Do John Piper and Doug Wilson Obscure Faith Alone? | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin.

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Every generation has to come to grips with the gospel. The good news tells us that the righteousness of Jesus Christ, his perfect fulfillment of the law, is counted to sinners and it is given to us by faith alone.

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And that tends to not only terrify people, it's something that comes under assault throughout the history of the church.

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That's clear to see. In our day, there's a couple of ways, even amongst the reformed crowd, where this is a thing.

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One of those movements is federal vision doctrine, another is the doctrine of final justification.

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So John and I are going to engage with both of those today on the show. We're going to talk about federal vision, we're going to talk about Doug Wilson, we're going to talk about final justification and John Piper and some who advocate that understanding.

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We're going to point out some concerns we have with it and we're going to aim to defend sola fide, the fact that we are righteous on account of Christ alone and we receive it by faith alone.

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We have peace with God now and forever. Then in SR, we're going to go all in on this. We're going to talk in more depth about federal vision theology and the need for creeds and confessions.

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We hope you enjoy the conversation. Stay tuned. A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the

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Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral confessional perspective.

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Our hosts today are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I am

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. Not trying to be overly dramatic.

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I don't know. It's just the mood I'm in today. We're going to be having a conversation about some stuff. It's a very serious podcast today.

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It is. I mean, it's kind of a punchy title. We're going to explain what we're going to talk about in a minute, but John, say hey to everybody.

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Hey, everybody. So, no, it's good to be here. It's good to be recording. This next week,

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Justin and I get to spend some time together in Knoxville. We're going to be doing some work on Theocast and work on Grace Reformed Network and spend some time dreaming and planning for the future.

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So always, always thankful for that. It's always good to be together, and we're usually, we work pretty productively together too.

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Yeah. So it should be a productive day. Yeah. I can't think of anything new at the moment other than His mercy and grace are new every day.

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Amen. So praise, praise our Father for that. That's right. We need it. Well, what we love about the podcast is this is the time

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I told Justin yesterday in a text conversation I was excited for tomorrow, just because I never get tired of talking about all the different ways in which

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Christ has been granted to us. So that's what we're going to talk about, the history of the gospel, and we're going to kind of start with modern day and work backwards.

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But specifically, there's a constant theme that happens, and Justin and I mentioned this probably in modern context, but we'll look at it in history in general, where the gospel is a word that maybe shifts in meaning over time.

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Justin and I said this before the podcast began that every generation needs to discover for themselves the true implications of the gospel and the difference between the law and the gospel.

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And specifically the nature of Christ and His obedience granted to us, which is called imputed righteousness.

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We'll get into that today. But when you do not rightly understand this doctrine, you don't understand the gospels, kind of the full orb end, which is everything.

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The good news is everything you need for forgiveness and everything you need for righteousness has been gifted to you by grace.

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That is to receive that which you don't deserve. When you lose that part of the gospel, you lose the gospel altogether.

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It's gone. You cannot remove the forgiveness side. You also cannot remove the imputed side.

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They have to have both. And today we're going to talk about how there's some modern day theology that is not new.

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The concept isn't new, but it's being branded as something that is new, where we seem to be losing that second side,

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Justin. We're clearly on the sola fide slash we receive forgiveness of sins, but that second part of sola fide, we believe it's by faith alone we are forgiven of sins, but we also believe that it's by faith alone that we receive the righteousness of Christ.

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It seems like that is going back to Rome in modern day context.

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And so, Justin, let's talk about some theology today that seems to be removing that second part of the gospel.

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Yeah, theology that sounds like Rome, that's what our title says. That's right. Yeah. I don't want to repeat everything you said.

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I'm not going to. I just want to double down on the fact that it is true that every generation has to come to terms with the gospel, what the good news is.

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And I completely agree that it is not the forgiveness of sins piece that is often lost.

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The imputation of the righteousness of Christ as the whole and only righteousness of the

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Christian received by faith is the issue. That's right. So when we talk about people hedging on sola fide, people hedging on faith alone, we don't mean that you're forgiven of sins by faith in Christ alone that's compromised.

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That's usually pretty clear amongst reasonably Orthodox people. But it's that latter piece, the sufficiency of Christ in terms of his active obedience and keeping the whole law.

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And it's actually as though we have done all of the obedient, good, righteous works that Jesus did, and it's enough for our peace with God now and forever.

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That's the part that gets muddied and muddled and cluttered and confused, and it makes people uncomfortable.

