Smuggling Works into Faith (with Mike Abendroth) | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I have a very important conversation about how works get smuggled into the

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Gospel, specifically faith, and what is faith. And if we aren't defining faith correctly, we can all say the same thing,

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I believe in salvation by faith alone, but if your definition of faith has works in it, then you are not saved by faith alone.

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On the podcast with us today, we have Mike Avendralik, you'll learn who that is, he is a dear friend and amazing pastor.

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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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?

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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,

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Pastor Mike Abendroth. 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.

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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.

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But Mike has been the pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church for, well, let's see, since 1997.

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So that is a long time. I'm so thankful for men who can preach the gospel faithfully week after week after week.

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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 gospel, to keep faithfully preaching

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Christ, and not allowing us to be swayed by anything. Super thankful for his ministry.

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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

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Gospel Assurance, A 31 -Day Guide to Assurance. And boy, that is what our listeners love to hear about, and so guess what?

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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.

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Well, I'm super thankful to be on, John. I say to myself, you know, these guys,

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I listen to them every week, they're in my head, it's stereo with Justin and John back and forth at 1 .5

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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

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Lord Jesus is and think about things clearly and precisely. Some of the old theologians were called precisionists, and I like that language, kind of like as we talked about earlier, tincture and precisionist and propitiation.

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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

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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

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Lord Jesus Christ today. Amen. Tell us a little bit about the book that you put together.

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It's supposed to be available in about 10 days. Sure. It's called Gospel Assurance, a 31 day guide to assurance.

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And essentially, John and Justin, what I did was, I thought to myself, what could

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I hand someone who's struggling with assurance? People ask the question all the time, what should

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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.

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What about assurance? And I love words. And if you think about the root word of assurance, it says, sure.

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Am I sure when I die, I'm going to go to heaven? Can I know that now? And the answer is, yes,

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I can know. And so I've compiled about 20, 25 authors, broke them up into 31 chapters.

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Just read one a day. You don't have to do it legalistically. Read one every other day. And it has chapters about the

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Lord Jesus and also the doctrine of assurance. Both are important because without Jesus, no assurance.

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So we just don't want to study assurance. We want to know who the object of our faith is. 31 days.

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I think it's going to be encouraging people. I can't wait to teach an assurance and then hand someone the book.

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Amen. So you can get that book at Amazon, from my understanding. It'll be available there for about fifteen dollars, but we're going to give a one away for free if you go to our social.

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This is why listening to the day the podcast drops is helpful. But if you go to our social media, as you will see the instructions there of what you can do in order to get that free copy.

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So just go to Theocast and go to either Twitter or Instagram, Facebook, whatever, and you can figure out how to do it there.

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Well, Justin, so we don't waste any more time. We're about five minutes in. So tell us, what is

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Smuggling Works into Faith about? We are fighting to recover the biblical doctrine of assurance in one sense.

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And 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.

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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.

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And the the emphasis of today is to talk about ways that are unintentional and maybe intentional in which works.

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And by works, hear us say obedience, a desire to obey, love, repentance.

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All of those things are being woven into the definition of what faith is. And you might be saying,

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OK, guys, hold the phone. Let's hit the pause button. I mean, didn't the Reformation happen? I mean, don't we understand Sola Fide in the evangelical church, the

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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.

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We want to talk about ways that people hedge on Sola Fide. They hedge on faith alone.

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And this manifests itself and presents itself in a number of different ways. And we're going to touch on some of these today.

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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?

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And so I hope all of this is encouraging to the listener and helps bolster assurance as people consider what

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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.

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So we're going to talk about all those things here, there and everywhere. We got to try to cram all of this in the next 30 minutes. So let's just get off and running with it.

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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?

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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.

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I just mean in this setting, virtually interfacing like we are. For the first time,

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I might add that Mike and I have seen each other's faces and spoken to each other this way. Roach, talk to me about why this conversation is important.

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Sure. Well, Justin, for you, when I talk and only the YouTube people can see it. When I talk to you,

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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.

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I appreciate it. Or as we say in New England, the Shekinah. The Shekinah. The world is crazy, as you men know.

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There's lawlessness everywhere. And we even see that in the church. People just indulging the lust of the flesh.

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And they're running around like crazy people. There's no God over me. Even Christians sometimes act that way.

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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

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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.

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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.

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This all boils down to we have to isolate good works, love, obedience, everything else from the instrumentality of justification.

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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.

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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.

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And are people taking holiness seriously enough? And so then we end up with the best of intentions sometimes doing what you just said.

