The Confusion of Law and Gospel, From Young Calvinists to Social Justice

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter Podcast. I am John Harris, and today we have a very important guest and a very important discussion because we're going to be talking about the central message of Christianity, the

Gospel. What is the Gospel? What is not the Gospel is probably even a better question for today, but I have with me

Pastor Mike Abendroth, and he's published a number of books.

I'm not going to read you all of them. One of them is Jesus Christ, the Prince of Preachers, and a number of other ones.

You can find them, I'm sure, on Amazon, but Pastor Abendroth has been the senior pastor at Bethlehem Bible Church in Massachusetts since 1997.

He's a graduate of the Master's Seminary, and he has a doctorate in expository preaching from the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. You can go to NoCompromiseRadio .com

if you want to hear more from Pastor Mike. Pastor Mike, thank you so much for joining me.

I appreciate it. John, I'm glad to be on the show. I listen to all your shows, and I'm happy to talk about this important subject.

They used to have the old Christian book distributors quarterly sale up in Peabody, Massachusetts, and they had a dollar rack, and you get all kinds of books for a dollar.

I think those books that I've published are all on that rack. Oh, so maybe don't go to Amazon.

Find a good garage sale or something, and that's good. One of the reasons

I actually like you a lot, just from a personality standpoint, is you don't take your degrees so seriously.

You're a very accomplished man and accomplished theologian, and you've helped me in recent weeks think through some things that I think were possibly holding me back in my own theology, in my own just resting in the gospel, but yet you're a humble guy, and I love that about you.

So, thank you for being humble. Thank you for just, you know, breaking it down for working class people, which

I think is so important. Well, John, one of the things I've noticed just in light of what you said, of course, when

I'm standing in the pulpit or we're talking about the Lord and His word or on a radio show, we want to be honoring

Him and not just, you know, slapstick and stuff like that, but outside of the pulpit and outside of serious counseling sessions or something, we're just regular people, frail, sinful people.

I used to think, John, that when the Lord called pastors teachers, maybe they were the strongest.

Maybe they were the most spiritual because they had the lead, but in fact, when you look at the Bible and see what qualifications are for leadership, of course,

I think it Titus and 1 Timothy, but probably the Lord uses the weakest people to get maximum effect, so He gets all the glory.

So, I think it's just a good dose of reality for all of us because we're not all that.

Yeah. Amen. I want to start off with an area that's familiar to my audience because we talk about it so often.

I think most of my podcasts, not all, a lot of them concern the social justice movement, and of course, right now, we're in a context in which this is pretty much stealing all the headlines, and so I want to kind of reverse engineer.

I want to start with that and talk about the gospel in relation to what

I would say is probably a corruption of the gospel, and then I want to go kind of back to how did we get here?

What kinds of things have been corrupting the gospel that led up to this moment?

So, I'm going to read for you a quote and then get your reaction. This is something I found last night, and I find quotes like this all the time from social justice proponents within broader evangelicalism, and this is from the

Jude 3 Project. It's a blog by Joshua Crutchfield, and for those who don't know, the

Jude 3 Project, they've interviewed Matt Hall and Walter Strickland, and Sean McDowell just recommended them, and so here's just a sample.

Not only reconciliation, but also reparations, restoration, and repayment are central to the gospel and a responsibility we've inherited by choosing to follow

Christ, and one more sentence here. As a black Christian working locally on the ground and interested in the complete liberation of all black people,

I'm calling on the white church to seriously consider what 21st century reparations from the church would look like.

So, I want to just ask you, is that the gospel? Is that central to the gospel, reparations in a political sense?

John, I don't know really where to start when he said something about reconciliation. If he were to talk about 2

Corinthians chapter 5 and to think, you know, we were born enemies, and God is thrice holy, and so there's this huge chasm of difference, and we need to be reconciled, right?

It's not God to be reconciled to us contra the hymn of Charles Wesley, but we need to be reconciled to God, and that's only through peace through the

Lord Jesus Christ. I don't even think he meant that. When he talks about reconciliation, I think, in my opinion, it all has to do with this racial issue.

At the center of the gospel is not reparations. It's not repayment. It's not any other word that starts with an

R. It's not social issues, or even I think as J .D. Greer said recently, the center of the gospel or the gospel starts with justice, something like that.

That's right. He did say that as a direct quote. Yeah, and I just did a little research, and the gospel does have modifiers in the

New Testament, and I wonder what the biblical modifiers are. Listen to these.

They're so good, and it's encouraging to just think about the good news. The gospel of God, Mark chapter 1, so it's his gospel.

The gospel of Jesus Christ, 1 Corinthians 9. The gospel of his son,

Romans 1. The gospel of the grace of God, Acts 20. The gospel of the kingdom,

Matthew 4. The gospel of peace that is between us and God, Ephesians 6.

And the eternal or everlasting gospel, Revelation 14. With the pinnacle, the gospel of the glory of Christ, 2

Corinthians 4. So when people want to talk about gospel modifiers, I like to ask myself the question, what is not modifying the word gospel?

And once you start throwing in words like social and justice and reparations and everything that goes along with it, it detracts, and here's the main way it detracts.

