2021 Summer of Interviews: R. Scott Clark Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

�But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Faith, Repentance, and the Order of Salvation

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we love to have guests on the show, but this is the first time in 2 ,500 episodes that I�m recording a NoCo Radio show in a different studio.

I�m in Escondido, California today on the campuses of Westminster Seminary West, that is Escondido, and I�m here with Dr. R. Scott Clark. Scott, welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry, although I think you should be saying, �Welcome to West Cal.

Yeah, well, it�s good to be here.

So these are the studios for office hours, is that correct?

This is the office hours studio in the deep, in a secret bunker, hidden within the bowels of Westminster Seminary. And the listeners should know, or we�ll take them behind the curtain, this is not the first episode that you and I have done together.

Well, see, now the good news is you owe me, so I can apply some covenant of works to our relationship.

We sat in here and did 25 brilliant minutes. It was the best radio I�ve ever done. I failed to record properly, so here we are again.

Well, the good news is, although your side wasn�t recorded, what I said was recorded. Yes, exactly.

I guess I could have gone back and done one myself independently, and somehow that would have been weird.

So we�re recording a couple shows today. I was thinking about that acronym, �Forsaking All, I Trust Him. Faith. And I think, you know, many people have used that, and of course, when it comes to our response to the person and work of Christ, our response is to trust and to have there�s a knowledge, a scent, and trust, and we respond that way.

But what about the forsaking all? I want to have you, Scott, talk to us a little bit about conditionality, antecedent requirements in order to believe, because I think lots of times in our circles, meaning my circles at least, we talk in a way that�s not proper when it comes to faith.

Is �Forsaking All, I Trust Him� proper, or should people ask, �How much do I need to forsake

Well, that�s just it. A lot of it depends on what people mean by that. I mean, it is true that Scripture does say, �Repent and believe, for the kingdom of God is in hand. But what do we make of that?

Is it the case that we need to have a certain quality of repentance, a certain quantity of repentance, in order to then move on to faith? And the Protestant Reformation said, �No, that�s not what repentance means.

And we�ve always distinguished between the pedagogical order and the logical order, if you will, of salvation. The truth is, as my professor said to me many years ago, Bob Godfrey said, �Dead people do not repent.

So, God has already given you new life and already true faith. Unbelievers don�t repent, it�s believers who repent. And so, yes, repentance is important, but you don�t want to stick things on the front end of faith before you get to faith as a load of conditions.

You have to repent, you have to do this kind of work and that kind of work and achieve this kind of sanctification, this degree of sanctification, or do this number of works or this quality of works, all of that.

We did all that. We tried that for about a thousand years in the Western Church, and it didn�t work very well. And it didn�t even get what we thought we were getting, right? We�ll set up a system where people have to be good in order to be saved, right?

And we�ll set up a proportional system, and we thought, �This will get people to be good. And then by the time we got to the 16th century, the church was a mess, the papacy was a mess, the bishops were a mess, the priests were a mess, the people were a mess.

It was a disaster from top to bottom. And that whole system did not work to create the kind of holiness, righteousness, and sanctification in people that they thought it would do. So then we thought, �Well, let�s do this.

Let�s go back and try to do what Paul said, right, and what Jesus said. Let�s put our trust in Jesus, and then we�ll say that God the Holy Spirit is going to work in those to whom He�s given new life and true faith, and He will work a gradual sanctification, that is, putting to death the old man, making life of the new, conforming it to Christ.

He will work that gradually as a consequence of His saving, regenerating, justifying grace.

I was just studying a little bit about William Perkins and some of the decrees and some of the chain of redemption and chronological versus logical. I think if I remember correctly, Scott, and you�re the Church historian, I think Perkins was putting the repentance after the making alive and after faith, I think he had that on the other side.

Is that right?

Yeah, as a matter of logic. And I learned that really first from Caspar Olivianus, who�s one of the primary authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, an important Reformed theologian, a covenant theologian, and he was a gospel man.

