November 28, 2023 with Jinger Duggar Vuolo on “Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith From Fear”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson,

19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports

legend Jim Thorpe.

It's iron sharpens iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning

issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens

another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to

have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener,

with your own questions.

And now here's your host Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living

on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of iron sharpens iron radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this

28th day of November 2023, and I'm thrilled to have a

returning guest today whose name is Ginger Duggar Volo.

That last name Volo may sound familiar to you because I just recently had my

guest's mother -in -law on the program, Diana Volo, to discuss her ministry,

Swan.

And I have also interviewed on a number of occasions my guest's father -in -law, Pastor Chuck Volo,

but today we have the honor and privilege of having back on the show Ginger Duggar Volo, who is the

sixth child of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggars, 19

children, and she's a wife, a mother, and Christian author.

And today we're going to be addressing her new book, Becoming Free Indeed, my story

of disentangling faith from fear.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Ginger Duggar Volo.

Thank you so much for having me, Chris.

First of all, I'd like our listeners to get an idea of the kind

of home in which you were raised because that is really what

is the catalyst behind this book to begin with.

But as far as the theological makeup of the church

and the denominational affiliation, was it a independent Bible church, non -denominational

type of church, or was it a part of a denomination?

And any kind of theological makeup that you can recount, I know that

your husband is a sovereign grace -believing Christian, theologically

reformed, and so on, as is his parents.

But in contrast to that, tell us something about your own upbringing in church.

Yeah, so it's interesting.

Actually, our setting where I grew up with my family, we were

more so like in a home church setting and didn't have formal leadership.

And so we didn't have too many elders or deacons or anything.

It was more like we would have someone stand up and share a message with us, maybe

one of the men in the church, and then we would have somebody who would maybe

bring a DVD of a teacher that they heard, that they liked, or we

would watch the teachings of Bill Gothard, go through some of his seminars.

So it was more of a hodgepodge of all different teachings brought together.

And like I said, no formal leadership.

So there was a lack of accountability there.

We weren't necessarily under a church banner.

We would have said we were non -denominational Bible -believing Christians, more of

a Baptist background.

And for some years, my family, we had attended First Baptist Church in our

area.

And that was, you know, it was just a very normal Baptist church setting.

But then once we moved on to the home church setting, I think that's where the teachings of Bill Gothard,

I remember that being very foundational in my

understanding of what the Word of God said.

And often that's what we would listen to on Sundays as well.

And I'm assuming that.

The.

Church of your upbringing, this house church movement, was not a

Reformed or Sovereign Grace -believing theological background.

Definitely not, yes.

Definitely more, I think it was, you know, my

parents had always an emphasis on the gospel, salvation not being by works.

And that was something that I'm grateful for to this day.

They taught us that.

And at the same time, because of the lack of depth in theology, we

were easily led into the teachings of Bill Gothard.

And so, yeah, it was more like free will type teaching,

and that's kind of just what I grew up under.

Well, since you've mentioned Bill Gothard, which also has a lot to do with what you have

written, tell our listeners about who Bill Gothard was and

the primary emphasis of his ministry.

Yes, so Bill Gothard, he came on the scene, and it was kind of at the time where

parents were kind of worried, really, for their kids' safety and

also for just spiritually, they were concerned that their kids were going to get involved

in what was happening at that time, sex, drugs, and rock and rolls in the 60s and 70s.

And they were really worried that, oh, no, if we don't get a hold of our kids, if we don't figure out how to get to

their hearts, then they're going to be swept away.

So Bill Gothard was a young man.

He came on the scene, and he said, I've got the answer to all of life's problems.

You can come to my seminars, and I will teach you basically how

you can keep your kids' hearts, and they will not fall away.

So there were, at that time, I think a lot of churches got involved, and

they started busing people to his seminars, which filled up massive stadiums all across the country.

And it seemed great on the outside, because some of these things were not

necessarily bad in and of themselves.

There were some principles that were true, and some of them that I would say were based in scripture.

But sadly, he started teaching things that were

outside the Bible, or he would take a verse of the Bible twist it, and make it say whatever he wanted it to say,

and then he would have you make a vow at the end of that time to bind your conscience to it.

So that's what happened with Bill Gothard, and he kind of blew up over that

time, and a lot of people would have known the name of Bill Gothard, and had at

least somebody who had maybe gone to a seminar in their circles, in the Christian world.

And from what I understand, your parents were even heavily involved in Bill

Gothard's ministry before they were married, correct?

Correct, yes.

And they attended a couple of seminars and things like that before they

were married, and it was all that they pretty much knew for their married

life.

They taught us kids the principles that Bill Gothard would have given to

them, and that was something that we all grew up with, we were born into.

And from what you've already said, obviously there were good

motivations behind what Mr. Gothard was teaching,

at least initially.

In our current world, in the 21st century, the

problem seems to be far more, amongst Christians and amongst

churches, far more in the area of looseness,

turning the gospel into a license to sin, turning the grace

of God into licentiousness, easy believism, cheap grace.

That seems to be the the largest problem today, but that does not mean that there is not

serious and harmful legalism that exists, obviously,

especially in the world of the cults.

But you do have genuine Bible -believing Christians, who may be very

sound in their theology, who are seriously harming

those under their authority with

enslavement to legalism and so on.

And if you could, why don't you tell us some of the primary ways

in which Bill Gothard's ministry in your

biblically -trained opinion went off the rails.

Obviously, we already said that not everything he taught was unbiblical or bad or

harmful, and every parent should have a watchful eye over their

children, seeking to guard them from

exposure to unnecessary temptations and so forth.

Not that we are to keep them locked in the house 24 -7 or anything like that, but

the parents are to guard their children and so on, and even adults are to guard

themselves and their spouses and their own children from these

types of lures and temptations and gateways to sin.

But tell us how, in your opinion, Bill Gothard went off the rails, and the primary ways that

you believe his teachings were harmful, and especially to you personally?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting, Chris.

I think that it was really based on—these principles were based on the

external, and so Bill Gothard would say, okay, you know,

don't—.

You know, it was—okay, so it was based on like where you go to like purity, right?

Purity is important, and that matters.

It's in scripture.

It's talked about everywhere.

Bill Gothard would think, okay, the word of God is not enough.

I need to put a rule on this.

