The Meat of the Word IS NOT Obedience! | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I want to dive into something that's relevant to all of us as Christians.

How do we know if we're truly eating the meat of the Word? What does Paul mean, or the writer of Hebrews, when he references that?

And how is it we often maybe confuse the meat of the Word with something like pietism? Stay tuned.

If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism. Have you ever felt like the

Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy? That you wake up worrying about how well you're going to perform instead of thinking about what

Christ has done for you? It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes

Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope not in what Christ has done but what they're doing.

We have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it, and we're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism.

Reform theology, really. How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when

Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like? You can download it on our website.

Just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed, confessional, and pastoral perspective. We seek to clarify the gospel and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom.

That is definitely what's going to be happening today. What is the gospel and how does it apply to the kingdom in light of things like milk and meat,

Justin? It's going to be fun. I just want everybody to know that John is centered, not only in his shot in terms of the video, but also in his soul.

So we look forward to what he has to offer us today. That's right. Your hosts are Justin Perdue, who you just heard of Covenant Baptist Church.

A little bit of inside baseball there, fam. He's the pastor there. Watched the Braves lose last night, so they're not going.

Then I am John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. As you can tell, we love

Christ, we love each other, and we love to encourage you, and that's what we're going to do today. We're going to try to. I'm pretty excited about today's subject.

Kind of birthed out of a conversation you and I were having offline about discipleship and people's confusion and milk and word.

Milk and meat. We just had a lecture that I did on prayer, why we struggle with prayer, and that's part of our brand new community called the

Theocast Community. If you're not a part of that, I encourage you to do so. It's growing. It's full of all of our resources.

If you've ever wanted to have everything that Theocast has ever produced on your phone, you can do that. Just go to theocastcommunity .org,

including a place to ask questions and commune with other wonderful believers who love

Reformed theology. There's my advertisement, Justin. Hey, man, let me ask you a question.

When someone says, I want to move on, Justin, from the milk of the word, and I want to move on to the meat of the word, what do you think they mean, and how do we respond?

Go for it. Typically, when people use that kind of language, they mean the milk is

Jesus, believing in Him and Christ for me and all that, for forgiveness and righteousness and eternal life.

That's milk. Then the meat of the word, the meat even of the Christian life, is holiness and obedience and our individual pursuit of those things.

Pastor, where's the meat that's ever communicated after a sermon?

Typically what that means is, I need you to tell me more things to do. I need you to give me more imperative.

I need you to talk to me about, effectively, what they're asking for is for you to infer, based on biblical principle, wisdom for their lives.

You need to bind me, maybe not bind my conscience, but you need to give me guardrails and we need to talk about what a serious

Christian life looks like. That's typically what people mean. I'm not trying to impugn motivations here.

I'm not even trying to be punchy in the way I'm communicating. I'm being sincere. I think that's what people mean. We've said this before.

People who have been born again and united to the Lord Jesus Christ, which we're going to talk about in a minute, want to obey

Him and want to honor Him with their lives. Christians mean well when they say this. I want to make sure, as much as I'm able, by God's grace, that I'm living in a way that honors

God. I want to make sure I'm living in a way that's good for my neighbor. The motivation and the desire is wonderful, so praise the

Lord for that. The Lord has put that in your heart if you're asking these questions. Our purpose today is not to disagree and say that obedience and holiness aren't in view here.

Just a brief caveat, don't hear what we're not saying. John and I absolutely believe that as we are in the faith, as we grow, as we're nourished, as we live life in the church because of our union with Jesus and through the means of grace and all these things, we will be changed, we will be sanctified, we will be matured, and we will bear fruit, and we will become more holy.

Praise God. So do not in any way say, man, the guys at Theocaster read it again, and they're talking about obedience and holiness, and those things don't matter.

That is not what we're saying. All we want to do in today's conversation is perhaps offer a different perspective slightly on the way that we might arrive at holiness and obedience, rather than the focus being holiness and obedience themselves, and let's just talk about that, and let's be serious, and let's buckle down here and white -knuckle this thing.

