Q&A: Confessional Theology, Justification & Sanctification, and Church Discipline

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we do our first ever live online Q &A. We, the hosts, talked about it and thought it would be a good idea in light of the COVID -19 pandemic and all of the quarantine stuff that's going on for many of us, that this could be a way to get people together, get the Theocast community together online and take some questions and have an encouraging conversation.

And there were some wonderful questions submitted. We only got to a few of them, unfortunately. We talked about a number of things, including confessional theology and how that's a help to us in times like now.

We considered church discipline, justification and sanctification. And then in the members podcast, we talked about how to preach obedience in light of the sufficiency of Christ. And we also talked some about fear-based preaching.

We hope that this conversation and these Q &As that we do are an encouragement to you. Stay tuned.

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Theocast’s Live Online Q&A During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota. And myself, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. Brethren, we have met to podcast today and it is a special day here at Theocast.

This is a podcast unlike any other, at least in our experience up to now. We are doing this live in front of a number of our friends and brothers and sisters in the faith. So I don't know about you, I'm feeling a little bit of extra pressure.

We don't get to do as much editing as we might normally do in a regular show. And there is a lot going on on my screen right now. Messages flying in and yeah, the extrovert in me wants to reply to all of them and I'm gonna fight that desire so that we can try to stay on task.

That's right.

John, why don't you, brother, help the listeners who are not partaking in this live webinar thing we've got going on, understand what we're doing today and why we're doing it?

Well, as everybody already knows, the whole world is feeling the effects of the coronavirus, specifically the majority of our listeners. We do have listeners all over the world, but majority of them here in the United States.

And most people are at home with extra time. And so we thought we would participate with them in any way that we can, provide more content. We're also gonna open up a lot of the stuff that we have for our membership for free because we know that people are scouring for good information, especially when it seems like most information that is on the internet right now is negative and full of fear.

And there is much to be afraid of, but I think at the same time, we need to be feeding ourselves with good information, objective realities that we remind ourselves that we are within the hand of God and can be safe within his hands, yet at the same time, we use wisdom.

So speaking of, we did a podcast, when was that, yesterday? Tuesday. I can't remember. Time has gone by fast. We did a podcast on joy in the midst of suffering and it's in reference to the coronavirus.

So today we thought we'd do something different. For those of you that are at home, we thought we'd do something live, use technology, using Zoom. So we're using Zoom webinar. We have almost over 50 people right now that are in here asking questions, all kinds of great comments.

And so if you wanna ask your question, just to remind you if you're new, you can come over here at the bottom where it says questions and you will be able to ask those down there. If you're interested in being on the podcast, on the audio, just let us know by putting you're willing to ask your question audibly and we will take that and open it up and let you answer.

So that's kind of where we're at today. We picked three questions that were emailed in to start us off and then we will grab several of these that are being put in at the moment. There is absolutely no way we're gonna be able to get to all of these.

So we're gonna spend about 45 minutes answering your questions and then we'll go over to the members podcast and do another 20 ish minutes. Well, you never know how long that podcast will be. It just kind of gets to the point until we're done.

It depends on how spicy the questions are.

It's at least 15 minutes.

And how fired up we get, I guess.

Well, and if we have anything that we, if we don't get recording right away, we run out of time. So I think we're good today. So Jimmy, why don't you go ahead and start us with our first question.

Sure, glad to do that. So this one comes from Stuart and his question is this, would be interested to hear how confessionalism strengthens us in the middle of this pandemic, which for me, and I'm sure others has brought up much unbelief and doubt that was present, but not stirred up in the heart until trouble came.

So that's a great question, Stuart. And actually yesterday, the podcast that we three recorded, we talk about this a little bit, but a great source of comfort that all three of us found actually came from the confession that our church uses, which is the 1689 London Baptist Confession.

Chapter five talks about divine providence. And in paragraph one of chapter five, I won't read it per se, but it talks about the infinite power and wisdom of God that he upholds and directs and governs all things and all creatures.

