Can't Believe I Did It Again | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're going to be considering besetting sins, habitual sins, the whole

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I can't believe that I've done this again. In other words, we're going to be talking about the regular Christian experience of the battle against the flesh.

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It's hard. It can be very discouraging, and at points, the church has not helped us in this battle against the flesh, has not helped us to think through the accusations of Satan and even of our own consciences.

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So John and I today are going to do a little bit of history talk. We're going to think theologically. We're going to think biblically about this.

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We hope to encourage us all in the Lord Jesus Christ as we continue to wage war against our flesh.

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And then over in SR, we're going to answer some potential objections, the yeah, but guys.

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And so we hope that's also helpful to you and instructive for you. Stay tuned. A simple and easy way for you to help support

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Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

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Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. Your hosts, our hosts today are

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

01:37

John, my man. I think I'm going to get the sticker right here. You've yeah, you got a sticker hanging off your microphone.

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You got other there. You got other things, other new branded. That's right. Hey, real quick, for those of you who don't know, that's right.

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Those of you don't know, if you don't watch us on YouTube, that's OK. But for those of you that are on YouTube, I don't watch this on YouTube either.

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So yeah, you don't watch this in general. Here we go. And here's our new logos and new stickers.

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It's all great stuff. But what's really great is the rebranding of our books.

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They look better. They feel better. And it's a new series that we have. And it's called

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Theocats Vintage, because guess what, Justin? The theology is very old.

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Old theology in a new medium. Old world theology, one might say. That's right. That's right.

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We don't have anything new to say. We're just dusting off all the good stuff. And that's what these books are,

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Theocats Vintage. So we've got rest and we definitely have safe and reformed. It's on the way. It's being formed on the way.

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Yeah. Not new theology. We're just forming the words. And man, I am excited to read

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Justin's chapter here pretty soon on confessionalism. And on law gospel. On law gospel. I'm working on Calvinism and covenant theology.

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And Justin and I are going to be working on ordinary means of grace together. So it's good stuff. But Justin, tell us, my friend, why is it that we have gathered to podcast today?

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We have met. Brethren, we have met to podcast. Yeah, we have.

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Or is it my job? Am I supposed to bring it? I'm supposed to bring it in. You know what, listen, we need to talk to the show director.

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We're professionals here at Theocats. That's right. Someone did ask me if we had like a director, like someone who actually shares names.

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The reason that we don't ever name director so -and -so is because we don't have one. So that's right. Well, today is a very near and dear conversation to my own spiritual experience.

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And as a pastor for many years, I was telling Justin, I've actually been preaching on a weekly basis for almost 20 years.

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I started right out of college. I know. I graduated from college when I was 13. I was brilliant.

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But it's a part of the Christian life that I think is often very confusing and demoralizing.

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It creates angst in almost all of the questions that we get at Theocats are related to this subject.

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In some way or another. Yeah. Yeah. In some way or another. It is the relationship between the struggle of sin.

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I can't believe I keep doing this and my relationship to God as my adopted father.

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Right. And the peace that I would have with him or not. That's right. That's right. And so we,

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I know I've said this in my head. I know that other people have where you just feel demoralized.

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You feel completely humbled and crushed by the reality that you could still sin and do the same sin that you thought you would never do again, or you would never struggle with again.

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Or it's, you thought by now, my Christian walk by now, this should not be a problem.

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You know, it's like I should be mature enough in Christ where this shouldn't be tangling me up over and over again.

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Or let's not even say possibly you give into it. It's the struggle of it's there. The fact that it tempts you.

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The fact that it's always present, that at times it does feel like it's grabbed a hold of you. But even when it doesn't have its claws in you, it's always there.

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It's always just kind of lurking and you might be more or less aware of it at points. But what we're talking about in part is the battle against the flesh and how the corruption of the flesh remains, even in those who have been redeemed in those who have been regenerated by the spirit of God.

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There is a regenerate part of us. There's our inner man that's now alive and united to Christ. And there is still our corrupt flesh, which will at the resurrection need to be raised incorruptible.

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And so between now and then we fight this battle, this war between our spirit and our flesh.

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And I think you're exactly right in just rip my earbuds out. So what happens when you talk with your hands, it's what preachers do and then sometimes you rip your buds out.

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So smack your microphone and smack your mic and everybody's welcome. So try to get myself back on track here.

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I think you're right though that we all battle this in various ways. We're going to talk about a lot of stuff today because there's a number of different theological principles that we talk about on the show a lot that are going to come to bear here and hopefully we can do a decent job of unpacking that.

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But I think at the heart of this conversation is every Christian's experience and every Christian's predicament where we, like Paul writes in Romans seven, we often find ourselves doing things we don't want to do and we're grieved by that.

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Or we find ourselves not doing things that we know we should do that are good and we're grieved by that.

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We find ourselves doing things yet again that we either swore we would never do again or like prayed and hoped that we never would.

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And yet here we are. And there are any number of reasons why we question our legitimacy in those moments.

