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One thing that I think people miss is the Bible says we're created unto good works. That means our works are not our own. They are given to us. They're actually created in us by God. Now think about this.
And Andrew, you're going to say this even better than me. Think about somebody that's going to say basically all good works are a gift. So if you're going to claim a gift that is given to you in the stead of God, you don't want to be in that spot.
I don't want to be in that spot.
Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community, of which this podcast is a proud member.
You can check out all the podcasts at christianpodcastcommunity .org, 50-plus vetted podcasts. We actually only accept about 30 to 40 of those that apply, so you will get good content there. The topic today is a continuation as we're working through our doctrinal statement of what we believe.
It is available at strivingforeternity .org. Go to the About section, What We Believe. We're in the section on Soteriology. That is the doctrine of salvation. We're specifically continuing from the last in the series we did on the topic of regeneration.
So that's what we're going to talk about today on The Wrap Report. I have a fellow podcaster from the Christian podcast community here with me, helping me out today. You will hear his voice. We may need translation.
He has got this heavy New York accent. So if you have trouble hearing him or understanding him, we'll have to work through this. Pastor Dominic Grimaldi from Street Talk Theology. Welcome to The Wrap Report.
It's an honor to be here, Andrew. So you just did something on the gift. So you're trying to say we may need an interpreter when I speak? Is that what you're trying to say now?
Yes.
I don't know how many people in the audience understand New York. You know?
Oh, okay. So you're not saying I'm going to be speaking in tongues or anything like that, are you?
I kind of thought New York accent was tongues. I could be mistaken, you know?
Yeah, that would go against your teaching on the gifts of the Son.
Well, no, it wouldn't, because I believe people speak other languages, you know. New York is just kind of its own dialect of... So help folks know a little bit about your background, where you pastor, a little bit about your podcast, and something of your history, because you do have a little bit of a dramatic history, maybe we'll say.
Yeah, dramatic is a pretty good word. Yes, I'm pastoring here in Desert Sky Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Great church. They treat me and my wife, Rachel, unbelievable. I do host a podcast called Street Talk Theology.
We take theology and bring it to the streets. Coming from my New York background, I did well over 20 years in prison, got saved while I was in prison. I guess I can say literally that God broke my chains, right, Andrew?
Literally.
Literally, right? So yeah, I got in trouble in prison, and you can get in trouble in prison. And I got thrown in the hole, and I didn't get my property for a few days, and there was a Bible there. I read it.
I was reading 1st and 2nd Kings, and I got saved.
In 1st and 2nd Kings, wow.
It's all inspired, right? I think your last show was on the inspiration of Scripture, too, a little bit, right?
Yeah, we talked about that, and you're right. God could use his word to save any of us, so it's just usually people think it's the book of John that everyone has to read to get saved, or Romans, but 1st and 2nd Kings?
You know, Andrew, in my old life, it was always about who was on top, and when I seen this God was taking one king and knocking him down and bringing another one up, that's what caused me to repent, because I related to that, or—does that make sense?
I kind of related to that theology, so to speak, how, you know, and we see now what God would Assyria, with Babylon, and how he would raise one nation and knock it down. So that kind of resonated with me, and I said, basically, I was serving the wrong king, right?
Yeah, now you're serving the right king.
Now I'm serving the right king. Nobody's going to knock him off his horse, right?
Nope.
No, he's on a permanent throne. That's the beauty of it.
Anyway, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here.
Well, let's begin with, as we dig into this doctrine of regeneration, and folks, again, if you want, go to strivingfortory .org. Under the About section is the What We Believe. We're doing this whole series, as I said at the very beginning, because we write this doctrinal statement, but a lot of people don't know everything that goes behind a doctrinal statement.
In other words, we write this, and there's a lot of things, if you've been tracking with us through this series, of things that are written that have a lot more behind it than just the words that are written, and for that reason, we're taking the time to walk through this so that, for one thing, it helps all of us to understand our theology better, but it also helps us to know what we should be looking for.
If you're going and looking for a church, you're going to go to Arizona, and you're going to go to see Pastor Dom's page, and what's the first thing you're going to do? Say, do I want to go to this church?
You're going to look at the doctrinal statement. Unfortunately, a lot of churches have these doctrinal statements that are seven bullets long and tell you absolutely nothing about what they believe, and some people think that by saying less, we have unity.
The reality is, the more we say, the more unity we have, because by having a detailed doctrinal statement, we are saying this is what we all agree to, and so if you have a lengthy, detailed doctrinal statement, and you're in agreement with it, and everyone else is, you have unity in the church.
