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

Christ’s Righteousness Received by Faith Alone

Hi, this is Justin. 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.

And that tends to not only terrify people, it's something that comes under assault throughout the history of the church that's clear to see. In our day, there's a couple of ways, even amongst the reformed crowd, where this is a thing.

One of those movements is federal vision doctrine. Another is the doctrine of final justification. So John and I are gonna engage with both of those today on the show. We're gonna talk about federal vision.

We're gonna talk about Doug Wilson. We're gonna talk about final justification and John Piper, and some who advocate that understanding. We're gonna point out some concerns we have with it, and we're gonna aim to defend sola fide, the fact that we are righteous on account of Christ alone, and we receive it by faith alone, but peace with God now and forever.

Then in SR, we're gonna go all in on this. We're gonna talk in more depth about federal vision theology and the need for creeds and confessions. We hope you enjoy the conversation. Stay tuned.

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The Gospel, Imputed Righteousness, and the Need to Revisit It Every Generation

Welcome to Theocast. Encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed and pastoral confessional perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I am Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

Not trying to be overly dramatic. I don't know, it's just the mood I'm in today. We're gonna be having a conversation about some stuff. It's a very serious podcast today. It is. I mean, it's kind of a punchy title.

We're gonna explain what we're gonna talk about in a minute, but John, say hey to everybody. Hey, everybody.

So, no, it's good to be here. It's good to be recording. This next week, Justin and I get to spend some time together in Knoxville. We're gonna be doing some work on Theocast and work on Grace Reformed Network and just spend some time dreaming and planning for the future.

So, always, always thankful for that.

It's always good to be together, and we're usually, we work pretty productively together too. 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. So, praise, praise our father for that. That's right. We need it. Yeah, well, what do we love about the podcast is this is the time I told Justin yesterday in a text conversation I was excited for tomorrow, just because I just, I never get tired of talking about all the different ways in which Christ has been granted to us.

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

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

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, the good news is everything you need for forgiveness and everything you need for righteousness has been gifted to you by grace, that is to receive that which you don't deserve.

When you lose that part of the gospel, you lose the gospel altogether, it's gone. You cannot remove the forgiveness side, you also cannot remove the imputed side, they have to have both. And today we're gonna talk about how there's some modern day theology that is not new, the concept isn't new, but it's being branded as something that is new, where we seem to be losing that second side, 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.

It seems like that is going back to Rome in modern day context. And so Justin, let's talk about some theology today that seems to be removing that second part of the gospel. Yeah, theology that sounds like Rome,.

That's what our title says. That's right. Yeah, I don't wanna repeat everything you said, 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.

And I completely agree that it is not the forgiveness of sins piece that is often lost. The imputation of the righteousness of Christ as the whole and only righteousness of the 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. 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. 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.

That's the part that gets muddied and muddled and cluttered and confused. And it makes people uncomfortable. Like that's the part that scares people. We've recorded an episode in the past, you know, why the gospel terrifies Christians.

I mean, it's that imputed righteousness piece that really is the part that scares everybody because we're afraid that people aren't gonna be concerned for obedience and lives of faithfulness. So yes, let's talk about some modern manifestations of this.

And we're not gonna, I don't know how many names we're gonna name. We may name some. We are not naming names in order to be pejorative or in order to impugn anybody's motivations. We're just trying to be clear on the fact that some of this stuff we're gonna talk about today is more prevalent than many might want to acknowledge.

That's right. 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. 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. You know, and in fact, like we're saying,.

It sounds kind of Roman. Yeah, 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.

Correct. I mean, second public service announcement, maybe we are not ever striving to be like some academic podcast, right? Like 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. 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. Oh, no.

There are, yeah. Anyway, we're getting mired in the weeds. Here we go. Let's just talk about the first one, John, and really what gave us the motivation for the episode today. We're just gonna go ahead and name it and then talk about it.

Federal Vision Theology and Why It Threatens the Law-Gospel Distinction

The first theological movement that is modern, it's about 20 years old in its proper form, is known as Federal Vision Theology. That's right. This has risen to some prominence within the Presbyterian and Reformed world.

And again, began about 20 years ago, 2002, there was a pastor's conference where it formally became a thing. And 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 Mid-America Reformed Seminary.

Yeah, I mean, they've done some really good stuff, like just assessing 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.

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

There was 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, you know, in terms of how the Lord works in and through it.

