November 29, 2016 Show with Stanley D. Gale on “Finding Forgiveness: Discovering the Healing Power of the Gospel”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 29th day of November 2016.

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Well, I'm delighted to have for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron today, Dr. Stanley D.

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Gale. He is pastor of Reformed Presbyterian Church in Westchester, Pennsylvania, which is a congregation within the

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Presbyterian Church in America denomination, also known as the PCA. He is the author of a number of books, including

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Warfare Witness Contending with Spiritual Opposition in Everyday Evangelism and What is

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Spiritual Warfare and Why Do We Pray? And he's also founder and director of Community Houses of Prayer.

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Today we're discussing one of his books, Finding Forgiveness, Discovering the Healing Power of the

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Gospel. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. Stanley D.

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Gale. Chris, thank you. It's a delight to be with you. Yeah, not only am

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I excited because you're a first -time guest and have thought highly of your writing ministry, but also because this is a very, very important subject, obviously, one of the pinnacle issues involved in the

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Christian faith and life. And before we go into the topic of Hand, Finding Forgiveness, Discovering the

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Healing Power of the Gospel, I'd like to know something about yourself, your personal testimony, what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, you were raised in, and what providential occurrences that our sovereign

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Lord bring about in your life that drew you to himself? Well, providential occurrences is a great way to put it.

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I was raised in a religious home, very much of a going to church kind of thing and keeping your nose kind of clean kind of thing.

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And then when I went away to college, no one was forcing the issue. So I stopped going to church and actually was influenced by some of the philosophy

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I was learning. I went to the University of Delaware. I grew up in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and I went to a university there in Newark.

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And then I was starting to learn things about philosophy, and I pretty much,

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I'm not sure if I became an atheist, but very much of an agnostic. And I enjoyed debating

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Christians because I thought it was so nonsensical, and they were so delusional. So living in Rehoboth, one of the joys,

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I worked there as a summer resort, and we would get this influx of college students each year.

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And my goal as a busboy at a restaurant, my goal was to date all of the cute girls who were coming in.

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So I did, and I was introduced to a household of Christians.

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I was dating this one girl. I was not a believer at this point. And then her roommate came a little bit later, who also went to Delaware, and so I started dating her because I thought she was cuter.

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So that's pretty much me. So it was remarkable.

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I think I saw for the first time a Christianity that grew and flowed from the inside out.

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There was this personal awareness, personal acquaintance with God that was foreign to me, and so I was intrigued.

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That was the summer. So when I went back to college at Delaware in the fall,

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I was still dating this girl, and she went to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

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And so I would go and sit outside and study while she went into the meeting. And then I got to know some of these students, these

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Christian students, and they weren't all obnoxious. They weren't pressing me.

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They just befriended me. And pretty soon I started learning the gospel. I knew

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I'd been in religion for a number of years of my life, but I'd never heard the gospel. I was never required to read the Bible. So I guess it was

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October 1974, I got my eyes to my need for Jesus Christ, my sin, and Him as my

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Savior, and I committed my life to Christ by His grace. Amen. Now, was your first Christian experience as a born -again believer within the theologically

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Reformed community, or were you in a different theological perspective at that time? Yeah, that's a good question.

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Actually, I cut my teeth on Reformed theology. The guy who was heading the

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InterVarsity ministry at the University of Delaware, Will Metzger is his name, he attended

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Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which became a PCA church, it was a

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Reformed church, and so I learned the doctrines of grace and understood this, learned more about the sovereignty of God, and it was just a wonderful thing.

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Very rich. Was Will Metzger at one time a mentor for the now agnostic

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Bart Ehrman, or is that a different Metzger? That doesn't ring a bell to me.

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Okay, because I know that there was a Metzger, and I am familiar with Will Metzger, but I'm trying to remember if he was the one that was actually a mentor of Bart Ehrman, who at the time was obviously a

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Christian. He was viewed as a bright and shining and rising star in the

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Evangelical community, and then he became agnostic. It's kind of a reverse thing of what happened to you. Yeah, you're right.

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And so, when did you realize, and how did you realize that God was placing a call upon your heart and your life to become a minister?

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I went to...my undergraduate degree was in psychology, so I graduated in psychology, and of course you can't do anything with that, so I sought a number of options, but I ended up staying at Delaware and going for a

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Master of Education in Guidance and Counseling. I thought that was a good application. I was a

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Christian at this point, and so one of the things that I did was kind of process what I was learning from this secular viewpoint about counseling with what

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I've been reading from good Christian counseling books, and I grew in that area.

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So then I went to...in our final year of the grad school, we had an internship, and I was placed at a

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Roman Catholic institution in Wilmington, Delaware, and it was wonderful because it gave me opportunity to do actual guidance and counseling, whereas my peers in the program, they all did scheduling of students, so for classes, and I didn't have any of that.

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We had...there was a vice principal who did that, so I was actually able to interact and bring a biblical worldview to bear and be involved in the guys...it

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was an all -male school of the students. So it was...I'm

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not sure what year it was, but I guess it was around 1982. I said...I

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was...I started having this draw at the seminary through some friends of mine who would attend the seminary, and I was with my wife in bed one night, and I leaned over to her and said, you know,

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I think God's calling me to seminary, and she said, no, he's not. So after the dust settled from that, and we talked it out some, she said, well, we can go to seminary.

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You can pursue that if we don't have to move. This was an hour and a half away from Westminster Seminary where I ended up going.

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We don't have to move. I don't have to get a job because we had a couple kids at home, and she said, you know, we were both of the same mind that we wanted...we

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preferred that she be a stay -at -home mom and take care of the kids, and also that God would need to provide, and it was incredible how

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God provided. I did have to commute four years to Westminster, an hour and a half each way, but that was a blessing, too.

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But, you know, to give you an example, I went to...I was serving as a hospital chaplain, volunteer hospital chaplain, and so I went to the department chair and said,

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I need to stop doing this because I need to get a job that pays so I can afford to go to seminary, and he goes, it just so happened that one of my part -time chaplains quit, and I can hire you on part -time, and not only did

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I get paid, but it was just a wonderful experience and a ministry opportunity.

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So that was an example of how God provided, and he did it in many other ways, too, to make it happen, so that I ended up finishing

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Westminster and able to enter into the pastoral ministry. Praise God.

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And now you are and have been since 1988 the pastor of the

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Reformed Presbyterian Church of Westchester, Pennsylvania. Unlike your neighbors to the east in New York, you spell that with two words,

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Westchester. That's right, yes. And a lot of folks, when they hear

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Reformed Presbyterian Church, they're immediately thinking of the Covenanters, but that is not the case with your congregation.

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You are in the PCA, and I've heard that a lot, the reason why there are a lot of PCA congregations who call themselves

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Reformed Presbyterian Church is because after the fundamentalist modernist controversy, before the

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PCA arose, about the same time as the OPC was forming, there was a

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Reformed Presbyterian Church unaffiliated with the Covenanters that eventually merged with another group and became the

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PCA. Am I right on that? Yes, yeah. I guess it was, well, initially we were, my congregation before I came was a

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Bible Presbyterian Church congregation. Okay, yes, I know that denomination. There was a group that went with Charles McIntyre, but our group did not, and it was a strange, independent

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Presbyterian congregation, that's for sure. But then when the church joined the

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Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod, they changed their name from Bible Presbyterian Church to Reformed Presbyterian Church, and then that was kind of swallowed up with the joining and receiving in the

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PCA in, I guess it was what, 1973, something like that. Yeah, Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod was also the original denomination of the local

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PCA church about 10 minutes from where I'm sitting. Carlisle Reformed Presbyterian Church is actually a

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PCA church pastored by Matt Purdy, and Deckard Stevens is the new associate pastor there.

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Looking forward to getting to know him better. I had the privilege of interviewing him in the past. Deckard Stevens is a survivor of cancer and has quite a remarkable testimony.

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Oh, okay. I knew David Cross. I think he's the one who started that church. Yes, I met David briefly and hope to get him on the program.

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I met him in a Christian bookstore right down the road, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, and looking forward to interviewing him at some point.

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He'd be a great guest. He has much to share. Yes. And you also are founder and director of Community Houses of Prayer, if you could tell about that.

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Actually, my first book was called the Community Houses of Prayer Ministry Manual, and one of the reasons

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I write is because I want to equip the saints for the work of ministry, and so I write to help mobilize

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Christ's church and minister to them in a variety of ways. This, what

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I wanted to do through Community Houses of Prayer, it's a ministry to engage

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Christ's saints in their life spheres for the sake of the gospel, and so it trains people.