So he would make you have commit to like a single service commitment,

and he would say, okay, well, since you're young, or even if you're not young, and you could be a 30 -year -old

girl who walks into his office, and he would say, are you going to—do you want to serve the Lord?

And she might say yes, and then he could go into this whole thing about how she should make a single service

commitment, maybe for five, ten years, and a lot this time to the Lord, which

if you think about it, it's like.

That became so prevalent in that setting.

Now, when you say single service, are you talking about like a specific ministry?

No, no, sir.

So this is how it would—this is how he would lay it out.

He would say, I think that, you know, for us to have undistracted devotion

to the Lord, you can serve the Lord better if you don't have a boy on your mind.

So a lot of my grown friends who were of marrying age, some of

them in their upper 20s, and some of them even in their 30s, would make single service

commitments to serve the Lord for maybe—pick a number—maybe seven years, ten years,

where I'm not going to get married for ten years.

Well, that in and of itself can create problems because it's an

idea that he came up with to solve a purity issue that he saw was happening.

The Word of God is not sufficient to keep us from sinning.

It's not sufficient to keep us from giving in to the lust of our flesh.

So we need to add courtship rules where you're not allowed to, you know, hold hands before you're

engaged or all of these things that become rules to prop you up,

not realizing that, man, we've got to go back to the beginning.

We've got to go back to the start.

What really matters is that our hearts have been transformed by the gospel, and that's how you're going to keep your young people

pure and loving Jesus and walking with the Lord, is from the transformation that happens at the

beginning in salvation.

And that will drive and motivate our hearts to love God, but we can't just put our kids in a box

and say, do this, don't do that.

And there's a certain time for that, like when your kids are young and they're at the house, you know, it's like, well, I understand we need to lay these

rules.

It's not without that, but his whole ministry was primarily

propped up with rules.

And so whether that was authority, which was a huge one, which authority is important.

It's in the word of God, but his idea of authority was that

that children would be under their parents' authority all the way up through adulthood.

If you're in the home and you're a woman, you, you know, you cannot work outside the home.

You cannot do anything outside the home.

Otherwise, you're opening yourself up to Satan's attacks.

Unless you're working for your father, then there's like a level of protection.

And so a lot of these things just, he would get carried away.

And I think that we are now seeing the breakdown of that.

Maybe, like I said at the beginning, a lot of people probably do not even understand who Bill Gothard is or

what, what, why this matters.

But I think that a lot of these kids who were raised in it, we're seeing these generations of kids turning out and

now they're realizing there are so many negative effects to this.

It's not something where it's like, oh, this is just Bill Gothard's opinion.

We're all these years removed.

It doesn't matter.

But it affects our view of God because the way that we view God is okay, if I

step outside of this box, God is waiting to smite me, which is what Bill Gothard would teach.

So if I don't, if I hold hands before I'm engaged, oh no, what is God going to do to me?

If I don't read my Bible for five minutes every day, like I made this vow, Bill Gothard wouldn't make this vow to

read and pray my, you know, to read my Bible for five minutes, to pray for five minutes every day.

If I don't, what is God going to do to me?

It's, it's a fear -based mindset that is not based in scripture.

And it's a man's opinion and he was very comfortable placing burdens on people that they couldn't

carry.

And so what you're saying is basically you were living under the fear and living

enslavement, an enslavement to fear that as if God

was constantly hovering above you with a sledgehammer waiting to crush you

because you disobeyed him in some way, in almost any way.

Exactly.

And ironically, even though that may appear on the surface to many

as as someone who is teaching that, they really take

sin seriously.

But what they are failing to recognize is that they are really undermining

the serious and prevalence of sin.

Because if that were the case, if God behaved that way with his children, we'd all be crushed with sledgehammers every

minute of the day.

Exactly.

In much in the same way the Roman Catholic Church, at least it used to.

Now it has become so liberal that it's barely

recognizable from historic Roman Catholicism.

But there was a time when the way that they would

distinguish sins from another and so on had the same kind of effect on people.

So you discovering the doctrines of grace, did

that come about through dating and then marrying Jeremy?

You know, it's interesting.

Actually, that whole perspective for me started before Jeremy.

Because my sister, one of my sisters had started a relationship with a guy who

went to a church that was reformed.

And it was at that time, I was going and driving to visit this young man and

his family and all at their church.

And so sitting through those church services, I realized, wow, they really read the Bible differently

and they handle it differently than I've ever seen.

And so realizing that God is sovereign over all, it was a huge shift in

my mindset.

And so when I started reading the Bible, I was like, whoa, how did I not see this?

It's everywhere.

And so that was kind of a shift that happened.

But the teachings of Bill Gothard were still there.

So foundational in my life that it was not until Jeremy came on the scene

that we started to discuss these things.

And as soon as I saw that it wasn't all based in scripture, those external

rules or traditions really fell off.

And I saw the word of God as.

Being.

So much greater than even this Bill Gothard's opinion.

And it was a beautiful thing because I saw then for the first time really that the word of God,

we don't need to come up with rules and all of this stuff to to keep us from sinning,

but that the word of God is sufficient.

And I think that's something that I was missing for all those years.

And I thought, OK, well, I'm terrified.

That years ago, right?

And you're breaking up a little bit.

I'm not sure what's happening, but.

Really wrestling through it.

I was like, oh, no.

Like, how am I going to raise my children?

Because now what if like what if I raise my children and I'd

because it's a guarantee for success if you follow Bill Gothard's principles.

But if you don't, he would always teach that your life was going to be one disaster after another.

But it was amazing because once I saw that this was in scripture and that a lot of these teachings from Bill Gothard just weren't

in scripture or they were twisted, it was so free.

And I was it actually started.

Yeah, that we're not based in like an awe and reverence, but it was based in

more of like that, like you said, the sledgehammer, the fear of the sledgehammer coming down.

And I want to quickly add that because of the fact that I brought up the

the distinction between the Arminian and the reformed

systems of theology, there are professedly reformed people, pastors and churches and

denominations that are just as legalistic as what we've been hearing

from the Bill Gothard seminars and other places.

So we're not trying to say that the reformed community is pristine and

perfectly separate from that unfortunate behavior and

theology, basically.

Let me quick give our listeners our email address because you have to leave

fairly soon.

Just to let our listeners know, Ginger has to leave after the first half hour of today's program.

And we're going to be joined after that by her in -laws, Pastor Chuck and

Diana Volo.

