The Self-Validation Project | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I are going to have a conversation about a problem within evangelicalism or within Christianity in general, where we feel like we must always be validating our faith or validating the faith of others.

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It's a lively conversation. We really hit home on the power of the gospel and how often grace can be offensive when it should be our motivation.

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We hope you enjoy. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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

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Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

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Christian life from a confessionally reformed and pastoral perspective. If you want to know what that means, well, stay tuned or read our free ebook, either one probably should do fine.

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Your hosts today are pastor of Covenant Baptist Church, Justin Perdue, and I'm Jon Moffitt, the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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I think I forgot to mention that you're from Asheville, North Carolina. Well, the problem is, Justin, we've done this three times now, and I can't remember what

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I've said. We've had all kinds of technical problems, and it's been a glorious morning. We had some spiritual warfare going on with lights going on and off, all kinds of things.

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I was going to say, we've done this three times with Triune God We Serve. Why do it once when you can do it three times?

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That's right. We're doing well anyways. We're going to go ahead and jump into it. It's a fun topic for today, and Justin, I'm going to go ahead and let you start and explain to us what do we mean by the self -validation project.

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This is a little bit of a punchy title, but I think it's going to be full of grace. Justin, explain to yourself.

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I'm going to go ahead and lead off with a couple of words about Jesus Christ, our Savior. I don't mean that facetiously at all.

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John and I both are of the persuasion that Christ is the only hope that sinners like us could ever have. We are also convinced from Scripture that Jesus is the only person who has ever earned anything good from God.

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We're very clear that one person has earned eternal blessedness.

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One person has earned eternal life, and his name is Jesus. The only way that any of us would ever have eternal life or blessedness is to be united to Christ by faith so that everything that is his is ours.

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This is an episode trying to bring some clarity and to expose some things that obscure the sufficient work of Christ in the place of sinners.

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The way that we're going to go about this, the title of the episode is Self -Validation Project or The Self -Validation

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Project. It's our assessment that that project of self -validation is very common in the church.

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We all, in various ways to various extents, participate in that project. What we mean is this.

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We're pretty good. By we, I mean Protestant evangelical

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Christians who would be even listening to this show, for example, serious -minded folks who believe that salvation is of the

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Lord, that kind of thing. We are pretty good with grace on the front end of salvation because we understand, we agree with Paul, we've read

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Ephesians 2, and we believe that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, that we were enslaved to our passions and our desires and our cravings, and that we were, like the rest of mankind, by nature children of wrath.

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If we were going to be made alive, not just healed a little bit, not just cleaned up a little bit, not just put back together a little bit, but made alive, then

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God had to do that. I assume that most people who listen to this episode will believe that God is the only one who can work regeneration, the new birth, that he's the only one who can grant that.

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God be praised, there are many preachers in this land who say that, who are clear on that, and we give thanks and praise to God for that.

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But it's as though we're good with grace on the front end, we understand grace to an extent on the front end, but then once we're in, once we're regenerated, we flip back to an economy of law and merit, not grace and gift.

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Now that we're in, it seems like all we're going about doing is just collecting stars and earning cookies, and that's what the

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Christian life is about. What I mean here is that the perspective of many of us, that we would never say this out loud,

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I think functionally we give it away. We'll joke in our office a lot, we use the phrase dead giveaway a lot.

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You said it earlier when we were talking. Dead giveaway that we struggle with this, John, is that we often go around doing all kinds of things and kind of kit ourselves into thinking that through our working and through our efforts, we can go back and somewhat vindicate the favor that we've been shown by God.

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God has shown us favor, and now we've really taken this and done some good with it, and so we've vindicated the favor we've been shown, when in reality, grace is unmerited favor.

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It could never be earned. Or we go around working really hard and disciplining ourselves and all of that, and we think that we can effectively retroactively vindicate

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God's saving of us. It's as though we can, through our working and through our efforts and through our deeds, we can turn ourselves into the kind of people that God would have been happy to save in the first place.

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Again, we would never say this out loud, John, but I think we give ourselves away in the ways that we think and live and act and in the ways that we treat one another.

