Christian, You Are Not on Parole | Theocast

Parole, Probation, and the Fear of Final Judgment

Hi, this is Justin. As a Christian, have you ever felt as though you are on parole or perhaps some kind of probation, where you've been released from prison, but now you need to do regular check-ins with an officer, you need to keep the rules adequately and avoid doing the wrong things well enough to finally be set free one day and to finally be rid of doubt and to finally be rid of fear that it might not end well for you?

Sadly, I think this is the experience for many in the church. And so today, John and I are gonna talk about this, about how Christians are not on parole, but in fact, Jesus has accomplished everything that's necessary for our salvation.

That's what justification means. And to be justified is to be finally saved. We're gonna consider all of that from a Reformed and biblical perspective today. We hope that's encouraging for you. And then in the Semper Reformanda podcast, we're gonna touch on things like final justification and the writings of John Owen and what it is to be a fruitful Christian.

Stay tuned.

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Thanks for listening.

Theocast, Weariness, and the Finished Work of Christ

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. Your hosts today are John Moffat, who is pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and he's drinking his tea out of a vintage Theocast mug today.

The old school branding, that vintage theology. And I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. We have met again today on this Wednesday morning to record a podcast.

And we hope as always to encourage the weary in the Lord Jesus, because he has saved us, period.

John.

Amen.

You're just gonna take us right in because we're trying to not waste people's time these days.

That's right. I mean, I am gonna say my adrenaline is a little high and two things happened to me today. One, I taught my 15-year-old how to drive an F -150 down an interstate. My adrenaline is high on that.

And I may or may not have shot a bobcat off my front porch this morning.

I told John not to talk about the bobcat, but here he is doing it anyway. Can't control him, friends.

Can't control him. It's just

Can't make people do anything.

Hey, this city boy is learning how to homestead at the moment. That's not true. Anyways

John lives in the cut.

I do live in the cut. If you ever wanna come visit me, come on down. I'll show you where I live. All right, so today is a fun conversation, mostly because Justin and I love talking about Christ and the gospel.

And we are always stretching our minds to try and grasp the glory of Christ. And sometimes to do that, you have to pull things, clutters off. Sometimes we clutter it. Sometimes there's things in our past that have kind of confused it.

One of the things that has happened recently, I love to listen to podcasts once in a while that are recommended to me. I was listening to one recently by a good friend of ours, Oscar Clark, and he was making some references to some theological issues.

And he said a statement, which was, Christians are not on probation. And I mentioned this, may have put it on social media or something, but Justin and I started talking about how that is the position of so many Christians today where they can't seem to live one day without their feeling as if their justification is being called into question or legitimized.

So today we're gonna be talking about justification, how it is often seen as, we would say most people's views of justification is only half correct. They've been set free from condemnation, but then there's more to it.

And then we're gonna be speaking about really the historical ramifications on justification. And this phrase really, which the title of the podcast is, Christians, you're not on parole, and we're gonna tell you why.

So Justin, talk to us a little bit about justification, this concept of being on parole, and then we're gonna kind of pull it apart, looking at history and looking at some modern day preaching and things like that.

The illustration of parole or probation, both are applicable and useful, and we'll try to unpack those in a second. I think, sadly, accurately describe how many of us have felt or how many of us still feel when it comes to living the Christian life.

And this is because of maybe some misunderstanding and some confusion, but at best, some seemingly contradictory things that are said and then implied. And out of one side of our mouth, we'll talk about justification in some good ways, and then out of the other side of our mouth, we unsettle the saints by talking about the Christian life as this project to vindicate oneself and prove oneself as legitimate.

So the illustrations of parole and probation quickly and how they apply well to what we're considering today, and many of the things, frankly, that we talk about on Theocast regularly. So parole, many understand this principle, this idea, a person who has been in prison is released from prison.

So we're justified, we're set free from jail. And now we enter into this season where we are on parole, where there are regular check-ins with our parole officer, there are a number of rules and regulations that we need to abide by, there are things that we need to be doing, and rules that we ought not break.

And if we break too many rules or we don't do the things that we're supposed to do, then we might actually find ourselves back in jail and a prisoner once again. And I fear that that's how many people think about the Christian life or even have been taught to think about it, that at the moment of justification, they've been set free, they've been let out of prison, but now there are many things that they need to be doing and many things that they need to avoid doing.

And depending on how well they handle those things, how well they perform, whether or not they break too many rules, people are concerned that what may end up happening at the end of all this is that they're gonna end up back in prison facing the judgment of God again.

They will have demonstrated that they are illegitimate. And what that does is we live our entire lives kind of looking over our shoulders, proverbially, and we live our entire lives unsettled and not resting because we're trying to constantly prove and validate our release from prison.

