Justification By Faith ALONE | w/ Anthony Rogers PT.1

The Apologetic Dog

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Here is the positive affirmation of how Abraham was justified. He believed, right?

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Pistousan. This means believe, to hold to be true, right? To affirm.

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We will trust

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God's word alone, where his perfect will is known.

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Our traditions shift like sand, while his truth forever stands.

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We will live by faith alone, clothed in merit not our own.

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All we claim is Jesus Christ and his finished sacrifice.

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Glory be, glory be to God alone.

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Through the church he redeemed and made his own.

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He has freed us, he will keep us, till we're safely home.

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Glory be, glory be to God alone.

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Post -Tenebrous Lux. After darkness, light. Well, it is good to be back.

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It's good to be on tonight. I hope you are excited for this show. I'm always excited about this topic, and I'm also excited that I'm doing it with my guest, the apologetic dog.

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Yes, that was quick. I'm sure you expected me to give a much longer intro, but not so.

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I wish I could have turned on the lights on my side as well, just out of the darkness light coming in.

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For those that don't know, I was talking to Jeremiah. His name is Jeremiah, and I think you say your last name

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Nortier, right? Yeah, okay. So I think I've heard people say

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Nortier, and I'm inclined to say that, only because Hillary of Pottier, his name is spelt almost the same as yours, at least the last several letters, with the exception of an

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S. But yeah, so you're in the South, and I guess as a result of that -

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Got that 2020 going on down here. Yeah, yeah. So for those that don't know, I'm going to let him introduce himself to you.

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Other than for me, I'll say, I've enjoyed watching stuff from Jeremiah.

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He gets the privilege of being my first full guest. I did have a show the other day where I invited some people up to ask questions, make comments, but this is the first time that I'm actually having a guest on.

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I'm a little apprehensive about this, because I don't know that I have the skill to really officiate something like this.

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I'm used to doing things on my own. I think in this sense, I'm kind of a YouTube interview bachelor.

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I mean, I don't know if that makes sense, but I'm not a bachelor in life, right?

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I have a wife and four kids, but as far as this goes, I'm used to doing it on my own. Four kids?

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I don't know how you even fit your YouTube stuff in with that schedule. Well, my kids are older now.

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My youngest is 16. Yeah, so - Anthony, I have one boy who's five months old, so I'm new to the whole parenting thing.

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Wow. Okay. Well, congrats on that. Congrats. For those that don't know,

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Jeremiah and I not only share a love for this topic, but as his name indicates, he's interested in apologetics, and that includes then defending this doctrine.

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He and I both debated the topic, or at least the general topic in different ways.

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There were different specifics in terms of what we were doing. He was debating specifically the question of justification in relation to water baptism over against an advocate of Church of Christ doctrine, and I was debating an

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Eastern Orthodox individual, so two very different groups of people, two very different ways of denying the doctrine of God's free grace in Christ and justification solely through faith in him and his active and passive obedience, but nevertheless, same doctrine we were defending.

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Anyways, Jeremiah, why don't you tell people about yourself, since I'd probably do an inadequate job, other than to say he's a brother.

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Yes, and it's an honor to be your first guest here on - I watched your channel, so I was listening to you talk a second ago.

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I was like, oh yeah, I'm here with Anthony as well, so thank you for having me. I serve as a pastor and elder at 12 -5

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Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas. That's northeast Arkansas, so I always just want to lead with that to tell people, if you're anywhere close in the area, come search us out.

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We have a church website. It's pretty easy to find us, and we'd love for you to come participate in our fellowship, and so I do that.

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I have a day job also as a hospice chaplain and bereavement coordinator, and so I'm doing a lot of visits throughout the day, and Anthony, it's so amazing to be able to talk about this gospel of grace with people that are going through hard times of life, whether they're about to reach the end of life, or I'm dealing with families that have lost a loved one, and so I get to comfort them with God's truth and a peace that surpasses anything that this world has to offer, so my heart is blessed being able to do that, and so my church family has come around me to really support my endeavors in apologetics, and so the

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Apologetic Dog was born out of that, and my wife and I, we were trying to think of a name and a logo, and it was so funny,

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Anthony, because she was just like, doctrines of grace, dog, and I was like, yes, I like it, but I want it to be broader than just the doctrines of grace, and I was praying about a verse to really ground the ministry because we all know 1

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Peter 3 15 is wonderful for apologetics, but the more I was reading Greg Bonson, hopefully you'll like this,

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I came across 1 Timothy 6 20 where Paul is saying, oh, Timothy, guard the deposit that's been entrusted to you, and so right there,

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I knew it needed to be a guard dog, meaning that all Christians are to guard the gospel of grace, and we do this by avoiding irreverent babble, pagan philosophy that tries to rival the knowledge of God and actually asserts contradictions that falsely have internal contradictions, and I was like, oh,

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I'm already thinking presuppositionally. You and I have a mutual friend,

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Eli Ayala, who's just enriched my heart and life with his ministry and his teaching, and so the apologetic dog is rooted in apologetics,

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Trinitarian, Reformed, gospel of grace, and so I'm just telling people I want to be broad, but I also have a few areas of emphasis, and so one of the things in Jonesboro, Arkansas, my local area, is there's the

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Church of Christ all over the place, and they hold to a different gospel. They believe that participating in the ceremony of water baptism is essential and necessary in order for us to be made right with God, and so I've been able to have a lot of opportunities to talk about the gospel in light of this gospel that really says, hey, well, you have to do something, right?

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We don't like calling it works, but read Acts 2 38. That didn't just stand there, and so I've been able to really shed some light on context and things like that, but Anthony, that's a little bit about me and my local context.

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Yeah, thank you so much. So there's a good bit of overlap. I actually think the ministry that you do when you talk about reaching out to people in the context of bereavement and so forth is very similar in some ways to what

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I do in terms of my primary vocation. You know I do prison ministry, and I go into the prisons.

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It's like going into hospitals in some ways, and there's a lot of difficulties associated with both of these contexts, but one thing is for people in prison is they've been yanked away from their loved ones, and sometimes there's stuff that happens on the outside for a prisoner, and he can't do anything about it, and they feel helpless.

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So anyways, there's a lot of different areas of overlap between these two things, and of course the gospel is the great balm for all of that.

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The gospel is the answer. I mean to me, what gets me a lot when

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I think about this issue and people opposing it and the very fact that we have to defend it is I think why.

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Why are people kicking against this? Sometimes people have looked at, and I don't know if you've noticed some of this.

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I know you've gotten some of this, but I don't know if you've noticed some of the backlash I've gotten from people. I've had people make all sorts of slanderous statements against me, just ungodly stuff, and I don't spend as much time trying to put out all those fires.

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I think that's fine. It is what it is. I kind of think like David where he said of Shimei, God has bidden him to curse, right?

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Let him curse. I've also heard of you, I believe it's Spurgeon, it's like, is that all bad things you have to say about me?

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Because I'm a lot worse than what you're actually accusing me of. I didn't know Spurgeon said that, but I'm glad to know that.

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Good minds think alike, or at least my mind thinks like one good mind at least. I'll also say,

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Anthony, real quick, I'm a small YouTube channel, so I look up to you. I'm just like, man,

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I'm so glad people are supporting his ministry. I'm glad you're getting up late at night to go deep into the trenches of truth, and so I just want to encourage the audience.

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I'm actually on a race to a thousand subscribers with a Mormon friend that I have,

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Robert Boylan, and so we have a little bit of stake in the game. So if you can help me out, I'm closely approaching 1K subs, and I'm pumped.

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I should have said something. I told you I'm new at this as far as having someone on. Plus, I don't even tell people to subscribe to my own channel.

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That's probably why you get so many subs, is people are like, man, this dude is so real. I just think, I've watched people sometimes saying subscribe, and then

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I watch their, or they'll say like my video, and I watch, and I'm thinking, nobody actually presses the like button when people are pressing them to press the like button.

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So it's like, we all hear it, and nobody does it, so I'm just going to leave it and let it be what it is.

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Not to criticize anybody who does it. It's just I think, but anyways, what I'm getting at is sometimes people will ask,

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I get comments all the time. People will send me comments through Facebook, through YouTube, through all these different venues, and they'll say, this person said this about you, this person said that, and they're upset for me.

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And I appreciate that. It means a lot to me that I have a place in people's hearts, that they're concerned about these lies and these slanders, and so forth.

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You got thick skin though. But there's a couple of things. It's thick skin, and part of it has to do with my own background, which

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I believe was God -directed. Maybe we can come back and talk about some of that. But the other thing is just the gospel.

