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!”

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 Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, 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 10 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 to me, and I always enjoy being on the show.

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's Freudian. It has to be a

Calvinistic slip somehow. 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.

Calvary Memorial Church is a Reformed church in Oak Park, Illinois.

Todd Wilson is the pastor, George C. Fenn 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 have some helpful airtime to use to advertise it, but I think your audience will be blessed by hearing them apply the truth of the

Reformation to pastoral theology. 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 Denny Burke, Richard Mow, Wesley Hill, because the topic is going to be on beauty, order, and mystery, the

Christian vision of sexuality. 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 speak the gospel to a quite confused culture right now,

I think this conference 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?

Oh my goodness, I forgot about how careful we have to be when we're on the air.

Everyone listening, no, I do not believe that at all.

Now, one of the figures that you've mentioned who's speaking at Calvary Memorial at this conference is very controversial.

Are you speaking about the president of Fuller Theological Seminary? Yes, and also the former academic dean at Boyce College, Denny Burke.

It will be so interesting to have their viewpoints both in the room at the conference.

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 10

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, Glory Road was a 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 many

African -Americans, Reformed theology has a bad name for many reasons in history, and some of them have to do with erroneous theological discussions, but he thought it would be good to have a project in which

African -Americans who were identifying with Reformed theology or seeking others could find that there are some who have embraced it and pastors and or professors, etc.,

etc., and that those who are out there would not feel odd if there could be some sort of central point with which they could begin to identify.

So he invited 10 of us to give our testimony about our journeys into Reformed theology.

I have been a believer since I was probably about 9 or 10 years old.

I grew up in a traditional African -American

Baptist church, and it was evangelical. You could hear the gospel preached there, but I never had any systematic teaching on Reformed theology.

While I was in college, someone introduced me to Table Talk, the devotional ministry of Ligonier Ministry, and then

I read the Gospel According to Jesus by John MacArthur, and then shortly after I graduated from college,

I also got a hold of Desiring God by John Piper, and the Lord used those three works to help me to see

His sovereign hand in all things, especially in salvation, that salvation would be impossible for a sinner without the mighty mercy of God first calling someone unto salvation.

And so He used that to open it up and then help me to see how all of the

Scriptures can be put together by embracing Reformed theology from start to finish.

The biblical storyline makes sense, much more sense, when I'm reading it through my lenses of Reformed theology and watching the sweet sovereignty of God work all the way back in the

Garden, all the way until the new Heaven and the new Earth. So that's just, you know, part of my journey and an overview.

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 can have the simplest of men, a 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 a hundred percent 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 percent 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 in 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 under salvation, that God was electing the church, but that didn't determine who in fact would be saved or how we came on to salvation.

And by making great arguments for it, those impressionable minds sitting under him, some of them were able to buy that unless God and 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

I served, 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 and 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, but I believed, but I responded to the gospel and said, yes, but it's clear in here that even that's from God, right?

Well, but I believed, and I felt such man -centeredness in there, it was baffling.

So, if there's a way that someone wants to get around it, they'll get around it, but it's clearly in the book of Ephesians that God alone gets all glory.

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 a hundred percent 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 jump into this.

This is the situation that they find themselves in. They want to say God gives all the glory, and then want to add but, 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. That makes absolutely no sense.

That's not giving 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.

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 significant in the first part because you see how in the dawning of the messianic age that God has done something different in 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. Yes, I mean, it was prophesied in Isaiah and it 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 our brothers and sisters under the old covenant bumbled and failed at that, even though God sent them the prophets, but God, in his mercy and his kindness, raised up a remnant, and through that remnant has been kind to preach to all nations, people of all nationalities, not just the ethnic descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and pulled them into this great redemptive work that he is doing for all of history, so he sends

Christ to be that light to those people, even where Israel failed. 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, of Galatians and becomes this hypocrite for a while, but that's not what you see when we're reading

Acts at first. You see that great sheet let down and Peter understanding and going and welcoming

Cornelius in, but somewhere along the way, he does get a little confused again. Amen.

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, that's like, so what else is new?

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,

Jews and Gentiles, to fully embrace what's going on. There's a slow way in which

God assimilates the Gentiles into the church with the conversion of the

Apostle Paul, and first going to the Samaritans, and bringing in an Ethiopian proselytize, and then finally convincing

Peter that this must be done. And yet we still have to have the discussion at the Jerusalem council, 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 it is. If for some, it's equally as radical to hear, we should not have just homogeneous churches all the time, to say that it might be more reflective of the gospel to have churches that are not homogeneous, although it's okay to have some,

I understand why they exist. That idea is totally radical for some people to say, we're mixing it up because that's what the gospel is about.

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 a hallmark of his character.

But 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 I 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, and 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 getting their feet wet in that sin.

So this is really a problem that still exists today, isn't it? It very much is a problem, and it's sad too,

Chris, that 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 ones.

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 a 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.

But that, again, is not where the Gospel were in.

The Gospel were in 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 alone.

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 chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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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.

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen 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 percent of the glory.

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. 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 deacons or whoever make those decisions, you 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 the opportunity to serve pastors who often need someone to pour into their lives, and I'm glad that the

Lord in His 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.

Oh, 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 when

Paul speaks of his Jewish brothers, and he makes that strong appeal in Romans 9 through 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 today God's people are described as 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, you know, 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 the church past the time of the resurrection of Christ and Him appointing

His apostles to be eyewitness to His resurrection. 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,

Complements 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, would, if 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 closed to our ideas, or who look completely differently than us, or a different ethnic class, or economic class, or a different 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, it happens. Praise God, because I know that I certainly would not be going to heaven if it were not totally by the grace of God.