And he always used to say that, in effect, it�s believers who repent. He said, �We repent when we reckon with what the law says. And the law says, �Do this and live. And the law says, �Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.

And the law says, �Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything which is written in the book of the law. And when we are repenting, we�re reckoning with our inability to, and our refusal to, obey God�s holy law perfectly, such that we know now, we come to realize that we are dead in sins and trespasses, that we are subject rightly to divine condemnation, and we have no hope outside of the perfect finished work of Jesus for His people that�s credited to all those who believe.

Repentance, the Law, and the Rich Young Ruler

St. Clair Ferguson wrote that book, �The Whole Christ Dealing with the Marrow Controversy. And I think he tells the story about some young buck evangelist who wanted to go talk to a lady carrying fish on her back, and he talked about the burden that was on her back, and is there another burden on your back?

And she said something in effect like, �Yes, young man, if you�re referring to the burden on my back that Bunyan talked about, I have something better than Bunyan discussed. And she said, �Instead of going through the wicket gate to get rid of my burden, I went straight to the cross.

Do you remember that story at all? No, but it�s a great story. I know. Talk to our listeners a little bit about that. Let�s say they meet an unbeliever. Is it okay for them to say, �You should repent and believe and really, what is repentance when you say that?

Or should you just say, �Here�s who Jesus is, and in light of that, repent and believe. What�s the best way to think about repentance, and can we say that to an unbeliever? Yes. That was a slow pitch right there.

That was underhand.

See, here�s the thing. I mean, there are a couple of things to think about at the same time. There are theological questions, right? What do we want to say theologically? How do we want to think about this theologically?

And then there are practical questions. So if somebody comes to me who�s already aware of their sins, and they�re burdened and they�re grieving, and they know that they�re in trouble, I don�t necessarily need to load them up with more law.

They already know they�re in trouble, and I would just affirm them, �Yes, your sense of your own unworthiness before God is correct, and so good that you know that, and that�s a good thing. That means perhaps the Holy Spirit is convicting you of your sin and your need for a Savior, and I have good news for you.

Jesus came to save people who know they need a physician, right? He didn�t come to save the healthy. He came to heal and save those who are sick, and he came to gather lost sheep, not sheep who don�t think they need a Savior.

So that�s good. Now, if somebody is full of self-righteousness and thinks that they have done all that the law, well, that person needs to, as we used to say in the old days, come under the law. They need to be told, �Listen, God is perfectly righteous, and you and I were talking about the rich young man in Mark chapter 10.

You know, we see an example of this in 10 and 17. You know, a rich young man comes up to him and says, �Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life And he immediately assumes that he can do something to inherit eternal life.

And Jesus says, �Why do you call me good, right? Nobody is good except for God alone. In other words, �Do you know to whom it is you�re speaking And Jesus says, �You know the commandments. So he puts him back under the law.

�Don�t murder. Don�t commit adultery. Don�t steal. Don�t bear false witness. So he�s surveying, essentially, the Ten Commandments. In verse 20, what does the young man say? He says, �Teacher, all these I have kept for my youth.

So this is clearly somebody who doesn�t know the greatness of their sin and misery. They don�t know how lost they are. They don�t know how desperate their need is. And they don�t know how holy and righteous the law is and how unable they are to obey it for salvation and certainly for justification.

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, which is a beautiful thing, right? He knows who he is. And he said to him, �You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

Come and follow me. And he wasn�t saying this as the monks took it to establish poverty and monasticism. He was preaching the law to him and saying, �Listen, you think you�ve kept the law, but you haven�t kept the law.

You haven�t loved God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. And if you had, then selling all you have when God asks you to do it would be no big thing if you really loved God.

But you don�t. And I�m going to show you that you don�t, and I�m going to ask you to do something that I know is impossible for you and that you will realize is impossible so that you will come to see the greatness of your need and your desperate need for a righteousness that�s outside of you, a perfect righteousness, because that�s the righteousness that Jesus came to accomplish.

So when you�re talking to an unbeliever, it really kind of depends on where they are, right? Somebody who�s awakened after a night of drunkenness and sexual immorality and is consumed with guilt, right?

