The God Who Justifies | w/ Dr. James White

Well, hello and welcome everybody to The Apologetic Dog. I just wanna thank you so much for all your support and joining us for Contending for the

Faith. The Apologetic Dog is obviously an apologetics ministry that I want us to be grounded in God's word.

So if you look at our Reform Dogs logo, then you see 1

Timothy 6 .20. This verse kind of grounds the ministry and the kind of vision that I see and the direction that I wanna go.

That verse says, O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

And so The Apologetic Dog represents Christians. We contend for the gospel of grace.

And so if you haven't already, please subscribe to this channel. I have a website these days. So if you wanna check me out there and just show some support.

Real quick, I actually wanna bring up a few announcements in the upcoming future. I have a debate.

I forget what number of debate this is, but I will be debating against a gentleman and he will be defending the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

So that'll be on Martin's channel at The Gospel Truth. So you don't wanna miss that. That's coming up here in August.

So next on the list is, I will be speaking at a conference in Indiana on why eschatology matters.

I cannot believe that I somehow got roped into this. I was so comfortable with my premillennial dispensationalism and I realized

I can't hang out there. I can't hang out there and do justice worrying against heresy that's creeping into the church like full preterism.

And so I've been given the task to preach on the resurrection of the dead. So this will be in Tempeka, Indiana, and this will be in September.

So mark this down on your calendars. I cannot wait for that. And my last announcement is

I have another debate coming up in Texas, maybe. So this is a little bit ways off towards the end of October.

But me and Mr. Michael Hysall, we're gonna be talking about justification and how that relates to baptism.

So mark that on your calendars if you are interested and would like to keep up with the apologetic dog.

But today is a very important and special episode. I have a guest that needs no introduction.

Dr. White is in the building. How are you doing today, sir? Oh, not too bad.

Hanging out in my RV. Hanging out in the RV. So where are you traveling at right now?

I've been in Colorado for over three weeks now. I head home over the weekend, but I was supposed to be doing a big swing through the

Midwest, but had some food poisoning that changed those plans.

And so I've just been chilling here in Colorado, spoken to a number of churches here and stuff like that, dodging an amazing amount of rain.

We just had hail. And yeah, weather's been very, very interesting.

But here we are in our mobile studio. I think

I'm the only person that has a two camera, 4K mobile studio that I can have running down the road with me.

So I don't do it while I'm actually moving, obviously. That would be sort of stupid. But yeah, there we are.

So I bet you're ready to get back home and I'm looking forward to you come back to 12 .5 Church.

I can't wait to see what you're gonna teach on next. Yeah, I'm definitely racking up the miles.

The next big trip is back to, I'll be in Pennsylvania with a debate.

I think the fellow's name is Gregory Coles on whether gay Christian is an appropriate category to be used in the church.

And then I head straight down to G3 for the big conference and come back through Louisiana.

So yeah, September is gonna be a 5 ,000 mile drive. And we're now looking at -

You seem so thrilled. Well, I do enjoy it, but it is a lot of work.

There's no choice about it. And you're dodging semi -tractor trailers and everything else.

So it has its own pleasures and dangers as well.

That's right. And in February, this is something where you and I will cross paths again.

I believe you're gonna have a debate at this conference with Jeffrey Rice in Tennessee.

So that's a little bit a ways away, but I bet you didn't know. I'm not debating Jeff. I just want everybody to know.

Oh, well, I would pay to see that. I mean, it's what you just said. You're gonna be having a debate with Jeffrey Rice. I want everybody to know.

I'm not gonna be debating Jeffrey Rice because he's my source, man. I mean, he just took me up with the text

I'm gonna preach from at G3. It's a Hebrew Bible and it's all

Hebrew. And you can see it's, let me see if I can find it. It's got the nice gold gilded pages until you open it.

And then it's purple. So it's a large print

Hebrew. You can't find too many large print Hebrew texts around. So there you go. You've rightly said you're not debating

Jeffrey Rice, but can you tell us anything about what you will be debating on at this conference? Yeah, I can.

I'm debating the same fellow I debated back in February there. He is a landmark

Baptist and he's a sharp fellow, but I'll be honest.

I'm not sure how it's gonna work out because if anybody watched that debate, you're too young to remember this, but back in the 1980s, we had a television commercial for FedEx and it was all about how

FedEx was really fast and get delivering your packages. And so they hired this guy who is a speed talker.

And so he would just sit there and he would rip through stuff. He's got multiple phones and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And this was the FedEx thing. Well, that's the guy I'm debating. Same thing at the debate.

Did you see the debate that we did in February? Absolutely. Okay, so he had 235 slides.

We're a single debate. And you may have noticed they all had so much text on them. No one, even in the room could read them before he was done.

And he wasn't debating for anybody in that room. It could have been an empty room. He did not care. He was debating for something.

He was debating for landmark Baptist. And so I'm supposed to be getting back to him and talking about this.

I'm going to try to encourage him to actually do a debate for the people that are in the room.

