Easy-Listening Legalism | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, John and I are going to have a follow -up conversation from our episode last week.

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We had Mike Abendroth on a week ago to talk about smuggling works into faith. Today John and I are going to talk about easy listening legalism and try to give some specific examples from prominent theologians in our day where we fear that works are being smuggled into faith.

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All of the things that we quote will be in the show notes for your reference and for your use.

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We hope that this conversation is clarifying for you, particularly when it comes to the nature of the gospel and the sufficiency of the work of Christ.

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He is our whole and only righteousness by faith. That's what we're going to talk about today. There's nothing more important.

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Stay tuned. A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the

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Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org slash give. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a confessional, Reformed, and pastoral perspective.

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John's using props for those who are watching on the YouTube, the audio format is disregarded. We do try to encourage people to rest in Christ, and that includes

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John and myself as we are prone to think in all kinds of ways we shouldn't, and we desperately need to be reminded of what

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Christ has done for us. So I've already used our names, haven't even introduced us yet, and haven't even told you who your hosts are.

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If you're listening regularly, you probably know, but if you're newer, we want to make you aware. Your hosts today around the virtual table are

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John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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We're talking today about a very important matter. I'm going to let John introduce the topic in just a moment, but the regular listeners will know that last week we had our friend, brother in Christ, fellow pastor

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Mike Abendroth on to talk about smuggling works into faith. I'm just going to sort of set the grenade on the table and pull the pin before I even hand it to John, because that's just how we roll sometimes.

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In our day, many people state that the problem in the church is nominalism, Christianity in name only, and that that's always been what's plagued the church.

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I would humbly but sincerely disagree that what plagues the church in this era and always has since the church's founding is the temptation to weave other things into the groundwork of salvation besides what

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Christ alone has accomplished. So it's Jesus plus has always been the temptation, and that is the epidemic.

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Moralism, legalism, Jesus plus works, faith plus works, faith plus obedience.

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That has always been it. So if you hear us say anything, hear that from the outset.

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John's going to give us a little more detail, and we're going to take off running. There's always been a response to nominalism, lackadaisical, however you want to put it for Christianity.

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This is what the spiritual disciplines movement was birthed out of in the 16th century. Some people don't even know this, but there's a lot of things, a lot of bad theology that has come from trying to motivate people to do what is right.

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We appreciate the intentions, right? Obey God, serve Him, and uphold holiness. But how you go about that tends to be, if you don't use, as Hebrew says, grace, then to motivate people, you're going to have to use legalism, and the law, and guilt, and shame, or we can say heresy.

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One of the things that we introduced in general were some ways in which the gospel is contaminated, or the way we worded it was we smuggle works into faith.

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And we wanted to give you some more tangible examples about what happens when men who reject what

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I would call sound theological structures that have been tested through time to be safeguards against heresy, when we begin to ignore those, and we'd say, well,

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I just want to believe what the Bible says, which is Biblicism, and I'm only going to just go with the Holy Spirit and my gut on this, then, yeah, we end up coming up with contradictions, and we end up rehashing old theology that was rejected.

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So today, we're going to specifically look at three different men who would reject law gospel distinction and reject covenant of works, and see how that has caused them to swerve off the road at times, and then in one case, the last case, we would even say, this person is now teaching heresy, and so we'll talk about all of that.

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But Justin, that's kind of the introduction to this. I don't know if you have some additional on -ramping words, and then we'll jump into it.

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I mean, perhaps. There's always been, in the history of the church, a concern for holiness, which we want to be really clear from the outset.

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John and I are concerned about holiness. Reformed theologians have always been concerned about holiness and obedience, but there are biblical and better ways to go at that, and there are poorer, just confusing, not biblical, unbiblical ways to go after and to try to lift up and raise the view on holiness and obedience.

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And so, don't misunderstand us. Don't hear what we're not saying today. We're going to try to be as clear as we can be. We're not going to waste a lot of time.

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It's not a waste of time. We're not going to take a lot of time at the beginning to outline the confessional Reformed understanding of justification, saving faith, good works.

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What we're hoping to do today is use the biblical confessional definition as the standard, and then compare these other things to it.

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And this is an exercise in what we say all the time. If you know the truth, then you can recognize the error. And so, we're going to try to put that to practice today.

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I know, John, you mentioned this in our pre -recording conversation. There are times when we will critique other men in our generation, and people will say, you're taking them out of context, or you need to read them at more length, or cite them at more length.

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And we're going to try to do some of that today. Not trying to point fingers, not trying to be, while we're standing on the wall with our machine guns, and we're going to mow everybody down, but we are very seriously going to contend for the clarity of the gospel.

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And we see this done in the pages of the New Testament. And we're going to be really clear too. Like you said, I just don't want people to misunderstand us,

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John, here. The first two guys we're going to talk about, we think, are well -intentioned, but just say things that are confusing.

