Getting The Gospel Right (Part 1)

Law and Gospel as the Heart of the Reformation

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we are coming to you, I guess, kind of live here from West Boylston, Massachusetts. It is snowy outside. We're expecting more snow in real time.

This is January 24th, and I think this show will play on January 25th. This is a great episode. Why? Not because I'm on it. Well, I guess I am, but it's great in this regard. It's not just one podcast, No Compromise Radio.

It's bigger than that. It's greater than that. It has more than that. Pat Abendroth and Mike Grimes from the Pactum are also on the show. Scott Clark, our Scott Clark from the Heidel cast is also on the show.

And Justin Perdue and John Moffat from Theo cast is on the show. Can you imagine? We have one, two, three, four, five, six hosts, radio host, podcast host on No Compromise Radio today. I was in California last week, and we were at the Westminster Seminary Faculty Conference on Friday the 13th and 14th of January.

And we had all four podcasts put together, and we recorded in front of a live studio audience. I don't know how many were there, 60 people? Something like that. The room was full, so that was good. And Westminster Seminary graciously gave us a room, and we were asked questions.

Pat Abendroth was essentially running lead with that, and he had questions for each of us. I got the law gospel question, and we'll talk about that today in the show. And then tomorrow, we'll look at part two of the mega, mega podcast with Theo cast, No Compromise Radio, Pactum podcast, and then the Heidel cast.

So, enjoy the show today, four podcasts, and each of us get a question with some banter back and forth. God bless you. Getting the gospel right with Theo cast, Heidel cast, No Compromise, and the Pactum.

Gentlemen, thank you for agreeing to do this, and thank you to Westminster Seminary for hosting us. The plan is to talk about Sola Fide, law gospel, assurance, and covenant theology as advertised, things that make us tick.

We have four rounds, hopefully no knockout rounds, but we have four rounds. And so, what we're going to do is allow each of the different podcasts to kick off one of the different rounds. And so, what we're going to do is we are going to draw questions from a hat.

I want you to know it is a Pactum hat. Shameless plug. But anyway, what we're going to do is we're going to draw from... Someone take that from him. Each of the podcasts is going to draw a question, and the questions are directed toward another podcast.

And when that happens, if you are on the receiving end of the question, what we want you to do is begin to answer the question, but then we'll kick it around amongst us. But at least it gives us a little rhyme or reason.

Mike Grimes is our sergeant at arms. I've got a timer. I'll cut you off and move it along, fellas. If Mike says time to pass the hat, it means, okay, hurry up, Scott.

We're taking an offering. We're taking an offering, apparently.

After 67 stances of just as I am, we'll take an offering. Do that. Now, Mike came on an airplane, so he's probably not armed. There's probably only one local guy who is armed, but we won't talk about that.

It might be fake news. Okay. With that in mind, who wants to draw first? Justin. All right. Here we go. We're going to pass that down. And if you draw your own, you got to pick a different one. Yeah. I knew you were going to do it.

He actually drew his own.

I did draw. Take one in four shots. Justin likes some Justin. Yes, he does. Dang. All right. Here we go. I'm going to read it as written. Okay. Mike Abendroth of No Compromise. We are asking you about law and gospel.

Come on. What is law gospel? And isn't it merely Lutheran? Isn't it something extra biblical imposed upon the Bible? And why do so many seem to have an allergy against it? How many questions was that, Mike?

Hey, I didn't write that. Yes, no. Yes, no. Just talk to us about the law and the gospel. Yeah. All right. Well, in Massachusetts, it's the law and the gospel. The law. That's right. So we have law enforcement people there that pull you over if you're going too fast.

Lots of times people will say, oh, law gospel distinction is simply Lutheran, or it's Lutheran. Sometimes they don't even say simply or merely. And kind of the fleshly Mike Abendroth wants to say, that's just really a stupid statement.

But I kind of know how to carry myself once in a while. And so I know my wife will check up on me. So I'll just say, well, what do you mean by that? But here's what I would say. Of course, law gospel is Lutheran.

