Two Types of Believers Who Desperately NEED the GOSPEL!

You know, where I think people are often happy to acknowledge that when it comes to their justification, the fact that they've been declared righteous, forgiven of sin, et cetera, that is completely by a righteousness that has been wrought by Jesus.

You know, then when it comes to sanctification, they now are going to be sanctified by a holiness that is wrought by themselves.

Right. And that is damaging. And what that does for some people, it it makes you this very serious kind of self -righteous person who's very uncharitable towards others.

For many, I think it makes you very anxious and you despair of the fact that you're not doing well enough.

And sometimes for for folks, and this is where I think a lot of our listeners have come from, they are so exhausted and discouraged and are questioning whether or not they're even

Christians at all. That's right. Or certainly they're convinced they're not good ones, whatever that means.

And this is a result of the legalism and pietism stuff. And it beats people to death.

One of my favorite videos early on when you two first came out was this young kid and he is handed a jackhammer and the guy kind of points at the ground like, hey, try to tear up the sidewalk and he man, he goes to town and you can see he wants to impress the boss and several of the workers that are around there.

And so he starts picking this thing up and slamming it on the ground using the right edge. He's just picking up, slamming it down, picking up and slamming it down.

And he's using his arms as the force. Right. Not a machine on.

Not a sledgehammer. There's a difference. Yeah. A jackhammer. Right. So then about like after a minute of this, you can see the guy is sweating.

The boss walks over. He plugs it in and turns it on. And so,

I mean, you know, the kid kind of just laughs like, oh, my word. And this is I think this is a perfect definition of pietism because pietists seek to do the right thing just for the wrong reasons in the wrong ways.

Right. And so they attempt really, really hard to obey God in their own strength.

And they're always examining themselves like, look, you know, everybody look at me. I'm picking it up. I'm slamming it down. Whereas we're trying to say, actually,

Paul says how you've begun the faith. Yeah. Which is by receiving grace and the gospel is the same way that you continue in the faith.

Right. It's the same power. So our godliness is always rooted in the spirit's power.

Walk by the spirit. You will not feel the lust of the flesh. So godliness is very much rooted in the position that we are already in.

We are in Christ, covered by his righteousness. And so we're not laboring in that way to impress someone.

There's nothing to impress. I want to live in a way that honors him and is good for my neighbor. But I'm not doing that from a place of fear.

I'm not doing that as a slave. Yeah. Doing that from a place of knowing that I am loved and adopted by God, and I'm now his beloved child.