Welcome to the 2014 Shepherds' Conference, The New Antinomianism: Evaluating the Implications of Cross-Centered Sanctification, Jerry Wragg.

Hi. Well, I have the unenviable task of dealing with a subject that really could go about five or six different ways. In fact, this could be a whole seminar on law versus gospel or law and gospel relationship. This could be a whole seminar on the sanctification process itself and a host of other things. But since I've called it the new antinomianism, obviously, you know that I'm trying to deal, in this session, with this entire discussion of the relationship between justification, sanctification, and particularly as it relates to how we change and some of the terminology that is going around today.

And so I want to try to accomplish three things today in the seminar. First, because the title is The New Antinomianism, I want to briefly explain the most basic features of the error of antinomianism and then compare it a little bit with some of what we're seeing today and some of what has been labeled in evangelicalism antinomianism, sort of a contemporary version of it. And then I want to look at the theological and the practical implications, or at least some of them, see how far we can get, especially as it relates to the doctrine of sanctification, progressive sanctification, and then the gospel-centered terminology, the cross-centered terminology that is so often applied to the process of spiritual growth.

And then nearly in, I want to just morph into some concerns, pastoral concerns, about the way we talk about these things and the way we interact with one another about these things, especially regarding the relationship between faith and the visceral part of us, the subjective part of our life, emotions, et cetera, and all of how that works itself into the issue of obedience. Obviously, this is a very heated debate. If you have had your head in the sand and you've not known that, but if you've been a pastor or a

church leader or involved in the life of discipling other Christians, then you know that this difficulty has been on the rise. And while there have been several capable voices coming to the forefront of bringing great clarity, biblical clarity, to these issues, the divide between reformed, gospel-centered, together for the gospel type of brothers and sisters is growing. And I don't think it should be, and yet it is not merely a matter of semantics.

So on one side there is this group of people who are strongly believing that the lion share of their reformed brothers and sisters are drifting into sort of a legalism. They're drifting away from the freedom of gospel grace. That's the concern on the part of some, that somehow striving to obey the gospel is going back to the very law from which we've been freed in justification. And so they talk about believing in grace and remembering grace, and they major on the indicatives of our union with Christ. And so the warning goes up that they are concerned about the danger of becoming like a Pharisee and performing commands with no heart. The legalism term gets thrown around quite a bit at fellow Christians especially those who might talk about submission or duty to Christ or effort in sanctification. And even there's a suspicion on the rise of any sermon or ministry that emphasizes obedience to commands rather than this language of the high thoughts of God's grace.

On the other side, there is this group of people that are strongly believing that this teaching either wrongly minimizes an outright - or a role of the law in the Christian's life or outright ignores it. There is this concern on this other side of the aisle that reformed brothers and sisters are abandoning what it truly means to know and love Christ in the imperatives and are running headlong into full-blown antinomianism. If you think it's nothing more than an intramural debate, I'll tell you that so far I've been contacted by dozens and dozens of friends and churches who have said their churches are dividing over this.

Here's how the typical situation goes. At some point, a pastor or a leader or a group of pastors and elders will be rightly teaching and emphasizing the doctrine of justifying grace, and then they begin to give emphatic cautions about terms like duty and striving for holiness. And so their sermon starts to become laced with cross-centered terminology, free grace terminology. They speak of obedience as unrequired or spontaneous and rising only from love and gratitude as legitimate motive. And so that leadership team will make strong contrast between being gospel-centered and obeying rules. And this dichotomy is created. And then that's when the word "legalism" starts to be generously applied to any emphasis on self-discipline, submission, and keeping commands. People in the congregation are hearing these new emphases, and they become concerned at what seems like a significant shift in the way we live the Christian life, in the way change occurs in the Christian life. And some in the church get together and they confirm their mutual concerns and they approach the leadership but unfortunately doesn't seem to be a way to bring these reformed gospel loving groups to agree on the problem, what is the core of the problem or to bring some biblical balance.

And so the questions we want to try to at least offer some answer to today are things like is this really true? Are there many wonderful cross-centered leaders in congregations that are slipping into antinomian errors? Or is that really just a reaction to really what is happening in evangelicalism? So the antinomian types will say or these cross-centered people will say they're just reacting to a slide into legalism, a wholesale plunge into the trap of heartless law-keeping. And so this is the argument. And something is out of balance somewhere because when I first became a Christian, I didn't know much about the depths of the gospel. I knew I was saved. I knew I was saved by God alone, through Christ's work alone. I believed in him. My sins were forgiven. That's really all I knew. But I never really would have imagined, even in the early years of growing in the Christian life that there was a

dichotomy between the excitement I had over that which was at times up and down and somewhat fleeting, between that and my duty to Christ, my duty to him as my lord and savior. I never saw the dichotomy between those two. And so this language really piqued my interest when I began to hear it some years back.

So what are the old problems with antinomianism? Let me just summarize them. If you've not read it, by the way, you might want to pick up Mark Jones' book Antinomianism Reformed Theology's Unwelcomed Guest. You can probably get it here at the conference. It is a very accessible, and it is quite penetrating analysis of the history of the error, and he's got some insightful critiques in there regarding this debate as well. Historic antinomianism is a challenge to define. You can't just say, well, it means that you're against the law because quite frankly, all sin is against the law. So all of us at some point or another are antinomian in that most general sense. Nor can the error be reduced to the bare idea that the moral law is not binding on Christians because there's just too many nuances in the movement, both historically and even perhaps contemporary. It was of course Martin Luther who coined the term "antinomian" and applied it to his antagonist, Johann Agricola. And Agricola believed this central thing, that if you're going to preach the gospel to unbelievers, it has to be the gospel and not law. Agricola believed that if you preached the law to someone, you would only create a Pharisee and so you must preach the grace of the gospel and not the law at all. So that's why, by the way, some of the rhetoric in this community lends itself to the label of antinomianism because of some of the hearkenings back to that time in history.

