When Two Baptists and Two Presbyterians Walk into a Podcast | Theocast

Theocast

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:02

Hi, this is John and Justin's on the intro today as well. Two for the price of one.

00:09

That's right. Hey, you know what? This is a long episode. It's over an hour. We got to be on with Nick and Peter from Guilt, Grace, Gratitude, a great podcast, and they hosted us.

00:19

We just thought we'd put this on our podcast as well. It was such a great conversation about confessional theology,

00:25

Reformed theology, and really some distinctions between the Presbyterian Westminster view of the confession and the

00:32

Lenten Baptist confession. It was really helpful. I don't know what your thoughts are, Justin. Yeah, I really enjoyed the time.

00:38

Very encouraging conversation, and it was wide -ranging in terms of the topics discussed. So I think you guys will be encouraged to listen to it.

00:46

You've got two Baptists and two Presbyterians. Peter is actually three forms of unity, but for simplicity.

00:52

Two Baptists, two Presbyterians talking confessional theology in the local church, and I enjoyed it immensely.

00:57

I was encouraged in thinking about these things with these guys, and we hope you're encouraged by the conversation, and maybe this will spark fodder for future episodes for us, man.

01:07

You never know. That's right. Because we're a guest on there, we didn't do a Semper Firmanda SR, so we'll save that for next week when we come back, and we're just so thankful for you guys.

01:17

Definitely go check out their podcast. Great guys. Love what they're doing. Enjoy the episode. If you'd like to help support

01:23

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

01:29

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

01:36

Thanks for listening. Hello, everyone.

01:49

Yet once again, it's another day of fresh grace and mercy. This is the Guilt, Grace, Gratitude podcast, sponsored by Lagos Bible Software, where we bridge the gap to Reformed Christian theology for your listening pleasure, and we're doing an exciting season four of the

02:04

Reformed Church episode, a special episode today. If you guys have ever listened to Theocast with John and Justin, we have them on today.

02:15

We're going to be talking to Reformed and Confessional Baptists on our show. As you guys know,

02:21

Peter and I are Reformed Presbyterians, so this will be a great episode to unpack our agreements and how we come shoulder -to -shoulder on biblical

02:32

Reformed Confessional faith. We'll jump into this show in a moment, but as a reminder on some show note reminders, there's some links there.

02:41

You can click those links to find the closest Reformed and Confessional churches near your area. So type in your zip code.

02:49

The closest denominations will come up near you. You can also, if you are in Orange County or know someone in Orange County, and they're looking for a church or you're looking for a church, feel free to reach out to Peter, find out more information about his church planting efforts at Santa Ana Reformed near the water tower right in the middle of Orange County, California.

03:11

And then some other information about how to contact Peter and myself just for any questions or dialogue, we have an email address, guiltgracepod at gmail .com.

03:22

You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at guiltgracepod. You can see these conversations via video on YouTube.

03:31

Usually the background for Peter and I is not so great. We've been reminded about how nice the field cast background and setup is on this show, so you can see their setup.

03:40

It's excellent. They've been doing it longer than we have. And then, yeah, any other information, feel free to take resources, check out our show notes and also becoming a bridge builder.

03:54

There's a Patreon link there. We'd love to have your support. Obviously don't let that take away from giving to your local church that you're a member of.

04:03

That's the most important thing. If you don't have anything left over, that's totally fine, but we do, we are a growing podcast and our bandwidth has more need to it.

04:14

So yeah, we are using some funds from sponsors and people like you, the listeners, and you're going to hear some words from our sponsors about the middle of this show and including our main sponsor,

04:26

Logos Bible Software. So I'll let Peter further introduce John and Justin from the field cast.

04:34

Yeah, we got both John Moffitt, who's the pastor of Grace Reformed Church, and he's a co -host of Theocast, as well as Justin Perdue, who's pastor of Covenant Baptist Church, as well as being a co -host of Theocast.

04:49

So thanks for coming on to talk about confessionalism in local church, which is, I mean, it's weirdly,

04:56

I'm assuming it's always been a hot topic, but I think especially lately it's been kind of a hot topic. So thanks for coming on our show.

05:03

Yeah, thanks for having us, guys. It's exciting. And we actually do have a lot of listeners that live in Orange County, so I think they're going to be excited to hear about, that's one of the questions we get often, where is a good church?

05:12

So now I know where to send somebody who lives in Orange County. And some good things do come from Christian Twitter, I suppose.

05:19

There you go. What you're alluding to is all the dust up over confessional theology that at least I have seen on the interwebs lately.

05:26

That's right. Yeah. We want to shout out to the girl who connected us with you guys to do a show together.

05:37

Yeah, glad we could make this happen. Yeah, I have to find her name on Twitter to give her true, as we go along,

05:43

I'll find her name on Twitter to thank her for this. But yeah, maybe we can start off, just tell the listeners about your background and kind of how you got into the confessional tradition and being confessional

05:55

Baptist. What that looks like, how you do it. Yeah, well,

06:01

I was born in a non -confessional background. My dad was a Baptist preacher and our confession was really kind of the traditions that was handed down to us.

06:09

I come from the inner fundamentalist Baptist background, so we have an unstated confession.

06:16

The things that you do and don't do, like you don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't go to movies and things like that. That was like our confession.

06:22

And I really wasn't introduced to confessional theology until I started to read

06:28

Reformed Theology in my early 20s. And after I graduated from seminary is when I really became very affectionate towards confessional theology and so devoured the

06:39

Westminster Confession and then learned about the London Baptist and devoured that and really became a balm to my soul.

06:47

I found a place of comfort. And so our church, we planted five years ago. One of the things that we love to tell them is that the world is so full of, as Paul warns us, against new teachings of men.

06:59

And it sounds biblical and sounds right, but how do we know comparing it to scripture? And so I always tell them, if you want to know where this church is going, it's going where we're following in a path that was laid out for us by Christians way, way before us.

07:12

And so it's a way to protect me. It's a way to protect them. And we'll get into more of that. But over the last five years, it's been a great comfort, not only to my own heart and soul, but to our congregation.

07:23

I'll let Justin speak into it. Yeah, not altogether different from John in terms of a general pattern.

07:28

But my upbringing was more liberal, whereas his was more of a fundamentalist context. Yours is like mine. Yeah, we both.

07:34

Yeah. Only just the Baptist version. Yeah. So I grew up in a liberal Baptist environment. Even though you can have told my church away from Baptist church, it would be no different.

07:43

Yeah, right. I mean, yeah, so theologically liberal, sort of still laced with moralism, you know, that's what

07:48

I grew up in. And my journey to confessional, like covenantal reform theology took place over probably a dozen years.

07:57

And it happened really through the things that I was given to read. So when I first encountered

08:02

Calvinism and this reform doctrine, I was reading John Calvin. I was also reading

08:09

Luther, but was given the Heidelberg Catechism, was was reading the Westminster Confession, read

08:15

B .B. Warfield, people like this, right, John Owen. And so I was exposed to guys that were confessional.

08:23

And then it wasn't until, I don't know, man, probably my late 20s that I ever read the

08:28

Second London Confession, the 1689 LBC. And the first time I read it, my reaction was like, why in the world do

08:36

Baptists not use this? And like this is the best Baptist document that I have ever read.

08:41

What is up with this? And so that obviously piqued my curiosity. And so I started to do more historical research on my own, continued to read more confessional reform theologians.

08:51

And over the course of time, just was able to piece some of these things together through reading and listening to good content, Whitehorse Inn, various things like that.

08:59

So like many people, I think you're shaped by books, but in particular, you're shaped by paragraphs and sentences and things that you read and digest and process.

