Dazed and Confused: Does 2 Peter 1:1-12 Teach Pietism?

Hey, this is Jimmy.

On the podcast today, we seek to answer one of your questions, specifically about 2 Peter chapter 1, and

how is this chapter not teaching what we call pietism.

So we discuss the difference between piety and pietism.

We look at the saint -center realities of the Christian life.

So we exegete the first 12 verses of this passage in our regular podcast, and in our members

podcast, we look at the rest of the chapter and discuss how we preach that in a way

that helps bolster people's assurance and doesn't rip it out from underneath their feet.

So we hope this conversation is helpful for you.

Stay tuned.

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Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the Christian

life from a Reformed perspective.

Your hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

And myself, Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota.

Gentlemen, very good to see your lovely faces today.

JP, I think you're going to give the people what they want today.

So why don't you intro kind of a new little segment we have here on Theocast?

So this is going to be a double intro, two for the price of one.

So the conversation amongst the hosts at Theocast has been that we want to do something a little different in the first few minutes of the

podcast to just enjoy ourselves a little bit more and we hope it's going to be good for the listener.

So that was part one.

Now part two is to explain what this is and try to model it for us today.

We're going to do, for at least a little while, we're going to try something that we're going to phrase or call pro -con.

We're going to each give the guy who has the update.

Let me just calm down a minute.

I'm excited.

The guy who has the update is going to give us something that he is for, a pro, and he's

going to give us something that he's not so fond of, a con.

So I'm going to give this a shot today.

And then we're going to make fun of them.

And we'll see.

That's right.

Or maybe agree.

Maybe agree.

John, you're so negative.

That's true.

We might.

You're such a contrarian.

I will find a reason to disagree.

I will find one.

Of course you will.

Yeah.

Of course you will.

All right, so here, let's give this a try.

I'm going to begin with something that I am all for, that I like.

So my pro for today is Tom Hardy as an actor.

Oh, yes.

And I know that I have an advocate in Jimmy Bueller.

I don't know where John stands.

We'll see.

So just a brief word on Tom Hardy.

The man, I think, is an underrated actor.

And I think he's phenomenal.

And I could reference a few things.

I mean, obviously, he plays Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

He has a very good, I think, role in the movie Inception.

And then this is going to kind of segue to me, to my con, in just a minute.

I think his performance in the movie Warrior is off the charts good.

And so anything Tom Hardy is in, sign me up to watch it.

That's my hot take pro for today.

The only problem with Bane in The Dark Knight Rises is that he did a great job.

But a lot of acting...

It's that he's Gotham's Reckoning.

Is that the thing?

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

Gotham's...

Yeah.

The problem is, is that he can't...

Gotham's Reckoning.

His facial expressions and all...

I mean, he just didn't do a lot of acting.

It was more of like he was present.

His persona on screen is pretty epic in that movie, though.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, first of all, we need to be clear on something, that the three of us, we often don't watch

that many movies because we spend so much time reading our Bible and praying.

But when we do...

Oh my goodness.

Tom Hardy...

Tom Hardy is...

He's a crazy guy.

Yeah.

Here's another thing.

His performance in Mad Max Fury Road.

If you've seen that movie...

True.

True.

Yeah.

It is an excellent film.

And even Venom.

I think he's good in Venom.

I know that that's kind of a controversial term.

Yeah.

I think we just lost about 1 ,000 listeners because of that.

All right.

What's your con?

I need to get you on your con.

All right.

So my con, and this is what makes my comment about Tom Hardy's role in the movie Warrior all the more astounding,

is that with almost no exceptions, I loathe sports movies.

So I'm an ex -athlete, I used to play sports, and I cannot stand sports movies because I find

that they're very cheesy, the sporting pieces of it are either overly dramatic,

or they don't do justice to the sport played.

And I find that they're just chock full of this rah -rah, win -win for the Gipper coach speak stuff that absolutely

makes my skin crawl.

I can't do it.

And so sometimes people are shocked when I make this statement because they're like, dude, you're a sports guy.

And I'm like, yeah, and I can't stand sports movies.

So there you go.

That's my con for the week.

I love it.

Thoughts, John? Jimmy? JP?

I mean, you are - I mean, Remember the Titans is still one of my favorite movies of all time.

That would be maybe a rare exception because Denzel Washington is Denzel Washington.

Okay.

All right.

We'll make an exception.

Yeah.

Because I want to say, I mean, that was pretty good.