In reality, the meat and the solid food that is alluded to by the apostles, 1

Corinthians 3, Paul, Hebrews 5, 12 and following, those are the two passages that are on the top of our minds, where it's a rebuke effectively to Christians, to congregations, that you should be moving on to more robust, mature, solid things, rather than being immature and just kind of hung up on basic things, like you don't even understand the basic things.

And so that's the rebuke, and then the general take is, well, the solid food and the meat is obedience and holiness, and we need to get serious about these things.

So we're here today to say, yes, obedience and holiness are wonderful, and they will be a fruit of everything that we're going to talk about.

But in fact, the solid food and the meat might be something slightly different than we are conditioned naturally to think.

Yeah, that's good. I was teaching a class last night that is available if you want to listen to it in our

Reformed Ministry class on biblical discipleship, and we were kind of starting the conversation in this way, when people reference discipleship, it's kind of like, well, you enter the realm by the milk of the word, which is the gospel, and then we're going to start discipling you in the meat of it, like the meat and bones.

Which means the Christian life. Yeah, like the do's and don'ts and kind of the apologetic side of it.

The disciplines, the rigor. That's where the real work gets done. And it's interesting how we always want there to be hands -on realities to our faith that somehow what

I do affects who I am or my standing before the Lord. And it's really complicated because it's just a natural bent.

I hadn't referenced this earlier, Justin, but I'll do it now. The end of Colossians makes reference to this.

And when you think about what he's getting at, it is this very much the, okay, we want there to be a depth to our

Christianity. And so at the end of it, he names all these things that the Colossians have been trying.

That's what he had got word of. And at the end, he says, these indeed have an appearance of wisdom.

Like this looks like it's going to work and it's wise. Promoting self -made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but have no value of stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

So if you want to, now that I'm a believer in Christ, I know I need to stop the indulgence of my flesh.

Of course. So I'm going to move on to the meat of the word, and that's going to be these actions. And Paul's like, actually, once you're a follower of Christ and you want to put to death the of the flesh, next verse, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Well, you kind of just glance through that. Do you understand the theological package he just gave you?

The where Christ had seated, why he's sitting there, what he accomplished. And then he goes on to your union in Christ.

He says, set your minds on things that are here. The realities of who Jesus is for you, not on things of the earth.

For you have died and you are hidden with Christ in God. So if you're not thinking about Christ, the hidden part of Christ, he says, when

Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him. He starts to go down the road of union in Christ as the results put to death, therefore, the earthly things.

Because of your union with Christ, because of your union with the Lord Jesus, put to death the things that are fleshly.

That's right. In you. So he does the reverse of what we think the Bible is going to say.

Oh, yeah. It's like, all right, you're now a believer in Christ. It's time for you to get to work, which we agree.

Let's start put to death sin. And Justin, putting to sin to death, this is a whole nother podcast for a whole nother time, but I think it matters in the whole meat of the word thing.

Putting sin to death is not the aim of the Christian life. It just gets in the way. Sin gets in the way of what we're supposed to be doing, which is loving

God and loving neighbor, and sin is what prevents us from that. So he's like, well, get rid of that. So we talk about what you should be doing.

Of course. But to do that requires maturity or meat, and he doesn't say that the actions are the meat.

That's where the confusion comes in. Yeah. What we do is not the meat. No. Agree. And I would even argue, too, the law is not the meat.

Right. We're going to say it again. Now, the law and the gospel, we'll get into that in a minute. Before we dive headlong into union with Christ and some other things,

I want to make a brief observation here, similar to things that you've been pulling out of various passages. In the 1

Corinthians 3 text, Paul, as he does in other places, juxtaposes this paradigm of being in the

Spirit or in the flesh. Colossians you already mentioned.

I think you get that implied there. Where Paul spills the most pointed ink on that contrast of being in the flesh or walking in the

Spirit and not in the flesh or being in the Spirit and not in the flesh is in Romans chapter 8, in the early verses of that chapter.

I am persuaded—I know you agree—that if you even take Romans on its own terms, if you think about Romans 4, the early verses of that chapter, what did

Abraham gain according to the flesh? There's this, you know, Abraham was justified by faith, not works, by grace, not merit.

