Godliness vs. Legalism | Theocast

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What is the difference between godliness and legalism? Sometimes when this is asked and someone gives the definition of godliness, it actually is legalism or even pietism.

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The difference is important and the Bible talks about it often. Today, Justin and I want to explain to you where heart -filled

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God -glorifying godliness comes from and the damages of the lies of Satan, which is legalism and pietism.

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Stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism.

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Have you ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy?

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That you wake up worrying about how well you're going to perform instead of thinking about what Christ has done for you?

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It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope not in what

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Christ has done but what they're doing. We have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it.

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We're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism. Reform theology, really.

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How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like?

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You can download it on our website. Just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Today, Justin and I, we seek to remove the clutter off the gospel and explain what does it mean to seek first the kingdom of Christ?

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What is the kingdom? That's a good question. Justin, it's good to record, my friend.

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It's been a little while, but it's good to be behind the microphones again. Yeah, it is, man.

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We are not recording on a normal day, and so we're both, admittedly, we're recording on a

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Monday, which is kind of tough for us, coming off a Sunday and everything that entails.

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We're a little weary, but we trust the Lord in it. Well, and the reason we're recording on a Monday is that we're going to be guests on Remnant Radio, and we'll hopefully be able to put that on our feed as well, so stay tuned for that podcast, talking about the law and the gospel, which

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I'm pretty sure we never get tired of talking about. One other announcement for you.

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If you're not a part of our community, which is where everything happens, we've got an entire education series.

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There's a community that encourages each other and asks questions. All of my sermons and Justin's, the conferences, everything is on our app called

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The Community. But Justin, we have our very first conference. We've had some mini conferences, one -day conferences, but we have our very first two -day conference that's going to be coming out next year.

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And tell them who our guests are before I give them the dates. Tell them who are the two guests we've got in the conference this year, next year.

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The two guys we have coming to speak, along with you and me, are Chad Byrd, whom our listeners will know, and Ken Jones, who our listeners will know as well.

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Both of these guys have done several episodes with us over the years. We're grateful for both of them and look forward to talking with them.

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We're talking about law and gospel, which we're going to be doing with Remnant Radio. That too is going to be the driving theme for our conference, is the law and the gospel and things related to that.

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I am looking forward to what Ken and Chad would say along those lines.

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And I trust it's going to be a really encouraging time, not only with the talks, the messages given, but singing and just being together, hanging out, enjoying each other's company.

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So, limited registration. Very limited. We're going to be hosting this in Asheville, North Carolina. It's going to be at Justin's church.

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And so we don't have a lot of space available, so you're going to want to sign up because once we're sold out, we're sold out. It's going to be

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April the 10th through the 12th. You can register at our website. We try to keep the cost as minimal as possible so that all of you can come, that would like to come.

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And so, yeah, go to theocast .org to learn more about that. And we're pretty excited about it.

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So, Justin, I don't really want to take much more time. I don't have any more announcements. I want to go ahead and jump into the subject just because we need all the time we can get.

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This is a confusing topic, and I'm not going to do the intro. I'm going to let you do the intro. What are we talking about today? I'll try to get to it myself here.

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The title of the episode is Godliness vs. Legalism. And truth in advertising, we gave it that title because it just is going to resonate with more people because legalism is sort of a buzzword and godliness is a relatively common word that's used as well.

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Another way that we might frame this conversation, for those of you who have been listening to us for a while or tracking with us over the years, is piety vs.

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pietism. So whether you want to look at it through the lens of godliness vs. legalism or piety vs. pietism, this is what we're going to try to get at today.

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And so not to bury the lead here, piety and godliness are wonderful things.

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So to live a thoughtful life, to live an upright life, to live with wisdom, to pursue things that God says are good, to flee from things that God says are evil, this is a wonderful thing.

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That we would be sanctified. That we would not only honor the Lord in the way that we live, but that we would be a blessing to our neighbor.

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These are things that we should value and cherish and pursue. And so all of the things that we say regularly about the law and the gospel and not collapsing those things or about the utter sufficiency of Jesus to save us and what our union with him means or even the ways that we'll point out the errors that do exist in the contemporary church and how assurance is often eroded and burdens are heaped upon the saints that ought not be put upon them.