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 work 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 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.

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 offspring of God's wrath.

We're 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 to do something uniquely when 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 a 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 is not of yourselves.

Even where belief is mentioned, which by the way, Chris, is only been mentioned twice in Ephesians now, from 1 .1

to 2 .10. It's mentioned in 1 .13 and 1 .14 once, and it's mentioned once inside of 2 .8

through 10. But the entire rest of the discussion is God doing, God doing, God doing,

God doing. So this is only a response to God doing. It's clear that that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, is something that comes to people who are helpless.

How are helpless people saved? Someone kindly comes along to do something to rescue them, whether that is get the paddles, or throw in a lifeline, or jump in the water and rescue that drowning person.

Whatever you want to call the image, someone outside has to do something kindly.

That's the gift. Amen. 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.

But this just can't, 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 that helpless, wrath -bound description 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 a 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 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 getting very upset with me because I suggested that a very well -known

African -American preacher who has the title

Reverend in front of 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 or a staircase up to God 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 to God.

And so you can have all those things exist and still have someone who is not pleasing in the sight of God, because what pleases

God is our dependency upon him by trusting the Son. And if someone doesn't do that, no matter how good we are, we're still looking at 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 the very

Son of God, Jesus Christ. 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, you deserve, or 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 it's even more than the way you humorously described it.

It's also saying, and God, you really should have someone like me in your heaven, shouldn't you? 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 formally 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 formally 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 non -existence.

Doesn't Ephesians 2 prove that you can be dead and yet still very active and conscious in your evil doing?

Exactly. Arnie, you are not off in any way. The people are dead presently, because Paul is speaking to the

Jewish and Gentile believers inside the church and recognizes that they were dead prior to coming to Christ.

So they were living, and they were dead in their sins and under the wrath of God.

So they were very much conscious. But in our systematic theology, we also see in many other places the consciousness of people after living this life.

That is, that Jesus will speak of the smoke of their torment rising up every day, or he'll speak of the weeping and the gnashing of teeth being there.

And even Brother Chris has asked or said a minute ago, some people come to this and they say

Paul is speaking in hyperbolic terms. But if he was speaking in hyperbolic terms, we would have to make the salvation that comes from the mercy of God in Christ hyperbolic also.

Or we might be able to do away with the wrath of God as something hyperbolic. But in here,

Paul clearly contrasts the wrath of God with the great workmanship that comes in Christ for people who are living and conscious and who have been given the gift of faith to trust in him.

Amen. And when Jesus says that it would have been better for Judas never to have been born, that doesn't seem to make sense if you believe that Judas will be non -existent.

Because why would that be worse for him since he has been born?

Why would it have been an improvement if he wasn't born, when obviously the comparison doesn't make any sense?

Because if he wasn't born, he was non -existent. And if he's non -existent after Judgment Day, then they're the same thing, really.

That's right. It would be a better existence or non -existence to have been annihilated than to be a person receiving conscious punishment.

And it's very apparent from the language that's used there and elsewhere for the cities that Jesus denounces that there is conscious, eternal punishment for those who do not trust

Christ. Amen. Well, thank you very much, Arnie and Perry Canty. And if you did not win a copy of Eric's Ephesians, a 12 -week study on our last interview, you will also be receiving one in the mail from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

So we thank you very much for contributing that question, a very good one.

And thanks again to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for mailing out all of our winners' books on a daily basis, well, nearly on a daily basis, but when we give away books at any rate.

And their website is cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com.

And we thank you for that. One of the key things about Ephesians is compelling the saints toward love.

And you have a section in your book, A Prayer for Love. And I think that also ties in with us owing

God all the glory because we, as sinners, often forget that God loved us while we were

His enemies, while we were despicable toward Him and either openly rebelled against Him by being an atheist or speaking against the

Scriptures or even something just as evil, being apathetic about them, about ignoring them, thinking that they're of no importance at all.

But we still, in our lives and in our thoughts, hated

God, even if we weren't conscious of that being hatred. We still did hate Him, whether we view it that way or not.

And yet God loved us. And it just shows, again, how God loving us enough to save us while we were in that state is all the more reason that we should be loving our brethren as we seek to imitate

Him, correct? Well, Chris, you hit upon the center of the effective aspect of Paul's theology, that being love, and it runs through almost all of the epistles.

There's that grand chapter in 1 Corinthians 13, and I could just detour there a second.

Paul solves these huge theological problems in 1 Corinthians by appealing to love and saying love is what's needed.

And many of your listeners are probably familiar with the fact that Paul is referencing all the other items in the book that he's discussed as he has this discussion about love and personifies love as a church member.

The effectiveness of the gospel comes as we love, just like God loves, as you said,

Chris, that we love our enemies or we love the way God did. We love when people are ignorant toward us, hostile or apathetic.

That's what we're going to face in unloving people, because that's exactly what God did through Christ. He looked at people who were ignorant of Him, hostile toward Him, or at best, maybe they were apathetic toward Him, and said,

I am yet going to pour out the fullness of my love, although you've rejected all my holiness, and I'm going to embrace you and enfold you into what

I'm doing to reveal my glorious joy forever. And then he looks at us and says, please go do the same to the people who are in the world who are also in need of Christ.

Yes, it's very important that love be at the center of everything, but again, as we're trying to say in this show, it only happens when we understand that God is the one who is doing salvation, so He can tell us how to act once we're saved.