But then you also have Romans 10, 9, really basically 9, 27 through the early verses of chapter 10, where it's very plain that the

Israelites were seeking to establish their own righteousness under the law. Paul says they've stumbled over the stumbling stone, who is

Jesus, and that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. And that in seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to God's righteousness, which is the righteousness that God gives to sinners in the gospel, right?

It's Christ's. It's Christ's righteousness for us. So I think taking Romans on its own terms, when

Paul, for example, will say that the righteous requirements of the law are fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the

Spirit, like Romans 8, 4, it's very clear that at the most basic level, to walk in the

Spirit is to submit to God's righteousness. It is to receive the righteousness of Christ, and to walk in the flesh is to seek to establish our own righteousness, right?

And so I think even that is instructive when it comes to how we interpret things.

Well, don't be in the flesh, be in the Spirit. Even in 1 Corinthians 3, when it comes to the meat of the

Word and maturity, the instinct typically is, well, maturity means we move on from the gospel.

Maturity means that we move on from the righteousness of Christ for me, because that's basic. When in reality, to walk in the

Spirit and to be mature and to be spiritual is to live in that place,

Christ for me, His righteousness as my righteousness, all of the things, and to live there and go more deep there, to go deeper there,

I should say. That's better English. So that's what I think we want to talk about now. We've at least introduced some, hey, maybe maturity and maybe meat and solid food doesn't simply mean what we do.

So let's talk about the better way. What would we say, John? Let's offer some other thoughts here on what is the solid food, what is the meat of the

Word, and what exactly are we growing deeper in? Jon Moffitt Yeah. I think it's interesting in Hebrews 5 of how he kind of equates where maturity leads, not that everyone should teach, but in essence, everyone kind of does.

Because we were talking about this earlier about kind of the outflow of how being a disciple of Christ works, right?

You have teachers and preachers who are then giving the truth of Christ to the congregation, and then you have the older men and women who are then now teaching the younger men and who the parents are teaching their children.

So he says, Hebrews 5, 12, for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the basic principles of the oracles.

In other words, their understanding of Christ and the representation of Christ is so elementary, they should be now passing it on, and they're not, and so he's got to come back and start that over again.

Where it's interesting here, he doesn't point to obedience as the issue. He's pointing to their awareness of Christ.

Justin Perdue And their understanding. Jon Moffitt Yeah, and the oracles of God or the promises of God. Then people say, well, you guys are more concerned about head knowledge and your obedience.

Listen, obedience always comes from what we know is true of Christ. You can't follow

Christ if you don't know who he is and what he is and what he's done, right? It is generally true that right thinking produces right living and that doctrine drives devotion.

Justin Perdue Oh, yeah. Jon Moffitt It just does. Justin Perdue And I'll use this other passage. Jon Moffitt It doesn't work the other way.

Justin Perdue That's right. So Paul is expressing to us what the new heavens and the new earth is going to be like, and he makes this really important statement that I just find encouraging.

So if we're going to talk about the meat of the Word or the deep and wonderful things of God, Ephesians 2 .7,

he says, so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ.

So we're going to be raised from the grave. We're going to spend forever with him in all of eternity with our

Father. And what is he going to be doing there? He's going to be showing us further and further without end the depths of his grace.

So that sounds like beyond elementary, right? That sounds like before beginning, but never moving on from.

Justin Perdue We're going to be plumbing the depths of Christ for us and God's mercy and grace to us forever and ever. Jon Moffitt That's right.

Justin Perdue And we're never going to hit bottom. Jon Moffitt Yeah. I think you also can't miss when Paul's talking to the

Corinthians and he says, look, I want to come make known to you Christ and him crucified and nothing else, right? Justin Perdue That's the only thing

I knew about you. Jon Moffitt That's right. Justin Perdue The saints in Rome, I'm here to come preach the gospel to you.

