Sola Christus

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See website for details. On today's episode of The Wrap Report, we're actually going to be listening to an episode of Five Solas Podcast.

I was on with the host, James Watkins, discussing the topic of sola scriptura. Why is scripture alone so important?

Well, you could check this out from the Five Solas Podcast, just another one of the many members of Christian podcast community.

Check it out. What's up, everyone?

This is James Watkins with the Five Solas Podcast. Hope that you are all doing absolutely fantastic as always.

Tonight, I am very excited because I have with me to discuss the topic of Solus Christus, Christ alone.

Someone that I have been wanting to have on the podcast ever since we started up and timing just never really worked out.

I scheduled with him and then had to cancel. He says it's not a good reason, but I think it was a pretty good reason.

On the show with me today, I have Andrew Rapoport of Striving for Eternity Ministries.

You hear the crowd going wild in the background. Andrew, how are you doing?

Great. Glad to be here. It is fantastic to have you on. Most people know I talk about you in nearly every episode.

There's a lot of sarcasm in there, but I do have a lot of respect for you. A lot of sarcasm.

We had a little sarcasm before the show. As everyone knows, I'm quite bald headed. That was something that started when

I was about 19 years old. I told Andrew, I still use shampoo. I call that faith.

He didn't remember it, but him and Frank Mullis are actually the ones that made that comment.

Andrew is the founder and president of Striving for Eternity Ministries, a ministry that has been very impactful in my

Christian walk. I'm very thankful for the ministry and the work that Andrew does for the kingdom. Andrew, I'm pretty sure people are pretty familiar with you, but there's probably a little bit of a chance that these people listening are just like, who is this

Andrew Rapoport guy that this guy is bragging about right now? Could you just, for the listeners, fill people in?

Who are you? What's your ministry about? I'm a nobody. I do nothing. Well, I don't think it was agreed with that.

They were just cheering for you whenever you were introduced. I'm Andrew Rapoport from Striving for Eternity Ministries.

I grew up in a Christian home. No, I didn't. I grew up in a

Jewish home. I was almost thrown out of the house when I was converted. But I started just discipling people and that's really what

Striving for Eternity is about. We do discipleship in a lot of different ways, whether it be coming into churches, doing our weekend seminars, preaching at conferences, preaching in churches.

We have an online academy where we do teaching. We have the

Christian podcast community where we disciple podcasters. I have a couple of podcasts, just a few.

We got Andrew Rapoport's Rap Report, which is a weekly one hour one, which, yeah, there's going to be some fireworks.

Jamal Bandy from Prescribed Truth and I talked about this whole Dallas police officer case.

I have a very different take than anybody. I even talked with Virgil from Just Thinking and he was like, wow,

I never even thought of that aspect of it. Jamal was like, yeah, we got to talk about that. So we have a very different view.

You'll have to listen to that. And then after that, the following week, I'm going to have Justin Peters and Jim Osmond and we're going to talk about Beth Moore.

So you're doing, we were joking, this week is

Sola Christos and I think her theory would be Sola more of Mia. I was hoping that I was going to be able to work that in somewhere so I could take credit for it.

But yeah, so that's that one. I have a

Monday through Friday two minute podcast for people like those shorter ones. Nice thing about that is I'm going through a very lengthy number of topics that people want to have heard answers to that you get on the streets.

So I'm giving two minute answers to issues. Why did God allow the

Holocaust? That was today's topic. So I do those, give short answers, give the transcription. So if people want to go and just copy and paste when they have need, they can do that.

I have Apologetics Live every Thursday night. You've been on there. We just have a live show, any questions, challenges, whatever.

Sometimes we have debates on there. We do that live on Thursday nights at apologeticslive .com. I do, so you want to be a podcaster for well, podcasters.

And we got two more that are going to be coming up really soon. And you're going to be able to be part of it,

James. All the podcasters in the Christian podcast community are going to be getting together for a theology podcast.

And so we're going to talk theology. The first topic, I haven't even put this into the group yet.

The first topic, Christian liberty. Oh, that's going to have a little bit of some differing viewpoints.

So we're going to deal with that. That's a monthly podcast. Then we're going to have a one for ministers, for people in vocational ministry.

So that's about six podcasts that I'll have on my docket. And then you do a lot of travel on top of that.

So I mean, do you have more than 24 hours in a day? I mean, is that a part that comes with living in Jersey or?

No, there's no perks. The thing is, is

I don't sleep. So I get more done in a day than I guess most people.

So you brought up the Christian podcast community and the episode that we just did with James D.

White on the topic of Sola Fide. We talked about the Christian podcast community a little bit and just not necessarily the fact that,

I mean, because there are a lot of podcasts that are coming available with the podcast community, but it's not really so much a boast about the number of podcasts that we have, but the quality of the content that is coming from the community.

And I really and truly enjoy being a part of the community. I was blessed to be the, I guess, the first guinea pig.

I guess that's the way to put it. But Andrew is on with me today and we are discussing, we're continuing our

Five Solas series here. And today we are arriving at Solas Christus, Christ Alone.

