Faith Never Saved Anyone | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, here's our topic. Faith has never saved anyone.

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I know it sounds controversial, and it actually is. And Justin and I are going to do our best to show you from a biblical and historical perspective, what actually saves you, and it's not your faith.

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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 slash give. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed and pastoral perspective. The pastors and hosts today are behind the microphone are

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and I am John Moffitt.

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I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Justin, as you like to say, we have met to podcast, and more importantly, we have met to discuss the man whom we trust in more than all and find our rest,

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Jesus Christ. That's why we're really here. The man Jesus. It is. The God -man

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Jesus Christ who has saved us from our sins. That's right. Speaking of, most all of our books are related to that, specifically today.

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Tell us, Justin, what are we giving away today to our member and listener? Not only are our books related to that, our sermons are.

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Amen, brother. Better be. Come on. Or as Spurgeon says, go home until you find Jesus. Until you find something worth preaching.

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I told a guy this past Sunday, we were having a conversation about the sermon, and I said, yeah, man, basically, because he was like, how do you not, with like all this content that you were going through, covenant theology and everything, he's like,

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I'm sure it's so tempting to just teach a ton. I said, yeah, it is, but at the end of the day, what drives me in preaching is if I haven't given us

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Christ, I've failed. And anyway, that's a governor. That thought was free. Now I'm going to go ahead and do the book giveaway thing that we always do because we love our listeners and we want to get good resources in your hands.

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And so today we are giving away another book by our friend, friend of Theo Kass, brother in Christ, a man we respect and appreciate very much,

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Michael Horton. He has written a book entitled Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, Embracing the

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Heart of the Gospel. And we trust this is going to be an encouraging resource. And today we have selected through various means.

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So John arranges all of our members in random ways every week, and then I just pick a number.

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And that's sort of how it happens. So the Lord's using however many agencies that is to determine who's going to get this book.

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So today, the winner is none other than Danny Fate. Danny, I hope that I'm saying your name the correct way.

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I'm giving it my best shot, man. And if I've butchered it, I trust you will give me grace. So Danny Fate has won this wonderful resource from Michael Horton.

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Danny, if you do not get a message from us, shoot us a message and we will happily work on getting that book out to you.

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Danny is a relatively new member of the Semper Reformanda Theo Kass team, or it seems has upped his membership or something this year.

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I'm not 100 % sure. It almost sounded like you said, Danny, Fate has, has you won this book?

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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, anyway. Yeah. Dad joke. Apologize. Dad joke. I don't even know where to go from here.

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But Danny, you've won a book. And congrats, man. And we hope it blesses you. And if you're sitting here listening and you're thinking, man,

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I'd love to have a copy of that book by Michael Horton, then a couple of things you could do. One, I mean, you could always just buy it.

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We're going to have the link to it in the show notes. But if you want to try to win a free copy, the day that this podcast releases, which will be on a

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Wednesday, you can go to any of our social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, and there'll be info there on how you can enter to be a person who wins or the person who wins the second free copy that we give away via social media each week.

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And so avail yourselves of that. And one of you will win this good resource from Michael Horton.

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So John, the book is about grace and how amazing it is. And you said that's related to what we're talking about today.

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So dear brother, why don't you tell the listener what we're going to talk about? Well, I'm sure there are some all kinds of people who are just anticipating and waiting this because the title of the podcast is it's a decent one.

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It's a nice title. Never saved anybody. Whereas we're joking about nobody, faith, faith.

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They never saved nobody, nobody. Yes, we like to have fun, and at times we like to pick very punchy topics.

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But this one, I think, is a very significant and very important topic because of how much it impacts,

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I think, people's day to day life, their choices of churches and how they interact with Christ.

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So we're going to really talk about kind of the three different ways faith has been used within the history of evangelicalism and even within scripture.

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And then present for you the biblical and historically reformed perspective as relates to our faith.

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And we're going to start, first of all, examining how often in, I would say, in the last 300 years, more prevalently as how it's influenced the

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United States and now broadly even the world, that we put our faith into our faith.

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The idea that we have belief in something. That gives us the confidence and the assurity that God is good with me, that I can be justified, and that at the end of my life, all will be fine because I have faith.

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And so, Justin, why is that a problem theologically and biblically to say that my faith is what saves me?