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I think it becomes apparent. This is what we want to expose today is some of the inconsistencies in the ways that we think and live and how we have a harder time with grace than we might let on.

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We're good with grace on the front end, but grace for the Christian life, grace for sanctification, that's harder for us.

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The theological categories often matter. And sometimes there's the movement

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I was in. We really downplayed theology, theology divides, or we really just need to focus in on the gospel.

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And the emphasis became evangelism and then holy living. And I grew up in a dispensational premillennial background, or even we would watch the

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Left Behind videos. And those were used as motivation to almost validate your faith.

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You wanted to assure yourself that when the rapture came, you weren't going to be stuck in this tribulation, which is the whole point behind the

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Left Behind series and Left Behind books and the videos. And it's a validation project where here are the means by which you can perform.

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And if performed well, you can assure yourself before God and others that you have a valid faith.

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And it's really hard, Justin, to be around people who really promote this type of theology.

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They lack gentleness, they lack sincerity, they lack humility, and they seem to always want to talk about how other people are failing to live up to the validation that they should be having.

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And grace is, well, obviously we believe in grace, and obviously, yes, there's mercy, but you need to be careful because people will just take advantage of that and they'll go live however they want.

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And grace is not motivating at all for those who are, listen, if you're trying to validate yourself, you don't want grace, right?

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In some form or fashion, you want merit. Yes. You know, it's like when my wife brings me a meal and I'm beginning to eat it, what she wants to hear is, did she do a good job or not?

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She doesn't want grace in those moments because she worked really, really hard and for a long time to make this amazing potato soup that I had last night.

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And do I want to say, well, you know what, honey, there's a lot of grace for that soup? That's offensive to her. What do you mean there's a lot of grace for that soup?

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What's wrong with that soup? No, I agree, man. I think a lot of times we in the church are more like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son than we want to admit, right?

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Like verse 31 of Luke 15, what does the father say to the older son? He says, son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours.

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We forget that because we live as though we're chasing after something. We forget that we have been united to Christ and everything that is his is ours and it's been given.

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All of salvation is a gift. I mean, Jesus says that he gives us eternal life. He knows his sheep, right?

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They know him. They hear his voice. They follow me, he says. And he's like, I give them eternal life.

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You know, salvation, I mean, by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not of you, right?

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This is not man's doing. It's the gift of God, you know, and we struggle with that to live in that gift, knowing that everything that we could ever need is already ours in the

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Lord Jesus. And so we're not chasing after something. We're living in something and living in light of something.

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I can't help but think Philippians three, when you say this, when he says Philippians three, nine, and being found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

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What's interesting is Paul then talks about his life going forward of what does it mean, like straining towards the goal.

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So the goal and even how he lives, right? He's talking about verse 12, that I may have already obtained this perfection.

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I'm not there yet, but let me just word it this way. We walk day by day in the position of our righteousness, or we could say it this way, positional righteousness.

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When he says we have, it means it's ours. We have a righteousness that has been given to us by Jesus, by faith.

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And then Paul says, walk by faith. Well, now you know what he means, faith in that righteousness, right?

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What makes you acceptable before God? It's not that you are sinless, it's that you are righteous.

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God demands perfection before him, righteousness. So when he says walk by faith, you're walking every day in that positional righteousness, just to live every day, trying to validate oneself.

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You are in essence denying your identity. You're denying the gift that was given to you, and you're saying it's not sufficient.

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I need to add to it. Agree. And what we end up doing, I'm at least reflecting on my own heart and mind.

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I think one of the struggles that I still have, John, is that I am so prone, and I know

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I'm not alone, when I read many, many passages in the Bible, in particular, where God is giving commands, and in particular, where he's clear about the judgment and the punishment that we deserve for breaking said commands.

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I am still so prone to try to turn the law into a covenant of works that needs to be kept for righteousness.

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And I'm haunted by the fact that I haven't done well enough. And what are we doing in those moments?

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We are all in ways, consciously and subconsciously, that we're collapsing the law and the gospel.

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And we're forgetting that everything that God demands in his law, he gives in his gospel through the work of God, the son who took on flesh, whose name is

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Jesus. And so, what that ends up doing, to your point, it affects the way that I live, and it affects the way that I think about my heavenly father.

