Why All Calvinists Are Not Reformed | Theocast

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Hi, this is Jon, and today on Theocast, we are going to be discussing the difference between being

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Reformed and a Calvinist. I know many think that being a Calvinist is being

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Reformed, but they're actually different, and we're going to explain why. We have three major reasons that we believe would be a distinction between those who are

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Reformed and those who would just believe in the five points of Calvinism. Then towards the end of the podcast, we explain why it is important for the distinction.

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If you love resting in Christ and the message of Theocast, then this is going to be coming from a Reformed perspective.

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In our member's podcast, the three of us explain our transition out of, we would say,

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Pietism or Calvinism into a confessionally Reformed perspective and hopefully share with you some other additional helps in the member's podcast.

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Stay tuned. Hey guys, as a quick reminder, if you'd like to join Theocast in helping other people find rest in Christ, a simple way of doing that is simply by leaving us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

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To learn more about how to support Theocast, simply visit theocast .org slash give.

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Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the

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Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Our hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota, and I'm John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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Gentlemen, we took a week off, so it's good to be back. It almost feels longer than a week, but it's good to be back. And today,

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I actually am always excited about our new segment because it's like you never know what you're going to get when you open up the box of Jimmy's chocolates.

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So Jimmy, you've got pro con today. Pro con. All right.

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Are you ready for what I'm about to say? Of course not. Okay. Okay, here we go.

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I am pro, wait for it, I am pro coffee from a mug.

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I am con, even though I'm doing it right now because it's necessity, con coffee in a travel mug.

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Same. Yeah. I mean, it's not super controversy, it's not super controversial, but here's the thing.

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I don't care who you are. Coffee from a travel mug is inferior to coffee in a regular mug.

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I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's like a scent thing. I can tell you why. Yes, it is. You can't smell it. You can't smell it.

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Is that what it is? That's exactly right. So I should take my lid off. So those of you watching the video, you can see. I mean,

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I don't drink my bourbon out of a travel mug either. Well, right.

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Do you have a sniffer? Do you have a sniffer? Well, I mean, I would say the same for - Not going to do it.

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I would say the same for beer. Out of a bottle. Absolutely. Same principle applies.

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I think actually, if I drink a couple beers out of a bottle or a can,

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I feel way more bloated. Then if I pour it in a glass, something with foam or I don't know.

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We just went to blow. It's cold old age, man. All right.

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What's your - I've actually been away more than one week because of moving and I can't believe what we've devolved into here at TheoCaf.

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Oh, that's true. It's been two weeks for you. Yeah, it's just shenanigans.

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Shenanigans. No, he said pro coffee in a cup. Oh, I didn't catch that.

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Here's the one thing that I realized though. Only time I drink coffee in a travel mug is when we do -

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John needs to pay attention to precision and nuance. Oh, man. The only time I drink it is when we do

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TheoCaf because I don't want to accidentally spill my coffee and it gets cold.

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The only downside about coffee in a mug is if I don't drink it real quick, it gets cold and that's cold coffee.

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I'm drinking mine out of a mug. Lukewarm coffee. Yeah, that's not good. You got to preheat your mug, John. Preheat your mug.

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Oh, that's a thing, huh? Like stick it in the microwave? Well, what is that? You could do that or you could just run some hot water through it.

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Does it really preserve the coffee that much? It does. It helps. I mean, ceramic is an insulator, so you got to get it in there.

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All right. Well, now that we bored them to death. Here's the thing.

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You could say that there is a fine distinction and nuance between coffee and a mug.

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Bro, there you go. Absolutely. We're all about distinction and nuance and precision and the definition of terms here.

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That's right. JP, rescue us and explain what you mean. Do my best,

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John. In the church broadly, in the West, in our context, we're in America, the terms reformed and Calvinist or Calvinistic are oftentimes used almost synonymously.

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In the minds of many people, to be a Calvinist is to be reformed or to be reformed is to be a Calvinist. What we thought we would do here today on this podcast is talk about the differences, the distinctions between those two terms and what they mean, what they represent.

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Really briefly, high -level summary here, and then we'll go forward with this.

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If you are reformed, you are a Calvinist, but not all people who are

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Calvinists, like in the sense of being a five -pointer, not all people who are

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Calvinists are reformed. There is a distinction between those two terms. The reason that we want to have this conversation is not to be condescending.

