Law/Gospel Distinction Is Life-Changing | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're going to have a conversation about the distinction between the law and the gospel.

And I recently was sitting with a group of pastors and we were all talking together about how coming to this understanding about the law and the gospel has been as important as anything that we have ever come to understand biblically and theologically for our lives, just as husbands, as dads, and certainly as pastors.

We were talking about how Martin Luther said that anyone who can rightly distinguish between the law and the gospel is a doctor of theology.

And how Charles Spurgeon said effectively the same thing. Anybody who can distinguish between these two things is a master of divinity.

So this is a really important thing for Christians to come to see in the scriptures.

It is quite literally a life -changing thing. And so this conversation today, we hope will help you come to a better and more clear understanding of the distinction between the law and the gospel.

Stay tuned. Prayer. Before I say anything else, some of you either intrigued about what

I'm going to say or you already feel ashamed, knowing that what I'm about to say is probably going to guilt you and shame you into praying more.

The exact opposite. I would like to do a class for the Theocast community, where at the end of the class, you have the joy of Christ in your heart, which is causing you to see prayer in a whole new light versus prayer being something you wake up every day realizing,

I'm a failure. This is why all this happens in my life. My life is a disaster because I don't know how to pray.

The exact opposite. God gave prayer as a means of grace, of hope and joy.

I'm going to do a live class where I'm going to teach you through the basics of how the gospel fuels our prayer.

It really liberates us to pray. It calls us to run into his presence looking for mercy and grace.

Most of us run into the presence of God, offering him a way to earn back his favor.

His favor does not remove. It's always the same. So how does that work? Well, that's what this class is going to be about.

Because this is a live class at the end, we're going to open it up to have you ask your personal questions, the struggles that you've had for years about prayer, so that we can then connect it to the

God of the gospel and rest and the true means of grace in prayer. We'd love to have you join.

I look forward to your questions. If you'd like more information about this class and the community, you can go to our website, theocast .org.

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

Christian life from a confessional, reformed and pastoral perspective. Your hosts today are

John Moffat, sitting to my right, and I don't know if it'll be your left or right when this thing airs.

He's the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And I am Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

John, we are together today on location in, I'm happy to say it, Smyrna, Tennessee.

Yeah, Smyrna, Tennessee. The big city. Just south of Nashville. And we are together for a very exciting reason.

This week, the last two and a half days, we have been involved in the founding event, the charter meeting of the

Grace Reformed Network. And so we're done with that. Big deal. I guess we can officially say the network is a thing.

It's chartered. Yeah, we signed with 10 churches. This is wonderful. And really sweet group of people that came for the first couple of days that were open to everybody and great time there.

And then today, a little bit more intimate family time, so to speak, with the founding churches and good stuff and a great lunch with a number of the pastors after.

That's such a great time. Now, truth in advertising, John and I are exhausted. We're very tired. We're encouraged.

We're happy to be here together. And we're also happy to be talking to you, dear people, who are tuned into the podcast today.

We have asked God for mercy. We have. And he is granting. Yeah. And today's episode is different than what we normally do.

Yeah. But as a part of this event pertaining to the chartering, the founding of Grace Reformed Network, we had a couple of days of talks, singing sermons, things like that that were open for anybody to attend.

And one of the addresses given was on the law and the gospel, in particular, the law and gospel distinction. That's right.

And then after each of the talks that were given, the GRN board of directors would have a panel discussion to talk about that subject matter.

And the panel discussion, you and I thought that the panel discussion on the law gospel topic was so good that we wanted to share it with the

Theocast audience. Yeah, for sure. It was done by the original talk was done by Charles Townsend, pastor at Covenant Baptist Church in Spencer, Indiana.

All of the talks will be available and the panel discussion is available on the GRN website, but also on the

Theocast Circle community. So you can go to the community and listen to it there. But I agree, we got done and we thought, man, this one would help us being traveling.

We need to record an episode. So we thought this really felt like an episode. It felt like a four panel episode.

So exactly. There's not much more I want to say about it other than you're going to get to hear two other pastors who love

GRN, who've been associated with Theocast. And I think they're going to hear what

I would call different colors of the same theology. And at times that just really provides a helpful explanation.

