What Is-and Is Not-the Gospel? | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're going to talk about what is and is not the gospel.

There are a number of things that are talked about in the church today that are offered essentially as the good news of Jesus Christ, but they are not.

These things would include repentance, faith, obedience, discipleship, and surrender all to Christ, just to name a few.

We're going to talk about each of these and then seek to clarify what exactly is the good news of Jesus Christ for sinners.

We hope this is encouraging. We hope it's helpful and clarifying. Stay tuned. Hey, everyone. If you'd like to help support

Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing or on your favorite podcast app.

You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We do have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation.

Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota, and myself,

Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. It is good to be around the microphone with my boys, my brothers, for the first time in the year of our

Lord, 2021. I think I can speak for all of us, as the memes would indicate as we look on social media, that 2021 is not much different than 2020 thus far.

Many people are ready to send that thing back and get a new one as far as just how life is going.

Things are still difficult. We need to read up on the fine print. Just to jump on that, the return policy is that he's returning.

Oh my goodness, I can't even, John. Dad joke. Starting the year off strong. I realize that our listeners will be hearing this in the month of February, not

January, but you guys will just bear with us as we do this New Year's banter. We've been away from the microphones for a couple of weeks.

Well, and each other. We haven't really talked. We haven't talked in a long while. I feel so disoriented by John's Christian bookstore coffee mug joke that I can't even...

Oh my gosh. Hey, I just speak truth, man. And his Christian bookstore coffee mug backdrop.

That's right. He's going to return. Wow. I can give you a different backdrop if you want.

No. No, I'm kidding. Nope. Totally kidding. No. No. So as far as like what's going on personally in our lives, our brother,

Jimmy Bueller is grieving this morning as his beloved Buckeyes took one on the chin last night.

Alabama is good. I think we can all agree on that, that they are very good. Yeah. That they were the best team in college football this year.

And we'll leave that with you as the listener, whether or not you like college football. For the rest of us who don't care.

Exactly. Yeah. Jimmy and I were talking before we hit record. Jimmy and I were talking about college football for,

I don't know what, five minutes, bro. Yeah. And John is sitting over there just completely disinterested.

Yeah. Glazed. Glazed. Yeah. Like, did not care in the slightest. And, yeah.

Well, you know. So, Jimmy. John is too spiritual for sports. No, actually, if Justin and I were talking about golf,

Jimmy would be doing the same thing. Oh, yeah. See ya. I'm done. Yeah. I mean, I can appreciate golf because I know it's a game of skill and athleticism.

But I just. Precision. Nope. So, Jimmy, you dropped something and it's like, I've kind of been waiting three minutes now to hear this whole thing that you dropped before we recorded.

So, bring it so we can get this podcast. Yes. We don't even know what it is. Nah. I thought it could be kind of a fun little intro, something new to kind of get our listeners excited.

And here it is. Here it is. I'm going to share something that I used to be really into when

I was younger, that as I've aged and matured, I am no longer into at all. Pogs.

Pogs. No, it's not pogs. Wow. Wow, John. John. Bringing it up from the depths.

Pogs. Here it is. Are you ready? And we can banter about this. Are you ready? Are you ready? When I was younger,

I used to be into pro wrestling like nobody else. Yeah.

Sure. I mean. Never. Really? I played the Nintendo game.

I love that. Yeah. The Nintendo game is great. But man, I mean, I remember and like my parents, my parents did not enjoy that I enjoyed pro wrestling.

And so like I had to go hide in the basement and turn on Monday Night Raw or Sunday Night Heat or Thursday Night Smackdown.

And like if I heard them coming down the stairs, like I would change the channel really quick. But man,

I was huge. I know. I was a huge Stone Cold Steve Austin fan. Dude.

Like my experience with WWF or whatever else you call it now, every Sunday, my uncle would come over and we'd sit and watch football with my dad and he goes, let me tell you what a real sport is.

This isn't a sport. Let me tell you what a real sport is. My dad and I would just look at each other like. Are you kidding me?

These are these are grown, sweaty men who are actually aren't pretending. And you're talking about grown, sweaty men who are pretending.

Yeah. OK. I will say this. I will say this. Pro wrestlers. Pro wrestlers. Yes. The outcomes are predetermined.

We all know that. But man, the things that they do to their bodies, they're totally athletes, though.