It's a pretty big one. I thought we were doing Sola Scriptura. Oh no! Wrong calendar.

No, actually, I'm very excited about doing Sola Scriptura. And to answer your question, the reason why that one didn't go first, we were talking about a little bit last week, the person that I'm doing

Sola Scriptura with, we could just never get the scheduling right in order to get it done.

Is this going to be Dr. Mullis? That must be. It is not the good Reverend Dr. Frank Mullis.

It's not. I don't want to give away who it is. It's a very, very sound brother in Christ. You know him.

The other James White? The other James White. No, he was just on last week, but I might go knocking on his door again pretty soon.

But today we are arriving at the teaching of Christ Alone. And Christ Alone is really and truly a dagger to the heart of the factory of idols men make that deviates from the all -sufficiency of Christ.

And I'm assuming that is why you really wanted to, whenever I asked in the podcast community

Facebook page, I was just asking, who would like to do what? And I'd like to do Christ Alone. It's like, okay,

I wouldn't mind that. I wouldn't mind that either. That's pretty easy one. But for the listeners out there, whenever we are talking about the teaching of Christ Alone, what exactly is it that we are meaning whenever we say this?

Yeah, well, let's put it in its historical context, because this is something a lot of people don't know to do is we have these doctrines.

We know them today and we unfortunately remove them from the historical context that they were formed in and then we start picking at them.

So, in its historical context, there was a battle going on, started actually with Hus, John Hus, but later with Luther, Calvin, others,

Zwingli. The issue was, and you see this a lot with Hus arguing, and then more so with Luther when he's arguing with the

Catholic Church. The Catholic Church had corrupted the doctrines that we see from the early church fathers.

And in that they're adding tradition, they're adding the church, they're adding their own authority.

So, the Catholic Church, meaning the magistrates, the leaders are the ones that can give grace, can bestow this on people and actually give salvation.

So, now you have this issue. Well, where does salvation really come from?

So, when we say sola scriptura, sola fide, we say all these and sola Christos, we're saying alone

Christ, meaning it's not Christ and the church. It's not

Christ and the magisterium. It's not Christ and your works.

This is essential to the gospel because this is what's going to separate every single man -made religion and the divine religion that God established.

Every man -made religion, every single one of them, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Second Temple Judaism, which is different than Old Testament Judaism, Roman Catholicism, all of those, they all have some element of human effort, every single one of them.

Even if it's the Catholic Church where they're going to say it's faith plus works. If it's Mormonism, it's grace after all you can do.

If it's Islam, it's one good deed counts for 10 bad deeds. If it's

Second Temple Judaism, it's doing Torah, obeying the law. All of these have human effort.

And Luther said, no, it is Christ, but it's not just Christ.

It's Christ alone. Amen. Amen. And whenever we're looking at this, whenever we are looking at the all -sufficiency of Christ, that means by implication alone that we in and of ourselves are insufficient.

And that's what the scripture says. It says not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.

And that is 2 Corinthians 3, verse 5. And so I think that we need to logically go this route.

For the believers that are listening, you know, this should, I say should, and I'm kind of giving some air quotes here.

This should be a question that we are able to answer. But what you find is whenever you ask this question, who is

Jesus Christ? You kind of get answers that are all over the place. If you talk to an atheist, for instance, they think they know everything there is to know about the

Bible, about who Jesus Christ is, but they end up giving completely wrong answers.

So I want to dive into with you, if you don't mind, who is Jesus Christ? And I do want to give you a little bit of a plug because you can help people out a lot more in a lot more detail with this than what the podcast episode can give because you have written two very detailed books.

You have written, What Do We Believe?, which basically is the breakdown of the Christian faith. And you also have written,

What Do They Believe?, which dealing with this topic here of Solus Christus, I mean, this could really benefit others to know what do other people believe regarding who

Jesus Christ is? What is, how do they define salvation? Because like you were saying,

Mormons, Roman Catholics, they'll use a lot of the same language, but there are very, very huge differences in what they mean by who

Jesus Christ is. Speaking to a Mormon, for instance, they'll say, yeah, I believe in Jesus. He lived, he died, he rose from the dead.

Okay, but who is Jesus Christ? Well, he is a God, right? So can we dive into that?

Who is Jesus Christ? If someone asks you that question, what answer do you give? Well, this is an essential question to ask when it comes to discussing religions, specifically

Christianity. Every man -made religion is based on a man -made system, okay?

You can have Islam without Muhammad because there's nothing actually special about Muhammad himself.

He was someone that they would say that Allah used. Now, Muslims will get very upset when you say something like that, but there's really nothing special about him.

You can have Mormonism without Joseph Smith. You don't need that individual.

You could look at, you know, any of these religions and there's nothing special about the individual founder of that religion, but that's not so with Christianity.

