Stop Preaching the Pietism 'Gospel'

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 three 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 read 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 was 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.

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, 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 and 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're not, 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 salt water?

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're, 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 have, they're extremely unsatisfied. And they, 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, 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 .1,

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's like, 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.

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 to.

We seek it outside the church. We seek it in things that are good but not great. And it 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 coming out of pietism. There was struggle, huge 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

I live. 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?

We've been set free. We are not now under the law as a condemnation or as a covenant of works.

We're now under the law of liberty. I think that helps us in terms of how we think about life.

And that's a big one. The other comment, and this is something that, I don't know, I've been thinking on it some lately.

This is something that pops into my brain in a pointed way periodically. And I think for good reason. There is a common objection out there that if you want to produce in the church, if you wanna see godly sanctified people in the church, then you need to talk about sanctification directly a lot.

You need to talk about how we live, like force that kind of conversation a lot.

And I'm not talking about just using the law well. I mean, we need to just major on our conduct, you know, and our behavior and our patterns and our disciplines.

And that's how you produce godly people. I disagree. And I would argue that the reform through history have disagreed.

How is it that we are not only sanctified, but how is it that we are propelled and motivated to love and toward godliness?

It is by contemplating all the time our justification in the

Lord Jesus Christ. As we are reminded repeatedly that we do not have what it takes in and of ourselves to be right with God, but then are pointed to Christ over and over and over again, it does something to a person's heart, man.

You are stirred by that. And it's like, I need that reminder constantly. So what do

I need for my godliness? I need the preaching of Christ. What do I need for my godliness? I need to be reminded of the gospel so that I might then be filled with gratitude and all of these kinds of things that might then propel and motivate me in my living.

And that's, I don't think that's controversial. But if you start to say that, if you want sanctification to occur, emphasize justification, people lose their minds,

John. And that's another podcast for another day. But I am convinced that that's even a piece of this conversation. It's related to what we're talking about.

Amen. Right? That whole guilt, grace, gratitude paradigm. That's right. Right? And that's what we're constantly reminding one another of on the

Lord's day and even in conversations like you and I had before we hit record today. The most introspective religion dominating the world for the last hundreds of years is the

Roman Catholic Church. And you know what they said about guilt, grace, gratitude, that if that of your works of obedience don't flow from your justifications as fruit of joy and gratitude, but don't add to your justification, you're anathemaed.

Yeah. It's natural for us to want our good works to be a part of our religious experience.

Adding to our - Part of our standing. That's right. I will say it in this way too. This is why it's so confusing with a lot of Martin day preaching where you show up to church and they're going to give you five ways to you for you to go work on yourself.

Yeah. When you read the New Testament, James gives you five ways to how to love your brother. Chapter two, impartiality.

Chapter three, your tongue. I mean, he just, it's like, he gives you points, but they're all focused on how to love.

Yeah. Focused outward. Not how to work on you. It's like how to work on you so you can love your brother. So like, you know, people ask me all the time, like,

John, why don't you ever give us application? I said, I do. It's just you haven't - It's not the kind of application you've been trained to hear. I said, it's just, you haven't got it yet.

So I can't stop. I said, once you understand how to love God and love your neighbor and you got that down, come back and talk to me and I'll give you more to do.

But until then, you know, good luck without application. No, I agree, man.

Agree. Not sinning is not the purpose of your life. Number one, we're not shock jocks.

That's not what we're trying to do. Number two, we're not antinomian. We actually love the

Lord's law and we, by God's grace, through the ministry of Christ's spirit in us, we seek to live in accord with it.

That's right. We have made this observation that oftentimes in the church, broadly speaking, the

Christian life and the purpose of the Christian life either stated this way explicitly or it's implied through the teaching and the posture and the tone, it's as though the purpose of the

Christian life and the great end and aim of the Christian life is not sinning. In other words, abstinence from sin is the pursuit, the purpose, the goal.

It's the high watermark of the Christian life and sanctification, abstaining from sin.

Abstinence from sin or pursuing a moral life are not distinctly

Christian things. No. Right now, I understand that God's law and how we might define some, there are some differences here, but just humor me for a minute.

To say that abstaining from this act, this act, this act, this act, do not do the following, to say that that is the purpose and the high watermark of your religious life, man, there are

Muslims all over the planet that would agree with that. Mormons. There are Mormons all over the planet who would come in and shame us all because not only do they not drink alcohol, they don't drink coffee either because caffeine's a problem.

And I was having a conversation recently. I mean, it's interesting that Mormons and Seventh -day

Adventists and others, I'm not lumping the two together, okay, but I'm just saying Mormons and Seventh -day

Adventists and people who advocate for kinds of works, righteousness, and are very law -centric, a lot of these people are highly successful in life.