Jon Moffitt That's right. That's right. Yeah. And this is because if you think about it, the hope, like, all right,

Justin, we are known as little Christs. The other title that we receive in scripture is disciple of Jesus or slave of Jesus, servant of Jesus, right?

These are the titles. So it is interesting that, I mean, even just if you understand this, like etymology of what a disciple is just from ancient times, it means that they are the learner of a religious or philosophical teacher.

And so the point of our life is to be learning of Christ for the rest of it.

But the Great Commission does say to observe all that I have commanded. So we're not saying this does not equate to the observation of what you learn.

Jon Moffitt Oh, for sure. Justin Perdue But it's learning of Christ that once you learn of Christ, the observation comes.

Jon Moffitt So I mean, what you're saying effectively, to start, is that to become more mature and to feed on solid food and the meat of the word is really to go deeper into Christ and the gospel.

I mean, to start, it's like to grow in our understanding of him, his person, his work in our place.

And then I'll even say it this way, too. Not only who he is for us, but to grow more deeply into his affection for us and what we are in effect to him.

He loves us. I mean, this is why Paul prays in Ephesians 3 that people would be strengthened in their inner man so that they might understand what?

The height, the depth, the length, and the breadth of the love of Christ for them. I mean, yeah, that's a significant thing.

That's Paul's prayer for the saints in Ephesus, that they would be strengthened in their inner man. That sounds like maturity language.

That sounds like solid food. It sounds like meat. I'm praying for you to be strengthened so that you might what?

Know how Christ loves you. And that's a big deal. I mean, so that's the first thing that we would maybe say.

You were talking about titles for Christians. The most common way that we are referred to in one sense in the

New Testament is when how many times the apostles say, you are in him, in him, right?

And so what is that? We've already alluded to it. It's our union with Christ. So that's another way.

We want to grow in maturity. We want to eat meat and solid food. Let's go more deeply into our understanding of our union with the

Lord Jesus that is a vital union, and it's a mystical one. Yes, we just said it.

It's true. This is a supernatural union between us and the Lord Jesus Christ that we are in him.

Our lives are hidden in him. He's our representative. Everything that's his is ours. His spirit has taken up residence within us.

Again, I'm preaching Roman, so things go back to Romans in my brain. It's Roman 6 stuff.

It's that we've been baptized into him, right? His death is our death. We've been raised with him to walk in newness of life, and so we've been justified from sin's guilt.

We've been set free from its dominion, and we've become obedient from the heart. This will happen where we will be transformed and changed and sanctified because we've been united to the

Lord Jesus Christ. This is what keeps us actually from just running off into sin. Should we sin all the more that grace may abound?

By no means. Why? Because we've been united to Christ. So we grow in our understanding of our union with the

Lord Jesus Christ unto maturity. That sounds like the apostles. We quote it a lot, but I think it's helpful in this conversation.

This is Ephesians 4. I mean, that's exactly where my brain was going. He's describing the perfect church that's a sinful church of what a mature church looks like.

He says, until we all attain the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the

Son of God. So he's like, this is the point of the work of the preachers, teachers, and evangelists in a congregation.

The Holy Spirit empowers them. They teach the body. What are they teaching the body? They're teaching the body about the unity of their faith, so we are one in Christ.

Secondly, about the knowledge of the Son of God, meaning Jesus. Right? To mature manhood, to the measures of the statures of the fullness of Christ.

So this whole thing is about faith, our union in Christ with each other, and then about Jesus as the

Son of God into the fullness of who Christ is. This is so good. Then he says, so that, why do we want to get to this point?

So that we may no longer be children. What? Children drink milk, toss to and fro, by the way, they don't care about what we've been talking about.

That's right. By every wind of doctrine, by cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. So we'll get into this in a minute about how one eats meat.

We'll do this in a minute. But I think the argument being, we've already been in four different books now, that meat is associated to the knowledge of Christ for us.

I think that's the way I would say it. Of course. The person and work of Christ on behalf of the believer. This is the meat of the word.

Hey guys, real quick. Some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions. So where do you go?

How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the

Theocast community. We're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there and you can share it and ask questions.

You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. Yes. Well, and you're in Ephesians, Ephesians four.