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Yeah, so the thing that we're really answering today is if somebody were to ask you, how do you know that you're saved?

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Or how do you know you'll be finally saved? Or how do you know that you'll make it to heaven?

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However you want to frame that question. That's essentially what we're trying to wrestle with today. And you just highlighted one of the answers that's given.

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And I would say that this is probably the very common answer amongst the average evangelical

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Christian in America. How do you know that you're saved? It's, well, I have faith. And that's the answer.

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So, in one sense, you are offering faith as the thing that would save you.

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Or if you were to stand, you know, hypothetically, like this is taking some liberty with the illustration, we're going to do this throughout. Like if you're standing before the judgment seat and you're being asked on what basis, you know, should you be admitted into heaven, the answer on the part of many evangelical

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Christians would be, well, I believe. And we're going to unpack this more throughout this episode.

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But dear friends, saints who are listening to this episode, if your answer to that question, you know, on what basis should you be admitted into heaven begins in the first person, we've gotten it wrong.

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I mean, if it begins with, I have done anything, including I believe, that's not the right answer. And so,

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John, I think it might be good for us to just go ahead and like lay our cards on the table just quickly and then kind of continue to unpack this.

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So our answer to that question, biblically speaking, on what basis would we be admitted into heaven?

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And on what basis are we reconciled to God? The answer is Jesus, period. He is it.

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And that's why we're saying faith has never saved anybody. Jesus saves sinners. And faith is the means through which the work of Christ is applied to us.

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And we're going to think more about that throughout this episode. And we're trying to get at it in several different ways. The issue here,

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John, I mean, as I look at this and answering this question and saying, how do you know that you've been reconciled to God?

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And the answer is, well, I believe not only are you placing confidence in something that is related to you that is somewhat subjective in that sense, it just does not hold even biblically.

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And so I know immediately people, there are objections that always get raised to this, because we even get this on our social media stuff sometimes,

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John, where people say, well, what about like Luke chapter seven, when Jesus looks at the woman of the city and says, your faith has saved you, go in peace?

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Well, we would respond to that by saying that woman in that account comes to Christ in a

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Pharisee's home. And it's very clear that she has no confidence in anything pertaining to her.

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She has no righteousness on which she's going to stand. And she's not confident in herself in any way and is casting herself completely upon Christ as the one who can save her.

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And so it's clear that the one who she is trusting is the one who does the saving. It is not her faith that does that faith.

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Even in that account is simply the means through which Christ's saving work would be applied to her.

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John, jump in. Jesus throughout all of the book of John calls people to believe in him.

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I mean, literally in John six, he says, you do not believe or you're in.

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How's it go? They say, make it plainly that you are the Messiah. And he says, I've already given you all the evidence, but you don't believe in me as his point.

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So it's not faith. In general. And he's saying that he's proving to them,

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I am the source of your justification or I am the source of your hope into the kingdom. And this even goes back to the rich young ruler.

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He walks up and what must I do to be saved? Jesus, the source of what he should be trusting in, because what he's saying is, what can

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I trust to get what I want? And Jesus says, well,

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I'm standing right here. And the fact that you don't know that is the answer that you need.

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And so he tries to crush the man by trusting himself because the man literally starts with, I'm trusting this so far.

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What else do I need to trust? I have obeyed the law. And in the end, Jesus sends him away because he's unwilling to trust

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Jesus. So it's not faith in your faith. The way

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I would kind of almost reword this, and this is going to sound heretical, and maybe we can kind of work it out. But the way I would say it this way,

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Justin, is that faith is the evidence of your salvation. So because I'm saved by Jesus, therefore

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I believe. And so you're resting in the sufficiency of Jesus to hold on to you.

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You are not resting in the sufficiency of holding on to Jesus. That's what I would say is faith in your faith is saying

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I'm saved because I have faith versus the Bible saying you are, no, excuse me, spitting all over myself, getting a

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Baptist, losing control over her, spitting fire.

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Well, that was awkward. Anyways, keep going. Control my tongue here if I can.

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Because Jesus saved me, therefore I believe that he is sufficient to carry me home. I mean, this is when

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Paul says, he who began a good work and you will complete it. Where are we putting our faith? Sure. In Christ, which, go ahead.

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No, I was just going to say, I think it's good to maybe mention where this comes from in the contemporary evangelical movement.