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That's the part that scares people. We've recorded an episode in the past, why the gospel terrifies Christians. It's that imputed righteousness piece that really is the part that scares everybody because we're afraid that people aren't going to be concerned for obedience and lives of faithfulness.

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So yes, let's talk about some modern manifestations of this. I don't know how many names we're going to name.

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We may name some. We are not naming names in order to be pejorative or in order to impugn anybody's motivations.

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We're just trying to be clear on the fact that some of this stuff we're going to talk about today is more prevalent than many might want to acknowledge.

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And we're not saying that because we think we're uniquely brilliant and we just have these lenses on that nobody else has or anything like that.

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We're just looking literally through the lenses of confessional reformed orthodoxy, and it's like that doesn't look right, doesn't sound right, and in fact, like we say, it sounds kind of Roman.

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Well, we're late to the game on this, so part of what I love about Theocast is that we take things that are vital, important, and profound, and we try to make them simple for everyone to think about and to work through, introductory level.

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Correct. I mean, second public service announcement, maybe we are not ever striving to be like some academic podcast, right?

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We're pastors. I mean, John and I, you know, we have education where we read, I mean, we study, we attempt to be scholarly in what we do, and at the same time, the purpose of this podcast is different than some of the other more academic podcasts that exist.

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We're trying to have this conversation at a pop level, so hopefully it's helpful for people. In other words, our audience aren't seminary students only.

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No, they aren't. Anyway, we're getting mired in the weeds. Here we go. Let's just talk about the first one,

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John, and really what gave us the motivation for the episode today. We're just going to go ahead and name it and then talk about it.

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The first theological movement that is modern, it's about 20 years old in its proper form, is known as Federal Vision Theology.

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That's right. This has risen to some prominence within the Presbyterian and Reformed world and, again, began about 20 years ago, in 2002, there was a pastor's conference where it formally became a thing.

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Federal Vision Theology, we'll describe it more in a minute. I would point people, so would you, John, to some of the stuff that Scott Clark has done on Federal Vision and also

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Mid -America Reformed Seminary. Yeah. I mean, they've done some really good stuff, like just assessing

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Federal Vision and breaking down the theology in more detail. We'll put that in our show notes. If you're interested in that, go geek out on it.

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It's helpful and I think you'll be encouraged. So what was motivating Federal Vision proponents was several concerns that we would agree with and we're going to talk about that reality.

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There was a concern amongst some that there was too low of a view of the promise of God and the covenant of grace.

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There's also the concern that there was too low of a view of the sacrament of baptism. Also a concern that there's too low of a view of the church in terms of how the

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Lord works in and through it. Then lastly, not least of all, there was a concern that the faith and our religion in general had become altogether too subjective.

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It was all about this kind of personal me and Jesus thing. Everything's subjective. There's not enough objectivity in our faith and in our practice, etc.

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John and I would agree with all of those assessments that as we survey the Protestant landscape in the

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States, for example, all of those things are a concern. The issue with Federal Vision theology is that the way that these men and women, with the best of motivations we trust, sought to fix the problem, ended up making it worse and ended up blowing up the whole thing.

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The project was to try to reclaim assurance and to reclaim objectivity. Briefly, maybe

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I'll just lay out some of the main tenets of Federal Vision theology just to make this conversation more plain, and then

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I'll throw it back over to you, John. Federal Vision advocates would say that we receive literally all the benefits of the covenant of grace through baptism.

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We receive everything that we need. All the benefits of the new covenant, we're good, through baptism.

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And they would then, because of that practice, not only infant baptism, but then infant paedo -communion.

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That's another conversation, maybe. But then what ends up happening is that you're telling people that, objectively speaking, they have been saved through baptism.

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But now what's going to happen is you're going to live out that life of faith through your faithfulness and through your obedience.

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How is it that the life of faith will be made manifest? Well, it's through what you do. And there's all kinds of things that we could talk about theologically with Federal Vision.

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We're probably going to get to some of these in a minute, but there is a different understanding of covenant theology. They deny the covenant of works pre -fall.

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And so there's kind of a collapsing there. And it's not even a full denial, even like someone like Doug Wilson.

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Well, they're mono -covenantal. Yeah. And it's weird. Sometimes it depends on who you listen to. Most people who are scholarly on Federal Vision will say that there is variance here, where depending on the writer, there would be one that would say, no, no, no, we embrace a covenant of works, but then they would redefine it.

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Or I would say they would morph it to be something that is not traditionally what would be the covenant of works.

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Yeah. So, I mean, going back to summarize, you receive all the benefits of the new covenant, justification, adoption, et cetera, via baptism.