Amen. And by the way, just to get some background, I think we skipped over this even the first time we addressed this book, not only your book, but the book that you're writing a commentary on, the letter of Paul to the

Ephesians, the letter by Paul to the Ephesians. What was Ephesus like when

Paul wrote this letter to them, and who were these people? I understand that Paul was in prison, likely, when he wrote this to them, and not nearby, and he had heard about the way that they had progressed and so on.

We often think of people in that era as all being in a dusty desert and being dirt poor and so on, but this was quite an affluent area, wasn't it?

Ephesus was that region of Asia Minor. There were a wealthy class of people there.

This is one of those areas in the world, if I could say, you probably, we probably would have liked living in Ephesus.

And Ephesus, the Church graciously had some of the most well -known personalities in the

New Testament come and serve it. Now, I'm going to go past the Apostle Paul in my discussion, but remember,

Apollos lands there, and Paul lands there, and eventually Timothy is appointed there, and later on you're going to even see that the

Apostle John, as best we can reconstruct our history, was the bishop over that area that included

Ephesus. So you have a tremendous region and a tremendous

Church, yet it's still part of the Hellenized world and the

Roman culture, and so the bad aspects that we know about Roman culture and the, what we would call, lack of human rights and morality among the

Romans also existed at Ephesus. You still have a people who should see in the preaching of the gospel their very own need for salvation, because they had a whole host of moral issues that would have made them in jeopardy before God.

And we're going to be going to another break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We do have a couple more people patiently waiting to have their questions asked and answered, but if you'd like to join them, go to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and we look forward to hearing from you. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Eric Redman. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year -round

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That's the Thriving Story. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnsin. Before I return to my guest Eric C. Redman and our discussion on the

Book of Ephesians and his commentary on the Book of Ephesians, I just want to remind you that I am going to be manning an exhibitor's table at the

G3 conference hosted by Pastor Josh Bice and Praise Mill Baptist Church at the

Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19 -21, in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation, and I hope as many of you as possible can join me there. I'll be joined there by speakers

Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Voti Baucom, Conrad M.

Bewe, who may be unfamiliar to many of you, but he is one of the most powerful preachers on the face of the earth.

He is the pastor of Coboata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and has been a friend of mine, thanks be to God, since 1995, and I'm looking forward to seeing him again.

Phil Johnson, who is the executive director of John MacArthur's ministry, grace to you.

Rosaria Butterfield, who we've had on this program a couple of times, she is a former leftist lesbian tenured professor at Syracuse University who was saved and transformed by Jesus Christ and is now the wife of a pastor in the

Reformed Presbyterian denomination. Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, and a whole bunch of other speakers.

That's, I think, perhaps only half of those speaking at this conference. My friend

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries is another one who you don't want to miss, and if you'd like more details on this conference go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com, that's g3conference .com, and I wouldn't wait too long because already the first hotel that they recommend that is closest to the venue, all the discount rooms in that hotel are booked now, so I would not wait too much longer if you have any intention on going to this conference, and please tell them that you heard about it from Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, that's g3conference .com,

and I want to thank from the bottom of my heart Pastor Josh Bice of Praise Middle Baptist Church for allowing me to attend this event for free and having my own exhibitors booth to promote

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I also want to thank my friends at Linbrook Baptist Church for providing my travel and other expenses there, and I just praise

God for His grace in this area, and I hope to see you there, and I hope you approach me at the exhibitors booth for Iron Sharpens Iron right next to the booth for the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and we are now back to our discussion with Eric C.

Redman, Professor of Bible at Moody Bible Institute and Associate Pastor of Adult Ministries at Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois, and we are discussing his book,

Ephesians, a 12 -week study, and how the battle cry of the

Reformation or the watchword or one of the pillars of the Reformation, Soli Deo Gloria, that all of our salvation, 100 % of it, is owed to God, that man, sinful men, do not deserve one ounce of gratitude or thanks.

We have no ability or reason to pat ourselves on the back for our salvation, and it is amazing how many people who claim to follow

Christ, and also many of those who really do follow Christ, who are born again, how they cannot see that truth, and who refuse to see the teaching of the scriptures that all of salvation is due to man, due to God.

They would say it's partially due to man. So the last, before the break, we were talking about basically our call to love one another that Paul addresses in this letter to the

Ephesians, a prayer for love. Before we move on to Christian maturity, do you have anything to complete on that area of love?

I was going to say, Paul, he calls us in Ephesians when we get into the next half of the book, which is probably going to need another conversation,

Chris. He calls us to walk in love, and you see that displayed in the rest of the book, and I think if we look at love as the effective outworking of the gospel in our lives, that'll put in context things like wives, commit yourselves to your husbands, husbands love your wives, children obeying your parents and honoring them, fathers not exasperating your children, and even the sort of submission and kindness that needs to take place in the workplace.

That's demonstrating the lordship of Christ through the gospel in our actions, and love is what shows what

God is doing through us. We have a listener in Kinross, Scotland.

Murray says, thinking of earlier comments with regard to the one new man and some who deny

Israel's involvement, surely for Paul to then build on this argument by proclaiming to him be glory in the church would obviously include both who have been made one or have

I misunderstood? Isn't there a logical progression of thought here? I would say yes, and I'm not sure on Murray's question, so forgive me,

Murray, if I get this wrong. I think based on the earlier question, he's asking should we see the

Jewish people still as part of Israel while seeing them included in the church?

I think what we see in Paul's terms is that he still identifies Jewish people as the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who are part of Israel, a remnant that is now identified under the idea of the church with Gentiles being included.