That person needs one word. Somebody who thinks that they�ve got everything together and they�re righteous and good and holy, that person needs another word.

Children, Faith, and No Antecedent Conditions

Talking to Scott Clark today on No Compromise Radio. Interestingly, sometimes in the Scripture, let�s see, Peter says, �Repent and then the text says, �And they believed. The call is to believe, and then the text says, �And some repented.

So I find that fascinating. In addition to just the section prior to the rich young ruler, �Let the children come to me showing the great contrast of children and what do they offer and what do they contribute.

They simply must just trust versus somehow being able to obey the law, do this and live. And the rich young man is not a case of you have to be willing to forsake, because if that�s the case, you have to be willing to forsake everything because God requires it all.

There has to be no antecedent condition before faith.

Yeah, I think that�s so true and very nicely said, if I may say that. I think people need to grasp that distinction, and you use this word �antecedent condition. So there are conditions in the covenant of grace, or in, let me rephrase that, there are conditions in this discussion, let�s put it that way.

If we could distinguish between, as you were doing, between antecedent, which is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself, and consequent, and people miss that.

So people say, �Well, you know, the Christian faith is unconditional. Well, not, depends on what you mean by that. If you mean, �Do I have to first love God with all my faculties Well, that�s right.

No, Jesus has obeyed the law for his people, and his righteousness is credited to them, and it�s received through faith alone. But those who believe are now morally obligated to seek to bring their lives into conformity with his holy will, as summarized in his moral law.

Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. We don�t do that in order to be accepted, or even in order to be saved, but because we have been saved, and we have been accepted, right? It�s a consequence.

Illicit Relationships, Saving Faith, and Consequences

Excellent. What if somebody came to you and said, �I�m in a relationship, and it�s an illicit sexual relationship, and I know it�s damning, I know I need to be forgiven, I know I need to trust in the Lord Jesus, I�ve heard about all that growing up, but I�m ensnared, and I�m enslaved, and I can�t get out of this relationship.

Must I stop this relationship in order to be saved.

And I�m stalling to think about this. Well, I�ll say to this person, �Sister, you�re right. You are in serious trouble. You�re in a relationship, and you�re in a relationship that is so damaging, so damaging,.

And, if you're asking me, do you have to do something in order to please God, and before you come to Christ, my answer is no. But I don't think you really recognize the gravity of your situation. You're telling me that you do, but by telling me that you can't leave it, right, you're no, you can, actually, there's no one no, tell me, if there's somebody holding you against your will, that's a matter for the civil authorities, and I can help you with that, and I will take you someplace where it's safe, I'll take you to a shelter.

But assuming that this is a moral question, right, not an actual matter of safety, you certainly can stop, and the Lord requires of you that you do, but the first thing you must do is recognize your need for a Savior, and the second thing you must do is to put your trust in Jesus.

And then, having done that, we will work out what the consequences are. But don't try to put the consequences before the cart.

Amen. See, that's why I ask you those questions. That is perfect. I told you the story just a little while ago, but it bears repeating. Scott, I've learned from you the emphasis on guilt, grace, and gratitude, and thinking about the Heidelberg Catechism.

And the three parts of the Book of Romans, right? Absolutely. That's where they learned those three parts was from Romans.

And if I could kind of combine that with a theme of Romans, with one word, righteousness. Guilt because we have no righteousness and we need a perfect righteousness, chapters 1, 2, and 3a. Grace, that is the righteousness that Christ has earned and gives by imputation, 3b, 4, 5, and beyond in sanctification.

And then the gratitude that you receive, the gratitude that you have for the Lord's work for giving you a perfect righteousness that is forensic and alien and things like that. That's a great paradigm there.

Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude in Romans and the Heidelberg Catechism

And so I was on top of a mountain in Massachusetts on Easter Sunday last year. There's typically a very liberal pastor who gives the sunrise service at 6 a .m. at the mountain. You know, mountaintop experiences.