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You had a lot of people back in the 80s or so begin to articulate things like this, where there was,

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I think, a good motivation to emphasize the freeness of the gospel. But then what ended up happening was it was kind of a hyper -Armenian, very man -centered approach to this whole thing.

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Where you had Zane Hodges and other guys, Zane Hodges from Dallas Theological Seminary, maybe famously in his book,

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Absolutely Free, I believe it is, begins to articulate that what is necessary is to have this one moment where you make this decision of faith.

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It's this one act of faith. And then at that point, based upon that act, a person is secure forever.

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And that's where you get this language of like, once saved, always saved, in this sort of mechanical sense. And what is the basis of that once saved, always saved?

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Well, it was that one act, that one decision of faith that you made at that one point, and you're looking back to that as the ground of your assurance before God.

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That is problematic. Because then in that view, what ends up happening, and where Zane Hodges went with this, is that once you've made that one decision of faith, it really doesn't matter what happens after that.

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It doesn't even matter if you continue believing. It's kind of crazy the way that it goes, but that's,

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I think, maybe the greatest example that we could give of placing faith in your faith, or placing faith even in one decision that you made, as the ground of your hope before the

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Lord and the ground of your reconciliation to Him. The problem with that is, which the whole lordship thing came out of, well, there's no evidence of your salvation, which we're going to get into that in a moment.

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That is not the problem. That is not the problem. The problem starts with the gospel that's being presented, because the good news is not this.

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The good news is not Jesus Christ saves sinners and presents them as righteous by His own obedience.

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That's the good news. The good news, what they're hearing is, if you say this prayer, you can be saved.

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Or if you dedicate yourself, you can be saved. It's like, you're the acting agent in salvation, and the gospel is

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Jesus is the acting agent in salvation. This whole business, John, I think one of the reasons why it's so damaging is that if you're putting faith in your faith, and if really faith is like this one decision you made or this act of faith that you do, effectively what you're saying is that faith is a work that you accomplish.

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You are capable of mustering up faith, and that faith that you have produced is what is your confidence.

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That's a really big dilemma. Because I think what I would want to say to those individuals who are going to say, well,

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I believe in Jesus, and that is the basis of my admittance into heaven, it's like, well, okay, but I assume that you're like every other person that I know, and you're like every single member of my church, and you're like me, and you're like John, in that your faith, pick your descriptor, the strength of it, the quality of it, the consistency of it, the vitality of it, the fervor of it, whatever, that ebbs and flows, not only by the year or the day, but by the moment sometimes.

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How in the world, then, if your confidence is based on something so subjective, like how you feel about Christ or how strong your faith is in this moment, how in the world could you ever have peace?

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The answer to that is, if you're sane and you're objectively assessing it, you couldn't. That's right. Well, people put faith in all kinds of things that have no reality to them.

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I've met people who have all kinds of beliefs and things that there's no reality to their faith, and they believe strongly in it, but they cannot place a reality connected to their faith.

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The point of it is that you're asking this question, Justin, how is it you can go from condemned to child, from unrighteous to righteous?

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Faith is not what does that. Jesus doesn't look at you and go, oh, you believe that can happen, therefore it's yours.

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No, there has to be a substance. There has to be a key access. For instance, just because I believe a plane can take me from point

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A to point B doesn't mean that actually the plane does it until the plane actually takes me from point

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A to point B. Faith doesn't make the plane fly. The plane does. Jesus is the one who saves and sanctifies and presents us as righteous.

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I know it sounds like a nuanced, but it is important because in the end, when

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I stand before God and he lets me into his kingdom as child, it has nothing to do with me.

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It has everything to do with what Christ did on my behalf. The evidence of me saying, okay, so let me reward faith and almost say it's an acceptance.

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Do you accept the reality that without Jesus, you cannot be saved? Yes, I accept that. Do you accept the reality without Jesus' obedience, you cannot be seen as righteous?

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Yes, I accept that reality. Then you are given all the benefits of Christ.

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Faith is acceptance, it's not doing. Well, and it's acceptance, it's receiving, and I would say it's also trusting.

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That's right. The real question at the heart of the matter is, who are you trusting? What are you trusting?

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Are you trusting in your faith? Are you trusting in something about you, or are you trusting in Christ and his sufficiency, which is where we're,

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I know, headed with this whole thing. I want to go ahead and introduce this now, John, if I can. Go for it.