Well, as antinomianism historically moved into the 17th and 18th century in England, it camped on different issues along the way. But looking at the raw data, you could sort of boil it down - first of all, that there's no ongoing ethical relationship or obligation to the law, particularly in progressive

sanctification. So in other words, since Christ has satisfied the law and he's suffered its wrath for our justification, then New Covenant believers have no relationship, no ethical relationship that's ongoing or even an obligation to the law. Secondly, historic antinomianism said that the relationship between law and gospel is purely one of antithesis. In other words, they are against one another. They are mutually exclusive. In 1853, Thomas Shepard [SOUNDS LIKE] argued against the antinomians. He was arguing for a reformed view, and he said that their fundamental error was to insist that "The law requires doing, but the gospel no doing." The third sort of dynamic in ancient or historic antinomianism is that good works are not a consequence, a necessary consequence, of your justification, but they are only evidence. They're only evidential. In other words, it means that good works are not required. They may or may not occur. As long as you're free in Christ in your justification, you can conform to the law or not conform to the law. It means nothing. And so there was no sense in which the standard of God was now able to be obeyed by a Christian in the New Covenant and therefore good works were a true and necessary consequence of being justified. Antinomians denied that altogether, which by the way historically has led antinomians to chide their contemporaries for talking about duty. So even in historic antinomianism, they didn't like the fact that somebody talked about duty. And then lastly, because believers stand justified before God, it can never be said that they please or displease God at all. They denied that a believer could ever be said to be pleasing to their God or not. They saw all displeasure on God's part as retributive. It was judgment. It was wrath. That's how they viewed it. In 1642, antinomian John Eaton argued that Christ's righteousness closed the believers. It covers the believer to the degree that the weaknesses in their faith and sanctification are utterly abolished before God. He cannot see them, can't recognize them.

And so while we would agree that no judgment will come to the believer because he's completely covered, these antinomians went further and said

not only were you covered but you could not be said ever to strive to please God and therefore please him or incur any kind of displeasure, whatever it might be. You see some of the reason that practical antinomianism has been on the rise today because this is what led to practical antinomianism then. What's practical antinomianism? To believe reformed doctrine, to believe you're justified by grace alone, through faith alone, and yet to have no regard for any moral standard at all. And Paul deals with that, of course, as you know, in Romans 6. How shall we who have been saved now still I've in sin? If we died in sin, you can't live in it. It's impossible. It has no dominion over you. It has no power over you. And you've been given the spirit of God now to be able to obey. Antinomian said that's irrelevant. You can't ever be said to be a displeasure to God in any sense. Therefore there's no impetus to please him.

Now what was the reformed response to that in the 17th century? Basically, they said, "Look, there's different kinds of love from God toward his people. There's benevolent love, which is the electing love. There's his beneficent love, which is his redeeming love that through which he saves us. And then there was his complacent love or the love of relationship, parental love. And the reformed response to the antinomian was that's the kind of love that can be displeased. God as a father wanting you to obey. And when you don't obey, he has a fatherly displeasure. Reformed theologians were responding to antinomianism by saying, "Look, it's in that sense that a believer should try to please God, right? Ephesians 5. We strive and try to find or investigate ways to please God, Ephesians 5:10. 2 Corinthians 5:9, we make it our ambition to please the Lord. This language is in the scriptures, and then of course God's displeasure is there as well. So that's the summary of antinomianism historically.

So are there some new versions of it cropping up? Is it fair really to label cross-centered or free grace ideology as new antinomianism? And I'm just

going to have to say that I think to some degree, it is or can be a fair criticism. First of all, I'm not against being cross-centered if we mean by that that I love the cross. If we mean by that that I love the cross work of Christ and it's only on the ground and basis of the cross work of Christ that I am saved. If we mean that, cross-centered all day long. I'm not against obeying God out of gratitude. I'm not against that at all. Why would I be? It's all over the scriptures, right? Giving thanks to him through the Father, Colossians 3, this is what it says. "We are to glorify God, and we are to obey Christ and let the word of Christ dwell within us richly out of a thankfulness to God the Father." Of course. So we're not against being cross-centered in the sense that we love the fact that our salvation is grounded there, and we're not against really the gratitude that courses through the believer's vein. But I think to some degree, it is a fair criticism to say that antinomianism is on the rise not because I believe that everyone who's sort of linked with it would resonate with historic antinomianism at every point, and so I wouldn't want to lump everyone into the worst elements of it. Perhaps it is that some are uncritically welcoming the terminology and the rhetoric because it sounds helpful on the surface. But I'll say this. If you join in without carefully combing through what's being taught, you can hardly expect to escape the label antinomian with some of what is being said. And if you're not biblically discerning, you're going to be vulnerable to these errors because there's enough gospel coursing through the rhetoric to sometimes miss the subtleties.

