Dead Men Walking Podcast & Theocast with Jon Moffitt: Does James Teach a Works Salvation?

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Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast based in Ephesians 2 by the way. Check it out.

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Thanks for listening. We appreciate all of your comments, your feedback, obviously supporting us at dmwpodcast .com,

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all kinds of cool merch there. Check that out as well. Well, we have a special treat for you. I am once again alone.

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We had a scheduling conflict with Jason Hamlin, our trustee co -host.

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So it's just me and a return guest, a very popular guest on the podcast.

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He was one of the people who reached out or I reached out to him and he said, absolutely, let's go on the podcast.

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We were just a few months old. We were in our infancy. Now we're all of almost two years old next month. It's the pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, host of TheoCast, a great podcast, by the way, if you are listening to us, make sure you go over there and listen to that podcast and subscribe.

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It's Mr. John Moffitt. John, how are you, sir? I'm good, man. Thanks for having me back on. I'm excited. Absolutely.

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So why don't you give the new listeners a little introduction? I know you've been on the show before. Give a little introduction of yourself, kind of what you got going on and a little bit about you.

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Yeah. Well, I was born and raised in a pastor's home in Southern California and kind of grew up in the dispensational world, very feminist world.

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And God has graciously drawn me to himself over the years. And so I've had the joy of learning more and more about Christ and resting in Christ through the various different ministries that I've served in.

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I started a church almost five years ago and Grace Reform Church here in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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And we've had the joy of planting two other churches, one in Minnesota with Jimmy Buehler, who's the pastor of Christ Community Church.

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And then we just planted another church down just south of us called Covenant Grace Columbia, Patrick Crandall, who's a

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Westminster grad. So it's been fun to just kind of watch the Lord through the pandemic, continue to grow the gospel and encourage weary saints.

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And as you said, Theocast really is kind of the one that made all that possible. Both those guys I've met through Theocast, I've met you through Theocast.

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So a little podcast we started for fun to encourage our church has allowed me an immense amount of fellowship and encouragement.

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And so I'm thankful that God has used this to encourage other people, but mostly encourage myself as well.

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Awesome. And, you know, I agree with you. Some of the relationships that come out of doing a podcast like this are, you can just tell it's going to be lifelong.

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It's so great to have brothers and sisters in the Lord and to be able to fellowship with them, even if sometimes like this, it's not in person.

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So church planning, I hear that can be a little bit of work. So you're staying busy right now with that, right?

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Yeah, my gray hair has come into existence since I started those churches. I mean, my kids can have definitely a role in that.

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I have four kids, but church planning is definitely not the easy thing to do as a career. Yeah, I got a couple of gray ones coming in the beard.

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My wife calls them my wisdom wisps. So I accept them gracefully, shows that I've been around a little bit, hopefully learn something by the grace of God.

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So we're going to jump right into it. I know normally we do a newsy news segment, we maybe, you know, do some different things, but I wanted to get into it with you because the last time you were on,

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I mean, you just started preaching to us and we absolutely loved it. We talked a little bit about assurance, but this subject, and I know your church is working through James right now, and I thought it was appropriate just because it was something that happened to me a few weeks ago.

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I know we were talking offline about talking to a very devout Catholic, and we were talking about justification through faith alone, all these different issues.

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And they, man, he just kept going back to James, James 2. I wanted to take him to Galatians, of course, and talking about adding things to the gospel.

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He wanted to go to James and James 2, specifically verses 17, 24, things like that to where sometimes you might think that you see a contradiction in scripture.

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Obviously, we both hold to justification through faith alone, that there is nothing that we do that earns our salvation, correct?

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And I just kind of wanted to look at James, maybe as a whole, obviously, we want to have a good hermeneutic here.

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We don't want to take one verse, which sometimes I feel a lot of denominations do across the board.

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I could say that for reform, non -reform, Pentecostal, Catholic, they take that one verse, they focus on it, and then they kind of throw the rest of the chapter, verse, and the whole

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Bible aside. So, when I'm looking at James 2, which is what we're going to be talking about today, the first question

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I would ask you is, what do you do when you have someone who goes to James 2 and says, look, verse 17 says it's all faith by itself, verse 24 says not justified by faith alone.

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How do we make that fit within the entire Bible and the biblical premise of justification through faith alone?

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And that's a big first question, but we'll start there. Yeah. Well, you're right. Context really does matter.

