The Antidote to Dead Orthodoxy Is NOT Sheep Beating!

Dead Orthodoxy, Pietism, and Revivalism

Reality of dead orthodoxy. Right. That does exist. I mean that's one of the pitfalls in confessionalism is dead orthodoxy. So then you have to ask the question, all right, even like if pietism and revivalism were well-intentioned, we still want to evaluate the the doctrinal underpinnings and even the methodology on their own merit.

And that's where I think I would begin to have some concerns. And rather than outlining what all those are, I would ask the question, what's the better way? What is the antidote? Like if what we're concerned for, rightly, is that people do experience real God-wrought transformation of life.

Sanctification by Union with Christ in Romans 6

Yeah. If what we're concerned for is that sanctification happens amongst God's people and that, you know, the church grows and that we're loving our neighbor and we're seeking to honor the Lord in our lives, amen to all of that.

And so the question is how do you rightly attack that? How do you rightly go after it? And I think the answer is quite simple and it's in the scriptures. And my last, I could talk of many of these, but my last line of defense on this is always Romans chapter six, where Paul is dealing with, there he is anticipating the objection of effectively antinomianism and licentiousness, but it still is a different kind of dead faith if we want to use that language.

Right. And he asks the question, you know, should we go on sinning so that grace might abound? And he says, by no means, but then he does not say by no means, here's what the law says, right? He doesn't say by no means, if you are a legitimate Christian and would prove yourself to be legit and not a faker, here's how you'll live.

He says, by no means we have been united to Christ. We've been baptized into Jesus. We have been justified from sin's guilt and thereby have been set free from sin's dominion and have become obedient from the heart.

And so now let's live accordingly. And of course, he's going to go on and say a number of other things about the internal war that we fight, the eternal security that we have, how God saves all of his people.

And then he pivots in chapter 12 to talk very specifically about how we live. I appeal to you, therefore brothers, by the mercies of God, present yourselves as living sacrifices. So I think, I think that's a better way to go at it is to not, you know, introduce this kind of false dichotomy.

It's like, well, and not that you're saying this at all, Drew, where it's like, either we emphasize the objective realities of Christ for us, or we emphasize godly living. It's like, no, we preach Christ and his sufficiency in union with Christ for not just justification, but also sanctification.

And we trust that the Lord is going to use the preaching of Christ, the means of grace, the fellowship of the saints, life in the church. He's going to use all of those things to produce fruit in us and to transform us, right?

The Subjectivizing of Religion

And what pietism and revivalism represent, and I'm going to try to use these words precisely, it is a subjectivizing of religion that is unhelpful, right? Where it becomes so much about me and my experience of the divine, my conversion moment, my transformation, that becomes the emphasis, right?

And at least becomes, it's woven into the fabric of my salvation, and I have to look to it somehow. And that's what we're trying to argue against, is that it is always and only Jesus when it comes to salvation.

And then there are all kinds of consequences and outflows of the fact that we've been vitally united to it. Amen.