It puts the emphasis off the work of the Lord Jesus, and it puts it on to what we do, and that's really the key to me.

They'll say, yes, of course, it's because of what Jesus did. We have to do these other things, and I think they give it lip service, but really the issue of the good news, it has to be, and I know you agree with me, it has to be the work of God, the work of the

Son, the work of the grace of God. When people say things like, be the fifth gospel.

So it's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Mike are the sixth gospel, this

John, without an H. That's not good news. I might like to think that sometimes I can do some things to the honor and glory of Christ Jesus, but that isn't good news at all.

So if anybody wants to modify the gospel, that's where we really have to stand up, and sadly, unlike Jude 3, we have to earnestly contend for the faith that's once delivered.

Yeah, amen. Now, so I want to ask you this, because I don't know if you see the same trajectory that I saw, but this social justice movement kind of came in right after,

I guess what they call this neo -reform movement, or the new Calvinism was taking the church by storm, and Gospel Coalition is usually one of the identifiable organizations people point to, and I saw a connection.

It was some of the same people that are promoting this were promoting that movement, and in that movement, there's a lot of emphasis on, at least

I noticed, on external behavior and making sure that you're,

I guess, acceptable to God in some way, and I know I had told you once that this was something that I think

I was caught up in to some extent, and I was hoping you could just talk about that for those who might be in captivity, in a sense, and just thinking that they have to be so right before God because of their works in order to be accepted.

Do you see that trajectory, and can you comment on that a little bit? Sure, and I do think it's related.

If we just think big picture on how does God accept a sinner, and again, we just think about what

God calls Adam to do, what he called Israel to do in the wilderness, what he calls all of us to do, and that is simply as created beings.

We have to obey. We have to do this and live, if you think of Luke chapter 10.

Problem is, of course, we don't do that. The way I teach my kids or younger people is I would say, you know what?

I'm sitting on a tractor, and I've got reverse, and I've got forward and neutral, and then the

Lord says, I want you to obey, and therefore, I've got to go forward. Well, really, in reality, because of Adam's fall and depravity,

I'm going backwards, and so therefore, I need to not only have my sins forgiven to get back to neutral,

I need to move forward and then obey perfectly, except that that's impossible, and so I think what happens is there's this culture of obedience in the warp and woof of a person.

That's not all bad because we are supposed to obey, but here's the problem. Our standards are too low.

God requires, as we look at Westminster or some of the other Reformed confessions, perfect, exact, entire, perpetual obedience, and the way

I like to remember that is, you know, those marshmallow things that you get at Easter, what do you call those? S'mores.

S'mores, okay. What about the Easter ones? They look like little chickens. The Easter ones, I'm sorry. I'm thinking of campfire stuff.

I don't know. I don't eat marshmallows. Yeah, I don't either, but I use it as an acronym, PEEPS, those little PEEPS. Oh, okay.

I know what you're talking about. So, just think about the standard of standing before God, perpetual P, exact E, entire

E, personal obedience. That's what God requires, and so therefore, when we attempt in any way, shape, or form to do that for our standing before God, we fall short, but it's still kind of within us, that residual, that desire to work, except it then eclipses the work of Christ.

You and I talked on the phone a while ago. I think the key verse, when I want to try to flesh out this works for righteousness, this works to keep standing, this works to have a final justification,

I think it stems from Romans 2 .13, and a wrong view of that, and this is the passage, by the way, which

I didn't tell you on the phone, if you misinterpret, children should laugh at you. That's what Calvin said, and for a long time,

I had children probably laughing at me, but I don't think anymore. Here's what Romans 2 .13 says, for it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God are righteous, but the doers of the law will be justified, and what a lot of people do in evangelicalism, this neo -Calvinism that you were talking about in the last generation or so, they'll say, you know, you have to have a lot of works, or some works, or quite a few works, and you have to treasure

God a certain amount, desire God a certain amount, have him be your Lord a certain amount, and that kind of helps you along, except that's really law light.

Romans 2 is in the section condemning everyone. This is not a sanctification verse.

That's Romans 6 and 7. This follows the heels of Romans 1, where the Gentiles are without righteousness.

Now, chapter 2, moralizers are Jews or people who think they're good. You're not any better, so he says in Romans 2 .13,

you can't have any righteousness unless you are perfectly obedient. So this is the rich young ruler going home because he can't fulfill the law.

That's right. That's right, so what happens, I think what we do, John, is we say, what's that passage about?

Well, it's about you have to be willing to yield your life, to surrender your life, to submit all areas to the

Lordship of Jesus. Now, while that happens in the category of sanctification, we believe in sola fide, faith alone.

No antecedent requirements. You don't clean up your life in order to come. God justifies the ungodly, and therefore the issue with the rich young ruler,

Jesus essentially showed him that very passage. That's insightful of you. You have to perfectly obey.

You want to get in by your own works. What must I do to be saved? The legal answer is perfectly obey.

The gospel answer is the Lord Jesus will obey in your place if you'll trust in him. Okay, now

I know some people, when they hear this, they're going to say, hold on a minute. You're talking about one purpose of the law, obviously, which is to condemn humanity and show us that we're in sin and need a

Savior, but isn't there another purpose? Doesn't the law also guide us into obedience with Christ?