They crush it in terms of life on earth. I mean, even like life expectancy in the

Seventh -day Adventist world is longer than the average American. I mean, it's like all kinds of things that we can point to and say, look, if what we're talking about is abstinence from sin and moral lives, at least on the exterior, and things that are kind of good for you in the here and now,

I mean, yeah, maybe they're on to something. But when it comes to what we are called to, this life is fleeting,

John. This life is passing away. We need to be redeemed. The creation needs to be redeemed.

The Lord Jesus needs to return. The heavenly Jerusalem needs to come down. Like we are living right now in light of the world to come.

So given that that's the case, surely there is more to our Christian living than just abstaining from sin.

And our answer to that question is, you better believe there is. There's a lot of stuff that we need to concern ourselves with and should, and it doesn't have so much to do with us.

That's a thing that we've got to own because we all tend to be very myopic. We all tend to navel gaze a lot.

We all tend to be very self -absorbed. And we focus a lot on ourselves, how we're doing, what's going well, what's not going well, all that.

Some of that's okay, but we're called by the Lord Jesus Christ to other pursuits.

And we're called to love and serve and minister. And there's a purpose to it. Adam had a priestly role in the garden where he was to work and keep it.

That's right, and enjoy God and glorify Him. And so there was a proactive, there was a proactive nature to the life.

And part of that was don't eat of the tree. And that has - Well, that was, right, sorry. No, you're good.

I was just gonna jump in and say that the prohibition to not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has to be understood within the context of the covenant of works that God made with Adam.

Because that's the real issue is that that test is the test of Adam's obedience as it pertains to that covenant.

Yep. But in terms of the purpose of Adam's existence, what you're describing is entirely right.

Yeah, and when you go into the New Testament, or Old Testament and New, once Christ comes and fulfills the covenant of works on our behalf, we don't have to do that work anymore, right?

And obviously we wanna stay away from sin because sin is, well, it's evil. It's contrary to all that is good.

But what's amazing is that God says what He has given to us originally has changed in that we are now part of the redemptive work.

We don't redeem people, but in God's means, He calls us ambassadors, right?

He calls us ones who carry the light, the proclaimers where we are now the preachers of the gospel.

We now proclaim it throughout the world. And the church has become a city set on a hill. That's right.

All that you have already received, your salvation and your inheritance, it's being kept by God, which means it's not like, oh, oh, there's a couple of sin, gotta take it out.

Oh, oh, you know. And it doesn't fade, which means you only have a certain amount of time to get your good works in or a certain amount of time not to sin and then you'll make it.

That's not how it's being worded at all. Peter creates a foundation. He creates a mindset is what

I would say. He creates a way in which we are to live. Here's your identity. I love this phrase.

Here's the status between me and you. Here's your status, right? Between God and yourself.

Because of that status, therefore, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

We've used this language for a long time on Theocast that the Christian life is status forward. Yep. What is the status?

Well, there are a number of words we could use. Justified, adopted. Those are two of the best ones.

Union with Christ. The Christian life is identity forward, but what's your identity? In him, in Christ, right?

But the language that Peter uses, you read some of it, but I love the sweetness of these words beginning in verse eight of chapter one.

Though you haven't seen him, you love him. We talked about this last week. That's right. This is the reality of the saints.

Sinner saints, yes, but this is only the reality for regenerative people. You have not seen him with your eyes. You have beheld him with the eyes of faith.

And though you haven't seen him with your physical eyes, you love him. You want to honor him. You want to obey him. You don't want to offend him, right?

And though you do not now see him, you believe in him and you rejoice. And that rejoicing is related to a future hope that is certain for you now because of your status.

And then the wonderful words about obtaining the outcome of our faith and the salvation of our souls, and then concerning the salvation.

It's epic stuff, because this has always been the plan of God. He prophesied it, and then he brought it to pass.

He sent Christ, Christ came, Christ accomplished it, and this is so incredibly epic that even the angels long to look into this.

That's right. What a plan. What a message, right? And then from there, and you ask, so then verse 13, the immediately following verse, therefore, well, what's the therefore, therefore?

It's in light of all that. And now here's what we're going to do and how we're going to live and what we're going to do.

Yeah, and his first response is like protecting what you just heard, because what does he say, right?

Sober -minded, what's the opposite of sober -minded? It's intoxication. And the world's - Yeah, inebriation.

Right, and we think like, oh, he means here - Don't be drunk. Right, well, no, that, but, you know, he means here, you know, lust, and he can.

I also think he means bad doctrine, like anything that would come in and alter what you just heard. If it's pointing inwardly on you, a self -focus, a self -work.

Sober -minded in your assessment of truth. That's right. Right, being discerning, you know?

And I think you can get that from the context where he says, and being sober -minded, and he goes immediately on to say, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, right?

So that's what it is to be sober -minded, is to set your grace on what's coming in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Not the fear. I mean, that fear is not the emphasis there. The grace that's coming when the

Lord Jesus returns. That's right. Right, so preparing your minds for action. So what's interesting is that -

Dress for battle like a man, John. That's right. Well, what he's saying is that it's like, there is something for you to be doing, and you won't be able to do it if you're intoxicated with this world.

