May 23, 2017 Show with Thaddeus Williams on “Reflect: Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History” PLUS Mark Chanski on “Discipleship In Your Family”

The Purpose of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and a Praise Report

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnsen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you a happy Tuesday on this 23rd day of May 2017.

And before I introduce my guest in our topic, I want to give a praise report from someone who has been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron a couple of times, who I've gotten to know over the last couple of years, Cindy Martin Morgan, the daughter of Walter Martin, who is the founder of the Christian Research Institute, and he was a frequent guest on the John Ankerberg show where he was involved in many debates with cult members and representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and others, which is where I actually started developing my love for debate.

But the late Dr. Walter Martin's daughter, Cindy, has a praise report for her daughter, and her daughter was diagnosed with skin cancer or melanoma, I believe, and she says, hi friends, thanks so much for prayers for our daughter, Stacy.

We found out this morning that the cancer has not spread to her lymphatic system, praise God. The doctor was able to get all of the cancer. God is good. So I just wanted to pass on that praise report from Cindy Martin Morgan, and I am so delighted to have today on the program, for the very first time ever, Thaddeus Williams.

He is assistant professor of theology at Biola University in La Mirada, California, former teacher of literature at Saddleback College, jurisprudence at Trinity Law School, philosophy at Labrie Fellowship in Switzerland and Holland, and ethics for Blackstone Legal Fellowship and Federalist Society in Washington, DC.

He is also the author of Love, Freedom, and Evil, Does Authentic Love Require Free Will?, which I definitely have to have him back on this program to discuss in a future date. But today we are discussing, for the first hour, his book, Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the very first time, Thaddeus J. Williams.

Thank you, Chris, and it is a joy and privilege to be with you. And in studio with me is the Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co-host. And hello once again. All right, good to meet you. And you had your volume off their buzz.

I am here, honest. And I am so delighted to also learn something that I didn't even know before the program started, is that our guest today, Thaddeus J. Williams, is a longtime friend of my longtime friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

That was a great bit of trivia to hear. Yeah, he's a dear.

Brother who ties up to the doctrines of grace. It was a combination of the one-two punch of James White and Jonathan Edwards. Well, you mean one-two-three punch. One-two-three punch the Holy Spirit.

And a one-two-three-four punch with actually reading the New Testament. Yeah, that's right.

Wow now, couldn't it? Yes, and in fact, I have to just very quickly tell you, I'll give you an abbreviated version of the story, but years ago when I was working for WMCA, which is a Salem station, Salem's the largest Christian radio network in the world, and I was contacted by an elderly Jewish journalist who was retired, and he asked me if he could buy three hours of radio time because he was debating a local fundamentalist Baptist on whether or not the New Testament was the Word of God.

And he fancied himself a student of the New Testament, said he read it hundreds of times, although he was not a Christian. And during the debate, the Jewish man, I believe his name was Ira, if I'm not mistaken, he says to the fundamentalist Baptist pastor, now let me get this right.

You believe that before the foundations of the world, God chose a specific group of people to be saved, bypassing all the rest of humanity, and the fundamentalist pastor interrupted him and said, excuse me, Ira?

Ira, Ira, I don't, I'm not a Calvinist. You're talking about Calvinism. He goes, what? What did you say? He goes, you're talking about Calvinism. He goes, what's that? Well that's what you're talking about.

You are describing Calvinism. He goes, I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm talking about your Bible, your New Testament. This man came to the conclusion that that was what Christianity taught, unconditional election, without even knowing anything about Calvin, the Reformers, or anything like that.

There it is. Just from reading the Bible over and over again, the New Testament. And by the way, before we even get into your book at hand, Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Miring the Greatest Person in History, tell us about the other book that I definitely have to have you back to discuss.

Love, Freedom, and Evil, Does Authentic Love Require Free Will? And I can really sigh a great loud sigh of relief knowing that you have become a Calvinist before asking that.

Question, but anyway. Yeah, that book came out of my PhD dissertation at the Free University of Amsterdam, and really what inspired me to write it was Jonathan Edwards' Freedom. It's so brilliant. It is logically rigorous, not only in their best art, but the evangelical land.

It's a cohesive idea of free will. We abuse that gift, so we're to blame theologically and in ministry. But it's still the most authentic love in existence. Maybe freedom. In medical ministry, one thing I noticed is, as people would come to me with lack of love, and if I were to pornay a sexual immorality with the Thessalonians as he prays, may God cause you to increase and abound in love.