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It causes me to question his love for me sometimes, because I am so disappointed in me, I trust he must be too.

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Or, we were talking about this analogy, and every analogy, every illustration falls apart at some point, so don't nail this to the wall, but just hear us say this, and we might talk about it for a second.

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It's like if you, as a loving parent, were to give your child a very valuable, very expensive gift that will change the rest of your child's life.

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And upon receiving this gift of such tremendous value and such tremendous impact for the rest of his life, your young child goes to his piggy bank and scrapes together a few quarters and brings them to you, and then spends the rest of his life trying to earn that gift you gave him.

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There are two huge things that he doesn't understand, your child. One, he doesn't understand that he could never come close to earning or paying for this gift, because he cannot understand its cost or its value.

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But then secondly, the other thing he doesn't understand is that you, as a loving parent, don't want him to pay for it anyway. You want him to live his life from it, in it, enjoying it, in the freedom of it, not live his life chasing after it to earn it somehow.

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And I know I am so prone to think that I have got to do something to make myself worthy of the salvation that I've been given.

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And the fear, of course, is that you're not going to do enough. And then in the end, especially in the Calvinistic world, in the end, you're just going to prove yourself to be an unbeliever.

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That's right. That's, I think, where the rubber meets the road. I think that's the fear of many people, and that's what motivates, sadly, that's motivating so many people to do things, when in reality, the motivation is something entirely different.

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We're going to get there in a minute. Have I done enough? I mean, I can't help but go back to Galatians 3, when he says,

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Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? This is what we're talking about, where you're looking to this validation of your actions.

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You, your actions, saying, I am righteous because of what I have done.

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And Paul says, no, you are righteous because of what Christ has done, right?

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So, multiple times in scripture, we are drawn back to our positional righteousness.

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What's so hard for us is to think— And positional righteousness, John, define that briefly. It means that my standing, when

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God looks at me, He sees me behind, standing behind Christ, and I receive all of the love, affections, and rewards because of who

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Christ is. So, think it literally as my position is, I'm standing behind Jesus. You're in Him.

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I'm in Him, and we're one. We're one. And when God looks at me, He looks and sees all of the perfection of Jesus.

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It's so offensive to add to perfection, right? This is why I said, when my wife brought me that soup, and I was like, well, there's grace for that.

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That's offensive to her because it's like, if it's a good soup, if it's good, it doesn't need anything else, right?

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Just a side note, totally not a part of the illustration, but when we first got married, I love hot sauce. I love

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Tapatio. I put it on everything. Eggs, spaghetti, lasagna. This is true. I've seen it happen.

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So, my wife makes spaghetti, and I'm like, hey, where's the Tapatio? And she's offended because she thinks it doesn't taste well. I'm like, oh, no, no.

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I just put it on everything. But we don't understand that the moment you think you have this obligation to validate your faith to the

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Father, just from a Calvinistic standpoint, from a sovereignty of God, God does not live in wonder.

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God does not live in lack of knowledge. He knows His own.

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He knew us before the foundation of the world. He knew us before we were in our mother's womb. It's like there's so many verses that just ooze with God is in complete knowledge of who belongs to Him and who is

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His. So, we don't need to validate our faith. We need to live in light of it, in reflection of it.

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I'll use Paul's words, right? He says to work it out because why? He's working in you.

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Exactly. That's Philippians 2, 12, and 13. That's right. Right after, he's talking about what positional righteousness that he has.

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Or go to Ephesians, when he says, walk in a manner worthy of the calling sovereignly to which you have been called.

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And what does he do? He doesn't point you to validation. He says a worthy way of living is to love other people for the sake of harmony and peace.

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If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, a primer on rest.

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

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

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slash primer. The apostles, we said this many times, we'll say it again.

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The apostles always write with this perspective. They write in a way of the Christian life that is status forward, meaning they confirm the saints in the faith and the fact that they're justified, declared just by God, and then go on to say, now, here's how the redeemed live.

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Or it's identity forward. You are united to Christ. You are a child of God.