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It's not like we think that we are a part of some club that not everybody is a part of. None of those things are our motivation.

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What we want to do is bring some clarity to this and help people understand the differences because we think the difference between being a

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Calvinist and then being reformed is significant for our lives in Christ, our lives in the local church, and it has everything to do with the things that we talk about here on Theocast all the time, namely resting in Christ and resting and trusting in his work in our place and his sufficiency, his adequacy, the fact that he has done it all for us and there is nothing left for us to contribute.

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The distinction between being reformed and being a Calvinist has everything to do with that stuff. A lot of times people, especially that are newer to Theocast, hear us use the word reformed and then they will hear other people use the word reformed or call themselves reformed and will think that they are talking about the same things that we are, and that is not always the case.

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The purpose of the conversation today is, as always, to point people to rest in Jesus but to make those distinctions clear so that people can remove the clutter, so that there can be some elimination of confusion.

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We don't like it when categories are collapsed. We talk about that stuff all the time, and so hopefully this conversation will be clarifying and helpful to the listener.

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Yeah, I think that's really helpful, JP. I think something else I want to throw in by way of introduction is to say this.

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On behalf of all of those who claim the title of reformed, allow me to sincerely apologize to those of you who have had bad experiences with those who have called themselves

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Calvinists. Absolutely. I think that's another reason why we want to have this distinguishing conversation because there are certainly a lot of Calvinists out there, and I'm using air quotes.

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There are a lot of those who have claimed the title of Calvinist who show very small amounts of grace, very small amounts of graciousness towards those who don't agree with their views.

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We think that there is going to be some helpful things that distinguish Reformational theology from merely empty or light

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Calvinistic theology. Again, we hope that this conversation helps bring some understanding to these categories because I know that there are many people who call themselves

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Calvinists that I would say, man, that's just not my kind of Calvinist. Not to be political, but when our current president was elected in 2016, there was this giant hashtag going around, not my president, where you could almost start a hashtag that's not my

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Calvinist. Oh, it's going to happen. Yeah, not my Calvinist. Some of these things

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I've said, I think they fly in the face of classic Reform theology.

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Hopefully, as we distinguish these categories, those things become overly and abundantly clear. I was going to say that we did a five -part series on the five points of Calvinism that we could refer people to, especially if you have total access membership, you can get access to those.

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Our agenda here today is not to lay out the five points in detail. I think one observation

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I would make before we even go further down the road in this conversation is that many people too who claim to be

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Calvinists or who would label themselves as Calvinists are not always even consistently five -point

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Calvinists as it's historically understood. What they mean is that they are Calvinistic in their soteriology, their understanding of salvation, meaning that they are predestinary and they believe in the sovereignty of God in election and things like that.

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That almost is the extent of their Calvinism. I think that sometimes those inconsistencies even within that Calvinistic framework lead to some of the bludgeoning and the condescension and the lack of grace and charity that we see manifest itself all over the place, maybe most notably on Calvinistic Twitter.

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It's a tough place to be sometimes, and I know that's going to resonate with many people.

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I myself have thought about getting off of social media for a number of reasons, one of them being just the absolute mudslinging that takes place amongst professing

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Calvinists. John, go. Yeah. Well, just to move us in to help further explain this, the listener may not know or may,

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I love golf. It's something I enjoy watching and playing. I know people say, you enjoy watching it. I take a nap every

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Sunday to watching golf. That's right, baby. But if someone says, oh,

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I like golf. I'm like, great. Well, what courses do you play? And they say, well, I play the putt -putt course right down the road.

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I would say, oh, well, is that the only place that you play? Yeah, yeah, I only play there.

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Well, putting is definitely a part of golf, but it is not golfing. That is not equal to say that you are a golfer because there's much, much more that is involved, and there's a lot of technical parts of golfing, and you have to own the right kind of clubs.

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You have to know how to use those clubs. You need to know the rules. If you're going to enjoy the game and not hurt somebody and get kicked off of a course.

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When it comes to the word reformed, just like putting is a part of golf, but putting is not golf.

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Calvinism is a part of reformed theology, but it is not reformed theology.

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Reformed theology is much broader, much more technical, and there's a structure behind what's going on.

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Calvinism happens to fit inside of that. What we're going to do now is walk you through what

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I would say are the key tenets, the key points that you must adhere to.