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I think people need to understand this, and this is related to putting faith in faith and even faith being a work.

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In the immediate aftermath of the Reformation, you had, rightly, a lot of people preaching and emphasizing faith over and against works.

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To the extent that even back in the day, and I think this happens even in our context too, which is what we're highlighting here, people made such a big deal about faith that it began to sound like faith was a work that we did or that we do that then reconciles us to God.

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Even to the extent that Roman Catholic theologians responding to the

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Protestant Reformation, some of them even drew the conclusion, oh, well, we see that you, like us, believe in salvation by works, you just have a different set of works, yours is faith, ours is this other stuff in terms of the sacraments and the like, but we all believe in salvation by works, which is where Luther and Calvin and the

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Reformers had to make great effort and take great pains to demonstrate that faith, first of all, was purely a gift from God, biblically speaking, and that it was not faith itself that saved anyone, but it was the object of our faith, namely

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Jesus, who saved us and that faith was simply the means through which the righteousness and the suffering and the satisfaction made for sins by Christ is applied to sinners.

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Historically, this has happened before, and we, like the Reformers and like Protestants through history, need to be careful that we articulate this in ways that are accurate biblically and don't turn faith into a work that we do that saves, but rather see faith as the means through which the work of Christ is applied to us.

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Why don't we move on, John, to the next section? Before you do, real quick, I think just quoting

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Romans 10 real quick, just so you can hear even Paul's words, he's talking about legitimacy of what's backing your faith, and he's even using this illustration,

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Romans 10, 6, righteousness based on faith, and then he even, in verse 9, says, because if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is

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Lord, where is he pointing the object of your faith, right?

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He says you're pointing it to the reality of who Jesus is. So I believe Jesus is Lord, and he's saying that's the evidence or that's what saves you, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

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So the faith is in the object of Jesus and what he did. I love that about Romans 10. We always use that verse as I will, so you have to say it with your mouth in order to be saved, and you missed the point.

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Faith is in who Jesus is and what he did, and that's what saves you, not the actual faith in itself, like just having faith.

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Sorry, just wanted to add on there. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest, and if you 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. It's very clear that the presentation of the scriptures is that it's the righteousness of God, it's the righteousness of Christ that's being counted to sinners, and faith is the means.

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I mean, so think about Romans 117, think about Ephesians 2, 8 to 10, think about Philippians 3, like 7, 8, and 9.

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It's very clear that it's somebody else's righteousness, namely the very righteousness of God.

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I mean, Romans 3, 21, 22, you know, that is responsible for the righteousness of received by faith, and so it's not faith itself that God counts to us as our righteousness, it is the righteousness of Jesus counted to us, and that precision really does matter.

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And it's evidenced by faith, it's evidenced by faith, that's right. Sure, yeah. All right, so let's move on maybe to the next header, at least on our little handy -dandy whiteboards here.

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So we dealt with the kind of placing faith in faith, you know, which is a very broad evangelical issue.

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Now we want to speak more to an issue that would be more prominent amongst Calvinistic or Reformed -ish evangelicals, and this would be, as you put it before we recorded, if the first one is faith in our faith, this category would be many people putting faith in our faithfulness.

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And so the answer here would be something along the lines of, you know, on what basis should you be admitted into heaven?

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And you would begin to point to your obedience. You would begin to point to your discipline and your faithfulness, that I, on the, you know, because, you know,

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I have whatever, like I, you know, I understood these things and believe these things, I did this stuff that then demonstrated and validated my faith.

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That's the argument, that you need to prove the legitimacy of your trust in Jesus through what you do.

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And why don't we just talk about that a little bit? Yeah, this is probably a subject that we handle all the time in Theocast.

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It's definitely, it's a tricky situation. We have talked about it once or twice. Yeah, it's a tricky situation because what

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I think we're going to be a little bit more pointed and trying to be very nuanced and careful here.

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The, there's a kind of a razor's edge here and it feels like we can get pushed off onto either side.

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And so Justin and I are trying, are going to trying to be as like scripturally relevant here as we can, because what people end up hearing is that obedience isn't necessary and that is by no means reformed confessional or biblical in any shape or the, at all.