And then lastly, not least of all, there was a concern that the faith and our religion in general had become altogether too subjective. 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, et cetera. And John and I would agree with all of those assessments that as we survey the landscape, Protestant landscape in the States, for example, all of those things are a concern.

That's right. 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, ended up kind of blowing up the whole thing.

So the project was to try to reclaim assurance and to reclaim objectivity. And so briefly, maybe I'll just lay out some of the main tenets of Federal Vision theology just to make this conversation more plain, and then I'll throw it back over to you, John.

Okay. So Federal Vision advocates would say that we receive literally all the benefits of the covenant of grace through baptism. We receive everything that we need. All the benefits of the new covenant, like we're good, through baptism.

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

But now what's going to happen is you're going to live out that faith, that life of faith through your faithfulness and through your obedience. 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. 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. And so there's kind of a collapsing there.

And it's not even a full denial, even, like someone like Dr. Wilson. 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 the covenant of works, but then they would redefine it.

Or I would say they would morph it to be something that is not traditionally what would be the covenant of works. Yeah, so, I mean, going back to summarize,.

You receive all the benefits of the new covenant, justification, adoption, et cetera, via baptism. Then what ends up happening is you, through your baptism, are demonstrated to be covenantally elect, and you now are gonna go about living this life of faith.

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

You need to cooperate with grace in order to keep what you've been given in baptism, right? That's effectively what this becomes. There's no longer, let me just say it this way, theologically too, there's a flattening of the covenants.

So there's a denial, 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 Christian, right?

That's a big thing. But then also there is a denial of the distinction between the law and the gospel. There's often a collapsing of law and gospel. And then there's a concerning understanding of the sacraments, which we're gonna get into more lately.

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

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. Yeah, apostasy.

Right, and so it's a huge, go ahead, John,.

And then we'll talk more. 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 secret sensitive movement, this idea that it's an individual faith, it's my personal faith.

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

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

We kind of go the wrong direction and we end up jumping ship. The place that keeps us safe, we overshoot it. And to do this, what's been interesting, this has been a unique debate to watch because they are trying to argue from a Westminster confession perspective.

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

If you at one point remove any part of that foundation, you need to ask yourself, why am I finding the necessity to add something to what has already been established in full clarity of scripture? So 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, you may know about a new form of 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.

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 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 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, Paul said that Christ is the second Adam and where the first Adam failed, the second 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. So Christ is the fulfillment of that obedience, right? The second thing that they start to muddy and really take issue with is the historical long view of the law and the gospel.

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.

Sure, well, I mean, in their denial of the covenant of works, what they end up doing is making the covenant of grace conditional. And so thereby the distinction between the law and the gospel is eroded.

Right. Because there are conditions placed upon the gospel in one sense. Yeah, for a non, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, because effectively, again, just to reiterate what this is, the view is this, through baptism, you're good.

Like 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. Election should only be read through the covenants.

It should only be understood through the covenants. It's covenantal election. And so then what you end up doing, you have people asking this question, right? They say, okay, well, I'm baptized and therefore I'm saved.

Yes. Okay, according to federal vision, right? I'm baptized, therefore I'm saved. Yes. Okay, but then how do I remain in this position of being saved? Well, then the answer to that is, well, by persevering, by living a life of faith.

And well, okay, what does that mean? And then what that always ends up becoming is you need to accomplish some level of faithfulness, right? So, I mean, this is where we keep coming back to because see, you can't escape this reality.

This is the thing that everybody, everybody wants to fix this and you can't. There are always going to be situations in the church where we realize that there are gonna be people who are a part of it for a season of time and then leave it.

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

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, like 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? And it's interesting, like you either are gonna reduce the thing down to, are you trusting Christ or not?

Or you're gonna reduce it down to a question of faithfulness. And federal vision reduces it down to a question of faithfulness because that's how you persevere in the faith. And what is lost in this is the unashamed, repeated, I mean, obnoxious, dare I say, emphasis on Christ alone being the only hope of the sinner.

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

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.

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

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer. 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, it's a new law.

And what that creates is something to be broken. So, 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, Justin, is that the first use is being brought back into play to the believer.

Instead of it being a guide, it's something that one must do. And one of the things that they talk about and emphasize a lot there is apostasy and apostasy passages. And I've even heard people tell to me personally that the Reformed don't really take serious apostasy passages, they kind of just gloss over them.

Not true. No, no, no, it's not true.