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The last guy we're going to talk about, we have a slightly different take on. So, here we go.

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Jon Moffitt Stay tuned for that. And a lot of this is, we're not just trying to create clickbait here.

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This is a good example of doing your work, being discerning. We are told in Scripture that we need to be grounded in our faith so that we aren't tossed about by every wind of doctrine.

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False teachers will come in. And I think that there are some teachers that have influenced some of these guys.

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And so, it's just healthy for us to sit back and say, these people might be famous, they might be popular, and they may have said a lot of good things.

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It's not the good things that concern me, it's the bad things that they say. And that those bad things will ultimately influence a lot of what else they believe in Scripture.

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So, we just have to be careful on that. Last comment, for real, for real, before we get going. I think that you're going to hear in the quotes that we read from these gentlemen, you're going to hear a lot of stuff that sounds very medieval in terms of, and to use maybe just colloquial speak, that sounds very

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Roman Catholic. And we're not saying that these guys have gone the way of Rome wholesale, but what we are saying is it sounds quite a bit like Rome.

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And by that, we mean a very synthesized understanding, a synergistic understanding of salvation.

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It's God's work and it's our work, rather than a monergistic understanding of salvation, where we understand that God saves.

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And yeah, I could say more, but we're just going to move forward. And so, as we tee up the first person,

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I want to say that a lot of times what will be thrown out there was, there's mystery, there's tension in the text, it's not my responsibility to fix the tension in the text.

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And I agree, there are times where there's some tension as understanding the will of God, but when it comes to our status before the

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Father as either righteous or sinner, there is no tension in the text. Justin Perdue I'm worked up now.

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So, I just finished preaching Habakkuk. And so, I've said a lot about mystery and the secret things belonging to the

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Lord when it comes to His providence. So, that's biblical. We don't understand the inner workings of the mind of God in terms of His sovereign will.

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That's true. But I will pound the desk and stand on the tabletops and even stake my ministry on this.

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There is no mystery and no confusion when it comes to the relationship between faith and works.

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There is no tension to be found when it comes to what is the only ground of our standing before God now and forever.

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No mystery, no tension there whatsoever. And this is what biblicism does, where you want to speak like the

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Bible does. It sounds holy. It sounds pious. But then you end up pitting texts against each other because you don't have an appropriate theological and biblical framework.

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And so, have that in your mind as well as you listen. This is how we learn and grow. And this is how we learn to recognize and distinguish between truth and error.

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All right. So, John, let's go. Yeah. We're providing a document. This is about six, seven pages long, single space quotes.

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We've also provided some confessions in there and some scriptures. So, we'll provide this on our website. We're not going to read every quote.

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There's probably six to ten quotes. We're only going to read a small smattering, yeah. Yeah. We're going to read about three just, but if you want additional ones, this is a lecture that I did.

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We'll put the lecture down there if you want to listen to this on smuggling works into faith. And this section is under Piper where there's, we would say he's bringing in some confusion because again, he openly rejects a logos for hermeneutic or an understanding that there's actual distinction in the

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Bible in this. And he also rejects a covenant of works. And you're going to be able to see that because it influences his understanding as he's dealing with biblical texts.

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So, this is not new. Does he first introduce this concept in his book, Desiring God, where he introduced this idea of a final salvation and he has throughout the years continued to clarify that.

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So, this is from his book, What Jesus Demands from the World in 2015. It says,

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Jesus says that on the day of judgment, people will go away into eternal punishment because they really failed to love their fellow believers.

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As you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.

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There is no doubt that Jesus saw some measure of real lived out obedience to the will of God as a necessary final salvation.

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Okay. So, again, we would agree and the confessions agreed that those who have a faith that has been granted to them by the

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Spirit have a faith that produces good works. Amen. We would agree with that. But there's nowhere in scripture that we would ever conclude that God examines those good works as an entrance fee, as how he's being used here, as an entrance fee into heaven.

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We're going to read another quote here in a minute, but what Piper has done here is he has added something on the end of faith.

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So, we're going to look at how faith is all kind of messed up here. But what he's done is like, well, you can enter into a right relationship with God by faith alone justification, but your eternal destination, which is heaven, that is granted by works.

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Yeah, it's faith and works. I mean, that's effectively the schema is that you enter into a right relationship with God by faith alone.

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You're justified by faith alone, but you're finally saved by faith and works. It's this two -stage justification, final justification, two -stage salvation kind of thing.

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And again, I'm going to say this probably a half dozen times today, and I'm unapologetic. We agree to John's point with the reform through history that where there is faith, there will be obedience.

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Where there is faith, there will be good works. But faith and obedience are not one in the same, and faith and works are not one in the same.

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And it is Christ alone who is the ground of our standing before God now and forever, and we receive what

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Christ has done by faith alone. You should expect a believer who professes Christ to desire to do good works and to do good works.

