Finding Jesus Through the Roof

My co-host, Matthew Pearson, as always. And we're here to encourage men to be good churchmen in their church, in their community. And we got a bunch of stuff to talk about today. So whatever questions you guys have, we have an attribute of God we're gonna cover, his righteousness.

And then we have an article from TruthScript. But before we get to that, I just wanna let everyone know that TruthScript is a 501c3. And if you wanna contribute, you can go to truthscript .com, scroll to the bottom, and there's a little Donate tab.

Not very prominent, you have to go down and find it. And there's also a Publish tab if you wanna publish with us. You can see the requirements for that. I know a few good articles that are coming. Now is a good time to actually subscribe to TruthScript because we got some real bangers that are gonna be coming in the next two weeks.

There is a conference coming up. It's not on the TruthScript website, but it is affiliated with TruthScript. In fact, I need to have our web guy take down the one that just happened. We just last weekend had our Christianity and the founding conference.

That went very well, by the way. And we will be having another conference this coming weekend. Probably the easiest way is to go to johnharrispodcast .com. And if you go there and scroll down, let's see, scroll to speaking, sorry.

You don't have to scroll, just click on speaking. The Truth Conference, May 2nd through 4th in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. So yeah, it kind of sounds like TruthScript, right? Truths Conference. Check it out if you're in that area.

I would love to see you there. I'll be there. David, the president of TruthScript will be there. And then Seth Brickley, Andrew Rappaport, Craig Chambers, a lot of former evangelical free church guys.

Strivingforeternity .org is also a place you can find it under their events tab, if you wanna know more. So we are gonna talk about one of the articles on TruthScript called, Through the Roof, A Call to Spiritual Action.

But before we get to that, I thought, I know Matthew said, let's not do an attribute of God today, but I said, let's actually do one, because we don't have to have theological books in front of us to talk about this, I don't think.

This is the, we're gonna talk about the righteousness of God, the righteousness of God. And there's two primary words in the Bible that describe God's righteousness. Do you know what they are, Matthew, out of curiosity?

The two primary words?

Well, the one in Greek and one in

Like in Greek? I mean, I'm thinking of, is it dikaios? This is gonna be really show my, okay, there it is.

Dikaios or dikaiosune, but same root. And then in Hebrew, it's the same word for justice. I'll say it, all right, it's tzedek or tzedek.

I haven't taken Hebrew yet, so for the record.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so when I was taking Hebrew, the social justice stuff was actually starting to get hot. And I remember we would go over the word tzedek, and that was the word that was so often used to like funnel in all of these rectifying disparities type language.

And really it just means to be upright or to be righteous, to be in conformity to God's moral standard. Think of like a straight stick or a standard of measure that has no deviation in it. Dikaiosune is kind of similar to that, or dikaios, just just righteous, a person who embodies those things.

It is a communicable attribute of God. So it's something that describes God, but it's something that we are also called to be in our own lives. We're supposed to do justice, right? That's that word there, tzedek or tzedek.

And there's a number of verses on this that I could read for you from both the Old and the New Testament. The Psalm 7, 9 says, "'Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, "'but establish the just.

"'For the righteous God trieth the hearts and reigns.'". And then Psalm 11, 7 says, "'For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness.'". This is all in King James. "'His countenance doth behold the upright.'".

So there's a contrast obviously between righteousness and wickedness. If we go into the New Testament, Romans 3, 25 through 26 says, "'Whom God hath sent forth to be a propitiation "'through faith in his blood, "'to declare,' I say, this time his righteousness, "'that he might be just and the justifier of him "'which believeth in Jesus.'".

And then 1 John 2, 29, "'For ye know that he is righteous. "'Ye know that everyone that doeth righteousness "'is born of him.'". So righteousness is that state of being wherein one has no moral flaws and is upright in every way.

There is no deviation. There is no crookedness to one's character. A righteous man is someone who does the right thing no matter what the circumstances or the consequences of his actions. So he's a marble man, as that was a term used to describe Robert E. Lee.

He was a marble man. There was no flaw in him, essentially. Although of course there was, but he's not God. But Jesus truly was a marble man in that sense. There truly was no flaw in Jesus Christ. And that's who God is.

We can depend on him 100 to always do the right thing. He can't be bribed. He can't be tempted. He doesn't even tempt us, as James says. He has no association with evil whatsoever. He is all light, no darkness.