But I'll be honest with you. I don't have a high level of confidence that that's what's going to end up happening, to be perfectly honest with you.

So that one's got me a little... And the thing is that's February and we are scheduling at least four major debates in Houston in February as well, probably on the way out to Tullahoma and on the way back.

Trent Horne of Catholic Answers, Dale Tuggy, the Unitarian, and Leighton Flowers.

That's the final one. On John six. So yeah, it's going to be a really, really, really, really busy period of time.

I've never done that many debates at one time. So it's going to be a challenge.

Not to waste. Dr. Watt, you can do that in your sleep. I don't doubt that. No, no, no. We're talking five, possibly six debates.

And that's just a ridiculous amount of material to be writing on and presenting on because they're very different topics.

And so, yeah, it's going to be interesting. I see you're trying to catch up with my debate tally, however, so February will put me pretty close to 190.

You got me by a little bit. Got a little something to keep you for. But you're much younger than I am. So, you know,

I'm so old, they're about to put me out to pasture anyway, so. Hey, we have just slightly different colored beards.

Yes, yes. Mine is definitely shows the wear and tear of 40 years in ministry.

So, because I'm only 42, so no. Well, hey, Dr. Watt, I bet you didn't know

I was speaking at this same conference with you, but I have been invited to do the pre -conference and I'm talking about your favorite subject of the dangers of full preterism.

So, I cannot believe that this task has been given to me because here in Jonesboro, Arkansas land, for whatever reason, this has creeped up inside the church.

We have, you know, self -proclaimed pastors preaching this from the pulpit and people are like scratching their heads saying,

Jeremiah, what is that? I'm like, I don't know, but I'll go figure it out. So, I got to connect with Jeffrey Rice and so,

I'll be honored to be a part of the whole conference with y 'all. I'll be at your debate, root me on. Hopefully, we'll see you at death.

And it will be at a much nicer location. We'll be able to have a lot more people there.

We were a little bit crammed in in February, but it's nice that, hopefully, there'll be a good turnout.

And so, I have to somehow arrange that teaching in Conway and arrange the schedules of three different guys to come into Houston, all to make that work.

I don't know how it's gonna happen, but that's what we're working on now. Well, it'll be good.

Hopefully, we won't see death by a thousand slides again, but I'm looking forward to it.

But Dr. White, you're on today because I reached out to you and I thought, hey, let's talk about a book you wrote a while back that's been very helpful for me contending for the faith.

You wrote this book, The God Who Justifies. So, my first question is, what prompted you to write this book in the first place?

It's interesting that that book took me the longest to write of any of the books that I've written.

I've not written a book in a while, and part of it is just, I think, age, and just trying to keep up with travel and stuff like that.

And it's just harder as you get older, I think. But I had already covered,

I'd written about the Trinity and Sola Scriptura and Bible translation and Roman Catholicism and Mormonism.

And obviously, I started it right when the federal vision movement stuff erupted.

And it's not a response to an anti -right or new perspectivism.

I sort of mentioned in passing that the problem is if you try to respond to all the stuff that's out there, it'll end up,

I mean, it's a fairly lengthy book as it is, it'll end up being just huge and nobody will read it.

And so, I felt there was a need because there was so much, I don't know.

Scholars like to write books that will keep them employed and advance their track toward tenure at seminaries, okay?

That, unfortunately, is just a reality. And just as with my book on the

Trinity, I am seeking to benefit pastors, benefit the church, benefit the people sitting in the pews.

And I'm seeking to do that by being what used to be a badge of honor and now is a badge of shame in certain elements of the

Reformed movement. And that is being a biblicist, being focused upon,

I'm a biblical Trinitarian. I believe in the Trinity because of certain doctrines that are revealed in scripture.

And that's following the apostles, that's believing in what the apostles taught. And as far as the gospel and justification is concerned, there are a few topics that are more fully addressed in the

New Testament than the subject of justification. I mean, between Romans and Galatians, you have a lot of specific argumentation on all the aspects that surround the doctrine of justification.

And yet that was not in church history, the focus of the early centuries.

I teach church history at Grace Bible Theological Seminary there in Conway. And we did early church history recently.

And one of the things that is somewhat of a mystery is the early church was very focused upon Christological issues, the

Council of Nicaea, Chalcedon, things like that. But when it came to, for example, the first full length treatise on the atonement to appear is from Athanasius in the fourth century.

And of course, a lot of Christians today would struggle to define theories of the atonement or even where they themselves land in regards to historical discussions, these things.

But the point is that the primary interesting concern of the church in history has been focused on other areas.

And it really isn't until Augustine that you start touching on a lot of these areas with Pelagius, the

Donatists, things like that. But still, that's right. Augustine is right at the end of the

Roman Empire as Europe is sliding into what we call the dark ages. And it's not that theological thought stopped during that period of time, but you have to remember in Europe for hundreds of years, the average person never moved more than seven miles, any one direction from where they were born.

