The Authentic Gospel

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. And with me today, this morning, most every day,

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays and Sundays, Austin Hobbs. Austin, welcome back to the show. Howdy, good to be back. He said howdy because Texas A &M via Mississippi.

Did they say howdy in Mississippi? They do, yeah. They say howdy in Mississippi. What was your favorite part about the education at Reformed Seminary Jackson?

Yeah, I think my favorite part of it was, I think it was a close -knit campus. We were like a massive school.

And so you really got to know the professors because I think at larger institutions, these professors, they have like hundreds of students to teach.

And they really just don't have time to get to know you personally. But at RTS, there's a lot of experts and scholars in their field.

And yet they're very pastoral men. I mean, all those people have been pastors. And so I've got to go over their houses and just spend time with their families and spend time in their office.

And they make time for you. What's J .B. Fesco's house like? J .B. Fesco's house? Oh, he has books all over the house.

Like bookshelves everywhere. Now they have a little baby dog. So he has three kids.

They're all very sweet. And one's in college now. And I remember I was with J .B. speaking at the pactum.

I think it was two years ago, two pactums ago. I know you were there just this last year. And it was my turn to go do the plenary address.

I think J .B. was just before me. And he looked at me and said, give him heaven. Give him heaven.

He has a great sense of humor. He always, a cool thing about Dr. Fesco is that in class, he'd always talk about his family, always find a way to talk about something funny in his family.

And so you can just tell he deeply loves his family. And so, I mean, those professors like Dr. Fesco, they're people you want to admire and to walk in their footsteps.

And so I really appreciate that about him. Sounds good. Well, today on the show, we're going to be talking about belief, trust.

What is saving faith? But before we do that, we are now live on Tuesdays and Thursdays, besides this

Wednesday show. So in light of my sickness last year, just went down to one show a week.

And now we're ramping that back up. Pretty soon we'll have Mondays and Fridays as well. And so we are back on, you want to make sure you get the podcast on Spotify or on iTunes, tell your friends, your frenemies, your enemies, et cetera.

I wanted to talk about faith today because I found a booklet called The Authentic Gospel by Jeffrey E.

Wilson. And you probably noticed these booklets and you've recognized them because they're from Banner of Truth.

And I want to say in terms of publishers, don't you think Banner of Truth is one of the greatest Christian publishers in the last generation?

Absolutely. Very reliable. You know, definitely, you know, it gives you, it posts a lot of Puritan paperbacks, very helpful resources for sure.

So I love Banner, John Owen, 16 volume, et cetera. And so with a couple exceptions, we love

Banner. Yeah, for sure. I saw the guys at Banner bookstore at the Shepherd's Conference a few years ago.

And I kind of got after them in a fun way, Austin, about selling Richard Baxter stuff.

Oh, yeah. And I said, I just love everything. I mean, I could basically say carte blanche to someone at the church, buy anything you want on Banner of Truth, right?

Some publishers, maybe Moody, you don't buy everything. IVP, you don't buy everything. But Banner, you could buy almost everything except Richard Baxter.

And then now, the authentic gospel. Give us an overview of why and when you think this was written.

First, when, and then lead into the why, Austin. Right, so this book was written in 1990.

And maybe you might recall that this was kind of within like the firestorm of the debate between free grace theology at DTS versus more

Lordship salvation theology for on the Master's Seminary. So those are two competing views.

One view, more of the free grace side. Zane Hodges were saying that salvation is a free gift.

You receive it by faith alone. But discipleship is optional, sanctification is optional.

You can be saved without being sanctified. You can be saved without becoming a disciple. But if you want rewards in heaven, then you have to commit to Jesus and follow him and be his disciple so you can have heavenly rewards.

And so this book is trying to respond to that way of thinking. And so that's what we're getting into today.

Well, it's interesting because when we see problems in theology or evangelicalism, isn't it so true,

Austin, that sometimes the pendulum will swing a little bit too far, right?