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My great concern is how does it stand between my soul and God? I'm almost 50 years old, and I've been thinking this way for almost, you know, for well, for about 30 years, and I don't think

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I have the same amount of time left. I don't know. I mean, it's in God's hands, but at the end of the day when

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I die, it's not going to matter what sorts of things were said about me. I'm going to stand before my

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Lord, and that's going to be what matters, is what that event will mean.

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And I'm not going to be embarrassed when I stand there that day, because I know I'm standing there clothed in His righteousness.

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I'm going to stand there clothed in the righteousness of the One who loved me and gave Himself for me.

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And so when I think of what God thinks of me, I think of the fact that He thinks of me as His Son, because I'm in His Son.

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He thinks of me as Beloved, because I'm in the Beloved. He thinks of me as Righteous, because I'm in the

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Righteous One. And on and on I could go with the different epithets. And so the point that I'm making with this is

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I don't understand why people want to oppose this gospel when it's so full of comfort.

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I've given only one example of the kind of comfort one can derive from this. Imagine being able to walk through a crowd of people hurling insults at you, and not once have to feel like you're ashamed or have to hang your head or lose a bit of peace or whatever.

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I mean, that's how I feel every single day. And then I look at these people who are opposing this gospel, who they wake up virtually every day despondent.

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They walk around like schleprock, like the sky is falling. Or even if that's not their every waking moment, it intrudes upon their thoughts often enough.

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It seems to me like these people are fighting against—not just seems, I know it as a matter of fact—they're fighting against that thing that will grant them peace, will grant them comfort.

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If you have peace with God, you could have peace in the midst of whatever storm is out there. Anthony, you've been a wonderful role model, because stepping into the apologetic sphere,

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I've slowly had to be able to process criticism. Probably one of the biggest pieces of criticism was over a year and a half ago or so,

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I went on The Gospel Truth with Marlon. Definitely want to encourage people to go over there. That's where they saw your debate.

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That's where I've had tons of debate. And I was the first live in -person debate on Marlon's channel. We flew him out from California down to the

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South, baby. We had a blast. But I debated the question, is

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Mary sinless or was Mary sinless? Obviously, I'm like, no, she's a sinner saved by grace.

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And so William Albrecht came at me, guns a -blazing. That was the first time

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I've ever been in someone's crosshairs and felt it. But honestly, Anthony was so good.

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I was like, you know what, because my wife was listening to the things he was saying, and she kept looking at him.

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I was like, we can't stop it. But like you said, my heart goes to the

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God who saved me, and he has to preserve me. He's not going to stop what he started.

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He's going to see it to completion. So I've looked to your guidance and your example a lot, and I just want to thank you a lot for your ministry.

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Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and that's one of the things I sometimes mention it just in case people miss it, but I'm always hoping it comes through.

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It's kind of like, I may not necessarily focus on the fact that Scripture is the

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Word of God. It's usually an assumption of all that I'm doing, right? It's assumed in what I'm doing when

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I exegete the Word. But I'm often thinking implicitly,

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I hope people see something of the beauty of in the course of what I'm saying and see something of the basis for believing it to be the inspired

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Word of God, even if that's not my direct focus at the time, right? So for example, if I'm talking about how

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Christ is set forth in Scripture in promise and fulfillment, you know, typologically and in reality,

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I may not be trying to make an argument for the inspiration of Scripture and so forth, but I'm hoping that people are, through seeing

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Christ in Scripture, also at the same time having communicated to them this fact. Well similarly, when

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I'm defending the gospel of justification, I'm hoping people are seeing something of the fruits of it. A lot of people like to slander justification by faith as though it promotes godlessness, as though it promotes licentiousness, and I think to myself, how in the world could this gospel, which strikes at the root of all sin, be itself a promotion of sin?

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And what I mean by that, you may have heard me mention this, but to take one example, if the gospel tells us that to God alone belongs the glory in salvation, inclusive of justification, because salvation is a bigger package than just justification, but if justification is by God's free grace, wholly apart from our works and received solely through God -given faith, inwrought by the

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Spirit, then how could such a person be proud? On what grounds? On what grounds could

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I be proud and think that I somehow have a right to look down my nose at other people, right?

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How could I, knowing that the very thing that was necessary to reclaim me for God and put me on a right standing with Him, was the very death of His Son, His eternal

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Son, the object of all His affection, and He gave Him for me, how could I think then that I have a right to turn my nose down at somebody else and, you know, be haughty towards them?

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I can certainly disagree with their lifestyle if they're not living for Christ. I could disagree with all sorts of things, but the criteria for that is the same criteria that condemns me apart from Christ, right?

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So, I'm just saying, how could this gospel be considered the license for sin if that's the case?

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And I've heard you bring out that paradigm that Jesus taught about in Luke 18 with the Pharisee and the tax collector, and the pushback

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I get from the Church of Christ is, well, that Pharisee, he was under the works of law. He's not talking about commands of obedience that Christians are to obey.

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I'm like, you've missed the substance of what this man is boasting in his accomplishments, the things that he has done, but look at the tax collector.

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This is somebody who is pleading for the mercy of God for him to make atonement on his behalf, right?

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He understands his wretchedness, and he needs God to save him out of the quarry, right?

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How Isaiah says of Abraham. So, I'm with you. I'm like, you know, how could we look at anything good in ourselves?

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It's like, no, I was a wretch, and God saved me by his amazing grace. Yeah, you know, that story, what

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I usually hear when that is brought up is the Pharisee was looking to his own efforts and not to the grace of God in him, helping him to do good works unto justification.

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So, you mentioned those who say, oh, well, he's just, you know, looking to works of law or that sort of thing, but the way that Roman Catholics, for example, will go about this is to say, well, we believe that it's works done by the grace of God, but notice carefully how the

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Pharisee, maybe you're already thinking this, but the Pharisee says, I thank you, God, that I'm not like he, speaking of the tax collector.

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The Pharisee didn't deny the grace of God. He didn't deny that God was there aiding him, assisting him, coming alongside of him, you know, he didn't deny synergy, which is a watchword of Eastern Orthodoxy in the context of justification.

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In fact, that's the very thing he was affirming. I thank you, God, that I'm not like that man, and it was then on the basis of works that he believed he performed by the grace of God, setting him apart, making him distinct, and so forth.

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It was on that basis that he thought he was right before God. The other thing

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I love about that story is the literal translation there when the tax collector declaims any righteousness of his own as the grounds of his confidence before God.

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When he says, have mercy on me, the sinner, he's literally saying, make atonement for me.

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Make atonement for me, the sinner. So he's looking away from himself, and he's looking for an atonement sufficient to cover his sin, and he's looking to God as the provider of that atonement, and that's the heart of justification and of a loose gospel and so forth.

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Okay, so we've kind of—we've said all sorts of good things, I think, about this topic.

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Maybe what we could do in sort of running through this is talk about—one of the things that I wanted to talk about, and we can make contact between these things and our debates if you want, or just talk about the issues or both, but one of the first things that I want to talk about is the whole issue of the nature and character of God because, you know, when

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I did my recent debates, and it's something I think about when it comes to doing any other debate on this topic, but you always have to decide, you know, how much time do

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I have for this or that. You might have to leave things out. It's an unfortunate fact of debate, you know, but everybody is shackled, right, by time and strength, but one of the assumptions, at least that I'm working on when

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I enter into a discussion like this, is that the God that we're talking about is holy, righteous, and just, and it seems to me that errant notions of justification often lose sight of this or don't sufficiently understand what

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Scripture teaches along these lines, and so what

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I'm thinking of here is the fact that Scripture teaches that the God with whom we have to do is the kind of being who is absolute perfection of being, right?

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He is absolutely holy, set apart from sin, so much so, and I always marvel at this, you know, people will mention

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Isaiah 6 and how Isaiah speaks of being undone, and that is where this is going, but, and it's not a one -off, that sort of thing is seen many times in Scripture, but what

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I marvel at and that people often miss is the fact that the unfallen angels in that context, the holy angels, according to Scripture, or at least the seraphim, if somebody wants to be technical, you know, some will make distinctions between orders of being among the heavenly hierarchy and all that, but in any case, these heavenly beings who are unfallen, who sing

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God's praise day and night, that's their function, that's their purpose for being, it says they cover their own eyes in the presence of God, whom

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Scripture says, you quoted 1 Timothy 6 earlier in that same context, it mentions

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God dwelling in unapproachable light, right? So I marvel at those who think of attaining justification before such a

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God when we're not unfallen angels, we are fallen sinners, so if, you know, you've got this picture of these, and part of what

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I'm thinking of here is that there's a difference between the uncreated holiness of God and the created holiness of creatures.

