The Demands of the Gospel? | Theocast

The Gospel as Good News, Not Demands

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we are going to answer a question. Does the gospel make demands on us? Are there things that we need to do in order to be saved? Must we forsake sin in order to come to Christ?

Do we need to make Jesus Lord of our lives? And then in the members area, we talk about our obedience and the first and third use of the law and how that factors into that conversation. If you don't even know what those things are, perhaps you should give it a listen.

Stay tuned, we hope it's encouraging.

If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

Thanks for listening.

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, just south of Nashville, for those who are wondering, and myself, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

John, it is good to be around the microphone with you today as normal, dude. Always enjoy what we do. And I find that a lot of times I'm encouraged by the conversations that we have around the mic, just as it seems many of our listeners are too.

I need these talks, and yeah, I feel that today.

That's right, it's good stuff. Yeah, no, we've had some good time together. Hey, so guess what, Theocast, we got stuff for you. We have decided that we're gonna start giving stuff away that we find helpful or funny, or we just wanna give it away.

We like to give things away. So this week, we're gonna be giving away books. So a couple of books that Justin and I absolutely love. We did an entire, we did a book study for pastors on it. You can go to our YouTube channel and look up the book study there we did it on, but it's called, The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant and Kingdoms, or Kingdom, by Samuel Rinehan.

Those of you who are watching online, you can see the book right here. And we're giving two copies away today. And the first copy is going to one of our members. So we took all of our member names, we threw them in this website called the Wheel of Names.

When through God's sovereignty and their selection, we came up with John Lau or John Leo. We were trying to figure out how to say it, but last name, L-A-O. I apologize if we have said that incorrectly.

But John, hopefully you hear this, you'll get an email from us, respond to it, give us your address. And then we have a second book we wanna give away. We got two. This is how you get the second one. Every Wednesday, if you go and look on our social media, so Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, you'll see a post for the giveaway of the day.

It shows up Wednesday, and then we select the winner through the Wheel of Names on Thursday morning. So make sure you go check that out. If you're listening to this right now on Wednesday morning, you'll be able to go and be a part of the giveaway, give that book away.

You can go do the book study if you want. Just go look up the Mystery of Christ Theocast, and you'll find it. And you can enjoy that free book giveaway. So Justin.

Justin.

I love how we just gave things away.

Yeah, we're gonna give coffee mugs, stickers, merch. Oh, by the way, if you have something you want us to give away, that's like, you know, I don't know, ESV Bible or commentary set, who knows? Contact us, go to our contact page, send it to us, we'll give it away.

I just mean people didn't have to buy it, it was given.

That's right, that's right, that's right.

Law and Gospel in the Language of the Gospel

Hey man, so today, today's a good one. I'm excited for us, Justin. People have already seen the title, so they probably can't wait for us to get into this.

People probably need to duck.

Help us out, brother. What are we talking about today?

It's pretty normal to hear people use language in the church. And by the church, I mean, it's kind of evangelical church in the West, in America, where we find ourselves. Normal to hear people talk about the quote, demands of the gospel, close quote.

To talk about the things that the gospel requires of us. And when we can help it, we try not to bury the lead here at Theocast. And so we'll just go ahead and say right out of the gate that we have very strong disagreements with that kind of language in terms of the demands of the gospel.

It is our understanding from scripture that the gospel, the good news about Jesus Christ, who he is and what he did for us, it is just that. It is news to be received, a message to be trusted. And it is a gift freely given.

It is not something that we do things, certainly in order to earn on the front end, but it's not even something where on the back end we do stuff that would have made us worthy to receive it in the first place.

And we'll go so far as to say, to just set this conversation up, that the law of God demands everything from us, but it gives nothing. Whereas the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ demands nothing, but gives everything.

Now that sounds, John, like off the charts controversial.

To many people.

And I mean, I trust there may be people listening to this podcast right now because somebody encouraged them to give it a spin. And they're thinking, what in the world did he just say? That the gospel demands nothing, but gives everything.

Is that true?

Look, my recommendation for the listener is just, if you can, stay with us for a few minutes and we want you to kind of hear us through, because this is a subtle shift and it can make it sound like we're heretics, but this is such an important conversation I can't even explain to you how it can confuse so much.

So what we're having a conversation about, really, is the law and the gospel, and what happens when you mix the two. You get glossable, or I put a tweet out the other day that if you put do back into what God has done, you're taking the good part out of the gospel.

And it's badspill, really, what it is. It's just bad news. It's not good news, it's bad news. So the moment, let's just think about, you know, to take a little bit farther what Justin just said, the law and the gospel.