That's what he's saying, right? So we agree. So hear us out, hear us out. Step one, we don't want to sin.

Amen. Amen. Step one. But there is something you are called to that's greater than not sinning, right?

Sin actually gets in the way of that what you're supposed to be doing. Yeah. And that's his whole point. And what I love about this is that he gives you, this goes back to last episode too, he gives you the fuel that you need.

You know, the law is a guide, but we need this power of the Spirit to actually carry through the work.

And he's like, listen, here's the power of the Spirit. Live in it. Set your hope for it. Man, what an unbelievable phrase.

Set your entire existence, set your entire heart, everything in you, put it on the hope of Christ's return.

You have to ask, what are we fighting for? We're putting our flesh to death, last episode. But why are we putting our flesh to death?

Like, what are we trying to do with this? This is Titus chapter three. He had just done the same thing

Peter had did as far as setting up like where our hope is. And this is how he ends this section.

I just want you to hear it out. This saying is trustworthy and I want you to assist on these things. Cause he's talking about this is who you were and this is your status now.

This saying is trustworthy and I want you to insist on these things so that those who believe in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.

Why? Hear this next phrase. These things are excellent and profitable for people.

Did you hear that? Your good works are profitable for other people. And I think they're profitable in two ways.

One, it is going to bring grace and mercy into their life because you're going to be sacrificially laying your life down for their benefit.

And number two, you're gonna be presenting to them the gospel that will liberate them and bring them home to their father.

We don't necessarily always think about our good works that way. I mean, what does Jesus say? Let the world see your good works and do what with them?

Glorify your father in heaven. That's right. That's right. Yeah, I love that Titus three text.

I think it's wonderful to see how he grounds these things about the pursuit of good works, doing things that are excellent and profitable for people, avoiding controversy.

That's right. You know, and dissension and quarreling and division. Like we avoid these things in the church.

He grounds all of that in the gospel. So it's an implication of the good news. That's right.

Christ for us, and all the wonderful words of Titus three, four through seven, he then moves from that in verses eight and nine and following to say, therefore, effectively, in light of this, pursue good works.

Because these things are excellent in and of themselves. Against these things, there is no law. Think Galatians five, like fruit of the spirit.

Pursue these things, they're excellent. They are self -authenticatingly good. We don't need to be told they're good.

It's obvious they're good. So these things are excellent and they're profitable for people. They bless your brothers and sisters.

They actually are used of the Lord to bring people into the kingdom of Christ, et cetera. And then, by the way, while we're here, avoid all of this other stuff.

Dissensions and quarreling and envy and division and stuff. Like this is just no good. This actually has the opposite negative effect of what the good works have that we would pursue in light of Christ for us.

Yeah. Right? So I'm gonna stay away from sin because it keeps me from being loving, effective, fruitful, and gospel -proclaiming.

That's why I stay away from sin. I got a greater mission in life than just to not mess up. Amen. Brief comment on the whole two -kingdom, saint -centered thing.

I think what you said is insightful. If you object to an understanding of two kingdoms, which we've done some pods on this, we could refer you to them.

But briefly, the redemptive kingdom of Christ and the common kingdom of the world, right? God reigns over both.

He just rules over them differently. The redemptive kingdom of Christ is his church. The common kingdom of the world is obvious.

It's the entire world. The church exists within it, right? To say that to have a two -kingdoms understanding like we do necessarily means that there is this,

I don't know, like too strong of a distinction that's drawn and there's this like radical separation of the two to where inherently what it must mean is you're all about the redemptive kingdom and you care nothing about the common is similar to the error that you just stated.

It's like, well, we believe in a sinner -saint reality that there is a real sense in which there is a division of spirit and flesh within us.

And there is the regenerate part and the unregenerate part. There's the new nature and there's the old corpse of the old man.

And just because we hold to that understanding does not then mean that we just sit back and say, oh, well, you know, like whatever happens happens and we're not gonna worry about it.

No, we, like we talked about last week and we're talking about today, we live intentional lives and we live thoughtfully and we battle against the flesh.

We resist the flesh because of Jesus. And so I think that argument that to have an understanding of these distinctions means that this just produces apathy and inactivity is absurd on the face of it.

And I think we need to argue against it as we're trying to do on the pod today. I need you to seek first the kingdom of God, right?

That's what he goes, that's what I want you to pursue. That's what I want you to think about. So it's like, here's the law, which is your guide.

Here's why, because we're advancing my kingdom. And we're like, bro, I love your kingdom. It's peaceful, it has joy, it has love.

It sounds amazing. He goes, great, seek that until you die. And then he goes, by the way, if they hated me, they're gonna hate you.

Most likely you're gonna suffer. And most likely, it's okay, your life is expendable. I love this about the Christian life. It's like, don't be worried about dying.

That's the whole point. It's like, you're gonna be poured out and when you're poured out, you're done. And you're gonna go be with me and then we're gonna come back.

