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

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Hey, this is Jimmy. On the podcast today, we seek to answer one of your questions, specifically about 2

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Peter chapter 1, and how is this chapter not teaching what we call pietism.

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So we discuss the difference between piety and pietism. We look at the saint -center realities of the

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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.

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So we hope this conversation is helpful for you. Stay tuned. A simple way for you to help support

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Theocast and join the Reformation is by shopping at Amazon. That's right. Everything that you purchase there, they will take a percentage of it and donate it to our ministry.

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All you have to do is go to smile .amazon .com and then search for Theocast Inc. and choose us as the supporting donation.

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To learn more about this and other ways of supporting us, you can go to theocast .org slash give.

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

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Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Your hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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

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Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota. Gentlemen, very good to see your lovely faces today.

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JP, I think you're going to give the people what they want today, so why don't you intro a new little segment we have here on Theocast.

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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.

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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.

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We're going to each give, or 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.

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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. Either or. Or maybe agree.

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Maybe agree. John, you said negative. We might. You're such a contrarian. I will find a reason to disagree. I will find one.

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Of course you will. 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.

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So my pro for today is Tom Hardy as an actor. Oh, yes. And I know that I have an advocate in Jimmy Bueller.

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I don't know where John stands. We'll see. So just a brief word on Tom Hardy. The man,

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I think, is an underrated actor. And I think he's phenomenal. And I could reference a few things.

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I mean, obviously, he plays Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. He has a very good, I think, role in the movie

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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

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Warrior is off the charts good. And so anything Tom Hardy is in, sign me up to watch it.

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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.

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It's that he's Gotham's Reckoning. Is that the thing? Yeah, I'm sorry, Gotham's, yeah.

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The problem is that his facial expressions and all, I mean, he just didn't do a lot of acting.

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It was more of like he was present. His persona on screen is pretty epic in that movie, though.

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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

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Bible and praying. But when we do, Tom Hardy, he's the guy.

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Yeah, here's another thing. His performance in Mad Max Fury Road, if you've seen that movie, yeah, it is.

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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.

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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

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Warrior all the more astounding, is that with almost no exceptions, I loathe sports movies.

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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.

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The sporting pieces of it are either like overly dramatic or they don't do justice to the sport played.

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And I find that they're just chock full of this like rah -rah, win -win for the Gipper coach -speak stuff that absolutely makes my skin crawl.

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Like, I just 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.

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And I'm like, yeah, and I can't stand sports movies. So there you go. That's my con for the week.

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Thoughts, John? Jimmy? JP, I mean, you are. I mean, remember the Titans is still one of my favorite movies of all time.

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That would be maybe a rare exception because Denzel Washington. OK, all right. We'll make an exception. Because I want to say, I mean, that that was pretty good.

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And Rudy is cheesy, but it's still a good movie. I could get something from Rudy, right?

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Yeah, JP, you are speaking my language. I mean, sports movies in general are just pretty bad.

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Just pretty bad. Well, and here's the other thing, like often the. Like the athletes, they're of a particular age, but they never actually look that age.

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Right. Like even remember the Titans. You got none of those grown men. None of those guys look like they're in high school. Yeah, that's right.

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You've got like 30 year old men playing high schoolers. Hey, man, have you have you seen college football lately?

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They look like grown men. Well, yeah, I'm just I guess

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I'm talking to those guys. It's like they're 30 years old in high school. So the only that's perhaps the only good, perhaps the only good and realistic sports movie is probably

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Waterboy. Let's just be honest. Oh, man. All right. It's time to move on. Here we go.

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All right. Once in a while, we get what we we have officially lost all of our listeners at the moment.

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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.

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It's understandable. Here's the thing about Theocast. The thing about Theocast is we don't take ourselves serious, but we definitely take the gospel serious.

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And so that's what we're going to do now. 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.

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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.

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Yeah. 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.

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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.

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We're going to be covering 2 Peter 1 through 12. This question came in from Mel Lockhart.

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Thank you, Mel. And the question is, how does Peter's instructions in 2 Peter differ from pietism?

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Well, it's very obvious that Peter is not a pietist in this section. Doesn't mean he's not a pietist. We all struggle with pietism, and just for the sake of clarification, who wants to give us a 15 -second explanation of what pietism is?

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Anybody want to grab that? Yeah, I'd be glad to do that, John. So we say this a lot.

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

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

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Pietism is more of like a microscopic, intense focus on the interior of the

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Christian life where the vast majority of your Christian life is spent in perhaps morbid introspection, trying to discern your fruit.

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And 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.