The gospel, when we think about, even when it's being used, like for instance, in Rome, when they would go and they would conquer a city and that city was now underneath the rule of Rome and it's gonna be receiving its taxes and warriors, they would send messengers back to Rome to declare the good news.

Like, hey, listen, we have just conquered a new city. It's now part of who we are. So it's a military term, really, of this declaration of victory.

Eugelion, yeah, it's a declaration of victory.

Right, so when they're going back and declaring victory, if they were to put demands on top of that, whoever is declaring that would probably get in trouble saying, hey, by the way, we have victory, but the city we conquered, they have some stipulations.

It's like, what?

Then we didn't conquer them because if there's stipulations by the city, then we didn't win. It's not ours, we don't own it. So when you hear the New Testament writers using it, we often forget context and we forget culture.

Justin and I, just as a little teaser, we're about to do a podcast coming up soon on what does it mean to bear your cross, which is misunderstood. But there's a context, there's a local context, a Roman and Jewish conflict between the two culture context.

So the gospel is the declaration of good news. And I want to say, just as they would go and declare the good news of what victory they have won, it's speaking of history. Like, this is done, like it's over.

We're declaring the news of the event. So the gospel is the declaration of the news, of the event of what has been done. And when someone comes in and then uses this phrase, the demands of the gospel, those are like, not only linguistically, but historically, that doesn't make any sense.

It almost like, Justin, let me say it this way. It's almost like saying, there are demands upon dead people. The dead must do this. And you're going, no one would ever tell you, they would never walk into a cemetery and say, well, let me tell you what, all these dead people, what they don't know is, this is stuff they have to do.

Like, we don't use that language because it logically doesn't make sense and scientifically doesn't make sense. But yet we do this to the gospel because we have confused the difference between the demands of God and the declaration good news of God.

The Law Demands Perfect Obedience

Yeah, so I'm gonna pick up on a couple of things, John. First, there are all kinds of things that God requires of us. His word is full of them. And just to give a very, very brief, 30 ,000 foot flyover synopsis of what God requires, we could maybe sum it up this way, that God demands sinlessness.

He demands that we be without sin if we're gonna live in his presence and be with him and know eternal rest and blessedness. He also requires that we have a righteousness that is perfect, where not only have we not sinned, you know, in terms of sinlessness, but we have positively obeyed him in every way at the level of thought, at the level of deed, desire, what have you.

And we learn of these demands of God that we keep his law perfectly in a number of different places, including Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, where he talks about the righteousness that's necessary, not only that must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, but he'll even say in Matthew 5, 48, that we must be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect.

We see the language of Paul in the letter to the Galatians, for example, where he cites the book of Moses. He cites Deuteronomy. He cites Leviticus to make it plain that everyone who does not abide by everything that is written in the book of the law is cursed.

And everybody who doesn't do everything in the book of the law is cursed. And as the law says in Leviticus 18, five, those who do these things will live by them, meaning eternally, you know, those who keep the law will live.

Think about Paul's language in Romans chapter two, where he says, it's not the hearers of the law, but the doers of the law who will be justified in God's sight. Think about James chapter two, where we're told that anybody who breaks the law in any way is guilty of breaking all of it, because the one who said don't murder also said don't commit adultery.

So, I mean, we could go on about this, but it is very clear that God makes all kinds of demands on us if we are gonna live with him. And there is no exceptions allowed. There is no curve, you know, that God uses to grade us with.

It is perfection or failure in terms of the requirements of God. Now, everything that I have just described would fall under the category of law in terms of what God requires of us. Do these things and you will live.

That is law. The question is, what is the gospel? What is gospel? Is it something where stuff is required of us, or is the gospel the free gift of God, to use the language of Romans 6, 23? The free gift of God is this.

And then what does he give us, right? And my answer is that he gives us everything that he requires.

That's right.

He gives it freely.

That's right.

And he gives it to us through the work of his son in our place that we receive by faith. So we get Christ's sinless sacrifice takes away our sin, and Christ's perfect life of obeying the law in every way is counted to us as our record.

That's good news. Yeah, and just to kind of, I would say to sum up what you're saying is that what Justin just did is a great example. There is no gospel if there is no law.

So true, brother. You've got to understand the law to understand the gospel.

Right, Paul even says this, right? The law is given to show us our sin. So Justin and I absolutely believe that the demands of God remain. They are there. And you have to understand, there's a difference between the demands of the law and then to say there's demands of the gospel.

And I know that more specifically,.

We understand that the demands of God's moral law remain, and we could unpack that more at some point, but go.

Right, and we're going to get into a minute of the difference between the law as entrance into the family of God, and then the law, which we understand there's different uses of the law, which we're not going to get into that right now, but we will.