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Then what ends up happening is you, through your baptism, are demonstrated to be covenantally elect, and you now are going to go about living this life of faith.

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How is that life of faith made manifest? Well, it's through your good works and through your obedience. So in one sense, it's like this.

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You get in through grace. You stay in through works. That's right. Right? And you need to cooperate with grace in order to realize your final salvation.

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You need to cooperate with grace in order to keep what you've been given in baptism. That's effectively what this becomes.

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There's no longer, let me just say this way theologically, too.

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There's a flattening of the covenants. So there's effectively a denial of the covenant of works pre -fall, if not a formal denial of that, which means that what these guys often end up doing is turning the conditions that were placed upon Adam into conditions for the

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Christian. That's a big thing. But then also there is a denial of the distinction between the law and the gospel.

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There's often a collapsing of law and gospel. And then there's a concerning understanding of the sacraments, which we're going to get into more lately.

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But what this ends up doing is that in the effort to reclaim assurance through objectivity, you have just relocated the problem, and if anything, made it worse.

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Because now I'm being told that I'm in by grace, but I'm being kept through my cooperation with God through obedience.

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And I could actually lose what I was given in baptism, and that it's legitimate that I might be temporarily elect, but finally not be, because I might give it all away through a life of disobedience.

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Yeah. Apostasy. Right. It's a huge thing. Go ahead, John. No, yeah. Just to reiterate, the conclusions are a criticism of evangelicalism by and large in the last 40 years, where there has been the seeker -sensitive movement, this idea that it's an individual faith, it's my personal faith.

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And I was talking to congregants last night that when they take communion, or their view of communion is even like it's once a quarter.

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There's just such a low view of the means of grace, a low view of baptism and the significance of baptism, and the low view of church.

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Church is something to be consumed. It's not a covenant community to which we engage in for the sake of receiving the means of grace.

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So I agree with that. Just like lordship salvation, there's a right assessment, but then it seems like we overshoot the bow, right?

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We kind of go the wrong direction, and we end up jumping ship. The place that keeps us safe, we overshoot it.

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And to do this, what's been interesting, this has been a unique debate to watch because they are trying to argue from a

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Westminster confession perspective. And what ends up happening is they use obscure language to then try and conclude with some of their findings.

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And one of the things that I find so helpful, that the simplicity of Sola Fide, the simplicity of faith becomes really the platform that everything else needs to be built on.

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If you at one point remove any part of that foundation, you need to ask yourself, why am

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I finding the necessity to add something to what has already been established?

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In full clarity of scripture, an example of this is that when they're presenting this idea of being in the covenant, some of this might be new for a lot of people that are listening to this.

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You may not be new to theology, so we're going to try our best to keep this at a very high level. But what is being presented is that they will say, no, we believe in Sola Fide, that you enter into this relationship with God by faith.

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But then they will use something like James, which I've been preaching through James. They will use something like James to say, well, the way in which you then confirm and maintain that faith is then by your faithfulness, your obedience, which is not what

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James is saying. James is not saying that at all. So, Justin, just to kind of go back to that, what goes under attack from what

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I have seen and what you've seen in federal vision is not only a skewing of the covenant of works, which for those of you that may not understand,

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Paul said that Christ is the second Adam and where the first Adam failed, the second

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Adam succeeded. This is why the covenant of works is so important and that it has to be separated from the covenant of grace, meaning that which we received.

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So Christ is the fulfillment of that obedience. The second thing that they start to muddy and really take issue with is the historical long view of the law and the gospel.

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They say that those categories don't necessarily always work, biblically speaking. And so the reason they have to, as you said, flatten it out at times is because there seems to be law seeping back into the gospel because there's now requirements in the good news.

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Sure. Well, I mean, in their denial of the covenant of works, what they end up doing is making the covenant of grace conditional.

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And so thereby, the distinction between the law and the gospel is eroded because the conditions place the law and the gospel in one sense.

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Because effectively, again, just to reiterate what this is, the view is this, through baptism, you're good.

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You're regenerated. You're united to Christ through baptism. And now what we need to do is give communion to all the baptized apart from a profession of faith.

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The election should only be read through the covenants. It should only be understood through the covenants.

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It's covenantal election. And so then what you end up doing, you have people asking this question, right?

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They say, okay, well, I'm baptized and therefore I'm saved. Yes. Okay. According to federal vision, right?

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I'm baptized, therefore I'm saved. Yes. Okay. But then how do I remain in this position of being saved?

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Well, then the answer to that is, well, by persevering, by living a life of faith.