In his critique of antinomianism, Mark Jones made this comment. "Historically, when a glorious truth is discovered or even rediscovered, such as justification, a number of half-truths or complete untruths are also birthed along with it." That's true. And that's what I believe has happened. And I'm sure that many in the movement didn't intend for it to become akin to historic antinomianism, but I believe many Christians have nonetheless become misguided and dangerously out of step with the whole counsel of

God, both in justification and the power that we're given for sanctification. It's as though they've kind of become gospel off-centered, if you will. And they're basically saying that Jesus plus nothing equals everything. They'll take that word everything and they'll narrow it down to disinclude all of the things the Bible says about what's included in the promises of God and his power given to the believer. There's not in this new movement to be any obligation to obey a command, any duty to obey a command, any command to proactively walk in a manner worthy of the gospel as Paul says in Philippians 1:27.

So I want to just look at some practical and theological implications here as we go. First of all, just the law of gospel issue, let's just explore it a little bit. I want you to think about this. The first and second antinomianism, the errors that I mentioned, have to do with this law gospel issue, and it has been, in my estimation, resurfacing. The free grace movement speaks as though there is no ongoing ethical obligation to the law and the relationship between law and gospel is one of antithesis. Now as you know, Tullian Tchividjian is a prolific writer and has joined the liberate conference, and he's kind of one of the names and faces in the movement. And I have reviewed several of his books and writings, just to sort of get an idea of what's being said. He's the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in South Florida, and he gave the following implications from the story of Zacchaeus that sort of illustrates the problem. "Perhaps the most powerful thing in this passage is Zacchaeus' response to Jesus once the Savior is in his home. His obedience flows naturally from him. Jesus never tells him what to do. Just as Jesus doesn't require a changed heart or lifestyle to enter his home, he doesn't then demand the charity and reparations. The gospel, God's one-way love for sinners, creates what the law, God's holy standard, can only require."

And we say, "Well, that's true. Only the law can condemn, can show us God's standard. It can condemn us," et cetera, et cetera. It has no power in it to

save. In fact, what the law does is further cause us to be condemned. Why? Because when you hear the law of God, the corruption in you violates it, hates it, and defies it, and makes you further guilty and further condemned, Paul says in Romans 7. That's all the law could do. Even though it was holy, even though it was God's standard, even though it shouldn't be ignored, and God's people were told they shouldn't ignore it, the bottom line is the law had no power to save. We all know that. That's clear in Scripture.

Yet, while it's true that only the power of the gospel can save, here's how Tullian draws the implications from this story of Zacchaeus and his assumption that Jesus never told him what to do. He goes on to say that the law prescribes good works but only grace can produce them. I agree. The requirements of the law, listen, spring unsummoned from a forgiven heart. By definition, good works can't be forced or coerced. They are instinctive, reflexive, and spontaneous. Then this, underserved grace creates a new life of unrequired obedience bringing forth more good works than any laying down of the law ever could. So basically, notice the terminology. Jesus never tells him what to do. Requirements of the law spring unsummoned from a forgiven heart. Undeserved grace creates a new life of unrequired obedience. And what the free grace movement is continuing to promote is the idea that the grace of justification generates works without any relationship to the obligations of the law, no relationship to the obligation sense of it at all. The need for holiness is never completely put out, but it's become kind of this, I like to call it, I told my staff, it's like a red-headed stepchild to the issue of grace.

The claim is that when believers fully understand grace, then vices, the kind that Hebrews says so easily entangle us, will be exposed for the fraudulent promises they are, and we will enjoy the liberating grace of God, listen, without having to strive, without having to struggle, or without having to obey from a sense of obligation. In other words, obedience, they say, out of

duty is always wrong. Now I'm convinced that this conflates, intermingles, and blurs the issue of justification, the freedom we have in justification, it conflates that with progressive sanctification. And the free grace movement often bleeds the believer's no condemnation status into the progressive sanctification dynamic so that the will is viewed as passive in spiritual growth and only moved upon by the motives of gratitude. That's how they get there. That's the tracing of the line. And this, by the way, beloved, was the battle of 17th century antinomianism. Antinomianism has always said that the promises of the gospel are the exclusive motivations for obedience. They've always denied that the Bible standards and the Bible's warnings are a means God uses to motivate his people. They've always said that.

Now let's be clear. Let's just continue to try to strike where the Bible brings us to the center. Of course, we believe that the promises of the gospel motivate us to obey. Of course. Of course. We affirm that the overwhelming gratitude is a right and true backdrop for all desiring to obey the Lord, but it is not the only biblical motivation the spirit uses or produces or even necessarily the highest motivation. And I'll talk about that in a little bit. Antinomianism, in other words, narrows the definition of the gospel to primarily the work of justification so that it creates a dichotomy between the gospel and the commands to obey in sanctification. And there's no need for that dichotomy in the Bible.

There was John Saltmarsh who define the gospel as Christ himself or the glad tidings of what he hath done and suffered for sinners. I have no problem with that. But then he and his friends, his antinomian friends, went much further and taught that the "whole doctrine of the gospel is not what we should do to serve God but what we should receive from him." Well, I don't agree with that unless it's qualified. The whole gospel is, of course, all about what God did for us, but it includes the power to do for him what he calls us to do, of course. And they sort of eliminate that second part. This, by the way, is

almost identical to the language of the free grace movement today. In his new book, One Way Love, Tchividjian writes this. "Hey, that Christians would want to engage the wider community with God's sacrificial love, living for neighbors instead of for themselves, that's a wonderful thing and should be applauded. The unintended consequence of this push, however, is that if we're not careful, we can give people the impression that Christianity is first and foremost about the sacrifice we make for Jesus rather than the sacrifice Jesus made for us; our performance for him, rather than his performance for us; our obedience for him rather than his obedience for us. It often seems that the good news of God's grace has been tragically hijacked by an oppressive, religious moralism that's all about rules, rules, and more rules, doing more, trying harder, self-help, get better. Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good."