Christianity, which by the way, little Christ, that's what Christian means, little

Christ. In other words, they look like they're trying to act like Christ. That's exactly right. That is what it was meant as an insult and Christians said, hi,

I like that. Yes, we want to be like Christ. We're little Christ. Okay, we'll take it. Yeah. Thanks for the advice on what to call ourselves.

Yeah, it's better than the way, which is what they were being called before. So, what you see is when

I look at Christianity, it's based on the person of Jesus Christ, not his teachings, but he himself, who he is.

So, Jesus Christ is truly God, truly man. We could get into why that's so important later, but the issue is you must see that he is not just a human being.

He is truly God, truly man, making him different from any other religious leader or founder.

It is because of what Christ did on the cross that Christians look to Christ, that he died in our place, that he took our sin upon himself on that cross and in exchange, and this is what you see in 2

Corinthians 5 .21, in exchange, he gives us his righteousness. That is a mind blow.

I mean, that's unfathomable that he takes our sin and gives us his righteousness, but that is why it's based on him.

You will not have Christianity without Jesus Christ. This is what Paul says when he talks about the resurrection.

We are most pitiable if Christ didn't raise because our faith would be in vain.

You see, so this isn't based on the teachings of Christ. This is based on Christ himself.

So, you brought up a very important point in there in that Jesus Christ is fully man, fully

God. Of course, this is a teaching that we know is the apostatic union. I remember whenever I was first being introduced to you years back,

I can't exactly remember how I come up on the video on YouTube, but there is a video of you, you're dialoguing with a

Jehovah's Witness. And one of the ways that you started out was, can I tell you why

Jesus must be God? But in doing so, you also explained why he had to be fully man.

And the explanation that you gave to that Jehovah's Witness, it just blew my mind because I think it was at that moment that it really just clicked with me because I was coming out of the prosperity gospel at that point.

So, it just kind of clicked with me that this Jesus that I thought that I knew, I didn't know anything whatsoever.

And I want us to dive a little bit into that particular doctrine, and we're going to do that right after this quick break.

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Grace and peace. Welcome back, everyone, to the 5 Solas podcast. This is your host,

James Watkins, still here with the great and incredible Andrew Rappaport. – Okay, stop and repent of that.

– Yeah, I guess I should repent of that, right? Lord, please forgive me. You know that is not correct. I do as well.

But before we went on break, we were talking a little bit about the hypostatic union. We were about to move into that.

And I made mention of a clip that I had on YouTube of why Jesus Christ must be

God. And luckily, Andrew, or providentially, I guess is the correct terminology to use here, found the clip.

And I want to play this for you. It's about four minutes long, but it's very, very rich. And I think that we need to dive into it.

So, I'm going to ask Andrew to play that really quick. – And just remember that this is outside.

I'm doing open air. So, the audio is not going to be the best. So, this is why must

Christ be God? That's the question that gets asked. You'll hear it. Here it is. – Here's the question.

Why did Jesus Christ have to be God? That's an essential thing of Christianity.

It's what makes Christianity different than every world religion. This is why it's essential. Every single one of us have violated

God's law. God says that all liars will have their place in a lake of fire, which burns a brimstone, which is called the second death.

There's only one of two ways to pay an eternal fine. We can pay it for all of eternity, or an eternal

God can pay it once in time and have it count for all eternity. Why? Because He is an eternal being.

It's because He's eternal that that consequence that He paid counts for eternity.

Otherwise, me personally, I don't even know how many lies I've told. So, for me to pay for my first one,

I'll never finish paying the first one to pay the second one. That's one of the reasons why I can't pay it for someone else.

Maybe one of you would be a perfect person and never violate God's law. And you'd say, well, hey,

I'm perfect. But you would only be able to pay for one other person's penalty in time because we're not an eternal being.

God being an eternal being can pay an eternal fine that would count for all of time.

That's why Jesus Christ had to be God. But He couldn't be just God. He also had to be like you and I.

He had to be a man. We can't go to a judge in a human court and say, Your Honor, I know I got six months in prison.

My poodle will do my down time. The judge is going to go, it doesn't work that way.

But one of us can pay a fine for someone else. But we have to be human.

Jesus Christ was God Almighty, became a man for one purpose.

He did that so He could die in our place. Being God, He could pay an eternal fine. Being a man,

He could pay for you and I. That is why we can have salvation. That's what makes Christianity different than any world religion.

Because every other world religion is based on works that we would do. But our works will work against us.

God will actually judge us by a book, and the name of that book is the Book of Works. There's two books that God has in heaven, the

Lamb's Book of Life and the Book of Works. Our name is in one of those two books. Either we have been forgiven by God because He's made the payment of sin for us, and our name is in the

Lamb's Book of Life, or our name is in the Book of Works, and it's those very works that we're going to be judged by.

We often think our works are going to count for good, but here's a way of thinking of it.

If you had a father who takes his son fishing, and his father says to him, hey,

I don't want you to go to the lower part of the jetty because it's dangerous down there, but the son, being a typical son, doesn't believe dad.