It's not to exclude Israel or to say that God has completely forgotten his people, which is what

Paul will argue in Romans 9 through 11, but this is God remembering his people. He has a remnant that he is pulled in by the working of Christ, and so yes, when

Paul says glory in the church, he is talking about glory to Jews and Gentiles, but that doesn't mean that we have excluded

God fulfilling his plan to his people Israel as he's always promised. He is fulfilling that plan to his people

Israel, and he's adding or he's enlarging what he is doing among the

Gentiles because as you said, Chris, 99 .999 % of the people we see in the Old Testament being part of the people of God are non -Jewish people, but you always see the hint of the

Gentiles in there also. Well, Murray, if you need any clarification on that answer, you can feel free to email us back, and Murray, I know that we usually have the rule of not sending out books to those in Canada and overseas because of the shipping costs, but somehow we're going to make an exception with you, and we're going to get you a free copy of Eric Redman's book,

Ephesians, a 12 -week study, so we will try our best to get that out to you as soon as possible, but we will find a way to do that.

Thank you very much for writing, Murray, and please spread the word about Iron Sharpens Iron in Scotland and everywhere else in the

UK. I always love to hear from my overseas listeners for Iron Sharpens Iron.

Walking in Christian maturity or being a mature

Christian, if you could comment more on that, please. I think this is important in the

Church for... Chris, I'm just going to make a figure here, a hypothetical figure, for someone who thinks that salvation is something that is cognitive only, or maybe somewhat of volitional and has a scent to it also, but stops right there, that I believe,

I get justification, that secures me forever, and there does not have to be any appearance of fruit, and that has been an erroneous teaching in the

Church, and is much an erroneous teaching in the contemporary Church.

I think what you see with Paul, you definitely see in Ephesians, is that this great work of God that he has done in salvation through Christ, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, us being his workmanship, the stewardship that Paul has to preach it when we get to chapter three, then effectively changes the lives of those who have experienced his salvation.

So, those who stole will steal no longer, but they'll work with their hands, doing something good, not only so they can work and provide for themselves, but they can give to him who has need.

These people no longer let the sun go down on their wrath. They get rid of bitterness and clamor and anger and malice, and they forgive one another.

There's a working of the gospel that takes place, and so we are to walk or to live out the working of God in the gospel, which is still a work of grace, and still must be accomplished by God alone, because as Paul says elsewhere, it's not

I, but it's grace. And for the Apostle Paul to say that is greatly significant, because we are nowhere near walking with Christ the way the

Apostle Paul did, if it's all the work of God's grace. For Paul, certainly it is the work of God's grace for each one of us, but God calls us to walk in that grace by his power, because the gospel means a change of life.

Amen, and yes, that is an issue that really divides the church today.

There are really churches that in many ways may be biblically sound, but have fallen into serious error when they exaggerate or distort the precious truth that we have been talking about, that salvation is owed all to God.

They think that men therefore are not accountable, and that is a serious error to commit, and a very serious, erroneous conclusion to draw, that it is not that either we cooperate with God in our salvation, or we could live any way we choose.

If indeed you are a child of God, and you have the

Holy Spirit dwelling within you, you are not going to be enslaved to sin any longer, even though you do sin as a

Christian, and you will until we are in glory for eternity with Christ.

But this is a very dangerous notion to think that just because God has saved you, that you can live any way you desire to live.

It is very dangerous, Chris, and I think you hit upon it in some of your terms with which we can make analogies.

What would it mean to be a child of someone, but to represent that person from whom you've been born?

What does it mean to be a child of the Holy God? It's going to be someone who's striving after holiness.

What does it mean to have the Holy Spirit of God come and live inside of you so that He can empower your life?

He's giving you power so you can live a life that He desires, that would be reflective of Him.

What does it mean that we've been rescued from wrath? We've been rescued from the penalty to our sins.

So do we want to go back in our sins and continue to live that way? No, that's what's bringing the wrath of God.

We want to live apart from that. We want to follow in what the death of Christ and His resurrection and His present session right now in heaven mean for our lives.

It means that we're on a new path, that God has put us on a road that is going to His glory and unto

His redemption. It's erroneous to think that if we don't cooperate with God, it also means that we don't have to change our lives.

God is the one who calls us on to salvation in the beginning. God is the one who empowers us to follow

Him. Yes, and doesn't the Apostle Paul in that very letter to the church in Ephesus say that He not only foreordained our salvation, but also the works which we are called to walk in?

We are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prayed beforehand for us to walk in them.

And it's as if Paul tipped his hat or foreshadows right there and says, I'm going to come back to this walk thing in a few minutes, but I just wanted you to know that when he was doing this

God -not -of -yourselves work, he was creating us so we could walk in something differently.

Yes, Chris, you've hit the nail on the head. Amen. And another thing that will mark a

Christian is that he doesn't just view these acts of obedience and these deeds that we are compelled to produce in our life.

As Jesus said, a good tree bears good fruit. We're not to be viewing this as drudgery and something that we hate to do and just have to put up with it until we're in heaven.

These are things that should give us reason to rejoice and should give us joy.

I'm not saying that they always will make us happy when we're doing them, because obviously there's no sacrifice in always doing things that at the moment are making you happy.

But at the same time, we're not supposed to be reluctantly trudging along in life as if we are serving a taskmaster.

No, if God were a taskmaster, he would be the happiest taskmaster with the happiest slaves under him.

If you're not a taskmaster, I think if we look at the tone of the book of Ephesians as you're reading it,

Paul is very excited about salvation. It's something, obviously, that makes him very happy and makes him very celebratory toward the people at Ephesus.