Absolutely. It's always good to hear other people articulate the same wonderful truths. So we think you're going to be encouraged to hear

Patrick and Charles talk about law and gospel with John and myself. And it's very interactive, good conversation as we try to pull off every week for you here.

So we hope that you enjoy it. And we will be back with you again next week with another episode that is to be determined.

Stay tuned. Kind of. Well, actually, that's another panel, but we'll let you know next week. Oh, I was going to surprise my own child.

We hope you guys enjoy. So, fellas, I thought we'd just jump in with a fun one to start off.

Antinomianism. Heard of it? Been accused of it? Ever? Yeah.

Yes. Same. Yeah. Is that a question? No, the question's coming. This is the build up to the question, right?

So this is something that gets lobbed at those who hold to this distinction quite often.

The accusation of antinomianism. How are we not antinomian when we hold to this law?

How much time we got, Patrick? You got about 29 minutes. Fire away. Happy for other bros to go first.

I might not stop when we start. No, this is good. This is a really, really important conversation.

It feels like the volume is only getting turned up on this debate. And how we, who are here, answer this is really important.

As a matter of fact, I had a conversation with somebody recently about this very question. Unfortunately, Theocast, and I hope

Jerren can be able to create some clarity here. Antinomianism, first of all, there's a confusion on what that is.

And just for the sake of clarity, it means that there's no place for the law. There's no place for the law in the life of the believer.

And that, if you've heard any type of preaching, is just not the case.

Now, when people hear law, gospel, distinction, what they think we're saying is throw out the law and only keep the gospel.

Well, when it comes down to your standing before God, your righteousness and your sanctification and your eternal glorification with the

Father, that is true. The law can only condemn you and it must be thrown out as it relates to your relationship.

But the law has a powerful and beautiful place in the life of the believer once we are, by faith, trusting in the righteousness of Christ.

Therefore, this is why we at Jerren and Theocast, we want to promote three uses of the law because the third use of the law, which is for us, it's a guide.

It directs us and it points us to the beauty and the glory of Christ for God's glory and the betterment of our neighbor, right?

It's for your advantage that we utilize that. So when someone says, you guys just emphasize grace, you just emphasize grace, you don't care about the law,

I think that it's unfair when you have someone who's confessional and reformed and encourages church discipline based upon the third use of the law, right?

If you refuse to adhere to the third use of the law, which is a reflection of holiness and righteousness as it relates to the nature of Christ, if you don't do that, then it's

God's loving act to use the church to discipline you. So I think this conversation is, you can't just say, no, we're not.

I think it's healthy to step back and say, this is why. Someone says, nowhere in the

Bible it says there's three uses of the law. This goes down to Trinity again. It's a helpful way. Yeah, it's a word concept fallacy.

It's a helpful way to describe how the Bible functions and sections itself. Just like there's nowhere in the

Bible that says Old Testament, New Testament, but we make that division for sake of clarity. There's the introduction to it.

I'll let you guys build on that. It's kind of a sidebar, but I know, sorry.

Don't hide it under a bushel. This doesn't really answer the question, but it's more of an anecdotal kind of situation.

When I, what I referenced in the sermon, as far as getting really hard hearted and really being just spit and fire law, it was that man right there.

One of my elders, he's now an elder, Tim. He's like, hey, have you, have you listened to this podcast named Teocast?

I'm like, yeah, I used to listen to it a while back. Oh, sorry. Back in, you know, octagon days or whatever.

And he's like, you should just very gently and lovingly. He's like, won't you listen to it again? And I listened to one episode and I love you guys, but I'm not going to give you credit.

The Holy Spirit just broke my heart because I realized, because he'd been kind of talking like, and I just feel like there's so much

I have to do when I leave church. And I have seen greater growth and maturity in the congregation since the law of gospel distinction is in place and say, this is what the law demands.

This is what Christ has done. Let us rest in Christ. Let us run to Christ. And I have seen greater maturity and greater growth in myself and the body of believers than I ever did preach in law.

Antinomianism against the law. Heard of it? Yes. We've been accused of it before. Yes. I'll make some historical comments maybe in a minute.

There were a number of other brothers, have been a number of other men who have gone before us. Many, you're going to know their names who have been accused of the same thing.