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Obedience is what I call, not necessary, but obedience is what

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I call, what's the word I'm looking for? Not evident, but. Well, I would say it's a necessary outworking of faith.

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Yeah, but not like a necessary consequence. It's a consequence, right? It's what's going to happen.

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Like even when in Ezekiel, when he says, I pull out your heart of stone and I put it in our heart of flesh and will cause you to walk in my ways.

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Exactly. It's like, obviously Christians who have the spirit's power in them are going to obey.

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So go ahead. No, amen. I mean, it's, it, I'm thinking of a bunch of scripture passages. So, you know,

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Romans six, union with Christ, we've been delivered from the dominion of sin. We've become obedient from the heart.

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Romans eight, we're being conformed into the image of Christ. Romans 12, we're being renewed, you know, in our minds.

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I mean, all of these things are our reality as a result of union with Christ by faith.

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And so of course, like you just said, because we have been fundamentally changed and united to Christ and his spirit is now at work in us, he is going to change us and that is going to result in good works and obedience.

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And we, along with the reform of all time and the orthodox of all time, see that as a necessary consequence of saving faith and a necessary consequence of salvation.

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That's right. The problem is, and you've said this so many times, John, and I agree with you. The problem is this kind of prove it mentality that exists out there because you start to try to make the stream flow uphill and you invert the relationship by saying, prove that you're saved by what you do.

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And it's like, yeah, you, you actually can't do that. You have to be saved first and then the fruit is born.

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That's right. And when you invert the relationship, we've got all kinds of problems. Well, we're just on, now we've gone from one side to the other, right?

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We, we are saved by our faith. Now we're being saved by our faithfulness, which no one would say that in the conservative, evangelical world.

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But to be, to be fair, that is what ends up leading people down that road.

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Because what is the, what is the basis foundation? Where are they resting?

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What's fueling their assurance, right? And what's fueling your assurance is the evidence of fruit in your life.

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And often I would even say it's not fruits of the spirit. It's fruit of Christian, you know, Christianism that's been handed down to us that, um, as crazy as this sounds, the moment you say reading your

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Bible daily is the evidence of my, or the desire to read my Bible daily is the evidence of my salvation and the ground of my assurance,

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I'm sorry, but that can't be it because your desires for anything are going to ebb and flow up and down, this is why

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Paul talks about the war against the flesh and the spirit and the spirit against the flesh is that we are going to have our desires that go up and down, even if you were to say, if you don't desire

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Jesus above everything else, every single moment of every single day, you should not have assurance.

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Again, you are saying the ground of your salvation, that which justifies you before God is based upon either your actions or your emotions or your level of dedication, this is why in the

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Baptist world that I grew up in, the call to rededication was so relevant because you can't, like you should question whether you're good with God.

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You should question whether God is going to save you because look at your life. You aren't fully dedicated to him and so we would have these rededication services to the point where some would even get re -baptized,

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Justin, you know this world, because your assurance level dropped so low that it was like, you know, we probably should re -up this membership here just to make sure that all things are good and when you are looking to dedication or faithfulness as the ground of your assurance, then you have a massive problem.

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This is why so many people who listen to Theocast contact us and say, for the first time in my life, I feel like I truly have assurance because I am not looking to a prayer on one side or I'm not looking to my faithfulness on the other side because prayer and faithfulness never saved anyone.

27:46

Justin Perdue That's right. I mean, yes, certainly this whole premise of walking an aisle and praying a prayer and making a decision one time, saving someone,

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I mean, that is foreign to the scriptures, but then yeah, this other thing of the emphasis on your disciplines and your faithfulness and the fruit in your life and basically pointing people to that to know that they're saved is, man, it's a hopeless endeavor because anyone,

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I've said this recently, I think, but I'm going to go and say it again, John, none of us on our deathbeds will ever be comforted by our obedience.

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You know why? Because all of us who have been united to Christ and who have been given a new heart and a new spirit who are actually tender in our consciences and want to obey, we will reflect back on our lives and we will be hyper aware,

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I trust, of how we could have done so much more. We could have obeyed so much more. We could have sinned so much less.

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And it's like, man, you can't comfort someone with that because we are imperfect at best, even in our obedience and our sincerity and how we feel about obeying ebbs and flows.

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And so if we're being pointed to that, not to encourage us, we agree with the confessions and the scriptures that we can have our assurance bolstered by being shown the change in our lives.

