How Can We Know We Are Saved? | Theocast

All right, we are back with not just another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast, but also an episode of the

TheoCast podcast. I am Sean DeMars, and you guys are? Justin Perdue.

John Moffitt. Yeah, so we always like to get started with prayer, if that's okay with you guys. All right, and I'll have the guests open us, whichever rock, paper, scissors to see who opens us up in prayer.

Just one, one for the win. Let's see who's got it. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. All right.

You're up, man. How do you figure it out? I did paper. Because I won, so I get to pray. That's how we're doing it.

I see how the game works. Let's pray. Let's do it. Our Father in heaven, we're grateful that you have shown mercy to sinners like us.

We're grateful to know that you are always with us. We pray that by your spirit, you would guide us in this conversation.

We pray that the things that we talk about would encourage the saints, and that they would honor you. And we pray that in Christ's name.

Amen. Amen. Now, this is going to be a joint episode. A mashup, if you will.

A mashup, if you will. But who's leading this thing? I feel like, Justin, you're a take charge kind of guy. Well, Sean, I mean, you were the one who initiated this.

That's true. I got the ball rolling. You keep it rolling. I mean, we are in our office, but your equipment, so it's kind of a tie.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Hey. I mean, we can play rock, paper, scissors. All right. Well, let's start this.

Tell us about TheoCast. Tell me what your name means. I think I can guess. And then tell me kind of what the heartbeat of your ministry is.

Yeah. John, you should go first on this. Yeah. Well, we were... A real short story. We were trying to figure out just a name for a podcast, and they were all really bad.

And one night, I was sitting. I'm like, listen, we talk about theology. It's a podcast. Why don't we just keep it simple and literally just call it

TheoCast? And no one else had had the name. And that's what it was. That in and of itself is shocking. Yeah. I thought...

I was thinking like, Theos, God, cast. I'm casting a vision out into... No. It literally was, we're a theology podcast.

We talk about all kinds of theology, and it's a podcast. So it was literally that simple, and no one had had it.

So we're like, let's just do it. But the podcast really has always been about helping people kind of pull back the pietistic, legalistic, self -help view of the gospel and putting people back into the reformation of the

Sola Fide, the confessions. And the tagline of our podcast is, Helping Worried Pilgrims Find Rest in Christ.

Say that one more time. Helping Worried Pilgrims Find Rest in Christ. I kind of mumbled there. Sorry, one more time.

Are you saying worried or wearied? Wearied. Wearied. Encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

There you go. See, maybe if I move the microphone down, you'll be able to see my lips. So that's been the heartbeat of it.

We'll take on theological problems once in a while if we feel like it's causing some confusion and rest, but we're really trying to help people find the sufficiency in Christ in all of life.

And then from there, they learn how to be a part of the kingdom. And so instead of...

Most Christianity feels like you're obeying God so that hopefully you'll make it into the kingdom.

And we think that's reverse. So that's kind of the heartbeat of the podcast is. Yeah, to add to that and maybe restate some of what you said in my own ways.

Yeah, we're trying to help people understand the utter sufficiency of Christ as their savior and what it means to be united to Jesus, not just for justification, but for all of the

Christian life and for what that means for their eternity. And I agree with John. A lot of times the way that even amongst serious minded, well -intentioned brothers and sisters in the

Lord, even like Calvinistic brothers and sisters in the Lord, if I can say that word, there is this...

There's a sense in which you're kind of chasing after something to prove your legitimacy.

It's like, yes, it's all of grace. It's by faith alone in Christ alone. But now there's a sense in which if you're not careful, you might just mess this up and prove yourself to be an unbeliever.

Do you think that's a non -valid category? No, I'm not saying that there aren't false professions.

Of course there are. But I think the emphasis sometimes in...

Again, I think because of... And we can talk about all of this. Because of the bad fruit of revivalism amongst other things, legitimate responses to easy believism and legitimate antinomian theology, there sometimes is a posture, again, amongst well -intentioned pastors where it's almost like we need to smoke out the fakers.

And that tone... I mean, we're just coming in hot here. I mean, that tone informs a lot. I mean, even when it comes to preaching in the way that we pastor people rather than the emphasis being on Christ for us and union with Jesus, kind of like Paul's response in Romans 6 where the age -old objection, if where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more, should we just sin?

Right? That's a legit question that the gospel raises in one sense. And his response is interesting because he doesn't say by no means, here is what the law says even.

It's not how he starts. And he doesn't say by no means if you are a serious Christian and not a fake, here's how you live, the way he begins to ground the saints and help them think about their obedience is by no means because we have been united to the

Savior and we've been baptized into Jesus. We've been set free from sin's guilt, and now we are free from its dominion.

Right? And so that's effectively what we're trying to do is put the emphasis in that place and to help people see that the

Christian life is not one where we're chasing after status. We've been given justification.

We're not chasing after an identity. We've been given one in that we've been adopted as children of the

Father, and we're now in Christ, and we live from that, not for it. And so that's really all we've been meaning to do for a while and help people know that you're not a

Christian because of what you do. You're a Christian because of what you believe. And now that you've been united to Christ, that is who you are.

And we even in the pages of the New Testament would see that's how the apostles often exhort the saints toward holiness.

Live like who you are now. We can talk about all this more, but... Well, even the illustration when Jesus says you want the wheat and the tares, it's like you start pulling out the tares, you're going to pull the wheat with it.

So we leave that alone, which is different from if you have a false teacher in your congregation.

They have just exposed themselves to the point where they have to be removed, right? But it seems like a lot of preaching when we're dealing with our congregation, there's always this,

I guess, this fear that we have a false convert, false convert, false professors, false conversions.

And that tenor, it becomes like, it's been in our experience in the history that I come from, from like a fundamentalist,

Calvinistic background, that seems to kind of be the tenor of the preaching. We're always trying to find the person who's faking and make sure that we kind of bring them to repentance.

So the preaching becomes very exacting and very self -examination. And we're not giving people hope that's beyond their own capacities, really their own obedience.

And to be clear, I mean, John and I both pastor churches where we practice church discipline. And so nothing that we're saying right now is in any way calling any of that into question or evaluating our lives.

We're all about healthy examination and healthy introspection even. What we're pushing back against is the hyper introspection or a constant kind of examination and measuring of oneself that becomes actually very unhealthy and counterproductive because the emphasis now becomes, and the focus becomes me somehow.

Like rather than being pointed to Christ always, and then seeing my own

Christian life through the lens of Jesus as my representative, Jesus as my substitute,

Jesus as the one to whom I've been united. And then I see me through him. I'm brought into the foreground and my life is the focus.

And we feel like that is an inversion of the best ways to talk about Christian living.

So... You look like you have a thousand questions. Yeah. You get to ask them. Yeah. You gotta tell us about your podcast. Ooh, okay.

Do we wanna keep rolling down this train or do you wanna... I'll leave that up to you. Yeah, let's finish your train, and then if there's any time left, we'll talk about me.

All right, sounds good. See, we're deferring to you. Save the worst for last. All right, I see that. Lead us, bro. So you got the lead now.

Yeah. Lead us. Okay, so what I wanna try to do is imagine people who might be listening or watching who will have questions or perhaps disagreements with the way you've stated things.

Because very often what'll happen is people will view... And you used this word a couple times in what you were saying, brother.

They'll view your emphasis from their perspective, not necessarily understanding your perspective or your context, and they'll evaluate...

I've used this example multiple times, people pushing back against Platt's radical book. Sure. It's some of the critique very valid.

Sure. Also not understanding that David Platt was pastoring one of the wealthiest churches in America where people were not in any way trying to sacrifice radically.

And it was in that context that I think the book made a little more sense. Now, it did get published to the whole wide world, so that's another question entirely.

Sure. So let me think about my context in line of what you just said, okay?

Sure. My context is I'm a pastor of a church in one of the most churched cities in the Bible Belt, okay?

A city of 55 ,000 people. All of the bad juju you just mentioned, revival and revivalism, false converts, go down the water slide and get baptized this

Sunday. Yeah, 100%. 100%, all that stuff. Contextually, there's a very serious pastoral need to let people know that the way that they've been thinking about Christianity is wrong, and that they may in fact not have any good reason to be confident in their salvation.

On top of that now, theologically and textually, I'm thinking about verses like, examine yourself to see if you are truly in the faith.

Or pick any one of the first, second, third Johns, you know, love, obedience, faith, they have to go together.

Examine yourself to make sure that they are going together, because if they're not, you don't actually love God and all that other stuff.

So what would your counsel be to a pastor like me, who says, yes, I'm on board,

I want to do gospel ministry from a place of Christ's accomplished work for us on the cross, but at the same time, this is a real problem, so how do

I do this? Examine yourself, you know, all this. How do I do this in that way?

So I would... You believe in the sovereignty of God and salvation, correct? Well, yeah, of course. You consider yourself to be a

Calvinist. For whatever reason, at times, there are portions of our

Bibles that we are put into a context, and we forget about them. So no matter what context someone is in, the jungles of Africa, a transgender, or someone who was raised in the big evangelical church with the water slide, they all need the same thing.

Their need doesn't change. Is that fair? Yeah, yeah. Their need doesn't change, but we see different emphases in different parts of the

Scripture depending on the audience. Well, let me reword it this way. If you're dead, you're dead. It doesn't matter how...

You resurrected. Exactly. And then what resurrects them, right? It's the same gospel that resurrects all three, right?

It does not change. So if I'm wondering if someone is not in the faith, the solution doesn't change.

It's always, we present them with the law. Have you met the standards by God's requirement, perfection to the law?

Well, all three are going to have to say no, right? Then you ask the second question. Then by what means do you consider yourself to be accepted by God?

Well, the two over here are going to be like, who's God, right? You got the person in the jungles. You're going to have to explain that to them.

The transgender, depending on their background, and then you're talking about this person in the south who's been raised in the church.

If they say, well, and if their answer isn't faith in Christ and the gospel and trusting in his sufficiency on my behalf, if it's anything other than that, like a good person, my baptism, then you understand their experience at church isn't really a gospel.

They haven't heard the gospel yet. So salvation is always by one means and one means only.

It's not taking your faith more serious, doing certain kinds of acts of obedience. You can never equate someone's salvation with their performance, because if you do that at that moment, you're not saved by faith.

You're being saved by works. I also pass through a very similar context that you do. I mean, Nashville, Bible Belt of the

United States, and I very rarely meet anybody in my city that doesn't go to some kind of a church or associated with some kind of a church.

Or call themselves a Christian. Exactly, right? Although increasingly these days. It even feels like it's changed in the last like 10 years or so.

It has only in that... Yeah, I think you're right about that. Tennessee has gained a lot of outside people from outside of the

South. Go back to California. Actually, that would mean you would have to go back. Exactly, yeah.

So this is, for me, pastoring and encouraging other pastors, it's always what is it that leads people to salvation?

And Paul says it's the gospel, right? The gospel is the power unto salvation. So if I'm ever questioning if someone's truly not understood or they're not living according to how they're supposed to be living, it might be one, they're anemic and they've not been discipled because that definitely happens because Paul said rebuke anemic churches.

It's like, hey, Corinthians, stop sleeping with each other, right? Or they actually aren't saved and the only solution to salvation is the gospel.

So those are what we're kind of trying to push back with. If you come in with heavy -handed, harsh preaching, it won't convert them.

So here's how I would say it. If I think that the people

I'm speaking to, that a number of them are false professors, by definition, a false professor would be someone who we suspect is unregenerate.

The strategy there, and I know you're going to agree with me, the strategy there is not to tell dead people to try harder, right?

It's not to tell dead people to be holy or to obey more or to be more serious, et cetera.

The solution in that environment, the strategy in that environment is to preach the law in all of its holiness, in all of its perfection, the fact that it reflects

God's own holy character and that it is to be obeyed perfectly at a spiritual level.

You know, the Jesus and Matthew 5 kind of thing, right? You need a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the

Pharisees. You have heard it said, what a shocking, audacious statement, right? You've heard it said in the 10 words, right, that God gave on Sinai, you shall not murder, but I am going to apply that at a spiritual level to your heart, that if you have anger in your heart toward your brother, you're a lawbreaker.

He does the same thing, excuse me, with the seventh commandment. And he sums up Matthew 5, verse 48, you must be perfect as your heavenly

Father is perfect. That's the way that we would preach the law. And the law preached that way to a sinner, all it can do is lay you bare.

All it can do is condemn and crush and kill you. It cannot save you.

And so that, to me, is where you begin if you think that you've got... So don't misunderstand what we're saying, not that you are,

Sean, but even for the listener out there, we are not saying that you don't preach the law, you do. You preach the law to expose, you know, the law used as a mirror, right?

As we assess ourselves in light of it, we see I'm undone, I'm condemned, and I'm driven to Jesus Christ who died to fulfill the law's penalty and who lived to fulfill its requirements, right?

And he is the forgiveness of my sins. He is my righteousness. I've covered in his robes.

I've washed my robes and made them white in his blood. And now through him alone, by faith in him alone, apart from anything that I could ever do,

I have peace with God now and forever, right? So that's that law and gospel reality. You know,

Charles Spurgeon says, and Spurgeon's a guy that we all like, and it's hard to disagree with Charles.

Hard, very hard. Really hard to disagree with Charles. Even the Armenians love him. That's right, I know. I'm always shocked.

So while for our purposes today, it's really interesting too, not only do Armenians love him, but folks that are not covenantal theologians love him, and he was covenantal.

Folks that might get a little nervous about the way that we would talk about the distinction between the law and the gospel love him, and he would say the same things.

And he has a sermon in a little book that I think Michael Reeves edited it,

Christ's Glorious Achievements. And the first sermon in that book is called Christ, the

End of the Law. It's worth a read because he does this very thing where he talks about the law to a sinner can only judge.

It can only condemn, it can only kill. And he says, yet strange irony, we cannot keep men away from it.

Just like the gnat that is drawn to the candle, even though it burns its wings, we cannot keep men from seeking righteousness by the law.

Right, and then he goes on to say other things like, brethren, as we talk about the law, we're breaking it.

You know, as we talk about its letter, we're violating its spirit, right? All of these things. And that his point in all of it is that when it comes to righteousness before God, there is only one way to receive it.

And it is not through the law. He says, if you ever think that you can ascend to God up the trembling sides of Mount Sinai, it is evidence that you have never seen that shaking mountain at all.

Like you don't understand the law. Let's just forget everything else we were gonna talk about and just quote Spurgeon to each other.

Right, it's beautiful, man. Always so good. It's really good. Just to show another question that you asked was, what about examine yourself to see if you're of the faith, right?

Justin and I had a really long conversation one day on a podcast about this because we've heard this passage used so often.

In that context, Paul is dealing with people who are questioning his apostleship and his gospel.

And so he tells them, okay, you don't accept my apostleship and you don't accept my gospel. Well, that's how you came to faith.

So you better examine yourself to see if you're truly of the faith because you got it from me. And in that context, it doesn't really work out unless you are somehow questioning your pastor's faith,

I guess, or questioning the apostle Paul's faith. But does that mean that there isn't other portions of scripture that would cause us to think that a self -examination isn't warranted?

Yes. The only time that you're gonna see that there's a self -examination that is warranted is in passages where there's unrepentant sin, where you have been confronted and you've been told, hey, you're in sin, you need to repent, and you're unwilling to, you're unwilling to repent.

Justin and I would agree, you really need to examine yourself at this moment because if we have confronted you with the law, we've shown you you're condemned, you were unwilling to stop doing this, you really are -

We've confronted you with the law and we've demonstrated that the way that you are living is out of step with what the Lord says is good.