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So piety good, pietism not so good. If you would like just a fuller explanation of that, you can go to our website.

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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.

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And 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.

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So how is it that Peter is not doing this here in 2 Peter? Justin, kind of give us kind of an overview of the chapter so we can be able to exegete it.

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So 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

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God and Savior Jesus Christ. And then he greets the saints with grace and peace. So of course we begin there.

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But then in verses three and four, Peter grounds this whole thing in the power of God and in the promises that God has made to us.

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And so 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.

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And 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.

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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.

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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.

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And then at the end of this section, we'll get to this more later, it's very interesting that Peter in verse nine 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.

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

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Jesus Christ has done for them. So a 30 ,000 foot summary would be God's power is at work in you.

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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.

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And so we're gonna unpack all of these things over the next, I don't know, 30, 40 minutes or so. And so I don't know which one of you guys wants to jump on this first.

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

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John is gonna take us to verse three and four, but before he does so, that's such a prudent point to make is one of the fundamental issues that you see in the

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New Testament epistles is the writers, the apostles, are consistently saying what you just said,

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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

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God has done for you in Christ. And when we do that, when we forget the gospel, a whole host of problems comes forth.

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And 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

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God has done for his people in Christ. And then he gets into these exhortations, or then they get into these exhortations, a lot of times in the latter half.

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

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Peter is actually back in 1 Peter chapter one, where Peter reminds the people that he is writing to of these wonderful promises that God has made them in Christ.

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And so keeping in mind that these are inspired words by the Holy Spirit, and so we read the entire text as a whole.

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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.

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I mean, certainly all of us as fathers, we exhort our children, but a lot of times we don't exhort them in threatening ways, right?

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So we wanna keep that in mind. So John, why don't you bring us into verse three and four? Yeah, I think that's exactly right,

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Jimmy. And these instructions are not alienated from your identity and your union with Christ.

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So what Peter does here, before he even gets into these instructions, is that he shares up your union, union meaning that you are one, you're united with Jesus Christ through the power of the

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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.

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

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So he starts in verse three, he says this, his divine power, meaning Christ, has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.

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

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It is God's power that has given us everything that we need to live this life and to produce godliness.

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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.

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So the knowledge of Jesus Christ is what is giving us the power to live this life in godliness.

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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.

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What is he pointing to? He's not pointing to obedience, he's not pointing to faithfulness, he's not pointing to actions.

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He says the promises, right? The promises, well, what promises are you talking about? The promises of God who says

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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.

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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.

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So our escape from this world is always through the promises of Christ, never through your obedience.

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

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So that's the foundation. He starts with the indicative. He says, this is the truth by which what

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I'm about to say has to rest upon. He begins with the promises of God, he begins with God's faithfulness to us.

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

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And so then he moves into verses five, six, and seven in which he's going to exhort his readers.

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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,

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John, vitally united to Christ by faith and through the work of the Holy Spirit.

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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.

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He's saying all of these things. This is a constant refrain of the apostles, 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.

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This is nothing new that Peter is exhorting his readers to. And I think my reaction to that, guys,

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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

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Christ has done for us and God's faithfulness to us, my takeaway is like, well, bro, no kidding.

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I mean, what else would I want to do? You know, as a redeemed sinner, why on the world would

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I ever consider what God has done for me and his faithfulness to me and think, yeah, I don't really wanna pursue loving my brothers and sisters.

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I don't really wanna pursue steadfastness or godliness. I think I just wanna keep running in the direction of sin and harming my neighbor.

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Like, said no one ever. Now, we're gonna struggle because we're still sinners, right, we're sinner saints.

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

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Peter are good things. And so our takeaway is like, yeah, bro, I'm with you. Like, let's ride, man.

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

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And so I think that's the posture that I would wanna 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.

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Let's consider what Christ has done for us. And now let's pursue these things. And I imagine their reaction is gonna be sort of like I've described.

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Like, absolutely, brother, amen. No kidding. You know, what do we pay you for? That makes entire sense to me.

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

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

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It's a good observation. 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

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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.

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And so one of the things that pietism loves is what? It loves conditional statements because pietism reads conditional statements as in this threatening tone, where what

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I think Peter is doing here is he is just giving kind of sound logic and well, no kidding, right?

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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

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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 gonna ask the question, well, what if it's not increasing?

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What does that mean, right? Well, he gives us the solution in verse three and four.

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

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What is the medicine to the soul that is ineffective? What is the prescription to the person that is unfruitful?

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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

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God, like none of this would be possible. And so that is what you need to look to.

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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.