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So you are a child of God. And now here's how the children of God live. That's how the apostles write. We struggle so much with that,

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John, because we immediately, whenever the apostles describe how the redeemed, the saints live, we immediately start doing this measuring stick comparison stuff.

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Like, are we doing it well enough to be legit enough? And it plagues us all, which is why the constant unashamed preaching of the gospel and the preaching of grace, it just can't be overdone.

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And this is why we need to hear it every week when we gather, because we forget it every day. Well, I would encourage the listener to go back and listen to the podcast we did on James 2.

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We'll put it in the notes. And then even the sermon series I've done on James, because what's interesting is that in James, we always use this as a validation passage.

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It's a total validation passage. Oh, for sure. But it's not. James literally says, brothers. He gives them our identity first.

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He identifies seven times before he even gets to chapter two that he is talking to people who are in Christ.

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In chapter one, verses 16 and 17, he talks about that their salvation is a sovereign gift according to the will of God.

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In chapter three, he literally says, walk in a manner worthy. And sorry, no, he says, sorry.

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So speak and so act as ones who have been liberated by the law. The point of it is, James is dealing with people who are not living in light of their identity.

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They are actually ignoring it, and they're trying to grasp after things. In this life, ignoring,

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I mean, literally James says, let the lowly boast in his exaltation. Exaltation in what?

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In what we receive as adopted children of God. So even in a book that we've illustrated before, even in a book that we often want to use as a means for validation, it's not.

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James is still calling them back to their identity first. We are safe in Christ. And because of that, the way in which we live is an outflow from that.

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It is not a validation of it. So you mentioned your series in James.

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I'm currently doing a series in the parables. And I would encourage people to go listen to some of that because inevitably in the parables of Christ, the way the kingdom of heaven works comes up over and over and over again.

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Because that's part of the reason he tells the parables is to explain to us the kingdom of God, because it does not work like we think it would work.

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And if we're honest, it does not work like we think it should work. Exhibit A is like the parable of the laborers in the vineyard in Matthew 20.

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The offense of that parable is kind of double. I mean, one is that everybody's equally justified. But the offense even more so is the fact that when we listen to that parable, and Jesus tells it, many people are familiar where there's people that have worked various number of hours in the day.

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And the people that have worked one hour are paid first, and they're paid a denarius, and then the people that worked all day come to be paid.

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They think they're going to get paid more, but they also receive a denarius, and they grumble.

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And they're like, what is the deal here? Like these fools worked an hour and we worked all day and you're making them equal to us, and we rise up with those workers and agree with them.

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This isn't fair. And then the master replies in a way that is very offensive to us in a way, because he says,

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I'm doing you no wrong. You know, I'm paying you what we agreed to this morning, which is true. But then he says,

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I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. In other words,

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Jesus is explaining to his disciples who have just said, look at all we've sacrificed for you.

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Jesus has said, it's going to be worth it, but realize that the first will be last and last first. In other words, all of this is grace.

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All of this is gift. Like your sacrifice does not obligate God to repay you because all of this has been given to you.

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You could never have earned this. So the offense is not just on the front end that everybody's equally justified by God's grace as a gift, but that everyone, even in terms of what we will receive from God in the end, it's all of grace, which is stuff we've highlighted,

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John, I think in recent months anyway, as we've talked some about good works. When we do good things in the

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Christian life, which we should do, where does the power come from? It comes completely from the

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Spirit of Christ. That's our confession, 16 .3, first sentence. But then what about our works?

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Are they good enough on their own to merit anything from God? No. I mean, well, then how in the world does he reward us?

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He rewards us in his Son because we do these things in faith and we do these things in union with Christ, and God is good and gracious.

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And so what we need to realize is that when God looks at us and says, well done, good and faithful servant, first of all, that's astonishing that he would ever say such a thing to people like us.

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But he's going to say that, and he's going to reward us in the kingdom of heaven based upon grace and not what we've earned because it's all been given.

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Anyway, it's a really, really big thing for our motivations and how we live with each other. It is.

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I know we have a few minutes here as we're kind of transitioning, but just thinking,

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Justin, about grace as our motivation, because for instance, self -validation, the motivation behind that is to prove that one has a capacity or one belongs, one has reason.