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Some of them have to do with the accuser, Satan, who is our enemy. Some of them have to do with our own consciences and some of them have to do with bad theology and things that we've been told in the church that have not helped weary strugglers, that have not helped people who are still fighting this war against their flesh, but if anything, have discouraged us and piled it on.

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So there's all of that going on here. And part of today's podcast is helping you to identify the difference between someone who should question their theology.

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I'm sorry, there's their assurance versus someone who should question their theology, meaning that maybe you aren't looking at this from a biblical standpoint.

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I love when Paul says this. Paul, present tense says, I am, not was.

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I am the greatest, the foremost sinner that I know. And Paul is not justifying his sin.

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He's not saying it's okay. He's definitely not, you know, I can wallow in it and it's fine.

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He's admitting his status. His status is of obviously the spirit lives within me.

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And I continue to see how sinful I am in this war. And first Timothy one 15 and 16, which is verse 15 is where he says he's the foremost of sinners.

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But he's talking about the patience and the mercy and the grace of Christ that's been shown to him so that if he's the foremost and he's been shown this grace and patience and mercy,

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Christ will be the same with everyone else, you know, who is in him, who has believed in him for eternal life. Right?

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So it's a comforting reality. And of course, Paul, at other places, like Philippians three is maybe the most well -known and beautiful, how

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Paul rejects any notion of his own righteousness. And he's like, look, even the good things that I think about myself, they're actually like trash.

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They're rubbish. And I forsake those things for the surpassing value of being found in Christ Jesus and receiving a righteousness by faith, you know, that is

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Christ's. Yeah. I believe it just real quick to add to that. It seems like in almost every letter that Paul writes, he mentions this about a right

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Galatians five 17 Romans seven. Even this, even the churches in Corinthians, he's dealing with this battle of listen, you are spirit.

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Cause he doesn't call them unbelievers. He's like, you are doing things that are really bad and need to repent of those.

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And he doesn't question their salvation. And the law of God is against such things. Right? Right. Right. So there's never a justification, but we do have to answer the question.

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And this is where we want to go now and really examine our hearts and our intentions and the spirit and our flesh in light of what scripture has to say.

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And in many ways, Justin, what, you know, I know some of the areas that we're going to get into, which is bad theology, come from revivalism.

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It comes from perfectionism, comes from Methodism. And all of that is the root of a theology called

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Pietism, which we're going to talk about in the podcast today. Yeah. Really quickly, just to maybe clarify and go ahead and set this out at the beginning.

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And John and I were acknowledging this reality in our pre -recording conversation. It's super critical that we understand what

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I'm about to say. And John, I'm happy for you to riff on this and interact with it too. The difference between a

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Christian and somebody who's not a Christian is not that the non -Christian still sins and Christians don't.

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Or sin less. Right. Or even just sin a lot less. The difference at the most basic level, at the fundamental level between a

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Christian and a non -Christian is that the Christian has agreed with God about his or her sin and has sided with God against his or her sin and has casted himself, herself upon Christ Jesus for salvation.

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That's the difference. And that needs to be reiterated because just to be super clear here, none of what we're saying today is meant to condone sinful behavior, is meant to give it a pass.

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I mean we're not saying that it doesn't matter how you live. We are not against the law at all. We are all for the law and its various uses being preached rightly in the church and even guiding our lives in Christ, right?

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But what we are saying is that we are not saved by our performance. And the fundamental difference between a

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Christian and someone who isn't is simply that we have agreed and sided with God against our sin and we have trusted in Christ alone for the satisfaction that he has made for our sins and for his righteousness and holiness being counted to us.

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Hmm. Yeah. And you may have even said this, but to restate it, I mean, ultimately

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Christianity is agreeing with God on your sin. Exactly. Well, and it's agreeing with God about your sin, about yourself, about him, his law, his requirements and his way of salvation.

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That's what it is. It's like, I agree with you, God, I am guilty. And I believe these things.

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Right. And here's what's hard, Justin, is that, um, wise men have been saying this for hundreds of years now, but the closer you get to the light of Christ, the more exposed you are to the darkness of your sin.

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And this is, this is after you've been regenerated because we live in an already not yet status.

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This is probably the theology that skips most people's training when they're being brought up in Christianity, as if there's this process of sanctification where the old man is completely abolished over time and the new man is being transformed.

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Yeah, right. And there, there's an already not yet aspect to this.

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And the new Testament is highly clear on the reality that we have the hope of Christ in us and we have the power to Christ to obey, but we have not been set free from the burdens of our flesh, that which is under the curse of sin.

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You can't be set free from that because you've been born into sin. You've been born under Adam, right?

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So only Christ who was not born under Adam, he was not born of the seed of man who did not carry the burden of a sinful nature.

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Now he had to deal with the temptations of the flesh, but never gave into them. We, unfortunately, as Paul has already said, and like I said, almost every letter he writes, he describes a battle that happens, this war, and it's, uh, it's not ended until you die.