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If these qualities are not increasing, you are going to be ineffective, right? Because people are gonna look at you and say, something's off here.

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Like, what is this guy not, 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, cleansed from his former sins, right?

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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?

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That you've forgotten. You have, 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

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God has done for us in Christ. And Peter is saying the exact same thing here in verse eight and nine.

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

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Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. 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.

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And how one leads to rest, and how the other often to a lack of assurance. And you can get this at theocast .org

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slash primer. And if you'd like to learn more about theocast, or if you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

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You can do that by joining our total access membership, that's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry.

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You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

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That's right. Well, to your point, Jimmy, he says ineffective and unfruitful in what?

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Not securing your salvation, not in proving your salvation.

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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 Pius X can get afraid.

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

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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.

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They all have to do with you and your relationship to your brothers and sisters in Christ. And the goal is to be able to not only preach, but also demonstrate the gospel.

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And 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.

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But 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

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God, he goes, listen, you're gonna be ineffective in doing that, and it's not gonna be fruitful. A fruitful relationship with another believer is to give them grace and mercy and kindness and forgiveness and love.

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

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

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Now, qualities, when he's talking about lack, these qualities is nearsighted. This is where things can get murky for people.

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So again, I think I'm just gonna try and say the same thing that Jimmy did, and I'll just give you another perspective on this.

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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, that what you should be turning to is repentance, and what causes you to repent clearly in verse nine is what's cleansed you.

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You are always looking to the past to motivate you for the present. You always look to your position,

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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.

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And I think Peter does a excellent job here of using language to help us say, look to your past to motivate you to pursue holiness.

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I'm gonna pick up right where you guys are too. I think this needs to be reiterated. The prescription, as you put it,

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Jimmy, whenever we find ourselves struggling is to remember the gospel. And God throughout scripture,

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Old Testament and New, operates this way. He constantly is telling his people to remember what I've done.

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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

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God who has worked the greater exodus for you in saving you from slavery to sin and death and hell.

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And so we're remembering the gospel and in particular, we're considering Jesus Christ. And a couple of things come to mind.

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Second Corinthians three, 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

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

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

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Well, what does Paul say in Philippians two? 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.

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And so to consider the Lord Jesus is always the prescription. And also a Romans two reality to pick up where you were,

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John, the kindness of God, the mercy and the grace and the patience of God is meant to lead us to repentance.

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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.

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

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And so I agree completely, guys. I wanna pick up maybe transitioning us into verses 10 and 11.

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

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For if you practice these qualities, you'll never fall. I mean, he's now exhorting them again to be diligent.

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

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I kind of alluded to that earlier, how pietism will read conditional statements and there's always some sort of jeopardy introduced.

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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

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Lord. The call to diligence, brothers, is in no way contradictory to the gospel. I think we've gotta get that through our minds that we can be called to be diligent and be safe.

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Like you can actually be secure and be exhorted to diligence because you're safe, because you're in good standing with the

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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.

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And it's gonna go really well for everybody around you. You will profit and your neighbor will profit.

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I was reading recently in this 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.

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I mean, 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.

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Yeah, and this is where the pietism can get very confusing here in verse 10.

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So this is where the heat comes in. Because what people point to is says, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election.

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What are they going to point to? They're gonna point right back to the faithfulness, virtue, knowledge, self -control, godliness.

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That is actually, even in grammarly speaking, in grammar, that is not what he's pointing back to.

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

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Forgetting the gospel. 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 three and four and verses eight and nine.

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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.

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I mean, you're smoking out the lazy Christian. You're smoking out the person who just wants to claim

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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.

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Well, how do you do that? You confirm it by looking at the promises and believing the promises.

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And he says, if you practice these qualities, what qualities? Looking to how you have been cleansed, then you will never fall.

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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.

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This is Roman Catholicism, which we did a podcast on. Go back and listen to it. I guess it was last week.

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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.

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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 of the brothers is what confirms it.

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So there's, we have another Days and Confused that we are going to do soon is on the same one is to examine your self -deceiver of the faith.

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People use this passage in the same way. So guys, why is it that, I mean,

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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?

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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 that, well,

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I just think of Ephesians chapter one and chapter two. Ephesians chapter one gives us this great

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Trinitarian theological treatise on how all the persons of the Trinity are working in tandem for the redemption of broken and weary sinners.

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And then we get into Ephesians two, where Paul takes that glorious in the air gospel and he brings it to the ground level.

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And he talks about how it's been applied to us by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, right? That's Ephesians chapter two, verse one to 10.

