00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
Hello, Pastor Patrick Hines here at Brittle Heights Presbyterian Church, and we just finished another live stream service. Very thankful to the guys that have made that possible and for our dear pianists who come and play so that we can live stream services. We're supposed to try to pick up with a somewhat normal gathering in worship next Sunday. We'll see, Lord willing, how that goes. And I'm very thankful that this coronavirus pandemic situation is coming to a conclusion. But today I wanted to do, for your edification, I wanted to press on with the John Ankerberg shows that we've been listening to. There's six of them, so this will be the fifth of six of them. And I've been talking about the Evangelicals and Catholics Together, the ECT movement that started, I think it was in 1994. And these programs were done, were aired on Grace to You, I think, in 1995. That's John MacArthur's radio ministry. But they were originally part of the John Ankenberg Show. John Ankerberg's show is something I've listened to a lot over the years. It's been on forever, and he's done a lot of really helpful stuff on cults and stuff like that. He's always been very solid on the gospel and Roman Catholicism, although I very, very strongly disagree with Ankerberg on creation issues. He is, I think, some kind of a progressive day-aged something. I don't know. But anyway, he hosted the Ken Ham, Jason Lyle, Hugh Ross, Walter Kaiser. And it wasn't Ken Ham and Lyle versus Ross and Kaiser. It was Ken Ham and Lyle versus Ross Kaiser and Ankerberg. Because he was on their side of the debate. But anyway, Ankerberg has always been very solid on Roman Catholicism and cults and groups like that. So without any more ado, I want to get right back into it here. Picking up with program number five. And let me switch the view here. So there you go. I'll begin Part 5 of Irreconcilable Differences, Catholics, Evangelicals, and the New Quest for Unity. We're talking about the Evangelicals and Catholic Together document, as well as the new clarifying statement that has just been signed by some of our evangelical friends that signed the ECT document. And this is going to be a wonderful program. We have questions from the audience. And hopefully, the very question that some of these folks are going to ask is the one that you want to ask and have answered. Now, I'm going to ask the first one and start the ball rolling here, and that is, There was a very controversial area in the Evangelicals and Catholic Together document that many of the evangelical lay people picked up on right away. And it was this statement right here. Those converted, whether understood as having received the new birth for the first time, or as having experienced the reawakening of the new birth originally bestowed in the sacrament of baptism must be given full freedom and respect as they discern and decide the community in which they will live their new life in Christ. Dr. Arcey. That is a horrifying statement. That is unreal. I forgot about that. Those converted, whether understood as having received the new birth, that's the only kind of converted there is. It's not a reawakening of the new birth originally bestowed in baptism. And then it says, they are to be given full respect as they discern which communion to live their new life in Christ in. In other words, the document is saying, that someone can be a faithful member of the Roman Catholic Church and that's just fine. And we should just respect that and we should not evangelize them. Unbelievable statement. Just shocking. Now listen to their responses to it. To many people that sounded like the evangelical Protestants who were helping frame this were allowing there to be two equally valid ways of coming into a relationship with Christ. Yeah, and also saying that the Roman Catholic Church is a good place for a true Christian to live their new life in Christ, which it most certainly is not. And please, the issue here is not, is every evangelical a Christian or is every Roman Catholic lost? That's not the question. The question is, what do the systems teach? For a church to be a Christian communion, it has to preach the gospel correctly. If it doesn't do that, it's not a Christian communion. It's apostate. It's a false religion. That's always been the issue. The issue is not, are you saying every member of this group or that group is or isn't a Christian? That's not the issue. The issue is, what do those those communions teach actively? That's the question. Is the new birth or the sacrament of baptism We objected to that statement and wanted it clarified. Tell us what's at stake and what we did. Even long ago, when I first heard this on the radio back in, it was on the radio in 1997, uh, I was. shocked by that. And I'd never studied the Reformation and didn't know anything about Catholic theology or very little about it. But I thought, man, are they saying that it's okay? Like, we should give full respect to wherever people choose to live their new life as if they're all valid churches? In that