So he's basically saying look, all this stuff about commands and imperatives and the things that even Dr. MacArthur called a duty in that service, all of that has no place because it ignores the fact that the gospel, if anything, is good news for people who are coping with powerlessness, powerlessness. That's not a complete picture of the gospel. And while he may not intend it, that is leaking into the antinomian error. That's the same antinomian terminology, the gospel is narrowly reduced to what Christ had to accomplish in our stead, and then that is set in opposition to the broader, ongoing promises of the gospel which is the power of God to work in us as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, Philippians 2. It's missing that whole section as if the two are opposed. They're not in opposition, and I'll show that in a moment as well.

And again, I affirm wholeheartedly that the law is powerless to save; I said that. Absolutely. Romans is clear. It is true that the gospel of grace alone through faith is what justifies a sinner and that we play no active role in

God's justifying work, but I also equally affirm that God did not plan for us to be passive in sanctification. 1 Corinthians 9:27, what did Paul say? I beat my body into submission, make it my slave. I strive according to the power that's working within me, Colossians 1. I affirm that God did not plan for us to be passive in sanctification not because it's our power that accomplishes it or that our growth is grounded in us, no. But he gave us the power, and he planned through the means he has chosen for us to grow. So that means that gratitude is not the only motivation for obedience in the Christian life. It can't be. Because the holy standard of God's perfections though powerless to save becomes deepened in the New Covenant as John Frame puts it.

Romans 8, look at Romans 8. This is very clear in Romans 8, absolutely crystal clear. I do not know why we're making enemies of one another in the reformed gospel-centered camp. Can't we just all be fellowshipping in the reformed camp together? I don't know why we're making these two things enemies of one another when Romans 8 is as clear as it gets. Notice verse 1. "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Yes, I'm on the justification side. I love it. "For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus," he's just explained that in chapters 3 and following, faith alone, then chapter 5, the grace in which we stand and then the results of it. Sin can't overcome the grace that reigns. And then chapter 6, it's all about hey, you don't live still in sin. You are to consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God, Romans 6:11, and then verse 12, therefore stop presenting your bodies as slaves to sin. You have power now. You have power now that results in sanctification and then ultimately, your glorification. So then he says the same thing in the beginning verses of chapter 70. He says you are powerless to the law, just continue to own you and dominate you.

But verse 2 of chapter 8, the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. Verse 3, for what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, that by the way, is that phrase that

means the law is holy. He just finished saying that. He doesn't want Jews in Rome saying, "Oh, you think the law is bad." And he's saying, "No, the law is holy. It is righteous." But I tell you this, if you don't have the Spirit to see the law rightly, to obey the law powerfully, to rejoice over the law delightedly, if you don't have the Spirit, you can try all day long. All that law is going to do is tell you apodictically thou shall not, and you're going to rail against it. And as you rail against it because you suppress that truth, you're going to further sin against it and further condemn yourself. So what the law could not do, weak as it was through that flesh, that corrupt flesh, God did, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin and he condemned the sin in the flesh. Purpose clause, verse 4, so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.

Now the free grace movement says, "Yeah, but that means justification." Well, then how do you get that second part of that verse, "who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit"? It's both. It's not either-or. It's both-and. The law of God is fulfilled in us in what sense? We are covered with the righteousness of Christ who fulfilled the law for us, right? By faith alone. But in what other sense is the law fulfilled in us? We have the power to obey it. You say, "But I'm not supposed to reference the law." Oh yeah? Check it out, verse 5. For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. He's not talking about believers there. He's talking about unbelievers. But by contrast, those who are according to the Spirit do things of the Spirit. Now their description, verse 6. The mindset on the flesh is death. That's an unbeliever. But the mindset on the Spirit is life and peace. That's a believer. Because, verse 7, here we go, the mindset on the flesh is hostile toward God. It does not subject itself to the law of God. It is not able to do so. And those who are on the flesh cannot please God. He is setting up a contrast here between believers and unbelievers. Unbelievers don't subject themselves to the law of God. What's the apodosis? Believers

do. Believers do by the contrast. Unbelievers cannot please God. By contrast, what can believers do? We can please God.

We're not condemned for not being able to obey it perfectly. In fact, that's the joy of justification. There is no condemnation. But that doesn't mean we have no obligation or relationship to the sweetness of God's holy standard. In fact, verse 9, however, here's the contrast, you aren't in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you. If anyone doesn't have the spirit of Christ doesn't belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is alive because of righteousness. What's that life going to give me? Verse 11, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells on you. What is the life he's talking about? Justification life? No. Sanctification life. It's grounded in your justification life, but verse 11 is a verse about the resurrection power to give you power over sin. You say, "How do I know that?" Verse 12, so then, brethren, we are under obligation? Whoa. You could translate that duty. Oooh. Careful. So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, for if you're living according to flesh, you got to die. But here's the contrast. You are under obligation so that if by the Spirit you're putting to the death the needs of the body, you're going to live. That resurrection life is going to be in you. It will prove your justification, and it will demonstrate in self that you are able to subject yourself to the holy standards of God by his power. That's as clear as can be here.

