Paul Tripp on Social Justice and the Gospel

Conversations That Matter

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00:13

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I wanna thank you, first of all, for all your prayers.

00:19

I am getting a lot better when it comes to the COVID. I'm still sleeping a little more than I usually sleep.

00:25

My body's, I guess, still fighting it to some extent. The fever's long gone. It's just that after effect.

00:31

You can maybe even hear it in my voice that it's fading, it's getting better every day, but it is a slower recovery than I thought it would be.

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But again, feeling much better. It's actually, it's a beautiful day here where I am. For those down South, you're gonna laugh a little.

00:50

It's supposed to be hit like 50 degrees or the lower 50s tomorrow. And today,

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I think it's in the upper 40s. And for us, man, that is like put your T -shirt on, go outside, have some fun.

01:02

Spring is here, right? And I know for some of you, that would be the time to put the parka on.

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But not for us when we are used to temperatures in the teens and 20s.

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That's pretty nice when it gets up into the 40s. So the ice is melting, the sun is shining, can't complain at all.

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And so I wanted to do a quick episode here. I don't wanna take too much time because I got a lot to get to today.

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But I saw some comments and I wanted to respond to some of them.

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Because I think we have to go down maybe a trip down memory lane. Is that all right?

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Can we go down a little bit of a trip down memory lane? Sometimes I have to remind myself, there's a lot of people who listen to this podcast who haven't been with me for the last even year or two years or three years.

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And so I want to review a couple things that I think would help clarify the last podcast

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I put out. I'm definitely getting some pushback for that last podcast. And I wonder whether or not some of that is because of just kind of hopping into this whole issue of social justice at different points in time.

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Some people started realizing what was happening later than others. And some of you started listening to my podcast at different times.

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And so I wanted to do a short podcast, which I did, but it might've been helpful if I gave you a little bit more context.

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So I'm gonna do that a little bit here. I wanna talk about Paul Tripp. And I've had to read a lot of Paul Tripp books for seminary, which is ironic to me because Paul Tripp's, his writing style, his level,

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I should say, is very, it's junior high probably. It's very simple writing style, which is fine.

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But just I happen to have, both at Masters and at Southeastern, a lot of people who really like Paul Tripp.

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So, and this is going back years, right? It is going back 2011,

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I guess, is when I did a semester at Masters. So I've read a lot of Paul Tripp. And so I've never been a huge fan of Paul Tripp.

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I've never had a huge problem either with Paul Tripp until about 2018. And that's when

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I started noticing things that were just like red alert, like what is going on with Paul Tripp?

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And most of his ministry would be characterized, I think, or at least most people would know him by his counseling material.

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He does a lot of counseling seminars and puts out books on counseling and also on just a lot of spiritual disciplines, those kinds of things.

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And so we wouldn't associate Paul Tripp with anything really political, but then in 2018, he wrote an article.

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And I don't know whether this was the first time he had done this, but it was April 5th, 2018. He wrote an article that just was really, it was awful, to put it mildly.

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So I'm gonna read for you some of this, and we're gonna go through this. I'm gonna just hit the high points.

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I know there's a lot more, but there's this article, there's another transcript

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I'm gonna read part of for you that was in 2020 that he put out. And then I wanna read for you a section from his latest book that, and this is the book in question, right?

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The book Steve Lawson endorsed that I'm getting pushed back for a little bit for even mentioning. So I'm gonna talk about that a little.

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But let's start here in 2018. The title of this article is "'My Confession Toward a

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More Balanced Gospel.'" And it's still on his website. And yes, he has been corrected numerous times by numerous people.

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In fact, for those who might remember the Shepherds Conference Q &A, where Al Mohler and Lincoln Duncan and Mark Dever were kind of all acting a little weird,

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Phil Johnson was asking questions. And he mentions in that Q &A, someone who said he didn't understand the gospel until very recently.

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And I think anyone who read this article knew who he was talking about. And so the whole theme of this article, remember, it's about having a more balanced gospel.

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And it's pretty short. He says, I'm writing today on the day following the 50th anniversary of the assassination of MLK because I have a humbling confession to make.

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For all my passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ, which has been accurate and faithful to the best of my ability, the gospel that I have held so dear has been in reality a truncated and incomplete gospel.

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Now stop right there. You should already have not just yellow flags going up, you should have red flags going up when you hear this kind of language.

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This is the exact kind of language that false teachers, specifically false teachers, in the more progressive circles of Christianity have used for decades now.

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This is no different than something you might hear from Jim Wallace or something you might hear from Richard Mao back in the 70s.

