Is Justification By Faith Alone in the Bible?

Revealed Apologetics

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All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. And today I have no guest, all right?

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I am actually going to be just teaching a little bit on a topic that I think is very important.

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And so I'm just gonna wait a couple of minutes to see if anyone is going to come in and give this a listen, maybe interact a little bit.

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But yeah, so those of you guys who follow the channel, you do know that I do place a great emphasis on apologetic methodology and things like that.

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But I'm sure many people know I am a reformed Christian. Okay, I identify, right?

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I theologically identify as a Calvinist. But I think reformed theology is very important.

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And so I do wanna do some videos in the near future to cover the various tenets of reformed theology and why

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I think that they're true. Because I think it's important. And even for those who are not

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Calvinist per se, but follow within a reformed tradition, who would hold to the solas, sola fide, sola scriptura, solus

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Christus, sola gratia, all the, you know, soli deo gloria, all of the solas of the Reformation.

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I think if you're not a Calvinist and we do have kind of those differences there, I still think that within the broader swath of Protestantism, we can kind of center around these doctrines and really understand that they're actually very, very important features of the

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Christian faith, okay? Now, of course, our Catholic friends and our Orthodox friends would kind of take issue with that.

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But of course, that is given the nature of our first principles, our starting points, right?

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As Protestants, we take very seriously the notion that scripture alone is the one sole infallible rule of faith and practice, okay?

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Now, I'm not gonna be talking about sola scriptura today, but it is an important feature and it is actually embedded within the

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Protestant presupposition with regards to the nature of authority, okay? When people ask the question, for example, what is the difference between Protestant Christianity and Roman Catholicism?

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We tend to focus on kind of the window dressing sort of things, okay?

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So for example, you know, you ask your cousin, you know, who's, you know, you know, what's the difference between, you know,

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Protestantism and Catholicism? Well, those Catholics, you know, they worship Mary, you know, you hear something like that, or, you know, those are the guys who pray to the saints, right, you know?

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You hear a lot of these kind of window dressing sort of things, when in reality, I think the more fundamental difference between Catholicism and Protestant Christianity and even orthodoxy is not so much the window dressing differences, those are true, there are differences there, but I think it's the more fundamental issue of the sources of authority, okay?

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So for example, Roman Catholic source of authority is different than the Protestant source of authority, okay?

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If you reject Sola Scriptura and you hold to kind of, kind of the Bible and, you know, church tradition, the magisterium, right, the authority of the

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Pope and things like that, that is the reason why you see the window dressing sort of differences, okay?

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So I think that's very important to keep in mind. So without getting bogged down with all of the specific differences, which are important,

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I think the fundamental difference between the Protestant, the Catholic and the Orthodox is really an issue of the source of authority. And so you wanna keep that in mind, always be conscious of the fact of what your authority is.

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And then of course, when you're engaging with folks from those perspectives, you want to argue in such a way so as to be consistent with that authority.

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Those of you guys who know presuppositional apologetics really deals with our fundamental foundations and then arguing in a way that is consistent with those authoritative foundations and arguing in such a way that is honoring to God, both in method, intellectually speaking, with regards to content, and also in manner with gentleness and respect, okay?

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I have been listening quite a bit to interactions between Roman Catholics and Protestants and Orthodox folks.

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And it's just very interesting to see how vitriolic people can be when they're defending the truth of the gospel, they are not reflecting the gospel in the way that they are engaging.

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And I think it's very important. And oftentimes this is hidden underneath the surface of a kind of a holy and righteous anger, right?

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Okay, you know, kind of when Jesus kind of knocked the tables over and made a whip and people tended to say, well, the reason why

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I'm so harsh is because it's righteous indignation. Well, listen, there is a context for that.

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But again, having listened to a lot of interactions between various folks, I just think that there is a lot of heat and there's not very much light.

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And so I really do think it's important to keep that in mind. Content is important and manner is important, okay?

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First Peter chapter three, verse 15, set apart Christ as Lord in your heart, always being ready to give a reason for the hope that's in you, yet doing so with gentleness and respect, okay?