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I would say historically, if you're going to hold to the perspective that we have been sharing for the last five years, then these are the key tenets that you need to believe in or hold or understand to legitimately say you hold a historic reformed perspective of Scripture.

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I'll start with the first one, and I'll let you guys unfold it. I would say probably the biggest one historically would be covenantalism, a covenantal perspective of the

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Bible. There was a debate a while back, and we did a short podcast on this.

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Can you be Calvinistic and dispensational? Yeah, I think there's a lot of guys who probably would fit that, but I do not think you can be reformed and dispensational.

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I would say there's no way to be. No, because the background of reformed is legitimately covenantal.

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When we say that, what do we mean by covenantal for someone who might be brand new to Reformed theology or even to covenant theology?

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What's a quick overview of that? We actually hope to dive into this further very soon, covenant theology from our perspective, because even within that,

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I can hear some of our other Reformed brethren on the other side of the mic right now saying,

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Oh boy, I can't wait to see what they say. There are differing views, but at its core, there are three major covenants of covenant theology.

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You have the covenant of redemption, which is the eternal covenant made between the three persons of the

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Godhead to redeem sinners. We see that clearly in places like Ephesians chapter one.

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Then you have the covenant of works, and then you have the covenant of grace. The covenant of works being that which is the covenant that God has with man that in order to have a righteous standing before God, you need to have perfect works.

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You need to have perfect righteousness on your own account. But you also have the covenant of grace, which is the covenant that God also makes with man that is mediated by Jesus Christ, where God does not look to the works of man.

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God does not look to the works of Adam, so to speak, that we see in the garden. Rather, he looks to the works of Christ, and by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, imputes that perfect righteousness to his people.

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Those are the three major covenants.

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Here's why it's important. Because if you don't make these categories, if you don't see these categories in Scripture, particularly covenant of works, covenant of grace, what happens is when you don't have these categories, as a pastor or preacher, you will typically try to lay a covenant of works back on your people.

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Here's what I mean by that. If you don't make these categories, particularly the covenant of grace, talking about how it's all of God's sheer, boundless, unmatched, wonderful, beautiful grace, what you'll do is you'll lay a covenant of works back on people to say, in order to be blessed, in order to have this kind of standing with God, you must have this, you must do this, you must pray like this, you must read this much, you must repent this much.

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In essence, saying it's all contingent upon the works that you do.

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We'll get into that a little bit more when we begin talking about the means of grace, but I want to let you guys come in and help fill out some of those edges as well on covenant theology.

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I would summarize covenant theology this way, that Jesus fulfills the covenant of works in the covenant of grace in order to accomplish the covenant of redemption.

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That is critical. I hope the listener can understand and maybe connect the dots as to how that is inextricably linked from the rest in Christ that we talk about all the time.

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We will talk about Jesus being sufficient. We'll talk about him being adequate. We'll talk about him having done everything that's necessary for salvation and how there's nothing left to contribute.

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That not only redemptive historical understanding of Scripture, but that covenantal framework of Scripture dovetails so beautifully with all of these understandings.

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If you start to pull these things apart, you kind of kill the whole thing. The sufficiency of Christ and a covenantal framework go together.

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When we will point people outside of themselves to the work of Christ in their place, when we will point people to Christ's faithfulness, not their own faithfulness, what we are doing is we are teaching the

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Bible in a redemptive, historical, covenantal way. You'll notice that amongst many of the guys in evangelicalism in particular who would claim to be

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Reformed, who are Calvinistic at least in their understanding of salvation, they will deny the covenantal framework of Scripture.

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In particular, they will deny the covenant of works. When you deny the covenant of works and you don't understand that Jesus has fulfilled that covenant in the place of the redeemed in the covenant of grace, this is where, to Jimmy's point, you get guys coming back in, putting burdens upon the

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Christian, and giving them things that they must do in order to secure their salvation.

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It reintroduces works back into the Christian life as a part of the ground of our standing before the

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Lord, and assurance and peace and security go away. The covenantal framework and that kind of confessional understanding that outside in the objective realities of the gospel, looking outside of ourselves to say what's wrong in us, and even that declarative reality that it's done and it's finished and there's nothing left to be accomplished, are inextricably linked to covenant theology.

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In order to be Reformed, one must be covenantal. We talk about this a lot when we are encouraging people to rest in Christ.