But specifically, I think what we found in paragraph three was particularly helpful when he said, or when the framers of this confession, when they write, in his ordinary providence, God makes use of means, though he is free to work apart from them, beyond them, and contrary to them at his pleasure.

And so as we think about the global pandemic that has really brought the world to its collective knees, it's difficult and being guys that rely heavily on the ordinary means of grace that God uses, the preaching of the word, the words visible at baptism and the Lord's table to kind of strengthen, create, establish our faith.

It's painful for us as pastors to not be able to gather with our people. And yet we also understand that, Justin coined this probably yesterday, where we are in extraordinary times, God will also give us extraordinary grace.

And so we rest in those things. And so you have confessionalism kind of at a paper level, but you also have confessionalism kind of at a 30 ,000 foot level that the truths that we have constantly harped on in this podcast, that we find rest in Christ outside of ourselves, that what God has given us in Christ, in the gospel, perfect righteousness imputed to us through no effort or merit on our own, those things even remain true in the midst of a pandemic.

So even when things are going well, when you are able to attend the gathered worship with the saints, that you are able to have the word of God preached over you, you see the gospel in the table, even when you quote unquote feel good and you're able to function in your everyday life in a normal sense, those things are true.

But even now, when we're kind of sheltered in place, when it's very easy to be discouraged, to feel lonely, to feel isolated and to feel socially distant from people, those objective truths of the imputed righteousness of Christ to your account, they're still there.

They didn't go anywhere. You know, I just think of, you know, places in scripture like Psalm 13, where the psalmist cries out to God. He asked God for help and for faith, but he recounts the faithfulness of the Lord in the past.

And this is something that I shared with my church last Sunday over Facebook Live, that, you know, we rest in the truths that God is not distant, that Jesus is not distant from sin and death, but rather he was crucified, he was buried with sin and death and he rose again, defeated them both.

And so, I mean, just to encourage you, I mean, I don't know where you specifically are, but just to encourage you that the truths that you fight to believe that God is for you in Christ, that he has from eternity past chose you to be his own, those truths are still there in a time of pandemic.

I don't know if a couple of you guys want to jump in on that topic as well.

I'll jump in really quick, Jimmy. I think to be confessional, it might help to state this clearly, to be confessional certainly does mean that we hold to a confession of faith. And for all of us, it's a confession of faith out of the era of the Reformation or the era that flowed out of the Reformation in the case of like the 1689 or the Westminster Confession, for example.

But it also means that we are confessing, right? We are saying together, believing together, we are looking to doctrines and truths from scripture that we are to rest in and trust. And so two words that we often use on Theocast to describe the confessional perspective are that it is an objective perspective.

It is an outside of us reality. So as Jimmy just alluded to, we're looking to Christ who is outside of us. We're looking to God who is outside of us. We're looking to these great truths and promises of God that exist outside of us in our experience.

And then also the other thing is that to be confessional is to believe in and hold to declarative realities, meaning that they're done, they're finished. And so when we're looking to things and trusting in things that are outside of us and that are completed, they're finished and they're not in jeopardy.

Those things transcend all circumstances and they transcend all of our emotional volatility. It matters not how I'm feeling today or how I'm processing the COVID -19 pandemic today. The truths of God remain.

And as Jimmy just said, the righteousness of Christ for me remains, the atoning, satisfying work of Christ for me remains. My safety in Christ, my standing before God, all of those things are rock solid because they're objective outside of me and they're declarative, they're done.

And so that's how a confessional perspective gives us rock under our feet as we sing in the hymn, when all around my soul gives way. He then is all my hope and stay. Well, that's a confessional perspective that we are looking to those things.

In particular, we're looking to God and Christ Jesus for us in the midst of all kinds of storms and things that are swirling around in our lives.

All right, Justin, you want me? I don't have much to add to that. That was excellent, guys. I'm gonna actually find Marissa here.

Here she is.

Marissa, hopefully you're ready. We're gonna bring you on and let you ask your question. Marissa, please state your first last name and where are you from?