And Rudy is cheesy, but it's still a good movie.

I could quote something from Rudy right now.

JP, you are speaking my language.

I mean, sports movies in general are just pretty bad.

Just pretty bad.

Well, and here's the other thing.

Like, often the athletes, they're of a particular age, but they never

actually look that age.

Right?

Like, even Remember the Titans.

You got grown men playing high school.

None of those guys look like they're in high school.

Yeah.

That's right.

You've got like 30 -year -old men playing high schoolers.

It's ridiculous.

Hey, man, have you seen college football lately?

They look like grown men.

Well, yeah.

I'm just -.

I guess I'm talking about high school.

Those guys look like they're 30 years old.

We're talking about high school.

We're talking about high school.

The only -.

That's right.

Perhaps the only good and realistic sports movie is probably Waterboy.

Let's just be honest.

Oh, man.

All right.

It's time to move on.

Here we go.

All right.

Once in a while -.

We have officially lost all of our listeners at the

moment.

We are going to talk about the Bible today.

For those of you that are wondering, listening to this podcast, Conversations About the Christian Life, hey, listen.

Here's the thing.

It's understandable that people would be wondering.

The thing about Theocast is we don't take ourselves serious, but we definitely take the gospel serious, and so that's what we're

going to do now.

True.

Once in a while, we like to do what's called a dazed and confused, and today we had a great question that came in through Ask

Theocast.

If you've not been able to go there, you can go to AskTheocast .com.

It's a small podcast that we do where we answer questions.

John, you might want to explain what dazed and confused is.

Yeah.

So you can ask ...

I'll get to that.

You can ask a question there, and once in a while, we like to pull those questions over here and do a full

episode on it.

Dazed and confused typically is a segment we do when someone reads a passage and they walk away more

confused or dazed than they were before they read the passage, and that's one of these today.

We're going to be covering 2 Peter 1 through 12.

This question came in from Mel Lockhart.

Thank you, Mel.

The question is, how does Peter's instructions in 2 Peter differ from pietism?

Well, it's very obvious that Peter is not a pietist in this section.

It doesn't mean he's not a pietist.

We all struggle with pietism.

Just for the sake of clarification, who wants to give us a 15 -second

explanation of what pietism is?

Anybody want to grab that?

Yeah, I'd be glad to do that, John.

We say this a lot.

There is a difference between piety and pietism, and just to be clear, piety is good.

The sanctification in the Christian life, the pursuit of holiness, is a good thing.

Pietism is more of a microscopic, intense focus on the

interior of the Christian life, where the vast majority of your Christian life is spent in perhaps

morbid introspection, trying to discern your fruit.

In fact, what we would say is pietism is actually crippling to the fruitfulness of the Christian life, because you are spent

most of your days trying to find the most microscopic sin within your own

life.

So, piety is good, but pietism is not so good.

If you would like a fuller explanation of that, you can go to our website.

We have a small little primer there, I think it's like $3.

It's called A Primer on Pietism, one of the first little primers we ever wrote.

Basically what we're saying is, pietism is you trying to earn and maintain

favor with God, and that your actions, your obedience, is the way in which you do that.

How is it that Peter is not doing this here in 2 Peter?

Justin, give us an overview of the chapter so we can be able to exegete it.

It begins with the greeting, which is a pretty standard greeting from the Apostle Peter, where he is greeting

saints and reminding them of the faith that they have that is equal to the standing of the faith of the apostles,

and that all of this is by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, and then he greets the saints with

grace and peace.

Of course, we begin there, but then in verses 3 and 4, Peter grounds this whole thing in the

power of God and in the promises that God has made to us.

This is where he begins.

He begins with the indicatives, the realities of who we are in Christ as saints, and

also just again the power and the working of God in us.

Then he's going to go on to exhort these Christians to pursue godliness, which, just

brief interjection, we should never assume that exhortations

necessarily mean something threatening, like, do this or else.

That's not how exhortations work underneath the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter is saying, you're in Jesus.

It's all about God's power and his promises made to you.

Now, go and pursue godliness and brotherly affection, love one another, and do these good

things so that you'll be good for your neighbor as God works in you.

Then at the end of this section, we'll get to this more later, it's very interesting that Peter in

verse 9 will talk about people who lack these qualities are nearsighted and they're blind and they have

forgotten the fact that they have been cleansed from sin.