It's just. Yeah. It's not. If we. But if we. So John. People college football, man, we've definitely done it now.

That's right. Hey. Yeah. John knows what the top turnbuckle is now. Can we all. I do. I know the top.

Well, that's what made me think of it. That's what made. We were talking about that. We were. JP makes that phrase all the time.

And I was like, is that a cowboy phrase? You have to own a belt buckle in order to craziness.

Do you people see what we have to work with here? Amen. So, I mean, I just I remember watching pro wrestling with my friends and we were just like fascinated.

We were we were fascinated. And then and then somebody. Somebody began to, like, you know, preach the gospel of it's not real to me.

And that's when I knew. There you go. Great transition. I mean, it was a stretch. It was a stretch.

I know. We got to keep the dad jokes real here, especially the the transitions.

Yeah. Got to keep them real. Keep it real. Speaking of what is and what is not the gospel, you're you're going to probably hear a very passionate the next two episodes are going to be very passionate.

Well, I can't ever think when we're not passionate, but it always just, you know, feels passionate. But today is definitely definitely is one of these ones that you you walk in and you drop this comment on any of these pastors.

And we are going to have some thoughts and they are not going to be they're not going to be lighthearted.

They're going to be they're going to be pretty heavy. So today we're going to talk about what we pile onto the gospel and we titled it.

What is not the gospel? And you would think, is that really necessary? I mean, it's almost like saying, what is the moon and what is not the moon?

What is the sun and what is not the sun? You would think it's obvious, but unfortunately, it's not.

It's not obvious in our day and age because there's been so much clutter that's been put on top of the gospel.

So today, what we're going to try to do is, as you do in wrestling, we're going to go and fight up, break up the fight and pull everybody off and clarify here.

That was my attempt at wrestling. I don't know. I think I just totally messed that up. But yeah, whatever. It's a brawl. The brawl.

It might have fallen flat. But anyway. Yeah. So and this is why if we believe, according to Paul, he says in Corinthians that the gospel is the power of God.

Sorry. Yeah. That the gospel is the power of God and that if you are going to see

God's power, you have to know what the gospel is. Many people don't experience the joy of resting in Christ and really see

God's power at work because the gospel they're believing in is confused, diluted.

It's grayed out at points. And most people can't find rest because they are not assured by whatever gospel it is that they are believing in.

So we're going to go through a list of things that have been piled on top of the gospel. And then at the end, we're going to talk to you about and clarify and protect and put a fence around what is the gospel.

So JP, let's start with one of the most popular, probably today, and the most confusing often of what people assume the gospel to be.

But it's not. So the first thing that we want to start with in terms of what the gospel is not is repentance.

You will hear many people today say things kind of like this, that the good news is that we repent of sin and thereby are saved.

That repentance is the good news, you know, repent and believe and whatever, and things will go well for you.

And we're here today to clarify a number of things, including this one, that repentance itself is not the good news.

Repentance is something that happens to us. Repentance, biblically speaking, is a change of mind.

It's a change of mind about a number of things, a change of mind about God and what he requires, a change of mind about ourselves and our position before God, a change of mind about Christ and what he has done for us.

But repentance itself is not the good news. You hear a lot of language in many contexts,

Calvinistic and otherwise, that will exalt repentance to this place of preeminence, where this is what the

Christian life is. To be a Christian is to repent, and so it is so synthesized and woven into the fabric of what the gospel even is that it's at best confusing, at worst damning.

Thoughts, brothers? This comes in, you hear verses all the time, repent, repent, and people

I know listening to this podcast have already yelled out, but the Bible literally says repent and believe and you will be forgiven of your sins, right?

And I would also say repent and be baptized is what it says as well. So we have to look at all of scripture when it comes down to a specific area.

And in certain contexts, when it says repent and believe, he's talking about those who are trusting in the law for their salvation versus trusting in the person of Jesus standing in front of them, like God's salvation in the flesh standing in front of them.

You have to understand the difference. It's don't believe in your own works for salvation. Believe in Christ's works for salvation.

But even that, in order to believe in Christ, it doesn't matter if you're turning from sin or turning from another false belief, which is sinful.

You can't do that on your own. What we would say systematic theology here is very important because the

Bible, the way in which it's written and the way in which it's designed, you have to look at all of scripture and all of context.