So I'm Marissa Namir. I live on the TheoCast group in Facebook world. No, technically I live in Georgia. So yeah, we're a little bit on lockdown, but anyway, I'll ask my question. First of all, I just wanna thank you guys for what you do.

You bring a lot of comfort to God's people, whether we're in a pandemic or not, you're always bringing us to the gospel, so I appreciate that.

You're welcome.

So I just wondered if you would talk a little bit about church discipline. At what point would you say that this is a pattern and not a struggle? And at what point would you say that a Christian should be under church discipline or excommunicated from the church?

That's hard.

Yeah, yeah, that is a good question. And I wanna publicly thank you. For those of you that may not know, she is one of the admins on our Facebook group and absolutely crushes it. And she catches things when I don't even see them coming.

So thank you so much for that. All right, yes, thanks. Guys, that is a really good question. I think that when you're dealing, first of all, I know every guy is gonna say that church discipline has to be dealt with patiently and it is a very long process.

Because I have personally seen cases where we confront a man who is openly in sin, admits that he's openly in sin. He's even sat down with the elders and says, I do not wanna repent, I'm going to pursue this.

And we could have at that moment just done church discipline but we said, look, we're gonna pray for you, we're gonna give you time. And sure enough, we gave him a month, we prayed for him and no change, gave him another month, tried to meet with him individually and praise God on month three, he repented.

And we didn't have to go to that final step and bring it to the congregation. Now, unfortunately, I've been in situations where the exact opposite is true. And you do that same process. And I think the difference of it is, if someone is unwilling to acknowledge that they are trapped in sin and unwilling to repent after multiple times of being gracious to pray with them, confront them, show them from scripture.

I think if you've encountered it and they are obviously being self-destructive in their sin, that's publicly well-known that everyone around them can see that this is the case. And I think you have to have that conversation with them.

Do you understand that what you are doing is so damaging to yourself and to your faith and that it's destructive in nature that the best thing for you is to understand how serious this is, that we're gonna have to one, remove you from the table.

Like that's step one. And then after that, if you still aren't willing to repent, then we're gonna need to remove you from fellowship so that you understand the seriousness of this. This should never be out of anger, out of judgmentalism, out of how dare you, because as Galatians 6 ,1 says, that when we confront someone in sin, we should be careful that we too ourselves don't fall into sin.

That's how I would initially, I know that both you guys have thoughts on this. So that's how I initially, I think, if you look at it from scripture, you have to look at comparing everything there is about church discipline along with Galatians 6 ,1, you will see that this is a long, painstaking, gracious time that it should not be done quickly.

Yeah, I mean, I would add to that. One of the clearest places that we see in scripture where church discipline takes place is in 1 Corinthians chapter five. And that's an extraordinary case where you have a man in the church who is committing a heinous sin.

In that case, it was sexual immorality. But what you see is that it was like this flippant, I don't care about what I'm doing, I don't care about who I'm hurting. And so what you have is Paul, the apostle, also the planter of that church, coming in and telling the elders, the overseers of that church to discipline that man, to remove him from the midst of the church because of the damage, not only that it's gonna cause him personally, but it's also gonna cause the greater church.

And so, like John said, each case has to be handled with extreme care. I don't think that there's going to be a single answer for every case. But once you start to see like kind of this high-handed, flippant, rejoicing in my sin rather than repenting of it and turning to Christ, I think that's when the elders of the church have to step in, not only for the soul of that individual, but also for the care of the larger flock of sheep, that sin spreads like poison.

And when people begin, in the Corinthian case, they were even openly celebrating this guy's sin. And that's what Paul's great concern was there. Now, I think that one of the, maybe perhaps to put the question in somebody's mouth is, you know, what about the person who kind of has that damaged conscience where they feel like, well, I'm always in sin.

And there is a difference between somebody who struggles with their own frame in a Roman seven sense. You know, somebody that's struggling with, man, the things that I want to do, I don't do. And the things that I don't want to do, I keep on doing, you know, who will save me from this?