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Creatures, their holiness depends upon God, right? God's holiness is independent, it's underived, it's immutable.

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God can't cease being holy. The angels could, if it were God's will to remove, withdraw from them, they could have fallen just like the other angels that fell, right, with Satan.

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So I'm just driving at this idea that the God of Scripture is absolute holiness, absolute purity, absolute righteousness, absolute justice.

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He can't accept from sinners anything less than perfection without denying himself, right?

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So I don't know, you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, absolutely, because in preparation for the debate, I think you're going to appreciate this too, and probably had a lot of similar thoughts.

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Not only do we want to put God in the highest esteem, he's all that is good and perfect, but he is the judge of all the earth who will do right.

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So in preparation, on my side of things, the propositional question that I debated and took the negative was, is water baptism necessary for our justification before God?

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And so a big part of this is saying, what is justification? What does justification look like for us before God, who is holy, righteous, and good, and what does that look like for God to be judged?

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Well, the big clue is this is judicial, legal, forensic language.

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And I personally think if somebody reads the book of Romans and agrees that it's legal, then the debate's over.

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That's what we were really trying to grasp to say, and we are justified on the basis of faith apart from works of law.

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Any works that you could possibly do and bring to the table, those things aren't going to make you right before God. Abraham is the precipient lead example in that, but it's by faith.

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And so I really try to say, look, justification is judicial. And help me out here. I believe

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Roman Catholics have tapped into that and realized that they can't make it judicial, at least in the way that we're trying to set it up, because they are trying to marry justification and sanctification to be elongated, that it can be waned and lost over time.

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And then it seems like there's, and you got to have that infused righteousness over time to kind of go back in the grace of God when you fall out.

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Awful. I don't see how you can have a experience of salvation. I mean, you can't. I've listened to Dr. James White ask the question, who is the blessed man?

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And Roman Catholics are like, oh, no, I would hope to be the blessed man one day. It's like, look, it's the person whose sin is not imputed on their account.

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Not now and not ever. And so, Anthony, I brought that out in my debate and the gentleman that I debated a lot of respect for, but I could tell there was a few times he was not tracking with Paul's argument in Romans 4.

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So that was some debate strategy on my part that I really wanted to go to Romans 4 and stay in the immediate context, allow

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Paul's argument to build on itself. Yeah. And so since you mentioned several things there, it's hard to pick out one, but I'll run with this.

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In Romans, the lead up to Paul's discussion towards the tail end of Romans 3 on into 4 through 5 and so forth, the lead up is talking about how the righteous wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

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What Paul is doing is he's set up in his thesis statement, Romans 1 .16

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and 17, he set up what the gospel is that he's going to talk about. But before he gets to unpacking that thesis statement, he sets up the quandary, the problem that's created by the fact that God is righteous and man is a sinful truth suppressor who deserves

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God's wrath. And so he begins in 1 .18 saying, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

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And he goes on to talk about the fact that men are culpable in their sinfulness because they're not sinning in ignorance.

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They're sinning in the light of God's clearly revealed truth.

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He has revealed himself and his righteous requirements through the things that he's made, as well as in the very internal constitution of man.

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We are image bearers, and by virtue of that, are creatures. And since all created things reveal the creator, our own constitution reveals him.

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I love this. I think even the blind person can't escape a revelation of God because his own being cries out that God exists.

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And so this is the context in which we're sinning. And so Paul says the whole world, not just Jews, but the whole world is guilty of sin.

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And the Jews don't get off either. Paul goes on in Romans 2 to talk about how the Jews are guilty and how even

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Gentiles sometimes put Jews to shame for doing things that the law requires that they don't have in written form.

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And this is what gives rise to Paul's summary statement in Romans 3, where he says, and again,

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I mean, this is an example of, well, I just read the text.

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This is his summary statement. In verse 19, he says, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be closed and all the world become accountable to God.

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And the Greek here is especially, I think, interesting because what it literally says is all men are answerable to God, but the law has shut their mouths.

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So their mouths are shut and they have to speak, but they can't. That's the upshot.

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And this is all legal language, by the way, the whole idea of having to give an account.

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Then it goes on, it says, because by works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

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Now, this connects to what I was asking about God's character, because the law is a transcription of God's character.

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It's a reflection of what God is or is like, and therefore, it's telling us what we as his image bearers are supposed to be like.

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In scripture, it says things like, be holy as I am holy, be perfect as I am perfect.

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And so the law is that transcription. It's showing us what his holiness and perfection looks like in the case of men, how men are supposed to reflect that.

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But through the law, we're not being told what we actually are. The law is exposing what we're not, how we fall short of God's glory.

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And so when you think about then the character of God and the law of God, how could you possibly think that you're going to be justified before that God on the basis of your own law -keeping, especially now that you're a sinner?

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So with the church of Christ, I'm trying to be super charitable in this, but it really gets me going because I think they are a part of the modern -day

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Pharisees of legalism, and all the commandments that they say that they're doing to obey

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God. So like a big word in the church world is obedience or obey. You got to obey the gospel.

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And when you look at Acts 2, see, they didn't just stand there and do nothing. It's like, of course not. But what their immediate objection is with Paul's argument in Romans, building up to chapter 4 here, is this is,

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Anthony, this is talking about works of the law. This is talking about a time before we exist here.

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And so they're saying, of course, we're not justified by works of the law. So they really are going to key in to works of law,

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Romans 3, 28, or Galatians 2, 16. They're going to say works of law. And so in my debate, and I'm pretty sure

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I got this from you talking with Tony Costa a while back, and I loved it because it's like, okay, how can we set up a statement that everybody's going to understand here?

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So I wrote a few out, and I landed on one. I want your thoughts on this. I wrote, and I asked the question to the individual.

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I said, I want you to hear the logic of the statement that I'm making. I have a question with it. Jesus is the son of God, and he is not the son of Baal.

33:04

And so the question was, since Jesus is not the son of Baal, could he potentially be the son of Asherah or Ra or something?

33:10

He's like, well, of course not. And I said, why? And I said, is it because of the positive affirmation?

33:15

And he was like, where are you going with this? And I'm like, look, we're justified by faith and not by works of law or any other works that you could conjure up in your mind.

33:25

That's not going to make you right before God. And so there's deeper issues going on here. In their mind, we're not justified by human works.

33:33

And what that means are things that we do that God does not prescribe. But if you do something in obedience to God, then they cloak this under the umbrella.

33:41

Well, that's a work of God. And I'm over here like, wait, the works of God are the things that God does, right?

33:49

Human works, human effort, that's all -encompassing. Now we are created unto good works in obedience to what

33:56

God has called us to. So what I was just wanting to say is there is such a language barrier.

34:02

We're using all the same terminology but mean different things by when we use it. Yeah, so it sounds like there's a confusion there.

34:11

If they're trying to tie this to any biblical statement that says something like the work of God, like John 6, the work of God is this, we believe in him whom he sent.

34:21

They're understanding it objectively rather than subjectively.

34:28

And what that means is the work of God, meaning that the work that we do that God prescribes, right?

34:36

As opposed to the work that God does either in us or for us or what have you.

34:42

That's interesting. So my experience is not as much with the church of Christ, though I have had a few run -ins with those who identify with the church of Christ.

34:54

I used to live in Las Vegas. Far more often, if we're thinking of restorationist groups,

35:00

I ran into Mormons, LDS people. You know, for those that don't know, during the 1800s there was a whole movement afoot that gave rise to all sorts of cult groups, the

35:14

Latter -day Saints, Mormons, Adventists. Yeah, the Adventist movement, the

35:20

Millerites, the Millennial Dawnists, the Jehovah's Witnesses. That whole period of time spawned this.

35:27

And so I was used to at least some offshoots of that movement, at least.

35:32

Well, now, Anthony, you're going to get more since I've come on your show. They follow me wherever I go, it seems like.

35:39

Oh, you know, you say that, it reminds me of speaking of another cultic group. I always reminded of whenever I hear that statement, they follow me.

35:48

Louis Farrakhan, I used to also deal with people who were members of the

35:54

Nation of Islam. And I remember one time listening to Louis Farrakhan, he was entertaining, if nothing else.

36:02

But anyways, he was trying to say that there's this great big mothership.