And that's, I think, a basis for depending on him and that his decisions are good. And this is probably one of the first things that's questioned about God. It's either this or his power, his ability to interact in the discourse, the life events when there's a trial.

People wanna question whether he's, is he really righteous? Is he really someone who cares and values goodness and truth, or is he someone who is, can be bought and actually has nefarious motives? He's not telling us about.

A righteous man, and God obviously is like this, upholds all the transcendental goods. So the good, the true, the beautiful, all those things are maxed out 100 in God. And of course the other attribute is often his ability to, some feature of his power.

He couldn't intervene somehow because he must not actually be powerful. He could be good and righteous, but he's not powerful. So that's just a little bit of, that's my understanding kind of off the cuff on this topic.

But I think it's kind of relevant, particularly in our context, just because the social justice crowd has really taken this concept and they have twisted it, turned it on its head and they have redefined it to mean any kind of rectification of disparities and really social equality or egalitarian equality.

That's righteous, that's just. And so if you have a hierarchy in society of some kind, they think that that's not righteous and God wouldn't approve of those things. And so based on God's righteousness or justice, they will try to make all kinds of arguments that women should be treated as equal to men in social circumstances and leadership positions.

And every nationality should be considered equal even within the boundaries of particular nations and all those kinds of things. So that's obviously not what we have in mind. That's not what God's talking about.

It really has nothing to do with the hierarchies that he's implemented into creation or the hierarchies that, I mean, he is the top of a hierarchy. He is the creator, we are the created. That's the greatest hierarchy.

So it's not against hierarchy. It's not about egalitarianism, but it is upholding that which is fitting, that which is in conformity to God's standard of measure. So anything to add there, Matthew?

Yeah, absolutely. You said a lot of good stuff there, John. So I don't have too much to add on to what you were saying. I think I could just really just expand it instead. I like the point that you made pertaining to hierarchy because oftentimes when we speak of righteousness or social justice or things like that, what people are supposing is that total equity, inequality is that which is righteous.

What everyone's do is what every other person has. So there's almost like a lot of people with their definition of righteousness. It's almost like this sort of egalitarianism. But if you're a Christian and you believe in the Christian God, you have to understand that at the very basis and foundation of this belief that we have is hierarchy.

And this hierarchy is righteous. And our fundamental principle to this righteousness, which is still hierarchical, is the very existence of God. God, who is the creator of all things and God who is uniquely transcendent above all things.

If he is transcendent above all things, this necessitates that him being above means he is higher in the hierarchy. And if God is righteous, this means that hierarchy in principle is not unrighteous or it's not unjust for it to be that way.

That would entail that God himself is unjust, which is that would contradict the very character of God, who God is. And if God was not righteous, God would not be God. And if God was not God, there'd be nothing to uphold all of creation.

And thus the very reality of God being righteous, of righteousness being compatible with hierarchies is essential to the existence of all things. So hierarchy is not unrighteous. That's a good point to make.

A mother or father having authority over their children to tell them what to do is not unrighteous. As a matter of fact, it is righteous because what you as a parent owe to your child is to properly raise them, is to properly make sure that they are obeying you.

A mother and father owe to their child this actual familial role of commanding them. And the same way that a child in order to be righteous owes to his parents obedience. Because righteousness, when we speak of it, would be rendering to someone that which is their due.

And what is a child's due? Proper parental guidance. What is a child's due to their parents? It would be obedience. And so that's very important. And this also has practical implications in the spiritual realm when we consider righteousness.

When you read throughout the Old and New Testament, we see that God is a righteous and just God, and that He demands obedience. And yet we constantly fall short of this obedience. We ourselves are not righteous.

Just like the Apostle Paul writes, "'None are good, no, not one.'". And he himself is quoting, I believe a Psalm there. I can't remember off the top of my head. But a big theme of this idea of cosmic redemption is that Christ was obedient in our set.

When our forefather Adam failed to obey, Christ, our second Adam, did obey. And as a result of this, He wins for us this sort of righteousness through His sacrifice on the cross by which we are able to be made righteous.

And then there's two senses which I say that we are made righteous. The first sense in which we speak of this is that we are made righteous in a forensic sense via imputation of Christ's righteousness to us.

Because we, as righteous as we can be, cannot meet the perfect standard that God demands of us. And thus we require a mediator who is able to represent us, take our place and fulfill this righteousness.