It seems that a huge problem here is that people have actually forgotten the gospel and have forgotten what

Jesus Christ has done for them.

A 30 ,000 foot summary would be, God's power is at work in you.

God has made promises to you in the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is who you are in him.

Pursue godliness, pursue brotherly affection so that you will be fruitful and helpful to

your neighbor and remember the gospel, in other words.

We're going to unpack all of these things over the next, I don't know, 30, 40 minutes or so.

I don't know which one of you guys wants to jump on this first.

We could start, I guess, with maybe verse 3 and get into the exegesis of this in more detail.

Yeah, I think John is going to take us to verse 3 and 4, but before he does so, that's such a

prudent point to make.

One of the fundamental issues that you see in the New Testament epistles is the

writers, the apostles are consistently saying what you just said, Justin, that

one of the fundamental issues is a forgetting of the gospel, forgetting of the indicative

realities of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who you are, what God has done

for you in Christ.

When we do that, when we forget the gospel, a whole host of problems comes forth.

That is why so many of the epistles begin with the apostles reminding the churches that they are

writing to of the glorious realities of what God has done for His people in Christ.

Then they get into these exhortations a lot of times in the latter half, and

specifically with 2 Peter, I think one of the greatest places that we can ground 2 Peter is

actually back in 1 Peter 1, where Peter reminds the people that he is

writing to of these wonderful promises that God has made them in Christ.

So keeping in mind that these are inspired words by the Holy Spirit, we

read the entire text as a whole, and I think it's a really good point to remember that not all exhortation is

threatening.

Now, certainly there is some exhortation that is threatening, but we can't always read the text that way.

Certainly, all of us as fathers, we exhort our children, but a lot of times we don't exhort

them in threatening ways.

We want to keep that in mind.

Jon, why don't you bring us into verse 3 and 4?

Jon Moffitt.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right, Jimmy.

These instructions are not alienated from your identity and your union with Christ.

So what Peter does here, before he even gets into these instructions, is that he sures up your union.

Union meaning that you are one, you are united with Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit, that the way in

which you are secured is not based upon your faith that you drummed up.

It's also not based upon your faithfulness, that your faith has been gifted to you, which united you with Christ.

You were baptized into Christ.

You died in Christ.

So what he does here is he grounds his instructions in the union of Christ.

So he starts in verse 3, he says this, his divine power, meaning Christ, has granted

to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.

So if you miss that, you miss everything else that follows.

It is God's power that has given us everything that we need

to live this life and to produce godliness.

And how do we know what that looks like?

Where does that come from?

Again, he says the power through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.

So the knowledge of Jesus Christ is what is giving us the power

to live this life in godliness.

Now the next verse is where you will hear something that Theocast says all the time,

by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them

you may be partakers of the divine nature.

What is he pointing to?

He's not pointing to obedience.

He's not pointing to faithfulness.

He's not pointing to actions.

He says the promises, right?

The promises.

Well, what promises are you talking about?

The promises of God who says, I will redeem the people through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He's talking about new covenant realities, the covenant of grace, the promise that God saves sinners by grace

alone.

And he says, so that through them you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the

corruption that is in the world because of sinful desires.

So our escape from this world is always through the promises of Christ,

never through your obedience.

So I think Peter gives one of the most glorious gospel presentations before he gets into instruction.

So that's the foundation.

He starts with the indicative.

He says, this is the truth by which what I'm about to say has to rest upon.

He begins with the promises of God.

He begins with God's faithfulness to us.

And he begins with the promises of God specifically realized and accomplished for us through

Jesus.

And so then he moves into verses five, six, and seven, in which he's going

to exhort his readers.

He's going to say, for this reason, because of God's power that's at work in you, because

of God's faithfulness to you and the promises he's made to you, and because of who you are in Jesus, like you said, John,

vitally united to Christ by faith and through the work of the Holy Spirit, because of all of

this and for this reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with

self -control, self -control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection

and brotherly affection with love.

He's saying all of these things.

This is a constant refrain of the apostles, you know, to live life this way

in the community of the saints and to concern yourself with these things, virtue and knowledge and self -control and

steadfastness and godliness and love.

This is nothing new that Peter is exhorting his readers to.

And I think my reaction to that, guys, I don't know what you guys think, as I'm reading Peter's flow

of thought here, as he's grounding all of these exhortations in these glorious truths of the gospel and what Christ has done for us and

God's faithfulness to us, my takeaway is like, well, bro, no kidding.