What do you say to people who would bring that up? Sure. I would say I agree with you, and it does, but just please don't confuse categories.

We don't want to commingle those things and get something that's not gospel news that's good or law.

Do something. You get what I think Michael Horton called glossable, right? You get this blending or this commingling.

We do believe in good works. As Luther said, you're saved by faith alone, and that faith isn't alone, but we have to be able to distinguish between the ground of our salvation and the evidences are fruits, and once they start coming together, your insight on neo -Calvinism is essentially a reverting back to Rome, where you've got to have a certain amount of sanctification to keep your justification or to get it or to have final justification.

So really, when we ask these questions, we have to start thinking law, gospel.

We have to start thinking what does God require for perfect obedience, and I think neo -Calvinism falls short of that because technically speaking, historically speaking, just because you believe in the sovereignty of God, you're not a

Calvinist. Just because you're a five -pointer doesn't mean you're a technical Calvinist. I'm glad for people that believe in sovereignty.

I'm glad for people that believe in the five points of, you know, answering the questions of their monsoons. That's great, but that's not,

I think Janet Mefford said yesterday something about she sees the theme of Calvinism with a lot of these social justice warriors, and I think it's true, but it's not

Calvinism's fault, obviously. By the way, James Boyce, we can make people mad on our shows.

James Boyce once preached a sermon, Jesus was a Calvinist. Only James Boyce could pull that off.

Yeah, yeah, a little bit of presentism in that one. I want to ask you just for some illustrations on this because I think, you know, at this point in our interview, there's people that are probably listening, thinking to themselves, yeah, that resonates with me.

You're right. There was something in that neo -Calvinism. I'm going to take just a minute and just give you personal testimony.

So, I had to read, it was required in seminary to read David Platt's Radical, and I'm just using this as one book because there were a number of other ones that had the same theme, but in Radical, I almost felt when

I was done reading it that I did not sufficiently hate the American dream enough and love people who are impoverished enough because I was living, well,

I was at seminary, I was living in Wake Forest, a suburb, you know, it was pretty nice there. And so,

I thought, I'm not following Jesus. And, you know, they're giving these to all these middle -class kids that aren't actually really doing what the book recommends.

And so, there was a burden of guilt. I saw it in others around me as well, and I knew there was something wrong with that, but I didn't,

I think most of us didn't know exactly what it was because, look, there are passages where Jesus says to sell and give to the poor, which we just talked about being in the wrong category.

Could you just maybe illustrate that for, maybe give some other illustrations of what does this look like in someone's life when they're confusing categories and having a burden of guilt on them?

Right. Well, with Platt, it's interesting that you felt that because I think a lot of other people felt that burden, and you feel the burden when

I think you see the law or it's presented apart from the lawgiver.

Remember, that's exactly, and I'm not saying Platt is satanic, don't get me wrong, I want to finish my thought on this, but remember what happened in the garden.

Satan was saying to Eve, and then, of course, Adam was there with her, you know what, these restrict, these bind, this rule isn't any good, but if they just would have realized, you know what, this is coming from a loving father who's given me everything, and given me a wife, and he's generous, and he's gracious, and these are for my own good, and his glory, and my pleasure, and all these things, and so what happens is if we're not careful, and we begin to blend law and gospel, we start seeing the law from a hand of a

God who says, I expect perfect obedience, right, so let's just think big picture for a second.

God is a judge, and he's a creator, and he wants obedience, and so we have to perfectly obey.

Well, now that Jesus has obeyed in our place as Christians, and forgiven our sins, and has been raised from the dead, we have the same law, because God's immutable, and his holy nature has the laws are the same, but our relationship is different.

Our relationship to God is now of father and son, so where before the fifth commandment, don't commit adultery, if you have one bad thought, sexually of course, you stand condemned,

James chapter 2 verse 10, but now when we struggle with sexual sin, it's not if we disobey, we are going to be kicked out or something, no, it's our father, and we may get chastened of course, and we want to honor him out of gratitude, that's true, but I think what

Platt ends up doing, is he ends up confusing God as judge, and God as father, because when you have sanctification jammed into justification, you're always thinking, am

I acceptable? Do I measure up? Can I do enough? He talks about living the gospel a lot.

We don't want to talk that way. You can adorn the gospel, but you can't live the gospel.

Jesus, who could live the gospel, said to all of us, preach the gospel, because it's good news, and when

Platt says things like the gospel evokes unconditional surrender, that's one of the things he said in the book.

If it's in the sanctification category, where we want to unconditionally surrender, fine, but there's a reason why sola fide is sola fide.

It's not sola surrender. It's not any of these kind of things we talk about submission. It is knowledge, assent, and trust, and we can just rest, and trust, and rely on the finished work of Jesus, which

I'll stop now, but it totally relates to assurance, because if you combine these categories, and you see

God essentially as a judge, you are going to have no assurance, and so how do you get assurance?

Do more. Do what the celebrity says. Try harder. What do you do when someone comes to you, which

I'm sure you've had as a pastor, and let's make it a younger teenager who is now going through the changes that come with adulthood, and they say to you,

Pastor Mike, I messed up the other night. I looked at pornography, and now

I'm wondering, am I even a Christian? I know I love Jesus, and I know

He's my Savior, but how could I have done that? What do you say to someone like that? Before I think like I do now, that is with some of these strict categories of justification and sanctification, which by the way, one will always follow the other, but they're different.