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We're not antinomians here. No, but that is an outflow of life received and of justification received.

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It is not the cause of any of it, and that's the hang -up here. I'm going to read the next quote from Piper.

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This is from an article he wrote a few years ago, Does God Really Save Us by Faith Alone? He says, quote,

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In final salvation at the last judgment, faith is confirmed by the sanctifying fruit it has borne, and we are saved through that fruit and that faith.

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Close quote. So that last clause is the problem. We are saved through that fruit and that faith.

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We would agree that good works, fruit, is evidence of faith, so that's fine.

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And the language of fruit period is helpful because think of that biblical illustration of the tree and fruit. A tree that's alive bears fruit, but you can't duct tape fruit to a tree, right?

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You can't reverse engineer this thing. Our human logic falls apart at a number of different levels, and that becomes clear in some of these conversations.

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You can say that where there's faith there will be fruit, true, but then you can't turn around and then say, well, produce fruit to be saved because that falls apart.

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That's not what the Scriptures say. When you invert or disorient this relationship and you just throw a monkey wrench into the order salutis, the order of salvation, we have all kinds of problems that flow out of that, and this is an example of that.

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Jon Moffitt So we've gone from Desiring God in 1996 to 2015 to today.

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I mean, he wrote that, I think, two years ago or a year and a half ago. It was the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Jon Moffitt Yeah, so sometimes people say, well, yeah, you're reading a younger man's writing.

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As they grow, they've changed their mind, and really Piper's only gotten stronger in his defense of this throughout the years.

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Go ahead. I mean, this next one dovetails with it. I'm just going to repeat it. Well, the question is, how does a person enter into right relationship with God?

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Piper's right about this. He says, the Christian answer is sola fide, faith alone.

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We agree, but be sure you hear this carefully and precisely. He says, write with God by faith alone, not attain heaven by faith alone.

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There are other conditions for attaining heaven, but no others for entering a right relationship to God.

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So again, we are drawing a distinction here between justification and final salvation. You're bifurcating those two things in a way that the

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Scripture just plainly doesn't. Because Paul, for example, in Romans 5 .1, this immediately comes to mind.

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Knowing then, having been justified by faith, we now have peace with God. Then he goes on in the coming verses to talk about how we know that faith produces all of these things, hope and character and all the rest.

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He says that that's the case because of a very future -oriented reality that the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the

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Holy Spirit, and we hope in the Lord. Present justification and future hope are very much tethered together in the mind of the

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Apostle Paul. Whereas I think Piper, with the best of intentions, is driving a wedge between those things, saying you can have present justification, but then your final salvation and your future hope is conditioned upon you bearing appropriate fruit.

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Jon Moffitt Right, which we would say is very confusing. I know he's still processing this. I pray that he listens to the godly men that influence him.

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But this is not a surprise. For those of you who don't know, he was a student of Daniel Fuller from Fuller Seminary, and Daniel Fuller hated the doctrine of the covenant of works, could not stand it, was ardently rejecting law gospel distinction, which you can see from Piper's own hermeneutic he is doing the same, and the results of that are leading him to believe in a two -stage salvation.

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So he's adding something to faith. Now we're going to move on to the next man who, on the front end, put something before faith.

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You've got Piper adding something additional to faith. Now you've got someone who's going to put a condition before faith.

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And so we're going to be reading some quotes from John MacArthur. Now, some of these are really old, and then they're going to get newer.

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And I know for a fact that John has changed his view on some of this, which is good, and I'm glad that he has. But this is the kind of thing that happens with biblicism, and this is also what happens when you tend to reject history and understand how things work.

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And so I'm going to start with one of his really old works on justification, and then we'll work our way back.

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And he started to correct himself, but he still has ended up adding something before that. But this really real old work on justification, it says this,

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We are not only declared righteous, we are made righteous, which is on page 98 of his work on justification by faith.

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This making righteous is accomplished by infusing Christ's righteousness into Christians.

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I'm just going to stop there. Justin, what's our problem? Justin Perdue So 11 .1 of our confession, the

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Second London Confession, but this would also be contained in the Westminster and in similar language in the Belgic and other places.

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But our confession verbatim says that God does not justify us.

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I'm just going to read it. God justifies us not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and accounting and accepting them as righteous.

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He does this for Christ's sake alone and not for anything produced in them or done by them. He does not impute faith itself, the act of believing, or any other gospel obedience to them as their righteousness.

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Instead, he imputes Christ's active obedience to the whole law and passive obedience in his death as their whole and only righteousness by faith.

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So we've got to make this distinction. We are declared righteous, we are counted righteous on account of Christ, and it is always

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Christ's righteousness that is given to us, but that righteousness is always Christ's, not ours.

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It is always alien, to use the language of the Reformers. So alien meaning it's not inherently ours.