So when someone quotes a verse and says, this is what the Bible says, so I'm just going to believe it, you brothers are changing the gospel.

Yeah, go ahead. A really quick interjection by way of clarification, when we're talking about the gospel or the good news, what we mean by that, and we're going to be clear about that later, the good news is the thing that saves you.

The good news is the thing that saves sinners from their sin and reconciles us to a holy

God. Repentance is not that thing. Repentance itself does not save people.

If the listener has not read the book The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson, may

I recommend that to you because in that book, the author, Sinclair Ferguson, Scottish Presbyterian, he is essentially talking about this very thing.

This is a controversy called the Marrow Controversy that went on centuries ago that surrounded this very issue, that does somebody need to forsake sin in order to come to Christ?

I can just hear the alarm bells going off in people's mind, but essentially what it centered on was kind of almost like this chicken and egg analogy that what comes first, is it

God's grace or is it our repentance? Which of these comes first?

I know this is heavily nuanced, and so we need to be pretty careful in how we're speaking about this, but often

I think people believe functionally that it is our work, our repentance, our turning from sin that generates

God's love, affection, and grace for us. I think what we are trying to say is that it's actually the other way around, that it is

God's grace toward us. It is God's work via the

Holy Spirit, via the preaching of the good news about Jesus Christ to us that generates repentance as a grace in the life of the believer.

Go ahead, JP. Is there anything that we need to do in order to come to Christ? The answer to that question is no.

Yeah, and that's good. Going back to something that Jimmy said a couple of weeks ago on a podcast on pietism,

God has done his part and basically he's presented you the goods. If you want them, you've got to clean up your life and come get them.

If we're going to change the word repentance, it's clean up your life and come get Jesus and you can be saved. That is not good news.

That's really bad news because in order to clean yourself up, to make yourself acceptable, you have to pay for your sins.

You can't do that. So, to be clear, we have to be careful. I'm just taking the

Bible literally and I'm saying you're taking a phrase literally out of its context of the whole

Bible because if you look at what all of Scripture has to say, repentance is absolutely part of the

Christian life, but it's what comes when the Spirit does that to you, that God repents you.

You can absolutely combine those together. If you believe in Christ, you're going to repent. So, repent and believe is a true statement, but you have to understand it in its context, but when you pile repentance on before, a change of heart and the

Spirit coming in and regenerating, if you require it beforehand, you are saying there is a position you must take in order to receive grace.

Therefore, grace only meets you at a certain point. Chad Bird, in his book,

I believe it's Night Driving, he talks about how God repents us, that God is the one that is doing the work in our lives in order for this to come to fruition, and if you think about specifically how

Ephesians chapter two speaks of the person who does not yet know

Christ, that they are spiritually dead, that their spiritual faculties have been so deeply affected by sin and the fall, to require that kind of person to do some sort of repenting in order that God's grace would be placed upon them is absurd.

We don't ask dead people to do anything. Repentance is a fruit of God's work via the

Holy Spirit, by the preaching of the gospel in the life of a believer. I know that might be shocking for some people to hear, but repentance is a fruit.

Jon Moffitt, J .D.: To add to that, Jimmy, can I say we cannot fall into the ditch of the either or.

You guys are saying repentance isn't necessary. That is ridiculous. That is not what we're saying.

You've got to get the order correct. Christ brings us to life, and we repent. Jimmy Buehler, J .D.:

Repentance, without doubt, will be there, and at the same time, it is not the gospel. This next one is going to perhaps be even more controversial.

Not only is repentance not the gospel, faith is not the gospel. Faith in and of itself is confusing.

So, the Scripture will use the phrase, we're saved not by works, we're saved by faith, but what the

Apostle Paul, in that instance, does not mean is that faith in and of itself saves. Faith in and of itself has never saved anybody, and it never will.

We'll talk more about this later, but we are saved by the object of our faith, who is Jesus Christ.

Faith is the means through which the work and merit of Christ are applied to us.

Just to be really clear, too, on faith and repentance, this seems like a reasonable time to say this, and then I'll hand it off to one of you guys.

I think a lot of times, faith and repentance are pulled apart in the ways that people talk about them in the church.

It's like they can exist independently. Biblically, I just don't think that's true. If we understand the definition of repentance like we've been framing it, it's a change of mind about these various things.

It's quite clear that repentance and faith go together. Both of them are produced by the work of God in us.