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You know, if someone were to take just about a five -second clip out of this conversation, they could conclude a lot of things from our conversation.

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They can consider us to be heretics, we could be anti -this and anti -that, and we could be spies.

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Context really does matter. Even just your podcast title alone, if people don't understand what it's for, it's like, oh, is this about like the walking dead?

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You know, it's like, what is this podcast about? So this is why context matters, sure, in life, but in the

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Bible, it's the most important thing because you cannot understand its intention. So what some people don't understand about the book of James is that James is probably one of the first epistles to be written, the first letter to churches.

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So the first issue you're dealing with is that persecution is now on the rise.

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And so this is why James says to the recipients of the letter, you are scattered abroad.

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And the reason that they're scattered abroad is because of religious persecution. So now that they're in these different cities and different locations, they're not only dealing with ongoing spiritual persecution, but now they're dealing on the hard times of relocating, not having money, and now they're dealing with social pressure.

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So James is dealing with congregations that are fracturing and falling apart because of their circumstances, and they're not responding rightly.

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And they're really responding out of their heart, which is not a heart that is centered on grace and the gospel, but their heart is centered on the world.

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This is why James says you cannot hold on to faith and hold on to partiality at the same time.

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So that's what he's dealing with. He's dealing with the people who are claiming to be believers of Christ, but they are not reflecting the same grace they have received.

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And not only are they not reflecting it, he says that their heart and their hope is still present earthbound.

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So he uses all kinds of language to pull them out of the present circumstance and says, listen,

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I know you're suffering. I know you're going without, but you can't use your mouth and you can't use your actions to hurt or show partiality to protect yourself.

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And what they were protecting was their wealth, their health, and their social setting, like how they were being presented.

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Because they were going, to be fair, these poor people were suffering a pretty immense amount of pain.

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So when you go through, I just want to give us kind of an overview of James chapter two. James didn't just helicopter in and pop these verses in there and pop out.

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He had a whole thought process that was going on. So listen to how he sets this up before he gets to chapter two.

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What he is dealing with is people who are suffering. So he first wants to bring them comfort. And then he uses some of their opposition because he is dealing with people who are, it sounds like they've had interaction with James.

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It sounds like James had shepherded them. They did leave Jerusalem. They did leave the church of Jerusalem. So most likely they were under James' shepherding.

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So he might even had some conversations with them before they left. But think about how he starts this whole letter before chapter two.

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Chapter one, verse two, counted all joy brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

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Well, that's important because what is he emphasizing? He's emphasizing the trial is exposing the reality of your faith for the reason that you're enduring.

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But what's important here is that as the example of what he's giving is that steadfastness is not on them.

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That steadfastness is the power of the Holy Spirit working in them. How do we know this? Because if you go down to verse 17, he says this, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation of shadow due to change.

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Oh, that is so important. That comes right after the section of 15 and 16, where James says, you are sending because of your own desires are tempting you and they're drawing you away.

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He is equating their gifts of what they're receiving. And we know he is speaking of salvation as well because look at verse 18 of his own will.

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He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

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So James is not dealing with what I would call people who are not believers almost seven times between chapters one and two, before he gets to chapters two, verse 14, he says, my brothers, my brothers, my brothers.

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He is, he is making sure that he's calling to clarity that they have received the faith.

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So he's dealing first of all, with God's preservation, not their preservation. God's going to preserve them in chapter or chapter one, verses two and three chapter seven, chapter one, 17 and 18, their salvation and anything that comes to them.

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I think it's so important when he says not due to variation or change, what he means there is that their performance does not determine whether or not they receive the gifts or not the gifts are coming to them because of the will of God, not their performance.

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I don't know how you interpret that any other way. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the father of lights without variation or due to change of his own will.

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He brought us forth. So it's important that we see the setups that James is doing.

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So James kind of gives us the first hint of what obedience comes from or where obedience comes from. So this is chapter two, and this is right before he hits into this whole idea.

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And he says, so speak. And so act as those who are to be judged under the law of Liberty.

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This is a brilliant phrase from James. James loves to use language from the old Testament and old

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Testament pictures. One of the problems is, you know, sometimes brother, when we, when we read the

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Bible, we read it from an American perspective. Yeah, we need to read it from a Hebraic perspective. So James, as a

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Jew is writing to Jews, those who would have known the old Testament. And he's writing to them and he's using

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Jewish language. So when he says the law of Liberty, he literally, let me rephrase it. He means those who've been liberated by the law.

