What is Pietism? | Theocast

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Hi, this is

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John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I are going to be tackling an old word, but a necessary one.

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What is pietism? It's an important distinction in our culture because it's robbing people of joy.

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It's destroying churches, and it's been around for a long time. You're going to want to hear about this. Stay tuned.

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If you're new to Theocast, we know that many people who start listening to us struggle with their assurance. What does it even mean to walk by faith, or how do you rest in Christ?

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We put together a free e -book called Rest, and it's where you can learn about the sufficiency of Christ and the differences between the law and the gospel, and that's an important distinction.

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If you'd like to learn more, just go to our website, theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed, pastoral, and confessional perspective. If you want to know our theological bent, there you go.

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We are technically reclaiming the purpose of the kingdom and clarifying the gospel. I've done three intros.

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All of them are wrong. We're going to go with it. Here we go. Yeah, we're doing three intros for the triune

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God we serve. Amen. Your host today. Three is a biblical number. None other than the most renowned

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. John just keeps piling it on. And I am

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John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. This is our second episode today, which means we're all fired up and ready to go.

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Second episode, third intro. We're triple stamping, double stamps, left and right. I mean, yeah. I got one announcement. Dumb and dumb in reference. If you'd like to be a part of this chaotic mess and you've been encouraged by Theocast, you can join a community called

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Theocast Community. And it's where all of our resources are. It's an online community and an app. All of the resources we've ever created in one app.

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You can go to our website and check it out. That's it, Justin. After this professional polished intro we've done, I don't know why in the world you wouldn't want to be a part of something like this.

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You know what? We're pastor podcasters, not professional podcasters. We take the gospel very seriously and try not to take ourselves very seriously at all.

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Well, so we don't lose anybody, Justin. We're off and running. Let's get into today's topic. There's that pro podcaster coming out in you,

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John. We've been doing this for about four years together, believe it or not. We've recorded nearly 200 episodes.

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A few years ago we recorded an episode called What is Pietism? If you don't know what Pietism is, just stay tuned for a second.

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We're going to define terms and talk about it for the rest of the show. It's important. It is important, and it is something that has been pretty foundational.

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It's been a seminal thought. It's life -changing for me. For Theocast even. As we have tried to point out these categories that have existed historically, theologically, and distinguished some things and defined terms,

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I think what has happened for many people that have listened to the show over the years is we have been able to put words to their experiences.

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We have been able to describe the things that they have felt, things that they have gone through, perhaps in their own church context or in their own personal lives and trying to trust

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Christ and follow Him. We're going to re -record this episode that we did many years ago because, like anyone, we are human beings.

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We're living. We're growing. We're learning all the time. The ways that we might articulate things today are somewhat different and are going to be nuanced differently than we would have a few years ago.

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We hope this is a helpful conversation for ourselves even, but also even more importantly for the listener.

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Let's just go and dive right into our material here. It would probably be good, and I think you and I can both speak to this,

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John. I'll throw it to you first, and then I'll give a shot at it too. If someone were to ask you,

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John, what is pietism? Let's just say that there's an attender who's not joined the church, not super familiar with the church there at Spring Hill, Tennessee at Grace Reformed Church or for me here in Asheville, and somebody just wants to have a coffee and say,

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I've kind of heard this word and I've seen the little book over there on the table, but what's pietism?

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That's good. Sometimes if you can give the weight of an answer before it's given, people tend to listen a little bit more intently.

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I will say, before I answer this question, I think you need to understand how vitally important your question is, because it has changed the trajectory of my life and my ministry forever.

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I grew up in pietism. I was underneath its influence for most of my Christian experience, and being liberated from it has been a great joy.

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I'll start with that, and that creates some intensity for me. Justin, I know you can speak to this. I feel exactly the same way.

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Pietism is an old word. Anything with ism at the end of it can be dangerous, but piety, if I start with the positive, means the outworking and the outflow of the obedience of the

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Christian life. It's fruit of the believer. It's the ministry of the Spirit in our lives. It's the imparted works of Christ's righteousness on our behalf.

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It's a wonderful thing. The piety and the practice of the believer is biblical and we're all for it.

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Pietism, though, sometimes when it sounds like a boogeyman and people don't think they're pietist or they've been in a pietistic context because they think it's heresy.

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Pietism isn't heresy. It's a confusion, in my opinion, and it's this. It's taking that which is biblical, which is the obedience of the believer, and putting it in the wrong category with the wrong emphasis.