This movement wants to create this unnecessary dichotomy. Look at Galatians 5 very quickly. Man, time is flying. Galatians 5:13, "For you are called to freedom," (Yes, free grace. Love it) "brethren. Only don't turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh." What's he mean by that? Does he mean I want to be less sensuous? Is this an admonition of Romans 6? No. No.

But through love, serve one another, for the whole law - man, there he goes with that law terminology again. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word in this statement. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. What's that doing here? That should be in the Old Testament. We don't have any relationship to this. Really? Love Christ. Love royal law. I can't obey any of those things even if I wanted to unless the spirit of God empowers me to do so, right? He must grant me these things. 2 Peter 1:3, he has granted to you through his magnificent and precious promises everything pertaining to life and godliness, not just the covering righteousness that gives me my acceptability before God, which I had nothing to do with. It was grace alone through faith alone, but also the power to obey.

Peter, by the way, in that passage will go on to say, "Hey, if you're struggling with your assurance, if you've forgotten your purification from your former sins, here's what I want you to do. I want you to contemplate the grace of God and hope that emotions rise up and stir up in you so you can go obey." No. It's not that that's eliminated. It's not that high joy and gratitude is eliminated as we'll see in a moment. I want to really press into that in a moment. But no, he says in your faith supply what you now have the power to supply. That's the point. That is Paul's point in Philippians 2:12-13. We've kind of made this in the free grace gospel sanctification movement sort of a strange justification narrowing of that passage. "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who is at work in you, both willing and working for his good pleasure." So God wants his good pleasure. He works in the believer for his good work and his good pleasure, for his glory. He empowers us to do it. And the free grace movement says that that working in verse 12 simply means what Christ has already done. But you can't make it mean that because it's not what the terminology means. So why would Paul put those two together? God's grace, god's justifying grace, God's grounded work in me to produce good works and my striving and duty and obedience and faithfulness, why? Why put those together? Because, beloved,

listen, in the power of the gospel, the means by which we grow were determined by God, and he did not make us passive.

Listen to John Frame in his Doctrine of the Christian Life. "It is wrong therefore to pit grace against law in the process of sanctification. We can never forget what Jesus has done for us, and his great work changes the way we look at God's law. The law defines our need that the Gospel satisfies, and the gospel shows us the true depths of the law and turns us to lives of repentance and faith." That's right. That's right.

Now having talked about law and gospel, I want to talk about another implication regarding these terms duty and delight, okay? And by the way, when did duty and delight become enemies? Okay. I'm commanded to delight in the Lord. Sounds like a duty. So delight itself is a duty. And I'm commanded to follow the Lord and obey his commands, yet I should do it out of love for Christ, which is produced by the Spirit, Romans 5. So I look at it this way. It is my delight to do my duty, and it's my duty to be delighted in it. I love that. That's absolutely right. It's not either-or. It's both-and. Same with the concept of loving Christ and submitting to Christ. I submit out of a Spirit-empowered, Spirit-produced love for Christ, and I love him because he commands it. So by grace, I submit. That's true. Call it affections. Call it delighting in God. Call it treasure in Christ as Piper does. Call it joy-driven. Call it whatever you want. These are all produced by the spirit of God so that you can do your duty to Christ. It's true. And your motives won't even always be perfect, as we'll see in a little bit.

Even the treasure in God, the guru John Piper who's taught us so much, has he not? about just enjoying the wonder of salvation. There's probably no greater teacher on that subject, and yet he says, "Look, you're commanded not just to delight and not just be joyful," in his revised edition of Desiring God, he says, "you're also commanded to be sorrowful." And I've always

thought about that when people say to me you gotta obey out of joy. Really? If I sin, I'm commanded to confess, and confession is a command and therefore a duty and I'm commanded to be sorrowful in that. That's true. I'm to weep and mourn and be sorrowful. So I'm commanded sometimes not to have emotional sensations, or I'm not [SOUNDS LIKE] commanded to have sorrow. And it's funny, in the revised edition of Desiring God, Piper acknowledges that, and then he says, but he believes that within that sorrow there's the seed of hope and joy. Okay, I'll give you that. That's fine. If that's what you want to call it, it's great. I don't have any problem with that. I'm not going to quibble over that. But it is sorrow at the moment. And I'll try to demonstrate in a moment why it can be dangerous to turn inward and look for things, and it's not wrong to be emotional, but it can be dangerous to look for things like that.

Now let me just say this. If it were true that we should never obey out of a sense of duty or obligation, let me ask you this. What would Luke 17:10 mean? Luke 17:10, one of my all-time favorite passages where Jesus is teaching his disciples about faith. And you remember they said in verse 5, increase our faith. That's what I would have said to him, of course. Increase my faith, Lord. Oh. And then he goes on that illustration. If you had faith like a mustard seed, you could defy what's natural, you know. Power, this is power. If you had faith even just like a little mustard seed, but it was raw, pure faith, real faith, simply as David Wells calls it, an empty-handed receiving of what God is and what he says. If you had that kind of raw faith, Jesus said it could defy what you normally wouldn't imagine could be defied.