I want to say that sometimes there are preachers, and it's very confusing to me and to those who are listening, when they say the gospel demands this. And what I would say, it's a poor use of words. Maybe they believe that if they do, it's heresy.

Honestly, I don't think that's what they believe. I think it's a confusion of what they're saying because to say that the gospel demands something is a heretical teaching that will lead you to damnation and hell.

And I'm just going to be frank on that. So I'm not accusing people of heresy. I think they're confused in their language. The law demands obedience or you are condemned. The gospel does not condemn people.

That's the thing about it. You have to understand the gospel does not lead people to the judgment seat of God. It relieves them from it. It rescues them from the judgment. So you have to understand, Justin and I absolutely believe if you don't preach the law, you cannot have gospel because the gospel is the relief of the law, right?

The most important part about this conversation is the refill of copy I'm about to get.

Thank you so much.

Justin Perdue. It's the law. That's Judith, awesome.

Strong word.

Justin Perdue. It's actually Jane. Thank you, Jane.

Justin Perdue. Jane, excellent.

Justin Perdue. A little coffee cup.

Justin Perdue. Hey, man.

Justin Perdue Promotion there.

Justin Perdue. Look at that good looking mug you got there.

Oh my gosh.

How about that?

Justin Perdue. Sorry.

Justin Perdue. You're not looking.

Justin Perdue. Yes, there you go.

Justin Perdue I was going to say that like picking up on what you're articulating there, and I've sort of lost my train of thought with the whole coffee interruption.

Justin Perdue. Well, law, the demands of the law versus the demands of the gospel.

Justin Perdue. Yeah, understood. I mean, but you even said the gospel sets us free from the law. Well, I mean, in the gospel, we are given the fulfillment of the law by Christ in order that we might be delivered from the condemnation of the law, right?

Yeah, anyway, we could keep going, but I don't want to derail your train.

No, yeah, no, no, it's totally good. The reason why this is so important is that Justin and I, the Reformers, the Bible, listen to Jesus. Justin and I were having a very long conversation about Luke 14 and Mark 8, where Jesus comes in and just pounds the law.

I mean, just boom, boom, boom, boom. People are confused. They think it's gospel because Jesus is talking about following him, right? Jesus is talking about being his disciple, and so they assume anytime Jesus mentions discipleship or following him, that's gospel.

Listen, Paul makes it very clear as what the gospel, I know Justin's losing his mind. He can't, I'll hand it to you, brother. If we aren't clear on what the gospel is, then you are going to live in the constant state of wonder.

Like, how do I know that I'm justified before God? This is the thing about it. So Paul, if you go and read the book of Galatians, Paul wrote that entire book to just pry the law out of the gospel. He's just ripping it out as hard as he can, saying, how are you so confused?

Have you been bewitched to think the good news requires something of you?

It can't.

It is a declaration of what has been done.

I was just going to comment briefly on the fact that there is so much confusion out there in terms of reading and understanding the words of Jesus, because people do assume that if Jesus spoke it, it must be gospel.

And even the name of the four books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the gospel of, I think that it's not that those are bad titles at all, but I think that can add to this confusion for some people where they assume that everything contained in it thereby is part of the gospel.

And what we need to understand is that the four accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ are narrative. They're describing what he accomplished for us. They're obviously recording some of the things that he taught and said for sure, but they are recording the works of Christ that have accomplished redemption.

That's right.

And so it is in particular the redemptive work of Christ that is offered freely to sinners that is the good news contained within those accounts. And then that gospel is further unpacked by the apostles as they write the rest of scripture in the New Testament.

And we need to understand that the majority of the words that came out of Jesus's mouth were actually law and not gospel. He was the greatest preacher and teacher of the law who has ever lived. He helped people see what the requirements of God really are and thereby he crushed people with the law that they might be driven to him who is their only hope of salvation and righteousness.

That's right.

And for example, brother, when there's a lawyer who comes up to him, this is in pretty much all the synoptic gospels, comes up to him and says, good teacher, what's required to enter the kingdom of God or what are the greatest commandments or what is the greatest commandment in the law?

And Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. People will say, see man, that's true religion there. Christ is telling us what we need to do.

It's like, well, yeah, he is telling us what we need to do and that he is summing up the law and the prophets. He says so himself. He's summing up the first and second table of the 10 commandments. The first four commandments that tell us about how we're to love God and the latter six commandments that tell us how we're to love neighbor.

And he sums that up with love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. But that's not the good news because nobody has ever done any of that for one second of their lives.