And on that basis, we are imputed with the righteousness of Christ. Christ's righteousness is accredited to us through union with Him. So that's the first sense in which we can speak of God making us righteous.

The second sense is that we are made actually righteous, not just in the sense of forensically righteous, such that when God looks at us, He sees Christ, but in a sense that when He looks inside of us, He sees true, real righteousness.

And this happens through the infusion of grace. And so many people may pause and say, that sounds a bit Roman Catholic, this notion of infused grace being actually righteous. Aren't we like, don't we fall short of that standard?

And the answer to that is by no means, that's not the case at all. This is not a distinctly Roman Catholic belief that we are made truly righteous. We would just call that sanctification. This is the idea that through growth and grace, through dedication to prayer, through reading the word, through fellowshipping with believers, through acts of charity that we perform to others, through helping the lowly, we are actually doing righteous deeds.

And in doing righteous deeds, we are being and acting righteous. The difference is, is that this is not a perfect righteousness, which is why we need the perfect righteousness of Christ to be credited to us, because even a non-believer can do things which we can call righteous.

The difference is, is that in the eyes of God, this falls short of his standards and thus it is not true righteousness. But with the imputed righteousness of Christ, we have grounds on which to stand.

And just to talk about righteousness being infused into us. Again, as I said, this is not a distinctly Roman Catholic notion. John Calvin, he writes in the Institutes of the Christian Religion on righteousness, where he's speaking of original sin.

He titles this column, original sin does not rest upon imitation. He says later in this, he says, but it is well-known that this, that being the remission of sins, occurs in no other way than that wonderful communication whereby Christ transfuses into us the power of his righteousness.

Likewise, William Perkins and his book, Reformed Catholic William Perkins is well-known as like one of the greatest Puritans out there though there is debate over whether he was truly a Puritan because he remained within the Church of England.

He was okay with the Book of Common Prayer and things like that. But that's another Theobro-nerdy discussion for another day. But he states, again, the benefits of Christ's manhood are diversely given, some by imputation, which is an action of God, accepting that which is done by Christ as done by us.

And thus it is pleased God to give the passion of Christ.

And his obedience.

Some again are given by a kind of propagation, which I cannot fitly express in terms, but I resemble it thus. As one candle is lighted by another and one torch or candle light is conveyed to 20 candles, even so the inherent righteousness of every believer, notice that inherent righteousness, is derived from the storehouse of righteousness, which is in the manhood of Christ.

For the righteousness of all the members is but the fruit thereof, even as the natural corruption in all mankind is but a fruit of their original sin, which was in Adam. And notice there as well, how he speaks of this storehouse of righteousness, which is in the manhood of Christ.

Of course, Christ, by virtue of his divine nature, is righteous. It is of the very essence of the divinity to be righteous. But notice he says, the storehouse of his humanity. This is because Christ, as the second Adam, I guess, yeah, behaved the law of God.

Yeah, I guess we could say it that way. I kind of misspoke, but you know, that works. He obeyed the law of God through his obedience. He won for us true obedience to God's law. And this is, when we speak of imputation, this is the imputation of the active obedience of Christ.

But there's also an infusion whereby we partake of Christ's righteousness such that we may be righteous because on our own, we cannot be righteous. So I like how I began this by saying, I didn't have much to add, but I became a yapaholic real quick.

But you know, there's so much to say here in regard to righteousness. And the fact that God does not look at our inward righteousness as the sufficient basis on which he judges us, but rather he sees Christ's imputed righteousness to us.

And that is truly a beautiful thing that Christ won on the cross for us was true righteousness that we may be made acceptable in God's eyes, that we may participate in divine glory and through becoming a brother of Christ, we may be made a son of God.

I am impressed, Matthew. You said you weren't prepared to talk about an attribute of God, but now you're quoting Puritans and Calvin. Where did you, how did you find that that quickly?

I just quickly looked up something I remembered. I remember the part of Calvin, and then I found that Perkins quote that I had read the other day. And so, yeah, no, I found out about that attribute like five minutes before because my time management skills are just wonderful,.

But well, I'm impressed. That was pretty good. I was gonna read Romans. I think you already covered the theology, but I keep thinking Romans four, I think it's eight or nine where it says that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness.

And we obviously know that as the alien righteousness of Christ, that Christ's life is credited to us. So, and then also I was thinking about Jesus when he tells the Pharisees, do not practice your righteousness before men to be seen by them, but before God.

