Classic Friday: You Say You Want A Reformation? With Dr. R. Scott Clark (Session two: Q & A Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

True Faith, Sanctification, and the Fruit of the Gospel

We�ve talked quite a bit on No Compromise Radio, and so today will be kind of like a little episode on No Compromise Radio. I�ll ask him questions, and then he can just talk as long as he wants to. I was on Scott�s show once, but you didn�t really let me talk that much, so I�m quite offended by that.

When you�re on my show, I let you talk all the time. Scott, in light of law and gospel and the finished work of the Lord Jesus, and there�s nothing else we need to do to keep our standing, what would you say to people then who would ask the question, �Well, if you do have that final standing based on the work of another, then won�t that lead me into licentiousness, and I can do whatever I want, and the Lord is looking at the Son�s work anyway, and so I can live as I please

Anybody who really and truly believes in Jesus, anyone who has what we call true faith, that�s one of the ways we talk about true faith as opposed to historical faith, temporary faith, the different kinds of faith that are not true faith.

True faith we define as a certain knowledge, and by certain I don�t mean particular, but I mean a confident, sure knowledge, and a heartfelt trust. So there�s knowledge, assent, and trust. Those are the aspects of true faith.

You have to know who Jesus is and what he did. You have to agree that it�s true, and you have to believe that it�s true for me, that he did it for me, and if that is you, then you�re going to live as one who�s been given new life and true faith.

Jesus says, �Good trees produce good fruit. If you�re a good tree, you will produce.

Good fruit.

I didn�t say how much fruit. I didn�t say it�s going to be perfect fruit, but good trees produce good fruit, and as Martin Luther said, �Before the law ever says do this, you�ve already started doing it.

Here�s the Gospel Mystery of Sanctification. There�s a great book on sanctification. I can�t think of the author.

Walter Marshall.

Walter Marshall, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification. Thank you. The law does not create righteousness in us. Even for Christians, the law doesn�t suddenly become the power of sanctification. Sanctification is spirit-wrought conformity to Jesus Christ, and the two aspects of sanctification are the putting to death of the old man, we used to call that mortification, and the making alive of the new, and those are both the work of the Holy Spirit.

Those are being done in us, and as a consequence of the ongoing, progressive, gradual, effectual work of the Spirit in us, our new inclination is to be obedient. I didn�t say perfectly. I didn�t say constantly.

I didn�t say you�re not going to struggle with sin. I think Romans 7, I�m confident, I�m convinced personally that Romans 7 is describing Paul as, at least at a certain point, you know, 7 .14 is kind of a transition, but there from the end of the chapter, Paul is describing his own life as a Christian, right?

That which I would not do, I do. That which I, well, and then he, so that he comes and he says, �What will become of me I don�t know sometimes. So that�s the confession of the honest Christian in the face of God.

And yet, he closes the chapter with a doxology, �Thanks be to Jesus Christ. That�s the confession of a Christian. So that�s our life, right? Romans 6, that�s our life. We�ve been, we�re united with Christ in His death.

We�re united with Christ in His resurrection. The new life is being wrought in us where, behold, we�re a new creature in Christ, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, 17. So we�re being made new. We�re being sanctified, and we will produce.

And the only people who ever ask, frankly, well, if you put it that way, if you preach the gospel of free acceptance with God and free salvation, right? So here�s one of the clever things people are doing.

They�re saying, well, justification is by grace alone through faith alone, but salvation is partly through works. Read Romans 2, 8. What does Paul say in Romans 2, 8 through 10? For it is by God�s free favor, grace, you have been saved.

Did you say Romans or Ephesians?

Ephesians 2, 8 through 10. For it is by God�s free favor, that�s my paraphrase, by grace, you have been saved. You already have been saved. Christ saved you on the cross. The Holy Spirit effectively, effectually applied that saving work to you in your experience, in your life.

Mysteriously, wonderfully, through the preaching of the gospel, and now the Spirit is at work in you. He�s united you through faith to the risen Christ. He�s at work in you. And the only people who ever ask, well, object, if you put it that way, people are going to do whatever they want.

Well, those are people who think, I guess, that we have to present ourselves to God on the basis of our performance, and they want to put you back under the law in order to get you to be good.

Well, you know, some of the congregation, they�re kind of wild, and they run around and do things you don�t want them to do as pastors. And so instead of knowledge, assent, and trust, we need to change that to knowledge, assent, and obedience.

Well, knowledge, assent, and trust should and does lead to obedience. That�s the natural progress. If a tree produces no fruit, right, sometimes it�s dormant. We�ve had that. We have some fruit trees on our property, not a lot.

I say property. I mean, our little patch, it sounds more glorious than it is, in our yard. And sometimes the trees, you know, they cycle. We have grapes, and we have a couple of different oranges and stuff.