And you disagree with that, I don't need to stop doing this. Then at that point, you are actually demonstrating that your faith is not in scripture and in Christ, and you really should think twice about calling yourself a

Christian. That's very clear in scripture. First John talks about that, James talks about that. And so there is the unrepentant disagreement with the law.

Now there are people that I'm sure you've experienced this, we both have, where even our own lives, there are times where we can get trapped in sin.

I don't agree, I should be doing this. We can even be blind to the sin that we're trapped in. Exactly.

Oh, for sure. I don't wanna do this, I don't wanna be in it, and I need help getting out of it. That's very different being trapped in sin versus not agreeing with God on your sin, right?

So at that point, I would say, hey, you really do need to think about your profession of faith because you're not agreeing with God on the gospel and you're not agreeing with God on what is sin.

Yeah, and even what's the difference between a Christian and a non -Christian or a believer and an unbeliever?

It's not that the believer doesn't sin and that the unbeliever does sin, it's that the believer agrees with God about his sin and sides with God against it.

And then is trusting a righteousness that is alien to him to cover his sin.

Trusting in agreeing with God about my sin, siding with God against it, I'm casting myself into the arms of the

Savior whose blood I'm covered by and whose righteousness has robed me. That's what makes a person a

Christian, it's that. It's not that we don't sin. Of course, we fight against it, we strive against it.

You know, with the help of God's spirit as we live life in the fellowship of the saints, we lock arms together. As we are pilgrims in this life, we pray for protection from the evil one.

We pray that God would give us grace that we might not sin. All of those things are right. And those things are not contradictory in any way.

To be fully assured and to know that we have rest and peace with God in no way leads to licentiousness.

We continue. It shouldn't. It should not. And I would put it this way. The preaching of the utter sufficiency of Jesus Christ never caused anyone to sin.

Because let's be frank, none of us need help sinning. We have a corrupt flesh that still loves sin, right?

And so we don't need help sinning. And so the fact, the idea, I think this is partly what Paul's getting at even in Romans 6.

The idea that Jesus who died for our sins and who is our righteousness, the idea that being united to Christ would somehow coddle or nourish corruption and sin in us is absurd.

Like to be united to Christ, it's like we've been united to the vine, like John 15 paradigm.

And because there's life in him, there's no life in me. And being united to Christ, it's like, man, the fountain of holiness begins to flow.

Jesus is the fountainhead of holiness. And those streams do not dry up.

I mean, and it only flows one direction. The only way that we would ever be holy is to be united to the

Holy One. You know, and so that's a lot of what we're trying to communicate as well is that holiness is something that it only flows from Christ to us and it is through our vital union with him by faith that we would ever be holy in the first place.

And so we would say that if you want to see holy people in your church, of course, we preach the law, not only the way we were talking about earlier, like to the unbeliever, but we also preach the law as the guide of our lives, as the rule of life in Christ.

And we help, we encourage each other. We're like, man, look how good this is. Look how wise God's law is.

Man, we want to live like that, don't we? Because we've been given new hearts that now delight in God's law and love it.

And it's like, man, we want to live like this. We often fail. This is why we need repentance, why we need to continue to turn to Jesus.

Amen. We preach the law like that, but we also understand that the power unto sanctification is only through the preaching of Christ.

The law can guide sanctification, but it can't empower it. Only Christ and the power of God through our union with Christ is what actually produces the transformation.

So we gotta keep preaching Jesus to the saints for that reason. So first,

John. Well, just to be clear, I want to make sure I could articulate what you're saying back to you.

Not that I, all of that, but let me try to put a little bit of, especially what you said, brother. John, you said,

I think, that the only time a call for self -examination is warranted is if there's unrepentant sin.

A call for self, if you're gonna look at it in scripture. Well, yeah, that's where I'm looking at it.

No, I know what I'm looking at. Yeah, we agree about the book now. I guess what

I mean is a call for self -examination in question of one's salvation. Yeah, that's right.

Because Paul says, examine yourself to see if you have the faith versus examine yourself to see if you're being effective.

Because Peter does this. Yeah, for sure. Peter's like, hey, are these fruits in you? Versus 2 Peter 1, are these fruits in you?

Because if they are, you're effective. And if they're not, you're ineffective and you forgot you've been cleansed.

So there's this difference between effective effectiveness. That is definitely being called a lot.

I think in 1 John, you've been known by God, loved by God. Yeah, so there's a difference between, hey, you should examine the way you're acting right now because it's not loving, it's not kind, and it's not for the sake of the body.

And this is not effective for what we're doing. Or even say, yeah, and it's not honoring the Lord. It's not helping your brother. It's not helping your neighbor.

Yeah, there's a lot of calls to that. And I would say every epistle has those. It's kind of the greeting, uplift, rebuke.

That's in that rebuke section of like, I'm rebuking you because, well, you really should examine how you're acting right now. It's not appropriate.

Compared to, you need to examine yourself because I don't think you're in the faith.

Now that is a very, very important accusation, right?

Even in 1 John, 1 John's like, perfect love casts out all fear. Well, who has perfect love? Jesus does, right, towards us.

So we have no fear. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. When you think about Romans 8, what can separate you from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus?

So we're always comforted by God's love for us. We love, 1 John, we love because he first loved us, right?

The only time that you should really have a concern about your salvation is when you are now messing with the underbelly of the gospel, right?

That's where I was saying, even in that, the discipline passages are the ones where we're like, look, we've walked you down the road.

Now you're acting like an unbeliever completely versus you're acting sinful and not helpful.

Now you're acting like an unbeliever. So I have like, I have a dozen different things that I could say right now.

And maybe we'll get to that. I'll say something that is also maybe provocative. And I'm not trying to be a shock jock with this, but even maybe to dovetail a little bit, because I agree there are different kinds of self -examination.

I think that's a good distinction. Like examining, are you being effective? Examining, are you being helpful to your neighbor?

Are you living in a way that honors God and blesses your brothers and sisters and is for the edification of the body? Or are you not?

Versus examining yourself as to whether you're even a Christian at all. Or maybe phrase it this way. When should a person question his or her salvation?

And I think that the time when that is most plain in Scripture is when you are being confronted with sin in your life and you are unrepentant.

Or I might even put it this way. Now this is going to presuppose a lot that you're in a healthy church that preaches the gospel, that is led by godly elders and practices healthy discipline.

It assumes all that. But I would say - So there's like six churches that this is applying to. Yeah, so for all, you know, like maybe 500 people, like I don't even know how big the audience is, but for all 12 of you that this applies to, right?

I hope you're encouraged by what I'm about to say. Yeah, right. I think in a church that's healthy that practices discipline rightly, we should question our salvation when we are facing the discipline of the church.

And outside of that, we need, obviously, we're still calling each other all the time. In our services, we read the law every week.

We confess sin every week, corporately. We're assured of our forgiveness in Christ, but what are we doing there?

I mean, we're calling one another to repentance perpetually all the time. Amen. Which is a form of examination.

Right, we do that, but we're doing that in a way where we know, man, like we sing all the time, our sins, there are many, as mercy is more.

We're still doing that from a place of, we're convicted, we lament, we grieve the fact that we're weak, we don't wanna sin, but yet we do.

So what do we do with our sin? We confess it, we acknowledge it, we pull it into the light. But we're doing that from a place knowing that God is our father, not our judge.

Knowing that we're safe and secure in Christ. We're loved and known by God, and we confess our sins.

That's very different than, hey, I'm facing the discipline of the church and I should look at my life and question sincerely whether or not

I am in Christ or not. Those are different things. Yeah, so that was a thought that I had, one of the 12 thoughts.

Right, good. Hard to choose, I'm guessing, between them. Like which one is your favorite? Brother, I'm greatly perplexed over here.

You guys specialize, forgive me if that's not the right word, but I think if it is the right word, it's a good thing to specialize in, in helping believers find assurance.

Why do you think that resonates so powerfully with your audience?

Because, I mean, you have a pretty decent audience and people never get tired of it. People just need more of it.

They love it. Why do you think that resonates so much? Yeah, it affects their life, their daily life, right?

So if you live in, have you guys ever passed a police officer speeding?

No. And then what do you do for the next 10 minutes?

You're waiting, right? You're just like, you're waiting, you're waiting, you're waiting. Am I gonna get, did he catch me?

Did he catch me? Did he catch me? Did he catch me, right? That's how most people live their Christian faith. Is God gonna catch me?

Is this gonna be the day? Is this it? He's gonna, and so they live in this constant fear of the judge coming after them.

And yes, I know I've been cleansed. And so we, most people have a portion of the gospel.

There's really like four aspects to the gospel when you think about it. Like you have your forgiveness where God cleanses you of your sins, right?

This is the part where we stop. God has forgiven me. And it's, we have this clean slate mentality of like, if I don't mess up, then

I'll make it to heaven. Well, the second part of the gospel is that is not going to go well for you.

So all of Jesus's righteousness, everything that he did to obey, what does it say?

We're clothed in it. We're imputed with it. So those are the first two parts of the gospel, which is so thankful.

The third part of the gospel is that not only have you been forgiven and clothed, the power of the spirit comes and lives within you, right?

This is the promise of the new covenant. And then the fourth part of the gospel is that it's all 100 % kept by God's power, right?

And this is 1 Peter 1, verses four. He says, by God's divine power, he will preserve this until the day of judgment.

So when you understand that perspective of it, you live life differently.

A lot of people live their life trying to get into God's kingdom and making sure that at the end of their life, they'll make it.

You'll hear the tone and perspective of the New Testament's very different. You are in.

Now live like it. Live as a light to others, care for them. As a matter of fact, you are so safe and secure, you can die living for the king because all is safe and sound.

So when people are liberated from a full gospel, like all of the gospel is given to them, they believe in all of it.

This is what Paul is getting upset with them and even says - Sorry, not liberated from the full gospel, liberated to a full gospel.

To a gospel, yeah. Liberated from the fear of God, fear -based gospel, yeah. Paul gets really angry at the

Galatians. He's like, who's used witchcraft to bewitch you? He's like, how did you begin?

He said, you begin by God's sovereignty upon your life by faith. He goes, and now you're gonna continue by the law, the law of obedience so you can earn my favor.

He says, no, the way you began is why you continue. You came into the faith by trusting in the sufficiency of Jesus and you will continue by trusting in the sufficiency of Jesus.

So now obey this way. So I think a lot of people, it's really resonated with them because a lot of preaching coming out of revivalism, coming out of legalistic pietism, even the prosperity gospel, right?

You do your part, God does his part, he'll bless you. And even charismatic theology where it is, they're always trying to get the

Holy Spirit within them so they can confirm their faith, like speaking in tongues in certain aspects of it. So when you finally tell someone your entire existence in relationship to God is fully wrapped up in his power, there's a moment that's liberating, not to the moment where I'm like, okay,

I'm gonna go live for myself. You realize, I want to be closer to that and I want everyone else to experience that.

So the way I live, the way I think, the way I talk, it's all gonna be in reflection of the assurance that I have and all my peace and joy comes from that and I want you to have that peace and joy as well.

When you get around people who only have the cleansing side of the gospel and they're trying to work off the rest, they're often, well, we fail, we sin.

So we're often depressed, we're often doubting. And then the only way to sometimes find assurance is like, well,

I'm better than Sean, so I become judgmental. Not a high bar, but go on. But you become judgmental.

I mean, how many judgmental Christians have you met? Very few. Right. No, I think all of them of whom

I am the foremost. Right. I think the way I would begin to answer, you asked, why is it that talking about assurance resonates with people?

I think there's a lot here. I mean, I think at the most basic level, it's because as believers, we are sinner saints.

We are at the same time, we're justified, but we still sin. And so the fact that we still sin troubles us.

Our consciences accuse us. The evil one doubles down on that, right?

The way that Satan operates, I mean, we could talk about any number of things right now, but the way that the evil one operates to people who are outside of Christ, he convinces them, you don't need mercy, you're fine.

But to people who are in Christ, he says, oh, there's mercy in the

Lord Jesus Christ, but not for you. And I think many among us, our consciences are more tender than we might let on.

We're riddled by guilt and fear and shame. And when we have some sense of the holiness of God from the scriptures, we think like, my goodness, he is magnificent.

He is pure. He is holy good, but I'm none of that, right? And he is righteously wrathful against evil.

And I know that there is sin that just continues to come from the corruption of my flesh.

And when we're not taught, and this is what John was getting at. People have not come from context in the church, many, where they've been taught well about everything that Jesus has done for them, how the work of redemption is over, right?

And how there is nothing left for them to do when it comes to peace with God. And so there is this underlying assumption for many people that there is some contribution that I need to make in order to know that I'm safe and I'm gonna fail in making that contribution well enough.

And we see it all over. Or there is a, sure. Or there's a sense in which I question, like,

I know that I do not live the way that I want to live. I'm disappointed in myself.

God has to be, right? There's that suspicion. Or like you said, that analogy is beautiful.

If you pass the police officer on the side of the road and you're looking in the rear view mirror, there's this suspicion that a lot of saints have that at the end of the day,

God is gonna flip the script and he's gonna judge me. And he would be right to do so because I'm not worthy, right, is how we feel.

And so I think for all the people out there that have heard us talk about the love of God for them in Christ or the utter sufficiency of Jesus and everything that he's done for us and what this then means for how we relate to God, the fact that we can be safe in the presence of a holy

God is an astonishing word to speak. And I think for some people, a lot of people have a hard time reconciling that.

Like, is it okay for me to feel safe with a holy God? Well, in the Lord Jesus Christ it is, right?

And it's not that Jesus had to come and die and suffer so that God could love you.

It's because God has loved you from before the foundation of the world that Christ came. And now he's achieved all of these things for you so that there is no barrier to fellowship and communion with God for you anymore.

And now live in that, you know. And we've just not been taught that. Many of us have not come from an environment where that was what we were fed.

And so we, like Luther, Martin Luther's helpful to me on a lot of these things. Like Luther would say -

Just his tirade against the Jews stuff? Oh, you mean his law and gospel stuff? His law and gospel stuff. Or even

Luther's really tender conscience and the fact that he was so gripped by God's holiness and his sin that until he had had his tower experience and had come to see that the righteous live by faith and here's what that means.

I love his honesty too, where he would say, you know, we're told to love God and he'd say, love

God, I hate him. Why? Because I see in him, he's a holy judge and he's gonna condemn me and he should.

But it's like, that's how Luther felt toward God and he was so like warped out of his frame over this that, you know, he's confessing sin for hours and hours a day and he's, you know, flagellating himself and all these kinds of things and it's never enough and he was exactly right about that, you know.

And I just think there's a lot of people in modern Christianity that have had similar kinds of experiences or that's what they've absorbed is that I need to do something.

Last comment here, the Canons of Trent. So the Council of Trent was a Roman Catholic ecumenical council in the middle of the 16th century that was effectively held somewhat in response to the

Protestant Reformation. So they produce writings, canons, standards of this council.

And I think it's session six, canon 24. This would have been in the late 1540s.

Effectively it communicates that if anyone teaches that fruit or good works,

I should say good works or obedience are a fruit of justification received and are not a cause, right, of justification or of maintaining it, right?

Let him be accursed. And so I would say that in modern evangelical contexts, nobody is saying that we obey in order to contribute to our justification.

But I think there's an implication sometimes that we obey in order to maintain our justified status.

