Law and Gospel - Theology Throw Down

Behave, Phil. This is as close to behaving as we get. All right, Phil.

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The Christian podcast community of podcasters gather to discuss our theological differences with love and charity. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

Introducing the Panel and the Topic of Law and Gospel

All right, well, welcome to another Theology Throwdown. This is where the Christian podcast community podcasters, we get together, we have discussions on different theological topics, and we, well, we try to disagree, and hopefully we do so as Christians with love and charity, as was said in the intro.

So we have a larger number than usual of podcasters here, so it is going to be, I think there's nine of us right now, and so I'm going to have everybody introduce themselves one at a time, and tonight's topic we're going to get into is, I was going to say law versus gospel just to get Colleen to correct me on record, but no, it's law and gospel.

It's, you know, Colleen's like, you know, she's a mom of several boys, so it's just like, you know, when you record with her, she's just the mom comes out, and I tend to be like the child who gets into trouble.

I don't know why. It should be Phil Sessa's job, but he's a natural at it, so we'll start. It's your spiritual gift. All right, so let's start. I'm going to, because we've got a number of guys, and the order keeps changing in my list there, I'll just name you guys off so you can introduce yourselves, your podcast one at a time.

So, Keith, why don't you start us off?

Yeah, this is Keith Heltsley from Quest for Truth, located at life-truth .com. I do about three different flavors of podcasts, including an audio drama, which is always a fun thing to do, and we try to dig into the Bible once a month, and the Quest for Truth is we kind of go casual, a bit lighthearted, and try to take a look at some cultural worldviews, both in the church and out of the church.

All right, Eve, how about you go next?

Hi, I am Eve Franklin, and I co-host the Are You Just Watching podcast, where we talk about movies from a Christian worldview, and my co-host is Tim Martin. And Colleen?

I am Colleen Sharp, and I host Theology Gals podcast, and you can find us at theologygals .com.

All right, and then how about we go with some of the newer faces, or newer names, maybe. We'll start with Eric and then Dylan.

Yes, good evening. My name is Eric Leupold. I'm an elder at Hilltown Baptist Church, and co-host for the podcast Two Guys and a Bible. First time on the Theology Throwdown here tonight, but our podcast just talks about a variety of topics, cultural, theological, and always, hopefully, scriptural.

That's the goal here. So, yes, that's us. We can be found at twoguysandabible .org.

Dylan, you're up. How's it going, everybody? My name is Dylan Keniston, also co-host of Two Guys and a Bible podcast, although Eric's co-host, I'm a co-host, the real star is the Bible. But, yes, we have conversations about theology, culture, and God's most holy word.

And as Eric said, twoguysandabible .org.

Okay, so we got those two guys down. Do we have two other guys that should go together? So, Phil and they'll give Roy. Why don't you guys go?

So, Glenn Roy and I are the hosts of the Stop and Think About It podcast. Our focus is to bring a podcast to people and just speak about things that are going on, issues in the world through a biblical lens, and compare it to how things going on in the world aligns with Scripture.

And so our target is just your everyday person who's going to church, not seminary students and the like. I'm an elder at Grace Baptist Church and director of Soul Fishing Ministries, and we can be found at stopandthinkcrew .com.

And we're also going to be having our podcast move over to soulfishingministries .org. And Glenn Roy is my favorite Jamaican who co-hosts with me, and I'll let him introduce himself.

Yes, so my name is Glenn Roy Clark. I am a co-host with Phil Sessa on Stop and Think About It. My job is to keep Phil sane, keep him grounded and biblical as he tends to go off on tangents. I'm a deacon at Grace Baptist Church, which he's an elder at.

And like he said, we just want to bring theologically complex ideas simply to people who may not have the time to do the study and research, but they have these questions.

That's what we're here for. All right. Sorry, I mispronounced your name, by the way.

No, it's a funny story, Andrew, about why. That's why. Someone called me that. That's why you remember it that way.