I know you like that. The pietist inside of you loves that. They are fun. And so I thought, well, our service isn't until 10 and so we take it up and then everybody stands around for five minutes while the pastor gives the message.

So I said to them, do you know what? We're up here skiing and some of you just like to ski for fun, some cross country, some snowboard, some of you race and maybe it's a slalom. But years ago, they started a new race called the Super G and Lindsey Vonn has won so many Super Gs, et cetera.

I want you to ski downhill or every time you think of a ski race, a Super G, you think of these three Super Gs and if you understand these, you understand historic Christianity. And then I gave them guilt from Romans, grace from Romans, and gratitude from Romans.

Preach the gospel. And this is a true story, Scott. I got to the bottom of the hill, the mountain, and a guy said to me, you know what? Thank you for that, pastor. I'll always remember the three Gs. Oh, that's great.

And so I was really encouraged by that. I first talked about, well, I mean, as a pastor, I've talked about it for years, but when I started teaching at Wheaton College, I just sketched on the board one time.

I said, you know, in our tradition, we talk about the Christian faith in these three categories, guilt, grace, and gratitude. This is the whole Christian life and I just walked it through. And the kids came up afterwards and they said, that's the greatest thing I've ever heard.

I've never heard the Christian faith presented that way. Because in their experience, the Christian life and the Christian faith was nothing but obligation. And they had no way to think about how to relate obligation to grace and no way to distinguish grace from guilt or law and gospel or grace and works.

Assurance, Fruit, and Sanctification

Scott, let's talk about that a little bit more, because I find it fascinating in light of the doctrine of assurance. And if you don't understand the motivation for obeying, if it's simply just here, you must obey and these are unbiblical reasons to obey, or that is, it's not based on the person of Christ and union with him.

To me, that only leads to despair or pride. If you don't get the gratitude down out of grace coming because of your guilt, you either think self-righteously, yeah, I can do that, or you think honestly and you think, I can never do that.

And therefore, what God requires in his law, even for the Christian, you just think, well, what am I going to do? But if you understand it rightly, well, then there's a great freedom knowing that it's your union with Christ and this is a fruit that flows out of that.

What do you think?

I think that's huge. The notion, you use this language, fruit, that's hugely important. Good trees produce good fruit. We're not saved because of fruit. We're not saved through fruit. We're not justified because of fruit or through fruit, but nevertheless, God, the Holy Spirit produces fruit in those people whom he has saved.

The imagery is so basic and if we just stopped and thought about it, so a tree comes up out of the ground and if it's a good tree, if it's a living tree, it produces fruit. If it's not a living tree, there's no fruit.

And so in the Belgic Confession, which is one of our confessions published in the Netherlands in 1561, and it's one of the confessions that the Reformed churches were defending at the Synod of Dort where we produced the Canons of Dort in 1816 -19, Belgic Confession 24 is all about sanctification as a consequence of our salvation, as a consequence of our justification, and it puts it in terms of good fruit.

But it says we are justified even before we do good works. But good works naturally flow. And Martin Luther said this, you know, a Christian does good works even before he knows that he's supposed to do them because they simply come.

That doesn't mean that we don't struggle in sanctification, we do, and we are struggling against sin and fighting against it and putting to death the old man and praying to be made alive in the new and asking for the grace of the Spirit to be conformed more and more to Christ.

And yet, fundamentally, this is all the product of grace, right? And it's the consequence of grace, it's the fruit of grace. And so peace, joy, love, all of those fruits of the Spirit, they're fruits.

They're not conditions for salvation and they're not conditions for acceptance with God. And yet, if the fruit is lacking, then you begin to look at the tree, right? And again, when people say, well, then you're a fruit inspector.

Well, not so much, right? Not looking at the quality of the fruit and the quantity. But I mean, if there's no fruit, right? And you, okay, you and I are both from Nebraska and you go out to a field, about the time of year you expect the corn to be pretty high, say September, by September, the corn should be pretty high.