And it's a wonderful celebration for the rest of the world. So just give your life away. This is why he describes it as Romans 12, a living sacrifice.

So prove yourself gospel. And yeah, punchy title, but it's definitely something that we need to deal with.

It's something that Theocast has been dealing with for years, but every time we do, we're trying to bring a greater form of biblical clarity here.

There's a historical backdrop to what happened and what I think

Justin and I and the Reformation is fighting, was fighting 500 years ago and now fighting again. It's kind of like we're reliving same battles.

But the point of it is this, sure, you're saved by grace through faith alone for the glory of God alone.

Amen, right? The five solos, man. Five solos wholeheartedly. But in order for you to gain assurance, in order for you to maintain assurance, there must be an ongoing evidence of this faith.

And we'll address that, because sometimes, Justin, when people hear us talk, they think we're creating either ors.

You either obey or you don't obey. That's not how this works. Or there's a false dichotomy.

Either we're preaching faith with no regard for obedience. That's right. Or you are rightly emphasizing obedience as effectively the determiner of one's salvation.

That's the dichotomy that exists in the minds of many. And the answer there is, no, there's actually a better way that's more biblical and faithful to how the scriptures have been understood through history.

If the gospel is clear and pure, then there will be an endless stream of hope for the believer.

But when we muddy it, then you remove all of the power and the strength and the joy, like as David says, restore to me the joy of my salvation, right?

The joy of what? Knowing that I am saved by a power, an object outside of myself.

So this is really, are we talking about objective realities where the object of our faith is

Jesus? Or are we talking about objective realities where the object of my faith is

Jesus and my obedience? And in that case, the latter case, we've actually turned it into a very subjective thing.

That's right. Which is unhelpful. The Reformation effectively was an effort by a large number of people to recover the clarity of the gospel.

In our own day, that battle continues on because there are always those who rise up with good intentions and we trust well -motivated concerns, but the concerns raised and the things said often do clutter the gospel or obscure it,

I should say, throw clutter on it and obscure it so that Christ is less clear, the gospel is less clear, and the saints never profit from that.

There was a gentleman who was asked one time in an interview a few years ago, is continuing on in goodness, so you understand what that means, continuing on in goodness, like obedience, upright living, et cetera, is continuing on in goodness a consequence of our salvation or is it the cause of it?

And this theologian, this pastor's answer to that question was the ambiguous kind of humorous yes.

In other words, it's both, right? Continuing on in goodness is both consequence and cause of our salvation, to which we would respond charitably and humbly, that is wrong.

That's right. That is not biblically true. There are things that we have to hold an appropriate tension in the scripture, no argument there, but this is not one of those things.

That's right. The scripture could not be more plain that salvation is grounded upon the work of Jesus Christ alone in the place of the sinner that we receive by faith and we are united to him so that everything that is his is ours.

We'll come back and double down on this in a minute, but the emphasis and the focus is the issue. Whenever we talk about obedience or continuing on in goodness, we have to talk about it as a consequence of salvation.

We have to talk about it as an outflow, a necessary outflow of salvation, of life received.

The Christian life is the given life. It's a received life and then there are outflows.

There are implications. There are all kinds of things. There are consequences of that life received. That's how we need to talk about obedience.

Justin, how do I know that you're alive? Well, I'm talking to you. I see that you're breathing and you're moving, but you didn't cause that birth.

You're not the cause, but I can see the evidence of it. Right, you see the evidence of the life that I have. That's right.

But I didn't do anything to produce life in myself. Yeah. It's something that I've been given by God in terms of this physical life.

That's right. And the spiritual life is no different. That's why he said you must be born again, except for this time, it's a spiritual birth. And then beautifully, he concludes that whole piece by saying, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the

Son of Man be lifted up. And effectively, then this is how people will be saved and forgiven of their sins.

Believe. I will handle, I'll do it. Yeah. And that's always been the purpose of God from eternity past, that I would save my people and this given life will come only through me.

You know, and how beautiful. And I fear that many in our day, as has been true for a while, we think that the way we combat nominalism,

Christianity and name only, that's the problem from the perspective of many. The way we combat that is to double down on obedience.

And so what we do is we tell people that unless you are obedient in these ways, unless you do all of these things, you should question your legitimacy because we are going to make the gauge, the measuring stick, the metric, it's all about your obedience and your faithfulness because that's how the true believers will prove themselves legit.

I'm not saying that's all that's going on. I think it's a significant factor though. The problem in the minds of so many people is fake

Christianity. It's Christianity and name only. And so what we need to do is smoke those people out and we're going to do that through the standard of obedience.

We almost called this podcast Obedience Alone as a play off of faith alone or grace alone because the way that some talk, the gospel's assumed of yes, of course,

Jesus, but really where we determine who the believers are is through obedience.

People say, John, are you saying that Christians are not required to obey? And I don't like the word required because that's like saying, are you saying human beings are not required to breathe?