Well, see, once I get it stuck in my head, but, you know, trying to keep Phil in line is an impossible task. Anthony is one of our newest podcasters, and if you want to introduce yourself and your show for folks.

Yeah, sure. It's also my rookie time here, so thanks for having me. I am the host of thykingdom ,com. That's where you can find the podcast, thykingdom ,com. And the way I try to describe it, it's a Christian living blog and podcast.

I try to have engaging conversations with those who are listening about applying God's word to everyday life. So thykingdom ,com, and thanks for having me.

And I am Andrew Rappaport, the host of a couple of podcasts. Andrew Rappaport's Rappaport, which is a weekly, like, hour-long show. I have the Andrew Rappaport's daily Rappaport, which is Monday through Friday, two minutes long.

So if you like more shorter devotional stuff. And then on Thursday nights, we do a live show. If you have any Apologetics questions, challenges, that is called Apologetics Live. You could go to ApologeticsLive .com and come in and ask anything.

Any challenges that you might have or that others may have given to you that you want answers, we will attempt to answer them. If not, we'll ask Phil, and he'll make up an answer. But we also have Colleen and I are the co-hosts of So You Want to Be a Podcaster for people who want to learn about podcasting.

And I think I kind of just try to moderate this one. And so that's enough of that. You can check all of the podcasts, though, out at christianpodcastcommunity .org. So tonight's topic is Law and Gospel, which is something that Theology Gals, Colleen's podcast, they've done actually several episodes about this topic.

And so what I want to do to start us off is let Colleen kind of just start us off with giving a framework of what are the issues. There will be some differences between the Baptists here, and I think Colleen is like probably the sole Presbyterian here, so she may be outnumbered.

But, you know, she can handle it. She has a Westminster Confession. Always a good weapon to have on your hip. Yeah, yeah. And she didn't have any comment back at me for that. Wow.

Law and Gospel, the Uses of the Law, and the Gospel Promise

Well, I don't know. I think if we're talking Law and Gospel, I'd probably point people more to the Heidelberg Catechism. But I'll just give a really quick kind of framework, and within that, I'll say what we believe so you can kind of disagree when other people talk.

But there is a difference between the Law and the Gospel. The Law is good. It's useful. The Law restrains sin in God's common grace. We see that it restrains sin in society. That would be the civil use of the Law.

The pedagogical use, it acts as a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. And then the normative use is it instructs Christians in godliness. And so the Law is good, but the Law is not the Gospel. The Law says do this and live, and the Gospel has promises.

I really like I'm going to grab a real quick quote from Michael Horton because I like what he says. Sometimes the Gospel, especially today, we know the Gospel, all kinds of things are thrown into the Gospel.

People will say something is a Gospel issue. We often say in our podcasts the only Gospel issue is the Gospel. And so it's easy to throw all kinds of good things and call them Gospel, but the Gospel is something very specific.

And I'm going to use this quote from Michael Horton to kind of use what I'm talking about when I'm talking about Gospel. Gospel is a very particular word or kind of speech in the Bible. From Genesis to Revelation, the Gospel is God's promise of a son who will crush the serpent's head, forgive the sins of his people, raise them from the dead, and give them everlasting life solely on the basis of his grace for the sake of Christ.

Another thing that we'll often talk about, if anyone's ever listened to the White Horse Inn radio show, you've maybe heard this. We talk about the indicative and the imperative. So the indicative is a declaration of what God has done and of who we are in Christ as a result of what God has done.

And then the imperative, hold on, I just lost my place. So let me get back to that. The imperative tells those of us who are in Christ, who we know who we are in Christ, it tells us how we should then therefore live.

But it's important to distinguish between these two things. And I know Andrew will say that, as a dispensationalist, he doesn't distinguish between the two. But I think it's very, very important to distinguish between law and gospel.