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This manual that I wrote, and there's a website also, communityhousesofprayer .chopministry

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.net website, that enfolds four aspects, and one is life sphere witness, where you kind of map out your life, and you see what are the life spheres that God has providentially placed you in, and where he uses you to reach others for Jesus Christ.

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You know, that could be work or family, or where you play, or neighborhood, your neighborhood.

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Lots of people do that, and then also there are aspects of personal revitalization, where, you know, we grow in our intimacy with God, and our sharing the gospel is an overflow of the fullness of the gospel in our own lives, and then there's prayer, and that's some of the writing

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I've done, a good deal of writing on prayer, because God's grown me in that area, and so I've learned what prayer is, as a means for God's ends, and so it's not just for communion with him, it's actually for the accomplishment of his purposes, that his design, and then the other aspect, and a community house is a prayer that is enfold, and people take lessons in this, but they're also reinforced as through a daily private prayer and weekly group meetings, and that's this, and this grew out of a

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Doctor of Ministry dissertation that I did for Covenant Theological Seminary.

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I was working on it, and one of my advisors, Phil Douglas is his name, he said, you know, why don't you write, there's nothing from a

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Reform perspective in the popular literature on spiritual warfare.

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So he said that the Reform community kind of acknowledges that they are tips its hat at it, but it never does anything with it in the trenches of life.

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Excellent, excellent. And then, and he said that all the popular literature is from really far -fetched, you know, the binding, naming demons, and them, and all that, and so he said, why don't you, so I did that, and that ended up being the fourth dimension of my

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Community Houses of Prayer approach, to tune people into what every New Testament writer talks about, and that is spiritual warfare and the reality of spiritual warfare.

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So it includes that as well. My website also is a place to blog and throw up articles and things like that.

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So your first book was A Warfare Witness, Contending with Spiritual Opposition and Everyday Evangelism? No, the first book was

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Community Houses of Prayer Ministry. Oh, that's right, I'm sorry. And then I, and then when I did, I wrote

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A Warfare Witness, what that did was I ended up using that text in the daily readings for the

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Community Houses of Prayer Ministry manual, because I did a revision of that. And then

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Christian Focus published that, and it basically approaches, it gets into the, it gives the theological background for the

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Community Houses of Prayer Ministry approach. I definitely want to have you back in the future, God willing, to discuss that book.

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And you also have a follow -up booklet that PNR published, What is Spiritual Warfare?

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Yeah, yeah, that's basically a primer to let people know that there is an unseen realm, you know, that God alerts us to where things are, where spiritual forces are at work, and God not only alerts us to them, but he shows us how to account for them and to address spiritual warfare as part of our daily, as part of our sanctification, as part of our growth in Christ.

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Yes, and I have been pleased to do a couple of interviews on the issue of spiritual warfare and the demonic realm and so on, because it is something that is oddly, rarely discussed, it seems, amongst

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Performed Christians from, it's rarely heard from Performed pulpits. And we are, one of the things that we consider our niche in the spectrum of Christendom is we view

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Reformed theology as bringing into consideration the whole Council of God, which makes it odd that that would be left out.

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But I do know that I've interviewed Dr. Joel Beakey on Fighting Satan, and I interviewed

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Pastor Doug Van Dorn, I think his book is

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The Unseen Realm, I think that's exactly the title of his book. And he's a Reformed Baptist.

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And I actually interviewed a Lutheran scholar on modern -day demon possession, and he takes a very biblical, balanced, sane approach to it.

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He does not agree with the sensationalistic understanding of that that is common amongst a lot of Charismatic and Pentecostal groups.

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So I was delighted to do that interview as well.

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But I just want to give a couple of website addresses, just so I don't forget to do it later.

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I want to provide the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Westchester, Pennsylvania's website, where our guest is the pastor.

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It's rpcwc .org. RPC for Reformed Presbyterian Church, WC for Westchester .org.

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And also the Community Houses of Prayer website is CHOPministry .net,

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C -H -O -P -ministry .net. Of course, CHOP stands for Community Houses of Prayer.

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So I hope that all of you at some point review those websites and continue to visit them often.

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And I want to read a commendation for the book that we are addressing today,

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Finding Forgiveness, written by a man who has been not long ago a guest on Iron, Sharp, and Zion, Dr.

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Peter Littleback. I interviewed him on his massive biography of George Washington, probably the largest book in print anywhere.

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But Dr. Littleback says, Stan Gales' Finding Forgiveness is beautifully written, eminently practical, richly biblical, and emotionally uplifting.

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It provides godly guidance and spiritual nurture for weary pastors, hurting believers, caring counselors, and troubled counselees.

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Here you'll find grace in your struggle to forgive and be forgiven. As I said, that was

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Dr. Peter Littleback, who is the President and Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for our guest, Dr. Stan Gale, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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Chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name, at least your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. I understand with a topic like this, it really opens itself up to people who want to get advice and counsel over very personal and intimate and private things, so obviously you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable, and obviously

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I will make sure you're anonymous if you're talking about specific people and churches and so on, but you can feel comfortable knowing that if you would rather remain anonymous you will not be identified on the air.

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And that's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Well, I'd like to start somewhere that may seem odd to a lot of listeners.

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I'd like you to define forgiveness, and people might say that's kind of silly, everybody knows what that means, but I have really found out over the years of my

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Christian life that no, not everybody does. I think not everybody has a biblical understanding of what that means, and there are even disagreements amongst conservative bible -believing

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Christians and even amongst Calvinists. They have disagreements over forgiveness.

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There are disagreements even between two of my modern -day heroes over forgiveness,

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Dr. J. Adams and Dr. John MacArthur, both thoroughgoing Calvinists, have disagreements over forgiveness, but if you could define your understanding of forgiveness.

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Okay, well, yeah, I'm not sure this is, on the heels of that comment,

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I'm not sure this is definitive, because I think we're always growing in our understanding as we search the scriptures to grow and to understand things.

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But I see forgiveness, there are two main words in the

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Greek New Testament that I think help us to get a good handle on forgiveness. One is aphiemi, and that means to let go.

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So here you are, someone has offended you, and basically you hold something over them, you hold something against them, and like you might picture a club in your hand, and when you forgive you, and it's aphiemi, you let go.

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You drop the ammunition. It's no longer available to you to use against them.

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And the other word for forgiveness is charizomai, which has at its heart the word grace.

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And so it's a matter of extending grace to someone.

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So with the aphiemi, you kind of drop the weapon. With the charizomai, you respond to them in a way that moves toward them in love for their well -being, for the healing of the relationship.

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And so it's kind of those two aspects, and there are ways to talk about the way you distance, the way you remove that offense from the person.

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But basically that's it, the guilt is no longer associated with them.

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And the first chapter in your book is forgiveness in the gospel.

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If you could tell us about forgiveness specifically as it's connected to the gospel. Sure. In fact, that's one of the reasons that motivated me to write the book.

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As you point out, there's a deficiency, I guess, of understanding. And something

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I want to grow an understanding of, but also as I grow, I like to express it and to help people walk along with me as I consider these things.

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Let's look at the book of Romans. The book of Romans, it's a primer in the gospel.

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It's the basics. You move from elementary school in the gospel with some generalities, you know, all that's in the fall short of the glory of God, and you're

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Jew and Gentile under the same boat, all that. And then as you move through the book of Romans, you come to grad school.

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You kind of, you open the engine room and you come to Romans 9, and you see pre -estimation.

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Ephesians starts with pre -estimation. The Romans starts with the basics. He wants people to understand the gospel.

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And it's curious that at the gospel, the message of the gospel is that our sins are forgiven.

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Our guilt is atoned for. You know, our sins are not imparted by the whole.

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We bear them no more. They're nailed to the cross. It's interesting in the book of Romans that you only find the word forgiveness, or forgive, one time, even though it deals with the basics, the

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ABCs of the gospel. You only find the word forgiveness, and that is a quote from the

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Old Testament, Psalm 32 in Romans 4. So that's very curious.

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And I think the reason is this, is that Paul, in laying out the gospel in its basics, he packages forgiveness.

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He packages forgiveness in the doctrine of justification.

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Because in order for us to be acceptable to God, we not only need to be, our sin needs to be atoned for, forgiven, but we also need to be clothed.

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So you've got two aspects in the box, the package of forgiveness, of justification. You've got forgiveness and an imputed righteousness, counted righteousness, accredited righteousness.