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Can and should. Yes. Amen. But if you're being pointed to that as how do you know and on what basis should you be admitted into heaven?

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Well, I've got these good works to prove that I'm legit. That, that is assurance robbing and peace destroying.

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That's right. And many a saint has been wrecked by that, even in our modern context. This, in my mind,

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John, is kind of like bad Puritan theology, where there was an overemphasis on moral transformation.

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The gospel is kind of assumed. Of course, Christ is preached and all that, but that's kind of in the backdrop.

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You know, it's the background and really the focus becomes on the Christian's life, disciplines, obedience, performance, and the like.

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And I go back again to like what we said earlier, and I'm going to give this illustration from Alistair Begg here in a minute.

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If we begin to answer the question on what basis should you be admitted into heaven in the first person in any way, we are wrong.

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If it's our faith or if it's our obedience or the fact that we persevere to continue, it's like, oh, brother, sister, you, you're looking in the wrong spot.

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To be clear, I want to go back and say this because I feel like people misquote me and Theocast quite often.

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I think Christians should and must be very disciplined in their lives as it relates to their sin and their actions.

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And I would even say as it relates to the word of God, because God's word and God's people point us to the one who is saving us.

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And the more disciplined and dedicated we can be to focusing our attention on the substance of our faith, or sorry, of the substance of our salvation, the stronger our faith and obedience can and should be.

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But what's so, here's the razor fall side, Justin, and I know you're about to get to this here in this illustration you're going to use.

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The emphasis is put on your faithfulness. And it's like, no, no, no, no.

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The emphasis has to be put on Christ and his faithfulness. And so we draw,

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I mean, this is 1 John when it says, what we are, we are not yet. Right? He says, but we in anticipation of this, we purify ourselves as he is pure.

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The looking to is Christ, not to our faithfulness. So I know people can feel like we're being nuanced here, but I will tell you the flip on this is the difference between rest and no rest.

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You can rest seeking obedience, disciplining yourself, understanding the benefits of living a godly life and loving those and just giving grace and mercy and patience and long suffering, resting in the reality that it's

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Jesus sufficiency that brings me home, or you can pursue godliness and all of these other things as they ebb and flow, go up and down as they do.

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So does your assurance and so does your emotional dryness, because you're trying to find comfort in yourself and in yourself sacrificing and it cannot be found.

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This is why Paul says, I am present tense, the greatest center I know. And where does he find his hope in the sufficiency of Jesus?

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He does, which is where we're turning. I mean, so the title of the episode, faith never saved anybody or never saved anyone is an entirely true statement.

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Faith does not save sinners. Jesus does. Faith, as we've been saying, this whole podcast is simply a vehicle or a conduit or a means, whatever word you want to use.

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It is the object of our faith that is the one in whom we trust who saves us. And so even our confession,

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John, in the ways that it will outline what saving faith is, you know, it is receiving, resting and trusting in Christ alone for salvation, for all of it.

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Justification, sanctification and glorification. You know, it is as 11 .1 in the 1689 points out with respect to justification.

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It's not that God infuses righteousness into us, but he pardons our sins and accounts us as righteous.

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How? He does it for Christ's sake alone, not for anything produced in us or done by us.

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He doesn't count faith itself, the act of believing or any other obedience to us as our righteousness.

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Instead, God credits, he imputes Christ's active obedience to the law and passive obedience in his death as our whole and only righteousness by faith.

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And that is a beautiful definition of what justification looks like and even of what saving faith looks like.

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And that's what we're trying to outline and articulate here today. So what we want to do now is continue to unpack this reformed understanding of this question or the reformed answer to the question on what basis would should we be admitted into heaven?

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The answer is Jesus. Period. But there is no there is nothing else to say, he is the one who has saved us and we look outside of ourselves always to him as the ground of our assurance and peace before God.

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So, yeah, and just to please interject because I'm going to give you an illustration. Not just not just Jesus, and I know you mean this, but not just Jesus, the good teacher,

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Jesus, the good person. It's Jesus, the replacement for our sins, the substitute,

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Jesus, the righteous one, Jesus, the intermediary, the one who intercedes for us.

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I mean, Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, that's the one who saves you.

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And just to be clear. Yeah, it's in, like I said, from our confession, it's his obedience to the whole law.