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Right. And then, then Christ returns. Correct. Right. Right. And we affirm wholeheartedly that, you know, as Paul writes in Romans six, that we have been set free from the tyranny, the dominion of sin.

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Um, we are no longer under the law or under grace. We've become obedient from the heart. We now delight in the law of God and our inner man.

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All of that is true. And at the same time, the corruption of the flesh is still with us. And we will not be finally delivered from that in totality until the resurrection.

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And we are raised incorruptible, imperishable, and we'll no longer be able to sin.

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And we no longer will want to. Because we will be pure and righteous and blameless.

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And wow. I mean, mind blow can't even comprehend what that's going to be like. Yeah. It's an incredible promise from the

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Lord. Go ahead. I just want to mention one more thing to just theologically set this up.

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And then we'll let you take it over from this point. But Paul even talks about how, and this is an encouragement.

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It should be for anyone, but there's a desire change. All of a sudden we see our sin. We hate our sin.

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But just because our desire change doesn't mean our abilities always change. Cause Paul flat out says the things

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I want to do, I don't, I'm not doing them. Right. And when, when you talk about the desire change, the new desires come from the regenerate part of us.

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So it's from our spirit. There are also cravings and desires of the flesh. This is what the war consists of, right?

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It's the desires and, and the aspirations, the good things that I want in my spirit and my inner man now born again by the spirit of God versus the things that I crave and desire.

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And I lust after in my flesh. And both of these are at work and both of these are at war within the

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Christian, which is a completely unique experience that only Christians go through. That's right.

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Right. One of a kind, it's one of a kind thing. And this is the war that is now on our hands for the rest of our lives on earth until Christ returns or we die as we've said.

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And so how can we speak honestly about these things? How can we speak in a way that is hope giving and not soul crushing, right?

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Because I fear that a lot of times you not only, as I alluded to earlier, have the accusations of the enemy who tells you, if you were really

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God, you wouldn't do this. If you were really a Christian, you wouldn't think that. If you were really in Christ, you wouldn't feel that or want that.

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That's what the enemy says to us. You know, the enemy on the front end of things, John, when we're outside of Christ, to all those outside of Christ, Satan says, you're good.

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You don't need, you don't need mercy. You're fine. And then when we're in the Lord Jesus, he tells us, oh, there's no mercy for you.

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You're not worthy of it. You're not good enough for it. You're not legit. Right. And this is what he does.

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He accuses us. But then there's also our own consciences that accuse us because we know that we sin and we know we're wrong.

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And oftentimes what you see with people who are legitimately running off into lawlessness and antinomian theology, it's that their consciences have beat them up for so long and the church has piled it on that they just are like running, kicking, and screaming the other direction with their fingers in their ears, you know, so that they can't hear anything because they just want to go do what they want to do and not feel bad about it, you know, and, and they want to escape their own consciences that rightly accuse them.

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And they think that if they can kind of turn this whole thing on its head, where the only good is that we would be free, then maybe, uh, maybe this can, can work for them.

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But in addition to Satan, and in addition to our consciences that rightly accuse us of the wrong that we do, you have some bad doctrine that's contributed to this issue.

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So we're talking again, the title of the episode, I can't believe I did it again. Like here I am again, struggling in the same way, perhaps falling in the same way, wanting the same thing, craving the same thing.

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Why is this not gone yet? I thought I would be better by now and I'm not.

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Here I am. What, what do we have to say about these things? And some of the bad theology,

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John, maybe we can start with some of the poor things that have harmed people and have not helped. And then we can pivot to the better stuff.

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Um, so we've talked a lot about you. We could start with revivalism and some of those things, the

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American church. And I know at some point we're going to be doing some episodes on confessional theology and just confessionalism and the history of American Protestantism.

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I don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but eventually we're going to talk more about that stuff. Um, it's important that we understand that so much of the conservative church in America is steeped in revivalism and has roots in revivalism.

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There are, I mean, I'm going to say this and I'm not trying to get shot at here. There was the second great awakening that most people agree with, agree with me and saying it was really bad, you know,

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Charles Finney and the new methods and all these things. People are, yes, terrible. But the first great awakening, as it's so called, uh, many

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Calvinistic evangelicals think it was great. And I'm, I'm going to say publicly that one was not so great either.

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The theology may have been a little better in ways. Um, and I realized to criticize Whitefield or even by implication,

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Edwards is near blasphemy for some, but you know, my name is Jonathan Edward Moffat. How dare you?

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But the problem in part with even the first not so great awakening is that it relocated the real work of God from the local church to these special meetings where you would go hear a fiery preacher.

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And then here's the thing. It became about your own personal fervor and intensity and devotion.

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That's what it was to really be. A Christian was to feel it, to be on fire, to be devoted, right?

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And all of that. And that was the thing that you were looking for, you know, as evidence of having been converted and as evidence of being legit, right?

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Because there was this concern that if that stuff wasn't present, then one wasn't really in Christ. And so all of that has permeated so much of the conservative church in America.