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So you've got cleansing and clothing, cleansing and clothing. And so, well,

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I guess that's pretty much it, is that the gospel speaks of forgiveness, but forgiveness is only, in the gospel, is only half the story.

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The other story is the imputation of the crediting of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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Not only are we called not guilty, we are called perfectly righteous. Amen. And that's the only reason that anyone is going to enter through the gates of heaven after they perish in this life.

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The only thing that will be pleasing to God is the fact that we are possessing that imputed righteousness, and thank

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God for that. We are going to our first break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air, again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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We already have a number of people who have written their questions for you, and we'll get to as many of those as we can when we return from the break.

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But if you'd like to join us again, that's chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Don't go away. We will be right back with Dr. Stan Gale and more of our discussion on forgiveness. Chris Arnson here, and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia, and here's my friend

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Dr. James White to tell you why. Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. I hope you join me at the

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G3 Conference hosted by Pastor Josh Bice and Praise Mill Baptist Church at the

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Bayway, Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what

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G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory. For more details, go to g3conference .com.

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That's g3conference .com. Thanks, James. Make sure you greet me at the

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And if you just joined us, we have as our guest today for the full two hours Dr. Stanley D.

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Gale, pastor of Reformed Presbyterian Church in Westchester, Pennsylvania, author of a number of books and founder and director of Community Houses of Prayer.

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We're discussing his book Finding Forgiveness, Discovering the Healing Power of the Gospel. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. We have a listener, Dr. Gale, in Slovenia named

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Joe, and Joe in Slovenia says, Brother Chris, please ask Dr. Gale to address the seemingly common experience of believers who are sure of their salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, who struggle with emotional and spiritual pain that more or less paralyzes them against consistent growth and grace, discipleship, service in the church, and generally keeps them from healthy

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Christian maturity. Thanks for your service to Christ and his church. Well, Dr. Gale, do you have a response to Joe in Slovenia's question?

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Well, that is a heavy, heavy... I'm sure there is a lot behind that, and it's hard to pull things together in just a short period, but I guess one is to recognize that there are, in fact,

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I've encountered many as a pastor, people who have wrestled with the whole idea of feeling assured.

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I do think that the Reformed documents held by the

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PCA and Westminster Confession of Faith helps to, as that summarizes biblical teaching,

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I think it distinguishes helpfully between objective assurance and subjective assurance. Objective assurance says that I do know that my...

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I know what Scripture teaches. I know that it says that I'm a sinner, and that Jesus Christ is

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God's remedy for sin, and that if my trust is in Jesus Christ, then

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I do not... then I... it's what my...

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it's what He has done, not what I have done that commends me to God, and it is that love of God that brought that to me, and the

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Spirit who united me to Jesus Christ that will... it all points to God, and and the

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Spirit's confirmation in our heart that we believe what God says. But the

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Confession also talks about that feeling of assurance that waxes and wanes, and I think the way that we want to be honest with that, and I think the psalmist is a great place.

36:57

You know, the psalms are great places. They're sung through all seasons that help us through all sorts of various difficulties, and we find language in there that cries out to God in an honest way, like this

37:08

John from Slovenia. I think he needs to take that to God and to do what it says in Psalm 42.

37:16

You know, why are you in despair, O my soul? Why are you cast down within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise

37:22

Him to help my countenance of my God, and to wrestle out these things. It's almost like I do believe.

37:27

Help me in my unbelief. But while the feeling, they wax and wane, we always want to come back to the solid ground of the testimony of God's Word, and we want to shore ourselves, our minds up against the assault of the evil one who would distance us from Christ and make us look for other things that prompt that restlessness.

37:51

Amen. And wouldn't you say that although this is a very real problem that John Slovenia addresses, that there are

38:00

Christians out there who should not be doubting their salvation or wrestling with assurance, wouldn't you say that in the 21st century, by far the more common dangerous problem plaguing evangelicalism, in fact plaguing

38:14

Christendom, is people having a false assurance, who have no business having any assurance that they're truly children of God and truly saved and truly on their way to heaven?

38:25

I mean, even if you look at the statistics of how many people in the

38:32

United States, the percentages of people in the United States who claim to be Christian, I mean, I think it's the majority, the vast majority of the population here makes that claim, and obviously that cannot be true.

38:43

But if you could comment on your thoughts with that. Yeah, well, that's certainly a valid point.

38:50

I think the Puritans talked about the distinction between people being professors of faith versus those being possessors of faith.

39:00

And there are those who believe that because they prayed a prayer or walked the aisle, something like that, that on the basis of that they belong to Jesus Christ, and that they got their insurance policy, and they're good to go.

39:21

But one of the things in Scripture, many times nowadays with an evangelistic presentation, there's the idea of saying, welcome to the family of God.

39:33

You've got it. You've prayed the prayer. There might be a little qualifier by saying, you know, if you really meant this, then you are part of the family of God.

39:46

But Scripture never gives assurance simply on the basis of that profession.

39:55

There's always a, it's on the basis of a fruitful life. For example, you look at 1

40:01

John, he says, Are there any things that you may know that you have eternal life? What is, he points us to changes brought by the

40:09

Holy Spirit to form Christ in us and bring Christ out in us so that we grow in the grace and the knowledge of the

40:17

Lord Jesus Christ. We grow as sons in relationship to the Father and as servants in relationship to the

40:24

Father for his kingdom. So, yeah, there are many who will say that they, and churches are filled,

40:31

Jesus talks in many of them, they look alike. They look alike.

40:38

You know, there are rich young rulers in our church who give money and they're the kind of person that pastor would want on their church roll, but Jesus touched the heart and he said that your heart is not with me.

40:52

Well, guess what, Joe in Slovenia, you have won a free copy of the book we are discussing,

40:58

Finding Forgiveness, Discovering the Healing Power of the Gospel, compliments of our friends at Reformation Heritage Books, and our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service are going to be shipping that out to you, so keep your eye open for that.

41:13

Their website is cvbbs .com and look for a package that says cvbbs .com

41:20

on the label, and that's our gift to you for submitting a question today.

41:26

And by the way, I have another book to highly recommend on that subject by Dr. Joel Beeky, who's been a guest on this program a number of times.

41:36

His doctoral dissertation eventually became a more popular book called

41:43

The Quest for Full Assurance, The Legacy of Calvin and His Successors, also published by Reformation Heritage Books, and so keep your eye out for that in catalogs and so on, or you can look it up at cvbbs .com

42:00

cvbbs .com because they carry nearly everything by Reformation Heritage Books, so that would be another book that you might want to look up and purchase.

42:12

But we also have a listener in North Carolina.

42:19

We have Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker, pastor of Shepherd's Fellowship in Greensboro, North Carolina.

42:26

I typically don't give people's names, but I know that when I see a pastor who is pastoring a theologically reformed church,

42:37

I like to give them a plug when I can, when they write in. Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker says, a number of years ago

42:44

I read a great description of depression by a church elder named Steve Lehrer.

42:50

I found it quite helpful because it defined many pastoral counseling sessions for depression ending up in dealing with a sinful selfishness foundation.

43:05

How should a pastor differentiate between clinical psychological depression and simple selfishness caused depression?

43:17

Well, I'm not sure that I'm qualified to answer that one. The father of my daughter -in -law,

43:27

Ed Welch, might be able to handle that one. Oh yeah, I've had Ed Welch on the program. Really?

43:33

Yeah. He wrote a book called Depression, a Stubborn Darkness, that is what it's called, and he has a lot to say about that.

43:43

I'm not sure how that would, you know, I guess, you know, in some ways there are some ideas where, some sense where we want to talk about, do we actually believe the gospel?

43:56

And I think it's a matter of growing in this. You know, when we first encounter these truths, we believe them intellectually, we believe them in our heart by the work of the

44:06

Holy Spirit to a certain degree. But I think that just as we, when we meet someone for the first time, we know them and we're friends, but as we grow to know them, these things become more meaningful and more part of us.

44:21

I think it's the way that it works with theological truth. We grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I'm not sure

44:29

I can, I don't know that I can answer that question in respect to depression.

44:34

One of the things, there are so many feeding factors to depression, and I understand depression is kind of a spiral, and one of the things we want to do is to see what are the things that contribute to that downward spiral, and how we can, how can we move the other direction, and fix our eyes on Christ.

44:52

You know, even, I don't want to take the risk of just tossing a Bible verse out there, but one of the things that's very meaningful to me is

45:00

Hebrews 12, where it says that, because we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us run with endurance the race marked out for us, tossing aside every encumbrance, and the sin which should easily entangle.

