Stop Preaching the Pietism 'Gospel'

Pietism as a False Gospel of Self-Justification

The gospel according to Pietism says, you are saved by grace alone through Christ alone. Now you better make sure that is true by your performance. That's a great definition of Pietism. The gospel according to Jesus, I'm the one who saved you.

I lose none. Now rest in my power to save and spread the light of the kingdom, right? So the good news is secured. And then from that, Jesus says, here's what I want you to do. My burden is light, my yoke is easy.

So it's the outflow of it. I'll start with this as well. It's just kind of a ground of where we're arguing from, and then we're gonna compare this to history and what's kind of going on in history. But John 3 is a great example.

What must I do to enter the kingdom of heaven? Like, what must I do, right? And Jesus tells Nicodemus, well, you have to be born again, which means you can't born yourself again. It's a beautiful illustration from Jesus.

I mean, obviously it's from God. You have to receive that life. That's right. And he's like, well, how am I to re-enter into it? He goes, no, no, you don't understand. You have to receive it from the spirit, right?

So it's important that we get the flow and the order correctly, because if you don't, you're going to credit your salvation to your obedience. And this is why people say, well, no, no, I'm always crediting at Jesus.

No, if you have to look to your performance, then you are crediting your salvation to your obedience. We are not antinomians, okay? So hear us clearly. Those who have been justified will be sanctified.

It is a part of the new covenant promise, right? Those whom have received the love of God will give the love of God. That is a promise, but it is not the means or the ground of your justification. It cannot be.

It's not the cause of anything. That's right. It can't. That's right. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed and pastoral perspective.

Our goal is to pull the clutter off the gospel and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom. Your hosts are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina and I'm John Moffitt.

I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And we wanted to put together a special episode for you. We wanted to take a little bit of a break this summer to give Justin and I a breather in between some of the episodes that we record.

And to do so, going back into the archives, into some of the best episodes we've recorded on pietism. And if you're new to Theocast, pietism is a really important subject. It's something we talk about a lot.

It's the overemphasis of the Christian life where we really do focus more on what we're doing for God, thinking this matters the most instead of focusing on what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. And we explain the differences of it, the history of it, what does it look like, different passages that can sound pietistic, and the difference between pietism and piety, godliness.

What does that look like to live a godly life, which is very different from pietism. We hope this episode is encouraging and we actually have a book about it as well. You can go to our website and download our free ebook that is related to these topics.

We hope this longer episode is encouraging to you as we've gone through and grabbed some of our best episodes. Stay tuned. If you're not being motivated by love, you're in pietism, flat out. And pietism isn't heresy, it's a confusion in my opinion, and it's this.

It's taking that which is biblical, which is the obedience of the believer, and putting it in the wrong category with the wrong emphasis, okay? So the obedience of the believer, which is a biblical concept, putting it in the wrong category with the wrong emphasis.

And the category it often gets put into is not one's salvation, that's evangelical, that's not an issue, but it is in the acceptance and blessings of God. In other words, how well I perform and obey is whether God accepts me as a believer and whether he will continue to protect me and bless me.

For instance, often one's assurance will be called into question depending upon their performance. Again, their obedience, right? So that's how I would define it is that it's a wrong category. And then the emphasis is it's heavily emphasized, meaning that the constant introspection of the believer, am I doing enough on my behalf to prove the evidence of my life is a true believer?

And so all sermons and reading and really the interior of their Christian life becomes the most important thing about the Christian, are they performing well enough? That would be how I'd first define it as far as on like a ground level.

Thing of categories. Though we would never point the Christian to himself for salvation, at least at the beginning of the thing, we kind of implicitly, if not explicitly, point the Christian toward his obedience to know that he will be saved.

And that's a collapsing of categories and a collapsing of even the law and the gospel, which we talk about often. The pietism typically, our identity is derived from what we do or what we don't do. Whereas for us as confessional Protestants, we would invert that and say that our duty, what we do is derived from who we are, which is we are in Christ, united to him by faith.

The idea that sanctification is a monergistic act where God is the one doing the work, that was thrown out the window, right? And this is why you have Methodism that came in. There was methods that were given to the believer.

