Pat Abendroth on the Active Obedience of Christ 

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. I was going to substitute the music for the intro to the band called

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New Order with a song called Confusion because Pat and I have been trying to get everything set up and the

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Abendroth brothers can't really seem to function when it comes to technology. Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. Mike Abendroth is your host and today on the show

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Pastor Pat Abendroth. Pat, welcome back. It is great to be on No Compromise and yes, it's been a little confusion, a ball of confusion.

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Who sang that song? I think that was Love and Rockets, right? Yeah, and they covered it from like a 1960s, you know, funk band or something.

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So, I think that's the theme of my life is ball of confusion. That's what the world is today.

00:57

Hey, hey. Well, this relates to what we're going to talk about today. Pat, I was working on the sermon,

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Jesus in Luke 5 said, I didn't come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

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And I was thinking about Jesus, the righteous one, 1st John 2. I was thinking about Pharisees, self -righteous, and I was thinking about tax collectors and sinners, unrighteous.

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And I'm just thinking about what kind of intro I could have and so I thought, remember that old band the Righteous Brothers? So, I pulled it up and I thought, hey, what did the

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Righteous Brothers sing? And I found out that they, A, weren't brothers and B, that they weren't too righteous. Were they ever arrested?

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Well, the one guy overdosed on cocaine, so I guess he was unrighteous.

01:46

Okay, well, I hope by the end, before he breathed his last breath, he had imputed righteousness by faith alone to Christ alone, right?

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That's right. Not infusion. We might talk about impartation, but a different category than justification.

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Exactly. Maybe they were the Righteous Brothers because it was some kind of intrusion already, not yet.

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They didn't even know what they were speaking about, kind of thing. But what if the righteousness was just a legal fiction?

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Well, there is that. There is that. So, Pat Abendroth is the pastor at Omaha Bible Church and has been for probably 25 years or so, plus how many,

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Pat? 26? 1998, so not real good at math, but somehow I have several degrees.

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Well, you always joke that, you know, public school education, and I started at Laura Dodge at the elementary school, and then a new school was built called

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Masters. We were the Masters Monarchs. It has nothing to do with a theological institution in California. That's right.

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So, I graduated from Masters, sixth grade. Same teachers you had, Dr. Sanfilippo, but I don't know what grade it was for.

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And then, eventually, Masters Seminary graduated with you. So, onward we go, as God's providence would have it.

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My favorite teacher, I think, maybe it was Sanfilippo, and I know you talked to him not long ago. I had another teacher

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I thought was cool because she had an orange Camaro convertible, and she once had dinner with Gene Simmons of Kiss, and so I thought that was street cred for an elementary school teacher.

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I know. I'm sorry I got you involved with all these bands. You know, I was probably 15 going to see

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Kiss, and that meant nine years younger. You were six listening to Kiss. Well, it's interesting.

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I can't say journey because pactum listeners might listen to this, but our pilgrimage is similar in terms of our father dying, the

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Lord using different people to preach the gospel to us, both getting saved shortly after dad died.

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And then, isn't it interesting that we essentially believe the same things? I mean, I would still love you if you're an

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Arminian, but I probably wouldn't love you as much. Maybe not effectually.

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Mike, I like to tell people, they say, oh, you know, how's your brother doing? I'm looking forward to meeting your brother. He's gonna come speak at the pactum conference or whatever, and I say, you know,

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Mike and I are so alike that we don't get along. And then I laugh, and I say, actually, we do get along, but that's how alike we are.

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So, I'm thankful in God's mysterious providence that we do get along.

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It's pretty amazing. Amen. Well, I want to talk a little bit about your new book, but before that, since you brought up the pactum conference, tell our listeners about the conference last year, because I think it was really wonderful and exciting, and then you can tell us about the conference this fall, 2024.

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Absolutely. So, in 2023, we had a conference that focused on eschatology, but not necessarily like millennial issues.