sense, that surprised me even before I was really a very well-grounded Christian. First of all, John, let me put my theologian's hat on just for a second. Your indulgence to get a little bit technical here with respect to that. That question, as you've posted, and as it's stated in ECT, represents what's called the fallacy of the false dilemma, or the either-or fallacy. So in the document, there was a bullet point list of ongoing points of differences. Do we believe this or that? which in some cases radically miss the historic points in dispute. For example, you're saying, are there two ways of conversion, one through regeneration, the other through the sacraments? That really misses the point of the historic debate between Reformed theology, Protestantism, and Rome. It does. Because both Rome and historic evangelicalism, they both teach you have to be regenerated. Okay, listen to Sproul. It is necessary for a person to be regenerate. Of course. They're both decent. There's no dispute about that. The question is, how does regeneration come to pass? And that's all important. How does regeneration come to pass? How does regeneration come to pass? Well, thankfully, Jesus told us, Jesus told us that it is like the wind that blows. The Holy Spirit is sovereign. Now, normally it is through the proclamation of the gospel that God does that, but it's not through sacraments. It's not through baptism. And what does it affect? What does it do? And how is it linked to justification? On the classical reform view of Calvin Luther, the order of salvation went like this. that first, before I can believe and meet the requirement of faith in order to receive and appropriate the righteousness of Christ for my justification, something has to happen to my heart because I'm fallen, I'm dead in sin, and the Holy Spirit has to change the disposition of my heart, and we call that regeneration or rebirth. As a result of that work of the Holy Spirit, now I am able to and indeed do embrace Christ in faith. So I'm reborn. I have faith. As a consequence of the faith, I am justified." The Roman Catholic Church has taught that the way a person comes to salvation is in the first instance they are baptized, and baptism works ex opera operato by the working of the works virtually automatically, infusing the grace of justification in the soul, affecting regeneration. and justifying grace. So a person is now justified by baptism, and that's good until or unless that person commits mortal sin. Mortal sin is called mortal sin because it destroys the grace that's justifying grace that has been implanted and infused into the soul at baptism. That's why you have confession. That's why you have the sacrament of penance, which became the center of the controversy in the sixteenth century. So I hope you're following this. Justification is a process in Catholic theology, but it starts with baptism. I mean, it's baptismal justification. You are justified by baptism. And then that's good, unless you commit a mortal sin, in which case you have to go through the sacrament of penance and go to a priest and do works of satisfaction and so on and so forth. They call that the second plank. of justification for those who have made shipwreck of their souls. That's how the Council of Trent put it. Rome defines and redefines a Trent as the second plank of justification for those who have made shipwreck of their souls. That is, once you commit mortal sin, that sin is called mortal because it kills the grace of justification that you received at baptism. You got to hear that. So the Roman Catholic Church is saying, okay, once you're baptized, you're good to go. You may spend some time in purgatory, but you're going to go to heaven unless you commit a mortal sin. So as long as you haven't done anything really bad and you've been baptized, you're fine. May go to purgatory for a while, but you're good. But if you commit a serious sin, a real serious sin, with full knowledge of it and willfully, then you're in big trouble and you literally lose your salvation. I mean, a Roman Catholic person technically could lose and regain their salvation multiple times a day. Because you go back to the priest and confess that serious sin, he absolves you of the eternal guilt by Te absolvo, he absolves you of your guilt. So you're justified again now, until or unless you commit another mortal sin. Now folks, you got to understand, that is what the Roman Catholic Church teaches to this very day. Is that the gospel? Is that Christianity? You can lose your salvation and regain it thousands, millions of times in your life. No, of course not. That's not what Christianity is. That's not what Jesus died to give us by any stretch of the imagination and how people can gloss over things like that, how wrong they are. on the issue of salvation, how salvation comes to pass, how a person can get into heaven and not go to hell and still say, well, we should respect the decisions that people make about where they wanna live their new life in Christ. Are you kidding me? What he is describing here with all this intricate stuff about