Bunyan Conference Houston 2008: Session 3B

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But that issue aside, are we not adding to scripture by using the phrase, faith alone? Certainly not.
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John Calvin, who never did have a really good picture taken, um, but again,
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I didn't either, so it's not a bad thing, but, uh, you know, you gotta give poor
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John some credit though, by the way. The little known fact of his life is that he had a headache for 27 years.
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Now you tell me, if you have a headache for 27 years, whether you're going to smile a lot for your portraits.
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I have a headache for 5 minutes and I'm looking for the Advil and the leave, and, uh, he had one for 27 years.
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Now the reader sees how fairly the sophists today cavil against our doctrine when we say that man is justified by faith alone.
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They dare not deny that man is justified by faith, because it recurs so often in scripture, but since the word alone is nowhere expressed, they do not allow this addition to be made.
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But is it so? Well, what will they reply to these words of Paul, where he contends that righteousness cannot be of faith unless it be free,
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Romans 4 .2. How will a free gift agree with works? With what chicaneries will they allude what he says in another passage, that God's righteousness is revealed in the gospel.
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If righteousness is revealed in the gospel, surely no mutilated or half righteousness, but a full and perfect righteousness is contained there.
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The law, therefore, has no place there. Not only by a false, but an obviously ridiculous shift.
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They insist upon excluding this adjective. Does not he who takes everything from works firmly enough ascribe everything to faith alone?
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What, I pray, do these expressions mean? His righteousness has been manifested apart from his own. The law, therefore, has no place there.
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Not only by a false, but an obviously ridiculous shift.
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Paul, having proclaimed the bad news, and I cannot help but stop for just a moment and remind us that it is not a gospel that does not explain to men and to women and to children why they are under the wrath of God.
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Don't tell me you've preached the gospel to someone when you have not followed the apostolic example and explain first and foremost, we all stand justly condemned before a holy
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God. If you have not proclaimed that, you have not proclaimed the gospel. When the apostle
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Paul writes to church in Rome, he knows he's writing to a church where all roads lead to Rome.
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And so if you can establish a sound church there, just as he did in Ephesus, you're going to naturally evangelize all the area around it.
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And so he presents in that, what might well be called the gospel according to Paul, a thought out, organized, logical presentation of what the gospel is.
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And before he ever gets to how wonderful a savior Jesus is, he starts off by explaining why we are just under the wrath of God.
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And he doesn't do it in two verses. He starts in Romans chapter one, verse 18, and he finishes up in Romans chapter three, verse 18.
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And he does so with that long cantina of passages drawn from the Old Testament, demonstrating the universal sinfulness of man.
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And he says, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be closed.
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Jews and Gentiles, he's covered them all in Romans one, two, and three. Every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God.
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The picture there is of the person who stands before the judge, recognizing the judge's authority and recognizing their own guilt.
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If you watch court TV, you'll see some of these people standing before the judge and their heads still up and they're still proclaiming their innocence and I'm not as bad as the other guy and you don't have any right to tell me what
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I can and cannot do. That's not the picture. The picture here is that the person stands before the judge and they acknowledge and the judge has the right to bring sentence against me.
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That's the picture here. Every mouth closed, no more tongue wagging, no more self -righteousness.
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That's the person who's ready to hear the gospel. How many times, simply because we fear the face of men, do we allow people to bypass that and we wonder then why they view
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Jesus as nothing but a self -help methodology. Paul didn't.
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All the world may become accountable to God because by the works of the law, the law which
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Paul honors, no flesh will be justified in his sight.
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For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. The law reveals to us our sinfulness but it does not contain within it the power to justify.
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That is his point. But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, made known, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who do what?
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Who believe. For there is no distinction. That is there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile.
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There is not a gospel for the Jew and a gospel for the Gentile. There's not a Jewish Christian church and a
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Gentile Christian church. There is no distinction if you're going to experience the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, you're going to believe in him whether you're a
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Jew or a Gentile. That is the only way that you can have this relationship with God.
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There is no distinction and there can't be a distinction. Why? And here's a verse everybody has memorized but so often don't realize why it's even there.
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For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Jew and Gentile. We use it correctly but we need to recognize why it's saying what it's saying is that there's no distinction here.
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All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and therefore all, if you're going to be justified, you're going to be justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.
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Any sinner, there's only one way, is to be justified as a gift by his grace through what he means.
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He only does this in one way. All the pluralism of the world, as popular as it might be, everybody's saying that every path leads to God and all the rest is stuff.