But our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

Ginger, just out of curiosity, did Bill Gothard teach that you could lose your salvation?

He never would have said that, but I think that the way that his principles kind of

if you followed his principles to a tee, you could easily get there.

And so I think that because of the the way that he taught that everything is

relying on you, then I think that a lot of people in that setting would wrestle with assurance.

Even those who were genuine believers are sitting there wrestling with assurance because here it's not

on God's sovereignty and salvation where God has you know, he has chosen you and

he will keep you, he will preserve you.

All of those things were kind of they weren't just really taught.

And so it was more on like, okay, here are all these rules and if you failed

you just felt like, oh man, I've messed up big time.

God is not pleased with me, even as his child, even as I think it's interesting how you can

get so many years into this and not read through the psalms and the wrestlings that

you hear the psalmist talking about.

And it's like, well, if you look at that, Bill Gothard would just totally...

You broke up there a little bit.

Bill Gothard would just totally what?

I'm sorry.

And I hope we haven't lost Ginger.

I'm not sure why I can't hear Ginger right now.

Ginger, are you there?

Ginger, can you hear me?

Okay.

Well, sorry folks, I'm not sure why we cannot hear Ginger.

There's some kind of technical difficulty going on.

And I hope that our link is restored

so that we can continue the discussion.

And while I am waiting to hear from Ginger again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail

.com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least.

City and state and country of residence.

And Ginger's gone.

Well, Ginger, are you there?

Yes, I'm back on.

Can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you fine now.

Sorry for that.

You were right in the middle of talking about how, even though Bill Gothard did not

believe you could lose your salvation,.

Go ahead.

Yeah, he would gloss over a lot of those things and just say like he would give you more rules.

So if you were struggling with whatever it was, or if you were not measuring up, instead of saying

that the grace of God covers our sin, that on the cross Christ paid for that, and

that God viewing us as father was missing from his teaching.

So I think a lot of people had this view of like a domineering taskmaster that's just

waiting for you to mess up.

And I think that produced a sense of like, okay, well, I know I can't lose my salvation

because he wouldn't say that, but he.

Almost.

Made it feel like that.

Yeah, you can you could be just as much enslaved to legalism and fear

just by believing that God, as you have said, is going to kill you in a car accident if you

fail in this way.

He's going to give you cancer if you do this wrong.

That constant fear as if God is going to unleash a hitman against you

for disobeying him.

Exactly.

And that is obviously not living with the joy and liberty and freedom of the

grace of God.

We do have a listener named Chad from Averill Park, New York, and he says,

Tony Volo was the best man in my wedding 26 years ago.

That's Chuck's younger brother.

I was wondering if Ginger and Jeremy have sat down with an open Bible to

appeal to Ginger's parents about the errant teachings they've held to, and if

so, what has been their response?

Hmm.

Thanks for that question.

And that's that's an awesome connection there.

Yeah, so I have had so many conversations with my family, loved ones, and

I know that at the end of the day it's going to be, I think it's such

a difficult thing for so many to leave the teachings of Bill Gothard because of

how they view these things as scripture.

So like you said, with an open Bible, I think that a lot of people, even in my family, have

maybe walked away from some of those teachings, and it's been very encouraging.

And at the same time, there are so many that are still following them.

And so we just pray that even those who are genuine believers there, that they would be

able to see what is true and what is not.

And I think that's just where we leave it to the Lord and trust in His goodness and sovereignty even

over that.

And how have your parents reacted to the book?

Yeah, we've had conversations.

I think it's definitely been difficult for some just because of these teachings being

so foundational and all in their lives.

But others have been so appreciative of it.

And so it's kind of been a mix.

It's really been a mix among my family members.

And so I think that at the end of the day, I just wanted to be able to write this book to help

those who are still stuck in these teachings.

Whether that means family members will come out of these teachings or not, I just wanted to be faithful to what God had put

before me to do.

Well, I believe that if I'm not mistaken, you and

Jeremy have a website where people can learn more about you and your lives

and your ministry and your writing.

Yes, we do.

So it is gingerandjeremy .com.

And by the way, folks, she spells it with a J. J. J -I -N -G -E -R.

Gingerandjeremy .com.

And.

Well, I hope that we can have you back on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio in the near future and perhaps

for a longer segment because this has really got me even more

fascinated to and more intrigued to hear more about your story.

But by the way, I want to tell Chad in Averill Park, New York,

thanks to our friends at Thomas Nelson.

You've won a free copy of Becoming Free Indeed, My Story of Disentangling Faith from

Fear by Ginger Duggar Volo.

So make sure we get your full mailing address in Averill Park, New York.

And even though Ginger has to leave us, we still have more copies to give away to other listeners who

send in questions when we have her in -laws, Pastor Chuck and Diana Volo on

momentarily.

But Ginger, it has been a joy.

Please send my regards to your husband.

And I look forward to even sharing fellowship with you again face to face as we had the

opportunity to do a number of years ago at the G3 conference.

Will do.

Thank you so much, Chris.

It's been wonderful talking to you.

You too.

And don't go away, folks, because as I said, Pastor Chuck and Diana Volo are going to be

joining us momentarily, the in -laws of Ginger Duggar Volo.

And if you have a question for them, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com gives us the first name at least, city and state and country of

residence.

Don't go away.

We'll be right back.

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We are now joined by my friends Pastor Chuck and Diana

Volo.

Pastor Chuck Volo is the pastor of

Gospel of Grace Community Church here in Pennsylvania, and

Diana Volo, his wife, is the founder of SWAN, which

stands for Scaling Walls A Note At A Time.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you both back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Chuck and Diana Volo.

Hello Chris, we're glad to be with you.

And Pastor Chuck, why don't you first of all tell our listeners something about Gospel of

Grace Church, I'm sorry, Gospel of Grace Community Church here

in Pennsylvania.

Yeah, well God has had opened up a door for me among the Amish about

18 years ago, and for those years I was ministering to Amish people.

God was converting them, they were going off to various Anabaptist churches, and I really didn't have a

church in that area to bring them to.

I was helping to start a church in Northern Maryland at the time as well, but about seven

years ago a group of men approached me about starting a church there in Lancaster County,

and I was glad to do that because I had labored there for all those years.

And so we began meeting, and I would bring in several friends to

preach.