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And doing these things with gentleness and respect, I think allows us to step back, listen to what someone has to say and really grapple with it, okay?

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I, for example, when I'm engaging with Roman Catholics or Orthodox folks, I am not a scholar with regards to the early church fathers.

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And so when the issues of the early church come up, I wanna listen. I wanna take into consideration what the person's saying.

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And if it's something I need to go back and look into, because the context of the interaction is one of respect and gentleness and humility, then

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I could freely say that, hey, that's a great point. You know, let me look into that, all right? And that's how discussions should be.

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Not every disagreement is within the context of a formal debate or an online interaction where some of these kind of, you know, the ways in which we present ourselves is removed, we act in ways towards people online in ways that we would never act if we were face -to -face.

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And so I think it's a very important thing to keep in mind, okay? Well, in this specific video,

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I wanna cover a very important doctrine, and that is the doctrine of justification by faith alone, okay?

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And this is, I think, a very important centerpiece of Protestant theology, and of course, more fundamentally biblical theology.

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And so I think it's very important that we understand what justification by faith is, okay?

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And then proceed to the more fundamental question of, you know, is justification by faith alone?

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So understanding what justification is, and then understanding whether it is alone within the context of Protestant theology.

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Is the Protestant perspective correct, okay? And of course, we will address kind of the, some of the scriptures that people bring up in contradiction to the

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Reformed understanding of justification by faith alone, all right? And then after that, I'll take just a few questions.

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It is a work night, okay? I have to go to work tomorrow, so I can't take a few questions, but we'll see how long this takes.

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And hopefully, however long it is, it will be useful to someone, and would perhaps encourage folks to go a little deeper in.

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Now, before I get started, I would like to thank, I won't mention any names, but I would like to thank some very generous supporters of Revealed Apologetics.

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I received a wonderful financial gift by a couple of people that has been very, very helpful.

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Of course, when folks contribute financially, that helps with buying equipment and things like that, especially with regards to some research and study.

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Of course, it's always helpful to have some extra money to get books and to get things that are relevant to the content that people are appreciating about this specific channel.

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So I do very much appreciate the financial help that has been given, and of course, I do appreciate any financial help that may come in the future, okay?

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So thank you very much for that. It is greatly, greatly appreciated. All right, well, let me get started, and then we'll take it from there.

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So I wanna talk about the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Now, first, I wanna focus on this issue of justification.

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What do we mean by justification? And the standard definition, I think, is appropriate here. Justification refers to the instantaneous act of God in which

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He, one, thinks of our sins as forgiven and Christ's righteousness as belonging to us, and He declares us righteous in His sight.

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I'll say that again. Justification refers to the instantaneous act of God in which He thinks of our sins as forgiven and Christ's righteousness as belonging to us, and He declares us righteous in His sight, okay?

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Justification refers to this notion of being declared righteous, okay?

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So this is very, very important to keep in mind. Before we ask the question, is justification by faith alone, we wanna understand what justification is.

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I think that's very important to define our terms, okay? I'm kind of getting more specific.

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Justification also involves a legal declaration by God to declare us righteous.

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In a legal declaration, in this sense, justification is often understood within a forensic context.

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And when we speak of forensic, that is having to do with legal proceedings. This is important because sin is defined in the

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Bible as lawlessness, 1 John 3, 4, okay? Sin is the breaking of God's law.

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It's a violation of God's law, okay? And so justification does have kind of legal connotations to it that I think are important to keep in mind.

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Now, when we speak of being justified, being declared justified, we mean in essence that we are being declared righteous.

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That's what justification means in this particular context. And of course, scripture bears that out with the various uses of the term justification.

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I also think it's important to understand various aspects of justification, okay? Let me see here,

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I got some comments here. Again, I won't be taking questions until later on and try to keep your questions simple, okay?

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Sometimes I read people's questions and I'm kind of just like, I'm not sure what you're asking. So I try to keep your questions short and in one little bracket, don't kind of give me part one, part two, part three.

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It makes it difficult to answer. So just giving a heads up. Graham, I'm not taking calls.

