SRR 106 John Piper and the Decline of Sola Fide at Final Judgment, Part 4

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone.
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When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the error and combating the error.
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We are unabashedly, unashamedly, Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make,
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I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.
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We are polemical and polarizing, Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing.
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It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Jesus said,
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Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.
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It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. The new perspective on Paul of E .P.
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Sanders, James D .D. Dunn, and N .T. Wright also attacked justification by faith alone.
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These are popular in the Reformed communities. These teachings have become popular in Reformed and Presbyterian churches and have caused great spiritual harm to many, as they are soul damning heresies.
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However, it is not just the Reformed and Presbyterian churches which have been afflicted with heresy, but even the
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Neo -Reformed or Neo -Puritan teachers and the Neo -Calvinist movement within the Baptist churches have begun to promulgate a similar teaching, as seen in the writings of John Piper and Thomas Schreiner.
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In the foreword to Schreiner's book, Faith Alone, The Doctrine of Justification, What the Reformers Taught and Why It Still Matters, John Piper writes,
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As Thomas Schreiner says, the book tackles one of the fundamental questions of our human condition.
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How can a person be right with God? The stunning Christian answer is, sola fide, faith alone.
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But be sure you hear this carefully and precisely. He says, write with God by faith alone, but not attain heaven by faith alone.
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There are other conditions for attaining heaven, but no others for entering a right relationship to God.
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In fact, one must already be in a right relationship with God by faith alone in order to meet the other conditions.
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Schreiner, who wrote the book, Piper wrote the foreword, in the work already cited, also makes statements which undermine justification and salvation.
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In his chapter, Righteousness is Eschatological, Schreiner states, yet another piece of evidence points to the eschatological character of justification.
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The Bible speaks of Jesus Christ being justified or acquitted at his resurrection, 1
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Timothy 3 .16. Further on, he writes, Believers in Jesus Christ are now justified through faith in Jesus Christ.
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They are justified by faith alone by virtue of Christ's death for their sins and his resurrection for their justification,
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Romans 4 .25. Still, they look forward to the day when the declaration will be announced publicly and to the entire world.
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In this sense, as many scholars attest, justification is an already, but not yet, reality.
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Later in his chapter, The Role of Good Works in Justification, Schreiner continues to speak of final justification and salvation, meanwhile attacking faith as belief.
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When some hear the Reformation cry of sola fide, faith alone, they assume that it means that good works are an optional part of the
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Christian life or that they play no role at all in our final justification or salvation.
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The New Testament clearly teaches that bare faith cannot save and that works are necessary for final justification or final salvation.
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Here it is. Works are necessary for final justification. That once -for -all declaration isn't once -for -all, according to Schreiner and Piper.
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Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the podcast. My name is Tim Shaughnessy and I am here with my co -host,
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Carlos Montijo, and you guys are listening to Semper Reformanda Radio. So, real quickly, if you would like to give us a call, you can call us at 915 -302 -0915 or you can email us at thorncrownministries at gmail .com.
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So, as you probably already guessed, we are going to tackle the John Piper issue again.
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This is going to be number four in our series. And some people might be asking, why are you guys still talking about this?
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And, you know, it's interesting to point out that the Norman Shepard controversy, I think it took like seven years for everything to, for them to actually go through the controversy.
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And then even then it wasn't handled correctly. These controversies, they're not settled overnight because it takes a long time to work out the implications of the false teaching.
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And that's really what we're doing. We're working out the implications of John Piper's false teaching. We're trying to address a lot of our critics and a lot of the defenders and what they say.
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And so there's a reason we played this clip because we're going to make a point about this.
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But first, Carlos, let me hand it off to you. It's great to be recording with you again.
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I've missed a couple of them. And big thanks to you for doing the interview with Ryan Denton and also with Hiram Diaz.
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Both great guys and big thanks to them for coming on. I wasn't able to join you, but you've got some emails that you want to read and some other things that you want to talk about before we just dive right into the program.
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So let's go ahead and take care of that first. Yeah, it's good to be back on the show with you, Tim. And as I mentioned last time in our last part on the
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Piper issue, this is where we're going to get into even more severe flaws that a lot of people haven't really talked about that much, at least from what
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I've noticed. So I'm really looking forward to talking about this. And we received a few comments and emails about this issue, and so we wanted to take the time to go ahead and look at those right now.
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We got an encouraging message from a comment from Toni Brown in the
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SRR 101, which is Part 3 of the Piper issue. She says this,
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You have been appointed for just this time in church history. Hold the line, brothers. As I read through Jeremiah in my personal
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Bible study, I am comforted and reminded that God is glorified. Even when no one will listen,
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He is glorified in a believer's faithfulness. Amen. So yeah, amen. Thank you. Thank you very much,
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Toni, for your encouragement. This has been a controversial issue, so it's always encouraging to get positive feedback on this.
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And we also got another comment that I had overlooked from John Bradshaw.
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He left a comment a couple months ago, actually, and I didn't catch it, so there was a...
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He says this, Very helpful discussion. Does Piper quote known Reformed teachers like Luther, Calvin, Owen, Spurgeon, Ryle, etc.
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to support his view of Scripture? If not, who does he quote for support? So thanks for your question,
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John. And we are going to probably get into this a little bit more in this episode.
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And I think we've talked about it before somewhat, but the article does talk about how
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Piper basically makes blanket statements saying that his view is completely in line with the mainstream
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Reformed tradition. And so we've shown how utterly contrary, how utterly false that claim is, and we're going to continue to show that.
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But he definitely does claim to be in line with the mainstream Reformed tradition, and he does quote the confession.
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He quotes the Westminster Confession to support his view. He quotes, I think he does quote other authors as well.
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But more often than not, from what I've noticed, Piper doesn't actually cite any evidence. He just sort of makes the assertion without really backing up his claim.
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So we're going to get into that a little bit more. So thanks for your question there, John. We also got another very encouraging email from Jake that I wanted to read.
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He wrote us this. In response to you, Tim and Carlos, taking on John Piper's bogus position on justification,
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I must say you have done important work. I had no idea he was this bad. I had no idea of the resources of the
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Trinity Foundation. I had no idea how much Michael Horton had wavered. As a direct result, I was able to inform my brother and sister -in -law as to how bad
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Piper and Keller were and why they should treat them as charlatans. Please keep up the good work.
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From SRR to TCN, I am glad every time I see a new post.
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As a side note, Tim Coffman is the boss. Jake. Oh, man.
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He's the eschatological boss and the boss on Roman Catholicism.
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Thanks again for your email, Jake, and for everybody else for your comments. Please continue to give us your feedback.
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We love to interact with people and let us know what you think. I'll read my response to Jake real quick.
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It just says, Dear Jake, we're very encouraged to hear that. One of our goals is to warn people of dangerous ministries and also point them to more reliable ones.
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Sadly, many of the big -name ministries have overlooked men like Keller and Piper and often assume that they are sound without warrant.
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And yes, Brother Tim Coffman is definitely the boss. Thanks for tuning in. Blessings. So, yeah, good stuff.
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Oh, man, that's good. Yeah. All right, let's go ahead and jump into this. The reason that we played that clip from Tom Giuditis, who is the president of the
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Trinity Foundation, is because we're going to make a point. We keep hearing people try to defend
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Piper on the grounds of saying that he's not talking about final justification, that he's talking about final salvation.
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One person wrote, To be fair, Piper is arguing for final salvation, not final justification.