I mean, what else would I want to do, you know, as a redeemed sinner?

Why on the world would I ever consider what God has done for me and His faithfulness to me and think, yeah,

I don't really want to pursue loving my brothers and sisters.

I don't really want to pursue steadfastness or godliness.

I think I just want to keep running in the direction of sin and harming my neighbor.

Said no one ever.

Now, we're going to struggle because we're still sinners, right?

We're sinner saints.

And so at times we're not going to live the way we want.

We're not going to think the way that we want.

But in our inner man, we will delight in the law of God and we will see that these exhortations from the apostle Peter are good

things.

And so our takeaway is like, yeah, bro, I'm with you.

Like let's ride, man.

I mean, in light of Christ and God's faithfulness to us, let's pursue this stuff.

And so I think that's the posture that I would want to have as a preacher even, as I'm going to be giving

these exhortations to my own congregation, is saints, let's consider the love and faithfulness of God to

us in Christ Jesus.

Let's consider what Christ has done for us.

And now let's pursue these things.

And I imagine their reaction is going to be sort of like I've described, like, absolutely, brother.

Amen.

No kidding.

What do we pay you for?

That makes entire sense to me.

I can see that just like you can, you know, in my script, in my text, like, let's go.

Right.

Well, as you guys know, the inner pietist dies a very slow and painful death and often

is resurrected again, only needing to be drowned and killed again.

And so specifically as we look at verses eight and

nine, for if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or

unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

And so one of the things that pietism loves is what?

It loves conditional statements because pietism reads conditional statements in

this threatening tone where what I think Peter is doing here is he is just giving kind of sound

logic and no kidding.

And so when he says in verse eight, if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or

unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Right.

And so that just makes sense.

And so what pietism wants to do is it wants to take that verse and it's always going to ask the question,

well, what if it's not increasing?

What does that mean?

Right.

Well, he gives us the solution in verse three and four.

Verse three and four are really the ground, as John said earlier, for the entire passage.

What is the medicine to the soul that is ineffective?

What is the prescription to the person that is unfruitful?

It's never pull out the whip of the law and get them moving.

It's always, hey, can you just remember what the gospel says?

That his divine power has granted you this ability, that in and of yourself, you are dead face

down in the water in sin.

And without the saving grace, merciful faith, gifting God, like

none of this would be possible.

And so that is what you need to look to.

That is where your eyes need to go.

And so when Peter says what he does in verse eight, well, it's like, as JP has said numerous times already,

well, no kidding.

If these qualities are not increasing, you are going to be ineffective, right?

Because people are going to look at you and say, something's off here.

Like, what's not clicking in his brain?

And then verse nine, for whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he's blind, having forgotten that he was

cleansed from his former sins, right?

That Peter is again reminding them of like, hey, when you act this way or when you fail to act

this way, what are you saying by your life that you've forgotten?

One of my friends, his pastor out in California, he talks about how remembrance is often the fuel of our

faith, that we remember what God has done for us in Christ.

And Peter is saying the exact same thing here in verse eight and nine.

We're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called Faith vs.

Faithfulness, a Primer on Rust.

And we, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ

versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other

often to a lack of assurance.

And you can get this at theocast .org slash Primer.

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We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

That's right.

Well, to your point, Jimmy, he says ineffective and unfruitful in what?

Not securing your salvation, not in proving your salvation.

He says you're ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Meaning, because the thing is, this is where pietists can get afraid.

Well, I don't want to be ineffective and unfruitful because then I'll lack

assurance.

That is not what he's saying here at all.

If you'll notice that every single one of these, virtue, self -control,

steadfastness, godliness, all of these are horizontal actions.

They all have to do with you and your relationship to your brothers and sisters in Christ.

The goal is to be able to not only preach, but also

demonstrate the gospel.

What I mean by that is, if I've been transformed, I now give grace because I've received grace.

You don't live the gospel, so let's just be clear there.

What he's saying is, if you aren't demonstrating these qualities, the one responsibility

that God gave us, love your neighbor, and the other one is love God, he goes, listen, you're going to be

ineffective in doing that, and it's not going to be fruitful.

A fruitful relationship with another believer is to give them grace and mercy and kindness and forgiveness and

love.

If you're not giving those qualities, you are actually denying the knowledge that's been handed to you.

This is why he says you're ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Now, when he's talking about lack these qualities is nearsighted.

This is where things can get murky for people.