There seems to be a premise there that God can cause us to love in ways that we wouldn't love if left to our own devices. And so I wanted to unpack that theologically, exegetically. Well, if you keep your eye.

Open for an email from me after the show is over, I would love to invite you back on the program to discuss that, and I will send you a calendar of available dates. Absolutely, sounds great. And even one more time before we get into your book, Reflect, I'd like to hear something very briefly, of course a summarized version of your own personal testimony of how our Sovereign Lord in His.

Providence drew you to Himself and saved you. Five years old. Wow, this is another thing I didn't know. Yeah, a little fun fact of my bio there. Raised Mormon, and my parent, a woman who loved Jesus, she was able to go to Evangelical Church and went through the motions, but it wasn't until 14 years old, waking up and finally got to the point where I just hit the utter air.

Wow. You know, on the exterior, I was an Iwano, earning my Iwana bucks, memorizing scripture. So the night I tell them,.

Praise God. Praise God. 24 years ago, yeah. Oh, praise God. Well, I'm gonna give our listeners our email address. It's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com, if you have a question for our guest Thaddeus Williams.

And I really hope that you are not going to be insulted by this, but when I first saw the title of your book, Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History, I got a little nervous because I was wondering if there was going to be a foreword by Joel Osteen.

I couldn't afford him. In fact, I was actually expecting to see his face on the cover underneath The Greatest Person in History. But that doesn't sound like a typical Reformed title, if you follow.

What I'm saying. Explain, if you could. Yeah, it's titled to almost sound like, you know, a typical Osteen-esque, be it. The 21st century. Believe in yourself. And the language from that, and trying to redeem it, and say, by being obsessed with how you become your true self.

It's what Jesus is getting at with, you know, find their true self. People who wake up and... Well, I'm gonna read a couple of endorsements for this book. One is.

From someone who has been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio way back when he was on the pastoral staff at Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina. And that is Gabriel Flueher, and I still don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right, but he is a minister of discipleship at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi now.

And we have had people from that congregation on the program as well. But he says, Williams is one of the most exciting theological voices writing today. And J .P. Moreland, distinguished professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, a name that many may recognize, who are apologetics junkies.

He says, an astonishing, absolutely unique treasure. And we have also the president of Biola University, Barry H. Corey. He says, a brilliant resource for 21st century people seeking to live meaningfully in a world where meaning is harder and harder to find.

Very impressive endorsements indeed from some impressive, impressive, impressive people. This book, I think you were actually wise in giving it the title that you did because I think many people who are less likely to pick up a thing, a book that is openly a theologically driven treatise or something technical, they may more readily start to dig into this and hopefully by God's grace have their lives and their theology transformed.

But you have starting off in your book, mirroring the profound thinking of Jesus. If you could tell us what you mean specifically by mirroring the profound.

Thinking of Jesus. Sure, so I argue on the opening pages that, and this is something that came out of teaching in a secular college for almost a decade, history of atheism. First day and there's me, this young Reformed guy and 50 atheists.

It was a great kind of covert mission field there for for quite a few years, and one of the things I realized over the years of teaching classes like that was there aren't really any true atheists at the end of the day.

They might claim to not believe in a God or a higher power, but they were all on their knees to something or someone. They all, political ideology, maybe progressivism with a capital P was their gospel, maybe science with a capital S was their gospel, maybe they worshiped their boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, spouse, child, and it just became clear to me that everybody worships, which is something that Paul has been saying for thousands of years right there in Romans 1 and 2.

We're all worshipers, it's not a question of whether to worship, it's whether you're going to worship the Creator. And so then the Bible goes further and says not only do we worship, but we're all in the process of becoming like what we worship for better or worse.

So in Psalm 115, they worshiped dumb idols, and the dumb idol worshipers themselves became dumb. And what I'm up to in this book is saying if we really, truly worship Jesus and don't just claim to, we'll become like him, and that's going to affect every square inch of our personality.

So in the first real chapter there, I dive into nine attributes.

The Mind That Loves the Father and the Call to Know Scripture

Could you go through those? I mean, I know that we only have an hour with you today, but it may give you more of a reason to be with us for two hours next.

Time! Matthew 22, where Jesus, by a lawyer, doesn't mean to love God with our minds, it's to look at Jesus himself, because he not only gave the Great Commandment, he kept it better than anyone in history.