45:14

So there are two things mentioned there, sin and encumbrance. And perhaps the things that are going on that this pastor is wrestling with in his ministry could be fallen categories, but fixing your eyes on Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith.

45:31

So it ends up being in Christ, and looking to him, because he is the Alpha and the Omega in respect to our faith.

45:39

And then he says, it goes on, it says, consider him who, he sat down at the right hand of the throne of God, and so we want to see that the victory is ours in Christ, and how do we realize that victory?

45:52

And then he polishes it off by saying, consider him who endures such opposition so that you will not grow weary and loose heart.

45:58

And you know, I think that growing weary and loose heart can take any number of different expressions, including the things that you just mentioned.

46:08

Well, thank you very much, Pastor Vanderwerker. And you are also getting a free copy of Finding Forgiveness, Discovering the

46:16

Healing Power of the Gospel by our guest, Dr. Stanley D. Gale, complements of Reformation Heritage Books and complements of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

46:26

We'll be shipping that out to you. One of the next chapters in your book is forgiveness as kingdom currency.

46:36

Very interesting phrase, if you could explain that. Well, it's, you know, that's just kind of a way of saying that we are to forgive as we have been forgiven.

46:55

And so, in order for us to understand how we are to interact with others when they wrong us, we want to understand how

47:05

God has treated us with our wrongs against Him, because the little bit of debt that anyone would have against us because they sinned against us will be overwhelmed by the measure of God's forgiveness of us with the mountain of our sin.

47:29

And so, it works that out. And so, it says that in what you have received, then minister in kind.

47:37

Well, according to that same heading, let me ask a couple of other questions. Is it biblical to forgive and forget?

47:45

Well, you mentioned J. Adams earlier, and I got this from him, where he says it's more biblical to forgive and not remember.

47:54

If we're going to model our forgiveness on God, then we, and the expression that God uses as He speaks to us, as He condescends to speak to us in His Word, His language that speaks of not forgiving and forgetting, but forgiving and not remembering sins no more.

48:11

And we can't just forget, but we can work at not remembering. And I think we can do that by, one, no longer holding it against the offense against the person any longer.

48:26

And two, we work at not remembering by not bringing it up. And Adam speaks about this when he says we don't bring it up to the person because we've let it go, we've dropped it, and we're applying grace.

48:39

We don't bring it up to others and keep it alive by way of gossip, with the idea that what you don't feed will die.

48:47

And we don't bring it up to ourselves. Rather, we fill our minds with those things that are not just positive thinking, but profitable thinking, that which is moving toward God's ends, for God's goals.

49:01

So we work, we just don't forgive and forget like flipping a switch, but we can work at forgiving and not remembering in those three practical ways.

49:11

You know, there is a lot of talk today, not only amongst

49:16

Christians, but a lot of secular psychologists and so on, and authors, self -help book authors, who talk about forgiveness as if the primary reason for it is to cleanse yourself of bitterness and harboring grudges and remaining stifled or imprisoned in your own life because you can't move past what someone has done with you.

49:49

And there may be elements of truth in all that. There are definitely blessings, I think, that come to us when we obey

49:56

God, obviously. But is that really the primary goal of forgiveness is really to help ourselves?

50:04

It almost seems like a selfish motive to forgive someone else. Yeah. Well, I do think that scripture addresses that when it says that don't let a root of bitterness spring up and so defile many.

50:19

And when we harbor something against someone and it does eat away at us and all that, that bitterness not only affects us, affects our relationship, our walk with God, it also affects those around us as it seems to be a negative thing in the way we relate to others.

50:45

But no, I agree with you. It's not primary. The primary reason to forgive is because God has forgiven us.

50:54

That's part of kingdom life. That's part of living out the gospel.

50:59

It's part of dealing with that in the exchange of kingdom currency, forgiving as we have been forgiven.

51:06

And so it all has to do with the gospel of the kingdom. The gospel is, Jesus called it the gospel of the kingdom.

51:14

And that means that it's a kingdom that affects. It's not just a matter of salvation. It's a matter of our relationships, our values, our priorities, our goals, our ethics.

51:26

Everything has to do with loving and serving Jesus Christ and as part of his kingdom and seeking to advance that kingdom.

51:37

Oh, why do we need to confess our sins if they are already forgiven?

51:43

That actually reminds me, I don't know if you have ever heard of him, but there was a very popular national radio talk host, might have even been global, but I know he was national.

51:58

Bob George was his name. I don't think he is any longer in the radio ministry, but he had views that I would deem to be heretical.

52:09

And he said in answer to that question, you shouldn't ask for forgiveness because your sins already have been forgiven if you are saved.

52:21

And he actually would say that it was absolutely wrong, not only to ask forgiveness, but that would include obviously saying what is known as the

52:32

Lord's Prayer. And he said the only reason Jesus gave that prayer in the scriptures is because that was before the cross.

52:40

But anyway, that may be too obscure of a reference for people to be aware of. But it is a good question,

52:48

I think, though. Why do we need to confess our sins if they are already forgiven? Yeah, yeah.

52:54

I didn't know about George, but I don't think it was that one. Okay. Well, we look at justification, appropriately so, as a one -time thing, as an act of God, where He pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in His sight only for the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us and received by faith alone.

53:22

So that's a one -time thing. It's a legal declaration. But that standing has continuing application.

53:32

And I think that, for example, one very well -known passage on forgiveness that addresses what you're talking about, it comes from 1

53:40

John 1. John is writing to two believers, two ones he calls his little children who are beloved.

53:50

Clearly, he's writing to the household of faith. He speaks of the plural pronoun, we.

53:57

And we have fellowship with God, fellowship with one another. But he says this. He says in verse 8 of chapter 1, 1

54:07

John, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

54:13

If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. So on the one hand, he says we deceive ourselves if we say that we don't have sin to confess.

54:25

And he takes it to another level when he says we're actually calling God a liar by claiming to be without sin to confess.

54:35

So there's the aspect of our standing in Christ, and there's our growth in Christ.

54:43

So to confess our sins, in fact,

54:50

I'd like to put it, if I could just make it, get a little picture here.

54:57

The word confess means to say the same thing.

55:03

So when we confess sin, we don't call it a mistake. We don't use euphemisms.

55:10

We say, yes, this is a sin because God calls it a sin. And to say the same thing as means I'm lining myself up with God's assessment of my thought, word, or deed of action or inaction.

55:22

So it is to to align myself with God and his assessment. So if we confess our sins, it says that God is faithful and just, and that means that he is true to his word, he's true to his covenant, true to his promises, true to what he has accomplished in Christ and all that.

55:48

And then he is merciful and he's just, and that just means that he has actually paid for that sin through Jesus Christ.

56:00

Could you say that there's two aspects of our forgiveness? For instance, a truly born again child of God will never be punished by the judge of all the earth,

56:17

God in heaven. On that day of judgment, he is going to be welcomed into heaven, but as our heavenly father, he does chastise us.

56:29

Well, and that's the point, is that that passage in 1 John has in view the idea that our relationship with God is no longer sinner to judge.

56:42

It's now child to father. And when my kids do wrong,

56:49

I don't cease becoming, cease being their father, but our fellowship could be broken.

56:54

That's what's broken, is not the relationship, but the fellowship. And that, so for example, there's a

57:01

Psalm that talks about that when we sin, we turn our backs on God to follow after sin.

57:07

And when the spirit brings us to our senses and we turn and we see that we are the ones who walked away from God and God never walked away from us.

57:17

And so he has, he is a faithful, loving God. And when we confess our sin, we acknowledge our sin and we basically, it's a return to him.

57:29

We repent and return to him. By the way, just to prevent people from confusing the heretical

57:38

Bob George with the Bob George you know, the one that I'm referring to hosted, and maybe he does still host the program.

57:45

I just know it went off the air for a while, but he hosted a program called People to People. And I've been in the radio industry for about 30 years or more.

57:55

And when I first started with the Salem Network in the 90s, he was a very popular program and then it went off the air.

58:03

But he may have returned to the airwaves, I don't know. But I don't want somebody else named Bob George to be upset thinking that I'm attributing this heretical concept of not asking for forgiveness and not confessing your sin to God to the other orthodox

58:21

Bob George that you know. We are going to go to another listener in Indianapolis, Indiana.

58:30

But in fact, Aaron in Indianapolis, we're going to take your question after the break because I don't want to have to cut our guests short while answering you.

