The Doctrine Most Missing in the Church | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I are going to do something a little bit different.

We're going to offer some clarification and a critique about something that was put out recently by Steve Lawson concerning the gospel and what the church should be focused on and what is missing in the church as it relates to regeneration and justification.

We hope you find this edifying and helpful. A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the

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

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

I got it this time. Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral perspective and confessional.

If you want to know what we're trying to do, we are trying to clarify the gospel here and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom.

Your hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and I am

John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Justin, it is good to be here with you today.

Before we keep going, I just need to quickly point out, we do have a new coffee mug. It's black and white, and it looks really good.

They're fire, man. I can't wait for mine to arrive. It's on its way, but be careful when you open it. My scratch is mine, so you don't want to do that.

We've got hats, shirts. What's his name over at... Oh, I can't think of his name right now.

He got his hat in. Dwayne Atkinson. Dwayne Atkinson, yeah. Shout out to Dwayne.

Yeah, he got his hat in. He sent me a picture of the hat. He looks better in the hat than you do.

Well, thank you for that, John. You're welcome. I don't know how to receive that, but I will. We don't want to start another dust -up over flatbill hats.

You think it's heresy or something? For the Lord's sake, yeah, seriously, heresy. Imagine. Do people look at you differently when you wear a flatbill hat?

I think they look at me differently. I don't know. I don't know. I don't really concern myself with such things. I actually haven't been wearing my hat a lot lately, and I just felt like wearing a hat today.

And this is kind of like a waffle shirt with a t -shirt over it hat kind of day for those watching on the video.

You've already seen this. That's just kind of how I'm feeling today. I got my pants on, all that kind of stuff. I'm just feeling edgy today.

You're feeling it. Well, that's an edgy... Speaking of, it is a very edgy take. If you've seen the title of the episode, we'll just go ahead and get into it after all that banter.

And Justin and I... Thank you for sticking with us. Yeah, Justin and I try our best to pick subjects that are broad, but helpful.

And today's one of those that is nuanced, but yet important. The distinction is important.

And so, Justin, the title of this particular episode is just paperwork in heaven.

And yes, it might be a little bit punchy. The title, yeah. But let's explain to them why that title was given and what it is we're going to be talking about today.

Before I even get into setting up the topic formally, I want to make this disclaimer. We are not a discernment ministry, and so we really do not make it our aim to take things that other pastors and theologians have said publicly and critique them.

That's not what fuels our fire. That's not what drives this podcast. And yet, it seems that of late, there have been things said publicly by guys that are influential who have large public platforms that we just can't ignore and sit on the sidelines and not respond to.

Today's episode is one of those. Many that listen to this podcast may have already seen the video that we're going to reference here, but I'll try to give a good summary of it, and then we're going to interact with it.

That's today's show. Steve Lawson, John, remind me of the name of the ministry that he's the head of that released the video.

One Passion. I think it's One Passion. I'll look it up for you to give you the exact one. Steve Lawson is a guy that has a relatively large public platform.

He in particular is influential in speaking about preaching. One Passion Ministries is great.

If I'm not wrong in this, John, I think he even teaches some doctrinal classes on preaching.

I mean, a doctorate level, Ph .D. level classes on preaching, or at least demon stuff.

I've butchered all that. I trust you've been able to track with me. This is a man who speaks a lot about preaching, who was a pastor for many years, who has a large public platform, and often speaks to men who are aiming to do expositional ministry.

He's influential. He recently released, Steve Lawson did, a video where he is answering the question, what is the doctrine most missing in the church today?

He's going to narrow that focus a little bit to answer the question more pointedly, what is the doctrine that's most missing in preaching today?

Track with me for just a few minutes because I want to try to fairly represent what Steve Lawson said so that John and I can then interact with it.

We aim to be charitable here, and yet this is a matter of great importance. So Steve Lawson, in answering that question, what is the doctrine most missing in preaching today?

His answer was, it is the doctrine of regeneration, the doctrine of the new birth.

Now, that sounds good on the face of it, but where he goes with this is problematic.

So I'm going to quote him at some length here, quote, when you begin to preach the new birth and what are the necessary evidences of the new birth, people begin to examine their lives.

This takes it to a whole other level of self -examination, of careful thought about their own soul.

In a sense, justification by faith alone is just paperwork in heaven.

It does nothing to change your life. It simply changes your status or your standing in heaven before God as you are clothed with the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Insertion. He at least understands what justification is. His take on it, however, we'll interact with in a minute.