He loved the Father. So if you look at Matthew 22, we get a glimpse of what a mind that fully loved the Father looks like in action. And so I talk about this scene on the temple squaring off with Jesus on the question of the afterlife, and their agendas to make him look like an idiot in public, that's what they're trying to do.

And the way he responds to them, you know, hey, what's to bully them and say, how dare you question me? I will smite thee with a mighty smiting. A mind that fully loved the Father, with nine attributes, and just a few of them.

A mind that fully loved the Father knows Scripture. Single Hebrew words, so he had a command. The more we worship and become like him, the deeper acquainted we'll become. Jesus also, standing with my arms outstretched, moment by moment, connects inspirational minds to study history and language.

But they got to buy the book to get the rest.

I think we do have some influence from Joel Osteen after all. Actually, I don't know if he does it that crassly on his program, but some of the people in his ilk do anyway. We have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York.

He's asking a question that is more related to your book, Love, Freedom, and Evil. Sure. But he says, do you think that Martin Luther's Bondage of the Will is a good dissertation to the subject of the fall of man, and how it corrupted man's nature?

I think Bondage.

Of the Will, I would put it on, and Luther himself, out of all of his theological works, he rated that his personal favorite. That was from his debate with Erasmus, correct? Yeah, absolutely. He saw that that was his quintessential work, that was the one he wanted to be remembered for.

And you could see, you know, 16th century, Luther had already anticipated being regurgitated today to defend the unbiblical concept, the mind of Christ. Luther, Ignatius. Yeah, I can.

Remember, to bring up our mutual friend James White again, I can remember years ago when he was debating, it was more like a friendly conversation than a debate, but he was having a discussion, if you will, with Dave Hunt, the late Dave Hunt, on a radio program where they were disagreeing on Calvinism, and James said to him, and I'm of course paraphrasing, aren't you concerned, Dave, that you are on the side of Erasmus rather than the side of Luther in the great debate of the Reformation that they had, Erasmus the Roman Catholic, where you have written so much in opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, and here you are siding with Erasmus on this issue, and Dave Hunt said, well, James, I really don't know much about the Reformers and what they taught or wrote.

I'd like to just pick up a Bible like I've never read it before and draw my own conclusions from what's in the Word of God rather than having to rely on the words of man or something like that, and then two months later when he was asked if he was qualified to be involved in a debate on Calvinism, he said, I think you'll find that I know more about John Calvin and what he taught than most Calvinists.

Two months went by, and he became the world's greatest executive.

All it takes. He must have noticed it. Well, we can be rejoicing, at least, that now he is a Calvinist. There you go. Yeah, bonded to the will, I actually talk about quite a bit in the Love, Freedom, and Evil book, because I think the arguments remain just as relevant, and that has a certain appeal to it.

The problem is it's just blatantly unbiblical, as he shows it doesn't imply it can through any kind of desperate need for, and it's insights like that that from 500 years ago still.

Well, thanks Tyler, and guess what? You have won a free copy of this beautiful book, Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History, and I gotta really give a shout-out to the Weaver Book Company because they did a really excellent job on this book and on the cover and everything.

I mean, I know that what's inside a book is far more important and vital than the cover, but this is certainly a beautiful book that you have here. Oh, thank you very.

Much. Every time I got writer's block, I would draw one of the faces on there. Yeah, and I love how the.

The mirrored effect with the word reflect, where you see it's like a mirror in that metallic ink that they used, and also with the the person of.

Christ in the center. Yeah, some of that's supposed to be biblical, how Paul says we behold through a mirror dimly. Title of the book, You Become Yourself by.

Mirroring. Reflecting Jesus. I had never heard that interpretation before, because.

I've always heard the glass darkly. Yeah, I've heard it both ways, but when you look at the cover, you can kind of see yourself, but only kind of. Right, right. Which is biblical because now, as I argue in the last chapter, become like Christ.

Oh, so you designed the cover? Yeah, me and Frank Guttbrad also works with Jim Weaver over there, and he's just fantastic at what he does,.

So it was a team effort. So do you actually draw those faces? When you were saying that you were doodling and so on, are these the doodles? Yep, those are. Oh, wow. And on paper. Wow, yeah, I'm an art major myself, just to let you know.

In fact, I did the cover for one of James White's books, Dangerous Airwaves, Harold Camping Refuted, and the Church of Christ Defended, or Christ's Church.

Defended. There you go, now I got the artist for my next book cover, perfect.