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So our actions are not, Jesus says it this way. All you who are heavy laden and burdened down by the law come to me and I will give you rest for my yoke is easy.

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My burden is light. Why is that? Because when you're no longer under the law, heaven and hell don't hang in the balance, right?

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So you aren't, yeah, you're not obeying so that you get out of hell and get into heaven.

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Jesus says, you now obey because you've been liberated from that.

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You're not under that weight anymore. So James says, liberated. This is why you obey.

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So that's the backdrop of what's going on. This is not something that we are trying to earn into God's favor.

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We have God's favor. We've received that gift. One other example of that, we can even go forward in context.

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When you go forward into chapter four, he is dealing with people who are clearly not obeying.

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And he says to them, you're adulterous. He calls them enemies of God, like the way that they're acting.

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But he doesn't call into question their salvation. He says this right after he calls them adulterous enemies.

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He says, James 5, 6, but he gives more grace. That is to say,

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God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. In chapter four, verse eight, draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

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Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Sometimes we don't understand that word humble. What he means by that humility in this context literally means to say, you have nothing.

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As it relates to, here's the key, ready? As it relates to your acceptance before God.

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So the problem is, is that they are, James is biting people who are saying, I have faith in Christ and my way and my actions are acceptable before God.

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James is saying your ways and your actions are not acceptable before God. This is not an acceptable way to live.

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So he says this powerful thing in chapter, the end of chapter four, he says, you are changing the law to meet your own standards.

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Therefore you're becoming a judge. And there's only one judge and that's God. So let me just sum the whole thing up.

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James says that what James is dealing with are people who are confused. They are confused on what is required of them as a believer once they're a part of the family of God.

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Once they're a part of the family of God. So the way I describe it this way, Paul is dealing with people who are trying to add law into salvation.

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That's who Paul is dealing with. You cannot do that. You are saved by grace alone. So Paul is dealing with those adding to justification.

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James is dealing with a whole different crowd of people. James is dealing with people who have received salvation and now don't see it necessary to love their brother in the church.

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So he's dealing with a whole different crowd. He literally is, excuse me, he is dealing with what's called an antinomian heart.

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They don't see the need for them to love each other, but he is not calling into question their salvation because one cannot be saved by works.

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The way I would describe it is this way. It's the fruit of our salvation. So we'll get into,

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I know you've got some questions, but that's kind of the backdrop of what James is at. So if you don't have that whole picture, the whole letter of everything that James has said beginning to end and then interpret different parts of it, you're going to misinterpret what

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James is saying. No, that's good. Would you view James primarily as almost a pragmatic approach to sanctification in your walk with Christ?

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Or is this salvific? Or is it not? Because you're saying, hey, look it, he's already talking to people who are saved and regenerated.

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So do we read through James that way? Or do we read through, this is how you actually pragmatically walk out your faith?

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Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I would say that James is definitely dealing with believers.

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He addresses them in chapter one and he continues to address them in that manner. Because if James was dealing with unbelievers, he would then be calling them to repentance and faith in Christ for the salvation of their souls.

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But he's not doing that. He is addressing them as actual believers. And so the way I would describe it as this way is that in Ezekiel 36, when it says that he pulls out our heart of stone, he puts in a heart of flesh.

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And then there's this phrase, and he will cause you to walk in his ways. James is like, you're not walking in his ways.

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That's what he's saying. You are regenerate Christians. You are believers. You put your faith in Christ, but you're not walking in his ways.

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And what's interesting is that James doesn't call into question their salvation. He calls into question, excuse me, he calls into question their understanding of what the

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Christian life looks like. So they had changed what was required of them.

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You know, the way that we would look at it is that sometimes people don't like that word required. And it's important to understand when Jesus says, my burden is easy, my yoke is easy, my burden is light.

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To love another sinner is not easy. It requires.

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So James knows this. This is what's so great about the book of James. If you just go back to chapter one and verse five,

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James is like, all right, you guys are counting to joy, but in the midst of trials, guess what happens when something steps on her neck, like bad things come out of our mouth.

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He's like, all right. So you might need some help here. Right. If you lack wisdom, wisdom, if you go to chapter three, at the end of the chapter, he says it's meekness and gentleness and purity and harmony.

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He says, we show, we show patience with one another is if you lack that, let him ask of God and he will give it to you without reproach abundantly.

