Smuggling Works into Faith (with Mike Abendroth) | Theocast

Smuggling Works into the Gospel and the Need for Assurance

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I have a very important conversation about how works get smuggled into the Gospel, specifically, faith, and what is faith, and if we aren't defining faith correctly, we can all say the same thing.

I believe in salvation by faith alone, but if faith, your definition of faith, has works in it, then you are not saved by faith alone. On the podcast with us today, we have Mike Avendral, you'll learn who that is, he is a dear friend, an amazing pastor, you will definitely enjoy this episode, stay tuned.

If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, plus we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

Thanks for listening.

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed, pastoral, and confessional perspective. Your hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and I am John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and if you've already hit that skip button, you have already missed out where Justin and I live, back up, how dare you not know where we live, I'm just kidding.

It is a joy today, for those of you in the title who have already seen the podcast, we have a guest on our podcast that we've been wanting to have on here for so long, Pastor Mike Ebendroth. For those of you that may not know who he is, I'm excited to introduce you to not only his preaching, but his podcast.

So for those of you that may not know Mike, who is a very good friend of mine, I'm pretty sure there's not a week that goes by that we don't talk on the phone, which is one of my great joys. But Mike has been the pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church for, well let's see, since 1997.

So that is a long time, I'm so thankful for men who can preach the gospel faithfully week after week after week. For those on YouTube, he's pointing to his faithfulness to the ministry. And then also, for those of you that don't know, he is the host of NoCo Radio, or No Compromise Radio, which this podcast today is going to go right along with that, because the podcast that he does, the radio program he does, is about not compromising from the to keep faithfully preaching Christ, and not allowing us to be swayed by anything.

Super thankful for his ministry. And before I forget, I'm going to mention this now, and Mike, I'd like for you to say hello to our listeners and also tell us about the book, but Mike just wrote a new book, or kind of authored and accumulated a new book called Gospel Assurance, a 31-day guide to assurance.

And boy, that is what our listeners love to hear about, and so guess what? We are going to give away one of Mike's books today, and we will explain to you what that looks like here in a little bit. But Mike, say hello to our listeners and definitely tell us a little bit about that book and about your ministry.

Well, I'm super thankful to be on, John. I say to myself, you know, these guys, I listen to them every week, they're in my head, it's stereo with Justin and John back and forth at 1 .5 speed. And so I just thought I would tune out, and then I realized, oh, I'm on the show.

So I'm super encouraged by both of you young men, younger than I am, and wanting to stand up for who the Lord Jesus is and think about things clearly and precisely. Some of the old theologians were called prestigionists, and I like that language, kind of like as we talked about earlier, tincture and precisionist and propitiation.

There are certain words that just are lullabies to my ears, and I'm thankful for you men. Glad to be on, glad to talk about the Lord Jesus. And it's kind of like every show you go, what are we going to talk about?

Well, there'll be some nuance, but it's going to be about the risen Lord Jesus Christ today.

Amen. Amen. Tell us a little bit about the book that you put together. It's supposed to be available in about 10 days.

Sure. It's called Gospel Assurance, a 31 day guide to assurance. And essentially, John and Justin, what I did was I thought to myself, what could I hand someone who's struggling with assurance? People ask the question all the time, what should I read?

And I think Burkhoff's got a good book. Joel Beeky's got a good book. Of course, Romans is a good book. What about assurance? And I love words. And if you think about the root word of assurance, it says sure.

Am I sure when I die, I'm going to go to heaven? Can I know that now? And the answer is, yes, I can know. And so I've compiled about 20, 25 authors, broke them up into 31 chapters. Just read one a day.

You don't have to do it legalistically. Read one every other day. And it has chapters about the Lord Jesus and also the doctrine of assurance. Both are important because without Jesus, no assurance. So we just don't want to study assurance.

We want to know who the object of our faith is. 31 days, I think it's going to be encouraging people. I can't wait to teach an assurance and then hand someone the book.

So you can get that book at Amazon. From my understanding, it'll be available there for about $15. But we're going to give one away for free. If you go to our social... This is why listening to the day the podcast drops is helpful.

But if you go to our social media, you will see the instructions there of what you can do in order to get that free copy. So just go to Theocast and go to either Twitter or Instagram, Facebook, whatever.