09:08

Here we are. Grateful to be in this confessional space, though, man, it's a little bit disorienting for people.

09:16

We were talking about this before we hit record, right? Like it's disorienting for people when they encounter it because you're told that Christ has done everything, you know, that's grounded in the objective realities of Christ and what he's accomplished for us.

09:25

And people are kind of like, OK, well, what do I do now? It's a little weird. But then once you're in, like the water is really nice and it's like there's liberation and there's freedom here to pursue righteousness because of what

09:37

Christ has done for us. And we're going to talk about all that stuff today, I'm sure. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. Maybe if you two, just to ground some of this, because Nick from the

09:46

OPC is Westminster primarily, although he would confess the three of forms too.

09:52

And me being three forms, I would also confess to Westminster. You guys are the second London Baptist Confession.

09:57

So what like what is what is the London Baptist Confession? How does that maybe relate from or like kind of differ or relate to the

10:05

Westminster? Yeah. How does that actually like what is that for a Baptist? Yeah, no, that's great.

10:11

I mean, so just really quick, like historical stuff for people to just 30 ,000 feet to be aware of two major streams within the

10:19

Reformed tradition, the Continental Reformed tradition and then the Puritan Reformed tradition. And so the

10:25

Continental Reformers would be characterized by the three forms of unity, Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession, Canons of Dort.

10:31

But then the Puritan tradition, three major confessions of faith there would be the

10:37

Westminster Confession of Faith, the Savoy Platform, Savoy Declaration, and then the 1689 LBC.

10:43

And so for us, there's probably I think there's some debate here, but probably 90 to 95 percent of the language of the

10:48

Second London Confession is identical to the language of Westminster. And even the chapter divisions and all that kind of stuff, they're very similar.

10:56

And so for us, I mean, we could talk maybe more about this in technical terms, like shop talk maybe later, but for us as confessional

11:03

Baptists, I can speak for John's church and mine. Our confession functions for us very much like the

11:09

Westminster would function for a Presbyterian in terms of like it is the standard for doctrine. We appeal to it.

11:14

We subscribe to it. You know, quia subscription because it's biblical. Right. I mean, so it's it's that idea for us, just like it is for you guys.

11:23

John, any any additional thoughts on that? Yeah. The only thing if people want to know where there might be some change, there's there's some language here and there.

11:30

I've even, you know, there being that it's an updated document there, we had the opportunity or the writers had the opportunity to to add some clarity on some things.

11:39

But only thing you're going to vary on is church polity and a view of infant baptism.

11:45

So believer baptism is going to be the same theology a little bit. Right. And then obviously those are a result of a difference in covenant theology.

11:53

So I love the Westminster. You know, I've told lots of people that if I was in a city and the only place

11:59

I could attend is a Westminster confession, then I'm in because it's a beautiful document that really upholds the glory of Christ and the advancement of the kingdom.

12:09

And so it's it's it's it's of, you know, of value. Yeah. And I mean, it should be said that John and I would be representative of the vast minority of Baptists on this continent.

12:23

So there are a lot of historical reasons for that. The Reformed Baptist, confessional

12:28

Reformed Baptist tradition has never really, I don't know, flourished on this continent.

12:34

It doesn't have the airtime that most other do. Right. There's not as much of a robust tradition here in North America.

12:41

And there is a resurgence amongst some of our friends and brothers and sisters that is encouraging to us.

12:49

You guys see some of this, I'm sure, even at West Cal. I do. Hell yeah. And so we're encouraged by that.

12:55

But it should be stated that for your audience, when they hear Baptist 98 times, 99 times out of 100, it's not what

13:03

John and I are saying. It's something different. It's going to be either a broad evangelical sort of semi -Pelagian thing, or it may be a

13:11

Calvinistic Baptist thing, meaning they're they're Calvinistic in their soteriology, their doctrine of salvation.

13:17

But they're not covenantal. They're not confessional. And that's not to be pejorative. That's just to be clear. Yeah. Yeah.

13:23

I think Nick has a question to kind of help people figure this stuff out, too. Well, yeah. Before that question, that resonates with my personal experience going from before recording and kind of unpacked my journey.

13:36

It's quite a journey, Nick. Yeah. Our listeners know Nick's journey, which is partially why we started this podcast.

13:43

Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm glad I was sitting down when you relayed it to me. Well, I was sitting up, standing down, sitting up when

13:52

I was a young child, obviously, my earliest remembering going to church was

14:00

Nazarene. But then it was Roman Catholic for years and years up through the few years after college, even.

14:09

And then I started going to an Acts 29 non -denominational church. And at that time,

14:14

I was like, well, you know, I just spent all these years in Catholic. What is this? And it just I didn't know how to define it.

14:21

With people say, what church do you go to? What kind of church you go to? I'm like, I don't know. It's like non -denominational

14:27

Christian. I don't know. And then one time and I love the church, by the way. The Acts 29 church I went to is the first time

14:33

I really I heard the gospel very clearly. And I love that pastor and he's up in Seattle.

14:40

Washington's great. And but he did describe he's like, if to describe our background, we're, you know, we're a non -denominational church.

14:49

But if we had any sort of identity, it could be loosely independent Baptist.

14:55

And I'm like, OK, I guess I could tell people I'm going to kind of a Baptist church. I didn't really know what that meant.

15:02

And I don't know if that kind of resonates with what you're saying, Justin, is just kind of I've never personally been to maybe a covenantal or confessional

15:14

Baptist church where the liturgy is surrounded by the lumped London Baptist confession or anything like that.

15:21

And, you know, even the regulative principle of worship and those kinds of things are going to be in our minds. The liturgy I know at our church is we meet on a

15:28

PCA church's campus and the liturgy and our service and the liturgy and their service is going to be very similar. OK.

15:34

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, other than the obvious. I guess his question,

15:40

Joe, I finally found the person's name. It's Anastasia Smith. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And a joy.

15:46

Eighty seven. I just want to shout her out. I know. I know she listens to you guys and she listens to us. Yeah. So shout out to say thanks for connecting us.

15:54

For sure. I knew like I pictured her her picture. I was like, I just couldn't think of a name.

15:59

But there you go. Anastasia Smith. Thanks for doing this. So, yeah. Nick, carry on. Oh, yeah.

16:05

And that's just kind of carrying on more of that thought is I think you're right in saying there could be a non -denominational independent

16:13

Baptist type of church that leans Calvinistic in soteriology or doctrine.

16:20

And I think that's where we're where I was at before I went to an

16:26

OPC church where I'm a Reformed Presbyterian. And yeah, there's a lot of it is like. We know that we definitely were appreciating the history of the

16:38

Reformation. I remember that was a big topic. I've learned a lot about the Reformation even at the Acts 29 church.

16:44

And of course, we did adult believers baptism. And so that's where we are going with that.

16:50

And so that was kind of some background I was matching up with what Justin was saying. But here's a question for you guys.

16:57

What's the biggest change coming from maybe a more Southern Baptist to a confessional

17:03

Baptist direction? I mean, how much time you got? Yeah, I mean, really, that's what our podcast has been about for six years now.

17:12

Because I think when they think of Baptist, either they think of Southern Baptist, they might think of like fundamental or independent

17:17

Baptist, but like kind of average church is like a Baptist church. So how would. Yeah, it's interesting.

17:24

Justin has the word Baptist in his title. We decided to leave it off and it's not it's just confusing sometimes.

17:31

We also have the word covenant in our name. You do. That kind of corrects it. It's a dead giveaway.