He's not saying, oh and guys, guess what? Jesus died for you and although salvation is going to come your way and rescue you from wrath, you're really not going to like being saved in this world.

No, quite the opposite. He makes it as if this is the best thing that can happen to you in the world, which it is, and it's going to make for a joyful and happy life, yet it's in a world that is fallen and in need of redemption.

So we will have struggles, trials, persecution, suffering down here, but when

I'm reading a book of Ephesians, I see Paul being excited from start to finish and if we were reading the

Greek, you would see that Paul, four to eight times in his book, he's going on with such excitement that he has long sentences that in our text go on for several verses because he just cannot contain himself.

Amen. This whole issue of the accountability of men is one of the reasons why

Roman Catholics, in my communication with them, they view

Protestantism and modern evangelicalism as being false because they think that this is a blueprint for licentiousness that we are teaching.

Unfortunately, there are many professing Christians and evangelicals that give them a lot of reason to think that.

Obviously, the alternative is no better for their eternity to think that they are earning their salvation in any way.

By the way, for those Roman Catholics out there who insist that your church does not teach that, go to the

Council of Trent and you will see, you can read that on the internet, right from your own sources, that it is anathema to believe that good works are only a fruit or evidence of a truly justified person.

They believe that works are required to increase and merit grace and to remain a child of God and to enter into heaven.

In fact, even when you've worked as hard as you could, most of you will, in your own system of theology, end up in purgatory anyway and be tortured for quite a while, although the

Roman Catholics have never said what that period of time will be. This whole concept is a mockery of the cross of Christ, obviously, and the completed work that he provided.

But just because Protestants have misrepresented not only what the

Reformers taught on this, but also what the Bible teaches, is no excuse to fall back on your works as a cause of your salvation.

But this is something serious that we have to look at in our own backyard, isn't it? This is a very prevalent thing in modern evangelicalism, this whole concept of once you are born again after saying a prayer at a revival meeting or something, well, yeah, you should be repenting and you should be living a good life, an obedient life, because you're not going to be a good witness to other people and your life isn't going to be as fulfilled and joyful, but it really doesn't matter because you'll be going to heaven anyway.

I mean, this is really a lie from the pit of hell, isn't it? It is a lie from the pit of hell, and it's something that we have created again in our natural inclination in our churches, but it's so far from anything that we see in Scripture, even the book of Ephesians, because Paul is the one who says that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetousness, which he'll call idolatry, has no inheritance in the kingdom of God.

So Paul says, if someone continues to live the life that was the lifestyle when you were under wrath, not someone who is struggling or not someone who is tempting, but someone who says, my life does not change at all, as we're discussing here, it's just enough to believe,

Paul says, you're deceived. That person has no inheritance in the kingdom of God, and then

Paul will say, let no one deceive you with those empty words. The wrath of God comes upon people who are the sons of disobedience, and so Paul would not have said that having works afterwards makes legalism.

He would not have said you're free to have license, nor would he have said that your works are what bring you salvation.

Paul has a discussion on walking far after he has had a discussion on how we came to salvation.

How we came to salvation? Spiritual blessings in Christ, God who is rich in mercy.

What do we do after salvation? Walk in love. Walk according to wisdom.

Walk circumspectly in the world. And so he puts work in the right place, not before salvation, but definitely a fruit that is provided by salvation.

Yeah, this is a very important tension to have, isn't it? There are people, both

Arminian and Hyper -Calvinist, who want to remove all tension from the

Bible. They want to force all the words of Scripture into one side of the coin, whichever side of the coin they're on, whether they are

Arminian or whether they are Hyper -Calvinist. Obviously, nobody calls themselves a

Hyper -Calvinist, but those who are thinking that they're historically Calvinistic and are in reality

Hyper -Calvinist, because they just don't want there to be any tension. But the

Scriptures are written, they are breathed by God through these men of old who gave us these

Scriptures, and they are intended to have that tension in there, aren't they? They are very much intended to have that sort of tension.

One of the things I tell people who struggle with the idea of God electing people under salvation is that as people who are finite beings, because God is infinite, we must embrace mystery.

We must have that distance or that gap between the limits of our finality and God's infinite knowledge and power.

We cannot fully understand all that God is doing.

We can actually understand what He's revealed in Scripture, but to say that we can smooth out every tension means that we would understand everything as completely as God understands it.

And we're just not there. There are these healthy tensions that exist in Scripture, and one day glory will reveal all the, for lack of a better word, solutions to these tensions in the face of Christ.

Amen. I think a perfect situation that would indicate this tension is the issue of suicide.

Now, if we are believers in the fact that Jesus Christ, when

He died on Calvary for His people, He died for every sin of all

His people, and every single sin has been blotted out by Him, and that sin, those sins would even include the murder of oneself.

But the tension is, would a child of God do such a thing?

Would He, on His last act on earth, take His own life?

And obviously there are different reasons that that may occur. There are people who are on medications and all kinds of things, but there is a realm of mystery about that where we have to be very careful as to not give the grieving family and the brothers and sisters in Christ of that professing believer, not to give them undue sadness and hopelessness when such a professing

Christian does take their own life. We don't want to rob those surviving family members and loved ones of hope and peace, but at the same time, you don't want to encourage those that are facing hardship and depression to kill themselves.

So it's one of those things where the Scriptures, it's interesting that the Scriptures hardly say anything about that sin.

I mean, we have Judas committing suicide and that kind of a thing, and of course he was an evil person who

Jesus, as I already said, made the comment it would have been better of him if he was never born, so we know that he is not in eternity with Christ.