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The obedience of the believer, which is a biblical concept, putting it in the wrong category with the wrong emphasis.

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The category it often gets put into is not one's salvation, that's evangelical, that's not an issue, but it is in the acceptance and blessings of God.

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In other words, how well I perform and obey is whether God accepts me as a believer and whether He will continue to protect me and bless me.

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For instance, often one's assurance will be called into question depending upon their performance, again, their obedience.

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That's how I would define it, is that it's a wrong category, and then the emphasis is it's heavily emphasized, meaning that the constant introspection of the believer, am

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I doing enough on my behalf to prove the evidence of my life as a true believer?

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So all sermons and reading and really the interior of their Christian life becomes the most important thing about the

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Christian. Are they performing well enough? That would be how I'd first define it as far as on a ground level.

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Now, to be clear, in most pietistic contexts, Christ is preached. The gospel is preached, Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins,

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Jesus for our righteousness, Jesus for our eternal life, and we praise the Lord for that. What really the issue is,

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John, if we're going to nail it down, is the emphasis is off and there is also some collapsing of categories.

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What I mean here is that the emphasis of our preaching and our teaching and our conversations in life in the local churches is one of looking inward and self -examination, pointing the

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Christian in on himself to examine everything that's going on in our hearts and minds, rather than always being pointed outside of ourselves first to Jesus.

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And then there's often a collapsing of categories. Though we would never point the Christian to himself for salvation, at least at the beginning of the thing, we kind of implicitly, if not explicitly, point the

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Christian toward his obedience to know that he will be saved. That's a collapsing of categories and a collapsing of even the law and the gospel, which we talk about often here on this show.

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If I were to frame it in a couple of other ways, just really quickly, we believe biblically that Christ should always be the focus.

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Christ should always be the foreground and that the Christian life is only understood in light of him and as a backdrop to what he alone has done.

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In pietism, that kind of gets inverted. The Christian life is in the foreground. Christ is in the background.

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You said something earlier that's really important. In pietism, typically, our identity is derived from what we do or what we don't do.

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Whereas for us as confessional Protestants, we would invert that and say that our duty, what we do, is derived from who we are, which is we are in Christ, united to him by faith.

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So I think we've at least said some things there. We're going to continue to talk a little bit more about the individual believer before moving on to some other things.

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If you were going to talk, John, again, with this person that's new to these categories and you're going to try to put words to their experience, how would you speak it?

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It comes from a history. There's been a theological decline here in that it produces naturally, for whatever reason, there's a natural bent towards self -justification and self -effort and self -trust.

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We know this to be the truth even in Scripture because the New Testament writers often fight this.

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I mean, Jesus is dealing with the self -trust often when the rich young ruler walks up to him and says, what must

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I do to be saved? The man is pointing to his own self -justification. So Jesus gives him the law.

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So it's bent in on our pride to be self -justifying, or we might give

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God credit for our new birth, but then sanctification becomes a self -project as well, self -improvement project.

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I mean, Justin, why do you go to Barnes & Noble and there's a massive section on the self -improvement?

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I mean, it's ginormous. Why? Because we as humans, we believe that there's a capacity within us to do that.

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If you're talking about the past history of the movement, even moving into the American revivalism,

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American revivalism had a very Arminian bent to it. It was emotional and it was built on really self -repentance.

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You repent, you receive salvation. And the idea, in my opinion, from the research that I've done, the idea that sanctification is a monergistic act where God is the one doing the work, that was thrown out the window.

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And this is why you have Methodism that came in. There was methods that were given to the believer. Yeah, methods of holiness.

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So in my understanding, the experience of it, if you don't believe the work of the

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Spirit is the one who comes in and regenerates the believer or regenerates the sinner, and then the believer then is transformed by the works of the

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Spirit through the means of grace, the preaching and teaching of the word and prayer and sacrament. If you don't believe that, then you're going to put emphasis not on the power of the

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Spirit and the means of grace. You're going to put emphasis on the individual acts of the person, which when you look at revivalism and the history of it, this is what pietism is birthed out of.

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So things like spiritual disciplines become paramount. Pietism kind of drives that revivalism. That's right. Absolutely. When you look at the history of revivalism and pietism, spiritual disciplines are right on the backs of it.

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It is what ended up fueling that entire... I have a whole entire article on it. We've had a total episode on this.

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If you go back and listen to Justin and I's episode on spiritual disciplines, this is where it's really birthed out of.