You know, I mean, cause certainly we're all there. We all, church discipline is not about, you know, who's crushing it in the Christian life, but church discipline is about more so the individual, the person who is by their actions going to destroy or bring harm to the body.

JP, I think you wanted to say a few things as well.

Sure, to pick up on 1 Corinthians 5 that you mentioned, Jimmy, I do think that's the clearest passage that we can go to. Jesus obviously has some words about this in Matthew chapter 18 that are helpful for us as well.

The reason that Paul rebukes the church in Corinth, I mean, and I think he's rebuking all of them, to Jimmy's point, and to kind of expand on that up for just a moment, is the fact that they should have been grieved by this man's sin, but instead verse two of 1 Corinthians 5, Paul says, but instead you are arrogant.

Like they are in one sense, seeing this as an appropriate expression of Christian freedom, and they are boasting in what this man is doing rather than being grieved and seeing that this sin would not only destroy this man, but it could bring harm upon the entire church and needed to be dealt with.

And Paul is very clear in the context of 1 Corinthians 5, that the goal of church discipline is restoration. So I think we all need to approach church discipline with that in view. This is not a blunt instrument to be wielded around this kind of, to like bludgeon people with, right?

Like we wanna be very precise in how we do this, we wanna be gracious, we wanna be careful, and we wanna make sure that the point of it all, and we communicate this to the church as we try to lead the church through it, is to see this individual restored and to see this individual flourish in Christ.

And so I do think that the big difference between, to Marissa's question, maybe pointedly, at what point is this not like a struggling sinner anymore, like the Romans 7 reality, the Galatians 5, 17 reality, when does this become a case where church discipline is necessary?

So I do think the sin needs to be clear, it needs to be demonstrable, but then to use some of the language Jimmy used, I wrote these same things down on my whiteboard here, it's a kind of high-handed sin, it's hard-hearted, and it's unrepentant.

And so what that means is an individual is in sin, and will say, well, one of two or three things, well, yeah, I'm sinning and I just don't care, I realize it's sin, not bothering me, not worried about it, who are you to tell me how to live, I'm gonna continue doing what I wanna do, don't care.

Or it might be a posture like this, yeah, God's word seems pretty clear that this is sin, and I understand that the teaching of our church and the teaching of our pastors is that this is sin, but I don't think it's sin, and so I'm just gonna keep doing it.

That's also a high-handed approach. And also just this kind of ongoing unrepentant posture over the course of not like days or weeks, but we're talking like months and months, where it's just obvious that this kind of hard-hearted posture is enduring.

And then I think that's just very different than the person who is grieved and bothered by his or her sin. Now, none of us are ever grieved as we should be, we're never bothered as much as we should be, but there is something in us as redeemed people, and because we have the spirit and it's our inner man, we're bothered by our sin.

And so there's this constant cycle that we're on, like where we do transgress, what God says is good, we sin, and then we acknowledge it, we own it, and we repent. And we cast ourselves anew in one sense upon the mercy of God in Christ, in submission even to the doctrine and teaching of the church.

And so I think that's the easiest way that I know to answer this. And it's something that I know we've practiced in our context, and it's hard. And I know you brothers, I know, John, you have, and Jimmy, I trust you will in your church.

And it's always very sober and heavy. And it's something that the Lord does, though, use for good in the life of the church and in the lives of the saints.

Right.

Even of those of us who are not being disciplined at the time, it's a sobering reality where we're all like, man, if it were not for the grace of God, there go I.

Right, absolutely.

And Lord, may that never be me. And we're praying for our brother or sister that he or she would be restored. Anyway, it's a great question.

Excellent question.

Absolutely, yeah.

Hebrews 10:25 and the Call to Assemble in Exceptional Times

So I'm happy to tee one up now, John, on just the Hebrews 10 question would be great. So this question comes from Andrew. His question is this. How do you see Hebrews 10, 25 in its immediate context of persecution being honored in the face of the present pandemic that persecutes the church, as well as the decree that has gone out in the land to not gather?