And so the need for theological communication, the ability to hear from others and to be able to balance ideas off and things like that, it pretty much came to a halt in the

West when the Roman Empire collapsed in the West and became much more minimized in the

East. And they had a few more hundred years before the rise of Islam. So there's some interesting church history aspects to keep in mind.

And so when you talk about justification, it is something that has clearly been discussed a great deal in the

West since the Reformation. But in the East, it's still, especially in Eastern Orthodoxy, is a frozen subject,

I guess would be the way I put it. What I mean by that is Eastern Orthodoxy, which is making a lot of headway these days.

There's people in the West that are being attracted to it. They don't like Francis.

They don't really like Rome all that much because of what they've already experienced with that.

And so Eastern Orthodoxy provides a liturgical, mysterious alternative.

The problem is Eastern Orthodoxy today is basically the traditions of the seventh and eighth centuries fossilized.

They're just set in stone. And that's what defines Eastern Orthodoxy. Now, I'm not getting into Eastern Orthodoxy right now, but that's not an area that they have a lot of focus on.

And many times they just look at Protestants and Roman Catholics and go, well, that's something you all argue about.

We've got all this figured out a long time ago. But there's really no emphasis. Yeah, there's really no emphasis though upon a biblical doctrine of sin, a biblical doctrine of the deadness of man and sin.

And these are things that just aren't there. So all of that to say that I felt that there was a real need for a biblically based, a biblicist examination of the doctrine of justification because once again,

I come out of a background of debating these things with Roman Catholicism.

And I've just simply seen that for people to truly, whether it's the

Trinity, justification, the doctrines of grace, the highest view of scripture, these are all divine truths that the sheep of Christ, they want to hear his voice on these matters.

And so I didn't wanna sit there and do some type of historical survey or there's plenty of value to those things.

But from my perspective, the sheep of Christ become convinced of a truth when it is brought to bear upon their heart from scripture by the spirit of God.

That's scripture and the spirit. There was a guy named John Calvin who recognized how important all that stuff is.

His offspring in our day are trying to get rid of him in every way possible, sadly, but he recognized word and spirit, word and spirit.

That's what it's all about. Not great traditions, it's word and spirit. And that remains the same today.

And so the book itself, I recognize that a lot of people enjoy the first eight chapters and then go,

I may use it as a resource in the future starting with chapter nine. Oh yeah,

I had those thoughts. But in your book, you talk about how this was contended for in church history is a problem, especially with the

East and West along with those types of controversies. Someone in the chat asked a good question and we don't have to spend a whole lot of time on this, but what's something over the next 50 years or so you seeing the next big challenge within Christianity?

Well, we have repetitive cycles of the same things, unfortunately.

Nothing we go back on the same things, and you'll see this in the church over and over again.

Obviously, unless there is a major event in world history, nuclear war, famine, an actual something other than a planned epidemic, a disease that actually kills 70 % of the people it infects instead of 0 .007

or something like that. That changes everything and how we respond to that changes everything, where it's focused changes everything.

So, I mean, it's very easy to see some very negative directions right now.

All you have to do is listen to Yuval Noah Harari, a name that most people do not know, but have seen clips of him.

He is sort of the scientific mind behind the World Economic Forum. And you read his stuff and the movement toward transhumanism, toward a utterly technologically based totalitarianism.

And we've got math. I mean, that's just gonna be massive challenges that the church has never faced before.

We can look back and learn a lot from history, but the interface of technology and the utilization of technology by secular humanism, which hates human life.

We have lots of books that have been written over the past 50 years telling us what the dangers were.

It's amazing to me. I look, I read 1984 and I see it happening around me.

I read Fahrenheit 41, I see Brave New World. And then another book

I've suggested to people, it's not a Christian book, so be aware of that. But This Perfect Day was written in 1975,

I believe. Ira Levin, I think was the name. And I read it during the lockdowns and I'm sitting here going, how did these people see this coming?

I mean, so much of it was completely in line. And if that's where we're headed for, we can't look back at our experience under the

Soviet Union, for example, and really come up with really helpful stuff because they didn't have the tech.

We could hide in the woods and have church services. With drones and satellites, you can't hide anywhere.

And so, yeah, there's some serious challenges. And the impact, let me tie this together with our topic.

One of the challenges that I'm seeing right now already is as we are pushed into a smaller and smaller cultural space when

I say we, I mean everyone who claims to be a Christian. And as in each group, whether it's amongst

Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox or Protestants and our cult groups like Mormonism and stuff like that, you start seeing a division.

You start seeing people, it's amazing to me. Did you know that the city council of Salt Lake City is 100 %

LGBTQ? Know that? Whoa. Most people have no idea.

Yep. The collapse of Mormonism on morals and ethics and especially in regards to marriage, homosexuality, transgenderism, it's astonishing.

And we're obviously, we're used to seeing quote unquote progressives.

We used to call them liberals. We're used to seeing those folks just going with the culture and going with whatever the culture wants to do.

All the Lutheran priestess woman with the rainbow stole doing the sparkle creed a few weeks ago.

I'm not sure if you saw that. Maybe it wasn't allowed in your state. But it's just the level of apostasy is astonishing.