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And it's no different than what you hear today from people like David Platt or Eric Mason or Jamar Tisby, the list goes on.

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So he's already saying that he doesn't have the full gospel, he doesn't have it. Now that's scary, right?

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You don't have the gospel, you have an incomplete gospel. Can an incomplete gospel save you? What is there lacking in the gospel that for years, when

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I was in seminary, I'm reading books by this man. At seminaries, I thought to be pretty solid, right?

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And I'm reading from a man who doesn't even understand the gospel, like that's pretty concerning. So he keeps going, he says this.

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If you know me, you know that I have invested my life in ministry and teaching, preaching and writing about the gospel, right?

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I have taught that the gospel not only addresses our past forgiveness and our future hope, but also everything we face today.

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I've talked and written again and again about the now -ism of the gospel, that is the right here, right now benefits of the life, death and resurrection of Christ, or Jesus, he says.

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He says, I've endeavored to hold the gospel as the lens through which we see and understand everything we are dealing with between the already of our conversion and the not yet of our home going.

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And I've worked to help people see how the gospel sets the everyday agenda for how they see themselves, how they view and relate to one another, to others, how they make decisions and how they live in the place where God has put them.

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But as I have taken time to examine the cross of Jesus Christ, once again, I have been confirmed with a very significant area of personal blindness.

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I agree that it took me so long to see this while being filled with joy that my patient and faithful savior did not give up on me.

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I kept working to open my eyes, soften my heart and give balance to my gospel voice. You may be thinking right now,

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Paul, I understand your word so far, but I haven't a clue what you're talking about. Let me explain by giving you the last chapter first and then unpacking what it means.

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So here's a headline for you. The gospel of justice, the gospel of justice, should already be a concern in your mind.

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If you understand what the gospel is, you understand what justice is and how it ties into the gospel.

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Justice is our problem. Justice is the thing that we can't get away from. It's the penalty that we deserve.

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And justice is going to find us and it is going to punish us. And every man is going to have his day in court after they die.

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And justice is not our friend. It's not good news, right? The gospel is good news. Justice is not good news.

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Justice is bad news for us because we're sinners. And yet the good news is that Jesus paid our penalty, that he took the justice we deserved, right?

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This is really basic stuff. So to say the gospel of God's justice, the good news of justice, that makes no sense.

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What do you mean by that? He says this, by God's grace, I've become deeply persuaded that we cannot celebrate the gospel of God's grace without being a committed ambassador of the gospel of his justice as well.

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Okay, this is where you're splitting the gospel up. There's two gospels now. You have the gospel of God's grace and now you have the gospel of his justice.

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And this is so classic. This is what Tom Skinner did at Urbana 70 that Tim Keller listened to over and over.

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And it changed his view of things. He phrased it this way, the fundamentalist individual gospel and then the social gospel, the corporate gospel of salvation for systems.

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And you see this basic, it's a compromise. You see this way of dividing the gospel up over and over with progressive evangelicals, progressive

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Christians, where they try to say, well, you got part of it, you got half of it. You have that part that gets you to heaven because your sins are taken care of, but you gotta remember that other part.

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There's the gospel of God's justice. There's the gospel that saves the institutions. There's the gospel that we apply as we live and we follow

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God's law. That's also part of the gospel. No, it's not. Any kind of works, any kind of law, that's not part of the gospel.

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May God forbid that. That is, any kind of works we condemn.

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We can't keep them. So this is the territory that Paul Tripp decided to go down at the very least in 2018, and he's still doubling down on it.

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So he says this, from the moment of his very first breath, Jesus marched towards the cross because God is unwilling to compromise his justice in order to deliver his forgiveness.

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On the cross of forgiveness, even speaking words of forgiveness as he hung in torture,

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God would not close his eyes to humanity's incalculable violations of his just requirements in order to extend to us his forgiving and accepting grace.

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Jesus never said to the Father, you know, I have lived with these people. They mean well, but they just don't understand who you are, who they are, and what life is all about.

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We don't, we just close our, why don't we just close our eyes to all of their rebellion, selfishness, pride, idolatry, and inhumanity, act like everything is okay, and welcome them into our family.

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Of course, God would have never participated in such a negotiation. So I'm gonna skip forward a little bit.

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He's explaining some things that we would say absolutely true. But the relationship of justice to grace here is he's introducing two kinds of relationships.

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One is that Jesus satisfies the justice of God. That's one. The other one is that there's some kind of gospel, there's some kind of good news with justice, and he's failed to somehow to forward that message or do enough to promote justice.