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We'll put it in the notes below. Yeah. Doubling down a little bit on what you said and even putting my own take on it, even the revivals of the

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First Great Awakening, for example, that were more Calvinistic versus the kind of semi -Pelagian, even Pelagian stuff that occurred in the

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Second Great Awakening so -called and beyond, even there, when there's Calvinistic preachers like Whitefield and others that are the main figures of that movement and of those revivals, there still is this very subjective thing going on.

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It's this subjectivizing of religion where it's about a conversion experience, and then it's about your transformation thereafter.

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That's a lot of what we're trying to highlight is this emphasis on your improvement, and you need to be examining yourself.

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If you're not continually improving, you should be afraid, and you should be concerned because your legitimacy is now called into question.

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This kind of onward and upward, we're just continually getting better thing, I think that is everywhere in American Christianity.

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Sometimes it takes a very obvious, like here's seven steps to better finances or seven steps to a better marriage presentation, or in more serious -minded contexts where the

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Bible is taken very seriously and oftentimes they're conservative and Calvinistic, you get this emphasis on personal growth to where you become maybe not prosperous materially, but you become so spiritually strong that you're kind of impervious to the challenges and trials of life, and you are spiritually able to just take on whatever you encounter because you've just gotten that much stronger and you've grown so much.

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There's almost not place for weakness anymore. I was going to maybe try to put some words to people out there.

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It's like, hey, how would I know if I'm in a pietistic context or not?

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I'm hearing you guys talk about this, but can you put more handles on it for me? Before I do that, do you want to say anything else about pietism, just kind of proper for the individual

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Christian? Yeah, just to kind of look at it at a different angle, something you said, it takes the eyes off of Christ and his accomplishments and Christ and his mission.

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Christ and his accomplishment for the believer is that you are cleansed of your sins, all of the works of righteousness that are required to be accepted before God.

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Like when Romans says, we fall short of the glory of God. When Jesus rose from the grave, he brought many sons to glory.

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Why? Because they were riding on the robes of his righteousness. Praise God did that. We are transported.

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Beam me up, Scotty. Why? Because I'm in the robes of Jesus right now. So that part of the emphasis of Christ is lost, even in dispensationalism.

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We mentioned this last week. It has often struggled with the imputation of Christ's righteousness on our behalf.

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Thankfully, guys like John MacArthur have kind of switched that around in some of his most recent sermons. But that's important because if you're not emphasizing the work of Jesus on our behalf, you're going to emphasize your own works.

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Therefore, Justin, the efforts of the believer are not to advance the kingdom of God. The efforts of the believer are spent on self -justification, self -sanctification.

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I think this is important because when I say a matter of emphasis, you emphasize the wrong thing, people start working on the wrong stuff.

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They don't need to be working on sanctifying themselves or justifying themselves. Now, they do need to be working on obeying because it's been given to them to obey.

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They need to work on actually living out the love that God has given them to do. So I'm not saying don't obey.

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Opposite, I'm saying that. But don't do it thinking you're sanctifying yourself or justifying yourself because you can't do that.

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Yeah, you're not obeying for your status. No. You're not obeying in order to finally secure an identity that's already been given to you.

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But you are obligated to obey. Hear us say, you are obligated to obey. You're living from what you've been given.

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Status forward. Status forward and identity forward. That's the biblical perspective on the Christian life.

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Just a few observations and then we'll pivot to talk about pietism differently.

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This is going to launch us into our second piece of this conversation, how pietism and corporate worship come together.

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How do you know if you're in a pietistic context? If you're listening and you're newer. A few things in no particular order.

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The place of the gospel. What I mean by that is in pietism, typically the gospel is like the entry point to the

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Christian life. It's back there. It's like that, well, I trusted Jesus and the gospel was back there, and now

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I've kind of entered into the Christian life, and I'm about living the Christian life now. And the gospel was then. This is now.

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And the Christian life is now. We're going on to more serious things that matter to the Christian life.

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Secondly, is even like how the gospel is preached. Is the gospel preached to the saints or not?

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Right. Just the sinners. Yeah, because typically I think the understanding in a pietistic context is that unbelievers need the gospel.

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Christians need something else, which is being told how to live effectively and how to do things better, how to be more godly.

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That's what Christians need. Rather than understanding that the saints need the gospel all the time and that the power for their living only comes from Christ and from the gospel.

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A few other things. I'm going to kind of mash a bunch of things together. Tone, emphasis, right?

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In a pietistic context, the tone tends to be kind of threatening and exacting. It's this kind of like obey or else, dot, dot, dot.

