who are perishing, when you are more concerned about what the world's perspective of the church is, you're going to end up adjusting what you emphasize and what you talk about because he is right.

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The gospel is scandalous. It is not a logical message. It is not one that when someone looks like it and analyzes it and wants to scientifically pull it apart and they walk away and go, yeah, that makes a lot of sense there.

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They call it child abuse. That's what the world calls it. They call it ridiculous.

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When I'm listening to you talk, you're kind of taking us into the stream, and it's fine to start here, where there seems to be a demand on the part of some people that the church be able to speak super well to all the issues of culture in our day.

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There are plenty of them. As we've acknowledged many times on the show, because of sin, since Adam and Eve, there has been all kinds of horrific stuff in the culture from Jump Street 1.

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We need to acknowledge that. And then there are all kinds of things that go on culturally and societally that are legitimately common kingdom considerations when it comes to public policy and the like and how we can best handle some of these issues.

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Where we deal with the capital that we trade in in the church pointedly is matters pertaining to the gospel, sin, and repentance.

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And so that as pastors is what we want to concern ourselves with, and not so much trying to fix everything that ails the society and the culture in which we find ourselves living.

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The church is better off. I mean, this is kind of a throwback to that Two Kingdoms episode we did. The church is actually far more effective when the church keeps her mission clear.

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That's what this whole conversation is. And the administration of the salvation of God's people.

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Jon Moffitt And the mission is not only lost, but when we do participate in the very events that we should be as a church, which is the whole point of this podcast, is that they're anemic.

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They're not even really seen as useful. I always go back and I use this.

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I've been using it for years. Paul describes one thing that encapsulates the power of God. There's nothing else in Scripture that says this is the power of God, other than God's power displayed from him.

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But Paul's saying this message of the gospel actually encapsulates the power of God.

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This is why we are told that faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God, because the Word of God encapsulates the power of God.

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When we think about the most important journey someone has, it is from this life to the next, and how it is that they're going to make that journey.

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I mentioned this in my sermon, and I'll mention it here, Justin, and then I'll throw it over to you. I'm not trying to be judgmental.

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I definitely don't want to come across as if my motives are pure and everything I do is always right, and I don't struggle with this as well.

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I know I struggle with this, and I know Justin struggles with this as well. A lot of the decisions, the arguments, and the things that boil our blood are not necessarily

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Christocentric coming from the Word of God, but they are related to comfortableness, the comfortable nature that we have.

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In other words, if something's going to mess with me being happy and comfortable, that becomes the most important part of what

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I'm going to protect. When we think about the culture of today and social issues of today, you can look at people's arguments, and you can see how much the volume comes up.

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Then when you stop and ask yourself, this is a temporal issue that has to do with our generation and our culture right now, but it has no bearing when you think about eternity, when you think about the mission of the church.

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I'll give this illustration now. You hear people raise their voice about governments, about mandates, about vaccines, and all of that has a bearing on what your life will look like, the comfortableness of what you can and cannot do.

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Yet we had 40 million babies murdered last year, but our blood doesn't get boiled over that because it actually doesn't change the way where I work, what kind of income

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I have, my freedoms. This is not a podcast about abortion. I'm just saying that it's obvious that the

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American culture, and it's natural for us to do this, we want to protect that which keeps us comfortable.

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My point is come into the church and into the preaching of the church, where instead of heralding the power of God through the gospel, we are giving our opinions on protecting what keeps us comfortable.

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Yeah. Well, I think that's true in any social issue. You literally can fill in the blank.

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People are ruled by comfort, and that's true in their perspectives on these various issues.

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It matters not which one we're talking about. I have a couple of thoughts on this while we're still on this portion of the talk of the podcast.

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I know we've said this before, but I feel this in my bones, and I trust many listening may, too.

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I care about political and social issues. I care very much about many of them. I'm a citizen of this country.

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I'm a citizen of the common kingdom. We are called in Christ to love neighbor, and I know as believers, we want to take that very seriously and love our neighbor.

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There are plenty of things that go on in our lives that make us feel all kinds of ways, and we should have strong feelings about these things because the way that we live in the world matters.

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At the same time, when I come to church on Sunday, John, I do not want to nor do

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I need to hear more about what's going on politically, what's going on with the government, what's going on in our society.