But when you have a very vague doctrinal statement, as Dominic, you were just mentioning the gifts of tongues continuing or not for today, as we were joking, but if your church doesn't take a stance on that, you're going to have people that believe tongues continue for today, those that don't, and that's not unity.
So this is important for us to have unity in the body of Christ, especially within a local church, and that's why we try to write these things out, but we're also trying to show you what's behind doctrinal statements, and hopefully when you would read a doctrinal statement that you may see at a church or another ministry, you would see, as we go through this, you start seeing how much is behind it, and you start going, oh, I learned this before, this is what this refers to, and you start to pick up more of what's in a doctrinal statement.
So let's begin. Pastor Dom, I'm going to ask if you could read the section here on regeneration.
Yeah, for sure, Andrew, for sure. So regeneration is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit by which a new nature and eternal life are given. It is an instantaneous and is accomplished solely by the power of the Holy Spirit through instrumentality of the Word of God.
When the repentant sinner, as enabled by the Holy Spirit, responds in faith to the divine provision of salvation, genuine regeneration is manifested by fruits worthy of repentance as demonstrated in righteous attitudes and conduct.
Good works will be its proper evidence and fruit and will be experienced to the extent that the believer submits to the control of the Holy Spirit in his life through faithful obedience to the Word of God.
This obedience causes the believer to be increasingly conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. Such a conformity is climaxed in the believer's glorification at Christ's coming.
All right, so we're going to pick this up now in the third sentence because this last episode, which will be linked in the show notes, if you missed that one, you could go pick that up, listen to that.
But we're going to pick up now in the third sentence because this is where we left off. So we've so far talked about the fact that regeneration is a supernatural work. It's something that the Holy Spirit does.
It's part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We talked about the fact that it was instantaneous. So this is not something that happens over time. We talked about it, that the Word of God is the instrument that the Holy Spirit uses and enables, the Holy Spirit enables a sinner to respond to regeneration in faith.
And so now we talk about genuine regeneration. I'm stopping right with those two words for this reason. There are people who think they are saved and they are not saved. There are people who believe that they have the gift of salvation, and yet what we end up finding is that they walk away from the faith later.
Now, there's an entire book of Scripture devoted to this topic, actually, as far as genuine regeneration, what it looks like, and in the aspect, and we'll talk about this today, in the aspect of our sanctification, when we're regenerated, there's certain things that we would expect to see in a believer's life.
And the book of James, the entire book, gives us like a little over a dozen different ways of testing our faith, those of us who claim we have faith, to see if it is genuine. So if you were struggling and wondering, is my faith genuine?
Go to the book of James. James will help in that discussion. You say, well, Andrew, how do you know that people can walk away from the faith? How do you say that they didn't have genuine regeneration?
Well, let me give you one verse. 1 John 2 verse 19, John says this, they went out from us, but they were not really of us, for had they been of us, they would have remained with us. But they went out so that it would be shown that they all were not of us.
John is saying that we should expect people to think they're saved, walk away later, and we find out they're what we might call a false convert. They thought they were converted, but they weren't.
That's a great point. We were just talking about, just before the show, about Demas. The Bible says that Demas left for the cares of the world. That's an interesting play for me, because who would think at least that he would know better?
You'd think Paul would know. So at least for a little bit, Demas had—I don't want to use the word tricked—but Demas actually, in Paul's eyes, in the beginning, looked like a believer. And obviously, if you read the progression of Paul's letters, one time he just says, Demas left me for the cares of the world.
So if you can pull the wool over Paul's eyes for a little bit, like you said, there can be a lot of—I hate to use the word false converts. That's probably not a good word. But ones who actually have not been regenerated could actually be in the church.
And hopefully and prayerfully, the longer they stay in the church, if they don't walk away, hopefully they can be regenerated. That's a good point.
What I call them is hypocrites, that when they walk away, they stop pretending. And they get upset with me when I say that, because I used to be a Christian. I said, no, according to 1 John 2, 19, you were a hypocrite that just stopped pretending.
And a better example, Dom, would be Judas. I mean, think about this. Here's Judas. You have the 11 disciples. Even when he leaves to go and betray Jesus, after Jesus says, one of you will betray me, and then Judas gets up and leaves, Jesus says, what are you going to do?
Go do quickly. And they think he's going to give money to the poor, because that was part of a Passover Seder, was to go take care of the poor if you hadn't. They're thinking the best of Judas. Now, one of them goes, oh, it's got to be Judas.
No, when Judas goes to betray him, they actually are going, oh, he must be going to give money to the poor. He must have so fooled them that they're thinking the best of him, even when he's going to betray Christ.
And you know what else? You know what I think about Judas? I know it's not in the scripture, but he was probably preaching too.
I mean, right?