John Owen, Thomas Boston, to name two, were accused of antinomianism in their own eras in the ways that they wrote and spoke and were dogged about this, the distinction between the law and the gospel and the ways that we hold

Jesus out to sinners. It's like you said, in a sense, it is ridiculous to fall in human reason in the legal frame that we have.

It sounds crazy. But to be antinomian, historically speaking, is a couple of things.

It is to deny the third use of the law, right? To deny that the law has a place in the life of the

Christian to guide. Chapter 19, paragraph six that you read is absolute gold when it comes to how we think about the law's usefulness and the goodness of the law in the life of the

Christian. We are no longer under it as a covenant of works to be kept for righteousness or to be condemned by it based on our disobedience.

That is true. But when it comes to, how do I know what righteousness looks like? I look to the law. How do I know what's good for my neighbor?

I look to the law. How do I know what's good for me, for my wife, for my children? And we look to the law and we appeal to it unashamedly in all those ways.

And so whenever you start talking like that, you are in no way in any kind of historical or theological sense an antinomian, right?

We do say the law no longer exists in any way for righteousness.

That's true. That's scandalous. I mean, Calvin writes in his Institutes and when it comes to us standing before the judgment seat of God, the law has no place in our conscience.

I guess Calvin was an antinomian as well, you know, when it comes to these matters.

And so the three uses of the law, just really briefly, this is why this is critical to maintain. The first use of the law is to show us our sin and drive us to Christ who kept it.

The second use is broader. It's civil. It restrains human corruption because we're shown what's good and bad, right and wrong.

There's curses for breaking it. There's blessings for keeping it. Third use of the law in Christ guides our living and we by the

Spirit seek conformity unto it and that is a good and wonderful thing. So that's how we respond to that.

But we don't ever collapse the law and the gospel when it comes to righteousness and standing and relationship to God and we make no apologies for that.

Amen. I have a comment. Do you have a question? No, I was going to have a comment too, so you can do yours first. Oh, thanks.

I appreciate that. The helpful way of thinking about it for someone who's struggling with, no, this sounds antinomian.

So the law are road signs. They're telling you the way, right.

This is the way you should go, but the roadside can't make you go anywhere. It's just pointing to the direction.

You have to have a power that actually carries you in the direction that the roadside is pointing and this is where Paul says, he who began a good work in you will complete it, right.

As you began by grace, you're going to continue by grace. So we emphasize and preach grace, right, because we know that's the motion.

That's the motivation. What does 1 Peter 1 .9 say? Why are you not following the road signs?

Is it not that you forgot you've been cleansed, right? It's not because somehow the road signs cause it and that's what's so helpful is that the law is a great arrow pointing, here's where one should go and here's how one gets there, which is in Christ.

Well, it's Christ for pardon and Christ for power. That's what you're talking about. Pardon from sin, power unto sanctification.

So I am an antinomial when it comes to that. Right. Well, when it comes to justification and standing in righteousness.

Well, yeah. The law cannot produce righteousness in me. Exactly. It can't transform. It can only hide.

No, that's right. Yeah. The law is a covenant of works, does not work. Right. Right. And so one of the things

I think that gets confused, right, is it's different. It's a different thing to say that law is good and it's a different thing to say the law is good news for sinners.

Those are two totally different things. We say the law is not good news for sinners. The law condemns sinners.

The law is good. That's why it's bad for sinners. I'm glad there's laws against murder. I don't really want people to be free to come murder me.

I think that's a good thing. Yeah. If I am a murderer, is that law good for me now? No. No. Not because that law is bad, but because I am bad.

So good. The law is good. Right. The problem is that we are bad. So when we say things like the law is not the good news, that's what we mean.

Right. It's not good news for sinners. It is good. That's precisely why it's bad news for sinners. Right.

Yeah. Just to quote Charles, he says, collapsing dilutes the good news of both. Like if they're good apart from each other and when you combine them together, then they both lose their goodness.

That's good. And then conversely, once we are united to Christ, the law becomes good for us.

Once we are justified, even the first use of the law for Christians is good. Repentance is not this thing you do once.

No. It's not the thing that unites you to Christ. Repentance is the Christian life. Exactly. It's a life. It is what comes as the fruit of faith.