But then he gives that other illustration about a slave plowing, tending sheep, and he comes in and he makes a meal out of a full day's work, makes the meal for the master, I think I mentioned this last year when I was talking about this. But it's always a marvel to me when someone says you should never obey out of duty. I don't understand that when it comes to what verse

10 says. You too, Jesus says, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say this, "We are unworthy slaves. We have only done that which we ought to have done." That's the language. We've only done our duty. That's what he says we're to say about ourselves in our service to Christ. This is duty language. In fact, the term slave wouldn't make sense here. The term slave would lose its ownership imagery if obligation or duty were not companion motivations with gratitude. They are companion motivations with gratitude. Why call me a slave if I'm only obeying Jesus out of my inner sense of thankfulness? I mean, a slave might obey because they're grateful, but they're never out from underneath the sense of duty to a master who owns them. 1 Corinthians 6:19, you've been bought with a price. You're not your own. Christians should always obey because they're grateful, but we are always bound a slave under the sweet mastery of Christ lordship as well. It's both-and, not either-or.

Furthermore, what meaning would there be in the biblical commands and admonitions and strong warnings to remain faithful? Like for example the warning passages themselves, what sense would they make? Because warning passages are about perseverance, and they'd be useless if the sole motivation for my obedience was a deep sense of overwhelming gratitude for the cross. I should have that. I'd love to have that. I'd love to be able to know when I have that, sometimes. But if God only intended for me to persevere motivated by sheer thankfulness alone, then warning me of the perils of unbelief makes no sense. It makes no sense. You say, "Well, I thought I'm not condemned. I thought I will never apostasize." That's true. So ask yourself this question. If you'll never apostasize, why the warning passages? What are they for? Because the means by which God gets you from here to your secured glorification or commands and warnings and cautions and urgings and standards. God's warnings against unbeliever intended to forge your active faith and your passionate growth in his grace. That's what they're intended to do. They forge an active and passionate

growth. Instead of like the antinomian, you sit there and say, "Oh God, do it to me." Or Major Ian Thomas did years ago and said, "I'm not obeying. When I actually obey, it's Christ obeying through me." I'm like a, I don't know, what? I'm an avatar? Strange.

Warnings against unbelief forge an active and passionate growth in grace. They also prevent the self-deception of any false security. God knew we would need that. It tests your level of faithfulness. Warnings test your levels of faithfulness, and they cause you to soberly reflect on the dangers of unbelief. So it is our duty by faith to heed them. That's what God intends. Now his warnings will have a different impact on you depending on where you're at the Christian life. If you're a strong Christian, then the warnings will remind you to press on all the more, and it will bring an abiding confidence that you've obeyed the cautions, assurance. If you're a weak believer but you really want to heed those warnings, you really want to obey, then the warnings provide this graphic deterrent to patterns of sin, and they keep you away from it, and they hem you in. And those warnings display the specific care of God in pointing to those dangers, and so they engender a greater dependence upon him. I love that. If you happen to be a weak believer who's stubborn, then those warnings bring instant quality to the trouble in your life, don't they? Because that's chastening. You look at your circumstances and you say, "Oh, I know why I'm being chastened because I don't obey those warnings. I don't heed those warnings. I don't listen to them. I ignore them." And those warnings expose unbelief as the source of all your stubbornness. And if you're a hardened person, well, warnings call for the justice of God and they uphold holiness, and they confirm apostasy, and they may even declare the absence of conversion in your life. Warnings are, as I call them, God's gracious red lights. They stop the believer in his tracks and call him to greater diligence in faith as a duty. Does it happen by faith? Yes. But it must happen nonetheless.

So we've looked at the implication of law and gospel. We looked at the implication of duty and delight. Let's talk a little bit about the taboo one: faith and feelings. Let's talk about this. How do you feel about that? Okay. This is sort of my diagnosis of the problem, how people have, you know, good reformed brothers, cross-centered brothers, gospel-centered brothers, together for the gospel, robust reformed guys, this is my sort of diagnosis about how we got here into this strange dichotomy. And it has to do with faith and feelings and how we view them. I'm convinced that much of the divide among reformed brothers and sisters over this issue is the result of the disappearance, the slow disappearance of the language of faith that the bible so often uses. When we talk about sanctification, we should be talking about faith. When we talk about sanctification, we should be talking about walking by faith and living by faith, right? Galatians 2:20-21, "I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live. Yet, not I but Christ lives in me. And the life I know live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God." I live by faith. I walk by faith.

That terminology, by the way, is being replaced slowly by more viscerally driven terminology. So in other words, sanctification and change is talked about more often than not today as something emotional, something visceral, feelings and inner sensations, for lack of a better term. You say, "Well, what does have to do with antinomianism?" Well, listen. I don't think that many today are caught up in the errors of antinomianism theologically. Some of my friends who've drifted into some of this, they never could have gotten there theologically because I know their grounding in justification by faith alone, and I know that they are grounded in the right things about how we change, and they're certainly not licentious or unholy. But I think some who are caught up in the free grace movement have drifted into these tendencies by backing into them over this confusion about how sanctification works. We can talk about walking by faith and refer to the text that define it and command it. But there seems to be an obvious gravitation away from

that kind of terminology toward a sanctification that is measured and evaluated largely by visceral experience or a lot of times by visceral experience. And what John said earlier, the narcissistic sort of inward-focused culture that is ours, that's in my estimation the soup that we're living in and people can't see it around them. They can't see how much they're eaten up with sort of how you view your world through your senses.

David Wells in his new book God in the Whirlwind says this, very, very poignant. "Let me begin with a baseline truth of Scripture," he says. "It is that God stands before us. He summons us to come out of ourselves and to know him, and yet our culture is pushing us into exactly the opposite pattern. Our culture says we must go into ourselves to know God, and that is why we must come back to our first principles that God is there, that he is objective to us. He is not there to conform to us; we must conform to him. He summons us from outside of ourselves to know him. We don't go inside of ourselves to find him. We are summoned to know him only on his terms. We're here to know him as he is and not as we want him to be. He comes from outside of our circumstances. He's not limited by our subjectivity. He's free to break in upon us, making us his own, and incorporate us into his great redemptive plans."