And you can figure out how to do it there. Well, Justin, so we don't waste any more time. We're about five minutes in. So tell us, what is Smuggling Works into Faith about?

Faith Alone, Assurance, and the Object of Faith

We are fighting to recover the biblical doctrine of assurance in one sense. In the conversation that we're having today, by thinking about our surety, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. And like we were talking about before we started the episode, you don't recover assurance, you don't get assurance, quote unquote.

By chasing after assurance itself, you would know that in contemplating the Lord Jesus Christ. And like Mike said, we're going to talk about Christ today. And we're going to talk about the sufficiency of his work and how we apprehend that work by faith.

And the emphasis of today is to talk about ways that are unintentional and maybe intentional in which works. And by works, hear us say obedience, a desire to obey, love, repentance. All of those things are being woven into the definition of what faith is.

And you might be saying, okay, guys, hold the phone, pause button. I mean, didn't the Reformation happen? I mean, don't we understand Sola Fide in the evangelical church, the Protestant church in the States these days?

And our answer to that question would be like, well, yes and no. And what we want to do today in a way that we haven't done on this show in at least a little while, we were doing more of this a few years ago.

We want to talk about ways that people hedge on Sola Fide. They hedge on faith alone. And this manifests itself and presents itself in a number of different ways. And we're going to touch on some of these today.

And we want to define faith appropriately, biblically, confessionally. What do the confessions say? How have saints understood faith throughout the history of the church? And so I hope all of this is encouraging to the listener and helps bolster assurance as people consider what Christ has done for them.

And what it looks like to live an ordinary, faithful Christian life. And how faith and faithfulness are not one in the same. So we're going to talk about all those things here, there, and everywhere. We've got to try to cram all of this in the next 30 minutes.

So let's just get off and running with it. Do you guys have any thoughts? I've teed it up a little bit. But are there ways that you would want to tee up this conversation? Mike, I'm particularly looking at you, brother, because I don't get to hear you talk about these things all the time.

We should listen to the show more often. I just mean, in this setting, virtually interfacing like we are. For the first time, I might add, that Mike and I have seen each other's faces and spoken to each other this way.

Bro, talk to me about why this conversation is important.

Sure. Well, Justin, for you, when I talk, and only the YouTube people can see it, when I talk to you, I will make sure I lean back and get in the sun for the Shekinah glory. I talk to John, I'll just be in the shadows.

I appreciate it. Or as we say in New England, the Shekinah. The Shekinah. That's right. The world is crazy, as you men know. There's lawlessness everywhere. And we even see that in the church. People just indulging the lust of the flesh.

And they're running around like crazy people. There's no God over me. Even Christians sometimes act that way. So what do we, as three pastors, do? We assess the situation. And then if we're not careful, the error that we're talking about today is the tendency not to just tell unbelievers about Christ, not just to tell believers about Christ, but also to tell them it's faith in this Christ plus something else, because that something else is going to help cure the malady of society or the church culture or something like that.

In other words, we have to be careful that we distinguish between the object of our faith, faith, faithfulness, and what we really, really need to do. This all boils down to we have to isolate good works, love, obedience, everything else from the instrumentality of justification, and that is faith alone.

No, amen. Brief comment. This, I trust, is true to the listener. But the motivation underneath and behind every holiness movement in the history of the church is this concern. That's right. It's what you just said, Mike.

We look around. We survey the landscape, not just in the world. I mean, that may be true. But we would survey the landscape in the church, and we see lawlessness and immorality. And are people taking holiness seriously enough?

And so then we end up, with the best of intentions sometimes, doing what you just said. It's Jesus plus this other stuff because that plus piece is what we think will cure the malady. It's what will cure what ails us.

And what our contention is, along with Paul and Romans 6 and other places, is like actually no, it's clarity on Christ and union with Christ and clarity on how we apprehend the sufficiency of the work of Christ in our place that actually will bear the fruit.

And that seems counterintuitive to us at a human level, and it's why we struggle with it so much. John, any thoughts before we jump into what faith is?

Yeah, I've been tweeting about this lately and putting it on social media.

Oh, you're active on the Twitterverse.

You can always tell what's in my brain theologically because I tend to throw it out there to see how it bounces off of people. Not really. I actually don't like being in controversy, but I am interested to see how people respond to some thoughts I'm thinking about.