And that idea is straight out of the canons of the

Roman Catholic Church, that we obey to maintain something. The Protestant Reformed way to talk about it is we obey because we've been given everything.

And last analogy, I've lied several times in saying that I'm about to wrap up and I'm -

I can imagine being a congregant in your church on a Sunday morning. Landing the plane. 17th final point.

Brother, you have buzzed the tower four times. When are you gonna set this thing down? Yeah, exactly. So the analogy of the family is useful.

The apostles write this way with respect to obedience. They'll say, you're in the family.

That's not changing. That's what grace means. But now that you're in the family, here's how the family lives.

Rather than, you're in the family, but in order to stay in the family and not get kicked out, you need to live right.

Just completely different emphasis. No, you're in the family. God has adopted you. He's put his name on you. He's not ashamed to have done that.

He delights in you. He looks forward to the day when you're presented pure and blameless in his presence. There's gonna be great joy there.

There's rejoicing in heaven over the fact that this has been done for you and you've been united to the

Savior. You're in the family and that will not change because God has you. And now here is how we live in the family.

Live like who you are. And in my mind and heart, for me, rather than making obedience seem somehow less necessary or, well,

I don't need to worry about it then. Exact opposite is produced, I think, in the hearts of the saints where we say, my gosh,

I want to live for him. My goodness, I want to obey. And that doesn't mean that we're not warned.

We can talk about that in a minute too. What do we do with warnings? I mean, even 1 Corinthians 6, 9 to 11, when

Paul uses really strong language. Here I go buzzing the tower another time. When he says, he's just gotten done.

1 Corinthians 5, he's rebuking the whole church for the fact that there was a man who's having relations with his stepmother and you're arrogant.

You should be putting this man out. You should be grieved, but you're arrogant, thinking that this is somehow an expression of Christian freedom or something, that you can just do what you want.

You should remove this man from among you so that he might be restored, so that he might be saved. And then he's rebuking them for the fact that they're suing each other and they're dragging each other into court.

I mean, it's not a good look. I mean, it's a tire fire there in Corinth, right? And so then he says, he names a list of things, all kinds of debauchery and sin that we would find people engaged in.

And he says, do you not know? Like, do you not remember? Have I not told you that people who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Now that's law right there, man. That is a word of law and it should be spoken. And then he says this though, and such were some of you, right?

And then, but now you've been cleansed. You've been washed. You've been sanctified. You've been united to Christ effectively. And so I would even say there, that's an interesting passage where, circling back to our earlier conversation, strong words of warning.

Why would you ever do these things for which the wrath of God is coming? People who do these things deserve judgment. You're not that anymore.

You used to be that. You're different now. Here's your new reality. And now live like this.

That's what he's emphasizing even there. So there's various ways that the apostles even use strong language of warning.

Not all of them. Like some of them are more of that kind of discipline, question, examine yourself stuff.

Other times, it's not calling their salvation into question at all, right?

But it's still strong. Don't do this. But I'm not saying that you're not Christ, but you need to understand, don't do this.

Because this is not how you are to live. And this is not what you are anymore in the first place. Yeah. I'll just add one more thing to that since I haven't flown by the tire at all yet.

I'll get you a couple. You should, brother. It's a good thing to do. So water's nice, man.

Come on in. A lot of Christianity, rightfully so, is centered around good works, right?

We're concerned about that because there's work to be done. And what we're trying to do is put good works back where they belong.

Good works in the law are to gain God's attention and favor. Look what

I have done. Do you consider me to be righteous? Well, there's none righteous, no, not one.

But good works in Christ done by faith, they mean everything. But not for our justification and not for our sanctification.

What are they for? Think about most of the good works when they're defined in the New Testament, right? They're all outward facing, gentle, meek, kind, patience, forgiving, right?

So even the definition of... Pursuing love and unity. That's right. I mean, what are the two greatest commandments? Love God, love neighbor, right?

So as we're loving God, we're gonna love each other. So when you have someone who is assured, they realize that the purpose of their life and good works is not to gain

God's attention. It's because as Luther says so famously,

God doesn't need your good works. He used Christ to save you, but your neighbor needs them, right?

So consider how to build one another up. Lay your life down, right? Be sacrificial. Consider others more significant than yourself.

Even the fruits of the spirit, they're all outward facing, not inward facing. So when someone finally realizes, oh,

I can fail and fumble and do good works, and God will somehow use them for his glory and advancing the kingdom, that's a whole lot less pressure.

And it also makes sense when Jesus says, come to me all you who are heavy laden by the law.

Like you've tried to obey the law and it's not working. And what does he say? I will give you rest. And then he goes, my yoke, it's a whole lot easier because you're obeying from love.

You're obeying from what you already have. And you're doing it as a reflection for others' benefits. You're not doing it to try and keep or maintain that which can be kept.

You guys have referenced Luther a lot. Justin, I think I remember you telling me on a phone call, brother, that you actually have a lot of cachet with Lutherans.

Like Lutherans love some... Theocast. Theocast. We have good relationships with some confessional Lutherans, yeah.

Yeah. I've also found that people who sort of, again, to use that word, specialize or emphasize or focus on, they feel called to help people understand a more robust gospel, particularly in relation to assurance.

They are often accused of antinomianism as Luther was. And we are.

That's what I was going to ask. So I'm sitting here listening to you talk about the use of the law.

I mean, every other word. You're just like, the law, the law, the law. We have to hold the law. We have to hold the law.

And yet I'm pretty sure that you guys are accused of antinomianism. What do you do with that?

You just keep saying, I'll just repeat myself again. Well, I know,

I'm assuming your podcast is like, you want just blunt statements. So yeah. I just want the good stuff.

Exactly. I think sometimes people don't give us the courtesy of listening to everything that we say.

They'll take a sound bite of 30 seconds to a minute. That doesn't sound like people. Christians wouldn't do that.

No, definitely not. Recently, someone took a sound bite of 30 seconds and said some stuff and then someone sent it to us.

And I was like, you know, that's their discretion if that's what they want to do. I think it's uncharitable. Even our own book, our book that we have on rest.

What's the name of that book? Yeah. So it's called Rest, A Consideration of Faith Versus Faithfulness. It's free. Go to our website and download it.

Nice. Or you could buy it. Or you go to Amazon. Go to Amazon and buy it. But in there, you know, we were trying to...

A lot of what we're talking about, it's just condensed in down a lot smaller form. But we rewrote it.

We wrote our first edition. We decided to kind of update a little bit and we put a chapter on there that's...

So what about obedience? And I always chuckle because people get through the first half of the book, make their conclusion.

The last half of the book is dealing with like, what does this look like in our faith now? And I always chuckle because it's like, somehow they just forget to get to the latter part of the book.

And when you talk like we are, you're going to get the same...

And I feel comfortable in this. You're going to get the same accusations that Paul does. Paul's going five chapters is hardcore at you with the gospel.

And then he's like, all right, well, I know what you're thinking. So why don't we just disobey so that grace can abound?

And he stops people from doing that, right? And he goes into application. Well, there's no way you're going to obey rightly if you don't understand the gospel rightly, right?

You're going to obey for the wrong reasons. And it actually is damaging to you and to the gospel and to your faith.

And so Paul is... And the writers of the New Testament are very concerned about you get the gospel right, and then you put obedience in.

I think that a confusion of the law of what it is and the gospel causes this.

So we are rightly explaining the gospel for what it is. And it makes people nervous because then...

I'll tell you this right now. I am 100 % an antinomian and I will embrace that.

When it comes to my salvation, I can't do anything to be saved, right? Ephesians 2 .8

.9 makes that pretty clear, like 100 % antinomian. And so if you're going to say you guys are antinomian, well, where is the accusation?

When it comes to my faith in Christ and my justification, I am an antinomian. But when it comes to my post salvation, right?

Like now I'm regenerate, I'm alive. And you're telling us that you now are an antinomian.

I just think that's an unfair accusation because first of all, we both hold to and very clearly teach that church discipline is for the good of the church.

Well, you can't enact your discipline if there isn't a reason to obey. But the law changes for us, right?

Paul says that when those of us who are in Christ, we no longer have a fear of condemnation.

There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So well, then what is the law for us now? Well, the law becomes a wonderful guide.

Think of it this way. Go back to the driving illustration. We see the speed limit wherever it's at.

And that speed limit is there because it helps remind us what is a safe way to live in life.

That's exactly how the law becomes for us. It can't judge us. It cannot condemn us. But it is a good reminder that it's safe and good for us and for others that we obey in that way, right?

Stop signs are good because it means I'm not gonna plow into someone. So the law becomes that for us.

This is a good way to live. It reflects God's glory and it's good for neighbor. But it cannot condemn you.

It can't. In Christ. In Christ, right? But when you start, oh, disobeying the law, that's where church discipline comes in.

It's good for the brothers and sisters to come in and say, hey, I'm gonna confront you on this. I don't think you understand that you're violating

God's law. That's not good for his glory and that's not good for our church. And we would encourage that.

I mean, Galatians 6 .1, those who are trapped in sin, go to them and pull them out with a spirit of gentleness and meekness, right?

And so we preach all of the gospel and we preach all of the law, but we never combine them. And I'll give this illustration because I know you have some thoughts you want to say, or you might have another question, but one of the things that we are very passionate about is law gospel distinction.

The law is always do this, these commands, and if you do them, you will have the title of righteous.

And therefore, if you're righteous completely, you will live forever. The law is always do, list of things to do.

The gospel is titled as news, right? So news is either potential, no, news is always past.

And news is connected to a person. So the gospel is the good news of what Jesus did in all of his life, right?

So his birth, his life, his death and resurrection. So the gospel is all about what has already been done.

You either believe it and have eternal life or you obey the law and have eternal life.

Those are your only options. And the whole Bible is broken down into these two categories. Unfortunately, in modern day context, the gospel is you repent, you do, you turn away from your sins and you obey enough and have faith in Jesus and you can have eternal life.

And that's where that collapsing happens. And that's what we're trying to say.

We get called antinomians because we won't allow the law to be collapsed on the gospel.

The law has its place before salvation and the law has its place after salvation, but never in the gospel.

That's why we get called antinomian. Yeah, I mean, I think, so we did an entire episode,

I don't know, in the last six months, nine months, why we're not antinomian. The listeners could check it out and get the more long form answer.

Yeah, I think we're accused - Longer than that? For real, bro. Yeah, it was like 45 minutes. Yeah, you know,

I mean, obviously, I mean, Paul was accused of being against Moses. I mean, that's like he, right.

I mean, that's pretty clear. And then, I mean, Luther, the reformers, same thing.

I mean, and then, you know, Lloyd -Jones is famous for saying, if you're not accused of being an antinomian, you're probably not preaching the gospel.

I mean, all those - That one hits. It does. I mean, so that's all legit. That's fair. So in some senses, you, when you're called an antinomian,

I think as Christians and as preachers of the God, of God's word, of the gospel,

I think we've received that with like, yeah, amen, it's, yeah, I'm happy to take that shot.

Happy to be lumped in with all these others and yeah, received. Specifically when it's, you're talking about emphasis of the gospel, not because we've been caught in some atrocious sin.

Sure. Right? So that's all true. I think the reason that we get called antinomian largely is because of what

John said, because of our commitment to the distinction between the law and the gospel and how we want to protect, because at least as we understand the scriptures, the law is a covenant of works, like do this and live, right?

This is how Jesus speaks often in the gospels to various audiences of people. I mean,

I'm thinking of, you could think of the rich young man or you could even think of the prelude to the parable of the good

Samaritan. I mean, there's things there where in various contexts, people will say, teacher, what do

I need to do in order to have eternal life? Jesus straight up says to the scribe in Luke 10, well, what's in the law?

How do you read it? And the scribe answers, love God and love neighbor, basically.

And Jesus says, you've answered correctly, do this and you'll live, right? And then of course that scribe seeking to justify himself and we would ask, well, according to what?

According to the law, he asks, he begins to litigate and asks, well, who's my neighbor, right? I mean, so even there, we see the law as a covenant of works, like do this and you'll live.

Then you have the gospel, which we would refer to as effectively the covenant of grace, right?

Where it is given to sinners, we receive it by faith and it's all completely wrapped up into what

Jesus has done. And so there is no sense in which those two categories of works, grace, law, gospel should be collapsed into each other.

And I think because we maintain that distinction so staunchly, we are often accused of being antinomian.

And what I would say in response as to why we're not, two things we've mentioned already, so I'll be brief.

One, we'll see. Watch me, brother. Watch me. I like this guy. One is we practice church discipline.

Two, we uphold what has historically been called the third use of the law. The law is the guide, the law as the perfect rule of life.

And so just for those can you just give the first, second, and third? Sure. So it depends on which tradition you're talking about.

So like Lutherans would number this differently than reformed folk would. So for us, the first use of the law, and again,

I want to be really clear here. This is like anything else we're grasping at the leash of language to try to describe these things.

And these categories, they're not just perfect. They're like, oh, once you have these three uses, everything just fits neatly in a category.

And that's not what we're trying to say, but they are. Kind of like civil ceremonial. Also, that's people trying to categorize things that are really pretty interconnected.

But I do think these are helpful. So historically, the first use in the reformed tradition is the law as a mirror, right?

That it's given first and foremost to show us our sin and then drive us to Christ.

And so this is like Romans 3, 19 and 20. You know, the law holds everyone accountable.

It shuts everybody's mouth. By works of the law, no flesh will ever be justified since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Or the law was given to increase the trespass of Adam, right? Romans 5, 20. Like when in the aftermath of sin, when the law was given, it didn't make things better.

It actually made it worse, right? Romans 7, 13, you know, so that sin would be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

Or Galatians 3, 19, the law was given because of transgression until the promised offspring of Abraham would come.

That's first use. Second use is kind of civil. It's broad. It's to restrain human corruption.

God prohibits evil in the law, right? Third use in Christ to the Christian is as the perfect rule of life or to guide our living.

And so this is where we would say that that third use piece, what makes it unique is that the law in that regard is not condemnatory with respect to our standing.

It is not threatening with respect to our standing, yet it guides our living. And we pursue conformity unto it by the spirit in union with Christ.

And so that third use of the law part to be an antinomian, historically speaking, you would need to deny that.

And I'm happy to say this right now. I mean, because this may be helpful to the listener. So, I mean, even it's fine to name names here.

Oh, yes. I assume this. So even take an individual like Tullian Shavigin.

So he was really good on the first use of the law and justification, really good. But where he would be different than us is that he would deny the third use of the law.

So one is not like the other. That would be the way that I would begin to respond. Yeah, because obedience, any type of...

And I understand the sentiment like there's a repulse against any kind of obedience when it says there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

But if you're a new... But how do you know if you're in Christ Jesus if you're not walking in obedience? Yeah, well, and I would say that...

And then that's a good question. And we could definitely, we could go there. So like first,

John in the gospel says, I write... So are you now speaking to that question or are you saying what you're gonna say? I'm going to in a very roundabout way.

Okay. So John says in his gospel in chapter 20, he says, I write these things that you might believe and then believing knowing you have eternal life.

So he says, learn the life of Jesus. And when you do, you'll have eternal life. So I would say that everywhere in scripture, when we're talking about assurance, am

I saved? It is always pointed to the object of our faith. Is Jesus sufficient to do what he promises?

And if you believe that he is, he goes, you've been saved. You have assurance, right? We have put faith as the object of our assurance.

And when you do that... Faith rather than the finished work of Christ. Rather than the person. Yeah. You have faith in your faith.