Both of them are a result of the grace of God and they're fruit of the new birth that God alone causes in us as we behold

Christ. I think we do bad things, and this is probably another podcast for another day, when we separate those two, repentance and faith.

This is how repentance in particular ends up sounding like a work that we need to do, when in reality, repentance and faith go together and they're sort of opposite sides of the same coin.

But neither of them are the good news. Something I say to our church repeatedly, and they might be getting tired of it by now, but we are never saved by the quality of our faith, but we are always saved by the object of our faith, which is

Jesus Christ. I think often when we read the

New Testament and we look at the people that believed in Christ, believed on Christ, we want to, in particular,

Hebrews 11, their faith is commended. I think we often associate that, this person is a man of strong faith, or this woman has a strong faith.

I understand what people are trying to say there, that their life is a model for perhaps younger

Christians to follow. But at the end of the day, you look at Hebrews 11, the people that are commended for their faith committed some pretty horrible sins and had some pretty atrocious decisions littered throughout their life, and so the object of our faith is always

Jesus Christ. We are not saved by our strong faith, we are saved by a strong Savior in whom our faith is in.

So, to say that the gospel is faith, that you just believe, well, that's actually not good news.

The good news has to be about someone to believe in, which is Jesus Christ. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. If you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what does it mean to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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slash Primer. If you've been encouraged by our ministry and would like to help us, you can join one of our support teams.

This is a monthly membership where we provide additional content each week, and your support is what allows us to keep spreading the good news of resting in Christ.

You can learn more at theocast .org. We all believe you have to drink water.

I mean, there's like three things you need in order to live, right? You've got to drink, you've got to eat, and you've got to sleep. If you remove one of those, you're going to die, period, right?

So, if you say, I believe that water will keep me alive, believing in the water won't keep you alive.

The water itself has to keep you alive, but believing in the water is not going to do it.

You actually have to put your faith in something that actually is going to accomplish the thing that you said, and then it has to do it.

And this is what we're trying to separate, is that some people just talk about finding their assurance in their faith.

Well, as Jimmy said earlier, your faith will be weak at times, and your faith can be strong at times.

When someone describes to me a strong Christian, I think of someone who is really trusting in Christ and nothing else.

That, to me, is a strong Christian, versus someone who's weak in faith means that there's some doubt, they're wavering, their faith in the substance of Christ, our object, is not very strong.

And the illustration I've used a thousand times, sorry, I'm muttering, but I'm just trying to get this all out because I know we have a lot more to cover.

When you're in a plane, there are a lot of people who just don't, you know, my dear mother -in -law, it just terrifies her to fly.

She's afraid she's going to fall. Her faith is really weak. So if I'm sitting next to my mother -in -law in a plane, and we're flying, and we fly safely, we get to point

A to point B, was it called into question based upon her faith in that plane versus me?

No problem. No, our faith did not get us from point A to point B. The plane did, and that's gospel.

The gospel is Jesus Christ saving sinners, not

Jesus Christ looking to someone's faith saying, oh, your faith is strong, therefore you are saved, or because you have faith, therefore you are saved.

And I know it sounds like we're splitting hairs, but this is so important because people often lose heart because they have weak faith.

A weak faith is not a weak Savior. That just means that your heart needs to be renewed in Christ. Okay, next.

We've already talked about repentance. We've talked about faith. The next thing that is not the gospel is obedience because sometimes people will look at the words of Christ, you know, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments, language like that, that the apostles will even use,

John uses language like that at points, you know, that to love God is to essentially do what he says, and so people will talk about obedience being the good news, hitching my wagon to obedience and those kinds of things, or even the transformation of life kind of falls under this heading too.

The transformation of our lives is not the good news. The fact that I'm not like I used to be is not the gospel.

Yeah, so we like to use the phrase, even though I don't think

John likes it anymore, you know, kind of poke him in the eye, there is this trend within greater evangelicalism to, and it's good -hearted, like nobody,

I don't want to impugn people's motives and so on and so forth, but there is this trend within greater evangelicalism to typically, you know, if it's a credo

Baptistic church to share kind of their testimony before they are baptized, and I mean,

I'm all for hearing people's stories and how God has worked in their life, but if you notice the common thread, the way that Christianity, modern

Christianity has framed people and taught people how to share their testimonies, what is it that they are constantly pointing to?