So Andrew, thank you for your question. Hebrews 10, 25 is the verse that says we are not to neglect the assembling of ourselves together as is the habit of some. And I know we've talked about this in my own local church context and the guys we've talked about it sort of off the mic on Theocast.

It's not gone out on the air or anything. I know my own understanding of Hebrews 25 would not be so much a situation where we are providentially hindered from gathering that's being described, but it would be the willful neglect of the corporate assembly.

That's what the writer to the Hebrews is warning people against. Like it will not go well for you if you willfully neglect assembling together because this is how God has meant to work in your life ordinarily.

So this brings us back to something that Jimmy mentioned already. We understand that these are exceptional times where the government of our land is not uniquely singling out churches. It'd be one thing if the government had said, well, continue going to theaters and bars and clubs and doing everything you normally do, but don't go to church.

That would be very different than what the government is doing in most of our locales in our states where it's a broad sweeping thing where they're requesting or advising or mandating that we not gather in groups larger than 10 or 50 or whatever.

And so the way that we are approaching this in my church, and I know these brothers behind the mic agree here, is that out of an interest to submit to our government in something that is reasonable in light of a passage like Romans 13, and also in the interest of loving neighbor and trying to help play our part in promoting public health, we have foregone gathering together for a season of time.

So we understand these are exceptional times. This is just for context. Some may be aware of this. In terms of peacetime, this is the first time in 102 years that any government agency in the United States has asked people not to gather like this.

The last time this happened was in 1918 with the Spanish flu pandemic. So this is a once in a century kind of thing. So these are exceptional times under the providence of God. And what we are trusting is, as I said on the podcast yesterday, that'll come out at some point, is that in these exceptional times, when we are being kept from the ordinary means, we trust that God will give extraordinary grace.

And so we trust him to do that in these times that are exceptional. And so we do not understand churches to be violating Hebrews 10 .25 in this really unusual season where we're providentially hindered from gathering.

Now it'll be different, when things open back up and all of that, and we're back to normal life. If people are neglecting the assembly, then we would understand them to be in violation of Hebrews 10 .25.

And we would be encouraging and pleading with those people, you need to be with the saints on the Lord's day.

Yeah, and I would say we answer that question in a very long answer next week. We're gonna move all of our podcasts back and we'll put out the one that we did yesterday out next week.

Exactly, so what John is saying is that the COVID -19 conversation we had yesterday will go live next Wednesday. So you'll be able to hear it then.

We're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called Faith Versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And we the hosts put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

And you can get this at theocast .org slash primer. And if you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us. You can do that by joining our total access membership.

That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry. And you can do that by going to our website, theocast .org.

We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

Awesome.

Jimmy, did you have another one?

Yeah, like another question, you mean?

Yeah.

Yeah, I

There are only a few.

I wanted to take this one, right? I wanna take this one from Jonathan. He says, what advice would you give pastors who are church planting when they feel discouraged about new people not coming to church, or when the pastors feel incompetent because of a struggle with sin?

And so first, I'm gonna yell at Jimmy. I'm gonna yell at Jonathan for reading my mail. And second, so Jonathan, I mean, honestly, you're speaking to me because we, as Christ Community Church, John was just here in December and kind of officially launched us.

And I mean, I'll just be frank with you. We launched with six families and we've added a family since then. So, I mean, just realize that where we are in our culture, it's no longer a place that you go to church in order to kind of conduct business as it used to be.

It's not like a socially driven thing. But also what us three guys have kind of had offline conversations all about this, about church planting, things like that. And one of the things we continually circle back to is that it's very easy to become kind of slave to the tyranny of the urgent, that you're always counting numbers on a Sunday morning, a given Sunday morning and feeling like, are we doing something wrong that we're not growing exponentially?

And frankly, I had to make a conscious decision to not really read much that is out there regarding church planting right now, because there's all sorts of nonsense out there that give you unrealistic metrics and goals and different things where honestly, you have to kind of know your context, the neighborhood or the city or the place where you are planting a church.