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It was hope for the future, no more tears, things like that, things that are certain because of the

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Lord Jesus that we're waiting to experience. And great time. You were one of the speakers. D .G.

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Hart was one of the speakers, as well as Michael Beck from Two Age Sojourner, and I think we were all surprised.

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The people at Omaha Bible Church hosting and all of the speakers, we were surprised. Even the other guests, the pastors, people that came from all around, we were all surprised with just how well it went, how warmly received everything was.

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And it was such a big success that we thought, well, I guess we better do it next year, too. A lot of work, but praise

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God for that. So we're scheduled. I think we have people sign up already from 18 different states, and I imagine that will just fill up to who knows how many.

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But October 11th and 12th, God's Good Law in Omaha, Nebraska, Pactim Conference. And this year, it's

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Mike Avendroth, Pat Avendroth, David Van Drunen, and Jimmy Fesko. And as you might imagine, if this year is going to be on the law in 2024, 2025 is already being planned, and it will be on the gospel.

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So it'll be no compromise approved and Pactim approved. Law and gospel, both important.

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Don't confuse them. Amen. Well, that kind of leads into what I want to talk to you about today,

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Pat, and that's your new book, The Active Obedience of Christ, just released this year. Wonderful little book published by the

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Pactim. And before we get into the book, you mentioned the law.

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Walk our listeners through, if you would, please, about the law, meriting, righteousness, a lot of that kind of thing.

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Because I think most people, or some people rather, they get nervous when we talk about merit. Tell me about the law and how this leads into this whole book.

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So maybe regarding nervousness and merit, it seems to be true, and I'm not the first one to say this, but everyone puts merit somewhere.

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So everyone puts obedience and reward somewhere, and you're either going to have it be all of Christ, and He did all of the work necessary, or you're going to have it be all of you, or maybe a mixture in between.

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And historic Christianity, Biblical Christianity would say it's all of Christ. That's why we receive salvation freely, not because we do anything, but because He did everything.

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So merit's actually a good thing. It's positive. Salvation is by works. It's just not by our works.

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So that's important. Regarding the law, people get nervous about that because a lot of times people don't realize that the law is not only the

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Mosaic law, which was specifically applied to Israel as a nation with animal sacrifices and all the rest.

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God has always required allegiance to Him, which is another way of saying obedience to His requirements, which is another way of saying law.

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So I like to say, Mike, there was law before there was law, just to kind of get people thinking.

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So long before Exodus and the giving of the Mosaic law, God still required that you love

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Him appropriately, that you see Him as God and treat Him as God. So love Him with heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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Love your neighbor as yourself. That's always been true. It was true during the Mosaic time, if you will, but it's also true afterward.

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So law is always in effect. Jesus at Luke 10, we should probably talk about that. Reaffirm this.

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Do this and live. If you love God appropriately, heart, soul, mind, and strength, love your neighbor as yourself, you will gain eternal life,

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Luke 10. And so that's where we face our conundrum, our problem. God requires perfect personal perpetual obedience for eternal life.

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There you have it. So Houston, we have a problem. That's what the requirement is.

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Trevor Burrus Pat, you were talking about the two great laws, love God and love neighbor. Have you ever hugged yourself in front of a church sign regarding the great third commandment, love yourself?

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Trevor Burrus So no compromise, listeners, if you're not on, you know, the super gnostic inside track, what your host,

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Mike Ebendroff, is getting at is one time we were on our way. Mike was visiting back in Omaha.

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We're on our way to Omaha Bible Church where he's going to preach. And we drive by a kind of evangelical mega church for Omaha.

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And the sign, the kiosk said something like today's sermon, how to love yourself or whatever.

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Typical Ebendroffs. We looked at each other and we knew what we were going to be doing after the morning services at Omaha Bible Church.

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We were going to be stopping in that parking lot doing the self hug and a photo op. So. Pat Smith Well, I want you to know,

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Pat, that loving myself is written on my heart. Trevor Burrus Right. No man ever hated his own flesh.