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Certainly the conservative church that we would call evangelical hails from that revivalistic stuff and from those revivalistic roots.

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So that's a big deal. Yeah. Revivalism in by nature rejected, uh, all of basically the tenets of reformed theology.

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It was not covenantal in, in the most part. Uh, I would definitely say the second great awakening for sure.

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Not, not Calvinistic. It rejected the first great awakening was Calvinistic. The second was not right.

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Yeah. Calvinistic is a good way of saying that. It was definitely losing its reformed roots on its way out.

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And it was not confessional. No, no, no, no. And when you, the, the, the second great awakening really took a lot of roots in how many evangelicals, many

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Christians in America think about their Christian faith and your actions were directly tied to your standing before God.

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This is where the anxious bench became very popular where you were called down methods, the new measures you developed by Charles Finney and others.

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Yeah. I mean for those of you that are either grew up in a fundamentalist

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Baptist church or are aware of revivalism, you know, the sawdust trail, it's a funny phrase, but people don't understand what

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I meant. They would have these big tents they would bring into towns and you have, and this is before entertainment. This is before you have radios for you, have the internet.

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So when a tent sporting events raised, yeah, sporting events, when a tent gets raised, you go out to see and most preachers became the entertainment for the town.

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When you have these guys coming in and they're preaching fire and brimstone and they're preaching against alcohol and just loose living and sexuality.

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Well, they're calling you to rededicate your life or to get saved and they had so many people walking down this aisle down to the front of the anxious bench.

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They were kicking up dust and you just, it was distracting. So they would put sawdust down to kind of prevent that and they called it the sawdust trail, but they were, they were just driving emotions.

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I mean, Finney literally said that you put me in a room with a hundred people and enough time, I can convince them all that they were on their way to hell and that they're unregenerate and need to be saved.

21:20

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called faith versus faithfulness, a primer on rest.

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

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You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer. And I mean,

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Finney would even say that when Christians sin, they need to be saved again. I mean, he was completely heterodox in so much of his theology.

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He was, but he had a massive influence on the way in which we understand Christianity in the United States. But in both of the awakenings and the revival and that kind of revivalistic stuff, there is a massive emphasis on transformation, right?

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And this can look several ways. And this is where, you know, I'm going to kind of weave the talk of pietism into this.

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So just really quickly, I'm gonna try to define some terms and hope this is clear. Piety is good. Piety is

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God wrought transformation of life by the power of the Holy spirit through the means that God has ordained, right?

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That's awesome. That's what we all desire. You know, that we would grow in piety, in godliness wrought of the spirit.

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Pietism though is a hyper emphasis on personal transformation, on personal moral transformation, on feelings, on affections, on devotion, on obedience, on performance, right?

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So that's true at the individual level. But pietism also has this transformationalist instinct at the societal level too.

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And it depends on whether you're a conservative or a liberal as to what that looks like. If you're a conservative, it's like, well, we can transform the culture and the society through people being saved and then living like Christians.

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I mean, this is very clear in the revivalistic movement, you know, in the States. I mean, even what you just said,

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I mean, we're going to come in here and we're going to preach against sin and call people to repentance and to trust Christ and then live this way.

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Or you could just be a liberal, which surfaced obviously later in the game, latter part of the 19th century and into the 20th century where it was just kind of unashamedly aimed at the culture.

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Like we just need to love others and be, you know, doctrine doesn't so much matter, but what we want to do is try to change society for the better progression, you know, and, but still it's transformational at its heart.

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And there's this hyper -focus on transformation. And so you take all of that formula and you, you put that down on the conservative evangelical church, the

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Calvinistic evangelical church in America, where many of our listeners have found themselves. And what you get is a real struggle to be able to process the ongoing battle against the flesh and the life of the

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Christian, because you have people being told that, well, if Christ is in you and you've been united to him, you're going to be sanctified and you ought not be how you used to be.

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And if you still struggle with this sin, then you need to call into question everything with respect to your standing before God.

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And, and, you know, with respect to whether or not you've actually been adopted by God as your father, you know, like you use the analogy, man, it's almost like we begin to argue with God over the legitimacy of our adoption papers.

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You know, like, exactly how have we really been adopted and have we blown this somehow?

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That's right. You know, as if somehow the Christ's blood as the signature can be erased, you know, it's ridiculous.

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Well, and, and from this, and it sounds, it could be sounding like we're picking on this particular area and it doesn't make any connection, but let me help you make a connection here.

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Because psychologically this has passed down where doctrine was very much downplayed.

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Doctrine divides, Christ unites. And what Christianity became about was what we don't do.

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Yeah. And what we abstain from. That's right. Christians don't do this. So you were given a list.

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And if you could look at your life and you could see I am not doing these things, therefore I'm an acceptable

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Christian. The problem was, as Justin said, is that the real struggles of the Christian life, you couldn't bring those to the surface because then you would have to admit there is something wrong with you.