Anyways, I did put something out about false teachers and the gospel, and specifically one of the replies I got was, well, that's antinomian. And my reply was, salvation is 100 antinomian. There is no works or law in the way in which you are saved.

And so I completely embrace that. This is part of the conversation. I love our pre-conversations before we record. Mike even said, man, we should be recording this. I'm like, I agree, this is great. But one of the—if I sit back and I ask myself, why do good men who have been trained well, who are not foolish, who are—how does Paul describe them?

They are not novices, right? How is it that they are tripped, which can happen, because Ephesians 4 says that we can be tossed about by a ruin of doctrine. It can happen, right? We can be blinded. We can be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

It can happen. Why does it happen? And I think it is good intentions, but not driven by gospel passion, right? So their passions are more driven by a morality. In other words, when we are saved, when we are brought into the kingdom of the Father, He assures us—I mean, I love this.

This is Colossians and Ephesians. Everything we could ever possibly need—this is 2 Peter 1. Everything we need to, one, cleanse our sins and then declare us perfectly righteous in the eyes of God has been granted to us.

And that's—we live in that status, right? Status forward. It is then there we go and proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God that can transform other people's hearts and minds. That's our mission.

Except for, it feels like today, instead of understanding the clarity of the gospel and the mission of the believer, it's like we feel like our mission is to moralize everybody. Every country and every person, whether they're a believer or not, the main mission is to show them that their morality is wrong.

And it's like, that becomes the mission. And so I think this is why this conversation is so important, is that if we lose sight of the gospel and we lose sight of what the purpose of Christianity is about, we're going to start smuggling works in.

And all of a sudden, we are about transforming culture to be more moral than we are preaching the good news that's offensive that you can't save yourself.

Sure. And not only are you putting the cart before the horse when you talk that way, in reality, the morality of Christianity is not what makes it utterly unique. It is the message of Christianity that makes it utterly unique in the scope of world religion.

And that's Christ for us. So that's what we want to begin to talk about. Guys, if I were to ask you, define for me faith. Or if we even want to put the descriptor, define for me saving faith.

Where would you start? Well, we just go through the acronyms, Justin. You have all these acronyms that you were taught when you were a kid. And what are certain doctrines? And so faith, F-A-I-T-H, forsaking all I trust him.

That's good.

Is there a bracelet that goes along with that or something that I could get? Maybe with different colors and things?

It rolls off the tongue easily. But this goes back to what you men are well versed in. And that's the Merrill controversy in the 1700s in Scotland. Must I forsake sin as an unbeliever in order to come to Christ?

Do I have to somehow stop sinning or become more godly or something in order to believe? Does Christ justify the ungodly? Does Jesus save sins? It all revolves around that. So the one thing we're going to do is make sure we don't use acronyms to define it.

On the other hand, maybe K-A-T would be a better acronym. I'll repent right now and say, oh, let's use K-A-T. Knowledge, Ascent, and Trust. So for those of you that don't like cats, you should at least like this cat.

Knowledge, Ascent, and Trust. And we have to know things. There's a knowledge of the person, Jesus Christ, and about his life. And he's born of a woman, born under law. He doesn't die for his own sins.

And he dies a substitutionary death. God affirms that. The Father, Son, and the Spirit are all involved in the resurrection, et cetera. He is true. He's alive. He's historical. That's knowledge. Ascent, simply we agree.

We say that's true. We agree. And then thirdly, this is where the rub comes. We say to trust. There are other words we use, synonyms, like rest. You guys ever use that word at all? Receive. I've heard it, yeah.

Except there are other words like that, but we have to make sure we stay with a category that the reformers would use a Latin word for, fiduciary categories, because it simply means to rest. It simply means we're focused on the object of our faith.

And so even a little faith in the right object saves. What the world has done, though, what evangelicalism has done, Wesleyanism has done, Arminianism has done, and even Catholics to some degree, instead of fiduciary categories, we now use, as we call unbelievers to faith, we use volitional categories.

These are words like submit, surrender, yield, treasure, desire. And if I was an unbeliever and I heard those words, I would probably say, well, how much do I have to surrender? How much do I have to desire?

Do I really have to desire Jesus above all else in order to be saved? That's wrong. Those are categories for the Christian. I want to submit. I want to surrender. I want to yield. I want to treasure. But we have to make sure we're clear with knowledge, assent, and trust.