We live a life of repentance. Now, we constantly need to be reminded of our sinfulness and brought back to total dependence on Jesus Christ.

Amen. And that's where the uses of the law are preached to the believer every week. Absolutely. In the first use to humble us and to continue to drive us to Christ and cast ourselves on him.

Third use to guide us. Right. And Paul's words in Romans 7 are helpful in this too. I mean, when he speaks of how, you know, given that the law is all these good things that he's already said and the problem is sin in us, not anything with the law.

Right. He says that, like, if I do as a regenerate man, if I do what I don't want, then

I agree with the law that it is good. Right. Because the reason, the unique paradox in the believer's life is that I have a flesh that loves sin and craves it.

But I have an inner man, a regenerate part of me that loves God's law and delights in it. And I'm grieved when

I break it. Right. Not because I've merited punishment, but because I love the

Lord and I want to live in a way that pleases and honors him and is good for my neighbor. And so I'm agreeing with the law and with the

Lord who gave it that it's good as a Christian. And we should talk like this. Right. But we need to be clear on what we mean.

Because so often people, what they get, I mean, you guys have said this in various ways, but often what people get when you collapse these categories is you kind of get the law preached as gospel.

You know, we drum it down and relativize it, do your best in keeping the law. And if you do well enough, then you're going to be saved in the end.

Well, that's the law preached as gospel and it's damning. Whereas we often get the gospel preached as law, you know, obey well enough and you'll be saved.

It's just, it's unhelpful when those categories are collapsed. Yeah. And I would actually, to kind of come full circle to the point at hand, antinomianism, to hold a law gospel distinction is not antinomianism.

In fact, it's anti -antinomianism. If you have a proper law gospel distinction, you actually have the highest view of God's law that can be because you won't relativize it.

If you're going to blend them, you have to relativize it. You have to move the target. You have to make it at least theoretically attainable if you're going to hold it out as good news.

But if you refuse to do that, if you say, no, the law is not the good news, the good news is only Christ. Then you can keep the law of God as the perfect standard that flows out of the very character and nature of God himself.

And you can uphold that because the law is not the good news. The good news is Christ. So it's actually law gospel distinctions anti -antinomian.

Agree. Do we overthrow the law by this faith, right? By no means. We uphold the law.

What's he talking about? He's not talking about our spirit wrought obedience. He is talking about the fact that Christ died to endure the law's penalty and he lived to fulfill its requirements.

And what greater commendation of the law could there ever be than that God the Son, when he became a human being, put himself under it, lived and kept it, and died to fulfill its curse.

Like, do we overthrow the law? Are you kidding? No, we uphold and honor the law very much. Look at what Christ did.

So yeah, I agree with you. To maintain this distinction, as the apostles did, is to be an anti -antinomian.

We can say better things about the law because we have this understanding. Hey guys, real quick, some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions.

So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the

Theocast Community. We're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there, and you can share it and ask questions.

You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. Yeah, and it also changes the purpose of the law too. For instance, where do we point to God's love dwelling up inside of us?

John doesn't point to the law. The law produced love in you. It says, no, we love because he first loved us, which is gospel, right?

And it's important that it is the natural bent of every sinner who has grace in them to clamor for the law because just as your beautiful illustration of we don't like to come with empty hands, it's embarrassing.

It's embarrassing to admit you're a sinner, but that's what the law demands. And for those who get closer to the law and allow its light to shine on your filthiness,

Christ and the gospel becomes brighter. And what's happening in a lot of these law gospel collapsing of churches is that people want to come and have their egos stroked and be told they're doing well, and here's how to get better.

And we're standing up and knocking people out of the kneecaps, and it's like, I don't like that at all.

But it's like, yeah, but you need Jesus, and this is the only way to get you there. Can I just make a statement that sounds scandalous?

Why not? Okay, go for it. So the law, excuse me, the gospel, so this makes a lot of folks nervous.

Maybe not you in this room, but many in evangelicalism. The gospel contains nothing in it whatsoever for us to do, nothing.

The gospel is completely and only a message of what Christ has done, right? And that's kind of the distinction in a nutshell.

We live in an age because we're so anxious about nominalism and because we have seen the bad fruit of revivalism, like easy believism and all these things and walking aisles and praying prayers and mass baptisms and the whole thing.