Or it's the strength of the faith, the quality of the faith, the sincerity of the faith that is the emphasis, not the object of faith.

That's right. So I love using this illustration. Are you afraid to fly in a plane?

Okay. Have you ever been near someone that is? Like you see them on a plane, they're super, super nervous, right? So you're sitting there, you go from point

A to point B, the same person next to you, point A to point B, but the entire time, they are in utter terror and fear.

Were they transported less safely than you? No, right?

Their experience may have been different than yours, but they got there the same way. Why? Because they had less trust in the means, right?

They were less secure of whether they could be there or not. So when we talk about faith in an object, the object is the security of our salvation.

It is never our faith, right? The faith is the evidence that we have been saved, but the faith is not the security of our faith.

This is what is so important because at times we think somehow that it's the faith that saves us.

Jesus is the one who saves you. Are you trusting me? I mean, do you understand? Like it's like, whether I believe in a plane has the capacity to take me to point

A to point B, it doesn't really matter. It only matters if the plane actually has the capacity. So if Jesus has the capacity to save me, the evidence that I am in Jesus is my faith, right?

Then what we learn is that our good works become the additive or what he would say a helpful way of adding to our faith.

This is why even in 1 Peter, when he talks about his divine power has granted you everything you need for life and godliness, right?

Or this is 2 Peter, sorry. And then he says, now take to that faith and add these works.

Remember this, right? And so you add all these things to it. Well, you're adding to them because you've already been grounded and safe.

And our confession and the confession speak about assurance in this way in that the ground of our assurance, the way that we absolutely know without a doubt that we are in Christ and we're safe is always our faith.

And our good works can be bolstering and add to that. So there's nothing, as a matter of fact,

I would encourage people to look at their good works and say, wow, look what God is doing in our life. But if you make, if you reverse it and the good works become your assurance,

I have one question for you. How many good works do you need to fully find assurance, right?

And there's no question in the Bible in that. The Bible does say you can have complete assurance by faith alone.

So I'll put it, I'll say a few things here too. Like obedience, how do you know you're in Christ?

That's effectively kind of how you said it. So, and I'll talk about it specifically related to works and obedience.

Here's how things often are posited. We'll make a few statements that are true and then we'll draw a conclusion that isn't, at least from our vantage point.

So we will rightly say that all those who are justified will do good works, true.

If there are no good works, you're not justified, true. Then the conclusion often is, therefore, do good works to know you're justified.

That's where we would push back as the most fundamental. When you use the word no, you mean it in a sort of infallible, unshakable sense.

More of an assurative sense. An assurance kind of sense, right? How do

I know from the perspective of assurance? How can I be assured that I have peace with God?

And we would say like with our confession, and Sean, I think you're gonna agree with this, rightly, our good works and the fruit that is born bolsters our assurance.

It obviously is of great encouragement, not only sometimes to ourselves as we are aware of it in a way, but it's an encouragement to the saints.

It's helpful to the body of Christ. Others might identify these things in our lives and say, bro, like super encouraged by the way that I see evidence of God's grace in your life or super encouraged by the ways that I'm seeing you do this or the way your life has changed.

Like we should be encouraged by that. We should in the church encourage others as we see these things. Paul even writes that way,

I'm encouraged by what I'm seeing. Totally. So it's not that obedience or good works or fruit are not bolstering our assurance.

The thing that we want to drive a stake in the ground and say good works or obedience can never be the ground of our assurance.

I guess I'm thinking about scriptures. It's Jesus for us that is. It seems like you want fruits.

I'll just speak in terms of fruits, but that's pretty wide open category of good works. You want it to cut in one direction, in a positive direction as a source of like strengthening assurance, but it seems like you don't want examination of fruits to cut in the other direction to maybe remove any sort of assurance.

And I'm thinking about, again, going back to 1 John, thinking about James and the way he like specifically is like, listen, if you don't have these works, then you probably deceived.

You don't have the faith that you think you have. I know this is tough. There's a tension here.

You're trying to say both and. You're trying to hold two things in tension. But from my perspective, what you're saying sounds very

Lutheran. And I think the Lutherans take it a little too far in that they basically say like, you should never look at your fruit and ever let that in any way lead you to examine or even doubt your salvation.

Thoughts? How long can someone sin doing bad fruit until you would say they're no longer a believer?

Is that a, that's not a rhetorical question? Yeah. I don't think that's, I probably would just disagree with the way the question was stated, but I'm assuming you're trying to be provocative.

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. But that's something to think about. Like how long was David in sin? We think a few hours, but no, it was a long time before Nathan the prophet came to him and said, let me tell you a story.

Yeah. You are the man, right? David was in sin for a long time before he came to repentant. You think about the church of Corinth and Paul's like, all right,

I've got to write to you not only the first time, but now the second time. You think about even the last verse of James.

James gives the indication that there are people who are so far in disobedience that God's about to take their life.

Like that, like Ananias and Sapphira. He goes, and if you can get them to repent, at least keep them from dying. So there is an indication in the

New Testament, I like this one as well. First Peter chapter, I'm sorry, Ephesians four, talks about if you don't want to be trapped, tossed about in every wind of doctrine or deceived, then you need to implement these things in your life, which means you can have all of that to be true, right?

Galatians 6, one, those who are trapped in sin. It doesn't say how long they've been trapped in sin. We don't know how long those people were trapped in sin, but we know that they were.

So there's an indication that Christians can and will struggle with sin, right? First John even says this.

If you say you're not struggling with sin, you're a liar, and the truth is not in you. So how many times and how often can someone struggle with sin according to First John?

He doesn't tell us that. How many times can you repent? He doesn't tell us that either, right? So there's an indication that someone can be weak and immature in the faith, and they can be weak and immature for a very, very long time.

There's even a rebuke in Revelation that talks about this. So I'm very cautious and I stand back and look at all of scripture and say, there are warning passages, but there are also indications that Christians can struggle, right?

The harshest passages are given in First John towards people who are outright rejecting the gospel, right?

For instance, John says, if you say you have love for God and not love for one another, which is a rejection, he's like, which is a rejection of the law.

So, I don't want to interrupt you. Yeah, he's like, then you don't have the truth in you. Like you are not agreeing with God on God's standards.

But for someone to struggle with sin is normal.

Now, what about looking at fruit as far as like on the negative side, right?

It's interesting in that when someone is in disobedience in the New Testament, I'll give you an example with James.

So I preached to James and the problem, I struggle with James and how people approach his letter is they don't allow all of James to inform them.

Over nine times, he goes through these sections. He says, brothers, and then he tells them what he wants them to hear.

Brothers, then he tells them what's going on. Brothers, he is never questioning their salvation.

He is saying your actions aren't matching your words. And therefore, your justification of your words, you need to rethink what you're saying.

He's not calling into question their faith. He's like, you need to look at yourself like I'm seeing you.

The way you're acting doesn't match your mouth. Therefore, the justification of your words is not true.

So he's constantly affirming who they are. Peter does the same thing. And he's calling into question their actions saying, you're not living a life that is beneficial.

The strongest warnings are always when someone is not agreeing with God about their sin. And they're saying it is okay to live in opposition to God.

And therefore, I can be a Christian and live in opposition to God openly and defiantly.

And at that point, then yeah, you should say that is bad fruit. And we would agree that you really need to examine your salvation because at that moment, you can't.

Versus someone who was struggling, trapped, caught, wandering. You can.

I mean, even Peter talks or Paul talks about Demas who kind of wandered off from the faith because of his presence, right? And who brings it back later on?

Barnabas is the one who brings Demas back, right? So you have this idea that people can wander from the faith and that it's our responsibility to either bring them back or to disciple them.

But if they're unwilling to repent of that sin and see that it's an opposition to God, then it's at that point I would say, yeah, that's bad faith.

You need to examine yourself and you're not of the faith. A few thoughts. One on church discipline.

And Sean, given that you and I both have like nine marks connections, relationships.

DNA, both have done the internship, been on staff at Capitol Hill, all the things.

And it's good to always acknowledge that even within certain groups of Christians or pastors or whatever, it's not monolithic in how we all understand things.

So even for myself, and I'd be interested to hear how you think about this. And then

I wanna touch on First John in a minute. But right now, church discipline. So even when it comes to the most severe level of church censure, which is excommunication,

I think a good question to ask ourselves is what are we saying and what are we not saying?

We all, of course, are going to acknowledge that none of us are God and none of us can see the human heart and that ultimately the

Lord is the only one who knows whether or not this person is a Christian. Everybody acknowledges that. I think the way that we talk in our local church as pastors about even excommunication, we will say that when we do excommunicate someone, which we have done at multiple points in our church's brief -ish life, we are not saying with certainty that this person isn't a believer.

What we are saying is that this person is in hard -hearted, obstinate, unrepentant sin that is incredibly dangerous for him or her.

And we are barring them from the fellowship and not admitting them to the table. Because we no longer have confidence.

Well, so that, I mean, even the emphasis of 1 Corinthians 5, so that they might be restored, one. And then two, what we're saying is their life is being lived in such a way where they are outside of the bounds.

Would you agree with that statement? As a church, you're saying we no longer have confidence. You're not declaring that they're an unbeliever.

You don't have the authority to do that. Of course. But would you say as a church, when we received you into membership, we gave you the team jersey, we were expressing a semblance of confidence in your confession of faith.

When we remove you from the table and remove you from membership, we're just saying we just aren't confident that your confession is in line with the gospel.

Sure, and I know that illustration is used in, like, Jonathan Lehman uses that illustration.

I don't use that illustration the same way. So this is where there might be a little bit of disagreement, and that's fine. So, like,

I would not use the same language that you might. This is why I brought it up, because I know enough of where we hail from and how we agree on church discipline and how we might articulate things differently, which is getting at the question you're asking us.

So yeah, we would not use the same kind of language of, we're putting the jersey on you, and then we're taking the jersey back.

The way that we would phrase it is, we are not certain that this person's an unbeliever, but we are certain that there is clear, demonstrable, unrepentant sin, that if, like, if this remains the case.

Well, I wouldn't use the word certain either, just to be clear. Yeah, confident is the word that you use. Yeah, totally, totally, brother, yeah.

So, but we just don't speak about, we don't use the language that we are no longer confident in this person's confession or confession of faith.

We just don't use that. We say what we, this person professes faith in Christ, and this person is living in a way contrary to that profession.

And they are - You would not therefore say, we have lower confidence, less confidence? I think because we so would maybe, acknowledging what

I already have said, because we don't know their heart. What we're gonna major on is what is clear.

Yeah. And we're gonna major on the emphasis, particularly of 1 Corinthians 5, that this removal is what needs to be done for the sake of this person, so that he or she might be restored in the day of the

Lord's return. Yeah, Paul talks about turning them over to Satan to have his way so that they might be restored, which means -

But you guys are big on saying like, hey, we need to interpret the whole Bible's language on this. Matthew 18, right?

Treat them like a Gentile or a tax collector. Yeah, sure. Right, that's, I think in the realm of less confident.

Somebody who needs to be - Yeah, sure, that's fair. Treat them like someone who needs to be converted. Right, well, yeah, and mainly what you're doing is you're calling, that's where we would go back to, you're preaching, you are effectively applying the law to them in that way to crush and to humble.

So I do think that's legitimate in terms of how we would then interact with them. Yeah, but even in that context, so this is important.

So one of the first steps that we're going to do if someone's on repentance sin is to remove them from the table.

Like, hey, you can't come in good communion knowing you're in defiant sin, we're not going to welcome you to the

Lord's table. And this is not an official act of the church, this is just you, the elders. This is an official act of the church.

That's the first step. Well, and not the first, I'm just saying, the first step is always to confront them.

Okay. And call them to repentance. And even admonish and all these things. But there's a time before the church would officially vote to excommunicate the member where you would call them to not partake in the supper.

And that's just like even, I mean, we've read Polity, you know, the Baptist stuff.

And then so if you look at some of the older Baptist documents, and then if you look as well in like, you know, the PCA's book of church order, et cetera, the three tiers of censure, of admonishment, suspension from the table and excommunication, that we would kind of be in that camp.

I just so ardently disagree with that. That's fine, brother. And that's fine. And that's not meant to be a jab at you guys.

No, I mean, that's fine. And I think there's freedom in how this is applied. I'm just walking it. So like there's a...

Sorry, it's actually interesting that I disagree with you guys about that. But because I think

I disagree with it for reasons that feel more in line with you guys and the way you think about this stuff.

Because I'm so like, listen, the supper is a means of grace that God has given us to draw us to repentance and draw us to Himself.

And unless the church has officially excommunioned you, officially removed you from the table, I just don't see any reason in Scripture to remove that means of grace from someone as long as we're still trying to bring them back to repentance.

So to me, removing someone before the church has officially excommunicated them, removing them from the table, is actually working at cross purposes with God's means of grace.

I mean, we can have that conversation. I mean, dude, how long do we have? I mean, let me finish your first question, and I think we should go back to that.

And I still want to speak to 1 John at some point. So Jesus and the New Testament authors are protecting the fidelity and the unity of the church.

So sin, like when Paul says in Ephesians, he says, grieve not the

Holy Spirit, right? We think that's personal sin. That is sin in the church. He's like, the Spirit brings unity, and when you sin, it grieves

His work, and it causes diversity, right? It's disunity in the church and division and anger in the body, et cetera. What happens when you have unrepentant sinners who are unwilling to change, they are going to bring conflict into the church that is contrary to its work, right?

We are to live sacrificial, repentant lives for the sake of the unity of the church. So Jesus says, you have to put them out and treat them like an unbeliever because we don't unify ourselves with unbelievers, right?

They're not, they don't have the Holy Spirit. They can't bring their gifts of grace. Therefore, they're, this is why we don't do church for unbelievers, we do church for believers to go out and get them.

So He's like, you have to treat them as one who is, there is so much in sin that you have to put them outside the context because they are not being unified with the body.

But why are we putting them out? We're not putting them out so they remain there. We're putting them out so they see themselves for who they are.

You are acting like an unbeliever that we might restore them. But the restoration, what is it they need?

They always need the gospel because if we're saying treat them like a Gentile, what do Gentiles need? They need the gospel, yeah.

So it's always in context of the church. We always individualize it in the context of the person.

But I think we need to contact, look at it in the context of the person and the church. And because Paul's talking about like the purity of the congregation, he's worried about the unity of the congregation.

So, and Jesus is also thinking about it in the sheepfold. So there is an essence, because sometimes when it says don't even eat with them,

I think he means in that context of like, you're not gonna enjoy the Lord's table with them. You're not gonna, yeah.

Yeah, and you can take that in both ways. I don't care how you wanna take that. Yeah, I think it's very similar to 2 John where it says you not receive these false teachers into your home.

You don't do something that makes it look like to the public world that you're in fellowship with this person who's either an unrepentant sin or preaching a false gospel or whatever.

Yeah, that can be corporately, it could be individually. You can go have lunch. I mean, as a matter of fact, I would hope that our members would go have lunch with someone who's an unrepentant sin.

But the way that you relate to them during that meal is gonna be very different. For sure, yeah. Yeah, you're gonna, and I would even say there's a difference between a false teacher.

Oh, of course. And yeah, you would agree. Yeah, gradations. Yeah, so I would always look at it as until they, until an individual is like, has absolutely changed their faith, saying

I actually no longer embrace the gospel. I'm gonna continue to tell them, you are living outside of God's will and judgment.

If you remain in this state that you are in now in unrepentant sin, you're gonna have to stand in judgment before the

Lord in that, right? Because there are contexts in the New Testament where people do live in really grotesque sins for a very long time, and then they come back.