And I'll give just one example, is if we include law with gospel, it changes what we mean by things. And I'll give one example of sola fide, faith alone. So sola fide, or faith, historically, has been defined as knowledge, assent, and trust.

That's how faith has historically been defined. If you confuse law and gospel and you add law to gospel and you redefine faith as not just knowledge, assent, and trust, but you now add repentance to it or some sort of law to it, it completely changes what we're talking about when we say faith alone.

Now faith includes works. So that would be my position.

Okay. And I'm not going to say, maybe you don't know dispensationalism that well. I'm going to throw this out, actually. Son, you said I was planning on, I was going to ask Phil to address the use of the law in sharing the gospel.

So Phil, you can get ready for that one. But one of the things that you mentioned about the, I was thinking when you were talking about the law and gospel, I was thinking about a conversation I had with a theonomist who, for folks who don't know some of the theonomy, not to get into all of it, they will argue that we should be, we should be practicing Old Testament law today, essentially, that there's no difference.

And the issue there is they would talk about taking dominion over things. When you were saying they add things to make it a gospel issue, I remember talking with a theonomist and he was saying that we have to take dominion over everything.

Now this is a gentleman who likes to drink alcohol. We're not getting into whether that's good or bad here, whether we should or shouldn't, maybe that's a throw down we could do at a future time. It'd be interesting.

We kind of dealt with that under Christian liberties a bit, but the position he had though is as Christians, we not only should drink, we must drink because it's a gospel issue to take dominion over alcohol.

Well, that's a lot of gospel confusion. Also, and real quick, and then I'll shut up for a little bit because you said you want to address the importance of the law in sharing the gospel. Just so in case I was confusing, yes, we share the law to share the gospel.

There is no good news if there's not bad news. So when I talked about the usefulness of the law, one of the uses is to show us our sin, that we're in need of a Savior. But yeah, I would say that the theonomists have a law gospel confusion, plus we would say that the law is civil, ceremonial, and moral, and that we are no longer bound by the civil and ceremonial law.

That's what we would say, only the moral law. And I'll be quiet now.

Anyone before we go to talk about the laws, the use of the law in the gospel? Go for it, Eric. Oh, yeah.

I know there's a variety of flavors of theonomists, right? So I mean, there's a spectrum of theonomy because the word simply means God's law, right? So I've heard some people say that there's always a God and there's always a law.

So if you worship Moloch, Moloch requires child sacrifice. So if you worship something else, if you worship Allah, he requires, you know, the dying jihad and things like that. So I think in some broad sense, perhaps we're all theonomists, right?

But the question is, how does that play out? And, you know, the civil, ceremonial, and moral aspects of the law can be helpful. But I always found a good passage of scripture that kind of, for me, kind of guides me very well is 1 Corinthians chapter 9, where the Apostle Paul quotes from what we would say would be probably a civil law.

He says in verse 8 of chapter 9, Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the law say the same? For it is written in the law of Moses, You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.

Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope, and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop.

So just to point out that even the Apostle Paul there is using a ceremonial law, I'm sorry, a civil law that has to do with oxen. But he even says, was it really written for oxen? Not really, it was actually written for our, so I'm assuming, you know, Christian sake.

And it has to do with the principle of basically paying your pastors. So just two points there about theonomy and about, there are some limitations to the civil, ceremonial, and moral division. I find it to be very useful, but I do think there might be some limitations there.

Well, before we go to using the law and evangelism, there was a discussion, we went out to eat on capital punishment. And so, you know, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If someone kills someone, should they then be killed according to the law?

And so several people said, well, yeah, you know, capital punishment is fine. It's not us killing them, it is the government doing it. And then it raised the question, so what if you have a mother that aborts her child and now that mother becomes a Christian?

Should we kill that mother? Question mark. That wasn't a comma.

No. Okay. Just to throw that out there for Anthony. Yeah.

Anthony Russo was really smiling.