And the probation illustration is also useful because it communicates the same thing because it's this, I think, overemphasized off-centered perspective on time will tell. Trust Christ, be baptized into the church, time will tell.

Christians through history have talked this way and that's fine, but I don't think they mean what we often take that to mean as though, yeah, you're in right now, but we're not really sure you're really in, like really, really in.

And so your life is going to be the validation project. It's going to be the thing that will prove or not that your being united to Christ was in fact legitimate and genuine. And the reason why this is unhelpful, if I was gonna reduce it down in a nutshell, is that I do think it communicates a misunderstanding of what justification means biblically, historically, and theologically, and we're gonna go there.

But then I also think what it is is a great example of putting the cart before the theological horse, where we have inverted a relationship that ends up producing a lot of harm and ends up producing a lot of doubt and wrestling and fear, and I think actually hinders real Christian sanctification and genuine Christian living and turns the gospel into this quasi-conditional covenant of works type thing where we need to be doing a bunch of stuff, maybe not to save ourselves on the front end, but to certainly validate, prove, and maintain our status before the Lord.

And that's problematic. So John, I think now would be a good time where we can turn to justification and think about what it is biblically and historically and theologically.

That's right.

And the evidence of what you're talking about, Justin, is we're gonna see here in a minute, just so you'll know where we're going. We are going to look at some theological movements in modern-day preaching that has influenced this.

Most people's perspective of the Bible is it's a story of what God did to get you cleaned. This is what we're gonna talk about now. Then the rest of it is an instruction manual on how to keep yourself clean until he returns, because if you don't keep yourself clean enough, well, then you're not getting in.

And that's that probationary period we're talking about. And so justification for most people is just as I've never sinned. So God cleans the slate. He removes the condemnation. You're no longer in his judgment, and he's set you free, right?

It's like, well, you're out. Good job. You believed. You put your faith in Jesus. You got out of condemnation. You're not gonna be in prison in hell anymore. God's no longer angry with you. Now, here's what you need to do to keep God off your back, and here's how you check in.

And this is some rules for you to follow. And these things can look different throughout the ages. This is where I'm gonna get myself in trouble, but I've done a lot of work on this, so I'll put some links down below.

But this is where spiritual disciplines work hand in hand with this type of view of justification, right?

And view of salvation, yeah.

Right, so your justification is the cleansing part, and your spiritual disciplines is the parole officer giving you what it is that you need to be doing to, one, verify you are no longer going to return back to what puts you in prison, and that you're going to be progressing in your life.

So you are then given fleshly works to do, things that you are to do, and if you don't do them to a certain level and you don't have a desire to do them, I've literally had people tell me that if you don't have a desire to read your Bible every day for whatever long periods of time, you should question your salvation.

And those are types of disciplines, and I would even say it this way, the confession, the Lenten Baptist confession makes a very important observation about scripture. In chapter 16 on Good Works, point one, it says any works that are not instituted by God are not good works, and they are not to be seen as good works.

And good works, meaning God institutes them, they're said they're good for His glory and the benefit for the believer. And so we can turn spiritual disciplines and use it and turn it upside down. Here's the problem, okay?

The problem is that view of justification is not a biblical view. It's only half true. You took half the truth of justification and then you added another part to it that is not biblical. The second part of justification is an accounting term, right?

So it means that your debt that you owed has been paid, but there's still requirement for you to be accepted by God as righteous. So to be fully justified, it's not to be set free from debt, but to be fully justified means to be set free from debt and have full righteousness.

So what are we told? That when Christ's life, it's His act of obedience, active meaning passive is what was done to Him on the cross.

And His suffering His whole life, right?

Active would be Him obeying the law perfectly. And that is told, we are told that that is given to us. The technical word, if you're new to this, it's called imputation. It's imparted to us. Here's the key, by faith alone as well.

So your salvation from condemnation and your inheritance into righteousness, into union with Christ is given to you by faith alone. A great example of this is Ephesians chapter one and two is a good example of this.

Also Philippians chapter one and two, both explain that Christ's work on our behalf is given to us by faith alone. So Justin, that would be the technical, that would be the biblical simple view that the church has embraced for as long as we know, that that is the biblical perspective of justification.

Our salvation is not just from the penalty of sin, but we are saved from the penalty of sin and then adopted as children of God and given full right to the righteousness of Christ. Here it is, by faith alone, you do not earn the righteousness of Christ.

Justification, Imputation, and the Wedding Garment

Yeah, in justification, what God is doing is he is declaring unjust people just.

That's right.

Through what you just said.

Not sinless, not sinless.