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So what happens is you start hiding sin and you suppress it. And we feel very justified in our life because well, at least

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I'm not doing this and I'm not doing, and whatever that list may be. And it has changed over the years. I mean, back in the day in revivalism is you didn't drink, you didn't dance, you didn't smoke and you didn't wear a certain kind of clothing.

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And you know, any type of rock music, which would have been, you know, Elvis Presley in, in the early days it was wrong.

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And all of that has progressed. I mean, today it is just, it's different. It's your view on vaccinations.

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It's your view on social justice. I mean, it is the don't, these things justify you as a

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Christian when you participate or don't participate in them. And they're all biblical. There's nothing in the Bible about this, but we create it.

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And what it, what it, what it does is that it, it creates this achievableness to where you can look at your

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Christian life and say, I am good because, and then you have your list. And the Bible makes it very clear that the only reason you are ever acceptable in the eyes of God, the only reason your adoption papers are handed to you is because of what

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Christ has done for you. You, let me, let me put it this way. And this is

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Justin. I'm telling you, man, this took me a long time to understand. And even people in my own church, it's we all struggle with this.

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When God looks at you at the end of your life and he holds your adoption papers in his hands, and he's looking at the check mark of righteous, right?

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You are righteous. You will enter into my glory. You are clean.

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Do you know whose righteousness he's looking at? He's looking 100 % at the work of Jesus and never at your works at all.

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Well, and I mean, it's like our confession says in 11 .1 chapter 11 paragraph one, that Christ is our whole and only righteousness by faith.

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That's right. And that is so hard for us. And then, and then immediately, somebody is going to rise up and say, well, but brothers, does it not matter how we live?

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And we're going to say, of course it does. Of course it does. And we are going to uphold the clear teaching of the scripture that all those who are in Christ have been perfected for all time as they are being sanctified.

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We will uphold that sanctification for those United to Jesus is a certainty. And that God will see to it and that he is the one who sanctifies.

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And he does that through the means that he has given. That's right. And this is not an ordinary means of grace podcast, but those are the primary ones, the ways that God normally grows and sustains and nourishes, not only the faith of his people, but the piety of his people is through word and sacrament and prayer and song and the fellowship of the saints.

28:04

Right. And he does that over the course of our lifetimes. But we'll talk about that more some other time. Can I just jump in and add to it?

28:10

So I don't forget, you know, um, when we see, when our little children see, uh, whether it'd be an actor or a sports figure, let's just say a basketball player, and they're a good basketball player and they want to emulate their moves, their style.

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And in many ways, when you look at the glory of Christ, this is first John three, he says, when we see his purity and who he is, we purify ourselves.

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Yeah. First Corinthians three, two. Yeah. Oh yeah. First Corinthians three, 18, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. First John, second

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Corinthians three, eight, and then first John, uh, three, one through five. But he says we purify ourselves as he is pure.

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The meaning of the point of it is, is that we don't, we don't fight the flesh and we don't pursue righteousness because it gained something with us in, in God.

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We do it because we see how beautiful and glorious and wonderful it is. And we want to be like that. Like we want to reflect what

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Christ is. And we want to be because we now delight in God's law and our inner man, because we've been brought again by the spirit of God and we do the whole

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Christ. Go ahead. That's right. But the one thing doesn't always match up with doing, and that's because of the flesh, right?

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Because the flesh is always there. So yeah, absolutely. And we want to uphold this reality that we will do good works in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. We will walk in the good works that have been prepared beforehand for us to walk in. We will do all of that, but we will not do that in our own strength.

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And we will not do that motivated by fear or striving after merit. We will do that because only because we have been united to the

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Lord Jesus by faith. We are now in him and his spirit is in us and he is at work to produce these things in and through us.

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Streams only flow downhill. So if we want to see the transformation of life, if we want to see sanctification occur, we do that best by heralding the mercy, power, grace, and love of Christ.

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And then we rightly teach God's law. So we preach law and gospel, which brings me to something else

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I would like to say about the current theological environment that doesn't help us in this conversation. Two things.

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There is a lot of in the current church context, there is a lot of biblicism and there is a lack of a right understanding of law and gospel.

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And so this is super confusing and I think piles it on in this whole situation that we're describing today, the battle against the flesh and even the battle against besetting sins, you know?

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Yeah. John, please. Hey, real quick for someone that being me, bright brand new to theocast definition of biblicism.

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About to go there. Sorry, go ahead. About to go there. So biblicism would be where you, you isolate texts.

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You just go and you read verses and you say, well, see, it says right here that this is what it says. And you end up, maybe not intentionally, but unintentionally, inadvertently, you end up pitting texts against each other and introducing contradiction and tension into the scripture that is actually not there when it is rightly understood and viewed through an appropriate theological framework.

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And the scripture does not contradict itself. The writers of scripture are not schizophrenic. And so when you say, you know, it's mysterious, like for example, a great example of biblicism and a lack of an understanding of the flow of argumentation and how people do this.