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None of those things should ever be misconstrued to mean that godliness and an upright life and piety in these regards is somehow not a good thing or that these things are bad.

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And so the last way I might frame it is sometimes when people are new to confessional theology or Reformed theology in general or they're seeing for the first time the distinction between the law and the gospel, they're seeing the utter sufficiency of Jesus to save them, there is a cage stage that comes along with that, right?

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Kind of like the cage stages of Calvinism. Covenant theology. Sure, covenant theology, all that, yeah, because you react so strongly against dispensationalism maybe.

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There is a tendency we all have to overreact and everything that we came from is terrible and we just burn it all down.

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And so any talk of obedience or any talk of godliness is legalism now for some.

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And that's not helpful. And so what we want to do is try to reframe that conversation and demonstrate how it's good to pursue obedience, it's good to pursue holiness, it's good to pursue all of those things, but the way we pursue piety and godliness and holiness and the reasons why we pursue it have completely changed from where we maybe were before.

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And so hopefully we're able to point these things out to the listener and we hope, for those of you listening to this, we'll encourage you and stir you up and make you see, man, the

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Lord is really good and His law is good and I want to live in a way that honors Him and is good for my neighbor, but I'm not doing that from a place of fear.

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I'm not doing that as a slave. I'm doing that from a place of knowing that I am loved and adopted by God.

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Yeah, godliness and pietism stated bluntly, in my opinion, are lies.

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They're just lies from the evil one because they are making promises that cannot pay out. Do you mean legalism and pietism?

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What did I say? Is that what you meant? You said godliness and pietism. Legalism and pietism, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It is

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Monday and we are tired. I was preaching yesterday and I was reading through the list of the points we were going to cover in the text and instead of saying hospitality,

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I kept saying host -a -tality or host -ality and everybody's looking at me. I'm like, what did I say? They're like, you said host -ality.

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Oh, hospitality. Anyways. Yeah, they're lies because they're rooted in anti -gospel, anti -Christ's power.

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They're rooted in fleshly power and they're rooted in the law. Pietism and legalism are both rooted in the law and it seeks to use the law as to gain progress, whether it's progress in God's affection towards you, progress in righteousness, progress in fighting sin.

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I'll have to say, Justin, a lot of times when I see people who are trapped in legalism and pietism, they're not bad people. They're not people who want to be there.

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No. They're sincere, well -intentioned. They tend to be very dedicated, very much affectionate towards the things of God.

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It could be a number of ways. It could be how they grew up. It could be they had a bad mentor. I mean, who knows how we all...

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I mean, I was raised in pietism, so that's how I was introduced into it. But it's powerful because it's been around from the day of the

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New Testament. I mean, I think there's almost every New Testament epistle is going to warn us against either legalism or pietism.

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Paul does it often. So, yeah, for sure. Let me jump in really quick for those who might be brand new to us.

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So when we say the word legalism, what we mean is that you are obeying, you are keeping God's law for righteousness.

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Like you are seeking to obey and keep the law for your standing before God. So that's huge.

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And then pietism is related, but a little bit different, in that it is an overemphasis on you in terms of your obedience, your performance, your sincerity, your fervor, your devotion, your discipline, you fill in the blank.

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That's the emphasis of the teaching and the conversation pertaining to the Christian life, rather than the emphasis being

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Jesus for you and then you being seen through the lens of him. It becomes about really you at the end of the day.

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So it's not one and the same with legalism, but they are very much related. Yeah, pietism is really an emphasis on self -examination where we're constantly looking at our performance.

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Yeah, hyper -interesting. And I'll say this, Justin, it's very similar to legalism, but it is different in that it might be pursuing the correct view of godliness, but it's trying to do it often in fleshly means, through self -discipline.

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So versus godliness, godliness, man, it's so funny how Satan has taken legalism and pietism, not the words, but the concepts, and make them extremely attractive to the believer.

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And it makes godliness seem bad to some. It's repulsive to some people.