But the... Go ahead. But what we are doing, in terms of how we understand 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 Reformed have always done that federal vision advocates do not do.

They do not distinguish between mere, you know, the external administration of the covenant versus the internal administration of the covenant via election. They don't do that. They also do not distinguish, again, between internal versus external participation in the covenant of grace.

And 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.

That's right. 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 that.

That's right. Yeah, 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.

But, you know, you participated in the ordinances, you participated in all of these things,.

But then you're gone. That's right. 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.

What that means is to have the Holy Spirit come. This is Ephesians 2, right? We were dead in our trespasses and sins, He made us alive, and then He came and dwells within us and He causes us to walk in His ways, right?

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... In federal vision, they believe this.

In federal vision, yeah. Union of Christ is your baptism in the church. If you abandon the church, you're abandoning union with Christ. Correct. And then that's, rightfully so, every reformer says foul.

That that goes against... And what's so hard for it is that people who claim to be proponents of federal vision, they also would hold to Calvinism. And so you have a massive problem where you have Christ's blood being shed for the elect, and it never fails.

Also, the doctrine of preservation, where He perseveres us. I mean, this is James 1, through trials, what does our faith strengthen? Because He perseveres us. We don't persevere ourselves. 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. That's the caveat you have to throw in there.

But there's nothing there. As long as you sufficiently cooperate with grace.

Right. 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.

Right. 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. All those who have been united to Christ are sanctified by the work of His Spirit in us and will be raised incorruptible.

And both of those are by faith. And faith is a gift. All by faith. Sovereignly. The whole of salvation is a gift. Right. That's right. That's important that we maintain those things. And yeah, I mean, to argue as federal vision advocates do, that one can be united to Christ and then lost is not an historically reformed orthodox position.

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

Every reformed denomination and almost every reformed seminary put out documents, long documents. Had to address the issue. That's right. It's unorthodox. It really does deny sola fide. It goes against the nature of the gospel.

And so we're not the ones who are calling foul here. We're just kind of raising it to the awareness of saying, one, unfortunately, this is still an issue. 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.

But just 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, 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.

A couple of other observations, just maybe before we move into the more broad stuff and bring in some other things. 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. I think that the federal vision schema is sacerdotal in its perspective, meaning that the sacraments are effective in and of themselves. Ex operae operato is the Latin phrase that was used during the Reformation.

And Protestants don't believe that because we believe that the Lord works directly on the human heart via the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit works through faith. And yes, he works through means.

By the means of the word of God, right?

The word and sacrament and the like. But as soon as you remove the 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 Spirit and the place of faith by the Spirit in terms of how he works in and through us. And even how the word and sacrament is a benefit to the believer, we come literally, like the Belgic Confession, right, with the mouth of faith.

I mean, we feed on Christ by faith, for example, in the table. 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 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. 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, you know, 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.

That's right. 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.

It's like, no, you get in and are kept by grace, right? It's all of grace, and it's all of Christ. And the whole and only righteousness of the Christian is Jesus and his righteousness. So it's not that our faith is counted as our righteousness.

It's not that our obedience is counted as our righteousness. It's not that God infuses righteousness into us, like we trust Christ and now we're made inherently righteous enough. You know, 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. 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 Christ's. Jon Moffitt. That's right. You know, it's like the emperor with no clothes. Almost that reality in reverse where we walk by faith, 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. When God the Father sees you, he sees you sinless, not just sinless, but perfect.

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

Now it's required of you to maintain that relationship. Or if you even want to use the word prove that main 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.

And if there's a proof factor at all, Justin, if it's 99 .99 God and 0 .01 us, we have no hope. We have no assurance because if we can fail at 0 .01 we will fail. That is the promise. This is why we walk by not partial faithfulness, but complete faith in Christ alone.

This is why sola fide, alone. So, I mean, we don't need to maybe say anything else.

Final Justification and the Claim That Good Works Complete Salvation

About federal vision right now. 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, 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.

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

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

Like, 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, right? 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, right?

And the issue here is, I mean, I trust it's obvious. 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? 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. What does that even mean if I'm going to be finally saved by faith and then what 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 to 13, where they want to try, and I'm not going to riff on that.

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

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. Everything for life and godliness. Everything. Every spiritual blessing.

That's right. If Peter doesn't mean everything for life and godliness, then why would he say that? Same thing from James 1, says every good gift that, that it literally says from his own will, he chose to bring these things to us.

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.