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And we'll, okay, what does that mean? And then what that always ends up becoming is you need to accomplish some level of faithfulness, right?

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So, I mean, this is where we keep coming back to because you can't escape this reality. This is the thing that everybody wants to fix this and you can't.

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There are always going to be situations in the church where we realize that there are going to be people who are a part of it for a season of time and then leave it.

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We understand that God, I mean, even backing up the truck a little bit more, God does not save everyone, you know?

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And so we're trying to figure out how to navigate all of these things. And we realize that there is something to a person continuing to persevere in the faith.

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And then the question is, what does that look like and what does that mean for a person? And because if somebody just completely punts the whole thing, everybody understands like, that's not good.

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That's not okay. So then the question, how do you explain it? How do you talk about it? How do you help people think about it?

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And it's interesting, like you either are going to reduce the thing down to, are you trusting Christ or not, or you're going to reduce it down to a question of faithfulness.

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And federal vision reduces it down to a question of faithfulness because that's how you persevere in the faith.

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And what is lost in this is the unashamed, repeated, I mean, obnoxious, dare

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I say, emphasis on Christ alone being the only hope of the sinner.

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Always pointing the person not to his or her own works, not even to his or her own faith, but pointing the person to the object of his or her faith, namely

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Christ, who is the atonement for our sins and who is the righteousness that God requires for us.

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And if we ever lose both sides of that coin, in particular, if we ever fall off and lose the emphasis of the obedience of Christ for the sinner, then you're going to have all kinds of problems with assurance and you can't get around it.

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If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest.

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And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

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slash primer. Jon Moffitt Yeah, it's neonomism, it's what we've mentioned before and what that does, it's a new law for those of you who may not know what that phrase is.

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It's a new law and what that creates is something to be broken.

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We've mentioned this before, you can go to the link down below, we've talked about the three uses of the law, but what's almost happening,

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Justin, is that the first use is being brought back into play to the believer, instead of it being a guide.

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It's something that one must do. One of the things that they talk about and emphasize a lot there is apostasy and apostasy passages.

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I've even heard people tell me personally that the Reformed don't really take serious apostasy passages, they kind of just gloss over them.

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Justin Perdue Not true. Jon Moffitt No, it's not true. Justin Perdue But what we are doing in terms of how we understand

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Hebrews 6, for example, that's maybe the one that people really go to. Well, you have to distinguish between internal and external participation in the covenant of grace, which is what the

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Reformed have always done that federal vision advocates do not do. They do not distinguish between the external administration of the covenant versus the internal administration of the covenant via election.

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They don't do that. They also do not distinguish, again, between internal versus external participation in the covenant of grace.

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So how we would understand apostasy is people who have only ever externally participated in the covenant of grace end up deciding that this is all a sham and that Christ is from hell and I'm out of here.

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I mean, that's what's happening in Hebrews 6, is you've tasted and seen, you've participated in these things, you've lived life in the covenant community of the church, and you have left them.

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Jon Moffitt That's right. And even that language of tasted, it means that they didn't consume, they didn't partake. It was like they saw from a distance.

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Justin Perdue But you participated in the ordinances. You participated in all of these things, but then you're gone. Jon Moffitt That's right.

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And obviously, Jesus says they went out from among us because they're not of us. And I think those are important because what ends up happening is one can believe that you can be in union with Christ.

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What that means is to have the Holy Spirit come, you know, this is Ephesians 2, right? We were dead in our trespasses and sins.

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He made us alive. And then he came and dwells within us and he causes us to walk in his ways, right?

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This is Ezekiel 36. So you believe that you can be in union with Christ and then lose that union because the way in which it's described is that union of Christ.

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Justin Perdue In federal vision, they believe this. Jon Moffitt In federal vision, yeah. Union of Christ is your baptism in the church. If you abandon the church, you're abandoning union with Christ.

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And then that's rightfully so. Every reformer says foul that that goes against.

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And what's so hard for it is that people who claim to be proponents of federal vision, they also would hold to Calvinism.

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And so you have a massive problem where you have Christ's blood being shed for the elect and it never fails.

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Also the doctrine of preservation where he perseveres us. This is James 1.

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Through trials, what does our faith strengthen? Because he perseveres us. We don't persevere ourselves.

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When you have passages that says, he who began a good work in you will complete it. What you're saying is he will complete it as long as you stay faithful.

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That's the caveat you have to throw in there. But there's nothing there. Justin Perdue But as long as you sufficiently cooperate with grace.

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I mean, even going back to Galatians 3, it says, you're so foolish that you think you start by the spirit and now you're going to cooperate through means of the flesh.