17:36

That's right. But I would say for Justin and I, and I'll speak for me and then

17:42

I'll let him talk. But covenant theology is so like mind altering, shifting.

17:49

It changes the emphasis of Christ, of assurance, of I would say even obedience, church life, the ordinary means of grace.

17:59

I mean, once you understand covenant theology, it's like the ordinary means of grace is a jump off the page. So once those who are

18:07

Southern Baptist can be Calvinistic, but they tend to be dispensational in their theology or they have what

18:15

I would call covenant theology light where they understand it, but it doesn't drive the heart of their ministry.

18:22

And I would say the difference between a confessional Baptist perspective is that covenant theology really is the undergirding of of how you understand scripture and how you communicate it.

18:35

Speaking doctrinally, because trying to just keep the focus somewhat narrow, because we could talk about so many things.

18:40

John already hit on two things. Covenant theology is huge, which is related to a redemptive historical framework of the

18:46

Bible and how we understand the scriptures to hang together. That's big. Because there are a lot of guys who are

18:51

Calvinistic Baptists who will cling to a redemptive historical understanding in one sense, but they're not covenantal in terms of like that tri -covenantal framework of scripture, redemption works and grace, and so there's some inherent inconsistency there that does come through.

19:06

The other thing John mentioned is ordinary means of grace. That's significant because a lot of times when people use the language of ordinary means of grace, they mean something different.

19:15

They do mean the ministry of the word and sacrament and the gathered church, but they also mean personal disciplines. And that's not what we mean.

19:22

We mean primarily the word and sacrament. Also, we could, you know, prayer and song, but in the context of the gathered church is what we mean.

19:30

But two other observations for me. One, if I wax too long on this one, a huge thing doctrinally is the distinction between the law and the gospel.

19:42

So these things are paradigm shifting things and are, I would say covenant theology and the law gospel distinction piece is as big of a deal as anything.

19:54

And for us, I mean, we've talked about this on Theocast before, when we say we're reformed.

19:59

Now we understand debates that exist and shout out to Scott Clark.

20:05

Shout out to Scott Clark. Love you. So appreciative of your work. Yeah. It's a lot of East Coast love coming your way,

20:12

Dr. Clark. But what we mean when we say that is we're covenantal, we're

20:17

Calvinistic, we're confessional. We uphold a law gospel distinction and we uphold an understanding of the ordinary means of grace.

20:24

So those five tenets for us is what we will say. We mean at Theocast by saying we're reformed.

20:30

And so all of those things taken together is where we understand ourselves to be, which is quite different from the typical

20:37

Calvinistic Baptist situation. And I'll jump in there. There are even those who will claim the 1689, but it's almost a, and I don't,

20:45

I don't mean to be mean here, but it's, it's a, it's almost like a cool thing to claim it.

20:50

And then when you start talking to them, you realize they don't really understand the history of it or why they confess it.

20:55

And there's a massive confusion on law gospel. And so they, they tend to be Calvinistic and they like Calvinism.

21:01

So like, oh, well, I'm a Baptist. I think I'm going to take the 1689. And that's where people will walk into context like that.

21:07

And they're like, wait a minute, this is nothing. Like when I listened to John and Justin and when I'm in this church, it's not the same. And that's why it can be confusing for people who visit a reformed

21:17

Baptist church at times. Cause a lot of guys in that world, just to be Frank or conservatives who use the word confession rather than being really confessional in there, which is a distinction.

21:28

If I, if I can't, can I just for maybe a second, if you guys will allow me to maybe articulate when we say confession, here's what we mean.

21:35

Is that cool? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So it's usually helpful for our listeners. Yeah. Yeah. And this is not exhaustive, right?

21:41

These are just a few major talking points and then John jump in and pile on wherever you want. So to begin with,

21:47

I mean, kind of low hanging fruit, and this is the one that I think most people would think of, but it doesn't go further than this for some folks is to be confessional means we have a theology, a piety, and a practice against shout out to Scott Clarke, right?

22:00

Cause he articulates this well. And so his book recovering the reformed confession is an excellent. Yeah. Wonderful.

22:06

I mean, I, yeah, our elders that's required reading for our elders, you know, as we do elder development, our church, it's a great book.

22:13

So yeah, a theology, piety, and practice articulated by a confession of faith written in the era of the reformation. So by that we mean the middle part of the 1500s through the late 1600s.

22:23

That's the year of the reformation. So that's one. So we have a understanding of God, an understanding of godliness, and an understanding of how we arrange ourselves and do the

22:31

Christian life together. That's articulated in a confession from that era. One. Two, we have a theology, piety, and practice grounded in the objective work of Christ in the place of the center.

22:41

So rather than the emphasis being the subjective experience of the believer, the emphasis is unashamedly in all ways, what

22:48

Christ accomplished for us that stands outside of us unaffected by how we're feeling or how we're doing.

22:54

So that's huge. Then next we have a theology, piety, and practice that's grounded in the local church and realized through the ordinary means of grace, which by that we mean primarily the ministry of the word and sacrament in the gathered church.

23:06

So that's huge in terms of an understanding of the Christian life, how we're sustained, how we're grown, how faith is imparted even, it's big.

23:15

And then lastly, sort of related to that, there's an understanding, and shout out here to Daryl Hart, another great resource,

23:22

The Lost Soul of American Protestants, excellent book. So like this is borrowing some of his categories there.

23:30

I mean, well, it's not unique to him. I mean, this is just something we all would hold dear, but to be confessional means that you understand the

23:36

Christian life to be that of the life of a pilgrim, a sojourner in exile, right?

23:41

We're not activists. We're not crusaders so much. But we're pilgrims on the way. We've been promised a homeland, but we're not there yet.

23:48

And between here and there, there's a thousand spiritual dangers. There's temptation and trial on every side.

23:55

And what we need is nourishment and sustenance and protection. And that is what the ministry of the church is meant to provide.

24:01

That's right. We're in the seas. So those few things that I've just articulated for us at Theocast, and I know for our elders at Covenant Baptist Church, I'm sure this is true for John, probably true for you brothers,

24:12

Peter, Nick. That's what we mean at the heart of it when we say we're confessional.

24:17

It's a theological posture and orientation. Yeah, no, that's helpful.

24:23

Yeah, I don't really have anything to add to that other than that last part when you're talking about the kingdom. I had someone from Canada email me recently and they're trying to find a good confessional church and they said they can't seem to find one that it doesn't be, that it's not emphasizing theonomy at the moment, which is right, which

24:40

I think is a direct attack on confessional theology, whether you're Westminster or 1689. Covenant theology, there's a lot of things in Student Square.

24:46

Yeah, which has been gaining a lot more steam as of late than I think it's ever gotten.

24:52

I mean, there's some steam like in the early 2000s with the controversy, but it's been gaining a bunch.

24:58

I mean, I know personally, at least from our church back in San Diego and then the other church I was in,

25:03

Washington, I knew personally four or five families from each church that moved to Idaho, that moved to somewhere else for the explicit purpose of being part of that movement.

25:14

And I'd heard it and I'd read about it a little bit, but I was like, oh my gosh, this is actually like, they're like, they're getting a lot of steam.

25:20

Right. And the reason, just to emphasize the reason why understanding like the nature of the kingdom and understand, like Jesus says, this kingdom is not visible.

25:29

You can't see it. It's within you. And then understanding the role of the church, which is to advance the good news of the kingdom and you lose sight of that, which is what we learn in our confessions, then all of a sudden we become transformationalists.

25:45

And it is sad because it changes the nature of, I think it begins to change the nature of the gospel. And I would say your church, your whole mission of your church and life, well, piety and practice all changes as well.