Our confession speaks to this. In chapter five, it says that God at times allows people to wander in their sins so that when they repent, they have a greater dependence upon Him.

Yeah, there's all kinds of good and holy purposes He has, and that's one of them. That's right. Yeah, I guess I would just, the reason why

I appreciate confidence as a category is because it's not on -off. It's like a dimmer switch.

Obviously, someone who's wandered 10 ,000 feet from the fold in egregious sin for quite a long time, the church and you as pastors and whoever else is in their lives has diminished confidence.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Oh, sure. Yeah, that's right. And then if they come back, they start poking their head in on a Sunday morning, oh, we have greater hope and confidence.

Let's just keep giving them the gospel and pray that the Lord causes fruit to be born there in keeping with repentance.

Yes, and I have no problems with that. Even Paul talks about how encouraged and strengthened he is by the fidelity and faithfulness to the gospel that they have.

Of course. So that's not language that we're, yes. Yeah. I don't have any more to say than that I agree with you.

I mean, to kind of speak to the way that you kind of launched us into this portion of the conversation, I will receive what you said about the way that I, as a pastor, emphasize fruit and examination of it in that positive direction to adorn your profession, to build up the body of Christ, to bless your neighbor and to bolster your assurance.

Absolutely. I want to talk in those terms all the time. Where I think we go the negative direction is really when we practice church discipline.

I don't know that outside of that, I'm doing, I'm not saying I don't know this,

Sean, but I might not be doing as much of that as you might. Sure. And that's, it might just be different. Well, I'm even examining myself as I'm sitting here listening to you guys talk and I'm like, oh, do

I need to calibrate? I wonder, I'm thinking of when I preach through judges or John, which is like, every time you're in John, it's just like, do they really believe in Jesus?

And the temptation is just to lean heavily in that direction. So I'm trying to listen and receive too, like do

I need to calibrate when I'm, you know? No, these kinds of conversations are really helpful because we are like -minded brothers in the

Lord that have maybe some disagreements over some things or might have different emphases or we might have just different degrees to which we think this, do this, whatever, apply this.

This is healthy, it's good, it's sharpening. 1 John, so this is a, I'm gonna be,

I wanna be thoughtful, I wanna be nuanced. Hey, there's plenty of room for it. Shout out to Room for Nuance.

But I'll give my take on 1 John. I'll lead by saying that I think in our modern context, any commentary, for example, that's been written on 1

John by anybody who's alive - Is bad. Well, kind of, kind of.

I mean, so I think generally speaking, the way that we view 1 John is as like the litmus test of salvation.

I would contend that the emphasis of 1

John, so I preached it a few years ago. I think John is writing to a church that has been bombarded by false teaching and apostasy.

And in the context, I mean, you can gather some of these things from what he writes. So there are people who are denying, effectively, the sinfulness of sin.

Gnosticism and all this other stuff. Yeah, so proto -gnostic thought, right? Yeah, and then this kind of like dualism where there's like kind of spiritual plane, physical plane, sins done in the body don't matter, right?

Because all that really matters is kind of the spiritual plane. So that's that kind of denial of the sinfulness of sin or that sins committed in the body don't matter.

You see that even in chapter one. Obviously, there's a kind of docetism going on as well, where Jesus only appeared to be in the flesh, but he wasn't really human.

And it's very clear that there are people who have left the church that John is writing to, even in chapter two in verse 19, a verse that we know well, they went out of us or went out from us because they're not of us, right?

Yeah, so that's all going on. And I think John is actually writing to the saints to assure them that they're legit in light of all the things that have been bombarding them.

So that's why he makes such an emphasis on several things. Confessing sin and acknowledging sin.

Confessing, how often does he say, we confess that Christ came in the flesh, and that's critical.

And then he talks about love. Rather than abandonment, he talks about love and loving one another.

And then rather than denying that sin is even a thing, he's saying pursue righteousness.

So I think what he is writing, because how often too in that letter, like if you go through it, how often does he not only call them brothers or beloved or beloved children, he writes a lot of really strong words about how you are strong, or we are children of God, right?

So he is constantly pointing them to who they are. And I think is trying to demonstrate not that they are illegitimate, but that the people who left them are illegitimate.

And so I think that for me, and then you even get into chapter five, where verse 13, where he writes these things so that they would know, right?

And like John Calvin's commentary on 1 John, I think is quite good. And in on that verse, he writes some things that I quote often, that have become in one sense, very much a kind of guiding principle for me as a preacher.

He says that the apostle writes this to those who are already in the faith so that they might know that they're in Christ.

And he said, but note, and he says, let's take note though of how disciples are confirmed in the faith. It is to have the office and power of Christ explained to them.

And then he says, it is therefore the duty of a godly minister to extol as much as possible the grace of Christ, so that being satisfied with that, we might look to nothing else.

Yeah, and I think he's right on that. And so that's my take on 1 John. And again, like -minded brothers can have differing opinions on that.

We're talking about three or four degrees of difference here, not 15, not 50.

Not fundamentally different directions. That's right. Right. I wanna ask you guys your opinions on three books in relation to this subject.

This could be fun. I think so. Hopefully we won't get those books thrown at us based on our responses, we'll see.

First book from somebody I think we all appreciate, Kevin DeYoung, The Hole in Our Holiness.

Oh, Sean. Okay. John, I'll go.

I'll take the bullet. All right. So, appreciate Kevin, like you're saying. Which means he's about to get real quick.

Love that brother. He's got a loving heart. So grateful for his ministry. All right, so we took a pull back the curtain, we took a brief break, and we were acknowledging the fact that these kinds of conversations are so healthy because we tend to look back over church history and assume that people who were a part of the same tradition were just monolithic and thought the same way about everything, which is just abjectly false and so patently false.

So this is great to do. So yeah, it's possible to appreciate a man's ministry and agree with him about a lot of things and then disagree with him about some things.

That can be done. And we don't just need to burn his entire ministry down and just, well,

I need to just reject everything he's ever said or written, which is, I assume, kind of the point of your entire podcast,

Room for Nuance. That's right. How about that? All right, so that book by Kevin, The Hole in Our Holiness.

Where I would take some exception to it is even his treatment of Hebrews 12.

So I think, Kevin, we're all reactionary. We have to acknowledge that. We all react. Yeah, you do theology in a real world where people are saying things and you respond to them.

Yeah, that's right. Nothing happens in the back. I mean, even the Protestant Reformation, for goodness sakes. I mean, we're all sitting here today because there's reaction.

Confessions of faith, creeds in the ancient, in the patristic era. I mean, they're all done. Why? Well, it's a reaction to what's going on.

Yeah. So that's not illegitimate to be reactionary. I think Kevin, understandably, was reacting to like Tully and Chauvigin and some of that kind of stuff where it was this first use of the law only and a denial of the third use of the law.

And there really were reasons to ask, like, does holiness matter based upon how some of these guys, particularly in the

Presbyterian world at that time, were speaking, teaching, writing, et cetera. So I'm sympathetic to that. I do think, for my vantage point,

I do think that the book, to a degree, was maybe an overcorrection.

And in particular, the treatment of Hebrews 12, I don't agree wholly because I think in the context there, you know,

Hebrews 12 begins with, we are to, you know, obviously set aside the sin that entangles all these kinds of things, and we are to look to Christ, the author and the finisher of our faith, right?

And then he begins to talk about God's fatherly discipline. And he speaks in such a way, the writer writes in such a way as to say that you're being disciplined because you're a child of God, right?

And this is actually so that, like verse 10 or 11, so that you might share in his holiness, God disciplines you.

This one's never pleasant when you're going through it, of course not. And that's why he has to exhort the saints that you're being disciplined not because you're illegitimate, you're being disciplined because you're

God's child. And so strengthen your weak hands, your feeble knees, and bear up under the discipline of God in as much as it concerns you, pursue holiness, without which no one will see the

Lord. I don't see that to be as threatening of a thing as maybe Kevin made it to be, because literally the discipline of God as your heavenly father is meant for you so that you would share in his holiness.

So he's actually working this in us. And there is a holiness without which we will not see him, and he is disciplining us to that end that we might share in his holiness.

So I might make a different emphasis in terms of an application of Hebrews 12. Having said that, obviously we are concerned for holiness and obedience in the church.

We're called to it, and it's wonderful that we would pursue it, and we should pursue it. So nothing that I'm saying should be misconstrued in that regard.

So that's... Turn that thing around now. In the book,

I believe, and forgive me if I misquote it, but I'm pretty sure he says to the tone of,

I will stake my entire ministry on the fact that this verse means that our holiness does play into our just, or basically...

He's saying that he's not, this is not writing about positional holiness, to which I would agree. Agree. But the struggle then becomes if, and I agree with Justin that he didn't really take time to execute the entire passage, kind of just pulled the one verse out and said, see right here, it says this.

And when you're looking at it and you're reading it, you're talking about a loving, gracious, heavenly father who, I mean, he begins with looking unto the author and finisher of our faith.

So just stop and think about that just for a moment. If he authors and finishes it, what does the writer want us to walk away with in that statement?

Competence, assurance. If he brought me to life, he will bring me to glory.

So that's how he begins the context, right? He goes, now, the journey from life to glory, it could be a rough one, right?

So he's like, lift up your drooping head, like, hey, listen, you can lift your eyes, lift your head up. It's been a rough path, but know that when the

Lord disciplines you in these moments where you struggle, it's love. He disciplines those whom he loves, right?

So there's this flow of confidence and gentleness and encouragement towards holiness, and then all of a sudden, just to turn that thing on its head and smack you, it doesn't make sense, right?

You're like, why would he go from confidence and gentleness and encouragement? And God's fatherly discipline.

To just like pop fear on you, right? So when you look at it in context, given in the verses that follow, he is encouraging them to think different about their life, right?

So I mean, he even goes on and says, see to it that you're restraining from sexual morality and holy, just like Esau.

So it's almost like the right of people is sitting down this child and saying, all right, look, you're different now, okay?

There's a different way of thinking about life. Your confidence needs to always be Jesus setting aside the weight and the sin that easily besets us.

And what are we doing as we're setting aside as in this running of the race? We're not looking to ourselves, examining myself.

He goes looking unto Jesus who started you and he will finish you. So some of our criticism of a book like The Hole in Our Holiness is that we agree we want to be holy.

The motivation is not fear that I may not make it. The motivation is, I'll turn to another passage.

1 John even says this, right? 1 John says, what we will be, we have not yet, he has not yet appeared.

But while we wait for his appearing, we purify ourselves as he is pure, right?

Looking unto Jesus. So this is, 1 John's saying it just slightly different than Hebrews. Hebrews, look at Jesus, set aside the weight.

Look at Jesus, purify yourself. So the motivation for holiness is always the good aspects of who

Christ is. My kickback would be the holiness without no one will see the

Lord. How much holiness? That's always my question. Is that your argument with the author of Hebrews?

No, I think the author of Hebrews is making his argument very clear in that, hey, listen, holiness has its place.

And it's a part of your life. And it's all a part of this entire context. My argument with DeYoung, he uses it the way he did in a fear tactic.

My answer is, how much holiness does one need to have in order to make sure they see the

Lord? Is there a place for fear in sanctification process? 100%.

Justin and I was talking about this the other day. I'm really afraid of the consequences of my sin against my family. Against the glory and honor of the

Lord. Against the implications of my church. I am afraid of what it will do because it's negative and destructive and not helpful at all.

Am I afraid of that my sin will lead me to the place where I will not be saved? No, because there's nothing that can separate me from that.

Because you're asking, is there a place for fear as it pertains to our relationship to God? Yeah, so I agree with you guys about all of the fatherly comforting, assuring language of Hebrews.

But it feels like at the end there where he says, holiness without which no one will see the Lord. It's not fear that my sin might hurt my marriage.

It's fear that - That's why I asked you the question. Yeah. Right. Because you're getting at that fear as it pertains to God and me.

Yeah, it's couched within the context of overall assurance, but I don't want to neuter that. Right.

And I don't even remember everything that Kevin said about it there. I didn't expect us to get so - It's been a while, yeah, same.

So even here, is there a sense in which Christians fear God?

I mean, I think we need to define fear, again, a fear of the Lord, because that's used in various places throughout

Scripture. And I think there are different nuances to it. There we go again. There we go again. Maybe I get royalty every time you say it.

I think the way that I would say, Sean, I think, in short, is there a place for fear in the form of dread in the

Christian's life as it pertains to sanctification? I'm going to push my heart against that and generally say no. So can

I pause you right there? But I want to clarify what I mean. Okay, sure, go ahead. So what

I would say, though, is that we do, as Christians, fear God. We revere Him. We respect

Him. We're in awe of Him. We see Him as holy and majestic and glorious and all those things. And we do know that His righteous wrath is coming for all those who deserve it.

And we would understand, even as far as my corrupt flesh is concerned, I do deserve that as well. So there is a sense of great reverence and fear that we have in that regard.

But I am not any longer, because of my union with Christ and the fact that I have been in the

Lord Jesus, I really am, I'm not what I once was. I am a new creation and united to Christ, that I am now

God's child, and that that is not going anywhere. And so there is no longer fear of Him as judge.

There is fear of Him as father, which is fundamentally different. And, you know, like if we think about all of us -

Can I pause you right there then? So I just, so I don't lose this. Please, bro. I hear you.

That doesn't sound like what the author of Hebrews is saying there. Couched with all the language of assurance and children, he still is, it's not like fear of like, yeah,

I'm your father and I'm gonna discipline you. He says, fear, without holiness, you will not see the

Lord, right? So like, I do like, I don't know what you guys think about the structure of Hebrews and all that. Five sermons.

I mean, if we want to just have a six hour podcast, we could cover all of it. But like, I wonder if you guys were sitting in maybe the church service where this sermon were being preached, right?

Yeah, because we do, it does seem like a sermon. Yeah, right. And he says, listen, without holiness, you will not see the

Lord. Couched in all the language of all the other stuff in the chapter, which grounds our assurance.

I wonder if you would correct him. I wonder if you would say that's not an appropriate way. Now, obviously, you're not gonna sit here and tell me that you would correct the author of Hebrews, divinely inspired.

But I wonder if you were in my church service and I tried to have that warp and woof as I was preaching through the warp and woof of the text.

Don't ask me exactly what that means. You'll just feel it out. If I was preaching that text to my congregation and I'm giving them the assurance and discipline, it comes from a father who loves us and he's gonna keep us and he's the author and perfecter, but don't get it twisted.

If you are not holy, you will not see God and that should terrify you. I wonder if you would correct me after that and say, brother,

I don't think that was appropriate. If you use the word terrify, I might push back against that. Well, I mean, that's the most terrifying thing

I can think of, to not see the Lord. Be holy, because if you're not, you won't see the

Lord. Sure. Yeah. We still have two more books to do, so.

Yeah, you do have decisions to make though, because you have to look at all of scripture, and I would say even all of the book, and make your decisions in light of that.

I feel like, I mean, even back up, I think it's funny how we're emphasizing the holy part, but we're not emphasizing the part before that, right?

He says, strive for peace with everyone. And so what does he mean by that?

Like, there's a context to everything he's writing. What is he concerned about, right? Like, what is it at the heart of what he's getting at?

And I think that there is a, we rest in the sufficiency of Christ, and we understand that we're gonna struggle against sin, saint, sin, and reality, that is right there in the text, and that if you don't agree with him on this, there's a problem.