They're pointing to, I used to do this, I used to be addicted to this,

I used to struggle with this end, but now I don't, and now I'd like to go under the water.

Like that is the way that they own, and I've come to Christ. Exactly, exactly right.

As if like that is, that is the end game, right?

The proof of their salvation is the evidence of some kind of change. Right. I mean, people used to make these,

I haven't seen a video like this in a while, but I have seen it before, where essentially it's like the cardboard testimonies, right?

I feel like I'm just offending people left and right, and I'm really sorry, where it's like they would hold up the cardboard sign and say,

I used to be this, and they'd flip it over and they'd say it now, and it's like, okay, well, that's great, but here's the problem in that.

If that is the gospel we are sharing, we are in essence making a promise to people that if you believe in Jesus, you will no longer struggle with this, which may or may not be the case, and that's not good news.

Well, the thing that communicates in part two, this transformation of life idea, for example, what we're saying,

I used to be an alcoholic and now I'm not, and I'm coming to Christ, or I used to abuse substances and now

I don't, and I'm coming to Christ, or I used to be this and now I'm not, and I'm coming to Christ, it's like, well, you realize there are many different belief systems and programs that exist in the world where people give the exact same testimony, where they say,

I used to be this and now I'm not, I used to be that and now I'm different, there is nothing distinctly

Christian about that, and this is just one example of so many things in the church, in the evangelical church anyway, where there are good things talked about, but you don't need

Jesus for them, you don't have to have Christ for them, because you could go about it some other way and transform your life.

There are people who don't believe in Christ at all and are pagan in that sense of the word, whose lives have been changed by this or that discipline or this or that thought process or whatever it may be, and so you don't need

Jesus to get off drugs, you don't need Jesus to quit drinking, you don't need

Jesus to stop being a serial womanizer and be a good husband. That sounds absolutely controversial to say, but you need

Jesus to save you from your sins and give you righteousness. That's right. Amen. Well, my children were baptized recently, my 12 -year -old daughter.

Praise God. In our church, we give people the opportunity, if they would like to say something to the congregation for the encouragement of the hearer, we give them an opportunity to do that.

So my 12 -year -old daughter wrote out something, and it was great. We've had people who have come from pretty rough backgrounds who you would hear their testimony, and it's unbelievable to see what

God has done saving them. And I remember when my daughter came to me and she said,

Dad, I think I really want to be baptized because it's something we explain every single week with communion and the sacraments.

And she goes, but I just don't have like a—and she was trying to describe, like, I don't have that transition moment to tell people about.

And so, you know, it was six months of me really encouraging her and talking with her to make sure she understood that you aren't saved because you've had a transition moment.

It's like, you know, I used to really get upset at my brother, and now I don't anymore. And so when she got up there and she read her testimony, she literally said, you know,

I always thought I had to have like this story. And I'm reminded that without God and Christ that—and she explained the gospel.

She literally said, I'm a sinner, and I'm standing in this water because I'm a sinner who was saved by Jesus. That's why

I'm here. And God gave her baptism so that she now has that story where she can look back and say,

I was baptized into Christ Jesus, and I'm united to him, and I'm his.

I once was dry, but now I'm wet. I mean, that's it.

So, and here's kind of the crazy thing. And I've said this before, and I've prayed this before publicly, and people have given me—I don't think

I've ever received more pushback for a prayer than what I'm about to say. Where I have prayed for the children of our church, and I have prayed,

God, we ask in your grace and by your favor that our children would have particularly boring testimonies.

Yeah, absolutely. And people give me all sorts of pushback, right?

Praise hands, doc. Because they're like, well, what do you—I mean, we want our kids' testimonies to be exciting so that other people—and

I'm like, you know what? I feel like if in 20 years, my Charlie and my

Owen and my Nora, they can say, Lord, we can't remember a time that we didn't know or trust in you.

I'm like, praise God. I'll chalk that up as a win. Not only that, I don't remember a time

I wasn't meaning to trust Christ. One. Two, I remember my baptism. That's right. That's right.

There it is. Boom. Yeah. Well, and that's decisionalism. I mean, what you're getting into is that I have decided to follow

Jesus. And, you know, sinner's prayer probably falls into this. What a lot of people grew up in a

Baptist background and their point to, I remember when I decided to follow Jesus and I made the sinner's prayer.