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Right. Well, like you're saying, legalism and pietism ruin godliness, and legalism and pietism ruin piety for people.

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Because I think here's the thing, is you see this inconsistency where, especially with the pietism crowd, so think, when we say pietism as well, think like bad puritanism, hyper -introspection, where I think people are often happy to acknowledge that when it comes to their justification, the fact that they've been declared righteous, forgiven of sin, et cetera, that is completely by a righteousness that has been wrought by Jesus.

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But then when it comes to sanctification, they now are going to be sanctified by a holiness that is wrought by themselves.

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Right. And that is damaging. And what that does, for some people, it makes you this very serious, kind of self -righteous person who's very uncharitable towards others.

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For many, I think it makes you very anxious, and you despair of the fact that you're not doing well enough.

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And sometimes for folks, and this is where I think a lot of our listeners have come from, they are so exhausted and discouraged and are questioning whether or not they're even

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Christians at all, right? Or certainly they're convinced they're not good ones, whatever that means.

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And this is a result of the legalism and pietism stuff, and it beats people to death.

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And so there is an understandable reaction against it. Anyway, I hope I'm making some sense. But that's what you're saying is that legalism and pietism kind of ruin godliness for people because it does sound terrible.

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One of my favorite videos early on when YouTube first came out was this young kid, and he is handed a jackhammer, and the guy kind of points at the ground like, hey, tear up the sidewalk.

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And he goes to town, and you can see he wants to impress the boss and several of the workers that are around there.

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And so he starts picking this thing up and slamming it on the ground, using the right edge. He's just picking it up and slamming it down, picking it up and slamming it down.

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And he's using his arms as the force, right? Not a sledgehammer.

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There's a difference. A jackhammer, right? So then about like after a minute of this, you can see the guy is sweating.

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The boss walks over. He plugs it in and turns it on. And so the kid kind of just laughs like, oh, my word.

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And I think this is a perfect definition of pietism because pietists seek to do the right thing just for the wrong reasons in the wrong ways, right?

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And so they attempt really, really hard to obey God in their own strength.

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And they're always examining themselves like, look, everybody look at me. I'm picking it up. I'm slamming it down. Whereas we're trying to say, actually,

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Paul says how you've begun the faith, which is by receiving grace and the gospel, is the same way that you continue in the faith, right?

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It's the same power. So our godliness is always rooted in the Spirit's power, or walk by the

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Spirit, and you will not feel the lust of the flesh. So godliness is very much rooted in the position that we are already in.

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We are in Christ, covered by his righteousness. And so we're not laboring in that way to impress someone.

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There's nothing to impress. Versus when we're thinking about the whole jackhammer situation is we're trying to impress the boss because, you know, whatever.

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And this is what was really helpful for me when I was thinking about the differences between where I used to be in a pietistic context and where I am now.

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I still am doing the same work, Justin. I do a lot of the same things. I don't want to lie.

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I don't want to cheat. I don't want to lust. I don't want to cheat on my wife. I want to live for the King. But it's how and why

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I do it that's changed, which we're going to get to in a minute. I don't want to jump the gun here. Yeah. But, you know, with legalism,

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I think I might say the legalist is obeying or seeking to obey for righteousness.

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Right? They're seeking to obey for salvation, just straight up. Whereas the pietist is often seeking to obey to prove his legitimacy.

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To himself and to others. He's seeking to obey so that he can be assured that he's actually a

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Christian. And both are joy -robbing. Both are soul -crushing. Because when it comes to obedience for righteousness, that's impossible.

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Because if you've ever rightly seen the law of God, you know immediately that it condemns you and crushes you.

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And if you think for one second that you can keep the law, it's very clear that you have not understood it. But then when it comes to pietism, you know, this obey well enough to prove your legitimacy or to prove that you're an adopted child of God.

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Or obey well enough so that you can be assured. Obey well enough so that you will know that in the end, you'll stand in the judgment.

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That too is soul -crushing. Because the question is always, well, how much obedience?

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How well do I need to be doing? And nobody can really answer that question because the scriptures don't speak this way.