And I'm like, that's a weird question. Or required to eat or whatever. I'm like, what do you mean?

That's kind of like, it just doesn't make sense to me because according to scripture, if you're in the new covenant and you're alive in the new covenant and you have a new heart, the according to Ephesians two and Ezekiel and Jeremiah, we will walk in his ways here.

But so it is always the fruit. It's always the presence of.

If the gospel becomes something other than news and when you add a command on it, other than you need to believe this, but you add a command of any type of into it, it is no longer faith alone.

I don't care if you wanna yell at the top of your lungs, faith alone. Justin, if you say to someone, you must look to your good works to determine your justification, that is adding works into it.

If you preach the gospel and you say, Jesus died an atoning death to make satisfaction for your sins and fulfill the penalty of the law.

Jesus lived a perfect life to fulfill the requirement of the law. He was raised triumphant for our justification and to guarantee our bodily resurrection.

You can say all that and you receive that by faith. But then you say and. Soon as you said and, we've given it all away.

Because you have put something beside Christ. Now, implications, outflow, consequences of that glorious gospel, we're here for it all day.

And we'll listen happily and we'll proclaim it joyfully. But as soon as you say Jesus and, we've run into the problems that existed in the

Galatian churches, that existed in the Colossian churches, that existed all over the pages of the New Testament clearly.

And that's concerning. And I think, I've said things like this before on this show and in my own church.

The gospel contains nothing in it whatsoever that we are to do. Other than believe. And then you stop and just let it sit awkwardly silent for about five seconds.

Because everybody's instinct is to be like, yeah, but, you know, we got to add, ah, but once the gospel's received, then

A, B, C, and D. And I'm like, look, I probably am going to agree with what you're about to say. That's right.

But can we not allow the saints to receive Christ and rest and live there for a moment before we take the focus off of Jesus and put it back on us?

Hebrews 12, looking unto Jesus, the one who started our faith, the founder, and the one who completes our faith, right?

You know, in Colossians or Ephesians in particular, I'm thinking about those two letters. There's all this language of put off the old man, put on the new man.

Well, none of that language is condemnatory. He's already affirmed these saints in the

Lord Jesus Christ. He's written of the gospel to them. And he's giving, in both cases, he's giving a clear vision of the person and work of Christ, especially to the church in Colossae, as the thing that will protect them from false teaching and false practice.

And then he's going to say, you know, live like this. Remember too, he's writing to mostly a

Gentile audience who have no context for the law of God, who used to live in all kinds of crazy ways.

And he says, now that you have been united to Christ, you used to be this, now you're this, don't live like that anymore, live like this now.

Put off that old man that was crucified and nailed to the cross and live now in newness of life in Christ Jesus.

But somehow we turn that into a threat. That's the problem. Yeah, well,

I just, the whole Galatian heresy, right? He says, you've begun by the spirit and now you're going to perfect yourself by the flesh.

Exactly. Right, so if it's faith that saves us, he says it's faith that sustains you and it's faith that sanctifies you and it's faith that glorifies you.

May we believe that. Faith in what, Justin? Not faith in performance, but faith in the one who performed, right?

So we're putting faith in Christ for our salvation and we're putting faith in Christ for our sanctification.

Let me just say it this way. The reason why I agree with God that I need to pursue holiness is because I am putting my faith in my salvation, my

Savior, right? Because I believe in Christ, I obey. Not perfectly by any sense of the word.

But the difference, Justin, is that if we're not careful, and people are like, you guys are splitting hairs, this is a nuanced conversation.

These distinctions make all the difference in the world. It does, because what ends up happening is if your faith for justification and your faith for sanctification is not in Jesus, then you're going to be on shifting sands.

Because if your faith is, okay, well, I got in by Jesus, but I need to maintain by my flesh obedience, you'll never have enough.

I always ask this question. And that actually is what Rome taught, by the way. That's exactly what Rome taught. That's right. In by grace, and you maintain your justification through good works.

That's right. Pietism inevitably turns good works into something that seems hard and terrible and scary, and it becomes hyper -introspective.

The saints are robbed of assurance. We end up doing good works for the wrong reasons. There's all kinds of things that occurs with pietism and good works.

So the good news at the heart of the gospel is this reality, that Jesus Christ has fulfilled everything that is required for redemption, period.

Full stop. And what that means is that we no longer need to do anything.

We no longer need to work anything. We no longer need to render anything unto

God that would result in His favor being shown to us or would result in our salvation.

We simply receive passively. To put it as saints before have put it, the treasure that is

Jesus Christ and His righteousness for us. That's the gospel. Now, when you say it that way, and when you preach it that way, people lose their minds.

They sometimes just get indignant and kind of kick and scream in the floor and all that.

Sometimes people just genuinely are concerned, and there's always the yeah, but.

Like, that's great. What you just said is great about Jesus, and we all love Him, and we're grateful for Him, but what about, and then more often than not,

John, what are the words that follow? What about our obedience, or what about our holiness, or what about our good works?