penance and re-justification through sacraments and everything else, that's not Christianity, that's not the gospel. And so you need to get justified again. And that comes through another sacrament, namely the sacrament of penance. Now what that provoked in the 16th century was in the second question, not only what is the grounds and the basis of justification, whether it's the righteousness of Christ imputed to me or infused in me, the other question was what is the instrumental cause of my justification? Now, before we get into that, what is the instrument? What is the instrumental cause of my justification? Faith. Alone. See, that's why when Doug Wilson says, well James 2 says that works are instruments in our justification, that's why I say that's a false gospel. according to all of the confessions. Okay. Real quick here. I just want to make sure there's no, you know, people think, don't think I have Doug Wilson derangement syndrome or something like that. The Westminster Confession, which he claims to believe, look at Westminster Confession, I believe it is 11.2, the section on justification, the chapter on justification. Let's get to it here, 11.2, there it is. Faith, I see it here, faith thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness is the alone instrument of justification. So when someone teaches works are instruments in justification, they cannot possibly believe what this confession says. And I would argue, I would maintain they don't believe what the Bible teaches about salvation and how we're justified and how we get to heaven. So very, very critical point. Going back to Aristotelian language, the instrumental cause is defined as that cause or means by which an effect is brought to pass. And when the reformers said that justification is by faith alone, sola fide, the word by there meant the instrumental data. The means by which I appropriate the righteousness of Christ and therefore am justified is by faith and by faith alone. Whereas Rome taught, as opposed to by works, by faith and something else, by faith and my faithfulness or something like that. The instrumental cause of justification is not faith. It is the sacraments in the first instance, baptism and the second instance, uh, And so that was a major point of difference on the how question of how a person is saved. Does that answer? See, and if we don't agree on how a person is saved, we do not have Christian unity. We don't have unity if we don't agree on that. Yeah. Talk about that thing of faith then, because obviously If a Roman Catholic baby is baptized, where does faith come in? They're not even conscious at that point. No, that the faith would come, they would presume that it would come later as a consequence of their being in a state of justifying grace. It would be a result, it would be for them the same place as with it is for us that faith is a result of regeneration ultimately. Although the difference from the reformed perspective, although there are many professing evangelicals that don't agree with this, they would say that regeneration makes it possible for a person to have faith, but it doesn't necessarily yield. And obviously we would disagree with that very strongly. When God makes someone born again, that is the irresistible effectual call. That is the irresistible grace. And the natural byproduct of that irresistible making alive in Christ, that new birth, is faith. It doesn't make it possible for people to have faith. It accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish. The grace of God does not attempt to do things. God does what he pleases. And when he affectionately calls someone, that person will have faith, because faith is a saving grace, just like repentance is a saving grace. They don't originate in us. They're gifts. They're gifts that were blood purchased by Christ for his elect people. The fruit of faith. And that would be the case in the Roman church, but not in the case of the... Why did we want that clarified? And why has that been so objectionable to the evangelical community then? Because for the most part, the evangelical community is aghast at any idea that the sacraments can in any way automatically confer justifying grace. And it should be aghast by that because they don't do that. Now, we're not hardcore, strict memorialists either. We believe that the sacraments are means of grace, but they are not the instruments of justification. Okay, I think we need to have a high view of the sacraments. You know how high that view should be? As high as the Bible makes them. It should be as high as scripture makes it. We should go as far as scripture goes, but not further, but not stop short of where scripture goes with the sacraments either. So that we're balanced and biblical on them. That a person can be saved through the sacraments without faith. So you have a double-edged sword here. On the one hand, you have that view seeming to suggest that a person can be saved without faith. and the other view of Rome that a person can have faith and not be saved. Now that gets confusing, but let me say this, that that's