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Well, here's what we want to point out. The question is, is final justification partly by works?
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Now, Piper's defenders will say he didn't say that or he didn't mean that. And Piper actually has used the term final justification, and he's also used the term final salvation.
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We've already pointed this out. So that is precisely what he has said, and that is precisely what he is talking about.
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Piper has used both terms, and so has Tom Schreiner, in his book on justification, which
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Piper wrote the foreword to that book. And let's not forget that Piper said,
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Be sure to hear him, meaning Tom Schreiner, carefully and precisely. Okay, so I want to, again, just read from Tom Schreiner's book, which was already pointed out by Tom Giuditis in that little sermon jam there.
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But let me go ahead and read this so that everybody's super clear. Piper wrote the foreword to this book.
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He said, Be sure that you hear Tom Schreiner carefully and precisely. Okay, so Tom Schreiner, in chapter 16, he writes,
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The New Testament clearly teaches that bare faith cannot save, and that works are necessary for final justification or final salvation.
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These men are using the terms final justification and final salvation synonymously to capture the doctrine of double justification.
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And so the complaint against us that we're misrepresenting him because he's not talking about final justification, he is.
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Tom Schreiner wrote that in the book. John Piper wrote the foreword to it. He obviously has no problem with it.
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He's used that term before himself, which we've quoted in our article on the
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Trinity Foundation. So Piper's view of the final judgment, which places believers on trial, is a view of final justification, which is basically, by him for the most part, been rebranded in the pious, unbiblical expression of final salvation.
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And Timothy Kaufman, talking about the boss, Timothy Kaufman, he points out that Rich Lusk, who is a, he's a,
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I would say he's masquerading, he's a Roman Catholic masquerading as a Presbyterian. He's a federal visionist guy.
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Rich Lusk writes, This double justification doctrine, speaking of an initial justification by faith alone, followed by a second justification, according to works in the eschatological judgment, is reemerging as the consensus position among today's leading evangelical and reformed biblical theologians.
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And then Tim points out, he says, they're not even trying to hide it anymore. So I would say this,
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I would say that some people have demonstrated such an incredible lack of discernment, along with an unwavering confirmation bias over this
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John Piper controversy, that I honestly fear that we'll never persuade them of his errors.
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And we have to acknowledge that the lack of discernment in the church, coupled with an ungodly confirmation bias, will always prove to be a formidable fortress of refuge for heretics.
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Therefore, we aim to assault it relentlessly with the word of God. So here's one such example.
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There was a gentleman on Facebook who really took me to task and was accusing me of slander, was accusing me of sin, and I'm going to say falsely accusing me, because he believed that Piper's clarification video has basically exonerated
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Piper of any of the charges that were trying to level against him. And people keep sending us the
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Piper clarification video as if we haven't heard it, or as if it hasn't already been addressed.
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I didn't really think that we were going to have to address this, because Pastor Hines addressed it on our network, and then also
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Paul Flynn addressed it, and he did an outstanding job. As a matter of fact, I would commend
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Paul Flynn's Megiddo radio episode to you, as we're going to put that in the show notes, so be sure to listen to that.
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If you think that Piper's clarification video exonerates him or alleviates the tension that he's caused in this controversy, you're dead wrong, and you need to listen to what these gentlemen say.
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Before we get to that, I want to give a little bit of a Heretics 101, a lesson on how heretics and false teachers deal with these issues, and how they obscure false teaching and false teachers.
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In order to do that, let me go ahead and play a clip from an episode on the
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Bible Answer Man. This was dated back in April 10th of 2017, and this is fascinating.
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I'm going to use this to show what Piper's doing as well. Let's listen to Hank Hanegraaff.
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A caller calls in to sort of challenge Hank on the idea that he's put out there that Roman Catholics are
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Christians, and this caller basically says they don't hold to the essentials of the faith because they deny
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Sola Fide. Let me go ahead and play that for you. It's pretty short, and it's very, very insightful.
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Then we're going to play the clip. We're going to talk about what John Piper has said. Hank, there's something that I tend to notice when listening that you maintain that Protestants and Catholics hold to the essentials of our faith, but Hank, that's not true.
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Catholics do not hold to the core essentials of our faith. In fact, they do not ascribe to Sola Fide, and so for that purpose,
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I don't think that we can call the Catholic Church a
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Christian church, at least not in its orthodoxy. And so when we say things like the
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Catholic Church, while they may differ on certain nonessential issues, they do differ on essential issues.
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Well, let me simply say I appreciate your call. I've often defined the
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Roman Catholic position as best I know how with respect to Sola Fide. The Roman Catholic Church does not hold to a crass system of works righteousness.
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They believe that we are saved by God's grace through faith.
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They believe that the faith are infused with works, and those works are meritorious. So this is not a crass system of works righteousness.
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We may disagree with Rome on that position when you get to the minutia of how they define faith and how they render the distinction between faith and works, but this has always been sort of a debate that Western Christians have had.
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All right, so that was a very short clip. This guy calls in to confront
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Hank Hanegraaff about his affirmation of Roman Catholicism as a true Christian religion.
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Notice at the end of that, this is 101 how heretics, this is their smooth speech that the
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Bible warns against. Notice at the end that Hank Hanegraaff says that this is a debate between Western Christians.
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This is a debate between Roman Catholics and Protestants, and at the very end, he affirms them again as Christians, and this guy calls in to ask about Sola Fide.
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He says they deny Sola Fide, and what does Hank Hanegraaff do? Twice he does this.
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He says, oh, but they don't teach a crass system of works righteousness. Well, that's not the issue.
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We know that. Nobody's accused Roman Catholics of, this guy didn't accuse
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Roman Catholics of teaching a crass system of works righteousness. He said they deny justification by faith alone.
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Now, I want to contrast that with what John Piper said in his clarification video, because what these men are doing is that they are obscuring their own error, and they're setting up a straw man, and they're attacking the straw man, and they're not dealing with the real issue.
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Let me go ahead and play the clip from Desiring God, and I'm going to start from where Piper says, because this is what was sent to me, works to be saved.
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Let me go ahead and play this, and then I want to point this out, and then we're going to jump into your article. So, we are not justified through sanctification.
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Let me say it again. We are not justified through sanctification, but we are finally saved through sanctification.
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That is, through a real change in our hearts and minds and lives, without which we will not see the
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Lord. Let me just go ahead and stop right there and say, Piper has used the term final justification.
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Tom Schreiner used the term final justification, and so now he's trying to say, we're not justified through sanctification, we're finally saved through sanctification.
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Well, if he's consistent, and if he's going to acknowledge what he's actually said in the past, then he's going to have to acknowledge that he also believes that you're finally justified through sanctification, and he's mixing justification with sanctification.
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I mean, it was clear in what Tom Schreiner said, and he's not going to admit that, but this gets really good, and that wasn't even the part that this gentleman had sent me.
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I just wanted to play that for sort of a background. Let's go ahead and play the rest of it.
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Now, people hear this. If they haven't been well taught on these things, here's what people do.
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They hear this, they say, whoa, necessary? You think they're necessary for final salvation?
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And they draw two inferences from that statement, and both of them are false.
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Number one, therefore, they say, final salvation is dependent on us, decisively on us.
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And here's the next false inference. Therefore, it's uncertain. I could fail.
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I could lose my salvation. I could be justified and then not be justified. The child of God might lose his justification.
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Now, both those inferences are dead wrong, both logically wrong and biblically wrong.