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It's Jesus plus this other stuff, because that plus piece is what we think will cure the malady.

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It's what will cure what ails us. And what our contention is, along with Paul and Romans six 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.

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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?

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Yeah, I've been tweeting about this lately and putting it on social media. You're active on the Twitter, the Twitterverse.

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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.

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Not really. I actually don't like being in controversy, but I am interested to see how people respond to some thoughts

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I'm thinking about. Anyways, I did put something out about false teachers and the gospel. And specifically, one of the replies

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I got was, well, that's antinomian. And my reply was salvation is 100 percent antinomian, right?

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There is no works or law in the way in which you are saved. And so I completely embrace that, which this is part of the conversation.

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I love our pre conversations before we record. Mike even said, man, we should be recorded this. I'm like,

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I agree. This is great. But one of the 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

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Paul describe them? They are not novices, right? Sure. How is it that they are tripped, which can happen?

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Because Ephesians four 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.

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It can happen. Why does it happen? And I think it is good intentions, but not driven by gospel passion.

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Right. So their passions are more driven by a morality. In other words, when we are saved and we are brought into the kingdom of the

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Father, He assures us. I mean, I love this. This is Colossians and Ephesians. Everything we could ever possibly need.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Like every country and every person, whether they're a believer or not, the main mission is to show them that their morality is wrong.

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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 gonna start smuggling works in.

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And all of a sudden it's 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.

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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.

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It is the message of Christianity that makes it utterly unique in the scope of world religion. And that's Christ for us.

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So that's what we wanna begin to talk about. Guys, if I were to ask you, define for me faith, or if we even wanna put the descriptor, define for me saving faith, where would you start?

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Well, we just go through the acronyms, Justin. Do you have all these acronyms that you were taught when you were a kid? And what are certain doctrines?

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And so faith, F -A -I -T -H, forsaking all I trust him. That's good.

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

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It rolls off the tongue easily, but this goes back to what you men are well -versed in, and that's the

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Merrill Controversy in the 1700s in Scotland. Must I forsake sin as an unbeliever in order to come to Christ?

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Do I have to somehow stop sinning or become more godly or something in order to believe?

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Does Christ justify the ungodly? Does Jesus save sins? It all revolves around that. So the one thing we're gonna do is make sure we don't use acronyms to define it.

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On the other hand, maybe K -A -T would be a better acronym. I'll repent right now and say, oh, let's use

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K -A -T, knowledge, assent, and trust. So for those of you that don't like cats, you should at least like this cat, knowledge, assent, and trust.

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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.

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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.

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That's knowledge. Assent is simply we agree, we say that's true. Agree. And then thirdly, this is where the rub comes.

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We say to trust. There are other words we use, synonyms, like rest.

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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

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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 saved.

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What the world has done, though, what evangelicalism has done, Wesleyanism has done, Arminianism has done, and even

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Catholics to some degree, instead of fiduciary categories, we now use, as we call unbelievers to faith, we use volitional categories.

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These are words like submit, surrender, yield, treasure, desire.

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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

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I have to desire? Do I really have to desire Jesus above all else in order to be saved? That's wrong.

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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.

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So we're calling people just like Jesus discussed Numbers chapter 21, and there's a serpent on the cross, and what do you do when there's an unclean thing hanging up on the pole?

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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.

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You simply need to get circumcised before you look. You need to do something. Maybe your parents could look for you.

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No, you simply look, or rest, or trust. That's a fiduciary category. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

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Faith Versus 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

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

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slash primer. You know, it's a lot of what you're talking about is understanding and distinguishing between the law and the gospel.

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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?

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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 gonna put your faith in it?

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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.

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And because they're coming from the mouth of Jesus, we think, oh, it must be gospel. You know, the famous illustration that Theocast, and I know

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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

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I do, right, action, to enter into the kingdom? Well, Jesus tells him what he must do, right?

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That is different. The way we have to define the gospel is news, because that's literally what it means, right, good news.

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You either accept good news. There's nothing to do to receive the news. You've already heard it.

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You either believe that it's true or you deny that it's true. Now, when it, so that's gospel.

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Law is all about what you must do to be acceptable, whether it's you're looking for perfect righteousness or not.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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It's what has been done. Law has all potential. If you do this, then the results is you can be declared righteous.

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

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I think it's in the archives of theseventhdayadventist .com. Hey. Hey. Come on, now.

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1689, younger brother. I didn't wanna make that assumption, because I'd not ask you that question directly.