So righteousness should have an outward manifestation in our lives. It does lead to action. It's not just an inward quality. And so, yeah, a righteous person does engage in good deeds, but the motives are important there too.

They need to both be aligned, the motives and the actions. So, yeah, everything God does is consistent with righteousness. And it doesn't matter if we don't understand it. It just, that is who he is by definition.

So, all right, now that we're about 19 minutes in, if anyone has questions on any of that or comments, please. I noticed we have a couple hundred people streaming, but no one's left a comment yet. So we'll be waiting for those as we go into the podcast.

I think this is the first time I've ever noticed that, that we've haven't had one comment this far into a podcast.

Dr. Bob isn't here because it's not a Tuesday evening.

That's what it is. We threw everyone off, but I think you're right. Yeah, Dr. Bob is our most faithful commenter, isn't he? Have you, you've never met Dr. Bob, have you?

I have not. I've never met Dr. Bob.

I know Dr. Bob. Oh, there he is. There he is.

There he is.

Tori comment. There he is. All right, so Dr. Bob is here. Yeah, I've met, I've seen Dr. Bob. I, he's, you know, I'm not gonna blow his cover, but he's out there. He's doing his doctor stuff. So, very grateful for that.

He was my, you know, COVID doctor during 2020.

I was like.

Did he vaccinate you?

No, no.

I'll let him represent himself. He was trying to figure out, I think, where the medical community was going, and he provided some commentary. But I think, I think he, Dr. Bob, I don't wanna misrepresent you, but I think you were a little cautious at first that I was so skeptical of this particular vaccine.

And then I think, and not just the vaccine, but the lockdowns. But then I think you kind of realized or came around. Not because I have more medical knowledge than Dr. Bob. I don't at all. I just really don't trust the government.

So that's, that's where that came from. And the medical community, I think.

I don't know.

All right, we're gonna talk about an article from TrueScript. We're switching gears here. It's called, Through the Roof, A Call to Spiritual Action by Seth Wayne. Seth Wayne. And it's a pretty good article.

I wanna read it for you here. And yeah, I think everyone can see it now. It starts out this way. It quotes Mark chapter two, verses three through five. And they came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men.

And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him. And when they had made an opening, they let down the bed where the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, son, your sins are forgiven.

Mark two, three through five. And then the article says, these verses tell a story most of us entrenched in Christianity know. It tells a beautiful story of friends who care so much for one another that they lower their paralytic peer through a roof to Jesus, who they know can heal his ailment.

It sounds nice, but I've heard this story many times and didn't realize I became numb to it. Several years, several times I've passed the verse over without recognizing the true beauty held within. These friends picked up their paralyzed friend and brought him to Jesus.

We don't know the actual extent of this man's paralysis, but from the text, we know he couldn't walk. I have never had to lift a limp body, but I know it's difficult. I've shouldered heavy sandbags of 100 and 150 pounds from the ground.

And this awkward movement is hard work. These four friends lifted this man likely around the same weight of sandbags I've listed and carried him to go see Christ. Carrying a heavy sandbag over the shoulder for a short distance is difficult, but they worked together to carry their friend for an unknown distance.

However long, it likely wasn't an easy trek. When the men arrived, they couldn't get to Jesus because of the crowd. Too many people blocked their way. The men didn't quit, but instead went above and beyond.

They carry their friend to the roof of the building. Not only did they walk carrying the man, but they lifted him up on the housetop. I've never tried to lift a sandbag onto a roof, but I can imagine it would be difficult.

And after the paralytic was on the roof, the men removed a piece of it. Don't pass over this like I have before. They took apart the roof. I don't know what the roof was made with. Did they tear off the shingles, remove straw, tear through clay?

I don't know a lot about the New Testament period architecture in Capernaum. Either way, they physically tore a large hole enough to fit a grown man through, then lowered him down to reach Jesus directly.

Through their great faith, Jesus saved the paralytic. These men took on multiple physical grueling tasks to bring their friend to Christ. Nothing about it was easy. When they finally got to where Jesus was, they could have given up because the crowd was too large, but they pressed on.

They knew that this man, Jesus, was important for their friend to meet, likely the most important man he would ever meet. So we'll stop there. That's part one of three parts of this. And reflecting on that story, I, obviously it's a familiar story.

It's the kind of story you share with your kids. And I just, I never thought of that either. I skip over that. I'm assuming it was probably some kind of like mud and straw or something. I mean, I've always assumed it must've been easy, but probably not.