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All the pressure that's put upon us to adopt that attitude is pressure being placed upon us to deny our faith.
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And it might be time for some of us in our society, especially those of you in corporate
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America, where this is being shoved down your throat to put your hand up and say, excuse me, you are demanding that I deny my
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Lord. It's time for us to say, that offends me. Since offense seems to be the worst thing you can possibly do in our society, it's time to stand up and say, excuse me, but I'm not doing that because that means
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I have to deny Christ and I'm not going to do it. Being justified as a gift by his grace, please notice that being justified, who does it?
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We don't justify ourselves. It's not the end result of some process we do.
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Justification is a divine act, it's something God does. And when justification becomes the result of some process, sacraments, whatever else it is, then in essence we are now controlling divine actions by what we ourselves do.
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Being justified as a gift, that is freely, some translations would say freely, by his grace, and there's only one way he can do it and remain just, and that is because the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.
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Why? Why is this the only way that God can do so? Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith.
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A lady was asking me beforehand, how can we tell decent Bible translations from bad
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Bible translations? Here's a test. Bible translations like to try to avoid big words like propitiation, as they come up with other ways of trying to say it.
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And I think, if I recall correctly, if anybody has an NIV, does it say sacrifice of atonement? Sacrifice of atonement?
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At least the NIV is not trying to avoid saying propitiation.
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If you find expiation here, use it as a doorstop. Expiation is sort of the
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British, continental, European way of getting around what propitiation means.
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Because you see, while expiation is close, what expiation lacks that propitiation has is that while propitiation removes the wrath of God.
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Forgiveness removes the barriers, yes, expiation speaks to that, but propitiation refers to removing the wrath of God.
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And of course, ever since C .H. Dodd and those guys, the wrath of God has been pretty much out of stock in European theology.
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Though it's not out of style in the Bible. When God is played publicly as a propitiation, a sacrifice that removes the penalty and wrath of God in His blood through faith, that is how it becomes propitious for me.
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This was to demonstrate His righteousness. Because of the forbearance of God, He passed over the sins previously committed.
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A lot of people look at this and go, I don't get that. How can Abraham be the friend of God? Because of the certainty of the cross.
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Abraham was a friend of God, and his sins could be forgiven because of the certainty of the cross. His faith in Yahweh becomes a model for our faith in Christ because of the certainty of the cross.
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You see, in His forbearance, He had passed over the sins previously committed. For the demonstration,
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I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
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In other words, God's holiness must be upheld. My Muslim friends don't understand this.
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They think God can just simply forgive a sin, and His law can remain broken. There is no sacrifice, there's no propitiation.
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There is no remedy. But the Scriptures say that God demonstrates
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His righteousness at the present time and demonstrates that He is just, even when
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He calls sinners His friends. Why? Because every sin will be punished.
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The question is where? Every sin will be punished.
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Righteousness will be done. His throne is established on righteousness. Every sin will be punished, either in the sinner or in the sin bearer.
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One or two. So that He would be just and the justifier.
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Man, I don't know about you, but I'm awful glad God is called the justifier. I am awful glad that God is called the justifier.
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But who is He justifying? The one who keeps His nose clean, the one who does the right sacraments, the one who does the right baptisms, the one who has faith in Jesus.
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Where, then, is boasting? And see, that's why people don't like justification. They don't like it by grace alone, through faith alone, because it leaves absolutely no ground for boasting.
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I have no control over God's grace. I have no control over anything that would give me a ground for saying,
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And yeah, God tried, and I allowed
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Him to succeed. Aren't I wonderful? When I was flying out here, every time
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I fly out to Houston, I end up in a long conversation on the plane. It's really weird.
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A few years ago, I flew out here. I bought a PT Cruiser on eBay, and it was in Houston. And I was flying off to drive it back home.
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And guess who I sat down next to on the plane? A Mormon elder. If that makes you laugh.
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A few years ago, we were over in Salt Lake City for the General Conference, my son and I. I think it was the first General Conference he had been to to pass out tracks.
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And we were flying back on a Sunday morning on America West, and a class had just graduated from the
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Missionary Training Center in Provo. And the first time Mormon missionaries were all going out to the place where there were going to be little
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Mormon missionaries on their bikes. And they were all on that plane with us. And in God's sovereignty, some poor little
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Mormon missionary from up in Idaho someplace, this is the first time he'd ever been on a plane. This poor kid was so green, he shot an entire roll of film out the window before we got off the plane.