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This is not a call -in, but you can type in your question. And if I'm able to, I will address it in the comments when

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I do some Q &A. So just wanted to throw that out there, okay? All right, so I wanna focus a little bit on aspects of justification.

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Now, one important aspect of justification is the notion of forgiveness, okay? And while forgiveness is an aspect of the justification, the theological concept of justification in scripture, that entails that we have no penalty for our sins due to our debt being paid in Christ, right?

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We are forgiven and we're also made righteous. Now, check this out. It's a very important term. We are made righteous by the imputing of Christ's righteousness to our account, okay?

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So this is another important key theological term, this term imputation, okay?

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When Christ imputes righteousness to us, His righteousness is reckoned to our account, okay? When we speak of Christ's righteousness being imputed to us, we are in essence saying that His righteousness is reckoned to our account such that His righteousness is our righteousness, okay?

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I kind of like to think of the righteousness of Christ that is obtained by the Christian through faith as kind of a robe, right?

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Christ is wearing this white robe that is untainted by sin and filth. And His righteous robe,

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He gives to us and we are clothed with His righteousness, okay?

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And in exchange, Christ takes on our iniquities, right? In 1

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Peter 2, verse 24, it says that He bore our sins in His body on the cross. All right, a lot of people refer to this kind of exchanging of Christ's righteousness and our unrighteousness.

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Our unrighteousness is imputed to Christ and Christ's righteousness is imputed to us such that we are declared righteous before the

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Father in light of the fact that we are in Christ, okay? That word, phrase in Christ is very, very important.

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You have kind of this in category. We are either in Adam or we are in Christ, okay?

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And that has much to do with another theological topic that is related. And that is the issue of federal headship, which

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I won't get into too much at this point. But federal headship is a very important concept that I think when you're studying these issues, especially issues pertaining to soteriology and the work of Christ, His work as a mediator, these specific issues,

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I think, become very, very important to look into, expand upon, and study up a bit, okay?

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So very, very, very, very, very, very important, okay? All right, so we have this kind of exchange.

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Our unrighteousness is imputed to Christ. Christ's righteousness is imputed to us such that we are declared righteous before the

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Father in light of the fact that we are in Christ, okay? So we kind of know what justification by faith is, but now the question

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I think that's more fundamental is justification by faith alone, okay?

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We are justified, declared righteous by faith, but is it faith plus something else?

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I think that's a very important question to ask. And I think this is something that the Bible does address.

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And I think this is really the reason why Protestants hold to the doctrine. We think that it flows out of a consistent application and reading of the scriptures, okay?

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Now check this out. So this being declared righteous, this justification before God, is not received by anything that we do, okay?

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It is not by our works, okay? I'm gonna say that again, very important. This being declared righteous, this justification before God is not received by anything that we do.

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It's not by our works, but rather it is received, as the scriptures say, by faith, okay?

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As Romans 4 or 5 says, and to the one who does not work, okay? To the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

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But to the one who does not work, work is a separate category than faith, okay?

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Justification is not acquired by faith and works or just works or some mixture where we are joining something together with faith.

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If it's not by works, it's by faith. And if it's by faith, it's not by works, okay? So I think that this implies very strongly that justification by faith and not by works is this notion of faith alone, which we can find in multiple places in scripture, okay?

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Now, given this idea that we are justified by faith and not by our works,

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I think any attempt to add a work as a prerequisite or a condition upon which we're justified is to add works to what the

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Bible says only requires faith, right? Justification is by faith, all right?

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Now we'll talk a little bit more about faith because there needs to be some nuance there. It's not simply, well,

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I just believe and that's it. And it doesn't matter what I do after that, okay? We'll talk a little bit about kind of the implications there that I think is very important to keep in mind so that we can clarify any kind of ambiguities and misunderstanding as to what the

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Protestant means when we say that we are not justified by works but by faith and faith alone, okay? Now, this idea that we're not justified by faith and works or we're justified by works or whatever, however you wanna say it,

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I think this point is emphatically taught throughout scripture, okay? Let's consider a couple of passages here.