There's a problem if you don't agree with him on this. Right? I mean, that's, there's a, because how then do you answer the question in Romans 8, where he's like, well, there's nothing that will separate you from the love of God, and even you, right?

Jesus loses none of his own. So I have to hold that intention. We are saved by faith, not by works.

I have to hold that intention. That passage, you're saved by works. If you're in, if you're putting the emphasis the way you're putting it, you have to say you are saved by works.

You have to say that. Without holiness, you will not see the Lord. Well, I'm just quoting.

Well, you could also say for God's who love the world, therefore free will, right? Yeah, and this is one of the problems

I think sometimes we can get into with, like, sometimes you just have to let a text stand on its own, and you don't, you cannot qualify it to death with every facet and nuance that the gospel presents, you know, because if you do that, you're gonna neuter passages.

There's always a danger of doing that. That's right. I certainly agree. I agree, but I guess at the end of the day, when you stand, so we're all three standing before Christ, and Jesus says to you, why are you here?

And your answer is Christ. Same answer we would give. Yeah, same answer. Right, but then how do you justify that in light of this?

Well, okay. Are you not gonna say, I have holiness? No, but I would, okay, so now we're gonna get off and do a big long thing here.

I'm just saying this is why I struggle with your emphasis and what you're pointing to, because it's inconsistent with the rest of scripture.

So we have to ask ourselves. Well, I just basically just, I just said, like, what if I just quoted the author of Hebrews and just said exactly what he said?

But there's always a context to a statement, and that's what I'm kicking back saying. You can't make a statement.

All right, here's one for, I'm gonna change the scenario. What if Justin comes to you and says, I do not like the way that John talks to his children.

He's extremely harsh and forceful. And you're like, well, that's a pretty serious accusation towards a pastor.

What happened? Well, we were standing on the road, and his son ran out in the middle of the road.

Could've got hit by a car, he screamed at him. There's a context to it, right? So you're stating this, and I'm like, yeah, but there's a context to what he's saying entitled the entire

Bible and book, which I don't think you can divorce from it. Well, Sean, of course you agree. I mean, so we,

I agree with you that there is a sense in which you cannot nuance everything.

That's right. And you can't, because a lot of times a text, it loses its punch. Yeah. I agree with that completely.

And of course, you as well, given what I know of you, are gonna agree that we preach that verse or these couple of verses in the context not only of like Hebrews 12, but in the context of the letter, the sermon, if you will.

Of course, yeah. Right, and so there is, there has to be a sense in which even the way that that verse hits is informed by everything around it.

Obviously. And so we all agree on that. Yeah, that's right. And I think for me, yeah, I have no rebuttal with the writer of scripture, of course, but I have no rebuttal even with the force of the verse.

What I would do though, too, is what I did just a minute ago, that even the words of holiness and the fact that we need it, it's like God is working in us, verse 10, that we will have it.

And that's what the discipline is there for. So it's not like I'm gonna say, and just try to neuter, I'm not trying to neuter verse 14, but I'm fear in terms of reverence, all like God's power, all of these things.

And even where he's gonna go, he's gonna go Sinai and Zion. It's like even this, and the fact that we've been given this unshakable kingdom and all these things, and God is a consuming fire.

I mean, because he's pointing them back to Mount Sinai and he's contrasting it though with where they have now come to effectively to Christ and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect and to the blood of Jesus that preaches a better word than the blood of Abel.

And so like all of that, there is fear and reverence and awe of God and there is holiness that is required of us.

And I understand that. Can I jump in just for a second? Guys, can we just move on? We got two more whole books to do.

Okay, five second statement. I don't believe you, but let's see. So I just want to, for context sake,

I do believe he's talking about, you need to look at discipline and holiness and you're gonna receive this discipline.

Here's my last statement, that we may share his holiness in light of the discipline. So he's saying, if you think you're gonna go through the

Christian life without discipline, which produces holiness, then you're not gonna see glory. The two are connected.

The discipline of God and holiness. So you're just like, no, I don't want discipline from God. I don't want that. He goes, then you're not gonna see holiness.

I think that is the context. Okay, so we'll move on to that. All right. Now that we've figured all of that out, we're gonna move on to the second book.

Am I Really a Christian? Or is it Am I Really Saved? Am I Really a Christian by Mike McKinley, wherein he walks through 1

John and I think his goal, he wrote, he's told me this and he said it publicly, his goal with that book was primarily to people coming in falsely confident in their salvation, cultural

Christians, walking them through 1 John, almost intentionally trying to get them to doubt, to examine themselves.

But if you talk to him more about it, he says he thinks 1 John has this, and I think he's right here, that it has this effect where it causes some who are falsely hopeful to doubt, and it causes some who are falsely doubting to hope.

But anyways, have you read Am I Really Saved? Okay, well then you're not a part of this. Boo, get out of here. Bro, admittedly,

I have not, I don't know that I've read the book. I've obviously, I know Mike and I love Mike, and I'm aware of the book, but I don't think that I have read it.

And so in that regard, I'm hesitant to react in detail. Sure, great. Yeah. Well, then we'll move on to the third one.

I've already said what I think about 1 John, which might probably be more indicative of how

I might respond. Yeah, yeah. Third book, classic, written by somebody who's long dead.

Okay. Odds of you loving it are higher. J .C. Ryle's Holiness. I have mixed feelings on that book.

There we go. Yeah. And he's not gonna see this, so speak frankly. Well, that's not true, because one day

I will meet him. But I don't think anybody at that point will care about this book.

Yeah, if J .C. Ryle's really stressing over what we say on Room for Nuance podcast, heaven ain't what we thought it was. Yeah, I mean, listen,

I think the book has a lot of correct observations for, like at times it makes really good observations about,

I'll be worded this way. There are times where in Christian culture, people are confused on what is appropriate and what is not appropriate.

I think we're in this issue right now with our culture. Like there's so much sensuality in the church that I think at times we kind of have to, unfortunately, we got to be more blunt these days.

I'm like, I thought this was, like you know this. So Ryle at times,

I think, is writing in that context where he's a little bit more blunt. And I appreciate that about some of it.

Because at first, a long time ago, I would have had a problem with the bluntness of it. But I even realizing

I've got congregants where I'm like... Little pastor time under your belt. You're like, yeah, that was actually really good.

He did it, said it that way. Yeah, for sure. But at times, then the confusion becomes where I struggle with some of the motivation for holiness, right?

So let me put it this way. This is what is holiness. I thought it was good. What motivates me to be holy,

I struggle with. Holistically or just in part? In part. And it's been a while since I've read it.

But there are times where it's like, I don't feel like it's looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith, to be my holiness.

Like what we will be, we are not yet. So I want to be like him. Or even 2 Corinthians 4, when he talks about that Jesus is veiled to us right now.

And that we are looking at the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And as we do that, we are being transformed into his image, right?

It's always looking at Jesus for the motivation for our holiness, right? And at times

I felt like it's more of the fear of judgment if I'm not holy, is where I struggled.

In that I will never be holiness. I will never be holy enough to not warrant

God's judgment. I'm always gonna be judged for my lack of holiness.

It's always going to happen. So therefore, I struggled to look at my holiness in that way versus his righteousness covers me.

His blood covers me. And now I want to reflect that for his glory as failing as it's going to be and for the benefits of others.

And so it just felt like the Ryle book, that's the part of it that I felt like I was like, I don't agree with the motivation for holiness.

All right, so I'm gonna just kind of take, I had had you, Sean, lead us. I'm gonna take this for a second if you're okay.

Take the wheel, baby. I'm gonna take it for a second. Because I wanna speak to a few things just because that are popping around in my brain. I'm not gonna speak specifically to holiness by Ryle.

I think the book is largely good. Yeah, and would, I mean, probably share John's sentiment, maybe to a slightly different degree.

A question that I get asked a lot, so this is related, is what do you think of the

Puritans? Now, first of all. Which is a very broad question. That's my reaction immediately.

It's like, that's like you asking me, what do I think of evangelicals? Because Puritans is technically, that's just the

English Reformation. Nonconformist, just, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's the English Reformation. And so, of course

I say, well, it's case by case. So there are Puritan authors, and John, I know you're the same way.

There are Puritan authors that we love. I mean, thoroughly love. And then there are some

Puritan authors where we're like, yeah, maybe not as helpful, right? This book, not that book. Correct, correct.

So like, for example, I mean, and we don't need to get into this because we don't need to get into like the

Mero controversy in Scotland. And so Scottish Presbyterianism, I won't do that to us right now. But one of my favorite

Puritans is Thomas Boston, who is from that era, 18th century in Scotland.

You know, I mean, John Owen, love John Owen. I mean, we could name others. Some, yeah,

John Cahoon is another. But then, like, for example, the reason I bring this up as well.

So like Richard Baxter, not a fan. And I don't know where you stand on that.

And that's... I love dying thoughts, don't really trust them on justification. Exactly, exactly. So that's a lot of the justification and sanctification and how he kind of collapses those categories.

And I would agree, right? So there's a book by a man named

Walter Marshall called The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification. Marshall had been influenced in his younger days and may have even been a member or a congregant of Baxter's.

And so his book, I think, is largely informed by some of the ways in which Baxter's confusion on justification and sanctification,

I think, had affected him as a young man. And then he's writing in a kind of the way that we are maybe aiming to emphasize sanctification and a pursuit of holiness in terms of this emphasis on Christ and even the emphasis of kind of this given life.

And where he makes a statement where... And this is not a monergism synergism conversation. I'm not even trying to introduce all that because it depends on how you define those terms, right?

When it comes to sanctification. But he makes an observation that's really good where he says, you know, where there are many who are very happy to acknowledge that they have a justification that is via a righteousness that is wrought by God, that is wrought by Jesus.

But then they think that they will be sanctified by a righteousness that is wrought of themselves, right?

And he's pointing out that kind of collapsing and that confusion that exists there. And so I think what

John and I are largely contending for is that even our sanctification is a holiness and a righteousness that is wrought by God.

And he uses various means, of course, and even various kinds of emphases and teaching to accomplish it. But I still,

I do think at the end of the day, even when it comes to the pursuit of holiness, we're doing that not primarily not to attain something that isn't ours in terms of peace with God.

We're not chasing after something that has not been given to us. But we're pursuing holiness because of what

God has done for us, because of who God has made us in his son. And because God has done everything and has assured us of the end, we strive.

And that's where I think people trip is that, and there are people, brother, to be very clear that are in the kind of confessional reformed world that do get out over their skis.

And John and I would be the first to say, yeah, they've over course corrected because you cannot even use for some of these folks, you can't even use the language of striving.

That's bad. Like if we can't use the language of striving, if we can't use words like repent, if we can't use words like work, obey, like we've got a serious problem.

And so I just wanna be very plain about all of that. In our disagreements or our two or three degrees of separation, we are all for striving and working and pursuing.

We're just trying to maybe highlight the motivations and the emphasis maybe slightly different.

Yeah. The reason why I ask is because I think those two modern, one a little older, probably some of the most popular books on holiness, sanctification, which is all bound up with assurance, which is kind of where you guys are.

That's your subject matter expert. To some degree. To some degree. So in light of those thoughts about those books, do you have a recommendation?

This is our number one when people have questions and I'm like, you can't be in our church, but here's a resource we want you to take and read.

You got your book. You already gave that a shout out. But any other really good resources on sanctification and assurance, they can be together in one book.

They can be different books. It doesn't matter. Just give them, give them. I mean, Walter Marshall, obviously. Walter Marshall book

I just mentioned, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification is probably my favorite piece on sanctification in particular.

I think it's really good. I would also, some of the good, so John Cahoon's treatise on the law and the gospel, and Cahoon is spelled weird,

C -O -L -Q -U. Yeah, that is weird. I thought you were saying Calhoun weird. Yeah.

But no, Cahoon. John Cahoon. So he's got a book called A Treatise on the Law and the

Gospel where he does a lot of really good work though, even talking about the law in ways that we have somewhat in this podcast that I think are very useful.

As far as a book on assurance, I mean, I think very quickly becoming a modern classic is

Gentle and Lowly by Dane Orland is beautiful. I mean, everybody loves it for a reason. I didn't know how much

I needed that book until I was like the second chapter in and I was like, oh. Exactly. I didn't wanna read it at first.

I was like, everyone is talking about this book. I'm contrarian. Contrarian, exactly. Dude, I was two chapters in and I was like, everyone needs this book.

It's so good. So, and then... Which became very controversial. I know. The Bruised Read, of course, by Sibbes.

A little less accessible. Yeah, but wonderful. I've tried to get a lot of people, I can get people to read Gentle and Lowly. Well, I think that's why it's so powerful because it is so consumable.

Yeah, that's right. I'm just gonna make a couple other book recs that are related.

Sure. I think that The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson and he deals with that thing that I mentioned that I'm not gonna talk about how the mere controversy, but he does some great law and gospel.

The offer of the entire, like the whole Christ, like in holding him out to sinners and the offer of Jesus is not conditioned upon anything in you,

I think is really good and helpful when it comes to this assurance and peace with God conversation. Any other recommendations, brother?

Whitehorse put out a little book on law gospel distinction because what confuses most of your assurance is putting the law back in your gospel.

So that's a great little book that I would recommend reading. I think you can get it on their website. It's just called Law Gospel Distinction.

Nice. Right. There it is. I think you took the wheel. I did.

What now, Captain? Because you were asking, I kind of wanted to pivot and speak about Puritans and all of those kinds of things and then to bring up, you know,

Baxter and Marshall and the like. I was trying to take the wheel on this whole like book author.

What do we like to read? What do we recommend? Which I feel like we've kind of concluded. I'm happy to hand the wheel back to you.

I have one thing. Fire away. That would be fun to throw at you and we could all three talk about it.

For sure. If you want to know what this is all boiled down to, because we kind of are picking passages and doctrines in books.

If you really want to know what this is all boiled down to, it is a matter of perspective and emphasis.

So we believe that the job of the preacher, according to scripture, is to feed and protect the sheep.

What does Jesus tell Peter? Feed my sheep, right? So we're going to feed them assurance based upon Christ's work.

We're going to feed them Christ. And we're going to protect them against anything that would take their eyes off of Christ.

That would be the argument of our emphasis. How would you describe like, okay, this is what

I emphasize to be aware how I understand scripture to be emphasized to believers. And you may agree, disagree.

Yeah, no, I think it's a very tiny disagreement. I do believe more in a call to self -examination, and you can put whatever language on that.

Of course, sure. I'm of the school of, for every one look at yourself, take 10 looks at Christ.

That's McShane, right? Yeah, that's right. But I do think there needs to be a look at yourself, and not to find the grounding of my justification, but to find evidence that I'm not deceived about my justification.

And there's individual and corporate aspects of that. But even that ability to look at myself is something that is empowered by God's grace, and God's grace alone.

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is he who works in you. Both to will and to work.

That's right, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think that's where I would be. As a matter of emphasis, or as like a matter of practice?

Well, hopefully those two things are lined up like perfect circles. Well, I think so. We would agree in the practice, because we do practice that every week.

We read the law to them, ask them to examine their heart, confess their sin before the Lord. Yeah. So that we could lead them to feeding in Christ.

So the emphasis is always Christ for you, not examination of self. Yeah. I think, again,

I think there are multiple places in Scripture where you see the calls to examine self, is you're examining yourself to see, am

I really in Christ? And is Christ really in me? Yeah. So I... So now that we're...

That's, I think, the heart between perspective. I would say that there's a way in which you can examine yourself that is actually examining

Christ. You look at yourself to see Christ. Can't do it too much. Can't do it too often.