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He was in the window seat. Me and Josh were in the next seat.
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He got quite an earful. You should have seen the missionaries in front of us going like this. And they all had crips in their neck by the time they got out of the plane.
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Whoopsie, save, back there we go. Save Elder Watson! You know, something like that. But anyway. I imagine he's going to tell his grandkids, you wouldn't believe what happened to me when
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I went on my mission. I ended up next to James White on the plane. Anyway. How did
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I get there? Oh yes. Where then is boasting? It is excluded.
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By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.
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We can boast in no one but Christ. It is by His work that you are in Christ Jesus.
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1 Corinthians chapter 1. Take a look at what it says there. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
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Now remember, for Paul, the law is the highest revelation of God.
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I just love when people say, oh well, but you see, actually, yes, works of the Mosaic law, but we have the law of Christ.
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They don't understand Paul, do they? Not in any way, shape, or form. Now, here's a question that I would ask.
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Again, the battery is still working, so I'm under some constraint here. One of the questions
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I love to ask my Roman Catholic friends. That takes us back to Romans chapter 4.
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Here's the background for it, and you'll see how it's relevant. Romans chapter 4. After discussing
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Abraham, and going back to Genesis 15 and 6. This is where Abraham was justified, and he was justified by faith even before he was circumcised.
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That's his point. And then he gives us an apostolic interpretation of Genesis 15 and 6.
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Now, to the one who works, his wage, his reward, his misthos, in Greek, that which you get for working, for employment, is not credited or imputed as a favor, that's literally the word grace, but as what is due or owed.
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Now, what is Paul saying there? He's saying something we all understand. When you go to work, and you put in your 40 hours, or your 50 hours, or your 60 hours, or your 70 hours these days, and you get your paycheck at the end of the week, you're going to be pretty insulted, or you might be looking for a job, if your boss comes to you and hands you your paycheck and says, here's a gift for you.
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If your boss says, here's a gift for you, that's not a good thing. Because you work for that.
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That is what is due to you. So, if you do something with the expectation of receiving something back, that's work.
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And what you get back is what is due to you. But to the one who does not work.
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But, in opposition to that, believes in him who justifies the undying, his faith is credited, imputed to him as righteousness.
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That is Paul's understanding. Now, look at this very carefully. The one who works, ergatzimai, to engage in physical labor, to engage in that which is profitable, and it means that you're the one putting out the energy.
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What is due is an accounting term that was used, this is what we said if you were in debt, it is what is owed to you.
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Credited, ergatzimai, all the standard terms Paul uses here in this verse. But to the one who does not work, same word, but instead believes, his place in such a way as to make believing the opposite of working.
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Not something that's just real close, but the opposite. It has an object, it's not just, oh believe, just have faith, in what?
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Even Abraham was given something to have faith in, it was promises of God, as are we.
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Our faith is placed in one who justifies the ungodly, not justifies the godly, you don't clean yourself up first.
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And that is credited, ergatzimai, as righteousness, justification.
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Now, make sure to see this, which is why I put it in the presentation. Verse 4, the one working.
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Verse 5, the one not working. Do you see something there? You don't have to read
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Greek to notice. They are the exact same terms except for one little word right there, the negative particle.
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So in other words, Paul repeats himself, he uses the exact same terminology, so that you can tell that verse 4 is the opposite attitude of verse 5.
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Verse 4 is not going to get you righteousness. It's only going to get you the wages of your works.
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Paul did not provide a clear and stronger contrast between the person in verse 4 who seeks reward from God by what they're doing, and the person in verse 5 who does not do so, but instead, believes.
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This is the nature of saving faith. But to the one not working provides the negative aspect of saving faith.
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It makes no claims upon God. It comes to God with the empty hand of faith.
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It is not the one who comes and pulls out the wallet and says, I know this isn't a lie, but will this be enough?
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No. It's an empty hand of faith that fits the sovereign hand of grace.
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You bring anything in it, you won't experience righteousness from God.
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It makes no claims upon God, but on the positive side, Paul provides the complete 180 degree contrast, but believes.
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Saving faith then cannot include any idea of works or merit.
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Saving faith always has the same object, the God who justifies. So Paul says, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly.
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No, faith's object is the God who justifies. God does the work of salvation.
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God justifies. It's a divine act, not the end result of an extended
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Amway presentation. Sorry about that. Someone sounds like I just punched them.