So again, I think I'm just going to try and say the same thing that Jimmy did, and I'll just give you another

perspective on this.

When you find yourself when you are unkind, you're unloving,

you are lacking godliness, you have fallen, and you're unvirtuous in your actions,

what you should be turning to is repentance, and what causes you to repent

clearly in verse 9 is what's cleansed you.

You are always looking to the past to motivate you for the present.

You always look to your position, I am secure in Christ, so that

you may pursue holiness.

You never look to your holiness, what's in the present, to look and secure what's

happened in the past, my salvation.

And I think Peter does an excellent job here of using language to help us say, look

to your past to motivate you to pursue holiness.

I'm going to pick up right where you guys are, too.

I think this needs to be reiterated.

The prescription, as you put it, Jimmy, whenever we find ourselves struggling, is to

remember the gospel, and God throughout Scripture, Old Testament and New, operates

this way.

He constantly is telling his people to remember what I've done, remember me, remember who I am, remember that I'm a redeemer,

I'm the God who brought you out of Egypt, right?

And here we're being told, remember that I am the God who has worked the greater exodus for you in

saving you from slavery to sin and death and hell.

And so we're remembering the gospel, and in particular, we're considering Jesus Christ.

And a couple of things come to mind, 2 Corinthians 3, where we're told that by beholding the Lord Jesus, we're transformed from

one degree of glory to another.

So if we're even thinking about growth in the faith, that happens primarily as we behold the Lord Jesus.

But then also think about Philippians 2, where Jesus is held up as a model for us.

So, okay, you're struggling with pride, which every human being would acknowledge, I'm a prideful person.

Well, what does Paul say in Philippians 2?

Consider Christ.

Look to Christ as not only the one who lived and died for you, but who laid his life down

as a model of humility and service and sacrifice as well.

And so to consider the Lord Jesus is always the prescription.

And also a Romans 2 reality to pick up where you were, John, the kindness of God, the mercy and the

grace and the patience of God is meant to lead us to repentance.

And it's God's love that repents us.

It's not us wigging out over our performance and our lack of holiness that ultimately

does it.

It's God's spirit working in us as God has been gracious and merciful to wretches such as we.

And so I agree completely, guys.

I wanna pick up maybe transitioning us into verses 10 and 11.

Yeah.

Verse 10, therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure for

if you practice these qualities, you'll never fall.

I mean, he's now exhorting them again to be diligent.

And I think, Jimmy, you mentioned this earlier about how pietism always views exhortations as threatening.

I kind of alluded to that earlier, how pietism will read conditional statements and there's

always some sort of jeopardy introduced.

If you don't do this well enough, then it will go poorly for you and you may not be able to stand

before the Lord.

The call to diligence, brothers, is in no way contradictory to the gospel.

I think we've got to get that through our minds that we can be called to be diligent and be

safe.

You can actually be secure and be exhorted to diligence because you're safe,

because you're in good standing with the Lord.

And I think that's in Peter's mind here.

And he's just acknowledging the reality that if you practice these qualities, it's gonna go really well for you and

it's gonna go really well for everybody around you.

You will profit and your neighbor will profit.

I was reading recently a Baptist theologian from the 1700s, and he makes the statement,

paraphrase, like, God, the most perfect of men will be of no profit to

God, but he will be blessed in and of himself and he will be a blessing to his neighbor,

if we pursue righteousness was his conclusion.

And I think that's what Peter is saying, is that it will be good for you and good for your neighbor if you pursue these things.

Yeah.

And this is where the pietism can get very confusing here in verse 10.

So this is where the heat comes in, because what people point to, it says, be all the more diligent to confirm your

calling and election.

What are they going to point to?

They're gonna point right back to the faithfulness, virtue, knowledge, self -control, godliness.

That is actually, even in grammar, that is not what he's

pointing back to.

So you have to understand, the last thing he just said, he was talking about the forgetting of

your cleansing.

Right.

Forgetting the gospel.

In the sentence.

Right.

That's what he's pointing back to.

So, two things.

He can't be pointing to the diligence of obedience, because if he does, he would

completely counteract everything he said in verses 3 and 4 and verses 8 and 9.

That would be, he would completely undermine the promises of the gospel.

So when it says here, because this verse is often used to call people's assurance into question.

I mean, you're smoking out the lazy Christian here.

You're smoking out the person who just wants to claim Jesus.

Well, that's not what he's saying.

He's saying this.