So I'll jump in on that. So I'd say no, for a couple different reasons. And I think, you know, when we talk about killing and the sword in particular, in Romans 13, beginning with the state, right? I think when we're talking about capital punishment, it has that flavor of murder, kind of unlawful killing.

I want to address something that Eric said as well. I completely agree with everything Eric said. And I think, you know, that notion that in some sense we're all theonomous is a helpful one. Because, you know, if we just mean God's law, you know, but if by theonomy we mean, you know, do we take the penal sanctions of the old covenant and apply them in the new covenant?

That's where I would pump the brakes a little bit. You know, if we're talking about taking dominion, that seems to me that, you know, I know that that can be a broad phrase, but, you know, take every thought captive for Christ.

You know what I mean? Like that to me sounds like we're taking dominion. Now, how exactly that gets applied in the weeds and, you know, whether or not we're taking dominion of alcohol and, you know, the sense that your friend meant it, I don't know.

That sounds to me a little bit of a stretch. You know, normally when I think of taking dominion, it's kind of reclaiming all of those things that the world thinks it has claim on, despite the fact that Christ is king.

So it seems to me like, you know, when we're talking about theonomy in a broad sense, sure. Taking dominion? Absolutely. You know, I think all of those are generally good things. So, yeah.

Well, one thing I would say, because I often hear theonomists do this, I'll hear covenant theologians do this, that is a fallacy of equivocation. Theonomy is, as was said, God's law, right? Eric had said that.

But theonomy is different than theonomy, the theological system, right? So you have theonomy referring to God's law, and you have a theological system that uses the same name. I'll hear sometimes covenant theologians.

A good friend of mine, Matt Slick, does this all the time, and it drives me nuts when I tell him all the time. But he'll say, well, covenant theology is biblical because covenants are mentioned in the Bible.

Well, covenants are mentioned in the Bible. You have covenants, but that's not covenant theology. Those are covenants. They just share a same name. And by the way, for the record, dispensationalism is based on covenants, just for the record.

So we're I jokingly said, Matt, we're the ones that actually rely on covenants. He only has two of them. We have all of them, right? But we'll do covenant theology and dispensationalism another time, I'm sure.

So let's deal with I want to come back to the whole view of the three, the tripart view of the law. But before that, to get one thing kind of out of the way is this idea that there's some people when it comes to law and gospel, and a reason I called on Phil was because I know Phil has been

Phil and I have been out on the streets evangelizing a lot. I know how he evangelizes. I know that he's been influenced by the way the master and that style that is done. And so, Phil, there's some people.

I don't know if there's anyone here that would espouse new covenant theology. Anyone hold to that? Okay, Dylan does. Depends what you mean by that. That's a good response. Yeah, I mean, so new covenant theology sometimes has an issue with using the law in sharing the gospel, sometimes.

So I don't know if we'll get any disagreement there. But, Phil, why don't you explain the use of the law when sharing the gospel?

The Law as a Schoolmaster in Evangelism

Yeah, so the Bible tells us that the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, and I believe Colleen mentioned that, if I'm not mistaken. And so I do believe that it's a mirror to show man their sins.

Of course, we're born sinners. We're sinners by nature, and we are sinners by choice. And so many people, when they evangelize, they might say, you know, come to Jesus. He has a wonderful plan for your life.

And people never seem to deal with sin. But if you don't bring sin up, then why does man need to turn to the Lord if it's not to flee from their sin? Of course, we want to turn to the Lord because He's good and because He's kind and not just the fear factor only, but that is definitely there.

That I've committed a cosmic offense against a holy God, and the law shows me that I'm guilty, and all humanity is condemned as a result of it, which we see throughout the book of Romans. And so Paul takes, what, the first 11 chapters to just condemn everybody.

And when you look through, especially like Romans 3, we are just, even our throats are like an open sepulchre. And it really, I believe, helps it to be very simple where you're not just trying to say, hey, take these Jesus pills because you have a problem.