I think Wells' assessment is fairly sound. He's pointing to some very important trends that we're seeing. Many Christians today have become used to the idea that Bible preaching and Christian living are not so much about God speaking and us responding with bare faith, which means to self-empty, to empty-handedly receive what God says about himself and entrust ourselves to it. That's faith by definition, Hebrews 11:1. People are not used to preaching and Christian living being filtered through that grid. They're rather sensing God in their lives. Do I sense God's presence and his love? How do I feel about my walk with the Lord? Am I experiencing a vibrant, spiritual joy and delight in the Lord? I'm not against questions of emotion.

Not at all. All these questions may be valid as personal critiques, but they cannot become the ground of obedience. And that's what I think sometimes is happening. People are making their view of where they're at spiritually, a sort of an assessment of the visceral experience of their life, and they're grounding their assessment in that. And while I'm not ready to connect directly all the talk of visceral affections to some drift away from true faith, I would suggest that it's very dangerous, potentially dangerous when faith language takes a backseat to experiential or subjective motifs. All true believers understand that faith is the basic route, but many people speak of spiritual transformation as if it were grounded and evaluated by experience that they're having at any given time.

You see the scriptures, as I said in Hebrews 11:1, teach something totally different. The scriptures teach that faith is the entrustment of oneself to God. It is, by the way, the instrument God chose through which we are commanded to know him and experience life in him. You know that from Hebrews 11:6, right? He who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. There you have diligence language, you have seeking language, all of it wrapped up in the definition of what it means to believe. Verse 1 tells us that faith is the evidence of things hoped for. That is to say I haven't realized them yet, but the evidence is there in my life, that I truly believe them and want them and desire them. God's grace has filled me up with the desire to want that home, not this one. So I believe in those promises. That's faith. The evidence in my life of things I'm hoping for is already empowering me. And, this is important, it is the conviction of things not seen. Of course. If you have to see it, it's not faith. Faith is convinced by God's word alone. Why? Because it's God who says it. So God's grace is granted to us by his power alone. I get that.

But in his gift of grace, listen, comes three important things. In his gift of grace comes three important things. First, the illumining power to go from a

dead mind and heart to knowing and clearly perceiving the truth. That's the first thing this power of God's grace gives. He opens our minds and he illumines us to the truth. He overcomes our deadness, our dead mind and heart, our corrupt, futile way of thinking, our foolish heart. He illumines us with his power to overcome those and to know and clearly perceive the truth. Anytime you read your Bible as a Christian, it is a miraculous moment by the power of God. Secondly, this gift of God's grace, though granted by his power alone, none of mine, it also grants the power to go from suppressing the truth to fully receiving it. Jesus said of his disciples in John 17, when he prayed to his father, "Father, I have given them your word, and they have understood it and received it as their own, and they've come to believe that you sent me." There it is. There's the definition of faith. You apprehend it and you receive it. And then thirdly, that same power, granted by God alone, is the power to go from always defying his will to yielding in obedience and submission to his will. That's what I look for in my Christian life when it comes to progress. All through my Christian life I never knew a dichotomy between duty and delight or faith and feelings. I wasn't too concerned about anything that was about my feelings unless the Bible told me something that I was supposed to be having. And so I knew that everything about me was to be sanctified including my feelings. You want a great book on that? Brian Borgman, Faith and Feelings. The theology of emotions is tremendous. And in there he says, "Look, you can't live by your emotions. They must be sanctified and they are sanctified by faith. But the instrument that God chose that actively dispenses to us what his grace grants is faith. That's the instrument.

And I don't like talking about change that is always about visceral evaluations and experiential terminology. I don't like that. I like the language of faith. It's very clear to me, self-emptying and trusting myself to what God says. Is that subjective? Yeah, it affects me. And then I'm called subjectively to live out the truth. I get that. But my power to do so is not grounded in me

or in my experience or even my evaluation of it. God has to accept a pretty imperfect duty and delight from Jerry Wragg every day. He has to accept a pretty imperfect version of all of that. And by his grace, I'm under no condemnation, but he empowers me to do that and the greater and more strong my faith, the more my everything will mature, emotions included. So people sometimes will list passages where God commands us to delight in him and love him and rejoice in him. In response to those things, I just say amen. But what seems missing quite often is the language of faith. And so by drifting into the place where you largely define and evaluate your spiritual condition by internal subjective senses, it becomes a bit of a dead end.

I love the old work by Obadiah Sedgwick on The Doubting Believer. It's hard to come by, but it's a tremendous Puritan work, originally published by Soli Deo Gloria. And he says, "You want to know where doubt spring from most? It's by living a life according to your senses, sensuality." This is what he says. "Sense is not a fit judge of our condition. It cannot report our state by what it feels. The spiritual state is not always under feeling. We should be good and bad, found and lost, cheerful and sorrowful many times in one day. Nay, even in one hour. If that sense gave sentence on our condition, we'd be in trouble. Beloved, think well on this," he says. "How can your senses reach deep into the times of desertion, into the times of want, into the times of indisposition, into the times where faith expresses no acts but such as our pure and clear and grounded upon the promises." What a great statement.