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It's that kind of feel. Everything's edgy. And the posture. Well, it's constant self -examination.

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The default posture of the preacher and most of the Christians is, yeah, most everybody in the church is probably a fake.

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They're probably a faker, and so we need to smoke those fakers out and make sure that only the strong survive and the serious types are the real ones.

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And so that's kind of the ethos of the thing. Last one that I really want to draw attention to, though, is the sacraments and how the sacraments are viewed.

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In a pietistic context, the sacraments are made more about our faithfulness and obedience to God than they are

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God's faithfulness to us. This is why the Lord's Supper in particular was one of those anxiety -producing times for many

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Christians in their churchgoing experience because it's a time of hyper -introspection and hyper -self -examination to whether or not

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I am worthy to come to the table. And worthy in their minds means, have I done well enough? Have I obeyed well enough?

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Do I hate my sin enough? Have I worked myself up into this place of frenzied angst over my sin and just this utter desire to live for the

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Lord? And then maybe if I'm in that space, I can now come to the table and not eat and drink judgment on myself, rather than understanding that the sacraments are about God's faithfulness to us primarily and that they're given to us because we're needy and because we're weak.

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So let's talk a little bit about corporate worship, John, maybe even just a perspective on it, not particular elements of the preaching or the supper or anything like that.

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But corporate worship and pietism, I'll start us off. I think that pietism has ruined corporate worship in ways.

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That's strong to say. But the reason I say that is because typically we come to corporate worship thinking that really what matters is that we're coming now to do something for God.

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Like we're coming to bring Him something that is going to please Him and maybe we're going to come and bring

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Him something on the basis of which He would show me His favor in a continued and ongoing way, rather than having the understanding that we come to corporate worship to receive from the ministry of Christ and that worship in one sense is a dialogue between us and God.

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God has spoken, we respond. God has acted, we respond. I think pietism has messed us up in terms of how we even think about what we do on Sundays together in the gathered church.

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In my opinion, I think from my experience, pietism messes with the metals and transactional relationships with God.

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They will pound the desk, sola fide, sola fide, faith alone, faith alone, faith alone, for justification.

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But then there's this constant boogeyman that they're chasing that is running throughout the congregation telling people they can live however they want, and so they're trying to scare them out of the house.

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Justin, we often get called the grace boys, the radical grace guys, the radical grace movement.

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I think it's interesting in that every time Paul motivates the believer to obey, every time he uses grace, every time, not fear.

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Just listen to this one. This is not Paul, maybe. I think it is. Hebrews 13, 9, do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings.

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Well, then you have to ask, what is that? What are the strange teachings? It has to be the opposite about what he's about to say, because he says this, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace.

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So if you're emphasizing something other than grace, that's strange and diverse. Hey, guys, real quick.

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Some of you are listening to this, and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions. So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources?

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We have started something called the Theocast Community. We're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there, and you can share it and ask questions.

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You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. Even if somebody out there is thinking, well, what about 1 Corinthians 6, 9 to 11, where Paul says, do you not know that the wrath of God is coming against all these things?

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That's a good use of the law, right? But then what does he say in verse 11? He says, such were some of you.

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But you have been washed. You've been cleansed. You've been sanctified. In other words, you've been united to Jesus. So he's reminding them of who they are.

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He's going back to that identity piece, and he's saying, live like who you are now. Justin, can you imagine you've played football, and you've played sports, and you've watched sports, and there's the experience of the player who goes out, and he's going to give all he can because he loves his team, and he loves his coach, and he enjoys the game.

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And he's just going to spend himself on the field, and he'll leave the results on the field just because it's kind of like that.

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I mean, that's the best I can do, and I hope we win, right? Yeah. And then there's the guy who goes out there, and he's always looking over his shoulder of how the coach's face looks because he's afraid of disappointing the coach.

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So he's more focused on disappointing the coach than he is what he's supposed to be doing out there, which is playing the game.

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Right. And that's what pietism does. Yeah. To reframe that in a very personal way as a former athlete, yeah, what you're saying is exactly right.

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We used to talk about this. It never does good things for an athlete, like talk football. If you're always worried that with the first mistake you make in the game you're going to get benched, you're going to get pulled, you don't play with freedom and speed and aggression the same way.

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But if you know, it's like, okay, no, I'm good here, and I'm not going to lose my spot because of one mistake, then you're going to go and lay it all out there because you play with confidence and freedom and speed and aggression.

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And the analogy holds here. We actually become so focused on ourselves and on God's approval from a pietistic perspective that we live constantly in a state of fear.