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It's one of my favorite examples. Romans two, six through like 13, you know, where people are reading, you know, again,

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Paul's doing something in the flow of his letter to the Romans, but Paul brings up in Romans two, six and following how

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God is an impartial and righteous judge and how he rewards those who do good with eternal life.

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And he punishes those who do evil with, with wrath and condemnation. And people read that.

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And then later, you know, because it's not the hearers of the law who are justified, but it's the doers of the law who will be justified.

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Right? I mean, this is the flow of Paul's argumentation there. And people will say, you know,

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Protestant people, I understand why Roman Catholic people would say this, but Protestant people as we like to joke, you know, using our fundamentalist brothers have lost their ever loving minds.

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And they say, you know, it's mysterious. We know that elsewhere in the Bible, we're told that we're saved by grace through faith and Christ alone and that Christ is our righteousness and you know, all of these kinds of things.

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But then here it's, you know, somehow, mysteriously, somehow our, our works and our obedience, they're going to factor into our final salvation to which we say, hold the phone.

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You, you need to understand this. First of all, in light of the context of the letter, because Paul is arguing that God is an impartial righteous judge who rewards those who do good and punishes those who do evil.

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The problem, Romans three, is that nobody's good, which is why we need a righteousness that's revealed apart from the law.

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Cause nobody's going to be justified by the law, but it's the righteousness revealed, you know, of God revealed apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

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It's the righteousness of God that comes through faith in Jesus Christ. Right? So that's, that's an example of how you would isolate a paragraph and you would, you would draw a conclusion that is wrong.

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That is heterodox. That is like false teaching that our works factor into our salvation.

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Now, will works be there? You better believe they will be. As R .C. Sproul says, everyone is saved by works.

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Just Christ's, not yours. Right. But you know, will good works be present in the life of the believer? Absolutely. They will.

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But as evidence, not as ground of salvation in any way.

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And you got to talk about this. I would say as evidence and necessity, like it's needed for the work of the ministry of Christ. And it's needed exactly for the ministry of Christ and your neighbor needs it.

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And that's what I mean. And the ministry of Christ is the advancement of the gospel for the glory of God and the love of neighbor. So it's, it's not like, let me put it this way.

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Sometimes we think about good works as like, ah, you know, it's a good thing to do. It's like, no, no, it's necessary. Like it's, it's, it's, it's a necessity for you to advance the kingdom of God by being a child of God.

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No, amen. All right. The second, second theological. So biblicism is bad. Like where we just kind of read a text. Can I give another good message that relates to this thing about I can't believe

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I keep doing, this is the one that people reference all the time, which is 2 Corinthians 5 .17. Okay. Yeah.

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No, no. 2 Corinthians 5 .17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things have passed away.

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Behold, all things have become new. So I shouldn't, I shouldn't be struggling with sin because old things have passed away.

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And we're like, ah, the old law has passed away. And behold, the new things is this we're talking about.

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It literally, he's in, if you look at the translation there, it's a new year. There's a new creation. There's a new creature, right?

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There's a new kind of person. No, that's right. Another thing that is missing in the modern church context is the appropriate distinction between law and gospel.

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And it's interesting. A lot of the people that are biblicists, like with Romans two, who will just wrongly say that our works factor into our final salvation.

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We'll then read other passages like 1 Corinthians six comes to mind. Galatians five comes to mind and other places, right?

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Where Paul, in both of those instances says that here is what the flesh does.

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And here's what the flesh craves. And anyone who does these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Hmm.

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Well, what, what I've heard so many times in my life, because people have to soft pedal that because they're like,

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Oh gosh, because nobody, at least these days, thank goodness, teaches Christian perfection, um, that I know of.

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I mean, none of the like Calvinistic evangelical teachers that we would know would ever think like Allah, like John Wesley, that Christian perfection is attainable, um, or Oberlin school, you know, like that Christian perfection is attainable.

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Nobody's saying that, but they do struggle to then interpret passages like first Corinthians six or Galatians five, because they don't have a law in gospel hermeneutic.

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And so it's like, okay, well clearly Paul doesn't mean that we're going to be sinless. And so what this must mean then is that you don't live a life characterized by such things.

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And I'm like, that's not what the book says. You were a biblicist over there in Romans two, but now you're, now you're not saying what the book says here, you know?

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And it's like, well, maybe you need to rethink how you're doing exegesis. Maybe you need to rethink your hermeneutic, you know, your method of interpretation, because seeing through a law gospel hermeneutic, we understand that what

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Paul is doing right there is a first use of the law, right? The people who do these things have broken

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God's law and will not inherit the kingdom of God. Full stop. The law of God is against that.

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And then third use by implication, why would we ever do things that God hates and that God says will destroy us?

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Let's flee from those things in Christ. I mean, both and I think are legitimate applications, but he's not talking about our standing before the

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Lord in terms of righteousness there saying that you need to be perfect. I mean, we do need to be perfect in order to stand before God, but Jesus has been perfect for us, you know?