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Which is what we're going to, I think, point out in a minute. There's a completely different perspective and a completely different motivation.

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There's a completely different power unto obedience and godliness that the scriptures present.

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And that's what we always try to hold out on this show, is this other way. Yeah, I mean, you know, as you're talking Justin, I'm thinking about like, okay, so I have a younger brother who's like 14 months younger than me,

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Mark. And let's say my dad gave us both brand new, you know, trucks. You know, right when we could drive.

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We both got the same truck and we got the same instructions. Hey boys, you can have this truck. It's yours. Just take care of it.

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You know, no obligations, no reason other than I love you. That's why I'm giving you this truck. So there's two responses to that, right?

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I mean, you can have the one where it's like, man, out of gratitude and respect for my dad, I'm going to take care of this truck. I'm going to use it what it's used for.

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And, you know, this is great. Versus, you know, let's say my younger brother, because he's my younger brother and I can pick on him and he's probably going to listen to this.

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He decides to take care of his truck so that he can prove to my father that he is a good kid and that he deserves to have this truck and that truck belongs to him because of how well he's performed.

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And then he looks at me and starts judging me for the way that I'm taking care of the truck because I'm not doing it his way.

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And he's now assuming I don't deserve that truck because of the way I'm treating my...

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And the funny thing was the parameters were already set. This is yours because I love you and I want to give it to you.

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And this is what ends up happening in pietism, Justin. I've experienced this and legalism. People are so judgmental.

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And because we start looking at how well we are taking care of the truck and we're like, how come you're not doing it this way?

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It's because I don't have to do it that way because I'm not obligated to do it that way. Justin Perdue That's right.

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To continue to use the family analogy, I think it's helpful. I might frame it this way. The pietistic perspective would say, all right, you've been brought into the family of God.

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Now you better obey so that you can remain a part of the family so that you're not kicked out.

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Whereas what the gospel actually says and where we're going today in terms of Christian obedience in the

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Lord Jesus Christ is you are a part of the family. That's not changing ever. And now as a part of this family, here's how we live.

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It's a completely different approach. One is driven by fear.

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One is a posture of chasing after something that I don't really have yet or that's fragile, like it could easily just go away.

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The other, the right perspective from our vantage point, is motivated completely by love and a new identity and a new heart and the fact that God's Spirit has been put within us and that we have been vitally united to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. He is our sanctification and is the power unto it. We live from that.

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We're not chasing after anything. We've been given everything. And so now we're going to live accordingly.

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Yeah, and this is probably the thing if I wanted to, like if you're kind of been tracking with us for a little bit, pietism and legalism versus what we would say biblical godliness, it really does come down to motivation, right?

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It really does. And what I mean by that is that often when I meet a pietist or a legalist, for the most part, unless they're a true legalist, they get the gospel right, you know, as far as like how they're saved.

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I think there's levels of legalism that can definitely, and then there's a crossover between pietism and legalism sometimes.

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So I say that's correct, but the difference between someone who lives a godly life in a biblical standpoint is that they are living from the position that they now see themselves.

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I mean, there's so many titles that we're given and it's important to pay attention to the titles, right? We're seen as adopted.

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I love in 1 Peter, I've been preaching through 1 Peter, Peter says that we are royal priests, right?

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We carry out the role of royal priest. What's interesting is that Peter is connecting that to our baptism, which is connected to our salvation.

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So you're not a priest because you earn the position. Now in the Old Testament, you had to earn the position. You had to do all the right ceremonies and you had to be born of the right tribe.

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And Jesus is like, I made you a priest. I made this to you. And so your motivation to reflect

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Christ, because what do priests do according to the Old Testament? They're the ones that go between God and man. And he's literally like, that's you, dear child.

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You're the one that does that. And it's not because you earn the position. And this is so important because then our motivation then becomes 1

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John 4, we love the world, we love others, because we have already received while we were yet enemies, right?

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When you were sinners, Christ died for you. So at our worst position we could possibly be, that's when we received the love.

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So godliness is always rooted out of what we have already, right?