Before I really came to an end of thinking that I was so righteous on my own through cancer and some other things,

I would have met with a man for 60 minutes, and for 55 minutes, I would have said, this is what the

Bible expects. How can you call yourself a Christian? This is how you need to stop this in the future.

This is how you need to make amends, and you know what? I would still tell them those things, but here's how it would be different.

The final five minutes of the old Mike would be, I love you. The Lord loves sinners.

Let's pray. But now what I do to people that I think are really Christians and who have sinned,

I was going to say struggle, but maybe it's not a struggle. Maybe it's not some lapse or fall, but they really did sin.

I talked to them for about an hour of the Lord Jesus and what He has done and what

His life was like, and not one sin, not one lustful look, not one foible error, a shortcut.

I mean, just not even one, and when Jesus was tempted, of course, in Matthew 4, we always look at it and say, how do you overcome temptation?

Hide God's Word in your heart. It's good to hide God's Word in your heart, but Matthew 4 is so much more.

We're sitting there watching Jesus, and if He succumbs, we are so lost.

Your eternal life is riding in the hands of Jesus, your captain. Will He make it?

Adam tempted in the garden, failed. Eve tempted in the garden, failed. Israel tempted in the wilderness, failed.

David on a rooftop, failed. We fail. Can somebody live up to the commands and demands of God?

Jesus, I think you can do it, and of course, He overcomes Satan. So then what I would do, back to your pornography issue,

I would tell the person, here's who the Lord is, and I've done this before, and then

I embrace them at the very end, and I tell them, I love you, and then with my finger pretty hard on their sternum,

I say, and don't you ever do that again. So it's changed a little bit because I think, what motivates people?

Does the law motivate? John Murray said the law has no motivation. The law just says, you did it or you didn't.

Everybody can think about GPS these days. Let's think about how are we motivated to obey or to say no to sexual sin or lust or pornography?

Is it the law? Well, we need to use the law. Of course, it's good and holy if it's used rightly. You're in a car, you've got your

GPS, and it says, I don't know where you live anymore, but let's say I was going to go visit Virginia. Okay, Albany, I said at four, and I've got the

GPS, and it either says, good job, keep going, or turn around, you know, you turn here or something, but if I don't have an engine,

I don't get there, even though I've got a GPS. So the law is like a

GPS, but the engine, the motivator out of gratitude is the Lord Jesus, and that's why

Romans 16 says we are strengthened with the gospel. So I would try to help motivate him by talking about the

Lord Jesus and then giving him the guidance from the law. Yeah, that's really beautiful.

And certainly, you know, when you said the old Mike, I mean, I heard teaching on this issue that is exactly parallel to the 95%, the law, and then, so I think that's a great word on that.

I'm curious, when you evangelize, do you use the law? How do you approach sharing the gospel with someone who is not saved, without confusing categories?

Good. Well, I do think, because what we would call the first use of the law to show them their sin.

But these days, I don't try to get to the Lord Jesus too fast. Here's what I mean by that.

Romans 3 verse 19 says, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, and there's a purpose.

What's the purpose for these unbelievers being under the law? Answer, so that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God.

Now, there's never a wrong time to talk about the Lord Jesus and what he's done. But there is a time to make sure we really demonstrate to people from scriptures.

Maybe we even talk about creation. Maybe we talk about conscience. But we tell them about sin, because they need a sin bearer, and understanding some of the synonyms for sin.

Trespass, transgression, perversion, iniquity. There's lots of different Hebrew words and Greek words.

So I try these days to talk more about the heinousness of sin, because then they need someone.

They need someone to be there in Matthew 4 to overcome temptation, and to perfectly win, and then set his face like a flint to Jerusalem, so he might suffer and die.

So I do use the law. But here's the thing. I think sometimes it's just all law and no good news.

So you hear street preachers. I was in Dublin once with my wife, and there's a huge square there.

And I wanted to go get some kind of cool glasses. I don't know, like Bono or somebody. I was there for a secular reason.

And I saw a guy standing up on a box, a preacher's box, kind of with a little attendant, a bodyguard or something.

Both have suits on, dressed immaculately. And here's what I heard. Repent, believe, turn and burn.

And he was saying all these things like that, which are all true, and must be said, should be said.

But he wasn't talking about Jesus. So after a heavy dose of the law, I want to make sure

I tell them about Jesus, the law keeper, Jesus, the sin bearer. So I can talk about substituentary atonement.

I can talk about the Lamb of God and all these other things. So I walked up to him, kind of sheepishly.

I didn't want him to think I was going to attack him. And I walked up and I said, I teach a lot of preaching classes.

And I want to make sure all my students talk about the Lord Jesus too, and not just tell people to repent.

And then I walked away. Well, he immediately figured it out because he was in that mode of the street preaching and just law only.

And he forgot to talk about Jesus, the risen Savior. And then he said, and Jesus Christ has conquered sin and death and hell and is alive and he's coming back.

He died on the cross for sinners like you. And I didn't do it physically, but in my heart, I was going.