So we're calling people just like Jesus discussed Numbers Chapter 21, and there's a serpent on the pole. And what do you do when there's an unclean thing hanging up on the pole? It doesn't seem like it's going to work.

This is a supernatural thing, though. You simply need to put aloe vera juice on the bite. You simply need to get circumcised before you look. You need to do something. Maybe your parents could look for you.

No, you simply look or rest or trust. That's a fiduciary category.

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free e-book available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, a primer on rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a Reformed confessional perspective.

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer.

You know, a lot of what you're talking about is understanding and distinguishing between the law and the gospel. You have an amazing series, if you have not heard it, not only on No Compromised Radio, but is it American Gospel that it's on?

We'll link both of those there. Justin and I did a podcast on it. But one question I love to ask people when thinking about the good news of the gospel and putting your faith in that good news is, if you can't define the gospel, then how are you going to put your faith in it?

If you can't define it correctly, how do you put your faith in it? And what's interesting about, for instance, when you used all of these words that sound gospel because Jesus says to do these things, right?

To deny, to pick up your cross, to die. And because they're coming from the mouth of Jesus, we think, oh, it must be gospel. The famous illustration that Theocast, and I know I've heard you use it, is the rich young ruler where he comes to Jesus and says, or the lawyer, who says, what must I do, right, action, to enter into the kingdom?

Well, Jesus tells him what he must do, right? That is different. The way we have to define the gospel is news, because that's literally what it means, right, good news. You either accept good news. There's nothing to do to receive the news.

You've already heard it. You either believe that it's true or you deny that it's true. So that's gospel. Law is all about what you must do to be acceptable, whether you're looking for perfect righteousness or not.

So it's do versus done. So the reason why we have to distinguish these things is that when we're talking about smuggling, the gospel has nothing for you to do, and I love how we are using that we're accepting the knowledge, right?

And then there's a place where you have to go, all right, I now believe what you announced to me, what happened to Jesus, who he is, what he did. I actually believe that to be true for me. If you then add in something to do to that, you cannot say that that's gospel because now you're adding something to news.

I mean, I'll say it this way. I've said it before, and then I'll throw it over to you, Justin. News has no potential. It isn't there is, oh, this might happen. It's what has been done. Law has all potential.

If you do this, then the result is you can be declared righteous. That's good stuff.

The confession that our churches use, mine and John's. Mike, what confession did your church?

I think it's in the archives of the 7thdayadventist .com.

1689. I didn't want to make that assumption because I'd not ask you that question directly. So the confession that all of our churches use, the 1689 London Baptist Confession, or the Second London Confession, as it's sometimes called, in Chapter 14 on saving faith contains some really good words.

And we need to understand that the confession is already done a lot in the first 13 chapters, even pertaining to the work of Christ. I mean, so Christ as mediator in Chapter 8 is beautiful in terms of what he's accomplished in our place and all these things.

He's the only mediator between God and man and what he's done in terms of his active and passive obedience and all those things. And then you have Chapter 11 on justification. 11 .1 is such a beautiful paragraph on how God justifies ungodly people completely on account of Christ, who is our whole and only righteousness received by faith.

And then we have Chapter 12 on adoption. But then you get to Chapter 14 on saving faith. And the very end of Paragraph 2 uses this language, that the principal acts of saving faith center directly on Christ.

And then they use these three words that are all synonyms of the word that you used earlier, Mike, trust. Accepting, receiving, and resting in him alone for justification. So that's the declaration of righteousness from God.

God looks at us and says, just. It's as though you've never sinned or been a sinner, and it's as though you've been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for you. Justification. But then we're relying completely on Christ for sanctification.

That's a mind blow, that our transformation of life is completely based upon our union with Jesus. And we're trusting him for that. And then we're trusting him for eternal life, meaning everything we would ever need to live eternally with God, to our glorification.

And we're doing all of that by virtue of the covenant of grace. And all we're going to say about that today is that the covenant of grace is a covenant that God has made with the elect, where we receive all of the benefits of Christ Jesus.

We receive it, we don't achieve it. We receive it by faith. It's given to us. And so we're on the right track when we begin to talk in these ways about what faith is. And I think it's become very clear.