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I don't need to hear about political and societal issues because I've been bombarded by those Monday through Saturday.

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When I come to church, I need to be reminded of the thing, definite article, the thing that matters, and that has everything to do with Christ and what

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He has accomplished on my behalf and on behalf of all these other sinners who have gathered with me. What is our hope in this life that is so often just racked with pain and injustice and all this kind of suffering and just ugliness every place?

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What hope do we have, and what is true, for goodness sakes? That's what we need to be reminded of on the

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Lord's day, and here's the wonder about all that. You come in exhausted and beat down.

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You're given Christ. You find rest for your weary soul on the Lord's day, and then you're actually equipped, and you actually have the capacity to go out and love other people in your vocation or love other people in your just day -to -day life in the society, and you become more fruitful and effective.

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It's remarkable, you know, and so then one other comment here, and I know this can be overblown, but I think it's a legitimate observation to make for the people that clamor all the time that we need to be hammering societal and political issues from the pulpit.

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When I read the New Testament, and I read the epistles in particular written by the apostles, there were no doubt societal and political issues aplenty in the first century context, and there is next to zero ink spilled on said political and societal issues.

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What is written to is the realities of Christ and the gospel, the realities of sin and repentance, and the realities of life together in the body of Christ.

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That's what the apostles spill ink on, and thereby that's what we need to be spilling ink on proverbially.

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That's what we need to be using oxygen for in the pulpit is preach these things and herald these things, because this is what the church is about, and this is why we gather.

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That's right. No, I think it's good. I know the application is about to come, but before we do,

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I think one of the areas we don't want to pick on one area, we want to assess all the different areas of the church and where things are at.

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Again, Justin and I are making these observations not based upon our own wisdom, and we feel very confident in what we have chosen to be as right.

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We look at Scripture and we look at the history of what the church has fought for and how men of God have rightly divided the word of God and has preserved and protected this.

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This is why we are creedal and confessional, because we look to what the church has emphasized and rightly so given to us.

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You can easily see how there's so much that can distract you.

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I'll just make this quote from Paul to Timothy, and I'll throw it back over to you, Justin, and for our next subject.

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Paul warned about there being itchy ears and that they were going to seek for themselves people that are going to want to feed their flesh, is what he's saying.

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The criticism there, just to be careful, Paul is saying, hey, beware these people are there, but the criticism isn't to the people.

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It's to the pastors who give in to it, because they're always going to be there.

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That's our natural bent. A lot of this podcast is very much a criticism of what's going on in modern -day pulpits.

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We've taken the power of God and set it aside for the wisdom of men, and this is exactly what

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Paul was warning against in Timothy. They're wanting to hear things that relate to their current circumstances.

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Justin is saying the current circumstances have one solution, and that's the gospel.

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It's hard for people to hear that, because they're like, no, there's more to it than just that, John. You can't just say it's the gospel.

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I'm like, well, I can, because Paul did. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

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

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

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slash primer. Well, it's the gospel which then equips and restores the saints in such a way that they can then go and love neighbor.

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In their going and loving neighbor, they're not going to fix what ails the world, because that's not going to happen until the resurrection.

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But it's the best thing we can do is offer hope to people in the midst of suffering. That's kind of our first attempt there at assessing one stream of what's going on in the church, like people that are saying that the problem in the church is that the church does not deal with social issues well enough and political issues well enough.

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Well, our response is what we've already said. I want to jump to the next one, kind of sandwich this one in the middle.

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We probably won't spend as long here, but I feel like this should be said in this podcast.

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So now we're going to talk about the stream of the church that might be called progressive, or you might even call it liberal, theologically.

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This is the stream where the blogosphere has been eaten up with a lot of people in this stream in recent years.

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We don't need to drop any names here, but I think many will hear kind of who we're referring to, even as we talk about this.

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So you'll hear people in this camp, this kind of progressive, more liberal Christianity kind of camp, talk about, well, you know, the real problem is we hammer doctrine too much.

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We get so rigid and concerned and stuffy up and just all, I don't know, worked up about stuff that we don't need to be worked up about.