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It's not native to us, and it never is. It is always Christ's righteousness counted to us.

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So this whole idea of righteousness being infused into us is not a

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Protestant category. That is a Roman Catholic medieval category where righteousness would be infused into a person, and we become inherently righteous ourselves.

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And so that distinction, it may sound like splitting hairs to you theologically. It makes a ton of difference.

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Justin Perdue It does. It does. Because if we were to just go down and read the Canon and the

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Council of Trent, I mean, they flat out will say, I mean, I'll just read this to you. So this is Canon 11.

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It says, If anyone saith that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ or by the sole remission of sins to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the

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Holy Ghost and is inherent in them, so infused, or even that the grace whereby we are justified is only the favor of God, let him be anathemate.

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Or this is 12. If anyone saith that justification by faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which merits sins, sorry, remits sins for Christ's sake, or that it is confidence alone in that whereby we are justified, let him be anathemate.

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So the Catholic Church understood well what the Reformation was saying and that we are not infused.

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Because I understand what MacArthur was going with this, basically saying if you have regeneration, then the fruits of regeneration should be evident in you.

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And that's different than saying you are infused with Christ's righteousness. We are not infused with it.

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But this category of confusion is important for us to point out because, again, when you ignore history and you ignore what's come before, you tend to fall into the same trap.

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So let's fast -forward a little bit, Justin, into some more modern -day writing that he's put out.

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So there's the Gospel According to Jesus, which there's an updated version to that. And then there's the newest one, which is hard to believe.

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But these are some of the phrases I'll read too, and you can conclude on the other one. We'll talk about it.

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But MacArthur says about the rich young ruler, which we have referenced multiple times on this podcast, that, quote, no matter what he believed, since he was unwilling to forsake all, he could not be a disciple of Christ.

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And MacArthur would argue that Jesus actually presented the gospel to the rich young ruler, which is when he walked up and said, what must

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I do to enter the kingdom? Christ said, obey the law. Well, that's not gospel. That's law.

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Well, or that Jesus presented gospel more precisely when he said, sell everything you own, give it to the poor, and follow me.

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Whereas we would say, no, what Christ was doing there actually was just turning the temperature up on the law and was preaching the law to the man's heart to say, oh, well, you've claimed to have perfectly loved

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God and neighbor in keeping the law. Prove it by selling everything you have, giving it to the poor, and following me.

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And of course, the man can't do it. Right. And that's the point. Yeah, that's right. And then one other quote, he's in this same book later on, he's talking about Judas and those, and it's interesting because Judas is the one who forsook everything and followed

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Jesus. But his comment on this quote, Judas had responded positively to Christ, but never with all his heart, which

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I don't know anyone in the history of the world has ever responded with all their heart. Well, yeah, and there's a lot we could say about Judas.

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I mean, even in terms of Jesus's foreknowledge and the predestination in terms of the plan of God with him.

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But what's implied in both of those quotes is that with the rich young ruler, the issue was that he was not willing to surrender all.

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So that's the crux. And then with Judas, it was he didn't accept Jesus. He did not respond positively to Jesus with all his heart.

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Implication being the rich young ruler could have been saved if he had been willing to give away everything and follow

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Christ. Implication, Judas would not have fallen away like he did if he had responded to Jesus with all his heart.

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And you let the listener discern what the emphasis is there. That's right. It's not trust and reliance upon Christ.

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It's actually this thing that we bring in terms of our devotion, wholehearted devotion, our willingness to surrender all.

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And there's a lot that could be said, but I'm going to trust other work and other podcasts that we've done and not beat this.

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We've done a whole thing on it. And I would just say we're adding a stipulation before faith in order for someone to have faith, they have to have repentance first.

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And repentance is a fruit of faith. And so I'll just read this one last quote. I think it's an interesting way to kind of conclude here.

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This is from Hard to Believe. So it's most recent book. Salvation isn't the result of an intellectual exercise. It comes from a life.

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We agree with that. Yeah. It comes from a life lived in obedience and service to Christ as revealed in Scripture.

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It's the fruit of actions, not intentions. Now, here's where we go wrong. There's no room for passive spectators.

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Words without actions are empty and futile. The life we live, not the words we speak, determines our eternal destiny.

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And there's so much confusion there in that I agree with him that you're living.

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This is James, right? Faith without words is dead. But that last phrase, no, your words do not determine your eternal destiny.

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The life we live determines our eternal destiny. I mean, it is so problematic on a number of levels.

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And it's a conflation of faith and obedience. Whereas what we would say is who you trust, where you understand your righteousness comes from, determines your eternal destiny.

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And then there are going to be all kinds of implications and outflows and fruits of that trust. Amen. But to then reduce it down and say that the life we live here, the obedience that we render, the good works that we do, determines our eternal destiny.