It's completely passive in terms of how we would acquire it. Righteousness, that is. Salvation, that is. And it's completely extranose. It's outside of us. We're looking outside of ourselves to Christ, and it is the object of our faith, as you said, Mike, who saves us.

It's not even the strength or the quality of our faith, the sincerity of our faith. It's the object of our faith who is our salvation, and we apprehend what he's done by that simple, that knowledge, that assent, that trust.

And so here we are. John, thought before we….

No, I think Mike had something. Well, you know, we have three podcast hosts, and we're just waiting for the lips of the other guys to stop…. Jumping. Pounce.

Which way are you on the draw? Technically, you've got three preachers who like to preach. That's what you've got.

Help me, men, and I think it'll help your listeners. If we can distinguish between the ground of salvation and evidence of salvation, that really, really helps. So just paint the picture. You stand before God on that day, Judgment Day.

Luther said he has two days in his calendar, today and that day. That's Judgment Day. You stand before God. And what ground will you stand upon? Well, it better be perfection, because remember Matthew 5 .48, Jesus is perfect, God is holy, his heaven is holy.

It better be perfect, and to use Westminster Shorter, perfect, entire, exact, perpetual obedience. To remember that, I just use the acronym PEEP, P-E-E-P. So at Easter time, when you go buy those marshmallow chicks at the store, you redeem the peeps.

Personal, entire, exact, perpetual obedience. That's what you need to get into heaven. But, of course, we realize Adam's sin, we realize our sin, and everything else, and we go, we can't do that. But is there fruit?

Is there evidence? And, therefore, our faith needs to be in the perfect one, because Jesus was the law keeper. He did merit. Jesus' life was one of, I always do what's pleasing to the Father. I perfectly, entirely, exactly, perpetually obey.

So you stand in Christ, and you're united with Christ. That's the ground of salvation. We're all for works, just in the right categories. That's right. The work of Christ alone we can trust in. Then, because of what he's done, in the category of responding to God's sanctifying work, there's fruit, there's evidence, there's love, there's worship, there's denial, there's watching, there's praying, there's all kinds of things like that.

You know, in Mike's office, you guys can't see this, but there's a shelf behind him, and there's peeps and cats up there.

I have this Japanese cuckoo clock, and it has a little bird in there. It could have been the perfect peep illustration. It just peeped 11 times for our illustration. To make it really practical, dear Christian, if you're listening today, can you imagine to stand before this God?

Just think about Exodus chapter 19. You'd have to stand before this God without a mediator. By the way, that's what makes hell, hell, is to be in the presence of God without a mediator, one standing between you and God.

What makes heaven, heaven is to have a mediator, the Lord Jesus, not just a go-between, but an advocate. He doesn't just stand between you and God. He stands with you. He's your representative, and then you can stand before God with a clear conscience, no guilt.

We already know this is going to happen because we simply trust in him. There's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Categories matter.

And thinking on Judgment Day is so helpful. I mean, Calvin in his Institute says this. When we're going to have the conversation about justification, we've got to begin here. What kind of righteousness will stand in the judgment?

And if we're going to talk about righteousness, it needs to be that kind. And he'll talk about the judgment seat, and the one before whom we stand is the one before whom the mountains melt. And the angels themselves can't handle his holiness, and even the heavens are dim compared to his brightness and his glory and all of these things.

And even the stars and the moon are corrupt in his sight. How much more so man? And so then it's like, okay, if we're going to talk about standing before this one, where is our trust and our confidence?

In our own works? I don't think so. It will be in the works of Christ and in the works of Christ alone. And so when we're talking about assurance before the Lord and peace, give no ear to the law, right?

We look only to Christ. How many defective O-rings does it take to destroy the shuttle? One. That's right. You better be completely covered in the robes of Christ's righteousness.

Amen, bro. Amen. So Justin, I think we should move to the smuggles. The smuggles. All right, so Mike, you're our guest today.

You get to go first. Podcast host, preacher man, you get to go first. We don't want to steal any of your thunder. So talk to us about one of the ways in which works are smuggled into the gospel that will resonate with the dear people listening to this show.

For most of us, if we read Galatians, we'll easily identify, oh, these churches around the Galatia area, they believed in the virgin birth. They believed that Jesus fulfilled all these messianic prophecies.