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So we have in the past, our sins forgiven. In the present, our sins covered. And in the future, a full restoration, completely scaled up by the work of Christ.

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So we have that now. There's nothing more you can do to increase or decrease your inheritance.

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Same with your salvation, right? Or your righteousness. That's right.

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Now, what you can decrease and increase, which is, Justin and I have been trying to say this, and I'm trying to think about new ways of saying this, because people are like, then why does it matter?

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Like, why be holy? I'm like, are you kidding me? The moment you taste and see how awesome Jesus is, you want others to have the same.

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Like, Justin, we do this naturally. If I see a good movie, I'm like, I want you to watch it. Hey, that was a really good movie.

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You should watch that. We want you to have the same experience. But when you truly understand the freedom and the love and the joy that we have received in Christ, that is at that moment we become the ambassadors for God.

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This is why we still exist and still live, are still alive today. We are to care for each other in the body of Christ and that we advance the kingdom's message to those who are lost, right?

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Now, Justin, you can do that very effective if you live a godly life or you can be very ineffective and actually damaging to the kingdom if you live an ungodly life.

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But the point of it being, according to the New Testament writers, is they're not worried about your standing, but they are worried about your light, your salt, your effectiveness, your affection for other people and the church.

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So I think there's a difference. Like, godliness is always I'm rooted and safe in Christ and I want to express that.

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I mean, just to read this. This is 1 Peter 4, 11. In order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

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I mean, that is a great explanation of godliness. Because he's describing hospitality and love and affection and serving.

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And he goes, at the end of it, so that God may be glorified. And when God's glorified, it draws the eyes of the world towards Jesus.

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This is what we want. You can be really effective at that, Justin, or you can be really bad at it. But as it relates to your relationship to God, which is pietism and legalism, it is not affecting that.

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And that's just really hard for people to embrace. Hey guys, real quick. Some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions.

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So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the

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Theocast Community. And we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there.

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And you can share it and ask questions. You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. Justin Perdue Well, and talking about the apostles right now in terms of how they write and how they exhort, how they encourage and all that, it's very plain that they ground the saints in Christ first.

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And they point out the marvels of God's grace and mercy. And here's the thing that John and I say all the time is that when you have eyes to see, by the grace of God, when you have eyes to see

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Jesus for you and God's grace and God's mercy and his compassion and his patience and all of those things, it is remarkable how that begins to change everything about you.

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It begins to change how you view everything else. It begins to change how you think. It begins to change how you process things, how you respond to things.

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It will happen. The Lord will do this work in you. And I will say this as well because the apostles also make this plain, and this is a biblical truth because the prophets write about this.

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For everybody who has come to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, for every saint out there,

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God has taken away your heart of flesh, or excuse me, your heart of stone and given you a heart of flesh. He has brought you from death to life.

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He has written his law on the heart that he's given you. He has given you his own spirit to dwell in you.

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And he has united you vitally to the Lord Jesus Christ who not only is your righteousness and your redemption, he is your sanctification as well.

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And so now, because of this supernatural work of God, you have become obedient from the heart.

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This is marvelous. And so we should encourage this kind of thing. Don't make obedience sound like a trip to the

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DMV, but encourage people towards obedience because, believe it or not,

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Christians want to. We want to obey, and we actually can now. So when we hear, we were talking about this a little bit before we hit record, take even the

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Ten Commandments. I'm not going to go through all ten. I will spare everybody from that. But just think of two or three of the

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Ten Commandments as you sit there right now. And then think, obviously, if you have any ounce of sanity in you and you rightly understand

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God's law, then when you hear, you'll have no other gods before me. You're going to know immediately, well,

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I haven't done that. I haven't loved the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength for five minutes of my life. Or when you hear, do not commit adultery, but you know that that's applied at a spiritual level, and you're thinking,

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I stand condemned. Or how about Commandments 9 and 10? Don't bear false witness. Not only don't lie about your neighbor, but interpret charitably everything that your neighbor does.

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Assume the best of them all the time. Everybody knows, I don't do that. I am guilty.