We're so anxious about the fruit of all that. We see the problem that's a legitimate problem, and so now what we often do is we make the gospel sound hard.

We think that's the antidote, right? We introduce the demands of the gospel. It's hard to believe.

Well, yeah, you're exactly right. It's hard to believe. It's impossible to believe it, actually, because God must give us his faith, but the gospel is free, right?

It is. It's that Isaiah 55 and that Matthew 11 reality. So maybe we never do that. We don't live the gospel.

We don't do the gospel. There are no demands of the gospel other than if there is one, believe it, receive it. So can

I throw a wrench in your illustration because I know your answer, but I think everyone here is maybe thinking, yeah, but Paul and the confession says obey the gospel.

I'm asking you. Yeah, great. I'm so glad that you said that. Romans 1, 5, Romans 16, 26, right?

Romans 10, 16, 17. These are the verses that we're appealing to. Paul will use the language in Romans 1 and Romans 16, the obedience of faith.

I think that's the dead giveaway, what he's talking about. And then when he says in Romans 10, 16, 17, not everyone has obeyed the gospel.

What does it mean to obey the gospel? Very simple answer. Believe in Jesus. That's it.

The obedience of faith, faith in Christ. So I think that's how I would answer that question.

And that's where they'll take a portion of scripture and twist it and say, no, but there are demands in the gospel and there aren't.

And it's important because sometimes people will hear what you say and they think that you're just being overdramatic, which you can be.

I've known you long enough. Hyperbolic, right? But in this area, you're not. But this is where we say things like this too.

There are all kinds of implications that flow from the gospel. You better believe there are.

Because of the gospel, because of our union with Christ, everything changes, right?

Amen to all that. But the implications of the gospel are not the gospel. Can I give you a question to ask?

Yeah, I'm sorry. What's the difference between the implications of the gospel and the gospel? You should answer that question.

I know, but I'm going to ask you to answer it. John, you like to answer your own questions. I'm taking your role. I'm on the other end. I got the

B -roll. So what are the difference between the implications and the gospel proper? Yeah. So the gospel is news, right?

It is good news. It comes from this idea of these heralds who would go out and proclaim the king, the

Caesar's victory. He would declare the glory of Caesar because he conquers his enemies.

That's what the gospel is. We are heralding the victory of King Jesus. There is no command in there.

It is the declaration of the victory of Jesus Christ. Now, if Jesus Christ is victorious, if he has conquered sin and death and done that on behalf of his people, does that mean stuff for me?

Absolutely it does. Is there a response that you should have? Response to that? Absolutely there is. That's the differentiation between implications and what the gospel is.

You don't help the gospel by blending those two things together, right? You introduce yourself into Jesus' victory, and that's not what we want to do.

The gospel is Jesus' victory. Jesus does the gospel. Nobody else has ever lived the gospel.

Jesus does. I think back to my own life and news, right?

For me, my age time frame, 9 -11 was a very shaping thing.

I ended up in the military in large part because of that, and that shaped a lot of things.

That shaped the consciousness of Americans in a lot of ways. We never flew the same way after that. We changed law.

We did all sorts of things, but the news of that day was flight at the Twin Towers.

That was the thing that happened. There were all these things that rolled out from it, but those weren't the thing.

And that's the difference between gospel proper and gospel implications. The gospel is the news, and specifically the news of Jesus' victory.

And the only thing you can do with news, you don't change the news. You don't add anything to the news. All you can do is believe it and receive it.

It's untouchable because it's in the past. Right? Exactly. And it's a work. It's declarative. Like you said, it's finished, and we've thought about already how it's objective.

It is that thing that happened, and it's not affected by my subjective response.

It stands. And then the call then is to receive and believe. And the historic objectivity of Christianity is really what sets it apart from other religions, right?

You think about the Apostles' Creed, a short little tiny creed, and within that, the tightest economy of words, and you've got crucified under Pontius Pilate, which

I always think is just kind of the oddest thing. You've got this few words, and you're going to throw in this random, really meaningless

Roman official. Why? Because it grounds the Christian faith in a historic act.

Yeah, it's history. Christianity is not a system of thought. It's not a philosophy. It is the fact that this act happened in history.