58:38

So if you can be patient, we'll go to your question after this break. If anybody else would like to join

58:43

Aaron on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

58:51

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with more on forgiveness with our guest

58:56

Dr. Stan Gale right after these messages from our sponsors. And for some reason that that message from our sponsor didn't start playing.

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests,

01:03:13

Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to. Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV, and occasional guest on Chris's show

01:03:25

Iron Criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called.

01:03:32

Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

01:03:39

It is going to be a bang -up conference called the G3 Conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

01:03:47

Protestant Reformation, with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people.

01:03:55

We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

01:04:03

Thanks, Todd. I think see you at the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's booth.

01:04:09

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, and I can't help but chuckle every time I hear that. But I thank all of you in the audience of Iron Sharpens Iron who have already registered for the

01:04:19

G3 Conference, and please make sure that if you haven't told them already, make sure you tell them that you heard about the

01:04:28

G3 Conference from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and they have room for about 500 more people.

01:04:34

They already have over 2 ,000 people registered, and they have room for about 500 more.

01:04:40

So please keep spreading the word. Invite other people from your congregation, or even invite lost people.

01:04:47

Especially, perhaps, invite lost people, lost friends and loved ones to the

01:04:53

G3 Conference, and if you can, perhaps even pay for their registration if you have the funds to do so.

01:04:59

And I would love to see you there. Please make sure you approach me at the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor booth when you're there.

01:05:06

We look forward to seeing you there January 19th through the 21st. In fact, there's an update on that.

01:05:12

Many of you may not be aware that on January 18th at the

01:05:18

Georgia Convention Center right there, where the conference is being held, the day before the conference on January 18th,

01:05:24

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries is going to be debating a

01:05:29

Roman Catholic apologist on whether or not a true Christian can lose his or her salvation.

01:05:38

So that's going to be an exciting event. I believe that's Trent Horn, who is the

01:05:43

Roman Catholic apologist who has accepted the challenge of Dr. White.

01:05:49

That's Trent Horn of Catholic Answers, and I am very pleased that Catholic Answers has finally lifted the ban on debating

01:06:04

Dr. James White, because for years after they saw so many of their apologists not fare very well in debates with Dr.

01:06:13

White, they had a ban against anyone debating him. But they've finally apparently lifted it, and Dr.

01:06:20

Horn is supposed to be debating Dr. White. So we look forward to that event. And if you'd like to join us on the air today with a question for our guest,

01:06:28

Dr. Stanley Gale, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. We're talking about his book,

01:06:35

Finding Forgiveness, Discovering the Healing Power of the Gospel. Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana says, could

01:06:42

Dr. Gale discuss the difference between forgiving and forgetting? For example, if one's father has an affair and abandons his family, the child may have forgiven him, but the repercussions live on.

01:06:58

So how does the child know whether he or she had truly forgiven him?

01:07:07

Yeah, that's another deep question. I'm convinced that the gospel is a power, not just to deal with a transaction of debt, as God gives us that image.

01:07:27

I think it has the power to transform and to heal. And so that sort of question, there is so much, it's not a matter of just, again, flicking that switch and forgiving.

01:07:42

That starts, you forgive, but then there's the process of trying to live that out day by day, just like we repent and bring forth fruit in keeping with our repentance.

01:07:55

And it's something we need to shore up. It's not, it's not, I guess what I want to say, it's not mechanical. So one of the things that needs to be done is to acknowledge that wrong done, and there may be certain recriminations, consequences for that, that would be addressed.

01:08:18

But it seems to me it's a matter of working at, if that person is really working at forgiving him, is removing that, not holding it against him, working and not remembering.

01:08:31

But also, it's a matter, forgiveness is a, I guess, is a pivot point.

01:08:37

So it's not an end in itself, in my understanding. Rather, what it does is it's like, it's like pulling out a thorn from your body.

01:08:49

And then what happens is healing. One of the examples that I use in my book is

01:08:54

I was going out and taking the recycling out on a day that was, it was earlier in the day, it was frozen rain on the ground.

01:09:05

So it was very slick. But by the time I took the recycling out later in the day, it was in the 40s. And I'm not thinking about frozen ground.

01:09:12

So both my arms were filled. I was zipping along a speedy way. And then

01:09:17

I hit a patch of ice with water on it, went flying, came down on the edge of a step, tore my quadriceps tendon, and was in,

01:09:26

I was hurting. But my goal in the healing was not simply to heal.

01:09:34

My goal was to get back to regular functioning. You know, for me, that's tennis, or exercise, things like that.

01:09:42

Now, I think this will be different for everyone. What does a restored relationship look like?

01:09:49

I think there's some modicum, some level of something where we need to love someone, we're called to love even our enemy.

01:09:59

What does that look like? So it's, in this gentleman's case,

01:10:06

I think it's a matter of saying, what would that relationship look like? And something else, too,

01:10:16

I think that things will be uncovered as, you know, in his own heart, but also in that relationship as things go along.

01:10:25

I don't think that it means, that forgiveness means to completely be naive, put things behind you to the extent that you're not wise and aware of things.

01:10:36

So it's a movement toward what a reconciled relationship looks like. Thank you so much,

01:10:44

Aaron, in Indianapolis, Indiana. And you have also won a free copy of the book, Finding Forgiveness, Discovering the

01:10:51

Healing Power of the Gospel. So we hope that you are richly blessed through that.

01:10:57

We have an anonymous listener in the state of Michigan, who says, Am I required to welcome an atheist ex -son -in -law into my home, who is unrepentant and is not interested in forgiveness?

01:11:13

Well, I think that that would probably be a case -by -case situation, because there's a lot of reasons why somebody shouldn't be welcoming in anybody's home.

01:11:22

Perhaps they're an unrepentant pedophile or something. But if you could comment on that.

01:11:29

Yeah, that would need to be fleshed out a little bit, because it's kind of hard to speak to specifics without them.

01:11:40

I think welcoming an atheist ex -son -in -law into your home, just speaking generally,

01:11:48

I think it is a wonderful thing. I think Jesus welcomed sinners, he ate with them, he lived, he was a model of what love and compassion, justice, all these things were like.

01:12:05

And I think for this son -in -law to come into this home and see what Christ looks like in the way that everyone else lives, and the way they treat him, that doesn't mean that they are embracing of his sin or excuse his sin, or not that they won't even discuss this.

01:12:24

I think they need to be praying about opportunities to talk about these things. So I think what you want is an environment that will allow for demonstration of the

01:12:36

Gospel and conversation with the Gospel. Well, thank you

01:12:41

Anonymous Listener, and thank you also for providing your actual name and address so we can ship out a free copy of the book that you just won,

01:12:50

Finding Forgiveness, Discovering the Healing Power of the Gospel. And thank you for participating in today's show.

01:13:00

One of the other areas that are important under this heading is, as far as the actual nuts and bolts of the matter, how do we actually go about forgiving someone?

01:13:17

Well, that's the third chapter of my book that gets into what

01:13:24

I've spoken of before, and that is, remove the offense and then work at not remembering it.

01:13:33

So removing is, I give the example in the book of a conversation I was having with my son.

01:13:40

My wife and I, son were sitting at the dining room table, and he had come home from the day, and he was having a very, we were talking about a very serious thing he had raised, and my wife had made pulled pork for dinner.

01:13:54

And so we looked at him, and he had this piece of pulled pork on his cheek. And we were trying to be all serious here, paying attention to him and give it the way that it deserves, but finally we had to say he had to remove that from his cheek in order for us to pay attention.

01:14:12

Yeah, all we could look at was that, and that's what we do when someone has wronged us. We look at them, and we see the offense kind of velcroed right there.

01:14:19

We can't see them without the offense. And so the first step of forgiveness is to remove it.

01:14:27

You know, we're told in Scripture that God removes our sin as far as the east is from the west.

01:14:33

And what that means is that to look at one is not to look at the other. So if I look at the person who wronged me, and I've forgiven them, then my back is to the offense.

01:14:43

You can't look at both. So it's kind of remove, and then the work of the remember not, by not bringing it up to the person, to others, or to yourself.

01:14:53

And by God's grace, it will eventually, I don't know, ever disappear from your mind, but it will lose power.

01:15:04

The idea that what we don't feed will die. And so we don't dwell on it.

01:15:10

We don't bring it up. And so it fades. It fades. If we were to come back to it and start scratching it again, then it would become inflamed again.

01:15:20

But our goal is, in the power of the Holy Spirit, with our focus on Christ, to leave it alone.