So biblical truth is at 6 p .m. on a clock and we see an error at 5 p .m.

We try to correct it back to six, but we almost go a little too far and end up going to 7 p .m.

And so obviously MacArthur was right in analyzing a bunch of people who said they believed in Jesus.

They professed Christ, right? 60s generation of people growing up and then now it's older.

They're in the 70s, 80s, and now 90s. And there are people saying they're Christians and they don't really seem to be.

In terms of fruit and evidence in their life. And so John rightly analyzed the problem.

And then there's a lot of other people that came along besides John MacArthur and others who wanted to try to get the five o 'clock back to six o 'clock.

And I think that's why this booklet was written, The Authentic Gospel by Jeffrey Wilson. And he says, it has been called cheap or easy gospel resulting in what is termed easy believism.

Tragically, it is the gospel that is being presented today in many churches by many missionaries and in much

Christian literature. Basically this gospel states that in order to be saved, this is important, a person must simply believe in, trust in, receive, or accept

Jesus as his personal savior or believe that he died for his sins personally or receive his free gift of eternal life.

Now let's stop there. Doesn't that sound good? That sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty biblical. I start thinking of Romans chapter 10, for instance, if you call on the

Lord, you will be saved. I think of John chapter three, remember Jesus with Nicodemus, that great passage alluding to Numbers, I believe chapter 21.

And here these disobedient Israelites, they're to look up on this snake, this unclean thing that Moses was told by God to make.

And if they simply look, right? That's all they have to do is look, take God at his word and look.

So is there anything wrong with when you hear the claims of Christ, his promises, his person, his work, his death, burial, resurrection, his sin bearing, that the response that we tell unbelievers is believe in, trust in, receive, and accept?

No, there's nothing wrong with that at all. I mean, that's exactly what Paul says in Romans chapter three, verse 23 and 24.

He says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. So that seems fairly biblical there.

I think it does. Well, before I dive into this any further, this booklet, let's just think about sola fide a little bit.

Sola fide. And if you think about F -I -D, fidelity, it would be faithfulness, but here it's faith.

Faith alone. The response to the work of Christ should be faith alone.

Why do we put the alone in there? Why is it alone so important? What are we trying to protect against,

Austin? Yeah, we want to protect against this idea that we're justified by faith and works. That's where Reformers were responding to, the

Roman Catholic Church. They don't teach Pelagianism, like this idea that you're saved by works alone, but they have an idea of grace.

Grace is infused within you, but you have to cooperate that. You're justified by faith working through love, according to Rome.

So we say we're saved by faith alone to exclude our works in that and to include

Christ's own works in our stead, that his perfect righteousness is given to us as a free gift.

His atoning death is given to us. He has died for us. So it's all of Christ. The reason why we're righteous before God is not from anything internally within us, but simply the righteousness of Christ given to us, imputed to us as a free gift.

So faith is simply the instrument by which we receive the righteousness of Christ.

A non -meritorious instrument, right? Exactly, that's right. That we're receiving. Right, so let's talk a little bit more before we dive into this.

And that is categories, Austin, justification and sanctification. Do we not teach and believe and want you viewers and listeners to believe that as a

Christian, holy living is important? Discipleship is important. Walking even by faith as a

Christian is important. And then you want to kill sin. We call that mortification. And then we want to live unto righteousness.

And so we affirm that, do we not? We do affirm that, absolutely. Why is it important to have those categories of justification and sanctification separate, but one must follow the other?

Right, yeah. So we need to keep them distinct so as to remove any notion that the fruit we bear in sanctification somehow saves us in the end.

And also we need to keep them joined together because they're both benefits of our union with the resurrected

Christ. And here's the thing, Mike, justification results in sanctification because justification declares us righteous and we are worthy of eternal life.

And sanctification is the outworking of that new creation eternal life. It's the already eschological life.