36:10

Because in the thinking of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, you all realize this is very relevant to justification, right?

36:19

No, this is an aside, but I think you guys will find it somewhat funny. But Louis Farrakhan believes that there are numerous embodied gods, just like in Mormonism and that sort of thing.

36:33

And so it's entirely consistent with that to think of these gods in the way you might think of interplanetary travelers, astronauts, or what have you, who are in spaceships.

36:45

And he mentioned that there's this mothership that follows him around and keeps track of him. And he says that's what's going on in Ezekiel 1, when it talks about a wheel with eyes all around, right?

36:57

Anybody reading the text is not actually going to get that idea. It's describing a throne chariot and all this.

37:04

But anyways, but Farrakhan says, it follows me everywhere I go.

37:11

For some reason that sticks in my head. Anyways, it's true though. So they follow you everywhere you go.

37:17

All right. So I'm going to pick up some of your... Yeah, yeah. They'll start following you too.

37:23

So they can just join the long line following Anthony Rogers. And so with these groups that I just unashamedly say that have wholesale grabbed into works of righteousness, one of the best ways that I've found to really pick apart, because like I said, they're kind of the radical dispensationalists.

37:41

Well, we're not under law anymore. That's the law of Moses. We're living in a time post that. And so I was like, okay, let's go back to Abraham, right?

37:50

Because he's the lead example. And yes, Romans one through three is talking about the

37:56

Jews and the works of law. But then there's a subtle shift in Romans four, when it talks about in verse two for if Abraham was justified by works.

38:06

Now, what are your thoughts on this? Because I've just said, look, I don't think this could be talking about works of law with Abraham because he precedes the law by 600 years plus.

38:16

Now it's going to be super apparent in the Jews mind. Well, of course, Abraham would have had to be justified apart from works of law because of the time period he lived.

38:25

And so one of the immediate questions I asked my interlocutor a few weeks ago was what works is

38:32

Paul referring to with Abraham here? He immediately said, every time you see works in Romans, it's more than likely going to be referring to works of the law when you go back into Romans three, 20.

38:45

Okay. And I said, okay, help me out because of who Abraham is. And he said, well,

38:51

I think it would, you just still drive the point home even more. And so I said, okay. And this goes back to what you just said a second ago.

38:58

Think about Abraham. We need somebody who is an example of faith, someone that has a living faith or an obedient faith.

39:04

The church of Christ liked that term, obedient faith, right? Because you got to think in their mind, James two, a particular interpretation is floating around in there.

39:12

But I said, look with me at verse 11, because Paul is referring to Abraham being the father of faith to all who believe whether the circumcised or uncircumcised.

39:24

So how does Paul's argument begin by making an appeal that's going to be in a category that's really only relevant to the

39:31

Jews rather than a transcendent category where both parties can look to him as an example.

39:37

And so I got the ball rolling with that, Anthony, because I said, look, the works that Abraham did precedes work of law, right?

39:44

In the immediate context is probably talking about the work of circumcision, right? That was in Genesis 17, but we should also have in our mind, the works of Genesis 22, where he offered up his son,

39:54

Isaac. And if you read a Hebrews 11, then Genesis 12, he left the land of Ur, and my big point to him was none of his works, none of his

40:03

Ergon, none of his human accomplishments grounded his justification, verse two says, before God.

40:12

And so Anthony, that's how I got to start my cross -examination, and it was awesome.

40:20

Oh, so by the way, real quick, so where can people find that debate? I should put a link to this in the description box, but it's on Donnie's channel,

40:31

Standing for Truth. And I just want to say, I love Donnie's channel, Standing for Truth, and Marlon's channel,

40:37

The Gospel Truth. Those are two wonderful debate platforms, two charitable men, moderators, love both of those men dearly.

40:45

And you've been on both. Have you been on Standing for Truth? I feel like you debated, was it, did you debate

40:51

Turbeville on that one? I can't remember where I've debated who. I don't think it was there, but it could have been.

40:58

It might've been on Marlon's channel. I've been, oh no. So with Donnie, I've done a talk on the

41:04

Trinity, and in fact, I'll be going back on Donnie's channel, I think next month. And I'm thinking of proposing to Donnie, I keep getting these

41:12

Unitarians that want to debate, and I've been sort of rushing them off. How about those full preterists?

41:21

Yeah, Stacey Turbeville, he's an interesting character. So I debated him once when he held one view of God.

41:28

A year later, he holds a different view, and he wanted to debate me. And I said, look, Stacey, I said, let's wait a couple of years until you've changed your position again.

41:37

And then I want to debate, you know what I mean? I want to debate your final position, right? Like let's talk about that.

41:44

And then after that, you become a Trinitarian, right? But anyways, yeah, he wants to debate again.

41:49

And he didn't know what happened in the first debate. And I'm like, why am I going to do a second one? So I've been pushing him off.

41:56

But actually, just recently, Andrew Griffin asked if I would do a debate on Philippians 2 and the preexistence of Christ.

42:03

And I'm thinking that's a possibility. I like Andrew, and not that I don't like Stacey, but I'm thinking maybe

42:09

I'll - Anthony, is the debate ever going to happen with you and William Albrecht? So here's the funny thing.

42:17

Now, you asked the question. I wasn't going to bring this up, because here's another thing. I mentioned that it doesn't bother me to get flack from people, but I've been reticent to bring people on, and I've told people this repeatedly.

42:29

You mentioned that I'm going to get some of the fallout of the people that follow you.

42:37

I know that the people that I've been engaged with are not very ...

42:43

They don't have high marks when it comes to integrity, and they will say the most slanderous things about people.

42:51

So I've been, in my mind, it's like, I can take it all, send it all to me. In fact,

42:57

I haven't even told people this. I'm not going to give the full details here, but there are certain individuals that were objects of attack from certain people.

43:03

And I thought, you know what? I'm going to draw their fire. I will minimize the amount of time people have to attack these other people, so that they can continue to do ministerial stuff, and I'll just be their lightning rod.

43:14

And to some extent, it's been effective, though it hasn't completely dissipated their attacks on some of these other parties.

43:20

But anyways, I often think, I don't want to bring people on, because I don't want to bring them into this. But okay, so with respect to the

43:28

William thing, Marlon could tell you, I mean, I just left it up to Marlon.

43:34

I said, look, Marlon, I said, you continue to chase him if you want. I've done enough.

43:39

I've tried to do this for a year. And it's just not happening.

43:45

And these guys are going to keep lying. They're going to keep lying and pretending that I'm not, you know, look at what happened. Because the debate with Albrecht didn't happen,

43:52

I debated an Eastern Orthodox guy. Let me tell you that I set up this debate with Seraphim, the

43:58

Eastern Orthodox guy, within a matter of days, we were able to agree on a time, a date and format. And we had almost no communication between them.

44:07

And there was, you know, there was like, no reason to go back and forth or anything. We were just we had a date set, we did it and it happened.

44:16

It all happened within a matter of days, right. But with William, it over the course of a year, the date kept changing and everything else.

44:24

So I just kind of gave up on that. And then I kind of said, you know, after a year, I was like,

44:29

I'm not even interested after this. I love what you said, too, is if he ever changes mind, you will drop, give you one day notice, you'll drop everything and make it happen.

44:39

Well, I didn't say I was saying within that time period, I think I had said like after a year, I was like, then that's it, right.

44:45

But I was saying any time up to this point, you tell me and I'll be ready and I'll debate.

44:52

I think you're spooking him because you're like, oh, if you want to talk about what the early church fathers taught, we can dance over there, too, if you want.

45:00

So I love that. Yeah, so let me comment. Okay, let me comment on Romans 4 because this brings up something

45:06

I wanted to mention with respect to my debate that I think will be helpful for people. But in Romans 4, it's significant.

45:15

Every exegete makes this observation. It's significant that Paul, when talking about Abraham, drops the phrase of the law and simply speaks of works, which is a more comprehensive term that includes works of the law.

45:33

But any kind of work, anything that you do, I mean, that's the meaning of the term, right? Ergon and BDAG seems to give the best first definition of human activity of any kind, deed, action.

45:49

And just to chime in real quick, when you look at Abraham who perceives the works of the law, look what he did.

45:55

And I'm saying whatever we look at with Abraham and the works that he did in the broadest sense of the understanding of ergon, that's going to help us understand the principle point in verse 4.

46:05

Now to the one who works, whatever singular person you want to look at, whatever they do in general, if they're trying to do this to be made right before God, well, they're earning it.