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No, whereas the reform position is simple. It's all those who are united to Christ. Will be finally saved because Jesus has seen to that, you know, all those who have been united to Christ are sanctified by the work of his spirit in us and will be raised incorruptible.

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And both of those are by faith and faith is a gift. All by faith. Sovereignly. It's all the whole of salvation is a gift.

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Right. Like that's important that we maintain those things. And yeah, I mean, to to argue as federal vision advocates do that one can be united to Christ and then lost is not an historically reformed orthodox position.

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No. I'd love to throw this in here real quick, Jason. To our defense, just so people understand, we're not taking federal vision head on.

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And if we were, we would, you know, one could criticize us immensely. We're trying to introduce the subject and just kind of point out the natural problems with it.

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Every reformed denomination and almost every reformed seminary put out documents, long documents.

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How to address the issue. That's right. Denying the it's unorthodox. It really does deny sola fide.

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It goes against the nature of the gospel. And so we're not we're not the ones who are calling foul here.

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We're just kind of raising it to the awareness of saying, one, unfortunately, this is still an issue.

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It's not just in the Presbyterian world. It seems to be seeping into other worlds that we're going to talk about here in a moment.

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But just just, you know, halfway through, I feel like we probably should have said that in the beginning. We are standing on the shoulders of the work of other men who've done a fabulous job exposing and for years we're talking years.

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Years this debate has gone on and there has been pushing for clarity. And, you know, finally, it's come to the conclusion that you cannot hold this position and hold to a reformed confession orthodox position.

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A couple of other observations, just maybe before we move into the more broad stuff and bring in some other some other things.

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One of the issues with the federal vision schema, too, is the way they understand the sacraments. I'm going to use a word and try to define it.

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I think that the federal vision schema is sacerdotal in its perspective, meaning that the sacraments are effective in and of themselves.

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Ex operae operato is the Latin phrase that was used during the Reformation. And Protestants don't believe that because we believe that the

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Lord works directly on the human heart via the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit works through faith.

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And yes, he works through means by the means of the word of God, right. The word and sacrament and like, but as soon as you remove the

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Holy Spirit and you remove faith from this equation, you now have gone to a different place than the historic reformed orthodox position, because we're always maintaining the work of the

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Spirit and the place of faith by the Spirit in terms of how he works in and through us.

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And even how the word and sacrament is a benefit to the believer, we come literally like the

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Church of Confession, right, with the mouth of faith. I mean, we feed on Christ by faith, for example, in the table.

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That's right. I mean, that's the language of the Reformers and the language of the Confessions. So we're just trying to maintain those things. We want to maintain, obviously, the covenantal framework of the

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Bible where we're going to uphold the first and second Adam, right. There was a covenant of works placed upon Adam, and he failed.

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And now what the covenant of grace is, is the second Adam, namely Christ, comes to accomplish a covenant of works for us in order that we would be forgiven of our sins, yes, through his atoning death, but also so that we might be counted righteous through his perfect life.

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And so we've got to maintain those things. And in all of this, we want to maintain, right, it's not just that you get in by grace and then you keep yourself through faithfulness and obedience.

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It's like, no, you get in and are kept by grace, right. It's all of grace, and it's all of Christ.

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And the whole and only righteousness of the Christian is Jesus and his righteousness.

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So it's not that our faith is counted as our righteousness. It's not that our obedience is counted as our righteousness.

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It's not that God infuses righteousness into us, like we trust Christ and now we're made inherently righteous enough.

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It's not any of that. It's that the whole and only righteousness of the Christian is the righteousness of Christ in his death and in his life that's been counted to us, it's given to us.

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So we just stand in Christ, we're covered by his blood and righteousness always. And if you maintain this stuff, we can say, you're going to live a life of obedience, you're going to do good works because God's going to produce that in you, amen, and your righteousness before God is always

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Christ's. That's right. It's like the emperor with no clothes, almost that reality in reverse, where we walk by faith.

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Not necessarily when we look down seeing Christ's righteousness, we see our filth, but when Paul says to walk by faith, he's saying, walk believing you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

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When God the Father sees you, he sees you sinless, not just sinless, but perfect.

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This is what it means to have every good and perfect gift coming down from the Father of Lights coming to you.

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Why is it given to you? It's given to you by grace. So when you then make statements like you've been forgiven, you're now in covenant, you're in relationship with the

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Father, now it's required of you to maintain that relationship. Or if you even want to use the word prove that, or whatever it is that you want, if you want to put anything additive to that, where you are now taking your righteousness, even if it's an additive, like, oh yeah, you receive the righteousness of Christ, but you must now prove it.