25:56

So this is why Justin and I are kind of on this crusade of trying to recover confessional theology because it does protect people from falling into these traps.

26:08

It keeps the mission of the church pure as well. I mean, so I'm going to try to keep myself from wanting to nerd out on theonomy and how that's related to reconstructionism and how that's related to like a very optimistic flavor of post -millennial eschatology.

26:21

I mean, there's all kinds of things we talk about there, but I think to keep us on the confessionalism train, confessional theology does preserve and protect the mission of the church because we understand what the point of this is.

26:34

I mean, I'll say this, we're kind of on your show, but this is going to be broadcasted on our show as well, but I'm still just going to say this.

26:41

The mission of the church is the right preaching of the word of Christ, the right administration of the sacraments for the salvation of God's elect.

26:50

Now, if you were to say that in most contexts, people would be like, bro, surely you're short selling the thing.

26:55

And it's like, no, this is really what the ministry of the church is made for. This is what God intends the church to do.

27:00

Yeah, but more than that, we're flattening the church and it's no different than any other pursuit we may have. Correct.

27:06

And so a confessional posture understands that this is the goal of the church, high level.

27:12

And so even when it comes to our worship, like how we arrange ourselves in the local church during the week, but the

27:17

Lord's day becomes primary and an understanding of the importance of Sunday morning and why is it that we gather on Sunday?

27:24

So you guys are talking about us and our backgrounds and where we come from. Granted, they're different, but when people hear

27:29

Baptist, you think broad evangelical, like megachurch, or maybe you think something else.

27:35

But in that world, guys, most of the time, the Sunday morning gathering has been turned into a stationary Billy Graham crusade rally.

27:43

And the point of the service is it's aimed at the non -believer.

27:48

And the question for the saint is, well, why do I go to church? And the best thing people can say is, well, we're told to, or maybe it's like it helps me.

27:57

Like it's some sort of supplement, right? But people don't know what's more important.

28:04

Whether it's gathering for them turns into like, oh, this is actually where I learned the word. And then Sunday is just like, oh, that's where all the new people come in.

28:10

Exactly. And we've said this on Theocast many times. The new sacrament of evangelicalism is the quiet time, you know?

28:17

And so people think that the real stuff in the Christian life occurs when they're by themselves because that's what they've been told in the last couple of centuries in the

28:25

States in particular. But then what we're saying is no, biblically speaking, when you survey the

28:31

New Testament, the most significant stuff happens when we're together. And we understand,

28:37

I mean, to put it bluntly, I mean, this might be a little bit reductionistic, but I think we could chop it up on this for a minute. Like, what's the point of corporate worship?

28:44

I mean, it's the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of righteousness on account of Christ, period.

28:50

I mean, that's why we gather. And there are all kinds of implications and things that flow out of that, but that's what corporate worship is about.

28:57

You know, talking about preserving the mission of the church and preserving what Sunday morning's for. Justin, you nailed on something really good there.

29:06

That was just a reminder about how important every

29:11

Lord's Day, every Sunday for us saints, us believers, you know, we're all part of God's family right here, right now on this side of heaven.

29:21

And we need that weekly, every Sunday nourishment as believers, as part of his children, because, and I like that you nailed on that because that the big

29:33

Eva experience you're talking about where it's just aimed towards the non -believer is kind of saying, hey, repent of your sins, which is good.

29:43

It's all true. Repent of your sins, believe in the gospel, which is all true. But then it's kind of like, all right, well, um, you know, see it on your deathbed, like, like no in between.

29:56

It's like, save, repent, believe, or like you haven't read your Bible enough last week or like, well, the

30:03

Christian life becomes all on you and your shoulders, like start with all this stuff.

30:09

But really that's just like, oh, we, we, we have to say this stuff to get this, to get this over with, but where the

30:14

Christian life is really lived is the Christian life has really lived the law. Um, but they may not call it the law.

30:20

They may call it like, oh, we're just, we're practicing good stuff. But like you said, we have that stuff in the confessional tradition.

30:28

It's just not, it's not well known. And so they, they kind of substitute it because they know something's missing.

30:33

They know, they know, they know they're not getting something into it. So they make the new, like you, you've talked about new sacraments, your quiet time, or, um, did you go rally in front of the nearest

30:45

Planned Parenthood or whatever it is, this is all these things that now become part of our, our, our practice versus no, this is what the church does.

30:53

Uh, and this is how we're fueled out into our life. It's not just, oh no, the church kind of fills you up and then like you spend it all during the week.

31:00

No, it's actually you're, you're resting at church and then you get to rest week from this. We have found that over the years, we use that language a lot, rest.

31:09

And what people hear when we say rest is they hear inactivity and that's not what we're saying.

31:14

There's a difference between a soul at rest and an, and an disobedient child, right?

31:20

A soul at rest is one who is not anxiously trying to please the father and earn a position or maintain a position.

31:26

Right. Uh, but a child who's at rest, here's the father say, love me, love others. And immediately the child says, yeah, that, well, that of course

31:33

I want to do that. Yeah, exactly. Um, but that's, that's comes from a position of rest, right?

31:39

Uh, but it's really mission of obligation. Like, Oh, I have to do this. No, this has already been done for me. Right. And resting, uh, what, uh, so I've had to help clarify that for people.

31:50

Cause when they hear me say, or Justin or anybody in the reformed tradition say, you know, we need to find our rest in Christ. Um, what they think we're saying is you're not obligated to obey.

31:59

Yeah. I'm saying the exact opposite of that is that the only way you can obey properly is if you rest in sufficiency of Christ, you know, a verse

32:06

I like to quote to people is I'll start this versus Colossians three 16. It says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, which we're all like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

32:14

And then I say, but what does the rest of the verse say? Cause immediately people have a con like what's scripture memorization.

32:19

That's personal devotion time. It's individualistic. Well, first of all, Paul's writing to the church Colossi and to that church, he says, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, but Thanksgiving in your hearts towards God.

32:34

Exactly. The point is the word of God dwells richly in us collectively, and this is how it happens.

32:40

And it's so, to me, I find rest and hope in that because the responsibility is not on me, but our family, the body part, right?

32:47

Ephesians four 15, when the body functions properly, that it builds itself up in love. And this is where we get our theology of the ordinary means of grace.

32:54

And, uh, going back to it is that this is, um, it is so mind shifting where people have been so dependent on themselves for so long.

33:04

They've lived outside of a governing protective body. You know, it's almost like they've lived in a war zone and they have to protect me and mine.

33:11

And there's there, it's scary to think that you're going to trust in elders. Like when Hebrews says they watch over your soul, they haven't had an elder watch over their soul.

33:20

They've had a guy talk to them that they haven't. So that you're talking kind of about, what does that shift look like?

33:26

It's really hard to, to help people make that transition. And it takes a lot of time.

33:31

I know for me, it did where understanding that God has designed the elders, the offices of the church for the protection of the church, when it's properly centering itself around the word of God and not individualizing it.

33:43

And that's where I think, um, reform theology is making a resurgence in a confessional church context because people truly are finding, wow,

33:52

I can trust in these local congregations because we are centered on a doctrine we all agree on and it's protecting us and it's causing us to rest and be effective in loving one another.

34:05

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called faith versus faithfulness, a primer on rest.

34:11

And if you struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a reformed confessional perspective.