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So James is dealing with the interaction between believers. That's, that's the whole issue here is that these churches are fighting with one another.

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They're, they are, they're fracturing. And if a church is fracturing, they're not fulfilling the commission that had been given to, right.

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Love each other and advance the gospel. Yeah, no, that's, that's really good. So playing devil's advocate here.

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If you start at 224 and you start to see all the examples that James is laying out, he's saying here, let's take a look at it.

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So he says something like you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

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And in the same way was not Rahab, the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers.

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And then he goes on and he's talking about Abraham and all these people who did works. And, but to start that he's saying not justified by faith alone.

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So if we look at that one verse, that can be very confusing. You just set out a great foundation for us to work off of, of who he was talking to and, and, and what he was trying to say.

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But when you look at something to where, and I like to call them the reformed taglines, where we say faith alone and, you know,

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Christ alone and all those things. And then you see a verse in the Bible that says, look at you're not justified by faith alone, but works has a part.

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And here are all, here are some of the men and women of God in the Bible that were justified by those works.

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What is a good jumping off point for someone who, who may read into that, or is from a denomination or belief that says, yeah, there is something that we have to do to either attain salvation or keep salvation.

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Right. What, what do we say about those verses that seem to stick out and maybe have, and I say for the layman have a really opposite view of what, what belief they might hold.

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Yeah, if we're, if you are going to take the English translation, they're literal, and you're not going to allow for context, you can say, well, it says literally right there,

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John, that their works justified them. Well, you have to back up. What does James say before he says that?

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So in chapter two and in verse 14, he says, what good is it? Here's the key.

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My brothers, if someone says he is, has faith, but does not have works, can that faith save him?

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So here's, what's interesting about what James is doing. He's saying, he's talking about the proclamation, what they're saying.

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No, no, I'm a, I'm a believer. I have faith. And so what James is calling it, he says,

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I brother, I hear you. He literally says, brother, I hear you. I hear you, brother. But the problem is what you're saying is not matching what you're doing.

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And so he's not calling the question, their faith. He's calling the question where they're putting their faith.

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So a great example of this is that every time he says their faith, where they were justified by their actions, he was saying,

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Abraham, all these examples he gives, right? Let's go to Abraham. For example, he talks about Abraham's faith, justifying him.

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What he means by that is that we have to define the word justify. And in the context, what is he going after?

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If we believe that Abraham's works justified him, we have some massive problems.

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First of all, how much of his works justified him? If we, it's, I think it's so important that James uses

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Abraham. What do we know about Abraham? Up to in the example that James is using here, it's later in Abraham's life.

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But before then, up to that point, he had lied about his wife like three times. I mean, the guy was a scoundrel.

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It's interesting how every example that James uses, he is Rahab, the harlot, the prostitute. And he keeps using people who do not have great reputations as far as a lifelong of obedience.

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So let's be, let's be clear here. But what is interesting is what James ends up using are examples of what faith is connected to.

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He's saying this, that their claim to faith matches their love and affection for one another and for God.

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In other words, their actions justified their faith, not justified them as far as their salvation.

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There's a difference because he says, you're saying, you say that you have a salvation, but your actions are, what do you call it?

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They're contradicting that. So I think, because James clearly, I mean, Paul says flat out that Abraham was justified by faith.

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Right. Yep. What he means by that is that his going from center to saved or regenerate or his right standing before God was done, was given to him by faith alone.

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James is not dealing with that context here. James is dealing. So in that context, Paul is dealing with people who are trying to add works into their salvation.

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And James is like, Paul is saying, you know, you can't add works into salvation. You're saved by faith alone. James is dealing with people who are clearly saved.

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They believe the gospel, but they are confused on what is it they need to be doing now.

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And so I think it's interesting how he even uses Rahab. What did Rahab do? She put herself in danger for who, right?

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The sake of those men that she let out of the window. Right. So he keeps using these illustrations of people who are reflecting love of God and then love of neighbor.

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Well, earlier in James, he says to them, well, you say the

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Lord, your God is one. Yeah. The demons even say that. Well, his point in that is that just because you proclaim to have right doctrine or right theology, and yet it's not there in practice, it doesn't mean that you have a right understanding.

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James is trying to correct their understanding. He is not trying to get them saved. That's the thing

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I think is so important for people to understand here. I mean, I don't know how else you interpret

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James 2 .16 when he says, I'm sorry, 2 .14.