With his courage and my theology, we make a good team. That's awesome. So when you get to that call, you know, they call it the call, you know, the altar call that some ask

Jesus into your heart, or you need to repent and trust. What do you say to an unbeliever?

How do you transition that? And when they say, what must I do to be saved? What does Mike say?

Well, this last Sunday, I was in the book of Hebrews as we're going chapter by chapter. And I came to chapter 13, verse 10.

And it says, we have an altar. It's very fascinating, because of course, for years, I blast

Roman Catholics for having non -bloody, you know, sacrifice on their altar. And for years,

I would critique altar calls and calling people to a place. And here it is, we have an altar.

And by the way, the neat context with that is, the Jewish people who are Christians and professing

Christ are getting persecuted by other Jewish people, old covenant Jews. And those old covenant

Jews are saying, you don't have a temple, you don't have a sacrifice, you don't have an altar. And the writer uses good figurative language, a metonym, using one word close to something else.

And he says, we have an altar, we have a sacrifice. And by the way, you can't have any of that sacrifice unless you believe in Jesus.

So anyway, when it comes to altar calls, I don't call people to a place, I call people to receive

Christ Jesus. I can use words like believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. I can say, whoever calls upon the name of the

Lord will not be disappointed. I can say repent. I can say, receive,

I could say rest. There are many words and even John Owen in his great 16 volume set has categorized a lot of these calls.

But here's what I don't say. I do not say, you have to stop sinning in order to come to Christ.

I say, God accepts sinners. That is to say that Jesus justifies the ungodly.

God demonstrates his own love toward us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And that's where I think some of our friends maybe fall into the category of thinking repentance somehow means change your life in order to come.

Yeah, because I know many look back. I mean, I saw this in my class in soteriology when I was at Southeastern.

It seemed like most of the class when the professor asked, you know, did you doubt your salvation at any point, all hands went up.

And they all had similar stories just about, you know, I was young, I prayed this prayer, I was baptized. And now

I'm looking back on that event, and I'm wondering, did I have perfect repentance? Was I really truly believing in my heart?

And of course, do we ever truly 100 % believe the way that Jesus, you know, believes?

No. So I just think it's so destructive when you have to think you must be clean before God can accept you.

That's a good point. And when I think of repentance and faith, I would ask your audience to read

Sinclair Ferguson's The Whole Christ, W -H -O -L -E. He has a good section in there about repentance and faith.

And so just in summary, when you think of the Reformation, going from Rome to what the

Bible teaches, sola fide means faith alone. And then you have to think about which comes first.

And of course, you can't have an unrepentant believer, and you can't have a believing unrepentant, right?

So chronologically, it would happen at the same time. But as Calvin said, repentance is the fruit of faith.

And so logically, faith comes first. And when we even hear words, somebody will say to me,

Luke 24, preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins to all nations. That's true. But to give you the theological word of the day, synecdoche, and I love to hear

Sinclair Ferguson here, synecdoche. That's when you give one word, which can envelop both words.

So when you say repent, in the New Testament, sometimes the text says, and they believed. Peter sometimes says repent, and then they say they believe.

I could say believe, and then the text says they repented. So if I say one word, believe, it encapsulates repentance, because that's how we view sin.

Faith is more towards the object of the Savior. But I could say repent. But what I don't mean when

I say repent, is you clean up your sins. We have a free offer. And if you don't have water, come, you can buy it without price.

We don't want to have any preparationism, where the people have to do certain things in order to believe.

And here's what happens. What we do is we say, well, I read John Bunyan's biography and David Brainard's biography, and for 15 to 18 months, they were laboring under their sin, and then they believed, and that's what should happen.

But that's not what always happens. That happened with them, but it doesn't happen with everyone. And I think,

John, I could probably make a point if I said, what about a communion service? What's that meant to do?

And for most people, it's a frightening time. It's like, I got to examine all my sins.

Did I do this? Should I take it? Anybody watching? The deacons handed me the, and do

I, should I? Did the pastor notice? Of course, there's an examined statement in First Corinthians.

I don't doubt that. But just think about what we do with a communion service. Isn't a communion service supposed to follow

Jesus's words when he says, do this in remembrance of me? Isn't it supposed to be about Jesus?

Don't you want to come to a communion service? And I could say, John, did you pray enough this week? Did you evangelize enough?

Did you have a good enough attitude? Never. I know. So I just want to remind you, dear

Christian, weak Christian, sick Christian, dying of brain cancer Christian, stay at home mom

Christian, they can hardly open their Bible because they got six kids there. I want you to know, Jesus prayed enough.

And Jesus is actually praying right now for you. And Jesus read enough, evangelized enough, he did everything adequately enough, because he always pleased the father.

And I just want you to know, God couldn't love you anymore. He couldn't love you any less, because he loves you like he loves his son.

And so today, we're going to remember that Jesus paid it all. And of course, our response is all to him

I owe. We're not against the law. But we want to remind people, I have good news for you.

And so in my circles, we turn communion into all law, where the primary part of communion is gospel.