only in the case of infants. When it comes to... Yeah, because with adults, an adult that commits a mortal sin, they would, in Roman Catholic theology, they still have faith in Christ, but are not justified now because they lost their justification by mortal sin. That's one of the clearest announcements of denying justification by faith alone that Rome does, by saying that a person with true faith can lose their salvation by committing a mortal sin. has committed mortal sin, according to Rome, So faith is a requirement in the case of adults. Well, let's pick it up right there too with the adult. They're not saying it's faith alone either, because then you have to go back to the sacraments of the mass. If you look at their section in Trent on the sacraments of penance. And by the way, um, did I put it back? I think I did. I put my, my copy of the tridentine decree back there. The canons and decrees of the Council of Trent, if you really want to understand what is Roman Catholic theology all about, you need to get that and read it. In fact, if I remember, I'll put a link to it on Amazon. It's pretty cheap. In fact, I bet it's probably on Kindle, and it's probably cheap on there. But you just need to take the time to sit down and plow through that whole thing. You will see what Roman Catholic theology really is and how anyone could read the Council of Trent. and think that Reformed churches can have unity with them on our core beliefs is beyond me. Because so much of what was taught by that council is grotesquely unbiblical. Well, as the session six of this Council of Trent on justification, on the Kins and Decrees of Justification, Rome spells this business of mortal sin out and goes on to say that if a person has true faith and commits mortal sin, that mortal sin destroys the grace of justification but does not destroy the faith. So there you have a clear statement by Rome. I should have brought the Candids and Decrees of Trent with me to read it to you exactly. But the thing there, John, is that it clearly states that a person can have faith, true faith, not just a profession of faith, but true faith and not be justified, which couldn't be any more clear of a repudiation of the New Testament concept of justification by faith. All right, let's finish this up. Flip the coin because Catholics do not have assurance that they're in heaven because they have to get more and more justifying faith through the sacraments. Once they have come in via baptism. Well, they don't normally have the assurance of salvation because again, Trent declares that it is possible to be, have assurance of salvation in the sense of knowing that you are going to be saved. Yeah. Listen to this. I remember learning this. Um, here's how Roman Catholic person can know that they have eternal life and are going to heaven. If they have a special supernatural revelation from God, if God himself tells you that, like supernaturally tells you that, not reading the promises of scripture, but because we could technically argue, well, we have God telling us that. But if God tells you, then you can know you're justified. by special revelation in special circumstances, like in the case of Mary and in some of the saints, but the normal rank and file believer cannot have the assurance of perseverance or the assurance of salvation. Yeah. So sleep tight. Um, do you, do you know you're going to heaven? Nope. Have you committed a mortal sin? Have you committed a mortal sin? Well, I've never killed anyone, but I want you to think with me for a moment. What is the great commandment? The great commandment, according to Jesus, is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And yet any honest Catholic person will tell you they do not love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. In fact, if you did love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, you wouldn't need a savior at all. You'd be perfect. So we must continually be in a state of mortal sin then, right? Because we're constantly breaking the greatest commandment, right? In light of that, how could someone possibly believe what Romans 5.1 says? Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. It's not part of the rank and file Roman Catholic thought. of what the church encourages them. versus Catholicism, that it's not a completed act all at once. It's a process. Define those two for us. For the Protestant and for the biblical view, as I understand it, John, and embrace it, justification technically and narrowly considered, and what the word means in the Greek, in the Hebrew, and I believe originally in the Latin until it got corrupted in the Roman judicial system, And that was where one of the problems came in with the Latin justificare, which means to make just, and that planted the seeds in some of the Latin fathers of thinking that justification means a making just. But the biblical concept, dikeiosune, and so on, clearly teaches that justification narrowly considered is the declaration of God, the legal declaration, what we call forensic declaration. You hear about the forensics in trials and