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So his righteous life and it's his obedience in his death, in which he paid for our sins, took the punishment we deserve as lawbreakers.

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Right. It's all of that counted to us so that we are not only viewed by God as though we have never sinned.

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We are also viewed as having all of the obedient works of Jesus credited to our account.

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It's phenomenal news. And faith is the means by which all of that is applied to wretches such as we.

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So that's right. A few illustrations, John, and we'll just I'll give these one at a time and we can maybe riff on them a little bit.

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And these are by teachers that everybody I think or most people that are listening to this podcast will probably have heard of.

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And these are really, really good and helpful. So the first is Tim Keller. We'll just do this quickly. Keller has given an illustration at multiple points to demonstrate how it is

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God and his promises that save sinners grounded in what

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Jesus has done. So he says, you know, envision the Exodus where the people of Israel are going to be crossing through the

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Red Sea. And I mean, this is an insane event, you know, where God miraculously parts the waters.

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And can you imagine what it would have been like to walk through on the floor of the

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Red Sea with these, like we presume, like walls of water on either side?

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And, you know, you're being pursued by the Egyptian army. And Keller will rightly point out you have to assume that there would have been people in that mass of Israelites walking through the

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Red Sea who would have felt all kinds of different ways about this event. Some of them would have been super confident in God and in Moses, their leader.

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And it's like, OK, here we go. And God is going to deliver us. And then there would have been some, no doubt, who would have been scared out of their minds.

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But as Keller points out rightly, both those who were confident and those who were terrified made it through to the other side.

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Why? Because God was their deliverer. It was not about them and their confidence.

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It was about God and his faithfulness. That's right, man. It's a good illustration. It is.

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And again, the substance, again, it's the substance of what saved them.

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Right. Obviously, they had to believe. And how do we know that they believed? Because they went through the sea.

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That's right. They walked. That's right. That's such a good illustration. All right.

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Another one. And this one's this one's excellent. Don Carson. So he presents this hypothetical conversation between two

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Israelites the night the Passover is going to go down. You know, God has said he's going to come through the land of Egypt and kill all the firstborn.

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And he's instructed his people as to what they are to do and how they're to make this meal, you know, kill a lamb and make this meal and eat it in haste and put the door on the excuse me, the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of their house.

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And God's going to pass over that household. And Carson paints this picture of two two men having a conversation about all this.

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And one of them is absolutely losing his mind. And he's like, I just don't know about all this. I'm scared. I don't know how this is going to go down.

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Like, what are we supposed to do? How is this going to go down for us? And the other man responds and says, what are you talking about?

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Like, the Lord has told us everything that we need to know. Like, we can have complete confidence in what he has told us. We just need to do this with the lamb and we need to put the blood on the doorposts and all this.

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Everything's going to be fine. And he's super confident. And the other guy's like, oh, my gosh, I guess I'm going to go do that. But I just don't know.

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I just don't know how this is going to go down. So that happens. The one man in confidence goes and does the thing.

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And the other man with a lot of doubt and fear and trepidation goes and does the thing. And then this question, whose house was visited by the angel of death that night?

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Everyone. Neither. I'm sorry. That's what. Yes. Neither. Right. I know.

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Yeah. Why? Because it did not. The issue in terms of God passing over the house did not hinge upon the quality of the faith of the people.

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It hinged upon the quality of the promises and the one who made the promises. It hinged on his character that the promise giver is the promise keeper and it is his nature and his character that carries the day.

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It's not how the people felt and how much confidence they had. Right. It's oh, it's so helpful and good.

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Sorry. I missed what I meant was it passed over the ones. Mm hmm. Sorry.

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It passed over everyone that, you know, who had done that. That's right on that. Yeah. And then go ahead, John. No, I think you get

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I think give the last one. I think we're going all the row and then we'll we'll just comment. All right. This last one has been circulating around on social media some lately and it's so good.

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So Alistair Begg is a preacher known to some, maybe known to many. And he is there's a clip like two minutes long of him giving a message.

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And he begins by saying some really helpful things about that first and third person stuff, about how if you were to die and you stand, you know, before the proverbial judgment seat and you're asked on what basis you should be admitted into heaven.

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If you begin to answer in the first person, he's like, loved ones were wrong. It must be answered in the third person.