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And so we need to, we need to preach law and gospel, you know, in those contexts. And then we can help set people free from this like hyper introspective, like,

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Oh my gosh, like how, how much is too much? You know, like I still do struggle with sexual immorality or I struggle with pride or struggle with greed or I lie or whatever it is.

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Like those things that Paul is telling me covetousness and envy and the like, I'm still battling that all the time.

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How much is too much that's going to finally damn me? Nobody can answer that question. And in reality, what we need to understand is that Paul is using the law in the first and third use, but mainly in the first use to say, this is destructive.

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Like you need righteousness. Second use, you know, you need to flee from this because it's terrible and it's going to wreck your life.

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And third, you seek to be conformed to the law, you know, as you have now been saved in Christ Jesus. And that's just a much better way to talk.

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Right. But people have been put in slavery, John, because they have to assess themselves as to how well they're doing, you know, in abstaining from these things in order to be legit.

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Well, and they've been handed, um, when you think about how to handle your struggles against the flesh, they've been handed pietism and pietism never works.

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Introspection doesn't work. This is why monks can live by themselves and still have no righteousness because righteousness doesn't come by your own actions.

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You can't just flee from the world and from temptation because temptation is always around you. You know why?

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Because your flesh is corrupt and weak. And so there's always occasion for sin. That's right. So there's a couple of things that I wanted to add to this, uh, this thought that where you're at with law and gospel and then the struggle.

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Uh, so you have, um, yeah, I just preached in, um, James one 13 through 15, where he talks about, do not blame

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God for when you fall into various temptations. Uh, and those temptations come from your own desires.

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So he says your desires lead to a lure you into temptation, temptation that gives birth to sin and sin gives when it's full grown brings forth death.

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And to, to battle that, Paul says, you need to be renewing your mind. And I, this is why this is so important.

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So when we think about the battle of the flesh, think about how the new Testament equips us. I mean, even we can go to Ephesians six where it talks about armor of God.

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We'll get there in a minute, but he says, renew your mind without faith. Is it possible to please me?

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And then he says, walk by faith, which Justin, he literally means every step of your life.

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You are trusting in the sufficiency of Christ righteousness and forgiveness on your behalf.

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You are not walking by works. You are not walking by pietism. This doesn't mean we don't obey.

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It's not an either or, and I just wish that pietism is so ingrained in us.

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It's so hard to root it out because we have trusted in our own actions.

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We walk by our own obedience. And Paul does not say walk by your obedience. He says, walk by faith.

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And what flows out of faith, obedience flows out of faith, right? Obedience is what comes as the result of our faith.

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It doesn't, it's not in the reverse. So what I think needs to happen here is when someone finds themselves in this habitual ongoing sin, where they keep doing the same thing over and over again, to not fall into utter defeat and to give up.

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And so they are crushed by this. There needs to be the renewal of our minds and there needs to be the constant reminder of walking by faith.

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And this is where go back to the episode we did on the purpose of the church, the purpose and the design of the church is to carry you in the midst of these struggles to renew your mind and to wrap, as it says in Galatians 6 .2,

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we are to bear one another's burdens. So what ends up happening is in most Christians experience is that they fall into a sin or they are being beat down by their flesh and they are isolated all by themselves.

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And what they need to be hearing, Justin, is what you and I are saying from their congregate, from their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to renew their minds, to walk by faith.

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They need in, I mean, in the most pointed sense, they need to gather with the saints and hear the law and the gospel.

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You know, they need that. Rightly defined, separately. Rightly preached. Right. And, and I mean, even to think about Ephesians chapter six,

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I mean, as soon as you said this, you know, like that we need to renew our minds. Immediately I go to the armor of God passage, which has been so sadly like made all about us.

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You know, it's about our fervor and our faithfulness to put on the armor. And I'm just like, if that's the case, then that's no armor at all.

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If the armor is only useful in as much as I'm able to put it on well, then God help us. You know, but in reality, the armor of God is

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Christ. It's not, has nothing to do with me. You know? So, I mean, when you read the descriptions of these things, you know, we put on the belt of truth.

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It's like, well, whose truth is that? You know, the last time I checked Jesus in John 17 said, sanctify them in the truth.

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Your word is truth. So, I mean, it's, it's God's, God's truth. Right. And then having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

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Well, I'm confident that's not my own righteousness. That is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Right. And just being reminded that I have that now by faith and I'm putting that on, you know, shoes for your feet, the gospel of peace.

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Well, who's gospel and who did it? Christ did the gospel. We don't do the gospel. Right. I mean, there's that. And then the shield of faith.

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Feet, right? Feet walk by faith in what the gospel. What Christ has done for you. You know, not what you do for God, what

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Christ has done for you. And then the shield of faith. It's like, well, what is faith inherently? It's looking outside of ourselves.

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It's looking away from ourselves to Christ, trusting another who has done what's necessary. And that shields us.