What's a phrase that Paul uses at multiple points in Ephesians? He talks about the mystery of Christ.

That's right. Yeah. He uses that in other books too. Even in talking about understanding the

Son of God, we're growing more deeply. So here we go. Meat, solid food, maturity.

We're growing more deeply into our understanding of the mystery of Christ. Well, brothers, what is the mystery of Christ exactly?

Glad you asked. I mean, this is like the early verses of Romans again. Like when Paul talks about, I've been called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God's gospel that pertains to his

Son. So the gospel is about his Son who descended from David according to the flesh.

And then he is testified to be the Son of God, empowered his resurrection by the Holy Spirit. So there's all of this there.

And we could talk for multiple podcasts about what it means that Jesus descended from David according to the flesh, but yet he is

God testified to be the Son of God, empowered his resurrection by the Holy Spirit. But the mystery of Christ is just this.

It's the whole story and arc of Scripture that beginning from the fall, the promise of the

Redeemer, and effectively the rest of the whole Bible is the unfolding of the accomplishment of that promise that there's going to come one who's going to crush the serpent's head.

And so in one sense, the Scripture is the story of the mystery of Christ and how he will come to save us and make all things right and new.

And so as we grow in our understanding of that mystery and that wonder that is

Christ, the plan of God, we're going to be matured. We're eating solid food when we grow in our understanding of these things and how really, again,

Jesus said this, John 5, Luke 24, that the Bible's about him. You will grow in your maturity, in your understanding, and dare

I say, in your holiness as you begin to see how we search the

Scriptures thinking that in them we find eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about Jesus. We do find eternal life in the

Scriptures for one reason, because they bear witness about Christ. And Moses wrote about Christ.

And beginning with the law and the prophets and the Psalms and everything, Jesus explains to the disciples everything that was written about him.

So as we grow in all these ways, we're eating solid food, we're eating meat, we will be matured.

So we've hit on several big things, growing deeper in our understanding of the gospel, growing deeper in our understanding of our union with Christ, growing deeper in our understanding of the mystery of Christ.

Those are good. All right, I'm going to give you the choice, John. Do you want to talk about law and gospel? Because I think that's important.

Or do you want to talk about the church and means of grace and our role in the church? We could go a number of different ways. Yeah, I just want to add a little capstone on what you were saying.

Or option C. Option C is that you could do what you're about to do. Yeah, that works.

We have endless options here, or at least until we run out of alphabet. The Colossians 2 .6,

this is not a throwaway phrase. When we're talking about development in our relationship to God, in our sanctification and growing, he says, therefore, as you received

Christ Jesus, so walk in him. So to walk would mean that you have gone from birth to now.

How did we receive Christ? We received him by means of the gospel being proclaimed to us and by faith in that gospel.

You can't say the meat of the word now switches because he's telling you that's how you live. He's not saying to walk in milk.

It can't mean that. Rooted and built up in him and established in the faith.

This sounds like deep, rooted, meaty kind of language, just as you were taught abounding in Thanksgiving.

And I think what's interesting is that he gives you the counter of this, which is, I want you to pay attention that the counter of this is not action.

It's actually knowledge. Listen to this. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy, empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

So Paul's conclusion is that the way in which we walk is this deep understanding of the person and work of Christ on our behalf.

From that, I always quote this, but it's just one more passage of 2

Peter 1. How does he begin in verse 3? Everything has been granted to you by his divine sovereign power so that you have nothing to worry about.

From that is where he goes, because of this, that's where the good works come from, so that you aren't ineffective and unfruitful.

So I always walk it backwards. If someone is trapped in sin or not effectively loving their brother and loving

God, it's not that they need more meat as far as being told how to obey more.

What to do or not to do. You actually took your eyes off of Christ.

That's what ended up happening, because he says you've forgotten. You've been cleansed. Right. I really appreciate it.

We've said this a couple of times, but I appreciate how you drew out again from the text that the contrast is not between milk and immaturity and then doing things.