And so one year we don�t get so much, and the next year we get a ton. But we know they�re still alive because we can see evidence of life. We have one little tree that is alive, barely. He�s not a fruit tree.

He�s just a sad little Charlie Brown tree. But he�s alive. He produces leaves in the spring and the summer. We don�t cut him down. I don�t have the heart to cut him down. But he�s still alive. He�s not dead, right?

But if he�s brown all the time, and in the spring, and he comes, and there�s never no little buds, no little leaves, well, I guess he�s dead, and then he has to go,.

Right?

We�re not putting water on a dead tree.

Assurance, Ordinary Means, and the Difference Between Gospel and Legalism

In light of that, Scott, how about assurance? Tell us a little bit about law and gospel, and then how that applies to the doctrine of assurance and the difference between an external looking at the work of Christ versus an internal, morbid introspection.

Let me add one thing to that previous answer, then I�ll answer this one, because I meant to say this. Because the point of mentioning the gospel mystery of sanctification is that the mystery of sanctification is that it�s not the law that does it, because that�s how we would do it.

It�s what makes sense to us. It�s the gospel that produces that sanctification in us. So if you want your people to be more godly, and the pastor knows this, the secret to producing godliness in your people is to preach the gospel.

It�s not that you don�t also preach the law, because our Christian life is normed by the law. It norms us, it guides us. And we need that. We need that instruction. We need that help. We need that norm.

You�re in Christ, you want to love God with all your faculties, and you want to worship only Him. You don�t want to abuse His name. You want to rest one day out of seven. You want to honor authorities that God�s placed over you.

You don�t want to commit sexual immorality. You don�t want to steal. You don�t want to lie. You don�t want to covet.

We�re talking today in the car about John�s illustration, and the law is like a GPS. So you want to go someplace. You want to go from here to Salem, let�s say, and how do we get there? Well, the GPS can tell you, good job, you�re on track, or you�re deviating, and that�s what the law does.

It either says, good job, or you�re deviating, but it can�t get you there. So you don�t have an engine to drive the car to go, you can�t get there. And so the gospel, and in this particular case, I�m thinking about the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, He is enabling us, and we�re thinking about what the Lord has done for us that drives us to holy living.

The gospel is your identity. You are in Christ. That�s a huge category for Paul. You�re in Christ. You�re not in Adam anymore. You�re in Christ. You still have the old man, Romans 6, or Romans 7, you�re still wrestling with that.

But there�s a fascinating dichotomy or distinction Paul makes, not I, but sin. So there�s I that�s the new I in Christ, and there�s still sin. Both things are true simultaneously. And so sanctification is the putting to death of that, and the making alive of the I that Paul mentions in Romans 7.

Before we answer the assurance question, is there no place like Nebraska?

There is no place like Nebraska. If you�re going through Nebraska, get off Interstate 80, go south or go north. I guarantee you, you�ll be delighted. Interstate 80 is a long river valley you�re in. It�s a 500-mile long river valley.

Nobody likes Interstate 80. You just go up to Highway 2, Highway 20, right, and it�s just gorgeous. Go down to Highway 36, it�s beautiful, canyons, hills, green farms, cattle, if you like.

I like cattle.

So let�s make it even more personal.

I learned to drive in a pasture.

How do you pronounce M-I-L-K?

In Nebraska, we say milk, warsh, roof, root, crick.

So if someone comes up to you and says, �Dr. Clark, I�m struggling with assurance, I�m a Christian and I�m just wondering about that, what�s kind of your M .O. as you approach them, especially in light of our law gospel presentation?

I say, �Brother, you believe in Jesus. You believe that he died for your sins and he was raised for your justification and that you�re hopeless apart from him and your whole confidence is in what he did for you.

And he says, �Yes, I believe that. I say, �You know what? God loves you for Jesus� sake. He accepts you for Jesus� sake, and nothing will ever change that. You have to rest in that. You have to trust in that.

That�s your confidence. Now, why are you struggling with assurance? �Well, you know, it�s kind of a drag sometimes to go to church, and so I haven�t really been hearing the gospel consistently. Well, okay, that�s easy diagnosis.

Get your butt in church. You need to be hearing the minister stand in the pulpit and announcing the law, reminding you of the greatness of your sin and misery and your need for a savior, and then announcing the good news that everyone who trusts in Jesus has been justified and saved and will be glorified, shall be, shall be glorified, and that�s for you, and you need to be coming to the Lord�s table, and you need to be reminded visibly, sensibly.

In the Heidelberg Catechism, it says, �As surely as I receive from the hand of the minister, as surely as I taste the bread and taste the wine, so sure is the promise of the gospel for me. We need those tangible, audible, oral reminders.