01:15:29

In fact, speaking of pulled pork, I don't think that I've ever eaten pulled pork where someone hasn't said to me, you've got some on your cheek, you've got it on your neck, you've got it on your shirt, you've got it on your sleeve.

01:15:44

That's a way of doing that, doesn't it? Well, some of the things that you just said,

01:15:55

I think also require some clarification in regard to consequences.

01:16:02

Like, for instance, somebody murders your entire family and then requests that you visit them in prison, and this person behind the bulletproof glass is weeping and pleading with you to forgive them.

01:16:20

If you believe that that is a genuine act of remorse and repentance that this person is demonstrating, you are obviously, as a

01:16:30

Christian, obligated to forgive them, but you would not say, guards, release this man, or let me get the warden in here.

01:16:39

I want this person out on the street immediately because I've forgiven him, and therefore he needs to be released.

01:16:44

Obviously, that's not the way forgiveness works across the board in every circumstances.

01:16:50

There are sometimes circumstances that have repercussions, that have things connected to them that does not get a person completely off scot -free in every realm of their life.

01:17:06

Would you agree? Sure. For example, let's say someone molested your child.

01:17:14

There is a huge amount of anger there, but it may not even be to that degree of molesting, but it's something inappropriate, and you forgive that person because that person comes to you and asks for forgiveness.

01:17:29

That doesn't mean you're all of a sudden going to be allowing your child to be alone with that person.

01:17:36

In addition, there may be consequences if it does reach to a level of molestation or consequences with the state.

01:17:47

Yes, there are repercussions, but in terms of you, for the sake of Christ, you move toward that person, especially since they have asked for forgiveness, and you seek to put that into practice because your sin that God has forgiven you is so much more heinous and larger because it has all, and the cost of that was the price of the blood of his own son.

01:18:22

Now, since you also quoted Dr. Adams, and I had brought him up earlier about a controversy that exists amongst even theologically reformed people who disagree on this issue,

01:18:37

I don't know where you stand, if you are completely on one side or the other or somewhere in between, but Dr.

01:18:45

J. Adams believes that the sinner's repentance is absolutely essential for a

01:18:57

Christian to extend forgiveness to them, whereas other very well -known and beloved figures, even amongst

01:19:06

Calvinists like Dr. John MacArthur, does not believe that. He believes that you are supposed to be, as a

01:19:12

Christian, forgiving people even if they have no interest in asking for it, and perhaps that might even be the majority view amongst

01:19:23

Christians, if not even the majority of theologically reformed people. And I know another reformed author who stands with Dr.

01:19:33

Adams on that wrote a really fascinating book called Unpacking Forgiveness, Biblical Answers for Complex Questions and Deep Wounds.

01:19:43

Dr. Chris Brawns. I've read that. Yeah, he would, as I said, agree with Dr. Adams on that.

01:19:49

Do you stand on either side of that or somewhere in between? Actually, I think you raised two questions.

01:19:56

One, do we forgive when someone has not asked? That's one question. The other is, do we forgive if someone asks but does not show repentance?

01:20:07

So those are two different questions with two different answers. There is a sense in exercising with a spirit of forgiveness as an exercise of love that we work at, you know, it says, hatred stirs up strife, but love covers a multitude of transgressions.

01:20:32

So we want to be one to cover over, not excuse, not cover up, but cover over in the sense of look to unilaterally, not try to work at removing it from them and work at not remembering it.

01:20:50

Now, at the same time, let's say that we don't have opportunity to deal with it because of their distance or there's a strange relationship to the center.

01:21:01

We don't even have an audience with them. Then we deal with that personally so that no root of bitterness springs up, but we pray and we say,

01:21:11

Lord, if you want me to have opportunity to pursue this, I pray that you would grant me that opportunity and that you would grant me the courage to take it and the wisdom to run with it.

01:21:26

So the other part, the other question I had about is repentance necessary?

01:21:35

That is tricky and in my book, I actually wrestle with that and I don't come out with a definitive answer because I don't think there is a definitive answer to be found.

01:21:48

When Jesus says that if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, then that makes it sound like, well, yes, repentance is necessary.

01:22:02

It needs to be there, otherwise it's bogus repentance, asking for forgiveness.

01:22:10

And so, yes, that needs to be, it needs to be, you need to look for that. You need to look for words of regret and sorrow.

01:22:21

Here's the problem with that. One, that repentance should be there because we're talking about sin and there needs to be some sense.

01:22:32

Sin is always first against God. We want to have some sense that this is an offense, this is a wrong, it grieves

01:22:40

God, it is against him as a holy

01:22:46

God, and so sin is to be hated, acknowledged, and rejected for that reason, and that's all repentance kind of stuff.

01:22:54

But when Jesus says that, if your brother, if he repents, forgive him, Jesus goes on to say, if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times saying,

01:23:08

I repent, you must forgive him. Well, that raises a question.

01:23:16

You know, repentance in Scripture is that if someone sins against you seven times a day, that almost says, well, they haven't really repented.

01:23:28

So there must be something up here. Plus, you know, Paul says we repent and bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance.

01:23:37

So seven times a day, there's no opportunity to examine fruit, to look for fruit.

01:23:46

So there must be something. So is Jesus saying repent, using the word repent is just another way of saying, if he comes to you, which he has already moved toward you, acknowledging a wrong, is that Jesus is expecting that as as repent.

01:24:04

So there are a couple things here. We want someone to hate sin, to reject the sin, first and foremost, because God's a holy

01:24:10

God, and sin is always first against God. So we want to, we don't want to minimize sin.

01:24:18

But on the other hand, we don't want to be so mechanical about things that we need to look for our version of repentance so that they need to jump to the hoops that we have in mind.

01:24:32

We always want to be inclined to forgive. So I think that what Jesus is doing is he is,

01:24:40

I think he's saying that this is what it looks like when someone turns from their back on you to turn to you to move toward you.

01:24:49

And yes, you are to forgive them, you're not to hold it against them when they take that step. I don't think it's to say you need to hear the words for forgiveness, repent rather, or hear or examine that fruit carefully for your own version.

01:25:08

By the way, I want to make it clear to our listeners that Dr. Jay Adams in his book

01:25:14

From Forgiven to Forgiving and Dr. Chris Brauns in Unpacking Forgiveness, they would both wholeheartedly agree that we are to love our enemies, that we are to pray for our enemies, that we are to do good to our enemies, but they would view that in a different category from forgiveness.

01:25:37

They would just treat forgiveness as a specific thing that goes beyond what those things are, and so I just want to make sure that I'm not giving the impression to our listeners who are unfamiliar with those two men that they are thinking that it is proper for a

01:25:53

Christian to harbor hatred and to seek revenge and all that kind of thing.

01:25:58

Yeah. If I could mention one other little twist to this whole thing, is that when Jesus says, you know, if your brother sins, rebuke, repents, forgive.

01:26:07

If he sins seven times, forgive seven times. It's interesting that the apostles' reaction, they say,

01:26:16

Lord, increase our faith. And so it's almost like what

01:26:21

Jesus is doing there is not giving the steps, the hoops, the mechanical way to go about this transaction of forgiveness.

01:26:33

I think what he's showing there, one of the things he's showing is the majesty of the mercy and the grace of God.

01:26:42

This is just too incredible to aspire to and say, Lord, I can't do this on my own strength. Lord, increase my faith so that I can move toward this, because this is unnatural to want to do that.

01:26:55

But this is the model that you show, because you are a forgiving God. And we have to go to our final break right now.

01:27:04

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:27:11

if you have a question for our guest Dr. Stan Gale on forgiveness. So don't go away.

01:27:16

We are coming right back, God willing, right after these messages. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

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I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a

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We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

01:27:51

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01:27:57

We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

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01:33:09

This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes in the next half hour to come, our guest has been and will continue to be

01:33:17

Dr. Stanley D. Gale, pastor of Reformed Presbyterian Church in Westchester, Pennsylvania, author of a number of books, and founder and director of Community Houses of Prayer.

01:33:28

We are discussing one of his books, Finding Forgiveness, Discovering the Healing Power of the

01:33:34

Gospel. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:33:41

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and our friend there in Greensboro, North Carolina, Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker, responding to my comment that every time

01:33:54

I eat pulled pork, I'm typically covered from my nose to my waist in pieces of pork and sauce.

01:34:01

He said, I bet you learned how to eat pulled pork in North Carolina. So thank you for that comment.

01:34:11

Now, this is a thing that comes up a lot.