I was only able to come maybe once a month at first, and they were getting a smorgasbord, a

wonderful diet, but it was different every week with different men, gifted preachers, and they didn't want to

constitute until a full -time preacher was willing to commit, which I was willing to do in the

providence of God in early 2020.

And so we're coming up on our fourth year anniversary in February, and we constituted

as Gospel of Grace Community Church there in Kinzers, which is a

bit west of east of Lancaster City and west by a couple of miles

of the town of Gap, Pennsylvania.

Well, if anybody wants more details on Gospel of Grace Community Church, go to

gospelofgracecommunitychurch .com, gospelofgracecommunitychurch .com.

That's Gospel of Grace Community Church in Kinzers, Pennsylvania, and you are a confessionally

reformed Reformed Baptist Church, correct?

Correct.

Yeah, we do subscribe basically to the 1689 London Baptist Confession, and

we are thoroughly Reformed, Calvinistic in our doctrine.

We have a wonderful cultural diversity in the church, which I really delight in, Chris, because

anyone who knows Lancaster County knows that the churches tend to be very uniform.

Instead of unity, they often opt for uniformity, even in the way people dress.

And so one of the doctrines I've preached in the community for quite a few years is the

doctrine of liberty of conscience in areas where the Bible doesn't speak clearly.

And I'm glad that we have a church that is doctrinally unified in major things,

but we have a good cultural diversity, including some former Amish, some former Mennonite,

a former Hindu, and it's a wonderful blend of God's people under

the banner of the cross.

Now, I'd like to have Diana, your lovely wife, who I recently interviewed again,.

Tell our listeners about SWAN.

Oh, thanks for asking, Chris, and thanks for having me on your program.

SWAN is a nonprofit organization, and it stands for Scaling Walls One Note at a Time, and we

help children affected by parental incarceration and the resulting trauma

and the ways that we help them is by teaching them music.

We give them very loving music teachers.

We share the love of Christ with them through those music teachers, but we also share devotions and prayer,

and we also provide some Bible classes.

Additionally, we provide our students with mental health care, so

they have immediate access to a mental health professional, and that professional also

helps them with trauma management.

Well, if anybody wants to find out more about SWAN, you can go to their website,

swan4kids .org, swan4kids .org, and

hopefully we will remember to repeat that information before the end of the program.

Well, continuing the thread that we began with your daughter -in -law, Ginger,

Pastor Chuck, since you work so closely with the Amish

community, you have labored in evangelizing them and seeking by

the grace of God and the Holy Spirit to lead them out of a false gospel

of works righteousness into the true biblical gospel of

free and sovereign grace.

You are obviously no stranger to legalism and the

heaviness of enslavement to fear that can exist

amongst professing Christians.

Now, obviously, we want to distinguish between your

daughter -in -law's upbringing.

The gospel was present in that home and in the faith of her parents,

but nonetheless, there was a stranglehold of constant fear

perpetually being yoked upon the family.

And, of course, the Amish have a false gospel of

actual works righteousness.

But if you could tell us why this is such an important issue,

even in the midst of the fact, as I said earlier, it seems that the more prevalent problem we have in the church

is anything goes, turning the grace of God into licentiousness.

But this still exists, and in some ways may even exist amongst

liberal churches and easy believism and cheap grace churches, but it

perhaps manifests itself in a different way.

But if you.

Could, why is this such an important issue?

You're referring to the issue of legalism, Chris, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If there's a group that would call itself Christian that defines legalism, I

can't think of another that better does that than the Amish.

They are just choked with man -made rules.

They do profess to be Christian, and they do use the Bible, although very loosely.

In my years of working among them, I have come to call them a cult of culture.

So it's not like they're aberrant in a particular doctrine, such as the deity of Christ or the

Trinity, as with the major cults.

But they are mainly concerned to propagate and perpetuate a culture.

But it's a culture that is religious, and it is dictated by so many man -made rules

as to how they dress, the fact that they can't drive a motorized vehicle, they can't be connected to the main

power grid.

They are really defined by the legalism of Mark 7 and Matthew 15, where Jesus condemns

the Pharisees for choking out the Word of God and neglecting the Word of God in favor of their traditions.

So they are very much tradition -bound.

I have come to believe that there are a number of Amish who are converted.

There are enough Bibles, and there's enough witness in the general community that

my estimate would be that perhaps as many as 20 of the Amish might be

genuinely converted, but they're very stunted in their growth because they're not going to receive solid

biblical teaching.

They really go by what they call the Adning.

It's the German word Ordnung.

If we were to define it in brief, if there's God on one side, man on the

other, and we need to build a bridge between man and God, they would say that the grace

of God builds the bridge partway, and then their own works, their own performance of Adning, Ordnung,

will carry them the rest of the way.

So it is a system choked with works righteousness, and they desperately have needed

and still need the gospel of God's justifying grace in Jesus.

Christ.

Amen.

And the Bible is very clear, the precious, inerrant, God -breathed words of Scripture

are very clear, that not only is unrepentant

hearts and licentiousness damning, on the other end of the spectrum,

a Pharisaic understanding of attaining good favor with God and

meriting salvation through one's life and deeds and good works is equally

damning.

They're just damning in different ways.

So this is something that we have to be very careful that we are balanced in the way that

we present the truths of Scripture and proclaim the gospel.

Obviously, the way that Paul preached the gospel

initially must have led some to think that we should

sin so that grace will all the more abound as he even himself

asked the question, should we do that?

And God forbid, he says.

So we have to be very balanced to make sure that we are not teaching a gospel of

licentiousness, but at the same time that we equally and as strongly oppose

as damning works, righteousness, salvation.

And when you two came to meet Ginger,

when your son was beginning a relationship with her, perhaps we'll have Diana

respond, was she still in some way under the effects of that wrong

teaching and you could recognize it?

Yes, she was because it had been her entire life.

She was emerging from it though.

When she was a chaperone for her sister, Jessa, when she was courting Ben,

Ginger was their primary chaperone.

And Ben would love and Jessa would love to talk about the doctrines of grace

and many other doctrines from the Bible.

And so Ginger started hearing that all for the first time as she was

probably about 16 or 17, I guess.

So it was new to her, but because it was truth and because the Holy Spirit dwells within her and is our

counselor, she was drawn to it.

She was drawn to truth and would read for and study on her own and

she was coming to grips with it.

And then shortly after that season of time, that's when she met Jeremy.