You know, I'm with Jimmy, my kids, 16, 14, 12, and five, my oldest three, they can't tell you when they said a prayer.

We just don't lead our kids in that way. They hear the gospel every single week. And what really forces my children early on in their ages to deal with their salvation is that they saw communion happen every week and we fenced the table.

And we let people know to come to the table and receive such mercy and kindness and grace and strength from the

Father, you have to be a family member. I mean, this is a family gathering. And so the kids would ask, that's right.

And my kids would ask, well, dad, why am I not taking communion? It was early on. We had this opportunity to share the gospel with them over and over again.

And eventually the kids were like, yeah, I mean, I believe when can I participate?

It's like, well, you need to be baptized. But the point of it is it wasn't that my kids, I didn't send them, walk them through a prayer and say, well, are you deciding to follow

Jesus now? I can tell you, my kids have been hearing the gospels from the birth because I've been sharing it with them and they're not going to have this transition moment.

As a matter of fact, my kids could fall into deep sin. And we know that to be true according to Christianity.

So a sinner's prayer is really dangerous and it's not the gospel. It's just one of the things that we pile onto the gospel.

The sinner's prayer is not the gospel. And I can't tell you how many people I know who come and talk to me and say,

I know I'm a Christian because I said a prayer. And it's really sad and it's heartbreaking because again, that's another way of saying my faith is in the statement

I said. They're effectively saying that the sinner's prayer saved me.

It is the thing that saved me and reconciled me to God. People want to get crazy.

They look at us like we're nuts when we talk about the sacraments in that way. God communicates grace and they're like, no, that's mysticism, blah, blah, blah.

And then all of a sudden they're like, yeah, but the sinner's prayer, that's where it's at, you know?

And I'm like, okay. And I understand why people want that. It's like this one and done mentality where I want to know that I did what was required in order to get in.

What's the secret passcode? I've got it. I'm in. And that's dangerous because again, you're pointing to something you did, not what

Christ has done. You were not saved because you prayed a prayer. You were saved because Christ saved sinners.

And that's really hard to wrap people's minds around. All right. I'm going to go to another one. You guys ready for this? I'm ready.

We're running out of time. We're going to have to do our best on this one. Discipleship is not the gospel.

Here's the thing, John. I'm using air quotes. You might believe in Jesus, but you just don't take the

Christian life very seriously. And that's not what saves you. You're a nominal

Christian. You don't really love Jesus. You're right. People there are separating faith in Christ and discipleship as though those are two different things.

That a person could, in theory, believe in Jesus and not then be a disciple.

I'm trying to figure out where in the world you have those categories biblically as though they're distinct things.

Because the New Testament clearly speaks that to believe in Christ is to be a disciple and that every Christian is a disciple.

You're right. I think we confuse discipleship with mentorship and apprenticeship.

We think to be a disciple means that I get coffee with somebody once a week and share my deepest, darkest sins and when

I think I'm going to stop. That is discipleship. When in reality, when you live and participate within the greater life of the church, your pastor, every time he preaches, is discipling you.

When you go to church and you live life with people and you need to forgive them and they need to forgive you and you need to have hard conversations and you need to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, that is discipleship.

They want to pigeonhole discipleship to be mentorship. I'm all for mentorship. I'm a young guy.

The two guys that I'm looking at the screen at right now, these two guys, I would call, they help mentor me and they help disciple me.

But at the same time, in the same way, there are people within my church that I wouldn't consider to be my mentor, but they disciple me and me living life with them.

It's a cultural word that we often get very confused and we have turned discipleship into something that is just biblically not there.

We assume discipleship is to be one of the twelve. Jesus had more than twelve disciples. That's the confusing part that people don't understand.

Even when he says, go out into all the world and make disciples, the concept back then was a follower of one's teaching.

So you were identified as, I'm a follower of this teacher and I am being discipled of him.

I'm embracing his teaching. I'm embracing his instruction. What people assume that means, going back to what

Jimmy is saying, is we take it to the next level, and discipleship is you get in the gate as a

Christian and then you become the real deal when you're a disciple. If you believe the gospel, you are a follower of the teachings of Christ.

Therefore, you're a disciple. Like you said, there's not two paths. Justin Perdue It's almost framed like those who simply believe in Jesus, some of them will be saved but not all of them.