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Pat Smith Talking to Pat Ebendroff today on No Compromise radio.

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We've mentioned the Pactom conference. Don't forget, dear listeners, pactom .org. You can pull up all the shows.

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I think Pat's got, I don't know, a couple hundred shows by now with his co -host, Mike Grimes.

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I listen to every show, Pat, except the shows that I'm on. Pat Smith But you listen to like, you listen on like 30 speed.

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So it's a defilement of the image of God. Because it's chip monkeyology.

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Trevor Burrus I listen to 1 .5 speed. What do you listen to? Podcasts? Usually podcasts, I just listen to the straight up as it is.

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Audiobooks, I'll speed it up. But there's just something, you know, sort of like the apps where, you know, our kids have smartphones.

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Oh, we can't say that because kids are supposed to have smartphones. Anyway, when our kids, I kid, when our kids have smartphones, and they distort their faces and make themselves look like, you know, all contorted,

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I can't look. It's just like, it just makes me like, that's not right. So that's audio listening.

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1 .5 is a defilement of the image. Trevor Burrus See, who said you're an antinomian?

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Because you can't even do that. You're such a legalist. I think mainly, you know, all legalists are antinomian, but that's another show.

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All right. So the title, Active Obedience of Christ. I'm sure our listeners understand what that is.

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So before we get some nuances on the difference between active and passive and that type of thing, tell me how you eventually recognized how important this was.

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You didn't really think it was maybe that important. But then you started studying a certain doctrine, and you thought, this is a mandatory doctrine for Christian fidelity, and also for Christian rejoicing.

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Step one is going to be when you start to grapple with the doctrine of justification, and you figure out that the

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Bible teaches justification, sola fide, you know, by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. So the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls according to Luther -esque kind of thinking.

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So once you have that, you say, okay, but what upholds justification? And well, what upholds that is imputation.

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So that's the crediting. So the crediting of what? It's righteousness. Well, what is righteousness?

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It's law abiding, law keeping. Well, before you know it now, all of a sudden what's upholding justification sola fide is yes, imputation, but it's not imputation of nothing or imputation of a concept or God certainly most absolutely doesn't credit us with his divine attribute, which would be heretical and make us divine.

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He credits us with the obedience of Jesus, with the perfect righteousness, with the perfect law keeping of the

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Lord Jesus. And now all of a sudden you have the complete package. So otherwise

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Rome would be correct saying, oh, that's legal fiction because it's faith alone. No, it's not. It's actual perfect obedience, but it's not ours.

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It's Christ. And so once you do the deep dive, if you read Buchanan or you read

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Fesco or Horton, any of those good volumes on the doctrine of justification, before you know it, you are going to be waking up in the middle of the night saying active obedience, active obedience, active obedience.

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What color is the Buchanan justification book that you own?

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I think the one I own was probably, it's the orange external cover, but I don't know what color it is on the inside.

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Okay. I kept that orange cover because I call James Buchanan the orange man of justification.

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Orange man good. Make active obedience great again,

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MAGA. Yeah, that's right. That should be on a t -shirt. You can have another t -shirt that says final justification is a lie and that'd be a big seller.

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Oh, I think maybe it was inspired by your talk at the last ACM conference and we've made it famous around the world now.

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All right, Pat, let's get into just a reminder for everyone. Sometimes when you read the word active and then we read the word passive, somehow we think something wrong about Jesus and his suffering and Jesus and his obeying the law, i .e.

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honoring his father and mother, help us to have clarity on active and passive words as meant by their theological meaning in justification lingo.

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Sure. Mike, what we want to make sure we do, and we've talked about this before, is realize that the work of Christ is complete, it's whole.

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So in one sense, this is artificial to take things apart, but in another sense, if we want to see the beauty and the wonder of it all, we can say, okay, active and passive obedience, one complete obedience, and by passive, we do not mean he was ever passive.