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So there's two relationships here, and they're kind of, they're at odds with one another. So very true that there's a connection of justice and gospel, but that connection is not go be a social justice warrior, right?

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So he says, let's see here. We cannot be comfortable with exegeting his mercy for all people without being an advocate for his justice for all people.

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And so what does this mean, right? If you mean give the bad news first, that there's justice and you're condemned and then give the good news, then right on.

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That's not what he's talking about though here though. He says in the next section, which is titled balancing the gospel.

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By God's patient grace, I am now convinced that I cannot be a voice for one without being a voice for the other.

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Sadly, I have preached the grace and been silent in the face of injustice. The cross forbids me to close my eyes to any form of injustice, whether personal and corporate, governmental, ecclesiastical, or systemic.

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There should be no community that is more present, active, and vocal advocate for justice in the community that preaches the gospel.

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But how can we advocate for those with whom we have no functional relationship? How can we stand together when we have let skin color, subculture, or leadership and worship styles separate us?

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How can we stand for justice when we have let prejudice separate us? How can we understand the travail of others who we are never with, never see, and never hear?

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How can we stand for justice when because of prejudice, there are those we will minister to, but whose leadership we wouldn't serve under?

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I'm gonna just skip through this. He's calling people in the church racist. That's what he's saying. He's saying that they're racist and that's preventing them from preaching part of the gospel apparently.

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Let's see here. I'm gonna just... Forgiveness without God's holy justice makes no sense and is therefore cheap, unbiblical forgiveness.

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He talks about being part of Epiphany Fellowship and he talks about Dr. Eric Mason, the author of Woke Church, how he sat under that ministry and he's blessed by it.

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He's grateful for it. He's heard all the stories of bias in education in the workplace and demeaning encounters by the police.

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And he talks about schools being racially segregated. It's all the kind of stuff we were hearing a lot, especially in 2020.

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And he talks about all this stuff. And the way he frames it is these are all problems that are addressed by this gospel of justice.

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And Christians are failing to somehow carry out this gospel of justice. I have news for you.

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The gospel is what Christ has done. It's his work. It's not our work. Yeah, in response to the gospel, in obedience to Christ, we carry out his law.

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We obey him. That's not the gospel. Don't confuse those two. There will be a day when

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God's perfect justice will finally roll down and every form of injustice will be piled in the ash heap of his mercy. The already and not yet.

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Anyway, there's really not much more to this. He asked people though, he says, what about you? How balanced has your gospel been?

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Have you been an advocate for grace but silent in the face of injustice? Have you been uncomfortable with the segregation of the

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Christian community or with the subtle personal prejudice? Where is God calling you to confession, repentance and brand new ways of living?

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You see the language here, ways of living. Yeah, we're gonna live in obedience but you have an unbalanced gospel.

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We don't have the gospel unless we're doing A, B and C to promote some kind of social justice. This is the problem.

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This is false teaching. I don't have a problem calling this false teaching. Paul would have called this false teaching. Apostle Paul, not

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Paul Tripp. And there hasn't been repentance from this. And that's been part of the concern.

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Now, fast forward to 2020. So we're a little over two years later, July 15th, 2020.

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The gospel, the church and racial injustice. And there was this 20 minute video that Paul Tripp made.

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I'm not gonna, I'll spare you a lot of the details. You get to the end though. And he recommends for all

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Christians that if they, in fact, I wonder what would happen. Let me just see here if I, I did a whole video on this if you wanna see it.

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Let's type in gospel. Gospel is mentioned 13 times in this. Let's see.

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I think of my ministry as putting on the gospel glasses. Let's see. Scripture says, when

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I apply the same, very same mission, looking at the issue of racial injustice from the vantage point of the same message of scripture, the same gospel, people get mad at me.

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So again, there's this relationship of there's the gospel and this is somehow supposed to, is integrated with racial injustice and all that that means in 2020, in July of 2020 of all times.

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And let's see here. He says, we went because we knew, he's saying we, meaning his wife and him, went to Epiphany Fellowship where Eric Mason's the pastor, author of Woke Church.

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He said, we went there because we knew we would hear the gospel up one side and down the other because the heart of that ministry is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Now I've read Woke Church. I did a whole review of it on this podcast and Eric Mason is a false teacher.

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He, in that book, you find the same basic problem. He takes the law and he smashes it into the gospel.

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He does not keep these categories separate. And he also gives the impression in his book that there are secular institutions out there, even governmental institutions that can teach

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Christians how to better apply the gospel. So you have non -Christians working with Christians or even without Christians, just working toward achieving some kind of status, some kind of gospel related status in this world.