But I really think it kind of weaves a thread through what the problem is. The problem is that we've sinned against God. And when people think that they're good and you start to take them through the law and show what goodness is and that we all have fallen miserably short and we've missed the mark of perfection, people, I think, are able to see themselves in light of the mirror of God's law that they are absolutely guilty, that they're morally and totally depraved, and that they ultimately need a Savior.

And I think that a lot of people are afraid to bring up sin because someone might not like you or someone may get offended. But that's exactly what the law does. It's an offense. And so that we would turn to Christ.

So I would just say, as somebody who espouses New Covenant theology, kind of broadly understood to Eric's point, we need to kind of define the term a little bit. But I agree. I agree with all that. Okay.

Yeah, because I know Colleen and I used to be with some other podcasters that were New Covenant theology, and they would actually argue their view was the Old Testament law. You should not be referring to the Ten Commandments or any of the Old Testament laws.

It's only the New Testament law. That's how they would define it different. And so in their position, they were saying basically nine of the Ten Commandments were repeated, so they would call that the law of Christ.

Right.

You mean Paul would call it that?

Well, Paul meaning the podcaster or Paul the apostle? So obviously Dylan knows exactly who I'm referring to. But the thing is, is that there's actually five uses of the word law. And that's why it was good to have Colleen start us off because there's also a fallacy of equivocation people do when we talk about law.

I mean, you have law, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, that's law. You have law, the Ten Commandments, or which sometimes to summarize, really there's 316 commandments in the Old Testament.

Do you think it's 613?

No. I think it's 600. Your Jewish dyslexia just kicked in. Get out your prayer shawl and start counting those little threads on the end there.

All I remember is I asked the rabbi once, what do the Gentiles have to do since they don't know all the laws? He says, oh, they only have six, which are, if you think about the Ten Commandments, it's the last six of the Ten Commandments.

And I remember going like, I can't even keep those. Why do I want to keep the rest of these? I literally, this is not the thing to say to your rabbi. I think I'd rather be a Gentile.

Things rabbis never want to hear. Yeah, and then he told you a dong and smacked you and smitten you in the mouth.

Yeah. But any other comments with what Phil was talking about as far as the law, using it with the gospel? I have a question. I think it might fit in here.

I'm not sure. If I understand what you're talking about, New Covenant is basically someone saying, all we need is a New Testament. All the Old Testament don't count. Throw it away. No. In an extreme point of view.

But yet Jesus says, if you love me, you'll obey my commands. So what commands is there that Jesus is talking about that we should obey?

So maybe Dylan could clean up the understanding of New Covenant first.

The Law of Christ, the New Covenant, and Sabbath as a Test Case

Yeah. So, I mean, at a high level, it's just to say there's a difference between kind of Old Covenant, New Covenant. I think, you know, if we were going to take any position and try to, you know, contend for or against it from its point of strength, right, from where it's most defensible, you know, we want to, I'm going to get my heretics mixed up, but it wasn't, God, not origin, but who was the way back guy who wanted to get rid of the Old Testament?

Marcion. Yeah. Marcion. Marcion. We're not Marcionists. Yeah. No question about that. I think, you know, we would look at, or I can't say, me personally, right? Like Eric, I agree that the moral civil ceremonial, kind of the tripartite division of the law is tough to, like, I don't know that when the New Testament authors write about, you know, the law, you know, I don't know that they have that same tripartite division in mind.

You know, I think if you read through, I think the distinctions are useful, but, you know, when it comes to kind of how that moral law gets defined and the content of that, you know, that's where I think, you know, you could look at kind of the Old Covenant, 10 commandments as the apex of the Old Covenant law, or, you know, another position might be, you know, to, I think Phil was, or Andrew was referring to the law of Christ, right?

And so when we're talking about the law of Christ, what content fills that phrase, right? And the content broadly that would fill that phrase would be those commandments that, because there are plenty of commandments that are issued in the New Covenant.