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Romans 3, 28 through 30 says, for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

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For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law, okay?

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Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since indeed

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God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one, okay?

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So Paul says we're justified by faith, not by works, okay? Galatians 2, 16, nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law since by the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified, okay?

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So there is a great emphasis upon faith and not works, okay?

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Very, very important thing to keep in mind. Paul is making kind of this dichotomy, so to speak, so that we don't mix them inappropriately.

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Now, there is an appropriate way in which we understand the relationship between faith and works. And then there's an inappropriate way in which we understand the relationship between faith and works.

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And Paul is giving us the proper context as to how we are to understand the relationship of faith and works.

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We're not saved or justified by our works, we're saved and justified by our faith, okay?

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Very important. Now, what's up with this faith? Well, faith, the Bible describes is a gift, is a gift of God, okay?

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The justification, which is by faith and not by works is something that is an extension of God's grace or the scriptures say, for it is by grace you've been saved through faith and this is not from yourself, that is a gift of God, Ephesians 2, 8.

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Indeed, faith is a gift of God's grace as the scriptures tell us, it is granted to us that we believe,

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Philippians 1, 29. So faith is a gift, it is not of ourselves and it is granted to us to believe, okay?

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I think this is very, very important to keep in mind. Again, you're gonna have kind of heated debates as to whether faith is something that is a gift of God or not, okay?

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You're gonna have different positions on there and they have different variations and understanding of how this all works out, okay?

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Which we won't get into at this point, but be that as it may, I'm saying that faith is a gift according to scripture, okay?

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Now there are some objections to this, okay? So we're justified by faith, now faith is a gift, justification is something

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God declares upon us by faith, okay? So we're declared righteous before God in Christ Jesus by faith, which is itself a gift of God, okay?

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And so we're not justified by works, we're justified by faith and so I'm saying that that implies that faith is alone, okay, in the sense that we are saved not by the things that we do, but rather faith, okay?

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Now, very important, there are some objections here where people want to emphasize the necessity of works somewhere in this process and I think that's an inappropriate thing to do because I think

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Paul is speaking clearly against that, but let us take a look at some passages or some scriptures that often people bring up, okay?

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For example, some people bring up Galatians 5, verse 6, Galatians 5, verse 6,

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I don't know if you're watching with a Bible next to you, but maybe you wanna go and grab a Bible and open up to Galatians 5, 6, okay?

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And it says here, it says for in Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, check this out, this is the key point here, but only faith working through love, so there you go.

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It's not faith alone, it's faith working through love and so there has to be a work of some sort that is conjoined with the faith, okay?

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Now, is this a proper understanding? I think there's an inappropriate kind of attempt to include some kind of work within the process and I don't think that it works, sorry for saying works multiple times, okay?

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When we speak of faith, faith points us away from works and towards a complete reliance upon the finished work of Christ, okay?

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However, as we learn clearly from scripture that a genuine faith,

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I wanna say this very clearly, it's very important, a genuine faith is never a lonely faith, okay?

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A genuine faith is never a lonely faith. Genuine saving faith produces fruit consistent with the root of saving faith.

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As the popular reformed catchphrase goes, we're saved by faith alone, but a saving faith is never alone, okay?

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Very, very important to keep in mind. This is why it's futile to try and refute the reformed doctrine of justification by faith alone by appealing to biblical passages which speak of the necessity of works because reformed folks have never denied the importance of works.

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The very evidence is that our alone faith which justifies us before God is genuine, okay?

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And this, I think, clearly is brought up when we talk about passages like James 2, verses 14 through 26, okay?

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This is very, very important, okay? Let me turn there and read what James 2, verse 14 through 26 says.

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Now, a lot of our Catholic friends and other people Orthodox, anyone who denies justification by faith alone will point to the only place in the

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Bible where faith alone is mentioned and it is the portion of scripture that says we're not justified by faith alone, okay?

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So let's talk a little bit about James 2. Let me turn there because it's kind of a lengthy passage here, okay?

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And as I turn there, again, I'll try my best to answer some questions if you guys have it towards the end, but let's turn to James here.

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Okay, so let's see here, James, James, James. You ever just like look for a book in the

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Bible that you're like, I know where this book is and then you continue to look and you keep skipping over it and you're like, I don't even know what,

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I don't even know what's going on here. We know where certain books of the Bible are and then all of a sudden when we're trying to turn there, someone ripped out

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Galatians out of my Bible. What's up with that? That happens to me sometimes. It's happening to me right now as I'm flipping frantically through my

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Bible. Let's see, James 2, verses 14, verse 14 through 26, okay?

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Let's turn there here, all right? Okay, I'm gonna read it with overexaggerated emphasis

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I think is important, okay? James 2, 14 through 26. What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

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Can that faith save him? What kind of faith? Well, it's a faith that doesn't have works, okay?

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If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace and be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

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So also faith by itself is, if it does not have works, is dead, amen. I can say that as a

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Protestant Christian who believes in justification by faith alone, I can say amen to everything that James is saying here.

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But someone will say, you have faith and I have works, show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works.

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You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?

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Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was acting along with his works and faith was completed by his works and the scripture was fulfilled that says

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Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone, there it goes.

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And in the same way, was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?

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For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead, okay?

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Now, as a Protestant Christian who fully affirms justification by faith alone, I can affirm those without reservation at all.

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I mean, I affirm that James is in the Bible, it's inspired word of God. Now, there are people who appeal to history, well, listen,

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Martin Luther didn't accept James, right? He called it an epistle of straw. You know, that's often brought up.

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Here's what a Protestant would say to that accusation with regards to Martin Luther.

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Here's what a Protestant would say who affirms sola scriptura, okay? Ready? When someone brings up Martin Luther and his rejection of James, I would just say, so what?

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Okay, who says that as a Protestant, Martin Luther is my authority? Okay, I do not think that Martin Luther was infallible.

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He did many things that were a little off at times and many things that I would strongly support and agree and argue for, that's from scripture, okay?

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Doesn't matter what Martin Luther believed, all right? Even though he may have seen a conflict here, I don't see a conflict.

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And when you read the context, there is no conflict. All right, I think this is very important. Don't let people get away with that, by the way.

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A lot of people's, you know, well, you know, they'll try to appeal to the imperfections and inadequacies of people within the past.

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But if we are going to hold scripture as our ultimate authority, I wanna know what the Bible says, okay?

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I wanna know what the Bible supports this doctrine because the Bible is the word of God. Martin Luther is not the word of God.

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John Calvin is not the word of God. Ehrlich Zwingli is not the,

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I always have trouble saying his name. He's not the word of God. Helpful at times, but not inspired of God.

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And so we need to go to the scriptures, the inspired word of God. Now, let's take a look here. So James chapter two.

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What good is it my brothers if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? Answer, no. If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to him, go in peace, be warm, filled without giving them the things needed for the body.

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What good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works is dead. Check this out.

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But someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works, okay?

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Check that out. What is the context here? Okay, this is talking about justification before other men.

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Show me your works, okay? Show me. This is horizontal, okay?

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It is not vertical. You see, this is where you have people setting Paul against James and that's inappropriate.

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If the Bible is the word of God and Paul is in the word of God and James is in the word of God, the word of God does not conflict with itself.

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There is a consistency there. But because God has communicated to us in language, we need to look at context and see what's going on here.

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I think it's very important, okay? James is talking about Christian living, okay?

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Controlling the tongue. You see, read the broader context of the book. In this particular passage, he's speaking about justification before men.

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We show that our faith is genuine by our works. As I said before, we're saved by faith alone, but the faith that is alone is,

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I'm sorry, the faith that we're saved by is not alone. We believe that there is works included in as much as it is evidence of the genuineness of our faith, okay?

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Works is the fruit of a genuine faith, okay? And so James here is speaking of horizontal issues.

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Now, when you talk about justification in the book of James, I think the error is to see justification in the writings of Paul, and then there's an equivocation between the uses of these words.

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Just because a word appears in multiple times throughout the Bible doesn't mean it's meant to be taken the exact same way.

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Everything is defined by the context, okay? You look at Paul and justification has a very interesting and important legal context, and it is a justification vertically speaking.

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Paul speaks of our justification before God. We are not made right before God by our works. That's why he says, but to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned to him as righteousness, okay?

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But then James is speaking how we are justified by, how we're justified towards others, okay?

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My faith is justified by what I do. My actions reflect the genuineness of my faith. My actions reflect the fact that I possess a genuine faith.

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I think that's very, very important to keep those distinct uses in mind, okay? So just by seeing the words were not by faith alone, doesn't really

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I think touch the essential issues involved in this specific debate, okay? So I think those things are kind of key to understand, okay?

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Now, I would say that just as Paul demonstrated that trusting in our own works doesn't work,

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James is teaching us that resting on our empty dead faith doesn't work, okay?

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And of course that is explained, right? Faith is joined with evidence of its genuineness, i .e.

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our works, okay? But ultimately, ultimately we are justified before God, not by anything we can contribute.

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It is only God's grace that we are gifted faith so as to be justified before him. The process of salvation that God has ordained in his sovereignty is a precious thing.

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It highlights his love. It highlights his majesty. It highlights his works and righteousness done in Christ Jesus, not ours.

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It's the mark of man -centered religion to insert ourselves into the process in a way that is inappropriate and unbiblical.

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We're saved by faith, which is evidenced by work, by works, okay? Very, very important thing to keep in mind, all right?

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Well, that's all, okay? Again, we can go into greater detail. As I said before, it is a work night, so I can't go the full hour as I normally go, but let's take a look at some questions or comments here.

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Flaming Sword makes a comment here. I've seen a lot of dialogue lately, even on apologetic sites over the whole

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Protestant Catholic issue. Perhaps this is why you are bringing this up. Well, sort of.

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I think in one context, it's important to understand this distinctive of Reformed Protestant Christianity.

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I think it's biblical, and I think it's an essential feature of the Christian faith. It touches on the very issue of the gospel.

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And so on the one hand, when we're interacting with Roman Catholics, yes, this is something that comes up, and I think it's important for Christians to know.

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On the other hand, I think from a more kind of experiential perspective,

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I think it's important for Christians to understand how salvation works, because I think once we understand that we are justified by faith and not by what we do, that truth is very liberating.

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A lot of people who have perhaps grown up in very legalistic churches, who teach you can lose your salvation and things like that, there's this heavy burden that they need to perform in order to keep their right standing with God.

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And so when you come to the realization that salvation is a complete and utter work of God, and it is by faith and nothing that we can do, this is what it means to be free, to be set free from the law of sin and death, okay?

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So I think this is a, was it inspired by the interactions online?

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Maybe in my subconscious, but I do think it's an important topic, and so I brought it up nonetheless, okay?

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All right, let's see here. There's a lot of comments here.

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Someone's called a heretic. By the way, I knew someone was gonna be called a heretic on this live stream.

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You never, it never fails in that regard here. Okay. Aaronic Pelagian says is key to bringing up unity between James and Paul.

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I do think that's very important. Yes, I agree, I agree. So yeah, so because, as I said before, because I believe the

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Bible is the inspired word of God, 2 Timothy 3, 16, all scripture is theanoustos. It is God -breathed.

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Because it has its source in God, it is consistent with itself because God is consistent. And so when we see apparent, apparent conflicts and tensions,

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I do think that because we know that God does not contradict himself, then we need to do some of the hard work and see, well, what's going on here?

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And I think when you take the writings of Paul, you take the writings of James, there is a beautiful consistency there, but you do need to scratch below the surface and kind of look a little deeper into that.

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And that's what Bible study is all about, right? We study the scriptures and iron sharpens iron within the context of, you know, doing this with our brothers and sisters within the church.

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Hopefully that can sharpen our ability to really get at what God is trying to teach us in the scriptures, okay?

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All right, let's see here. Let me get rid of that. All right,

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Graham says here, I might say that faith alone is possibly shorthand. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

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Yeah, yeah, I would say that. To say that we're not justified by the deeds of the law is to say that we're justified by faith, right?

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And so for justified by faith and not by works, then the works is not included there as with regards to what justifies before God, it's faith.

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And faith is left there alone. We're justified by faith alone. So yes, I would say it's a shorthand here, okay?

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Let's see here. Yeah, okay, so Eranic Pelagian writes, if you're going to come up with a declaration that's supposed to represent a

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Christian doctrine, perhaps you should find one that the text itself doesn't directly contradict.

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See James 2 .24. Well, we addressed James 2 .24, okay? The conversation that Paul is having with regards to justification before God is a different conversation that James is having when he's speaking about justification before men, okay?

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So the context there I think would explode that faulty assertion that there is a contradiction to the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

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I affirm justification by faith alone and I strongly affirm James 2 .24.

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There's no conflict there, okay? But thank you. Okay, let's see here.

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Brad says, great topic. Thank you. I think it is a great topic, appreciate it. Okay, let's see here.

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What words did he find that it means? I believe he's saying Holy Spirit is the ranch dressing or his word salad. Okay, I love reading the comments, by the way.

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I mean, I don't appreciate kind of the mean -spirited ones or the jabs, but some of them are pretty darn funny.

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I won't read all of them, but let's see here. I like this one here. Check this one out here. I believe he's saying that this

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Holy Spirit is the ranch dressing for his word salad. That's a good one. That's a real good one.

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See, creativity in the comments. I think that's very, that's awesome. All right, let's see here.

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Here, so Brad is interacting with someone else, I guess. If faith is a gift of God, faith is not a work. Any other doctrine that assumes we add anything to our justification mitigates the sovereignty of God.

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Amen, I do agree with that. That's right, that's a dangerous assumption, yeah. I'm very cautious of someone who is named

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Irenic Pelagian. Okay, we're probably gonna have some disagreements there. Okay, let's see here.

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It's kind of hard to determine if there's a question for me or someone's interacting with someone else in the comments.

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So I'll just see here. Now, why did you speak of arts as a bouquet?

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Here, Mr. C, why did you speak of works as a doing rather than a not doing? Yeah, I think that's an appropriate distinction, right?

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To make a conscious decision not to do something is sort of a work, just as you make a conscious decision to actually do something.

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So I would think that's an appropriate distinction there. Yeah, let's see here.

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Let's see here. Okay, that's kind of just beating a dead horse.

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All right, okay. All right, that's it. All right, so if there are no more questions, if I skipped it, it's probably because you're just rehashing something

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I've already addressed. Okay, well, just in closing, justification by faith alone is biblical, it's important, and we need to be able to defend what we believe from the scriptures and challenge others who disagree, challenge them to be consistent with the scriptures, right?

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We wanna always bring people back to the word of God, okay? Oh, we have one more question here. Flaming Sword says, have you talked to Cameron Bertuzzi about all of the dialogues going on lately, not only on his channel, but others on the

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Protestant Catholic dialogue? I know that Cameron Bertuzzi knows who

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I am, but I've never actually spoken with him, so I haven't actually, I've actually never interacted with him.

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But yeah, I think I can see why people are concerned with the constant dialogues going on, especially when the dialogues are with, they kind of give the impression that someone might be flirting with the

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Catholic position. So again, I can see why that's the case. That's why also

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I've had scheduled an interview with Hank Hanegraaff, which I'm kind of maybe reconsidering.

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I'm very careful as to who I talk with. I don't ever wanna give the wrong impression that I'm okay with stuff.

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I mean, I'm not an expert in Eastern Orthodoxy per se, but I do think that the things

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I do know about it, there is strong disagreements. I don't wanna give the impression that I think it's okay. So, you know, if you are praying for me and praying for this channel and just the content and things like that,

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I do pray that you, I hope, I ask that you pray that I use wisdom in the people

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I select because I definitely want to help the body, but I don't want to misdirect and kind of confuse people.

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So I would appreciate prayers in that regard. Okay, well, that is it for today. Irenic Pelagian says, thanks

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Eli. Thank you so much, Irenic Pelagian. I appreciate you listening in and that's it for tonight, okay?

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