Yeah, methods of holiness. So in my understanding of someone's, if the experience of it, if you don't believe the work of the spirit is the one who comes in and regenerates the believer or regenerates the sinner, and then the believer then is transformed by the works of the spirit through the means of grace, the preaching and teaching of the word and prayer and sacrament of the, if you don't believe that, then you're going to put emphasis, not on the power of the spirit and the means of grace, you're going to put emphasis on the individual acts of the person, which when you look at revivalism, and the history of it, this is what pietism is birthed out of.

So it's things like spiritual disciplines. Pietism kind of drives that revival. That's right. Absolutely. You, when you look at the history of revivalism and pietism, spiritual disciplines are right on the backs of it.

It is what ended up fueling that entire, I have a whole entire article on it. We've had a total episode on this. If you go back and listen to Justin Knight's episode on spiritual disciplines, this is where it's really birthed out of.

We'll put it in the notes below. Yeah, it really, just to kind of look at it at a different angle, something you said, it takes the eyes off of Christ and his, so it takes in two ways, Christ and his accomplishments and Christ and his mission, right?

So Christ and his accomplishment for the believer is that you are cleansed of your sins, all of the works of righteousness that are required to be accepted before God. Like when Romans says, we fall short of the glory of God.

When Jesus rose from the grave, he brought many sons to glory. Why? Because they were riding on the robes of his righteousness. Praise God did that. Man, we are transported. Beam me up, Scotty. Why? Because I'm in the robes of Jesus right now.

If you're not emphasizing the work of Jesus on our behalf, you're going to emphasize your own works. Therefore, Justin, the efforts of the believer are not to advance the kingdom of God. The efforts of the believer are spent on self-justification, self-sanctification.

And so I think this is important because when I say a matter of emphasis, you emphasize the wrong thing. You're making people start working on the wrong stuff. They don't need to be working on sanctifying themselves or justifying themselves.

Now, they do need to be working on obeying because it's been given to them to obey. They need to work on actually living out the love that God has given them to do. So I'm not saying don't obey. Opposite, I'm saying that.

But don't do it thinking you're sanctifying yourself or justifying yourself because you can't do that. Yeah, you're not obeying for your status. No. You're not obeying in order to finally secure an identity that's already been given to you.

But you are obligated to obey. Hear us say, you are obligated to obey. Yeah, you're living from what you've been given. How do you know if you're in a pietistic context, if you're listening and you're newer?

Few things, in no particular order. The place of the gospel. What I mean by that is, in pietism, typically the gospel is like the entry point to the Christian life. It's back there. It's like that, well, I trusted Jesus and the gospel was back there and now I've kind of entered into the Christian life and I'm about living the Christian life now.

And the gospel was then, this is now. And the Christian life is now. Yeah, we're going on to more serious things that matters with Christian life. Secondly, is even like how the gospel is preached. Is the gospel preached to the saints or not?

Right? Yeah, no, just the sinners. Yeah, because typically I think the understanding in a pietistic context is that unbelievers need the gospel. Christians need something else, which is being told how to live effectively and how to do things better, how to be more godly.

That's what Christians need. Rather than understanding that the saints need the gospel all the time and that the power for their living only comes from Christ and from the gospel. In a pietistic context, the tone tends to be kind of threatening and exacting.

It's this kind of like obey or else dot, dot, dot. It's that kind of feel. Everything's edgy. You know, and the posture. Yeah, it's constant self-examination. Yeah, the posture, default posture of the preacher and most of the Christians is, yeah, most everybody in the church is probably a fake.

That's right. They're probably a faker, and so we need to smoke those fakers out and make sure that only the strong survive and the serious types are the real ones. And in a pietistic context, the sacraments are made more about our faithfulness and obedience to God than they are God's faithfulness to us.

This is why the Lord's Supper in particular was one of those anxiety-producing times for many Christians in their churchgoing experience because it's a time of hyper introspection and hyper self-examination to whether or not I am worthy to come to the table and worthy in their minds means, have I done well enough?

Have I obeyed well enough? Do I hate my sin enough? Have I worked myself up into this place of frenzied angst over my sin and just this utter desire to live for the Lord? And then maybe if I'm in that space, I can now come to the table and not eat and drink judgment on myself rather than understanding that the sacraments are about God's faithfulness to us primarily and that they're given to us because we're needy and because we're weak.

From my experience, pietism messes with and meddles in transactional relationships with God. Yeah. Hebrews 13, nine, do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings. Well, then you have to ask, what is that?