46:16

It's no longer of grace. Yeah, and so a couple of things here. One is the fact that he uses the phrase works, which is more comprehensive than however you want to understand works of the law.

46:31

Now, I don't think works of the law merely refers to ceremonial ordinances or the dietary restrictions of the

46:38

Old Testament or anything of that sort. In fact, it can't mean that because Paul makes, if you look back at Romans 3, this is why this is so significant.

46:47

In 3 .19, Paul says, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth, note the comprehensiveness, so that every mouth may be closed.

46:58

And note the comprehensiveness again, the universality of this, and all the world may become accountable before God.

47:07

And contextually, that's Paul's whole point. In Romans 1 from 1 .18 through to 3 .18,

47:14

he's showing that the whole world is sinful before God, is guilty of having violated his righteous character and standards, and so is under his just wrath.

47:25

That's why the gospel is necessary. We're not under the law anymore, man. Well, if one is in Christ, one is not under the law, meaning it has no power to condemn them.

47:36

But those who are outside of Christ are still subject to that problem, right?

47:42

Paul says, so that the whole world, every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God. So everyone is accountable to God, answerable to God with closed mouths, unless they are in Christ.

47:53

And this is further proven by what Paul goes on to say. He says in 27 through 31 that the gospel by which we're saved is for Jew and Gentile.

48:06

This shows the comprehensiveness of what Paul has in view here. He cannot possibly be restricting the condemning law to those things that were specific to the

48:18

Jews, or exclusive to the Jews. It has to be something more comprehensive. And so when you get into Romans 4, now

48:24

Paul is bringing forward his primary example. He's made the general point, now he's giving his primary example.

48:30

Now, before getting to that actually though, think back to Romans 3, because Paul, notice what he says in verses 21 through 26.

48:38

He says, now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.

48:45

So apart from law, that is the requirements of God, but witnessed through the law, that is the written scriptures of the

48:52

Old Testament, witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ.

48:58

He here introduces the principle of faith, right? Faith is the way of being right with God, and on what basis?

49:05

He says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, whom

49:13

God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. So the grounds are given here, namely it's the propitiatory sacrificial debt of Christ.

49:24

The means are given here, or is given here, which is faith. What is not included here is excluded, it's works, works of righteousness, works of the law, and all of this therefore is by grace, it excludes boasting, right?

49:39

This is what leads up to Romans 4, and it couldn't be clearer not only because Paul uses the comprehensive term works, but also because of the nature of the antithesis, right?

49:49

Paul says in verse 2, if Abraham—actually note the connection in verse 1, it says, what then shall we say that Abraham our forefather according to the flesh is found?

50:01

So this shows that this connects back to chapter 3. He's asking the question in light of what he says, what was found to be true in the case of Abraham?

50:09

In verse 2, it says, if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

50:17

4, what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

50:23

Here is the positive affirmation of how Abraham was justified. He believed.

50:30

This means believe, to hold to be true, to affirm, to—go ahead.

50:39

Yeah, so I love the strong consistency that you're showing in Paul's argument, what he's trying to communicate.

50:46

So what I've had to try to do with specifically the Church of Christ crowd is to say, look, faith and works are not the same thing.

50:54

They're mutually exclusive. Are they related? Absolutely, but they're different words with different meanings.

51:01

And I try to show the obscurity because the Church of Christ are trying to say, well, faith is a work.

51:08

Go read James 2, and then we deal with that context over there. I'm like, but look, if you're trying to make faith a work that we do, then it's totally nonsense, not to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift as is due, but to the one who does not work, but works in him, who justifies the ungodly, his work is counted as righteousness.

51:29

It's nonsense at that point. And so, yes, we believe that faith is a gracious gift granted from God that he works in us, and we work out what he has worked in.

51:42

But faith is not something that we do. We experience that gift, but that is a category of the heart.

51:48

So tell me what you think about this. I ask the question a lot of times in my debate, and when I debated

51:54

Greek Orthodox a year and a half ago on Marlon's channel, I asked him, what is the difference?

52:01

What are the differences between faith and works? He paused for about six seconds, and he said, I don't know. And I thought, oh, this is kind of getting at the core of the issue because faith is inward.

52:13

Faith is of the heart. God tests the heart. God sees the heart. He looks where your trust is, and he knows the moment when you have faith that you have faith, right?

52:23

And so works are things that now are outward, right? So ergon, we get our

52:28

English word, energy derived from this term. So anything that we can put on display, anything that we can accomplish by getting up and doing, that's a work by definition.

52:39

And when I just had casual conversations with Church of Christ or people that to me is obviously righteousness, we're not even getting into things that they think are justifiable by what you do.

52:49

But when we just start defining the word works, like you're talking about, they feel the direct implication of where we're going.

52:57

So I've tried to encourage people, like when you're having these conversations, is baptism a work? Absolutely. It's a ceremonial work that we participate in, that the

53:04

Holy Spirit is definitely involved with, right, in our sanctification. But you got to have the proper categories.

53:11

And to me, there's four good ones, faith and works. Define those terms. They're not the same thing.

53:17

Justification, sanctification, not the same thing. I even say, and more words to scale the language barrier, define baptism.

53:24

Define the word obey. It means to be in agreement with. Obey and obedience doesn't always necessarily entail works.

53:30

You can obey from the heart, in faith, right? So I've just noticed the code language of the people that I interact with, of what they're getting at.

53:40

And it takes time to really feel like, oh, they're making an exception for baptism and not calling it a work and saying, oh, well, acts of obedience that you do, well, those are works of God.

53:52

Yeah. Another way people try to smuggle their own virtue, works, contribution into the equation is making faith itself somehow a quality that forms the basis or grounds of God justifying, rather than...

54:13

You didn't know faith really meant faithfulness? Well, and this is one of the key passages that just refutes it, especially in a soteriological context, because throughout this context,

54:23

Paul uses it interchangeably with the verb believe. I think it's, well, okay,

54:29

I was going to say something else, but I'll leave that aside. The one thing that's interesting is in Romans 11,

54:38

Paul says, and you know the verse well, if it is by grace, then it is no longer by works.

54:44

Otherwise, grace is no longer grace, right? Now, the reason I think that's significant is because look at what

54:51

Paul says in Romans 4, 16. He says, for this reason, for this reason, it is by faith in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who's the father of us all.

55:12

Paul says that faith preserves the gracious character of salvation. If grace precludes works, if it is in the nature of the case, exclusive of works in the matter of salvation, then faith cannot be turned into a work.

55:30

And of course, as you've mentioned, faith is itself a gift of God, as Scripture everywhere testifies.

55:35

I've tried to tell people faith is inward, works are outward. That's a good working example of how to understand faith is something that we're resting in, as opposed to works or things that you get up and do.

55:47

And sure, we can explain the narrative of Acts and things elsewhere to understand. Look, if you just understand the context, the gospel of grace is embedded in there.

55:55

And Peter, whether it be Peter or a different apostle, they can call someone to justification and call someone to sanctification in the same breath.

56:04

We're talking about a total disposition of life. But Scripture has given us these categories, and your debate with Seraphim, it felt like he would not define what sanctification was, justification, and glorification, because it seemed like, in their view, that's just all kind of meshed together.

56:21

And you're like, Paul is trying to make an argument using different words with different meanings. Is that fair?

56:27

Yeah, yeah. Now, okay, so this is something that I wanted to go to, and it's basically right here in front of us in Romans 4.

56:36

But Abraham mentions that or, excuse me, Paul mentions that Abraham believed

56:43

God. This is how he was justified, in contrast to being justified on the basis of works.

56:50

But when he speaks of this justification, he speaks of it in terms of it being credited or imputed to him.

56:59

Now, in my debate, and I was astounded in this context, and I mentioned to you before the show, one thing

57:06

I didn't like about the debate is there should have been another rebuttal period, especially since my opponent didn't really rebut my opening in his opening, which left me,

57:16

I had no rebuttal period after that. The way it worked was there was my opening, then his opening, and then two rebuttals, mine, and then his.

57:25

But what he did was he didn't rebut my opening. I had the burden of proving, so he had the responsibility of refuting.

57:32

He didn't do that. He just gave his own positive presentation for his position, which would have been fine if it was a propositional statement we were debating rather than an interrogative.

57:41

But anyways, he didn't do that so that when it came time, he gave this rebuttal to me eventually, and I never got to do a rebuttal.