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So, here is the problem with this. Piper and Hank Hanegraaff did the exact same thing.
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This is really, really interesting. Both of these inferences that Piper is trying to address, and keep in mind that this episode of Desiring God was put out to address
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Piper's critics, to address the controversy. So, both of these clarifications, both of these points are completely irrelevant.
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The first one, he says, they say final salvation then is dependent on us, decisively on us.
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I don't know of anyone who is involved in this controversy and has called him out who has argued that this is the issue.
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And remember, again, that this was put out to address the controversy that he caused, but nobody in the controversy that I know of has actually argued against him on this point that it is decisively on us.
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So, who are the they that he is referring to here? And he just did exactly what
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Hank Hanegraaff did. The man asked Hank Hanegraaff about Sola Fide, and Hank's response was by saying that Roman Catholicism does not hold to a crass system of works righteousness.
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Nobody said that they did. And nobody is saying here that Piper's teaching that salvation or final justification or final salvation is decisively dependent on us.
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That's not the issue. So, here's what's going on, and Carlos, this is crazy deceptive.
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And it's almost like you have to pause, rewind, pause, rewind, and listen to this a couple of times before it hits you.
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This is the smooth speech that we are warned against in the Bible. Basically, we point out, hey, you're denying
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Sola Fide or faith alone. They respond by saying, oh, no, you're mistaken.
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We're not teaching Sola Opera or works alone. Do you see what they just did?
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We know that. We know that they're not saying you're teaching works alone, and that's not the issue.
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The issue is that you're denying faith alone because you're teaching faith plus works.
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See, Hank Hanegraaff obscured Rome's false gospel in the same way that Piper obscured his false gospel.
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The issue is whether or not you hold to faith alone, not whether or not you hold to works alone.
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Not even the Judaizers argued that it was decisively dependent on us, yet they still taught a false gospel.
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That's why Paul says he condemns them first, and then he says in Galatians 3 .3,
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he says, are you so foolish having begun by the Spirit? Are you now being perfected in the flesh or by the flesh?
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You see, they weren't told by the Judaizers that it was all by the flesh or that it was decisively dependent on them or that it was a crass works righteousness system.
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And I don't know of anybody who's drawing that inference. So he's trying to address the people who are having an issue with him, and it's so insulting because he says if you haven't been well taught on this, and he completely misrepresents his critics by erecting a straw man and tackling an issue that nobody's even arguing.
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So here's point number two. He says, here's the next false inference.
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They say, therefore, it's uncertain. I could fail. I could lose my salvation. I could be justified and then not be justified.
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A child of God might lose his justification. Well, here's what's interesting.
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Piper offers his readers a false assurance, as we've already pointed out. And as we've already shown from previous episodes,
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Piper apparently contradicts himself on this point. But here's the problem.
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It's not that we're trying to point out that his view of salvation or getting into heaven is uncertain, that the problem is, well, it's uncertain.
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That's not the issue. What we're saying is that it's completely unattainable. If these people go into eternity thinking that they're going to get into heaven by or through their own inherent righteousness or good works, which is what
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Piper teaches, then they're trusting in a false gospel. So you can be certain that salvation is unattainable by this false gospel.
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So Carlos, I want to know, do you have any thoughts on this? I mean, this is brilliantly deceptive to try to tackle these two points that nobody's arguing and to obscure the false teaching because it's almost like, and I'm going to say this again because I really want people to get this.
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We say you're denying faith alone. And they say, oh, no, no, no.
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We're not teaching works alone. And it's like, okay, we didn't accuse you of teaching works alone.
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We accused you of denying faith alone because you're adding works. We know you're not teaching works alone.
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You're teaching. We know that you're not teaching that it's decisively dependent on us. You'll give credit to God's grace and faith.
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And you'll say all of those things, but you're adding works. So you're denying faith alone.
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So did you have anything to say on that? Because if not, then I want to talk.
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I want to play the clip where Piper boasts that his view is right in line with Reformed Orthodoxy.
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Yeah. So I remember we critiqued that clip from Hanegraaff in the previous episode that we did on Hanegraaff.
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So if you want to check that out, you can go back and listen to that. And just to make a few distinctions, so I know, yeah, they're both like sort of creating scarecrows and red herrings.
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But there's a slight difference with how, with why Hank is doing it as opposed to why
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Piper is doing it. Because Hank, the reason he's apostate now is because he has dethroned the doctrine of justification from a primary to a secondary issue.
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So he allows you to have some works, not a crass system of works, right?
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Just as if it was completely 100 % works. But you can have some works as long as it's not a crass works only system, which makes, he's making it a secondary issue.
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And that's why he's apostate, because justification is not a secondary issue that you can disagree on with respect to how much works contribute to your justification.
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It's 100 % Christ alone. And Hanegraaff denies that.
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And so another thing, so Piper doesn't agree with that. He would probably say that it's a primary issue.
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However, and we've already pointed this out, and I don't know why people have criticized us for denying that Piper acknowledges justification by faith alone, because he does.
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The problem is that he's a both and kind of guy, and you can't have it both ways because these are mutually exclusive systems.
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And so Piper says, well, justification is by faith alone, but salvation is by, a final salvation is faith and works, inherent righteousness required.
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And so that's a false dichotomy, like we've been pointing out repeatedly, and you can't have it both ways.
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Yeah, that's good. So let's go ahead and jump into this. I got another comment from somebody, and we're going to jump into your article now.
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Somebody posted on my timeline, hashtag read
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Jonathan Edwards. And then I joked with this individual, and I said, at least you didn't say
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Daniel Fuller, because Daniel Fuller just outright denied the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
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But then he says, Tim, I think that you're viewing this through the eyes of the reformers instead of the
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Puritans view of justification. Piper is using Edwards language. So we're viewing this through the lens of the reformers, and we should be viewing this through the lens of the
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Puritans. And I wrote back and I said, well, then there shouldn't be an issue. After all, it was
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Piper who boasted that his view is the view of the entire mainstream of reformed theology.
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The other thing that I want to point out is just the obvious flaw in this thinking, because if the reformers and the
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Puritans are at odds with the doctrine of justification, then we've got some serious issues.
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And you shouldn't have to go and read basically every
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Puritan to make a case for Piper. But I want to play the clip.
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And this is from the same Desiring God episode. Just listen to what
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Piper says about his position being right in line with reformed theology.
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Now the question rises, how do our good deeds then fit with justification and final salvation?
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And my answer is, and it's the answer of the entire mainstream of the reformed tradition.
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And really not just Calvinists would talk this way. Many others would as well.
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All right. So you just heard him say, my answer is, and it's the answer of the entire mainstream of reformed tradition.
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And not really just Calvinists would talk this way. Many others would as well.
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So you can't tell me I need to read Jonathan Edwards or I need to read the Puritans because I'm viewing this through the lens of the reformers.
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There should be no problem because Piper himself boasts that this is the entire mainstream of reformed theology.
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And so Carlos, that's kind of what you alluded to earlier. And I want to get into your article because I think that today in part four, you really hit this hard.
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And we're going to talk about is Piper really in line with reformed orthodoxy?
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Yeah. We're going to basically point out that he's not. And I'm pretty much going to let you do like most of the talking since now you're going to be talking about your article.
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But I want to remind you first that you wanted to also talk about the debtor's ethic and double jeopardy.
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So how should we do this? Did you want to tackle that first? Because I know that last time we kind of didn't really talk about that.