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I mean, that's insane, but that's what Eric Mason teaches. It's so, it's in black and white. It's right there in his book,

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Woke Church. You get to the end of this and Paul Tripp says, look, here's some resources for you.

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Go watch this 17 minute video done by Phil Vischer. In the book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, I respond.

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I take pages to respond to that 17 minute video by Phil Vischer because it's nonsense. It is, and it is a

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Marxist narrative. There's no doubt about it. He recommends a Woke Church. He recommends

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Jamar Tisby's Color of Compromise. If ever there was a book that promoted critical race theory, it's Jamar Tisby's Color of Compromise.

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And so this is his message to people.

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And this is very concerning, right? You have false teachers being promoted. You have false teaching being promoted.

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And this is all from Paul Tripp. And two years later, and he's doubling down. Now, let me get to this particular book.

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This is the book that Paul Tripp just wrote. And let's see, let me see what it's called real quick because I don't, oh,

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Do You Believe? There it is. 12 Historic Doctrines to Change Your Everyday Life. Do You Believe is the name of the book. And this is the book that Steve Lawson endorsed.

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And so I just brought this up to mention in the last podcast. Let me actually take this off so people can see me.

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I had a short video, the very last podcast where I talk about how I was really encouraged to find a section in a

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Bible study Steve Lawson was doing where he takes aim at social justice. Someone asks him about it and he doesn't really hold much back.

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Some people were quibbling in the comments about, you know, well, he leaves a little door open here because he talks about white people and their prejudice.

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And I'm not gonna quibble about that. There's probably, there are things like that that I heard that I thought, you know,

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I wish you would have said that differently or something. But look, let's look at the big picture here. He took a shot at social justice.

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And that's not always an easy thing to do. There's very few people that are even willing to do that.

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They do exist. I'm certainly not the only one. One person was commenting as if, giving the impression that I thought

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I was, I guess, the only one out there. And I certainly don't think that. But I think a lot of people relate to what

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I said in the beginning of that podcast, where I said, look, sometimes you get discouraged. You think, am I the only one that sees this?

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You know, I see these false teachers. I see false teaching. And to be specific about it, to call it out, how many people are willing to do that is very few.

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I'm not saying they don't exist. I'm just saying it's very few. And I'm talking about Christians here.

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I'm not talking about, I know there's people in the world on the political right who will call this stuff out, but they're not doing it in the same way. They don't see the same threats to the gospel and to Christianity.

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They see a threat to America or to their way of life. No, I'm saying that there's something very specific here that is a threat to Christianity.

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And people in my group, if you wanna call it that, but people of my theological persuasion who are willing to say that is very rare, especially people willing to name names.

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So when I saw Steve Lawson say something, I got excited. I was really happy that he did that because people need to know.

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It does lull you into a sense of security, I think, a false sense that if you, let's say you attend a lot of conferences and you have a lot of preachers you listen to and they're willing to go after the prosperity gospel hard, because there's a lot of,

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I can name off the top of my head, tons of preachers who are willing to do that. They'll go right after the prosperity gospel and they'll have whole conferences about it even.

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And they'll call out the names of these people. They have no problem saying Benny Hinn. I did no problem calling out

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Joel Osteen. They have no problem, even some of them have called out those who would give cover.

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I remember at Strangefire Conference, John MacArthur and the whole panel was calling out John Piper. I mean, there's a lot of aggression and a lot of, there's a huge spotlight on the prosperity gospel issue.

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And imagine you're someone who, you go to these conferences, you understand that, but no one in that group, this is hypothetical, okay?

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This is hypothetical. And I'll phrase it this way. It's not that no one in the group, you don't hear, you don't happen to hear people in that group being as aggressive or saying things to warn about social justice teaching and naming the names of the people that promote that teaching.

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I think what it would do, and this is natural, I'm the same way, I would think, well, it's probably not that big of a deal.

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It's probably not that pervasive. It's probably, maybe it's out there somewhere, but it's certainly, it's not the big problem that prosperity preaching is, right?

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That's just, that's logical to think that way because you trust the people that you listen to. And if they're warning you about this one thing over here really hard, you'd think, well, they'd warn me about other threats.

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And I think this particular issue has been a little more difficult. I think there's a number of reasons.

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There's the reason that there's a political element and you have some pastors, I think, that have a big aversion to getting involved in politics.

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And they think that that's what they're doing if they start calling this out. I think you also have a lot of relationships.

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A lot of people who were fellow Reformed brothers who you did conferences with, you'd endorse their books, you had relationships with, and now they're going off the deep end and there's a reluctancy to wanna call out people you have a good relationship with.