We are declared just. We are declared righteous. And we're done, that is done by God, just as you described. The penalty paid by Christ, it is as though we've never sinned. And the obedience of Christ, the fulfilling of the law and righteous requirements, it is as though we did and have done all the good works of obedience that Jesus did.

So we've been given, to use the biblical illustration, we've been given his clothes, right? We've been given his righteousness to wear. It's like Matthew 22, one to 14 in the parable of the wedding feast, where there's a wedding garment that's required, right?

And there's a man in the wedding feast who's wearing his own clothes. He's wearing his own righteousness, in other words. He's coming in his own merit. He's the one who's hurled out on the street. The other people who are wicked, we're already told, are there because they've been given wedding garments to wear.

And so that is what justification is. It's that it is as though we've never sinned, and it is as though we have done all the righteous things that Christ has done. And what does that mean for us is really the question.

I think some of the confusion, John.

John, can I throw one more illustration in there? You know, when the prodigal son comes home and he had squandered all of his own, he comes back shamed. And what does his father put on him, right? He puts on the ring, he puts on the robe.

In other words, he treats him as he is not. That is that picture all throughout the New Testament of us receiving forgiveness, and then receiving all of the favor of God based upon Jesus.

Amen. And so a few, a number of things are just popcorning around in my brain, like as you were talking. So I think sometimes people get anxious when we say something like I'm about to say. We stand by this.

Instead of emphasizing in the church the incomplete partial work of sanctification, what we need to herald from the rooftops all the time is the completed work of Christ in justification. And then what that will do, as the saints look to Christ and as the saints can rest in what Christ has already finished, we then can pursue by grace in the Spirit via union with Christ, conformity unto the law, conformity unto the image of Christ, we can pursue obedience in freedom now.

And people get anxious about that because when we say that we need to emphasize justification, what people hear us to mean is that it doesn't matter how we live. And we've tried to deal with that in a number of episodes, even recently.

Of course it matters how we live, but what we're trying to do here is to speak like the apostles wrote. And we've got an episode we plan, anyway, to record next week where we're gonna think about how the apostles wrote to the saints.

That's right.

And so if this is of interest to you, guys, doesn't it matter how we live? Yes, it does. The apostles thought so, we think so. And at the same time, one need not clutter up the gospel in confused justification in order for that to be the case.

So that's kind of an aside.

That's coming next week.

Apostolic Certainty, Union with Christ, and the Christian Life

Yeah, so how we wanna talk, John, I think in this whole thing, how we wanna talk to the saints is the way that the apostles wrote. For example, 1 John chapter three and verse one, John writes to Christians who have been bombarded by a whole host of things.

But he says to them, see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God, and so we are. He talks with language of certainty. We are children of God. Not we might prove ourselves to be, but that we are, and then we live accordingly.

Or the language of Romans 8 .30, the famous golden chain, as it is called, where Paul writes using verbs all of a tense that indicate completion, like this is over. He says, those whom God predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified.

How can he write that way? He can write that way because redemption is over. It is finished. Jesus saw to that. There is nothing left to be done. All we do is receive what has already been accomplished.

Amen.

And that is the language of justification. That's the language of the gospel. It's the language of the apostles. And that is what actually sustains and propels the Christian in his pursuit of love and good works.

That's right.

Yeah.

I'm gonna add one to that. 2 Peter 1, verse three, his divine power is granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. I think he means life in the new life, like regenerated birth, life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called him.

And what's interesting is he keeps going through it and he says, well, how do you know this to be true? By which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.

Whose promises? God's promises, not yours, having escaped from the corruption that is in this world because of sinful desires. For this very reason, make every effort to stop. And he goes on to talk about good works, which we'll speak of next week.

But the point of it is is that everything you need for your justification has been granted to you by God, right, your forgiveness into life and your godliness, which is the part of righteousness that is required to you.

Here's what's interesting about what James is saying. It's yours not to be earned, it's yours, it's there. He's given it to you. And it's really hard for us to hear that language because Justin, we live as creatures who want to feel validated.

We want to feel as if we can claim some type of control over what's happening. But yeah, I know, I think the greatest illustration that even Jesus uses is that you and I didn't have any type of control who we were born by.

And yet we wanna somehow say, no, no, I chose the parents that, and it's just not, it doesn't work that way. And it's so, it goes with justification is that when we look at the promises of God, the promises are always stated, you are cleansed and you are clothed by God's power.

None of it is by your power.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

No, you good?

Yeah.

Okay, thinking back before we pivot to maybe some illustrations and as we consider how this manifests itself for many people, thinking back to the illustration of parole or probation, the way that we should speak when it comes to gospel and what justification actually means is not you've been set free, now prove yourself.