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So how do you want to play this? Yeah, so I did want to tie up some of those loose ends that I didn't get a chance to go into much detail the last episode.
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So I wanted to address first one criticism, another criticism that we've received.
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Basically, some people have gotten upset that we've talked about or that we've criticized other prominent theologians in addition to Piper.
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And that was always our intention. It was never our intention to just talk about Piper because Piper is not the only one committing this error.
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And, I mean, all you have to do is read the title of my article and it says When Protestants Error on the
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Side of Rome. It's Protestants, several of them, that are making an error similar to Piper.
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The reason that I'm focusing so much or that we're focusing so much on Piper is because Piper is more carefully nuanced his view.
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And so if you refute his view, you refute the more blatantly contradictory or unbiblical views tied to final justification.
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It's just that Piper tends to be a lot more nuanced and careful and more dangerous subsequently because of that.
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And so that's why we talk about Horton and his ecumenical hypocrisy and all that other stuff too.
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And the other people that we've also mentioned. You're right because, you know, in today's episode, we've talked about Tom Schreiner.
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And so if you have an issue with somebody talking about final justification that's in accordance with works, then you should have a problem with Tom Schreiner.
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But we're focusing on Piper. Well, I'm focusing on Piper because a lot of people in my church like him.
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And I want to make a case against him so that way I can mark him and avoid him.
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So yeah, carry on. Yeah. So a couple of the things that I touched on in the third fatal flaw, which is the analytic justification of the believer.
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I'm going to read a quote in there from Piper. He says this,
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Our deeds will reveal who enters the age to come. And our deeds will reveal the measure of our reward in the age to come.
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It sounds to many like a contradiction of salvation by grace through faith. Ephesians 2, 8 -9 says, By grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves.
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It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. Salvation is not of works. That is, works do not earn salvation.
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Works do not put God in our debt so that he must pay wages. That would contradict grace.
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The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 6, 23.
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Grace gives salvation as a free gift to be received by faith, not earned by works. The reason I'm quoting this is because I failed to mention before that part of the reason why
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Piper ends up where he is in his false view of justification and final salvation is because he denies the covenant of works.
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And he also denies the works principle tied to Christ earning our salvation on our behalf.
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And he derogatorily calls this the debtor's ethic, especially in his book Future Grace. So we're going to touch on that a little bit more later, towards the end of the article, but I wanted to point that out for people so that you can keep that in the back of your head because his position on this is where he says works can't earn your salvation and so that undermines the covenant of works completely and the biblical works principle.
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So we're going to touch on that later, but I wanted to point that out to keep that in mind.
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And the other point that we discussed a little bit last time is this issue of double jeopardy.
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And so I'm going to quote again in the article where I mentioned that.
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So even when he further contradicts himself by claiming that the latter will never happen,
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Piper nevertheless impugns the justice of God by advocating a form of double jeopardy in which he adds a second judgment of believers on top of the judgment that Christ already satisfied on their behalf on the cross, as do all legalistic systems that advocate an initial and final justification for salvation.
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Piper cannot legally eat his justified cake now and still have it at the last judgment.
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So I'm pointing this out again because every single false system of final salvation or justification, whether it's
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Roman Catholicism, whether it's John Piper or Schreiner or Federal Vision, New Perspective, all of these views make the same basic mistakes on a very fundamental level.
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And one of those major mistakes, major flaws, is the problem of double jeopardy.
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Because if Christ already satisfied the entire punishment and made full satisfaction of the wrath of God on our behalf on the cross, then there is no longer an impending judgment awaiting us any longer.
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And so that's where these men like Piper go fatally wrong. And it's a damnable heresy for this very reason.
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You're putting believers on trial once again to prove their way, to show that they have enough works to get into heaven when in reality,
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Christ has already satisfied that completely 100 % on their behalf, on all of their behalf.
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So I want to highlight that again because you'll see how this comes up later on as well and why this is damnable heresy.
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I mean, it's not something that you can just dismiss as a secondary issue or as a minor variation of justification.
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It is damnable false teaching. So now we can get into the fourth fatal flaw.
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Fatal flaw number four is the active obedience and congruous merit of the believer. So I'm going to start out.
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The first sentence says, Piper further overrides Christ's perfect active obedience which he affirms at the last judgment with the believer's own inherent righteousness in his words.
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Or in Roman Catholic terms, congruous merit where, quote, the individual who did their best could earn their translation into a state of grace not on the basis of strict merit which was intrinsically worthy of grace but on the basis of congruent merit whereby
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God agreed to take their best as if they really were worthy of grace. Then once in a state of grace, the individual could truly begin to perform works which were strictly meritorious.
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So that's a quote from Carl Truman. And he's explaining the
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Roman Catholic view. And I'm going to read also where Piper affirms he affirms actually, yeah, so he does affirm he affirms the active obedience of Christ which again is he's a both and kind of guy which is it's a false teaching.
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You can't have it both ways. You can't have it those are mutually exclusive and incompatible ways of salvation.
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And so Martin Luther and the reformers adamantly rejected this type of merit.
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And this is a quote from Luther. Works contribute nothing to justification. Therefore, man knows that works which he does by such faith are not his but God's.
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For this reason, he does not seek to become justified or glorified through them but seeks
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God. His justification by faith in Christ is sufficient to him. Christ is his wisdom, righteousness, and so on.
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As 1 Corinthians 1 .30 has it that he himself may be Christ's action and instrument. So that's
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Luther. And there you go. You see very clearly how he contradicts the reformers like Luther and the
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Bible on this issue. Because believers do not seek to be either justified nor glorified through their works.
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Right. And so the people who are saying that Piper is speaking of glorification when he says that we are finally saved through our works, the fruit of faith and our works.
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Obviously, he's not in line with the reformers. Martin Luther just says you're not saved through or you're not glorified through good works.
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So he's, I mean, that's an obvious contradiction. Yeah, this leads us, that's why this leads us to a very simple conclusion.
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So by teaching that God is going to evaluate the believers' works as necessary confirmation, in his words, for admission to heaven,
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Piper renders the imputation of Christ's obedience utterly worthless to believers at the last judgment.
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What good is it to be credited with Christ's full and perfect obedience if, in the end,
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God ultimately judges the believers' own works to see if they're worthy of heaven? Is Christ not enough?
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And this, obviously not for Piper because his final salvation doctrine contradicts even the most well -known verse in the
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Bible. John 3 .16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
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This means that everlasting life, heaven, is attained by belief alone, not by belief and personal holiness present at the last judgment, as Piper claims.
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Even in verse 18, it also says, He who believes in him is not condemned, not now, nor at the last judgment.
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There is no need to show your works at the last judgment to get into heaven. It's nonsense. So, he allegedly, like you,
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I think you read earlier, he holds to, in his words, he holds to the historic Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone and he might even explain it correctly from time to time but his nuances are the problem.
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Is that what's at odds with Protestant orthodoxy? And so, his both -and view is the problem.
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That is, that we are justified by faith alone but not finally saved by faith alone. Well, you're right and as you already pointed out,
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Luther completely contradicts what he says. Yeah, and it's not just Luther as we're going to, I'm going to read on some other quotes and it's definitely not just Luther and even the most popular verse in the
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Bible, like not just the Reformed tradition, the most basic fundamental verses of the
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Bible, he contradicts both of those things. Right, and let me just go ahead and clarify here that we are not appealing to the
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Reformers as the standard of our faith. What we're doing is we're actually refuting what
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John Piper says that he is right in line with basically the entire mainstream of Reformed theology.