I mean, that's the thing that gets me, because I know, I mean, we know the Bible is silent and we're silent, but he went out with the 70. I mean, he was preaching and teaching. And that's the thing that, for me, that, you know, we don't talk about that enough, but he was just not robbing money, though.
He was robbing money, but he was preaching and teaching and robbing money, I guess, at the same time. When we see that a lot sometimes on TBN, am I allowed to say that?
Yeah, we're not opposed to naming names here on this program. But what we end up seeing, though, is that we do see people who, like you're saying, preaching. I mean, I know men who got saved in seminary or even at the pulpit.
And so, knowing that, we must start with the fact that when we're speaking of regeneration, we're talking about a genuine regeneration, not the regeneration that people think they got, where they proclaim or profess to know Jesus, but they don't possess him.
And there's a difference there. And so, we're being specific here. We're saying genuine regeneration, when someone is truly converted to Christ. And so, we're going to say throughout, I've said this throughout the series, people can't lose their salvation.
Once you understand what salvation is, when you understand man's nature, we looked at that, you understand God's nature, and then you look at what salvation is, you can't lose that. All of our sin was paid at the cross, all of it.
And so, we recognize, though, that there's some people who think they're saved, but they're not. So, that is what we're focusing on now. Genuine regeneration is manifested by fruits worthy of repentance.
So, this is what we start getting into, that the topic that we'll dig into in later episodes on sanctification. But sanctification is, well, it's that process where we're made more like Christ. But guess what?
It is the natural response to regeneration. And so, this is where a lot of people struggle, because they turn to James 2, and they think that, and we've discussed this here, they think somehow that works are necessary for salvation.
But his argument that he makes, if you look in James 2, you have to actually start in verse 14. Most people start in 15. But 14 is the question that's being answered in the rest of the chapter.
He says,.
What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but has no works? Can that faith save him? Well, what faith is he talking about? That faith we were just talking about, a false faith, a faith that is not tied to a genuine repentance.
So what his whole argument here is that if you are truly regenerate, there are fruits that come along with that. If there's no fruit, then that causes concern. Now you say, well, how long do we take to have fruit?
Well, I won't speak for Pastor Dom here. I could speak for myself that there were certain things, like foul language, that I stopped almost immediately after getting saved. But there's other things that I've still struggled with today.
And there's going to be a progression in some things. Some things we're going to stop right away. Others we're going to struggle with for a long time. That doesn't mean that we're not saved. It means that we should continually, day in and day out, being made more and more in the image of Christ.
But if you've been saved for 30 years and there's no change, no difference after 30 years, you're not more like Christ, then you should have concern.
That's a great point. I think, right, there's some things that God just alleviates by grace. And there's some things that you will struggle with. And some of those things that you struggle with, Andrew, is the very things that keep you on your knees, right?
I mean, those are the things that there are some things that, like maybe language or whatever it might be, that God will just miraculously, supernaturally take away. But I believe there are some things that you just will struggle with that would keep you on your knees.
And I think that one of the things that hasn't been mentioned, and I know you know, but when I was listening to the earlier podcast that you and Brother Kofi did, one thing that I think people miss is the Bible says we're created unto good works.
That means our works are not our own. They are given to us. They're actually created in us by God. And I think that's where, so if people, now think about this, and Andrew, you can say this even better than me.
Think about somebody that's going to say basically all good works are a gift. So if you're going to claim a gift that is given to you in the stead of God, you don't want to be in that spot. I don't want to be in that spot.
Because the Bible says that we're created unto good works after the regeneration. So, and I don't hear a lot of times people say that, but that's, I think it's pretty clear in Ephesians if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah.
I mean, if you have a child, a baby just born, the natural response, the thing you want to hear is that cry. Well, the natural response for the believer is the regeneration, a changed life that is going to manifest itself by the fruits of the Spirit.
Now, or fruit of the Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit is love. So that's the first thing we should see changed. There is a thing where in our sin nature, we're going to be selfish, prideful. That's our nature.
But when we're truly genuinely regenerated, there's going to be a change where we have a love for others.
Why?
Because Christ first loved us, we will love others. And so we're saying here that genuine regeneration, the way you can see it is that by the fruits that are worthy of repentance. And we could go through the scriptures and see countless times that the fruit of the Spirit is explained, whether it be in Galatians 5 where we have that.
But there are things that you end up seeing throughout where in Galatians, you're going to see the list of things to put off, the list of things to put on. That is the new creation. And Pastor Dom, you referenced Ephesians 2 .10, for we are his workmanship created in Christ for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
So that's saying that this idea of good works, we can't do them to get saved. But once we're saved, that is the proper response to regeneration. So if you're not doing that, if you see someone that doesn't have the fruit in their life over time, that's a concern.