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There was always more of a separation between the Reformed guys and the more prosperity -minded preachers, right?

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So there's not really relationship strains quite as much. With some people there are, but with many there's just, that risk isn't there as much.

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There is a huge risk though with this because these are people that would say, hey, I can sign the same statement of faith.

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I was part of your conferences. You know, we believe the same gospel, that kind of thing. So I think relationships is part of it.

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And then there's this, and this is related to relationships. There's also, I think, the politics that, and I'm not talking about national politics.

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I'm talking about the politics that go on in the elite circles of evangelicalism. And believe me, there are politics there.

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A lot of them. I know, I mean, I remember the first dose I got of that years ago and I was like shocked that that was even, but why wouldn't there be?

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We're human, right? So there are halls of power, there are conferences, there are book deals, there are relationships that will benefit you.

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There are people that you need to separate from. All that stuff, all those calculations are happening.

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And so I think the dust still hasn't settled with this issue of social justice quite.

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And so it could be a risk. It'd be dangerous to call someone out too. So all these fears, and there may be more,

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I think make this issue different. And now it's not any less important.

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It's damning. This is a false gospel. Every bit as false as the prosperity gospel.

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In fact, it's more of a threat in some ways, just because it's not as obvious to many. There's not as many people warning about it, but every bit is false.

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And it's also got a political motivation behind it, which means it's gonna be well -funded. It's going to have implications beyond just the church, but in the political realm as well, which means

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I don't think it's going away anytime soon. This isn't like the emergent church movement. This is something, I mean, if you can get evangelicals to vote

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Democrat or not vote Republican or something, I mean, there's a lot of interested parties that would love to see that happen.

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So, I'm not accusing anyone in particular of anything in particular. I'm just giving you very 30 ,000 foot broad observations that I've made over the years now of why this is a harder issue for some than others.

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So you have someone like Paul Tripp, who's been, like I said, at both

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Masters and at Southeastern. A lot of Paul Tripp stuff being recommended to me and assigned even in class.

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I mean, he's someone that's part of that group, good theology in the minds of many. And when he does things like this, what

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I just showed you, it's, how can that be Paul Tripp? How can he be the one?

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I mean, he said so many good things. And that's the case. I mean, that's always been the case with false teachers.

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And Paul, I mean, how many times does Paul write about this kind of thing? So it shouldn't surprise us, but then it does.

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It just, it does. And so I wanted to look at this last book that Steve Lawson endorsed.

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And the only reason I brought it up is to say, all right, Steve Lawson said such good things in that clip against social justice.

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And I want to encourage Steve Lawson. It's like, look, be clear. We need people to be really crystal clear, unafraid, name names.

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When you endorse a book by Paul Tripp, it creates confusion. I'm not saying it's a sin. I'm not saying it's wrong in every sense, but I'm saying it creates confusion.

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That's the issue. That's the issue even Paul confronted Peter about. It was like, you're not being clear when it comes to the gospel.

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Peter had the gospel, but he was giving cover for false teachers. And that's what

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I'm trying to say about people like Steve Lawson here, in a sense, it's similar at least, is we have to be so careful who we endorse because people aren't always paying attention.

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If they hear you naming the names of prosperity teachers, and then you're willing to put your name behind a book by Paul Tripp, then it gives the impression to people that, hey, he's safe and he's not.

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That's the issue. I had a bunch of people pushing back on me, like, well, do you know what's in that book? Maybe it's a fine book.

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It could be, right? But that's not the issue. The issue is you have someone who's regularly, at least regular enough, promoting false teaching here.

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Now, I did wanna show you something from the book. So this is a section where Paul Tripp kind of doubles down again.

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And this is the very book that Steve Lawson endorsed. Do you believe? This is, let's see where I wanna start here.

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This is what he says. Okay, we'll start here on page 252.

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We are called to be ambassadors not only of God's saving mercies, but also of his wrong thinking, sorry, but also of his wrong writing, oppression defeating justice.

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You cannot have grace without justice, and you cannot have justice without grace. The redemptive narrative makes this very clear.

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Now, let's stop there for a moment before we go any further. Let me read for you something from the

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Westminster Confession. Westminster Confession, chapter eight. And I guess,

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I don't know if they go by sections. I can't remember. Section five, the Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he through the eternal spirit once offered up unto

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God, has fully satisfied the justice of his father and purchased not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for those whom the father has given unto him.

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That's good news. Does that sound like good news to you? Yeah, that's the gospel. Jesus has saved for himself a people, a people that were under the justice of God, and he satisfied that justice.

