September 6, 2016 Show with Eric C. Redmond on “”SOLI DEO GLORIA: The Apostle Paul’s Declaration that God Deserves 100% of the Glory for our Salvation in His Letter to the Ephesians!”

Program Introduction and the Reformation Theme of Soli Deo Gloria

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

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

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday.

On this sixth day of September 2016, I hope you all had a safe, joyful and God-glorifying Labor Day weekend and that you are now back in the rat race being a salt and light in the world here for the gospel of Jesus Christ and his word and we look forward to hearing from some of you today with your questions for my guest who has returned once again to Iron Sharpens Iron, my friend Eric C. Redmond.

He is Assistant Professor of Bible at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. He is Associate Pastor of Adult Ministries at Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois, and he contributed to the book Glory Road, The Journey of Ten African Americans into Reformed Christianity.

He's also the author of Where Are All the Brothers? Straight Answers to Men's Questions about the Church and also his latest book, which we are addressing again, a series that we started the last time he was on the program.

We started our discussion on his newest book. It's still kind of hot off the press. It's cooled off a little bit, but it's still kind of hot, and it's Ephesians, a 12-week study, and we are going to be theming our program today Soli Deo Gloria, the Apostle Paul's declaration that God deserves 100 of the glory for our salvation in his letter to the Ephesians, and many Roman Catholic apologists accuse us of believing in the teachings of men, the inventions of men, that the Reformers made up the solos of the Reformation, the pillars of the Reformation, which includes Soli Deo Gloria, but that is not the case.

This was something that was taught by the Apostle Paul long before Martin Luther was ever born, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Eric C. Redmond.

Chris, I'm so glad to be back, my brother. You have been a blessing.

Now, was that a Freudian slip? You said, I'm so glad to be black. Is that because you're talking to me?

Yeah, that was one of those slips there. I don't know if it was Freudian.

Well, everything was ordained by him, right? And before we go into our topic at hand, a continuation of our discussion on your commentary on Ephesians, once again, for those of our listeners who are tuning in for the first time, or at least hearing you for the first time, tell us something about Moody Bible Institute, and also tell us something about Calvary Memorial Church.

Moody Bible Institute is one of the longest standing colleges preparing men and women for ministry, especially in the undergraduate program. It also has one of the oldest correspondence, what we would now call distance learning schools, in the country.

It is outstanding in teaching evangelicals. Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois, Todd Wilson is the pastor, Gerard Heathen is the executive assistant, and you should get both of them on the show, Chris, because they also have a book out called The Pastor as Theologian, which you should discuss on the show.

But anyway, I started there as a small group, and I'm having a great time in a very mixed congregation, ethnically, very loving, and very focused on reaching the world for Christ.

Well, tell them that I would love to have them on the program. In fact, I remember I wanted to have them on the program when you first told me about that book, before it even was released, and I remembered that I think I tried to contact them and something fell through the cracks.

I don't remember right now, but I would love to get them on the program, so let them know about that.

I will certainly let them know and encourage them to get on the program, and there's a fall conference coming up, which they probably would want to.

Great, and do you, off the top of your head, know what the conference is specifically about and who the speakers are?

The primary speakers this year include... ...going to be on Beauty, Order, and Mystery. Vincent McCodey is going to be on there. Beth Becker-Jones is one of the speakers also. Of course, Todd and Gerald will be there.

My colleague from Moody, Ernest Gray, who teaches in the Bible Department, is also one of the speakers. And with all the discussion on human sexuality that we're having and trying to make sure that we can explore, it has great significance.

Great. Well, I know that your church website is calvarymemorial .com, so folks can look that up on the internet, calvarymemorial .com. And perhaps just one clarification to make when you were describing Moody about training men and women for the ministry, I don't believe you take the position that women are qualified to be pastors over men in churches, correct?

I do not take that position.

Now, one of the figures that you mentioned who's speaking at Calvary Memorial at this conference is very controversial. Are you speaking about the president of Fuller Theological Seminary?

Yes, a former...

Okay, great. And, well, before we even go into the study of Ephesians that we are primarily going to be talking about, I really want you to summarize Glory Road, which you participated in, the journey of ten African Americans into Reformed Christianity, but basically giving a summary of your own theological journey from your upbringing and, you know, all the way through your salvation and how you eventually became a believer in the doctrines of Sovereign Grace.

Well, brainchild of Anthony Carter, your listeners will be familiar with him and his primary book on being black and Reformed, and he wrote that because for Reformed theology's name, for many reasons in history, and some of them have to do with erroneous theological things, Reformed theology or seeking, and that there are some who have embraced it and are pastors and are professors, etc., etc., and that those who are out there would not feel odd that there could be some sort of central point with which they could begin to identify, so he invited ten of us to journey into Reformed theology.

I've been a believer since I was probably about nine or ten years old. I never had any systematic teaching on Reformed theology. While I was in college, someone introduced me to Ligonier Ministries, and then I read.

Ephesians and the Doctrines of Sovereign Grace

Well, praise God for that, and I think it's very appropriate that we are addressing the book of Ephesians today, and it is, I mean, I'd like to get your opinion on this. I don't understand how a fundamentalist or fundamentalist brethren who believe in a literal interpretation of the Word of God, and they love the Word of God, they believe strongly like we do in the inerrancy of the Word of God, and they read the book of Ephesians.

It is mind-boggling that they do not close the Bible after reading it and say, Hallelujah, I now believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace. I am a Calvinist. They don't do that, and I guess that's largely because God is even the one that needs to enlighten us about everything that's true.

This doesn't come from the brilliance of our own minds. This is something that is also a gift, I believe, to understand these things. Not that those who are Reformed are in some way superior at all, I'm not saying that, because you could have a brilliant Arminian scholar, and you could have the simplest of men, very childlike of men who can understand the basic tenets of what the gospel of sovereign grace is and believe in it, but isn't this one of the books of Scripture that is so clear that we owe 100 of the glory and the thanks and the gratitude and the praise to God alone for our salvation?

Chris, it is so clear in the book of Ephesians. As you said, 100 of our salvation is owed to God. And Chris, to answer your question, I'll tell you two experiences that I've had where people look at the obvious and find some way to get around it.

At another school at which I taught, not at Moody Bible Institute, but somewhere else where I taught at another time, I had colleagues, plural, who looked at Ephesians differently than me, and one specifically thought that the election involved in chapter 1 was corporate, and even tried to argue that by looking at the original languages, quote-unquote, and it had nothing to do with individual election unto salvation, that God was electing the church, but that didn't determine who, in fact, would be saved or how we came unto salvation.

And by making great arguments for it, those impressionable minds sitting under him, some of them were able to buy that, unless God in His mercy had them coming from a Reformed tradition, or later they encountered some other teaching and realized, no, this is God's hand in here clearly throughout the book.

That's one experience. And then at a church which I served many years ago, before I was a senior pastor, I can remember sitting in a young marriage class, and we were going through Ephesians, and we got through Ephesians 2, 1 through 10, and it was so clear that God had saved the praised sinners by interceding in our depravity, and we were His workmanship.

Now, I couldn't understand how anyone could see it differently, but then the rumble came afterwards. People started to say, well, yes, I understand that.

Amen.

And it's amazing how our brethren who are Arminian or even Roman Catholic, who will say, they will tell us, oh, I agree with you that God deserves 100 of the glory and the thanks and the praise. They really can't say that and be logically consistent with their belief system, can they?

No, they cannot. And I know we're going to get into this some, but let's just jump into this. This is the situation that they find themselves in. They want to say God gets all the glory and then want to add comma or comma but and say I.

So here's the situation we have when you get to glory. God, you get all the glory for everything in salvation, but this one little part, I get glorified for all of eternity because I believe. Absolutely no sin.

That's not getting God all the glory. That's reserving a portion of glory for us.

That's right. And, well, we already started the book that you have written in the last time we interviewed you, Ephesians, a 12-week study. So I just want to pick up a little later on in your commentary where you get to the discussion of one new man.

And why is this such a radical and important issue that a world where Yahweh's children, his followers, were up until the New Covenant 99 .99999 Jewish, and something radical is going on here. But tell us about the one new man.

The one new man is fulfilling the promises to Abraham. I'm not saying that the promise to include Gentiles was not there from the very beginning of the covenant promise,.

For it was.

He said, I will, through you all nations, will be blessed. But now you see that expanding. But when the expansion comes, it could be tempting, or could have been tempting to our forefathers in the first century, as we see in the book of Acts, to have two separate churches, one for the Jewish people and one for the Gentile people.

But the great thing about God doing a work in Christ alone in order to form the church is that he gets to call the shots about the makeup of his church. And what he has said is, I'm not making two churches.

I'm not making two brides. I'm not making two temples. I'm making one new man. And the identity we have in Christ must supersede everything ethnically. And that's vitally important for both today and for our forefathers in the faith.

Amen. Amen.

Yes, I mean, it was prophesied in Isaiah and then also repeated in Acts that the Jews were to be a light to the Gentiles.

They were to be a light to the Gentiles, and we know that.

Yeah, and we get the impression that initially Peter seemed to be very happy with the notion of there being two different churches, one for the Jews and one for the Gentiles.

Well, at least he got a little bit taken away, as Paul says.

Right.

And the inclusion of the Gentiles, people who are Gentiles, which would make up in these days in the 21st century and for many centuries prior to today, the majority of Christians are Gentiles now. That wasn't the case in the inception of the faith, but it has been the case for many centuries.

But when we read the Bible, we very often do not have the intended, jolting, radical punch in the face that we're supposed to be getting from the Bible when we read some of these passages, because to us, it's like, yes, so what else is new?

Gentiles. We almost erroneously view Gentile and Christian as synonyms. But this was a radical thing for the inclusion of the Gentiles, wasn't it?

It was extremely radical, and that's why even as you're reading the narrative in the book of Acts, and if you're reading carefully in the epistles, you can see that it took some time for both sides of the church to fully embrace what's going on.

There's a slow way in which God intends in bringing in an Ethiopian proselytize, and then finally convincing Peter that this must be done. And yet we still have counsel. And you read in the epistles this constant call for unity, not just unity among those who are Gentiles, but you can see that the unity needs to be had across ethnic lines.

And I understand them not getting at how radical, equally as radical to hear, we should not have just homogeneous, more reflective of homogeneous.

Amen, and for those of our listeners whose vocabulary is a little behind, our brother is not speaking of Matthew Vine's congregation or anything like that. He's speaking of homogeneous.

I'm not doing too well today, am I, Chris?

No, you're doing fine. And this is something that unfortunately we have an issue today, I believe, that you have obviously sin and racism are something that are going to plague humanity until Christ returns, even in the best of Christians.

Obviously, we would not believe somebody who was truly born again is going to be controlled and enslaved and overrun in his life by racism as like a hallmark of his character. But, you know, we have these difficulties in the church where you have those ignoring the Jewish people, not even having the slightest interest in bringing them the gospel.

And then you have on the other extreme, and you have to be very careful not to broad brush, but there are some of our Messianic brethren who I believe fall in the category of bigotry against Gentiles, even if it's unconscious, and are really dabbling.

And some of them, obviously, we wouldn't even consider these to be brethren, some of them would have stepped or leaped way over the borderline of Judaizing and are fully immersed in it. But you do have some that are coming way too close, much too close to dabbling in it, to like getting their feet wet in that sin.

So this is really a problem that still exists today, isn't it?

It very much is. You mentioned that there are some who have no concern about Abraham's ethnic offspring and are not looking forward to how God fulfills His program in the church, having grafted us in, made us part of the olive tree, even though we're the wild one.

But as you've also said, on the other side, you have some that are going back to the problems that we see in Galatians and Philippians, who almost want to say, well, there's an uncircumcised and there's a circumcised, and we don't think the two should ever come together.

And it is because of the sinfulness of man. And in America, we recognize that we suffer from the sinfulness that affected our history racially, and that's why we see the churches that are one unique race.

But again, it's not that there's something wrong with that. If we lived outside of America and we lived in countries where less people could live in sort of a melting pot sort of situation and we would immediately recognize people of one ethnicity belonging to a political nation, then we would see something similar in the churches.

We would see people of one ethnic background largely predominating a church, not where the gospel would end. The gospel would end with people of every land, nation, tongue, tribe, all worshiping around the throne together.

And we'll be that way because Christ did a work in His death and resurrection for us.

Amen.

And we're going to be continuing our discussion after these messages. We have to get a break right now. If you'd like to join us, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, your country of residence if you live outside the USA. And if you need to remain anonymous, sometimes we have people who have questions about their own pastors' teachings and so on.

They've fallen into disagreement with their own leaders. And we obviously understand that you don't want to identify yourself if you're speaking about something like that. But you may feel free to email us and remain anonymous if you choose to.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Eric C. Redman and more of our discussion on Soli Deo Gloria, the fact that God deserves 100 of the glory.

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The Gift of Faith and the Deadness of Sinners

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today is my friend Eric C. Redmond. And by the way, he is one of my favorite preachers. If you have any authority in your church in making decisions on inviting speakers for Bible conferences and so on, or you just want to tug on your pastor's ear or your deacon's or whoever made those decisions, you've got to tell them about Eric Redmond and see if they will be willing to invite him to speak at a conference when his schedule permits, because he is on the faculty at Moody Bible Institute.

But he is a remarkable speaker, and I have such fond memories of not only you speaking out on Long Island at the various churches where I arranged engagements for you, but also at my pastor's luncheon, my Iron Sharpens Iron pastor's luncheon that I had, that really I remember every pastor leaving that place saying to me, wow, that brother is a really gifted man of God.

So I was very blessed by that and look forward to hearing you preach again, brother.

Those are some very kind words, Chris, and I've always appreciated it. You often need someone to pour into their lives, and I'm glad Graciousness used me to be a blessing to anyone. Thank you for those words.

Amen.

We do have a listener in Ada, Ohio, David, who asks, how would you answer the dispensationalist who says that the Jews of the New Testament, one new man, are part of the church in this age of grace. However, God's plan for Israel was put on hold during this age of grace, and the Jews are now, during this time, a part of the church, but not Israel.

I want to be careful with this one because I do know there are erroneous teachings on this one. To say that Jews are not part of Israel just would be wrong because Jewish brothers, and he makes that strong appeal in Romans 9 -11, he speaks of them as a remnant of Israel.

And you will see a reference in Galatians to the Israel of God. It's very clear that that's a church. We see that in Ephesians. Ephesians is about the church in the mystery of God's plan of redemption.

But I think the problem has been when a dispensationalist has said the program for Israel has been ended because of their disobedience to the Messiah. When you clearly see that the first disciples who came to be part of the church, they were offsprings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that's how the narrative develops in the book of Acts.

And you can see directives toward Jewish believers in almost all the epistles. When you reconstruct them, you see references to things that are Jewish and recognize they're Jewish people that are part of the church.

So certainly, we would say that they are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob's offspring. That's Israel. And yet, there is this entity now that God calls time of the resurrection of Christ and Him appointing His apostles to be eyewitnesses.

Amen. Well, thank you, David. And if you did not win a copy of Eric's book the last time we had him on, we will send you out a free copy of Ephesians, a 12-week study, compliments of Crossway. And they will be, or it will be, I should say, shipped to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com.

So thank you very much, David, and Ada, Ohio, for joining us on the program today. This all really ties in. This radical union of Jew and Gentile really ties again into the main fact, the main theme, that salvation is all of God, doesn't it?

Because it has nothing to do with what one's culture is or one's ethnicity or one's nationality. It has nothing to do with what bloodline you're in. The only blood involved is the blood of Christ shed for His people on Calvary.

And this radical union of these two very opposite and opposing groups of people that had been at odds with one another since the Jews first walked the earth after Abraham, this is just another testimony how salvation is of the Lord, isn't it?

It is very much, Chris, and you hit upon the issue. Because we are sinful, because we are totally depraved, because we come into the world ignorant of the knowledge of God, having no fear of Him, we are selfish, we are self-centered, we have self-interest and not the interest of God.

And being people who are self-interested, we, as we see naturally, salvation depended upon us, we would take salvation to those who are like us or to those that we like, and we wouldn't be concerned for people who might be hostile to us or are closed to our ideas or who look completely differently than us or a different ethnic class or culture.

We would say, well, no, let's have salvation over here and have our own fine little huddle, and we would virtually say, and everyone else can perish, of course, there would be another way we would say that.

Yet, of course, what happens with God being the one in control of salvation, God not only has elected people from all sorts of nations, but then He looks at each one of us and says that you can't be exclusive, you have to go to people of all other nations, you have to love people who are your enemies, you have to cross borders, you have to make sacrifices of your lives to places where people are going to kill you for naming the name of Christ, because I am bringing people from all over the globe into my redemptive program.

So yes, if it were left up to us, if it were our idea, if we could get any glory, salvation would not happen. But when it's in God's hands...

Praise God, because I know that I certainly would not be going to heaven if it were not totally by the grace of God.

Neither. Amen.

And obviously, if you thought otherwise, you would not be going to heaven.

That's right.

If you were somehow boasting in the fact that you were meriting or earning heaven on your own, then obviously that would be a sign that you're not trusting in the finished work of Christ. We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, who says, I have pastor friends and other Christian friends who are not Reformed, and they tell me when they read Ephesians 2, starting in verse 8, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works so that anyone may boast.

They say that the gift is the grace, not the faith. How do you explain this to these people who don't want to accept the fact that even our belief is not something that comes from our own hearts or minds, that it is a gift of God in and of itself?

Well, Chris, you and I got into this one the last time, and I mentioned that one very well-known non-colonistic commentary makes the case that even as you're reading the Greek text, the original language, you can see that the terms, and that not of yourself, refer to the entire process, both the grace and the faith.

But let's not solve it on the basis of that, because obviously, you know, everyone doesn't read original language. Let's look at what Paul does, starting back at 2 .1. Paul makes it very clear that we are dead, but look how he describes the condition of a dead person, and keep in mind that once you're dead, you don't resurrect yourself on the emergency room table to help you do something.

He says we are following the prince of the power of the air. We were following the course of this world. All of us were following our own flesh. We were not doing anything to go after God. Later in Ephesians, he would describe us being ignorant and darkened toward God.

But then he says, as a result of all this, you were children of wrath. That means we're going to be objects of the wrath of God. Or we're not offspring of God in a salvific sense. We're only going to become, also going to be the direct objects of it.

We're not a neutral. We're not people who have some sort of spark inside of us that can respond to God. We don't have goodness inside of us. We are going to perish without remedy. And then Paul says, but God who is rich in mercy.

He makes it clear that God steps in. We are completely helpless. It's after that that he brings a conclusion. By grace, you are saved through faith. What is that grace? God who is rich in mercy, who loved us with the great love with which he loved us, not because we merited anything, but because he's done something in Christ.

He saved us. Paul says it twice in there. And then Paul says, that, even where belief is mentioned, from 1 .1 to 2 .10, is a drowning person, whatever you want to call the image.

Well, thank you, CJ. And if you did not win the last time, we have to go over our records, or you can just be honest. If you did not win a copy the last time of Ephesians, a 12-week study, we will send one off to you as well.

And that is one of those issues in Ephesians 2 where you scratch your head about our anti-Calvinist brethren who are literalists, who believe like we do in the inerrancy of Scripture. And yet they read, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

And they somehow want to give an image of man before his salvation, before his regeneration, that he has enough goodness in him to want to please God by believing in him and repenting before he even has a new heart.

This is an impossibility, isn't it?

It is quite the impossibility. I think that's why Paul goes into such detail into this description to say the very enemies that we have have always had, the concept of the world or our society following that which is anti-God, and the great enemy of God, the evil one himself, and then our own ways as a natural person, our own desires within, all three of these act together and do not let up to direct our paths against God, so much so that everyone exists in a state before salvation where nothing is due them but wrath.

Paul details this to make it very clear that you are in a condition where you are helpless. And he describes a condition with a term with which we can all relate. That is, dead. And dead will conjure the image of somebody who does not get up on his own.

Amen.

And so how do you respond to those who say, well, yeah, but this is really hyperbole, this is poetic exaggeration because we see even atheists who are very benevolent, who give to charity, we see people from all other kinds of religions that are very wonderful people, kind, and sometimes we even see a brother in Christ who's married to an unbeliever, and the unbeliever may be even in many ways a more appealing and wonderful person than the Christian spouse is.

And so what do you mean that people aren't capable of pleasing God? These people, there are people, all kinds of people that are superior in some realm of life than their Christian neighbors are. So how do you explain that?

Chris, I understand those sorts of questions. I remember a good friend of mine once, because I suggested that a very well-known preacher who had his name might not be saved based on the lack of gospel preaching that I heard from him and knew about his beliefs, and the person responded and said, but look at all the good works that XYZ person has done.

I recognize that many people do good things because the prophet, he does not say that we cannot do good things according to a human measure, and many of those things that look like the good things that those by the power of the Spirit of God also do.

But those good things do not merit salvation. We don't take those good things and start building a ladder and say, God, look how good this is. Look how good this next thing is. Look how good this next thing is.

And now I'm knocking on the door of heaven with my goodness, because even all of those good things are coming from a heart that is raging against God, that is not saying, God, to you belongs all glory.

God, I submit myself to you. God, I want to follow you in obedience. Those things are coming because we want to do what is pleasing and live in this present world without any regard. You can have all those things exist and still have someone who is not pleasing in the sight of God, because what pleases God?

Someone doesn't do that. You have someone who is following the ways of the world, doing good things in the world, following his natural inclination and following the deceptive plan of the evil one and not following.

Amen.

And obviously the scriptures even go as far as describe these wonderful deeds when they are held up to God as a bargaining chip that is basically used to say to God, God, I deserve for you to let me into your eternal paradise because look at what I've done.

That instantaneously is a filthy rag in his sight, isn't it?

It is very much. And if even more, you really should have it.

Right. Amen.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, forgive me if I am going off the main subject, but it does relate to Ephesians. When you read in Ephesians 2, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you were formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among them we all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

My question is toward those who believe in annihilation, that there is no eternal conscious punishment, because they will often use the term dead as a proof that the second death means unconsciousness and nonexistence.