He goes on, however, regeneration dramatically and radically changes your life from the inside out and does so immediately.

You would know if you've been born again, the dramatic change and transformation that has taken place in your life.

Regeneration is something that is an experiential reality in a person's life. You should know if this has happened in your life.

Close quote. He goes on to talk about George Whitefield, who was a revivalist during the

First Great Awakening, as it's known. He comments on how Whitefield was always preaching on the new birth.

And then Lawson tells this story about how one time a woman comes up to George Whitefield and asked him, why are you always preaching on the new birth?

And Whitefield's answer was, because, dear woman, you must be born again.

And Lawson is arguing for the effectiveness of Whitefield's ministry because he always preached on the new birth.

Then finally, Lawson later in the video goes on to say that if he were speaking to a group of people that he perceived to be religious but unconverted, he would preach the new birth, not justification by faith alone in Christ alone.

So what do we make of all this? Our plan here, not to give like the preacher outline thing, what we want to do first is interact with the content and offer humble yet sincerely held critiques of what

Steve Lawson said. Then we are going to pivot and offer a couple of things that we are convinced are missing in terms of doctrine in preaching today, and that's today's show.

So let's begin, John. Let's interact a little bit. Well, I just hope that someone close to Lawson has a conversation with him.

He needs to put out a public correction on this to state that justification is just paperwork in heaven and it really doesn't matter.

The justification by faith alone in Christ alone is just paperwork in heaven in a sense, and that it does nothing to change your life is the most...

It's one of the craziest statements I've ever heard from a sound reformed theological man that should know better.

We're trying to take the entire context of what he said in view here, trying to be charitable, but those two sentences need to be recanted.

No equivocation. No. They need to be recanted. It's like, if you have not justification by faith alone, you have nothing.

Your life is nothing. You have no life. You are dead in your trespasses and sins.

To be justified is not only to be cleansed of one's sin, but it's also to have their relationship with God corrected, which means you need righteousness to do that.

So just saying it's just paperwork and it has no bearing or effect on your life now, it is your life.

Amen, brother. We'll just go ahead and lead with this, because I know this is what you and I are most worked up over internally, kind of like to use the

Paul in Acts 17. Our spirits are just, I think, sort of raging within us here when you hear this language.

My initial reactions, and I don't mean to be extreme in what I'm about to say, my initial reaction when

I hear that justification by faith alone in Christ alone is in a sense just paperwork in heaven.

All it does is change your status before God as you're clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ, but it does nothing to change your life.

My initial reactions are two. One, I regard that as a blasphemous statement about the person and work of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, what a short sell of epic proportion in terms of the effect on our hearts and lives that justification received on account of Christ produces.

I'm flabbergasted, John, that a man would say such a thing. I could talk about what I assume his motivations are, but I don't want to go there.

I don't want to go to the level of conjecture. I just want to interact with what he said. I'm going to stop for a moment. I'm going to let you speak some more, and then we'll wrap up.

We do have to be careful to impugn his motives. He could be fighting back against easy believism.

He could be fighting against radical grace, whatever that thinks he is. I understand where the fear is.

If you preach justification by faith alone, people will live however they want. Here's our response to this. For 2 ,000 years, and with great clarity 500 years ago through our confession in the

Reformation, our good works were always the fruit of our gratitude.

It's always the outflow. Justin Perdue It's an outflow of justification received. I just want to give a couple of passages.

Philippians 2 is one of the greatest examples of this. He points to justification, to your standing, your status, the paperwork in heaven, and says, because of this, lay your life down.

Consider other people more significant than yourselves. Ephesians 4, walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

Called what? Justified. You were called and adopted into his family. He uses your status as your motivation.

2 Peter 1, when he says, everything has been granted to you. Your justification, your sanctification, your glorification, it's all been granted to you.

Now, because of that, act. And when you're not acting, you've forgotten. You've been cleansed.

He doesn't call into question your justification.

He doesn't call into question your regeneration. He says you've forgotten. If you're not acting in godliness, let's just put it simplified, he's saying you've forgotten your status, and your status is cleansed.

One more time, Paul says this to the Corinthians, he says, you were once these, but now you are not.

So, walk in the newness of who you are. What is that newness? It's the new status that you have. Justin Perdue Even the language of Colossians, for example, and even of Ephesians, like put off the old man, put on the new, all of these things.