Well, it seems to me, and that was excellent, by the way, it seems to me that the focus is just is on people and their performance so often, that we just turn our eyes off what

Christ did, which is, I think what you're saying about communion is it really the focus ought to be on Christ, not on us and how we achieved, you know, a certain barometer of obedience.

I want to talk a little bit about good guys and bad guys. And I don't expect you to give a full history of the how different men thought on this issue.

But I do know that when the neo Calvinist started going in the last 30 years or so, a lot of Puritan works, especially have been quoted like Richard Baxter, Jonathan Edwards, I mean, a lot of Puritans have become and there's things

I love about certain Puritans, but they've become like the pinnacle of religious, I don't know,

I'm just going to say it superiority, I guess they're the model, they're the what to shoot for. What do you think of the

Puritans in general? And I'm just giving you kind of an open question. So you can go any direction you want with that.

Sure. See, one of the great things about being a radio host being interviewed by another radio host, you

I get good questions like that. So thank you. You're welcome. It took me 10 years to do what you figured out to do in a year.

So when we hear the word Puritan, it's a broad category, almost like today, when we say evangelical, if we said

Calvinist or something like that, because there are a lot of different beliefs there. Even if I said something about Anglican, Presbyterian, maybe some

Baptist here there. But in general Puritans, if you want to know some background, I would recommend that big thick book by Joel Beakey on Puritans.

And you could just look up John Owen, what was he congregationalist, what was he known for, etc. But just because somebody is a

Puritan doesn't mean they're good. So there are some Puritans that I never recommend at church.

And if somebody has a book by them, I just meet them. I don't say anything, of course.

But as I get to know people and want to shepherd them, can come alongside. Really, the worst one is

Richard Baxter. And he wrote a book called The Reformed Pastor. And when

I know, and you got convicted, didn't you? Oh, yeah. Felt like you didn't measure. Well, I'll just say this real quick.

I went to my dad, I remember after I read because I, of all places, it was at Shepherds Conference.

I think I got it one of those like audio CD sets. And so many guys had recommended it to me, you got to read

The Reformed Pastor. I read or I listened to it. I went to my dad and I said, Dad, you're doing it all wrong. That's what

I said. You got to read this book. I mean, he's like in people's houses, you know, 13 hours a day.

And so anyway, now I realize how stupid I was. But yeah, go on. I'm sorry. No, no, that's okay.

The only thing I really like about Richard Baxter, I remember long ago, I'll tell you why

I don't like his writings. But long ago, I read something about, he had a section about dreams.

And he said, he was asked a question, what if you sin in your dreams? Do you have to confess it when you awake?

And he said, well, that's all subconscious, unconscious and all that stuff. And I would only suggest confessing and repenting if you put bad things in your mind before you went to bed.

So there's my bone for Richard Baxter. But it's not, it's not a reformed pastor. It's the unreformed pastor.

I said to the leadership at Banner of Truth, I love your ministry. I love your books. But that is such an awful book.

Richard Baxter, quickly, essentially said this. He was a chaplain for Cromwell's New Model Army.

Many of the soldiers said they were Christians and they did things that were awful, not just in war, but prostitutes, etc.

And so he thought, you know, what do I do with an antinomian licentious lifestyle?

Well, what we don't do is add new laws to the gospel. The gospel can combat both antinomianism, no law, and neonomism or legalism, new law.

What we don't want to try to add and when the pendulum kind of swings back and forth, if six o 'clock is the Bible and five o 'clock over here is antinomianism, we don't go to seven o 'clock.

So he began to talk about obedience and sincere obedience. Here's a quote.

Sincere obedience to God in Christ is a condition of our continuance in a state of justification or of our not losing it.

Good news? Not really. I know. Therefore, Baxter was a mortal enemy theologically of John Owen.

And John Owen, I think it's volume five, his Justification by Faith book was written against Baxter.

Those men try to make up some, they try to put a statement of faith together, but Baxter couldn't even use the word

Trinity. And so they never did. So I would never recommend Baxter unless you like to have minimal assurance and have guilt without gospel.

There's nothing wrong with conviction. But then we give people the balm of the gospel and who Jesus is after.

Joseph Alain, Alain's alarm is too heavy on law and not gospel and blends it sometimes.

Matthew Mead, Almost Christian Discovered, those are books, David Brainerd's journals, some of Edward's stuff, you read it and you just go,

I don't know how I could be a Christian. And really, I think what happens is if I had to summarize it, John, Luther said, when

I look to myself, I don't know how I could be saved. But when I look to the Lord Jesus, I don't know how

I could be lost. And so therefore, and Ferguson in his book,

Whole Christ really helps us with this. Is assurance part of faith?

Is it part of the gospel? What is it? What is the relationship? And I just think, you know, the old Mike used to preach to people and I didn't want any unbelievers sitting in the congregation, thinking that they had assurance.

And I still don't. But I think I preached at the expense of granting gospel assurance, biblical assurance to the saints sitting there in the church.

And I'm supposed to be ecclesiologically, at least a shepherd for the sheep and not for the goats.

So I said even Sunday, if you're not a believer, I call you to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus.

You will die one day and stand before God without a mediator. And standing in the presence of God without a mediator is called hell.

Right? Because God is in hell. And you need to have a mediator in the presence of God. That's called heaven.