And so we've all have those divisions but it's happening everywhere. Rome has its father

Martin promoting homosexuality and LGBTQ stuff amongst Roman Catholicism. And Francis thinks he's a great guy.

And so we're seeing those divisions but as the conservatives, conservative

Catholics, conservative Protestants, conservative Eastern Orthodox we're getting squished into a smaller and smaller space to be able to speak.

And that means we're getting pushed closer and closer together. And here's gonna be the big issue. If you and your

Roman Catholic neighbor both recognize that what's going on in the world right now is utter insanity, it's going to result in massive loss of life, degradation of humanity.

How important is justification in all this? Because the temptation is, well, there's so few of us now, those of us who still have some kind of a commitment here we all need to sort of stick together.

And yeah, we've divided over this stuff in the past but maybe it's time to stop doing that and stop dividing and change what we think is definitional of the

Christian faith. That is a major, major pressure. It's happening all over the place. I think, for example,

I've been given information that probably next month, while you and I are busy dealing with debates in our realm, that probably next month there's gonna be, well, there's going to be a conference held at Andy Stanley's church.

And by looking at the people that are speaking it seems pretty clear to me that they're going to adopt an affirming stance, an ally stance, the

LGBTQ movement. And that's a big bunch of evangelicals.

And so what's the result of that? What kind of impact does that have?

And so doctrines like justification, I think it was

Murray who said that the doctrine of justification no longer rings the bells of men's hearts.

And the reason for that is, and I may have mentioned that in the book. I mean, I wrote the book 19 years ago.

So, well, actually it came out in 04. So yeah, about 19. So I wrote it more than 20 years ago.

So like I said, I worked on it for a number of years. So I may have mentioned it there but one of the things that I remember is the reason it doesn't ring the bells of men's heart is because in Luther's day, every person had seen death.

They had seen dead bodies in the street. The plague would come in and out of towns.

And to go study at university, you are risking your life because it was a lot safer to be out in the countryside than to go into a city.

And so death, the infant mortality rate, every one of the reformers lost at least one child, some more than one.

And this impacted people in a massive way. You lived surrounded by the reality that you may be standing before God in judgment in a very short period of time.

In some forms of the plague, there was one form of the plague that people actually believed you got it by someone who had it looking at you.

And the reason was it was a pneumatic form that passed through the lungs and you basically had only 24 hours.

Once you got it, you're gone in one day. So that was people's reality.

And so talking to them about justification, righteousness, being right with God, having a right standing, what peace with God is, man, everybody wanted to know about that because that's the reality.

Where do we live now? Most kids are never taken to a funeral.

Most funerals are closed casket. Only a few generations ago, my grandparents would live with their children and they lived with their parents and their grandparents and their great grandparents.

And they all saw those people die in the same house. And so they recognized the continuing reality of death.

Now I was, oh goodness, I was in my late thirties, I think, before I saw a dead body or saw someone actually die.

And we hide our children from it. We don't talk about it. The church stinks at dealing with it to be perfectly honest with you.

And so - Now you were a chaplain, weren't you, for a time? Yeah, that's where I saw, that's where I broke all those streaks was being in the presence of death.

And that's why justification for many people is just a doctrine that's out there someplace.

It's not something that they see is actually relevant to them right now before they get in that car and drive down the road.

That's why justification by faith alone was the material doctrine of the

Reformation, the formal doctrine, the Sola Scriptura, material doctrine, justification by faith alone. And that grabbed people, it grabbed

Europe. But it doesn't grab people today because we think that we're gonna live forever, medical science is gonna cure whatever.

And so we don't even think about, and in fact, our society, one of the biggest changes in our society is since World War II, I would put probably where the big change took place.

Since then, there'll be no judgment. You're never gonna stand before God as judge.

And so why should I need an alien righteousness? Why should I need holiness?

God's just a loving God that sits on the throne and he's a big grandpa in the sky and he's gonna forgive whatever and we don't need to worry about holiness or anything.

Something you emphasize in your book is Romans 5 .1, talking about that justification by faith that gives us peace, right?

Last time you spoke at 12 .5, you talked about what true shalom looks like, a cease of fire from both sides.

And if you could lose your justification or you could walk away, that war would erupt all over again.

And you were just developing the thought, like what kind of peace is that? What kind of shalom is that? The Jewish mindset would not have been thinking in shalom in those categories.

Right, oh yeah, but our entire society is currently, the secular worldview is designed to give you peace by distracting you from ever thinking about eternity.

So your entire life is to be wrapped up in making yourself happy and having fulfillment and having your 401k or whatever else it might be.

And there's no judge, there is nothing to worry about in the afterlife because you're simply a cosmic accident.

To use the Star Trek language I like to use, an ugly bag of mostly water, moist robots, whatever terminology you wanna use from the secular perspective, there's nothing about you that's going to survive death.

And so you don't have a God to have to have peace with in the first place. It doesn't matter.

And that changes everything. And that's why even proclaiming the gospel to a secular world you basically have to make them humans that have value before you can then warn them of judgment.