forensic medicine and forensic pathology and so on. That what we're talking about there is the justification specifically and narrowly refers to God's declaration of a person's being righteous in His sight. that that's what justification means, and that is a once-for-all thing. What the New Testament teaches is that the very moment a person has authentic faith in Jesus Christ, at that instant, God the Father declares that person in Christ and acceptable in the beloved. He now remits or removes their sins forever. the eternal punishment of sin has been removed and the righteousness of Christ is imputed to that trusting and believing person, they are now pronounced just. And Luther said they are simul justus et peccator, at the same time just and sinner. While they're still unclean in themselves, though the seed and the beginning of their transformation has already taken place, they're still sinners, and they remain polluted by sin until they're glorified by God in heaven. The process of sanctification goes until we die and go into heaven, but the status that you're referring to, our condition of being declared just before God, is a once-for-all, single, instantaneous action the moment faith occurs. Yeah, as soon as the sinner is effectually called, as soon as they are born again, as soon as they believe the gospel, and they believe that Jesus is their savior, that his shed blood has fully paid for all their sins, past, present, future, original, and actual, and that his righteousness is imputed to them, that person once and forever has eternal life, and they cannot possibly be anything other than justified, and they have what Charles Hodge called a legal title to eternal life. a legal title to eternal life because of the all-sufficiency and perfection of the work of Christ. Not because of anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone. And they received that, as Luther said, with the beggar's empty hand of faith. All right. Question. I come from Brazil, the largest Roman Catholic country in the world. I heard you— By the way, they're doing audience questions now. —that what is at stake here is the gospel. Therefore, aren't those who advocate lordship salvation views guilty of the same mistake as Roman Catholics are by adding works to the gospel and therefore denying justification by faith alone? OK. I've preached on a lordship controversy. John MacArthur was at the heart of it and wrote the gospel according to Jesus and other books on that issue. This is kind of funny because Ankerberg is well aware of that and they kind of make a joke out of it. MacArthur, we knew that question had to come up tonight somewhere. Very good. All right, it's time to answer it, John. I've written on that question, haven't I? That is a straw man. It is. To say that a Christian who's been born again has been changed, they are not the slaves of sin anymore, they now will engage in the lifelong process of sanctification in that they follow Christ as Lord, that is not adding works to the gospel. That's not adding works to the gospel. Justification and sanctification always go together, but it is absolutely necessary to distinguish them from one another. But you can't have someone who is only justified. There will always be the sanctification process and a real change that takes place in them. has the connotation that you must believe in Jesus as Lord in order to be saved. I don't know how that all of a sudden became an aberrant view, but somewhere down the path it has become aberrant in some circles. Yeah, the idea of confessing Christ as Lord is an aberrant thing. I mean, think of Romans 10, 9, and 10. Whoever believes that Jesus Christ is Lord and believes in his heart that God raised him from the dead, he will be saved. I mean, Jesus as the Lord of a person's life, that is something that that person is going to do. They will follow Christ. They're not saved by following Christ. They're not justified by obedience. They're not saved by putting sin to death and pursuing holiness. But they will do all those things because God always accomplishes those things. But those things are not the basis of our salvation and they are not instruments in our justification either. to affirm the lordship of Jesus Christ in spite of the fact that Paul said you have to confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord in order to be saved. But the implication that people want to read into that is that if you have to do that, that's a work. That's a pre-salvation work that you have to do. And then they take repentance and they say, we don't believe in repentance either. In other words, salvation is purely grace. You don't commit to anything and you don't repent from anything. And you say, well, repentance is in the Bible. Well, those people who are against lordship salvation, they will redefine repentance as changing your mind about who Jesus is or changing your mind about whether you can save yourself. But it does not mean turning from your sin, because if you had to turn from your sin, that would be a pre-salvation human work. Or if you had to submit to