Believe it. It's not orient your life in this particular way. It's not this is the best way to live. It's like, no, this happened.

Believe it and have it shape everything. It makes it utterly unique, like you said, in the scope of world religion.

Only religion in the world based on news. Because every other religion in the world is going to tell you to go do a bunch of things.

I mean, pray your prayers, give your alms, all that kind of stuff, make your pilgrimage, and maybe it'll go well.

That's slavery. All right, let's take a little different angle, right?

We're all pastors up here. You guys are pastors or you have pastors? We would all probably agree that this confusion of these two things is fairly epidemic in American evangelicalism, right?

It's constant. What do you think the pull, the draw, the thing that causes pastors specifically?

Is there shepherding, caring for God's people? What is the pull towards confusing these things?

What's going on in us as we kind of have that role that makes us want to do that?

I mean, I'm sorry. He about to come out of his chair. So would you just be quiet, Patrick, and let the man talk? Let's get that pulpit back up here.

Justin's about to... I think I already said it. I think it's our fear of nominalism. I mean,

I think it's a motivator, and we have confused the antidote.

We think that if we make Christianity harder, then we're going to weed out the weak and the fakers.

And the weak, not like sincere weak, but we're just going to weed out the people that don't belong.

Go ahead. It makes pastoring easier. Go ahead. Hear me out. Because if I can put a whole bunch of burdens on people, and I can give them a standard, because grace is sloppy.

Grace is messy. Let me hear what Shane knows. Sorry. I'd never use one of these, obviously. Grace is sloppy.

It's just... If I can put a bunch of rules, and I can kind of ground it somewhere in Scripture, and then

I can put burdens on people, and I can place guilt on them, and I can make them tow the line, then my calendar stays less full, and I feel like I've accomplished more because I've got people goose -stepping.

Does that make sense? Yeah, and I want to be clear. I'm not impugning anybody's motivations. I trust that the motivations are good.

People look around, guys look around, and they see real problems. Yeah. Maybe it's subconscious, but still. This is bad.

There's bad fruit everywhere, and there are a lot of false professors in the church, so to speak.

And so then it's like, all right, what do we do? And I think devoid of some of these historical categories, and given our natural frame to weave the works back in, we take this kind of green beret approach to Christianity.

Only the strong survive, and only the serious among us are the ones who really are legitimate. And so let's turn the temperature up on the law to test who's legitimate and who's not.

Right, it's hunting goats and tares instead of worrying about wolves. And it's like, well, we need to try to tear the weeds out, you know, amongst the wheat.

Jesus said, don't do that, actually, because you're going to rip the wheat up with it. I mean, in the parable, that's what he says.

And so I think a lot of times we try to over -purify, and I mean, we're talking about...we're Baptists here. We're talking about regenerate church membership, but we don't want to be

Donatists and try to over -purify the church. Yeah, I think some of this is related to revivalism.

If you've ever heard the phrase, the burned -over district, you have these people who had these emotional experiences, and there's this extreme movement that kind of just washes over the country twice, you know.

And then you have people who are burned out by it, so they're still in the pew, but they're dead, according to the pastor.

And so he can't get them to give of their money, of their time, or anything. They're just kind of sitting there. So he's going to use what works with his kids, threats and yelling, you know, and more threats and more yelling.

But what happens when they turn to a teenager? They realize that's just foolish, and the rebellion just goes to another level.

So I've talked to people, and I mean, I remember the conversation that Charles and I had on the phone.

I was like, Charles, beating people doesn't ever get anybody to love Jesus more. It just doesn't do it, you know.

And I tried. Everybody tries, you know. And even Justin and I, we have to be careful not to slip back into those things because you can easily do it.

You can easily slip back into thinking, I just need to spice it up a little bit, get them a little, you know, invigorated.

And what you're doing is you're, this is bleeding into a little bit of my sermon tonight, but you're trusting in a physical means versus a spiritual means.

You legitimately think the flesh can change the spirit. And so you give fleshly means.

And Colossians says, Paul was so wise when he wrote this. He says, it looks spiritual.

This is why pastors do it. It sounds and looks spiritual, and it fills churches because people walk out feeling confident, like I can do this, and it's all subjective.