Because if they really view themselves as nothing more than happy -go -lucky cosmic accidents, just bubbling chemicals, what you're talking about, about justification and righteousness and judgment, all the rest of that stuff, just doesn't connect, doesn't mean anything to them.

I feel a little bit of that precept coming out there. Some of that what? That presuppositionalism.

Well, yeah, I mean, they're made in the image of God, but the state church known as the education system is given, what, 16, 17 years to numb the conscience, to silence the testimony of our createdness.

That's why they need that amount of time and they want more and they're gonna try to get it too.

And that's why they're gonna come after homeschoolers and everything else for long, you just watch. They have to have that to dumb down the image of God within us.

And so, yeah, that's all, I think, very, very relevant to justification and why

I think most people don't view it as central to their understanding of their relationship to God, their peace with God.

It's just, unless they're really in the word, they just don't recognize how important it is.

Dr. White, something that you emphasize well in your book. A couple of years ago, I was getting ready to debate a

Eastern Orthodox fellow and I was the one defending salvation by faith alone. So I had to consult

Dr. James White on the matter. And I loved how you showed that justification is judicial.

And so, you can go back to the Greek Septuagint, pardon my mispronunciation compared to how you say it.

But it's judicial, when you go back to the Septuagint and you look at court law, Paul's using all those same terms with justification.

He's talking about condemnation. This is a legal forensic context between the just judge of the earth that always does right.

You know what I mean? And so, I'll tell you this, what helps me with that is drawing a distinction, not a radical disjointed relationship, but a distinction with sanctification.

And so some of the payout in my debates, especially with baptism, with the church of Christ and people like that, is

I say, look, there's a few terms that you need to understand the difference between. Faith and works are distinct but related.

Justification and sanctification are distinct but related. In baptism, like you've rightly pointed out in the past is an act of faith, right?

This is a demonstration of someone that has a changed heart and wants to live their life to the glory of God. That's your baptism, right?

That you're participating in a ceremonial rite before the church and before the watching world.

And so I've had a lot of momentum and I think

I've helped a lot of people understand what we're trying to say is, look, justification is that one time past event.

And we can answer that question, who is the blessed man? Right, and so your book talks a little bit about that.

Why is that such an important concept in Romans four? Yeah, I was down in Louisiana about,

I don't know, I forget exactly when it was. Anyways, I was asked to speak on the subject of Roman Catholicism because that's so huge down there.

And I did for like three nights in a row. And the last night, this is funny, this fellow, these two guys come up to me and the one guy introduces the other and he says, and he's

Roman Catholic and he just sort of pushes him toward me and then runs off. Hi, how are you doing?

Hey, it's a sacrificial lamb thrown out there. And we ended up having a good conversation and it is my practice to go to that text and to work through Romans chapter four and to ask a

Roman Catholic, who is the blessed man? Because we're talking about a justification that comes from not expecting to be paid, not expecting to receive something for your works, but instead it's an empty hand of faith.

And then Paul goes into saying that God speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom

God imputes righteousness apart from works. And then he gives us his example, this quotation from Psalm 32, 31 in the

Septuagint. And the last portion, Romans 4, 8, blesses the man to whom the

Lord will not impute sin. And when you ask a Roman Catholic, okay, who is that?

I'm sure you've seen my debate with Father Peter Stravinskas from long, long ago.

And I asked him, I said, who's the blessed man?

And by this point, he was already pretty discombobulated. He went into that debate, having never read a word

I'd ever said and talking about his conversations with Jimmy Swaggart, which, man, that did not go well for him at all.

And so he was already a little on the disheveled side. And so his first answer as to who the blessed man was, was

Jesus. And I'm like - Jesus is the blessed man to whom the

Lord will not impute sin. Because he had obviously never even thought about it. He'd never been challenged on it.

Here's a guy with two PhDs from Ivy League schools, didn't get out much, shall we say.

And so I gave him an opportunity to sort of rethink that one. And the only answer he could come up with was, well,

I hope to be. I hope to be the blessed man. And the reality is, anyone who reads

Romans 4, every believer is the blessed man. That's what it means to be a

Christian. And in Roman Catholicism, there is no such thing as non -imputation of sin.

If you commit a venial sin, it is imputed to you. You must bear the punishment.

You have to go through the temporal punishment for those sins, et cetera, et cetera. If you don't do it in this life, you do it in purgatory.

If you commit a mortal sin, you lose the grace of justification. You have to be re -justified. And if you die in that state, you'll go to hell.

Well, this of course is old line, historic Roman Catholic teaching.

Anybody could stop you today and go, I sort of doubt Francis believes that.

And yeah, you'd probably be right. Who knows what Francis believes today. But in the olden

Roman Catholic church, that's what it was. So there is no non -imputation of sin. And it's not that your sin is ever imputed to Christ.

So his righteousness is imputed to you. And so there is no blessed man. And you listen to some of their apologists try to answer this question.

And it's really, it's pitiful. It's sad because they don't have any categories to fit into.