57:48

We did get to do cross -examination where I was able to show the mistakes. Yeah, I was able to poke holes,

57:55

I think, quite severely in his case, but it left out some opportunity for rebuttal.

58:02

But here's the thing. So I brought up that the righteousness on the basis of which

58:08

God declares us righteous is a credited or imputed or reckoned righteousness.

58:16

And I pointed out—first, I'll tell you what I'd said, and you heard it, but then

58:22

I'll get to what astounded me in terms of his response—but I pointed out that this whole idea is typified throughout the

58:29

Old Testament. You have the example of Adam and Eve sinning against God, and then God stripping off their own attempts at covering their shame, stripped off their fig leaves, and clothed them in the garments of a sacrificial animal.

58:43

Then I pointed out how you have other examples of this sort of thing. For example,

58:49

Jacob receives the blessings from Isaac. He receives the rites of the firstborn and all that goes with that by clothing himself in Esau's garments, in the garments of the firstborn.

59:02

I pointed out how the brothers of Joseph were only able to go back to their father and assuage his wrath by presenting to him the blood -stained garments of Joseph.

59:13

And then I showed that this sort of thing—I gave other examples—is not only typified, but it's explicitly taught in various places, like Psalm 32.

59:23

It's explicitly taught in Zechariah 3, where you have Joshua the high priest, who's clothed in his own filthy garments, but those are stripped off of him, and he's clothed in clean garments.

59:34

And then I— Seraphim didn't like the fact that you're saying, yeah, this is kind of picturing what imputed righteousness looks like.

59:41

Yeah, and so that was huge. So I mentioned then Revelation 7.

59:47

I gave a bunch of other examples, but Revelation 7 speaks of us being clothed in white robes, white because they were washed in the blood of the

59:54

Lamb. Now what he wanted to do—now I know that a lot of people probably didn't notice this.

01:00:00

They probably stumbled at this point, but I'm thinking it's colossally bad, right? It's huge, and it,

01:00:06

I think, exposes the anti -Christ nature of this gospel.

01:00:12

They want to see themselves where they should be seeing Christ, and I'll show you what I mean. So I pointed to all this stuff, and he went to Revelation, where it mentions that people are clothed, and then this clothing represents the righteous acts of the saints.

01:00:27

Now you and I don't disagree that we do righteous deeds, right? And Scripture can sometimes speak of our righteous deeds as clothing and so forth, but is that possibly what's going on in these cases that I'm talking about?

01:00:40

I'm talking about justification, and I'm talking about what's going on in these typological examples of our acceptance before the

01:00:47

Father. Is it the case that when Scripture speaks of Adam and Eve having their fig leaves stripped off of them and then being clothed by God, is that a picture of them being justified before God on the basis of their doing?

01:00:59

Is that a picture of God graciously saving or man doing something to save himself? Quite obviously, this is

01:01:06

God acting to save, right? Is the picture of Joseph or Jacob being accepted by Isaac and receiving the blessings by virtue of being clothed in Esau's garments a picture of Jacob being blessed because of his own righteous acts, or because he is presented before his father as though he were another, right?

01:01:24

As though he were clothed in somebody else's clothing, right? Is, were the brothers of Joseph able to, you know, escape their father's wrath because of something they did or because they had the blood -stained garments of Joseph, which suggested to him the death of his son, right?

01:01:42

Is the example in Zechariah 3 of Joshua being stripped of his fig leaf, or excuse me, of his filthy clothing and clothed in clean garments an example of him being justified by his acts?

01:01:53

Absolutely none of these examples have anything to do with the righteous acts of the saints, okay?

01:01:58

So this isn't a denial that saints do righteousness, but this is not unto justification.

01:02:04

And Abraham is not an example of being justified by his righteous acts. In Romans 4, what we're talking about is

01:02:12

Abraham being justified not by works, but it being credited to him.

01:02:17

This isn't something that was his due, it was something that was granted as a favor to him, as grace, the literal

01:02:24

Greek term there. So this is what astounded me, right? Like, you can read in Scripture all these clear passages about Christ, and the gospel denier can see themselves where they should be seeing

01:02:37

Jesus. Yes, yeah, so much.

01:02:42

I love, I was just like, man, I'm watching another Anthony Rogers episode there. But you're right, they're seeing themselves where they really should be seeing

01:02:51

Christ. And I think when we go to Romans 4, Abraham comes before the

01:02:56

Mosaic Law. And so I just think that's so important for the question at hand. And so I think defining faith and works and really challenging those that can't see a distinction between those, it's going to really unravel

01:03:11

Paul's argument that he's making. And so going back, you're talking about all the typology that's going on in the

01:03:19

Old Testament. I try to tell people this is what's at stake. When your interpretation of James 2 is in such a way that you define a living faith is the moment it produces a particular work.

01:03:31

Well, you now are adding your works to the already finished work of Christ.

01:03:38

He said, tetellestai, it is finished. The only way that I can understand that we are saved by works is

01:03:45

Christ works, which was perfect, never sinned, was never polluted by a taint of sin.

01:03:53

And so it's like, I want to be in him. I want to be represented by him. And that's how the whole exchange happens is when you look upon Jesus by faith, you get that perfect robe covering your account.

01:04:04

And then all of your filthy rags, past, present, and future get put back on Calvary.

01:04:10

And so the Church of Christ world, they always say, well, it's your past sins that get washed away in baptism.

01:04:16

And I ask, well, doesn't God see the entirety of your life or is it just in the past?

01:04:21

And they're like, well, you've only committed certain sins. I'm like, yeah, but if you look more into what

01:04:27

Paul says here about the blessed man, quoting Psalm 32, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

01:04:36

Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.

01:04:42

So this is in the emphatic subjunctive, right? The strongest form of negation as possible.

01:04:48

So in the debate, I was setting that garden path, Anthony, you'd have been proud of me. I was trying to be like, hey, I'm not trying to trap you yet.

01:04:56

We should be agreeing at this point. Because in Hebrews 13, that quotes the Old Testament, God will never leave us or forsake us.

01:05:05

Umay, emphatic subjunctive negation, meaning he's not going to leave us now or forever, regardless of if we believe that we can leave.

01:05:13

But Christ, God will never leave us. And so as soon as I got him to admit to that, I said, okay, am

01:05:19

I understanding Paul's point when I understand the same terminology being used? Blessed is the man against whom the

01:05:26

Lord will not, not now, not ever impute sin. And let's just say the wills were turning a little bit when he answered that.

01:05:36

Yeah, not impute sin. Now let me share this and then I think maybe it'd be good to take some questions. So we got good questions out there.

01:05:43

I've not been watching the chat. I haven't been paying attention yet because everybody knows I can't do that.

01:05:49

I can't either. I can't do two things at once. But I just want to follow up since we've been talking about imputation.

01:05:57

I want to show something interesting that I didn't bring up in the debate. But you know, well, let me say this just strategically.

01:06:05

I didn't do this either, but you know, I've gotten used to groups that people, not just, well, groups and individuals that represent them.

01:06:17

If somebody knows that something's in the Bible and they're pretending that their position is biblical, they're not going to say,

01:06:26

I disagree with the Bible, right? They're going to say, I disagree with your interpretation. That's the way it works, right?

01:06:31

Even if it's clear, even if it's evident on the face of it, that that's what this is saying, right? So, I mean,

01:06:38

I learned this like a year after my conversion, I had, I've told people this story. I said it on my channel more than once, but you'll have to suffer through it again if you've heard it before.

01:06:46

But for the benefit of those who haven't, I met this Mormon guy a year after I was converted and everything

01:06:51

I told him from the Bible, he'd say, that's just your interpretation. I was like, well, you know, yeah, that's how

01:06:56

I interpret it. But I don't think I'm doing something weird here that, you know, when you say, hey, hand me a napkin and I hand you a napkin,

01:07:04

I've interpreted your word. Sure. I think I've done so accurately though. I don't think there was any, you know, magic steps

01:07:10

I took or anything objectionable when I handed you the nap, anyways. But he would always say this and it just irked me.

01:07:17

And one of the disputes we used to have all the time was whether or not Christ is God. And I would point him to passages and then

01:07:26

I'd say, you know, Christ is God for this reason and that reason. And he'd say, that's just your interpretation. Well, one day he came up to me and out of the blue, he said,

01:07:33

Christ is not God. And I said, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was

01:07:39

God. And then he immediately shot back, that's just your interpretation. And I said,

01:07:44

I didn't give you my interpretation. I gave you a quotation, right? So now he knew it was a quotation, but he was so ready to do his normal mantra that he didn't think it through and he ended up, you know, walking into it.