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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.

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And we need to understand that the confession has already done a lot in the first 13 chapters, even pertaining to the work of Christ.

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I mean, so Christ as mediator in chapter eight is beautiful in terms of what he's accomplished in our place and all these things.

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And as 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.

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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.

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

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And then they use these three words that are all synonyms of the word that you used earlier, Mike, trust, right?

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Accepting, receiving, and resting. In him alone for justification, so that's the declaration of righteousness from God.

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Like 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.

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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.

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And then we're trusting him for eternal life, meaning everything we would ever need to live eternally with God, to our glorification.

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And we're doing all of that by virtue of the covenant of grace. And all we're gonna 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.

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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.

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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.

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And it's completely extra nos, it's outside of us. We're looking outside of ourselves to Christ and it is the object of our faith, as you said,

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Mike, who saves us. It's not even the strength or the quality of our faith, the sincerity of our faith.

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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.

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And so here we are, John, thought before we... No, I think Mike, I think... Well, you know, we have three podcasts hosts and we're just waiting for the other guys to stop.

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Jumping, pounce. How quick are you on the draw?

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Technically, you got three preachers who like to preach. That's what you got. What helped me, man, and I think it'll help your listeners.

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If we can distinguish between the ground of salvation and evidence of salvation, that really, really helps.

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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.

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You stand before God. And what ground will you stand upon? Well, it better be perfection because remember

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Matthew 5, 48, Jesus is perfect. God is holy, his heaven is holy. It better be perfect.

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And to use Westminster Shorter, perfect, entire, exact, perpetual obedience. To remember that,

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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

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PEEPs, personal, entire, exact, perpetual obedience. That's what you need to get into heaven.

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But of course we realize Adam's sin, we realize our sin and everything else. And we go, we can't do that.

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But is there fruit? Is there evidence? And therefore our faith needs to be in the perfect one because Jesus was the law keeper.

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He did merit. Jesus' life was one of, I always do what's pleasing to the father.

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I perfectly, entirely, exactly, perpetually obey. So you stand in Christ and you're united with Christ.

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That's the ground of salvation. We're all for works, just in the right categories. The work of Christ alone we can trust in.

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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.

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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.

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I have this Japanese cuckoo clock and it has a little bird in there. It could have been the perfect peep illustration.

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It just peeped 11 times for our illustration. And to make it really practical, dear

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Christian, if you're listening today, can you imagine to stand before this God? Just think about Exodus chapter 19.

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You'd have to stand before this God without a mediator. And 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.

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And what makes heaven, heaven is to have a mediator, the Lord Jesus, not just a go -between, but an advocate.

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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.

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We already know this is gonna happen because we simply trust in him. There's no condemnation for those in Christ. There's no condemnation for those

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Categories matter. Amen, man. And thinking on Judgment Day is so helpful. I mean, Calvin in his

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Institute says this. Like, when we're gonna have the conversation about justification, we've gotta begin here.

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What kind of righteousness will stand in the judgment? And if we're gonna talk about righteousness, it needs to be that kind.

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And he'll talk about the judgment seat. And the one before whom we stand is the one before whom the mountains melt.

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You know, and like the angels themselves can't handle his holiness. And even the heavens are dim, you know, compared to his brightness and his glory and all of these things.

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

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In our own works? I don't think so. It will be in the works of Christ and in the works of Christ alone.

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And so when we're talking about assurance before the Lord and peace, give no ear to the law. Right?

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We look only to Christ. How many O -rings, how many defective O -rings does it take to destroy the shuttle?

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One. That's right. You better be completely covered in the robes of Christ's righteousness. Amen, bro.

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Amen. So Justin, I think we should move to the smuggles. The smuggles.

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All right, so Mike, you're our guest today. You get to go first. Podcast host, preacher man.

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You get to go first. We don't wanna steal any of your thunder. And 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.

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For most of us, if we read Galatians, we'll easily identify, oh, these churches around the

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Galatia area, they believed in the virgin birth. They believe that Jesus fulfilled all these messianic prophecies.

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They believe life, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. What they got wrong was, how do you receive the benefits of the

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Lord Jesus? And for many of those, and Paul had to really get after them, he said, you know what?

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It's not faith and circumcision. It's faith alone, right? This is, I call this the not epistle,

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N -O -T, because the third word in the epistle, Paul, apostle, not, or the no epistle.

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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.

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Oh, works after you believe, fine as evidence. But if you're gonna 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.

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What's the least amount of poop I can put in the brownie mix before you'll say, oh, I'll eat it.