And of course they would continue that conversation and take it to greater depths.

So it's been a long process for Ginger, but we've always seen the heart of the matter in her,.

That she loves the Lord and loves his word.

Well, praise God for that.

And I'm sure that you two have come to love her as

your own daughter, haven't you?

Yes, we have.

Absolutely.

We could not imagine anyone better suited for our son than Ginger.

And we really believed that from the very beginning.

You know, I have found that it's not so much where a person is in their current thinking

so much as how teachable are they in their spirit.

And if a person is open to receive truth from the word of God, they're going to be led into

paths of truth.

And we saw that Jeremy saw that in Ginger from the start and knew that if she was convinced from the word

of God about something, she would believe it with all of her heart and follow it.

And he has certainly found that to be true.

We have loved her and seen her so wonderfully suited to our son from the very

beginning.

Well, praise God.

Well, we have to go to our midway break right now, folks.

The midway break is longer than the other breaks in the show.

So please be patient with us.

It's longer because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a

longer break in the show because the FCC requires of them to localize

this program geographically to Lake City, Florida.

And they do that with their own public service announcements and other local things that they air

in the middle break.

So please use this time wisely while they are airing their

local announcements.

We simultaneously are airing our globally heard commercials.

So please write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for our advertisers

so that you can more frequently contact our advertisers.

And keeping in mind that our advertisers are

absolutely positively necessary for our existence because of the finances that come through their advertising.

So please respond to our advertisers and send in questions to Chuck and Diana

Volo, to chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Don't go away.

We'll be right back.

It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show.

He really loves hearing interviewed, Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Ottawa in County Kildare, Ireland.

Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe

Moorcraft.

If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming,

Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr. Joe

Moorcraft is the author of an eight volume commentary on the larger catechism.

Heritage is a member of the Hanover Presbytery, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great Protestant

Reformation of the 16th century.

Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone,

grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, and God's glory alone.

Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.

For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch

.com, that's heritagepresbyterianchurch .com, or call 678 -954

-7831, that's 678 -954 -7831.

If you visit, tell them Joe O 'Reilly, Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener, from a tie in County Kildare,

Ireland, sent you.

Have you noticed the gap that exists between the Sunday morning sermon and the Sunday school classroom or the small

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So often, we experience great preaching from the pulpit, but when it comes time to study God's word in those

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It seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the word of God and is

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Hi there, my name is Jordan Too, and I am the Executive Director of the Baptist Publishing House.

Our ministry is dedicated to providing local churches with sound Bible study resources.

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May God bless you.

When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the New American

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Hello, my name is Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corum, New York, and

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And finally, if you're looking to worship in a Reformed church that holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening.

If you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is

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One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Hansen is doing is

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Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes,

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign

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Visit that site frequently, purchase generously, always mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnson

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Before I return to my guests, Pastor Chuck and Diana Volo, I have some

important announcements to make.

Folks, if you really love this show, you don't want it to disappear, please go to

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Last but not least, if you're not a member of a

Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, and doctrinally solid church

like the Gospel of Grace Community Church in Kinzers,

Pennsylvania, well, no matter where you live on the planet Earth, I may be able to help you find a

church, as I have already done many times with listeners spanning the globe

in our audience, sometimes even helping them find churches within minutes from where they live.

So, if you're without a church home, that could be you too.

Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and put I need a church in the subject line.

That's also the email address where you could send in a question to Pastor Chuck and Diana Volo.

And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

For those of you just tuning in now, for the first half hour of the program, we

had as our guest Ginger Volo, who is the author of Becoming Free

Indeed, my story of disentangling faith from fear, and currently we

have on her in -laws, Pastor Chuck and Diana Volo.

And we do have a listener, let's see, I was

just looking at the question.

We have a listener in Coatesville, Pennsylvania named Cornelia, and she

says, will Pastor Chuck please explain the differences between the Amish and the

Mennonites and their.

Legalism?

Well, hi, Cornelia.

We're actually neighbors of yours.

We actually live in Downingtown and travel across the county line.

Well, the Amish really came out of the Swiss Anabaptists, and there are a lot of

similarities, but the Mennonites have a great deal of diversity.

You have everything from the horse and buggy Mennonites.

In our area, they tend to have black buggies.

They're called the Joe Wengers to Mennonites that are theologically liberal.

They don't even believe the biblical gospel and everything in between.

So it's hard to, you know, to pinpoint Mennonites because there's such a variety.

I would say, though, that what they have in common would be they're both

both tend to have extra biblical rules.

Both tend to focus on externals like dress.

Head covering is very important as a mark of spirituality in both circles for

many Mennonites, not all Mennonites.

And they also have rules about facial hair, the Amish saying you have to grow a

long beard and no mustache.

Mennonites have various rules about facial hair, depending

on what group you're talking about.

So what they have in common are a lot of legalistic rules, a lot of extra biblical rules

in their theology.

They would tend to be agreed as well in that they don't believe many of them don't believe in the

assurance of salvation, the eternal security of the believer, which I think the Bible

clearly teaches.

And so that points to a lot of reliance upon personal works to earn salvation,

although many Mennonites surely know the gospel, understand the gospel and love the Lord and are Christians.

So it depends on what group of Mennonites you're really talking about.

But those are some things they have in common.

Also, another commonality is their doctrine of nonresistance.

They believe that as Christians, we should not really participate in

politics, in government and some of them don't even vote, don't be

part of the police force or partake in war.

So it's a it's a doctrine of nonresistance based on what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, do not

resist him who is evil.

So nonresistance is something they have in common.

Generally, though, the Amish would be more legalistic than most of the Mennonites in

terms of the number of extra biblical rules that.

They have to follow.

And you can in the more evangelical Mennonite churches find the true

gospel much more readily than you would in an Amish community.

Yes, that's why many of our Amish friends who come to a saving knowledge of Christ, when they leave the

Amish, they go to a church that is culturally similar.

There are several Amish Mennonite churches or beachy churches in Lancaster

County, which have the gospel much more clearly than the Amish do.

And yet they're culturally similar.

So many Amish tend to go first to those churches.

Well, thank you, Cornelia.

And please give us your full mailing.

Address in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, because you have also won a free copy of

Becoming Free Indeed, My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear by

Ginger Duggar Volo, the daughter -in -law of my guests currently, Chuck and

Diana Volo.