I mean, if they're lowering him through, they have to be standing on the roof. So it's gotta be solid enough for them to stand on. And to do this required not just physical strength, but I mean, can you imagine the awkwardness of it?

That's the thing that's standing out to me. Like you're the spectacle. You're kind of cramping on everyone's style, raining on the parade by showing up. And can you imagine what people would say? Oh, the arrogance.

We're all here to see Jesus. And these people just wanna jump to the front of the line. They think that they're more important than everyone else. I'm sure that was probably a thought of some people in there and they, I mean, it's kind of creative.

They're resourceful to be able to do this, but ultimately they just had great faith that Jesus was able to heal this man. And I don't know if I would have had the social and mental and physical fortitude to do all that, to risk my own reputation.

I mean, they didn't know what Jesus was gonna do. They could have been called out immediately for ruining this guy's roof and taking Jesus's time away from other people who had presumably waited in line.

I mean, this is kind of not cool in a way, but Jesus saw their faith, saw that they actually really did believe. They weren't there because he was just a celebrity. They were there because they knew that he could help their friend.

And then I guess I would finally say, before hearing from you, Matthew, they weren't jumping to the front of the line themselves. These four guys were on the roof. So they're not gaining any benefit from Jesus directly themselves.

They're just doing it for this one man and letting him see Jesus. So it just shows a lot about their own righteousness and character to do something like that. And I know he's gonna, I think he's gonna make this point as we keep reading, but do we treat Jesus that way?

Obviously it's the application. Do we think of him the way that they thought of him and are we sacrificing to bring others to Christ?

So, I'll allow you to do that.

No, I, yeah, great analysis, John. Something that this reminded me of is, and I would kind of, I wrote through the article before the show and he does sort of apply this to the labor of love that we ought to show for those who are spiritually lost or even like within the family, you know, things can be like, it's difficult sometimes.

Like, you know, the idea, like one example he gave was like, you know, getting your kids already on a Sunday morning or getting everyone to already go to church or whatever. You have to make it a routine.

You have to actually labor for these things. These men had to labor. You're carrying around a body, you're climbing up a roof, you're taking apart the shingles. And I too, like Mr. Wayne in this article, I do not know, you know, the sort of material that the roof was made out of regardless of what it was and what they put in, they still had to get up to the roof, take this apart.

Even if there was, say there's a circumstance in which it is easy to get up there, they're still carrying their, you know, disabled friend. And this reminded me of, in Thomas Watson's book on the Lord's Prayer, there's a section where he's talking about, you know, thy kingdom come.

And then he distinguishes the kingdom of glory and the kingdom of grace. And in talking about how we obtain the kingdom of grace, he, you know, this sort of talks, this sort of speaks also to what we were talking about with righteousness about how we are made righteous by imputation forensically, but then we're also made truly righteous by infusion.

In speaking of what must we do to obtain this kingdom, he says, in general, take pains for it. We cannot have the world without labor. And do we think to have grace? And then he quotes Proverbs 2, 4, if you seek her as silver.

And then he says, a man may as well expect a crop without sowing as grace without labor. We must not think to have grace as Israel had manna, who did not plow nor sow, but it was rained down from the heaven upon them.

No, we must operum dare. I don't know if I pronounced that Latin right, but he translates it as take pains for grace. Our salvation costs Christ's blood and it will cost us sweat. Now, of course, he is not being legalistic here.

He's not being Pelagian here. The idea that he is setting forth here is that the Christian life is paradoxical. There is a sense in which we rest in Christ. Come to me, all who are heavy laden and burdened.

I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me for I'm gentle and lowly of heart. And yet there is also a sense in which we must take pains. We must do things. We must get up. We must pray. You can't have salvation without prayer.

Nevertheless, these things are gifts. We're given the ability to do such a thing. And so now take this when you think about yourself and how the Christian life involves you going to church, praying, reading the word of God, fasting, keeping yourself devoted and steadfast in all these things and apply it to other people.

These men took pains to get him on the roof and to lower him to Christ. They saw what God had done for them. They thought we ought to do this for this man. And we can use this analogy because when you look at Christ's healing and restoring all these people throughout the gospel narratives, what does this ultimately point us to?