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That's what we're tackling, that's what we're showing is completely false. And we do believe that on the issue of justification by faith alone, the
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Reformers were correct. So, we're not, I mean, if you point back to the Reformation as the entire basis for what you believe, then you've missed the
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Reformation entirely because we are sola scriptura, we are sola fide, and we base that in sola scriptura.
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So, just a clarification here, we're not appealing to Luther and trying to pit
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Luther against Piper and saying Luther is the standard. We're saying Piper's dead wrong.
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He's not in line with Reformed orthodoxy. He should stop saying that. But when people hear that, they give him a pass.
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And it's what Carlos pointed to earlier. It's just a bald assertion that's completely false.
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Yeah, so this is to answer and partly answer John's comment, his question earlier. Because Piper misleading, he very misleadingly defends his view as mainstream
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Protestantism more often than not without citing any support for it. And so I'm going to quote
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Piper here. So, faith alone doesn't mean the same thing when applied to justification, sanctification, and final salvation.
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Obviously because final salvation is not by faith alone, according to Piper. You can see what extraordinary care and precision is called for in order to be faithful to the
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Scripture when using the five solas. And since Scripture alone is our final and decisive authority, being faithful to Scripture is the goal.
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We aim to be biblical first and reformed only if it follows from Scripture. So it's a typical, very kind of pious, you know, expression that he has there.
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But the reality is that Piper is so far removed from historic Protestantism and Scripture that even the
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Belgic Confession condemns his teaching as enormous blasphemy. And that's a strong claim and it's a very strong statement, but I'm just going to read it what it says.
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Article 22 of the Belgic Confession is the righteousness of faith. We believe that for us to acquire true knowledge of this great mystery, the
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Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts a true faith that embraces Jesus Christ with all his merits and makes him its own and no longer looks for anything apart from him.
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For it must necessarily follow that either all that is required for our salvation is not in Christ or if all is in him, then he who has
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Christ by faith has his salvation entirely. Entirely.
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Therefore, to say that Christ is not enough but that something else is needed as well is a most enormous blasphemy against God.
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For it would then follow that Jesus Christ is only half a Savior. And therefore we justly say with Paul that we are justified by faith alone or by faith apart from works.
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However, we do not mean properly speaking that it is faith itself that justifies us. For faith is only the instrument by which we embrace
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Christ, our righteousness. But Jesus Christ is our righteousness in making available to us all his merits and all the holy works he has done for us and in our place.
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And faith is the instrument that keeps us in communion with him and with all his benefits. When those benefits are made ours, they are more than enough to absolve us of our sins.
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That's the Belgic Confession. And they did an excellent job in explaining those two things.
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In the latter part where they talk about faith itself not only being the instrument we talked about earlier when
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I explained how faith is the instrumental copula. It's just a bridge that connects
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Christ's benefits to us and which is exactly what the Reformed tradition has affirmed.
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Right. And let me just also add to that point that in my article with Timothy Kaufman, I actually wrote and pointed out that Piper denies that because he makes faith a condition that we meet.
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He says there's other conditions other than faith that we must meet in order to get into heaven. Carlos, this is 100 % true.
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It is an enormous blasphemy. An enormous blasphemy. I couldn't have said it better myself.
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And I think people need to hit rewind, read Carlos' article again, see what the
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Belgic Confession has to say about this. Yeah, so this is also partly why even though Scott Clark, we agree with him largely on his criticisms against Piper, he actually doesn't go far enough.
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He doesn't appear to go far enough because he quotes this very article against Piper but he fails to mention the part about it being enormous blasphemy.
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And it's a very important reason that they're giving. Because if Christ does not accomplish all of our salvation entirely, it only makes him half a savior.
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That is to demean and to denigrate the work of Christ completely. Well, and it's to forfeit the gospel.
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Yeah, because he says final salvation is not by faith alone. Something from you inherently righteous, inherent righteousness is required in order to fulfill and to finish that final salvation, that final step.
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And so, this blatantly contradicts the historic Reformed understanding of justification and of the
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Bible. Basic Bible doctrines. So, when I read that, it just really blew me away because it is flatly condemning, you know, categorically condemning
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Piper's view. There's no way you can call this Reformed or biblical in any way, shape, or form.
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Right. It puts it in perspective. That's exactly what we need to do here for people.
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This is not just some tertiary or secondary issue. This puts it in perspective. It's an enormous blasphemy.
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It's a damnable heresy. It's a false gospel. Yeah. So, for those people who think that Piper's off, but he may not be all that off and stuff like that, well, hopefully this will help you to understand that you have full condemnation on the side of the
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Reformed tradition against views like those of Piper. So, again, if Christ did not accomplish our salvation entirely, then he is only, quote, half a savior.
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And Piper emphatically denies that he who has Christ by faith has his salvation entirely.
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And therefore, he can only claim half a savior because he teaches that believers are not saved by faith alone.
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And that final salvation requires inherent righteousness and the necessary confirmation of good works for God to allow them into heaven at the final judgment.
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This is not the savior and this is not the salvation of the Bible. Period. Rather, actually, instead it really does resonate the error of the legalistic
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Jews because as the Bible says in Romans 10, 3 -4, it says, "...who
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being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness have not submitted to the righteousness of God.
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For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." And here is what we're talking about when we say that Piper is both and and you can't have it both ways.
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The Bible just explicitly contrasted those two methods of salvation.
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You cannot have them both and. Piper affirms both inherent righteousness and God's righteousness but the scripture teaches these are incompatible mutually exclusive categories.
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To add even a smidgen of self -righteousness is to insult God and deny His own righteousness because God's righteousness needs nothing added to it.
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Period. And this is going to take it even a step further. I'm going to quote
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Horatius Bonner who was a Scottish Presbyterian, excellent excellent man of God, defender of the faith and this, when
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I read this, I mean it just blew me away once again. When I started to read historic expressions and understandings from the reform side of justification, it just blew my mind.
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That's why I dedicated a lengthy fatal flaw to this. And here's what
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Horatius Bonner says. What sort of justification does God give? Man's ideas of justification are vague and low.
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We must recognize God's thoughts upon the question. His justification is number one, righteous.
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The adjustment of the question between us and God is a righteous adjustment. The just one suffering for the unjust makes the justification of the unjust a just and righteous thing.
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Number two, complete. It extends to our whole persons, to our whole lives, to every sin committed by us.
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The whole man is justified. It is no half pardon, no semi acceptance that we receive, but something complete and divine, perfect as God can make it.
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So perfect as to satisfy conscience here and to stand the test of the judgment seat hereafter.
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Nothing in us or about us that goes to make up our own character as sinners is left unjustified.
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Here he explicitly contradicts Piper by saying that it withstands the judgment seat thereafter.
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It is an eternal, final, and complete justification. There is nothing necessary to add to it.
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Completely contrary to what Piper says about adding a necessary confirmation of good works at the final judgment.
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Totally contradicts the Reformed and Protestant understanding contrary to his claims once again about being in the mainstream
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Protestant understanding of this. It is patently false, demonstrably false, and we're going to continue to show that.
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The end of the quote, he says, number three, it's irreversible. No second verdict can alter our legal position.
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God is not a man that he should lie. Pardon once, then pardon forever. Who is he that condemneth?
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Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? That was an excellent quote by Horatius Bonner.
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And this is the Protestant doctrine of justification. Not Piper's. Not at all
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Piper's view. God's full, final, irreversible, perfect verdict. So perfect as to satisfy consciousness here and to stand the test of the judgment seat hereafter.