Can't do it the wrong way. But I don't think there's any real ability to do the fruit inspection that I think

Scripture calls us to without that. Yeah. Yeah, there's a... It's like we're saying the same thing and wording it different.

Funny how that works. Anyway, there's a... Anyway. There's a book.

So there's a book. There's an old book. It's not even in print. I think it... Jay Collier from RHB, Reformation Heritage Books, he sent it to us in like this digitized format.

I don't have my computer with me and I might butcher some of this. I think it's William Cuthbert, I believe is the author, written in like 1750.

The Right Use of Marks and Evidences or something like this is the name of the book. A hundred years later, 1850, it's republished with a lengthy preface by Horatius Bonner.

And the reason I even bring it up is because it's a very interesting treatment of there are good and bad ways to use marks and evidences, like good and bad ways to talk about fruit, evidence, etc.

And we all, of course, agree and where there... Again, it's a couple of degrees of separation where we might push and sharpen each other on what are the appropriate ways to use marks and evidences in preaching or in the

Christian life in general. Again, rowing the boat in the same direction, the three of us.

But yeah, there's just that tiny little bit of difference, which is okay. And I'm not going to go into all the stuff that's written there in that lengthy preface.

I think it is worth a read and I wish RHB would publish it in print. Come on, let's get it out. What's the holdup?

They're doing good things. They're doing great things. DiPrima published his book on Spurgeon through there, talk about holding things in tension.

Have you seen Alex DiPrima's book on Spurgeon and Mercy Ministry? You're talking about the Mercy Ministry?

He's also got a new biography. I know. Spurgeon and the Poor, that was so good. That was a corrective for me.

I thought we were doing pretty good with that and I read it and I was like, man, I think we can do better. Yeah, I have not read...

I mean, I know Alex. I have not read that book yet. We may end up having Alex on our podcast to talk about Spurgeon in general.

He's so sharp. So clear. Godly brother. Yeah, I hope you do. Well, now that I've said it in front of God and everyone.

Yeah, that's right. So what did you say? I would say room for nuanced stuff. I don't really have much to say.

So I mean, even for the Theocast audience, why don't you briefly, because we're doing a great job with brief today, why don't you talk a little bit about room for nuance, the reason for the podcast in general, and then that may spur a number of questions that I might want to ask you.

Well, brother, even in this conversation, I've just appreciated your willingness to like, okay, let's acknowledge some disagreements.

Let's not blow things out of proportion. Let's recognize that we have a lot more in common.

Than we have indifferent. That's right. And let's not just really revert to that second level separationist impulse, which lives in all of us.

And let's not give even a little bit of oxygen to that impulse. Because if we do, we're going to be in a dinghy alone trying to do gospel ministry.

Yeah, you're going to go pastor a church of like eight people who agree with you. Yeah, that's right. It's a dinghy. Me and my little dinghy in this violent ocean of spiritual warfare.

During the really hot and heavy CRT stuff with a podcast called

Defend and Confirm, me and Russell Berger did a series on critical theory. And it was helpful for people who hadn't...

A lot of pastors for the first time were like, what's critical race theory? And we were able to just send them the series.

And then, okay, well, that was really helpful. But I got invited onto a podcast to talk about critical theory.

And they said, well, you have... Okay, we got 15 minutes. I was like, whoa, okay.

And then I found that that's just kind of happening a lot in light of what's happening sort of with our media.

People just feel like they have to go shorter, shorter, shorter. I mean, even think about the way you use YouTube. You used to go on YouTube and you'd watch like maybe a 30 -minute video, maybe a 20 -minute video.

Now, if you're not doing those 60 -second reels, your presence on YouTube is diminished because that's all people really want.

How often have you clicked on a YouTube video and saw that it was like 15 minutes and you just click right back off? Can't make that investment.

Can't do that. So I just thought, okay, Christians are trying to have really complicated, really difficult, really emotionally fraught, spiritually significant conversations on a time crunch.

And I just think that's bad. I think it's dangerous. It's unhelpful. It's not going to work for unity. We need room, plenty of time for nuance, right?

Just as we've even been having these conversations, you've been like, well, this, but not quite that, right?

That's nuance. And I don't think it's a liberal word. I don't think it's a postmodern neologism.

I don't think we should abandon it. I think it's a good word. We just don't need to let liberals co -opt it, okay? It's our word, just like all the other good words are our words.

And then I also started realizing that, kind of typical of evangelicals, that they kind of understood the direction that the culture was going, but they also kind of missed it.

And one of the ways that they missed it was they didn't realize that one of the fastest growing forms of media in the world is long -form podcasts.

Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman. And it's not just for the weird ayahuasca stories. Rogan is good at bringing on a subject matter expert who spent their whole lives, or 10 years or 20 years or five years, thinking about something and writing about things and speaking about things and changing their minds about things.

And he'll bring them on and he'll just let them go. And he'll ask good questions. He'll press them a little bit here and there, and he'll back off and kind of just...

I mean, they're the subject matter expert, not him. And then he'll back off and let them talk. And you started seeing a lot of that.

And I said, well, we should really be doing this with this complicated stuff in the church. So get

Dane Ortlund on. Let him talk about Gentle and Lowly. Say, hey, well, these masters guys, they critiqued your book in this way.

How would you respond to that? And not, hey, how would you respond to that? And by the way, you have six minutes. You know?

And so that's what we started with. And brothers, I have to say, it has been incredible.

Just to let... I mean, you guys, I didn't get really to your origin story, but you didn't end up specializing in law gospel stuff, assurance stuff, sanctification stuff for no reason.

That's right. Right? Right. There's been a lot of blood and sweat and tears and repentance and joy and glory wrapped up in this.

And I don't want to interview you guys and be like, okay, in 30 minutes, give me what you got.

And I'm so glad that that's not what this conversation was. So when I get Matthew Martins on, one of the best lawyers in the country, who also knows the

Bible better than any lawyer in the country, to come on and talk about reforming criminal justice from a

Christian perspective, man, it was so good just to give him like three plus hours to talk about that stuff.

And so yeah, that's what we're trying to do. It's a little tricky. It's a little tricky. I mainly want our stuff to be evergreen.

I don't want to get into... But like you said earlier, brother, some things come up and they just kind of need to be addressed.

So I did an interview with Douglas Wilson and Joe Rigney about the Moscow mood and theonomy, just because, man, it's already in our churches, you know?

So I can spend a lot of time saying, don't look at that, don't look at that, don't look at that. Or I could just say, well, we'll look at it.

We'll talk about it. Kind of suck some of the oxygen out of that fire. So that's kind of what we've been trying to do. Now I got to ramble.

No, that's fine. That's good. Well, really quickly, like origin stories, man. You kind of gave a little bit of a room for nuance, origin story in a way.

But I mean, for me, just to put a little more personal spin on this, for myself,

I know I am a person. I'm an anxious soul. Assurance has always been something that,

I think because of my tender conscience and the ways that I tend to even examine and evaluate myself and question my, it's like, man, because I'm a sinner, you question your legitimacy, right?

That's a thing for me. You know, I grew up in an environment that was just laced with moralism and it was all theological.

There was no doctrine. Be a good person. And, you know, rededicated my life 150 times between the age of 12 and 18, all the things.

And then, you know, as I encountered better theology in my 20s, like in even Calvinism, I think the reason that that resonated so much with me was because it's like, okay, well, the only reason

I'm trusting Jesus in the first place is because God has done this for me. And if God did that, God's gonna keep me.

And that was incredible news. And then for me, you know, there were times that even, you know, as I encountered

Calvinistic teaching, I felt like sometimes all the good that was held out to me in Christ was kind of then eroded the next minute, you know?

And what gave me comfort at the end of it all was always coming back to Christ himself and the things that he would speak to people who knew they needed, you know?

They're all, I'm going to prepare a place for you. Fear not, believe in God, believe also in me kind of stuff. Or, you know, I'm gonna raise you up.

I'm the good shepherd, you know, and those kinds of things. And so that for me, for sure, is a backfill to why theocast is a thing and why

I'm even thrilled to be participating in it. And I think we all, you know, there's our concerns for the church broadly.

You know, like you're just saying, everything you said about room for nuance, I'm like, yeah, dude, like, this is a great thing. And then there's also just kind of personal things, you know, in our own spiritual lives as Christians that inform our ministries too.

And that's part of what I think makes us effective. I mean, even the reformers, for example. I mean, Luther, Calvin, pick your guy.

It's like, there's a reason why they were useful because of the way the Lord had made them. You know, so I think it's really good.

Like just the theocast, room for nuance. They're different. We're trying to do different things.

And the church needs both. Yeah, I've got a few seconds to add to that.

Theocast was originated because we were trying to take really complicated concepts and make them really simple, like simplify them, bring them down to the lay level.

Like Justin and I, we really encourage each other to keep doing that. Like, how do you take really heady doctrines and the person washing dishes goes, oh,

I think I, you know, the person driving in the car, like they don't have to stop and really think about what they're hearing. It just is, it's really simple.

Trying to distill it down, right? It's very, very simple. And subjects like assurance become one of the areas that we need to simplify the most because they feel, this whole podcast, they feel so complex, right?

It's so complex. But for me, from like a origin story, I, coming from a very harsh fundamentalist background and then being in the

Calvinistic, Calvangelical Lordship Salvation crowd, I just saw the harshness just rip people apart.

I had two friends of mine that I graduated with that left ministry, one of them left seminary, but left ministry because they could not, upon self -examination, they could not determine if they were saved.

And so like, I don't wanna be a pastor. And so they got out from underneath kind of the Lordship push. And that's when they started to discover kind of a more of a reformed understanding of assurance.

And they're both pastors now, but hearing them talk about that. And that's one of the things that we hear quite often when we get contacted by Theocast is that people are like,

I can't seem to just find assurance based upon this context that I'm in.

And you guys have been able to offer that for me. It's really freed my soul to obey in ways that I was so introspective examining myself all the time,

I ended up not doing any good works. So that's kind of where the origin of like, we wanna liberate people from that.

All right, so Sean, let me ask you this question. I'm just interested in your answer. And we can stop this whenever we need to, but given -

Once we get hungry. None of us are academics, we're pastors. We sometimes interview or engage.

Some of us are more not academics than others. You have like, what? How many degrees between the two of you?

Five. Just one? Yeah, just one. Okay. And I don't know how much

I tell my degree. So - Double the amount that Sean has. So we're not academics, we're pastors, but we interact with a lot of people who might be in that world and that's fine.

But given even all the things that you've done with Room for Nuance and the interviews that you've done, as a pastor,

I'm asking you this question. Talk to me or talk to us about one, two, three things on the front of your mind that you're like, hey, in our church context in the

States, these are things that we are, that if we're not dealing with them already, we're gonna be. And I think we need to be ready for.

The therapeutic culture that we live in has permeated the cell membrane of the church.

And you guys have probably even experienced something like this. Like you're pastoring someone and you're talking to them about some issue and they'll just sort of casually bring up a therapist that you didn't even know that they had.

If you just sort of survey your congregation, so many of them are on medication. Not that necessarily it's always a wrong thing to be on medication, but like if a hundred people in your church, if 60 of them are on antidepressants.

So anyways, I think even secular analysts are realizing that this is bad.

And the cynical prophets of old saw this coming.

Freud said that one day all the priests would be replaced by therapists. And I feel that as a pastor.

And I think the more I talk to other pastors, the more they feel it too. So that's one. You want to riff on that before I move on?

I want you to keep going. Okay. Just keep rolling. The second thing, not to beat a dead horse, but I do think critical theory is just,

I think it's the ascendant worldview that's in competition with the Western Christian worldview. All right. So talk about that for a minute.

Like, because especially for like, these are not things that we talk about on Theocast. Okay. Because this is just not our lane.

Yeah. So why don't you go for a minute? Yeah. So critical theory, Neal Shinbey talks about, there's four different elements of it, but it's basically just like a rebranded, repurposed, reified to use the scholarly term,

Marxism. You combine Freudian thought with Marxist thought, and then you end up with this, like beast with seven heads called critical theory.

And so all of the stuff that you've heard, like critical race theory, critical queer theory, colonial theory, fat theory, all of that is basically part of the same bad juju of thought.

That's a mixture of Marx and Freud. And it came to America after World War II through some scholars from the

Frankfurt School who came over here and they ended up being professors at Columbia and Harvard. And it got into the backwaters of academia.

And when it did, it spent about four decades sort of percolating and drifting down.

And it moved out of the classroom, into the newsroom, into the education rooms in other colleges and high schools, and even now elementary schools.

If you're wondering why is this teacher trying to queer a child during like the reading day at their library, it's because of queer theory.

It's critical theory. It's made its way into the Sunday school room. It's made its way into the boardroom. If you're wondering why

BlackRock, which manages trillions of dollars of money, in any way gives a crap about LGBTQ plus issues, it's because of critical theory that's made its way into the boardroom.

And then of course, yes, it's made its way into the church. There's varying degrees of that.

So there are some people who have been sort of unwittingly influenced by critical theory. You know, like the pastor who cared about racial issues and someone gave him a copy of Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility.

And he's, oh, you know, let me just read this and see what it's about. And there's some good things in there, some things that make sense, and doesn't maybe have the discernment to think.

So that's the guy who might just sort of be unwittingly influenced. And then there's some other people who have been sort of wholly given over to it.

I think you got to triage that. So put it on the same kind of spectrum that you would with like Arminianism.

So somebody can be like a Pelagian, like one of my elders was when I got to our church. He said, man, I'm a

Pelagian. Oh, Pelagius got it right. No way. Nobody identifies as that.

Dude, he was like Pelagian to the bone. I don't know that I have ever met someone who would claim I'm a

Pelagian. First and only one for me. He is now the most reformed dude in our church. I'm like, bro, you're more reformed than me.

Yes. So you have Pelagianism and then you have Semi -Pelagianism and then you have sort of Classical Arminianism.

And some people would say those are the same thing. They're not though. But they're not. And then you have like maybe

Four -Point Calvinists. They're dispossessionalism. Yeah, that's like a different point on the axis here.

And then you have reformed theology proper. In the same way, there are some people who are so wholly given over to critical theory.

They're like Pelagians. They're like... No, they got it right. Like the Frankfurt School is the way.

Most people are somewhere in the middle there. Chew the meat, spit out the bones.

They're friendly to it. They think it's a useful tool. Think Resolution 9. And I think that they're misguided.

I think they're opening the door to some really dangerous, bad juju stuff in the church.

But last thing here, the most important thing you need to understand about critical theory is that it co -ops whatever field it enters into.

It's not actually a field of study unto itself. Think about biology. Biology is the study of life forms on Earth.

Math is a study of numbers and how they work together and languages, subjects, and predicates and all this stuff.

Critical theory is a sociological lens through which you examine all these other things that are actually things unto themselves.

So now math is not math. It's a sociological thing. Two plus two only equals four because of corrupt power structures that have trained you to think in white

Western ways about numbers. Take all that and come into the church now.

Take that sociological, that cynical, sociological, Marxist, Freudian lens and read the

Bible. And what do you get? Examine relationships in the church and what do you get?

You get destruction. Just pure and utter destruction. And now you don't read the

Bible like someone who's trying to, as a sinner by God's grace, encounter a savior. You're reading it to understand power structures and all this other stuff.

So we've been trying to kind of warn against that. Yeah, that's really good.