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Like, you know, we need to take our cue from Jesus. So there's some really bad theology and bad exegesis going on here when they'll say, you know,

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Jesus basically just said, we need to love each other. And, you know, all this stuff in the

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Mosaic law and the Levitical law, like that was so over the top, like that was just insane from a bygone era.

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And even Jesus knew that. And he didn't talk anything about that stuff. He just told people that we need to love others and do unto others as we would want them to do unto us.

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And so the problem in the church today is that we are too concerned about doctrine and we're too concerned about all this other stuff that's rigid and we end up marginalizing and alienating people and we need to be more accepting.

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And if we were more accepting, it would cure what ails the church. My initial response to that is not only is that just really bad theology, but you have completely removed any kind of law, gospel paradigm from the

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Bible whatsoever. Because you have basically said that when Jesus told others, love

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God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, love your neighbor as yourself, that he basically was saying that to jettison and throw away any other commandment in the law.

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And that all you really need to worry about is just imperfectly loving God and imperfectly loving neighbor, but do it with a sincere heart.

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And that's what pleases the Lord. And that is, I want to use bad words about how bad that is theologically in terms of dumbing the law down that much.

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And then what happens, John, when you dumb the law down that much and you basically tell people to go out there and love other people and be a good person.

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I mean, I grew up with some of this. You basically not only have become a moralist completely in terms of your standing before God, you also, you lose completely the work of Christ in the place of the sinner.

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There's no room to talk about atonement. There's no room to talk about propitiation of satisfaction being made for sins.

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There's no room to talk about absolution of guilt, because it doesn't seem like anybody's really guilty except of being a bigot maybe.

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And then the other part is, what about the righteousness of Christ that he accomplished on behalf of sinners?

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It's like, well, I don't know that we really need that, because he fulfilled a law that apparently was archaic and was a mistake in the first place.

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So the work of Christ has no place in that kind of stream of thinking.

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And so it's very gospel -less, frankly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The death of Christ becomes an unfortunate circumstance where people didn't appreciate how loving and kind Jesus was.

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And he was going against culture. He was going against racism. And because of that, he ended up dying.

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What Jesus becomes is an example that we need to be loving and kind and look at what happens when people aren't loving and kind.

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He's our example. That's right. Jesus was trying to change culture, and culture wasn't ready to change, and that's why they killed him.

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That's where America is today, or you could say whatever culture is out there. We're trying to bring loving and accepting.

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Jesus was accepting of all. He was loving of all. We missed the entire point of why

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Jesus came, and it becomes about acceptance. And there's a difference between love and an acceptance.

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So I think Romans 5 is very helpful here in giving us an illustration of what it is that Jesus came to do and making sure you understand that Jesus wasn't coming to fix cultural divides or racism or social issues.

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Obviously, he is, according to Revelation 21, because he's going to make all things new. That is the final act of his glorious will of the

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Father. But right now, this is what the cross meant. When we say gospel, this is what we mean.

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And when you take it down to be, well, let's just love each other, and let's look to God, and let's be kind to each other, and that becomes the end of the gospel, and everybody's going to be okay, and we're just going to be accepting, and the world would be a better place if we can all learn to love and accept each other.

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And that is not good news. It doesn't fix your problem. It only compounds your problem because you can't love people sufficiently enough to make everything all right.

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So this is what he says, for while we were weak at the right... Another way to translate this is in 1

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Peter, it's helpless. So you need to understand what he means by this. While we were helpless, helpless in what?

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To fix the plot, he says Christ died for the ungodly, so we were helpless in our ungodliness.

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And it says, for one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare to even to die.

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So he's giving a very important comparison here. I used this recently for 9 -11. You had over 450 people who gave their lives up for what they would think is a righteous cause.

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Not everybody did, but there was a lot of people who did. They were willing to do it. And he was saying that there's some people who are willing to do that, but they didn't consider those.

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They weren't giving their life up for the terrorists in the plane. They were trying to say what they would consider to be innocent

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Americans. And so he's saying some people will do that, but then he compares it to this. But God shows his love for us, and that while we were sinners,

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Christ died for us. Since then, we have been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

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Listen, we understand the word wrath. It's another way of expressing anger. We all felt this 20 years ago when we saw the towers fall.