The grounding there is already given in terms of Christ for them, their justified status, adoption, union with Jesus.

So, then Paul is effectively just saying, here's how you used to live, here's how you live now, and you once were this, you're not that anymore.

Here's how the redeemed conduct themselves. Don't do that. Put that off. Live like who and what you are now.

That's the apostolic pattern. I could go on at length about that, but I think you've said enough there. A few thoughts here, just in interacting.

I'm going to say this first one just to get it out of the way, because I have some other things that I think are more significant, but it's very clear that where Steve Lawson is going with the doctrine of the new birth is we need to preach the necessary evidences of the new birth, he says, and what this does is it raises introspection and self -examination to a whole other level.

Now, with all due respect, I think just objectively speaking, that is the height of revivalism.

I mean, what else is that other than a revivalistic perspective on conversion and moral transformation of life and what the real marrow of the

Christian life is? It's self -examination, it's introspection, it's thinking about the necessary evidences and do

I have enough of those necessary evidences and I need to take seriously the condition of my soul. So that's there.

Some other things that I think are significant, though, that I want to touch on before we offer what we would suggest is missing today.

So I agree with Steve Lawson that we should absolutely preach the new birth, but in preaching the new birth, we're not preaching it at a human level of self -examination primarily.

We are preaching it as life given by God to dead sinners. Like when

Jesus raises Lazarus from the tomb, the one who gave the command gave the life, right?

And that's the perspective that the Lord is the one who causes the new birth.

Tracking on here, to say to someone, you must be born again, that is not the good news.

No, it just isn't. And with all due respect, people are born again precisely through the preaching of Christ.

And what do I mean by that? I mean the preaching of Christ for sinners, meaning his satisfaction for sins, his perfect righteousness imputed and union with him and everything that that means, his triumphant resurrection, which guarantees our bodily resurrection, the heralding of Christ and his excellencies is precisely how people are born again.

Can I interject? Please. So when you walk up to somebody and say you must be born again, you're assessing their circumstance.

Like Justin, if I were to walk up to you and say you have cancer and you must have surgery, I have not given you any good news.

I've only assessed your situation. Sure. And then I say that you have cancer and you need an operation or you need the new birth and you have not experienced it.

That's right. And then I say, but Justin, if you trust me, I can remove the cancer. Now I've given you good news.

Exactly right. Now I've given you good news. If I may, John 3, I'm sure this is going off on people's minds.

John 3, when Jesus interacts with Nicodemus, because he effectively tells Nicodemus, you must be born again.

And I'm sure the thoughtful listener is thinking that. I agree. Jesus says you must be born again. Nicodemus clearly doesn't understand it.

How can this be? We all know the interchange. And Jesus says in John 3, 8, that the wind blows where it wishes.

You hear the sound of it. You don't know where it comes from or where it's going. So it is with everyone who's born of the spirit, but he doesn't stop there.

Notice what he says at the end of the interchange. You know, some people debate as to whether John 3, 16 and following is still that same conversation or not.

That's irrelevant right now. What he says Jesus does in John 3, like 14 and 15 in particular, he says to Nicodemus after having told him that he needs to be born again, says just as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, he's talking about numbers 21, the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up.

So must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Jesus did not simply say you need to be born again. He preached the good news to Nicodemus in saying that just like all of these things in the

Old Testament foreshadowed and pointed to, just like the serpent was lifted up and everyone who looked upon that bronze serpent lived and was saved.

So the son of man must be lifted up. And when I'm lifted up on the cross in the place of my people, whoever looks to me in faith will have eternal life.

He preached the good news, man. And so that's important for us to remember. Just to jump ahead, in Romans, when

Paul says the gospel is the power of God, you then have to ask... And 1 Corinthians 1, the preaching of Christ crucified is the power of God.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. By the word of Christ, actually. Right. And the question you have to ask is, is he referencing the preaching of new birth, new regeneration, or is he preaching the good news of those who are under the law and feel the condemnation of the law and they have been rightly identified as sinners?

The good news is telling them you need regeneration is not good news. Telling them how they can be regenerated is the good news, right?

Right. And it's not actually that you are going to cause yourself to be born again. It's that you need to believe upon the

Lord Jesus Christ. Here is who he is, and here's what he did. Trust him. That's the exhortation.

And the fruits of justification can never be the gospel. That's the dangerous part of this. And we've been criticizing this about lordship salvation for who knows how many years now in theocast, but regeneration is definitely the outflow of the good news of the gospel, right?