But the disciples will be saved. Those who are really serious, the disciples, all of them will be saved without fail, but those who simply believe in Jesus, many of them will be lost.

It really is unhelpful because then it comes across sounding like discipleship is what makes one a genuine believer as opposed to trusting in Christ.

Jon Moffitt The confusion got, when Paul says, I am of Christ, I'm of Ephesus, I'm of Paulus, that's even where the confusion came in, that they were finding somehow their identity in who they were being discipled by.

Culturally speaking, this is a thing. It's a thing to follow someone and say, I am of this person, but it's confusing to assume that it's this next step level or real assurance is found by being a disciple of Jesus.

Discipleship is forsaking all, which I think is what we're getting into. Justin Perdue Absolutely. One very quick clarifying remark.

You'll notice that a number of these things that we've mentioned already are what we might call outflows of the gospel or implications of the gospel, but they are not the gospel itself.

Faith, repentance, obedience, discipleship, etc. flow out of the gospel and come from it, but they are not the gospel itself.

That distinction makes all the difference. This last one that we want to talk about also may offend some.

I think it's helpful, though, for us to draw this one into the light because many of us have heard this before, and it is, frankly, a form of slavery and bondage, and it is a damning reality if true.

Many people will say to surrender all to Jesus is the good news.

At the risk of sounding like a shock jock, if to surrender all to Christ is the gospel, we are all damned.

None of us have ever done it. Exactly right, John. That's the point of the rich young ruler.

When Jesus asks him to prove his love to God and neighbor, he can't do it because that's what

Christ asks of him. Prove your love for God and your love for neighbor by selling your stuff and following me, and the man walks away dejected.

I said this to my church last week that as you continue living the everyday

Christian life, every single day what you are going to find is that there is another deep recess and another dark corner of your heart that you are unaware of, or you could say an area that you have not surrendered to Christ.

However, the good news of the gospel is that in the same way that our wickedness and our sin goes far deeper into our hearts than we could ever possibly imagine,

God's grace and Jesus' righteousness also goes down into those deep places. It has to be that way, otherwise we are condemned.

Because if my salvation is banked on the fact of the quality of me surrendering all to Jesus, or treasuring

Jesus above all, or loving Jesus more than I love this, my goodness, that just denies the whole simulus at peccator.

That denies that I am both simultaneously saint and sinner. This is

Romans 7. The good news of Romans 7 is

Romans 8, verse 1, that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Jon Moffitt I would say there's a confusion here, and I'm going to make a statement, and if this is new to you, go back into our episodes.

They're all available. Go find the Law Gospel podcast, but this is a confusion of the law and the gospel.

Total surrender to God is impossible, and the danger of that is to assume that it can even remotely be.

So when Jesus says this, unless you forsake father and mother and wife and siblings and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.

Every person should hear that and say, well, then no one can be Jesus' disciples.

That's what you should hear, but it's not. What you hear is, oh man, I need to work on that. You just lowered what

Jesus said. Jesus didn't make it relatively. He says you have to, unless you sell everything.

The thing is, what we don't understand is that when Jesus receives the question, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

The inheritance is standing in front of you. Your path to inheritance is standing in front of you, and then you ask the man what you must do.

He says, well, if you want to know what you have to do, I'll tell you what you have to do, but if you want to know how you get eternal life, come to me.

That's law versus gospel. Gospel is faith in Jesus. Law is obey and do something to receive.

That's law. When you say to me, total surrender is how you receive salvation, you should walk away completely devastated because there is no one in the history of the world who ever surrendered themselves to the

Father except for Jesus. That's it. We're about to pivot briefly to talk about what the gospel is.

I want to illustrate the fact that this conversation we're having is important.

I put a post up months ago on social media about how emphasizing justification—emphasizing

God's declaration of us that we're righteous in His Son—actually leads to sanctification, growth in holiness and maturity in Christ, and that was very controversial, apparently, for many people, that to emphasize our justification leading to our sanctification.

People were like, no way, man. In order to grow in the faith, we need to emphasize sanctification because—this was the response of some people—Romans 12 is just as much a part of the gospel as Romans 3.