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It's like, good grief, guys. We've now conflated these things and so collapsed the order of salvation in terms of the relationship between faith and works and faith and obedience.

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That we're now basically saying that our obedience is what determines our eternal state. Because, well, where there's saving faith, there will be obedience.

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And that's not how the scriptures speak. Because we've got to keep this relationship in the right order, and you need to keep it appropriately distinct.

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There's regeneration, life given by God that results in faith, repentance, and then obedience, and even a desire to obey.

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And when you start smashing all that together, confusion results. That's right. So let the listener discern, which is the whole point of us trying to equip you and help you understand to use scripture and make sure we're comparing scripture to scripture, using our confessions as a helpful guide and shining light on this.

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All right. This last one is going to take a little bit of a different tone. It's something I've been doing some research on.

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I've obviously put some tweets out there that have caused some interesting ruckus. But for now, we've had so many people say, well, prove it, prove it, show it.

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So we're going to be talking about Doug Wilson. And this one is going to be a lot more complicated because there's a lot more that could be said.

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So we're going to do our best here to put this all in here. But Doug Wilson has obviously been a part of the

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Federal Vision. He no longer accepts the title, but on his blog part, blog article, you can go there and look at what we'll link to it.

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He says he still agrees to what he signed off on theologically. So it rejects the title.

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It's like saying this, Justin, I don't like the word Calvinism. I'm no longer a Calvinist. But then you were to ask me, but do you hold the five points?

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And I would say yes. Yeah, I hold the five points. I affirm everything written in the canons of Dorton. So, yeah, right.

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It's the same thing. Yeah. So rejecting a title is not the same as rejecting the actual theology.

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True. And the title of our episode today is Easy Listening Legalism. The reason we called it that is because what we're trying to expose here is how there are so many ways that we can talk about works and obedience that are confusing.

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And we would contend with the first two guys, biblicists with good intentions have spoken in ways that are less than clear and helpful about the relationship between faith and works.

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And now what we're going to get into is an even more what we think is an intentional distortion of how to think through these matters.

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But all of this that we're talking about, it's a new law, and it's a new kind of legalism and works righteousness woven into justification sola fide, all the while trying to maintain the claim to justification sola fide on the basis of Christ alone.

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And that's what's concerning, especially with Doug Wilson. I mean, he's going to say, no, I don't claim the federal vision anymore.

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I'm sola fide, sola Christus, all of those things. And it's like, yeah, but bro, in all honesty, look at the things that you're writing and saying.

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You're talking out of both sides of your mouth and you're contradicting sola fide and Christ alone. So we're going to start with this.

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Before I even read a quote of Doug, we have to clarify some things here.

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So one of the things that's really hard about dealing with Doug Wilson is he knows how to say the right thing, and he knows how to say the right words.

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So you have to be very careful when someone says, like, for instance, Justin, if someone walks up and says, I am a

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Christian, well, there needs to be some clarification to that because even in the world today, we don't agree on what is a

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Christian. Mormons say that, Jehovah's Witnesses say that, you know, Catholics say that. There's got to be some clarity.

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Justin Perdue Yeah, I mean, at a basic level, do you affirm the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and all these guys? Yeah, I mean, yeah.

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Jon Moffitt So Wilson will say, I am Reformed. I hold to the

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Westminster Confession. I hold to the Solas. But he doesn't, and this is why.

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He holds to the same wording, but different definitions. And so we're going to talk to you guys about the definition he holds, and then you will see when you read him, he says, no, no,

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I believe in faith alone. But his word, when he says faith, means something different. Justin Perdue Yeah. Like, I don't think that word means what you think it means, right?

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I mean, it's a very princess bride kind of word. Jon Moffitt Exactly. Justin Perdue You keep using that word. Jon Moffitt So first of all, we're going to talk about what he denies, and this will help you understand.

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So first of all, he denies the Covenant of Works. Just real quickly, even in their own, how do you call this, the

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Federal Vision, and even in their cross -examination. So this was the cross -examination from his own denomination. And his response to this, he says,

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I believe the Covenant of Works mentioned in chapter seven is badly named. I would prefer something like the

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Covenant of Life or the Covenant of Creation. I believe that this covenant obligated Adam to a wholehearted obedience to the requirement of God.

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That one stipulation I would add is that had Adam stood, he would have been required to thank

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God for his gracious protection and provision. And had Adam stood, he would have done so by believing the word of God.

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In other words, it would have all been by grace through faith. The Covenant of Works was not meritorious, and we deny that any covenant can be kept without faith.

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Sorry, go ahead. Justin Perdue No, I mean, so the thing is, though, is that so what he's saying, he's denying the

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Covenant of Works in the framework that Reformed theologians have articulated for hundreds of years. And I would argue the idea that has been communicated by theologians throughout the history of the church, and that is this, that Adam stood as our representative in the

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Garden of Eden. Doug would affirm that. But we understand that had

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Adam obeyed the covenant that God made with him, he would have earned eternal life and blessedness for himself and all of his posterity.