01:07:56

So one of the things I like to do if possible is quote something to somebody without telling them where it comes from and get their honest reaction.

01:08:04

And so one of the things I've thought of doing is, you know, just quoting a church father and saying, you know, what do you think about this or, or what have you, or let's play this game.

01:08:12

Was this said by a church father or by a reformer? Right. And you tell me, do you agree with this quote or not?

01:08:18

And I'm sure I could catch these guys a hundred times on this because some of these statements just sound like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, whoever, and, and some just, you know, vice versa.

01:08:31

Right. Well, but listen to this. These are some quotes on the passages that I read regarding Adam and Eve, regarding Jacob, regarding you know, all these passages.

01:08:43

Listen, so this is from Ambrose with respect to Jacob being clothed in Esau's garment.

01:08:52

So this is Ambrose, an early church father. He says, the spiritual meaning is that we are not justified by works.

01:08:58

He's talking about being clothed in Esau's garments, right? Does he say it's the righteous acts of the saints? Listen to this.

01:09:04

Seraphim, listen up. Does he say the righteous acts of the saints? He says the spiritual meaning is that we're not justified by works, but by faith, because the weakness of the flesh is a hindrance to works, but the brightness of faith puts the error that's in man's deeds in the shadow and obtains for him the forgiveness of his sins.

01:09:23

In an oration on faith and the resurrection, Ambrose said, in Adam I fell, in Adam I was cast out of paradise, in Adam I died, just as in Adam I am guilty of sin and owe a debt to death, so in Christ I am justified.

01:09:40

Okay, so just a similar idea there. Well, here's Cyril of Alexandria. He is speaking here in reference to Christ's righteousness, gladness, and joy, and he says we've been clothed with gladness and joy, and goes on to ask, what is this robe of gladness?

01:09:56

And the answer he gives is Christ, in whom we have been clothed. In his commentary on Zechariah 3,

01:10:02

Cyril of Alexandria said, when God had mercy, he ordered them to be freed from sin and clad in the grace that justifies, not the righteous acts of the saints.

01:10:14

Elsewhere he says, he who made the earth and mankind upon it, who adorned the heavens with the stars, has raised up Jesus as our righteousness, who redeems us freely, for we have been justified by faith.

01:10:28

I could go on and on with quotes like this. My point is just to say, this is solidly patristic, and it's solidly

01:10:35

Protestant, in the sense that this is what the Protestants later came came to say. This is what

01:10:40

I was saying in the debate, and this is the opposite of what Seraphim was saying in response to it. So I found it really astounding, on the one hand, that he would take the interpretation that he did of very clearly

01:10:52

Christological statements, and make them anthropocentric, they're about man and what man does, rather than what

01:10:59

Christ has done for us, and also be very non -patristic, ahistorical in his interpretation, while pretending to represent the ancient faith.

01:11:07

I found all that interesting. All right, so we've said a bunch of stuff, we've been at this for an hour and 10, not that we couldn't be on for another hour just by ourselves talking about different issues, but I want to give people a chance to throw some stuff at us.

01:11:22

Maybe some of your Church of Christ people have logged in. Okay, here's a question.

01:11:38

I was looking for one, and then a super chat popped up. So Mason says, been thinking about the Apostolic Fathers.

01:11:43

What's some good material to get into, like the epistles and stuff? Haven't read any yet. Either of you have favorites.

01:11:50

Thank you both for your hard work. Now, I don't know if Jeremiah has something he wants to say here, but what

01:11:55

I'll say is, number one, read everything you can from the

01:12:00

Apostolic Fathers. There's not a lot. It's usually all packaged in one volume, and you can get different translations.

01:12:10

You can get the translation of Lightfoot. You can get the translation of Michael Holmes.

01:12:16

You could get various translations, and I actually recommend that people get several, because sometimes, even when it comes to Bible translations, right, sometimes a different nuance is suggested by the way it's translated, and it might provoke thought.

01:12:37

You know, you might wonder which one is more accurate, or are both of these springing out a shade of meaning that's there in the original.

01:12:43

But one reason I suggest it is because I've seen, for example, I'll give you an example of, in the

01:12:49

Epistle to Diognetus, it makes mention of the great exchange, right, of our sin and Christ's righteousness, and how

01:12:58

Christ took on Himself our sins and died for them, and gave us, in turn, His righteousness, by which we are now justified in God's sight.

01:13:06

There are some translations of this which lamentably render a certain word there as being made worthy, when that's not what the

01:13:14

Greek word means. It actually means to be reckoned or regarded as such, rather than to be made worthy.

01:13:22

It's referring to one's legal status, rather than their inward condition. But in any case,

01:13:28

I'm just pointing out that there are several different translations. Some are better than others, but I think you should just get any book that gives you all of them, because they all usually fit in one volume.

01:13:40

And then after that, you can pick up books like—if you're talking about,

01:13:46

I don't know if your question is specific to justification, but here's a book written by Brian Arnold, Justification in the

01:13:55

Second Century. So this is a really good book. He shows that justification is found in numerous early

01:14:04

Christian writings like Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, the Odes of Solomon, the

01:14:10

Epistle to Diognetus, and so forth. So those are my thoughts. I don't know if Jeremiah wants to chime in with anything on that.

01:14:17

Yeah, if someone were to ask me, so Jeremiah, where's a good place that I can go to learn a little bit more about the early church fathers?

01:14:23

I would say I know a guy named Anthony Rogers that I would immediately point him to, and I would remind people this.

01:14:29

For one, I'm still learning a lot with the apostolic faith. I'm unashamedly,

01:14:35

I tell people, I'm confident that what I will find are those people resting in Christ by faith, whether they say alone or by implication, whether they understood consistently how to understand ceremonies.

01:14:48

I'm all for every bit of it, but at the end of the day, I care about the scripture.

01:14:54

Now, that's not to exclude our historic faith. I'm just saying absolutely what you just said, study our historic faith, how

01:15:00

Christ has been building his church for the past 2 ,000 years, how the Holy Spirit has been guiding the church into truth, but test their argumentation.

01:15:11

Don't just say, well, this was their conclusion and they know better than me. That's not being faithful to what

01:15:16

God's word commands us to do. That's not being a noble Berean. All I want to add is study the exegesis and the argumentation of the church fathers.

01:15:27

I've heard you say this before, Anthony, too. We would expect that second century church to get many things wrong.

01:15:36

Look at the people that follow Jesus, the disciples. Jesus constantly told them that it was necessary for him to suffer, to die, and to resurrect.

01:15:42

They weren't getting it. Them not understanding it wasn't a reflection of Jesus being a poor teacher.

01:15:49

Look at Galatians, the church of Galatia. They were already starting to depart from the grace of Christ and embrace a legalistic gospel.

01:15:57

I'm just saying the scripture gives us enough indicators that this next century after the last apostle, they were going to get many things wrong.

01:16:07

That's not to say that you can't still find the gospel of grace in many of these early writings.

01:16:13

Yeah, absolutely. That's a good note. I probably don't say it enough. I love reading everything from church history, even stuff

01:16:23

I disagree with. A lot of the reason for bringing it up in this context is because the people

01:16:28

I'm interacting with believe this is their strongest footing. They believe there's a consistent teaching that their church holds to now that can be found in those writings.

01:16:41

I'm just poking back at that and saying, no, look at this, look at this, look at that. I was so surprised when you agreed initially to debate

01:16:49

William Albrecht about the church fathers. Did they teach justification by faith? When I saw that,

01:16:56

I just thought, oh, I cannot wait. I was so let down. We were going to have a watch party here at 12 -5 and then it didn't happen.

01:17:01

We were lucky. Yeah, yeah. Well, I was disappointed as well.

01:17:09

All right, so another question here. This is from Adam Carmichael Sr.

01:17:16

Adam, Adam, right over there, your right hand man. Adam's the man, by the way.

01:17:22

Can you speak on original sin, the church of Christ rejects this doctrine?

01:17:28

Interestingly, so does the Eastern church, at least they reject the

01:17:34

Western version of this. Okay, so you go ahead since it's specific to the church of Christ.

01:17:41

Well, like he's getting at, they deny that we're born in sin, like the way that David speaks of it and how we are all in Adam and we've died.

01:17:53

But they believe that our environment corrupts us. I really think, and I've been told

01:17:59

I've been uncharitable saying this. I don't think so. But they're modern day Pelagians. They believe that we're born innocent, imperfect, and then we sin over time because of our fallen environment.