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Okay. We're just getting started here, folks. We can keep going on and on and on, quote after quote from Reformed and Protestant theologians just to show how badly they contradict,
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Piper contradicts the historic mainstream understanding. So you like Charles Spurgeon?
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Yeah, I like Charles Spurgeon. Yeah, he's a good guy. We've quoted him before. Did you know he's a Calvinist? Yeah. That's weird.
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Yeah, it is. Did you know that he thought the papacy was the Antichrist?
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Yeah. Did you also know that he almost explicitly corrected Piper's view in one of his sermons?
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Well, let's get into that. So yeah, even Charles Spurgeon in a very similar vein corrects
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Piper's view of final salvation almost directly by first explaining that in justification, quote,
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Christ takes our sins, we take Christ's righteousness, and it is by a glorious substitution and interchange of places that sinners go free and are justified by his grace.
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Spurgeon then goes on, he answers an objection which sounds much like Piper, that, quote, no one is justified like that until he dies.
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But what's Spurgeon's answer to the question? He says, quote, believe me, he is.
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The moment a sinner believes and trusts in his crucified God, his partner at once he receives salvation in full through his blood, not our works.
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Salvation. Yeah, salvation in full. That, by the way, is a quote from a hymn by Joseph Hart. And Spurgeon continues, if that young man over there has really believed in Christ this morning, realizing by his spiritual experience what
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I have attempted to describe, he is as much justified in God's sight now as he will be when he stands before the throne.
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Not the glorified spirits above are more acceptable to God than the poor man below who is once justified by grace.
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It is a perfect washing, it is perfect pardon, perfect imputation. We are fully, freely, and wholly accepted through Christ our
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Lord. Those who are once justified are justified irreversibly. As soon as a sinner takes
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Christ's place and Christ takes a sinner's place, there is no fear of a second change. I couldn't have said it better myself.
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He almost directly contradicts Piper's expressions of justification.
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It's astounding how totally contrary he is to these guys. And even the hymn that Spurgeon quotes by Joseph Hart, salvation or redemption in full through his blood, shows that Protestants historically did not believe in a quote, final salvation falsely dichotomized and ripped apart from justification.
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This is just, it is demonstrably false. And we could quote you hundreds of more quotes to show this.
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And you know, I want to, we should probably take the time to address this now, but I've seen people on Facebook and other social norms, medias that they try to quote these reformers or some obscure quotes by Luther or some reformers trying to show that they agree more with Piper than with what we're saying.
01:00:00
And it's one thing to quote Luther, perhaps on a bad day. Maybe he just said something that wasn't very well put or whatever.
01:00:09
For every bad quote that you quote from Luther or for some of these guys, we can give you at least 50 quotes showing the mainstream understanding of these people that it contradicts
01:00:22
Piper. You have to keep that in mind that these men had a lot to say and they wrote a lot. They wrote voluminously and maybe they didn't always express themselves in the best way because your thought also matures from time as you develop and as you grow in grace.
01:00:37
And so but for every bad quote that you might find, we could find you at least 50 quotes to show that it is contrary to what
01:00:46
Piper's view is. Yeah. So I was actually going to save that for when we talk about Mark Jones because that's usually when it comes up.
01:00:55
People send us the Mark Jones articles if we haven't seen it with and then they'll say, well, if you're going to condemn
01:01:01
Piper, you have to condemn all these other people. Let me just tell you how completely pathetic and shallow that is.
01:01:09
We're not going to play that name game. And you said, you know, maybe Luther had a bad day.
01:01:14
Maybe Clark had a bad day. Whatever. Maybe they said something that was off or wrong.
01:01:23
Let's point something out here. Piper has said this repeatedly for years and he's been consistently wrong on this issue.
01:01:33
So that doesn't go for Piper. It's not just that Piper had a bad day back in September of I think is 25th of 2017.
01:01:42
Piper's had a couple of bad decades. So that's the first point.
01:01:49
But this argument is completely pathetic and shallow and we're not going to play this name game because here's what happens.
01:01:57
People will defend Piper and they'll say, well, you can't just look at one little article.
01:02:04
You have to look at the broader scope of his entire ministry. Okay, well, we've done that. But then, and they'll say, you can't just pull one quote out of context and condemn him.
01:02:15
But then these guys will do just that. They'll pull a quote out of context from a bunch of other people that sort of sounds similar to what
01:02:26
Piper has said and they'll say, well, if you're going to condemn Piper, now you need to condemn all these other people.
01:02:32
Well, wait a minute. We're not doing that to Piper. We're not pulling a quote out of context and condemning him based off of one quote.
01:02:40
What makes you think that we're going to do that with all of these other men? We honestly, we're the ones who are being a little bit more responsible here.
01:02:49
And this is such a cheap argument and it's so pathetic because it's like, on the one hand, you're telling us not to do that.
01:02:57
Then on the other hand, you're trying to pin us between a rock and a hard spot and saying, well, if you're going to do that, if you're going to condemn
01:03:05
Piper, here, you need to condemn all these other people and we're not going to play that name game. And what you need to do with all these other people is you need to, first of all, you need to take them case by case.
01:03:17
And you need to go and see what is the context of which this quote was pulled.
01:03:24
And I'll tell you what, Pastor Patrick Hines actually did the work. He reviewed those quotes and he showed that pretty much all of the quotes,
01:03:33
I don't know if he got to all of the quotes, but he showed that they're being pulled out of context and that these people are being misrepresented.
01:03:43
So for all of those people that are doing that, the reason I'm I wasn't going to address this here, but it really irritates me because you need to basically be more responsible.
01:03:54
We're not going to condemn these people, these other people who maybe said something obscure.
01:04:01
I don't know what they meant by it. I would need to go and research them and look at the broader scope of their ministry.
01:04:09
I'm not just going to condemn somebody based off of one little quote. So no, we're not going to condemn all these other people.
01:04:15
And quite frankly, I don't have time to read everybody out there. I just don't. So that argument is pathetic.
01:04:23
It's bad and people need to stop using it. I have a section dedicated to that very issue of other people who supposedly sound like Piper.
01:04:33
So we're going to talk about that a little bit more later on in the article. So anyway, now we're so there's a bunch of older I just read some quotes from older theologians and confessions, but that's not just the old guys.
01:04:50
It's also the new guys, even Sinclair Ferguson. Most people, most of our audience probably knows who he is.
01:04:57
He's a Scottish Presbyterian. He's associated with Ligonier Ministries. And one of it in his book, in his book on anti, what's it called?
01:05:08
It's The Whole Christ, Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance, Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters.
01:05:14
That was a great book, by the way. I recommend our readers get a hold of that. And it was a very good book for the most part.
01:05:23
So in that book, he says this, Justification is both final and complete.
01:05:29
It is final because it is the eschatological justification of the last day brought forward into the present day.
01:05:36
It is complete because in justification we are counted as righteous before the Father, as Christ himself, since the only righteousness with which we are righteous is
01:05:46
Jesus Christ's righteousness. Again, contradicting Piper's false dichotomy of justification by faith alone and quote, final salvation at the last judgment.
01:05:59
Totally contradicting that. Now, there is a disclaimer that we have to make about Ferguson, unfortunately because he actually endorsed
01:06:09
Richard B. Gaffin Jr.'s book By Faith Not By Sight. So it's kind of weird.