He's like, brothers, be diligent to confirm your calling and election.

Well, how do you do that?

You confirm it by looking at the promises and believing the promises.

And he says, if you practice these qualities, what qualities?

Looking to how you have been cleansed, then you will never fall.

Fall where?

Fall away from Christ.

That's what he's pointing to.

He can't be pointing you towards your faithfulness, because that would be grace

plus works.

This is Roman Catholicism, which we did a podcast on.

Go back and listen to it.

I guess it was last week.

He can't be pointing us to that.

He has to be pointing us to, and this is the same thing that Paul does in Ephesians chapter four.

He says the same thing.

If these things are true about you, to make

yourself worthy of your calling and election, he points to our obedience and love for the brothers.

But he does not say your obedience and love for the brothers is what confirms it.

We have another Days and Confused that we are going to do soon.

The same one is to examine your self -deceiver of the faith.

People use this passage in the same way.

I don't know if you guys have additional thoughts on there, but why is it that he can't be pointing back to the

qualities, when he says qualities, the qualities of godliness as the practice of

assuring your calling and election, as the ground of your assurance?

Where else would you go to Scripture to say that just can't be true?

I think one of the texts that comes to mind for me is Ephesians chapter one and chapter two.

Ephesians chapter one gives us this great Trinitarian theological treatise on how all the persons of the

Trinity are working in tandem for the redemption of broken and weary sinners.

Then we get into Ephesians two, where Paul takes that glorious, in -the -air gospel and he brings it to the ground

level, and he talks about how it's been applied to us by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone.

That's Ephesians chapter two, verse one to ten.

It's not until those things are presented that, again, we start to see the imperatives be fleshed out in

chapters three and on in the book of Ephesians.

But you have to remember, what we see in the book of Ephesians, as you think about the

entirety of the letter, is Paul never talks about the grounds of our

assurance, the grounds of our safety in Christ

being what we do in response to the gospel.

The grounds of our safety in Christ are bound up in the grace and mercy and the person and work of

Jesus Christ, period, right?

I mean, even our confession talks about this, where certainly we can be encouraged

by the good works in this life of our assurance in Christ, but it can never

ultimately be found there.

They can bolster our assurance, but ultimately what is grounded is the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.

A number of passages come to mind.

One is Philippians chapter three, where Paul is very clear about the fact that he does not understand himself to have a

righteousness of his own.

That's huge.

I mean, this is related to 11 .1 in the 1689 and corresponding passages even in the

Westminster Confession of Faith, the Savoy Declaration, that Jesus Christ is our whole and only righteousness

by faith.

So Paul in Philippians three makes it clear, I don't consider myself to have a righteousness of my own, but I

pursue the righteousness that is from God through faith in Jesus Christ.

And so it's very clear that the righteousness that we'll save is an alien righteousness to use that

Reformation language.

It's outside of us and it's counted to us by faith.

I'm mindful of the entire first eight chapters of Romans.

I mean, my Lord, the argument that Paul unfolds there with the fact that there's

nobody good and everybody stands condemned by the law or by even the law of nature, and that

now the righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the law through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

But then he gets into a number of realities that are relevant to this.

Chapter five, we have peace with God.

The Holy Spirit's been poured out in our hearts.

We were dead in Adam.

We're alive in Jesus.

We've been united to Christ now.

We have a new identity, but we still struggle with sin, Romans seven.

And yet we have hope, not because we do everything right, but because nobody can bring a charge against God's elect because Christ

is the one who saved us, and nobody's going to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Those are just a few thoughts.

I know we were talking about Galatians, John.

You may want to take us there.

Lots of texts, man.

Well, I would say Galatians is probably the one that we point to quite often, where there's no way that Peter and Paul are

disagreeing with each other.

There has to be coherence here.

So Paul clearly points the Galatians away from examining their own works or

even their own efforts as securing them by way of furthering the God.

He says in Galatians 6 .3, why are you so foolish to think that you're going to begin by the Spirit and now perfect yourself

by the flesh?

So to take Peter's instructions in

2 Peter and say that he's pointing to your own faithfulness, or your own

efforts outside of the Spirit, would counteract what Paul's saying in Galatians.

So is Paul right, or is Peter right?

We would have to say, well, in context, I think Peter is making the argument that the

qualities are pointing to the promises and the cleansing that we have and the act of

trusting in those promises.

