All right, now we're live. And there is nobody watching, nobody likes it, and my studio audience has nobody in it, and nobody's in church other than me. And so here we are on the most popular reformed webcast in North, oh, there's one person watching. Oh, goodness. Okay. We are going to just do this for three. There's three. Now there's three people for there's four and I got to like, Hey, I wonder if I can like it myself. I cannot like my own, my own thing. Okay. Well, I pulled up some stuff here. I've got some, uh, I want to read some more of the articles, uh, by R Scott Clark on his resources on the final salvation controversy, which I think is a great, great, great thing. to get us focused on the things that matter most, and to make sure that we're not cool when people deny the very heart and soul of the Gospel, and deny the efficacy of what our Lord suffered, and what He came to the Earth to do, which was to save His people from their sins and to achieve a perfect righteousness, which is imputed to our account, not just as the initial step, but as the very basis, the soul basis, upon which we enter heaven itself. Our good works and the life of sanctification that we lead being the fruit and evidence, fruit of a salvation that we already possess in its fullness. fruit and evidence of salvation, not in any way at all as that which saves us. So that's what the Bible says, and that is what the Reformed Confessions all teach, with no exceptions. And so I wanted to pick up a little bit more here. I'll put a link over here in the chat. Hey, there's Jordan Foster, hey man. I'll put that over there. This is the article I'm reading from, and I'll put it in the description of the video once it's done. There were five people watching, and now we're down to four. So I've already offended someone in two minutes and 25 seconds, and they left. So there's four people watching now, man. But you know what? Those are four people that have souls that will live forever somewhere. Either in heaven or in hell. I need to get comfortable here in my chair. I got this new chair. It's kind of comfortable. I like it. It's okay. Let me try to settle in here. There's Jesse Washington. Jinx. Jesse Washington Jinx. Is Washington your maiden name or is your middle name actually Washington? Either way, that's really cool to have the last name either as your middle name or maiden name of our first president of this country, of this free land we live in. At least, hopefully it'll stay free for a little while. I'm not sure what's going to happen with the craziness. I'm glad you got a new chair. The old one was looking rough. Yeah, it was. It looks horrendous now. We actually took it home. Okay. Washington is your maiden name. And so my, my daughter Maria has my old chair in the basement and it's all scuffed up. It just looks like it's just totally falling apart. But that was my chair for eight years. And so I definitely got, I got my money's worth out of that thing. Okay. I'm right here in our Scott Clark's article. called We Attain Heaven Through Faith Alone, and that's important, that's worded that way on purpose because one of the things that Piper and I guess Tom Schreiner in the book Faith Alone, I don't know if it's... Schreiner's name is on it, but... They're saying that justification is by faith alone, but you attain heaven by fruit. And so R. Scott Clarke is rightly pointing out that you attain heaven by faith alone, because you get into heaven by faith alone, because you get into heaven by the righteousness of Christ alone. Good works are the fruit of sanctification. Important thing here. Good works are the logically necessary fruit and evidence of salvation, deliverance from judgment, and justification, which is the declaration of righteousness. This is why the Apostle Paul says, this is why the Apostle Paul says, makes faith the instrument of salvation. That's a typo. Makes faith the instrument of salvation in Romans 1, 16, 17. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation. The phrase in Greek there, ais soterion. To everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith Unto faith that's ek pistos ice piston from faith unto faith as it is written. The just shall live by faith. There's ek pistos first we must notice that Paul's concern here is broader than justification, the declaration of righteousness on the basis of Christ's righteousness imputed. His concern is salvation from the wrath to come. He sketches the crisis faced by sinners before the wrath of a holy God in Romans 1-3. Yes, he is concerned about justification, but he is concerned about the whole complex. In that sense, he does not distinguish them. He does not set up a system whereby we are justified in this life if somehow our future inheritance of glory is contingent upon or through our performance or our cooperation with grace. This is why he says that salvation is of faith unto faith. In other words, it is by faith and through faith from beginning to end. It is true that we are saved unto works, Ephesians 4, 12, Ace, Aragon, but not by them nor through them. We're saved unto. Ephesians 2, 10, we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, for good works. not saved by them. In fact, Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 is explicit in saying it is not by works that we are saved. It's not just talking about justification, it's talking about salvation from the wrath to come. So good works are the fruit, the outcome, the result of God's saving, justifying, and sanctifying grace. Good works are not instrumental in our salvation. Whoa, there's eight people now, cool. And there's lukewarm no more, howdy. Good works are the fruit, the outcome, the result of God's saving, justifying, and sanctifying grace. Good works are not instrumental in our salvation. As I wrote elsewhere, the Christian's shield in spiritual warfare is not his good works. It would not be possible to substitute good works for faith. They are not interchangeable. Faith looks to and rests in another Christ. That is such a helpful way of putting that. He's exactly right. When people try to turn faith into faithfulness, that's a big problem. That's a big problem. In fact, I found, let me see if I can find this again here. I have a folder on my email thing here of ideas for videos. Kevin Swanson, um, I used to listen to his generations of vision podcasts, but I've always been a little leery of what sounds like his federal vision sympathies. Um, so listen, listen to this. He actually did a whole, a whole podcast, a whole thing on, um, the federal vision. And here, here's a link to it. And if you go to the, uh, to the 2030 time stamp. Listen to what he says here. 22, 22, 22. I have heard some use the phrase justified by faithfulness. I don't particularly like it. And here's why. It's not clear that following justification by faithfulness. It's one of the phrases that I've heard before in some of these discussions. I have heard some use the phrase justified by faithfulness. I don't particularly like it. justified by faithfulness. And his answer is, I don't particularly like it. Yeah, that's what Paul said, isn't it? He said, I don't particularly like what the Galatian heretics are saying. I don't particularly like it. And listen to what he goes on to say. And here's why. It's not clear. No, it's very clear. Justification by faithfulness means justification by works. It means that you're justified, you are pronounced and declared righteous, which is what justification is, by your good works. Okay? It's not clear. It's very clear. If you say that faith is our faithfulness, then faith is not looking to someone else. Faithfulness is what we do, whether we're faithful or not. We're justified by being faithful. It's something intrinsic to us. So, you know, I used to listen to him, and, you know, I saw that this federal vision thing came up, and I thought, okay, well, it'd be good to see how he responds to it. What is he going to say to it? And this is July 23rd, 2014. I hadn't listened to this in a long time, but I wondered if he had ever addressed this, and I found this and was pretty upset by it. Let's see what else he says. It tends to confuse works and faith, because the average American... It tends to confuse works and faith? No, it does confuse them. In fact, it switches them. Justification by faithfulness means you get into heaven by your good works, and that's not the truth. That's not true. And so, that was so disappointing. I used to recommend him, and I don't anymore. Because if you're not going to be clear on that, then, you know, my goodness. I don't particularly like, you know, I've heard them say justification by faith. I don't particularly like that. Paul did not say I don't particularly like the false gospel. I mean, he had much stronger things to say about it than that. But then again, what do I know? Okay, let's continue on with R. Scott Clark here. Good stuff. Art Shannon, Jr. is here. Good to have you with us, dear brother. Art's been teaching a series on the Gospel of John, and I really have enjoyed it, not only getting into the Gospel of John, but also understanding his own story, his personal testimony, and weaving that in there. It's been really encouraging for our church. So appreciate, appreciate Mr. Shannon. Okay, he goes on here. As I wrote elsewhere, the Christian shield, okay, it's not good works. Yeah, it would not be possible to substitute good works for faith. They are not interchangeable. Faith looks to and rests in another. Okay, and that's what faith is. If you try to say that justification is by faithfulness, that doesn't confuse something. That guts the word faith, the word pistis, the verb pistuo, that guts it completely of its meaning. To have faith in Jesus Christ means you're trusting in what He did and not what you did. justification by faithfulness, by the faithfulness of the sinner, is to say salvation by works, and that's not true. Okay. Good works are the fruit of that faith and evidence of its reality, but they do not protect us from the assault of the devil because our good works are always broken, always stained, always imperfect, and that's the problem. In the hour of trial, they cannot sustain or protect us. That's why Paul says that it is faith that extinguishes the darts, the lies, the accusations, the temptations thrown by the evil one. Faith has an object, Christ. Faith is as good as its object. Okay, so think of it like this. Let's say that you're standing on one side of a cliff, and there's a cliff, a thousand foot drop, and then there's another cliff about a thousand yards away, and there's five lines up there, and you can hitch your thing to one line and zip line down, and when you jump off the edge, you're showing that your faith is in that line, and whether or not you're gonna get to the other side depends not on you, it depends on the thing you're trusting in to get you there. Right? If that thing is broken or rusted or has something wrong with it, it's going to fail to get you over there. But that's what the gospel is. It's you hitching yourself to Jesus Christ and saying, it's Him alone that's going to save me. It's Him that gets me all the way into heaven. And that's why it's so vital to get that right. Faith is not faithfulness. It is not the faithfulness of the sinner. Okay. All right. Faith has an object, Christ. Faith is as good as its object. That's right. You're getting to the other side of the cliffs is only as good as the strength of the line that you're pitched to. Okay? Faith. That's why it is a shield. Good works have no such object. For more on this, as Paul explains it in Ephesians 6, see this post. He's got a link here. The question, as it comes to us, uses the verb to attain. A rich young ruler asked our Lord what he needed to do, the poiesas, what do I need to do in order to inherit klerana meso, inherit eternal life. This seems a fair equivalent of the verb to attain. Did our Lord say trust and obey? No, he preached the law to him in order to teach him the greatness of his sin and misery, to teach him that he could not do anything. What he needed to do was recognize his need and turn to Christ as his Savior from the wrath to come. This is John Calvin's interpretation of that episode, I would agree with that. And the Philippian jailer. Asked what must I do poignant? What must I do to be saved? So so though what must I do to be saved the Apostle Paul's answer? Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved you and your whole household Acts 16 30 to 31 the question here is The question here concerns more than justification. It is about salvation from divine judgment. Both Paul and the jailer use the verb to save, not the term to justify. There are two potential instruments by which he can receive salvation, doing or believing. Paul says believe, a pisteuason. The jailer asks about doing and Paul preaches believing, as it were. See, the jailer, thinking like a good unregenerate natural Pelagian, What do I need to do? The rich young ruler. What must I do? See, we're not even thinking about what do I need to believe. We don't see that our situation is so bad that we can't do anything. We have to trust that someone else did it all for us. And we simply rest on his doing it. The jailer asked about doing, Paul preaches believing, as it were. The jailer assumes salvation is conditioned upon his performance, and Paul replies that Christ has already met the condition for our salvation. We receive it freely through faith alone. Okay, the next section here, R. Scott Clark has Our Confession. I've already addressed the confessional teaching at length in the earlier series, linked above, but it is helpful to look closely for a moment at the language of the Belgic Confession, Article 22. 22. For it must necessarily follow that either all that is required for our salvation is not in Christ, or, if all is in Him, that he who has Christ by faith has his salvation entirely. I mean, it's almost like these Confessions, these Reformed Confessions, they anticipated all this stuff already. And one of the reasons that they say this the way they did is because the Roman Catholic religion was saying the very same stuff that Piper and his followers are saying today. That it's gratuitous at the beginning, and then there's cooperation, and then by your good works, all which are made possible by the Spirit, you attain your final salvation. The Belgic Confession. says, he who has Christ by faith has his salvation entirely. It necessarily follows that either all that's required for our salvation is not in Christ, or if all is in him, then he who has Christ has his salvation entirely. Therefore, to say that Christ is not enough, but that something else is needed as well, is a most enormous blasphemy against God. For it then would follow that Jesus Christ is only half a Savior. And therefore we justly say with Paul that we are justified by faith alone or by faith apart from works. Belgian Confession there says. Isn't that glorious? So, what we have now is these ostensibly Reformed guys standing up and screaming, you don't get into heaven by faith alone. You get justified by faith alone, and then from that position, you put sin to death, and you're saved through your good works. You're saved through your fruit. How does the Belgian Confession describe that? a most enormous blasphemy against God. So now we have reform ministers standing up and announcing, with passion, enormous blasphemies against God and reform ministers respond with, I don't particularly like that. I don't particularly like that. It's terrible. What an atrocity. What an atrocity. I hope everyone watching, if you don't understand this, If you think that you're pet issues, I wonder, what is it that causes someone to be okay with most enormous blasphemies against God? Is it because, well, but he's an ally on theonomy and Christian reconstruction, and because he's with us on that, well, so what if he gets the gospel wrong? And I hope everyone realizes, even if you are a hardcore theonomic reconstruction person, that's not gonna happen without the true gospel. The reconstruction of society, along biblical lines, will not happen with justification by faithfulness. And when you hear someone say, we're justified by our faithfulness, you need to do something a little bit better than, I don't particularly like that. You need to understand with the Belgic Confession, that is a most enormous blasphemy against God. For it then would follow that Jesus Christ is only half a Savior. And therefore we justly say with Paul that we are justified by faith alone or by faith apart from works. And then the confession continues, However, we do not mean, properly speaking, that it is faith itself that justifies us, for faith is only the instrument by which we embrace Christ, our righteousness. But Jesus Christ is our righteousness, and making available to us all his merits and all the holy works he has done for us, and in our place. Isn't that glorious? Isn't that glorious stuff? That is just beautiful to read. Okay, it is true that Debray, the author of the Belgic Confession, uses the verb to justify, but we should not be too quick to conflate justification and salvation here. When Debray wrote salvation, he meant more than justification, and three times he wrote of salvation or a savior in this part of the article. Remember, the controversy with Rome and the Anabaptists was not only over the doctrine of justification, but it was also about the broader category of salvation. Debray knew that there are two benefits in this life that we receive sola gratia, sola fide, justification and sanctification. Calvin called this the duplex gratia dei, and Caspar Olevianus called it the duplex beneficium. The contest with Rome involved justification, but it also involved the broader question of deliverance from the wrath to come and our sanctification in this life. Rome taught that we are sanctified unto justification and salvation by grace and free cooperation with grace, or by grace and works. The Reformed Churches rejected the whole scheme in favor of justification, sanctification, and salvation by favor merited for us by Christ and received by us through faith alone. We confess explicitly that faith alone is the instrument of our justification and our salvation. as it was for Noah in the flood, and for the Israelites at the Red Sea, so it is for us. We are united to Christ by the Spirit through faith alone, and through faith alone we commune with Him, and through faith alone we have been delivered, we are being delivered, and we shall be delivered. Through faith we inherit eternal life." Now, I want to add one more Old Testament example. I've been preaching on the book of Exodus, so I've been thinking about this a lot as I've been studying and preparing for those sermons. The Passover. when the Jewish families, well, not Jewish yet, but the Israelite families there in Egypt, when they would slaughter that lamb and put the blood on the doorposts, everyone went to bed that night with faith, I hope this works, we did as instructed, and the firstborn may have had a difficult time going to sleep that night, but the strength or weakness of his confidence and that did not affect, did not affect its efficacy. I love that. There's nothing virtuous about believing. The only virtue is Christ. Faith looks away from self to Jesus Christ alone. And so when I think about death, it still stirs my heart and makes me nervous. It does. It does. But I'm betting my future, I'm betting my eternal destiny on Christ alone. I'm not trusting in the good works I've done as a Christian. The fruit, the fruit of my faith could not save me. It can form no part of what saves me at the last day and the final judgment. No part of it. And so I'm resting on Jesus Christ, and so I feel like the firstborn child in an Israelite household going to bed with the blood on the doorpost. But we have God's promise. If your faith is in Christ alone, if you trust in the shed blood of the Lord Jesus, you will not be condemned. That's the promise of God. So whether I'm really nervous about it or really confident about it, it doesn't matter. If my faith's in Christ, the weakest little bit of faith and the strongest amount of faith both embrace the same Savior. And therefore, the person who has Christ by faith has everything they need, just like the Belgian Confession says. Listen to that again, it's written so well. To say that Christ is not enough but that something else is needed as well is a most enormous blasphemy against God, for it would then follow that Christ is only half a Savior, It says, it must necessarily follow that either all that is required for our salvation is not in Christ, or if all is in Him, then he who has Christ by faith has his salvation entirely. Whether your faith is strong or weak, as long as it lays hold of Christ and is not in anything else, you have everything you need to be right with God. Finally, conclusions and pastoral advice. This is a good section here. As much as anyone else, my heart is grieved by the public moral failures of Christian leaders. I understand that there is great concern about sanctification in the Reformed churches, and among those broader evangelicals who identify with some aspects of Reformed theology. I have had conversations with pastors who report that they have members in their congregations who defiantly announce that they need not pursue sanctification vigorously, that they need not deny themselves or confess their sin because of grace. That's tragic. That's terrible. But listen to the next paragraph. Paul's answer to the charge of antinomianism was not to suspend our so-called final salvation on our fruit. That's not how Paul answers it. So listen to R. Scott Clark here. Not to suspend our justification or our salvation upon our performance, even if we characterize that performance as cooperation with grace. To affirm salvation through faith and works is to nullify justification sola fide. Salvation through faith and works makes our affirmation of justification sola fide a mere formality. The very same problems that plague the doctrine of justification through faithfulness plagues the doctrine of salvation through faithfulness. We have essentially changed the definition of saving true faith. Where Heidelberg Catechism 21 and 65 defines true faith as a certain knowledge and a hearty trust in Christ, salvation through faithfulness changes the object of our faith from Christ to my performance. You see why I would come down so hard on Kevin Swanson for saying that? I have heard people say that we're justified by faithfulness. I don't particularly like that, he says. don't particularly like that, that shifts the object that you're relying on to get you into heaven from Christ to yourself. Faith in Christ and justification by our faithfulness are completely different things, aren't they? As R. Scott Clarke continues, how am I doing? Am I faithful enough to meet the conditions for salvation? These questions plague the Christian's assurance of faith and salvation. In effect, it gives a different answer to the Flippian Jailor's question. That's right. It says that we begin with faith, but we continue unto salvation by our cooperation with grace. In such a view, we have drawn perilously close to the Romanist definition of faith and salvation as faith formed by love. That's how the Council of Trent described it. Fides formata caritate. Faith formed by love. They blur the line between resting on Christ, which is what faith is, and our works of love. So they smudge them together. Fides formata caritate. Faith formed by charity. Faith formed by love. By turning to such a formulation of salvation, we shall have turned back to the very sort of uncertainty from which the Reformation rescued us. Yup, it's a step backwards towards Rome, and towards not just Rome, but Pelagius and all the other ways that it's been distorted in church history. Further, however useful that uncertainty might seem toward promoting sanctity, history tells us that it does not work. You meant to say that does not work. Having uncertainty about salvation does NOT promote good works. People would think that it would. They would think that it would, but it doesn't. Though we may worry justly about easy-believism, salvation through faithfulness falls into what my friend Daryl Hart calls easy-obeyism. Easy-obeyism. It was against this very sort of easy obeism, or salvation through faith and works, that Machen warned in 1923 in Christianity and Liberalism. And I cannot recommend that book more. Christianity and Liberalism is just must reading for every Christian. One of the reasons for that is everything that Machen was fighting against in what he calls the modern liberal church is evangelicalism today. What he described as liberalism in 1923 has become conservative Bible-believing Christianity today. It's pretty shocking. The liberals were talking about salvation, but they had eminentized it, meaning they had made it this-worldly. Real salvation, Machen taught, is salvation not from poverty. But from the wrath to come, and that is sola gratia, sola fide. See, that's what is going on today with all this woke silliness. That's right, lukewarm, no more. It's all this woke stuff, okay? And the big Eva, what is the big Eva again? I forget what that stands for. What does Eva stand for? The woke social justice, people think that salvation means getting rid of social evil and everything else. The irony is, it's only when the gospel of Christ crucified and faith in him alone for salvation is preached that you have social change that will really happen. That's the irony. Okay, if salvation is through faith and works, then we have conceded a major point to the Armenians. Remember that the fifth head of doctrine in the Canons of Dort is about perseverance. After considering the grievous and real effects of sin on our Christian pilgrimage, the Synod declared in Article 9, Heading No. 5, under Perseverance, Of this preservation of the elect to salvation and of their perseverance in the faith, true believers themselves may and do obtain assurance, according to the measure of their faith, whereby they surely believe that they are and ever will continue true and living members of the Church, and that they have the forgiveness of sins and life eternal. We have assurance precisely because our preservation is sola gratia, sola fide. That's such an important point. That's what scripture teaches us. In Romans 4.16, therefore it is by faith, so that it would be by grace, so that the promise would be sure, so that it would be guaranteed. You see, if my final entrance into heaven is conditioned in any way upon my performance, my faithfulness, my works, it's not grace. It's not sure, then. It's always going to be uncertain. No matter what, it's always uncertain. Listen, we have assurance precisely because our preservation is sola gratia and sola fide. This is why, against the remonstrant doctrine, remonstrant being the Armenians, Berkhoff taught that our perseverance is by grace alone through faith alone. Making salvation by grace and works, or by grace and faithfulness, necessarily turns our eyes back upon our own performance and the quality of our faith and the quality of our sanctification. You see, that's what all of this does. It turns us back to looking at the subjective transformation in ourselves as being decisive in our own salvation. And to the extent that anyone does that, they're not saved. And as a matter of fact, if they think they are saved, they're Pharisees, and they're self-righteous. True faith looks entirely away from self to Christ alone and nothing else, and it's only those who do that that will then take the beginning steps of true holiness. Okay. Maybe he doesn't understand what the word particularly means. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. That is a spiritual dead end. Suspending our future salvation upon our present performance has never and can never be good news for sinners. None of us meets the test. None of our good works are inherently perfect. They are all, in themselves, corrupted with sin. This reality has pushed some advocates of similar systems, the self-described Federal Vision Theology, to resurrect the medieval doctrine of congruent merit. that God imputes perfection to our best efforts unto final justification and salvation. Others are turning to the Romanist two-stage justification and calling it reformed. Perhaps worst of all, this view tends to reduce Jesus to a facilitator. who enables us to do our part as if there is a part, as if there is a condition left unfulfilled. This scheme, of course, necessarily turns the Covenant of Grace into a Covenant of Works. We must obey. We must struggle manfully against sin. We must seek to put the old man to death and to be made alive in the new, but we do so only by virtue of our union and communion with Christ. Sola gratia, grace alone, sola fide, faith alone. Justification, sola fide, faith alone, is stunning indeed, but it is not stunning enough if we, after justification, we are sentenced to salvation through faith and works. No. We sinners need a truly and thoroughly stunning gospel of justification and salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And that's the end of the article. by R. Scott Clark, and I'm going to press on through the rest of them. This is Resources on Justification. It has 70 articles on it, so I might not finish all of this by the time I retire. So, anyway, that was the article titled, We Attain Heaven Through Faith Alone, and this is the page that has all of the resources from R. Scott Clark. Real helpful stuff. A lot of primary source stuff, quotations, stuff from the Reformed Confessions showing this stuff is not Reformed in any way, shape, or form. It's not the truth. It's not what the Gospel is. So there you go, there's that, let me, whoa, a lot of chit-chatting going on here in the chat section. Okay, is anyone asking questions? Art said, we are saved, not by our works, but our savior's work. That's right, that's why Federal Vision Movement leaders are very dialectic in their speaking and teaching. That's right, and Luke Warm No More, one of the reasons they're dialectic is, well, dialectic simply refers to conflict, like saying things that are contradictory. They do that because that way, no matter how someone criticizes them, they can rightly dismiss them as misrepresenting them. No matter what they say. In fact, when I read Peter Lightheart's book, Against Christianity, I don't think I've laughed more reading a book in my life. Primarily because I just kept saying, it doesn't matter how you criticize this. No matter what you say against it, it's a misrepresentation. Because the ambiguity and the dialectic is built into the writing style. See, that's why I like A.A. Hodge, and Charles Hodge, and B.B. Warfield, and Burkoff, and Robert Raymond, and Dabney. Those guys, if you held them at gunpoint, they would not have been able to write an unclear sentence for you. If you had told B.B. Warfield, write an ambiguous theological statement, he could not do it! He would not be able to do it. Okay? That's why they're so valuable, because they are so clear. Okay, I did pull up some more stuff. Let's see. A friend of mine likes James McDonald. He was fired by his church a few years ago. Should he be preaching? Oh, I don't know anything about that guy. Okay, anyway. I pulled up some videos. NT Wright on Hell. And I'd heard some of these before. And I want you to hear, listen to N.T. Wright talk about hell, okay? This is gonna be for the ages, for sure. Okay, is there a commercial here? Do-do-do, there is. All right, let me turn the volume up here. There's Joyce Meyer, yeah, there's a sound solid teacher for our time. Okay, here we go. The word hell has had a checkered career in the history of the church. And it wasn't hugely important in the early days. It was important, but not nearly as important as it became in the Middle Ages. And in the Middle Ages, you get this polarization of heaven over here and hell over there, and you've got to go to one place or the other eventually. Really? So, in the Middle Ages, people started thinking you've got to go to one place or the other and there's a polarization of them? That doesn't happen until the Middle Ages? You know, having plowed through Lightfoot's Apostolic Fathers and some of the stuff by Tertullian, Cyprian, we had to read some of that stuff when I was in seminary, and fascinating individuals, Augustine, they talk about hell. Irenaeus talks about hell. Athanasius talks about hell and heaven. Isn't that crazy? Hell is not that important in the early period, supposedly, but in the Middle Ages there's a polarization between heaven and hell, as if you've got to go to one place or the other. Listen to this. Let's hear that again. ...important as it became in the Middle Ages. And in the Middle Ages you get this polarization of heaven over here... I think there's a polarization of heaven over here and hell over there in the Bible, isn't there? and hell over there and you've got to go to one place or the other eventually. So you have the Sistine Chapel with that great thing behind the altar, this enormous great judgment scene with the souls going off in these different directions. Very interestingly, I was sitting in the Sistine Chapel just a few weeks ago, sitting for a service. I was sitting next to a Greek Orthodox Archimandrite who said to me, looking at the pictures of Jesus on one wall, he said, these I can understand. And the pictures of Moses on the other wall, he said, those I can understand. Then he pointed at the end wall, the judgment. He said, that I cannot understand. So pointing at the end wall of the judgment, and there's a big judgment, and there are people going to heaven and being sent off into hell. I can't, this Greek Orthodox Archimandrite doesn't understand that. And N.T. Wright, listen, So that's how you in the West have talked about judgment and heaven and hell. He said, we have never done it that way because the Bible doesn't do it that way. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. Um, the Bible does talk about, um, a judgment and people being sent to heaven and hell. I mean, that's how you've done it in the West. Really? Really? Um, but the Bible doesn't do that. Okay. Let's, let's see. Um, all right. And then the king shall say to those on his right hand, those on that side, come, you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Verse 41. Then he will also say to those on the left hand, on the left side, the polarization thing, depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Well, let's hear that again, because Wright is obviously agreeing with this Greek Orthodox Archimandrite. Listen. West have talked about judgment and heaven and hell. He said, we have never done it that way because the Bible doesn't do it that way. No, they have never done it that way because they don't believe in Sola Scriptura. And if you don't believe in Sola Scriptura, what the Bible says, even if the Bible directly contradicts you, even if the Bible directly contradicts you, you don't care. You don't care at all, because the Bible's not your authority. That's why the commandment number two, you shall not make unto yourself a graven image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity upon the fathers to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, but showing mercy to thousands to them that love me and keep my commandments. You shall not make for yourself a graven image. You shall not bow down nor serve them. Rome and the East make images. And they bow down to them and serve them. And yet we say, hey, you're not supposed to do that. And they say, I'm not violating that commandment. But you made an image and are bowing down to it. Yeah, that's right. But the commandment says not to do that. The commandment says not to do that. Why do they not care? Because they don't believe in Sola Scriptura. Once Sola Scriptura is jettisoned, what the Bible says is irrelevant. The Bible says it doesn't matter at all. Okay, listen to Wright's insights here on hell. I thought, whoops, I think he's right, actually. I think he's right. The Bible doesn't talk about it this way. I just read to you the parable of the sheep and the goats. I mean, how many passages in the book of Revelation talk about the judgment and those being brought into heaven and those cast off into hell? And whether you're Catholic or Protestant, that scenario which is etched No, it's etched into the consciousness of the Bible that God is angry at sin and that there's a place where he stays angry at sin for a very long time called hell if you die in your sins and under God's just condemnation. Jesus talks about it. Hell, Gehenna, the dump outside of Jerusalem, okay, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. Listen to that again. Whoops, I think he's right, actually. And whether you're Catholic or Protestant, that scenario which is etched into the consciousness of Western Christianity really has to be shaken about a bit. Because if heaven and earth are to join together, it's not a matter of leaving earth and going to heaven, it's heaven and earth being joined together. And that hell is what happens when human beings say to the God in whose image they were made, We don't want to worship you. We don't want our human life to be shaped by worshiping you. We don't want who we are as humans to be transformed by the love of Jesus dying and rising for us. We don't want any of that. We want to stay as we are and do our own thing. And if you do that, what you're saying is you want to stop being an image-bearing human being within this good world and you are colluding with your own progressive dehumanization. And that is such a shocking and horrible thing that it's not surprising that, again, the biblical writers and others have used very vivid and terrifying language about it. So, really, what he's... This is liberalism. This is the old liberalism, dressed up in a clerical collar, Well, of course, it's always been dressed up in a clerical collar, I guess. It's just the old liberalism where, yeah, they're just vivid images and ideas just to describe the dehumanization of people that don't want to worship God or something like that. No concept of sin, no concept of the justice, holiness of God, the curse of His law. All that stuff is gone. That doesn't fit with this at all. But many people have again picked that up and said this is a literal description of reality and somewhere down there there is a lake of fire and it's got worms in it and it's got serpents and demons and they're out there coming to get you. And I think actually the reality is more sober and sad than that which is this progressive shrinking of human life. So if he's gonna say That that's just those are just word pictures and there's not a place down there That's a lake of fire with worms and demons and they're gonna get you Does he take any of the descriptions of heaven as literal? What about the new heavens in the new earth about Romans 8 21 and following that the creation? groans and labor and birth pains until the revealing of the sons of God for the creation itself was subject to futility not to willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope, for the creation itself will be released from the bondage of corruption." Is that literal? Or are those just vivid ways of describing what is, as a matter of fact, I guess, an earthly way of living as a worshiper of God, and if you're not a worshiper of God, then you're the progressive dehumanizing. Listen to how he describes it. The reality is more sober and sad than that, which is this progressive shrinking of human life. So, all the stuff about fire, judgment, and pain and suffering, agony in the afterlife, the reality is much more sober than that. It's much more terrifying. The progressive shrinking. The progressive shrinking. How does he describe it? This progressive shrinking of human life. No, I think that fire and worms and demons and torture sounds worse than that. This is a minimizing of what scripture says about what awaits those who die in their sins. And that happens during this life, but it seems to me if somebody resolutely says to God, I'm not going to worship you, and it's not just not coming to church, it's a matter of deep down somewhere there is a rejection of the good creator God, then that is the choice that humans make. In other words, I think human choices in this life really matter. We're not just playing a game of chess where tomorrow morning God will put the pieces back on the board and say, okay, that was just a game, now we're doing something different. The choices you make here really do matter. There's part of me that would love to be a universalist and say, it'll be alright, everyone will get there in the end. I actually think the choices you make in the present are more important than that. Well, like everything he says, it's totally muddy and unclear what the heck he's actually saying. Well, here's another video. I haven't seen this one. Why I reject the idea of an angry god. Alright, this is only one minute and, let's see, a minute fifty. Let's hear this one real quick here. Why I reject the idea of an angry God. If you take a half-truth and make it into the whole truth, it becomes an untruth. And that's a very serious thing because then the vision of God that people have is distorted and so many people are actually put off the gospel, some of them having tried to believe it for many years, and then finally they just say, no, that sounds like a bullying God. If there is a God, he can't really be like that. Has it ever occurred to him that people don't like that idea? Because they know in the depths of their soul that they're sinful? And that if there is a God who's angry, that he is probably angry at them? It's pretty amazing. I mean, pagans in man's religions have a greater sense of sin than this guy. I mean, it's almost like God has no anger at all against us. which is in which this vision of an angry God who's going to get you, who demands blood, and unfortunately somebody steps in the way, and he happened to be innocent, and he happened to be his own son. He has said this so many times. He happens to be his own son. He gets in the way of the wrath and everything. That's the heart and soul of the Christian faith. You don't understand that. You're as lost as a ball in tall grass. So I often said, to hear some people talk about the gospel, you'd think that John 3.16 would... Oh no, he's going to do the John 3.16 thing. God so hated the world that he killed his son. ...said God so hated the world that he killed his own son. See, this is one of the reasons I don't read N.T. Wright. He just says the same things over and over and over again. If you've read one, you've read them all. I mean, it's just so redundant. And it's just him getting on his hobby horses and he hates the idea of God having anger at sin. Look at the Old Testament. How could you possibly miss how angry God is at sin? How could you possibly miss that? All the sacrifices and everything they had to do to appease the wrath and anger of God. God has real anger against real sin, and it's a real thing. And that's why Jesus had to die a terrible substitutionary death, where he bore the curse of the law and God laid on him our iniquities, the guilt of our sin. He just mocks that idea. He reminds me a lot of that Eastern Orthodox priest, Thomas Hopko, who