34:23

You can get your free copy at Theocast .org slash primer. Observation that I'd like to make if we can sort of, this is tying some things together, but going back a little bit to some of the conversations about Sunday and conversations about like even something you brought up,

34:39

Nick, uh, just regarding how church is viewed and, and how people think about the

34:44

Christian life. I think it's important for us to understand that evangelicalism, broadly speaking, as a movement has been birthed out of two significant theological traditions, streams of thought, pietism being one, which is again, a very subjective emphasis on the

35:02

Christian and the Christian's obedience, the Christian's affections, the Christian's feelings about God, the

35:09

Christian's performance, et cetera. But then in addition to that is another movement known as revivalism, where again, there is an emphasis on the subjective, but here it's several things need to be observed.

35:22

The, the locus of the Christian life is removed from the gathered assembly and it's taken outside of the local church.

35:29

So in that sense, it's extra ecclesiastical, right? It's, it's outside the local church. You're listening to a fiery preacher and a powerful communicator.

35:38

And then the emphasis is on your personal experience of the divine and the emphasis is on a conversion moment and the moral transformation of life thereafter.

35:48

Yeah. Philip Spanner. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's yeah.

35:53

He's a, I wrote a book in 1660 that it's, it's, it's like reading a book written in 2020 from, like it talks about exactly the stuff you're talking about.

36:04

Yeah. He's a Lutheran pietist. I mean, so exactly. And this is where some of like the small groups and some of this stuff hail from.

36:10

And I mean, even personal devotional time along with, you know, some of the stuff that happened. Very little preaching, very little under authority.

36:17

Exactly. All that stuff. So this stuff is not new and it's permeated everything that most

36:22

Christians in America know. And it's important because as we're describing this, I mean, people are hearing me and you talk,

36:28

Peter, and it's like, yeah, that's exactly what my Christian life has been like. You're, you're putting thoughts to my experience.

36:34

You're putting words to my experience. And that's true. And that's what has produced this kind of stationary revival meeting on Sunday.

36:43

Rather than seeing the gathered church on Sunday, being about the preaching of the word, the administration of the sacraments for the building up of the saints and in the salvation of the elect in that sense.

36:54

One other thing I'd love to say, because this is a good, this is a good thing to talk about because our confessions, all of them have beautiful language on the sacraments.

37:03

I think for most people in the North American church, the sacraments are about their faithfulness to God.

37:11

They're things that they do in one sense for God. Or not all the sacraments, but it's, it's, it's effective ordinances, you know, or just the

37:21

Lord's supper baptism. They are about the faithfulness of the believer. It's a good word. It is a good word.

37:27

But what we want to say is confessional reformed Christians is that the sacraments are about God's faithfulness to us before they're ever about our faithfulness to him.

37:37

And that's a paradigm shift too. Because for, I know many people in my church, myself included, the

37:42

Lord's table was one of the most anxiety producing things that I ever did as a Christian until entering into this confessional space where we realized, no, the supper was not given to me as a time for me to be hyper introspective and freak out about all the things

37:56

I lack. Actually it's given to me because God knows

38:01

I'm weak. He knows that Christ is my only nourishment and sustenance. And he gives this means of grace to me that as I receive and apprehend

38:10

Christ in the table, I'm being given everything that my faith and love might lack. You know, that all of this is just a fundamental, you asked the question, what's, what's it like coming out of a

38:20

Southern Baptist background? All of this is what we've come out of or John from a maybe different place.

38:26

Yeah. And, um, to that point about the sacraments,

38:31

I mean, what the reformers did versus the, uh, Rome versus Roman Catholic churches,

38:40

Roman Catholic church was teaching seven sacraments, extra biblical sacraments. So the more, the merrier, the more, the more, the, yeah, we can do the best, whether it's

38:48

Rome or a non -denominational church that's adding these extra biblical sacraments, subjectivism, you know, subjectively based on their experience outside of the church we're fighting as, as, you know, reformed

39:06

Presbyterians and reformed Baptists, again, we're pushing back on that and saying, no, there's really only two sacraments. And, and both you and I, we would both say, you know, uh, the bread and wine and baptism, and then we would disagree how baptism is played out, but we both agree how it's administered.

39:25

Baptism is, has, it's not, it has to be done. Baptism has to be done. And for us, both of the sacraments in their own ways are about union with Christ.

39:35

Yeah. Yeah. And say, yeah, the reformed Presbyterian, maybe, maybe to, so my last question before, if Nick has any last questions to, um, to, to, so that, so people who are listening to this, okay.

39:48

Great. Confessionalism, the church, um, reformed Presbyterian, reformed Baptists and stuff, and we, we hear, and not like we want to harp on differences whatsoever and say like, oh, like we're so different that we can't have communal with each other, but like what, like what maybe is distinctive about a reformed

40:05

Baptist, like confessional church, maybe service or, and how it's played out and not to say that it's, it's different or bad from the reformed

40:14

Presbyterian to say like there, there are differences. So maybe like, how does, how does that should play out in the local church, whether it be baptism, whether it be some sacraments, like how the church is structured,

40:24

I know that's a lot of, a lot of questions, a couple of differences and say, okay, now I kind of see how this is different and not saying that they're bad differences.

40:31

They're just differences. Yeah. I'll offer one or two and then I'll, I'll save some for, for Justin as well.

40:36

Um, I, if you were going to, if you guys were to attend Justin and I's church, you're going to, you're going to see liturgy.

40:42

So a call to worship confession. Uh, we all do prayers of confession. Um, we at times will get forgiveness.

40:50

Yes. Yep. Assurance of pardon and forgiveness. Um, we'll quote different creeds throughout the year, throughout the months, um, you know, so there, there's definitely a liturgy there where we, we love to, to, to see that flow within scripture.

41:05

Um, so as far as, and then massive emphasis on the preaching of the word specifically on Christ, right.

41:12

Christ in all the scriptures. So we're not, we're not as some people accuse us of finding them in every rock, but we understand that if you're, that's right.

41:21

If you're, if you're not concluding that Christ is sufficient from all of scripture, then your conclusion is wrong.

41:26

I don't care what it is. That's right. So that, that there, you're going to see a lot of harmony there. The differences are going to be obviously, um, which

41:33

I don't know if you're going to notice on a Sunday morning, but, uh, you know, our, our polity is going to be different, you know, um, so churches are elder rule.

41:42

So we are elder led depending on, you know, how they want to organize that, but they're going to be, um, governed within their own local body.

41:49

And like Justin and I, we submit, uh, our churches as a, uh, to a network that we're a part of, and it's not authoritative as much as it is a protective for us as a means of, of guidance.

42:00

Um, but that would be probably one of the differences that would be there. Justin, I'll let you speak to probably about, uh, understanding of covenant theology and baptism would be another one.

42:09

Yeah. I mean, briefly on the polity piece. I mean, we're, we're congregational in our polity, which just, so,

42:14

I mean, obviously John Owen and the congregationalist, the independence, as they were known in the 17th century would have had the same polity, right?

42:21

That we have a boy declaration. Yeah, correct. The Savoy platform. And so what that means is we don't believe in a, uh, we don't understand biblically that there's a body outside of the local church that has authority over the local church.

42:32

And that's, that's going to not really play itself out so much on a Sunday morning, that's going to play itself out in some other ways.

42:38

Yes. You wouldn't see walking into your local church, like, Oh, this place has a different polity. You're just, it's, you would not perceive that.

42:44

And really the elders are going to be the ones that notice it. And the members in the members meetings that you have, however many times a year are going to notice it just because it's done a little bit differently.

42:53

But just to be super clear, I mean, this is helpful, I think for people to know, like in our church, we only understand biblically that the congregation speaks into matters of membership, who's a part of the church and who isn't and doctrine.