I think it's clear in the New Testament that the realization of piety or the realization of

godliness is always through what Jesus Christ has done for us, and it's never

outside of the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

That could not be more clear that we do not, in our own effort,

through white -knuckling this thing and gritting our teeth, we don't do this.

It's God who works in us and works through us and does it by His power.

Right.

Just to go back to the context, so he says, 2 Peter 1 .10, Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to

confirm your calling and election.

For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall.

For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and

Savior Jesus Christ.

There's no way Peter is saying your faithfulness to these qualities is what you're entering into,

because if he is, that is grace plus works.

That's what he's saying.

Is he denying what he said in verses three and four?

No.

I think it's all in the same context.

It's all in the same pericope, which is a section of Scripture.

He hasn't moved on to the next paragraph yet.

In this pericope, he is saying these qualities, these promises that we receive from Christ.

Sometimes the English language can be confusing because you can't look at it in the original languages, but when you're

trying to translate these words, if you're not looking at it in the entire context,

you could argue that Peter is saying your faithfulness is what is going to secure for you your heavenly home.

We would say, no, you have to look at all of Scripture, and I think you have to look at all of the argumentation.

I would say Peter is not a pietist here.

Peter is definitely a pietist, because we all are at heart, but in what he's teaching here, Peter

is not teaching pietism.

I think he is teaching an appropriate view of piety, which is, ground your faith in Christ,

and in your grounding your faith in Christ, here is how you should act, which is piety, and we should all

obey and adhere to.

Amen.

So Peter, in his fallenness, like you say, John, is a pietist.

By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, what he writes here is infallible and true and good and right.

We here at Theocaster are in complete agreement with this kind of reasoning and thinking under the gospel.

Here's your identity, here's what Christ has done for you, here's the faithfulness of God to you.

Now, be diligent in pursuing godliness and piety, and

be diligent in pursuing, namely, loving your brothers and sisters, because if we're

going to reduce down the commands of God to us in this life, it is love

one another.

It's the words of Jesus, it's the words of John, repetitively in his writing,

and even as history goes, there are reliable sources that would indicate that the apostle John, who lived longer

than the other apostles, would be carried in at his old age into

assemblies and would simply say, little children love one another.

That was his main exhortation.

All four, the gospel and the work of Christ for us and the sufficiency of

Christ propels us forward in the pursuit of godliness, and it's not threatening and it's not scary.

It's what we do in living in Christ.

You could look at this section in 2 Peter 1 and call it

growing up in the gospel, growing up and understanding what God has done for you in Christ.

It just makes logical sense that the gospel is what pushes us to love

our neighbor.

The gospel is what pushes us to add virtue to our lives.

That's exactly right.

This is the whole guilt, grace, gratitude idea that the

law exposes our guilt, the gospel shows us God's grace,

and then the gospel also motivates and gives us gratitude that fuels the

holiness in the Christian life.

Pietism is very tricky.

It is like the snake that is always around the corner asking the

question, did God really say, because it always wants to point you to, you are in

control.

You are outside of God's sovereign decrees, and you can do whatever it is that you want, and

your eternity is within your own hands.

That is ultimately what it wants to do, where we believe that the vast

majority, the entire narrative of scripture, is pointing to this truth that,

Psalm 3, salvation belongs to who?

It belongs to the Lord, and that is what we are always seeking to remind ourselves of.

We remind our people of this, specifically when we look at confusing passages like this.

We are definitely going to move over to the members' podcast, but before we do, Jimmy,

I think we should probably, if someone is going to either preach this or teach this, how do you

do so and not step all over people's toes and help people slowly?

Everybody who is new to Theocast, if you are not from

a Reformed podcast,

this is all probably new to you.

I can remember the first time I heard the word pietism, and I had no idea what they were saying.

Puritism, is that what you say?

Puritanical?

We are going to maybe work on that a little bit for you in helping you understand, and really

using scriptures like 2 Peter to help free people from legalism and pietism.

So, how can you do that with grace and mercy and kindness?

We will do that in the members' podcast.

So, Jimmy, it is all you.

Awesome.

Well, thank you for listening to our conversation today.

We are going to head over to our members' podcast.

If you are unclear as to what that is, that is where we take the themes and the topics and the

various things that we have discussed in this podcast, and we let our hair down a little bit, perhaps have a little bit more of a

lively conversation.

And so, that is exclusively for our members.

If you are interested in learning more about what it means to become a member, you can head to theocast .org

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So, thank you for listening.

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