It's not Roman Catholic. Robert Bellarmine didn't come up with it. It's not, you know, the popes don't teach it. And so it's Lutheran, but it's not only Lutheran. It is reformed as well. So you can look at Luther with law gospel distinction.

You can look at Beza, or as we like to say at home, I know it's, I've said it twice now, but Theodore Bezer, he teaches that. Olivianus, shout out to Olivianus. He teaches it. William Perkins taught it.

And so it's not simply Lutheran. I think sometimes they want to shut us down and say, oh, it's a Lutheran thing, therefore Lutheran's bad, and they don't want us to talk about it. I think underneath everything, though, is if we begin to say law gospel is essentially covenant of works and covenant of grace, they don't like the covenant language.

And so that's what they're afraid of. That's what they're allergic to. Law is simply do, it's a command. It's something that God requires, and gospel is something that God has done. There are no demands in the gospel.

There's nothing to be done in the gospel. It's something that God himself does. And so law gospel looks at the scripture and says, is this something God has done, or is this something I'm supposed to do?

And then you can kind of break it down even farther when it comes to law. There are three kinds of law, right? Moral, civil, ceremonial, and there are uses of the law, and the uses of the law to the unbeliever, it shows them their sin, right?

It's like a mirror, right? Perfectly love God, love God, and love your neighbor. The hardest thing that you could ever do, Calvin said, to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and exposes their sin so they could look for a savior.

It also restrains society, both believers and unbelievers, but the main issue with law gospel in evangelical circles, in my opinion, is the denial of the third use of the law, right? So God is holy, righteous, and just.

The law is not floating around outside of him ethereally, abstractly. It's a reflection of his character. Therefore, since God is immutable, he never changes. His law doesn't change, but our relationship to the lawgiver changes.

That's the key with all this. When you hear preaching on TV, the radio, your favorite celebrity preacher, do they handle the law that way? Preaching from the Father to guide or to steer the Christian into holy living and obedience and striving and sweating.

And so the law is to guide. It doesn't animate. It doesn't help us obey. It just tells us, right or wrong, stay on target. Here's how I'm going to guide you. It's good for you. It glorifies God. And it is the personal work of the Lord Jesus sent by the Father that gives us the animating power to obey the gospel.

So laws do, gospel's done. Lutherans and reformers taught law gospel. Don't forget who's giving you the law. My son here is Luke, and I don't say to him, if you disobey me one more time, you're no longer going to have my last name.

I tend to find out that most parents are nicer to their children than they portray God because they don't have the right law gospel distinction and law from the hand of Christ from the Father, which the Merriman talked about a lot.

So what happens when people confuse law and gospel like in preaching, or what would be an example, a common example of confusing? Well, maybe one easy example, not even in preaching as we talk about living the gospel, right?

We're going to live the gospel and only one person lived the gospel. And he told you not to live it. He told you to preach it, right? Because he knew you couldn't live it. And so we're going to live the gospel.

What does that mean? That's even a command there, live the gospel. The gospel is historical. It's outside of us, something Jesus did, whether you lived or died or were never born, Jesus was on earth. That's why if you go to Israel, you see the little plaque outside, the stone outside Caesarea Philippi, and it says something about Pontius Pilate.

I love to take the pilgrims over to that area and say, why did we love this section here about Pontius Pilate? And then I read the creed, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and was buried, because this is history.

Machen said every good theologian is a historian first. We're talking about real time and space, real person. And so we don't want to live the gospel. That would be one way that we could mess it up. Okay.

Love God is law or gospel. It is law. Okay, good. So you go to churches and you have a banner in front of the church and they're advertising their church. Sometimes in the Midwest, it might be turkey, squirrel boils, and they have free squirrel.

Everybody can come at five o 'clock. Yeah. Maybe in North Carolina.

Definitely not in Tennessee. You've never seen that in Nebraska. Squirrel boils. We have in.

New England bean suppers. If you want a free bean supper, you can come to church and we might talk to you about the law. And so we advertise our churches. And so when I see a church that says, we're all about loving God and loving neighbor, I just say to myself, usually out loud, law.