Yes. I got a quick debate story on this very point. Cause like I said, read the book.

And so debating Church of Christ, you gotta think it's very works oriented. You gotta do good works in order to be saved and stay safe.

So that's the mantra. And so when I was studying the part where you're talking about ume, that God will not count your sin now, not ever, and that's

Church of Christ. They see baptism washes away your past sin. And so they don't have this category of imputation like you're talking about.

So they can't imagine all of your sin, the totality of your life. God's seeing the totality of your life because Christ is a perfect savior.

And so I led him down the pathway. I went to a different passage, I think in Hebrews 13 about that God doesn't forsake his promises.

It uses the ume. And I just said, so God's always faithful, right? Ume, he's not gonna let go of his promise now, not ever.

And he said, yes. And so when I said, okay, blessed is the man who sinned, the Lord will not, not now, not ever, onto their account.

I said, is that a fair reading of this text? The gentleman I was debating, he paused for about 10 solid seconds.

You could just tell the wheels totally stopped, right? Because the logic's consistent. And all this is rooted in judicial imputation forensic language.

And I just think that you just let Paul build his argument upon himself, and it's clear who the blessed man is.

And we can truly rejoice knowing that that verse in chapter five, verse one, we have peace with God, right?

We are justified by faith apart from works. Well, you're never gonna get invited to any conferences to speak with N .T.

Wright about this subject. I'm torn up about that. But other than that, yes, there are beautiful promises in the text of scripture and people's traditions keep them from being able to see these things.

And that happened with Peter Stravinskis, and you can go and watch that entire debate.

The cross -examination of that debate on 1 Corinthians 3 on purgatory was absolutely classic.

I mean, definitely - Do you ever go back and watch it just for funsies? I'm sorry? Do you ever go back to watch it just for fun?

Um, you know, no, but I always, I'm frequently having to track it down and link it for people.

And so I'll play portions of it then. And, you know, I just remember he was wearing his clerical collar and about halfway through that debate, he's just pulling at this thing all the time.

He wanted out of there so bad. And by the way, I mean, it was really obvious how that debate went, but I had a friend out in the audience and afterwards he was standing behind some

Roman Catholics that were talking and he heard one saying to the other, he said, you know, when Father Stravinskis was speaking, you could just feel the spirit moving and the truth flowing from him.

But then when White would get up to speak, you could see the demons right behind his head.

And it's sort of like, well, you know, not everybody was hearing the same thing. And that's sort of how things go, but.

I have another thought I want to get your thoughts on too, because, you know, people that deny once saved, always saved.

I'm like, look, when we're talking about justification. Which is not my favorite phraseology. I don't like it either because I'm saying justification is talking about the just judge of the universe banging the gavel, declaring someone righteous, no longer condemned.

That judge is not a liar. He's not gonna go back on his word. And so this is where when people start talking about the once saved, always saved, kind of have this synergistic understanding,

I try to dial it back, right? I try to lay that foundation of who God is and he's the righteous judge.

And if you're looking to Jesus in faith, something that's internal and of the heart, faith can't be put in a jar and measured and looked at.

God sees the heart. And so if you look to Jesus, then you're justified. Just as if you've never sinned and then you live the rest of your life in sanctifying works to give

God glory. And so that's kind of how I approach that conversation is saying, look, we need to go back to justification and sanctification.

So do you have any follow -up thoughts on that? Well, you know the illustration that whether it was actually from Luther or not is still relevant and people need to know it because the

Roman Catholics will bring it up. They'll read it in this rock magazine or whatever. And that is the pile of dung.

And, you know, Luther wanted to, was very earthy in his illustrations.

Anyone who's read his table talks know that. Chapter eight in your book. I'm sorry?

Chapter eight in your book. Right. And, you know, since I wrote the book,

I've been in Germany many, many times. I won't get a chance to do that again because I'm not traveling overseas anymore, but I had the opportunity of preaching in Luther's pulpit and visiting all around Wittenberg and sitting where the table talk discussions took place.

And I can think, I remember all those things in my mind. Anyway, the illustration of course that he uses is that we are like a pile of dung, which everybody in Germany knew all about.

I mean, they didn't, you couldn't go down to some store and buy fertilizer. You used your farm animal waste to fertilize your field.

So you weren't gonna have crops the next year. And so you had to pile all that stuff up. And obviously by the end of the end of the summer, into the fall, those things stunk and they had flies and they were repulsive and everything else.

But that's how you had to do things. And what he said was that that's offensive and you want to stay away from it.

But that's what we are. And the righteousness of Christ is like the first snowfall of the fall that comes and covers that over and takes away all of its offense.

But it doesn't change the dung pile. The dung pile is still a pile of dung.

You run and jump into it. You're gonna find out it's still a pile of dung. And so he was talking about the alien righteousness that takes away our offensiveness.

And he was trying to distinguish between justification and sanctification.

Justification is why we can have peace with God because of that alien righteousness that covers that offense.

Sanctification is the process whereby we ourselves are made like Christ. But what makes us acceptable before God is not where we are in that sanctification.