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus, by his death and his life, saves sinners.

You believe that, then he will gift you faith and regeneration, and he will produce in you good works, but that is the outflow.

It's not just paperwork in heaven. Sorry, I can't get past that. No, brother, I agree. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

Faith vs. 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. So a couple other thoughts before we transition a little bit.

If you're preaching to people that you understand to be religious, but not converted, you first preach the law to crush them in their sin, to show them the depth of their corruption.

The depth of their need. And then you herald the mercy, the power, the love, the work of Jesus Christ in their place, and you implore them to trust

Christ. That's what you do. You don't go and preach the new birth either by saying, you must be born again and leave it there, or you don't go in and talk to them about the moral transformation of their lives and say, here is what faithful Christians look like.

Because when you do the former, you've given them no good news at all. You've just told them what they need that they can't do.

I mean, Steve Lawson is a Calvinist, but then on the second part, not only have you told them to do something they can't do, you effectively have looked at a person that you esteem to be dead in his trespasses and sins, and you're more or less telling them, well, here's what it would look like if you were alive and you just need to try harder to live.

It's impossible. It makes no sense that we would talk to them about the transformation of life.

Perhaps what Steve Lawson is saying is that he would preach the law to them to help them understand what righteousness looks like.

If that's what he means, then I can agree with that. We preach the law and then the gospel. But if that's what you mean, say it that way.

He upholds the law as the good news, and he downplays the gospel and says it's paperwork, and I'm like, man, you have completely inverted the power of God.

Justin Perdue That's a great observation. Last thing here, you've already said it, I just want to say it again.

We cannot reverse engineer the transformation of life. I think that many people with the best of intentions do that in the ways they communicate.

I trust that Steve Lawson agrees with us that good works are fruit and evidence of justification received, and that you cannot duct tape fruit to a tree.

A tree has to have life in order to produce fruit. Duct taping fruit to a tree doesn't make the tree alive, the tree is still dead.

But if the tree has life in it, then it will produce fruit. I trust he agrees with all of that. But my fear is that when we communicate in this way, that you need to be examining yourself constantly and thinking about the necessary evidences of the new birth, and introspection needs to go to a whole other level.

What we are then saying is more or less that you need to live in a certain way to prove you're alive, and that you do good works to validate your justification.

That's at best what's being communicated. If not, I think some people hear that and effectively hear that they justify themselves through their sanctification.

That's a problem. We've talked about that a number of times on this show, and we don't need to beat that horse anymore today.

John, do you have any other thoughts by way of just maybe critique of what Steve said directly before we offer our own thoughts on what's missing today?

Yeah, and this is going to sound a little out of left field, but what's happening here is that Steve is giving people a purpose for life.

One of the criticisms I have about Christianity and the world in general is that people tend to create their own purpose for life when they don't have one significant enough given to them.

I look at the World Wars in the United States, and you can see how when we all have a common goal and focus, we tend to get rid of the superficiality and we stop fighting over the stupid areas of our culture, and we have a common goal, a common purpose, and we all agree on it.

9 -11 is a great example of this, when all of a sudden there's this natural disaster, not natural, but there's this disaster, right?

A national disaster. National, thank you, disaster. And all of a sudden it's like we understood what the goal is.

It's like, we got to help these people. We got to get in here. We got to do this thing. And I believe that in the

Bible that is given to us, our purpose. Like when Christ says, seek ye first the kingdom of God, right? He gives you your purpose.

He gives you your priority. And in that, what I love about the purpose given to us from Christ is that he first secures us, he then gives us the understanding of where the power is.

And then he goes, now here's where your purpose is, right? So he gives you your position. I'm going to be a good old Baptist here with three points for you.

He gives you your position, right? He gives you your protection, and then he gives you your purpose. And you alliterated those three points too.

Did you like that? Bless the Lord, man. Bless the Lord. What I am hearing Lawson say is the purpose of the

Christian life is regeneration and that's subjective.

Like you're looking to yourself for that application. When I'm listening to the gospel and the instructions from Christ, it's objective, right?

I can't help but going to Ephesians 2 or 2 Peter 1, where he's giving us a, here's how you were saved, here's how you were protected, looking unto

Jesus, Hebrews 12, the founder and perfecter of our faith, right? And the focus is not subjectively on what

I am doing. I have a mission that's ahead of me. So I agree with Lawson that people have lost their vision of what the purpose of their life is.