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Exactly. Don't covet. Don't be full of envy. When somebody gets something really nice, don't ever have a whiff of a thought like, man,

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I want that. And so we all know in that kind of first use of the law regard, we haven't done it.

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But here's the thing. For believers, when the law is applied rightly to the heart, we say, man,

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I haven't loved God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, but man, I want to. Or I have broken the seventh commandment, but if I'm a single person,

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I want to live a pure life. If I'm a married person, I also want to live a pure life. And in addition to that, I want to honor and respect my spouse.

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I want love and intimacy and trust and fidelity. That's what I want to be about.

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I want to be good for my neighbor. I want to always speak well of my neighbor. I want to always build them up, not tear them down.

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I want to always think charitably about them. I want to be content with what God has given me. I don't want to be a covetous person or an envious person.

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And so the Christian wants to obey, and so we should fan those flames. It's like, man,

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God has given you everything. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. The Lord, fear not, little flock, it is the

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Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. The righteousness of God, Romans, the entire letter, it's given to us by faith in Christ.

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Now that he's given you a kingdom that's unshakable and he's given you righteousness that's invincible, man, go love and serve.

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And we want to, so we should talk like that. I'm by nature not a perfectionist.

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I've been around them. And I am, and this is why some of our friendships...

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Actually, yeah, it's funny because we make fun of each other. Even when I go to your house, I mess with your desk, and I think it's funny.

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My office is like, it's a reflection of my personality, and it's a reflection of your personality.

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But this is separate from a spiritual... There's a sense where I've learned life by failing forward, but I've always had a motivation that keeps me allowed to keep...

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Even when I fail, it doesn't crush me to the moment where I don't want to get back up and I don't want to try again.

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And I have to have something that motivates me. And Justin and I realized really early on that I'm not a rule keeper.

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And that's part of the personality of kind of like a perfectionist. They enjoy rules because rules help them feel safe and in control.

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Or it helps you feel a sense of achievement. And I just... Yeah, like I've done... I'm not a rule keeper, and I don't feel like I have to...

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I need check marks and all this kind of stuff. But I'm a very passionate person, and I'm very motivated.

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And to be honest with you, I really struggled with Christianity early on because I just felt like it was, don't mess up.

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If you want God's favor in your life, and you want to end up having a good life...

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Go ahead. Christian living is absence from sin. Full stop. When I have guys in my office, and they're struggling with looking at things on the internet,

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I'm like, do you want to live the rest of your life trying not to do that? I mean, this sounds defeating.

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It's like, great, I made it 40 years of my life, and I never did that. It's like... And the great defining thing in your life is something that you've not done.

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That's how righteous self -righteousness comes. It's like, I've made it. This is what I've done.

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Versus when I think about the way in which my God loves me, how

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Jesus is just this precious and tender friend, where he treats me as his brother, and he wants to hear all of my struggles.

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And he's like, no matter what, John, no matter what happens in this life, you are safe and secure, my beloved child.

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You know what? That just gets me all kinds of excited. And I am like, man,

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I'm with you, Justin. It's like, I want to love my wife as Christ loves the church, and I'm going to fail about a thousand times today, but I got all the motivation in the world to get back up and try again, because he loves me, and I want her to feel that love, and I want my kids to feel that love, and I want my neighbor at the gas station to feel that love.

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And I'm going to fail, but I have this motivation that I just want them to have what

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I have. And I know they'll get it if they get it through Christ. And Christ says, look, the way that the world gets me is through you, the way that you love and tell the truth.

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And so I look at godliness as giving away what I already received, versus godliness as trying to achieve or maintain something.

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I can't achieve it. I'm not good enough. No, that's right.

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We say this a lot. It's maybe been a while since we've said it. This is Martin Luther, but it bears repeating.

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God does not need your good works, but your neighbor sure does. And so that's what you're highlighting, is we're not obeying so that the

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Lord will think well of us, or we're not obeying so that we might have God's favor. He's already told us how he feels about us in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. He's already told us that we're eternally secure. And so now we go and we seek to obey or live righteous lives and flee from sin.

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Yes, it's for our good, because our lives will go better. They do. In my experience, my life goes a lot better.