And so by the time you get to October, it's starting to come out of the field, right? Or if it's in Kansas, you're looking at wheat, it's coming up in probably now, they do it in June and July. If there's no head on that wheat, there's something wrong with the wheat, right?

So there is an indicator there. And of course, our Lord Jesus does talk this way and the book of James talks this way. If we understood this category, we would understand what James is talking about. In chapter two, James says, listen, if you tell me you have faith, but I don't see any evidence, I have a right to raise questions, right?

Anybody can stand up in the synagogue, he says, and say Deuteronomy 6, 4, which is, he actually makes reference to the Shema, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Anybody can say that. But if you treat your brothers and sisters like dogs, then I have a right, you know, which you're doing, by the way, then I have a right to raise questions about your professional faith.

Well, what would you say about a food inspecting person who says it's wrong to go up to the top of a mountain on the Easter Sabbath and...

Well, you went up there and preached the gospel, good for you. You were setting the captives free.

Private Devotions, the Quiet Time, and Corporate Worship

See, there you go. Scott, I also want to just bring out in our last little segment here on No Compromise Radio, private devotions and this sacrament, you call it, of piety. Is it good to have a devotional time and read your Bible, or is it not?

It is good.

I think everybody should read their Bible and pray. But there is this business in evangelicalism in which, you know, you and I have spent time and that's how I came to faith was through an evangelical congregation in my hometown.

And I'm thankful for them and I'm grateful to God for them. Was this in Lincoln or Omaha? This was in Lincoln. Okay. And I was taught a certain approach to Christian piety in which the chief means of spiritual growth, and really the only real means of spiritual growth, was private prayer and private Bible reading, which we call the quiet time.

And we used to sort of evaluate people on the basis of their quiet time. And you had a short book, the 959 book, and then for more mature Christians, the 2959.

Hey, let me interrupt you for a second. Remember in the old days when they would actually read out loud? Yes. Right? Reading silently is a modern, kind of a modern thing. How did you have a quiet time back in those days when you read out loud?

How quiet must you be? Yeah, exactly.

It wasn't very quiet. No, I mean, there was actually a serious debate in the ancient church as to whether a prayer that was not spoken counted as a prayer. How about that? That would rock people's world today.

So exactly. So the pietist gave us this legacy of the quiet time. And for a lot of American evangelicals, that is the sacrament, right? That's the seal. That's the way they're fed. And worship is kind of a second blessing.

It's a thing we do out of obligation, but it's not the real heart of the Christian life. And I think that's completely backwards. The heart of the Christian life is the public corporate gathering around the word of God and the administration of the sacraments, and then out of that flows the Christian life.

And part of that Christian life is reading of the word of God and prayer.

Scott, how often do I meet people that say, well, you know what? I didn't read my Bible this morning, therefore I kind of had a bad day. You know, things went wrong. I love reading my Bible, and I try to read it every morning, not to make sure I have a standing before God, but because I want to know Him better, and I want to study, and I have a Bible in my house, and it's not Sunday, so why not study and understand who the Lord is?

But is it wrong to say, well, you know, I didn't read my Bible today, so therefore today's going to go really badly?

It's not a magic talisman, right? So it's not the case that if I read my Bible, I'm good with God, and I've got the world by the tail. And if I don't read my Bible, well, God's unhappy with me, and things are going to go badly.

That's superstition. That's not Christianity. Christianity says, however things go is in the hand of God, and your doing or not doing isn't necessarily going to change that. And secondly, right, so you're not in this legal relationship with God.

Well, you can have a quiet time, bang, He's going to get you. By the way, I've had people say things like that, right? That's simply not true. Well, we want to live in gratitude, and we want to be conformed to Christ, but we don't want to put ourselves back under the covenant of works, under a legal relationship with God as we do that.

This is the fruit. Amen. Well, Scott, thank you for being in your studio but recording No Compromise Radio today, assuming that when you hit stop, we're going to have this uploaded. If you want to get ahold of me, it's Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com, and if you want to read more of R. Scott Clark, you can either go to Amazon and buy some of his books or go to heidelblog .net.

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

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