Debate Debrief

What's up guys, my name is KJ and this is Wild Theorology. So glad to be back and I have Jermiah with me. What up my peoples? Yes sir, yes sir. Now Jermiah, he actually just got done doing a debate with them Church of Christ on the, it was on baptism.

And so kind of. What's your feedback on that, man, your experience with that?

So it was about baptism, but the guy debated, he really wanted to try to not make it about baptism and I would not let him get away from that, KJ. The proposition was super wordy, I'll try to recall it.

The New Testament teaches that the liberty from the penalty of past sins is at the point of an external act of obedience. Now that's a word salad, that's just a bunch of jargon. But what he's basically saying is the penalty of our sin is taken care of by our works.

And that external act of obedience in his doctrine, and I know this, and I made it, everybody and their mother know that this is baptism. And it's not our works that forgive our sins. So I encourage KJ, everybody that listens to this, please, please, please go check it out.

You can check it out on my YouTube channel. And I'm starting to push KJ the apologetic dog a little bit more. That's gonna be awesome, that's awesome.

Now what's your YouTube channel. For people who don't know, name?

Yeah, so right now it's still just Jeremiah Nortier. And I haven't decided if I'm just gonna make a totally separate YouTube channel called the apologetic dog, or if I'll just integrate it with mine and perhaps change my name to the apologetic dog there.

But regardless, people will be able to find it pretty quick if they're just searching for my first and last name. Obviously those things can be found on my Facebook page. And Facebook is about the only thing I do anymore, KJ.

Facebook and YouTube, so people can always reach out to me through that social media platform.

I definitely, now if I'm not mistaken, correct me, but I think one of the verses that he tried to use to kind of point to, hey, you know, baptism is the only way you can be saved, was it Romans 6, 17?

Yes, let me turn there, because I'll be honest, this is a little bit bizarre, that he wanted to build his whole proposition, his whole case on two verses, and I'll read them for us real quick. But I have a lot of thoughts about this, KJ.

I felt very blessed and equipped to handle all the arguments that were coming forth. And like I said, that's just by the grace of God. But yeah, his entire case hinged on a particular understanding of Romans 6, verses 17, 18, those verses are the same.

But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

And his whole case was through that phrase to the standard of teaching, some translation, I think it's a form. He thought if he could just prove that that form meant a visible sign, then he wins the debate.

And KJ, I think this is worth kind of letting the audience know, I actually love Brock. Brock Kendall's his name, I love him more than he'll probably will ever know or realize. And so months leading up to the debate, he was constantly calling me on the phone, asking me really good Bible questions about like, what is repentance?

What is regeneration? What is my understanding of the gospel? And so KJ, I just had tons of conversations with them and I was like, God, please soften his heart, please open up his eyes, you know, understand.

And people were telling me, you shouldn't be talking with your interlocutor so much, because obviously he's just, you know, wherever making notes and doing this strategically, and I realized that. But I really wanted to approach this as evangelism.

I care about him and his soul, regardless of all these other things. So through that, he also was telling me his angle about the proposition and how he was gonna defend it. I'm over here, not even asking him for that necessarily.

So as I figured out he was gonna be going to these two verses, I thought, well, I need to be more familiar with Romans six, because this will be a huge part of the debate. He'll be pushing that and I'll be pushing all these other verses surrounding what that external act of obedience is, which is baptism.

So I wanna talk about all those other proof texts. So KJ, this is interesting. The more and more I studied verses 17 to 18, I knew I wanted to capitalize on the phrase obedient from the heart, because that is faith, obedience from the heart.

Justification is by faith apart from works. Paul spends Romans chapter two, three, four, really making that case. And he even really starts in chapter one, talking about how we're all sinners before God suppressed truth and righteousness.