How Christ heals us. Because sin too is a spiritual sickness. It's a disease. It cripples us. It blinds us. And Christ healed the sick. He healed the crippled. He gave sight to the blind. And likewise, in the same way, he sees us who are dead in our trespasses and sin, dead from this sin, like this disease of sin, and he heals us.

He resurrects us. And so this is the important part. If we are resurrected by Christ, we are healed, we ought to take pains and labor that we are to make sure that others can have access to this as well, which is what these men did.

And there's like an old little evangelical kind of quip where it's like the church is, it's like a hospital for the sick. It's not like a place for the righteous. And it's actually true. There's a lot of little evangelical quips that are said and are popular and that you may hear and you may think, oh, that's kind of corny, but they're actually true.

And this is one of them. The church is a hospital and the means of grace are your medicine. And if you don't take your medicine, you're gonna keep getting sick. And you need to make sure that people have access to the means of grace, to the word of God, to prayer.

And that's so important that we're able to think of others that way, because it's very easy to get comfortable in life and get passive and think, oh, well, only those kooky guys are street preaching or door knocking, yada, yada, yada.

But you ought to have that same fervor and desire. If you don't feel called to street preach or door knock, apply that in your life broadly. And I know that I don't always do that the best. Sometimes I become passive.

I kind of tell people I'm a Christian, like, oh, that's cool. And that never comes up again. Yet that's not the life that we're called to. We ought to take pain, take pain for the salvation of other people.

Charles Spurgeon says about this, one convert will bring another and that other a third. But this narrative seems to show that there are cases which will neither be brought by the general preaching of the word, nor yet by the instrumentality of one.

They require that there should be two or three or four in holy combination who with one consent, feeling one common agony of soul, shall resolve to band themselves together as a company for this one object and never to cease from their holy confederation until this object is gained and our friend is saved.

This man could not be brought to Christ by one. He must have had four to lend their strength for his carrying, or he cannot reach the place of healing. And that's a good, really good observation, I think, from Spurgeon there.

And obviously in our own lives, I think we can see this, that oftentimes it's not just one person who shares the gospel, but you have to, the laborers work together. Sometimes it's multiple people. Sometimes it's someone shares, someone else, one waters, one plants.

There's different parts that we play. And I think in almost every case I know of, there's not been just one person. There's been multiple people who are involved in someone's conversion. And it's always the best when you're that last link in the chain, because you get to see the privilege of the person passing from darkness into light.

But it's not you. And I oftentimes hear people say, I think I've even said like, oh, I led this person to the Lord. And yeah, I mean, it's not inaccurate, but it's not also totally accurate because it's not just you.

And obviously the Holy Spirit is behind all of it, but usually there's a string of people that have been used before you ever arrived on the scene. So yeah, good point from Charles Spurgeon. The article goes on and it says, these men had a fervor for bringing their loved one to Christ.

Do we have that same fervor? Would we take on the same challenges to bring our loved ones to Christ? Our challenge likely wouldn't be physical, but there are challenges. Do we broach the hard conversations with our friends, having faith in Christ that his will shall be done in those conversations, or do we shy away because they are awkward?

For parents, do we bring our children to church, even though it can be difficult to get all our little ones dressed and ready on Sunday? Do we take the time at home in the evening? So it goes through all these questions and it says most of us want the easy way out.

I will say that there's all these evangelism programs out there that usually guarantee, or they don't guarantee, but they'll tell you, like we do it in a less awkward way. I have never once found a way that's not awkward.

I mean, sometimes it just seems to flow in the spirit, but it's still awkward in the human realm. Like you're bringing up something that is, it's hard for a non-believer to hear that they're not on their way to heaven.

That's really, there's no easy way to say that or to insinuate that, or to get them to even come to that conclusion without it being awkward. I don't know how you avoid that. So some guides are smoother than others, but it doesn't matter how smooth you are, that there's always a hill you have to climb.

And then he goes on and he says, another way we can understand this passage is in reference to our service to fellow Christians. We don't need to expend greater energy on the lost than the found. So to put forth our strivings towards reaching the lost, we should also strive to edify our local church.

Serving a local body is not easy. Some go to church every Sunday, but that's all. Corporate worship is one of the primary purposes of the church, but there are many more things to be done. He goes on and he says, we might ask, are we putting in the work to grow closer to Christ in our own time?

So it means a general call here for sanctification and greater closeness to Christ. But I would say that that is, I think the main, that's the main thing here is we wanna be near Jesus. And we want those that we love to be near Jesus.