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That's the relationship between justice and grace. Jesus, out of the grace of God, has satisfied the justice of God, okay?

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Now, let's keep going with this section in the book by Paul Tripp here.

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So he says, you cannot have grace without justice. You cannot have justice without grace. The redemptive narrative make this very clear.

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Okay, I agree. If what you mean is what we just read from the Westminster. Yet many believers don't seem to understand this.

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Okay, really? Wait, hold on. What believers don't understand this? We might be committed to being representatives of God's saving mercies, but we don't seem to have the same enthusiasm to carry his heart for justice wherever injustice is found.

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Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is a different relationship, right? Do you see how this works? It's right there in the middle of this one paragraph, and it's the same thing

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Paul Tripp has said since 2018. He makes a connection. There's grace, there's the gospel, and then there's justice, and they're connected, and we all say amen, and then

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I think it's hard to recognize he flips, he changes the relationship, and it's, well, you need to go do some works.

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You need to go do some justice out there. So wait a minute, hold on. The justice we're talking about in relationship to the gospel is the justice we're all under automatically.

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It's not about doing something. It's the malady people have. It's the sickness they have that they're under the wrath of God.

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His justice is gonna be poured out, and we need to give him the cure. Look what Jesus did, right? Look at the grace.

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Flee to him. You have cancer, right? That's the justice, and here's the chemo.

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That's the relationship, but instead he makes it now about doing something in the here and now temporal world to forward some kind of political or social or something like that, charitable endeavor, and so we're gonna go out and we're gonna do justice for people.

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We're gonna do nice things for them. We're gonna help them in their plight because they clearly have some injustice against them, and we're not talking about the justice that God is gonna give to people that they deserve.

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We're talking about something that they didn't deserve. We're talking about they're experiencing injustice in this world, and it's our job to go roll it back because it's wrong, and God doesn't want that, and somehow this is related to the gospel.

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Do you see that? Do you see the switch he does? So here's what he says in the next paragraph. Again, this is the book.

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Do You Believe? 12 Historic Doctrines to Change Your Everyday Life, came out end of last year, okay? This is recent.

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This is an old, recent book. This is a book many endorse, including Steve Lawson, and this came out months after the video

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I showed you in the last podcast where Steve Lawson is railing against social justice, okay? It's in this book.

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Paul Tripp says, let me share my own experience. For many years, my personal mission statement has been connecting and transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life.

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My goal in my writing and teaching ministry is to look at everything through the lens of the Genesis to Revelation gospel narrative.

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When I do that with topics like sex, money, parenting, midlife, marriage, communication, counseling, leadership, and more, people respond with gratitude, but when

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I do the very same thing with the issue of racial injustice, people get mad at me. I've been called a socialist and a

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Marxist. I have been accused of forsaking the gospel. One person responded with goodbye, Paul Tripp. Often when

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I speak to the issue of racial injustice, I get what I call a whatabout response. People will say, what about abortion?

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What about sex trafficking? What about rioting? Of course, all of these things are sin in the eyes of God and the people of God should speak and act against them all.

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But this whatabout reaction seems to be a defense mechanism to somehow weaken or negate the justice concern.

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If I posted a short video on the horrors of adultery, I don't think I would have people responding with what about stealing or what about bearing false witness.

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He's referencing the video I showed you, a transcript from earlier from 2020. What is it about the issue of racial injustice that draws out such defensive and often angry responses?

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If God is generous in both grace and justice, shouldn't we also be? Or shouldn't we be also? And he says this, listen to this.

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He says, it does make me wonder if we have fallen into the same error as the Pharisees. Okay, so the people that are criticizing

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Paul Tripp, I mean, they're Pharisees apparently, because he quotes Matthew 23, where Christ says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

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These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. And so he says, it is not some social justice warrior who calls justice, mercy and faithfulness weightier matters of the law.

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No, it's our Savior King who makes this value judgment. All right, let's stop here for a minute.

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Let's just think about everything that I just read. He starts off with a hook. There's the relationship between justice and the gospel.

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And you say, yeah, amen, absolutely. We're under justice. Christ comes and he gives us grace. And so we're not under that justice anymore.

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Jesus has taken it. He satisfied that justice, praise God. But then Paul Tripp does a switcheroo.

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He changes things up. And instead of it being the justice we're all under because we're guilty, because we've sinned before God, it becomes, no, there's justice.

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There's physical justice that people are under in this world. And part of the gospel somehow is us, it's going and helping them.

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And forwarding justice. And not only that, it's this kind of, and he doesn't mention

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BLM, but the things he's referencing when he talks about racial justice, I mean, are the things that I showed you earlier.