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There was this sense of, we want justice for what? This is a horrific act. Anytime we see any kind of crime or injustice in our culture, there's that anger within us that says, we want this to be made right.

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That's the wrath. God has anger because the way in which we have treated his holiness and his creation, the way in which we have completely violated him, creates this anger.

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So God's not looking at you like a puppy who messed on the floor and said, oh, I can't believe you did that again.

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That's not anger and wrath. The wrath and anger of enemy, and he uses this word, listen to this next word, just so you understand.

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He says in verse nine, since therefore we have been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

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For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by his death of his son, much more now that we will be reconciled and saved by his life.

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The word enemy, we get that. Enemy is the pinnacle of hatred and anger.

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You have violated something that is so precious that you are no longer going to be status other than the most thing

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I hate. You are something that I want to see not in existence in this form anymore.

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I'm just going to keep using 9 -11 because it's been on our minds, but the illustration is this.

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We immediately saw what the injustice happened and we created an enemy, which was the terrorist, no matter what your political views are.

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You can make this in any moment for any injustice. And what Paul just wrote here was this.

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Here's the illustration. Jesus walked across the enemy lines and stood in front of you and said, okay, all of the anger and all of the justice that you're wanting to bring forth, he took the barrel of the gun and he shifted it off of your forehead and put it on his.

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And then that's not, this is when he says much more shall we say by his life. This is when he didn't just pay for your sins.

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He then said, okay, now I want you to go across enemy lines and you're going to go live in my home with my family and you don't have to do anything.

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There's no work. There's nothing. And I'll let them know that you are completely welcome and you belong there.

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And that is your new title. You're not a terrorist who the Americans hate.

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You're now a part of our country. You're a part of who we are and we're going to change your identity and you are now adopted in.

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You were an enemy, now you're an adopted child. That's right. And that's the scandal of the gospel.

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And in this section, he says, oh, and by the way, there's just one thing I need you to do. You're going to be amongst a bunch of other adopted people and I need you to love them.

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Which would you think the way I, the love I received, and here's what's crazy is that someone expressed this to me yesterday.

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And what's even crazier is that you were already dead. See, he brought you alive and then brought you over.

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And it completely, the whole, I mean, there can be holes in any illustration, but Romans five, you can't just say

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Jesus was a good person so we could be, look at that example. It's like, no, Jesus became that which

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God hated. The enemy of God. Jesus as example, damns us all because nobody can do it.

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Nobody can live as Jesus lived. Jesus as redeemer and savior. Okay.

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Now we've got something to sing about. And I know that I'm not trying to be punchy or hurt anybody's feelings or cause you to burn something that you own or whatever here, but the

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WWJD bracelet is sort of like the moniker of this kind of progressive movement that we're sort of highlighting here for a minute.

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That whole question of what would Jesus do? With all due respect, that is the absolute wrong question to ask.

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The question to ask when the rubber meets the road, as we stand before God is not what would Jesus do, but what did he do?

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What did he do in the place of sinners that would reconcile me to the holy God who made us all?

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And that's the emphasis. Of course, we look to Christ as example. Of course, we learn how we're to love and live with each other from the scripture, but example will save no one.

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We need a redeemer. We need someone who can satisfy for our sins and provide us with the righteousness that we don't have. And that's the message that's been entrusted to the church and the message that we herald.

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John, you want to pivot maybe to our last category here? Yeah, this one's a little spicy. This one's spicy. I mean, we saved it for last, not really on purpose, and we just kind of let this unfold as it did.

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I was afraid it was going to take over. Yeah, and I think it was wise to you let us off with not this, and that was probably a good move.

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So now we're going to talk about the stream of the church that, I mean, frankly,

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I mean, if we're being straight up, is the stream of the church that we speak to most often, probably.

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It's the conservative evangelical, potentially even the Calvinistic evangelical, that lives in a context that we might label neonomism, like a new law.

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And so here, the assessment of the church is that the problem is the church is full of fakers.

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It's full of people who are Christian in name only, and there is not enough concern in the church with obedience.

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There is not enough preaching about obedience. There is not enough fear of God instilled in people.

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There's not enough skin in the game, and people need to take holiness and obedience to God's commands much more seriously.

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And if we would do that, then we would legitimately and authentically finally be the church, you know, as the

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Lord intended. And here's the problem, John. It's not, I mean, you and I are all for obedience.