43:05

So basically it's who's a member, who's not a member, including discipline cases, right? Like excommunication, the pastors would, we historically, we practice three censures, you know, formal admonishment, suspension from the table, excommunication.

43:18

And the congregation in our polity must affirm an excommunication. The first two, the elders have authority to do.

43:25

And then, you know, in terms of doctrine, I mean, the congregation would need, if we were going to amend the confession, they would need to be able to vote on that.

43:32

And then prudentially we have the congregation vote on the budget once a year. So it's not like we're voting on everything, just to be super clear.

43:40

I mean, but what we do have is we don't have a body outside of our church that has authority over us, but we do have meaningful doctrinal confessional association with other

43:49

Baptists. So there's that. The baptism piece, obviously the big difference is going to be the administration of baptism.

43:59

The fact that you administer baptism is where we agree. It's, yeah, I think the

44:05

Lord would all agree, just to interject, we'd all agree on adult believer baptism. Actually, yeah, I think most people, both confessions are going to agree.

44:13

Most Presbyterians, to be honest, Nick and I have absolutely grinded on this because we just don't see it enough in our own church.

44:20

We don't see enough adult baptisms in our church, which you see in Baptist churches. I think you guys,

44:26

Nick and I have very much said like, Baptists do this way better than we do. Confessional baptism is way better than we do.

44:31

Getting people from outside the faith to come in and confess Christ, which is what Reformed Presbyterians should be doing.

44:37

Those who come from outside the covenant, what we call the covenantal family, without a covenant parent, come into the faith and say, hey, we don't believe in Jesus, but now we believe in Jesus and we can be baptized.

44:50

And you're grafted in. We do agree, and I think that doesn't get enough air time. Yeah, doesn't get enough pop, right?

44:57

I think, you know, really just a brief comment that was sparked by what you just said.

45:03

I think there's a misunderstanding, too, of how confessional Baptists would relate to our children. Because this whole

45:09

Jonathan Edwards thing, who, by the way, is not us, you know, this Vipers and Diapers thing is not at all how we think about our kids.

45:17

You read his Religious Affections and a couple of other works, and it's like, oh, man, you're a little off on a couple of things.

45:22

Well, sure, but what I would want to emphasize is we talk about internal and external participation in the covenant community of the church, and we also talk in terms of, like, we use we language with our kids.

45:35

Like, we seek as adults to pull our children up into what we are doing. This is how we pray with them.

45:42

This is how we interact with them. We covenant together as a church to invest in our young people, that they would be brought to faith.

45:49

I mean, so we expect, not that we presume, but we anticipate our kids coming to faith because God is a covenant -keeping

45:57

God, and He works through the means of grace. So it's not like caricature. It's just little demon pagans running around.

46:03

Exactly. No, that is not it, because all the stuff that you guys do, like, legitimately, other than Baptism, the things that you do with your children, we do with ours.

46:12

Catechesis, you know, and just, you know, family worship type stuff, how we interact with our kids on the

46:17

Lord's Day. You know, obviously, your children, until they profess faith, are not communing members. That's right.

46:23

Right. Yeah. So at least in good Reformed churches, yeah, if you go to the deconstructionist. We're not talking about the federal vision, you know, we're talking about that.

46:30

But that is something that I think that gets more playtime in a lot of Reform circles, where that's, those are debates that are kind of re, like, they're coming back up as patal communion, because a lot of people who come from a

46:41

Baptist Confessions or kind of a broadly evangelical Baptist church, they swing hard to the right and they go way over to patal communion.

46:49

So just really briefly, the administration of Baptism would be different. And if you back the truck up a little bit, the reason the administration of Baptism is different is because there are some nuanced differences in our understanding of covenant theology.

47:01

So we all would affirm the three, you know, covenants in scripture, a covenant of redemption, pactum salutis in eternity past, covenant of works made with Adam in the garden, covenant of grace.

47:11

Now, how we would articulate the covenant of grace is different. Yeah. We would say that it is promised in Genesis 3, 15 and revealed by farther steps throughout the old covenant, which is the

47:21

Old Testament, right? Yeah, right. Revealed by farther steps throughout the Old Testament and the promises of the covenant of grace are absolutely revealed to us in the subservient covenants of made with Abraham, Moses, and David for sure.

47:34

And we could talk more about this on another, another time, but then we understand that the covenant of grace proper is established and accomplished through Christ in the new covenant.

47:43

So what that means is that there's going to be a difference in how we understand the relation of the covenant sign, you know, in terms of circumcision, baptism, and how that plays itself out, who the members of the covenant of grace are, you know, and then thereby who should receive the sign of the covenant.

47:59

So that's, that's a theological difference. But when it comes to baptism, man,

48:04

I mean, we emphasize union with Christ, remission of sins. That's how we talk about it. And then with the table, it's the same thing.

48:11

It's the real presence of Christ in this, in the supper to minister to his people,

48:17

John. Yeah. We're in the middle of a series on the ordinary means of grace. Our third episode comes out today and I'm preaching, but we did a whole episode on baptism, which

48:25

I think you guys would agree with because at the end, you know, as we're remembering our baptism, we are remembering our union with Christ to real quick for those who are a little bit nerdy here,

48:34

Justin and I hold to probably an older view of covenant theology as, as it relates to the confessional

48:39

Baptist. There, there was a kind of a shift about a hundred years ago where the, the view kind of changed.

48:47

There's basically, there's two views from the Baptist perspective on covenant theology and Justin and I would be what would be kind of what's called a

48:54

Federalist view. I was about to say, I know the two views. I was wondering if you guys were in Federalist. We're 1689

48:59

Federalists. Yeah. Which would be, I mean, arguably the tradition of the 1689. That's what

49:04

I've heard. Yep. Right. The 20th century view is different and to us is inconsistent with our confession. So if you guys, you guys know,

49:11

Sam Rinahan, if, if you ever pick up Sam's book called The Mystery of Christ is Covenant in His Kingdom, he articulates there very much what

49:19

John and I would say about covenant theology. That is probably the best work, modern work

49:24

I've read. That's accessible. Yeah. I was going to ask Ian a couple of resources. I'm not all, I can ask the question again, but that's, yeah, one of the resources we can, we can link to this, that those who are interested in learning more about this to dig into.

49:38

Yeah. I don't know. Nick, if you have any other questions to ask. Um, just maybe somewhat questions, statements, and then welcome feedback could be, you know, just a reminder of this conversation is a reminder of the three marks of a true church, which we all agree on.

49:52

You guys are a true church. We're a true church. yeah, we're, yeah, we're totally, we're, yeah,

50:00

I, I, a hundred percent of, yeah, we're, we're true churches. Absolutely. And you guys, we all preach the gospel.

50:07

We all administer the sacraments. Of course, there's difference on how we play out, uh, think about baptism and then church discipline.

50:16

Correct. And, and that could be more congregationally focused with you guys. And we have more of it only in that last step, really.

50:24

Yeah, totally. Yep. Yeah. And that's going to vary between churches too. Yeah. Cause our church doesn't do that just by way of interjection.

50:31

I mean, our procedure and protocol for formal church discipline is almost a mirror image of the

50:37

PCA's book of church order. Yeah. I was about to say the way you described it reminded me of their PCO.

50:43

Yeah. Um, no, it's good. It's good. Um, and then I think another thing that going back to what

50:51

Justin was talking about with, you know, every Sunday being important for nourishment for us as believers, and it's, it's not to take away also at the same time of, um, you know, talking to non -believers.

51:05

So that's where we would also both agree in the law gospel distinction needs to be at every service, because if you only have law, you're only talking to maybe part of the congregation.