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That's been understood throughout the history of the church. Romans 5 makes that very plain.

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Other places in the Scripture do too. We've talked about this at length in other venues. So that's a big concern, that Doug Wilson does not understand that Adam could have earned obedience.

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And this has a tremendous downstream effect then on how you understand the work of Christ. John and I were talking about this a little bit ago, and this fires me up a little bit.

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I'm going to try to just be clear and not too passionate about it. But to say that Adam would have been saved by grace through faith implies then that Jesus was accounted righteous on the basis of faith.

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It was by grace through faith that Jesus would have obtained eternal life and that we and him attained it that way.

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It's a problem because where the first Adam failed, the second Adam succeeded, and that was in obeying.

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That was in keeping the law perfectly. And so Jesus was not given anything.

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He was not gifted anything. He earned eternal life, and he accomplished righteousness.

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And what Jesus earned, we are given by faith in the covenant of grace. That is a massive thing.

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So when you reject that, and this is why someone dispensationist might be listening, well, I reject covenant of works language.

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That's fine. But what you do not reject is imputation by faith alone. I was going to say this is important.

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That is heresy. If you reject that you are not imputed by Christ's righteousness by faith alone, then you are denying the gospel.

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And there's a play with words here, which we're going to get into. In essence, they say, no, no, no.

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We believe in the complete imputation of Christ's righteousness. But then they deny it, and we're going to show that here in a minute. And here's the thing.

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From a framework perspective, understand where this goes. Doug Wilson, when he looks at the covenant

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God made with Adam, he sees that the requirements of the covenant are obedience and faith.

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And so then now that's the paradigm and the framework for everyone else. And so it's going to be obedience and faith in the way that he understands the new covenant.

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And the way that he understands life in the church and everything else. And you might be in by grace, but you're kept by obedience.

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And so that's the paradigm, and that's important. The other thing that he denies, though, verbatim, and we're just getting this from the

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Joint Federal Vision Statement, is there is a denial of the law gospel distinction.

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So, quote from the Joint Federal Vision Statement, We deny that law and gospel should be considered as hermeneutics or treated as such.

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Close quote. So we have been clear on this show, along with the Reformed and our

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Lutheran brothers and sisters through history, that there is a distinction between the law and the gospel. That there's law and gospel in the

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Old Testament. There's law and gospel in the New Testament. And then whenever you hear something that we are to do in order to have righteousness before God, that's law.

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Whenever you hear of something that Christ has done, that God then gives us, that we receive by faith, that's gospel.

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That's right. And so they deny, the Federal Visionists do, but Doug Wilson does as well, deny that law and gospel distinction as a hermeneutic and would contend that it should not be used as a way to understand the scriptures.

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Oh, I would say, look, you don't have to have it as a hermeneutic, but to deny its existence is a massive problem. Because even where they go is they end up conflating it.

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And they're like passages are both law and gospel. That's right. And this is where you hear people say things that sound holy, like, you know, the law is all of grace and like the law is good news.

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And it's like, uh, no, no. In that the gospel wouldn't be titled good news if it wasn't the good news.

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The law is good and holy, amen, Romans 7. But it's not good news. There's no problem with the law, but there's a huge problem with us in that we cannot live up to its standard and therefore it condemns us.

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Yeah. Anyway. One last category. So there's, first of all, there's a denial of covenant of works. There's a denial of the law gospel.

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And then he has this thing that he changes words. And this is why I said you have to pay attention to words.

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So he changes the definition of faith. So this is quoting from his website.

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It says, I put the link down there. So it's still live. You can go read it in the New Testament. Obedience is a good word. Also in the

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New Testament, works is not, unless it is modified with the word like good. We are called to good works, but we are not saved by work.

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So you see what he did there is that he's saying not by works unless anyone should boast. Those are bad kinds of works. And obviously this doesn't work.

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Because John 17, Jesus says, I've fulfilled the work that you've given me. And Jesus doesn't put good work in front of there. But he says this, by way of contrast, sinners do not obey the truth.

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The Lord is the author of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

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No. So he is saying basically faith and obedience is synonymous. I'll just keep reading.

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All nations are summoned to the obedience of faith. Obedience is unto righteousness. Even thought,

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I'm sorry, every thought is to be brought into obedience of Christ. God gives the

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Holy Spirit to those who obey him. And of course, obedience is an evil thing when it is referred, sorry, rendered to the wrong master, which should be obvious enough.

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But the bottom line is that simple words, obey and obedience should not set off alarm bells for those who read the

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Bible. And yes, they should shut off alarm bells. If you're saying obedience and faith are the same thing, which he is.