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It's because he because he has done these things, not because I believe, not because I obeyed, not because I continued.

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And then he gives the illustration of the thief on the cross and he takes some liberty with these things. But the point is still made.

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That's right. So the thief on the cross, people know, was cursing Jesus. And Jesus said some wonderful things to him.

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And this man ends up trusting in Christ and clearly taking Jesus at his word when

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Jesus even looks at him and and says, today you'll be with me in paradise. And so Begg paints the picture of this man standing before the judgment seat.

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And, you know, like there's the angel there or whatever. Again, he takes liberty. And the angel asks this man, on what basis are you here?

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And the thief says, I don't know. It's like, what do you mean you don't know? He means, I don't know. And so then this angel gets very frustrated and goes and gets his supervisor angel who then comes to question the thief.

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And this supervisor angel asks the thief and he says, OK, well, tell me what you know about the doctrine of justification by faith.

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And the thief says, I've never heard of it in my life. And he says, OK, well, let's then go to the doctor of scripture immediately. Let's talk about that.

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It's just crickets. Nothing. So even the supervisor angel is now frustrated with the man, the thief.

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And and he says, OK, on what basis are you here? And the thief looks at him and says, well, because the man on the middle cross told me

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I can come. And it's like, I mean, even as he gives the message,

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I mean, people are just like, I mean, like the air is let out of the room and everybody's like, amen, brother, because it's like, you know, as a

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Christian, bro, like who is at all acquainted with your own sin? You're just like, that is right.

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Like you dag them right. That's right. Because that is the only way that we could ever have peace.

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It's like because Christ has told me on the basis of his unshakeable life and on the basis of his death in my place, he has told me that I can come and he has secured that for me.

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That's good news. That's right. I mean, it's like, yeah. How did this shake out for you, man? You were cursing him one minute and now you're here in paradise.

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And why are you here? It's because he because he told me I could come. That's right. I have come to seek and to save sinners.

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Amen. And the man on the cross is a great example of a sinner. I've come to seek and to save the lost, not those who have found their way, but those who have lost their way.

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It is so counter self -righteousness. Well, and why is it and why is it that we can be confident?

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It's because not only of what Jesus did for us while he was on earth, but like we talked about in a podcast recently, he has ascended to the heavens and said it's at the right hand of God and intercedes for his own.

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All of us. He's able to save us to the other most. Right. He advocates for us when we sin. His word stands right.

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He's telling us those of you who have trusted in me, you can come in and I am the one who guarantees that.

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I am the guarantor of the new covenant. Right. And I'm the mediator here and what

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I say goes. And so it's like, man, the one in whom we trust, the object of our faith is our confidence.

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It's not our faith. It's not our obedience. It's Christ and what he's done for us. Well, one last illustration before we go over to our next podcast has become one of my favorite.

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The disciples are in a locked room. They're afraid the Jews might find them. Mary's already told them, hey,

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Jesus is alive, but they still haven't figured it out yet. These are cowards.

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These are men who are quite afraid. Peter has rejected Jesus three times and knows he's ashamed of it because afterwards and Jesus appears in the room and the first word out of his mouth is peace be unto you and go back to, quote,

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Jeremiah, where he says the prophets are proclaiming peace, peace when there is no peace, because Israel is an absolute rejection of God.

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And he says, you are unwilling to repent. These men who are in the room not repenting and Jesus appears before them and says peace be to you.

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And I love what John says. He showed him the scars in his hand and his side. The substance of their peace was

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Jesus death on the cross. My goodness, that's something you should believe in.

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Amen, dude. And just like Christ's gentle posture toward them. It's a gentle and lowly

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Savior. Peace to you and let me show you my scars. My scars are your salvation.

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And here I am. By his wounds, we are healed. Not by our faithfulness, not by our faith, not by our obedience, by his.

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Man, we're going to continue this conversation in our family time. It's where we gather together to talk about how do we take this message and move it out into the world, encourage each other, ask hard questions.

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This is called Semper Reformanda. It's a two -part ministry. We do a podcast every week right after this one to continue the conversation.

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And then we continue that conversation in local and online groups in our ministry called

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Semper Reformanda on our app. And you could go in there and join the conversation, whether it's in the tavern or in a local and online group.

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So if you want to learn more about that, hear the podcast, join the group, you can go to theocast .org and we would love to have you there.