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So God justifies the ungodly, not the self -righteous. A person who will not say, yes,
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I'm the ungodly, is not the person who's ready to hear this message. And yet one of the great tragedies of most modern evangelical churches is that we assure those people of eternal life without ever challenging their sin.
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We end up filling the church with people who will never hear a message of God in us, because they've never been confronted with the reality of their own sin.
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Romans 4 -5 concludes, his faith is credited as righteousness. The faith that has God the justifier as its object, that brings no merit, that makes no plea to self -righteousness, is the faith that is credited as righteousness.
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And here's the key, and no other. There is no other. That's Paul's point here.
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Read it in his context. That's his argument. That's his defense against the Judaizers of his day.
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Now, here's the question that I have for the Roman Catholic. Who is the blessed man?
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I just realized that I apologize. I could have played this for you. If I had thought ahead far enough,
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I could have shown you this in video format, but you can go look for yourself. I have on my
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YouTube page a clip from one of the most useful debates I've ever done. It was a debate on the subject of purgatory.
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And it was between myself and Father Peter Stravinskis. Now, Peter Stravinskis has two
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PhDs. He taught in two Ivy League schools. He was the longtime editor of the
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Catholic Answer. He had written I don't know how many Catholic Answer books. And we debated purgatory.
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I came to that debate with everything he had ever published on the subject of purgatory in my handheld.
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He had never even read a single word I had ever said. You can tell how that debate went.
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By the end of the evening, he was pulling his collar and doing everything he could to get out of that place. And you can watch it for yourself.
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I'm not making you. It'd be sort of dumb to lie about something and give you to go watch. But I asked him this question.
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Who is the blessed man? And I read the text. Romans chapter 4, verse 6.
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David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom
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God credits righteousness apart from works. Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
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Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him. And I asked
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Peter Stravinskis, who is the blessed man? He'd never been asked that question before.
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And so his first answer, I actually had to try to keep myself from chuckling. Because it was so bad.
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He said it was Jesus. Yeah, God will never hold
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Jesus' sin against him. That didn't go over too well.
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Even the Catholics in the audience were sort of going. And so it came back a little later.
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And I sort of gave him a second shot at it. And here is the saddest thing, because this is really a pretty common response.
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Are you the blessed man? I hope to be. I hope to be.
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See, he can't know. I hope to be. Every single believer in Jesus Christ is the blessed man.
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And if you don't know you are, you're not a Christian. You're not a Christian. Look at what he says.
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Here we have an example of inspired interpretation. Where Paul interprets the meaning of Psalm 32, 1 -2.
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It's Psalm 31, if you accept it. He interprets these words to communicate the blessedness of the crediting of righteousness apart from works.
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Which he continues the theme he struck in Romans chapter 4, verses 4 -5, which we just looked at rather in depth.
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Clearly it is Paul's intention to apply this blessedness to every single believer who by faith is reckoned righteousness apart from works.
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But note that the imputation of God's righteousness likewise involves the non -imputation of sin.
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That is, Paul says the blessed man's sins are forgiven and they're covered.
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And, in verse 8 we read of the blessedness of the man whose sin the
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Lord will not take into account. The Greek is,
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This is an error subjunctive of strong denial.
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And it precludes the possibility of a future action. In this case, the possibility of the imputation of sin to the blessed man.
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That's why he's blessed. So, the blessed man is the one whose sin is not imputed to him.
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Remember 2 Corinthians 5 -21? Because it has been imputed to another.
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A substitute, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. And so Rome cannot answer the question, who is the blessed man?
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I had one Roman Catholic say, well, the blessed man is the person who has just been baptized before they leave the church.
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Because once you leave the church, then you can start engaging in venial sins. Not leave the church as in leave
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Roman Catholicism, but walk out of the church after being baptized. The blessed man is the blessed man for a matter of moments after receiving baptism.
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And then, now you have venial sins, and purgatory, and the possibility of mortal sins, and falling from grace, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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It's so sad, because everybody there that night saw. That Paul's whole point is, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you are the blessed man.
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You are the blessed woman. If you can't answer that tonight, then
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I would invite you to Christ. I really would. So, we go back to Paul in Galatians 2.
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We know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus.
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That we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by observing the law. Because by observing the law, no one will be justified.
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Even the apostles, good Jews that they were, recognized that there is only one means of salvation.
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And that is by faith in Jesus Christ, not by observing the law, even though the law reveals to us the very holiness of God.
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But when all is said and done, the question is, does it really matter? Have we wasted our time this evening?