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It's the BLM narrative. He's saying that if you're gonna truly be a, like what he says, a look at everything through the lens of the

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Genesis to Revelation gospel, then you have to go and you have to adopt this narrative that there's systemic injustice in policing, all the rest of it, education, and then you gotta go do something to stop that.

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And that's part of the Christian message. That's part of the gospel somehow. And so he said,

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I can mention all these other social maladies and no one cares, but as soon as I mentioned racial injustice, everyone's up in arms as if everyone else is the hypocrite.

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There's some problem with them that they're Pharisees. And I would like to suggest to you, he has no clue, either that or he does know, and he's just trying to,

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I don't know, get the pressure off him, but I'm just gonna assume ignorance here. That's the giving the benefit of the doubt here.

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He just has no clue the critiques that have been leveled against his position.

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The critique is not, hey, we're all for racial injustice. And we just want you to talk about all these other things, but we don't want you to talk about that.

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No, that's not, I think he preferred that, but that's not what people are saying. At least in my knowledge, maybe there's some people saying it

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I'm not aware of, but the prominent voices, the people on the internet who have said things, myself included, our critique has been, you're not drawing a faithful line between law and gospel, number one.

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That's the biggest issue. And then number two, you're requiring people to buy into a false narrative.

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It's just not true. Is there racism that exists? In other words, are there people who hate other people because of the race that they're a part of?

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And is there some kind of a pride and a partiality that exists? Yeah, there always will be. Is this something that is systemic and fundamental to what

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America is and part of the police and education system and all the disparities that exist somehow are caused by some kind of racial hatred or something?

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No, that's just not true. And that's why I took time in my book to respond to Phil Vischer's ridiculous 17 -minute video on this.

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There's certainly things from the past you can look at and say that there was racially motivated hatred that went on.

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There were laws, perhaps, that were passed to separate peoples and things like this. But when you're talking about today, systemic racism in all these things that exist out there, that Christians have a responsibility, like Eric Mason does at Woke Church, to go out and rectify, you're leaving any kind of biblical ethic.

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You're adopting a Marxist ethic. And it's funny, even in the narrative that Paul Tripp gives in his video on this from 2020, he talks about how he had to kind of come and just listen.

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He talks about in 2018, too, that he just had to listen to these stories of oppression and then he just bought them.

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He just believed them, that this is just how it is. And so the standpoint theory also pops out, that postmodern thinking.

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This stuff, this junk, is directly contrary to what Christians have historically believed.

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There's no barrier that's in front of us. There's no, like, we can't have a full understanding unless we get the minority perspective.

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And then we can apply God's word to the situation or something like that.

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We need this extra perspective we're not capable of having, or we must buy into this narrative of systemic injustice in order to be able to apply the gospel of all things to these areas.

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That's foreign to Christian thinking on this. Christian thinking is we have ethics. They're found in the pages of scripture.

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There's no barrier there. We can all understand it. It's the approved workman, so we work at it, who rightly divides the word of truth.

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We understand them and we apply them to the situations around us. We don't get our ethics from the

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Marxists. We don't just assume that what they're saying is accurate. And so those would be the critiques that have been leveled.

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You know, you're adopting a Marxist narrative, a postmodern narrative, and you're also corrupting the gospel in the process.

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It's not, we just don't like you talking about racial injustice, right? No, who says that? I haven't heard anyone say that.

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So this is just some of what's in this book.

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Do You Believe? 12 Historic Doctrines to Change Your Everyday Life. And so when you have someone like Steve Lawson, who has said some really good things,

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I wasn't aware of it, but I just saw recently some really good things against social justice, but then he endorses something like this.

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And very recently says, this is an important book. Paul Tripp puts his finger on the live nerve in the body of Christ.

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He addresses the dangerous disconnect that often exists between sound doctrine and sound living. I mean, look, that's what he's talking about with pursuing, you know, racial or anti -racism.

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That's what he's talking about. And Steve Lawson is, you know, I don't know. I can't put words in his mouth, but he's saying that that's the benefit of this book.

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Is he's, Paul Tripp is gonna tell you about this dangerous disconnect that exists between sound doctrine and sound living.

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Tripp sounds the needed warning that knowing truth is never an end in and of itself, but only a means to a far greater end.

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He reminds us that the goal of biblical instruction must be personal transformation. Here is made the inseparable connection between biblical indicatives and practical imperatives.

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What God has joined together, let no man separate. Okay, so it's an endorsement.