There's no phrase inside of the Bible where it says the law has the power to do this, but the

Bible says the gospel has the power to transform your life, right? The gospel is the power of God.

The law is the rule of God to show you you need the gospel. This is why law and gospel distinction is so important.

Matters a ton. Right, and going back to your phrase for those who might be new to Reformed theology or even just new to theology in general, when you say union in Christ, what that means is this.

When you by faith are brought to life, you have new birth, the Spirit comes and lives within you, and you are now putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, all of the benefits that belong to Jesus now belong to you because the two of you are now one.

You're in union together. The way I love this is that the good news of the gospel is that God grabs you as a sinner, grants you forgiveness in Christ, and then seats you at the same table of Jesus and says all of his inheritance that he's about to receive is your inheritance too.

You're sitting at the same table of Jesus and you're gonna receive all the same benefits and here's why. He never points to your good works.

He never points to your merits. He says, I'm giving you all of this because Jesus did it on your behalf.

The law cannot save, it can only condemn. The law cannot transform, it can only guide.

It's critical that we would keep those things plain. And then when you start talking immediately about the blessings that we receive in Jesus, how everything that's his is ours, immediately

I think of Ephesians 1, 3 and following. That we've been blessed in Christ, like in the beloved, we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

And I think that our doctrine of union with Christ is anemic in the contemporary church and it is to the detriment of the saints that that is true.

Good works are only those works that God has commanded in his holy word. Works that do not have this warrant are invented by people out of blind zeal or on a pretense of good intentions and are not truly good.

That you are teaching as doctrine the commandments of men. That's this, because only the things that are described in God's holy word as good works are in fact good works in the eyes of the

Lord. These good works done in obedience to God's commandment are the fruit and evidence of a true and living faith.

Through good works, believers express their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, build up the brothers and sisters, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of opponents and glorify

God. Believers are God's good, sorry, believers are God's good workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

So they bear fruit leading to holiness and have the outcome of eternal life. This is an important clarification because it is talking about what good works are for, right?

For instance, he says it's the fruit and evidence of a true and living faith. You know, Justin, you may have used this illustration.

I don't know, I stole it from somebody, but you know, how do we know someone's alive? We put their hand over their face and are they breathing, right?

But their breath isn't the cause of their life. It's the evidence of their life.

Well, you can't externally cause that to be a reality, right? You can't then push on the chest and force air in and out of the lungs and say, well, this is a living body.

Same is true with the tree and fruit analogy that is so common to the scriptures. How do we know that a tree is alive?

Well, it bears fruit, but you can't just duct tape fruit to a tree and say, well, that's a living tree because the life in the tree is what bears the fruit and you can't reverse engineer it.

And when you try to take the fruit and weave that somehow into the root of the tree, into the life of the tree itself, you kill the whole thing.

And I think that's important for us to keep those things straight. And this paragraph is super helpful because we're told some of the motivations for good works.

We obey and we do good works out of gratitude and thankfulness, joy. We do these things for what purpose?

Well, for the good of our brothers and sisters, for our neighbor's benefit and for God's honor, right?

And it also commends Christ to others when they see our good works done in faith.

Notice how the purpose of our good works is not for us at all. The purpose of our good works is for our neighbor's benefit, for the building up of the body of Christ.

And then indirectly, I would say for the honor of God and for the commending of Christ in the gospel through the way that we then live.

But we so often think about our good works as the way that we prove our own legitimacy and we then feel better about ourselves spiritually by doing these things.

And that is a small piece of this. I mean, we're told that we can bolster our assurance through our good works, and we need to hold onto that.

I can be comforted, John, and I can be encouraged, I would maybe even say more precisely,

I can be encouraged as I look at the work of God's Spirit through me, and when I realize that I'm not like I used to be, when

I realize that the Lord has used me to do something that only he could do, it's like, yeah, that's really encouraging for me, but I never trust in those things.

I trust in Christ alone, and then I rejoice as I see good works occurring in my life and in the lives of others, and then we keep good works in their proper context, and we have appropriate frameworks, we think about this, that we obey out of love and joy and gratitude for the good of our neighbor, for the honor of God, and that these things are an outflow of life already received, that streams only flow downhill.

You can't make them flow uphill. Good works, sanctification only flow out of justification and eternal life received.

We can't make things alive by trying to do good works.

We can't keep anything alive by works. We are kept alive by the same power that raised us from the dead.

Their ability to do good works does not arise at all from themselves, but entirely from the

Spirit of Christ. Justin, this goes back to your illustration of taping fruit to a tree.

If someone is not producing fruit, that's a problem, but the problem is not yell at them to produce it.

This is where I get upset with pastors who are thinking, oh, well, these carnal Christians or these lazy

Christians, and I'm like, hey, listen, I was logged onto a live stream of a famous college, and I was looking for something, and I was like, well, let me see what their chapel is like, and the opening statement basically was, most of you here think you're

Christians, but you're not, and then he presented to just basically tell them to obey more, and I'm like, if they're not a

Christian, they can't obey. That's why the confession says the ability to do good works can't come from your own strength.