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Amen? You and I are all for holiness. Absolutely. We are all for piety, which is the transformational work of the

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Holy Spirit in the life of the saints. Amen. But the problem is when you say, here's what ails us.

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We don't talk about obedience enough. We don't preach obedience enough. And you think that the answer is to just preach obedience and bombard people with law and commands, and then threaten them and scare them into doing things.

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We think that's going to cure it. I mean, that's like putting a Band -Aid, you know, on the gaping wound, right?

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It's just not going to work. You're putting a Band -Aid on something that's wrong internally. Like, we need to actually get at this thing from the inside out.

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So I'm just going to go ahead and say it, John, and then we'll just riff on this for the rest of the regular episode. I get really, really worked up.

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And this was a conversation I had with some guys from the church last week as I was processing my sermon out loud. And we were talking about grace and the nature of grace and all this stuff, and how grace makes people really nervous.

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Like, it terrifies folks because they think that as soon as you really hammer grace biblically, and that Jesus has done everything, that you're going to produce lawlessness and apathy towards obedience, right?

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And I'm like, look, the problem is not in so many church contexts, because we had just been thinking together as a group of guys about Christ and His work for us, and we're all just like moved to practically the point of tears of gratitude, like with what

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Jesus has done for wretches like us. And it's like the cure for this lack of obedience and zeal that you see in the church is not to just preach law, and it's not to just pound people with commands and shame and guilt them into doing something.

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The problem, guys, is that you're preaching an anemic gospel. You're not preaching

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Christ for goodness sakes. You're not giving people the whole Christ. You're not telling them, here's how bad it is.

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Like, here's the reality of the law. And now consider Christ, who left heaven and limited

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Himself and willingly gave His life for you to atone for your sin and satisfy for your sin and absolve you of guilt.

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And then He lived a perfect life, came and was a baby for crying out loud and lived a life of suffering and was perfected by suffering and was obedient every moment so that it's actually like you did all the good works

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He did, and now He's your righteousness. And you think about that, like, my goodness, what did Christ do for me?

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And if there's a better motivator in all the world, John, to flee from sin and pursue righteousness than to consider

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Christ that way, I don't know that motivation is. And I will die preaching that message of this is the way.

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Consider Christ and look at how lives will change. Look at how love for neighbor is stirred up amongst us.

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Look at how people respond to that preaching of Christ and they're thinking, man, I don't want to sin. I don't want to offend the one who died for me.

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I want to obey Him. You know, God, give me grace that I might. That's how people leave our services every

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Sunday, I trust, because people tell me that that's how they leave anyway. No, I, I, you're talking about two different diets.

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I've been and I've been around people who they have to have a guilt diet. Otherwise, they don't feel motivated to do what's right.

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You know, just from a healthy standpoint, you have, you have carb, you have carb filled, you have carb filled diets where you actually get your energy by carbs.

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And so you have to keep carbs coming in. And then you have a different, you know, more healthy diet, which a nutrition based diet where you're getting your energy.

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It's balanced. Right. You're getting it off of the nutrients of vegetables and meat and things like that. And so one is sugar based and one is going to be more vegetable based.

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And it's Justin, you and I both know, you know, battling health as a pastor, we're always having to go out to eat with people and our diets swing back and forth.

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And I know when I, when I stopped dealing with sugar in my body, it doesn't, it almost becomes afraid of like, no, no, no.

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I think I'm going to stick with what I trust. And I know so many people have to come up on diets of guilt driven sermons where you're always worried about, have

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I done enough? I'm just going to give you, I'm going to spark something here, Justin, and then I know it's going to blow up here, but I'm going to give you a couple of examples of how

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Paul encourages obedience. Okay. Listen to this. This is Ephesians four.

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He says, walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. What does he mean called? He's talking about called in as adopted children.

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The first three chapters, listen to first John three six. He's talking about sovereign grace.

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That's right. And by the way, he says, you know, we'll get into the actual obedience, but the point of it is he's pointing back to the first three chapters of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

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First John three 16 says, by this, we know love that he,

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Jesus laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

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What was his motivation? His motivation was consider Christ. And if you understand what it is that it means for Christ to lay his life down for us, you're left in awe and wonder.