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And we have further quotes to help you understand that this is what he's arguing for. Sure. He's saying, as others have said, that obedience and faith are effectively one in the same, or at least that obedience and faith are sort of part of the same.

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They're like flip sides of the same coin, which is just not helpful. And the whole business about how he tries to drive a wedge between works and obedience is wild.

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Obedience is good. Works is not a good word in the New Testament unless it's modified by a word like good. And so what he's saying is, yeah, we're not saved by works, but implication, our obedience is at least a part of our salvation.

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If not, obedience is the way that we are justified, you know, because obedience is a good word, whereas works is the bad thing.

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So it's not faith versus works in the way that we would think. Because he's like, yeah, works are clearly bad.

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But it's he's saying, yeah, like obedience, you know, is, well, this doesn't even work in James because James uses this way, right?

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No, work. Yeah. Faith without works. James uses the word works, not the word obedience, which is wild.

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So this is where he's setting this up so that it's like, yeah, we're not saved by works, but obedience.

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Now that's different. When you're always defending salvation by works, you have to come up with this kind of stuff.

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That is like, I've just never heard someone describe the Bible that way before. That is very wild.

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Well, it plays out. So here's an example. This is from his book. Reformed is not enough. So a lot of these quotes,

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I want you to understand these. Some of these quotes are from the Federal Vision, which is 20 years old. And he's still teaching this.

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He says he rejects it, but he's still teaching this today. The means by which men preserve in the covenant is faithfulness.

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So you have to understand his argument here is that he believes that baptism regenerates babies or even for those of us who are adults, baptism brings you into what's called a temporary election or this visible election.

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And that the way in which one preserves and reaches final election is through faithfulness.

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In other words, to assert that men fall away because their salvation was contingent upon continued faithfulness in the gospel is not to deny the sovereignty of God at all.

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So somehow he's construing saying, well, God and His sovereignty projected for this to happen.

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You could be legitimately in election, in covenant with God. You could be temporarily elect through baptism in the church, but not be eternally elect because the way that you persevere in the covenant is through faithfulness and thereby become eternally elect.

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And he will argue that in his mind, that is faith alone. No, no, no. We are justified by faith alone.

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But he's redefining the word faith. It doesn't mean the same thing that when we say faith alone or the

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Reformers, it does not mean the same thing. And like I said earlier, the whole wordplay game is wild because he's saying, you know, you should pit faith and works against each other, but faith and obedience, no.

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You know, those are one in the same. There's no tension there whatsoever. You know, and then, all right, here's the kicker, man.

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You want to talk about just being kind of slippery and sounding godly. You know, here's this, like, we love to use the language of mystery and tension.

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And you and I both have used that language. We try to use it in an appropriate way. What we want to do is put tension in the right place and mystery in the right place.

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But if you put tension or mystery where there inherently isn't any, you are wrong and you will lead people astray.

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And so here's a great example of that. Let's see here. This is from the, goodness,

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Christian Renewal, the Monroe Four Speak Out. That's where this is all coming from.

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So Doug is doing an interview and it says, when asked in the interview, quote,

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Doug, when you cite continuing in goodness in Romans 11 in your 2002 lecture, is that the cause of our salvation or the fruit of it?

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So let me just be clear on the question. You talk about continuing in goodness. Is continuing in goodness the cause of our salvation or is continuing in goodness the fruit of our salvation?

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Wilson replied, yes. In that he's saying, effectively, both, right?

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All right. Now, let me just say this. It is, that is unequivocally false.

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The answer is very simple. This is not one of those tension answers, both and. It is very clear that continuing in goodness is a fruit of our salvation and not the cause of our salvation.

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That's right. That is, that is so elementary to a Reformed understanding and a biblical understanding of justification and salvation that this should be a dead giveaway that we have now conflated obedience and continuing in goodness to be a piece of the cause of our salvation.

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And so how that's not a synthesis of works and faith is beyond me. Well, listen to this to, you know, to read the whole quote.

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He, right after he says, yes, look, in Colossians, Paul says, as you received Christ, so walk in him.

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So the way we become Christians is the way we stay. Christians is the way we finish as Christians by faith from first to last, which we would say agree.

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But he doesn't mean the same thing. So we continue in God's goodness by trust.

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We stand by faith. They fell, but you stand doing that to the end is how you come to your salvation.

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Whoa. What do you mean how you come to your salvation? So he, he begins to go on.

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And in this same quote, he is saying, listen to this. I believe we are saved by faith from first to last, which is why

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I have been accused of denying sola fide. And the reason why you've been accused of denying sola fide is that you're adding obedience.

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You're adding in works, this good standing that we must in order, in order to be saved.

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That's right. And again, you see this, we're, we're bifurcating the thing. It's like you enter in by faith alone.

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And I would argue that in a federal vision framework, you enter in by baptism, right? You know, it's by grace, but then, but then to finally be saved, you've got to persevere in faithfulness.