And by the way, if you are a first -time questioner—and this goes for all of our other listeners who are

submitting questions—if you're a first -time questioner, please let us know because you will also

win a free New American Standard Bible by virtue of

submitting a question.

And we do that all the time with first -time questioners.

I remember during our conversation recently, Diana, during our most

recent interview, that you brought up something similar, it seemed,

to the experience of your daughter -in -law when you were a Roman Catholic.

You were a Roman Catholic before Vatican II

seemed to, to a much greater degree, liberalize the Roman Catholic Church

and perhaps lessen, to a great degree, the

fear -mongering that went on, especially before Vatican II.

Now, I'm not saying that Vatican II was a good thing either.

They still presented a false gospel and, in fact, officially declared

the Church of Rome's ecumenism with non -Christian religions.

But at the same time, that fear factor was a big part

of the lives of Catholics, especially those raised in that religion in the 60s and prior.

If you could tell us something.

About that, Diana.

Yes, I can.

Yeah, legalism does lead to fear because we're trying to work our way to

a holy God, and that's impossible to do, and we all know that.

But the Vatican II was liberating for me in

that it helped me to see through the Catholic Church.

For example, we were taught that if we ate meat on Friday, that it was

a cardinal sin, and cardinal sins were more serious than venial sins.

They were weighty sins, and you had to spend certain amount of days or years

suffering in purgatory if you ate meat on Friday.

And every once in a while, I remember growing up, my mother would just be terrified because she had forgotten it was

Friday, and she served us all chicken.

And so that instilled fear in us as children.

But then when I was in high school, Vatican II, we were taught by the nuns, was going to release that

penalty for eating meat on Friday.

They were going to release that, and so they said it would be voted that you can eat

meat on Friday, and it is no longer a cardinal sin.

So of course, that made me think, well, if I eat meat this Friday, I'm going to have to suffer

years in purgatory.

But if I eat meat next Friday, I won't have to suffer any time in purgatory.

So that really helped to dismantle a system that was falling by its own

weight in my eyes, and by the grace of God giving me that understanding,

it was falling by its own weight.

And that's one of the things God did.

I was disillusioned with the Catholic faith, and as a little girl growing up in

Catholic neighborhoods where I was in one Catholic neighborhood, then there was the Polish Catholic neighborhood, there was the Italian one.

Side by side, I thought the whole world was Catholic.

And then when you would see television, you would see the Pope in his grandeur and beautiful robes in the Sistine Chapel, and

you just knew that he was a world leader.

So of course, it was the one true church.

That's what we were taught.

So in order for the Lord to prepare my heart for the true gospel, he had to

first disillusion me with what I thought was the one true faith.

Well, we praise God that you have come to be freed from

that damning legalism and have embraced the gospel of true and

sovereign grace.

Oh, I am too, because there were other rules.

So for example, if you missed, if you didn't go to church on a Sunday, that was a mortal sin,

and that was a sin you could never be forgiven of.

You would just go to hell.

It was terrifying.

We have...

Go ahead, I'm sorry.

That's how I...

Say that again.

That's how I understand.

Yeah, you're breaking up a little bit.

Hopefully, we won't lose you like we lost Ginger before.

Okay.

We have Flynn in Cat Town, New York.

I don't know if it's Cat Town or Catown, but I'm assuming it's Cat Town,

New York.

And Flynn says,.

Will Pastor Chuck please explain how in pastoral ways he

can convey to his congregation the seriousness of Christians

falling into sin, the seriousness of a sinning Christian needing

to examine his life to be further ensured that he is truly saved, or

perhaps come to the realization that he is lost, while at the same time

preventing a legalistic structure within the congregation?

Yeah, that's an excellent question.

I think that the simple answer is we just need to accurately and faithfully preach what

the Bible said.

I am one who is committed to expositional preaching, systematic expositional preaching,

preaching through books of the Bible, verse by verse, passage by passage.

And I think if we stick with the Bible and try not to go beyond the Bible, we're on safe

ground.

I think one of the things a preacher has to do on a regular basis is make application of the

Bible, both to believers and unbelievers.

And one thing I find is as I preach through the Bible, I am often finding what the Bible says

is true of a Christian.

And so if we're dealing with a particular passage, it may describe how a Christian thinks, how a

Christian acts, how a Christian speaks.

And that becomes then a mirror into which someone can look and ask, does my life match what the

Bible says is a Christian?

And if it does, then there's grounds for encouragement and assurance.

If it doesn't, then they have reason to question themselves, whether they're in the faith.

So I think we just need to stick with what the Bible says about what a Christian is.

And if we present that faithfully and repeatedly to the people of God, they get a clear picture of what a

Christian is.

And they can take either appropriate encouragement because their lives match that picture or

perhaps growing alarm that my life doesn't match with what the Bible says a Christian is in

terms of his or her motivations and her speech patterns and attitudes and dispositions and

actions.

So we mustn't go beyond the Bible.

We mustn't impose on people's consciences rules that the Bible doesn't.

That's where we're in the realm of Christian liberty.

So if we stick with the Bible and its description of a Christian, I think people will be able to come to an

accurate perception of their own relationship to God.

Now, don't you think that.

Discipline is a very vital mark of a true

church, that churches must be conducting discipline in doing so

without authoritarianism, without hypocritical

judgmentalism, without harshness?

But at the same time, it seems that in the broad

field of modern evangelicalism, discipline is barely existent in our modern day.

And I'll bet you that many churches that

litter the landscape of the United States never have conducted one

day of church discipline for anyone.

Isn't that an important thing?

And it's not loving if you avoid discipline, is it?

No, not at all.

And when we think of discipline, we might think first and foremost of formative discipline.

You know, before we think of corrective discipline, the vast majority of disciplining

that should go on in a church is individuals disciplining themselves according to the word of

God.

And of course, if the word of God is faithfully preached and applied, it really helps people to do

that.

And if people are reading the word themselves, feeding themselves personally on the word, they are disciplining themselves,

bringing their thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ, as the Apostle Paul says, putting off sin and putting

on righteousness.

So discipline begins with self -discipline by the word and by the Holy Spirit.

And then formative discipline also takes place in terms of the one -anothering that God calls us to do.

All the 25 or 30 duties and privileges we have to serve one another, help one

another, admonish one another, correct one another, exhort one another.

We formatively help one another in the disciplines of the Christian life by our

fellowship, by our interactions.