Law church. Law. They're all about the law. We love the law, but you want to know what our church is about? It's about the proclamation of the Lord Jesus Christ. T. David Gordon said, bring somebody from Tibet in your church that's never been to church ever.

They know nothing about Christianity. Let them listen to the sermon and ask them the question, what is Christianity all about? And inevitably they will say, do, be good. And so that's law. That's not gospel.

We want to.

Talk about the person and work of the Savior. I think you should pick a topic. He was excited.

About. Yeah, no kidding, right? That's right. Right. I hope that everybody actually really listened to that. So honestly, this is from my heart. If you don't take anything else tonight home with you, right?

Take that. That's right. Right. What he just gave you, that's hard worn, hard won stuff. Yeah. This is not, you won't hear that very many places and you won't hear it articulated that well from a Baptist no less.

Hey, I'm going to say amen to that. You will not hear it articulated that well, that concisely, right? That's the whole reformation right there. And anybody tries to take you away, take that away from you.

You just tell them, get thee behind me, Satan, right? That's the truth. That's God's truth that you just heard.

Amen. So then Mike, why do people call you an antinomian? You know, you used to stick up for me. You're nine years older than me. And you, you'd go after that. You'd have to go after the bullies to protect his younger brother.

And now sometimes I want to protect my older brother, my older brother, because he's called an antinomian. Are you an antinomian? And why do people call you that? Well, of course, you know, the, the word anti is against anti-Christ against Christ and anti-nom, anti-law where we're against the law.

In my little five minute description, did I sound like I was against the law? No, no. No, but I'm against using the law unlawfully and trying to put people back under the covenant of works if it were possible to use your line.

In order to get, in order to gain acceptance with God. Right. We, we love the law now because we have been accepted by God for Christ's sake alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, which leads us then to love the law.

If somebody after justification, logically after, says, well, I don't have any place for the law. Well, that's a problem. That's antinomianism and that person needs to repent. And if they're persistent, then we say, but listen, you need to repent and believe in Jesus.

Because if you really believed in Jesus, you would love his law, but not in order to be accepted with God. That's again, that's, that's the whole fight that Paul was having with the Judaizers. It's the whole fight that we had in the Reformation and it's the fight we're having with the Gnomists today.

And there's a lot of Gnomists. Well, we try to get people to obey.

So what do you do? If you just tell them, this is the God who loves you and has sent his son for you, maybe they don't think they'll obey out of gratitude that way. So then we try to put people under the law and to say, if you don't obey, you're going to be condemned.

If you don't align yourself with God, then somehow you're going to be condemned. And so that's not what we do. That's not how we treat our own children. That's not how God treats us. All your sins are forgiven, right, Christian?

Every single one. We believe in justification by faith alone. All of our sins have been paid for past, present, and future. Our name's written in the book, but our deeds are not because they're paid for by Jesus.

And so since he's done that, we want to obey and I want to encourage you to obey, but not to increase your standing, like Scott said, not to keep your standing, but because of your standing. Right? If somebody would love you like that, what would you do in response?

Hopefully you'd say, I want to honor you. And when you don't say that, we say, please forgive me. I'd like to honor you more. I repent. But in answer to your question, I'm not an antinomian, but when a neonomian calls me that, I'm happy.

Romans chapter six, right? That's right.

So they set up a test where if you're not a gnomist, in other words, if you're not using the law as your way of gaining favor with God, right, or gaining final acceptance or final salvation, by the way, anybody talks to you about final justification, final salvation, again, run away.

There's only one. And either you have it or you don't. And you have it by grace alone. So if you're justified now, if you're saved now, you are as justified and saved as you will ever be. You're either in Christ or you're not in Christ.

Right? So the idea that then, you know, you're initially justified, but you're going to finally gain approval or finally be delivered from wrath through your law keeping. Again, that's not from Jesus.

No, no. That's from someplace else. And I don't care what famous preacher says it. I don't care how big his church is. I don't care how big his social media following is. If anybody, an angel, an apostle, right?

Some big Eva star, even if they're from Nebraska, even if they're from Nebraska,.

Tells you, right, that there's a final stage. You're provisionally right. You're out on bail.