What are the strange teachings? It has to be the opposite about what he's about to say because he says this, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace. You've played football and you've played sports and you've watched sports and you can, there's the experience of the player who goes out and he's gonna give all he can because he loves his team and he loves his coach and he enjoys the game.

And he's just gonna spend himself on the field and he'll leave the results on the field just because it's kind of like that. I mean, that's the best I can do and I hope we win, right? Yeah. And then there's the guy who goes out there and he's always looking over his shoulder of how the coach's face looks because he's afraid of disappointing the coach.

So he's more focused on disappointing the coach than he is what he's supposed to be doing out there, which is playing the game. Right. And that's what pietism does. If you're always worried that with the first mistake you make in the game, you're gonna get benched, you're gonna get pulled, you don't play with freedom and speed and aggression the same way.

But if you know, it's like, okay, no, I'm good here and I'm not gonna lose my spot because of one mistake, you then, you're gonna go and lay it all out there because you play with confidence and freedom and speed and aggression.

And the analogy holds here. Like we actually become so focused on ourselves and on God's approval from a pietistic perspective that we live constantly at a state of fear. And like you said, man, we've been given a spirit of adoption by which we cry out, but Father, we haven't been given a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.

And pietism, I think, confuses those categories and in one sense kind of put some chains back on the believer, robs us of joy and peace and assurance. And it's not, again, I wanna be very clear. It's not that we're being told that our assurance wholesale lies in what we do, but we are not taught properly about how to think about our obedience and our good works.

Rather than looking, this is biblical, what I'm about to say. Look at the way the Lord is transforming you by his spirit. Look at the fruit that is being born in your life and be encouraged. Have your assurance strengthened.

That's biblical. But instead, what we often get told is, how do you know you're a believer? Examine your life. And that is, we have completely left the realm of being encouraged by my obedience to now looking to my obedience as the ground of my standing.

And that's a problem. And all we're trying to do is come back in here, take the clutter off the thing and say, no, it is Christ always and only. He is our whole and only righteousness today and tomorrow and forever.

And it's always gonna be Jesus. And you are not gonna look within to find the ground of anything before the Lord. You're gonna look without to Christ always. And so there's an emphasis on his objective work that stands unaffected by how you feel and how you're doing and how well you obey today and how well you'll obey tomorrow and how hard you'll fight sin tomorrow.

You will be righteous in Christ, reconciled to God in him, and you can bank on it. And that is going to change your life over the long haul. And it will be because you have fixed your gaze on the Savior, not because you have been looking at yourself and navel-gazing at other people.

But there's a difference between identifying the works of the Spirit within me and being like, man, that's encouraging to know that he's doing work and basing one's salvation upon it. The only thing that's gonna comfort any of us at the end of it all, and we know this is true, is to look to another who has accomplished.

There's so many passages of scripture where Paul will identify the problem in the sin and then the solution is always Christ. But then he'll get pointed in and say, now, if you think there's any other solution to the Galatians, well, then now I'm gonna tell you that you're believing in high heresy.

That's why it's known as the Galatian heresy. You cannot begin by the Spirit and perfect yourself. I mean, this is the end of Colossians 2. Because he says, now listen, and this is pietism, Justin. Pietism is an emphasis on the works of the flesh.

Like, what are you doing fleshly? And Paul's like, look, it has an appearance of godliness, but it's of no value. It appears, and pietism appears godly. This is why so many people embrace it. It sounds good.

It's got enough truth in it that it's got some traction. That's how it sells, right? Things that are completely untrue never sell amongst the faithful. Things that are partly true gain traction amongst the faithful.

Pietism, and you could pair revivalism with this, right? But pietism brings with it a very utilitarian view of the faith, and by that I mean the works of zeal and the transformation becomes, it's overly emphasized.

So then when you extrapolate that out to the church in the land and the church in the culture, I think many pietistic Christians have a very utilitarian view of the Christian life in the society or the church's function in the society.

And this is why it's not mysterious that in America, amongst evangelicals, the church has so often hitched its wagon to various social and political concerns for centuries now because of that utilitarian view of faith and church and the Christian life that pietism just brings with it.