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I will even go to first Peter three nine, where he says, if these truths about obeying gentleness, godliness, kindness, meekness, he goes, if it's not true about you and increasing, he doesn't use guilt,

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Justin. He says, you have forgotten that you've been cleansed from your former sins. These are just gospel amnesia.

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And that's right. So when you weaken the gospel, because you have three examples here, three examples from three different authors, you have

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Paul, you have Peter, and you have John, and all three of them are saying the motivation to obey

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God is not fear, but grace. It is grace driven gratitude. Right.

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So it's guilt, gratitude, grace. I'm sorry, guilt, grace, gratitude. And the gratitude, the confessions have been saying for hundreds of years is our motivation for obedience.

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And the Catholic Church flat out says, if that's your motivation for obedience, anathema would be you.

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Literally. Yeah. All right. So my kind of last bastion of defense,

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I mean, the examples you gave are great. And I know that this is a passage that I mean, Ephesians four is referred to maybe more than any other passage on here.

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Romans seven, maybe next, but this one is also that we hammer quite a bit, but it's

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Romans chapter six, because we were just talking about Romans five and the early part of it, how, when we were

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God's enemies, Christ died for us. Right. And we've been justified by faith in Christ.

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And now we have peace with God. But then the second half of chapter five is all about imputation.

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And by that we mean the crediting, the counting of Christ's obedience and righteousness to us as our righteousness.

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So Christ through his obedience made the many to be counted obedient, to be counted righteous.

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And so Paul, by the inspiration of the spirit, anticipates the objection that is as old as the church.

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So we should just sin then, right? You know, if that's what happened, and if the more we sin, the more grace abounds, that's what you're saying.

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We should just sin then, right? And he says, by no means, but I can't,

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I'll say this the rest of my life, John. He does not say by no means, you remember what the law says.

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He doesn't say that. That's right. He doesn't say by no means thou shalt not

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ABCD. He says by no means because you, we have been united to Christ by faith.

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That's the answer. That's right. It's not a natural human intuition response.

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It's a supernatural gospel response. I mean, this is, gosh, it's so important, right?

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So no, by no means you shouldn't go on sinning because you've been united to Jesus now. You've been united to him in his death, burial and resurrection.

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You've been raised to walk in newness of life in him. You've been set free from sin. It used to, you literally were a slave.

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It was your tyrant. You were in bondage and you have been set free from that now.

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Now he's going to say, you know, you're still going to sin. Of course, Romans 7 is coming, but you've been set free from that now.

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And you have become obedient from the heart. That's Romans 6, 1 through 17. And so in one sense, he's saying, no, of course you, why would you go on sinning now?

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It's not your identity anymore. It's not who you are anymore. You've been united to Christ now. You've been raised to walk in newness of life in him.

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You've been set free from the tyranny and the bondage of sin. And you've become obedient from the heart. You actually want to obey now.

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So why in the world would you go on sinning? That's the response. And it's not the response you get right in this camp that we're describing right now, because the response in those camps really is, should we sin all the more that grace may abound?

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By no means. Don't you know what the law says and that you'll go to hell? And that I would argue is not the right way to use the law.

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The right way to use the law in terms of don't you know what the law says, and those who do these things will inherit eternal judgment.

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The way to use the law in that sense is to talk with people who have not yet been crushed by the law, and therefore have not yet trusted

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Christ. Or if you have people who are being arrogant about sin, and they think it's an expression of Christian freedom, then okay, sure, you can drop the hammer in that moment and say, yeah, you ought not be arrogant like Paul does in 1

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Corinthians 5 and 6. Right? Well, they're using the law as motivation, or I would say instructions as motivation.

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Which it can't ever be. No, that's almost to say, well, you know, um, for instance, the law can instruct, but it can't ever motivate.

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No, it gives no power. No. Right. And that when you, when you are looking to instructions or, and all right, let me put it this way.

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First use of the law is designed to lead you to despair. Second use of the law is designed to lead you to effectiveness, meaning that it's not designed to lead you to despair.

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It's saying, hey, this is how you can be effective in loving your brother. But there's another, here's another, just one more from Philippians.

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It says, so if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord of one mind.