And I'm just going to say this, time and truth go hand in hand. Give it enough time, people will either walk away from the faith or they're going to expose that they don't have fruit or they're going to show that they do have fruit.
And you know this, Andrew, the word peritome or the word walk, it's not like taking a walk around the block. That word means a way of life in the Greek language. I know we use it for walking. So, you know, this, like you said, I'm trying to think that we should walk in these good works that God prepared beforehand.
This means this becomes our life. Like you said, we're not going to get everything perfect, but this is something, it becomes our life that was created to us. And I heard you say before the foundations of the world, I like the way you put that, like God speaks to us at our own level.
But I think the word walk is something that, you know, that's a way of life.
I think a good way of translating that would actually be pattern of life, because I think that's what it's trying to describe, right? We talk about it being a walk, but really it's our pattern of life.
I have a pattern of lying, deceiving, being selfish. You should not believe that I'm a believer if I've had this pattern for a long time, and that's the natural pattern. But if I have a pattern of love for others, of putting others before myself, of being humble, then that is fruit that we would see from the Holy Spirit that is manifested and demonstrated that we have that genuine regeneration.
So that's what we look for in the lives of others. Can you tell that I'm safe? Can you tell that Pastor Dom is safe? No. It's not like we walk around with some big letter E for elect on our foreheads.
That would be nice. Then we know who to evangelize, right? But it's not that way. So what do we look at? Well, we're basically fruit inspectors. We go around looking to see the fruit of faith, the fruit of regeneration, and we have throughout descriptions of what that fruit is, but the greatest of them is love.
And so that's what marks a Christian. A Christian should be marked by love. A Christian will be marked by forgiving others. These are the marks of genuine regeneration, because someone who is a hypocrite and pretending to be a Christian, they're not going to have humility because they still are influenced by their pride.
And so pride and selfishness is what's going to guide them. They may be pretending to be a Christian because that's part of what's guiding them to look good in the eyes of others or trying to earn salvation, as many try to do, but a genuine regeneration is where the Holy Spirit is going to work within us to bring us to loving others, to humble ourselves, and to submit to God.
That's really going to be some of the things we're going to see. And so we say here in the statement is, so genuine regeneration is manifested by fruits worthy of repentance, and now I say, as demonstrated in righteous attitudes and conduct.
So what are we talking about with righteous attitudes and conducts? Well, this is the idea of having the attitudes of submission. Now, this may surprise people because a lot of people think of submission, and the verse that so many people think of when they think of submission is Ephesians 5 in the context of wives submitting to their husbands.
However, that's actually not what the Bible says. Let me read to you a more literal translation, Ephesians 5 .22. Wives to their own husbands as to the Lord. So where do we get the word submissive from or subject?
From verse 21. Verse 21 says, and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Wives to their husbands, husbands to their wives by showing love, children to their parents in obedience, fathers to their children by not provoking them, slaves to masters, masters to slaves.
You'll see that in Colossians. So what do you see? You see, actually, another place you'd see where we do see the word submit is in 1 Peter. When speaking about submission with wives, you see that. But again, he talks, he starts off there by talking about submission to all.
And then he gives a bunch of examples of submission. Submission to government, an ungodly government. To wives, to unsaved husbands. Masters, or sorry, slaves to bad masters. So what he's doing is giving extreme examples where it is difficult to submit.
And he's saying this should be the character in all these different ways. But you know what? All of us should be submitting to one another. That is the attitude. It's kind of the illustration I always remember was from a pastor friend of mine that he said, he gives the illustration of submission this way.
He says, you know, there's little Johnny in Sunday school, and he's standing up and the teacher tells him, Johnny, sit down. Johnny doesn't want to sit down. Johnny, you sit down right now or I'm telling your parents.
So Johnny sits down and says, well, I'm sitting down on the outside, but inside I'm still standing up. That's someone who's not submissive. They're not, they don't have the proper attitude. And so if we have a genuine regeneration, the Holy Spirit is working on us.
We're going to have an attitude of submission to one another, love for one another, humility, and it's going to work out in our conduct. And this is an important point. And I'm sure Pastor Dom, who has done counseling, would understand this as well.
Our conduct starts with our thinking. So if we have the proper attitudes, with the proper thinking, it's going to affect the way that we behave. This is different, by the way, than the way culture says.
Culture says, change your behavior. You'll feel better about what you do. That'll change your thinking. What the Bible says is if you change your thinking, that will work its way out in your emotions.
You'll feel better about what you're doing because you have a right thinking, and that will change your behavior. And that's why we started with attitude and conduct. If you're genuinely saved, that's going to change your thinking about things.