Right. Mike knows about being out on bail. Hey, hey, hey, this is my segment.

I'll just add one thought to that. When you do collapse the law and the gospel, and you've had a heavy diet of that, this is one of the things that I learned from Scott early on years ago, is that when you decide to pull the gospel out of the law, that's when you start getting accused of being an antinomian.

And when it comes to the gospel, we are antinomians. We pull the law as far away from the gospel as we can. But when it's been glossable for so long, and you say, no, no, no, you've got to separate the law.

It's at that moment, they're like, well, you're an antinomian. It's like, there cannot be any law in the gospel. So when it comes to the gospel, I am an antinomian.

But in one sense, oh, no, you didn't. Right? Because you're not, John, because you know, Christ fulfilled the law. So the law is actually there. That's right. See, this all works together because preachers are going to preach about the law one way or the other.

And they're either going to focus on Jesus, the law keeper, and Jesus, the one who paid for the lawbreakers. Or they're going to focus on the congregation's obedience. He will talk about one way or the other.

Yeah, sure. So Reformed Pastor, a good book? No. Because it says the opposite of what we've been saying, right? And what the gospel teaches.

And people may not know, Pat, but you should tell them who the author of that is.

So Richard Baxter was against John Owen, and they had it out because Owen was standing for justification sola fide. And Baxter thought somehow it was faith and works. And so when somebody says, read Richard Baxter, I would say run.

Not helpful at all. It's the anti-reformed pastor. Not helpful, but.

Baxter wrote, published aphorisms on the doctrine of justification. And you can find those. Those are available. You can read those. And I've written about them at length on the Heidel blog. Written about everything at length, I know.

But if you look, for example, at the heidelblog .net, you know, slash resources, and there's a whole resource page on justification and essays on Baxter. He's an enemy of the gospel. And all these people out there promoting Richard Baxter.

It's like, really? It's like, if you were worried about arson, would you promote an arsonist? Yeah, he was an arsonist. Or he's a mass murderer, but in the other parts of his life, he was great. Really?

He never stole anything. Seems to me like being an arsonist or a mass murderer is kind of a defining characteristic, sort of disqualifying for the rest of what you have to say.

Well, what happens to Scott is, as you know, it crushes people's assurance. Intentionally. Yeah. And I don't want to steal the assurance talk tonight, but it's just like, it's so, and even as a seminary student, we were required to read Reformed Pastor by Baxter.

And I thought, I could never do this. And then the first few years when I didn't do it, I thought I felt so bad because I never measured up. But what Baxter was doing is going house to house to make sure they were keeping the laws of the Bible, plus the extra laws that the celebrity pastor Baxter from Kiddeminster gave.

So everybody would do the right thing. How much do I have to obey? Whatever the celebrity says.

And in order to gain acceptance with God. And keep it. That's good. Right.

Mike, how are we doing? You guys are doing good on time. I'm just watching. You got like a minute left. Hey, you know, I'm surprised. Shocked, really.

All right. Make sure this translates law gospel into even parenting because we're built with the law. And so there's nothing wrong with telling your children, sit down, be quiet. Shake your hand for the shake the hand firmly.

No running in the church. Don't eat with your mouth full. No elbows on the table. Push your chair in afterwards. Tell mom, thank you for the dinner. Help clean off the plates. Law, law, law, law, law.

That's all fine. But we need to make sure we parent our children like God fathers us. It's law and gospel, not just to get in, but also as God sanctifies us. And so it's law and gospel, the motivation.

So I love you. I hear a book coming. Gospel parenting. It's 20 ,000 words done.

And so that's, don't forget, that's how we deal with our spouse. If we're not careful, all law, we give them a honey do list. And it's not, here's what I think you are and how I love you, et cetera. So don't forget in your daily lives.

See, this is my practical, relevant K-love moment. Don't forget about law and gospel. With a blouse. In your love, man. In your parenting and your marriages. We need a honey done list.

I know. There you go. I tried to patent it. Anything else anybody wants to say about law and gospel? I'm sure we'll have other opportunities. Okay. We'll just come down the row here with this. It's probably for us.