01:34:17

You will hear Christians say this, and you will hear

01:34:23

Dr. Phil say this. You will hear Oprah Winfrey say this. You will hear a lot of people in secular society say this, whether they are counselors or talk show hosts or your father, mother, brother, sister, or neighbor.

01:34:40

They will say things like, you have got to forgive yourself. Does the

01:34:45

Bible give us a place to forgiving ourselves? Well, you're certainly right.

01:34:50

That is all over the place, and there are wide movements of teaching that talk about the need to forgive yourself.

01:35:05

The Bible talks a lot about forgiveness, but it never addresses the topic of forgiving ourselves.

01:35:21

I have a little bit of a quarrel, I guess in one sense, with both camps.

01:35:27

I have a quarrel with those who dismiss the notion of forgiving yourself.

01:35:32

They'll say something like, you're not forgiving yourself? God has forgiven you?

01:35:40

Who do you think you are, that if God has forgiven you, you shouldn't forgive yourself?

01:35:47

And so they will dismiss it. They will mock almost the real angst and shame and self -blame because of what someone did that contributed to a horrible tragedy, and they dismiss it.

01:36:02

The other is where you are called to forgive yourself.

01:36:10

There is a lot of Christian literature that addresses that, how to go about it, the steps to find freedom.

01:36:19

But again, you don't find that in Scripture, so it's a bit manufactured.

01:36:27

For me, I think to say, should I forgive myself, is asking the wrong question.

01:36:38

What it reminds me of, and I give this example in the book, is like you're in a baseball game, and you are standing at second base, and you're asking the question, should

01:36:51

I bunt or should I swing for the fences? And you're at second base, so that's not the question to be asking.

01:36:58

That's the question to be asking when you're at the plate. So I think it's important,

01:37:03

I think the Gospel deals with, as we sing this time of year, as far as the curse is found.

01:37:10

It deals not only with sin's guilt, it deals with sin's power. And I think that this question about forgiving ourselves deals not with the whole area of justification as much as it is sanctification.

01:37:27

And I think that we can process that pain and angst through the power of the

01:37:33

Gospel and through the direction of God's Word. And don't you think that it is completely inappropriate, to mildly put it, for people to publicly be granting forgiveness towards notoriously evil people when they have absolutely no connection to that person?

01:37:57

You may even hear a Christian say something like, you know, because I am commanded to forgive, I just want to let everybody know,

01:38:04

I forgive Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Well, was your family murdered in the death camps of the

01:38:13

Holocaust? I mean, have you personally been harmed by these evil, despicably satanic human beings?

01:38:23

Now, it's one thing, obviously, if a survivor of the death camp is forgiving some

01:38:28

Nazi guard who repented or something. It's another thing if, like,

01:38:34

Corrie ten Boom extended forgiveness towards these people. But for somebody who has no connection to these things, in some sort of demonstration of piety or perhaps even self -righteousness, they'll grant forgiveness to these people who they have never even met or never have heard from.

01:38:54

Isn't that entirely wrong? It sounds like it should be

01:39:00

Christian to do that. But that plays loose with God's word and I think minimizes the strength of what forgiveness is.

01:39:12

And so yes, I think another question there is, and we see this nowadays, where the people of this generation will confess the sins of a previous generation, for whether slavery or whatever it might be.

01:39:26

And I do think that Scripture, which is a rule for all of faith and life, gives us direction.

01:39:34

But we need to be careful about employing certain things that have a sound right but are not consistent with that, as you mentioned earlier, the whole counsel of God.

01:39:46

Now, to take a different spin on that, I am not a Southern Baptist. I'm a Reformed Baptist, but I am not a

01:39:53

Southern Baptist. Let's say that I am a Southern Baptist. And at the same time, the truth of my history is that my mother's ancestors came from Poland in the early 20th century.

01:40:13

I think it was before we were involved in World War II. And my father's side of the family emigrated from Norway in the 19th century.

01:40:25

So none of my family were slaveholders. But if I'm a Southern Baptist, and my denomination has a history of affirming slavery before the

01:40:36

Civil War, it would be absolutely appropriate for me as a

01:40:41

Southern Baptist to say that I, as a Southern Baptist, want you to know that I regret this horrible sin and, as a

01:40:54

Southern Baptist, openly ask of your forgiveness for it, or something to that effect, to take upon that sin because you are somehow connected with an organization that has a history of that sin.

01:41:08

Yeah, I think that's a very tricky question. We look at Daniel 9, and he confessed his own sin and the sins of his people.

01:41:17

But that wasn't confessing it to the people, it was confessing it to God. There is a sense in which if we are known for bigotry or something like that, and we are talking with someone who was oppressed by that bigotry, for us to have an honest conversation saying that, admitting that that was wrong, it should not have been done,

01:41:45

I do not believe that, and I work to make sure that people are loved as image bearers of Jesus Christ and all that,

01:41:53

I think that is a legitimate conversation. But to go about the transaction of forgiveness for that, it's hard for me to see how that comes into play.

01:42:03

And tell us what authentic forgiveness looks like. Well, part of that has to do with, you know, does repentance need to be part of, does an expression of repentance, that's kind of one of the things that I address in the book.

01:42:20

But I think authentic forgiveness, one, is it in the model, does it follow biblical framework?

01:42:31

Does it operate in a biblical process? There are, for example,

01:42:38

New Age spirituality has a whole movement there that uses words like forgiveness.

01:42:48

But it's just the casing, when you open it up, it bears no resemblance to cost, to the cross, to what

01:42:58

God has done. But I think that through some of the popular literature,

01:43:04

I think that Christians import some of this into the church, because it's packaged in a word that they're familiar with, and that is forgiveness.

01:43:12

But authentic forgiveness conforms to biblical teaching and is exercised in the model of God's example to us, and seeks to pursue a love and a reconciliation that is one of the beauties of the gospel.

01:43:36

We have an anonymous listener in New Jersey who asks, isn't one of the dangers of offering forgiveness or extending forgiveness or declaring forgiveness to someone who is unrepentant, especially if they are unrepentant, involving a dangerous sin?

01:43:58

Is that that person will be emboldened to hurt other people, perhaps even in life -threatening situations?

01:44:10

Yes, so basically it becomes an enablement of sin, enabling sin by doing that.

01:44:16

And yes, that's why when I speak of the forgiveness, and I try to come at it from all these different directions in my book, that we don't want to have the idea that it's just something sterile or mechanical or stark that is divorced from the whole of that gospel dynamic.

01:44:38

You know, gee, we're called to, simply because, for example, simply because we have forgiven someone, something doesn't mean that we don't address it anymore.

01:44:50

You know, what we've done is we've forgiven the guilt, but we may continue to need to address the pattern in their lives, or those dangers that this person is talking about.

01:44:58

But for us to naively say that we disarm a bomb by our forgiveness is not really a helpful way of looking at it.

01:45:08

I think the scripture speaks to that there's a whole body of things here related to forgiveness and not just a single action that leaves us hanging out there.

01:45:22

And of course, I believe you would agree that, because in some of those statements that our anonymous listener made, he was including extending or offering forgiveness.

01:45:36

Shouldn't we always be ready to offer forgiveness to the person before they repented?

01:45:42

Not that we've necessarily granted it to them and said, you are forgiven, but we are saying to them, you know, return to me, repent, please,

01:45:54

I'm ready to forgive you, that kind of a thing. Isn't the Christian obligated to always be ready to forgive, even no matter what side of the debate you're on regarding that controversy we spoke of?

01:46:09

You always have to be ready to forgive. Yeah, I fully agree. I think that's part of life in the kingdom, is that propensity to pardon, because we are, our credential for being part of the kingdom is the forgiveness of Jesus Christ and the clothing of his righteousness.

01:46:27

And so, yeah, we are part of the kingdom as one to have had this massive debt.

01:46:33

And so when we encounter someone who owes a little against us, the parable that Jesus told, we need to be ready and expectant and delight to forgive, to pass it on, because we have been blessed.

01:46:49

But it all is that once we lose that point of reference, that north star of God's forgiveness of us, then we lose our bearings, because our focus always has to be on God's forgiveness of us and Jesus Christ for us in our dealing with our fellow man.

01:47:07

And our anonymous listener in New Jersey, if you give me your full name and mailing address, we will give you the last copy that we have of Finding Forgiveness, Discovering the

01:47:18

Healing Power of the Gospel. And of course, you will remain anonymous even after we get your name and mailing address.

01:47:26

This is just for our purposes of sending you this gift. We have a question from Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, that is not really a question about our topic.