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And if there's a proof factor at all, Justin, if it's 99 .99 %

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God and 0 .01 % us, we have no hope.

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We have no assurance because if we can fail at 0 .01%, we will fail.

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That is the promise. This is why we walk by not partial faithfulness, but complete faith in Christ alone.

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This is why sola fide, alone. Amen. So, I mean, we don't need to maybe say anything else about federal vision right now.

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We can move on to some other things, but there are other ways that this kind of stuff creeps in into the modern, reformed, reformed -ish,

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Calvinistic, Protestant world. Yes, it does. Another thing, we've talked about this in the past, we're going to talk about it again briefly today, but there is an understanding, a theological position known as final justification that brings in this same kind of issue.

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Sounds very similar. Sounds similar. It's not, I mean, there's not the whole understanding of baptism.

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There's not all that kind of stuff that's associated with federal vision and all of this. The final justification piece goes something like this.

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We have the right, we acquire the right to eternal life by faith alone, but then we finally take hold of eternal life through faith in our good works.

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In other words, we might be justified by faith alone, but we will finally be saved by faith and our good works.

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That's how it's all going to be shaken out and sorted out in the end. We're going to have to have good works to present at the judgment seat, and there are going to have to be adequate good works to present there alongside our faith to prove that we're legitimate and therefore would be accepted into God's holy heaven.

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And the issue here is, I mean, I trust it's obvious.

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It's like, okay, well, what in the world then does it even mean to say that I've been justified by faith in Christ?

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I've been declared righteous by God on account of Christ alone. I've received that by faith, and now I have peace with God.

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What does that even mean if I'm going to be finally saved by faith and then what

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I do? As a piece of this, every advocate that I know of, of a kind of final justification perspective, there is obviously a collapsing of law and gospel, and it manifests itself maybe most obviously in a text like Romans 2, 6 -13, where they want to try, and I'm not going to riff on that.

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I've done it a number of times in the past, but where people try to say, ah, you know, they divorce it from the rest of Paul's argument, they divorce it from the rest of the

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New Testament and just orthodox theology, and say, see, it's mysterious. There's a way in which our good works factor into our final salvation.

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Yes, on the one hand, it's faith. On the one hand, it's Christ. But then on the other hand, see, it says here that God rewards those who do good, and He punishes those who do evil, and so we've got to do good, right, in order to be finally saved.

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I mean, this just goes, it flies in the face of things like 2 Peter 1, where every good and perfect gift, he says, has been sovereignly granted to us.

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That's everything for life and godliness. Everything. If everything— Every spiritual blessing. That's right. If Peter doesn't mean everything for life and godliness, then why would he say that?

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Same thing from James 1, says every good gift that, it literally says, from his own will, he chose to bring these things to us.

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So just, you know, Justin, I know you mentioned this, but I'm going to go ahead, and I think it's going to be helpful here, because, you know, these quotes have been around forever, so this isn't us picking on anybody, but this is a quote from John Piper's own article on his website, who makes these claims, and so we can put the link to this in the episode if you want to read the whole article, get the whole context.

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We've done episodes on this in the past, but we're only referencing it now because it seems like there is a trend, and we're connecting these trends to things that are starting to sound like Rome, which we're going to read some quotes from Rome here in a minute.

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But this is the quote, it says, from John Piper in his article, In justification, faith receives a finished work of Christ, performed outside of us, and counted as ours, imputed to us, and we'd say,

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Amen. In final salvation, at the last judgment, faith is confirmed by the sanctifying fruit it has borne.

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So he's added a new category that doesn't exist. And we are saved through that fruit and that faith.

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These works of faith, and he quotes passages here, and this obedience of faith, these fruits of the

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Spirit that come by faith are necessary for our final salvation. No holiness, no heaven.

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So we should not speak of getting to heaven by faith alone in the same way we are justified by faith alone.

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So he's saying you can be in a right relationship with God, but it's not guaranteeing your final destination with the

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Father. Again, this is not a category the Protestants have understood. This actually sounds very much like Trent, which

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I'm sure you're pulling up to read right momentarily. So you mentioned Piper, who is not a federal vision proponent.