But at the same time, the issue is really touched on very little in the Bible. Yes, Chris, and if I could add this very briefly, you again have brought us back to why it is that we must depend on God alone and he must get all the glory and why love is at the center of what we do.

When we have these tensions here, we realize our helplessness to resolve a problem here that only

God can resolve it. Yet, in living in this world, you have people who will experience great discomfort on both sides of this sort of issue, and the only way we can respond to this is with love.

So, in any way, we're dependent upon Christ alone, his work in the Gospel, even when we're existing with these tensions.

Well, we have to go to our final break right now, and if you would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. We do have a couple of people waiting for their questions to be asked and answered, so we appreciate your patience.

And don't go away, we're going to be right back after these messages, God willing, with Eric C. Redman and more of our discussion on Paul's letter.

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen, and if you just joined us for the last 90 minutes, our guest has been

Eric C. Redmond. We've got a little less than a half hour to go in our program, and we are discussing

Soledad Gloria, the Apostle Paul's declaration that God deserves 100 % of the glory for our salvation in his letter to the

Ephesians. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Before I move on to the final chapter in this, or the final section in this commentary you've written,

Standing Firm in the Real War, that actually sounds like it should be the title of a book all of its own.

Excellent title there. But we have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who asks,

I know that from your introduction that your guest is an African -American. What is his opinion that even

Christians today, both black and white, continue to make far too much of the distinctions between those in either race merely because of the color of our skin or certain attributes in our various cultures and ways of life?

Aren't these things really exaggerated in importance, or am I being insensitive here?

Chris, how did she figure out I was African -American? Maybe because you contributed to a book,

Glory Road, the journey of 10 African -Americans in the Reformed Christianity, which

I did state, as she said, according to my introduction. And then you actually opened up the program by saying,

I'm thankful I'm black. That's what you said. Well, you know, she's touched upon something interesting here, and that is we live in a highly racialized society and world in which so much has to do with ethnicity, and I think one of the things that Christ died for is that idolatry of ethnicity that exists in almost every culture, where, as we put our ethnicity above everything, and then we add the riches and status and education, etc.

Yes, we can't put too much on it, too much emphasis on it as Christians, but also we have to be careful not to minimize that due to our sinfulness and the emphasis that has been put on race and ethnicity in society.

Some real harm comes to people in this world on the basis of ethnicity or race, to which believers, loving justice and mercy, need to respond to and say,

I don't want to so minimize the issue of race or ethnicity that I don't recognize that some people, because of their race or ethnicity, experience some real unique pain in this fallen world, and the gospel should speak to that also.

That was an outstanding observation and question she made. Yeah, well, I think it does even tie in with one of the themes we've been discussing about the book of Ephesians, Paul's letter to the

Ephesians, about us being one man now. It very much ties into that, and again, we miss the radical nature of one new man, as you said earlier, for Jewish brothers to hear.

What, the Gentiles are on equal footing? For us, it's the same way. What, we're all on some sort of equal footing?

That can't be, but we are, and that equal footing happens at Calvary's cross and where the stone has been rolled away.

Amen, and you know, these are issues that I'm sure we are going to be addressing and facing until we're in heaven, and you know, obviously, there are certain areas where we have to, we should preferably fall on the side of caution when you, obviously, even if Paul, when he was addressing the issue of liberty, wanted us to, you know, make sure that the things that we did and said in the presence of others did not offend them and become a stumbling block.

Even when it comes to race, we should be very concerned about offending people, but at the same time,

I don't think that it is correct for people to be overly demanding of sensitivity either.

Would you agree with that? Where sometimes those who happen to be white are perhaps being grilled too harshly because of the way that words and phrases are spoken, and when it is fairly clear from the history of the person speaking that the person had no racist motivation in what they were saying, but it just is, the accusation of racism can be very easily hurled at people in this day and age when there's no basis for that.

I mean, would you agree with me or do you think I'm out to lunch here? Well, and Chris, it is a complex thing, but again, this goes back to, you know, for you and I, we humbly, we know this.

It comes back to the gospel again, and when we're having speech that is controlled by the gospel and we're being wise in the things that we're saying, we recognize we can't lump everyone in any one category, whether that is to pick one ethnicity as poor or someone else as these are the people who are thrifty or these are the people that do this.

There are individuals in there, and God has done a working in the heart of believers such that although there might be a class that we want to generalize and characterize in one way, well, these people are always racist or these people are always this or that.

We can't do that with every individual, and so to be loving toward each person within a class or an ethnic group, we have to be careful with our designations, with our generalizations.

Yet, on the other side, that tension again, we have to recognize that in society, the generalizations are going to fit what has happened in a depraved world in some sense, although every member of the class does not fit that.

So we have to be sensitive and understand that some people can be harmed by the generalization going either way, and we have to love each individual that is in that class or that identified group.

Yeah, and wouldn't you say before we go on to the standing firm in the real war that many people unconsciously are behaving as a racist when they automatically assume that a white person is racist in their motivation behind what they are saying or doing?

Yeah, again, this is part of the thing that has happened as a result of our long history, not just in America but in the world, and our response to the racialization of society.

We have become hypersensitive, everybody, to race issues, and now, unfortunately, we've become hypersensitive to gender issues, and we are in a just a terrible place with our gender identity because we've wrongly responded to this hypersensitivity to gender.

What we need to do as those who are called by Christ in the gospel is to say, okay, in light of this hypersensitive society, what does the gospel mean?

It means that we can't label everybody racist, but it also means that we have to recognize that gender does matter and not respond to the problem with gender by just obliterating the issue of gender altogether.