That has to come from something else. Just brief insertion for people that haven't heard us say this before. If you as a preacher legitimately think that the majority of your audience or a significant portion of your audience are unregenerate, then you ought not be telling them to obey more.

You need to be preaching the law in its first use. Show them that they cannot keep the law, that they could never do what

God requires, and then give them Jesus, who has paid their penalty and who has fulfilled the law for them.

That's what a person would need who is not regenerate. A person that is not alive does not mean to be told, like you said, obey better, because it won't give life.

Amen. The paragraph goes, to enable them to do good works, they need in addition to the grace they have already received, an active influence of the same

Holy Spirit to work in them to will and to do his good pleasure. So that's your point.

Yet, this is no reason for them to grow negligent as if they were not required to perform any duty without a special motion of the

Spirit. Instead, they should be diligent to stir up the grace of God that is in them. And all these passages from Corinthians, Thessalonians, Hebrews that taught in Ephesians to talk about, consider how to build one another up into love and good works, right?

We're to stir one another up, because the flesh is weak, the Spirit is willing. We need to be reminded of those things.

But when we do our good works, we need to always be giving praise and glory and honor to the Father, because those works are not works of the flesh.

Those are works brought to us by the Spirit. If he uses grace to stir them up, not fear, not pietism, a lot of times when you see people who are struggling to obey, they're not doing the things that they should, what does the modern day preacher do?

They either withhold blessings from God or they bring condemnation on the weak and weary sinner, the disobedient sinner.

The modern preacher generally has a framework where he thinks that people are motivated by fear of punishment or by merit.

And so he preaches accordingly. Like you're saying, you withhold blessing or you threaten judgment, whatever.

That's not biblical, that's not Christianity. But rather, what we do is because we've been made alive by the

Spirit of God, because we've been united with Christ, yet at the same time, because we're sinners and struggle sometimes, oftentimes, what we need is to be stirred up in grace and love so that we might then go and pursue good works all the more.

Well, how does that occur? I would say generally, ordinarily, that's gonna occur in a corporate context.

You're gonna gather with the saints, you're gonna sit under the Word, you're gonna come to the table, you're gonna witness baptism, you're gonna sing, you're gonna pray, we're gonna do all of that.

And that we together in doing that and then in fellowshipping as the saints will stir one another up to love and good works.

Those who attain the greatest heights of obedience possible in this life are far from being able to merit reward by going beyond duty or to do more than God requires.

Instead, they fall short of much that is their duty to do. So far from us being able to do enough that we would actually merit favor and blessing from God, we don't even do what we're supposed to do.

We fall far short of what God requires of us being made in His image. 16 .5 goes on.

We cannot, even by our best works, merit pardon of sin or eternal life from God's hand due to the huge disproportion between our works and the glory to come and the infinite distance between us and God.

By these works, we can neither benefit God nor satisfy Him for the debt of our former sins.

When we have done all we can, we have only done our duty and are unprofitable servants. Since our good works are good, they must proceed from His Spirit.

And since they are performed by us, they are defiled and nixed with so much weakness and imperfection that they cannot withstand the severity of God's punishment.

Just a few comments, John, and then you riff all you want, man. Yeah, brother. So hear these words.

Even our best works, like the best works we can possibly do, cannot merit pardon of sin or eternal life from God's hand.

We need to own that. We are not to work anything, do anything, or render unto God anything that would earn us

His favor. Can't be done. That's because of the huge disproportion between our works and the glory to come and the infinite distance between us and God.

That's great. Then, this is great. By these works, we can neither benefit God nor satisfy

Him for the debt of former sins. How good is this? We do not benefit the Lord. We do not give

Him anything that He needs in our good works. I feel like we so often use language unwittingly in the church that makes it sound like, even in our corporate worship, we're coming to offer

God something that He needs. We're coming to give Him something that's just gonna bless His name.

God made you to do things. We do not benefit God in our good works.

He needs nothing. Is He honored in them? Yes. Does He need them? No. Does He benefit?

No. And we obviously, through our good works that we do, cannot satisfy the debt of our former sins.

Well, this is James 2, 13 or 12 when he says, so speak and act as one who lives under the law of liberty, because we've been set free from the burden of the law.

We've been liberated from it. And we're under grace now. That's right. So we don't obey as one who's earning merit or earning forgiveness.

I have to go on and read this next paragraph before I make my next statement, because it will help clarify. And this goes back to the union in Christ that we had talked about earlier.

Nevertheless, this is 16 .6, nevertheless, believers are accepted through Christ and thus their good works are also accepted in Him.

This acceptance does not mean our good works are completely blameless or irreproachable in God's sight.

Instead, God views them in His Son. And so He is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, even though it is accompanied by many weaknesses and imperfections.

The point of it is you have been liberated to imperfectly, with many weaknesses, do good works and God will accept them because He accepts them in Christ.