I'm going to now read a question for you before I go to a break. It is a listener from Slovenia, and I'm gonna read, not only read the question, but I'm gonna email you his question, so you'll have it in front of you during the break, and you can answer when we come back.

Okay, Joe in Slovenia says, in thinking about the title of Brother Williams's book, I'm reminded of the enormous disparity between my personal holiness and God's complete picture of incarnate holiness, imminent holiness, coming to us in the person of Jesus.

I'm struck with what R .C. Sproul calls the trauma of holiness, and what Sinclair Ferguson calls fully realized human holiness that are in Christ. The mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to his saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, from Colossians chapter 1 verses 26 through 27.

How does reflecting on Christ develop and produce in us incarnate and imminent holiness? And I will email this to you, so you have it in front of you, and we're gonna be going to a break right now. If anybody would like to join us, if anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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Years to come. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest for the first hour, with about a half hour to go, is Thaddeus J. Williams, Assistant Professor of Theology at Biola University in La Mirada, California.

We are discussing his book, Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History. The second hour of today's broadcast will feature Pastor Mark Chansky of Harbor Reform Baptist Church of Holland, Michigan, and he is going to be discussing discipleship in your family.

So you want to make sure you stay tuned for the second hour as well. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question right now for Thaddeus J. Williams, our email address is ChrisArnson at gmail .com, ChrisArnson at gmail .com, and I read to you the question from Joan Slovenia before the break, and I'll read it for our audience's sake, since you have it in front of you right now, since I emailed it to you.

He says, in thinking about the title of Brother Williams's book, I'm reminded of the enormous disparity between my personal holiness and God's complete picture of incarnate holiness, imminent holiness, coming to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

I'm struck with what R .C. Sproul calls the trauma of holiness, and what Sinclair Ferguson calls the fully realized human holiness that are in Christ, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to the saints, to his saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, from Colossians chapter 1 verses 26 through 27.

How does reflecting on Christ develop and produce in us his incarnate and imminent holiness? That is Joan.

Slovenia. That is a fantastic question, Joan Slovenia. I think we can all relate to the enormous disparity between personal holiness and God's complete picture of incarnate holiness, as you say. I am right there, and I think a big clue comes from Paul's words to the Corinthians in the second letter, chapter 3, when he says, the Lord is the Spirit, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

We all are being transferred from one degree of glory to another, but this comes from the Lord, and I think that's where, you know, tying in some of the themes from earlier in our conversation, that's where Reformed Theology has so much to say, that God has a sovereignty over our hearts, conform us to the image of Christ.

And one of the ways that that happens as we behold Christ, in the beholding of Christ, when a community becomes enamored with itself, it's slick name-brand, it's celebrity poster boys, it's swelling numbers, it's only a matter of time until that community turns dark and destructive.

Real transformation happens when people come together for the chief purpose of pulling together at Jesus as we meet him in Scripture every week. And this is what Richard Sibbes is getting at, when he cannot but look.

Amen. Well, a Joe in Slovenia, guess what? You have also won a copy of the book Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History by Thaddeus J. Williams, and that's compliments of our friends at Weaver Book Company, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com, CVBBS .com, we'll be shipping that out to you at no charge to either you or Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and we thank Todd and Patty Jennings for their faithful support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio through CVBBS .com, who always ship out all of our winners in our audience, their free Bibles, books, DVDs, and CDs, and other things that they win.

So keep your eye open in the mail for a package with a shipping label that has a return address of CVBBS .com, and by the way, Joe in Slovenia, thanks again for giving us an American address in Georgia where your daughter lives to have that shipped, because that will be a lot less expensive to our friends at CVBBS .com to ship to her.

And we have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, putting the jokes about Joel Osteen aside, isn't it true that we who are Calvinists can go overboard in our description of man and his worth?

We know that total depravity is a true teaching from the Scriptures, but isn't it true that sometimes Calvinists go overboard and depict man as if he is worthless, and obviously Jesus Christ would never have died on Calvary and received the wrath of his own father.

Upon him if we were worth nothing? Yeah, I think that's certainly a danger, that the image of God is effaced but not erased, is warped by value, dignity, whether we're regenerate or not, by virtue of being image bearers of the infinitely, and we need to keep in tension with that emerges from the text, that God creates us in his image as his artwork, when he creates humanity in his image, he says at the end of that creation day,.

Very good. Mud. Well thank.

You Ronald, and you have also won a free copy of Reflect, Becoming Yourself by Mirroring the Greatest Person in History, by Thaddeus J. Williams. Thanks for the.

