What is Pietism? How does Pietism Effect the Christian Life? | ask Theocast

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So a question we get a lot at Theocast, and we've written on it, so we thought we'd do a short video on it, what is pietism?

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It's a really important question, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. So stay tuned. I'm John Moffitt.

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I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church and host of Theocast. This is Ask Theocast, where we answer your questions from a

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Reformed and pastoral perspective. Okay, we got all the niceties out of the way. Let's talk. So pietism is, if I'm going to just be frank with you, it is destroyed people's lives.

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It has caused so much anxiety, a lack of assurance. It suppresses people to the point where they have to be something that they're not.

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And pietism literally is everywhere. I'm just going to introduce it to you. I'm going to encourage you to read some stuff when we're done.

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But once you see it, you can't unsee it. It's really hard to remove it from your line of sight.

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And those of you that are in our Facebook group, it seems like every day you ask questions about, is this pietism?

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Is this pietism? You begin to be afraid that you might be stepping into a pietism trap.

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And I get that. I have felt that. Anything that looks like pietism, you want to grab that 12 gauge shotgun, a gospel blast, and just get it out of there.

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So for those of you that are trying to figure out what it is, welcome. We're going to have a conversation about one, what is pietism?

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Two, what should you do about it? And three, the difference between pietism and piety.

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So let's start with piety. Piety is great. You'll hear the reformers or you'll read the reformers write about it.

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They'll say reformed piety and practice. What they mean by that is piety is godliness.

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It's us reflecting the nature of God, loving our neighbor with gentleness, meekness, and patience. So we are all for piety.

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We, we see that it's necessary to, for the church to be functioning as it should, to build itself, build each other up.

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So piety, really good. Pietism, the, the, let me start with the simplest way.

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Piety is outward. So we are focusing our attention outside of ourselves.

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So we are reflecting Christ. We are seeing who Christ is for us. We're seeing his finished work.

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We're accepting the act of obedience of Christ, meaning that God sees us as righteous because of what

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Christ has done, not because of what we have done. And so we take all of that knowledge, all that truth, and in turn, we reflect it back.

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This is Paul in Ephesians four, when he says, walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called or in Philippians two, when he says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

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This is us seeing the glory of Christ. I mean, cause the very next verse after he says for it, it is he who works in you, right?

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So that's piety. Pietism reverses everything. Instead of us looking to the objective realities of Christ, looking to God's love for us of why we are safe, why we find assurance, why that we can look to the cross and hear

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Jesus say it is finished and know there's nothing else for us to do. The reverse of that is to look inside of us to find the same truth and motivation.

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So you will see in pietism, you will see individuals attempting to be godly, attempting to do so.

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There are two people can do the same exact act. I loving my neighbor as a pious act, and I'm loving my neighbor in pietism and, and their motivations and directions are different.

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One is the, the outflow of the love of God coming out of us. The other one is trying to look within themselves to assure themselves that they are right with God.

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So piety, I am right with God because of faith alone, and therefore I reflect his nature.

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Pietism, I am a trying to establish my assurance. I am trying to establish my position, or I would say

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I'm trying to affirm it. And so we are always looking at godliness in our own lives to say, is

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God good with me? Here's some examples of this. Uh, pietism influences the way that modern day preachers preach and write.

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And the emphasis is on this, the individual's life.

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So your Bible reading, your prayer, uh, fighting temptation, meditation, all of this.

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And what they're doing is you are practicing spiritual disciplines, as you may want to put it in. I have some thoughts on spiritual disciplines.

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Not for today, but coming soon. But there's a link down below. You can look at those. You are given spiritual disciplines so that you can one, grow yourself in sanctification.

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As you grow yourself in sanctification, you are doing two things. You are becoming more godly.

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And the second you are confirming your salvation. We'll use verses like James, where he says, faith without works is dead.

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So this is what I said before. There's a fine line between piety and pietism, and we can easily slip into pietism.

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When we are finding our assurance, when we are finding the right standing before God, based upon our performance, that is pietism.

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So what ends up happening is I need to know that I'm good, that, that God has saved me. I'm not a false convert.

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I'm not a lazy convert. I need to know for a fact. So we begin to focus in on what we can do to affirm that.

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The there's a little phrase that Theocast has been using for years, and it's the difference between do versus done.

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So pietism is the emphasis on what we are doing for God. I am doing these things for God.

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Therefore I'm a Christian. Actually the Bible, and we would argue the confessions, the reformed confession, reformed theology emphasizes what's been done when it relates to our standing before God.