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Everyone knows the language, second Adam. Jesus is the second Adam. Theologically, what he's getting at is where Adam failed, which is to obey

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God perfectly in the garden. Christ came, was born of a man, and fulfilled where Adam failed.

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Of course, Jesus wasn't born in a garden, and he didn't have to go through the temptation of receiving the fruit.

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Instead, God established the law covenant with Moses, and Christ went and fulfilled all of the requirements of the law, proving that not only is he worthy, but it says in Adam all died, and in Christ all are made alive.

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All of scripture is really about two Adams. It's the Adam who failed and the Adam who succeeded, and you are presented this.

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This is covenant of works. Adam, if you do what was right, then what we are told later on is that Adam would have been blessed and gone on to live eternally in that status that he was with God, but he failed.

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What does Christ earn for us? Jesus doesn't come in and clean the slate where Adam failed.

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We are told that not only does

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Christ pay for the failures of Adam, but then accomplishes what we need to enter into eternity and accomplishes all of the work.

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That's the covenant of grace. The whole Bible is what we call bi -covenantal.

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It's made up of the story of these two covenants, where there are those who have failed to earn salvation rightly by their works, and where Christ comes in and pays for their failure and then earns the righteousness.

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He says all can have this by faith alone. Jon Moffitt Yeah. I think to have a covenantal view of the

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Christian life also means to have a covenantal view of the Bible, and doing so helps us to see the

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Bible as one cohesive union that obviously finds culmination and point in Jesus Christ.

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I can hear people in the background saying, what about the Noahic covenant? What about the Abrahamic covenant? What about the Davidic covenant? Let's just take the

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Noahic covenant. God makes a covenant and says,

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I will not judge the earth again in this way. We have the rainbow. We're not going to see a flood.

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Later, we see in the New Testament that Peter talks about that, and the different apostles talk about that. In our baptism, the waters of judgment pass over us, but we are raised again to new life.

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Then you have the Abrahamic covenant that obviously Christ fulfills, that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars.

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You have the Davidic covenant that Jesus is the true and better David who is sitting on the throne.

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You have the new covenant in Jeremiah that the

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Spirit in the work of conversion takes out of our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh.

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You have the Mosaic covenant that Jesus fulfills. As we see these, all of these covenants fit within this frame,

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I believe, of the covenant of grace. When you see this, it constantly points the believer outside of themselves to the work that God is doing.

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I do see this in the evangelical world. Particularly in the

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Old Testament, we find different passages, Joseph, David, whatever, what have you.

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You see, what did the godly men of old used to do, and how do we bring that back in?

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Rather, I think a reformed covenantal view helps us see

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God is fulfilling his unique promises to his people, ultimately in the person of work of Jesus Christ.

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How does this story about David or Solomon or Daniel fit into that narrative that we as people can be invited to trust and rest in the promise -keeping

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God that covenant theology portrays? I think that is the helpful thing that reformed theology does.

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Right. I would say what Jimmy just described here is you have a covenantal framework, and another way of describing this is the way in which you interpret and read your

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Bible. It will be the way it is labeled as a redemptive, historic understanding of Scripture, which is a reformed perspective.

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That is what the reformers were teaching and pushing. So, when we say redemptive, we mean that from Genesis to Revelation, the story of the

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Bible is redemption. It is how God redeems sinners, and it is read and understood, and it unfolds throughout history.

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So, we are not pulling it apart. We are allowing it to be seen as it is unfolding in history.

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The one I always love to point to is Genesis chapter 3, when Adam and Eve fall, what does God do? He makes a promise that of the seed of Abraham, one will come and crush the head of the serpent.

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You immediately have the promise of a Messiah coming, and the question is, who is he, and how is he going to get here?

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As it unfolds, there are two major themes. One is the need. As Jimmy said, you get to the

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Noahic covenant, and he says there is none in the earth. They are all evil.

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They are all doing what is right in their own eyes, and if God wipes out all of humanity, he wipes out his promise to Eve and Adam.

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Of course, he doesn't. He preserves it. What you see is, as you are reading the Old Testament, you can see that there is none who have ever been able to be the second

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Adam. The question is, where is that second Adam? Who is going to come? It gets clarified through every covenant.