It's going to change your emotions about things. It's going to work its way out to your conduct. So what can we see? The conduct. You can't see my thinking. You can sometimes see my emotions. The thing you're looking really for in the emotions is you're seeing the conduct, the outworking of it.
Yeah, you know, I was looking at in Philippians where it says, you know, thinking are more important of others than yourself. And then using the example of Christ in there who emptied himself, taking the form of the slave, you know, just thinking about other people more than yourselves.
I mean, what I mean, that's a tough play, Andrew. I don't care what anybody says that you read that. And then obviously, given the example of Christ and, you know, coming down, but you talk about it, that's hard stuff.
And it's just hard.
I mean, well, you know, one of the things I say, it's really difficult to be able to measure, even for ourselves, our spiritual maturity. How do you do that? Well, what is spiritual maturity? It's humility.
How can we measure, even within ourselves, an objective way of looking at how we're doing with humility? And one of the ways that I've kind of really realized, and this is something each of us could do, each one of you listening, think about, when somebody corrects you, how quick are you to defending yourself versus listening to what they say?
Now, there's times where people will say something and you hear what they say and you know it's not true. And so you're correcting that. We're not saying that. It's about that attitude. And each of us knows in our own heart when we're doing that.
We know when we're just rejecting what they say out of hand because we don't want to admit we're wrong versus hearing what someone says, having already evaluated it, and realize that, hey, let me correct that.
But how quickly do we defend ourselves versus receiving correction? That's a good measure, I think, that each of us can examine ourselves and know. So that's one way that I kind of say we could look in how we're doing spiritually.
Yeah, you know what I find? And that's a great point because I don't want to say it was counseling. It was speaking to a congregant. And you know, it's tough in the beginning when somebody is, whether reproved, whether it's anybody, in the beginning, they may, you know, kind of buckle against it.
And then, but later on, when they sit down and they realize and think about it, and they come back, you know, sometimes it just takes that realization of the power of the Spirit in somebody's life to say, hey, you know, Pastor was telling me this because, or Joe was telling me this.
And I thank God for that conviction of the Spirit as you talk about. I think those things are important. I think sometimes in the beginning, our pride is going to jump up. But I think as you reflect on these things, and as you, I think reflection is huge.
I don't think we do enough of it. I think we react more than we reflect. But I think as true Christians, as we do reflect, thank God we have the, maybe by God's grace, the Holy Spirit to govern our thinking, come back and say, hey, Andrew, listen, I messed up.
You were right. I just was in my feelings. There's nothing wrong with that. I think we need to reflect more than we react. I think David went through that a lot in his life, you know. Going from reaction and reflection.
Just think about the one he married, Abigail, right? I mean, she made him reflect instead of react.
And, you know, a lot of people don't think about this, but that's what the Lord's Supper is supposed to be about. We should be reflecting. Now, not many churches do that. But part of Lord's Supper should be a time of self-examination.
And some churches don't give enough time for that.
I do.
So, I mean, this leads right into good works. Before we get into the good works, let me just let you guys know that as we're studying the Bible, you may want to dig in deeper. You may want to get more out of your own Bible study.
And you can do that by upgrading or buying Lagos. Now, Lagos just came out, Lagos 10. If you already have Lagos, you can get some of the packages. And if you do it through our website, through our link, you could actually get not only a discount on your package of Lagos, but five free books.
Now you say, well, Lagos is really expensive.
I get it.
But here's what it does. It's actually giving you not just books, but they're all tagged with things so you can cross-reference easy. It's you could do searches and you could look up by topics. It's really what you're getting with Lagos is not just books, but you're getting all the scholars that they hire to examine these books and go through all these books to tag them so that when someone's referencing something, even if it's a pronoun, who's that pronoun referring to?
That's what their scholars have done. And so it really is a great resource if you want to do some serious Bible study. And we have a link to make it easier for you. Just go to bit .ly, then slash S-F-E Lagos.
So bit .ly slash S-F-E L-O-G-O-S. And that will get you to the link where you can not only get the upgrades or buy a new package of Lagos 10, you'll get the discount codes, but you'll also be able to get five free books from Striving for Eternity.
The code, I believe, if they end up asking for the code is Striving7, I believe. But that is something you'd be able to do. So I encourage you guys to check that out.
Don't make a mistake like I did. So I came on and I told Andrew, I says, Andrew, I just upgraded to Lagos 10. And he says, you should have went on the website and got, so don't, so take advantage of that.
I didn't even take advantage of it. So I just upgraded to Lagos 10 too, and it's a great resource without a doubt.
It is.