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You know, it just contaminates it. It's Romans 11, six. One little part of work, it contaminates everything of grace.

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And therefore we have to, while we easily see Galatians problem and we could see Rome, oh,

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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.

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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.

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And that's federal vision. That would be one of the key smugglers these days in this law gospel distinction.

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And they do it because they don't believe in law gospel. They have one covenant of grace. So you better have law in there and grace in there and everything's mixed.

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So we want to be careful that we say to ourselves on that day, judgment day, no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

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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.

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You mean to tell me that if I simply look to that snake, I live? And the answer is yes.

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We have to be aware of the smugglers who say it's faith and then they conflate it into faithfulness.

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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, important phrase from the

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Reformation, guilt, grace, gratitude. That part gratitude is what the Reformation really helped clarify.

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And the Roman Catholic Church, there was what's called a counter -Reformation. And in the counter -Reformation, the

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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, said you were anathemate.

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And that still is an act and true today. That is still part of the Roman Catholic theology on salvation.

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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

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Protestant Reformation. In session six, 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.

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But they'll say, if you do not teach that good works, that obedience, increase and maintain justification received, then let him be accursed.

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And I would say, if we're going to talk about smuggling, I'm just going to go ahead and go here, John. And I'm sorry for like interjecting, but I'm excited to say it.

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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.

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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?

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That we, 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

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Lord, our justified status through how we live. And that is not Protestant teaching.

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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

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Romans commentaries regarding Romans eight. Those who are children are also heirs, but this inheritance is also conditioned upon obedience.

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Upon the willingness to suffer. The emphasis upon condition does not detract at all from the main thing of chapter eight, which is assurance belonging to believers, end quote.

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Really? It doesn't detract at all? Yes. No wonder Luther said every single week,

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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 see, man, maybe that's right, or you can begin to feel it a little bit.

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A great example, and I think we had talked about this before, I don't know if one of you guys were mentioning, I'm about to mention now, but people want to smuggle in affection.

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And I know how many believers, Mike and Justin, have you shepherded, where they're like,

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I just, and they immediately equate their salvation with what? How strong their affection is for Christ or for God.

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And I mean, there's so many authors that have hit this and have gone after this, and we've talked about Piper before in the past, but the hardest part about this is,

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I love this question, and I know both of you will answer it with gusto. How much faith does it require for you to know that you are right before God?

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Any. Right, any. And the point of it is, is that it is so important to understand that at times, our emotions and our affections will often waver, right?

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They ebb and flow. Right, this is why it's so important, the command given to the new believer is that they are to hear the gospel, they are to feed on his word, they are to receive communion.

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This is Hebrews 4. Consider how to build one era daily that you aren't hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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What I see happening is instead of us trusting in the means by which God has given us to keep our hearts centered, and I would even say 2

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Peter 1, where he says, he gives you the purpose of your works, to be effective in what?

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Loving and proclaiming the good news of Christ. If you're not doing that, Peter doesn't question your theology, I'm sorry, your salvation.

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He says, you've forgotten 2 Peter 1 .9. You've forgotten, you've been cleansed, right? So what ends up happening is we look at people falter in their faith, which is happening.

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I mean, it happens in my church, it happens in every church around the globe. People falter in their faith, and instead of bolstering them back with the gospel as every

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New Testament writer does, we begin to use scare tactics and guilt tactics, and this is what smuggles it in.

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And all of a sudden, we're using shame and fear and obligation to motivate people to obedience.

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And so, this is not a podcast about obedience, but if you wanna know how and why things get smuggled in, is because we confuse, really, what is the purpose of obedience?

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Couple of comments for me as we make our way out of the regular show. I think the problem with a lot of the language of affection, or Mike, you brought up some of these words earlier, surrender, treasure, these kinds of things.

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Surrender all for Christ, as the good news. The problem with that is nobody's ever done that. Talking about that, you used the

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PEEP acronym. I'm gonna use three P's, maybe this is my Baptist alliteration coming out of me. But perfect, personal, perpetual obedience.

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So nobody has ever surrendered all to Christ. Or if you don't treasure

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Jesus Christ above all things, then you're not a Christian. It's like, well, I guess then none of us are, because none of us have ever done that adequately for one moment of our lives.

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So there's a problem there. And just an understanding of the corruption of Adam that we've inherited, how everything we do is tainted with sin.

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And so therefore, how could anything that we're doing merit anything from the

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Lord as he looks at our, fill in the blank, and assesses it on its own merit. Last comment, though, in terms of ways this is often smuggled in.