But when a person is sinning and living in a way contrary to the way a Christian

is supposed to live, and if after being approached personally and then by two or three

witnesses, they refuse to repent, then the words of Jesus in Matthew 18, the words

of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 are very clear that that person then needs to come under the corrective

discipline of the church, literally put out of the church, treated as an unbeliever until such a

time as they repent.

And it is a loving thing.

The purpose of it is really restorative.

It is to, as Paul says, that their spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

It is also to prevent sin from having a leavening or spreading effect within the church.

So yeah, to tolerate scandalous sin in the church is unloving toward the one doing it.

It's unloving toward the church body, and it's robbing the Lord of the church,

Jesus, of the glory that he deserves.

Amen.

And I wholeheartedly agree with you, even.

Being one who has experienced being placed under church discipline

over a decade ago when I unfortunately delved back

into habitual drunkenness after 18 years of sobriety, and thankfully

my church lovingly placed me under discipline, which led to my restoration in membership

and also freeing me from enslavement to that addiction.

So I praise God for that.

Let's see, we have Bonita in Newcastle, New Hampshire, who

asks, have either of your guests ever doubted their salvation?

I'm assuming that Bonita is asking, you know, not before you were saved, but

as a seasoned Christian.

You know, I thank the Lord that I have not had that struggle, Bonita,

and I don't know why, because good and godly Christians do have that struggle, but God has

spared that for me, and I'm very grateful that just has not been a struggle that.

I have experienced.

How about you, Chuck?

Yeah, I think I can say the same.

The Bible says, the spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and in my

53 years as a Christian, I really have not had an occasion of seriously doubting my

faith.

I would say this, though, if you are one who does, very often the very concern

for that is a basis of assurance in itself.

Often those who are not saved don't really have much of a concern for it.

They have a presumption.

So if you are concerned about that, it may very well be a basis for

being assured.

That you are a child of God.

And praise the Lord at any time if we are in doubt, we can always.

Go to the cross and repent and believe.

Amen.

And pastorally, Chuck, although when after

counseling with a person, you may have confidence

that this is a true brother or sister

unnecessarily struggling with this doubt, at the same time, don't we as Christians

have to be careful in desiring not to hurt the feelings of somebody who approaches us

and says, you know, I'm wondering if I'm saved or lost.

Isn't it a danger to too quickly say, oh, brother, I wouldn't worry about that at

all, or what have you.

I mean, can't we too quickly offer assurance before perhaps we even know the story as to why this person

is experiencing the doubt?

Yeah, that's absolutely true, Chris.

I am one who's committed to balance and often recognizing ditches on both sides of the truth.

And the one truth would be to be overly scrutinizing and the other would be

to be too presumptuous.

So, yeah, if a person came to me and I didn't know them, I would want to ask a lot of questions

about how they're living and how they're thinking about their

sins and what their disposition is.

And so I would have a lot of questions to ask before I gave any counsel.

Ultimately, though, I would see that I'm not the judge.

I don't know any man or woman's heart.

But First John is a letter, the first epistle written by the Apostle John

near the back of the New Testament, which is very helpful for a person ascertaining whether they're in the

faith or not.

John wrote it.

He said that you may know that you have eternal life.

I write to you who believe in the name of Lord Jesus Christ, that you may know that you have eternal life.

And in that letter of First John, he gives several tests of true faith, you know,

whether one confesses his or her sins on a regular basis, whether one seeks to walk as Jesus walked,

whether one seeks to obey the commandments of God, not to earn salvation, but out of love for

Christ, whether one loves other Christians.

So there are a number of very helpful tests by which one might evaluate him or herself

to know whether they're in the faith.

We have a very faithful and loyal and generous supporter of Iron Sherpins

Iron Radio sending in a question.

Grady from Asheboro, North Carolina.

Greetings, Brother Chris and brother and sister Volo.

I heard of Billy Gothard in the past and that he had a large following.

But what I haven't heard is how that came about.

Did he have a charismatic personality and people were drawn to him and is

his that were drawn to him and his heretical teachings?

I missed just one word in.

That last part.

Chris, could you repeat the last sentence?

Yes.

Did he have a charismatic personality?

Yes.

And people were drawn to him and his heretical teachings.

And I assume Grady means by that.

Yeah.

And I can say that I attended the Bill Gothard Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts in the early 1970s.

And there were some profitable things to be gleaned from those seminars.

Yeah, I would say his following is very much attributed to his

personality.

He's has a very calm manner, very easy to

listen to, a winsome sense

of humor and a lot of practical principles.

And so, yeah, very much I think his following was due to his

his personality and his.

But it really ended up being something of a prosperity gospel.

I don't know if Ginger mentioned that, but he's really promising success that if you follow these principles,

you will have success.

And like Ginger said, he began to flourish in a time when there was a lot of counterculture rebellion.

It was the hippie era.

People were concerned about their children going off the rails.

And he was promising, you know, that that your children would be OK if you only followed these

principles.

It was very formulaic.

And so I think that also contributed to the large draw that he had.

He would fill large arenas of thousands of people.

And I remember being part of that in the 1970s.

Now, when you said he preached a prosperity gospel, he was not a Pentecostal or in the word

of faith movement, was he?

No, no, not the prosperity gospel in the in the sense of Benny Hinn and many others, but in the

sense that just like the prosperity gospel says, if you, you know, do certain

things, you will prosper in your health, you will prosper in your finances.

He was promising that if you followed these principles automatically, it would bring

success to you, to your family, to your children.

So it was a variation on the theme, but it was still making promises really that that

God in his word doesn't make.

And by the way, Grady and all of you who have sent in questions who I have not

declared this good news to, you have also won a free copy of

Becoming Free Indeed, My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear by Ginger Duggar

Volo, the daughter -in -law of my guests, Chuck and Diana Volo.

And that will be shipped out to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

So please make sure you give us your full mailing address.

And so we want to thank Thomas Nelson for providing us a limited number of these free books

and also cvbbs .com for shipping them out.

And once again, anybody who is a first -time listener or a first -time questioner, let me

know so you can also receive a new American Standard Bible provided

by our friends at nasbible .com, nasbible .com.

We're going to our final break right now.

If you have a question, please submit it as soon as you can, because we are rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail

.com.

Always give us first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

Only remain anonymous if your question is a personal and private one.

We'll be right back.

Please do not go away.