Romans 12 is a number of exhortations that are great that Paul gives in terms of how

Christians are to live together in the church. Every man around these microphones would uphold all of those exhortations from Romans 12, but to say that those exhortations are just as much a part of the gospel as the

Romans 3 content, where the righteousness of God has now been revealed apart from the law for all those who have faith in Christ, and the righteousness of God is given as a gift to those who believe in Jesus, that God might be just and the justifier of those who have faith in Christ—to say that those are equally the gospel, first of all, is flat -out insane, and it is not good news in the slightest because if it's true, then heaven will be empty.

No one will be there because none of us can ever do these things well enough to earn God's favor and to be then declared righteous on the basis of what we do or how well we perform.

This is the kind of confusion that exists out there because of some of the teaching that's out there in the evangelical church, and that's why this conversation, like John said at the beginning, may seem like, well, duh, guys, we know what the gospel is.

It's like, well, yeah, maybe we do, but there is all this clutter and confusion that's been thrown on top of it, and saints are harmed as a result.

That's right. This is almost like saying maintaining your house is how you gain your house.

It's like, no, you don't maintain a house so you can buy it. You buy the house, and then part of owning a house is to maintain it.

It's kind of what you do, but you now own it, and this is what we do with salvation. It's like somehow the maintenance plan is the gaining plan.

It's like, no, Christ gives us our salvation. Then He says, hey, there are some things that you're going to do now that you're a child, so moving on to that, and we're going to have to probably move most of this into the members, but that's fine.

The biggest thing, this is where I think being able to define the difference between good news and clutter on the good news is what

I would say done, and the gospel is done. That's everything about the good news of the gospel.

There's no potentiality. There's no future. I would say the good news is history because it's telling you the facts, not the potential.

So the facts are, it's what Christ has done on your behalf for you, and when

Jesus says it is finished, He means I finished the work required that all sinners can be saved through me, and so this is the difference between good news is not potential, it's done.

It's not due, it's done. Yeah, I mean, this is classic Luther, right?

I mean, this is Heidelberg Disputation. The law says do this, and it is never done. The gospel says believe this, and everything is already done.

The gospel is declarative, it's objective, it's outside of us. In its original context, the word euangelion,

Greek, where we get gospel, good news, is a military term. If a king won a battle, he would send a runner back to the city to say euangelion, good news, the victory has been achieved, and this is what, when we declare the gospel, that's what we are declaring.

We are declaring the victory over sin and death has been achieved. Believe, trust, and rest in that reality.

Receive what has been done for you on your behalf, and you brothers are both saying wonderful things.

The gospel is objective, it's outside of us, it's not affected by anything that we think, feel, or do.

It's declarative, it's done. The work of Christ is finished. It's news, it's facts, it's history. We should actually listen to ourselves when we call the gospel the good news.

That ought to instruct us on how to present it, because it's like, my goodness, all we're doing is heralding stuff that's happened, and stuff in particular that Jesus Christ, the

Messiah, has done. Then all that is left for us to do is to receive

His work, His merit, and His righteousness. Can I say that sometimes when

I hear someone give the gospel, I get done listening, and I go, there's nothing good about what you just said.

That is not good news. Basically, you gave me no news at all.

You gave me a bunch of instructions, but you didn't tell me anything that's actually been done.

You gave me a contract, is what you gave me. It's contractual. Thanks for the list. The last thing

I'll say to just kind of parting shot across the bow as we make our way over to the members podcast, is you will also hear a lot of language in the church these days about how we need to live the gospel, or we need to do the gospel in the church, which is just, again, a symptom of a larger systemic problem, because we're here to say there's one person who has ever done the gospel, and his name is

Jesus, and we trust and rest in Him. It is by faith in Christ.

There's nothing left to do. We receive what's been done, and Christ is our righteousness. He is our hope and stay in the ground of our assurance and peace before God today and forever.

So now we're going to transition into our members podcast, and what we're going to do over there is apply some of the things that we've been talking about.

We said a lot really quickly, and you might be feeling a little bit of that fire hose effect. So we're going to marinate on this a little bit, the three of us, and give you some handles, and hopefully flesh this out and unpack this for you in ways that will be helpful and encouraging.

As you think about the gospel, what it is, what it isn't, and what that means, frankly, for your Christian life in the local church.

If you would like to listen in on this conversation that we're about to have, and you don't quite know what the members podcast is, you can find more information about how you can partner with our ministry and get access to this content over at our website, theocast .org.

We look forward to speaking with many of you in just a moment in the members area, and we look forward to having another conversation with all of you.