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Would it have been easier for you, more meaningful for you, to have been watching
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ESPN and catching up on Olympics preparations? Or if you're like me, catching up on the next tour, the next stage in the
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Tour de France, or something like that. You know, can Cadel Evans keep the yellow? Something like that. For a lot of people, the answer to that question is yes, that would have been more useful for you.
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For a lot of people, what we're doing this evening is destructive, because it's so divisive. I see a lot of language in the
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New Testament where the apostles felt it was really good to be divided from those who don't have eternal life.
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And who do not honor God. But does it really matter? Romans 5 -1 says,
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Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
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Lord Jesus Christ. A number of years ago, I believe, wow, 12 years ago now,
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I wrote a book called The Roman Catholic Controversy. The focus of that book was upon that one word, peace.
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Part of the reason was because I recall very clearly an encounter
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I had in 1991 when I went to El Cajon, California, a suburb of San Diego.
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I did two debates with Fr. Mitchell Packwell. I mentioned Fr. Packwell to you a couple of evenings ago.
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I have a lot of respect for Mitch Packwell. I think the debates we've done, the five of them that we've done, have been some of the best that we've done because they were real debates.
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They weren't about him or me. I wasn't constantly having to dodge verbal javelins and so on and so forth.
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We were actually discussing the subject. During the course of the cross -examination,
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I asked Mitch Packwell a question. See, Mitch Packwell is a scholar. He's fluent in 12 languages. And he knows
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Biblical Hebrew. And so he knows what lies behind the word peace.
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The Greek term for peace is Irenia. But he knows, in Paul's thinking, what is the term that's behind the word peace.
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We all know that. Shalom. Shalom. And shalom in Hebrew is a rich concept.
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It's not just the absence of conflict. It is wellness of relationship. No one would say that today
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Israel is in a state of shalom, even though there may not have been a bombing today. They may not have launched a pre -emptive strike against Iran, which they will do.
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And we'll be paying $10 a gallon for gas when we do it. And it will happen before the end of the year.
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But anyways. That's not a prophecy, by the way.
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Just some stuff out of everything. But anyways. No one would say shalom exists there because when everyone's walking around packing heat and you have to have a fence around your country and you have to walk through a metal detector everywhere and you go out to a restaurant and you can't help but think that someone will blow up in here.
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That's not peace. That's not shalom. That's not shalom. Even if you happen to make it through the day, that's not shalom. And I knew that Mitch Paco knew that.
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And so I asked him, I said, The greatest commandment in scripture is to love the Lord your
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God with our hearts, souls, and minds, right? And while Rome has presented a doctrine of mortal sin and says, well, you have to purposely break these kinds of commandments.
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It's interesting that breaking the greatest commandment isn't one of them. Or at least not said to be specifically one of them.
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I pointed out that problem and said, you know, it seemed to me that breaking the greatest commandment would be a mortal sin.
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How could breaking lesser commandments be a mortal sin and breaking the greatest commandment be a demon? That doesn't make any sense. So keeping that in mind,
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I said, Father Paco, from your perspective, if you are in the state of grace today, you have no assurance that by the time your head touches the pillow this evening, you will still be in that state of grace.
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You commit a mortal sin this day and no longer be the friend of God, no longer be justified.
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And if you die in that state, you don't even go to purgatory. You're lost. Knowing what the word peace means, how can you say you truly have peace with God?
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If the grounds of your relationship is based upon your faithfulness, your actions, your remaining that pile of gold, how can you say you have true shalom with the holy
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God? To say that we truly have peace with God is to say something really big about the quality of the gospel, the power of the gospel, the perfection of the gospel.
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When you really get a handle on the holiness of God, when you, when you,
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I highly recommend to you a book I read in one sitting many, many years ago called
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The Holiness of God by R .C. Sproul. I highly, I just saw a bunch of heads go, hmm, hmm, hmm.
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When you understand the holiness of the God is what you have to do, you will realize we need a powerful gospel.
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We don't need a human gospel. We need a divine gospel. We need a powerful Savior. We don't need a
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Savior who tries to save and fails. We need a Savior who really can save. Which again brings us to the subject of tomorrow's meeting as well.
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Justification by faith. What the Apostle Paul says here is to have peace with God.
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We have to have already been, as something we look back upon, justified by faith.
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If you have not been justified by faith, you do not have peace with God. And the only reason
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I can claim to have peace with God is not because of anything I've accomplished in and of myself, but because I realize, the blessed man,
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I own my sins. I know that they are there. And I know that they are offensive to a holy
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God. But I know that my sins have been borne by another.