And so we need him to do that in our place to give us that righteousness. And then we need him, the sinless one to die for our sins and to bear the wrath of God we deserve. And that's what he came to do.

And so, yeah, man, it's the distinctions that we're making right now might seem at points like it's minor or we're splitting hairs but these distinctions make all the difference in the world.

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith Versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a Reformed confessional perspective.

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer.

Repentance, Belief, and the Free Gift of Faith

Yeah, so here's the thing I put out on Twitter that I think it tripped a lot of people up, which was an interesting conversation I had with some people. Repentance of sin cannot save you, which that I know, and people said, you need to be more clear about what you're saying.

And to be fair, how nuanced we are, can Justin and I say things in more clear, succinct ways? Though to the both of those things, criticisms, we will say always. And we're always trying to be clear on what we're saying and very simple and simplistic so that we're not misunderstood.

Because you can hear things like repentance of belief or you need to repent for the kingdom is at hand. And when you don't have a law, gospel understanding and the distinction between the demands of the law, the demands of the law are for you to repent.

That is demands of the law, absolutely. Because if you don't repent of your sins, you are going to be held accountable for your sins. The problem is no one can repent of all their sins. Like if you assumed that you turned from everything that you've ever, let me just put it this way, Justin, has anybody ever repented of not loving God.

With all their heart?

Has anybody ever repented of that?

Not adequately, because that's true of us every moment we're breathing and we're not continually repenting of it. So no, we've never done so adequately.

Right, what Jesus does is that he comes in and he takes repentance to a level that no one can do. Like when he says, you think that you're not sleeping with a woman, that means you have kept the law. But I tell you, but if you had thoughts about it, you were guilty of it.

And what Jesus is always going after is the impossibility of righteousness. If you want to stand righteous before God and what Jesus is really calling us to, and I believe this whole, all of my heart, what Jesus is calling us to is a change of mind of where you rest your righteousness.

Change where righteousness comes from and you will be saved.

So I'm going to say, and this is not to contradict anything that you just said, because you just said what I'm going to say, and I hope I can be clear about this. If there is a demand of the gospel, it is belief, right?

It is believe in Jesus Christ and alongside that belief as a part of that belief, I would include that change of mind that you just mentioned, that is repentance, that God works. Like he gives those things to us.

Like the thing that God's demands, believe in Christ, which means necessarily that I have changed my mind about God and his ways with us and what he requires of me and the way I might be reconciled to him.

God grants faith and repentance. He does in those senses, right? So even the one thing that we're told that we need to quote unquote, I'm using scare quotes, do with the gospel, trust Christ, is something that we can't do on our own.

And in and of itself is a gift of God that he gives us.

I would even say, like when someone says the demand of the gospel is to believe, my response to that is no, and I'm agreeing with you, brother.

And I'm going to say something else, go, keep going.

So it is news and what you do with that news is up to you. It's like, hey, listen, here's, and this is what I love, like in Luke 14, when Jesus says, those who have ears to hear, let them hear. And it says the sinners drew near.

It's like when they heard that Jesus is their way out of their own righteous failings, they come. They come. So it's like those who hear the gospel and the spirit has opened their minds and they see their need for repentance, they believe.

So there's not even the demand to believe. It's kind of like, yeah, go ahead.

Let me go, because I'm agreeing wholeheartedly. And I've said this, I put this up online recently, but I was having a conversation with the other guy on staff at our church. And I said to him, the language that people will use like this about what we need to do in order to come to Christ or whatever is just so unhelpful and absurd.

I said, here's the deal. If you offer a cup of water to a man dying of thirst, what's he gonna do with that? If you offer food to a starving person, what's he gonna do with that?

He's gonna eat it.

Do you need to like lambast him and persuade him and convince him to drink that water or eat that food?

No.

That's right, no.

Because he has an awareness of what he needs. It's visceral. I mean, it's intuitive. Like he doesn't need it explained to him. And then he has in front of him the thing that he absolutely has to have and doesn't.

That's right.

And he takes it. And that's what happens like to what you just said, John, when the Holy Spirit of God does his regenerating work. In the life of a fallen sinner, and we thereby having heard God's word, having been crushed by God's law, and we have Jesus held out to us, it is like that starving man being offered food.

It's like, give me Christ. That is the best picture that I know of to present the listener with in terms of what this actually looks like. And so it's not this whole like yell at people about like what they need to do to repent and believe and the demands of the gospel.

It's like, no, we're offering water to people who are dying of thirst and we're offering food to starving people. Sinners who are crushed by the law need Christ. And when the Spirit shows up, they receive and trust him and cast themselves upon him.