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We know through the Abrahamic covenant, it is coming through Abraham. Eventually, through the Mosaic covenant, we know that it is going to be the one who obeys the

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Mosaic covenant. Then we know through the line of David, through the line of Solomon, he will be a king who sits on the throne forever.

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It is this epic story. By the time you get to Matthew, do you ever wonder why the genealogy is there?

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It is so you know you have the right Messiah, that you are putting your faith in the right guy, and then Jesus' miracles prove that he is the right guy.

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That is a redemptive historic understanding of Scripture. The point of it is to look for Jesus throughout every verse, not look to put him in the verse, but look to see how he is going to be fulfilled in these verses.

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It is not to make your life, as Jimmy said, a Daniel or David or a Joseph. We are excited to announce that we have a new free e -book available at our website called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. We the hosts put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

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You can get this at theocast .org slash Primer. If you have been encouraged by what you have been hearing at Theocast, we would ask you to help partner with us.

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You can do that by joining our Total Access membership. That is our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we have produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry.

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You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

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You get the promise of the covenant of grace revealed in Genesis 3 .15, and then we work our way through redemptive history, and we see the covenant of grace established and accomplished in Christ in the new covenant.

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To pick up where you left off, John, when Jesus shows up on the scene as the new and better Adam, as the second

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Adam who will fulfill the covenant of works, thinking about Matthew's gospel, it begins with a genealogy.

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When Jesus is an adult, what are the first things that we read about and hear about him doing? It begins with his temptation and his baptism.

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Those two things are massive, and I think this is a good litmus test for how a person understands

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Scripture with respect to this covenantal framework. If we look to, for example, the temptation of Jesus, our number one take is that Jesus used

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Scripture to defeat the devil. I would argue that that is not a covenantal understanding, and that's not a redemptive historic understanding of that passage.

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That's a decent secondary application, but the point of the temptation of Christ is that the first Adam was tempted in a paradise and had everything going for him and fell.

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The second Adam is tempted in a wilderness, has nothing going for him, everything stacked against him, and he succeeds.

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Even in his baptism, what does he say to John the Baptist? John the Baptist is wigging out.

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He's like, I'm not the one who should baptize you. If anything, you should baptize me. Jesus says, no, it's appropriate that we do this in order that all righteousness might be fulfilled.

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What is that? Jesus doesn't need baptism for his own sake. He's doing it for his people's sake. Right out of the gate, in terms of his life and ministry, it's very clear that what matters most is who this dude is and what he has come to accomplish.

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He's come to accomplish redemption and the salvation of his people, and he's come to do everything.

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That is what produces rest. He did it.

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He done did it. Well, shame and guilt aren't useful tools, guys.

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They're not. I'm not shaming you, man. I'm not shaming you. First week back on the mic, and I'm just getting darts everywhere.

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To continue on that thread, JP, before we transition to our next distinguishing mark, even at Christ's baptism, what were the people coming to do at their baptism with John the

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Baptist? They were coming for repentance, leaving their sins in the water.

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A covenantal view helps you see that when Jesus goes down in the water, what does he come up with? He comes up with the sins of his people on his shoulders, and he carries them for three years to the cross.

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It's just beautiful that a covenantal understanding can give you these big pictures. We talked about covenant theology.

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That's a distinguishing mark of Reformed vs. Calvinistic theology.

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I think another thing that is a big, as you said, JP, litmus test is how we understand the means of grace.

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What I mean by that is how we understand the ways and means that God uses in our lives to grow us, to mature us, to conform us into the image of Christ.

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I'll just offer a personal anecdote that in the Calvinistic background that I had, the means of grace that were often given to me, which hear me say before you lose your ever -loving minds, are not bad things.

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The means of grace that were given to me were personal prayer and personal reading and study of Scripture.

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Those were the primary means. Again, not bad things.

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We have the Bible in various translations that are readable and approachable and affordable.

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It's a blessing. It's a gift. We can have it. We can read it. God does invite us to pray in a private sense.

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Not a bad thing. But when we talk about the chief ways that God uses to grow his people, what is the different understandings between Reformed and Calvinistic?

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What would you guys say to that? This is definitely a distinction where if you have been around Reformed theology at all, you'll know that I was a

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Calvinist for many, many, many years, and I had never heard the phrase means of grace or knew what it meant.