That's called the Lord Jesus. You mean hell isn't shut from the inside? Hell's gates are shut on the inside.

I think that was C .S. Lewis. And then of course, echoed by Tim Keller, who has a doctrine of hell similar to his.

But anyway, when it comes to assurance and when it comes to Puritans, there are some that are great to read.

I'd say John Owen would be really good. I try to read eight pages of Owen a day. Really?

I have a little aphorism and it's called eight pages of Owen a day keeps the

Richard Baxter's away. Because it's hard to read. But if you'll just read seven or eight pages a day, you can get through a few volumes a year.

And I just read the glory of Christ. Oh, part of which here's a good thing by Sinclair Ferguson.

Out of all the books by John Owen, which one do we read first? Sin and temptation.

Oh, and Ferguson said, why don't we read the glory of Christ? Or yeah, or mortification of sin.

Yeah, yeah. Mortification of sin. That's what people read. Yeah, right, right. So I think the William Perkins would be good, hearty reading for people.

He would be considered a Puritan, an Anglican, just has the 10 volumes out on Reformation heritage books.

And so many great Puritan to read, but I would stay away from Amid, Elaine, Brainerd, and especially

Richard Baxter. There was a quote that I wanted to read for you, because I think it sums up well.

I'm looking for it now, but there was, we're talking about mixing these categories of law and gospel and how in the neo -Calvinist movement, there's kind of this understanding that you got to clean yourself up somehow.

And you just mentioned Tim Keller, which sparked a thought in my mind. Tim Keller was, it was, this was from 2005, if I can find the quote, but he says essentially, let's see here.

This is actually 2006. He says, and I know you probably haven't listened to this whole talk, but he says,

God is a venture capitalist. The whole, and then he says, and he's talking to a room full of businessmen. And then he says, the whole purpose of salvation is to cleanse and purify this material world.

And I had listened to this speech and, and I'm not looking for you to bash Keller from a speech you've never heard, but this is the kind of language

I'm seeing a lot of the time is that, you know, the gospel, it means doing something in culture. Right. And so it seems like, is this a fair assessment?

Maybe we went from, we got to clean ourselves up, right? That's gospel in some way to now when we got to clean the world up, that's also gospel in some way.

And so then what's the real, what's the good news in either of those things? It just seems like we keep adding works of some kind to what

Christ has done. And I'm commenting, I'm not asking a question. I was just, these are the radio host question.

What's your reaction to that reaction? Well, I didn't listen to it, but there is this desire by so many people to make cities certain things and to change the culture or redeem the culture.

And I think it eventually gets to kind of revoice where people, you know, side

A side B kind of people can appreciate arts and culture better because they have a homosexual orientation or something.

I mean, it's just crazy. When I think of cities, I think of Hebrews 13, we have no lasting city here.

When I think of cities, of course, evangelize people in the city. But for me, the contextualization isn't with the data in scripture.

But I know there's people at the church that I pastor. The church that I pastor, I think the town is 93 % white, a little town in New England, 6 ,000 people in the town.

And I think we have maybe 30 % non -white. How did I figure that all out?

I don't know. I've just been preaching Hebrews. There's one race, one mediator between God and man, the man

Christ Jesus. Yeah. You didn't go and start bashing the police or kneel or do any of that.

I didn't. And so, how do I change the city? I mean, somebody said to me the other day, you know,

I want to do some more things in the city and evangelize more people. Great. I'm going to equip you in this local church in the suburb to do that.

I mean, I wear spandex a lot because I'm a bicyclist. So, I have a specialized kind of…

Same. I almost got hit the other day. That's a dangerous hobby. Anyway. I know.

Sometimes I listen to you on the bicycle. But now I know how to talk to bicyclists because that's just what

I do. That's my hobby and this, that, and the other. And I have neighbors. And therefore, I don't want to change, alter, add to, subtract from anything that comes from here's the we see him.

And here's, we see his, his penalty substitution, his resurrection. And I just don't think we plumb the depths of the person of Christ enough because we just start like, you know, here's an altar call.

King James, King, I'll say this. I think many King James only fighting fundamentalist, independent

Baptist talk about Jesus more than some evangelicals do. I've noticed that. And their sermons. Because at least they'll say death, burial, resurrection at the end before you come up.

It's, it's this incessant call for faithfulness apart from the faithful one.

The book of Hebrews, 13 chapters. It's a sermon. It's an epistolatory sermon or a sermonic epistle, whichever one you want to call it.

And he goes off on who Jesus is with some warnings, but the commands don't come until the end.

So therefore we don't want to be the lawless people. The law is good. We're not antinomian, but I want to focus on the

Lord Jesus. There's a reason why Paul said him we proclaim. Amen. Amen.

All right. I'm gonna do some short questions with you now. Sure. Or short answers. And I'm gonna ask you first, you've recommended a few books to me.

I'm gonna ask you recommend one book to my audience. If you had to choose one and they said, I really want to understand better the gospel.

What would, would the book be? Romans. Okay. I meant non -canonical book, but all right.

That's your canonical book. Now what's your non -canonical book? Well, you know what, since Romans is kind of divided up guilt, grace and gratitude, and that's where we get the

Heidelberg Catechism. It's not a book I know, but I'd have people read the Heidelberg Catechism just so they can be encouraged.