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And I mean, there's other people who endorse this too. There's a bunch of people. I'm not totally surprised about a lot of them, but like Breck McCracken, editor,

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Gospel Coalition, right? I'd expect that. I'd expect Dane Ortlund. So, you know, it's just,

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I wouldn't expect to see Steve Lawson's name there, especially given some of the content in this book, but it is there.

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And so this isn't to blast Steve Lawson. I know some of y 'all are very sensitive to that.

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And we all make mistakes. I can make mistakes. Everyone can make mistakes. There's no doubt about that. So there's no,

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I'm not doing this to blast anyone. All I was trying to say in the last video, and all

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I'm saying in this video, is we have to be very careful who we put our name, and I mean, this is public, right?

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This isn't just an offhanded remark. This is a public, well -thought -through endorsement of a book. And we wanna be very clear with, and if we're wrong, if there's something we miss, then we accept correction.

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We move on. We vocalize it publicly, just as publicly as we endorse something.

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We say, I can't necessarily endorse that. And we move on. And it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

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Sadly, I think it probably, in the political climate today, that kind of thing is a big deal, but I don't think it should be.

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I think, look, if Peter can make a mistake, I can make a mistake. Certainly Steve Lawson can make a mistake. And there's no condemnation or anything like that.

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But it's also not wrong to point those things out. And I think that's what Paul did. And it's helpful for people.

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I think that's why a lot of people who do listen to this podcast listen, because it's hard to get the information sometimes you receive on this podcast in other places.

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There's a few guys. In fact, someone was asking me the other day, John, who else talks about the kind of things that you've been talking about for the last few years on social justice in the church?

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I'm like, well, I mean, AD Robles has, for sure. I can give you the names of some other ministries that have taken shots at social justice.

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And even sometimes, maybe even in Twitter interactions, they've named names and stuff. But as far as like a consistent drumbeat of here's where there's some problems, beware of this.

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I mean, there's just not many. And that's not to toot my own horn or say that I'm better or anything like that, which some people get that impression.

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That's not what I'm doing. I'm just saying that there's, for the reasons I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, most likely, there's just not a lot of people who wanna dive into that,

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Christians who wanna dive into that. And it's a lot more comfortable to take shots at abstractions.

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If you're gonna say something, you can say, yeah, social justice, greatest threat to the gospel, terrible, horrible thing.

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But to make it specific, that's where things start getting a little uncomfortable. And so I just wanna encourage people out there like Steve Lawson, don't be afraid of that if you are,

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I don't know, but it's necessary, it's needed. People wanna know. There's a lot of people who, they'll never hear what

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I'm saying, which is fine, but they will hear what Steve Lawson says. They'll hear other voices that are platformed at some of these major conferences.

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And I think it would be helpful for them to at least know, hey, there's a danger out there. And it's with this group, it's with these people.

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And it doesn't have to be a personal thing. It's just, it's a life and death thing though, that the gospel is being corrupted.

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That is a dangerous thing. So that's what motivates me more than anything else is the corruption of the gospel and wanting to warn people about that.

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And so I'd love to see more people just kind of join me in that and say what needs to be said to help the sheep understand, because a lot of us have jobs.

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We're not paying attention to all this stuff. We can't be expected to pay attention to all of it. And that's where we do rely on leaders and pastors and even beyond that, people we listen to on podcasts and the radio to kind of tell us the truth about what's going on.

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So that's all I really wanted to say about that. Now I've gone for about 45 minutes. So that wasn't as short as I thought it would be, but what else is new with me, right?

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Hey, I wanna mention to everyone in closing here, I'll pull it up if I can here.

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I am gonna be speaking in February. This is February, February 23rd at Grace Baptist Church in Clarkstown, Clarkstown Road, Muncie, Pennsylvania.

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Muncie, Pennsylvania. And then of course, March 12th and 13th, I'm gonna be near Austin, Texas.

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So if anyone's out in the Austin area, would love to see you. I'm gonna be with AD Robles, by the way, and Pastor Joel.

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So I'm looking forward to that. And then in Nampa, Idaho, March 18th through 19th, the

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Rocky Mountain Biblical Worldview Conference, March 20th, Middletown, Middleton, Idaho for the

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Truth Family Bible Church. And so looking forward to all of that, looking forward to seeing you out at these locations in February and March.

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And my wife will be coming with me actually to Texas and to Idaho, which is exciting. So I just booked the flights for all of that last night.

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And so appreciate your prayers for travel mercies as well if you can't come, but would love to see you.

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And with that, we'll end up with the show, the podcast. God bless. Hope your weekend is excellent and as warm as mine is.