He says, you know what, I really want to get some fish for dinner. I want to be able to provide for my family. I'm going to go to the lower part of the jetty.

When he gets down there, an alligator whips its tail, knocks the kid in the water. The kid doesn't know how to swim all that well. Dad dives in the water.

He grabs the son. He starts swimming up to shore, and all of a sudden, the alligator rips both the father's legs off.

But with all of the father's energy, with everything he has left, as he's sitting there bleeding, he grabs his son to shore, and his son says, hey, thanks dad, but I really want to make sure

I have some fish for dinner. I'm going to go back to the jetty. That would be disrespectful. Why?

Because the father just gave his life to save the son, and the son said, but look at the works I'm doing.

That's what we're like when we stand before God and say, but God, look at my works. I know you're God almighty, and it took your death to pay the punishment for us.

But in doing that, we sit there and say we want to add our works to it. We diminish what he has done.

That's why Jesus Christ had to be both God and man. Well, that guy's got a loud mouth, man.

I was just about to confirm, you were not using amplification for that, correct? That is correct.

There was no amplification there. There's a lot of boom in that voice. But in light of the statement that you said at the very end, where you were just focusing on the work of Jesus Christ, here's a quote from Martin Luther.

I must listen to the gospel. It tells me not what I must do, but what Jesus Christ, the son of God, has done for me.

Andrew, I don't know how long ago that video was recorded. It had to be at least what, about seven, eight years?

Yeah, it was a long time ago. I did that probably eight to ten years ago.

Yeah, and it's incredible. It's just great to know that material that you produced from that long back, something that can still be beneficial for the saints today.

And in that, you brought up the hypostatic union in there, obviously. It's a union of the two natures, in the person of Jesus Christ.

And that kind of leads me to go a little bit, because you mentioned resurrection a little bit ago, whenever you're speaking of, namely in 1

Corinthians 15, whenever Paul is defending the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Obviously, without the resurrection of Christ, as Paul says, our faith is in vain, that we've made

God to be a liar. But what are some of the essential facts that we need to know about Christ?

Because based upon that video, that video alone led me in my gospel presentation to put focus on the deity of Christ, as well as Christ being fully man.

And the way I usually word it is that Jesus Christ, the eternal second person of the Trinity at one point in time, left heaven and entered into his creation as a man.

But what are some of the other essentials? What are the non -negotiables whenever it comes to Christ?

Well, when we think about him being truly God, truly man, the early church fathers struggled with this because they were trying to wrap their head around this.

How could Christ be the savior? Now, if he's God, that meant he can pay an eternal fine because of his being, who he is.

And that's what I end up dealing with in that clip, right? Me as a person, I'm a temporal being. So if the punishment for one lie is eternity,

I never get to finish paying the first one to pay a second one. So in order for someone to pay the fine for another, let alone for everyone, you think about the millions of people that will be in heaven.

So we had to pay for all of them. Well, guess what? He had to then be an eternal being.

But if he's just an eternal being, and this was some of the battle that was going on in the early centuries, but if he's not a human being, because part of what was going on in the first century was this idea of Gnosticism.

They never questioned his deity. They questioned his humanity. And some of the early church fathers said, yes, but if he's not human, how could he be a substitute for us?

He can't because, and that's the illustration I use with my dog doing my jail time, that it wouldn't work that way.

But another human can pay the fine for another human. So Christ coming to earth as a man, having never broken the law, that becomes an essential thing because he broke the law.

If he, any of it, he's guilty. So he had to come and be a perfect human being to be able to be that sacrifice.

The picture of this is what we see in the Old Testament with the unblemished lamb. Why was all the focus on the unblemished?

Because it had to be a lamb that was pure. Now, granted, you're not going to have a perfectly unblemished lamb, but in Christ we do.

We have someone that came as a man, lived 33 years of life, never sinning once.

He is that perfect sacrifice as a man, but as God, he can pay that eternal fine.

So if he's not truly God and truly man, then you are dead in your sin. And this is what

I say to Jehovah Witnesses all the time. I asked them all the time, why must Jesus have been God? And they're like, well, we don't think he is.

I know. But did you ever think why he had to be? Because if he's not God, you're dead in your sin.

You have no eternal life. Yeah. And you bring up another interesting point that early on in church history, that the battle wasn't necessarily his deity, but it was within his humanity.

And you make another interesting point about the fact that Jesus is referred to as the son of man.

So frequently there's quite the significance in that, right? Yeah. I'm working on the book on the deity of Christ through the gospels, the claims that he's made.

And often people will say, well, the term son of man is a reference to deity going back to the book of Daniel.

And that's true, but I think there's something else. And the fact is you look through what

Christ says all the time. He's saying, if you don't believe that the son of God came in the flesh, right?

He's always emphasizing that he came in the flesh. He had to let people know this.

He had to remind people this because this is what was being questioned. But if you think about it, what is the title he calls himself more than any other?

Son of man. Now, if son of God means that he's the essence of God, it doesn't mean he's the offspring of God.