But that begins, ultimately has to be started by justification by being declared righteous and worthy of eternal life.

So what we are saying here at No Compromise Radio, holy living for Christians is important to live in light of the risen savior,

Christ, not only for pardon, but Christ for power. You don't forsake sin in order to come to Christ.

But when you do come to Christ and you're united through faith in Christ, you will begin to deny self.

You'll begin to obey God. You'll begin to follow him. You'll begin to live a life of repentance.

So holy living is important. Absolutely essential. So this booklet says this,

Austin, this easy gospel, and it has easy in quotation marks, is devoid of any demand for repentance, whereby now he just finds repentance, whereby the individual must turn from his sins and deny himself as he comes to Christ for salvation.

It likewise, the easy gospel is devoid of any demand on the individual to commit himself to Jesus Christ as his

Lord with a sincere desire to follow and obey him completely.

Comments. You know, repentance is necessary. We will submit to Jesus as our

Lord. Absolutely necessary. We want to follow him, mortify our flesh, to commit ourselves to Jesus holy.

But Mike, that is not the gospel. That is not what saves us. It's not how we first come to Christ.

Because Mike, it's not sound orthodox that we should forsake sin in order to come to Christ. That's the creed back in the

Merit Controversy. And this is exactly, this is what Romans 4 says. It says, and to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

So it's not those, God doesn't count righteous those who make a sincere effort to be ready to be obedient, but it's the ungodly that God counts as righteous.

And that those are the one who simply trust in Christ and believe. Mike Caben -Ruth with Austin Hopps today on No Compromise Radio.

How does this relate, Austin, to the free offer? So we freely offer the good news to unbelievers.

And it is similar to Isaiah chapter 55, verse one, it starts off with H -O exclamation point.

That's kind of nice, ho, ho. Everyone who thirsts, we're talking spiritually here, come to the waters and you who have no money, come, buy and eat, come buy wine and milk, or for you, grape juice, without money and without cost.

We're talking the free offer of the gospel. Is the gospel offered freely if the preacher tells the unbeliever, you know what?

You're going to have to submit. You're going to have to yield. You're going to have to treasure. You're going to have to make Jesus as Lord. You're going to have to obey him.

You're going to have to follow him. You're going to have to count the cost of discipleship. Is that a free offer then? I mean, what we've seen in Isaiah 55 is a free offer.

So we need to hold to that and believe in that, right? So when we are talking to unbelievers, of course, we tell them to believe and trust, receive, rest.

But do we ever have to tell them, you have to stop sinning in order to come to Christ, right?

We'll talk about repentance here in a minute, but the way he described it, he's talked about repentance where he must turn from his sins and deny himself as he comes.

Now, if that means as I believe and I'm coming to Christ and as a fruit of faith,

I'm going to begin to repent. I don't mind that, but I don't think he's saying that. Do you? No, no. He's saying it has to precede ultimately justification, it would seem.

So what we're talking about today is when you see a problem in evangelicalism, theology problem, let's try to make sure we don't go too far with the solution.

And so when people add law to the gospel, we call them gnomists.

Gnome is law. Or if they say, you know what, you come to Christ and you don't have to worry about sanctified living and you just live lawlessly, anti -gnomism.

The solution for both of those is not overboard the opposite way or underboard the opposite way, is to go back again to the thing that's of first importance.

I delivered you as a first importance. Paul was using language, I'm sure you know. I'm passing this on.

It's like a tradition. It's a family thing I'm passing on. It's so valuable, important. I want to make sure

I pass that baton. If I ever ran in a race and we were running, I would not let go of the baton until you took it from me, right?

Same thing with communion. When we're serving communion, I don't let go of it when

I'm handing it to you until you take it from me. So what we don't want to do is overemphasize a truth.

We want to go right back to the pure gospel. The gospel that said promises are in Jesus, freely offered.

You do not have to forsake sin in order to come to Christ because Jesus dies for the ungodly people.