I enjoy, I've been using it for more years than I want to admit. I'll put it that way. So also another sponsor of this show is MyPillow. You could go and get a great pillow, get a great night's sleep.
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So let's get into the next part of this doctrinal statement. And it is about good works. It says good works will be its proper evidence and fruit. Now we've expounded this quite a bit. I've really tried to focus.
The fact that we are genuinely saved, genuinely regenerated, it's going to change the way we think, the way we feel, and it's going to have its effect on our conduct. And therefore the outworking of a genuine regeneration will be good works.
That's what James is saying. James's whole point in James 2 is not that works are necessary to earn salvation, as some try to argue. No, what he's arguing for is the fact that, because he says right after he asks about, can that work faith save him?
In other words, that faith that someone's saying they have, but it doesn't have any works associated with it. The very next verse is he says, if my brother or sister is without clothing or daily food, and one of them says, just go in peace, be warmed and filled, and does not give them what's necessary for their body, what use is that?
In other words, the genuine Christian is going to take care of his fellow Christians. If you have a Christian that's not willing to care for fellow Christians, then you have to question their claim of regeneration.
That's the argument that he's making there. And what he ends up saying afterwards, even so, if faith has no works, being by itself, it's dead. In other words, if you're claiming to have faith, but you don't have those good works that go along with the faith, then you have a dead faith.
In other words, you're not genuinely saved. That's what James is trying to say.
Yeah, and I think a lot of times, and you mentioned it on the last show, Paul and James are not pitting against each other. Paul speaks about the regeneration, the work of God. It's a work of God. And James is saying, if you truly have that work, if God has truly worked that out in your life, like Paul says, then this is how you're going to live.
So they are not, because, you know, some people will, you know, we've heard people say, you know, James is like an epistle from straw. No, James is just reiterating, just backing up what Paul said. Like you had said, I think on your last show, regeneration is a work of God.
And if that's truly a work of God in your life, then James is saying, well, if A happened, then B should happen. And I think people look at the way Paul thinks and James thinks and says, that doesn't make sense.
It makes perfect sense to me. And I'm not that smart, but it makes perfect sense, right?
Because it's in the Bible. That's why it makes sense. Because this is what God says, that this is, the good works are the proper evidence of fruit. That's what we look for. We look for the evidence of salvation.
How? By looking at good works. And so we go on and say, not only good works will be in the proper evidence and fruit, but it will be experienced to the extent that a believer submits to the controlling of the Holy Spirit in his life.
This is something we talked about way back when, go back to the episodes when we talked about the Holy Spirit. There's a difference between the baptism of the Spirit and the filling of the Spirit. So baptism of the Holy Spirit occurs at salvation.
It is a one-time thing when the Holy Spirit indwells us. This happens at genuine regeneration. But what comes and goes is the filling of the Spirit. And that is when we fight the Spirit or submit to the Spirit.
When we submit to the Spirit's controlling influence in our life, that is what's called the filling of the Holy Spirit. I know you'll hear many, especially in the charismatic circles, that confuse these two, as if the baptism of the Spirit can come and go, and they confuse that with the filling.
Baptism is a one-time event, occurs at regeneration. Filling is what we're talking about now. To the extent that you and I submit to the controlling influence of the Holy Spirit, that is the level or the extent that we will see these good works in our life.
So if you are a believer who is not seeing a lot of growth over a long period of time in your life, that's evidence that you are not submitting to the Spirit. You are still trying to fight Him and do things your own way.
Now, that doesn't mean you're not a believer. You could be a believer and grow slowly. If you're someone who never is growing, that's the concern. And so you may see slow growth. You want fast growth?
You want a lot of change in your life? Submit to the Holy Spirit. Stop fighting Him. Stop trying to do things your way. Because to the extent that you submit to the Holy Spirit is the extent that you will see those good works in your life.
Yeah, that's a great point. Now, what Andrew is not saying is that he knows you could never lose the Spirit, but Paul says you can quench the Spirit. And even when Paul says you can quench, it's not saying you can lose.
But the more you submit to the Spirit, the more you can do the ordained good works that have been ordained in your life. You know what I always try to counsel people, Andrew, and you can expound on this if necessary, is that a lot of times if you are quenching the Spirit, as a true Christian, you're going to live a miserable life because the Spirit is going to...
I mean, if you're not a true Christian, then that's another story. But if you really are a true Christian and you continue to quench the Spirit, it's going to be rough.
Yeah, because he chastises his children, and we will feel that chastising. This is, as we say here in the statement, this is the faithful obedience to the Word of God is the way that we submit to the Spirit.