Christ and bow your knee to his lordship, that would be a pre-salvation work. The simple answer to that is, that is exactly what R.C. was talking about when he talked about regeneration. You couldn't repent if it were a pre-salvation human work, and you couldn't submit to Christ if it were a pre-salvation human work. None of it is a pre-salvation human work. It is all encompassed in the redeeming work of God. It is all the work of God. God grants repentance. Paul said that to Timothy. God grants repentance. God grants submission. God breaks the human will. God terrorizes the soul over the results and the implications of sin. And to take any less than that is nothing more than limiting God. Yeah, and think about what that would mean. That would mean that if we don't believe that Christians follow Christ, they don't actually become his disciples, that would mean you have, like, you have real Christians, true Christians, who are utterly unrepentant about their sin and just keep right on committing all of it. That is not possible. A true Christian is going to turn away from a life of sin. Are you saying that God can save, He just can't make people repent? Or God can save, He just can't make them submissive? I mean, it strikes a blow against the power of God. It doesn't say anything about human works. I would never advocate there's any component of human effort in salvation. It's all of God. Let's just not strip out what God is doing and say He's not doing it. John, I think if I could add to that, the person who objects and coins this phrase, lordship salvation, which is the view that we are to believe in Jesus Christ both as Savior and Lord, which is to say we are to believe and repent. This has been the view of the church down through the centuries, and now it has been made as some kind of aberrant view by some in recent times. Now, the truth of the matter is that these people are guilty of doing the very thing that they're charging those who believe in what they now call lordship salvation. Because they do not see that salvation is all of God. And they say, well, we can't repent. That would be a human work. All we can do is believe. And so therefore, we will believe in Jesus as our Savior. And that is salvation by grace. but we are not able to repent. But they are the ones that are declaring that man has some ability to do something, namely to believe. The truth of the matter is, the unregenerate man is blind, he has eyes and sees not, he has ears and hears not, his mind is darkened, his heart is a stone, he's at enmity with God, and he is dead in trespasses and sins. He can no more believe than he can repent. You see the irony there? The Lordship, the people that deny Lordship salvation are Pelagian to the core. They don't even believe in original sin. They think that man in his unregenerate condition has the capacity and the ability to convert himself to believe and to do everything that he needs to do to be saved. It's really ironic. They want to say, you guys are adding works to the gospel. You guys don't even believe in original sin. You don't even believe that man was incapacitated by the fall. and understand the Gospel for the things of the Spirit of God, of which the Gospel is the heart of those things, are foolishness to the natural man, neither can he know them. Ooh, do not I? It is not possible that he can know them. The fact of the matter is that what God requires for salvation is faith and repentance, faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and repentance and submission to him as Lord. And that which God requires for salvation, that God also freely gives by his grace in regeneration, so that the whole thing may be of God. Salvation is by faith, by grace, excuse me, by faith, in order that salvation may be of grace. Why? That's Romans 4, 16. In order that salvation may be of God, that is the essence of evangelical religion. Salvation is of God. From eternity to eternity, from Alpha to Omega, man has no part in it, neither his repentance nor his faith or his good works or anything else, and to God be the glory. It is all of God. I've been wanting to say that for a long time. John, I think it's critical that as part of the question that was raised there about Lordship Salvation was, does not the Lordship Salvation concept undermine Sola Fide justification by faith alone because of its insistence on works? And we haven't discussed that quickly. The reformers said that justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. In fact, in the screenshot you're looking at, see it right here? See it? Faith is the alone instrument of justification, yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces and is no dead faith, but worketh by love. So we'll be accompanied by sanctification and the mortification of sin and all the rest of that. The point was this following James, that true faith, The faith that brings us into a saving relationship to Christ by which we receive His righteousness that is the alone basis for our salvation where our works contribute nothing of merit or value or contributing anything to