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And like you said, man, we've been given a spirit of adoption by which we cry, Abba, Father. We haven't been given a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, and pietism,

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I think, confuses those categories. And in one sense, kind of puts some chains back on the believer, robs us of joy and peace and assurance.

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And it's not, again, I want to be very clear, it's not that we're being told that our assurance wholesale lies in what we do.

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But we are not taught properly about how to think about our obedience and our good works. This is biblical, what

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I'm about to say. Look at the way the Lord is transforming you by His Spirit. Look at the fruit that is being born in your life and be encouraged.

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Have your assurance strengthened. That's biblical. But instead, what we often get told is, how do you know you're a believer?

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Examine your life. We have completely left the realm of being encouraged by my obedience to now looking to my obedience as the ground of my standing.

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And that's a problem. Well, we've created two and equal opposite problems. Pietism believes it's the counteraction to antinomianism, to people who want to live licentious.

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They want to either live licentious or they're dead orthodoxy. And so, pietism is a response to that.

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And the answer to that is that's not actually true either. It's not pietism or antinomianism. Those aren't the two options.

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Or pietism or dead orthodoxy. That's right. Those are both wrong. And that's where we're trying to come in and saying that there is an emphasis that Scripture places upon the believer.

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We think the confessions do a wonderful job of clarifying this.

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I believe Paul when he says, Hey, by the way, when you come to life,

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God brings you to life and you can see with new eyes and new hearts and new affections. He goes, guess what?

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Not only did he bring you to life, but he guaranteed you're going to do some work that matters.

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Your life is not about, well, now you're saved. Now move on to the next thing. He's like, no, not only did he save you, he gave you a work that matters.

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Eternally matters. But the thing is, that's the point of it. It's now that you're good, hey, guess what?

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God's not going to partner with you. God's going to live inside you to go do work. And it's a wonderful thing.

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That's what we're saying, that pietism turns the whole entire light structure off of Jesus and puts it on you.

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And you're so blinded by you, you end up hurting people. You judge them. You plow into them.

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You criticize them. Or, Justin, you're so blinded you go hide because you're so overwhelmed by how much of a failure you are because the light's on you instead of Jesus.

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Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Where are we looking? Looking unto me, the author and finisher of my faith.

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Maybe Jesus is the author, but I'm the finisher because I've got to do my part. When Jesus said it is finished, he kind of meant that.

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His part was done. Now it's your part. When the writer of the Hebrews says that he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified, he kind of meant that.

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All we're trying to do is come back in here, take the clutter off the thing, and say, no, it is

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Christ always and only. He is our whole and only righteousness today and tomorrow and forever, and it's always going to be

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Jesus. You are not going to look within to find the ground of anything before the Lord. You're going to look without, to Christ always.

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There's an emphasis on his objective work that stands unaffected by how you feel and how you're doing and how well you obey today and how well you'll obey tomorrow and how hard you'll fight sin tomorrow.

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You will be righteous in Christ, reconciled to God in him, and you can bank on it.

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That is going to change your life over the long haul, and it will be because you have fixed your gaze on the

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Savior, not because you have been looking at yourself and navel -gazing at other people all the time. That's just not a way to live.

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Justin, I'll say this. There's nothing wrong. I was mowing my lawn the other day. It's a world lawnmower.

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It's got gas in it, but the thing wouldn't turn on. There's nothing wrong with someone going, well, has the

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Holy Spirit turned on in me or what? How am I doing here? I see some fruits.

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I think he's in there. I think we're good. That's not wrong. There's nothing wrong with that at all. As a matter of fact, our confession says that that's actually normal.

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Be encouraged, and we should encourage each other. But there's a difference between identifying the works of the

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Spirit within me and being like, man, that's encouraging to know that he's doing a work and basing one's salvation upon it.

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That's the thing about it. It's like there's a difference between no matter what,

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Justin, for the rest of my life, I know if I don't cling to Christ, I don't care how many good works are coming out of me,

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I'm damned. I'm so doomed. Forget it. Because I always love asking people, how many good works is going to be enough for you to come to a moment where you feel justified?

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You can't define that. No, you're putting your faith in your works, believe it or not. You are, and none of us on our deathbeds,

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John, are ever going to be comforted by what we've done or by how much sin we've abstained from or how hard we fought against the flesh.

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It's like I always could have done more good works. I could have loved more. I could have sinned less. I could have fought harder against my flesh.