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When I began to discover these, I realized, oh, this is very different than what

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I have been told. I can say I'm with Jimmy that the way in which my faith is strengthened, the way

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I sanctify myself is by my personal efforts. Spiritual disciplines is another way of saying this. There's nothing wrong with disciplining yourself, and there's nothing wrong with reading

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Scripture. Understanding what the Bible tells us is the primary way in which

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God interacts with us. Let me explain it to you this way.

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You read God's word, and the reason you read God's word is that you believe that it's going to strengthen your faith.

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Then why don't we read God's word on Sunday morning? Just spend 45 minutes reading the word.

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Why would that not be sufficient for the church to strengthen their faith? Have you ever thought about this?

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God does not command the church to read. It does say in 1 Peter 4 .13,

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it says, until I come, devote yourselves to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

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It doesn't say just reading. We are actually exhorted to explain. This is why he says he's gifted preachers and teachers.

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Preachers and teachers are not readers. They are not to get up and read Scripture, but they're to get up and explain it and then exhort the believer to obey it, to practice it within the church.

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If you think that the primary way that God grows you is through the reading of his word, the problem with that is that you cannot point to anywhere in Scripture that says this, but I can show you multiple times.

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Ephesians 4, Hebrews 10, just as two examples, where when the word of God is appropriately used by gifted people, it literally says, when the body functions properly, it builds itself up in love.

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We are told that that is through the public preaching and teaching of God's word. Secondly, we are also told that the sacraments, so baptism and the

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Lord's table, when we receive the Lord's table, we are told to do that together as we gather, and it's not separate from the word.

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If you were just to eat bread and drink wine, it will not do anything for you spiritually, because if it did,

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I would have a heavy diet of the two because I would want to be as spiritually as I possibly could. I like both of those things.

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It's when it's presented to us in the corporate body with the word, the word brings the power, and it becomes the physical way in which we interact and receive from this presence of Christ, and he strengthens our faith.

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I would say that is a very Reformed view, and it is not a Calvinistic view.

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I'd say very few Calvinistic evangelicals would hold that perspective of those two means.

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Justin Perdue Historically speaking, the ordinary means of grace most primarily are understood, as you've said,

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John, as word and sacrament. Then we could add, and some do, prayer in the corporate context, even singing, the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and then the fellowship of the saints in general.

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A few observations about the ordinary means of grace. They're called ordinary means because they are that.

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In and of themselves, they are ordinary things that we do, and then the Holy Spirit of God takes those ordinary means to accomplish his extraordinary ends, namely, imparting, sustaining, confirming, and strengthening faith.

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That's what the Spirit does through those means. It's important. A couple other things. Ordinary means of grace only take place in a corporate, gathered church context.

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This is important because I would say the vast majority of evangelicals think that the real stuff of the

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Christian life happens when they're by themselves, but biblically speaking, that's not true. The New Testament is very clear that the real stuff of the

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Christian life and the real growth in the faith happens when we are gathered as a church. The Spirit shows up to uniquely minister in that setting, and we are grown and sustained in the faith through the ordinary means in the context of the gathered church over our lifetime.

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Stuff that happens when we're by ourselves is not meaningless. That's not what we're saying at all. It's just that the real important stuff that God has promised to do happens in the context of the gathered church.

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Last observation on the ordinary means before I throw it over to you, Jimmy. I think that in evangelicalism and amongst the

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Calvangelical -type crowd, the means of grace, even as they understand it, are often made to be more about our faithfulness and dedication to God than they are about God's dedication and faithfulness to us.

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This is probably most obviously seen in the Lord's table, because the Lord's table for so many people becomes this place that is just riddled with anxiety.

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I've got to work myself up into this emotional frenzy over my sin. If I partake of this in an unworthy manner,

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I'm eating and drinking judgment on myself. If I come and do it rightly, the best that's going to happen for me is that I'm being obedient.

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In reality, what we understand is that God shows up by His Spirit and through faith, we are receiving the merits and the benefits of Jesus Christ in the bread and the wine.

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We're being sustained, and we're being confirmed and strengthened through that. There's a real presence, a real spiritual presence of Christ ministering to His people at the table.

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The table is for the weak, not the perfect. As John Calvin said, it's not for the strong, but for the weak. It's for sinners, for those who have botched it this week.

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You're coming again to cast yourself upon the mercy of God in Christ in receiving the bread and the cup.