And so for our context, you know, Wilmer, Minnesota, is the city Wilmer, according to the last census, I'll be curious about this census, is only 20 ,000. And so we're not gonna see this explosive growth that you might see in a suburb where a lot of people are moving and perhaps they're interested in these kinds of things, being part of a church.

And so, I mean, honestly, I would say, don't be discouraged in the short term, but rather be faithful with the sheep that God has given you, love them, give them Christ, show them Jesus. And frankly, I mean, you trust God for the growth.

You know, I mean, this is 1 Corinthians chapter three. I mean, who are you? You know, you water and you plant and God gives growth. And so we trust God that as we, you know, faithfully do the ordinary means of grace that we feed people, we show them Jesus, that naturally those people will want to show other people Jesus.

And so I think there's a deep call to patience and I'm really preaching to myself right now. And then I think the second part of your question is really good. It's a really excellent question of, when pastors feel incompetent because of a struggle with sin, brother, that is a daily reality for me, that you read some of the things in the New Testament and you just, you struggle with the fact that you sin and you blow it and you blow it a lot.

And so I think being aware of your own weakness, of your own failures, of your own shortcomings, is actually very helpful because it kind of brings you down of your own pedestal as the pastor to feel high and above other people.

But, you know, as Luther so famously said that we as pastors, we are beggars who found bread and we are showing other people where they can find bread too. You know, that certainly we're not calling for a lackadaisical approach to character and to godly character in the life of the pastor.

But at the same time, what we are saying is, you know, who preaches grace the best other than those who have seen the wickedness of their own heart, but also the depth of God's grace as given to us in Christ Jesus.

So.

Jimmy, to that, a couple of comments. One, I think the most effective preachers are the guys who are most in touch with the depth of their own corruption. Because, I mean, so yeah, we all battle sin all the time.

And I think when that battle with sin is on our minds and hearts and we are constantly having to look outside of ourselves to Christ for righteousness, then that fuels gospel preaching in the pulpit because we're holding out to sinners the only hope that we know we have.

And yeah, it's a good thing. One other thought too, all of us have planted churches and you deal with very small numbers early on. And growth sometimes can be slow. It's always slower than we want it to be.

And sometimes pastoring a small church can be its own unique kind of challenge. And some of that is in our own consciences and our egos and everything else. And there's a quote from a pastor named John Brown.

This is back in Scotland in like 17, 1800s. And he's writing to a young minister in his area. And he's writing to this young man. And he says, I know, this is a paraphrase. I say, I know that you are mortified and are self-conscious about the small number of your congregation.

But I promise you that on the day when you stand before the Lord, you will know that you've had enough. Meaning there is so much responsibility and weight in pastoring even a few dozen people.

Absolutely.

We ought not confuse what in the world we're doing and be so caught up in numbers and size and metrics and everything else. And so, yeah, we want our churches to grow. We wanna see people come to faith.

We wanna see people grow in the faith and grow in their knowledge and understanding and even in their resting in Jesus. But there's a lot more to it than just how big our churches are.

And if I could just kind of chime back in, something that people ask me all the time, and this is kind of the struggle of a church planter is, are you guys exploding? Are you growing like crazy? And something I just constantly have to be mindful of is, man, what if we doubled in a Sunday?

What if we doubled in a week? The amount of pressure and stress that that would bring me, that it's like, well, man, now we've moved from 30 on a Sunday to 60 on a Sunday and who's gonna reach those people?

Who's gonna love those people? Who's gonna care for those people? And so, I have consciously made an effort in our church plant and voice this to our people that we wanna pray for slow and steady growth.

That we don't want to go from 30 to a 180 in six months because that's gonna bring all sorts of pains and problems. One of them probably being pride and ego. And so, we just wanna be sensitive to the people that are in our midst, the children that are in our midst.

We wanna love them, serve them, care for them well because if we are just aiming for growth, if we're just aiming for numbers and new people come into our midst, they're gonna smell that right away. That they're gonna start to feel like projects and not people.