But the purpose of our life is not to secure our position. That has been gifted to us and we know it's true by faith.

Because that's true, we need to obey. And there's a difference being from gratitude versus a guarantee.

You know, it's like guilt, grace, gratitude. Instead it's guilt, guarantee or guilt, grace, now guarantee it through your obedience.

It's not a gratitude. It's a guaranteeing of it. Yeah. A validation. Right. And in one sense, almost like a self -justification project.

Yeah. Now I'm with you. The thing that you said about everything being so subjective is accurate because revivalism and also pietism as well.

I mean, we've said this many times, but what those things, those theological streams of thought represent is a subjectivizing of religion in ways that are damaging and that's another conversation for another day.

All right. We've got just a few minutes left here on the regular show. I think we should offer, I know I've got two pointed thoughts and John, you may want to just jump in on these because I think we are in like mind here.

If we were asked the question, what doctrine is most missing in the church today, or what doctrine is most missing in preaching today,

I would have two immediate thoughts. I'm going to actually save the one that would be my initial response for second, because I think the first one needs to be stated explicitly to begin.

I will offer one doctrine that is missing in the church today and missing in preaching today is the active obedience of Jesus Christ and the imputation of Christ's righteousness to sinners received by faith.

Why do I say that? Because I think crucifixion, you know, the crucifixion, passive obedience, suffering

Jesus, atoning for our sins, propitiation, satisfying the wrath of God against our sin, I think those things are preached pretty well by most evangelical pastors in this land.

Thank God that's true. Now there's a lot of confusion, law gospel confusion, and other things that we don't need to talk about right now, but I think that portion of Christ's work is preached largely.

I don't think near as many preachers, near as many pastors are as clear and explicit as they should be about Christ's perfect life,

His fulfillment of all of the righteous requirements of the law, and the fact that His obedience is counted to us as our obedience, that He is our righteousness.

That's not said enough. We need to pound the pulpit for that. And I know this is true because of the membership interviews we do with people that come and join

Covenant Baptist Church here in Asheville. Constantly, people make this observation that, man, this understanding and understanding of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ was always missing for me, and now that I see this, it has changed everything because I now have a perspective on my standing before the

Lord and the righteousness He requires and how Christ has given me that. And now I live in freedom and I pursue obedience and righteousness, but I'm not mired in the self -righteousness piece.

I'm not mired in despair. I'm trusting Christ for my righteousness and for my holiness, even in that regard.

It's a game changer, John, and it's not said enough. Jon Moffitt That's right. Yeah, brother, it's so hard.

There's a lot of things that I think are lacking, but this becomes the foundation of our entire faith.

We can see it everywhere where if you don't believe that your standing before God is secured by His death and life, the cleansing of our sins and His righteousness, the necessity of works slides back in, and this is where we get called antinomian, and this is where we're going to say, listen,

Christians do good works, but I'm an antinomian when it comes to those works applying to your justification.

They cannot, in any situation, apply to your justification because if they do, then that is no longer faith alone in Christ alone, by His work alone.

So, yeah, I agree that the thing that you hear Paul and I would say every disciple and writer of the

New Testament raise to the highest level of importance and value is the gospel, and the gospel is our forgiveness and righteousness granted to us by faith alone.

When you lower that, like for instance, denying the covenant of works, which we're not even going to get into, you lose the gospel, and therefore, all you have is just another religion based upon law.

Jon Moffitt Yeah, and like you said, there are people through history who have been charged with being antinomian who have simply made a strong stand for this, the fact that the law and works and obedience has no place in the conversation of standing before the

Lord, that Jesus only can handle that and has handled that, and we receive what

He's done by faith apart from works. We'll die for that, Jon. We would stake our ministries on it, and we have no shame in that, and we stand alongside the

Mero brethren and many others who were called antinomian before us in those regards. Second thing I would offer, though, what doctrine is most missing, and this might be my initial knee -jerk response.

It's more of a holistic response, and that's why I didn't say it first. I think that the doctrine perhaps most neglected in the pulpit today and in churches today is union with Christ and what that means for the entirety of the

Christian life, so not just justification but for sanctification and for eternal life, and included in union with Christ, I would include adoption in that.