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He's a Calvinistic evangelical, but did promote

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Doug Wilson, who is a federal visionist. So that's who I was going to name. If you're wondering, is federal vision theology a thing, and is it influencing many people who would understand themselves to be

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Reformed? Yes. One name is all that needs to be named, and it's Doug Wilson. Doug Wilson is well -known, and he's read by a lot of people in the

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Reformed world. He is an advocate, a proponent of federal vision. Whether it's

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Piper's articulation that you just stated, or whether it's more of a federal vision presentation that you're in by grace, but then you're going to persevere through cooperating with grace, and doing good works, and living a life of faithfulness.

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Whatever the articulation, it sounds like Rome. That's where we're going. We're not trying to be punchy here.

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We're not trying to be shock jocks and clickbaits. But we care about this very much because we do look around and agree that the biblical doctrine, the

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Reformation doctrine of assurance, is under assault all the time, and the sufficiency of Christ to save sinners is under assault all the time in every generation, and it is in ours.

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We're trying to pound the desk to say, no, Jesus really is sufficient, and he's done enough not only to forgive you of your sins, and wipe your slate clean, and wash you, and all that kind of stuff, the language you use.

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He's done enough to save you because he's accomplished righteousness that's all you could ever need, and it's already yours.

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You've received it through your union with him. So how is it that federal vision

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Doug Wilson knows that camp, or how is it even that the final justification, John Piper, Mark Jones type camp, how is it that they sound like Rome?

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Well, I mean, listen to these words from Rome itself, and this is from the

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Council of Trent, session six, canon 24, in the year 1547. Now if people don't know what the

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Council of Trent is, it's happening in the decades after the Protestant Reformation has begun. It's a counter -reformation.

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It's a response to the Protestant Reformation. The Church of Rome has an ecumenical council that takes place over a number of years, a number of different meetings, sessions, right, that took place, and those sessions when they would meet would write down canons, or doctrines, or standards, right, that they wanted to affirm, and what

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I'm about to read is session six, canon 24, on justification.

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This was written in the year 1547. If anyone says that the justification received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works, but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof, let him be anathema.

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I'm just going to read it again. If anyone says that the justice received, the justification received, is not preserved and also increased before God through good works, but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof, let him be anathema.

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In other words, what did Rome say? Rome said in response to the Reformation, it is not right to say that good works are simply an outflow of justification received, or that good works are simply evidence of justification received, but that justification received is enough.

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To say that is wrong. To say that means you are accursed. What you need to teach, what we understand is biblical sound doctrine is this, that you maintain and even increase the justification you have received through the good works that you do.

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Now, we've said this a million times, we'll say it again. The danger in the final justification world and the danger in the federal vision world is not that we increase our justification through obedience.

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Nobody's saying that, but they are functionally, if not formally saying you maintain your justification through obedience.

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All right, I'm saved, federal vision, I'm saved by baptism, I'm in by baptism, how do

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I stay? Obey. Final justification, you're justified by faith in Christ, how am

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I finally saved? Obey. That's right. And whenever you redefine the terms of salvation and you start to redefine faith and you start to redefine this thing to include faithfulness and obedience, assurance is now impossible and we are at least flirting with giving away the good news because we now are introducing a

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Jesus plus kind of theology, which as far as I understand it, John, is what the letter of Galatians was all about.

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One of the earliest letters in the New Testament next to James, right? What is Paul defending there?

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He's defending the clarity of the gospel and he's not, he's not fighting against works righteousness wholesale. He's fighting against Jesus plus, like Jesus plus anything is wrong, it's

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Christ. That's right. Yeah, I mean, I think it's so clear. This is why the episode says sounds like Rome, where we're just calling kind of a little bit of a foul here.

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It seems like we are messing with the second part of the gospel, which we, there is no second part of the gospel is the entire gospel, which is the forgiveness of sins.

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And then also the work of Christ, which is when he says it is finished, he wasn't just referencing the payment of your sin.

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He rose for our sanctification. He completed the work of perfectly obeying the law.

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You know, in Hebrews it says he brings many sons to glory. Well, what does it say in Romans?

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We fall short of the glory of God. Well, if Adam would have succeeded in his obedience to the father, he would have entered into the father's glory.

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What does Christ do? He obeys the law and then he takes us and brings us into glory.

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Why can he do that? Because God doesn't require sinlessness to be in his presence. He requires righteousness to be in his presence.

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It's the presence of good. Real quick, Justin, before we move on, I just want to say this because I know one, we're going to continue this conversation in the next episode, but there are people who are going to listen to this and then say, well,

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John, Justin, Doug Wilson isn't part of federal vision anymore. And so he wrote an article called Federal Vision No Mass.

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If you read that article carefully, you will see he doesn't like the title anymore, but he says everything I've written and everything that I have taught,

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I still believe he still does fatal communion. He still believes in this collapsing of the law and the gospel.