And by the way, B .B., if you did not win a copy of this book by Eric Redmond the last time he was on, you will also get a free copy of Ephesians, a 12 -week study, thanks to our friends at Crossway and also thanks to our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service who will be shipping it out to you if you did not win it before.

So, we thank you very much for participating in the program with a very good question.

So, going back to this really phenomenal theme that you have here, standing firm in the real war, what is the real war?

The real war is that there's something going on in the heavenly realms with the rulers, the principalities, and the powers as Paul describes them, the demonic forces that would be against us, and something that God is doing for His glory, but it gets played out in the human realm.

It's why Paul has that statement that everyone quotes from Ephesians, we wrestle not against flesh and blood.

Yet, in every reality, we do wrestle against flesh and blood. We have a bad boss, a bad co -worker, or a bad subordinate.

We have an unbeliever in our marriage or we have a believer that's not fully walking in Christ. We have a wayward child or a harsh parent.

We have a neighbor that is disgusted with our Christianity. We don't talk directly to a demon and see that going on, but to see the activity that is waging war against Christ and His followers is evident in every sort of human conflict that takes place.

What Paul says is, let's recognize that we need to pull back the curtain of this earth and not confuse appearances with reality and realize there's a war that's going on in an unseen realm.

And how do we respond to that war? It's back to our theme, Chris. We rely 100 % on Christ, because that's what the armor is, and we can't wage the war in our own human frailties.

Now, are you speaking specifically about the reality of the demonic? I am speaking specifically about the reality of the demonic, but we shouldn't think of the demonic as something that's portrayed like the

Exodus movie or what we might see in cultures as we hear missionaries talk about it in places where there's more spiritism going on, where there might be more voodoo or witchcraft, and they might see more visible activity that they will identify as demonic.

What we're saying is the way the deceptive spiritual forces work is through the things that are sinful, that would be against walking with Christ and following in Him in this new work of salvation.

It would be hostile to the one new man. It would be hostile to anyone trying to come out of immorality, hostile to anybody who's trying to forgive and get rid of bitterness, hostile to anyone who's trying to work also to give something to the poor and have a steady new work ethic.

And all the things that Paul discusses that are part of this new workmanship, there's a war that is fighting against this.

And Paul says the way you wage that war against that, something that's fighting against the mission and loving your wife as Christ loves the church, is that you walk in the power of Christ, in His truth, in His righteousness, in following the

Word of God and yielding to the Spirit of God. It's all about following Christ. Yes, we're speaking about the demonic, but we're not speaking of a devil sitting on somebody's shoulder.

We're speaking on the actions that give evidence of this conflict that is supernatural in the world.

Amen. And obviously, Satan and his minions are far too clever to always manifest themselves in a

Hollywood style, which is even sometimes you even read in the pages of Scripture about demoniacs and so on.

But there are very subtle things in people's lives that they may be lured into, they may even be unconsciously affected by.

I don't know if you've ever read the book or heard of it by the late

Jerry Bridges, but he had a phenomenal book called Respectable Sins. Yes.

And there are so many things that professing Christians and even genuine

Christians overlook in their own lives because they subtly slip into a pharisaical mindset in thinking, well, since I am not committing adultery in a physical way, and since I'm not actually stealing my neighbor's lawnmower or robbing a bank or since I have never really physically murdered someone and on and on, they think,

I'm a good person, I'm righteous. But there are so many other things that we all do.

In fact, my former pastor was just on the program recently to discuss a book that he wrote on gossip, the church killer.

I think gossip is probably one of the most prevalent sins that even seasoned godly brothers and sisters in Christ slip into.

But that's the very subtle way that the demonic realm can work, isn't it? It is a very subtle way for them to work, and grumbling would be another one of those, or complaining in the church the way that people complain against Moses and Aaron.

I think, again, we have to remember that the fight is not against the person we see in front of us, but there's something more that's going on.

That little phrase by Paul, not against flesh and blood, is so important that as believers who have been called by Christ, we keep in mind that people we're looking at are not the issue.

You referenced Jerry Bridges, and I also immediately thought of C .S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, and he has that one chapter in which he discusses how the work that the little nephew imp has to do is convince the young man in the house to see all of his mother's sins, but never of any of his own sins.

Well, that's an issue of pride, and that's an issue of self -deception, but that's part of the warfare that Paul is talking about, that we need

Christ in us to stand against so that we don't fall prey to it. We have a listener in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Stuart, who asks,

Have you ever heard of a group of Christians who teach that Paul's epistles are the only applicable writings of the

Bible that we as Christians need to follow, that all of the other books are only useful for history and have nothing binding upon our consciences or lives in regard to conduct?

Chris, now I have to confess, I haven't heard of this new form of Marcion or the

Samaritans, but they've all gone to Paul rather than to the Pentateuch or the

Gospels. I have to apologize to your listener that I'm not James White.

I'm sure James would have heard about it and has already written a book against it, but I'm not familiar, but I don't think,

I think you will see this, and to answer this, I think when you look in the Apostle Paul and you see his references to Christ's death and resurrection and many other things, it's evident that Paul is someone who's familiar with what we read in the

Gospels, and he would have found those as foundational to what he is writing in the epistles.

The epistles are just the outworking of what we have seen told to us in the

Gospel about Christ coming into the world in his humility and his exaltation. Yeah, when you think about the absurdity that what

Jesus taught while he walked the earth and what the other Apostles and Disciples taught, the other authors of Scripture, would only be in effect for the

Church for a matter of a handful of years until Saul of Tarsus got saved and then brought us the real lasting binding

Word of God. I mean, when you think about it, that's really crazy. But I have heard of what he's talking about because, in fact, the radio station

I used to work for had one representative of that theology.

I don't know if all of the hyper -grace movement would include that understanding, but it's certainly a part of it, the hyper -grace movement, which basically also involves easy believism and so on.

And it is a really insane way,

I think, of looking at the Holy Scriptures that just Paul's words are binding upon the believer today.

I can't remember off the top of my head right now the main speaker on the radio station that I used to work for that held to that view, but it is out there.

It's thankfully still a minority as far as I know, but it also would be under the umbrella of hyper -dispensationalism.

But anyway, to put Jesus at odds with the Apostle Paul seems to me ludicrous.

It does, and it's very evident that Paul thoroughly believed upon Jesus having that encounter in Acts chapter 9, and his theology grows out of following the work of Christ.

Well, I want to make sure that as the time slips away from us that you have at least five minutes to really unburden your heart and leave our listeners with the things that you most want etched in their hearts and minds when they leave the program today.

I want them to see in the book of Ephesians that this is about God's calling of the

Church. I said on the last time we were on here that I had a man in my congregation when

I was preaching this in my first pastorate who realized, Pastor, you're trying to tell us what

God has called the Church to be, and we're to pattern our Church after this. Is that what you're trying to do as we go through Ephesians?

And that's exactly what we see in there. Not to the exclusion of all the other books in the New Testament and all the other books in Scripture, but there's something particular

Ephesians is getting at saying, this is what God has called the Church to be, do, and have, and it's a unique conversation, but, you know, the

Church is about believers and it's spoken of everywhere else. I would encourage the listeners to sit down with the book of Ephesians, and as I say in the beginning of the study guide, read straight through the book of Ephesians.

Start with prayer, just read the text of Ephesians, start with all the Bible study notes and any commentary as you're going through, and ask the

Holy Spirit to speak and start showing you what is pulling the book together. But I think what's pulling it together is

Christ's Church in the plan of God, and we're looking at what God is doing in all the redemptive history for the

Church in Christ, through the Church in Christ, to the Church in Christ, and you get a glorious picture of our salvation that is full of joy, and I think

Ephesians will become one of your listeners, whoever does this, one of his or her favorite books. Praise God for that.

I also want you, you already gave us a little overview of Glory Road earlier.

I think a very important book that you wrote on your own was

Where Are All the Brothers? This is an issue that, as I think was the motivation behind you writing it, that has really plagued the

Church, where I believe statistically the majority of members in churches nationwide, if not globally, are women, and that men look at Christianity as something that emasculates them.

They view Christianity as something softer than what manliness should be.

In fact, as you know, in the African American community, there is much of the

Church at large that has become matriarchal, and that was something that was of great concern to our late brother,

Dr. Robert Cameron, who's now in glory. But if you could comment on this book that you've written.

The book did grow out of that issue, Chris, but it was a pastoral work because I observed in my own congregation that there were women who were attending without their husbands and or their sons, and I, in talking with them, tried to write little responses to the objections that they had to the

Church, and it grew into this book. Let me just say to the men out there who might be skeptical and still say that Christianity is weak -willed and for women it's kind of feminine, or for someone who has a loved one who says that.

I said to my boys in this morning's devotion, in speaking about the meek inheriting the earth, that Jesus is the most powerful person who ever walked this earth.

He could still a storm, calm seas, he could cast out the demoniacs and exercise, he could heal people on the spot, yet he was the most meek, and I'm going to use words we like to use, mild disposition person who put others before himself that ever walked the face of the earth.

So both great power which men gravitate toward and great meekness which repels the natural man were found in this one person who is walking on the earth.

So Christianity certainly is not against powerful manliness, it just puts a new face on it in the person of Jesus Christ and in his power, and I think it's something that men who are less powerful than Jesus should readily embrace.

Amen, and meek is not the polar opposite of powerful. He's not.

Meek is having your power under control, is it not? Yes, that is it.

Jesus, with all of his power which he could have displayed in getting rid of all of his enemies, chose to keep the lid on all that power until yet a time in the future.

That is the picture of meekness. Yeah, and those that unleash their strength through acts of violence, through acts of controlling the lives of others, no matter what it is, it could be in a marriage, it could be in a bar room, it could be wherever this is, and unfortunately over the centuries it has been with nations and leaders where there have been millions killed on battlefields because of this, but there is very often a revelation in this uncontrolled unleashing of strength and power, so -called, there is really a revelation that there's some insecurity or weakness that the person is trying to overcompensate, or the nation even.

It is weakness, as you said, if the person could not control it, or we can't control it.

Hey brother Chris, I know we're almost out of time here, can I tell you thank you so much again for having me on the program, and I thank

God that Iron Shop and Iron Radio exists, and I hope it will reach many more people, and I'm so glad to participate in what

God is doing through you. Can I use that soundbite as an ad? Yes, yes you can.

Thank you so much. Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Radio did the same thing when

I last interviewed him and went on for about a minute raving about my show, and I said I've got to use this as a commercial, but I thank you for saying those things and knowing you,

I believe that you meant them, and it really blesses my heart in more ways than I can describe, and I look forward to the next time

I can actually fellowship with you face to face. Amen, I'm looking forward to it too

And crossway .org is where you can find out more about this book, Ephesians, a 12 -week study.

Any more contact information that you care to provide our listeners with? www .ericredmond

.wordpress .com is where you can find my blog and get more information about me and contact me, and you can find me on other social media sites too.

Great, well I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. Thank you for joining us on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.