And subjective preaching works. Otherwise, Paul wouldn't have been writing against it in the New Testament as well. So it's not a new phenomenon.

To your point, if Christianity was natural, if this was a natural process, then to motivate people with merit and fear makes sense.

But it's not supernatural. That's true. I have another comment, but I'm going to let go and then

I can... Yeah, I think a part of this, and again, this is not something anyone would say, you know, theologically, right?

But at the heart of it, there's a functional denial of the gospel's power, right?

We don't actually believe. We read the gospel's the power of God and salvation, right? Salvation being the whole thing, right?

Like making me alive when I was dead and bringing me all the way to glory. Amen. Gospel is God's power to do that.

But that means we trust the gospel to what is going to restrain people and keep people from sin.

Me threatening them enough, scaring them enough to do it? No. The gospel is the thing that's going to constrain that.

Do I actually believe what God says about his gospel? The gospel is not just this theological thing we believe.

It's this thing that happened in history. And then when we put faith in Christ, we are vitally and mystically united to Jesus Christ.

We are bound to him, right? Which means everything that is his, everything that he is one, is ours.

Amen. Right? That doesn't need any help. Right. You're not going to find some extra power in the law that is not in the gospel.

Scripture never says the law is the power of God. The gospel is the power of God. But we doubt it, right?

And this is what our hearts do, right? Legal stuff makes so much more sense. We have a legal frame.

Law and discipline and try harder and do this or else makes so much sense. What is so hard for us to trust and believe in while we desperately need that gift of faith constantly is to believe truly that what

Jesus has done in being united to him, that is the power that brings us from death all the way to life.

We'll be having an invitation now. You can all come down and repent. So I know we're running out of time.

I just want to offer this for all of us. If your concern, proverbially speaking, is that in your local church, if you're a pastor and your concern is that you've got a lot of nominal people there, meaning you think many of the people who are gathering with you on the

Lord's day are not born again. They're Christians in name only. The thing that is a mind blow to me biblically is that your strategy to try to help that problem is to speak to dead people and tell them to try harder.

It does not work. Imagine walking up to a guy on the road, his horse is dead, and you see him beating him.

What are you doing? Trying to get him to get up. Right. To speak to dead people, because you understand they're going to be dead, and effectively say,

I'm going to put more weight on them and tell them to try harder and obey better and think that that will fix the problem is insane.

Theologically, what do you do? You preach the thunder of the law, first use. You crush people with it.

And then you say, but have you heard of Christ? And here's what he came to do. And you herald him.

That's the strategy. Can I give you an example of Paul with a church that no one here would ever want to pastor, the

Corinthian church. Paul's like, yeah, I heard about your problems and it's a mess and it's all wrong, but I want to come and preach nothing among you except for Christ and him crucified.

That was the solution after the law was the solution. Yeah, it's good.

Thanks fellas. All right. Time to eat and try to enjoy as creatures, the goodness and provision of our

God. I'm going to pray for us. Right. As we would bless our fellowship and see you guys back in two and a half hours.

Lord, thank you for this time that you've given us. We thank you so much for your word. Your two words, your law that is good, that flows from who you are, that is perfect and flawless in every way.

But if that were all it was, if that was your only word, it would mean nothing but condemnation for ruined centers like us.

So we thank you for your second word, your final word in the personal work of Jesus, the gospel, the good news of his victory over sin and death and the reality that we can be united to him by faith and brought as a dead corpse drawn up out of the depths of the sea and have life breathed into us and be brought all the way to glory.

Not because of anything in us, not because of any of our discipline or our striving, but all riding the coattails of our

Lord and savior Jesus. We thank you so much for that. We thank you for just all your goodness to us and all the little, little ways you care for us as creatures, the enjoyment of good food and drink and fellowship.

We are meant to enjoy these things. You do them to delight us. You get glory in that. So I pray that you'd help us to delight well in your good gifts and bring us back together to rejoice more in you tonight.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Hey everyone, before you go, Justin and I first wanted to say thank you.

And if this has been encouraging to you in any way, please feel free to share it. But we also need your support.

And it's when you give that it really helps us financially reach more people. So the next time you consider giving to a ministry, we hope that you would pray about Theocast and partner with us as we share the gospel around the world.