the basis of our salvation, that is received solely by faith. But if that faith is a true faith, immediately, inevitably, necessarily, that faith begins at the moment of its inception to show forth the fruit of redemption and of justification. So if the question is this, is it possible for a person to have faith be justified and never have works? What John is saying, what we're all saying is that's absolutely impossible. There's no such thing as a carnal Christian in that sense, that they are utterly carnal and at the same time a Christian. I hope that helps. Explain it then, Dr. MacArthur, in terms of for the person that has listened to Simo Eustace at Peketar, at the same time that he's just, he's also a sinner, for the people that are the soft-hearted ones that are listening. Okay? For the people that say, okay, I have made my commitment to Jesus as Lord, but I haven't lived perfect every step. Does that mean that I have not really accepted Jesus Lordship? Talk to those folks. Yeah, seriously. That's hard. And that people, people struggle, you know, is Jesus really Lord over, over my life in every way that he should be? No. And he never will be. And your understanding of that is what will keep you clinging to his blood and righteousness as your only hope of heaven. And in fact, your sense of spiritual poverty is itself proof that you are born again. Well, I like to say to people like that, it's not the perfection of your life, it's the direction. Paul said, not as though I have attained, but I know the direction I'm going. I'm going toward Christlikeness, and that's my passion. And I think the way you get in touch with the reality of your salvation is not by counting up your righteous acts, but it's by listening to your heart longings. Curtin used to talk about holy aspirations. Um, I think the evidence of a regenerate heart is a hatred of sin. Yes, exactly. Is a love for God. It's not, it's not the absence of sin because it's always going to be there. It's your attitude towards it. Don't you despise it? Don't you hate it? If you could push a button and halt all of it and be righteous, wouldn't you push that button? I would. And a longing to obey. I don't think it's perfect obedience. It's not perfect love toward Christ, and it's not a perfect hatred toward sin, but it is animosity toward sin. It is revulsion toward sin, and mostly in me, not in you or in the culture. And it is a love for God that comes forth in a desire to commune with Him, a desire to do that which is well-pleasing in His sight, a desire to sing His praises. It comes forth in a love of His truth, a hunger to know that truth and to apply that truth in your life. I think it's the cry of the heart. I mean, David said it, as the heart pants after the water brook, so my soul pants after Thee, O God. When will I come before You? Okay, so that was the end of the fifth program, and then we'll do the sixth one sometime soon, but hopefully that's helpful to you. The Roman Catholic religion is a mission field for the church. It is a place that needs the gospel, the true gospel, because Rome doesn't have the true gospel. And when these men got together with these Roman Catholic theologians and spokespersons and came up with this document, They had to deny the gospel in order to get Rome to sign it. They had to sell out on the most important truths that a human being could ever contemplate in their mind, namely the gospel. They had They had to deny that, they had to downplay it, they had to remove critical distinctions. That's why ecumenical activity with Rome is a waste of time. We cannot draw up concordats with Rome until Rome repents of her false gospel and embraces the true gospel, which is justification by faith alone, meaning faith apart from works and apart from any subjective transformation in us. That's how we're declared righteous before God. God changes us, God regenerates us, God sanctifies us. That's not how we get into heaven. And that plays no role in getting us into heaven. And as Dr. Kennedy said, the unregenerate man is dead in his sins. He has eyes but sees not. He has ears but hears not. He is dead and he can no more believe than he can repent. And he was exactly right. Man cannot produce what must be produced, repentance unto life and faith in Jesus Christ. He can't. As the great Puritan writer Thomas Brooks said in his book, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, he said that repentance and faith are fruits that don't grow in nature's garden. They can only be produced supernaturally by the loving, sovereign, tender hand of Almighty God. So I hope that's been helpful to you. I hope you have a good restful rest of your Sabbath day and God bless. And thank you 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 Ridwell 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.
Evangelicals and Catholics Together PT05
Series Evangelicals & Roman Catholics
Sermon ID | 53201716145670 |
Duration | 42:40 |
Date | |
Category | Podcast |
Bible Text | Galatians 1:6-9; Romans 4:1-16 |
Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2025 SermonAudio.