01:06:17
It's unfortunate that he did that because there's articles, even a book on the
01:06:23
Trinity Foundation by Stephen Cunha, The Emperor Has No Clothes, Richard B. Gaffin Jr.'s
01:06:30
Doctrine of Justification. So you should check that out if you want to know more about Richard Gaffin, who is a federal visionist.
01:06:38
So this is like right in line with what we're talking about. So, Piper, he cannot claim his version of justification to be final or complete, not until the believer presents his works of obedience at the last judgment and is declared worthy of heaven.
01:06:59
So this is why, I mean, we can show you innumerable other examples to show just how badly contradicts
01:07:09
Piper's scheme of final salvation. Just historic
01:07:14
Protestantism in general, and Sola Fide in particular. I just tried to show you some of the explicit ones that really go against what he's saying, but there's many more that we could have dug up.
01:07:29
And I'll close it with this one. Here's to give another
01:07:35
Luther quote. Luther also says this, Since then works justify no man, but a man must be justified before he can do any good work.
01:07:44
It is most evident that it is faith alone by which the mere mercy of God through Christ and by means of his word can worthily and sufficiently justify and save the person.
01:07:58
And that a Christian man needs no work, no law for his salvation, for by faith he is freed from all law.
01:08:07
An imperfect freedom does gratuitously all that he does, seeking nothing either of profit or of salvation.
01:08:15
Since by the grace of God he is already saved and rich in all things through his faith, but solely that which is well -pleasing to God.
01:08:24
My God without merit on my part of his pure and free mercy has given to me an unworthy, condemned and contemptible creature, all the riches of justification and salvation in Christ, so that I no longer am in want of anything except of faith to believe that this is so.
01:08:43
But we must always guard most carefully against any vain confidence or presumption of being justified, gaining merit, or being saved by these works, this being the part of faith alone, as I have so often said."
01:09:00
And Luther has said it very often and we already showed you several quotes from him illustrating that very point.
01:09:08
So again, contra Piper, Luther repeatedly asserts we are neither justified nor gain merit nor saved by works because God gives us quote, all the riches of both justification and salvation in Christ.
01:09:23
So this is the mainstream understanding of justification. This is it.
01:09:30
You know it's funny, man, I just want to throw this out there for fun.
01:09:36
It's not only the entire mainstream of Reformed Orthodoxy that stands against Piper, but Piper should have just Googled, how do
01:09:45
I get to heaven? Have you tried this? This is funny. He should have just Googled it to get a better answer than what he's given.
01:09:55
Because Piper has said that you don't get into heaven by the work of Christ alone, that your works play a part in that, and that you're not saved by faith alone or by the finished work of Christ alone, that your works play a part in that.
01:10:09
So this is really interesting. Just Google, how do I get to heaven? The first thing that pops up is, according to the
01:10:17
Bible, there is one way to get to heaven. Repenting of your sins and placing your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
01:10:24
It should be noted that it is by grace through faith, not your works, but by the works of Christ alone that you're saved.
01:10:36
So, even Google, I mean, the guy should have just Googled it. Because this time, you know,
01:10:42
Google actually got it right. I've heard that even Siri gives a better response than Piper does on this.
01:10:48
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We don't normally recommend Google for these things, but this is funny. Just type in, how, quote, how do
01:10:56
I get to heaven? And the first thing that pops up is basically what we've been saying.
01:11:03
It is through the finished work of Christ alone. Your works don't add anything to that.
01:11:08
They don't contribute. They don't, it is not by or through your inherent righteousness, your love and obedience, your good works.
01:11:16
It is through faith alone and Christ alone that you are saved. So, I think, you know,
01:11:23
I thought that was really funny. Somebody pointed that out to me. You know, if he wanted to get the answer right, he could have just Googled it, but he didn't even do that.
01:11:34
Yeah, so what's the takeaway in all this? If it wasn't clear already, it's this.
01:11:43
The Protestant reformers never divorce justification from, quote, final salvation the way
01:11:50
Piper does. It is not there. And, you know, there is, we will eventually,
01:11:59
I think, have to get into the, sort of, the Neo -Puritan, and I think the clip you played from Tom Juditis, he kind of alludes to that, that the
01:12:08
Neo -Puritan view, because there were some legalistic controversies in the Reformed faith, which actually
01:12:14
Ferguson talks about in his book, the whole Christ. So, that's not to say that there were schools of thought or movements in the
01:12:23
Reformed faith that emphasize works too much, because there are, but those movements were condemned.
01:12:29
They were false movements. They had a false, imbalanced view of works and justification and grace.
01:12:39
We're talking about the mainstream view, the mainstream understanding. So, his claim of deriving his view of final salvation from historic
01:12:49
Protestantism is, therefore, flatly absurd.
01:12:56
And, in fact, that is what the Church of Rome teaches, which is what we explained earlier in the earlier flaws. This is exactly what the
01:13:03
Reformers explicitly rejected. And even the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges this in an article that they wrote called
01:13:15
The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. I'm going to read that now. The Doctrine of Justification was of central importance for the
01:13:22
Lutheran Reformation of the 16th century. It was held to be the first and chief article and at the same time the ruler and judge over all other
01:13:31
Christian doctrines. The Doctrine of Justification was particularly asserted and defended in its Reformation shape and special valuation over against the
01:13:39
Roman Catholic Church and theology of that time, which in turn asserted and defended a Doctrine of Justification of a different character.
01:13:47
From the Reformation perspective, justification was the crux of all the disputes.
01:13:53
Doctrinal condemnations were put forward both in the Lutheran Confessions and by the Roman Catholic Church's Council of Trent.
01:14:00
These condemnations are still valid today and thus have a Church -dividing effect. For the
01:14:05
Lutheran tradition, the Doctrine of Justification has retained its special status. So even the
01:14:10
Roman Catholic Church has acknowledged this. I mean, it's funny because they often have a very twisted view of justification as we've talked about, but this paragraph was actually an excellent summary of the primary issue that was at stake at the
01:14:30
Reformation. Even Rome acknowledges as that. So here's to sum up our fourth flaw.
01:14:38
Piper should and he does know better and he has no excuse. And this is why it's a serious problem for him because he's a teacher and he has a massive platform and a lot of influence.
01:14:49
And teachers are going to incur a stricter judgment according to James 3 .1. So, ironically,
01:14:55
I would not want to be Piper on the last judgment because what he's teaching is damnable heresy.
01:15:01
It's condemned by the Bible. It's condemned by the mainstream historic Reformed theologians and confessions.
01:15:08
There's just no way around that. Well, let's let me ask you one more question before we close out.
01:15:16
And I sort of want to tackle this because I know that there's people out there that I mean, when we say like Piper's a heretic, a
01:15:28
Judaizer heretic, you know, I think it was the Reformed Brotherhood tried to point out that, you know, people don't really go far enough.
01:15:37
They say that's heresy, but then they don't want to say that he's a heretic. We're saying that. Carlos, I know that even people in my church, they sort of have this like really harsh knee -jerk reaction.
01:15:54
Piper? You're going to call Piper a heretic? Yeah, because this is a false gospel and he's repeated it just about every time that he's, well, actually every time that he's talked about final salvation and even in his book that was recently published,
01:16:13
I read it last episode, he gets it wrong. And so what would you say to people who are just I mean, it's like not
01:16:26
Piper. I can't believe it. Like he's sort of you know, he's affirmed by everybody.
01:16:32
He's just you know, it's like how could you think this of Piper?