Assurance of Salvation in Christ Alone

That's the same question. Okay. Let's see. All right. John Moffitt, Justin Perdue of Theocast. We're asking you about assurance of salvation that already kind of came up, but what is the biblical basis for assurance?

What kind of Christian deserves to have assurance and why? Did you hear that? Repeat that one more time. What kind of Christian deserves to have assurance and why? And why do so many seek to rob Christians of assurance?

Talk to us about assurance. Simple answer. If you just make Jesus Lord of your life, you can have assurance. There it is. Sorry. This is not a Pisces episode. That's Pisces.

I'll let you start. All right. So assurance. What kind of Christian deserves assurance? Well, none of us deserve it. That's right. Nobody could ever earn it before the Lord. We were talking about the law and the gospel just a minute ago.

One of the most provocative things that we can ever say is that the gospel contains nothing in it whatsoever that we are to do. It's completely what Christ has accomplished, and we receive what Christ has done completely by faith.

And so no one deserves assurance, but we have it because of the Lord Jesus Christ and because of Him alone. We talk a lot on Theocast. You guys talk on your podcasts about these things as well. One of the things that occurs often in churches across this land lamentably is Christians are pointed back in on themselves somehow.

We're pointed to Christ, at least in part, believe the gospel, trust in Jesus, maybe even for your righteousness and your acceptance before God. But then somewhere the law has slipped back in, and it's not slipped back in as a guide, right?

In a good sense, the third use of the law, but it's brought back in as a piece of our standing before the Lord. And then any thoughtful, sane human being, anyone with a tender conscience is going to examine himself or herself and say, I don't meet the test, which is why many, many people in churches all over the place really don't have assurance because they hear things like final justification, that I'm going to need to do enough to supplement what Christ has done, or even if they're told Christ has done it all, I'm still going to need to do enough to prove myself a legitimate follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then when we press in and say, well, how much obedience, how many good works, what kind of works, no one can define that. It's very amorphous, it's very ethereal. Or when people will say to us, you need to not live a life characterized because they collapsed the law and the gospel in passages like Galatians 5 or whatever, we need our first John, a letter that's meant to comfort the saints is often turned into a litmus test of, are you legitimate or not?

We take passages and people will say, instead of preaching the law and the gospel rightly, the first use of the law as we should, well, you shouldn't live a life characterized by A, B, C, or D. You need to see a certain kind of trajectory in your life, a certain kind of improvement in your life in order to have peace with God.

And again, we say, well, how much improvement? What exactly does that trajectory need to look like? And no one could tell you. These are common things. John, go ahead.

No, that's good. One of the things I think that helps me is that we disassociate assurance from the affections of God, the love of God towards us. We love because He is the one who set his love upon us.

And so what I love about this is that John sets this up, right? God loves you not based upon His reaction to your love. You're reacting to His love. And the question is, how good are you at loving God?

Well, if you come to the conclusion that everybody should come to, I'm not really good at it. Paul then says, there's nothing that's going to separate you from that love you're enjoying. And it's important to understand that our responses to God and our obedience to God is grounded in our assurance.

I mean, I don't know how else you read Romans and not walk away with going, God loved me so much, He did not leave me in my state. The thing that would cause further separation and anxiety in my own heart, He took on Himself in His Son, and then guaranteed that there is nothing that can remove this.

We were talking about final justification when Jesus is on the cross and He says, it is finished. That which could separate you was completed on the cross. Therefore, your sin and required righteousness is all granted to you by the love of God in His mercy and in His grace.

Like you see the love of God in His mercy and in His grace. And then how does the Bible describe, excuse me, how does it describe the love of God? It's boundless. How does it describe the grace of God?

It's an ocean that you cannot dry. So when we think about assurance, I think what frustrates me the most, and obviously Theocast has really kind of built its ministry around this, is that it's hard, just now we're literally having this conversation in the car today, it's hard if a soldier doesn't know which side he's on, he doesn't know where to point the gun.