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What good is it, my brothers, if you say you have faith? So he's dealing with people who are already saved.

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He's not trying to get them saved. So the difference would be, hey, if you want salvation, you better be doing works.

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That's not what he says. He's saying, if you're saved, we do good works. It's kind of this way.

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Good trees produce fruit, right? Alive trees produce fruit. He isn't saying you better add on the fruit so that you can be alive.

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That's reverse. You're alive. Therefore, you produce fruit. So let me ask you this.

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That is such a great point, because you jumped to the verse that I was going to reference to, because I really struggled with that as a young believer coming up in a

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Pentecostal -type church, non -denominational, but very Pentecostal, and going, well, doesn't—all

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I have to do is raise my hand and say, I believe in this person named Jesus. Well, doesn't Satan believe in Jesus?

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I mean, didn't he—you know, he seeded—he wanted to seed the earthly kingdom to Christ because he understood who he was.

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So what makes me any different from the devil? So when you read through James, and I was—I was brought up saying

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James is salvific. This is talking about how you are saved. And it was a really weird thing because we would proclaim with our mouth justification by faith alone, right?

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That's not a strictly Reformed or Calvinistic view. We have a lot of Baptists and Pentecostals and even

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Oneness that go, hey, look at justification by faith alone. But then when you take James and say, oh no, we're talking about salvation and not talking about, like you're saying, being justified in your faith, it's a reflection of your faith, right?

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So I would lead up with this question. So is there anything other than good works that can justify you in your faith?

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And when I say in your faith, I'm saying not in salvific faith, but in that non -dead faith that James is talking about.

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Is it just works? Do we look at someone and say, look at those good works? They love their neighbor.

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They're not under the law, but they keep the law, all those things. Because then I would say, well, there's a lot of non -believers out there that do a lot of good works.

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So if James is preaching—and here's my question. I'll get to it eventually. I'm sorry. So if James is saying, look at the way you can be justified in your faith, just not saying, hey,

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I believe, right? Easy believism. Sure, I believe in this Jesus guy, but not act it out is through your good works.

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Is there anything else that does justify us in that type of faith if non -believers can do good works?

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Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think I understand it. And if my answer doesn't make sense, you maybe can rephrase it.

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It's my fault if it doesn't. No, no, it's okay. It was a complicated situation, but the way

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I would word it is this way. When we think about our faith, it's so important that we go back to chapter one where he talks about it's

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God's will that we be brought to life, right? So if you've been brought to life, this is where a theology really does kind of matter about what do you believe about the deadness of men?

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I mean, your podcast is in reference to Ephesians chapter two. We were once dead. He made us alive.

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Amen. And then later in Ephesians two, it says, and he predestined that we would walk in these good ways, right?

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So the one doing the power is Christ. The issue is this.

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When you read James, you can hear him dealing with rebuttals. He's saying, listen, you're not in agreement with God.

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That's his issue. You are not in agreement with God on what salvation, what the family of God does.

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He's dealing with people who adamantly are opposing James and the teachings, you know, the way early on in chapter acts, they would, they referenced it as the way.

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And that's, and then eventually we became known as Christian and Christianities. But James is kind of using this language and you are rejecting the way and those who have been brought, we have been humbled by our sin.

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God opened our eyes. We see that we have nothing. And at that moment, Christ becomes everything to us.

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We're in union with Christ. And then the father comes and says, love me, love one another. I mean, first John says it this way.

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So it says, if you say you love God and you have a lot of love for your brother, you're a liar. And the truth is not in you. He's not saying go love your brother.

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And you'll be saved. He's saying, if you're saved, you're going to love your brother. So it's a, it's what

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I call an agreement. Now, brother, you and I have never, not in an ounce of a second loved our neighbor as we should not have ever.

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But we agree that we should. Amen. And we have never loved

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God. I mean, the two greatest commands we've given to us never loved God, but we agree that we should. The issue in James is they weren't agreeing.

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They're like, no, we don't see that as necessary. And James is like, then if you don't see it as necessary, whatever faith you're claiming is not a real faith.

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He is not saying works are necessary. He's saying, you need to agree that that, that is the joy and the pursuit of our life is that those who've received, you know,

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Jesus says it this way. If you're unwilling to forgive your brother, who's offended you, then God's not going to forgive you.

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The point of it is, is that those who have life understand the need of reflecting that not let life here's, here's the biggest kicker, man.