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So we're not trying to just pick on a guy and we're not being careless. We've done our research.

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We try to be careful before we present this in there. But the reason why we bring this up is that there are well -known men who we loved and respect who seem to be doing things that are very confusing.

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Even things like James White interviewing Doug Wilson and kind of setting Doug Wilson up to say, look, he's confessional, he's reformed.

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But yet the issues that has been presented, James really didn't bring up some of those issues, which are really, really important for us to deal with, which is this kind of additive that happens to Sola Fide where, no, no, no, we believe in Sola Fide, but your obedience still matters.

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And it's not necessarily the fruit of what's coming from, but it is the justifying of your faith and your faith can never be justified by your actions.

42:58

Justin, I'll just, I'll leave it here. And I know we'll add this thought and then I'll let you close this out. But I said this to you before, and the podcast begins, if we just take the first law, the first requirement that's given to us as believers, which is to love

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God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, how much does God require us to love him to be enough of an evidence so that he will say justified?

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Because you and I have never in our lifetime remotely touched 100 percent love with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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So how much is it of Christ's righteousness covering it and how much of it is that our obedience?

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And there is no way you can look at scripture to give that percentage. It can't happen.

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Nobody can answer the question. No. Whenever we start to try to gauge things based upon our sincerity or whatever it may be, it's like nobody can quantify that.

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Nobody can tell you. It's one of the challenges. You know, I think it's interesting, just final observation here, you know, in the final justification view,

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I think one of the concerns is Christians need to live a life of obedience. And so here's how we should rightly understand these things.

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And OK, but then in the federal vision camp, it's very interesting. The motivation on the front end was a little bit different.

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It's like, no, we want to we want to fight for something more objective so that everything is not so subjective.

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And the irony is when you jettison the confessions and when you jettison orthodox positions that have been held historically and you try to come up with a new way in the interest of objectivity, you end up bringing subjectivity back into the thing, but you've doubled down on it.

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It becomes a 400 pound gorilla, man. And because you're not maintaining these categories that people have thought through really carefully for centuries and centuries and centuries in seeking to become more objective, the subjectivity of, well, cooperate and obey and live a faithful life is brought back in.

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By necessity, because you have re -altered the equation on the front end, we've now got to insert faithfulness and obedience and cooperation with God on the back end, which sounds like Rome.

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And yeah, it's it's tough. It's tough to see it. And it's sad when people are affected by this.

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And there are a lot of things I could talk about like culturally as to what I think unites some of these folks, like even

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James White and Doug Wilson, like why would they tag team? It's like there's some other things that they have in common, but it's almost like we're willing to borderline compromise on the gospel if we can talk about how people ought to be living today.

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Anyway, that's maybe another podcast for another day. And I don't mean to just like throw that across the bow before we leave.

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Are you talking about theonomy here? Well, yeah, no, not exactly. But I mean, theonomy makes sense, you know, in this schema, because if you if you think that the requirements placed on Adam or the requirements placed upon the

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Christian, I understand why you use this language all the time of creation mandate and why you would go back to, you know, the law given in a unique covenantal context and try to overlay it on today because you don't even have that covenantal framework.

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Anyway, there's a lot that could be said there that we don't have time to unpack today. We are about to record another podcast.

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That's right. Called Semper Reformanda, you know, which we get, of course, from one of the phrases of the Reformation, the church reformed and always reforming.

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Right. So Semper Reformanda, always reforming. We're headed over there to record that. It's a second podcast John and I record each week.

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And this is for our Semper Reformanda members, people who have partnered with Theocast to see this message of the sufficiency of Christ spread as far and wide as possible.

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If you want more information on how to become an SR member, to become a part of that community that's being built, there's access to an app where you can connect with all kinds of people who are processing the same stuff that you are.

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It's kind of like Facebook, but better and safer. Right. So that sounds appealing to you.

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Maybe head over to Theocast .org, our website, and you can find information there about membership and how you can get connected.

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And we'd love to see that community keep growing. It's encouraging to watch the saints encourage each other. That's right. You can start asking audio questions, which we're going to start answering in the

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SR app. Don't overpromise, John. Go over there. We're going to do the best we can. We're going to. Yeah. You know, anyway.

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Grace, bro. Grace. Grace. Lots of grace. OK, cool. Well, this, I hope, has been a decent conversation for people and clarifying on some stuff.

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Main thing, Christ is our righteousness, saints. Keep trusting him not only for forgiveness, but for your righteousness before the

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Lord now and forever. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith.