If I could invite our speakers to come forward and take a stool to sit on, and if you hear my voice, you can work your way back to the sanctuary. We're going to begin our question and answer time. I want to thank everyone for giving us some good questions, and if you think of a question, if you're not too afraid, you can slip up and I can grab it from you if you think of a good question as we talk. Dr. Phillips, this is a conference on adoption, and we have a wonderful question I'm going to begin with for you. What does it mean in Isaiah 9-6 when the name of the everlasting Father is used for the promised Messiah? Well, I would say that it's important in all of our Trinitarian theology to know that they mutually indwell one another. And they are, all of the Trinity is involved in all that the Trinity is and all that the Trinity does. And so you'll have statements being made about Jesus that seem to be more appropriate to be made about the Father. I mean, that's a classic example of it. And that's true. We wouldn't, we're not going to develop a Christology class where we're going to start with those claims. The fatherhood of God, of the first person, is invested in the sonship of the son. God is father in and through his... I really appreciated Blair last night. He started off God's love of the father by saying the father loves the son. And I knew it was going to be good at that point. And God's love for you is a part of his inner Trinitarian love for the Son. And so that's going to be a little bit of a stretching theological statement, but that is how we're going to understand that and the way that even their distinct persons are bound up in relation one to another. One of the reasons why Jesus must eternally be the Son is if he's not eternally the Son, God is not eternally the Father. Father's not a father without a son. And so, that is a peculiar statement, but we're going to see. God is going to manifest his eternal fathership through the sonship of this one who's to be born. Thank you, Dr. Smith. We're going to go right into controversy with you. In light of our experience of how we know the Father's love through the doctrine of eternal generation, how do we approach what many church leaders teach that affirm the eternal subordination of the Son? And should we call folk who believe that our brothers? Controversy, yes. It's a big question, so do I get extra time? You do, you do. Okay. You don't get as much as we gave Harry Reader a few weeks ago, but we'll... Yeah, he probably packed in five stories into his answer. Yeah. Yes, so eternal subordination, another phrase that you hear in and around these same controversies is eternal submission. But they all seem to communicate something of the distinction between the father and the son that would put the son at some lesser level. Now, if we had somebody here that held that, we could go back and forth to what degree do they hold the son to a lesser level. When I use the word subordination or teach on it, I think it's important to be clear on its connotation and its denotation. Denotation is what is a dictionary definition of a word, right? And subordination literally simply means to be ordered under, right? And to be ordered under does not necessarily entail that the son has less power or less authority than the father. I'll get back to that. But The connotation of subordination in theological history goes all the way back to controversies prior to Nicaea and after Nicaea. And their subordination does mean that the son is less than the father ontologically or in his being. And that connotation If we bring that connotation of subordination into our theological bloodstream, if I can say it that way, it's very confusing. Because what are you saying when you say the son is subordinate to the father? It seems as if you're saying that he has less power, less essence, less authority that the son does than the father. And that's heresy. You might want to look. I knew Mel was going to ask me some question in and around this. So I... I'll give you a heads up. Yeah. I look to see at what page numbers in this Trinity hymnal. You have the best, most updated Trinity hymnal here. And at the back of it, you have the Westminster Confession of Faith and the larger and shorter catechisms. And there's some very good grammar there on how we talk about the father-son relationship. If you want to turn to page 921, Page 921, you have the second chapter of the Westminster Confession, paragraph 3. And one of the things that you'll read about in paragraph 3 of chapter 2 on God is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share the same essence, the same power. And that means that they are 100% equal in their authority. So what distinguishes them? Well, the confession goes on to say that the Father is of no one, of nothing, the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The larger catechism, if you want to look at that, that's several pages later, questions nine to 11 in the larger catechism address this. And it talks about those things that distinguish the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as their personal properties. And those personal properties are eternal generation and eternal procession. Those are the things that the church, theologians, after a long meditation on the scriptures have said, these are what distinguish the persons, not authority. Because if you say authority distinguishes the persons or power distinguishes the persons, then you're slipping into subordinating the son ontologically in his being. He is less God than God the Father is God, in which case he is not God. Right, yeah. And so I think the Confessions are very helpful. It's very terse, it's dense, but it's very clear there that the Son does not have less of that Godness, less of that divinity. When we talk about authority, that belongs to what is God, not what is a person. all the persons share that property fully and equally. Now, the manner in which they hold it, then we can start talking about order, that the Son is from the Father, the Spirit is from the Father and the Son. And this is what we might call, using a Greek word, taxis, or order among the persons. That's fully biblical, that's fully in our confession, That's in Hillary, one of the great pro-Nicene theologians that I quoted last night. It's in Augustine. It's in Gregory of Nazianzus. It's in Basel. And when we hear them talking about order, what they're talking about between the order between the persons is that generation, is that procession, not order among how God they are. And so the eternal subordination controversy A lot of those that hold to that I don't think are malicious in holding that, like they're trying to cut against Orthodox Trinitarianism. So Mel's question, should we consider them brothers or not? I think and I teach that it's important when we're talking about heresy to really consider where is somebody in their intentionality, in their maturity, in what they're seeking to do with regard to teaching eternal subordination. Sometimes what we simply need to do is if somebody is maybe articulating something like eternal subordination is sit down with them. How are you using that word? How are you understanding that word? Are you thinking through the implications of using that word and trying to talk with them? But if they are motivated, if they are seeking to overturn centuries old teaching on the Trinity and they're going against Nicaea, yeah, then I have a hard and fast rule of heretic and yes, would I consider them a Christian or not? And they're pretty close to that these days. Yeah. I mean, it is heresy, but we don't want to be quick to label people who've been sound in other areas. You know, this is interesting because this is a fairly recent thing in our experience, the eternal subordination issue. It actually arises out of the biblical manhood and womanhood, and the complementarians are using more biblical data than they need. And the organization promoting biblical manhood and biblical womanhood use the divine, the eternal subordination of Jesus to ground the submission of wives to husbands when we don't need that. Now, it is true that Jesus subordinates himself to the Father. There's all that language, but 100% of it's in the context of the incarnation. as the mediatorial God-man. But when you say that He eternally, what they've done is that He eternally is subordinate to the Father, they're actually replicating more or less the arguments of Arius. It's actually the structure of much of Arius. You might want to go, whoa. And the problem is that when they dig their heels in, and then that's when the...it's like political cover-up. If you just go, oh, I'm wrong, you'll be okay. Some of the arguments being made to defend, in light of critique, the ESS or EFS, whatever it is, are pretty troubling. And so I actually had dinner with one of their leading figures a couple of years ago, and it was very disconcerting to me. But we do want to be careful when there's kind of a more technical matter, important as it is, where otherwise sound people are erring. And we have to oppose the error, but let's not label them too quickly in these cases. You know, it's interesting because I think most of us have benefited from the experience. We're probably accustomed to saying, okay, the Trinity is there's one God in three persons. That thing that Blair quoted from the Westminster Confession reminds you there's a third necessarily statement, and they are equal. And they are equally God in every respect. It's not the doctrine of the Trinity unless we say there's one God in three persons and those three persons are in every respect equally God. And we've been helped by heresy to remind ourselves of what's important. Yeah, the catechism uses the word equal in power and glory. And John 17 is beautiful because it talks about Jesus, of course, praying there. longing to, in one sense, bask in the glory that he has always had with the Father. He's returning to that after his state of humiliation. If I could just follow up on two points that Rick made there. When you hear eternal submission, one of the problems with eternal submission is when we understand Christ subordinating himself in the Incarnation, and talking about the Father is greater than I, I've come to do the will of the Father. All those sort of mission texts where he is saying he's obeying something. He's doing so as he has assumed a human nature, as the second Adam. And so there is a clear subordination there and a submission. But with the submission, you're talking there about the eternal son of God who's now assumed a human nature, which means he has two wills. And there's a divine will and a human will. And so we understand what's going on there in the context of those Trinitarian and Christological realities. And then, yeah, the second point is just to put an exclamation point on, as this relates to gender debates in the church and complementarianism, you know, one author put it rightly, why have so many gone to the Trinity to try to substantiate complementarianism when the scripture itself doesn't make that move? There's maybe a good motive in there that you're trying to go to the deepest, most profound thing, and that's the Trinity. But the scripture, we should go where the scripture's grain takes us, not beyond that. And where does the scripture takes us? It takes us to creation, 1 Timothy 2. It takes us to Christ in the church, Ephesians 5. We have texts like 1 Peter 3. These are the texts that we have to think through the order between the sexes. We don't need to bump up to the Trinity where it quickly gets in a lot of gobbledygook and gets this borderline heresy. And it has us defining God in virtue of man. One of their arguments they're making now is that a father-son, the essence of their argument is, as son he is not in the same authority as the father. And their argument is, well look, you have sons and fathers, the father has authority, the child does not. And you're going, no, the word for defining God in terms of the creature is idolatry. And you just want to go, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. There are analogies, of course, that's why that language father-son resonates with us. But we do not define God based upon the creature. And it's an exercise in hermeneutical out of control-ness. And so we do not define God. We don't argue because it works this way down here, it must therefore work that way up there. There's a creature-creator divide that we have to respect. Go ahead, Dr. Schmitt. I'm just giving a winning comment for the confession and catechisms. They're helpful, and their language keeps you in proper boundaries on questions like this. Good question, great answers. Dr. Master, a question from a seminary student. In the Ordo Salutis, that is the order of salvation, how are we to understand adoption in light of justification and sanctification while not emphasizing one part over the other? I have to think a little bit about the last part of the question, but in terms of the order of salvation, what we would say, and John actually goes out on to say this in the next verse, the verse following the one that we looked at this morning, that this this adoption as God's children is not of ourselves. This is not of the will of man, but it's of God. And so with respect to regeneration, we would say that we are born again into the family of God. And so if we want to think in a logical order, that's the right way to do that. In terms of proportionality, I think that might be the substance of the second part. How do we relate this and keep it in proportion to justification and sanctification? Well, I think we try to keep it in proportion by looking at the way in which the Bible teaches these things. Anything that's elevated at the expense of something else, anything that is the only lens through which we view our salvation is going to lead to an unbalance, and that certainly happened with adoption. Sometimes people think of that as the only way in which the Bible speaks of our salvation, and the only way in which the Bible views even our growth in sanctification, and that kind of imbalance is corrected for us by the Scriptures, and that's what we need to bear in mind. So it's... that's probably the... if I'm understanding the question correctly, that's probably the the simplest way to go about it. This is a category. It is an important category. It is an important lens. It is vital for us. But at the same time, these other things as well need to be born in mind and have a place in our understanding of how it is that we're saved. while we're talking about adoption, a very practical question I want you to take as well. Oh, that's a great question. There are so many ways in which it should influence it. I will say this, that in the ancient world, in the world of the first century, when Paul uses that doctrine of being God's sons, the primary thing that you'll see him pointing to is the question of inheritance. So there is a difference between the way in which we generally, our sort of default concerns when it comes to adoption and the default concerns of the first century world. We need to be aware of that. At the same time, when you take the full picture of what the Bible teaches regarding our adoption, then all of these relational benefits, all of the benefits of having a father who provides for us, a father who cares for us, a family of which we're now a part. All of those things really do. come to bear on the discussion. So I think that teaching will inform how we understand, ideally, what adoption should be. And it should also influence the emphasis we place on that, the goodness of adoption in our lives, because it is one of the the significant ways in which we're told our salvation is to be viewed. So the importance of it, for sure, and then also some of the benefits of it, with an awareness that there are some key things that we don't normally think about with respect to adoption that the Bible very much has in view when it uses particularly sonship language. Dr. Phillips, when Christ in the book of John said the Father was greater than him, Does that refer to the eternal relationship between the father and son or just the relationship in the incarnation? First of all, let me just amplify what Jonathan said. You know, when we're looking at justification, sanctification, and adoption, we have to make them distinct. There's biblical categories in each one. There's a biblical structure to each of those. But they also are organically linked through union with Christ. And we get into trouble when we think we can have one and not the others. I mean, let's keep your sanctification out of your justification. You're justified not by your works, but let's not let justification keep us from doing sanctification. We are to do good works. Let's keep the categories clear and that we're adopted, we're adopted in the beloved. Everything that we possess is through faith in union with Christ. And that means that that is true at the same time as everything else is simultaneously true. And that will keep us, usually our imbalance comes by emphasizing one and neglecting the other. The doctrines of justification, sanctification, and adoption You either, you have them all or you have none of them. And if you have them, you have them all bearing upon you equally, and that's really...in union with Christ. That's why you see us using the, actually, Paulian language. I think 10 years ago, you weren't used to saying, union with Christ through faith. It kind of sounds theological and wonky. It's actually biblical. When Paul says, in Christo, in Christ, that's what he means, in union with Christ. And so, we're actually proving the biblical depth and accuracy of our speaking when we say, well, by faith, we have union with Christ and the benefits thereof. And I think that's why guys like me are emphasizing that for that reason. Now, that bought me time to think about the passage. I don't know. I'd have to look at it carefully. I wouldn't be surprised. In John 5 and John 8, before answering, go look back at the Greek and think carefully about it. I'm not prepared to do that. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in there is that it's the derivative, he is derivative of the Father, and he's not talking about he's more God than I am. But I'm not prepared to answer that question off the cuff without maybe Blair, who's a full-time scholar. Do you want to wade into these waters? And actually, the question that was asked to him, I probably was asked to him because of some of the things I said last night. So let me just be clear. So we'll get around to this question eventually. So I was making this sort of, it was a subtle argument that we give adoption more attention rather than letting the doctrine of justification sort of swallow up everything when we talk about salvation. And that adoption needs to be an area of focus. And if there was a slight little argument there, it was that adoption actually pictures our future best. Because the courtroom, as important as it is for our salvation, It's not a picture of eternity, whereas the house, the family, that is a picture of eternity. So there's an eschatological orientation to adoption that we're living to, and I think you're preaching about that tomorrow night. Except there is a judgment in the future. Sure. There is a judgment in the future that we pass through. Yeah. But our ultimate destiny that we will be living in is in light of the father as our father. But adoption, as Dr. Master has made clear, that too has in some circles, in reform circles in the last 20 years, become a point of emphasis to the neglect of sanctification and justification on its own as well. So there can be imbalances all over the map. All right, now back to, this was John 14, the Father is greater than I. Is that right? Yeah, so the Father was greater than him. Does that refer to the eternal relationship to the Father and Son or the relationship in the Incarnation? Yeah, so it's interesting. There's a debate in the history of Orthodox theology on that very question. Some, including very good Orthodox Trinitarian theologians of the 4th century, said that when Jesus is talking that way, he's actually talking about his eternal generation. So something akin to, if you were here last night, the quote I gave from Hillary, where Hillary says the Father is greater But through eternal generation, he enables or gives to the son to be as great as he is. So can we say the father's greater in that he is the source or he is of no one and the son is of something? We're not accustomed to using greater in that language. When we think greater, we think more mighty, more strong, more elevated. But if greater there is simply referring to the fact that there's an order to the relationship according to their personal properties, the one being eternal, generated in the one generating, then that's fine. But most people in the history of theology, and I tend towards this, would see it as he is speaking in the capacity of his human nature, that the Father is greater than I. He's speaking as the incarnate Son of God who has assumed a human nature and is fulfilling the covenant of works where Adam failed. And he's doing that for us because he's gifting the righteousness that he is gaining to us. Dr. Master, what is contemporary Sonship theology, and where has it gone wrong? That's what I was referring to. Yeah, it's been alluded to a little bit already. The essential idea is that the way in which we need to view our entire Christian experience, or at least the bulk of our Christian experience, including our understanding of personal holiness is through this lens of adoption, so that what's most important, what we need to continually be reminded of over and over, in spite of our messiness, in spite of our sin, we're adopted as God's children and therefore we have this relationship with him. You have to say brokenness to describe sunshine. Did I say messiness? You haven't said broken. Messy is good, but you have to say broken. Right, right, right. Thank you. So what that means, you could say at one level so far so good, but what it means on the ground, and this is where it goes wrong, is it really undermines, downplays, and in some cases outright denies the biblical injunctions, the serious biblical commands to pursue personal holiness. We know, of course, that our lives, our Christian lives, are monuments to the grace of God. And yet the Bible does give us commands to pursue holiness, to say no to sin, and to, in fact, reckon ourselves dead to sin in all kinds of specific ways. And so what the contemporary sonship movement has done is that it has elevated this idea of our status before God as sons, and then therefore sidelined the clear biblical teaching that it's holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And so in its maybe least problematic forms, it's a lack of proportion. It's only talking about this and never talking about that or hardly ever talking about that. In its worst forms, it really is an outright denial or undermining of biblical injunctions to obey the commands of God, to obey the law of God. as God's adopted child. And creates a church culture of the celebration of licentiousness. A celebration of the normalization of brokenness. in a way the New Testament rejects. And so the church is not a place where we revel in the fact that we're envious, that we're prone to sexual sins. Those things may be true and we're candid about them in terms of confession, but we never normalize them and what happens. And sonship is itself a cultural response to legalism. The actual sonship curriculum was designed, I've gotten this from the horse's mouth, that you had particularly missionaries who were legalistic and their relationship with the Lord was bound by a performance mentality. So, the curriculum was put together to say, no, no, by propitiation, you have become sons of God and God loves the sons. And so, it was a correction to an error that became an overreaction that produced a culture. And we, certainly in the PCA today, we have in many, many places a culture of the normalization, even the celebration of messiness, of brokenness. Well, we are messy, we are broken, but the Bible doesn't celebrate that, it delivers us from that. And we're in the process of delivery. This is at the root of the controversies right now in the PCA over same-sex attraction and homosexuality. Because, you know, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, you were, but you are not. You were this, you now are that. And so sonship, I think it's helpful to know it's an overreaction that has enculturated what is itself than an overreaction. It's so hard not to overreact. So let's not overreact to that by being legalistic again. Yeah, I hope to pull together some of these strands these gentlemen are speaking to tomorrow in my sermon when we talk about family likeness. Because I think the Sonship Movement has gotten nailed down really well, love, and that we're loved by the Father and that we respond to Him in love. But Scripture puts together with love something that is sort of a curveball to our contemporary society, and that's law. Law and love go hand in hand in Scripture. John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments, Jesus says. And we want to break these things apart, and it creates so much confusion. It affects church cultures. It does many things. But Scripture pulls these together. And then another thing that Scripture pulls in here, Hebrews 12, is discipline. That if we are a son or we are a daughter, that means the father is going to be lovingly disciplining us. And he does so according to a standard in the context of his love. But we sort of want to pull apart law and love and see them as in intention. Whereas, I think if, to put this in the context of the sermon we just heard on prayer and the Psalms, don't we want to get to the point where we can pray Psalm 119, I love your law? Because that's Christ's prayer. Christ is the prayer of all the Psalms. He loved the law perfectly and obeyed it. And that's sort of our spiritual orientation. As part of our sanctification, can we be brought to that same place as sons and daughters? of the Father. I think that would be a heart's cry, whereas the Sonship Movement kind of sidelines the law as part of the discussion and really just focuses in on the relationship. According to Jesus, the subtitle of the Ten Commandments is how to love, how to love God, how to love your neighbor. And that's...so I'm for love, not law. The law is how to love, what love is. But it is a response to another problem, that's legalism, where we do separate the law from the loving lips of our fathers. So let's not overreact to the overreaction by going back to the thing that it overreacted against. It's hard not to do, isn't it, in the life of a church? I was just going to add one more thing that Rick's comments reminded me of. There's a sense in which part of the answer I would want to give is not don't spend so much time on adoption, don't think so much about sonship, but really understand it in a more biblical way. One of the things that we can see in the scriptures is that being a child of God involves a new identity. Being a child of God involves a new nature. And so it's not that adoption itself, or even the biblical doctrine of adoption, absents itself from these things. They're actually all included in it. So that's another way in which the sonship movement sort of truncates the doctrine of adoption while at the same time elevating it. I have a couple of questions from children who are in our midst. One, I think from our youngest conferee, I'm going to give this to you, Dr. Phillips. What is the best way I should praise God as his child? You should praise God for being the perfect and loving Father who loves you through His Son. And so the best way to praise Him is by Jesus said, we begin our prayer, our Father. And you have a daddy who's pretty good, but you have a heavenly Father who takes all the best things that you see in your Father on earth and he exemplifies them and perfects them. So the best way as a child of God to praise the Father is to really believe the words, our Father, and what the Bible says they mean. Dr. Smith, you're getting all the hard questions. In what sense can an unregenerate covenant child pray our Father who art in heaven? Well, I mean, I guess in one sense, the unregenerateness of the child is known to God. And if they're in the covenant, I mean, I haven't been given parameters on age or maturity or anything, those things, but if they're in the covenant, Part of the church part of a Christian family and he or she's being raised in the Lord I would be encouraging that child to call on your covenantal father And while you're calling on your covenantal father learning to confess your sins learning to put your faith in in Jesus Christ. But insofar as this is a covenant child, it's a part of the visible people of God that he or she should be taking those same prayers on his or her lips. But at the same time, again, the unregenerateness, that's something God sees. Encouraging that child to repentance and faith if there hasn't been a public profession at the same time. So is that pro-vipers and covenantal diapers or It shows you how the issue of the covenant relationship of covenant children can have all the biblical nuance stripped away from it. And if you have a child, one of our children, we remember vividly he was five years old when he had a dramatic conversion in our kitchen. Someone had died and he, Mommy, I don't want to go die and go to hell. And what do I do? Believe in the Lord Jesus. Oh, I believe. And it was just great. Now, that child was born again at that time. That child was justified at that time. But that child did not end up in a covenant home by accident. And the covenant relationship of children has more ways to describe it than is that child regenerate yet or not. The covenant relationship, this is what Blair is saying, the covenant relationship is itself real. And it then needs to be nuanced and all those sorts of things, but that covenant relates and we need to act upon it. So we should not be saying, you know, the vipers and diapers because it's not regenerate again. You can't pray our father until you've demonstrated that. No, Jesus teaches us and they're the children of the covenant. And he's the Jesus who said, do not keep the children from me. I realized that Jesus saying, you know, bring the children to me is not a proof of infant baptism. But that is the Lord of the covenant, and it's little children, he says. And he's calling for little children, we presume who've not shown regeneration at least. Jesus is saying, do not hinder them from coming to me. And he's going to give covenantal blessing to them. That covenant relationship is itself a very real thing, and we don't want to despise it. Master, how do you encourage someone in their spiritual walk with the Lord who's had a bad relationship with their earthly father. Yeah, that's very difficult. And I think Rick alluded to that in some of the things he taught on prayer and then some of the specific quotes he used on prayer in particular. I think what's important for us in those kinds of situations is to is to familiarize ourself perhaps even more acutely than others might need to with what the Bible teaches about God as our Father. That can be a difficult matter psychologically to unravel, but the thing is the Bible teaches us what it means for God to be Father. So going beyond simply the term Father, which may for some have a a negative connotation and all kinds of painful memories wrapped up with it and saying, OK, but what kind of a father is God himself? What does the Bible say about God's fatherhood? So I think that's the primary way you have to go about this. There's a sense in which you have to reprogram your understanding of what father means and reprogram your whole conception of what a father is and what a father does. At a smaller level, of course, It's also worth looking carefully in those situations at what the Bible teaches just about human fathers. Because what you'll find is that the biblical teaching on what it means to be a godly human father, after the pattern of God our Father Himself, is entirely different from whatever it is that you experienced and whoever's hand you suffered under. And so it's going to be a process of filling your mind with the scriptures and with the Bible's definitions. It's not unlike, actually, what was just discussed about the word love. The word love in our minds has all kinds of connotations. Well, but how does the Bible define love? How does the Bible define what that looks like? How does the Bible define how that's played out? And so all of us in different ways, and this is a very particular and painful and formative way, but in different ways have to rewire our thinking using the definitions and the terminology that the scriptures themselves give to us. Could I add to that a little bit? That was great. I think it's unmistakable that just psychologically the way we've been built, we initially get our initial thoughts about God from our parents, from our... from our father. There's this very interesting book written by a Roman Catholic psychologist who was at New York University for a long time, Paul Witz. It's called Faith of the Fatherless, and he gets into all these characters, psychological studies of men in history and how they've been shaped for good or ill. Some of the sort of worst actors in the history of our world have had really bad fathers, and he kind of traces that for us. And I think, you know, we live in a society where fatherhood is mocked on sitcom TV. It's not a place of honor, encouragement. It can be a difficult position to have. Some may say, well, because of that, and because there have been a lot of wicked fathers that have inflicted great heartache on their families, then we should back away from the category of fatherhood, because it's going to bring pain to those that you're ministering to. Where the actual opposite should be the case, as Jonathan, I think, was saying there, is that you don't avoid what is a biblical category. You keep teaching it so that people are reoriented from the heartache and the hurt and the sin that they've experienced as a result of wicked fatherhood, reoriented to the goodness of their loving Heavenly Father, because the grace of God can overcome Can I say brokenness? The brokenness of this world that comes as a result of sin that we do experience and can restore that through a conception of who our heavenly Father is. That's the grace, the restorative grace that can come and take place. So, maybe contextually we should actually be teaching more on the fatherhood of God because of the breaking apart of fathers in a society. And the God of the Bible has proven his trustworthiness. And you say, I need a father who's proven his worth, open your Bible. And it's fair enough. And people have been incredibly abused by their fathers and they're broken by that. God has proven his faithfulness to you. And as you read through the Old Testament, you see he's trustworthy, he's loving. You know, you think of how Jesus manifests the Father and everyone is safe with him. And you'll find in the Bible the ultimate Father, God as Father, and he is proven that you can trust your heart with him. And that can be a process, but it will change your life. We have many more questions, but I'm going to end with this last one. And Dr. Phillips, if you would take it, would you counsel someone who is worried that they are obeying God out of a sense of moralism instead of a love-based obedience? This is how they've asked it. The question, how would you counsel that person who's obeying God out of moralism instead of love-based obedience? Is that the right category to think about? Well, I'm not sure exactly what moralism means. There's a lot of good reasons to obey God. Jesus uses rewards. So people say we should never use rewards to motivate obedience. Jesus does. You know, do not store up treasures on earth, but store them up in heaven. It's true. What we must not do is, and we have to fight this, we need to keep our sanctification out of our justification and our adoption. Sanctification is great. We need to be zealous. But my standing before God was accomplished for me by Jesus Christ. That's justification. The law of God in terms of the judicial aspect of God's throne, that issue has been settled by Jesus paying my debt. The very justice of God that once demanded my condemnation now demands my approval because Jesus has paid my debt and his righteousness has imputed to me. With his imputed righteousness, the justice of God says that man must be approved in a claim before God. And so that issue is settled. So me doing good works is not a remedy for the legal problem of my life. And so also with the adoption of the Phil... Blair was talking about it. The Bible gives us a number of frame from which to think this is legal, there's the marketplace, there's the family relationship. And let's think about my earthly father. Why did I be my earthly father? Well, I was told to, I wanted, I had a sense of duty. Is duty moralism? I don't think so. Duty gets a bad name today. Duties are a good thing. It's an acceptance of this is who I am. This is what my relationship calls for. But it ought to be that the thing that is primarily motivating me even as a child obeying my father is respect and love for him and a desire to please him. When I was a boy, I had a wonderful father and I was hugely motivated by wanting my father to be pleased with me. Now, that was a bit of a trap, because when I went to college, my father was no longer there, and he didn't know what was going on. I didn't have other things. But it depends on what you mean by moralism. There are good moral reasons to do what is right. You should desire to please your Heavenly Father. If you're not stupid, you want the rewards. Right? But don't make it the basis of your standing, either in terms of your justification or your sonship. Your sonship, it's union with Christ in faith. If you are in Christ, you are beloved in the beloved. And by the way, this is where all you girls get to be sons. We get to be brides. You get to be sons. And Jonathan was right. More or less, John deals with the generic children. Paul, it's the heirship, sonship. So don't always make us say sons and daughters. Sometimes I'm not going to say daughter. I'm going to just leave it out there as sons because you women are sons of God and we are the bride of Christ. So that's probably because I don't know what the question means. Just don't make your obedience the means to what it cannot provide. In fact, it will undermine your embrace of being adopted as God's child. In fact, the morality is the consequence, not the condition. So it goes together. Because you are a child of God, you enter into the family business, you work in the restaurant, you know, you witness the gospel. That's the family business. And you do it not in order to become. And getting those things straight is really helpful. Will you join me in thanking our speakers for their wonderful answers and presentation? Thank you, man. If you are visiting with us this weekend and you don't have a church home or you're not a member of a church in the area, we want to invite you to come worship with us tomorrow at Second Church. We have two morning services at 8.30 and 11. Dr. Smith will be preaching. Dr. Master will be bringing our Sunday school lesson at 10 and then he'll be bringing the evening service to us tomorrow night. The bookstore is going to remain open for a little while. We want you to enjoy that, enjoy fellowship, enjoy fall for Greenville if you wish. That's a wonderful thing to do in downtown Greenville. And again, we want to thank you for being with us again today and hope to see you here if you don't have a church home on the Lord's Day. Dr. Phillips, do you have any other announcements to make? Well, let me close this time together and we'll be dismissed. God in heaven, thank you for this wonderful encouragement that we are part of your family. and that because of that we have the rights and privileges thereof. Lord, may we not sell our inheritance as we saw in the Old Testament for a bowl of soup. May we not give up that greatest gift that ever was for worldly reasons. Lord, may we live with the pride and dignity of the family name given to us, and may you hold our hand all the way to heaven. And thank you for this gathering of God's people. Bless us now, Lord, as we're dismissed. In Jesus' name, amen. Thanks, everybody.