It is the righteousness of Christ. And of course, Roman Catholic apologists just jump all over that.

It's a legal fiction. It doesn't have any meaning. It's a mockery. And so what

I did is I said, okay, let's take your position. Let's take the

Roman Catholic position. When you're baptized as an infant, you're a pile of dung because you've fallen in Adam.

So you've got original sin. When you're baptized, you are transformed by baptism into a pile of gold.

And the reason that you go to heaven is not because the righteousness of Christ.

It's because of your own intrinsic goodness having been changed by the infusion of grace into your soul.

So you're made a pile of gold. Evidently God likes gold. And so you get to heaven because you're gold.

But the problem is that you can commit sin. And if you commit a mortal sin, which destroys the grace of justification, boom, right back to a pile of dung.

So the pile of gold instantly becomes a pile of dung. Scary thing in Roman Catholicism.

I'll have this in front of me, but I believe it was Ludwig Ott in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, sorry, said the reason for the uncertainty of the state of grace lies in just this, that no one can know for certainty whether they have fulfilled all the conditions which are necessary for achieving justification.

So you never know which you are, whether you're a pile of gold or a pile of dung.

And if you assume you're a pile of gold, that might be the sin of presumption. And even if you don't feel like you've committed a mortal sin, if you commit a venial sin, which does not destroy the grace of justification, but brings temporal punishments, flecks of manure start appearing on the surface of the gold.

And you either clean those off by your penances in life, or it's gonna need to be cleaned off before it goes in the presence of God, which is what purgatory and indulgences are all about.

And so that's the major differences between these two perspectives.

And it illustrates the fact that what we're saying is the reason that anyone has peace with God and that anyone goes in the presence of God is because they have a perfect righteousness.

And that's the righteous Christ. And that's not the Roman Catholic perspective at all.

And so once you recognize that, then you can understand Ephesians two, we're saved by grace through faith alone.

And we are saved unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.

And so a healthy, proper, biblical, balanced understanding of the relationship of faith and works is readily available to us in scripture if we will but accept it.

But the problem is it destroys man's ego, man's pride.

Because what you're saying is I am completely dependent upon God for my salvation. I'm completely dependent upon the righteousness of Christ.

I can't add to that righteousness. I can only seek to glorify God and live out of love for what he's done for me.

And that leaves me with absolutely no ground for boasting at all. And it also leaves no ground for a sacramental system, some system whereby man is dependent upon God's grace, gotta have

God's grace. But man develops these ways of controlling that grace through sacraments and works and things like that.

There's no room for that either. And so that's why it is one of the central, central, central issues.

And yet the vast majority of those who are the children of the

Reformation today have no idea about any of that stuff. And hence, yeah.

Scripture is clear that if it's on the basis of works, it's no longer of grace, right? Those are antinomies.

They are mutually exclusive. And that's why you pointed this out in your book. I think it's Romans 4, 15 -ish.

But that's why it rests on faith so it can actually be accomplished by God's grace.

We don't have anything to look to in ourselves. And so as we're kind of beginning to wind down a little bit, your book does a really good job of talking about the relationship between Romans 4 and James 2.

Dr. White, faith without works is dead. How do we miss this fact? And James even quotes the phrase justification, right?

So the way that I present this to people is saying, look, James and Paul are back -to -back guarding the gospel of grace.

They're just fighting different fronts. And so there's different context. Justification is being used in a different way of saying demonstrate, show your faith.

Don't just say it, prove it, right, with your work. So what's something that can really help people understand that harmony between Romans 4,

James 2 centered around the person of Abraham? Well, that,

I think, 32 -page chapter that I worked long and hard on is,

I think, one of the more important contributions that I've made to this particular subject. And obviously there are so many groups that we deal with that immediately run to James 2.

The initial group that I was dealing with that did that, of course, was Mormons, but then eventually

Roman Catholicism, things like that, and Church of Christ and all those various groups.

But I think, personally, when you look at James 2 .14, I think that's where you have to start, is what use is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith?

So it's the term Lego, standard word for speaking, but the emphasis is on if someone literally, if faith someone says to have.

And that's the key issue, is this is a spoken faith.

This is a faith that is claimed in language.

Someone says they have faith, but they do not have works. Is that faith able to save them?

Now, you can get into a bunch of debates with anti -lordship guys and stuff like that, that no, it shouldn't be that faith and stuff like that, but it's very clearly shouldn't be.

It's hey, this is the faith that James is talking about is a spoken faith that has no evidence of its reality.

And the question that he is asking is, can a faith that exists only in the air and not in reality save someone?

And his answer is no. And Paul's answer would have been no as well, as we see in Ephesians and in Romans, Romans 6.

Shall we continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be. There's complete harmony between the two of them on this issue, even though, of course, you'll find all sorts of, especially continental theologians that, oh, this was the great argument between Paul and James and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

There's just no reason to believe that. James is talking to Christians about not having an empty

God dishonoring claim of being a follower of Jesus, and yet you live your life as you please.