The contrast is actually between immaturity and understanding. I'll just go ahead and say this, because I think, golly, how many times have

I heard this in my life? So often, multiple things.

I grew up in a context, man, where doctrine was bad. That's right. Because doctrine divides.

But then there's always this fear. It's like, it doesn't matter what you believe, it matters what you do. People take

James and other things out of context. It's the Roman Catholic faith working through love kind of stuff. It's all that.

But it's like, well, head knowledge and doctrine, this stuff, it's not useful.

It's not fruitful. It doesn't really matter for people. We just get puffed up. People take that out of context, too.

And then dead orthodoxy. That's where I was going, ultimately. There is always this fear. We're a

Reformed podcast. We're Reformed guys, and we're confessionalists. One of the pitfalls that has existed in confessional

Reformed Christianity is dead orthodoxy. You can become so hyper -focused on right doctrine, and there's not a lot of life in it.

There's not a lot of vitality to the thing. Okay, fair criticism. Fair pushback. But to say that that's possible to fall off the other side of the horse is a terrible argument against what we're saying.

To say that this could be done badly is never an argument against sound doctrine. And it is incontrovertible.

You've said it. I've said it already today. That right living will be driven by right doctrine, period.

And I'll put it this way. Is it possible for dead orthodoxy to exist?

Sure. But I would say it is impossible for real Christian maturity to exist apart from sound doctrine.

Why? The reason I say that is because if you have sound doctrine that then drives your living, there is a rightness and a goodness to that.

You could live, according to law keeping, you could live rightly.

But if your doctrine is bad, all of your right living is accidental. And it might not be

Christian at all, because there are Muslims and Mormons, and go down to the

Kingdom Hall. There are all kinds of places that you can go that don't even believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ, who will put us all to shame with their morality. So if that's what you're after, again, we have to keep these things in right relationship.

Doctrine drives devotion. Right doctrine, right understanding drives right living. Can that be jacked up in a sinful world?

Sure. But that's not an argument against why we should preach and emphasize sound doctrine.

We emphasize sound doctrine and we herald Jesus Christ. I think where dead orthodoxy comes, John, is when we get so geeked up about doctrine holistically and we lose sight of the fact that the thrust of everything we're doing is to herald and extol the excellencies of Jesus Christ for sinners.

Where that is done, there is life, period. Where Christ is preached and where Christ is held out constantly as our only hope, our only righteousness, and as our life, there will be vitality.

I would say, historically speaking, what was missing in these churches is the vitality of the gospel.

To preach Christ for you was not the mistake they were making. That was not the mistake they were making.

No, it was majoring on just doctrine for doctrine's sake.

And that's not what we're saying at all. Just to try to keep us on track reasonably, I think we should talk about where maturity comes from or where the meat comes from.

Great. We've talked about union with Christ and the mystery of Christ. We've talked about the gospel. Related to that is we'll grow in our understanding of the law and the gospel and how we shouldn't collapse those two things.

I'm going to trust some of the work we've done in other podcasts where we see the law as good and we understand on the one hand we can't keep it for righteousness, but then on the other hand, we look to it in the

Lord Jesus Christ as the wonderful thing that it is, and we seek to live in conformity to it. We know what righteousness looks like because of the law.

We know what's good for our neighbor because of the law. And we say, man, we delight in your law, Father. It's good.

And because Christ has rescued me from its condemnation, I am now in freedom and grace and joy and gratitude.

I'm going to seek to live that way. That's maturity to grow in our understanding of the law and the gospel.

Let's talk about the church, John, and let's talk about our role in the church, and let's talk about the means of grace.

This is really how, when the rubber meets the road, this is how we grow.

This is so counterintuitive to the modern Christian American here. It sounds insane.

That's right. I think it's interesting, even from the concept of discipleship, when you look at how it's being projected, it's not an individualistic pursuit.

You even have it where Jesus is talking about how you don't mature yourself.

You're actually being matured by somebody else, which I think is fascinating. So, go into all the world and preach the gospel, then you're making a disciple and teaching them to observe all things.

Well, the first thing that the evil one does is he isolates us and then convinces us, we just need a little guidance, but we can do this on our own.