In being united to Christ, we've been adopted into the family of God. We've been given a new name, a new status, and a new inheritance, and everything that's

Christ's is ours, and because we've been united to Him and are now found in Him and His Spirit is at work in us,

His Spirit working in and through us will accomplish our sanctification, and it is a certainty, and He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

He who calls you as faithful, He will surely do it. That is missing today because we're so afraid.

Well, we don't preach union with Christ enough, period, and then I think there's a negative reaction to this kind of communication because we're so fearful that people will not have proper motivation for obedience, and so those are my responses, the active obedience of Christ and the imputation of His righteousness and union with Christ and all that means for the entirety of the

Christian life, not just the beginning, the justification, but what that means for your sanctification and the transformation of your life that is

God -wrought, we need to say it more. Well, this is the whole Galatian heresy because Paul is saying you can't start this relationship, and then it's continued by the flesh.

He's saying we're in union with Christ, therefore it's from faith to faith. It's always faith because it's objectivity.

It's outside of yourself. It's extra nos. Yeah. Well, there's a lot more we could definitely say, and we are going to continue to say.

I do have additional thoughts on that. Justin, I'm going to make a statement here and then we'll talk about it in the next podcast we're going to do, but what is interesting about the ploy of Satan is that sometimes when we think about a demonic work,

C .S. Lewis was wise when he said... Yeah, screw tape letters. Yeah, we often fall off on one side or the other.

We either think that it's a cartoon character holding a pitchfork or we're excessively fascinated with the demonic realm, and Satan's happy with either one of those because it gets our focus and attention off of Christ.

One of the things that can happen is Satan wins when the gospel...

He doesn't need you to deny the sufficiency of Scripture. He doesn't need you to deny God, but if he can get you either distracted or completely away from preaching what is necessary for regeneration,

I would agree we want people to regenerate it, but there's a necessity.

It has to be the gospel, the good news. God says it is proclaimed into their ears, and when they hear it, the

Holy Spirit opens their eyes. It has to be the good news. So I want to talk a little bit about how

Satan is winning this war, unfortunately, in certain churches, where, as you said, all he needs to do is get you to focus on the subjectivity of the

Christian life, and then all of a sudden the power of the gospel in that congregation is now gone. Justin, go ahead.

Justin Perdue No, I feel the need to maybe clarify. We are not saying that Steve Lawson or anybody else doing some of these things are of the evil one.

That's not at all what we mean. What we're saying, though, is that Satan is the accuser of the brethren and he is our enemy, and his mission is to take the gaze of the

Christian off of Christ. I've said this before. Satan's message to the unbelieving world is that you don't need mercy.

You're fine. But his message to the saints, often, is there's no mercy for you.

He accuses you, or he, like screw tape letters type stuff, he's going to take your eyes off of Christ in another sense, to where you fixate on all of these other things that might be important enough, but they're not the main thing.

It does. It guts the church of its holiness and power, in particular, that power piece unto holiness and righteousness and effectiveness.

We're gutted if we don't keep Christ the unashamed emphasis always. How else do we think people will be sanctified,

John? I guess is what I would say. Jon Moffitt Yeah, you're either going to be sanctified by your own works, objectivity, or you're going to be sanctified by his works, objectivity.

Justin Perdue Because people ask, well, if you preach this way, I'm sorry, I know we've tried to land the podcast twice, but people say, well, if you preach all this, if you preach this way, guys, will people live holy lives?

My response would be, how else are they ever going to live holy lives other than to preach

Jesus for them? Because Christ and the gospel and union with Christ by the Spirit is the power unto sanctification anyway.

Jon Moffitt That's right. Well, we'll definitely have more to say to that. I have got some additional thoughts on that as well.

We do a second podcast every week, Justin and I do, called Semper Reformanda, which means always reforming. This particular podcast is designed for those who have partnered with us in our ministry to support what we are doing.

This ministry has multiple podcasts that we're working on. We've got this one, Semper Reformanda. We've got another podcast called

Everyday Grace, where you can listen to serving clips by Justin and I five days a week. We have some additional podcasts coming your way that remain unannounced, but they are coming.

We're just trying to provide more materials for all of life. If you'd like to learn more about that, you can go to theocast .org.

Thank you for listening. Next week, we have some new stuff we're doing. Justin and I have taken a turn here and there, bringing in some new material.

Can I tell them what we're doing next week? Or should we just wait? Justin Perdue As in what we're going to record next week? Justin Perdue Save it for Nsoar.

Jon Moffitt We'll announce it in the Semper Reformanda podcast. Thank you guys. All right.