And Paul had a robust doctrine that said that a person who is born again, a person who is indwelt by the

Holy Spirit of God, this will be a person who is concerned about holiness and about good works, not to gain their position with God, not to make them right before God, but because that is the natural outflow of the sovereign work of God in drawing his elect people unto himself.

So it is interesting because the various groups that you'll deal with, the

Mormons, I can tell you how many times I've had a Mormon quote something like James 2 .20

and say, well, as Paul said. So in other words, they have no clue where this even is or what the context is or anything else.

And so it can be challenging because what people are trying to prove with the use of James will be a little bit different depending on which group you're running into.

So you sort of have to, you have to make sure, it's one thing to write some of these notes down the back of your Bible, but you always have to remember you're dealing with an individual who's gonna have maybe some unique beliefs and you can't just run with, you know.

The groups of people I deal with saying, you gotta do something, you gotta get baptized, you gotta get your past sins washed away in the watery graves of baptism.

So I have to go to James 2, Acts, I have to go to James 2, Acts 2, Acts 22,

Mark 16, 16. I tell them, I'm like, hey, let's talk more about Mark 16.

But yeah, it's trying to explain people, look, there's a call to repentance and there's a call to demonstrate that repentance.

And when you start rationalizing it, you can just tell just the traditions start to perk up.

And Dr. White, I've had a lot of private conversations with people within the

Church of Christ that have reached out. Legalism eats itself, you know what I mean? And me and my friend

Trey Fisher, the fishbone, we were at Reform Con, got to see you and the

SEAL guys. We started a Facebook group called the Church of Christ Exiles.

And so that is growing, and we just wanted to create a community of people that have been exiled, stiff -armed, because when they, and you know what the key issue is they start really wrestling with?

Justification. Realizing that it's forensic, it's a one -time past event, realizing more who the character of God is as a holy, righteous judge, but Christ is the ticket, and it's by faith and not by our works.

So you've contributed so much in that. And once again, just want to recommend people, if you haven't already, go check out the book,

The God Who Justifies. And so Dr. White, is there any kind of final words that you want to encourage our audience with?

Well, I just would encourage folks, as I do pick it up, just be aware that, like I said, the first eight chapters flow along real easily, and then you get into chapter nine, what

I'm recalling, and that's when we start digging into the text, digging into the

Greek. It's necessary, especially if you're gonna be dealing with Rome and stuff like that, to get to that level.

So you can sort of read the first eight chapters as an encouragement, and then use the last half as a resource when you're gonna be dealing with certain subjects,

I suppose, or just press through the whole thing. Stop watching silly

TV programs and press through the whole thing. But it is sort of two books in that sense.

So I'd encourage folks to read all of it, actually. Yes, sir.

Well, hey, we're gonna have to get you back to 12 -5 Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Dr. White, God's really blessed us down here, and we're looking for a new building.

You loved our building with the one bathroom so much, but we're gonna be having a lot better facility in the next coming months, and so you will enjoy coming back to speak.

And we're making a lot of connections. You're gonna have to make sure it has a place to park an

RV. We got it. It's gonna be a huge parking lot. We got you, Dr. White. Well, but you have to have electricity.

You gotta have water. A sewer drop's nice, you know. There's a few things more than just a parking space.

Hey, you got a really nice truck, too. Was there a digital graphic that says that Jesus is

Lord or something? I'm trying to remember what it said. I'm trying to remember the last time

I was there whether I had my, which, because I've got a new truck, but in both of the trucks that I've had,

I have an LED sign in the back that says it's Christ or chaos, and personally,

I'm tired of the chaos. And on the back of this unit that I'm in right now, I've got an even bigger one that scrolls back 1731 all the time, especially at night in the

RV park. People are always walking their dogs and stuff like that, and it catches people's attention big time.

Absolutely. Well, hey, when you're coming through Conway or something, hit up Pastor Nathan Hargrave or myself.

We'd love to host you again. It's been great, the two times that you've come down to talk on. I believe it was the

Trinity. You spoke on the doctrines of grace and this last time, justification by faith alone.

All right, Dr. White. Excellent. Thank you, sir. Absolutely. Take care out there driving and swerving and dodging cars and all the rest.

I will. God bless. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. Well, I just wanna thank you all for joining us on another episode of The Apologetic Dog.

If you haven't, please like, please subscribe. That helps circulate our content throughout YouTube and standing on the gospel of grace.

I hope this episode has been encouraging to you. The God Who Justifies. This is a fantastic book and this really emphasizes that salvation truly is by faith, not a dead faith, not just something that you speak into the air and other people are like, all right, what now?

No, it's a living faith. It's a faith of a dead heart, a heart of stone that has been quickened, made alive by the spirit and now demonstrates a life to the glory of God.

And so it sounds like Dr. White has a whole lot coming up on his schedule. He's going to be debating

Layton Flowers on John 6. I can't wait for that. The Apologetic Dog, we have a few things on our docket coming up as well.

So you don't wanna miss it. So please tune in the next time that we go live.