Isn't that what we're saying? Absolutely, for sure. All right. Here's what the book goes on to say.

In fact, commitment is inherent in the meaning of faith. This is Jeffrey Wilson.

Commitment is inherent in the meaning of faith. The Greek word for believe, pastuo, can be translated into English as believe, commit and trust, trust.

Thayer's Greek English lexicon gives one general definition of pastuo as to give oneself up to in faith.

I didn't misspeak. To give oneself up to in faith. With reference to belief in Christ in particular, it notes that obedience to Christ is inherent in the definition.

Is obedience to Christ inherent in saving faith, knowledge, assent, trust, obedience? No, no,

I think it's definitely outside the bounds of what we believe as Reformed people. We believe that the essence of faith is resting and receiving

Christ for all of his benefits. Of course, part of those benefits is sanctification. So it does result in commitment to Christ and obedience to him as a fruit of faith, but not of the essence of faith.

It's very essential to keep distinct. We have no problem with saying there's fruit in evidence because that's the language that we use as Reformed people, fruit in evidence.

And when he says, the scriptures give many examples of practical holiness. They include love for and devotion to God's word, love to fellow

Christians and for all men, control of fleshly desires, nonconformity to the world's mindset, modesty of life, sacrificial giving, et cetera.

We don't deny those things. We're just trying to say, that's what Christians do. You don't have to do that in order to become a

Christian. Is that what we're saying? Right, exactly, exactly. So if you were to evangelize someone and they were living with some person, they were sexual sinners, would you tell them,

Austin, if they came to you and they said, I just am enslaved to this sin. I'm living with my girlfriend. I can't stop the sexual sin.

I've tried before, but I just seem enslaved to it. Do I have to stop this in order to become a

Christian? Because I think I need to be reconciled to God. What do you tell them? Yeah, I mean, you're right. You need to be reconciled to God that this sin offends

God. It displeases him. You're under his wrath and condemnation. But to escape his wrath and condemnation, the way to do that is not by simply giving up that sin, because that's moralism.

Your works cannot atone for that sin that you've already committed. But you need Christ, you need his substitutionary death for that sin, his free gift of righteousness.

He was always sexually perfect. He was always righteous and holy. You need that as a gift. So yes, you should stop sleeping with your girlfriend, but first you have to see your sin that it's offends

God, that you cannot atone for it. Only Christ can save you from that sin. Amen.

We're talking today about the free offer of the gospel. We're talking about when we preach the gospel to people, the response that we say that this is what you must do should be things like believe and trust and rest and receive, accept.

He is right when he says, untold millions around the world who have made a simple faith decision have lived or are living in blatant disobedience to God's word.

That's true. Lots of people say, I'm a Christian and all I have to do is think about Luke chapter eight and the parable of the sower or soils, depending on your point of view.

And some people hear the word, it says, I believe in Luke 8, 13, and they receive the word with great joy. They're so happy to hear the word.

It's like Herod, you know, come back, Paul, I need to keep hearing you and come back, Jesus, I wanna hear you more often.

But they fall away because it's temporary faith. It's a fake faith. We believe and we teach here at this church and through No Compromise Radio.

There's a demonic faith, it doesn't save. There's a spurious faith. There's a faith that is less than saving, but saving faith includes three elements, knowledge, assent, and trust.

Not following, not obedience, not forsaking sin, knowledge, assent, and trust.

Do you remember the Latin words for those? I bet you do. Knowledge is notitia, assent is assensus, and faith is fiducia.

There you go. Or trust, yeah, fiducia. Excellent. So let's go back to this repentance portion, Austin, because people see the words repent, repent and believe.

Is it okay ever to say to an unbeliever, repent? Oh, absolutely, yeah, you should, yeah. Is there a difference between repentance and the fruits of repentance?

I think there is, for sure. The fruit of repentance would be the following after Jesus, his commands, his living a life worthy of him, but that doesn't come before faith.

We can't live a life worthy of Christ without faith. It's impossible to please God apart from faith.

Okay, good. This is like a little catechesis here on repentance. Why don't we call it sola metanoia, faith?

I mean, repentance, only repentance. Why don't we call it sola fide? What are we after there?

We wanna make sure that God does not justify us based upon some internal transformation that has occurred within us.

We wanna uphold what Paul says in Romans 4, that God justifies the ungodly. He doesn't justify those who sincerely want to follow

Jesus or who are trying to be obedient, who are trying to follow and be sincere, but he justifies the ungodly.

So Christ alone, he is the source of our salvation. He is the only way we can be saved before God.

Nothing that we have done, but simply we receive him by faith alone. So with repentance, there are two schools of thought.

One school of thought is when we call unbelievers to respond to the good news of Jesus, the risen savior, the sin bearer, that we tell them to repent and believe.

And that school of thought says repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin, right?

Because how could you in time be a repentant unbeliever or a believing unrepentant?

And so thinking about sin rightly and turning to the savior and believing in him.

And so they would say simultaneously in time happens. And so that's one school of thought.

And if you say faith, you mean repentance. If you say repentance, you mean faith. You say apart, you mean the whole.

Remember what figure of speech that is? Oh, that's a metame, metame, I think it's a synecdoche.

A synecdoche, okay, that's right, that's right. And so the other school of thought is

I'll call it Calvin's school of thought. And that is faith is what we call people to do, to believe.

And that as a fruit of faith, we have repentance. Now there's two sides of the same coin is thinking about in time chronologically.

Calvin's view is thinking more theologically or logically. So to give a different illustration, regeneration in faith, which one proceeds?

Well, in time, they happen at the same time because you have a regenerate unbeliever or a believing unregenerate. No, in time simultaneously, but logically, theologically, which one comes first?

Regeneration. Regeneration, right? Because how can a dead person believe? So this is similar. And so we're telling people to believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ. If you want to say, repent and believe, you can. I don't want you to be thinking repentance means they have to stop sinning in order to come to Christ.

I don't want you to think that way. But if you want to say to them, repent and believe, I have no problem. But I just want you to know theologically, it's fine to say, believe.

I remember, Austin, years ago, people said, well, you know what? The gospel of John, a gospel written so that people might believe, chapter 20, verse 31.

It doesn't have the word repent in it. Oh, really? And so it just only has believe. And then you have people that would say, well, what about the book of Acts?

There's all kinds of stuff there about repentance. And so if you tell people to believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ and don't say you have to repent, would that be okay? Well, I mean, as far as it goes, you know, we had to make sure, along we're saying this is for justification, right?

Yeah. And so often we'll see in Acts chapter 16, verse 31, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. It's okay to say. There's a section of people,

Austin, that if you don't say repent, they think somehow you're watering down the response to the gospel.

And I'm just saying, you can say repent. Obviously it's in the text, but theologically it goes under the fruit of faith.

And so I call people to believe and know that they don't have to forsake their sin in order to come to Christ.

They come to Christ in order to forsake their sin. Exactly, exactly. And that's why Calvin places faith logically prior to repentance because in repentance, we have sorrow, we hate our sin, but why do we hate our sin?

Because we love God. And how can we know we, how can we love God unless God first loved us? We apprehended that by faith.

It's very important to keep that structure. Absolutely. Jeffrey Wilson, in his book, the end of it, it says under the category of summing up heresy, the advocates of this gospel believe that a person is saved by simple faith, according to their definition of faith.

But I'm just saying knowledge, assent, and trust. Here's one of the things I want you to do.

And I know you already do this, dear viewers and listeners. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. Austin, tell us a little bit about a strategy, even that you learned at seminary or you've just learned studying the

Bible. We don't have to come up with anything new. We say to ourselves, oh, that was a problem back in the 1600s.

Here's how they addressed it. What's our strategy with that? Right, right. You know, I think we do need to study church history, how this is a reoccurring problem.

We saw this back in the 1600s with, well, I mean, back even early, even from Augustine and Pelagius.

You know, Augustine emphasized, God's grace alone saves you instead of like you alone working.

So we see that, then we see in the course of the 16th century with the reformers and the

Roman Catholics, how we, as reform said, we're saved by grace alone through faith alone because of the righteousness of Christ given to us, imputed to us by God's grace alone.

And 1600s, we see the neonomism controversy and the antinomianism controversy.

Then the 18th century is the marrow controversy and people saying that you have to forsake sin in order to come to Christ. So we have to understand like our debates are not new, but we actually learn from the past and see like other men, other wise men have studied and learned from these things.

And we shouldn't keep repeating mistakes if we don't study history, essentially. So true. And a lot of this talk here, as I've read this booklet, he keeps talking about a false gospel and present the gospel a certain way.

I would even go so far to say, let's think about what the gospel is. Here's who

Jesus is. The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, his person, his promises, his work, prophet, priest, king.

Here's who Jesus is. Here's what he's come to do. That parts the gospel, strictly speaking.

There's no doing. There's no submitting. There's no forsaking. There's no following. There's no obedience in the gospel unless those submissions and obediences are the

Lord Jesus's. So this is all about who Jesus is. So this whole idea about a false gospel,

I actually think DTS, masters, the people that he's writing about here,

I think they all believed in the real gospel. Here's who Jesus is.

Substitutionary atonement that he said, it is finished, erased from the dead. It's what do we tell people to do in light of the gospel?

That's what we're after, are we not? To tell people to believe and to receive. Even John 1, verses 12 and 13, as many as received him.

When I first got saved, I thought that's too easy just to receive. Don't you have to forsake?

Don't you have to commit? Actually in church history, back to Austin's point about studying church history and things aren't new.

It was the Wesleyans in the Arminians that said to unbelievers after presenting them the claims of Christ, the gospel, the good news, they would say to them, you must surrender in order to come to Christ.

You must submit. You must yield. And all those verbs had to do with the person.

How much do I surrender? How much do I submit? How much do I yield? But it was the reformed in church history that said that submission, that submission, surrendering rather, that yielding, perfect thing to tell people once they're

Christians, right? We tell them to do that and repent of your repentance. But to the unbeliever, we want to say things that are called gospel imperatives, not legal imperatives like submit, but a gospel imperative is based on the good news.

What do you do? You receive. You trust. You believe.

That's what your response is. And when you do, obedience will follow because how can the spirit of God dwell in you and you not have a desire to obey?

Isn't that what we're saying? Exactly. Yeah. How can we who have died a sin still live in it? Absolutely. So we've got a minute and 20 to go.

What would you say a summary would be in 60 seconds or less of what we're after today?

Why this show? You know, we want to help out the fact that we are declared righteous by faith alone.

Faith is a resting and receiving of Christ. We simply entrust ourselves to Jesus. We're kind of righteous.

So we don't transform our lives. We don't simply try to commit to follow Jesus in order to be justified, but God justifies us by faith.

And then He necessarily sanctifies us again through our union with the resurrected

Christ. So we will follow Jesus. We will submit to Him. We will hate our sin and grow in holiness, but we need to make sure that doesn't happen before faith.

It subsequently follows faith. Absolutely. So when you have a problem in theology, you don't want to swing too far in the opposite way because now you're compounding the problem.

So the solution for loose living, the solution for legality and Galatians error is the true gospel, simple of first importance.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, did he not in verses three and four, that Christ, the

Messiah died for our sins. He didn't die for his own sins. He died for our sins. And he was buried.

He really died. The wages of sin is death. And then he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures, like Psalm 16.

Mike Avendroth, Austin Hobbs. Welcome to No Compromise Radio. Say goodbye to No Compromise Radio because I just said the wrong thing.