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If you don't hold this position, that it's an agreement issue. James is just dealing. Hey, like, I need you guys to agree with me that you're wrong.

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Like your view is wrong. That's what I need you to do is because if you don't, whatever faith you're claiming is a dead faith, because those who are alive, understand that they love

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God and love neighbor. There is no way to, to gauge inside of James letter.

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If James actually means works. The question is how many works do

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I need to perform to say, okay, now I know I'm justified. Absolutely. That that's the biggest issue because here's the thing.

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If you're going to be justified by the law, Jesus says is perfection. Literally tells the rich young ruler go and do perfectly.

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And you shall have eternal life. So you either, you either are walking by faith in the righteousness of Christ, his works for you.

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And this, uh, the reform used to say guilt, grace, gratitude, right? We feel the guiltiness of our sin. The gospel comes in and saves us.

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That's grace. And now out of gratitude, we now obey, you know, Trent literally said this.

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They said, if anyone says our good works are based on our gratitude, they should be anathema.

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If they do not add to our salvation, they should be anathema. So they understood what

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James was. They understand what Paul is saying. No, no, we obey out of gratitude. So that's why I think in this section of James, um, like when it says, even the demons believe in trouble, you need to understand that's not a salvific faith.

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He's saying the demons understand who God is just because they understand who God is. Doesn't mean they have saving faith.

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That's what James point was. So the point of it is alive people breathe.

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Like you can't, you don't, um, let me put it this way. Like if you go in to a cemetery and you tell a dead people lying there, you need to start breathing.

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If you breathe, then you could be alive. That doesn't work. So if you go and tell someone, if you do good works, you can be saved.

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You can't do good works alive. People do good works, not dead people. Yeah. Yeah. So good.

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And as we wind this down here too, uh, this is a little off subject, but this is one of the reasons why, uh,

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I really enjoy doing this podcast. Why I enjoy listening to, um, people like yourself too, is because what's really concerning to me is what we're talking about here in James is we have a lot of people, a lot of people who call themselves

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Christians, a lot of preachers or pastors, I'm gonna put air quotes on that, uh, from the pulpit that, that give a head knowledge of who

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Jesus was, who give a slip your hands up while no one's looking and you can, uh, accept

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Christ into your heart. Let's not get started on that wording. You, you have, if you're watching from zoom, if you feel that you need a better life, right?

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All these examples to where we have this general head knowledge, Ligonier did a, uh, we covered it on the podcast at about six months ago.

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It was appalling. John, they, they did a, they did a national, uh, survey of 15 ,000 people who are self -proclaimed

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Christians. 22 % of them believed in the Trinity, you know, 30 % of them thought, you know, thought

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Jesus Christ had deity. I mean, it's just insane when we call ourselves Christian and we don't even hold to these basic truths.

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And I'm wondering if this has a little bit to do with it too, not only, uh,

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James, but as a whole, and maybe I'll just get your opinion on this. Do you, do you feel that you come across that at all to where we have, uh,

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I say easy believism, but that's kind of a term of the nineties and before, but this thing of where we, we just think a head knowledge and look at, we want it where theology means to know

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God, right. To understand him. We want to have a head knowledge of him, but just to say, do you believe in this thing that there is a creator or there's this

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Jesus. And it does such a disservice to so many sitting in the pews to where there's no further expectation, discipleship.

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There's no further explanation. There's no diving into theology or doctrine or why, or the sufficiency of the

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Bible. And I feel like the only way that we can curb that, if you do agree that that is happening in America is discussions like this and actually doing what you do in your church, where you're digging down into the context of the word.

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Um, or what do you think? Do you think America has a chance here? Are we going to recover from this, uh, easy believism

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Christianity that's plaguing our nation? I feel like, uh, probably not. That's that part is, is that the world has been dealing with this since,

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I mean, honestly go read the new Testament epistles. It started there. Paul had to deal with it. James had to deal with it.

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You know, uh, um, the way I, the way I view this, which is kind of how the reformers have viewed this.

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If you read the confessions, like, uh, if you read learning about the confession 5 .5, they talk about how Christians at times can fall away and be trapped in sin.

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And God uses that a way to expose them to the frailties of their own life and to cause greater dependence upon him.

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Uh, Paul says it this way. I think this is where they get that verse. It's in Ephesians chapter four. He says that we can be tossed about by every wind of doctrine.