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And it's not until those things are presented that again, we start to see the imperatives be fleshed out in chapters three and on.

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In the book of Ephesians. And so, but you have to remember what we see in the book of Ephesians, as you think about the entirety of the letter is

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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.

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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?

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And so, 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.

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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

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It's outside of us and it's counted to us by faith. I'm mindful of the entire first eight chapters of Romans.

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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.

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But then he gets into a number of realities that are relevant to this. Chapter five, we have peace with God.

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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.

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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 gonna separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

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Those are just a few thoughts. I know we were talking about Galatians, John, you may wanna take us there. Well, I would say just, man.

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Yeah, and I would say Galatians is probably the one that we point to quite often where Paul, there's no way that Peter and Paul are disagreeing with each other.

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There has to be coherence here. And 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

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God. I mean, he says in Galatians six, three, why are you so foolish to think that you're gonna begin by the spirit and now perfect yourself by the flesh?

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So to take Peter's instructions in, yeah, to take Peter's instructions in second

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Peter and say that he's pointing to your own faithfulness or your own efforts outside of the spirit would counteract what

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Paul's saying in Galatians. So is Paul right or is Peter right? We would have to say, well, in context,

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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.

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I think it's clear in the New Testament that the realization of piety or the realization of godliness is always through what

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Jesus Christ has done for us. And it's never outside of the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

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That can't be, 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.

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It's God who works in us and works through us and does it by his power. Right, and just to go back to the context.

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So he says, second 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.

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

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There's no way Peter is saying your faithfulness to these qualities is what you're entering into.

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Because if he is, that is grace plus works. That's what he's saying. So is he denying what he said in verses three and four?

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No, I think it's all in the same context. It's all in the same pericope, which is a section of scripture.

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He hasn't moved on to the next paragraph yet. And so in this pericope, he is saying these qualities, these promises that we receive from Christ.

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So sometimes the English language can be confusing because you can't look at it in the original languages.

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But when you're trying to translate these words, they can be, 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.

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And we would say, no, you have to look at all of scripture, and I think you have to look at all of the argumentation.

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So I would say Peter is not a pietist here. Peter is definitely a pietist, because we all are at heart.

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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.

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Amen, I mean, 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.

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

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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,

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I mean, namely, loving your brothers and sisters. Because if we're gonna reduce down the commands of God to us in this life,

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I mean, it is love one another. I mean, it's the words of Jesus, it's the words of John repetitively in his writing.

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And even as history goes, I mean, there are reliable sources that would indicate that the Apostle John, who lived longer than the other apostles,

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I mean, would be carried in at his old age into assemblies and would simply say, like, little children love one another.

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I mean, that was his main exhortation. I mean, so 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.

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Yeah, you could look at this section in 2 Peter 1 and kind of just call it growing up in the gospel, growing up and understanding what

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God has done for you in Christ. And it just makes logical sense that the gospel is what pushes us to love our neighbor.

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The gospel is what pushes us to add virtue to our lives. That's exactly right.

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I mean, it's just, this is the whole guilt, grace, gratitude idea that the law exposes our guilt, the gospel shows us

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God's grace, and then the gospel also motivates and gives us gratitude that fuels the holiness in the

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Christian life. And so, pietism is very tricky, right?

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It is like the snake that is always around the corner asking the question, did

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God really say, right? 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, right?

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I mean, 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?

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It belongs to the Lord, right? And that is what we are always seeking to remind ourselves of and remind our people of, specifically when we look at confusing passages like this.

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Yeah, that's good. Well, gentlemen, we're definitely gonna move over to the members' podcast, but before we do,

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Jimmy, I know you're gonna take us over there, 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?

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Because everybody who's new to Theocast, if you're not from a Reformed podcast, or I'm sorry, podcast, if you didn't come over from another

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Reformed podcast. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, for a Reformed background. This is all probably new to you.

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

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Yeah, puritism, is that what you say, puritanical? So we're gonna maybe work on that a little bit for you in helping you understand and really using

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

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So how can you do that with grace and mercy and kindness? We'll do that in the members podcast. So Jimmy, it's all you.

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Awesome. Well, thank you for listening to our conversation today. We're gonna head over to our members podcast.

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If you are unclear as to what that is, that is where we kind of take the themes and the topics and the various things that we've discussed in this podcast, and we let our hair down a little bit, perhaps have a little bit more of a lively conversation.

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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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and learn more about that, what it means to support us and receive additional resources.

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So thank you for listening. We hope this conversation was beneficial and helpful to you.

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Go ahead and share this with those around you if you think that it would help them. And thank you for your support.