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It comes from a word that just means suffering originally. So in one sense, it's unfortunate that we say passive, but it's a word that means suffering.

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So his whole life was a life of suffering. So he had dear friends who died because of the wages of sin is death.

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I mean, he was acquainted with sorrows and grief, and he was treated unjustly, unfairly, all sorts of things throughout his whole life, born into a broken world.

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And he, his sufferings culminated on the cross. So think of Philippians chapter two, even death on a cross, he obeys suffering, all suffering, but it's also all obeying.

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So he always did all of the right things throughout his entire life, including complete the mission that his father sent him on to fulfill all righteousness.

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And so it's just looking at the perfect work of Christ from two different perspectives. He was always suffering and he on our behalf even, uh, and, and, but he all also was always obeying the law of God so that when

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God declares believers righteous, it's based upon something real. Um, and it's his real obedience to God's God's law.

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So it's super simple in one sense. Um, some theologians, even good theologians have been less than clear on this, not that I'm always perfectly clear, but they make it sound like his life was that the cross was suffering and his life was obeying.

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Um, and actually that's, that's not quite right. Let's have it all be suffering and it all be obeying.

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Uh, and we're more on the right track. Pat, would it be fair to say if we, in addition to what you said, included a look at a law and the law has a positive side.

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If you do that law, there's some kind of reward. And if you disobey the law, there's some kind of punishment, the positive and the penalty side of the law.

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Does that help us? I think it really does. I'm glad you bring that up. So Christ may, you know, he'd made atonement, perfect atonement for our sins, for our law breaking.

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And he also perfectly fulfilled the obligation of loving God and loving neighbor. Uh, some, you know, some folks are more biblicist in their way of thinking.

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I know that means a lot of different things, but I'm trying to trigger no co -listeners maybe. Uh, but for some people, if the

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Bible doesn't explicitly name it, they, they're suspicious. Well, like active obedience isn't in there, passive obedience isn't in there, but, but to appeal to more of the biblicist mindset, because I've kind of been there, done that.

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You have to, the first John does specifically and explicitly say sin is lawlessness.

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So we know, we know we're talking about law when we're talking about obeying

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God, because the opposite of sin, the opposite of law is lawlessness.

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Law keeping is lawlessness. And the Bible says that that is sin. So when we hear people say, well, there's no, we have no connection to the law anymore.

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So we don't need the active obedience of Christ anymore. That was just mosaic. Well, no, anytime you see the word sin, it's talking about law breaking, kind of going to your point.

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Good. Pat Abendroth here today with myself, Mike Abendroth on No Compromise Radio Ministry.

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Don't forget, you can pull up Pat's sermons, omahabiblechurch .org. You can go to thepactum .org to listen to the podcast and you can pick up both his book,

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The Act of Obedience of Christ and his other great book, Covenant Theology on Amazon.

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Pat, what if somebody said to you, hey, pal, Romans 5, therefore as one trespass led to the condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men,

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Romans 5, 18. Doesn't that destroy your whole act of obedience deal? I guess

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I would just have to say, if you just, if you only would read my book and buy it, then you'd know the answer to the question.

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It's an excellent question, and I actually do address it because on the face of it in isolation, looking at one text, you'd say, well, the one act of obedience, so that clearly was just, just his death.

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Well, I think Paul is using shorthand to kind of capture something that carries a lot of freight, carries a lot of weight.

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Because if we look a little bit broader in chapter four, for example, he was raised for our justification.

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Well, that's not his death. That's actually a different aspect of his one work. But apart from the resurrection, we don't have justification.

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So, we need to step back and look at the bigger picture, not just zeroing in on only the details.

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So, that's how I would answer that question. So, we have to have his life, his death, his resurrection.

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I mean, for that matter, we have to include his ascension. We're going to include all the significant aspects.

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Without any of those particulars, we would not have actually the That's correct.

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And it's easy to just see that verse as a description of his whole life of perfect obedience. Pat, one of the things

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I often say to myself and to the congregation, anyone who listens for that matter, why don't we just have the death of Jesus recorded in the scriptures?