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Even there, it's that kind of outside -in reality. You're looking outside of yourself to Christ to save what's wrong in you through the ordinary means of grace.

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Unless you think that it's just three 30 -something year old pastors who are just thinking they can make category distinctions like this, allow me just to read from the 1689

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London Baptist Confession, chapter 14, on saving faith. This is what the framers of this confession, this

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Reformed confession, say. They say, the grace of faith by which the elect are enabled to believe so that their souls are saved, this is paragraph one of chapter 14, is the work of the

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Spirit of Christ in their hearts. Faith is ordinarily produced by the ministry of the

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Word, by the same ministry and by the administration of baptism and the

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Lord's Supper, prayer, and other means appointed by God. Faith is increased and strengthened.

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JP, I think you hit the nail on the head where you said, in a Calvinist mindset, the means of grace –

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I've also heard of them as the habits of grace – are merely these individual works, these individual actions of the believer that my growth, my sanctification, is drummed up within myself if I can wake up early enough or stay up late enough or whatever it is of.

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Do these specific actions – not to say that individual spiritual disciplines are wrong or bad, in fact, quite the opposite – but rather, within a greater

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Reformed understanding of the Christian life, what we see is that the means of grace are these corporate realities.

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I love how you emphasize this, JP. Prayer is the outworking of faith.

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Prayer is something we do in a corporate sense. It's also something we do in an individual sense, but means of grace in a truly

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Reformed understanding are things that push us outside of ourselves into a corporate body, but also onto objective realities.

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We can even say from a Baptist perspective that baptism is something that God does to us.

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We can say that when we are served at the table of the Lord, it is the Lord serving us.

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It is not us serving the Lord. When the pastor stands in the pulpit to preach, to declare and herald

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Christ from the pulpit, it is something that is coming from outside of us into our ears.

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The means of grace are external realities landing in the place of individual hearts.

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It is not something that we drum up in and of ourselves. All of that to say, can we read our

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Bibles individually? By all means, yes, you can. It's not a bad thing, but these things, that thing, the individual prayer, the individual study, they are not the chief and primary means.

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What we are talking about are these corporate realities, particularly word and sacrament.

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To add to that, and I've said this before, reading your Bible in today's world should be done for the sake of gaining a greater awareness of the

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God who saved you and for the use of the encouragement of the benefit of the body.

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Mostly people read their Bibles because they want to. It's all inward. I read because of me.

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I will tell you right now, I work harder and I prep harder for my sermons and I spend long hours on it because I know that it's going to benefit and needs to benefit the body of those who are going to hear it.

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We are so introspective and so individualized that we read the Bible because we want to be good little

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Christians, whereas Scripture says, consider how to build one another up. You've received these truths. Now consider,

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I would say, read your Bible to consider on how to build one another up. I want to say one last illustration for you.

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When Christ says, take this as my body, eat, he's using a beautiful illustration that we sustain ourselves on Christ.

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That illustration of the Lord's table is that we are eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

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Just as we need food and water to sustain ourselves, we must have the preached word and the table to sustain us.

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That's how we live. Most non -reformed people do not see the sustaining of their life in the means of grace from what

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I have seen historically. In baptism, that is the sign that points to our union with Christ.

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We are baptized into Jesus, so we're vitally united to him. Then in the Lord's table, we are feeding on him by faith and being sustained by him.

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It has everything to do with our vital union to Christ and what he's done for us.

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The last thing that we should talk about in this regular portion of the podcast that is a distinction of Reformed theology over and against merely a

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Calvinistic understanding of theology would be the distinction between law and gospel.

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In order to be Reformed, historically speaking, we would hold to that law -gospel distinction.

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We did an entire podcast on this not that long ago that the listener could refer to to get this in a more full presentation.

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But for now, we could begin to talk about the distinction between law and gospel in this way. Anything we see in Scripture that tells us to do something, an imperative or a command where we're told to do these things and you will live forever, that is law.

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Anywhere in where we are told what Christ has done for us that we are to receive by faith, that is gospel.

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Do is law. Done is gospel. That framework is really helpful in understanding

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Scripture and understanding even the way that God deals with his people and the way that God saves us.

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We're very unashamed here at Theocast that only one person in the history of the world has ever done the gospel, and his name is

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Jesus. We do not, as Christians, do the gospel. We don't live the gospel. We receive the work of Christ by faith and receive what he has done for us.