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Hi,

this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

Taking a moment of your day.

To talk about Chris Arnson and the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast.

I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity.

He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key

doctrines of the Christian faith.

I've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet

where folk won't be led astray.

I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide.

This is a day of great spiritual compromise and yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time

and knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer

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I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting Iron

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Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

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All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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I'm Dr. Tony Costa,.

Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love, Hope

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For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformli .net.

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Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them.

From Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens

Iron.

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005.

The publishers of the New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors.

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As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And keep in mind, folks, the new website for Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey is

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This is Brian McLaughlin of the.

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Welcome back.

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Kurt adds something to the discussion.

I don't know if you are aware of this, Pastor Chuck and Diana, but Kurt

says that Jeremy, your son, ran the Shepherd's

Conference shop a few years ago and bought 20

Spurgeon message pages from me to sell for the conference.

So I thought you might want to know.

That.

I'm sorry, what was that?

Oh, I said it sounds like Jeremy.

Sounds like the Shep Shop.

Also.

Yep.

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Well, we're now back with our final segment of today's show.

And if you have a question submitted immediately, because we're almost out of time,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And we have Whitey in Cinnamonson, New Jersey.

And Whitey says, Can you please explain what the unpardonable sin is?

That question comes up nearly every time there's any discussion on

sin, on legalism, on assurance, on the necessity of

repentance.

You know, anything that involves a warning about hell,

people want to know what the unpardonable sin is, and maybe because they're afraid they've committed it.

But if you could, Pastor Chuck, what is the unpardonable sin?

Yeah, well, in my understanding, as it is in recorded in Matthew 12, the

Pharisees were attributing to the devil, the work that Jesus was doing by the Holy

Spirit.

And I understand that to be a not just a one time act of,

you know, verbally cursing God or the Holy Spirit, but

a settled disposition of the heart or soul of resistance

to the Spirit of God as he tries to bring us to the truth that is in Jesus

Christ.

And so one thing that's important to be said is many people who come

concerned that they've committed the unpardonable sin or the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit by

the very virtue of the fact that they're concerned that they've done that indicates that they have not.

Because someone who has so spurned the truth of God and spurned the ministry of the Spirit

to bring them to that truth really is not concerned about it.

So anyone who is concerned about it has not really committed that sin.

So I think that's what it is.

It's a settled disposition of soul, of resistance to the

truth of God as presented by the Holy Spirit.

It's comparable to the biblical term reprobation.

Reprobation where God gives a person over to their own sin and they are

beyond salvation.

Now, I don't know that we can ever discern when a person has reached that point, but according to the Bible,

a person can reach that point where they say enough times, my will be done, my

will be done, that God gives them over to their own will and they become reprobate.

They become unapproved.

They become sealed in their unbelief and doomed to destruction.

So the way to avoid it is just to respond to every particle of truth from the word of

God that we receive, especially to believingly receive the truth about

the gospel of Jesus Christ, that Jesus is the only Savior of sinners and we need to put our trust

fully in him and he will take away all of our sins and our salvation will be

secure.

Excellent.

And doesn't that teaching that there actually exists an

unpardonable sin, it is actually an added proof

bolstering the true doctrine of particular redemption, also known as definite atonement

and limited atonement, because obviously everyone for whom Christ

died could not have ever committed that sin because there is no sin

so grievous, so wicked, so satanic, that a member of God's

elect could not be delivered from that sin and that sin could not be atoned for.

So doesn't that, isn't that a part of the arsenal that bolsters

particular.

Redemption?

Yeah, yeah, amen.

Yeah, God's elect are chosen by the Father, purchased by the Son,

and regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and they have a life that that cannot be lost.

The true believer can never blaspheme the Holy Spirit because he will be kept by the power of God

through faith until the final salvation is revealed.

So the important thing is just make sure your faith is fully in Jesus Christ alone,

his person, his finished work for the forgiveness of your sins, and one need not fear

that one has committed that unpardonable sin.

Well, thank you, Whitey.

Say hello to Honky for me.

I'm only kidding.

And by the way, Whitey, give us your full mailing address because you've also won Becoming Free Indeed, the book by Ginger

Duggarvolo, the daughter -in -law of my guests right now.

In fact, I don't have time for another question, so I'm just

going to ask Pastor Chuck and Diana to summarize what they most want

etched.

In the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

Pastor Chuck?

Well, there's nothing more central, more foundational, or more important than the gospel of

Jesus Christ, that we are not saved by any of our own performance, any of our own doing,

but Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came, lived a perfect life on our behalf

to satisfy the demands of the law of God, and then he died in our place, in the

place of sinners, to pay the price in full for our sins, so that by trust in him

alone, we can instantly know that all our sins are forgiven, and we are destined to live with

God, with the triune God, first in heaven, and then eventually on a new.

Heavens and a new earth.

And Diana?

Yes, you know, once we are a child of God, we understand that God

has such a heart for orphans, for widows in distress, for children who are abused and

suffering poverty and trauma, and so if that is something that resonates

with your heart to want to help care for those children, please look up our website,

swan4kids .org, see what we're doing, and you might want to become

involved.

It's a great website to visit.

You'll see pictures of our students learning, healing, and sharing their music with

others, and you'll hear video clips of what they do, and wonderful stories of

impact.

I think it will do your heart very good, because our.

Hearts are aligned with the God who cares so much for these children.

Amen, that's swan4kids .org, and also, please don't forget about the

website for the Gospel of Grace Community Church in

Pennsylvania, which is gospelofgracecommunitychurch .com,

gospelofgracecommunitychurch .com.

I want to thank you so much, Pastor Chuck and Diana, for being such superb

guests, and also, I loved every minute of interviewing your daughter -in -law, Ginger, once

again during the first half hour of the program.

I look forward to all of you coming back on, and hopefully Jeremy.

Can join us next time.

Our pleasure, Chris.

We appreciate you, and we appreciate the ministry that you're doing, and especially those luncheons that you host

twice a year.

Very generous, very.

Edifying.

Thank you.

By the way, folks, please, if you're a man in ministry leadership, mark on your calendar Thursday, June

6th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m., because my next free pastor's luncheon will feature Dr. Joel

Beeky.

That will be Thursday, June 6th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m., 2024, at Church of the Living

Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

I want to thank everybody who listened today, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ

is a far, far greater Savior than you are a sinner.