just hated the idea. of an angry God and a substitute that bears the penalty. It doesn't. It's God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Yeah, but what does the rest of the verse say? So that every believing one, everyone believing in him, himapos hapistion, every one believing would not perish, but have everlasting life, would not go to hell, but have eternal life in heaven with God. It's all very well. Sometimes people say, well, all that picture is important. Wrath and sin and hell and all the rest of it. Wrath and sin and hell and all the rest of it is important because it's a theme all the way from the beginning to the end of the Bible. And you can't understand the gospel or the Christian faith without it. It's because God loves us. But simply adding the word love onto the end of that story, can be actually even worse. No, no, Bishop Wright. It is because God is loving towards his elect people that he sends Christ into the world to take us. I mean, this is like such basic biblical stuff. Listen to Romans 5, verses 6 and following. Oops. Romans 5, verse 6. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us. In that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. Our salvation from God's wrath is because God loves us. We're not tacking it on to the end. We're not tacking it on to the end. It is the very basis, it is the very motivating force in the heart of God, the freeness of His love, loving those who are not worthy of His love, who have done everything to spurn His love, and yet He is utterly relentless and unstoppable in His love regardless, and He is determined to save us from our sins because He loves us. To save us from His wrath because He loves us, at the expense of the suffering of His own Son, who loved us too. Man, how can someone miss it this bad? Let's back up a little bit here. That story can be actually even worse. It is like what abusers do when they say, I love you so much. Oh, how blasphemous is that? It's like what abusers say, I'm abusing you because I love you. That's what a terrible, terrible thing. You know, John Piper said, N.T. Wright doesn't preach a false gospel, he just preaches a really confusing gospel. No, this is not even worthy of being called a false gospel. This isn't even in the realm of classical theism. That's hideous. So the people have seen that in our generation and have reacted against it. But I really do want to say I didn't write this book because of those abuses. I wrote it because out of my own living with scripture for many years, I've just seen what I think is a bigger picture where it all fits together so that the punishment for our sins matters as well. God condemned sin in the flesh of Christ. That's important. Yeah, yeah, throw that on the end there, so that all his followers... See, see, see, see, see, he's affirming that. No, he's contradicting what he said earlier. The punishment of worse ends it. It's an important thing. But he just discarded it, didn't he? So what do you have here? You have what 1 Timothy 6, 20 calls contradictions. False teachers contradict themselves all the time. That way, their followers can say, well, you're just misrepresenting them, and you're not listening to what they said over here. Because they did affirm the truth over here. Yeah, but they contradicted over there. Well, you're just not reading them in the best possible light. The best kind of theology, dear ones, is understandable theology. The best kind of theology is clear theology. OK, Jordan, or excuse me, Luke Warm asked, do you hold R. Scott Clark's view on Reformed Baptist? As I understand it, I think, from what I have gathered, he thinks that the term reformed is not rightfully applied to Baptists. I think that's his position. I certainly think it's a little bit confusing, because historically, as I understand it, having read Stuff on historical theology, we had to read Timothy George's book on the theology of the reformers, Alistair McGrath's book, The Theology of the Reformation, or it's called Reformation Thought, I think, by Alistair McGrath. The term reformed, historically, did not refer to Baptists. It didn't. And Calvinistic versions of Baptist theology, as I understand it, was called Particular Baptism. You can call yourself a Particular Baptist, but even a Calvinistic Baptist, John Calvin would probably have Gotten the vapors if he heard his name attached to that because he definitely did not like Baptists. I thought that they were very very wrong So it's definitely it's such a common moniker today. I mean the quote-unquote reformed Baptist. It's fine I mean the way it's come to be understood now usually just means a confessional Baptist. It's fine, but historically reformed Lutheran Those terms did have specific meanings to them, and I think that the word Reformed is just as incompatible with Baptist as Lutheran is. Like, you would never have a Lutheran Baptist any more than you would have a Reformed Baptist. Because to be Reformed was to understand, was to believe what we believe about covenants. That's really what made us, makes the term meaningful. But that's obviously been lost, and they, the term is here to stay, Reformed Baptist. And it doesn't bother me anymore. But I do think historically, from the stuff I have read, those two things really don't go well together. Because our understanding of covenant theology is what makes us not Baptist. But anyway, for what it's worth. Okay, we are at the 50, almost 54 minute mark. Hope that was interesting and encouraging, maybe even a little entertaining. I'll try to get the links from the chat thing here into the description and thank you all for watching or for listening. This is Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church, and you've been listening to the Pulpit Supplemental Podcast. You can find us on the web at www.bridwellheightspca.org. Our sermons are streamed through sermon audio, and you can listen to that on the iTunes podcast version of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church. Feel free to join us any Sunday morning for worship at 11 a.m. sharp at 108 Ridgewell Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee. And may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.