The third thing, I think... Hey, give us three. Yeah, the third thing... Is there anything a Baptist should do? Yeah, I think theonomy is an ascendant threat.

It's... Would you lump in like Christian nationalism and kind of broader reconstructionist ideas with theonomy?

Yeah, so, yeah. You know, we need to bust out a chart here to kind of clarify where each one goes, under which umbrella.

And it needs to not be like a 2D chart. It needs to be like a four -dimensional chart because some theonomists are not reconstructionists and, you know, some...

Yeah, all that stuff. But it's actually, what I'm seeing is that it's a reaction to the ascendant leftist worldviews.

And there's a lot of Christians who are afraid, and rightly so, of Drag Queen Story Hour and men beating up women in the

Olympics. And, you know, at my work, I have to call this person by a pronoun that isn't...

And they feel like the Christian worldview is dying in the West. And they're right.

It is, it's dying. Yeah, the world they grew up in. That's right. Yeah. And they don't want that to happen.

And I don't want that to happen. The Lord's sovereign, and he can use it, and I think it'll probably be better for the gospel in the long run.

But the most thoughtful of them want to have a theological reason to fight back against that.

They're not just out here culture warring. The best of them want to have some sort of theological grounding.

Sure. Right? Where from Scripture, how do I get there? How can I fight this battle of Scripture? And that's what theonomy offers you.

Right? It offers you a certain kind of political theology, a justification that is just 100 % in opposition to the exile theology that we find in the

New Testament. The pilgrim theology that we find in the New Testament. That this idea that the church is always a nation within a nation.

Right. In God's providence and kindness, there may be times where that pagan nation is more friendly and receptive to what you're saying, but the vast majority of human history, and even the world today, bears witness to the fact that that's the exception that proves the rule.

That this is not our home, and we're always going to be at war with the nations as our own little nation within the nation.

So I think particularly the versions of it that are being espoused right now are really bad and really dangerous.

I think they're going to do untold damage. So we have done, of the three things that you mentioned, we have done some work and done some podcasts ourselves on the theonomy piece.

And I agree with everything you said about that. And so that we're not here all afternoon, because this is, we've been going for a minute.

I'm getting hungry. Yeah. You promised me tacos, so. Yeah, man. Yeah, we would agree.

Vegetarian, is that okay? I think if I was going to make a statement about, like, where our concern, because we've just been here together this week for the first General Assembly of something called the

Grace Reform Network. It's a network of confessional, like Second London Confession, Baptist churches. And some of the time that we spent together was teaching and panel discussions and just general edification stuff.

We did a panel discussion, John and I were a part of it, on this, on theonomy and Christian nationalism and related subject matter.

I think a lot of our concern, agreeing with everything you've already stated, is the way that serious minded theonomy and related things can really obscure not only

Christ and the gospel, but can also kind of make the mission of the church. It's a right word version of the same thing we critique on the left.

Correct. Mission drift. Correct, exactly. Our concern is the purity of the mission of the church. On the left, it's like environmentalism.

Correct, whereas on the right, so it's good to criticize this. On the right, it is all of these things where, like baked into the cake, part of the mission of the church is the transformation of society this way, or maybe even overhauling the government to some extent.

And this is what Christians, it's not just that Christians as individuals, as citizens of the common kingdom can be involved in all kinds of good pursuits.

It's that the institutional church needs to be involved in these kinds of social and even political matters sometimes.

Yeah. And that fidelity to the Lord Jesus includes these things. Yeah. And if you're not therefore pursuing them, then you are not being faithful to Christ.

Oh, you're weak, you're compromisers, you're cowards. And that's very concerning, rather than kind of a historical understanding of we preach the word of God, we administer the sacraments, we rightly practice discipline for the salvation of God's people.

Being the mission of the church. So you said you're in a town of like 55 ,000? You're seeing this in your church?

Dude, I went 16 hours, four flights, two camel rides, and a guy in a rickshaw picked me up to get to Moscow, Idaho.

This town of 22 ,000 people, and it's there. I mean, it's everywhere. The internet has made the world a very small place.

It's true. And I think you see it in big cities, like big blue cities that you would never expect to see it.

I think it's actually more dangerous there, because people are feeling the pinch so acutely...

They are. ...that when somebody holds out this thing that... I mean, and the branding and the marketing, you know, like, by what standard?

I'm like, yeah, right? I mean, it sounds so good, so... Sure, or it's either

God's law or man's law, which is one. Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. It's like, well, yeah, I mean, I'm all for God's law. I just think the way that you're applying it is...

God's law rightly understood in the context of redemptive history... Yeah. ...within the biblical covenantal framework, etc.

And it's an error that I... No offense to my Presbyterian brothers, but it makes more sense that they would make in light of their biblical theology and the continuity that they see between the covenants and even their law gospel, their threefold distinction of the law, which

I don't hold to, civil ceremonial. I think that's part of the problem. You would be...

Would you be a progressive covenantalist? Depends on who's asking and what they mean by it, but basically, yeah.

I'm not a 1689er. A 1689 Federalist like we are. Yeah. It's cool. But there goes those three degrees of difference again, right?

That's... Yeah, it's great. But the fact that I'm seeing... But if I came to your church, I'd get the gospel.

You'd get the gospel, baby, come on. But the fact that I'm seeing it make inroads into Baptist circles...

Oh, that's so frustrating. It is. It's a problem. And big can we name names? I mean, big names that hold the name, Joel Webbin, right?

I don't even know who that is. Can't be that big of a name. Or even... Buckle up. He's got probably 150 ,000 subscribers on his

YouTube, and he's a part of this Moscow mood. He's just in Texas. But he claims himself to be a

Reformed Baptist. He's probably the biggest Reformed Baptist theonomist that I know of. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Anyway.

Maybe you should have him on your room for nuance. I would love to. And we've... Even for us as Second London Confession guys, we are covenantal.

So we would affirm even like the threefold division of the law. And then we would hold to one covenant of grace and all of scripture, though there's some nuance in terms of how we understand that, as opposed to our

Presbyterian friends. So we contend, even from our standpoint, like this theonomy in particular, like if you're thinking like Greg Bonson and some of the seminal figures, this does not square with confessional

Baptist theology from our perspective. And PCA guys want to be exceedingly clear as well.

They don't think it squares with Westminster. Of course. Yes. Would you say, because I loved how you emphasized like, you know, we would call it a theology of the cross.

Like we should expect suffering. Would you say that... Even that sojourner in exile paradigm, we could not agree more.

Right. We've got megachurch anemic Christians who have somewhat been influenced by prosperity gospels.

So we could say that there's a carnality to these people that they really want their world to be more enjoyable to live in.

That's why theonomy probably is very enticing to them. You know,

I'm not... Sorry, you were going to say something. Go ahead, because mine's maybe slightly... I mean, what I think... I've not seen explicitly like the prosperity -like connection to theonomy, but I can imagine it.

I mean, I'm sure it's true. Somebody comes out of that. Actually, no, I actually have experienced this.

Somebody kind of came out of that context. They came to our church, got discipled, got a little more of the gospel. And then within six months, we didn't know anything.

We were idiots. They got on the theonomy train. So I did see that. Yeah, that connection is true. Yeah, because there's...

Everyone... We're all parents here. I mean, everyone wants a safe experience for their family.

Yeah, that's right. And that's what they offer. Yeah, in theory. In theory. Because I got to tell you, when

I was in Moscow, if you were going to say like, man, if it's going to work anywhere, it's going to work here.

They got Doug Wilson. There are like four sister churches in that area. It's like the CREC stuff.

Yeah, that's right. The hub of it. But I mean, there's their little downtown strip. Like half the buildings are owned by the church and people related to it and businesses related to it in New St.

Andrews. And the other half, when I was there, like had pride flags out. You know, so like they're not... They're not any...

I surveyed people who lived in the city and asked them questions. I interviewed my taxi driver. You know, they're not any closer to getting there than anywhere.

I didn't know that. So you went there to interview? Yeah, I went there to interview. And could not have been...

Actually, what's interesting, I think, is... I haven't said this publicly, but nobody watches the show anyway.

So I'll tell you here and now. I had one encounter with one person there who was everything that I thought it would be kind, affable, intelligent, generous.

Real sense of brotherly unity. And then I had another encounter, which is everything that you hear about the

Moscow mood and the way people act on the internet. And I thought that was pretty revealing.

Yeah, that was pretty revealing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is. Well, I mean, we're going to go here.

So now that you say that, what's been the attitude? Like, are you experienced theonomist?

How would you describe their attitude towards culture and other Christians? Yeah, I think...

So first of all, anytime you have a movement, however tight or loose that may be, you usually have people at the forefront of that movement who do a particularly good job of being balanced and fair and charitable.

And then you have people who kind of sort of ape them, and they make hash of it, right?

So let's say in our Nine Marks world, right? Mark is such a fantastic example.

Yeah, thoughtful, nuanced. Holds the convictions, but can be Catholic to the inside. Very open -handed, very charitable, all of those kinds of things.

Very difficult to do. He does it well. Then you get guys who come along, and they read one Nine Marks book, and they're like, you're excommunicated, and you're excommunicated.

And then people start throwing shade and like, Nine Marks is... Nine Marks this, they're authoritarian.

Okay, well, maybe don't evaluate the whole movement based on this guy. Sure. But I will say that the vast majority of theonomy kind of people that I've encountered have just been hostile.

They've been uncharitable. They've been unkind. I'm not talking about, you know, are you being winsome?

I just mean like basic Christian decency. Like if someone disagrees with you about something, not calling them gay on the internet, you know, that kind of thing.

And listen, we're part of... Literally just happened to me. Been there, done that, got the t -shirt, brother.

There are... Now, I'll call you gay offline because we're friends, right? But that's totally different.

Okay. With Dave, sorry. But even if you look at kind of the main theonomy denominational structure, the

CREC, and I know, you know, there are theonomists out there who are like, they don't represent us, but you get what I'm saying.

If you think about Baptist, you think about the SPC. If you think about Presbyterians, you think about the PCA. If you think about theonomists, you think about the

CREC. I have just a mountain, a mountain of stories of pastors saying like, the

CREC came to our town and things went crazy.

Hostility, frustrations, disunity, accusations. I'm thinking about the verse, you know, do not bite and devour one another.

And yeah, so I mean, all of that leads me to say, I don't want to be overly harsh towards my theonomy brothers, but I just, that's most of what

I've seen. Yeah, yeah. So I've never said this publicly, so since we're in the state of doing this, two years ago,

I put out a 30 -minute video just saying, here's my concerns with Doug Wilson, right? And I just deal with this theology.

And you did that in part because you saw this creeping into your own church. I had to deal with it. As a pastor,

I kind of have a circle. And if the crazies are out there and they're not in my circle, I don't care. But the crazies come into my circle,

I got to deal with them. So Doug came in with it a force, kind of like a lot of people are experiencing. So I decided to deal with it in a letter that I wrote to our congregation.

And I was like, you know what, I'm just going to put a video out there because some people won't read this letter, but they will watch this video. Well, it got a lot of attraction.

And I started getting emails and people calling me and messaging me on Facebook. Mostly pastors, your video split my church in half.

I lost my elders. I lost half my board because they did not realize the amount of influence that Wilson had had in their churches.

And so these pastors were bringing this to their congregation or bring it to their churches. And it was just slicing it right down the middle.

And those, I think I lost count at like 20. After 20, I was like, this is a problem. Yeah. So when

I had one guy, he disagreed with me about interviewing Wilson. He says, you're just giving him more exposure.

I said, listen, if you have people in your church who are homeschoolers, he's in your church.

Right. I'm talking about him like he's a commando secret agent. And I doubt

Doug will ever see this, but if he does, brother, I don't mean to insinuate that you're trying to creep into churches and tear them apart.

We're just talking about the way reality works. A man with a platform has influence. That's right. And his platform, particularly through homeschooling stuff and canon press, is if your church has homeschooling families, he has an influence.

So just like you, brother, I finally felt like I needed to address it in some sense because it was making its way into our church.

No, it's just interesting that you say that because it sounds like you've been involved in it in some way, and I've just been noticing like, well, in my experience, these guys are hostile.

And that just tells me that in and alone is an off -putting of the theology.

Well, and I think for my part, maybe I've not had as much direct in our church, maybe overtly, but I live in a...

Because you live in the land of the fruit and nuts, bro. I live in a very liberal city in North Carolina. So it's a unique environment.

But I do think that... I like the way he said it better. Part of my concerns with some of this too is that because of theonomy's ties to things like Christian nationalism or because of theonomy's ties to like what you were touching on before, there are a lot of people who are frankly afraid of the trajectory of the culture.

And they do... It's like to see in the pages of Scripture to have a theological sort of underpinning to not only validate that concern, but then to also validate action against what they see

Yeah, I think that's every place. And I mean, I think you look at the political climate, all of the kinds of things going on in our country.

I think that every Christian to some extent or another is having to wrestle with these things.

Yeah, political theology that used to just sort of be assumed. Yeah. Now you kind of just got to figure out where you stand on these things. You have to.

Yeah. Yeah, you have to. And so, yeah, for me, that was a lot of the reason that I was willing to engage on it.

Because I see in my church our members wrestling with these things. And the potential division that can be brought into a congregation, one of our roles as pastors is to protect the church, and to keep this kind of division that is of the evil one from manifesting itself in our congregations.

And so I think you've got to, as a pastor, you've got to be informed on some of these things. And you need to get out in front of it in these ways.

Not only because the mission of the church, I really do think is at stake, and the clarity of the gospel is at stake.

We don't want Christ to be obscured. But we also don't want our churches just fractured over this stuff.

You know, in terms of whether it's voting patterns... Go ahead. On that note, so if you're an elder, a pastor, bishop, whatever you call yourself, presbyter, and you're watching this,

Theocast did a series on theonomy. We've done episodes on them. Okay. And I have a 10 ,000 word essay on Theocast that's reasonably well researched.

So just go to Theocast, type in theonomy, and it'll come up. And Nine Marks also published a bridge version of that essay in their journal on the whole thing.

They published a journal disguised as a book on theonomy. Defending Confirmed did a series on theonomy.

I don't know, four or five part series on theonomy. So there are good resources out there from Trusted Brothers that you can check out.

You were going to say something, brother? I have a real estate agent who's coming right now to take photos of this building.

I didn't think we'd be here this long. Great. Well, that seems like a good place to end. In the providence of God. Yes. That and the fact that we want to go eat tacos together is a good reason to land this plane for...

Yeah. You know, we buzz the tower. Only the Lord knows how many times. That's right. Luke is just sitting here going, I have to drive back to Decatur.

Hey, let's end on a note of hope. Theonomy, therapeutic culture, list them out, right?

All the threats to the gospel. Gnosticism, justification by works. The gospel wins.

Jesus already won. It was finished on the cross. It was planned before the foundations of the world. Amen. Now we are just walking in the works that he's prepared before us.

Hopeful, confident, trusting that he will lead his people home. All right, let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for my

Theocast brothers. Thank you for in your providence, allowing us to have this time together. We pray that any stupid, silly, inaccurate things we've said in this podcast, that you will just protect our viewers and our listeners from it.

Anything good and useful, perhaps even challenging that has been said in this podcast, we pray that you will use it.

That you'll work your word down into the hearts of your people. Insofar as we've spoken your word, Lord, we pray that you will bless our words.

Get this episode to exactly those who need to hear it. And Lord, protect us and keep us as we go back out into the world to continue to be your ambassadors.

pray this in the name of Jesus, the most holy name, the most beautiful name, the most precious name. Amen.