The visual reminder of seeing people baptized. We need to see that. That�s part of God�s plan for our sanctification and for our assurance, so if you�re absenting yourself from what we call the due use of ordinary means, of course you�re not doing very well.

�Well, I�ve been engaging in sexual immorality with my girlfriend. Well, that will also damage your assurance. You need to stop that. You need to repent. That�s not fitting for somebody who�s been united to Jesus Christ.

You probably should be having some qualms. If you�re feeling guilty, that�s good. Those guilt feelings are telling you, �Stop. This is not appropriate for somebody who�s been united to Jesus Christ. I want to talk to him and diagnose and see what�s going on, but oftentimes it�s just, �I just don�t feel like I�m good enough and my response is, �You aren�t good enough, but Jesus is.

You are, and you never will be if you intend to present yourself to God on the basis of your performance or your sanctification or your good works. You�re never going to meet the test, and you�re always going to be having a crisis.

�Yeah, but I haven�t had the second blessing. �Good news. There�s no such thing as a second blessing. I had a lady in my congregation. She was from an old Dutch tradition that believes that only those who�ve had the blessing could come to the Lord�s table, right?

You have to convince the elders that you had the blessing. It�s a kind of a second blessing theology, not Pentecostal, but it�s a blessing. The Holy Spirit comes and says specifically, �Johanna, you are mine apart from that experience of which you can convince the elders you can�t come to the Lord�s table, and you can never have assurance, because to have assurance without the blessing would be presumption, and that would be evidence that you�re damned, so the only way to have any kind of comfort is to doubt.

She had made doubt of the essence of faith, so I�ve dealt with that, and the truth is doubt is not of the essence of faith, doubt is of the essence of unbelief. Trust and confidence and hope is of the essence of faith.

Now, we don�t always experience that, because we live in a fallen world, but if you�re in the community, if you�re in the church, you�re hearing the gospel, you�re participating in the Lord�s Supper, right, all of those things, you are more likely to feel that sense of assurance than apart from that.

So external means matter, and that�s important. In American evangelicalism, it�s all about me and my Lord privately, secretly in the closet, you know, and then I come to church as an expression of my private life.

No, that�s completely backwards. I read the Bible privately, and I pray privately because I�m a member of the visible church that Jesus established, and I�ve been received by that, and I�m hearing his gospel authoritatively proclaimed to me.

I�m not blessing the church with my presence, the church is blessing me by letting me in it.

And it�s sad these days that so many churches just resort to pragmatics, five keys and six steps and all these things.

Oh, yeah, listicles. If he starts giving you listicles, right, unplug his mic, it�s not going to happen, but yeah, that�s right, because people like�and that�s�okay, if he gives you a list, seven steps to a happy life, is that law or is that gospel?

Yeah, that�s law-light. And so in all these mega-church, church-growth places, right, everybody�s happy and healthy and successful, seven steps, three steps, 12 steps, it�s all law. And people are burdened under that law, and they�re.

They�ve already disobeyed throughout the week, right?

That�s right.

We all have, and now we have seven more ways we can disobey. Have a good day.

Yeah. As Bob Dylan said way back in 1980, suffering under the law, right? And they come from law into more law, and it�s happy law, it�s exciting law, shine Jesus, shine, and sloppy wet kiss and all that.

What? Did you just look at me when you said that?

It�s a song. My students tell me this is a song that people sing in public worship, like a sloppy wet kiss.

Oh.

Law and Gospel in Parenting, Marriage, and the Third Use of the Law

How about law-gospel, those two words, those two kinds of words, would you say it would be fair, Scott, to apply those even with parenting and marriage when it comes to.

Oh, yeah.

It�s transformative. Relating to our spouses?

Because I see so many parents. I mean, my default is do this, do this, do this, and then I forget about the gospel kind.

Of word.

And even with couples, can you pick this up, can you iron that, could you don�t, you know, remember this, could you fix that? And so I see couples, they just give each other law all the time.

The people from whom we come are past masters in passive-aggressive legalism.

Who said?

So, yeah, we come. It�s kind of a� it�s a law with a� it�s law in a velvet glove,.

But it�s still law.

Yeah, and when we are law with each other in our relationships, that will show if there�s.

Not gospel.

The law follows� in Paul�s epistles, typically the law follows the gospel. So if we�re gracious and kind with our� in our relationships, and if we�re, in a sense, you know, being gracious with them, and then instruction follows that.

You know, if the kids are� if it�s always just law with the kids. There needs to be law. There needs to be structure. Anybody who denies the abiding validity of the moral law of God is an antinomian. And the antinomians who deny the moral law of God, not that we�re under it for salvation or justification, but we�re under it as the norm, right?

We call that the third use of the law, the normative use of the law. If you deny that, you�re an antinomian. You don�t understand the gospel or the law, and if you�re a neonomian, you�re going to present yourself to God on the basis of your performance of the law.

If you�re a gnomist, you still don�t understand the law, just like those two men, right? The lawyer and the rich man. They both thought that they could present themselves to God on the basis of their performance, and Jesus said, �You don�t get the law.

Right? So neither one of them understands the law, and they�re really two sides of the same.

Coin.

And so if we�re gnomists with our kids, we�re going to get bitter, disappointed kids, and if we�re gnomists with our spouse, we�re going to get bitter, disappointed spouses, because they can never meet the standard.

Legal Preaching, the Power of the Gospel, and the Belgic Confession

Good. How about this, Dr. Clark? The article that I think has helped me the most in my own ministry is an article that you wrote, �The Attraction of Legal Preaching. �The Attraction of Legal Preaching.

And you said this in the article, �A legal preacher is a preacher who majors in the law to the neglect of the gospel. In practice, he preaches nothing but law. He thinks that mentioning Jesus periodically, or even regularly, means that he�s not a legal preacher, and he can�t imagine that people are concerned about the tenor of his preaching because he doesn�t see anything wrong with it.

It�s the sort of preaching he heard as a young man, and it�s the sort of preaching he heard in seminary, and it�s the sort of preaching he admires in other preachers. Talk to us a little bit about this kind of legal preaching, and how even men end up talking about Jesus with kind of a scolding attitude.

Just because you invoke Jesus doesn�t mean you�re a gospel preacher, right? I drive a car. That doesn�t make me a NASCAR driver, right? There�s a difference in kind. We were playing basketball at the Hall of Fame.

That didn�t make us Hall of Fame basketball players.

Speak for yourself.

By no means. So the legal preacher, one of the giveaways of a legal preacher is that he�s dissatisfied with his people because they don�t ever meet the test. He has this test that he wants them to meet.

Have you obeyed enough?

Have you obeyed enough?

Have you read enough? Have you prayed enough?

And, of course, you haven�t. You haven�t read your Bible enough. You haven�t prayed enough. You haven�t loved your neighbor enough. You haven�t loved God enough. And the whole�the tenor of the preaching is legal.

There�s never really any relief from the law. It�s always some kind of law, one kind of law or another. And it�s just relentless, because that�s the nature of the law. It never goes away. It never stops.

The law can only be law. Lawyers will know. If you�ve been to law school, you�ve heard this expression, �The law is an ass. And what it means, among other things, is that the law is what it is. It only does what it does.

It�s an instrument. It�s a tool. It�s not smart in a sense, right? And if you�ve ever worked with animals, worked with donkeys, whatnot, they�re mule-stubborn. My great-uncle�one of the famous stories in our family is my great-uncle, Chop, Wyatt, when he was a boy, was standing on a plow�this tells you how long ago it was, right

�standing on a plow behind a mule, and a mule stopped, and Chop wanted him to go, and Chop was a big guy. He went around front, and he punched the mule, and he made him go. Chop was a big guy. Think John Wayne, big, right?

So the law is an ass. It can�t do anything for you except what it does. Only the gospel can change things. Only the gospel raises you from the dead. I mean, this is a crazy thing. This is the system that God�s instituted�I say crazy from a human point of view.

God�s instituted a system whereby some guy, this guy in particular, stands somewhere in a pulpit, announces a highly improbable message about a rabbi�an untrained rabbi from Nazareth who was crucified, buried, and raised on the third day, and God uses that message to literally�not figuratively�raise people spiritually from death to life and to confer upon them all the benefits of Christ.

So that�the legal preacher doesn�t ever really confer that benefit on people. He never really announces the good news in such a way as to set the captives free. They�re always kept�so they�re basically in Egypt, and he just wants them to get used to being in Egypt and, you know, eat your leeks and eat your onions and make more bricks without straw.

He�s basically Pharaoh, and what he needs to become is Moses in a sense. He needs to become the deliverer and lead them out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, which in our confession that we confess in our churches is the Belgic Confession, and we say�we actually confess in the confession that Christ is our Red Sea.

Meditate on that. Christ is our�and we need the preacher to take us by the hand and lead us through the Red Sea, lead us through Christ and to the promised land of righteousness, grace, forgiveness, and mercy.

And if the preacher�s not doing that, he�s fundamentally a legal preacher. I�ve had preachers preach the law and just leave us there.

Now.

And there�s nothing wrong with preaching law.

No.

You need to preach the law. You need to preach it in the first use, even in the second use, right, the civil use, right, to norm civil life. And in terms of the second table, right, we don�t�I�m an American.

I don�t want the state enforcing the first table, right, putting people in jail for having the wrong religion, but the second table, right, we don�t�we need that, and then we need the third use. We need expositions, explanations of what the law entails, what it requires.

But the power of the Christian life is not the law.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God�s Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We�re right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.