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He's saying, listen, if you have been encouraged by what you've been received, this love, participation of the spirit, affection and sympathy, he's pointing to your motivations.

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He goes, if this has happened to you, you've seen the glory of Christ in chapters one.

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And then by the way, he goes on to even explain that Christ then lowered himself.

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So verses four, all the way down to verse 11, he gives you more motivation of saying, watch how

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Christ did this and what he did for you and let that be your motivation. It's never fear.

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It's always looking to Christ in faith. Yeah. So Philippians two, you know, consider Christ and what he did for you is just like what we thought about as a church on Sunday from the book of Genesis.

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Like Jacob is renamed Israel in this account where God comes down, takes on flesh, limits himself, wrestles with a man and willingly loses to him.

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He could have destroyed Jacob, but he didn't. That's not what he meant to do. He renames this man and says, your name's now going to be

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Israel, which means he strives because you have striven with man and with God and have prevailed.

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So it's like this man's name is going to be a forever reminder that he is who he is and God's people are who they are because God willingly came down, took on flesh and lost.

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Right? Like that's what our identity is about now. And you consider what Christ did,

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Philippians two, he leaves the glories of heaven. He takes on flesh. He's born as a baby. He suffers his whole life.

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He obeys perfectly. And then at the right time, he willingly gave his life up, not because he had to, but because he wanted to.

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That's right. He willingly lost, right? So that we might have the victory. He willingly died so that we might have life.

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And then it's like, Hey, consider Christ in that way and let your heart be stirred with love and gratitude to where you now leave that contemplation of the

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Lord Jesus Christ motivated to love your neighbor and motivated to pursue obedience.

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And that's a better way, John. I mean, I'll die saying it. I know you will too.

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So let's go back to Paul's statement. This is the power of God unto righteousness. So for salvation.

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And so God's power has given it in form of word.

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And that word when believed brings forth transformation. So we see transformation from death to life, from that salvation, the miracle of salvation.

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And then we see ongoing sanctification. He who began a good work and you will complete it. How have you begun by the spirit?

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Now you're going to be perfected by the flesh. It's God's word through God's people. When they focus in on God's power through the gospel, we find not only salvation, but we find our sustenance.

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The way in which that we will then be transformed in the image of Christ. This is 2 Corinthians 4. When we look at the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we're transformed into his image.

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When we're looking at what God has done in Jesus, we don't look at the law and are transformed into his image.

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We look at what Christ has done for us and then we're transformed. Last comment from me before we go over to SR.

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Grace terrifies people and it shouldn't because the same grace that saves is the same grace that transforms lives.

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So remind me again what we're going to be talking about in SR because we have talked about so much. One of the things that I want you to talk about is an experience that you had going to a conference a few months ago that was in your own city.

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Yes, and we'll leave it at that. Oh, we're not going to name the conference. Okay, we will over there, but not here.

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Family time. So for those of you that want to know, go ahead. And yeah, and for those of you who are just like, oh my gosh, it's going to eat at me if I don't know what they're talking about, then that's why you should become an

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SR member. And if you can't afford it, just send me an email. This is the most shameless bait and switch

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I've ever done. I know. Hey, what we do is part of the way in which we help continue to transform people out of fear and bondage into the rest in Jesus Christ.

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That's right. Guilt, grace, gratitude. We use a ministry called Semper Firmanda and that helps one fund

47:51

Theocast and what we're doing, but it also allows us to give us the resources to do more books and more materials.

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And there's just a lot. And if you want to participate and be a part of this transformation, where we're seeing more people go to church, more people find rest, more people literally finding

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Christ for the first time, then this is a way for you to participate in that. And then we use it also as an opportunity to talk a little bit more candid and more,

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I think, theological. And oftentimes we will be more academic at times.

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We have fun. We plan out the podcast for the first 45 minutes, and then the

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SR podcast literally is, well, let's talk. So if you want to know more about that, we have an app.

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That's where you can participate with us. We have our free podcast and we have our, sorry, private podcast feed that you can download to your phone.

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All of that can be found at theocast .org and you can join the conversation. Yeah. We even have live chats going on over there.

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Now I hop in there once a while to answer questions. I know Justin is as well. So he means he will, we'll get them in there one day.