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We've talked about lordship salvation before on this show. And this is associated in the minds of many people with John MacArthur, maybe

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Grace Community Church, Master's Seminary, et cetera. The concern there is that the same smuggling action is happening where we are smuggling into the definition of faith things like obedience, things like repentance, or even a desire to obey.

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And the reform through history have been clear that where there is faith, there will be these outflows. Outflows of faith, necessary consequences of faith are repentance, obedience, a desire to obey, things like this.

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But those things are not faith. And we need to keep those things appropriately distinct. For the interest of time,

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I'm just gonna kind of state it that way. If either of you have a pointed comment of general interest on lordship salvation, by all means, launch it.

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Well, I'll just say that my lordship salvation friends are earnest about preaching the Bible, and I respect that.

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And I think they're in a different category than many of the federal visionist people. I think the federal visionist people, they know what they're doing, and they do it on purpose in a negative way.

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Some of the folks at TMS don't know the categories, and they're excited about telling the truth, and they preach the gospel, and they might not know exactly what's going on with these reform categories.

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And so they're kind of in a different category. You know what, John, you were talking and you said smuggle, but then you misspoke and you said snuggle.

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Some of these doctrines are snuggled in. Those are more deceptive because they're snuggled in.

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I mean, one of the ways I like to say it is this, the fear of the Lord is beginning of wisdom, true or false? And of course we say, yes.

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But dear Christian, what kind of fear do you have? If you stand based on the ground of Christ's perfect work, what kind of fear is it?

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There's two kinds of fear, and it opens everything up. The next time you read your Bible in Proverbs or Job 28, the fear of the

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Lord is beginning of wisdom, or Ecclesiastes. There's a kind of fear before you were a Christian that you were standing before God as judge, jury, and executioner.

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It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. But now Christian, because of Christ, you don't stand before him like that because you don't stand before the judge, you stand before your father because you have

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Jesus, the mediator. Should you still fear him? Yes, in this way. My father is so awesome.

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He's so protective. He's provided everything. He's the greatest father ever. I wanna respond with awe, obedience, honor, reverence, and I wanna do the right thing to make him look good.

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Amen. Amen, dude. Come on. It sounds like Paul when he says, walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

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You've been called his son. Yeah. Now out of gratitude, right? Amen. I think where we can go in our

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Semper Reformanda episode is perhaps make some distinctions between the perhaps intentional and more malicious kind of stuff, and then the unintentional well -meaning kind of stuff.

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So in the first camp would be the federal vision advocates, and then in the latter camp would be perhaps lordship guys, even

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Piper and others, where there's some biblicism and some things going on, and we could talk about some of those things and expose some of that, and maybe clarify some of those things in a few minutes.

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Well, we were using the word Semper Reformanda. If you don't know what that means, it means always reforming.

40:00

It's a second podcast that Justin and I do, and we get to have Mike Ebendroth join us there. Let me put it this way.

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It's spicy. We enjoy it. We do have a little bit more of a frank conversation because we're trying to help those who want to partner with us and kind of take this conversation about reforming our mind to making sure that it's biblical and we are proclaiming the true gospel.

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If you want to really join us in that conversation where we go a lot deeper and a lot stronger in some of these conversations, you can do so.

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Just go to theocast .org. And what this is, it's a whole nother community and another podcast and a way to support what we're doing here at Theocast as we continue to preach and clarify the gospel and expand the message of the gospel to the kingdom of God.

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And so we'd love to have you there. I'm gonna tell you right now, we already had this conversation started before the podcast and it was spicy.

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So it's gonna be good. I hope you're there. A couple of recommendations before you leave. Please go check out No Compromise Radio.

40:54

In the show notes, I will put lists to a series that Mike has done on Law Gospel Distinction.

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He recently did an article on that at the Heidelblog to his series that he's done.

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So just go down there. You'll get all his social media. Oh, he's on social media, by the way. You can definitely follow him on Twitter.

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And talk about spicy. It's spicy over there. My daughter used to say when she was a little tiny kid, we would go to some

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Mexican place and there would be a salsa on there. And she'd say, daddy, that's picey.

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Picey baby. So stay tuned for the picey Theocast. Thank you guys. One last thing.

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If you have not downloaded our new free podcast, it's called Everyday Grace. And these are sermon clips and podcast clips from Justin and I.

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They're three minutes long, designed pretty much like Mike's books. They're designed just to give you hope and grace and assurance on a daily basis.