Your good works are not good enough on their own. God does not accept them based upon your own capacity.

So first of all, they're brought by the Holy Spirit, but they're brought with many weaknesses because we still live in the flesh.

And they're acceptable, not because you did them, they're acceptable because God accepts them in Christ.

Therefore, you should never boast in your good works because you have to boast in Christ. Why would

God accept that? Because He's accepting it because of what you have received. That's right.

So you are now liberated to do good works, not to look at them and ask yourself, oh, is

God going to accept me because I did these good works? Am I sustaining my relationship with the

Father? Am I progressing in my relationship with the Father?

And the answer to all of that is no, no, and no, because you cannot have more of Jesus than you have now.

You can't be more in union with Him than you are now. You can either obey out of joy and gratitude, as we're told, not trying to do it meritoriously, knowing that you are being effective for the sake of your brother.

I mean, we use this constantly, but this is 2 Peter 1. He says, when you're not doing these good works, you are ineffective and unfruitful in the work that God has presented for you, which is what?

To love neighbor and advance the gospel. It's not, you're not being ineffective in maintaining or progressing your sanctification.

That's the work of God. Believers are accepted through Christ, like full stop, period.

Praise God. That's why we do good works. And we're excited to do it as we fail. And we never look to our good works.

We're always looking to Christ. This is, can I just say this and I'll pass it off to you? This is

Hebrews when it says, laying aside the weight and the sin that easily besets us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

Steinbeck, I think in East of Eden, says something like, now that you don't have to be perfect, go and be good.

Go and be good. Right? And that's a helpful. I mean, Steinbeck is a writer of fiction.

Very good, I mean, good writer, in my opinion. And there's a lot though of theological undertones in things that he writes.

And whether the guy's a believer or not, I have no idea. He may have just grown up in the church. Anyway, that's another conversation for another time.

But that language is really helpful. You know, now that you don't have to be perfect, go and be good. Because Jesus was perfect for us.

We are now under the law of liberty, like you said. We're not under the condemnation of the law anymore. We're under grace.

The law guides our living. And we can go and seek conformity unto it. We can go pursue good works and righteousness because Christ has handled eternity.

And he has handled judgment. And he has kept the law perfectly for us. So we're now free unto righteousness.

We're free unto love and all of these good things. And I'm thinking about it, you know, it's like we're children, right?

God is our father. And it's as though, the way we think a lot of times, it's as though we come to God with our imperfect things that we've done.

And we say, hey, here, here these are. And I'm assuming that on the basis of these,

I can get in to your holy heaven. That's the wrong way to think of it.

But rather, we come to him and we say, you know, I know that because of Christ and because of Christ alone,

I am now gonna be welcomed into your joy forever. And here are things because of that, here are things that I did for the good of my brothers and sisters.

And I know that they please you. And as imperfect as they are, I trust that you accept them in the Lord Jesus. And here

I am. And that's a much more helpful posture. Works done by unregenerate people, that's folks who are not born again by the spirit of God, may in themselves be commanded by God and useful to themselves and others.

Yet they do not come from a heart purified by faith and are not done in a right manner according to the word, nor the right goal, which is the glory of God.

Therefore they are sinful and cannot please God. They cannot qualify anyone to receive grace from God. And yet their neglect is even more sinful and displeasing to God.

So a few clarifying comments here. Works done by people who are not trusting Christ, they might be works that God has commanded.

They might be useful to that individual and they might very well be useful to other people. Yet they do not please the

Lord. Why? Because they are not done in faith. Hebrews 11, six, apart from faith, it's impossible to please God.

Your good works aren't eternally valuable because they're justifying you or they're confirming you. Your works are eternally valuable because they're glorifying

God and advancing his kingdom. And you need to stop worrying about this confirmation pietism because it actually distracts you from what you should be doing.

We get so focused on self -confirmation and pietism that we are ineffective in the actual work of the kingdom.

Christians are more focused on self -development than they are loving neighbor and advancement of the gospel. And that is not good.

Man, that's a good word, man. This is a little piece of history that I feel remiss in not saying in a conversation about good works.

Many will know of the Council of Trent, which was a Roman Catholic church council in the middle of the 16th century that was held in response to the

Protestant Reformation. In session six, canon 24, there is a paragraph on justification and good works.

And the Roman position is that if anyone says that good works are only evidence of justification obtained and they are not for the increase and the maintenance of justification, then let him be accursed.

And why does this matter? Well, because for many evangelicals, I don't think any of them would say that we are increasing our justification through our good works, but many would think and act as though we are maintaining our justification through good works.

And with all due respect, that perspective is not Protestant. That perspective is

Roman Catholic. And that's my parting shot. And if I've upset anyone,

I don't mean to. If you're interested in learning more about like the Council of Trent, session six, canon 24, and all of these kinds of things and what it means to be historically

Protestant and how we think about good works, not as maintaining our justification, then hit us up,