If we're not in the Word of God, if you're a professing believer, let's change that, let's say you are a believer, you're a possessing believer, you have genuine regeneration, but you're not studying the Word of God, you're not reading the Word of God on a regular basis, you're going to have a hard time submitting to the controlling influence of the Spirit because where...
I've already given the clue to this, so I'm going to ask the question, you should already know the answer. Where does this process start? With our thinking. So the Word of God is what provides that right biblical thinking that the Holy Spirit is going to use to bring us to do good works.
But if we're not in the Word of God, then we're not giving the thing that we need in our life for the Spirit to use to bring us under control. And so if you're not regularly in the Word of God, in prayer, that is where you start.
And that's what we're trying to say with this, is that the extent that the believer is going to submit to the Holy Spirit in his life through faithful obedience to the Word of God. But I'm saying here, the next sentence, this obedience causes the believer to increasingly conform to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That's the goal of reading the Word of God. It's not just so we know dates and facts and places and people and be able to impress people with how much we know or memorized.
No.
The Word of God is going to cause us to read that and see the areas we need to make changes in our life. And that's what the Holy Spirit's going to help us with. Part of the ministry, if you go back to the series, when we talked about the Holy Spirit, we mentioned part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is the illumination of the Spirit.
And what that means is that He illuminates the Word of God and the application of the Word of God to our lives. So we have a better understanding of the Word and how to apply it to our lives. But if we're not in the Word, He can't illuminate it and He can't apply it because we're not in it.
So this obedience to the Word of God, to the Holy Spirit, will make us conform us more and more in the image of Christ. This is the process of sanctification. Like I said, folks, there's areas that are going to be very quick.
There's areas that just will not. I've been walking with the Lord for over 35 years, almost 40 years now. And I can tell you, it's not any easier. In fact, I will say that that conforming to the Spirit actually gets harder because the easy things for us to work on got dropped off early.
It's those things that are deeply rooted in us, things we don't see that the Holy Spirit has to reveal to us that we have to start peeling away. That is a hard work. And the Scriptures say we're not going to be done with this sin nature or the sin influence until we're die and glorified.
And that's what we're saying in the next sentence. Such a conformity is climaxed in the believer's glorification at Christ's coming. When we die, we're done away with this body of sin. 2 Corinthians 5.
I love that chapter where it talks about that we get rid of this body of sin, this tent, this temporal tent. We'll be with Christ, the one whom we love, and we will not have this influence of sin in our lives.
That's the climax. But we're not going to get there. The reassuring thing is what Paul says in Philippians, that God is not only the author of our faith, but he's the finisher. I love that because it means that God's not done with us.
God is going to keep working on us. That he is going to be there step by step. And eventually, the moment we die, we're glorified. Then we will be sinless. Do not let any people tell you what this is saying.
As I've said throughout this series, the things that this says and doesn't say, there is a doctrine that many teach called sinless perfectionism. What they teach is that we as believers could be sinlessly perfect and never sin.
In fact, they'll argue that if you sin, you lost your salvation. Some of them will say you can get it back again. Some will say you can't. Hebrews 6 is one that they use and Hebrews 10. And those two passages would say, if that's speaking of your regeneration, if you lost it, you can never get it back.
But I don't even think that's what those passages are talking about. Those passages are talking about what we've been discussing this whole episode. They're talking about people that are hypocrites, that pretend to be Christians.
They go to church, they put on the show, and then eventually walk away. They had the light, not meaning that they possessed salvation, meaning that they sat in church, heard the word of God, but they didn't eat upon it.
They did not have it within them. That would be the difference. And so we are not sinlessly perfect on earth. We are sinlessly perfect in heaven. That's the climax that we receive of our sanctification and it's in glorification.
Yeah, and the book, I got a scripture here that is important, but I think in the epistle to the Hebrews, like you said, the template there is the wanderers in the wilderness, how many of them fell, and then applying that to the church.
I think that, like you said, there was many people in the wilderness. I think it was only Joshua and Caleb that came out okay. But there's a scripture here that says, Paul says, not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on that I may lay hold of that which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
Brothers, I do not consider myself as having laid hold of it yet, but this one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and kind of stretch his neck forward. So even Paul is saying there, I have not obtained it fully, but I press on to do so.
And then he even says later on, that would fully be realized in the resurrection when he is with the Lord, obviously. So it's a great point, Andrew, that we got to press on.
Yeah, and the fact that scripture talks so much about pressing on and overcoming, it doesn't mean that we are going to lose our salvation if we don't, if we sin one time. And I know that those that are in the sinless perfectionist camp will talk about a willful sinfulness.
Well, I got news for you. Every sin we commit is willful. There's not a single sin we do that's not forced upon us where someone made us sin.