And, you know, essentially from, well, I'll leave it at that. So within the New Covenant, there are stipulations for how we are to live. You know, Christ has a lot to say about how we are to live. And we would say that that would, you know, represent and that content includes the law of Christ.

And that is the law that, you know, kind of under which I would say Christians are bound by conscience today. But that's going to be a little bit different than the law as it's manifest in the Old Covenant.

You know, one example, and I think, gosh, who is it? Carson has his book from Sabbath to Lord's Day, I think is the book. And he makes the point that, you know, one main difference between, you know, Sabbatarians or those who would hold to kind of the moral law and the Ten Commandments in the Old Covenant being the apex of the moral law, a difference between that ilk and those who would espouse kind of a law of Christ from the New Covenant would be one's view of Sabbath, right?

Because if Sabbath keeping, if you see the Ten Commandments as the apex of the moral law in the Old Covenant, it would follow to be Sabbatarian, at least kind of on this view. Versus, you know, you have, you know, the Apostle Paul will say, you know, one man considers one day more esteem than another.

Another considers all days the same. Let each be fully persuaded in his own mind. So, you know, one of the big differences would be your view of Sabbath. So not that that's the topic for this particular issue, but I think it's a good test case, Sabbath, for, you know, how we put our whole Bibles together and how we put the whole question of law and gospel back together in light of kind of the law of Christ on one hand and, you know, seeing the Ten Commandments as the apex of the moral law from the Old Covenant in the other hand.

Covenant Theology, Dispensationalism, and the Shape of the Law

All right. Now, so one thing that I think when we look at New Covenant theology, they're going to see, they're going to come generally, right, out of a Covenant theology background. For folks who are not familiar at all with them, I'll just give a quick, real quick overview.

They're typically from a New Covenant, from a Covenant theology background, typically they see a distinction between Israel and the church. And so some people may go, oh, that sounds dispensational. Yes, but no, right?

So they're making, they make some distinctions. In the early years, there really wasn't as much distinction. They've made a little bit more now, but they're going to see a distinction between Israel and the church.

They're going to take a more, what we would call literal or normal, hermeneutic, less allegorical. But then they do, they have some other things they end up doing with their views on the law, as I mentioned, with the law of Christ, and they'll see that Christ was the fulfillment of the law.

And so the Old Testament laws were fulfilled in him, and now he gives kind of like a new law. And so that's just a high-level view for anyone who doesn't know the terms, because these may be new terms for folks, so just wanted to throw that out there.

And I'll look to Dylan or Eric to tell me if I'm right or wrong. They're giving a shug like that.

I think the latter part of the summary you just gave about Christ fulfilling the law and now issuing, what Paul would call the law of Christ, I think is a fair summary.

Yeah, I would completely agree. I mean, just again, recognizing that there's been a change of some kind, you could even think about perhaps, let's see, in Hebrews chapter seven, which talks about, verse 12 talks about when there's a change in the priesthood, there's necessarily a change in the law as well.

Christ being better than Melchizedek or better than the greatest high priest, right? So, I mean, why can Jesus declare all foods clean now? That seems a little contrary to the old covenant law there, but that's because he's fulfilled in that regard, but what matters is what comes out of your mouth, not what goes into your mouth, right?

So that's really what we're getting at, but there's a spectrum of new covenant believers and there are some that go off the diving board of heresy and that we need to stay clear of.

So would you say the Paul that I think we're both talking of would be in the, no, no, okay, we won't go there. That's a conversation for a porch of a different kind. All right, so, real quick, we do have Daniel Minnick joined in, so maybe I'm gonna just unmute him real quick so that he can introduce his podcast since he joined in a little bit late.

Maybe we'll get some espresso from him. Daniel, go for it. Just introduce yourself and your podcast real quick, unless, of course, we won't be able to hear you. He was able to hear us. Okay, Daniel, you may need to check your audio because I know you were having some trouble earlier.