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So I think that transitioning now to kind of understanding the positive side of the motivation, when

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I think about the Christian life, the outflow of it, when you don't live your life trying to prove yourself to others and prove yourself to God, this is what it looks like according to the

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New Testament. I love Hebrews 4. Man, it's such a tender place for me.

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What do we have? We have a high priest who understands our weakness, who in every way knows how we are tempted, how we deal with the frailties of our flesh.

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I mean, I'm so thankful for our brother Paul, and he's like, hey guys, you're going to war against the flesh, and at times you're going to give in, and it is hard, and you're going to do the things you don't want to do, and you're not going to do the things you need to do.

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Oh, wretched man that I am, who's going to save me? It's the great high priest. It's the great high priest who saves you.

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What does Hebrews say? With boldness. Well, why should I have boldness?

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Because of my positional righteousness. With boldness, I belong as an adopted child.

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I belong in the presence of the Father. And he says, hey, whenever you need grace and whenever you need mercy in a time of need, you can come and get it.

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So what does that look like? Well, I wake up in the morning and I think, all right, Father, what is it that you need from me today?

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Because obviously you left me here and you said there's a way I can walk that's worthy.

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So what does that look like? Oh, love my brothers and care for them and be eager to maintain peace.

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Okay, I'll go do that. At the end of the day, you're like, man, I didn't do so great.

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He goes, I know. Come here and I'm going to give you some mercy and I'm going to give you some grace. And you wake up the next day and you think, okay, well,

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I'm going to go and do that today. And you get halfway through the day and you're like, man, I'm not doing so great. And he goes, I know this is why you walk by faith.

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This is just keep your eyes on me. Set aside the weight, set aside the sin, and just focus up on me.

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If you keep focused on me, you'll do fine. You'll be effective. If you don't focus on me, you're not going to be effective in what I need you to do.

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Effective in what, Justin? Effective in what? Loving our neighbor, loving our brothers and sisters in Christ.

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That's the difference between living in my validation or living in my identity and trying to identify.

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We live in grace. We live in grace, constant grace. Without grace, we have not the motivation to try again and try again and try again.

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Well, to live under grace and not under law means that we live this way as though everything has been given to us and it's already ours.

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We're not trying to earn it through our obedience. That's right. And that's so difficult.

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An observation in Hebrews four that has four and five, but especially four, 14 to 16, like what you were saying, our great high priest who sympathizes with us in our weakness, he is the one who is without sin.

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I think it's an astonishing observation because if you think about us, John, as fallen humans, if any of us were without sin in the church,

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I fear, I mean, obviously, if we were without sin, we would love our brothers perfectly. But let's just say that any of us reach some objectively verifiable level of sanctification that's just off the charts.

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My fear for a lot of us is that we would then be harder on those who are not as godly because that's often what occurs in the church.

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The more mature you perceive yourself to be, oftentimes you're harder on people who are not, and that's the complete opposite of how our savior is.

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He is the one who is without sin, yet he is sympathetic. So should we not be the same way?

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We've said this before. The more mature we are, the more sanctified we are, the more wisdom we have, the more understanding we have.

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First of all, what do you understand? What do you have that you've not been given? But then secondarily, the more of that stuff you have, the more compassionate and sympathetic you should be toward the weak.

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You should not be less compassionate. You should not be more edgy and harder.

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You should be more gentle. You should be more humble. You should be more patient. All of that.

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Even when you're confronting people in San Galatians 6 .2, do it with the spirit of meekness, lest you too fall into temptation.

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In Romans 15, those of us who are strong, it is incumbent upon us to bear with those who are weak.

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I can't even help, even in James. James is writing to this church that they're doing some pretty not good stuff.

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He even uses an Old Testament language. Or do you suppose, James 4 .5, or do you suppose it is not the purpose that scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell within us?

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He's talking about, he literally just called him not idolaters, he says adulterers, like those of you who are whoring yourself to other gods.