51:18

If you're only talking about gospel, you're only doing law, gospel's convict and comfort or however you want to put it.

51:25

You don't need one evangelistic service in the one life doctrinal service. Necessarily. You can have the same service that speaks to both people at the same time.

51:33

Absolutely. If you're preaching law and gospel, I mean, you're speaking to both. Yeah. This is the big debate of Biola is like,

51:43

Oh man, what, like, what are we going to have evangelistic services? What are we going to have doctrinal services? We got to build with saints, call people to repent and believe.

51:49

And I was like, well, how do I do this? And now having a law gospel distinction, I was like, Oh, that's, that's how you do it. Well, I mean,

51:56

John, I was going to say, and as, as, as true believers, us, we, we still need to confess our sins too.

52:05

It's not saying that, Oh, I already, we need the gospel every week, man. Yeah, exactly. We need the law. We need the gospel.

52:10

Yeah. I quote James five every Sunday. I said, listen, James tells us to confess our sins to one another so that we might be healed and he doesn't mean physically, he means spiritually.

52:19

So this, this, uh, break in our fellowship can be restored. Yeah. I mean, we, we, as the saints need the gospel every, every week, like Luther would say, right, we forget it, you know?

52:29

And, and so I know in our service, talking about our services aimed at the saints and at the same time, this is not contradictory at all from the welcome, you know, which is informal, you know, and then we have the call to worship that starts the service proper, but from the welcome to the benediction, it is apt, like people are, are slapped upside the head with the good news of Jesus Christ and it's like, now look, there are times when the nonbeliever in a sermon might be addressed directly, occasionally, like,

52:58

Hey, if you're here today and you're not a Christian kind of thing, you know, this may sound whack to you, but yeah, I mean that I do that occasionally, but generally

53:05

I don't do that. I mean, I'm just trying to apply law and gospel to the hearts of the people sitting there. And obviously we have the uses of the law in view, you know, the first and primary use of the law is to crush us in our sin and drive us to Christ.

53:17

So that's always there. And that's true even for the saints, because like our confessions would say, we need to be reminded regularly of the depth of our need of Christ and the depth of the corruption that remains in us and all these things so that we might be humbled.

53:29

I mean, all of that's good, but then we're using the law in its third use to guide our living in, in the Lord Jesus Christ, not in a threatening way, but in a way that guides and exhorts us towards godliness.

53:41

So yeah, if we do law and gospel the right way, the law in its various uses, and we preach Christ, your preaching and your service is definitely going to affect believers and nonbelievers alike.

53:51

And I think we'd all agree we're, you know, we believe in federal theology, covenantal theology, and confessional theology.

54:00

So, and, and it sounds like you guys prescribe to two kingdom as well. Oh, for sure.

54:07

If you have, we interviewed, we interviewed Dr. Vandren and we've had Dr. Vandren and I think that's, that was the hope for this episode too is, um, yeah,

54:17

I think too often it's, we drive a wedge between these two traditions and say, yeah, we can't really have communal with each other, but until you like really start digging deep in the weeds, you're like, oh, there's, there's a, there's a lot more we agree on that we disagree on and we can have commune with one another.

54:34

We can, we can proclaim the gospel with one another. Our services aren't going to look that different from each other.

54:39

Um, which I, yeah, it's, I think it's a helpful thing where you always get a baptism debate and like, you don't have to have a baptism debate when you talk about baptism.

54:46

You talk to a Presbyterian, you can, you can talk about something else. And the fact that we know we disagree on it, like if you're confessional, like we're talking about, like I was saying, yeah, you actually know what you could disagree on.

54:59

Correct. I mean, like I said, my best pastor friends here in the city where I am are Presbyterian and, uh, that's because we agree on things and we know where we disagree, so occasionally we've ribbed each other, but we don't, we don't get into debates unless we just decide that we want to talk about something.

55:14

Typically we just talk about the umpteen things we agree on and we talk about pastoral ministry.

55:20

We talk about caring for sinners, like who are battling the corruption of their flesh.

55:26

It's stuff like this. You know, we, I think we have more in common than you guys would have with a dispensational

55:34

Baptist church. John, John, you could riff on that. Yeah. I mean, that's my tradition.

55:39

I mean, I graduated from the master's seminary, so I was trained in dispensational, you know, hermeneutic and yeah, it, it, it's hard.

55:47

You know, we, we agree with them on the gospel. For sure on sin and, and holiness and all of that.

55:53

But when it comes down to other parts, it, uh, I would say assurance and maybe the focus of scripture, you know,

56:01

Justin and I are always trying to help people process through a dispensational lens, uh, because it does, it does often confuse people.

56:10

It robs them of assurance. Um, it robs them of, of their union in Christ.

56:15

Um, and, and what's so hard is you guys understand this is that dispensationalism is so not consistent from one person to the next, you know, a

56:24

John MacArthur calls himself a leaky dispensationalist. I don't even know what that means. Like what part is leaking?

56:29

We don't even know. No, he doesn't even tell you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's no consistency when it comes to it.

56:35

And you know, you could say the same thing about reform tradition as well. Sure. I mean, there's a lot of differences, but there's actually something that codifies the reform.

56:43

That's exactly right. Confession is the session. You can look to something versus you go, and we don't want to harp too much on it, but if you go to a non -denominational confessionalist church, like you can't point to something that says that's what you believe you have to create, you have to create something that says, no, we believe this.

56:59

And that changes church to church. It does. Yeah. I mean, you're either writing your own confession or your own statement of faith or functionally like your celebrity pastor guy is your confession.

57:08

Exactly. I was at Mars Hill for a couple of years. So Mark Driscoll was our confession or, you know,

57:14

John Piper's your confession or whatever it may be. And that's frightening, you know, in a way. Yeah. And, uh,

57:19

MacArthur both wrote their church doctrinal statement. Yep. Sure. So I think another thing to piggyback on what you're saying,

57:26

Nick, uh, and we can cut this off guys, whenever you want, but I mean, I'm having a good time. So, uh, we have far more in common with you brothers, with Peter and you and Nick.

57:37

Um, in terms of three forms of unity and then the Westminster standards, that tradition, then we do with 90, whatever percent of the

57:46

Baptist in this land. From our perspective, that's not debatable because granted polity and baptism is a thing.

57:55

Those things, there are secondary issues of doctrine. You need to agree on, have a church together. True. Um, but the other stuff that we're talking about high level, and we talked about covenant theology,

58:06

Calvinism, confessionalism, law, gospel, ordinary means, these things, the things that we understand inform our, our liturgy, our ethic, the whole thing.

58:16

We agree on this stuff. And so we have tremendous amounts of fellowship and unity with you guys.

58:22

Yeah. And I will add to that. It comforts my heart to know that if I were, no matter where I go,

58:28

I want to know, okay, is the, is the, the men behind the pulpit, are they going to understand this law, gospel distinction?

58:34

And, and use the three uses of the law properly, because if they're not, they're going to give me all kinds of problems in my, in my home as I'm trying to guide my children.

58:42

Right. Are they going to emphasize the, the sufficiency of Christ and all of scripture? I mean, these are the, like, these are the core behind our confession.

58:50

Um, and so those are the kinds of things where I look at it and I say, yes, we, it's like 99 % in agreement here.

58:58

And, you know, I, I love that this is gaining traction. More and more people are wanting this. Um, you know,

59:03

I wish Westminster had 2000 campuses all around the United States and the most expensive state in the most extensive,

59:10

I mean, I wish they offered stuff via distance, man. Yeah. Yeah. Just keep putting that in there. Tell them to open it up.