That's right.

You are forgiven, you are justified, now the vindication project is commenced and one day we'll know whether or not you are in fact in Christ. No, the way we speak is here is what God's law requires and you like all of us are crushed by that, but here's what Christ has done.

He is able to save the uttermost, all those who draw near to God through him. And he has accomplished everything necessary to save even you and trust him. And in doing that, you've been united to him and you are free.

And we just let that sit, right? We don't qualify it, you are free from condemnation, you are free from judgment and in light of all of that, go live. In light of all of that, go pursue love and good works.

In light of all of that, go pursue righteousness. Trust Christ, love your brothers and sisters, right? And that in a nutshell is the message of the apostles and they unpack for us, yes, what that looks like because people don't know what it means to love my brother and so they need to explain it.

That's right.

Or people don't know what it means for the church to be unified so they need to explain it. And of course that matters a ton but really what we're getting at in so much of this conversation is what is the emphasis in the church?

What is the emphasis in preaching? What is the emphasis in terms of the tone and the tenor of the Christian life? I love the old word tincture. You know, it's a word that implies like there's a little bit of tinting, right?

Like it's like water in a little drop of food coloring and it just kind of colors and flavors the whole thing. What is that in the church and in the Christian life for you as you sit here as a listener?

How have you been taught? What is your understanding? And our unashamed stance is that that tincture, that emphasis, it is always and only Christ and what he's done. And if that's not center stage, we've got a problem.

That's right.

I'm gonna read a quote probably later from Sinclair Ferguson regarding some historical matters that we may get to in a moment that will, I think, highlight that reality. But John, why don't you take us into ways that this shows itself?

You already mentioned disciplines earlier. You got that, you went there. Anything else to say about that or maybe we think about some other things.

Spiritual Disciplines, Sanctification, and the Means of Grace

A little bit. I know I kind of threw that out there as a bomb drop if you've not heard this, but spiritual disciplines within the church history is not been the way in which the church has understood spiritual growth and nor the application of it.

They tend to be very individualistic and they tend to be for validating purposes. When you aren't trying to validate yourself and you understand that he who began a good work and you will complete it, well, foolish Galatians, right?

You've become by the spirit. Are you now being perfected by the flesh? That isn't how this works. So we're going to look at this from a more biblical perspective where like in second Corinthians, where it says when we're looking at the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we are being transformed.

From one degree of glory to another.

That's right. Or, if I can,.

What may as well say this now, first John three, three. He's just talked about how we're all children of God. And he says, for everyone who thus hopes in him, for everyone who hopes in Christ this way, he seeks to purify himself as he is pure.

In other words, for those of us who hope in Christ for life, for forgiveness, for righteousness and all those things, we'll seek to imitate him. We'll seek to purify ourselves because Christ is pure. We will seek to pursue righteousness because Christ is righteous.

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith Versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a Reformed confessional perspective.

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer.

So you see the emphasis being there that we're looking to Christ and Christ is doing the work in us. Christians are very much disciplined because we have to be. To love neighbor and to fight sin requires discipline.

But the question is, where does the energy and power to do that come from? And Paul says it can't come to flesh. I mean, this is the end of Colossians 2 where he says they have an appearance of being helpful, but they're of no value stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

Then what does he say in chapter three? Look to Christ, seat at the right hand of the Father. So we're gonna go through a couple of examples here, but when you're always looking at the New Testament, you hear the New Testament telling you to feed on the finished work of Christ.

What does Jesus tell the man who was unfaithful to him just a few days before? Peter, if you love me, feed my sheep. But what does he mean by feed them? Literally in Christ's ministry, he's talking about feeding on him, right?

It's my body, my blood. That's what sustains you. We are being sustained by. So when you go and read 1 and 2 Peter, you go read Paul's work, you go read John, where are they always pushing you to? The finished work of Christ on your behalf.

The way we could say it is this way, Justin. It's like they are establishing your position as secure before they ever give you anything to do to practice. And we're gonna talk about that next week.

That's next week.

That's right.

Status forward, identity forward.

A good example of this, another zinger that is, you know, I'm gonna go ahead and throw it out there because I think it's helpful. Lordship salvation has a history built upon, I think, a probationary platform in that you can't just claim that you love God, that you have to then make Jesus Lord of your life.

And then there's, which I don't disagree with that. If you're gonna say you're a Christian and there's no fruit evidencing that, that could be a problem, right? This is, go ahead.

Brief word here. We've done episodes on lordship salvation before and we can refer you to those. But the really important word, in my brain anyway, to speak right now is this. The reform through history have always said, and John and I wholeheartedly agree, that where there is faith, real faith, there will be obedience.