The Rich Young Ruler and the Crushing Weight of the Law

Yeah, I mean, to go back to the law gospel distinction of what you were just saying, Justin, like we were so confused what Jesus says as if like the rich young ruler, all the man had to do was sell everything and come follow Jesus.

And he would, it's like, you really believe that he would have saved himself? I mean, that is insane to think about because what you were saying is the law is now achievable. If you think the rich young ruler's problem was he wasn't willing to leave his money, that's why he wasn't saved, you just thought the law is achievable.

The law taught properly should crush 99, should, sorry, should crush 100 of everyone.

Everybody.

Everybody, except Jesus. That's what I was gonna say, 99 .9 except Jesus. The law, and here's my problem. You know, people who say, well, you guys aren't preaching the gospel. No, you're not preaching the law because the law says it is 100 without failure.

Like when someone says, unless you make Jesus Lord, you cannot be saved, I agree. Yeah, and it needs to be 100 Lord all the time without fail. And my fingers point at you in the camera.

Well, if you're gonna make Jesus Lord in that sense, it would mean that you love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength all the time.

Without fail.

Without fail, that's what I mean, all the time.

That's right.

Every moment without exception. And I love, John, let me just riff for a second on the whole rich young man, rich young ruler passage. We've talked about this before in terms of the passage itself. I mean, I agree with you completely that what Jesus is doing in that moment is crushing that man with the weight of the law.

This man thinks that he has loved God and neighbor, that he has done enough to merit eternal life. He says, I've kept the commandments. Well, what does Jesus do? Jesus asks him to prove his love for God and neighbor and the man can't do it, right?

I'm in complete agreement with you there. But what kills me, John, is that when guys who, I say this humbly, but when guys who will scream from the rooftops about faithful biblical exposition and exegesis, then will come to a passage like that and will introduce something into the text that is flat out not there, ala, they say, well, what we need to be at least willing to do is give away everything for Christ.

And I'm like

You just lowered the law. You just lowered the law.

And I'm like, homie, first of all, where in the world did you get willing from the text? Because it's not there. You pound the drum all the time of we need to be faithful to the text. I'm like, well, the word willing is nowhere to be seen on that page.

That's right.

Christ said, do this if you would be perfect. Do this. And the man can't do it. And that is the point, right? We can't do what God requires. And that is why, I mean, again, think of the, that's why I want to finish my thought.

The gospel is the free gift of God through faith, right? Where we are counted righteous with the very righteousness of Jesus and all of our sins are forgiven and they are atoned for, and we are absolved of all guilt.

And it is a free gift. It is like come and drink, you know, of the water without payment and without price, right? It's Isaiah 55, it's Revelation 21. And I can't get away from the argument of Paul in Romans two and three, where he makes very, very clear that none of us live up to our own standards, let alone God's, right?

Because we judge each other for not meeting the standards that we hold out. And we can't keep our own standards either. So we condemn ourselves. And then he talks about how God is a righteous judge who's impartial, who rewards those who do good with eternal life.

And he punishes those who do evil with wrath and condemnation. And then he says the whole thing about, for it is not the hearers of the law, but the doers of the law who will be justified. But then what does he go on to say?

There's a huge problem because nobody's good. Nobody has kept the law, which is why beginning in Romans 321, he tells us what the good news is. And he says, but now the righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the law, although the law and prophets bear witness to it.

It is the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. And like that is what we're discussing here, that God has all kinds of requirements, but none of us have ever kept his law.

None of us have ever met the standard. And so we are desperate for the work of Christ in our place.

That's right.

Hey, Justin, have you ever been out in public and you get home and you realize that your zipper was down or you had like a booger hanging from your nose and you realize no one there told you like this embarrassing thing about you.

And you're like, are you kidding me? All these people saw this and no one ever said anything. When David says, I love thy law, I understand why he says that because when David looks into the law, he sees himself as God sees him and it helps him keep a right perspective of who God is and who he is and how he needs to depend upon God, right?

I never understood the phrase, oh, I love thy law. I love the law of God. So I love it because it keeps the gospel so fresh and clean and necessary for me. Like I can't move on from the gospel because the more I look at the law, I can see all of what's wrong with me and it keeps me on this dependent track of Christ where I am not going to depend upon my ability to do the law.

The law exposes my frailty and says, I have nothing. I have no righteousness. I love God's law for that.

I love God's law because of God's gospel.

That's right.

We just said it earlier. Like you need to understand the law in order to understand the gospel. I would say that in order to really understand the law, you also need to be able to see and understand the gospel.

That's right.

I mean, you have to keep them distinct, but the understanding of the one aids your understanding of the other and that's huge. So David can say, I love God's law.

We do too.