And maturity comes from self -discipline. We don't want to use self -difficulty because that's just not a very spiritual way of saying it, so we'll do this instead.

That sounds carnal. We'll call it spiritual discipline. Spiritual discipline equates to maturity.

And you're not going to find that in Scripture. As crazy as you think I may sound right now, and you're going to try and flip it, you will not find spiritual.

Now, Paul says that he disciplines himself. Well, that's the result of his maturity.

Those who are mature, Justin, discipline themselves. Isn't that fascinating? Of course. Those who are mature discipline themselves, but they don't discipline themselves to be mature, which is fascinating to me.

We turn it upside down. We always put the cart before the horse and invert relationships. That's what we do.

So how is it that newborn believers grow in the sufficiency of Christ? It's by his means through his church.

So he has one organization that provides a means, which is the preaching and teaching of the Word, the means of grace.

And from that, people grow. They grow up into Christ, into maturity.

As they grow, their faith produces in them discipline to say no to the flesh and say yes to the

Spirit. To me, Justin, it's refreshing to know that our Father knew our frail weakness.

Even going back to Colossians 2, it says, you think discipline is going to produce in you this maturity and this obedience, but it isn't.

Then he says, look to Christ. How does someone who's reading Paul's letter look to Christ?

They don't have their own Bibles. They don't even have education to figure that stuff out.

This is why Paul's like, you have to have elders who know the Word, who dedicate themselves to the Word, because they're the ones,

Ephesians 4, who are equipping you with the Word. Justin Perdue That's right. That's right.

I'll just throw this in here to your lecture. If you guys haven't heard it, go to either the app or the GRN website and listen to Justin's lecture on confessionalism.

Because what we are not saying is the elders become mini -popes. They don't.

Elders must submit to Scripture, and that's where we hand over a confession saying, this is what we're asking you to submit to.

So, as you let the elders guide you, this is our understanding of the Bible. This is our understanding, and it's examinable. It's test worthy.

Justin Perdue Exactly. I'm going to say this, and I'm probably going to tweet this after we get done. Maybe. We'll see how people react.

Holiness is a community project. Justin Perdue Amen. Justin Perdue Right? Justin Perdue Ephesians 4. I don't know how you argue with that.

Justin Perdue Holiness is a community project. Sanctification is a community project. We talk often about how the

Christian life is inherently corporate. It's personal, but it's never private. It's corporate, and how

Christian devotion is church -shaped if you read the New Testament. So, that's where I'm coming from.

Holiness is a community project. This is not something that we will do on our own, but as being part of a local church, by virtue of being a part of a local church where Christ is preached, where we come to His table, where baptism is administered, where we gather, and we sing, and we exhort, and build one another up in the faith by singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

Where we come, and we pray in Jesus' name to the Father together. We praise

Him. We thank Him. We confess our sins. We ask Him for what we need. As we're doing all this stuff as a gathered church week over week over week over week, and we live life in the fellowship of those saints, holiness is a fruit of all that, and the

Lord does it ultimately. You want imperatives.

I know this sounds insane, too, and I don't care because we all have legal frames, and so we can only often hear things in a legalistic sense, like check the box.

That's just how we think about this. Sadly, few of us have been taught about what the local church even is.

Few of us have been taught rightly about what corporate worship is and why we need it, so people don't even know how to answer the question, what do we do when we worship?

People don't even know how to answer the question, why do we need the church? I didn't know how to answer it for the longest time, but when you begin to have some of these categories, what

I'm about to say starts to make sense. If you want an imperative for holiness, number one, show up to your local church every

Sunday. Show up to your local church every

Sunday. If you want to be holy and you want to be godly, that is priority one without question.

Show up there week over week, get to know those people, lock arms with those people, love your pastors, sit under the word, come to the table, observe baptism, sing and pray, and live life with those people for decades.

Let's talk about how that's gone, because the Lord will keep his promises, he will sanctify us via our union with Christ, and he will use his church and the means of grace that he's given us to produce maturity and holiness in our lives.