Rather than, for us, John, and as confessional Protestants, we would emphasize the ordinary faithfulness of the saints. We would emphasize church-shaped devotion. We would emphasize the corporate life of the believer in the church to where we are going to live relatively mundane, ordinary lives, loving our families, loving our brothers and sisters in the church, loving our neighbor and serving them through our vocation, all while we trust Christ, and in that sense are waging war against the kingdom of darkness.

But the Christian is understood as a pilgrim and a sojourner biblically, not a crusader in the way that it often is presented in our American paradigms anyway. And that has more to do with pietism than people might think.

That's right. Well, the emphasis in all preaching and teaching and books that are being written are on performance. I mean, look, I'll say this, and I said it to you last week, the most pietistic preacher of our age that most people would be shocked when I say this is Joel Osteen.

Yeah, man. Why would I say that? Because he points to performance. That's right. And your faith and everything else. That's right, that's right. And if you do your part, God does his part in all that kind of language.

And I think it goes down into the Calvinistic churches as well and conservative churches where the emphasis is on the performance of the believer. And I'll just say it this way. Here's the last statement I'll make so you can understand the difference.

Pietism is fueled by fear. The Bible is fueled by love. Grace. What does John tell sinners? God's redeeming you, sinner, because he loves you. And what does Romans say? While we were the enemy of God is when he set his love on us.

And so it's always a motivation of love versus fear. When we buy into the lie, though, that it's about me, it exhausts us. It does. We're worn out by religion. That's right. And we find no rest, we find no peace, we find no joy in a rock-solid, lasting way in the church.

We find no rest, no peace, no joy, even in Christ because we, in one sense, almost misrepresent him to ourselves because he comes across as a very harsh, demanding taskmaster rather than the one who invites us to him that we might know rest and lay our burdens down.

So when we're exhausted by our religion and we find no rest there, no peace there, or no joy there, this is where we're going, we tend to look for that rest, that peace, that joy in other places that might not be bad in and of themselves.

They're actually good gifts from God, but they're not the greatest thing. They're not the thing that God actually means us to find joy and rest and peace in, in an ultimate sense. That's right. So good.

James says it this way, James 4 .1. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You know, it's interesting. He's saying the outflow of the passion of your heart is now warring against your spirit, which is causing you to be un, you do not have joy.

The whole issue of James, if you back up to chapter three, he is exposing their love of self and the world. He says you're showing partiality in chapter two. In chapter three, you're using your tongue as a vicious viper full of, he literally says it's full of poison.

Yeah, it's set on fire by hell. Right, and then he says things like this. He says, let's see, verse 11 or verse, yeah, verse 10. So 3 .10, from the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not so to be.

Does a spring pour forth from the same opening, both fresh and saltwater? Can a fig tree, my brother's bear, olives and grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. So he's exposing that the source of their heart and desire is coming out of their mouth.

And when you have the flesh, when you are fleshly producing stuff out of your heart, this is what's going to come out of your mouth. And then it comes out in your actions. So I talk with people, their marriages are falling apart.

They're extremely unsatisfied. And when they even contemplate thinking about the church, they have no time because they've got this practice and that baseball and this entertainment and that movie and this.

It's like their whole lives, they're trying to fill it with happiness. And yet all it's causing is a strife and fighting. And I look at that and I say, you are so focused on you and not Christ and what Christ has given you, you've built this whole world around yourself, protecting your happiness and you're not happy.

Yeah, I'll go ahead and keep painting this picture. And then I might circle back to that rest in order to do things later. But just while we're here, you're spot on, John. I mean, how many times have we seen this where there are individuals or families in the church where there's all kinds of things, like literally it is just insane, the amount of stuff that they are going to do.

And it's good. I mean, these things are not of themselves bad, like we've said already. And yet the schedule is just so jam-packed. Life is just chaos because we can't possibly squeeze it all in and we just keep trying to add more.

And we also, I have noticed amongst individuals like this, many of them, there is a focus for them spiritually on private devotional religion. Check box. Well, yeah, check the box or I need to be a serious disciple and what that means is this.

I need to be reading this, praying this, meeting, having this group, like accountability group here. And that's what my spiritual life needs to really consist of. And I just need to grit my teeth and push through this.

And then the irony, like you've said, the local church and the ordinary means of grace on the Lord's day, the preaching of Christ, the administration of the table, prayer and song in the assembly of the saints, that is at best an inconsistent reality in their life.