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We start off in Luke 23, we end in 24, and that's it. Why Luke 1 to 22?

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Well, lots of answers, fulfillment of prophecy, you know, all these other things.

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But we get to know about the person of Jesus. Who is this person? So, we don't disconnect his benefits from his person, the whole

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Christ, the totalus Christus. But in that, when you watch Jesus, we have to ask ourselves the question, how would a true man live?

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How would a perfect man live? What does it look like for someone to perfectly, entirely, exactly, perpetually obey the law like Adam should have?

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But let's watch Jesus now in his life. Is that a fair way to read the Gospels? Absolutely.

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Can you imagine, Mike? Can you imagine being the half -brother of Jesus? Can you imagine being James? You know,

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Mother Mary, would you say, if you could just be more like your older brother? Because Jesus would have always obeyed.

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He always would have cleaned his room if he had one. He always would have done so with a happy spirit. I mean, everything would have been exactly right.

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It's so good, as the song says, that the right man is on our side, the one who fulfilled all righteousness.

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It even makes me think of, you know, 1 John 2, you mentioned it earlier. 1 John 2 has become so sweet to me because of understanding these things.

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Christians, I'm paraphrasing, Christians don't sin. But if you do, we have an advocate.

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And who is our advocate? Jesus Christ, the perfect lawkeeper. Jesus Christ, the righteous.

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So, it would be one thing if we had an advocate, but we need a perfect advocate who can claim us.

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He can say before the throne, if that's how it is, yes, indeed, Mike Avendroth has not loved you and done the right thing today, but he's mine, and my righteousness is for his, imputed to him, justified by faith alone.

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It's so good, and it brings assurance and comfort and joy, and it makes us want to do the right thing.

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It makes us want to not sin. Amen. Well, that's kind of my last lead -in,

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Pat, to talk a little bit about what you just said, practical application, so what, comfort, joy, etc.

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Here's one of the things I liked about the book. There are many, but just one I can talk about now. In a similar fashion, outside the topic of the book, when we want to try to talk about grace to people, we, in our circles especially, like to give

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Jerry Bridges' books out because his Gospel for Daily Living or Transforming Grace, most people respect

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Bridges, even if they might not be where we are when it comes to law gospel, etc. In a similar fashion,

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I liked it that you quoted John Bunyan, because this seems to me a good tactic. They respect, most evangelicals respect

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John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, they're familiar, they trust him, and you write in the book, a quote from Bunyan, that there is no other way for sinners to be justified from the curse of the law in the sight of God than by the imputation of that righteousness performed long ago and still residing with the person of Jesus Christ, end quote.

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And was that an intentional thing? I'm going to use people that others accept readily, and then it'll help, a spoonful of sugar helps medicine go down?

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Indeed, and we want to quote all different kinds of people, whether it's Bunyan or Spurgeon or, you know,

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Witsius or whoever it is, to show that in so many ways, this is a Catholic doctrine, lowercase c.

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Roman Catholicism might reject it, because they're not very Catholic, they're not very universal, but this is a universal doctrine that Christians have been affirming, and it's been more the deviants, the kind of creative types who've wanted to color outside of the lines who've rejected it.

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So indeed, it's a tactic, trying to win people over so that we can recover this great and wonderful doctrine that so many people have forgotten about, and hopefully it leads to greater praise.

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You know, I like to say I've always thought Jesus was good. In fact, I've always thought he was great, because he's forgiven me of my sins, he's made atonement for my sins, but he's even better than I realized, because he not only gets rid of my guilt and sin, he positively gives me, freely gives me what

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God actually requires, which is obedience. Petey Amen. I was talking to my son and your nephew,

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Luke, the other day, and he was required for seminary to read Trent, the

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Catholic doctrines at Trent, and he said, Dad, and I know you'll echo this,

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Pat, if you read Trent on justification and just believe the opposite of what they write, they perfectly understood the doctrine of justification by faith alone as Protestants, right?