01:16:38
What would you say to them? Well, yeah, that's an interesting question and I think we dealt with this a little bit when we, in our episodes about Keller, because Keller has a similar reputation and he's highly regarded by mainstream evangelical circles, the gospel coalition, the
01:16:58
Together for the Gospel, and Piper's right there along with him. And these men have a lot of they have a lot of weight in evangelicalism and all we have to do is say, it's because it's
01:17:13
John Piper that it's so damnably wrong. We've quoted decades of his writings to you and his sermons to show you that all you have to do is read
01:17:22
Piper and a lot of these people, unfortunately, are just ignorant of what Piper himself has actually said.
01:17:28
And that tends to be a problem in our media social media driven society, right?
01:17:37
Because they tend to get snippets and bite -sized clips from here and there and they don't really take a look at this stuff for themselves.
01:17:44
So that's why we encourage you to read the article for yourself. Read the sources for yourself and you'll see that Piper is he has been saying this for decades and it's damnably wrong.
01:17:58
So, really, a lot of this also can stem from a faulty understanding of Christianity because you know, people have a problem with calling out false teaching and things like that and it's something that sadly, and we talked about this in the first part of the article, that evangelicals and Protestants today, a lot of them don't even know what those terms mean anymore.
01:18:24
They don't know what the Reformation was about. They don't know church history well enough. They don't understand the conflict with Rome that still applies to today.
01:18:35
Even the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges that in their joint declaration on justification that they co -operate with some
01:18:43
Lutheran council or whatever. Even the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges this and sadly, we have lost our
01:18:52
Reformation heritage in evangelicalism. It's like practically evaporated and so that's what people need to do.
01:19:00
They need to go back to church history. They need to study the Reformation. They need to look at what Piper actually said and they'll see that the conclusion is inescapable that we're telling you, that we're informing people about.
01:19:13
I'll read Galatians 2 verse 6. Paul says, and from those who seem to be influential, whatever they were makes no difference to me.
01:19:24
God shows no partiality. Those I say who seemed influential add nothing to me.
01:19:31
I think thank God that we have the
01:19:37
Word of God because I'll put the Word of God up against somebody's status any day of the week and it's unfortunate because so many local pastors are asking well how come
01:19:52
John MacArthur's not saying this and how come Phil Johnson and Steve Lawson and how come they're not and it's like the local pastor is waiting for the celebrity pastor to do something first and that's not what that's not the way it should work you know
01:20:11
Paul commended the Ephesian elders to God in his word. He didn't commend them to other men and whatever status
01:20:21
Piper has, it makes no difference to me. If he's got a doctorate degree
01:20:27
Tom Schreiner makes no difference to me if he's a professor, if he has a doctorate degree whatever they were makes no difference.
01:20:37
Whatever influence they have, I mean the rule is that from those who have much, more is required and so because they're influential because they are highly esteemed more is required of them and so when they err on the doctrine of justification or something that's just critical to Christianity, we have a responsibility to call them out.
01:21:07
I wish that more people would just do what the Bible says the more we dig into this the more obvious it becomes and the more obvious it becomes it becomes really difficult for me to understand how somebody can say, yeah,
01:21:28
I think Piper's wrong and then not do anything about it and I've had to point out to people okay, he's wrong and we're talking about the gospel what are the implications of that?
01:21:42
He's wrong in the gospel. What does Paul say about those who preach and bring to you a false gospel?
01:21:50
Anathema I mean what are we doing here? It's almost like nobody wants to touch this because it's
01:22:00
Piper and thankfully we have I am so grateful for the men on this network
01:22:10
Tim Coffman, Steve Matthews Patrick Hines, even Ryan Denton even
01:22:18
Hiram Diaz, the gentleman that we just interviewed, all of them see the error, call it out, and so big thanks to them for doing what the
01:22:30
Bible says and big thanks to them for taking up the fight with us At Thorn Crown Ministries we want our listeners to know that we are united in this fight on this issue concerning the current justification controversy
01:22:48
So Carlos, did you have anything else that you wanted to add to that? Yeah, I wanted to close with this. I think what throws people off a lot and again, we've talked about this throughout the entire critique of our entire critique of Piper People get thrown off because Piper from time to time correctly formulates the doctrine of justification
01:23:10
He'll sometimes express himself correctly, and the problem this is what makes it even more dangerous because that's not the issue.
01:23:19
The issue is that he also says final salvation requires works at the final judgment.
01:23:27
He says other things in addition to that that contradict and nullify the orthodox doctrine.
01:23:35
You can't have it both ways, and we've tried to show people that repeatedly. The Bible itself explicitly says you cannot have your own righteousness and God's righteousness at the same time.
01:23:46
It's a mutually exclusive incompatible way of salvation.
01:23:53
That is why Piper is wrong. It's not because just because he expresses himself correctly from time to time doesn't make a difference.
01:24:02
The Judaizers express themselves correctly about many things, and they added the one issue of circumcision to your justification.
01:24:10
Well, let me I might disagree with you a little bit here because I would say that every time
01:24:18
Piper expresses himself, he's wrong. The reason that it's missed is because he's not defining his terms.
01:24:26
I get what you're saying. It may appear like, hey, he's right on the doctrine of justification.
01:24:32
Ask him what he's talking about. Ask him to define his terms. He's redefined the doctrine of justification because every time he talks about being justified by faith alone, he limits it to an initial step where God is 100 % for you.
01:24:50
It's this doctrine of double justification. But I would venture to say that whenever Piper speaks about justification, in his mind, he might say the right things, but he's wrong because and people are just missing it because they're not actually he's not defining what he's saying.
01:25:14
He's not telling you he's not defining his terms. He's not telling you what he means, but if you dig a little bit deeper, you're going to find out, wait a minute, that's not what
01:25:23
Protestant orthodoxy actually teaches. Yeah, well, and he wrote a book
01:25:29
Counted Righteous in Christ, and that book got very even Tim Kaufman liked that book.
01:25:35
So, I mean, he has expressed himself correctly, but the problem is you have to, when you realize that he's not, he doesn't actually mean those things because he's adding this final salvation issue, that's what makes it so dangerous.
01:25:48
And so, that's why people need to take what we're saying and showing you these quotes from him and take that into account as well.
01:25:57
You can't just take the stuff that he says that sounds right and leave it at that and say, oh, well, that settles it.
01:26:03
No, he has to take responsibility for everything that he teaches. And even recently, he's been emphasizing emphatically and doubling down on the fact that final salvation requires inherent righteousness at the final judgment.
01:26:16
So, that's why we've been stressing that so much. And hopefully, it will clarify for people why it's so dangerous and it's anathema.
01:26:25
It's wrong. Well, let's go ahead and close out this episode. We've still got two more fatal flaws to cover.
01:26:33
If you'd like to read ahead, go for it. It's Carlos' article and we're going to cover fatal flaws number five and six.
01:26:45
Hopefully, next time, we might just do one at a time just so that we can really dig into this.
01:26:52
So, Carlos, thank you for all the work that you put in and thank you for staying up late and recording with me tonight.
01:27:00
Is there anything else that you wanted to say before we sign out? No, just that I'm glad we're getting the chance to do this and I look forward to the next time to flesh this out a little bit more because I think it's, like you said, it's very important.
01:27:13
This stuff is affecting the church here and now and it's a vital issue to get right.
01:27:19
So, I'm grateful for the opportunity to be able to do this and look forward to next time. Yeah. Amen.