01:47:41

So I'm a little bit puzzled as to why he asked it, but I think we can make it a question about our topic.

01:47:49

His question is, when it comes to evangelism, do Arminians have a disadvantage because they believe human decision plays the final role in conversion?

01:48:02

Well, they have a disadvantage because they're not acting according to the scriptures.

01:48:08

It's one of the main disadvantages they have. But before I even go into tying it in with your theme today, it is true, however, that the

01:48:20

Arminian has an advantage, not over Calvinists, that is, but has a blessing upon them in that God, who is sovereign over all things, even uses the evangelism of Arminians to draw the laws to salvation.

01:48:37

In fact, if many of the Reformed people listening were to be honest with themselves as they reflect upon their lives, it is very likely that many, perhaps even most of us who are

01:48:49

Reformed, were led to Christ initially by Arminians. But to tie it in with your theme, there is an obvious deficient understanding of forgiveness.

01:49:04

When I say Arminian, I'm actually talking about the full -blown five -point Arminian who believes you could lose your salvation, which would also be in agreement with Roman Catholicism and perhaps outside of Reformational theology, all of the world's religions, except for Universalism, that is.

01:49:28

If you can fall out of favor with God eternally when you already had a right relationship or a restored relationship with him, that's a very deficient view of forgiveness, isn't it?

01:49:43

No, it certainly is. I think one of the things, I don't know, I can't say this of all

01:49:50

Arminian circles, but I do know that in some circles there is a view where you can be entirely sanctified, which means that there is no longer any sin in your life, and so it would disavow what it says in 1

01:50:07

John 1. You have a problem with that? The way they get there though is that they reduce lesson what sin is.

01:50:22

Yes, yes. Jesus had a view of sin that was extraordinarily deep. There's a view of sin and sinfulness, you know, thought, word, and deed, omission, commission, but if we make it simpler so it's just things that we can overtly do, then we can say, oh,

01:50:41

I never murdered anybody, so I'm okay with that commandment. But Jesus' view of sin was far more serious, far graver, because his view of the

01:50:52

Father was so much grander, because he is such a holy and lofty and pure God.

01:50:58

So, in fact, the way that it works in the Christian life is, the closer you grow in the knowledge of God, the more you will understand your sinfulness.

01:51:08

You know, I had an idea when he had that vision of the throne room of God, and he saw God in his profound holiness and his superlative, holy, holy, holy.

01:51:19

It was there that he shifted his gaze and realized, hey, I'm standing right here. Woe is me, for I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.

01:51:29

My eyes have seen the Lord of hosts. So, the better, the more we grow to know

01:51:36

God, the more we will see our sin in all its vileness, and the greater, the more wonderful we will see the cross that is sufficient at every point.

01:51:47

And so, when we talk about forgiveness, a person confesses sin, let's say that anybody confesses sin.

01:51:57

Forgiveness of sin is not based on confession of sin, but it's based on confession of Christ.

01:52:04

That's why John, when he says, when he says that, I write, he says, when he says, if you confess your sins, he is faithful and just, he goes on to say, my

01:52:14

Lord told him, I'm writing these things so that you do not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the

01:52:19

Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, not for ours only, for the sins of the whole world.

01:52:25

In other words, Jew or Gentile alike. And so, you can't just, God doesn't forgive sins just because we confess them.

01:52:32

It's because we put our trust in Jesus Christ and his propitiating work. My very dear friend,

01:52:39

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, who you've heard brought up in a couple of the ads we've been airing, he said profound years ago in regard to the contrast between the

01:52:52

Gospel of the Reformation and the Gospel of Rome, when he said, the

01:52:58

Gospel of the Reformation, which of course, those who are heirs of the Reformation, we believe that that is the

01:53:06

Gospel of the Bible. We believe that through the Gospel and through salvation, we receive the perfect shalom, the perfect peace with Christ.

01:53:19

Rome, and all of those who believe that a true salvation can be lost, really are only in the midst of a ceasefire.

01:53:30

They're not experiencing peace, they're in a ceasefire. A ceasefire that could erupt in full -scale war with God at any given moment.

01:53:40

And that is not something that refreshes or gives encouragement or comfort to my soul at all, knowing how sinful my own heart is.

01:53:50

Isn't that the kind of forgiveness that has really no biblical origin?

01:53:58

It doesn't. It's not the forgiveness of the Gospel. The forgiveness of the Gospel is something that is ongoing and absolute.

01:54:05

You know how it says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful just to cleanse us?

01:54:11

Well, we love that idea of cleansing, because let's say a guy has been giving himself over to pornography, and the

01:54:22

Spirit brings him to a census, and he comes to the cross, and he repents. And to be cleansed, that's such a beautiful thought, because he feels dirty.

01:54:31

Or someone who is gossiping, and talking about, a wife talking about her husband, and saying all kinds of negative things, and she comes to her census, and she realized how filthy and dirty, and she has ended to cleanse.

01:54:45

But actually, that's not the most helpful. The cleansing at the ceremonial cleansing is like that beautiful picture.

01:54:53

But we don't want to get this idea, and here's a wrong, it's really a heresy, where there's a teaching that says that if we forget to confess a sin, that it is still counted against us.

01:55:06

Wow. None of us have hope, if that was true. That's exactly right, because who knows, we forget all kinds of things.

01:55:13

So we don't want to get the idea that when we confess our sin, we come up to the laver of Christ's blood, the wash basin, and wash all the dirt off.

01:55:20

What if we miss a spot? Because we forget to confess a sin. I think that the more helpful view is to see sin as the wages, debt.

01:55:33

And so when we sin, we open up the ledger, we come to the throne of grace, we open up the ledger, and there's, we run our finger down the page, and there's our sin.

01:55:43

And we look to the right of it, and it says, paid in full. Amen.

01:55:49

So in other words, we're not being forgiven as much as we are finding forgiveness, finding that we already have been, finding that the debt has already been paid at the cross.

01:56:00

And that is the extent of the freedom that we have in Jesus Christ, in the true gospel.

01:56:05

Isn't that the very definition of Tetelestai? It is, it is paid, finished. Debt is paid. Yeah, that is such a precious truth, and it is a tragedy that people could even think.

01:56:20

It goes back to something you said before, about how some people who think that they are actually adopting a stricter or harsher view against sin are often actually minimalizing the severity of what sin is, because if they think that they can remember all their sins, they don't really understand sin to begin with, do they?

01:56:45

Right, right, exactly. And one of the ways, going back to the spiritual warfare thing, just to give us another perspective,

01:56:56

Satan points out our sin in our lives, and we have piles of things he can point out.

01:57:03

He points out our sin to drive us to despair. The Holy Spirit points out our sin to drive us to Christ, and that's a basic principle of standing in spiritual warfare.

01:57:16

Amen. And I think that if someone were to be held to the requirement that they would remember every sin, it would actually imply that the person would have to be omniscient.

01:57:30

Yeah, yeah. Well, David in Psalm 139, he wants, you know, search me

01:57:35

O God, know my heart. He just talked about God knowing everything, and the search is not for the benefit of God, it's for the benefit of David, so that he can turn from sin and continue in his fellowship with the

01:57:46

Lord. In one minute, if you could just please summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

01:57:55

I want to, I want people, I want the gospel showcased.

01:58:00

The gospel is radical, because it deals with a radical issue, this pervasive sin, and it affects something that is essential to what it means to be human, maybe the image of God, and that is made for relationship with God to glorify and enjoy

01:58:19

Him. And I want us to see, my purpose in writing the book, is to see what God has done in the gospel to deal with sins, and to help us to grow in this

01:58:31

Christian community, this greenhouse with fellow believers, and to be an agent of His love in this world with that gospel of Jesus Christ.

01:58:40

Amen, and for those of you who would like to visit Reformed Presbyterian Church in Westchester, Pennsylvania, their website is rpcwc, that's

01:58:50

Reformed Presbyterian Church, westchester .org, rpcwc .org,

01:58:57

and also the Community Houses of Prayer website is chopministry .net,

01:59:04

c -h -o -p -ministry .net, and if anybody would like to purchase the book that we have been discussing today,

01:59:11

Finding Forgiveness, Discovering the Healing Power of the Gospel, go to cvbbs .com,

01:59:16

cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com. Thank you so much, Dr. Gale, for being my guest,

01:59:22

I look forward to you returning often in the future on Iron Sharpens Iron. Well, Chris, it's been my pleasure, thank you so much.

01:59:28

And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.