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And you know what happens? He says the church, when it functions properly, when elders and teachers are shepherding and grounding people in the sufficiency of Christ, what's the first three chapters of Ephesians about the sufficiency of Christ?

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He says, well, when they are, when they are properly administrating God's word, sufficiently teaching them about union in Christ, they will not be tossed about by everyone to doctrine and teaching.

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I think there's a lot of true believers who are in the pew who have been tossed about by all kinds of crazy bad doctrine, because they've not been shepherded.

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Well, they've not been sitting underneath the healthy preaching of the gospel. And they don't agree with God on their life.

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And James is coming in and saying, you need to agree with God. And here, here's bro. Here here's, I'll say this, this might be controversial.

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I don't think people need to be yelled at. And I don't think they need to be told, how dare you? Because that's not what

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James does. You need to pay attention to what James does. He says, but there's more grace.

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The same grace that saved them is the same grace that will repent them. That's what's crazy.

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So think about it this way. He says to them in chapter four, he says, you are adulterous enemies of God by the way that you have acted.

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He's referencing even like what Israel was. He uses this language of Israel when they adulterated themselves. And they broke the covenant.

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He says, that's how you are in your current actions in each other. And he says to them, draw near to God.

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And what is he going to do? Like the prodigal son, as he walks home, the father runs out to him. God will draw near to you.

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People need to hear the grace of God so they can repent. This is why Roman says it this way.

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Paul says that the kindness of God is meant to lead to repentance. So we need to be, as Paul says, heralders of the gospel.

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I think the greatest thing that's happening in the pulpit today is that gospel is not being preached.

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And that's why people sit there and flounder because they aren't being drawn. Put it this way. How do you lay aside the weight and the sin that's easily besetting you?

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Looking unto what? Jesus, right? Amen. There you go. And you want to know what?

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We've said this often, especially over the last two years with what's going on. Anytime that there has been a time of persecution or resistance, the church has always flourished like a refining fire.

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John, so give us the 60 second or less as we wrap it up here. Someone's working through the Bible. They get to James.

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How should they view it? How should they read it? Give us just a big overview as we cap this off to the listener that goes,

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I've always been kind of a little confused by the language in James. How do they look at it? 60 seconds or less.

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So we have this natural tendency to protect ourselves and to look at our significance.

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And we want wealth and we want notoriety. And James comes in and says, he goes, humble yourselves and God will exalt you.

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He says, all of your inheritance is wrapped up in Christ. He will preserve you. He will take care of you. You can literally let go of this world.

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And because to love your neighbor or to love your brother, that is sinful. It requires you to lay down your life.

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What does Jesus say? The greatest example is love is to lay down your life for someone else.

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That's what James is trying to help them understand. He literally says, God has you preserved on this world. Your inheritance is waiting for you in heaven.

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I'm going to protect you now. You have every capacity to love one another. That's the whole point of it.

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He's actually securing them in Christ. And then goes, now, listen, you need to go, not be partial and love one another, care for one another as you all are suffering right now.

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Awesome. All right, John, tell everyone where they can find you, what you got going on, how they can connect with you on social media.

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We're going to link all this stuff up, obviously, when the podcast, the YouTube, everything goes out. But let the people know what you got going on.

37:05

Yeah, theocast .org. We did an episode on this on James chapter two. If you want to hear a little bit more about that with my co -host and James, probably by the time this comes out,

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I'll be finished with James, finishing up chapter five here pretty soon. You can go to our website, gracereform .org

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to get more about that. And then all of my socials and all that are on both Theocast and Grace Reform. So you can go and check me out there.

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I post a lot of weird, nerdy stuff. So you may not want to follow me. No, I do follow you and I do like it.

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And John, we appreciate you as a brother in the Lord. I know the listeners do. I know I do love getting my midweek sermon in with Mr.

37:38

John Moffitt. And guys, thank you so much for listening to another episode of Dead Man Walking Podcast. As always, you can check out more about us at dmwpodcast .com.

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And we really appreciate the comments, the questions, the suggestions. We actually had someone just a few weeks ago.

37:55

John, tell us, hey, when are you going to have that John guy back on? I've been listening for a year and a half and I haven't heard him. I said, well, there's always an open door for John Moffitt and the

38:03

Theocast crew. So guys, thanks so much for listening. As always, God bless. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Dead Man Walking Podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips, or email us at deadmanwalkingpodcast at gmail .com.