Any different than James and John being the sons of thunder are the offspring of two lightning bolts.

And that sound of cracking produced James and John. No, we wouldn't think that. They're just loud and bolsterous.

You know, they would be good open air evangelists. But what you see is that it's the character of God.

Well, then that means that son of man means he's the character of men, which, by the way, every

Jehovah Witness wants to say that son of man means he's man, but son of God doesn't mean he's

God. Wait, you can't have it both ways. But at some point, if I had to keep reminding you that I'm a human being,

I'm a human being, I'm a human being, I'm a human being, I'm a human being. At some point, you're gonna be like, dude, of course you're a human being.

Who do you think you are, God? Don't make us stone you for claiming such.

So here is another quote here that I want to read. And this is from R.

Scott Clark. It says, The heart of the gospel is not about us. The heart of gospel is Christ for us.

This was the essence of Paul's message that Christ came for us to do what we could not and would not do.

He obeyed. He was crucified. He was raised. He has ascended. He is returning. The medieval church turned the gospel into a message about what

Christ is doing in us by grace and sanctification and about what we must do to do our part in order to benefit, cooperate with grace.

The good news is that we have no part, not in this story. We're recipients. We're beggars.

We're not contributors to the story. And you touched on it a little bit earlier on whenever you were talking about every, cause really and truly, and I agree with you on this, you've said this a lot in the past, is that really in this world, there are two religions.

You have the true religion of Christianity, which relies solely and strictly on the sufficiency and efficiency of Christ upon the cross.

And then you have every other system in the world that says, I must do, I must do,

I must do. And it kind of got me thinking a little bit, and James and I talked about this in the last episode in Sola Fide regarding easy believism, but how can we distinguish between believing in Christ and having true faith in Jesus Christ?

So the issue here is it's an issue of actual trust. It's the issue of, for many people, they say,

I believe in Jesus. I was just dialoguing with someone on Facebook who's unhappy with the video we put out about Beth Moore.

And he was basically saying he would allow Beth Moore to preach at his pulpit because he thinks that Paul was being a hypocrite when he wrote 1

Timothy 2. Now, what's he doing there? He's saying, but I believe in Jesus. No, you hate

Jesus. That's what I said to him. You hate Christ. I know you don't want to think that, but you think your words and your opinions count more than his word.

So no, you don't like Christ if you don't submit to everything he said.

So that really is going to be a way of measuring. How do we view our life in light of Christ?

When we sin, do we hate the consequences of sin or do we actually hate the sin because this is what

Christ died for? There's a big difference there. When people struggle with coming to me,

Pastor, I'm struggling with, you know, I don't really think I'm saved. I just, usually what is some sin in their life and you work with them.

And yet that's the question I usually ask. Do you hate the sin or the consequence? People that hate the consequence are going to share the gospel.

People that are like, you know, this, I just hate the fact, this is what Christ died for. And I keep going back to it.

Okay. Now we're dealing with someone that's probably a believer because a believer hates what Christ had to suffer for that.

So are you going to submit everything to Christ? Are there things in the

Bible I wish it didn't say? Sure. I mean, it'd be so much easier if Christ just said, yeah, women can be pastors and preachers and go for it.

I mean, it'd be much easier in our culture, but it's not what he said. And so I have to submit to the word of God and like it or not, it's because God is

God, not me. And so I think the issue becomes one of, do you truly trust

God or do you want to get out of hell free card? Right. Most people just want to get out of hell free card.

Yeah, pretty much. That is very, very accurate. You know, it really is.

It's heartbreaking whenever you deal with people who are saying that, yeah, I believe in Jesus.

The question really and truly is, especially whenever you are directly opposing the words that Jesus spoke.

And that's kind of another point too, is we can't separate the red letters in the New Testament from the black letters in the

Old Testament. We can't do that. I mean, it's not that Christ was in disagreement with anything that was written in the

Old Testament, but there really has to come that question, okay, what Jesus are you referring to?

And every single instance that you're, whenever you're speaking to someone like that, you're finding that they have created a God that is in their image.

And so that was a wonderful answer. And just looking at another quote, I'm full of quotes tonight. I did a lot.

I did a lot of two years ago. You did a lot of quote mining. Yeah, I did a lot of quote mining. Well, actually about two years ago,

I had to, I preached on the topic of Christ alone. And what Frank and I did at Devereux, it was, there were five

Sundays in the month. So each Sunday we did a solo. And Frank would do, Yeah.

So Frank would do like a little, it was his idea too. Why am

I not surprised? But he did kind of like a historical introduction to it. And then

I would come up and I would preach on the text. And texts that I preached mainly out of was

Acts 4 .12, which says, And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

And a couple of, I mean, there's many points that you can make from that, of course. And there is salvation in no one else, not a co -mediatrix, it's nothing from the

Pope. I mean, you can't give the Pope $20 and say, can you forgive this mortal sin?

It's not like that way, but there is an absolute necessity given in that verse by which we must be saved is that we must be saved.