I think he's having trouble, but I'm messaging him to see if I can help.

Okay, so when you guys think you got that figured out, just put a note in the chat, so that way we can make sure we're hearing him. Oh, he said he was off by an hour, so he thought he was starting at the beginning.

All right, so anything else with ideas that anyone wants to discuss with this law of Christ?

I'm gonna just say something really, really, really fast. It's not really the time for it because it would be a whole other discussion, but just to know that what the NCT guys say, that both on the dispensational side and on the reformed side, and when I say reformed, I'm speaking of those hold to the reformed confessions, that we would strongly disagree, but I don't want to get into a distraction on that.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's gonna be some disagreements there, but it's kind of interesting, on my wrap report that will air end of this month, if any of you... Testing, one, two, three, testing. Here we go, we hear you.

Okay, Dan. Hello.

Okay, so somehow I did not check that my microphone switch was turned off, the ATR 2100, but I guess you can hear me and I can hear you, so everything's good.

Yeah, so why don't you introduce, for folks who don't know your voice and your podcast, just introduce yourself and your podcast.

Okay, well, my name is Daniel Minnick and I host the Truthspresso podcast, and we cover a lot of different topics on Truthspresso from the political to the theological, and usually I try to take a slightly different angle than what you might get in the mainstream.

Very technical, but my last episode was on the economics of the coronavirus, and I invite everyone to check that out, check out Truthspresso,.

And see you there. All right, so we're talking law and gospel, and so we were, I forgot where I was, where we were just going with New Covenant, but yeah, any further?

You were going to mention something about your last, the upcoming rap report.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so for folks who don't know, on the Andrew Eppert's rap report, the weekly one, we've been doing a series this whole month on the church, and if anyone didn't hear from Shepard's conference, John MacArthur dealt with a topic of dispensationalism.

Covenant theology did an excellent job, in my opinion. I might be biased, but... You might be switching camps? No, no. I hold to the same as MacArthur, a biblical view. We'll pray for you. But actually, one of the things I did was I took that, I took a response from Emilio Ramos, who would be a covenant theologian, and I pointed out that where a lot of people claim there's so much differences, a lot of times when we actually get together and deal with scripture, there's not as much as people think.

And so I sent it to Emilio. He said I didn't misrepresent him, and then now we're going to get him on, so he'll be a bonus episode. But that aside, I think that's one of the things I see with, in my opinion, and when New Covenant Theology was kind of just starting, their whole issue of the law, I really saw it as kind of emerging between covenant theology and dispensationalism.

Like it was somewhere in the middle. And I think that when it comes to, for some guys, and I'm saying some guys, because obviously Eric and Dylan are not agreeing with some of the guys who would say, no, you don't use the law at all.

You use the law of Christ. And so I think it is good to use, as Colleen said, to use the law as a schoolmaster to show people their sin. I think Phil said the same. Any thoughts on that from anyone?

The Role of the Law in Evangelism and the Gospel Message

Yeah, I'll chime in. I agree. I mean, I think it's good to use the law in evangelism to point people to Christ. I think it helps set the stage that God is the lawgiver, that God is the authority in this universe, and we are not, that the person we're speaking with is not, that we can't make up our own rules.

And then I think also from there, again, as you step through the gospel, right, you're showing them how they have broken the laws of the lawgiver, how they are now guilty, and then, of course, how Christ steps in and how they can be forgiven and how he paid their fine, as Ray Comfort likes to say.

So yeah, I think it's the most God-honoring way to do evangelism because it really shows the supremacy, the authority of God and the sinfulness of man. It shows them their true condition, and it exalts Christ so much more.

I mean, he is literally the star, if you will, of the gospel narrative when you present it in a law and grace format, so much more than just, you know, God's got a wonderful plan for your life, and God is sad and weepy and knocking at the door of your heart, and would you please, please, please let him in kind of a thing.