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That's so good. And what's so crazy is so many Protestants sound like Roman Catholics.

25:50

Well, I think as T. David Gordon in the book Why Johnny Can't Preach, he said if Luther sat in, if it were possible for Luther to sit in on a worship service in most evangelical churches today, besides the blue lights, besides the drums and the guitars and things that he might not know about, he would listen to the sermon and say,

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I didn't know this was Roman Catholic Church. Oh, it's a shame, but we laugh because indeed it is true.

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I wish evangelicals and pastors and supposedly Reformed pastors,

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Bible -believing pastors, I wish they would always preach like they're talking to people who are

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Roman Catholic, because at least then they would be clear on the fact that the merit is all in Christ's category, if you will, and none of it is ours.

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And that's true no matter what, whether you're talking to a Roman Catholic or not, it's how it always is, because otherwise, you know, soli deo gloria is not true.

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God alone be the glory. It's a good litmus test for whether or not your preaching is distinctly

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Protestant, biblical, glorifying to God, glorifying to Christ or not. Does he get all of the credit or does he not?

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And so many Roman Catholics in Omaha and in Massachusetts, here in Boston, we have to be very, very clear.

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Last thing, Pat, tell me about the strategy you had for the size of the book, the price of the book.

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When I write books, you know, they're a couple hundred pages, they're big, they're expensive. When you write books, like, this is just perfect to hand out to people at church.

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I know many churches buy a bunch and just hand them out to people. What's the strategy of getting church leaders to buy a bunch of these bulk and then hand them out to people?

27:36

Strategy is, I'm not the smartest, you know, I'm not the brightest crayon in the box. Well, what does that make me?

27:44

I appreciate the question. So simplicity is, you know, underrated, clarity is underrated.

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I think it was Brian McLaren, the bad teaching guy. Brian McLaren said clarity is overrated.

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We say the opposite. It's underrated. So let's be clear. I think there's a place for big, long books.

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I'm so thankful for them. But I think there's also a place for short books that get to the point that can really help people that aren't overwhelming.

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And so that's why I wrote this book and made it real short. I think it's maybe 11 ,000 words can be read pretty easily.

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Anybody can read it if they want to read it. We give a copy to every church, you know, every church member and other churches are doing that as well.

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So I guess you keep writing the longer ones, even though yours aren't so long, though.

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31 -day guides, that's very digestible, very easy. So I think the

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Abendroths are playing on the same team. What if I did a 31 -day guide to active obedience as a supplement?

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We could do that. It reminded me, I just heard somebody talking about this in the past, where clarity is so important and needed, simplifying doctrines, not simplistic, but simple, clear.

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And then the word we use in theological discourse for clarity of scripture is one of the most unclear words that we have, perspicuity.

29:08

I don't even know how to spell that. Another thing,

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I'm getting more and more requests for discussions, like discussion questions. So at the end of the book, there's a link to free discussion questions.

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You can get online and download the PDF. And so I think I'm going to probably start doing that more and more because people like it, you know, for a small group.

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So all of that's there and available. Well, you know what, Pat, just made me think of something else. Someone said to me,

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Mike, in the back of your books, do you have a picture of yourself? Other books. And I thought, oh yeah, some companies do that.

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So maybe we should start doing that. You could have at the back of the Act of Obedience book, a picture of Covenant Theology book. Yep. Yep.

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Cross -pollinating, I guess, is what we're up to. Yep. That's right. Well, Pat, thanks for coming on No Compromise Radio.

29:58

Thanks for having me on the Pactum, where we talked about one of my books. And see how we do this? I scratch your back and then you scratch my back, or how does that work, really?

30:06

It sounds like an Old Promise Keepers event or something. We're going to do Holy Ghost Backrubs. Oh, don't even get me started.

30:13

What's that one guy say? Number one, don't touch me. Thanks for being on,