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They have been taken out of the way, nailed to the tree. But when
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I try to say that, and then also say, and then
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I've done this, am I not saying that all that before isn't enough?
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If I try to add to it, am I not very clearly indicating that that wasn't enough? Obviously.
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And that's why it's solo fide. That's why it's faith alone.
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Not separate from everything else that God does in our lives, but alone as the means of justification.
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Because when I add anything to it, then I'm saying that what Christ did was not enough. Christ died for us.
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And that's what we have in the doctrine of justification. So, I...
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Oh, I did have this pretty little picture, for those of you who are historic historians.
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As Luther finally, before the Diet of Worms, said, Here I stand,
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I can do no else. Help me. Now whether he actually said all that, we're not 100 % certain.
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But he said something to that effect. So, with that, we have exactly 10 minutes for questions.
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So, I will try to remember to repeat the question for the sake of recording, but I'm often very bad at that.
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So I will apologize ahead of time, should that take place. So, yes ma 'am.
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Since you already know all the words to The Mighty Fortress, When you debate these
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Catholic monks...
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Well, let me... The question is, when you debate these high -muckety monks, well, the only two priests
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I've debated, and neither one of them were bishops, were Peter Stravinsky and St. Mitch Pacwa. Generally, Roman Catholic apologists, and this is interesting, because I point out the inconsistencies, are not in the hierarchy of the
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Church. You can't get those folks to do debates. They just don't have any interest in it.
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So, most of the apologists are lay people. Maybe professors once in a while, Scott Hahn, though he won't debate me, but people like that.
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Did Stravinsky give an answer? The only answer he gave was, I hope to be. But he wasn't able to give...
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Go ahead and hit my YouTube page. There's two clips I've posted up there. One where I'm asking you that question, and then another one where we go through 1
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Corinthians chapter 3, in the base of Purgatory, and just demonstrate that if you just go to the
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Word, and you know what the Word is... Here's a guy with two PhDs, a long -time
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Catholic, and he just has not had a response. And it's very clear, the audience sees it as well.
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You can hear the audience going, come on, you know. And no, it just did not have a meaningful response at all.
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A couple times, all he would just say is, well, you're playing games. You're playing games. You can look for yourself, watch for yourself.
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Now, there are others who always have an answer, but it's sometimes, as my brother and I were talking about today, when
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I was debating Robert Syngenis on the mass in 1999, he was extremely nasty.
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At one point, he was trying to make a point that I allegedly contradicted myself on my own book, but he didn't understand what
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I was saying, and so I just started joking. And he said, well, I think I can honestly claim to be the sole infallible interpreter of my own book.
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And everybody's turned to him and asked, and he goes, that's your problem, Mr. White. You think you're infallible. And everybody's like, oh, come on.
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So it was quite interesting. In fact, I think maybe both of those debates have been posted in total on YouTube.
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It's not on my page. I think someone else has posted those, too. So you can watch them and see for yourself. Yes, sir.
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Would you... Sorry, I think I'm trying to think of a good way to ask this. It appears on the surface that in Galatians 5, 4, we have found the only exception to the end of Romans 8, where it says that nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.
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No, not at all. As I pointed out when I looked at Galatians 5, there is a specific audience that is given there.
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And you will notice that it is those who are seeking to be justified by works.
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Those are not believers, obviously, if you're seeking to be justified by law. You have been separate from Christ.
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You who are seeking to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace.
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But does the term fallen from grace then include... From the realm of grace. It doesn't mean that you were standing... He does not say you have been saved by grace and now since you've decided to seek to be justified by law, then grace has failed to save you.
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No, when it says severed from Christ and fallen from grace, if I...
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I used to use the illustration of Michael Jordan, but he's gotten old now, so... I really can't use almost anybody else these days because they're always getting in trouble, so...
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I've stopped using sports analogies for this, but... So I use the path analogy.
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Again, there is the path of faith and grace. There is the path of law and obedience to law.
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And Christ and grace is only there. And if I choose to walk down this road, even if I am claiming to be a
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Christian, even if I am claiming Christ, even if I'm saying that Christ's grace is causing me to do this,
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I am walking away from Christ. I am walking away from the spirit of His blessing, His activity. I am going as far away from Him as I can because I'm not following after His own message.
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And so when someone says, well, what you have here is you have someone who is in Christ, someone who is in grace, and then they somehow do this seeking to be justified.