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And then, in addition, alongside that, and I think the real point of sanctification is for the building up of those around you.

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You become a conduit of the Lord's grace and mercy to others. You become a blessing.

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I mean, I know that can be abused, hashtag be a blessing or whatever, but you become a blessing to people. You really do.

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And you're the kind of person that people want to be near. Because, man, when I'm near him, when

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I'm near her, when I'm with this individual, gosh, it's good to be in their presence.

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And we talk about things. We ebb and flow. Yeah, we laugh and we enjoy each other, but we talk about things that really do affect my heart and my mind and my day -to -day living.

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I mean, that's what we all want to be, right? And I want to surround myself with those kinds of people.

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So, like you're saying, it's not a matter of standing. It's not a matter of security, but it is a matter of effectiveness, and it's a matter of the building up of the body of Christ, and it's a matter of loving our neighbor so that in the day of the

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Lord's visitation, he might be glorified. Yeah, I mean, this verse just sits in the back of my heart constantly.

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When Peter's like, go through suffering, and here's all the ways you'll suffer through government, through relationships, through your job, your employment, and then it says be ready to give an answer of the hope that lies within you.

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Why? Because we are living godly lives based upon hope, Justin. Set your hope fully on the grace that is to come, right?

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He says, be sober -minded, be watchful, and set your hope fully on the grace that is to come. Why? Well, because we are saved by grace, we are sustained by grace, and we are going to be transformed by grace, right?

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We're going to be finally in glory by God's grace. So our hope is always in front of us.

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Therefore, we suffer, we endure, we in love based upon grace, not achievement, right?

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Grace is to receive that which you did not earn. And so I just want to encourage anyone who's like, I don't want to do pietism, but I don't have a motivation to be godly.

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And my encouragement to you is where that motivation comes from, like 2 Corinthians 3, when it says that we look at the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, that's what draws us to him.

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We want to be like him because he's wonderful and glorious. And so be in a church, be around people who love

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Christ. The motivation, we all need to obey. I'm going to tell you this right now. So Justin, you and I are not antinomians.

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We want you to obey from the heart fully as best you can through the power of the Spirit. But to do that, you need the motivation, and the motivation always comes from the gospel.

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So my encouragement to you is be in a good gospel -preaching church. Justin, any final words? Justin Perdue No, build your house upon the rock.

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Build the house of your life upon the rock, which is not your obedience, it's Christ's obedience. It's Christ's righteousness.

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But then as you stand there, as you live life, as you've been pulled upon to the rock that is higher than you, then now that you know rest and peace and eternal security and joy in the

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Lord, go and love and serve and do. Because that's what the Lord has called us to, and it really is a joy to do that, and a joy to love and serve your neighbor in those ways.

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If any of you listening to us are preachers or pastor types out there, my last word too is if you want to see obedience and you want to see sanctified people in your church, you better preach

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Jesus. Because Christ in Him for us is the only power under sanctification that I have ever known.

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Through willpower and discipline and all that kind of stuff and beating people up with the law, you can produce some folks who will get in line.

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But it is not the kind of sanctification and obedience that we're talking about. Because what we're talking about is supernatural, and it is the work of God in the hearts of His people as Christ has held out to them.

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Dear believer, obey not to reach the King, but obey because the

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King reached you and loves you and transformed you. That's why we obey.

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Amen. Well, thank you for listening, and thank you for being a part of this ministry. We'd love to see you inside the

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Community app. There's well over 1 ,500 people in there now. It's growing, and it's a great, safe community. As Justin always says, it's like Facebook but better with no ads.

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So there's the last ad for the day. We'll see you guys, Lord willing, in the presence of our King. But if not there, we'll have another podcast for you next week,

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Lord willing. See you later. Hey, everyone. Before you go, Justin and I first wanted to say thank you. And if this has been encouraging to you in any way, please feel free to share it.

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But we also need your support, and it's when you give that it really helps us financially reach more people.

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So the next time you consider giving to a ministry, we hope that you would pray about Theocast and partner with us as we share the gospel around the world.