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We don't contribute anything in terms of something that's necessary for our salvation.

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Obviously, that law -gospel distinction is something that many people who are Calvinists would not understand.

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I've been in conversations personally many times with guys who are absolutely Calvinistic but who bristle at the idea of law -gospel distinction and see it as something that we're reading down on the text.

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We would just say, no, actually, this comes up out of the text. It's very clear. We're not imposing it on the text.

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It comes out of it as we read it, interpret it, and preach it. I was preaching the end of Hebrews 12 this last

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Sunday, and it's plain right there at the end of Hebrews 12. He gives them the terror of the law, even to the illustration that the law and God's holiness to adhere to the law is so terrifying.

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He points them back to Exodus chapter 19 and 20, where if they were to even touch the mountain, they would die.

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He says, but you haven't come to the mountain. He literally says, brought into Mount Zion.

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He says, the reason you can be brought here is the mediator, Jesus Christ, has brought you here.

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That's the distinction between the law and the gospel. We'll get into this in the members podcast, but I will say the

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Calvinist non -reformed believer that I have seen publicly as public ministry, the law -gospel distinction has been the most confusing and damaging part of not being reformed.

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It has caused more people to lose rest. The ignorance of that distinction. It is, because what happens is they add the law to the gospel and they don't realize they're doing it because they understand there's a distinction.

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As we think about law and gospel distinction, I think one of the primary differences that you'll see between a reformed preacher and a

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Calvingelical preacher is the tone of the sermon. Very much.

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When we fail to distinguish law and gospel, I realize in my church context, we have a lot of young kids.

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We have a lot of families that are under a fair amount of stress as they've got little ones in diapers and yelling and screaming.

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Our church is loud on Sunday mornings. We've got a lot of kids in there. For me to stand in the pulpit and to use the law as this whip to motivate people unto obedience, the only thing that's going to accomplish is going to crush my people.

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Because most likely, the vast majority of my congregants are already feeling the weight of the law every week.

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I said this last week in my sermon, that law is the natural air that we breathe.

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Do this and live. We are surrounded by it. We are surrounded by the law each and every day, barking at us to do this, be this, do more, and be better.

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Where constantly, the banner in a law -gospel distinction view of the Christian life, the banner under which we live and operate is, it is finished.

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Christ has accomplished these things on our behalf. The purpose of the law in my sermon is to crush the person, to see that they cannot in and of themselves accomplish the

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Christian life, but that Jesus Christ has lived in their place and invites them to rest in his good and gracious mercy and promises.

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In a Calvinistic, Calvangelical mindset, the law is often used in such a tone that it is a whip to motivate people unto obedience, but it never does.

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Preaching the law that way never produces what you think it is going to produce. It is only going to produce either self -righteous people or crushed people.

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To truly preach and herald the gospel in Christ, to truly preach the gospel that way is to preach the law in all of its weight, to crush people, but then to lift them, to resurrect them through the meritorious work of Jesus Christ on their behalf.

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To put a bow on this conversation, I recently tweeted out something like this. To reduce

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Reformed theology to the five points of Calvinism is not only inaccurate, it produces a lot of confusion.

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I think that is what we have been trying to speak to today, to try to remove some of that clutter and confusion and make clear the distinctions between Calvinism and Reformed theology.

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To sum it up, our understanding, and this is in line with an historical understanding of Reformed theology, would include not only being

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Calvinistic, but being covenantal, being confessional, and then also holding to an understanding of the ordinary means and the distinction between the law and the gospel.

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If you are going to ask the guys at Theocast, what does it mean to be Reformed, it would mean all of those things. If you are

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Reformed, you are a Calvinist, but if you are a Calvinist, you are not necessarily Reformed. We hope that some of these things have been helpful to the listener.

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Thank you for listening, and we are going to continue the conversation over in our members' podcast.

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This is a way for us to, one, we always have additional thoughts. 45 minutes is hard to get an entire podcast in, and so we go additionally.

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It's a varied time. It can be long, but we're going to continue that conversation over there. If you want to join us on this conversation, what this is, it's really our support team.

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Those people who support Theocast monthly and get behind us to help be the advocates of pushing us along, we try and do extra things for them, provide books and other additional resources just for their generosity.

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If you'd like to participate with us, you can do that by going over to theocast .org. We'll see you next week.