So he often points it at himself like, well, I'm just going to take myself out of this. And what's so comforting about Scripture is that we have this firm and solid foundation of Christ our Rock. And we have every reason to realize it's not my performance, what I do right or wrong, which is not a justification to go do something wrong, but it's the love of God that comes and it fuels me so I know where I'm supposed to run, where I'm supposed to go, because I know what side I'm on.

I'm on the side of my Father who adopted me, unconditionally loves me, and will take care of me to the very end. So what happens with an assurance is that we emphasize what we're doing, those who deserve it, you'll never do...

If you're trying like, okay, I'm going to do this list of things to assure myself that I know I'm right with God, it'll never happen. But if you can say, well, this is what Christ did, this is how God fulfilled these promises, and this is how I know it's true because I believe these, I have every reason then to go produce fruit because it's based upon the confidence of Christ versus my own.

Work. So it's rightly said that the Reformation was a recovery of the biblical doctrine of assurance. Good. And that's not something that John Calvin or Martin Luther or anybody else came up with, they're getting this from scripture.

I mean, think about beginning in Romans 5, we were talking about final justification in a moment. I don't know what you do with Romans 5, 1 and 2, or even Romans 5, 1 to 5, if you're going to argue for a final justification perspective, because Paul says, having been justified by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we now have peace with God.

And then he says, he gives this very forward-looking language of, we now rejoice in a number of things, including the hope of the glory of God. So it's very clear that if we have been united to the Lord Jesus Christ and presently justified, we will be finally saved.

Book it. It's done. And then Paul continues to talk about the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, which I'm sure we're going to talk about more later, and how Jesus, it's legitimate that Jesus represents us all.

We're going to talk about covenant theology later. That's what Romans 5, 12 to 21 is about. Adam clearly represented us all in the garden. It's legitimate then that Christ would represent everyone who's united to him.

But then there's this question, if where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more, and if we're counted righteous on account of Christ, well, we can just send them. And Paul says, by no means, but it's interesting how he answers that question.

He does not go to the law immediately and say, well, remember what the law says. He says, no, saints, you have been united to Christ. You've been baptized into Jesus. You've been set free from the tyranny of sin, and you're no longer under the law for your justification, for your standing, but you're under grace and you've now become obedient from the heart.

But then we get Romans 7, which are some of the most true words ever penned. We all resonate with it that I now, the law is good and holy. There is nothing wrong with the law, but the law for a sinner, it shows us the depth of our corruption and it shows me how horrible sin is.

And so now I have to look outside of myself for righteousness. But then Paul acknowledges that even as a Christian, I am often finding myself in this position where I want to do good and I'm not doing good.

I want to flee from evil, but yet I find myself doing evil things. And he cries out like we all do, wretched man that I am. I delight in God's law and my inner man, he says, which by the way, you can't say that.

You can never say I delight in the law and my inner man, if the law is still your death sentence. No one rejoices in what is his or her death sentence. Only a person that's been justified, forgiven and absolved could ever say such a thing.

But then we cry out wretched man, wretched woman that I am. But then what is our peace? What is our stay? Thanks be to God through the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

And we learned that what God meant to do and did do through the Lord Jesus Christ was something that the flesh could not accomplish because it was weakened by sin. And now through Christ, the righteous requirements of the law are fulfilled in us, which John Calvin says in his commentary on Romans 8, 3 and 4, that people who even point to Romans 8, 3 and 4 and say that what's being depicted there is our spirit empowered obedience.

That person is introducing a gloss that is foreign to the apostle Paul. What Paul is talking about there in the early verses of Romans 8 is the imputation of the righteousness of Christ who has fulfilled the law for us.

So that by faith in the Lord Jesus, it is as though we have been as perfectly obedient as he was. This is the bedrock of assurance. I talk for a long time. You know what, Justin, are you preaching at your church.

On Sunday? Are you traveling? You just got your sermon out, man. That's right, man. He got it out.

That's right. This is good. We should have multiple... Get preachers behind the microphone.

It's dangerous, man. Right? There you go. What is that? I guess it's time for the show to end. That was abrupt. Spencer, that was kind of abrupt. Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio, we'll listen to part two of the Mego podcast tomorrow.