That's the point that we made in Sola Fide is that our greatest need is not necessarily anything material in this world.

Our greatest need is something spiritual, something that must occur by the work and the power of the

Holy Spirit. And that is the regeneration, the granting of faith, the granting of repentance.

And I want us to look just a little bit, obviously, we've spoken on the resurrection, we've spoke on the absolute necessity of the deity of Christ.

And I'm looking forward to something that I have coming up. We're actually going to be talking about the Holy Spirit because people don't question the deity of the

Father. They don't do that. They'll question the deity of the Son. But the one that I've found more often than not is people have a very difficult time with the deity of the

Holy Spirit. Not that they have difficulty with it, they'll profess it, but they really don't know how to navigate through that from a scriptural basis.

But in light of Christ alone, what is the gospel for someone, maybe non -believer, of course, but also for those who are professing to be a believer, who are maybe following a different Jesus than the one that is given to us in the scriptures?

What is the gospel in light of this amazing truth? Well, let me quote

Paul. This is 2 Corinthians 5 .21. For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.

That really is the gospel in one verse. If you want one word, it would be the theological term, imputation.

And that's what that verse really captures. Our sin was laid upon Christ. His righteousness is laid upon us.

We don't deserve it. We can't earn it. The gospel, the good news is the fact that Christ saves us because of what he did.

It is something that is different from any man -made religion because every man -made religion wants to praise their own efforts, their own works.

And here you see it's Christ's work and Christ alone. You can't add to it.

Anything you do, simple math equation, if you add something to one side of an equation, you're diminishing it to the other side.

So anything you do to add to the work of what

Christ did diminishes the work of Christ. It's going to lessen it because now you need what you did additional.

So when someone says it's faith plus works, okay, but the work of Christ just got diminished.

It's less. And do you really think you're going to stand before God and say, Oh God, look at me, look how good

I am. And he's going to say, I went to earth as a man, lived perfectly.

And you think your work should count even close to that? I mean, in the comparison is so far off Christ, almighty

God, who is in heaven where all the angels are singing his praises. There's no sin.

There's no sickness. There's no starvation. There's no suffering. It's the place all of us want to go to.

And Jesus Christ left there to come to earth as a man so he could live among his own creation, be mocked and jeered and ridiculed and eventually crucified on a cross and hung there for three hours to excruciating death so he could die.

The cause, what he did was the payment for us that then because he's now just the justice was satisfied.

His wrath was appeased because he paid it himself. Now that his justice is satisfied, he can offer mercy.

It's the only religion in the world where God can be both just and merciful in the same act.

These are two mutually exclusive things. You can't be just and merciful. But in Christ, we can because the payment was made by him.

He took the full weight of sin, the full consequences in the full punishments and upon himself.

And now that the justice is satisfied, here's mercy. Now he can offer mercy.

And that is why only in Christianity can you have God that is both just and merciful.

You can't have that anywhere else. And so this is what the gospel is. And if anybody is adding anything to that, then you're going to stand before God and say, well,

I thought that this should count as well to what you did on the cross. Almighty God suffering the full weight of sin for all these people, an eternity of sin, suffer that.

And because he's an eternal being, it's an eternal, you know, he always experiences that, you know, he's he's outside of time.

So this is an eternal consequence. And he takes that all upon himself. Boom, there's there you have here's my righteousness.

That's insanity to think about. And that's what he did. That's the good news.

And if that doesn't make your heart jump, if you don't get a greater desire to be with Christ, a longing for Christ, when you think about what he did on the cross, then yes, maybe you should check your spiritual well -being.

Maybe you should check whether you actually do trust fully on Jesus Christ. Amen. And here is a amazing quote from John Calvin.

And no, that doesn't mean that I agree with everything that John Calvin said. We must seek peace for ourselves solely in the anguish of Christ, our

Redeemer. And that is the purpose of our podcast. That's the purpose of the podcast community is to get the gospel message out to those that are lost, those who will apart from Christ, pay for their sin for all of eternity in the lake of fire.

But we have an obligation to proclaim the great truth of Scripture that, as Jesus says in John 14, 6,

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

And that is the truth that the Reformers fought for. That's the truth that we must continue to fight for is that it is absolutely, positively

Christ alone, not Christ and. Because the problem is everything that follows the and is insufficient for your salvation.

Christ is sufficient. He is enough. And Andrew, I want to ask you before we head out,

I've enjoyed doing the podcast with you. Thank you for coming on with me, spending the time with me. I do hope and I do believe that it's going to be very edifying for people to listen to.

It sounds so simple. Christ alone. OK, Christ alone. We get it. We get it. That's not the point for believers.

This serves to reinforce what we should already know about Christ. But at the same time, it's very humbling to reflect on what

Christ did on our behalf upon that cross over 2000 years ago. So with that said,

I would like to just kind of give you the floor here for a second. If there's anything that you would like to add, anything that you would like to tell us about what's coming for the podcast community or for the rap report, anything of that nature, the floor is yours.