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That's right. And so it, it's a problem because what we are saying is that you are saved by faith alone in Christ alone, grounded in the grace of God alone.

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I mean, this is what the confession states, and this is what the Bible teaches that we are, we are resting, accepting, receiving, trusting in Jesus Christ for all of it.

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So I, in this document, we're not going to read them all. I had put, he, he begins to go to defend his theology.

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He's got multiple blog articles that he's done this. One of them is this, what's called living faith.

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And in it, he says, I am treating obedient faith and living faith as synonymous.

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So just, just so we're not putting words in Doug's mouth here, obedient faith and living faith as synonymous.

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It is obedient in its life and in that life living condition, it is the instrument of our justification.

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He himself, you can look at it, look up living faith by Doug Wilson on his blog. He is saying obedient faith is the instrument of our justification.

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That is heresy. Right. Which it is, whereas we would say we are, we are justified on account of Christ alone, which we receive by faith alone.

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And then as a fruit of that, we live lives where we seek to obey and by God's grace actually do.

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But we're not conflating those things. And that distinction makes all the difference in the world. Final parting shot here.

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Lest you think this is just John and myself taking issue with this. Listen to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church's report on justification.

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So this is a work by the OPC. Here we go. Though not ordinarily challenging the terminology of justification by faith alone, they, the federal visionists, have changed the definition of faith and have therefore changed the meaning of faith alone.

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Yep. Close quote. Exactly. It's like you can talk about being justified by faith alone all you want to.

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But the issue here is that you have changed the definition of faith. And when you change the definition of faith from the confessional reformed biblical view of trusting, resting, accepting, receiving, you know,

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Christ to now, well, yeah, that and it's our obedience and our persevering and faithfulness that's a part of faith.

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You've changed the game. That's right. Yeah. And the Bible says to be very clearly that someone that preaches another gospel that you should avoid them.

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And, you know, some people will say to me, but Doug has said some really helpful things about culture and about marriage and sexuality and homosexuality.

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And I said, OK, but that doesn't mean he's trustworthy. If he doesn't get the gospel right, then

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I don't trust anything else he has to say and really should be avoided. And so people have said,

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I'm too harsh. I'm misquoting him. I'm misunderstanding him. If for 20 years people have sought to understand

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Doug and the conclusion is you're wrong, Doug, for 20 years and the

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Orthodox, there are multiple Presbyterians. So we'll put all of this out there. Right. So if you want to keep saying

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I'm misunderstanding Doug, then you are CNA. Yeah. Then you're telling me multiple godly men with massive degrees who have read and re -read and understood

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Doug, and they all come to the same conclusion that he is changing the definition of faith and he's adding works into it.

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I'm sorry. It's not Justin and I. We are not misunderstanding him. If he wants to be clear, he needs to repent of this.

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And he is not. He has never come out and said federal vision is heretical. He is. He's not changed his view on the imputation of Christ.

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He will. I've seen the video. Don't send it to us. I have seen the video when he does the whole thing on why he's reformed and faith alone.

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And he says all of the right things in that video. I agree with everything that he says, but he does not repudiate and change these articles and these books that he's written.

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Reformed is not enough. It's still unpublished. And that's where we grab some of these quotes. So I'll end the session by saying just because someone says

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I hold to sola fide doesn't mean they actually do, because you cannot hold to faith alone and salvation by works.

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You cannot hold them both. They do not work together. Now, there are certain things you can hold. For instance, you can hold faith alone and have a different view of in times you can hold a faith alone and have a different view of the mode of baptism, right?

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But you cannot hold the faith alone and works. The two do not work. So that's my last thought.

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We're going to leave it with that. We're going to go over and record some more content in the other podcasts that we do each week.

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It's called Semper Reformanda. That's just the name of the other ministry. It's a group of people who have supported our ministry and who have partnered with us in various ways to see this message of the sufficiency of Christ spread as far and wide as possible.

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If you're interested in how you might become a Semper Reformanda member and thereby have access not only to this additional podcast, but you can become a part of a community of people where you can process with folks who are wrestling through the same things you are.

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You can get on an app where we kind of interface together. It's like Facebook, but better. There's all kinds of things that come along with this.

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We're grateful for all of our supporters. So if you're interested in becoming a supporter of Theocast, becoming a Semper Reformanda member, you can find information about that over on our website, theocast .org.

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So John and I are headed over to continue this conversation with those of you who are headed that way.

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If you are only listening to the regular podcast these days, we love you too. And we'll talk with you again next week.

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We also, John just threw this at me, just a reminder to check out our other additional podcast that is not a part of the membership called

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Everyday Grace. That's just three to five minute clips of sermons from John, from me, and also from our podcasts aiming to encourage you daily,

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Monday to Friday anyway, in the work of Christ for you and the grace of God toward you. So there's all of that.