It's so refreshing. If you read the first three questions, you can't put it down. You'll just think, you know what, what's my only comfort in life and death?

And it talks about the Lord Jesus. And you just think, you know what, this makes me want to worship him. In terms of other books,

I said to Sinclair Ferguson in person, two Shepherds conferences ago,

I said, you know what, the whole Christ changed my life. The book that you wrote, it changed my ministry, my life, my presentation.

I don't have to be looking mad and mean. Thomas Boston talks about the tincture and the gospel tincture, and you can tell people that God loves them and smile and not be afraid of kind of loose living if you preach the real gospel.

And so I think the whole Christ would be the book that I probably read three times, listened to maybe five times, that really gives you a fresh taste of the gospel, the whole

Christ Sinclair Ferguson. Awesome. Seminaries. All right. You have one seminary to recommend.

Young man comes to you, says, I want to go be equipped to know the word of God better. Where do you send them? See, you're going to get me in so much trouble.

I'm planning on it. Yeah. Okay. No, no, that's okay. Your escape hatch is that there could be other good seminaries that maybe just almost made it, but didn't quite.

So you can just name the number one. Right. I would send them to Westminster Seminary in Escondido.

Even if they're Baptist? Yeah, absolutely. Well, they used to have the Baptist Center there with Jim Renahan that's now moved to Texas.

But even as Baptist, I think you go there. And if your view of baptism isn't strong enough to withhold or withstand the

Presbyterian version, then. Okay. The reason why I pick Westminster Seminary is because I think they understand law gospel categories.

I think they understand justification, sanctification categories, church history, the

Reformation. And I think that's good. I think some seminaries have so overemphasized eschatology that their soteriology sometimes is lacking.

And I don't really care so much about people's eschatology, assuming that it's the literal bodily return of Jesus.

And so I would say Westminster Escondido. Okay. For a non -serious question, you have to preach.

And it's a hot summer day. Rick Warren Hawaiian shirt or John MacArthur suit and tie?

Which one? I've only preached in a Hawaiian shirt once in my life. That's when

I was in Hawaii, and I was told to do that. So you go for the cultural norms.

Good. Every Sunday, I preach with a sports coat and a tie.

And I had some kind of tricky Volcom slacks on Sunday. I don't think anybody knew they were these surf shorts.

I have Volcom on even now. Do you surf? I do, but my kids are much better. My wife is much better than I am.

Yeah. Do you do that? Now you're in, I think, Massachusetts, right? So you get to the beach in about an hour and 10 minutes.

And they surf in Massachusetts? Yeah. Yeah. The waves aren't as good as in California and Santa Cruz, but you can surf here.

Interesting. Okay. Yeah. So definitely a suit and tie. Not the Hawaiian deal.

All right. So I probably know the answer to the next non -serious question, but hymns or contemporary or a mix?

Well, it's interesting. You have Handel's Messiah came out and everybody thought it was too new.

It's too contemporary. They hated it. It was what the cool kids were all listening to in their boom boxes, right?

Yeah. I know. At our service at Bethlehem Bible Church, we have both hymns and contemporary song.

And some of those contemporary songs are like Luther's words redone about counting us righteous in Christ Jesus and only his mercy, only his grace, that type of thing.

Psalm 130. So it's kind of a blend. I like to sing more psalms.

And so maybe we're slowly going to introduce more psalms too. All right. Well, final question. How can people be praying for you specifically after they listen to this podcast?

He's trying to think something funny. You wanted more non -serious questions? I mean, I can certainly.

I'm 60 years old. I've been here at the church for 23 years. I would like to finish well.

I know lots of people that haven't finished well for whatever reason. And I would like to keep preaching

Christ. And when I can't do that, they probably just need to take me out. But I've just been seen.

So take me out. I mean, figuratively speaking. And then like a Joe Biden needs to not run kind of thing.

I get it. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so I just would like to finish well. I don't want to bring any scandals for lots of reasons.

One reason I think to John and all this, I was going to call you Joe. I think when

I'm really pushing people to what the Reformation teaches about grace and free grace and the free offer of the gospel and how it needs to be almost questioned like Paul did in Romans 6, anticipating the question, should we sin?

The grace might abound. That's too good to be true. We've got to keep these people at bay. If I do something awful or sin in some egregious way,

I think then people would say, see, he believed that because he was hiding something. And so I want to finish well to honor the

Lord Jesus because I just came from an awful background. And I want to be a good example to my wife and children.

I went to a funeral the other day of a 54 -year -old man, and I heard the kids get up and speak of their father. And I want them to get up and think, you know what, by the grace of God, dad finished well.

But somewhere down the line, four or five, number six or something down there,

I don't want to finish poorly and then have people say, you know what, what he taught wasn't true because this free grace will just get you a licentious life.

So pray that I finish well. Wow. Yeah. Well, you're a humble man. I appreciate you sharing that.

You didn't even plug any of your books, but if people want to find them, they can go to NoCompromiseRadio .com and they can listen to your podcast there.

And I'm assuming your sermons as well and anything else that you have available. So Pastor Mike Avendraw, thank you so much for joining me.