That's right. And it's like the one thing that could give you rest and joy and peace, you're neglecting because you're chasing after all these other things that you think are gonna give you what you seek and what you desire.

And they won't. Now, part of that, like this is a vicious cycle because what we started by saying was one of the reasons that we go chase after all that stuff, in addition to the corruption of our flesh, is the fact that we've been so exhausted in our lives by religion and by the church because we've never been given Christ really.

We've never been given rest. So we have bought into that lie and we intuitively think, well, I gotta go outside the church and do all these things privately, devotionally, if I'm really gonna do this and have the things, not realizing that, man, the thing that could give me the joy, the thing that could give me the rest, in a confessional environment anyway, is being offered to me every Lord's day, but I can't seem to consistently show up because I've got a million things going on.

That's right. Well, go back to James two. He says, you can't hold the faith of Christ and partiality at the same time. It's like they don't work together. Those who find satisfaction in Christ are going to understand that the natural response to that is to lay their life down.

So, and listen, I understand that there is no perfect church and we get this complaint all the time about, well, you guys say these things and there's just no good churches in our area. And like, listen, I understand that frustration.

And a lot of what we're saying, I think still can be applied even if you're in a church that's struggling and it's frustrating. If Christ is preached, this can be applicable for you. That's right, because joy in the Lord is to know that all is secure and satisfied in Christ.

He has saved me. He has repented me. He is sanctifying me. The way I put it this way, if I go back to James, what I love about James before he gets on them about their mouth and their actions, he, first of all, reminds them of who Christ is and what is going on.

In trials, your faith will be preserved. Even though you give into the desires of your heart and the temptation, all good gifts, including your salvation are a gift from him and they do not come to you by a father that has a mind that changes based upon your actions.

That's verses 10 and following. And then he goes through and says, when you need the spirit to come and do these works called acts of wisdom, you can ask for them and I'll give them to you. He just goes on and on and on.

And he goes, how do you know that you receive these gifts? He goes, do you love the Father? It's just this constant train of over and over. He's pushing it along. You are secure in Christ. Look to Christ.

And then after, so this is kind of Justin going to the latter part of this podcast where you were before. Once he develops a platform and this pure, you are safe and secure. The way I described it the other day is God builds this mighty ship and says, the ship is Christ and you're in it.

Now let's go sail and bring other people into it. You can then sacrificially look to help bring your brothers and sisters and encourage them and develop them because you're not trying to build the ship, it's built.

You're inside of it safe and secure. That's right. Yeah, you're not, that's a great analogy. You're not trying to build the boat. You're in the boat. And so now I can give myself to other tasks, other things.

We work within it. Yeah, it's big. So I'm going to circle back again to this rest in order to do bit because I think it's very critical. And when we think about this conversation or rest in order to love, like if we are always living where we started, right?

Subjective, it's about me. I'm chasing something, I'm proving myself. I'm always trying to do in order to rest. And I'm always trying to obey in order to have peace. If that's my perspective, then I'm going to be exhausted.

And to use the boat analogy, I am exhausting myself in building the boat because I think I need to build the boat rather than doing the other things. That's good. Inviting others in, loving people on deck, right?

And enjoying one another, right? In the fellowship that we have on the boat as we make our way to our destination, right? That's right. I'm not doing that. Can I just inject a verse that pictures this?

First John 5, one, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. This is what you're talking about. We've been born of God, let's rest in that.

And he goes, now love others. Yeah, yeah. And I think I already talked about the subjective side and the pietistic, you know, navel gaze side. I'm always worried about me. I'm always doing in order to rest.

I'm always obeying in order to have peace. Another way to describe that though, John, is simply by calling it what it is. It's a law economy. It is a very legal approach to our relationship with God. It's a very legal approach to our religion.

We wouldn't want to call it that because it was, oh no, we're all about the gospel. We're all about grace and all these things. And it's like, that could be true for you as you think about certain aspects of your faith and how you're justified and the like.

But you've bought in again to this notion that you've got to keep doing stuff in order to maintain it or to prove yourself. And that law economy rears its head in all kinds of ways in our lives. And it robs us of joy.

We were talking about this before we recorded, just acknowledging how people that operate this way, and we're all prone to this, right? We all tend to operate this way. This is what produces the pride and the self-righteousness and the self-justifying stuff that we all do.