That's why salvation, i .e., or justification must be on faith apart from anything else we can do, so that God could save us by grace. So I thought, okay, I'm really gonna key in on that phrase. And I kept studying the chapter and then I noticed in verse 19, and I won't read the whole thing, but verse 19 goes on to say, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

Now, you read the New King James, don't you? KJ, what does it say? Does it say a different word? Okay, so the New King James says holiness, same Greek word. And so the more I studied this chapter, I noticed sanctification pops up again in verse 22.

But now that you've been set free from sin and become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and it's in eternal life. So I thought, wow, sanctification is only mentioned twice in the whole book of Romans and it's two times in Romans chapter six.

And so I knew how I was wanting to approach this debate. The proposition says the penalty of past sins, well, he's talking about penalty, that's judicial. That has to be talking about justification, which is by faith.

And the proposition says the penalty of past sins rests on an external act of obedience. That's wrong, right? Justification rests on faith, not on our works. So I thought, well, he's really gonna be saying this context is about works.

And I thought, you know, I actually think he's wrong, even in the verses that he mentioned, because to the standard teaching, yeah, that might be a visible form, but it's not talking about the visible form of works that we do.

That's talking about the visible, tangible standard of teaching that has been given to the saints through God's word. That's the visible form. And I thought, I'm not gonna get lost in the weeds by trying to explain that to him.

I'm just gonna say, yeah, this context is dealing about some type of works that we do, because that visible form of teaching includes works of obedience, because the context is about sanctification, not justification.

So I knew that that was gonna be a huge part of the debate. Paige, I know I'm explaining all this to everybody just in brief. And there was one other point. I knew I was wanting to show that this is talking about sanctification, not justification.

And then earlier in the context, Paul's talking about the power of sin, not the penalty of sin. Verse 14 earlier says, "'For sin will have no dominion.'". In the verse 12, "'Sin in your mortal brain.'".

Don't let sin have power or dominion over you. And so I think from beginning to end, I praise God because I knew how this debate was gonna go. I knew I could tell everybody, what you're gonna hear from the opposing side is a conflation or a mixing of justification and sanctification.

So we can't do that. They mean different things. I knew I needed to define faith and works, how they relate, how they're distinct, and then define the word baptism because it can be a wet immersion. It can be also an immersion into suffering or one's authority and context will always determine those things.

So KJ, I felt very blessed and equipped. And I mean this with all humility that I possibly can. I felt like the route the opposing side took to stand for their position was probably the easiest route for me to just show everybody everything that's going on.

Definitely, definitely.

Now, just for some of our listeners who may not know justification, sanctification, how could you summarize those two things?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what I tell people is the scripture teaches us that salvation is a process. Salvation means deliverance. Now, we kind of see this in three phases. There is a sense in where a person, a believer, a saint has been saved, past tense.

They are being saved, present tense, and then they will be saved one day in the future, still yet to come. So we have been saved as children of God in the past tense by being justified. This is the legal declaration from God pronouncing us innocent, no longer guilty of the penalty of our sin, and we are declared righteous.

We are declared justified, just as if I never sinned. That's past tense at the moment of faith, okay? And that's so wonderful. It's a faith, a heart that trust in Jesus. This is essentially the gospel message.

A transaction takes place. When you look to Jesus, all of your sin, past, present, and future, gets put on the cross of Calvary. And since Jesus is a perfect savior, you get his perfect righteousness covering your account, covering you completely.

It's counted to you, right? There's a legal transaction. And so we're saved, past tense, positionally before God. God no longer sees our sin, but he sees the righteousness of Christ covering our behalf.

I believe this is 2 Corinthians 5 .21. This is the father made Jesus him who knew no sin, that he might become the righteousness of God. I wish people knew that verse, KJ, more than John 3 .16. I love John 3 .16, don't get me wrong, but I want people to look to those verses that talk about this transaction that's going on, right?

So that's a believer being saved, past tense, by faith. And we obviously will say faith alone, faith apart from any accomplishments, any works that you possibly could do, including baptism, right? So that's important.