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He says, but he gives more grace. It's offensive and it's harsh to hear that even when we fall away,

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God calls his back, not under law, he calls his back with grace. Final observation for me as we're trying to think about the positive outflows of a deeper understanding of Christ and a deeper understanding of grace and the gospel.

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I'm convinced that the more we understand those things, John, and the more we take them to heart, it produces deeper love in the church for one another, and it produces greater levels of effectiveness in the church.

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What I mean at the most basic level is this, if you understand yourself to be a debtor to grace, you are then stirred to love and serve other people who are also debtors to grace.

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If you understand that Christ is your only hope, you are stirred to love and serve other people who also know that Christ is their only hope.

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Because there's something to that collective sense of our need of Christ and the collective sense of being debtors to grace that knits hearts together and fuels us in loving one another and serving one another in the church.

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I think what we pray and hope for is that our hearts, as we understand Christ and the gospel and the grace of God, that our hearts would be filled with gratitude, that our hearts would be filled with love and with joy, and that we might legitimately love and serve each other because we are heirs together of such a great salvation.

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That's right. When I think about when Jesus says, no greater demonstration of love is this.

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You know what he describes next? Grace. That a man should lay down his life. So Jesus...

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Take his friend's place. That's right. Jesus gave what we don't deserve. That's grace.

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And then what does 1 John say? We love because he first loved us.

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Right. He gave the demonstration of grace. He loved us. Grace is our means of salvation and grace is our means of motivation.

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We are motivated by grace to live this life each and every day. And it's really hard when you have a steady diet and you've been told your entire life that you must do these things to validate yourself.

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That's not grace, dear child. That is not grace. You are not walking by faith. You are walking by faithfulness.

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Your eyes are on you. They're not on Jesus. Your hope is on your capacity. It's not on your identity.

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And so we're here just to say as loud and as long as we possibly can, look unto

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Jesus. He started your faith. He will end your faith. He will complete it.

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He is perfect and he's never failed. And every time you fail with absolute boldness, you can run in to the presence of your

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Father and say, Father, I have failed once again. Will you please give me mercy? And I need grace so that I may trust in this amazing gospel that you have given me.

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And so as believers, as Hebrews says, we need to daily consider how to take these truths and build each other up so that we are not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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Dear child, we are not giving you freedom to go and enslave yourself into sin. We're giving you every reason to trust in the grace of God to fight your sin because it is there you find hope and joy.

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Amen. If I can add one other brief thing, I think just an encouragement to us and maybe another way to expose what we're talking about.

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You said something that made me think about this. I think in the church landscape today, most people in trying to respond to the objection that Paul responds to in the beginning of Romans six, should we go on sinning that grace may abound?

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I think the answer of many today would be by no means, because if you're legit, you will do these things and you won't do these things.

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That's how I think most would respond. Whereas, how does Paul respond? Should we go on sinning that grace may abound?

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By no means. Why? Because you've been united to Christ. You've been baptized into Jesus.

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You've been set free from the tyranny of sin, and you've become obedient from the heart. That's his answer, and that's what you just said.

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I just said it in a way that's more punchy, so there that was. John tried to land us on a pillow, and then I come back in and blow that up.

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But that's why you guys love us, and welcome to Theocast, all those good things. We're going to record another podcast now,

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John. Tell people about it. That's right. Well, Justin and I have the opportunity to record a second podcast, and we love to do it.

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That's a lead -in to Semper Ephraimanda. It tends to be a little bit more edgy, more educational, and it can go all kinds of different directions.

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We love recording it, and it's kind of like Theocast gets us all warmed up, and this is how we have to do it.

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This is the calm down moment. How do we land this thing? So if you want to know more about this podcast, it's called

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Semper Ephraimanda. It's how we interact with those who support our ministry. We have several people who support us on a monthly basis, and you can go to Theocast .org

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to learn more about that. The program is called Semper Ephraimanda. We have an app.

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We have a private podcast feed. We have lots of interaction that's in there and giveaways. It's a lot of fun, and it's growing, and we're so thankful for all of you that are there.

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So if you'd like to learn more about that, you can go to Theocast .org, and for those of you that are in SR, we'll see you there, and for those of you that are not, we'll see you next week,