59:16

Sprinkle that in. Yeah. It's that is, yeah. They, they would sooner turn Baptist and they would go to, uh, online and I understand.

59:24

Yeah. But yeah, I totally get what you're saying. Totally. Well, you know, I mean, it's things too, that we would be in agreement on that are not, not the case in, in other streams, whether you're talking about Roman Catholicism, whether you're talking about like the, the

59:38

Anabaptist, like radical tradition, like church of Nazarene, or whether you're talking about broad evangelicalism, I think in more or less formal ways, there's a synergistic understanding of salvation, you know, maybe not on the front end.

59:51

Yeah. Maybe not on the front end for some of the Calvinistic evangelicals. They're monergistic when it comes to justification,

59:57

God does it one worker, but then there's a lot of synergism that creeps in, particularly when it comes to sanctification, whereas we're going to beat the drum that God is the one who not only justifies, but sanctifies and glorifies.

01:00:11

And yes, we participate in our sanctification by the virtue of the fact that we're alive and united to Christ, but the spirit of Christ in us is the one who's doing this, you know,

01:00:20

I mean, it's just a lot of things that we agree on that are so fundamental to, I'm going to use this word to the experience of the saint in terms of a weekly rhythm and liturgy, it's going to feel similar in your churches and in our churches.

01:00:35

And I've said, like John said earlier, I've said the same thing. Like if we were in the city where I live and our church didn't exist, and I wasn't concerned, if I had the same convictions

01:00:43

I do now, and I wasn't concerned about being an elder, we would absolutely be at a confessional

01:00:50

Presbyterian church or potentially even, there's a one confessional Lutheran church here. And the reason

01:00:55

I say that is because I know if we go to those churches, we're going to get law and gospel and we're going to get the goods every

01:01:03

Sunday. Like we're going to get Christ for us, you know, and that's what my wife and my kids, and that's what I need.

01:01:09

You're going to experience the five solas. As we economically just come alongside each other and we should be evangelizing together.

01:01:21

And I know Baptists do, I think, five ways better than us. Because you welcome...

01:01:28

For all the foibles and like broader evangelicalism, they do some stuff better than we do. No, it's true. Yeah, because the way you're set up, even with baptism, you're welcoming in non -believers that are adults that could be baptized.

01:01:40

And I think people automatically think that Presbyterians only do organic baby baptism, which...

01:01:47

Which is not far from the truth. Well, and what's wild is we baptize a ton of our kids. You know,

01:01:52

I mean, the majority of our baptisms are not with young, you know, 25 year olds. Yeah, I want to speak into that,

01:01:58

Justin. You know, Justin and I both do communion every Sunday. And what I love about it is that it's for parents sitting there, we are forcing parents to live, like to basically, you need to talk to your kid about the gospel because every week they're telling their kid, well, you can't really take communion.

01:02:14

Well, why can't I? Well, you need to, you have to have faith. And it's been great because I've in my church as well,

01:02:21

Justin, I've seen a lot more children being baptized because they're having to deal with the reality of, wait, wait a minute,

01:02:27

I'm a part of this family and this is what we do. And so, you know, we have a lot of baptism classes scheduled because these kids are thinking themselves, yeah,

01:02:35

I don't, I don't know if I've ever had to wrestle with this before. In the tradition I come from, the only reason that you got baptized is you got home from camp and they just preached the hell out of you.

01:02:44

And so now you got to get baptized. And you threw your stick in the fire. But it's, but you know, for us too, this is a brief comment.

01:02:52

I mean, I don't want to flatten this, but what you guys are looking for to admit a young person to the

01:02:58

Lord's table is not terribly different than what we're looking for to baptize a person and admit them to the table.

01:03:05

You know, and in some senses, because I've talked with, again, Presbyterian pastor friends about this, you know, in our own church,

01:03:12

I mean, the way we'll frame it is in a young person, because this is what we're talking about, we are looking for a sincere profession of faith.

01:03:18

And we use that word intentionally because does this child mean to trust Christ? Does this 12 year old mean to trust

01:03:24

Christ? Does he understand enough of the law and the gospel that he understands he's wrecked before a holy

01:03:30

God and Christ is the forgiveness of his sins and his righteousness. If he understands that, then we're going to baptize him into the covenant community of the church in an internal sense and admit him to the

01:03:39

Lord's table and allow the Lord through the means of grace to keep him just like he keeps the rest of us. So that's how we approach it.

01:03:46

Which is not how most Baptists would approach baptizing young people. Another podcast for another day.

01:03:53

But I think worth observing while we're talking about differences and similarities in our churches and what that may or may not look like week to week, year to year.

01:04:02

Yeah. One last statement for me before we go and it's John, you're mentioning the word rest.

01:04:09

You know, when it comes to it being in light of the gospel and being a part of God's family. And that's how

01:04:15

I see how that's how what gratitude is and guilt, grace, gratitude is really, it's not kicking your feet up and sitting back on the couch and thinking because predestination or Calvinist that God's just going to take care of saving people without us working.

01:04:30

No, the great commission is for Presbyterians and Baptists and all of God's church, big

01:04:37

C church to come alongside each other and out of gratitude, bring people to the gospel.

01:04:44

So there is a heart, there is a head, heart and hands in rest versus just rest thinking, taking a nap and letting, we don't need to worry about anything.

01:04:55

John, I mean, maybe talk for just a second, kind of as a parting shot from us on just like rest in Christ and love of neighbor. Yeah. Yeah.

01:05:01

I mean, Jesus says, come unto me, all you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

01:05:06

And when you realize that you no longer have to obey to earn righteousness and you no longer have to not only obey once, but perpetually, that's that moment of rest.

01:05:21

And then he says, look, the thing I am going to ask you to do is to take the love you've received, which is unconditional and fully sacrificial.

01:05:29

What does Jesus say? The greatest example of love is I lay my life down for you. And he says, take that love and give it.

01:05:38

And I love what he says in John 15. He says, when you do this, you will have my joy and your joy will be complete. It'll be full. So rest leads to affection for the father and affection for others.

01:05:49

And that becomes the resting heartbeat of the Christian life. Right. We, we rest in the sufficiency of Christ for us.

01:05:55

And because of that, it gives us, I mean, this is second Peter one, nine, right? Add to your faith, these things. And if they're not true about you, this is verse nine.

01:06:02

You have forgotten you've been cleansed from your former sin. So you don't go back to the law to find your motivation to love.

01:06:09

You go back to grace. You rest in that grace for your motivation. It's right to love. Yeah. Yeah.

01:06:16

That's awesome. Well, brothers, Justin and John, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on and thank you,

01:06:21

Anastasia, for connecting us. And thank you, sister. We need to send her some merch.

01:06:27

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, yeah, we're, we're, we're thankful for the work that you guys do at TheoCast and keep it up.

01:06:33

I love what you guys are putting out there. I know a bunch of people listen to you, so yeah, keep it up. Thanks for talking about confessionalism and for two

01:06:40

Presbyterians and two Baptists to talk to each other that we can, we can have fun. We can talk to each other. We can have our differences, but like you said, we are, we are far more similar to each other than we are to kind of other, other branches outside.

01:06:53

So, so thanks for, thanks for talking. And, um, I really do hope that we can continue this relationship and keep talking to each other in the future.

01:07:01

We need to do an in -person meeting next time. We have to. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That'd be, that'd be awesome. Well, yeah.

01:07:07

Well, brothers, thanks. Thanks for, thanks so much for doing this and we'll see you again next time. Yeah. Peace.