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The only thing that's going to comfort any of us at the end of it all, and we know this is true, is to look to another who has accomplished our salvation.

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Well, and that's where I think you look at all of Scripture, even when Paul's dealing with the Corinthians. He ends up pointing out their sin by the use of the law.

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You already pointed this out. But then he goes to the gospel. Yeah, and their identity in Christ. That's right. He always does this.

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Always. He affirms the saints. Right. There's so many passages of Scripture where Paul will identify the problem and the sin, and then the solution is always

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Christ. But then he'll get pointed and say, now if you think there's any other solution to the Galatians, well, then now

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I'm going to tell you you're believing in a heresy. That's why it's known as the Galatian heresy. You cannot begin by the

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Spirit and perfect yourself. I mean, this is the end of Colossians 2. Right. Because he says, now listen, and this is pietism,

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Justin. Pietism is an emphasis on the works of the flesh. Like, what are you doing fleshly?

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And Paul's like, look, it has an appearance of godliness, but it's of no value. And pietism appears godly.

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This is why so many people embrace it. It sounds good. It's got enough truth in it that it's got some traction.

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That's how it sells, right? Things that are completely untrue never sell amongst the faithful. Things that are partly true gain traction amongst the faithful.

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You know, thinking Colossians even, just really briefly here, the whole language of put off, put on, you know, that you get in a number of Paul's epistles, that is completely, it's a union with Christ identity in Jesus argument.

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He is saying to them, you're not that anymore. No. You're this now in the

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Lord Jesus. So, yeah, you carry the corpse of the old man around with you, but put that thing off and live like who you are now.

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That's his argument over and over and over again. It's not calling their identity into question. It's pointing them to their new identity in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and then that being the reason and the fuel in one sense for how they live.

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Brief, super brief, John, before we shut the pod down. I think we'd be remiss to not make a more like societal type comment or two because I'll just make this observation historically.

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Pietism, and you could pair revivalism with this, right? But pietism brings with it a very utilitarian view of the faith, and by that I mean like the works of zeal and the transformation becomes, it's overly emphasized.

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So then when you extrapolate that out to the church in the land and the church in the culture,

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I think many pietistic Christians have a very utilitarian view of the

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Christian life in the society or the church's function in the society. And this is why it's not mysterious that in America, amongst evangelicals, the church has so often hitched its wagon to various social and political concerns for centuries now because of that utilitarian view of faith and church and the

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Christian life that pietism just brings with it. Rather than, for us,

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John, as confessional Protestants, we would emphasize the ordinary faithfulness of the saints.

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We would emphasize church -shaped devotion. We would emphasize the corporate life of the believer in the church to where we are going to live relatively mundane, ordinary lives, loving our families, loving our brothers and sisters in the church, loving our neighbor and serving them through our vocation, all while we trust

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Christ and in that sense are waging war against the kingdom of darkness. But the

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Christian is understood as a pilgrim and a sojourner biblically, not a crusader in the way that it often is presented in our

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American paradigms anyway. And that has more to do with pietism than people might think. That's right. Well, the emphasis in all preaching and teaching and books that are being written are on performance.

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I mean, look, I'll say this, and I said it to you last week. The most pietistic preacher of our age that most people would be shocked when

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I say this is Joel Osteen. Yeah, man. Why would I say that? Because he points to performance. That's right.

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And your faith and everything else. That's right. And if you do your part, God does his part and all that kind of language.

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And I think it goes down into the Calvinistic churches as well and conservative churches where the emphasis is on the performance of the believer.

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And I'll just say it this way. Here's the last statement I'll make so you can understand the difference. Pietism is fueled by fear.

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The Bible is fueled by love. What does John tell sinners?

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God's redeeming you, sinner, because he loves you. And what does Romans say? While we were the enemy of God is when he set his love on us.

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And so it's always a motivation of love versus fear. If you're not being motivated by love, you're in pietism flat out.

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If you're being motivated by fear, that's pietism. Yeah, and if you're always being brought back into fear, it's pietism and it's law in a way that is being used unlawfully, which is we would refer you to other episodes that we've done talking about the law and the gospel and not collapsing those categories as well because inherently in pietism,

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John, the law and the gospel are collapsed. That's right. And that's a big thing. We've said a good bit. I'm going to let you shut this thing down, and we're going to trust that we've said enough.

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Yeah. Justin and I would like to welcome you into the Theocast community. If you haven't looked at it yet, please come join it.

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We'd love to have you there. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week where we're going to be talking about what is reformed theology.

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

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