So in the charismatic circles, they'll blame all the Satan made me do it. No, you chose to sin. It is a willful act we do. We may be so desensitized to it that we don't realize we're doing it. That's a different issue.
But the thing that we would see as a genuine believer is that we should be sensitive to the work of the Holy Spirit. We should be sensitive when He's correcting us and chastising us for our disobedience, because we want to be obedient as believers.
We want to live a life that we're made more like Christ. So the steps that we're seeing is that what we're walking through in this doctrinal statement is not just, hey, here's what regeneration is. How do we spot it in ourselves and others?
What do we look for? Well, we look for good works, the good word, the fruit of the Spirit. We look for the Spirit working within a person. In that process of sanctification, we should be seeing that change.
And in looking for that change, we should ultimately know that by being able to look eternally and say, okay, I see that I used to be really prideful and selfish, and now I'm seeing a humble, that should cause us to say, I can't wait.
As Paul argues, can't wait to be with Christ. Read what Paul says in Philippians. Read what he says in 2 Corinthians 5. You look at that. He's saying, I can't wait to be with Christ. I'd rather be dead than alive, because in death, I'm with Christ.
Is that our attitude?
Do you want to be dead in Christ? I mean, is that something where you're just trying everything you can to hang on to this.
Life?
Or do you see a greater value in being dead and with Christ? Because a genuine Christian loves Christ so much that we're looking forward to being done away with this body of sin, being glorified, being with Christ, being able to be with the one we love the most.
If that is your heart attitude, then that's the natural progression we'd see in sanctification. One of the questions I often ask people when they say they're struggling with the assurance of salvation, there's a difference between having our salvation eternally secure and having that assurance.
The assurance is that feeling. And often when we're sinning, we have some sin in our life. We don't have that assurance of salvation because there's sin in our life. We don't have that feeling because we know there's something wrong.
That's the Holy Spirit working on us and convicting us. And so when people struggle with that, well, a good book to read would be 1 John. That's a book that deals with it. So 1 John, James, great books to deal with these topics.
But the question I ask people is, do you hate your sin or do you hate the consequences of your sin? It's a really important question. See, an unbeliever loves the sin. They just don't want it to be exposed.
They don't want the consequences of it. They'll steal from someone if they can get away with it. They'll look at the pornography if they don't think anyone's watching. But the genuine believer hates the actual sin.
Because we know that this is what Christ died for. Yeah, you may steal from someone, but the act of stealing is what you hate, not the consequences that you got caught or that you might get caught. So what is it you really hate?
The consequences or the sin itself?
Yeah, you know, and in some of the conversations, and you know, Andrew, some of the conversations that I have with people and they'll come in and say, man, I just, I want to do better. I want to. And just the fact that they hate the sin, not the consequence, just the fact that they hate the sin.
I says, you know what? Believe it or not, you're in a good place. You're in a good place. Because people will come in and they'll say, I'm just struggling with this. And they're not saying I'm afraid to go to hell.
That's not what they're saying. They're saying exactly what you're saying. You know, as a pastor, you know, people come in and say, I'm just struggling with this. I says, just thank God that you're convicted of your struggle, because if you weren't, thank God, because that shows you have the spirit.
Now you got to stop quenching the spirit. And just what you're saying. Now, if somebody is going to come in and say, well, I don't want to sin no more because I don't want to go to hell. Well, that's not, that's the wrong attitude.
But the right attitude is, man, Andrew, I hate my sin. I just can't stop sinning. And things like that. I think those are better conversations than somebody that's concerned about the outcome more than the sin itself.
That's a great point. And it's a pastoral point that pastors need to kind of dichotomize of the difference. So that resonated with me. So thank you for that.
Well, you're welcome. I'm glad that I could be of some help to at least one person. So I hope this is helpful for folks. I hope that you see there's a lot more we could say about the doctrine of regeneration.
There's entire books that are written on it. But this doctrinal statement is trying to say, to basically give a divide between what we believe is orthodox and what's not. So I would say sinless perfectionism, not orthodox.
Someone who believes that they could be saved, but no change in their life, no good works in their life. I would say that doesn't work that way. But when you see someone who is having that change, that's what we're talking about.
And this is what the doctrinal statement does. It helps us to identify these things. So I hope this has been helpful for you. The next in this series is going to be the doctrine of election. There are many who struggle with this doctrine.
There's many who believe it. They just have different definitions of it. So we'll go through that. What or who are elected when we talk of election? Is this something that we should be against? Many people have a hatred for this doctrine.
Many misdefine it. So these are the things we're going to look at in the next in this series as we look through what we believe from the Striving for Eternity website. And with that, folks, that's a wrap.