They believe life, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. What they got wrong was how do you receive the benefits of the Lord Jesus? And for many of those, and Paul had to really get after them, he said, you know what?

It's not faith and circumcision. It's faith alone. I call this the not epistle, N-O-T, because the third word in the epistle, Paul, apostle, not, or the no epistle. I'm not going to do it. No to Peter.

No to an angel. No to adding any kind of work to put into faith. Oh, works after you believe? Fine, as evidence. But if you're going to stand before God with some kind of mixture, if I was going to be on NoCo Radio, I'd say, you know, we had a dog and the kids had to go pick up the poop every once in a while.

What's the least amount of poop I can put in the brownie mix before you'll say, oh, I'll eat it? You know, it just contaminates it. It's Romans 11 .6. One little part of work, it contaminates everything of grace.

And therefore, we have to, while we easily see Galatians' problem, and we could see Rome, oh, Rome does the same thing, except instead of circumcision, it's baptism. But what about other things like federal vision and theonomy and other things that say, well, the culture's bad.

We want to try to help. And what do we do? And so we'll say, well, you're in by baptism. You stay in by works. And that's federal vision. That would be one of the key smugglers these days in this law, gospel distinction.

And they do it because they don't believe in law and gospel. They have one covenant of grace, so you better have law in there and grace in there, and everything's mixed. So we want to be careful that we say to ourselves on that day, judgment day, no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

It needs to be full stop. I read commentaries all the time. They want to explain themselves because it's dangerous to say no condemnation, full stop. You mean to tell me that if I simply look to that snake, I live?

And the answer is yes. We have to be aware of the smugglers who say it's faith, and then they conflate it into faithfulness. Very good.

Amen. John, your turn, man. Well, I want to go back to a podcast we were just on, but it's a really famous and important phrase from Reformation, guilt, grace, gratitude. That part gratitude is what the Reformation really helped clarify.

And the Roman Catholic Church, there was what's called a counter-Reformation. And in the counter-Reformation, the Council of Trent, they made it extremely clear that if you believed your good works were birthed out of gratitude and not an additive to or supplementing or actually part of your salvation, you were anathemaed.

And that still is an act and true today. That is still part of the Roman Catholic theology on salvation. Justin, were you going to say something?

Yeah, I was going to say Council of Trent. So is a Roman Catholic ecumenical council that meets for over a period of years in the middle of the 16th century in response to the Protestant Reformation. In Session 6, Canon 24 on justification, they use this language that if you teach that good works or obedience are simply fruit and evidence of justification received, may you be accursed.

But they'll say if you do not teach that good works, that obedience, increase and maintain justification received, then let him be accursed. And I would say if we're going to talk about smuggling, I'm just going to go and go here, John, and I'm sorry for interjecting, but I'm excited to say it.

I haven't said it in a while. The whole Roman position that we would increase our justification through obedience and our good works, nobody's buying that. But how many pulpits and in how many contexts across this land that are evangelical would many people understand that we maintain our justification through our obedience?

And that's effectively what, Mike, you just said with federal vision, but it manifests itself in other schemas as well, that we effectively maintain our standing before the Lord, our justified status through how we live.

And that is not Protestant teaching. No, no, not at all.

I've got that quote in front of me. Here's a quote from one of the most famous modern Romans commentaries regarding Romans 8. Those who are children are also heirs, but this inheritance is also conditioned upon obedience, upon the willingness to suffer.

The emphasis upon condition does not detract at all from the main thing of chapter 8, which is assurance belonging to believers, end quote. Really? It doesn't detract at all? Yes. No wonder Luther said every single week I'm going to preach about self-righteousness because it's the default of the heart of man, even as a Christian and all this idea that it's faith plus something we do smacks of self-righteousness because we really think somehow what we do is good enough to withstand the discerning eye of God.

No, no, we can't do that. We must not do that. It's built in, as John Brown used to say, for man to lean in on himself for something. And we can't do that. That's why everything's outward. That's why when you look at the doctrine of assurance, when you look to yourself, Luther said, I don't know how I could be saved.

When I look to the Lord Jesus, I don't know how I could be lost. That's right.

Yeah, I think it's at times, I think all of us would be able to admit to our flesh, at times when you hear works being smuggled into the gospel, you can say, man, maybe that's right. You can begin to feel it a little bit.