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A believer doesn't seek to be justified. We look back upon our justifications. We've already been justified.
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They never started that way and then in confusion doubled back. No, no, no, no, no. So it's a matter of they were never justified to begin with.
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Exactly. Alright. There is no third gospel.
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There is no partial gospel. You either... What does Paul say? There is only one kind of faith that saves.
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It is the faith that casts yourself completely upon Christ. That's what he said in Romans chapter 4. Yes, sir.
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So to reconstruct what you're having then it's not a path of law but a pit of law. Yes.
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A pit of law. As he says, it's not a path of law, it's a pit of law because you fall into it and unfortunately many people who are in it don't realize that they are in a pit from which they cannot extract themselves.
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Yes, sir. Have you ever read into Roman Catholicism that says that, for example,
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Scripture says we submit that we are not justified. Is it justified by the cross or is it law? Do you have to take one of them and say, well, we are not talking about the pit of law.
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Yes. Yes. In fact, I made reference to that very briefly in passing. The question is, is it common for Roman Catholic apologists to use the argumentation well, yes, you're not justified by the
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Mosaic law but you're justified by a higher law, the law of Christ. Almost all of them use that. In fact, I found it fascinating when
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I picked up Jonathan Edwards' book On Justification by Faith. He, likewise, had to deal with that because they were making the same argument then,
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Roman Catholics were. And so, that's why I emphasize the law of which Paul speaks.
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He recognizes it is the holy law of God and it embodies the revelation of his holiness and it shows us our sin.
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So, when they say, well, it's the ceremonial laws that are being done away with here. What did he say in Romans chapter 3?
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For by the law is the what? The knowledge of sin. What part of the law gives us the knowledge of sin? The ceremonial or the moral?
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Obviously, it's the moral. And so, that kind of attempt to, and there are
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Roman Catholic apologists who sort of bought into some of the new perspective stuff as well, even though it doesn't fit well with Trent, but let's face it, now there's today amongst, and certainly in the universities, in the educational system,
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Roman Catholicism, that you'll find every view under the sun. Especially in Western cultures, you'll find every view under the sun.
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But yes, I can name names of the people who utilize that particular argumentation fairly frequently.
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You two look like you're arguing so I'll go with you. I was going to ask, I know like R .C.
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Sproul and like John Gerstner believe that Thomas Aquinas believed in justification by faith and they thought he was a,
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I mean, in May of 1993 Gerstner wrote an article, you know, because he believed that Aquinas believed in justification by faith.
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I was wondering what you believe about that. I have always wondered what the fascination is with that personally.
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I have never invested in a whole lot of time worrying too much about trying to interpret the massive amount of writing that Thomas Aquinas produced to try to defend the idea that he was a
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Protestant given that he was very clearly in subjection and vision of Rome.
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Yet, many of the dogmas, most pernicious dogmas have not even yet been defined at the time of his life.
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Certainly most of the Marian dogmas have not been. I don't see the use in trying to turn
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Thomas into a Protestant personally. I think that's always a rather slippery slope that takes time away from dealing with the real issues and they are not the only ones fascinated with him.
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Norman Geisser obviously at the same time is very enamored with Thomas as well and I think what you can prove is that modern
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Roman Catholic dogma is an evolutionary beast by demonstrating that at that point in time here is a mind that was obviously very bright and yet it did not come to the conclusions that modern
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Roman Catholicism has come to in these areas. But, you could at the same time dig up all sorts of things that you'd have to disagree with him on.
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So, what really, it seems very anachronistic to utilize those kinds of categories. I'm not really sure what the use of it is other than getting yourself published.
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Nothing against either of any of those gentlemen, but I just personally see it. Yes, sir? Dr. White, what would you attribute the recent perfection of Roman Catholicism by?
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Yeah, Frank Beckwith was the head of ETS. Well, when you, in fact,
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I just saw this afternoon that Frank Beckwith's book is coming out. I have it pre -ordered from Amazon. And as I have discussed, for example, that, we'll use that as an illustration.
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There are a lot of things that are attractive to people. I know a lot of converts and convert converts that went in and came out in that type of situation.
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Most of them are attracted by liturgy. Those who've never been Roman Catholics, I see, of course,
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Beckwith was raised as a Catholic, so it doesn't work for him, but many of those who were not raised as Roman Catholics are attracted to the liturgy, are attracted to the image of the eternal church or the 2 ,000 -year -old church, standing in the midst of time, unchanged, and all the rest of the stuff, which is a mirage.