And then sanctification is this ongoing process in the present tense of us being conformed more into the image of Jesus and being set apart. That's what sanctification means, to be set apart from the world.

And we do this by walking in obedience to all of what God has commanded us. That's where baptism belongs. This is where gathering together with the saints belong. This is where meditating and reading and studying God's words belong.

Everything that we do falls within our sanctification in terms of works of obedience, right? But when we say you must be obedient from the heart, we're saying, yeah, put your faith alone in Jesus and you'll be justified.

And then out of that justification enters that sanctification. That's an ongoing process. And we continue to be more and more like Christ from one degree of glory to another. And we'll never reach perfection here on this side of eternity.

You got those heretical groups that says that they're sinless or they can reach perfection. It's never gonna happen because we're gonna always be warring against our flesh, Romans chapter seven, right?

And Romans six, the dominion reign over sin. That's this ongoing fight against the flesh. We are no longer slaves to it. We're slaves of righteousness, but we still war against sin's reign in our life.

It has power, but we're warring against it because we've already been justified in Christ. We already have the indwelling Holy Spirit warring against sin and the lust of the flesh. Remind me to say something about that later.

And then lastly, glorification. What's neat is you can always understand each of these three phases in reference to sin. Justification is being declared righteous from the penalty of sin. Sanctification is being released from the power of sin.

And glorification one day we will be set free from the presence of sin. We will have new resurrected bodies fit for eternity as we see our Lord and Savior face to face for all eternity. And that's still future, not yet.

So salvation is a process. Philippians 1 .6 says, "'He who began a good work in you.'". So we can even go one step past or before justification. The Holy Spirit must regenerate us. Regeneration is that initial point of God working salvation in us.

And then he's gonna bring it to completion to our glorification one day. Let me say this also real quick. I know I'm saying a whole lot, KJ. You're okay, you're okay. But I noticed the other side afterwards, they were really upset with how the debate went.

And I hate that for them. But I think ultimately truth revealed itself at the end of the day. And when falsity or error has truth like a shining light beaming on it, I mean, it's like cockroaches, they scatter.

You know what I mean? So something that they said accused me of later, and I don't really care. I mean, I still love these guys. They just said, well, if you can be justified by faith, then you don't really have to do anything.

And I'm just like, man, when you've been regenerated, when you died to the old self, you desire to walk in holiness. And they said, well, that means you can be justified and still be a slave of sin. And you know, I just wanna encourage people, that's not what Romans is teaching.

Those that are in Christ, that have looked to him in salvation, by repentance and faith, and they now desire to walk in holiness. They are no longer slaves of sin. Jesus said, he who sins is a slave to sin, right?

But if the son sets you free, then you are free indeed. So you're now a slave of righteousness, but you're still warring against the power and reign of sin in our flesh and in this world. We can't escape its presence.

And so we're constantly warring against its power because we are slaves, not to sin, but to righteousness. I just wanted to throw that in there real quick.

Some good stuff, man. Definitely check out the debate. Like again, Jeremiah said it's on his YouTube page. I think it's on Facebook as well, if I'm not mistaken, on 12 o 'clock.

Yeah, the best place to watch it, KJ, is on my YouTube channel. Like I said, you can just look up Jeremiah North here. What I've tried to do, you know, YouTube videos have show notes. So if you look below the video, you can click down.

I've tried to organize it where people can clearly just click to the opening statement, a rebuttal, cross-examination. I try to make it really easy to break it up into parts because let's be honest, it's two and a half hours and you really got to carve out a lot of time for something like that.

Definitely, definitely. I enjoyed it, man. I'm glad you reviewed it again for us, for the listeners. So maybe that'll kind of make somebody be encouraged.

I wish you could have been there in person, man. Yeah, I'd be there the next one, man.

Yeah, yeah. You're a celebrity now, so you'll get plenty of calls. I don't know about all that. Thank you, Jeremiah, for being on with me. Hope you guys have a good day.