Excellent question. If I could just throw in real quickly, there's one aspect in the chapter on grace where I deal with some of Osteen's theology. Basically good, if I'm good, I only need him if at all, and that life coached friend Jesus, you know, Paul warned the Corinthians, that life coached Jesus, who moves us from good to great, rather than depraved to gospel.

My co-host Reverend Buzz Taylor has a.

Comment or question. Do you think that, I think, you see Chris turns me down at.

Will there. And there's big reasons for it, but go ahead Buzz. You didn't like my.

Question? But you know, I remember when I came to Christ, and of course you know I went through a lot of the same channels that a lot of people did. You have to almost get saved, so you've got some people to go reformed.

But I, you know, when I came to Christ, I knew that the issue was sin, that I was a sinner, and you know when when people witnessed to me, they started you know with the all of sin and fall short of the glory of God.

And I'm beginning to wonder today if if people still believe that, because I see so little of it, and so much of the evangelistic witnessing and preaching that I see, doesn't include any of that. And what's all about, so much about relationship, that I begin to wonder if anybody actually believes that it's sin that we're being saved from.

Yeah, and it.

Leads to a very strange gospel, because now we've reduced the Christ. Jesus died, why? Well just to show how much God loves you. And so we've all heard the little catchphrase, we ask God how to find love.

That's really confusing to the non-believer. I believe you man, like stop hurting yourself, you're fine. Like no, I really love you, and I grab a book off the shelf, you know, I start bashing myself on the head with Calvin's Institute.

Williams isn't playing with the full deck here, what's going on? So if we just reduce the gospel to the cross work of love, that's a strange gospel. If it's the meeting point of God's supreme perfect justice, and his supreme perfect love together.

You edit out the just, and you're left with a half gospel, which is no gospel at all. I think it would be.

Very interesting to do a survey and ask people today, in churches, do you think men are basically good, or basically evil? And then just see, you know, how they.

Answer it. Yeah, there is a survey in the book where I talk about the Pelagian. Conviction that we're basically good people cuts really deep across all kinds.

Of demographics in the culture and in the church. Yes, so in other words, the priest in the classic movie Boys Town, he was wrong when he said there is no bad boy. It was like a pivotal point in the movie.

But you, in fact, you just recalled to my memory some a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the monks are marching in front of their heads. Yeah, and they have, Ye shall dominate, and all that is right with you.

That's just good theology right there. We have Tony from New York City who says, I don't mean to make light of people that are going through hard trials in life, some of which are infinitely greater than anything I've ever experienced.

And, of course, I don't mean to make light of people who have been disfigured or anything else that is tragic like that. But do you think that many people who are in serious depression, who come to the point of hating themselves, that one of the reasons they hate themselves is because they think too much about themselves?

A lot of people, on a regular basis, hold into themselves into deeper despair. You know, in thinking great thoughts about God, we emerge as people worrying about ourselves, but really liberating about, at the end of the day, revolve a lot of relief.

If you make some second, you not only lose, and so what I found is that if I make my own hackle togetherness, my, or whatever it might be, the first thing, I actually not only lose the real first thing, I miss out on Jesus, but I make the first thingness of mind.

Amen. And we have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, although I agree with everything you're saying, don't we have to be very careful not to behave like Job's friends when we visit people who are going through severe depression?

We could take this advice you're giving upon ourselves primarily, but don't you think that we have to use great caution when delivering this kind of information to those who are in the depth of depression?

And that's where.

Theology Day and Walter Martin and all these great guys, that my intellectual life, so that loving God with my mind was really the only thing. I mean, if you had met me in those years and come to me, just a heart, a bleak medical diagnosis, I think a lot of us particularly who might listen to a show of cerebral things and deep theology, we can fall into that same trap.

And so I realized the lopsided, and it was no longer Christ-centered, really brilliant. He had a large, fully integrated, but the E in REFLECT stands for emote. We will also emote like him, and that he had towards people who were in a way the most frequently used emotional term in the New Testament, gut twisting, when he sees other good theology to those who are suffering, but will reflect his compassion.

And oftentimes that will mean just those who weep in all their affliction. So I think we want to move towards a more well-rounded spirituality, and the more we reflect emotional life, his relational life, his creative life, we'll get a lot better at helping.

Well, believe it or not, Thaddeus, we are out of time, and certainly want you back the next time for two hours on the program. And I know that the Weaver Book Company website is WeaverBookCompany .com.