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It's an image. It's not real if you actually take the time to study these things and find out that that's not the case. But in Beckwith's case, the real question, and I'm hoping the book will help to answer some of this, but I think he's already answered in many ways, he says that he always held the view of man and the view of natural law that Roman Catholicism held, and I never have seen anything where he gave any kind of passionate defense of the solas or anything like that, even as a quote -unquote evangelical.
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And so I think the foundations, he always held to a Roman Catholic epistemology to begin with, and so if you're trying to hold that together with evangelical theology to any depth, you're going to create an inconsistency.
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And hence, when things happen in life that would cause you to want to be closer to your
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Roman Catholic family and things like that, it's not overly surprising then that he found that to be a rather easy transition to make.
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But by his own confession on fundamental issues of the sufficiency of scripture, fundamental issues concerning epistemology, natural law, the view of man, he had always been
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Roman Catholic. He had never left that fold. So I'm not sure that it's even fair to call him a revert or a convert because I never saw any type of denunciation of his former faith in a positive affirmation on those particular issues.
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So... How do you resolve the race of evangelical leadership without anybody taking that?
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Well, let's be honest as we look at evangelicalism today. The idea of really knowing why you are what you are.
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Again, if we were doing a seminar on prophecy or making a better marriage or Christian finances, would we be able to fit in this room?
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Probably not. And yet here we are talking about these things and so it doesn't surprise me at all given the fact that evangelicalism has adopted the idea, which is a fairly new idea for whatever it's called evangelicalism these days, that theology really doesn't matter and that it is really something we can put off to one side.
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I am not surprised whatsoever when people embrace false systems because they've never been vetted or challenged or examined themselves to begin with.
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I've had you sitting now for approximately two hours and that means there are some of you that are going to have trouble standing up anyways.
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So let's close our time tomorrow evening. We will spend our two hours reviewing a sermon and I hope it will be useful to you.
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I hope you realize I don't do this with any animosity toward the man we'll be reviewing.
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In fact, I'll tell you right now that I appreciate it, that at least at a number of points, for example at one point he took the time to say a pretty short sermon.
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I'm not sure how you get anything into sermons and sermon links these folks use but he took the time to say that one of the big knocks on Calvinism is that they don't do evangelism.
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He says all the Calvinists I know are very involved in evangelism so I appreciate it that there was not the abject
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Calvinists are demons from hell type perspective that is very common, very, very common in the literature and the presentations that are out there but at the same time there was some really basic misunderstandings and I really think the overall intention was to stop conversation not start conversation and I just don't think that that's how we advance.
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These things do need to be aired and as all of you know I've engaged in debates on the subject and I've tried to engage in other debates on the subject that ended up not taking place such as the infamous debate at Liberty University Tom Askew and myself versus Ergon and Ymir Cannon that never happened but we'd love to have that to take place.
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So that's what we're going to be talking about tomorrow evening. I believe that you would be free to invite people because I'm not going to be standing up here mocking people.
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I'm not going to be standing up here ripping and snorting but I am going to very clearly demonstrate that what was presented really wasn't something that I think was overly helpful to however many thousands of people who were sitting in that auditorium that day.
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So that's what we'll be doing tomorrow evening. I will actually be playing about 85 percent of the sermon.
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We'll watch it and then it fades out, I'll stop, make my comments and move on from there. So it's not like you have to be trusting me and accusing me of mis -citing somebody.
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You're going to actually, we'll watch the whole thing together. Okay? Alright, let's close the time. Once again,
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Father, we do thank you for your gospel. We thank you that you have revealed the truth of the gospel.
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That you preserved it and that by your spirit you continue to call people of every tribe, tongue, people and nation to love it, to live in light of it, to be passionate about it.
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And so, Father, we thank you that we can know the gospel today. We can proclaim it and your spirit continues to honor it by bringing your people to yourself under its auspices.
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And so we thank you for the gospel. We thank you that we find our life in it, that we have peace with you this evening.
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And we can recognize that even though there is sin in our existence, that the wrath of God has already fallen in its full fury upon this perfect substitute in our
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Christ. And therefore, we have true peace with you. We are indeed the blessed man, the blessed woman, the blessed child when we have true faith in Christ.
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And that comes from your work in our hearts. We thank you for your gospel. And we ask that you would make us bold in proclamation of it.
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We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Real quickly, before you leave,
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I want to recommend again the God who justifies, and I think it's rather apropos that a German Mickey Friedrich would get the book tonight.