Let me first say this as a way of closing this out with why does it have to be Christ alone?

Let's look at what Paul said about who Christ is. And I'm going to try not to give you my full sermon that I'm going to be in Redwood City next week.

But Colossians 1, 15 to 23. And just meditate on that.

I have a podcast on the rap report where I dealt with this. And this is what Paul says, who this

Christ is. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things. And in him, all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

For in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by this death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which

I, Paul, became a minister. If that doesn't get your heart to jump, this is the

Christ we speak of. Everything is about him. He holds everything together.

This is the one we love and long to see. This is why it must be

Christ alone. So you asked about the

Christian podcast community, different things going on. We're in the process of redoing the website. And so we got about six podcasts that are kind of in a holding pattern and not happy with us because we're going to be six more.

We'll have a total of 20 podcasts when we go to the new website. And we're growing faster than we can keep up with, but we're going to have a website that we're looking to design specifically for podcasting.

So it'll be easier to navigate. And once we get there, we're going to be adding a whole bunch of new podcasts. And Colleen and I had this plan that we would get the

Christian podcast community up and running. And then we were going to reach out to people. We had podcasts say, would you want to join us?

We haven't gotten to that stage yet. And we have 20 podcasts. What you see is that Colleen and I are really quite strict and restrictive of who gets into the community.

We don't accept everybody. In fact, there's a number that have been turned down. And because of that,

I think what you see is there's good content there. It's a place where people are trusting. We had one podcaster that's joining us and she was like,

I am so glad that you guys are taking this so serious and so restrictive on who comes in because it says that I can trust all the other podcasters that I'm with.

And that's what we want. We want a community where we are producing good content as you're doing, excellent content, promoting others, getting each other on each other's shows, and being able to talk about each other's podcasts.

This is what we're trying to do. Striving for Eternity is a discipling ministry, but you know what?

That's the role the church should be doing. I really wish that we didn't need to exist.

I really wish every church was discipling within their own body and didn't need

Striving for Eternity. But until that day, we're here to encourage the church, come alongside believers, give materials, training, different things so that people can be solid in the faith, so they know the faith that they hold to and can go out on the streets and proclaim it.

Because this is what we have to do. We as Christians are coming up on some hard times.

We're going to see, I believe, some persecution coming that most Christians are not ready for. I mean, when it happens, the largest church in America, Joelstein, is going to be empty that Sunday.

I mean, if America ever outlaws Christianity, Joelstein's going to sit there with a big smile going, oh, where is everybody?

I don't know where they're at. I need that couple million dollar offering to come in for my new plane or something.

The reality, they have nothing because their faith is not a faith built on Jesus Christ.

It's a faith built on selfishness. And when persecution comes, they're gone.

You know when we see historically, when persecution comes, God's true church grows.

And that only comes when we have a solid foundation. And that's what we're trying to do at Striving for Eternity, is to provide that foundation.

That's why, I mean, one of my favorite seminars that we do is the Bible interpretation made easy.

Because when people understand how to handle the word of God, they grow in their faith.

That's why we offer a lot of our stuff free of charge. It's out on YouTube. All of our classes are on YouTube for free.

You could watch them. Get a good foundation, good education without having to pay anything.

So we try to do that. But we do need supporters. I'm saying that because money doesn't grow on trees.

But we try to give away everything that we can so that we can see people literally around the world.

We actually train pastors through our academy in other countries, in China, in Chile, in Brazil, different places where we've been contacted.

And they're getting trained. And they're pastors because they don't have training in their countries.

That's why we offer it for free. It's like when people support us, they're like, oh, well, you're not supporting us.

You're supporting that guy in China. We have five churches in China that have gone through our courses because they couldn't get training like we get in America.

We're spoiled. James should get back into his seminary schooling there because he's got it available.

Yeah, it's coming. It is coming. I'm very excited about getting rolling back into that again.

Did you have to give up your guns when you moved to Ohio? No, absolutely not. Okay. You should move to Jersey.

You would love it here. Oh, I bet. I bet. You're able to carry a tactical pen if you want.

I'm armed. Yeah. You'll be like California before long and not getting any straws. Oh, come on.

We lead that. We're going to lead the liberalism. We're on a fight. Yeah. I was on the way home from work today and there were people on an overpass above the interstate that had just a huge time that said impeach.

So down south, it was it was all for Trump here. It's no, I am totally for impeachment of Biden and Pelosi.

I fully support impeaching them since they're actually the ones guilty of what they're thinking everyone else is doing.

I think they're trying to affect an election with an impeachment process that they don't actually start.

And I would agree with that wholeheartedly. But for everyone that doesn't know, you can visit

Andrew online at striving for eternity dot org. Check the ministry out.

View some of the resources that they have. But I would encourage you that if there is a ministry that you are looking to support, if there is a ministry that is that actually will put that support to great use for the furthering of the kingdom of God, striving for eternity is that ministry.

You can see details on there about how you can become a monthly supporter for striving for eternity. Again, that is striving for eternity dot org.