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How do I know that I'm a child of God? How do I know I've been cleansed? I'm adopted. We say done.

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It is finished. It's objective realities that have nothing to do with us, right?

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We can't look to ourselves to say that we're saved. We look to Christ. It's almost like the illustration

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I love to use is that if you're in a plane and you're flying over the ocean, what is holding you as you fly over the ocean?

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Well, it's the plane. You're in the plane. The plane is doing all of the work. Now, whether you have faith in that plane or not, it doesn't matter.

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So there is, I've sat next to people who are terrified. They think they're going to die and their faith in that plane has no bearing on whether or not they're making it across.

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What ends up happening in pietism is that we start feeling comfortable with our salvation because you can put a number of things on there.

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I have my seatbelt on, or I'm not afraid, or whatever it is that you want to say about your flight.

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The reality is you made it from point A to point B because of the plane, not because of your experience inside of the plane.

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That's the difference between the objective realities of Christ, confessional theology, reformed theology, and pietism, right?

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Pietism has you emphasizing on the experience that you had in the plane. And your experience in the plane did nothing for your transportation from point

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A to point B. So as it relates to your relationship to God, right, in your adoption, whether you can say,

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I am assured that God is good with me, has nothing to do with, here's the shocker, your experience, your emotions, your actions, your feelings.

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God does not need to look at your obedience to confirm whether or not you belong to him.

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If you know reformed theology at all, Calvinism, we believe that God, before the world began, promised, chose to put his love upon us who are our sinners, right, while yet his enemies,

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Christ, chose us, elected us before the foundation of the world. So I have a hard time believing that when

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God chooses his children, he then wonders, you know what, I'm going to have to look at their obedience to see if my selection was right.

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God knows his own, there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.

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What pietism does is it almost puts the question in God's mind.

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We'll hear verses like in Hebrews, it says, without godliness, no one will see the Lord.

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And the question then is put on the believer is, do you have enough godliness to know at the end of your life when you die, you're going to see

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God? That is pietism. Well, John, that's exactly what the verse says. Without godliness, no one will see the

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Lord. Well, I agree with that. If you don't have godliness, you cannot see

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God. But what kind of godliness are we talking about here? He isn't meaning partial godliness, kind of godly, mostly godly.

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You have to be perfect. And where do we receive that perfection? Well, that comes from Christ and our faith in Christ.

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So we have to be very careful when we're looking at particular verses. Another favorite, a favorite one of people is examine yourself to see if you're of the faith.

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And somehow we have turned that self -examination looking inward. Well, that's exactly what

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Paul says. Examine yourself to see if you're of the faith. We've turned that to look at our actions, right?

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Bible reading, prayer, fighting against sin, going to church, evangelism. Well, in the context, that is not what

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Paul is talking about. He's saying, you're denying my apostleship.

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You don't think that I'm an apostle and you're actually rejecting my gospel. Well, you were saved by the very gospel that I handed you.

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And so if you're questioning my gospel, examine your own self. You may not be a believer.

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He's not talking about an issue of godliness here. And now there's, you know, should we be self -examining ourselves?

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Should we be looking at our own selves? Well, yeah. Every time that you look at the law and you look at the gospel, it's going to reflect your absolute putrid heart.

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The absolute horrendous idea that you could in any way, shape or form perform in such a way that God would accept you.

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So to kind of bring this down to a conclusion, pietism is looking at the

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Christian life, always in this direction, introspectively, every time we hear a sermon, every time that we read the

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Bible or we read a book, we are looking at it in a mirror saying, do

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I have enough for God to accept me? Confessional theology or reformed theology that we're going to argue is pulling that out of you and said, you should only be right with God.

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You should only feel right with God because of the finished work of what

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Christ has done and is doing. He who began a good work in you will complete it.

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He does not say he began the work in you. Now you complete it or now you confirm it.

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Even the calling, when he says, make your calling and election sure, what he's talking to before in that section is the finished work of Christ.

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If your faith is on anything else other than Christ and his finished work, then you should not be sure of your calling and election, you should not.

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He is not saying, look at your obedience, look at your faithfulness. One last phrase

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I'm going to give to you that helps you understand the difference between pietism and piety. It's the title of our book, faith versus faithfulness, faith in Christ versus faithfulness to Christ.

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It's a free ebook down below. I'd encourage you to grab that. If you liked this video, please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell.

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If you have any questions or an idea for another episode, leave us in the comments below.