And it harms all the relationships that we have and robs us of peace and joy in those relationships. It affects how we relate to one another in the church. It's not this place of freedom. It's not this place of peace and rest where we can have joy with one another in Christ.

There's always this underlying thing that I don't know, I'm measuring myself or I'm wondering what other people are thinking about me. I'm kind of on my soapbox judging other people thinking they're judging me or whatever.

It's just all this craziness because of how we do. We don't find the rest and the joy in Christ. And we're trying to find it in all kinds of things, whether that's our obedience or we're pursuing it. Like we've argued too, we seek it outside the church.

We seek it in things that are good but not great and just bears bad fruit. I hope all this is kind of landing for the listener to where you realize that if you're really gonna weave the thread through the thing, it's like rest in Christ, trust in Christ, and then you will find joy as you give your life away in love and service to your brothers and sisters because you're not worried about you, Christ has you.

That's right, amen. So that's the kind of way we describe the disaster. And we've kind of described what caused it. And I think how do we back ourselves out of this and how do we move forward? I will tell you that for Justin and me, there's some PTSD when coming out of pietism.

There was struggle. Where you wonder, is it possible to live in the Christian realm and not be hurt and to not struggle with your identity and struggle with your assurance? And I can say with full confidence that the only way to endure pain and suffering and the only way to endure strife and the frailties of this world is through resting in Christ.

So sometimes when we say things like that, people think give up and just sit there and hum in a meditative sense and just rest in Christ, rest in Christ, rest in Christ. No, that's not what we mean. So what's complicated about Christianity is that our flesh tends to clutter and bring in requirements that the Bible never does.

Paul says this in the end of Colossians chapter two that we have all of these asceticisms, the systems that we'd like to place upon ourselves, thinking that it's going to curb the flesh. Because Justin, our ultimate thought is this, sinlessness brings joy.

So what do we pursue? We pursue to be sinless, but when that's impossible to do, which it is, we then become depressed because Yeah, discouraged. Yeah, because now, right. So we think if we don't have sin, then we'll be happy and we'll have joy.

Actually, Jesus describes this in this way, as we confess our sin, 1 John, as we run and receive mercy, Hebrews four, as we look for wisdom, James one, we are then given the means to actually have joy, which is to love your brother.

So in the midst of our struggle against the flesh, spirit against the flesh, flesh against spirit, he isn't calling us to sinlessness for joy. That's impossible. He says, in the midst of your struggle against the flesh, you're going to constantly be called to lay it down.

And as you do, I will provide you joy. And it's not introspective. It's not you laying yourself down for you. He says, consider other people more significant than yourself, because that's where the source of your joy is.

Think of it this way. You're taking the love that God has showed you, unconditional, full of grace and mercy. As James is dealing with this, I love this. He's dealing with the church, like the end of chapter four.

He's like, you guys, I just created such a mess, but there's more grace. That's how he describes it. Your struggle against this life, he says there's always more grace, which means we don't have to try and reach perfection to have the joy of the Lord.

The joy of the Lord can be ours because God's love for us is static. It does not waver. This is James one. It does not waver. It's not due to change. So if God's affection for us is static, it means we can always use that, as it says in 2 Corinthians three, looking at the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 12, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. 1 Peter chapter, or 2 Peter one, where it's nine, forgetting that we've been cleansed from our former sins. We're always looking to Christ.

And then we use that to motivate us to love our brothers and sisters, which is where we find what I call a double dose of joy. We get joy of knowing our safety in Christ. And then we get a second set of joy in giving that love and that grace to those who are in need.

Yeah, a couple thoughts. I think this is maybe gonna sound theoretical or ethereal, and I don't mean it to, because this is part of that, like recalling to mind things that are true, and then it affects everything in terms of how Paul may have said that.

Think on these things. Yeah. It's a number of places in the scripture, right? That we're to recall things, think on these things, whatever. One is we need to continually remind ourselves that we are no longer under the law as a covenant of works.

We are no longer under the law in the sense that it would condemn us and be our death sentence. That is a struggle for us, because we are so prone to think of the law that way. And we're no longer under the law in terms of merit, earning something.

We're no longer under the law when it comes to like, I need to do well enough to escape punishment. We think in these terms. If we could understand that we are not under the law, but are under grace, right?