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I mean, it's incredible. You know, you can extinguish the flaming darts of the enemy with faith. Well, faith in whom?

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Christ, you know, and what he's done. Oh no, it's faith and putting on the armor every day. You know, the helmet of salvation.

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It's, I mean, we could go on and on and on. It's very clear that it is Christ for us, the gospel and what

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God has revealed the word of Christ for us. Just back up to where the paragraph, the pericope begins.

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He says, finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

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Not be strong in your own, your own might. So all of this to Justin, we got to start wrapping this up, get ready to go over to Semper Firmanda.

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I know we had, we can, we can make a lot more sweet pastoral words here before we transition over.

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Yeah. My encouragement to you is that in the midst of your struggle of sin, I stand on this.

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I would go to prison and give my life up for this, that the battle of the Christian life will remain.

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Remain until you are taken home with the father. This is so clear in scripture.

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It's so clear. All you need to do is watch the disciples as they've battled their own flesh while doing ministry with Christ.

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Then all of the writers of the new Testament, uh, it is, it's, I just, I can't think of a book in the new

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Testament that doesn't, that doesn't have in some ways describe the war between the flesh and the spirit.

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It's there. I agree. It's underneath it all. So we can't be biblicist and isolate passages and not look at the whole.

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I mean, our confession, the reformers fought for the comparing of scripture with scripture for this very reason.

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I was just teaching, we had membership classes past weekend and I teach through our concession, right? And I was struck even in teaching it, how often this remaining corruption piece is reiterated.

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It's in three chapters. It's in several, bro. I mean, multiple paragraphs within said chapters, you know, and so that's important that we not lose sight of that and that we're realistic about the

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Christian life and that we are as confessional Protestants always looking outside of ourselves to say what's wrong in us.

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And we understand that it is ultimately the work of God to keep pilgrims on the way, you know, of which we are.

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So I think my word to people is like, if you are battling your flesh and you're often discouraged in that fight and you're grieved by your own sin and you're frankly just heartbroken that here you are again doing the same thing again, you're not alone.

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You are one of us. Every saint from all time has had this experience.

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So take comfort in that and be reminded that Christ is your righteousness. He has made satisfaction for your sins.

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He is sufficient. He is enough to save even you and that you like Paul can rightly describe yourself as the foremost of centers, but Christ has been merciful, gracious and patient with the foremost of centers and he will be with all of us.

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And if anything, we should be humbled and let our battle against the flesh, the ongoing fight against our corruption, if anything, let it humble us and crush our self -righteousness so that we might cast ourselves on Christ alone and that we might love our brothers and sisters and be gracious and charitable with them.

46:06

That would be a good outcome, right? Yeah, man. Well, what I would add to that before Justin takes us over to Semper Riffamanda, to the sweetness of what he's already said is that we have a great high priest who is sympathetic and has understood the pressures and the temptations that we have.

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And he is our great high priest in that he mediates between the father and us.

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And you need to understand he is a successful mediator.

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He never fails. Yeah, that's right. So no matter how often you struggle, your sins are forgiven because the blood of Christ is sufficient to cover all your sins and his righteousness is sufficient that you might inherit all

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God's blessings. So this is why we walk by faith day by day.

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We consider how to build one another up, that we are hardened by the deceitfulness of sins and we renew our minds and the freshness of the gospel by the word preached, by the word taught, and by the word brought to us in the sacraments.

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Church, take advantage of what God has given you to sustain you. Amen. When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward

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I look and see him there who made an end of all my sin, right? Because the sinless savior died, my sinful soul is counted free for God, the justice satisfied to look on him and pardon me.

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Brother, just sing it. Man, what a beautiful song. And it's like, yeah, he made an end of all our sin. It doesn't mean that we don't sin anymore, but it means in the eyes of God, he remembers our sins no more.

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And that we are no longer counted as sinners, but are seen only covered in the righteousness of Christ as though it is our own righteousness and holiness.

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That's the good news, right? And it will result in our not only peace with God now, but peace with God forever, bodily resurrection.

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That's what's come in saints. Hang on, keep fighting, keep trusting Christ. We are now headed over to the

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Semper Reformanda podcast. And this is an additional podcast that John and I do every week for our

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SR, as we like to call it, members. And so these are people who have partnered with Theocast financially, but support the ministry also in various other ways, gives you access to this additional podcast content.

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And we've got various things in the works for groups that are beating online and even geographically situated.

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There's all kinds of things that we hope to do with SR moving forward. But if Theocast has blessed you and encouraged you, consider partnering with us in this way to see the ministry continue to grow.

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And so that we have resources to be able to get this word spread even further and even wider, right?

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If you're wondering how you could become a member of Semper Reformanda, you can find all that information over at our website, theocast .org.

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I think it's all pretty clear and laid out over there. So if you're headed over to SR, John, and I'll talk with you in just a minute, because I assume you're going to listen to it right now.

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And if you're not an SR member yet, we'll talk with you again in this regular format next week.