I'm confident of that, but isn't the Lord good? Isn't he good?

Can I jump in on that? This is the plan. You and I would agree that in history, guys like Martin Luther, there have been times where people get alone with the word and God develops in them and matures them and really brings out from that mature godly people.

I've heard people talk about this, like, well, this is how I had this fervor for God's word, I could never put it down, and I was just hungry for it, and basically they're a learner.

And God blessed that and used that, and that's fine, God's used a lot of things, but there's a difference between God using something and the guarantee of the word.

Like, God guarantees you this, like, this isn't like, oh, it might happen. He says it will happen.

If you do what I tell you, it will happen. Justin Perdue Amen, and I think, yeah, does the

Lord work through individuals at points in church history? Undebatably so.

John, even for you and me, just to be brief on this, you and I are both learner types.

We read a lot and we study, and that's good. It helps us in our ministry, but you know what

I trust, brother? In terms of, like, our local church, I have seen so much fruit, and this is not just true of CBC, this is true of other gospel preaching churches.

I have seen so much fruit born over the last five, six, seven years that, like, in terms of maturity, growth, understanding, groundedness, love, joy, charity, patience, right, a hatred of sin, like, confession of sin, like, all of these things have happened repeatedly in the lives of our people.

Why? Not because of individual pursuits, but it's because of the preaching of Jesus and the means of grace in the church.

Now, has the Lord used me or some of the other elders of our church in our study, you know, in the preaching of the

Scriptures or in the teaching of doctrine? Sure. I'm not pitting the two against each other, but it's ultimately the study, the individual study, to use the example of Martin Luther or somebody else, the individual study ends up bearing fruit in the local church through the teaching and the proclamation of Jesus.

I would even say that's our prayer with Theocastic. If you're going to benefit from us, the fruit of that, well, we're not going to benefit from it.

We don't know you unless you're in our church, but your church and the believers around you should benefit from that.

This is a complicated thing where it's like, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use other resources outside of your local elders and pastors.

It's not saying that at all. You should, and they're encouraging to receive from the saints from all time is encouragement.

But there's a difference between how a believer is sustained and grows is guaranteed according to God's method.

And we can use other means for encouragement and learning and growing in knowledge.

We were even talking about this, Justin, about how even education is changing these days, where it used to be you had to go to a seminary that had a library because that's where all the books were.

And that's kind of why you had to go there and then have guys teach you. And a lot of people are learning just because of the internet, which is an evil and good thing at the same time.

Anyways, there's a lot more we could say. Did you have one last statement before we close it down? No, I'm putting a bow on the conversation.

We're shutting this thing down. I mean, the church is God's plan to accomplish the Great Commission, and the church is

God's plan to accomplish holiness and godliness in the lives of His people. And that sounds counterintuitive to us, but it's biblical.

And search the scriptures, and I think that you'll see that that's true. And so I hope this has been freeing for people to listen to.

And as they think about maturity and growing and solid food and meat and all that, yes, obedience and holiness, amen.

But those things will be produced by something upstream, actually. And it's all of the things that we've been talking about today that center on Jesus for us.

Justin Perdue Amen, amen. Well, thank you for listening. And if you've been encouraged and you want to support what we're doing, you can do that in multiple ways.

Leaving us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app or following us on YouTube. Or you can come over and support us on the community.

Justin and I are fervently working on some new writing opportunities and new education materials.

So your support helps us reach more people with rest in Christ. Justin, thank you for your time, my friend.

I was thoroughly encouraged. It was good to be here with you. It was good to see you a couple of weeks ago and hope to see you soon.

And we may, I'll just announce this here, we may, may be having a small little event coming up next year.

Just a tiny one. As soon as we get it locked down, we'll let you know. I'll just throw that out there. Don't you like how

I do that? Justin Perdue Sure. Oh yeah. Just shot across the bell, John. Justin Perdue All right. Thank you guys.

Hopefully you were encouraged and not discouraged. We'll see you hopefully in God's glorious new heavens and new earth.

But if not, we'll have another episode for you next week. Transcribed by https://otter .ai