Check out the book resources on there. Check out what do they believe. What do we believe? Great resources.

I have copies of them. And there are a lot of highlights in there. We also have

Dr. Sylvester's book on the origin of kinds. Yep. Anthony Sylvester was actually someone that I am going to have on the podcast in the future regarding creation science.

I am very excited about that. No way. Yeah. We are going to talk about, can you guess the book?

Can you guess it? Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. We are going to talk about Genesis.

Oh, that book. Anthony is going to talk about Genesis. Really? Yeah. Creation guy, Genesis. I didn't know.

I mean, if you ask him to preach on marriage, you know where he goes? Genesis. If you ask him to preach on Christ, you know where he goes anyway?

Genesis. If you ask him to preach on almost anything, do you know where he goes? Genesis. It all begins in Genesis.

He's got to learn that there are 65 other books. But Andrew, thank you so much for recording with me.

The beautiful thing is he won't even pick up on that because he never listens to podcasts. No, he doesn't. He doesn't. So picking on him will be easy.

And whenever I release an episode I do with him, I can edit a lot of stuff in there and make him say a lot of stuff that he didn't say and he would never know.

But we could work on that. Yeah, we could. But again, guys, that's strivingforeternity .org.

You can visit us online at fivesolasministries .com. Thank you very much, Andrew, for joining me.

Hopefully this is not the last time. Hopefully it's not another 30 episodes before I can get you on.

It's been great. I've enjoyed talking about this. It's very important. With that said, guys, next week we are going to be moving into the

Sola that should have been number one, Sola Scriptura. We're going to spend a lot of time on that because we really need to hash that out.

A lot of people think that Sola Fide was kind of that main battle cry of the

Reformation. But really, whenever you look at it, it was Sola Scriptura that was that foundation that they were fighting so hard for.

And who's going to be your guest? I don't want to say it. Austin Hetzler? The guy that lives about six minutes away from me.

Is he soon to be my pastor? Is that what his title is, soon to be for you? Maybe so.

You know, we have a great problem here in Ohio. I don't understand this problem. Most people have a hard time finding a solid church to attend.

And we're kind of sandwiched between multiple churches that we can choose from that are just so solid and just filled with godly people who love the

Word of God, who love Jesus Christ. And the fellowship that we've had with members of both churches is just absolutely phenomenal.

I don't understand that. You guys be in prayer for us about that. We're definitely ready to get plugged into a church, a church that we can call home, and a church that we can grow in the grace and knowledge of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and that we can serve in. That's the big thing, is we want to be able to serve within the church that we are in.

And with that said, Andrew, thank you again. I've enjoyed it. Guys, next week, join me as we continue our series with Sola Scriptura, a big one.

And in the meantime, guys, go back, listen to previous episodes. Go to Andrew's podcast on your favorite podcasting app, search for The Wrap Report.

You can listen to The Wrap Report, the weekly episode. You can listen to The Daily. So you want to be a podcaster,

Apologetics Live. I'm lost now because I feel like there's about 13 other ones that I'm not mentioning.

Yeah, well, I could give you the list if you want. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. So we got Andrew Rapport's Wrap Report, Andrew Rapport's Wrap Report Daily.

Didiké with Justin Peters, and that is starting. He has 60 episodes of old podcasts that dropped.

So you have 60 episodes of Justin Peters. Theology Gals, Apologetics Live. So you want to be a podcaster.

Five Solas Ministries, Five Solas Podcast. What are we even doing here?

The Way Radio, Everyday Ministry Podcast, Prescribed Truth Podcast, Roman's Road with Eddie Roman.

You got to be checking that one out if you haven't listened to Eddie. Great stuff on evangelism. Blue Stocking Baptists.

That's to balance out those Presbyterian theology guys, right? And then Are You Just Watching? That's the one for Frank Mullis, since he likes to go to the movies.

Give you guys some critical thinking about movies. And so we have several that are coming, though.

We have a contract out with Creation Science for Kids show.

So this is the first this is being announced. We have Revive Thoughts, Two Guys and a

Bible, Echo Zoe Radio. And we got a couple others that I won't announce.

And I'll just say that we have one person that I'm going to be reaching out to. That very well -known

Christian ministry, very well -known Christian radio host. He contacted me.

Now, it was kind of funny, I will admit. He was like, you guys have James White on there, so it must be good.

No, no, no. The other James White. The other James White. All right, guys.

But thank you again, Andrew. Go back and listen to prior episodes. StriveForEternity .org. Also visit us at fivesoulsministries .com.

And as always, everyone, may all that you do be done to the glory of God. Hey, Scott, what brings you into the pharmacy?

I'm thinking about getting one of the updated COVID -19 vaccines. Great. Do you know which type of vaccine you'd like?

There's more than one. Yep. There are different types of vaccines available. You can learn more about them at wedovaccines .com.

If you have questions or want to make an appointment, give me a call. What was that website again?

Wedovaccines .com. Thanks. I'll check it out. This message was brought to you by Novavax.

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