Where there is faith, there will be good works. Where there is faith, there will be a desire to obey. All true. And at the same time, obedience is not part of faith. Good works are not part of faith. A desire to obey is not part of faith.

One must keep those things distinct or we really do confuse and compromise the good news itself.

Good works come out of the gratitude of what we have.

In our position.

And they flow from.

That's right.

I use this illustration in my sermon in James on Sunday. Alive people breathe. Well, the problem with lordship salvation and this concept is that those who've ever been under this type of ministry and type of preaching is that the believer is always being called into question their actions.

And are their actions matching their profession? Now listen, I don't have a problem with that. There are times where that is necessary where if someone keeps professing to be a Christian and yet they reject the truth of Christ, that's a problem.

Totally.

But in lordship salvation, the problem with it is is that there is always a self-examination where you live every day trying to determine have I made Jesus Lord of my life? And the question on that is the last word on that, Justin, I'll throw it to you is, have I made him Lord of my life enough?

Right. And you're gonna demonstrate that through these various ways. I think my biggest hang up here biblically and theologically with this whole thing is that lordship salvation is one way this occurs.

But in this whole principle of parole or probation, what we're effectively doing is instead of communicating what we said earlier that's biblical, you are a child of God, you are justified, you are saved because of Christ.

Trust him and now live and love and pursue righteousness because it's good. Rather than talking like that, we talk in such a way as though, yeah, you've been set free. And now you need to go about the work of doing this in such a way where there might come a time in the future.

It's not this. Like I do think we can rightly say that our profession of faith in Christ will be vindicated over the course of our lifetime. It will be and God will see to that. Okay, that's true. But what we do is introduce a lot of doubt into the equation about what's gonna happen at the end.

We say, yeah, you're set free and now one needs to go about the vindication project. And the implication is the future and how this will end is uncertain.

That's right.

Right?

And that uncertainty bit is really what we're driving at right now because there's this doubt in the Christian's mind and the church doubles down on it that you might end up being lost. You might end up not being justified and raised incorruptible in the end because you will have not done this adequately.

You will have not done your part. And of course people will backpedal on that and say, well, if that's true of a person then they never really were a Christian and all. And that's fine. But rather than talking in these ways of, yep, there's gonna come a reckoning and it might not go well for you.

We should say, no, Christ has saved you. Now live in him. And that I think is the real rub for me. You mentioned Lordship Salvation. While we're here, historically there is a controversy in the 18th century in the Church of Scotland known as the Marrow Controversy.

And we don't have time to explain all of the context and everything that was going on there. It was around a book written in the 17th century called the Marrow of Modern Divinity. And there were a number of men in the Church of Scotland in the 1720s or so who were referred to as the Marrow Brethren because of their appreciation for this book.

There was a rural presbytery, the Octorator Presbytery, in which there was a question for ministerial candidates that was worded effectively this way. Must one forsake sin in order to come to Christ? Now I fear, John, that many of our contemporaries in the Lordship camp and many of our contemporaries in the Calvinistic Evangelical Church would maybe answer that question, yes.

A person must forsake sin in order to come to Christ in faith, savingly. Our answer to that, and the Marrow Brethren as they were known, their answer to that question is no. If we need to do anything, then we cannot come to Christ.

But in fact, what we need to do, we don't need to do anything, we trust that Christ is able to save all those who draw near to God through him, period, right? And then from that, all this other stuff flows.

So I'm gonna just read a quote. This has everything to do with preaching, this has everything to do with that emphasis thing that we were talking about. Where is the emphasis in the church? What is the lifeblood of the church?

So listen to Sinclair Ferguson's words from the whole Christ. He says, is it obvious to me and of sermons I, excuse me, let me just start over. It is obvious to me and of engrossing concern that the chief focus, the dominant note in the sermons I preach or hear is Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Or is the dominant emphasis in perhaps the greatest energies of the preacher focused somewhere else? Perhaps on how to overcome sin or how to live the Christian life or on the benefits to be received from the gospel.

All are legitimate emphases in their place, but that place is never center stage, close quote. Very helpful. He goes on to say, the warrant of faith in Christ is neither knowledge of election, nor a conviction of universal redemption, nor is it a sense of our own sinfulness.

It is that Jesus Christ is able to save all those who come to God through him, since his is the only name given under heaven whereby we may be saved. Christ himself is the gospel. And that's all we are saying, is we need not qualify this thing for people to come on the front end and we need not throw all these qualifications on the back end to say, well, you need to have done all these things and you need to do all these things in order to be in Christ, because we have put the cart before the theological horse in doing so.