01:18:12

So that's why church of Christ at large, they actually deny baptismal regeneration, the way that they're interpreting

01:18:19

Acts 2 -38 and various other baptismal passages. They hold, and they wouldn't say this, but I've coined this, they believe more in a baptismal justification.

01:18:27

Why? Because they don't really think they need a new nature. They're just born like Adam was created, innocent and upright, essentially.

01:18:37

So I just wanted to tell the audience that's kind of the background of original sin. But I would love for you to really speak to that too,

01:18:44

Juan. That is just totally absurd when we look at Scripture. Yeah. It's interesting, just as an aside on this, in the

01:18:54

Targum on Ruth, just one example comes to mind, because a lot of people think that this...

01:19:01

Some people will criticize the doctrine of original sin as a New Testament innovation. So you'll get Jews who will say, this isn't found in the

01:19:09

Old Testament. Then you'll get people who say it's not found in the New Testament. Sometimes you'll get people who say

01:19:14

Paul taught it, but they don't like Paul until they excise him from the list of canonical writers and so forth.

01:19:21

So you get a variety of denials on this. But what's interesting is if you look at something like the Targum on Ruth, it mentions

01:19:29

Jesse, the father of King David, because you've got this genealogy there from Ruth and Boaz.

01:19:35

The idea is it's giving you the genealogy that will lead up to David.

01:19:40

That's why it's there. And it mentions the death of Jesse. And one of the things it wants to say about Jesse is that he was a righteous person, but by righteous, it doesn't mean not in Adam, not guilty.

01:19:53

It just means he was an upright individual, but it creates something of an issue. And so they want to explain how is it that Jesse, who was righteous, died.

01:20:02

And so what it says, very interesting, it says he died because Adam's sin. The sentence that was passed upon the human race because of Adam's sin was brought to pass on Jesse.

01:20:14

So it's specifically laying this at the feet of Adam. This is why Jesse died.

01:20:20

He's culpable for Adam's sin. And there's other statements like that in rabbinic literature. But for those that accept the authority of scripture, what's clearer than Paul's words in Romans 5, right?

01:20:31

There he sets forth the federal headship of Adam. All men who are descendants of his by means of ordinary generation, that is all who come into the world through the process of ordinary biological procreation, are born into it as guilty and corrupt.

01:20:48

We're guilty, meaning that we're liable to God's wrath and curse, and corrupt, meaning that we are inclined towards evil.

01:20:56

We are sinful by nature, and out of that sinfulness proceed all actual transgressions.

01:21:01

But Paul couldn't be clearer. He says, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

01:21:14

Except Mary. Huh? I said except Mary. But he's saying that death spread to all men because of the sin of Adam.

01:21:23

All sinned in Adam. And he goes on, he says that death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of the one who is to come.

01:21:34

So one question that I like to ask people, this was a classic question that was being asked of the

01:21:40

Pelagians in their day, is why do babies die, right? And Paul says, well, even though they haven't necessarily personally engaged in an act of transgression, in the sense of being fully conscious as they will be when they grow up and so forth, he says they die.

01:21:59

Why do they die? That's the million dollar question. If you believe Paul in Romans 5, you know why. But if you're a church of Christ, you're going to have to chuck and jive there.

01:22:09

So I want you to engage with an objection I hear too. Jeremiah, have you not read Ezekiel 18? The soul that sins will die.

01:22:16

And I want you to speak a little bit to that context because we've read that before.

01:22:22

And my immediate answer is what that's showing us is that we also will be culpable for our own sin as well, right?

01:22:30

Original sin is a different issue. It's just speaking to how we were born children of wrath. I think that's a

01:22:36

Bible verse somewhere in Ephesians 2, right? And I'm like you, I like to just mention that we're children of wrath, not reference it to see if they realize that I'm quoting a

01:22:44

Bible verse. I got to say, you can't do the Hebrews thing and quote the actual chapter.

01:22:51

The author of Hebrews, he says somewhere it is written, right? And he's quoting Psalm 8. You said somewhere it's written,

01:22:57

Ephesians 2. You're right. No, that's true. But yeah, Ezekiel 18, they think this is a defeater for the

01:23:05

Protestant doctrine or the church of Christ. They despise the name denominations.

01:23:10

That's just denominational teaching. We're the church of Christ, Romans 16, 16. I'm like, do you greet one another with the holy kiss?

01:23:17

I'm just, nevermind. So yeah, they'll mention Ezekiel 18 as a defeater to original sin.

01:23:26

Yeah. So, well, one quick answer is we don't think in the first place that in terms of imputed guilt, that the sin of everyone's ascendant is imputed to them.

01:23:40

We proclaim the federal headship of Adam. It was Adam who was created as the federal head of the human race. Look at Hosea 6, where it mentions that Adam broke the covenant.

01:23:50

It's specifically talking about Adam there, and I'd challenge anybody who wants to make it refer to something else. It's talking about Adam breaking a covenant.

01:23:58

There was a covenant that God established with Adam, which he broke. And it's clear from Paul in Romans 5 that he was the representative of the human race in that covenant, such that when he transgressed, it had devastating consequences for all of his descendants.

01:24:15

In fact, for the entire cosmos. In Romans 8, Paul speaks of the whole cosmos being subject to bondage and decay, right?

01:24:23

Why? You know, because the cosmos sinned? No, because Adam, who was the head, you know, sinned.

01:24:29

Does that mean you're a young earth creationist? Oh, I am, but I don't usually talk about it.

01:24:39

So number one, we don't necessarily teach that everyone's ascendant acts and their descendants are culpable.

01:24:49

So that would be the quick answer. But also, one of the problems they have to deal with too—and there's a whole bunch of stuff that can be said about Ezekiel 18—but one other thing to say is, why is

01:25:01

Ezekiel even saying this? Because the people are objecting that they're suffering when it was their parents who did something wrong.

01:25:09

And this is an inescapable fact of life. Think about this. It's an inescapable fact.

01:25:15

If your parents do something, you know, if you have a father, let's say, who's an alcoholic, and he goes out and gets in a car wreck, you know, he then goes to jail, he loses his job, he, you know, all these consequences fall out from that.

01:25:33

Are you not going to suffer the consequences of that, even though you didn't do anything? It's an inescapable fact of life.

01:25:39

We can complain about it, but we can't escape it, right? Well, the Israelites are looking at their condition, and they're saying, look, here we are in this situation, and it was our fathers who did this, okay?

01:25:51

So Ezekiel 18 is addressing a problem against this undeniable background, right?

01:25:58

So deal with that, right? Deal with the fact that the Israelites are complaining because this was their situation.

01:26:04

And I agree with you, you know, as it goes on, it's talking about people being—you know, if a person repents of sin,

01:26:13

God's not going to hold him accountable for, you know, the sins of his parents or his own sins.

01:26:19

And if a person doesn't repent, he's going to hold him accountable for his sins. It is teaching personal responsibility, we don't deny that.

01:26:26

There's a thousand things, I think, that can be said about that. No, I was just saying that, no, that's really good.

01:26:32

I wanted to chime in and say, somebody by the name of Chloe, thank you for the super chat, and I want to tell you,

01:26:40

I was going to point that out. She included me that I get some coffee in this. Hey, you know, definitely, and maybe sometime—I think when

01:26:51

I looked, I think you're like 10 hours from me, but how far is—well, maybe

01:26:59

I'll talk to you behind the scenes about some of this, but one day it'd be great to meet up in person. How far are you from Indiana?

01:27:05

So I live in South Carolina, but we were in Arkansas some time ago for medical testing for our youngest, but I didn't know you were there at the time.

01:27:19

I didn't even know about you. This was a few years ago. Our church, we have a guest house, so anytime you and your family come, you'll have a place to stay.

01:27:26

You have a manse. You guys call it a manse? We like to refer to it as kind of the parsonage, but it's a nice parsonage.

01:27:34

Okay, okay. All right, thank you so much, Chloe, by the way. We will trust

01:27:51

God's word alone, where His perfect will is known.

01:27:58

Our traditions shift like sand while His truth forever stands.

01:28:08

We will live by faith alone, clothed in merit not our own.

01:28:17

All we claim is Jesus Christ and His finished sacrifice.

01:28:29

Glory be, glory be to God alone.

01:28:38

Through the church He redeemed and made

01:28:44

His own. He has freed us,

01:28:50

He will keep us till we're safely home.

01:28:57

Glory be, glory be to God alone.