Look, sometimes you're going to believe God, and it's going to be like you're carried away into the delights of saying yes without ever the pain of saying no to any sin. You just wafted along, maybe for a long period of time. I just love the grace of the cross, and it carried me into a new energized life of obedience. I get that. You're going to have those. But if you count on that as a ground for evaluating your spiritual life, what are you going to do with those times like Abraham experienced on Mount Moriah? Was there any

joyful, emotional, visceral, experiential sense other than anguish and sorrow when he picked up the stake? But yet, that was a hope against hope moment, right? He believed God. He trusted in his promises. It was faith that brought the two together. And it produced a consideration that joy will be the result. Why else would James say considered all joy? That doesn't make any sense if you're grounding everything in visceral experiences. That verse should say feel joy when you encounter various trials. It doesn't say that. Just consider it joy. Why? Because you might in the moment of the trial have bouts with sorrow and anguish and emotional coursings that you didn't anticipate.

You don't have to fret that you've been unspiritual because you brought yourself back to the promises of God. And though you felt nothing toward the promises, you knew your God and empty-handedly said I believe. Isn't that what our Lord Jesus Christ experienced in the Garden in Mark 14? There was no emotional sensation of delight in the Garden that is described there. In fact, it's the opposite. Now I wouldn't want to get into what really went on inside the God/man and all those dynamics. This text doesn't tell us. But what it does say is that he said in the major battle for sanctification and the major battle for that moment, he said, "Not my will." Faith brings these two together, you see. You shouldn't ground your will in all the spiritual change in your life. Otherwise, you become a legalist like William Law who turned it into this I'm going to sheer will power crank it up. But you shouldn't ground your evaluation of where you're at spiritually in all things what you're feeling either because that's no reliable course. That's to turn inward. That's a mistake. What brings them together? Faith. Faith. That's what brings them together.

Some teachers today are promoting the idea that love for Christ begins with feelings of affection with him. I don't agree with that. I think love for Christ is granted by the Spirit of God, Romans 5, and the only way you could access

that is by having been granted faith. And so faith becomes the way that you understood God's love and it's the way that you live by his love. Faith is the terminology we ought to be using, believing God. Faith is real entrustment in the person of Christ and loving submission to his commands. Even loving Christ with true affection and joy is impossible apart from faith. That's why I like the faith language to stay in there, guys. Fight for that faith language if you want to fight for anything. Fine. Fight for joy. Fight for submission. Fight for duty. But fight for faith language in the Christian life, in spiritual change. The objective truth of scripture and yielding to it by faith in Christ is the clear way to know where you stand spiritually. Ephesians 5:18, to be controlled by the Spirit, that is to love Christ, which results in subordination to the will. In fact, you can't tell me when you're really loving Christ unless I see obedience in your life, right? Isn't that true? James said it. You can say you have faith. But I'll show you my faith by my works. I'll show you that this is faith that has power. This is faith that results in something. You can tell me you enjoy God all you want, but that's part of the problem in reformed and sort of young and sort of all things justification sort of amped up on grace kind of movement is that they're talking justification but carnality is reigning in the church. They can't seem to succeed in the basics of the Christian life. I love what the hymn writer said. "I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus' name."

Let me just say something of a sort of pastoral final word on some of the struggle here. I have a lot of young people in our church, and I talk to them all the time and counsel many of them and all of our staff counsel the up and comers who've been saved by grace, and they are immersed in and loving what the Bible says about justification by faith alone. They are as reformed through and through as they could be in the early part of their Christian life. But as we counsel them, it's interesting. They have a lot of patterns of failure as you would expect, but there is a defeatedness and spiritual fatigue that is also there quite often. And look, they're singing the songs as passionately as

anybody on Sunday morning. I've never seen so much passion, you know, since Gerizim. Just kidding. A lot of heat, a lot of passion, but doesn't seem to change the spiritual patterns of growth and maturity in their life quite often. And then this depression sort of sets in, and these doubts set in. And it's interesting, the free grace movement today sees the greatest problem in the church as driving people to conform to rules for fear of failing to accept or hold on to God's love. It's like the diagnosis today is if you see people in spiritual fatigue, it can't possibly be because they're just sinning and full of guilt and need to repent and live a life of confession. That can't be it. It's gotta be because the rest of us are telling them about duty all the time. Tullian Tchividjian calls it the plague of performancism, that everybody is trying too hard, and they're just tired.

Let me tell you, beloved, there's a very real danger in merely telling exhausted, fearful Christians that Christ has done everything for them. You must help them trace their spiritual discouragement to the correct route. I mean, you know that, right? Cain was depressed, and what did God say to them? Hey, man. If you sing a song about me, won't your countenance be lifted? No. And I don't mean to be overly critical. I'm just saying he said, "If you do what is right," Cain's spiritual exhaustion looked a lot like what you sometimes see in a self-atoner's life. And wherever you have somebody that does believe that their salvation could be lost, they come out of Arminianism, Seventh Day Adventism or Pentecostalism or whatever has taught them that their salvation is not secure and they don't understand justification, by all means ground them in the truth of security in the justification of God. Ground them there. But sometimes it isn't that they're doubting at all their justification. Sometimes, listen, they are under the divine burden of guilt and failure that is on their conscience. If you tell them about free grace in that moment, you will tempt them to ignore the conscience.

Think about this. If the justifying grace of God frees me, and indeed it does, but if that meant that I don't have to do anything, then the conscience serves no ongoing function. What would the conscience be for? Because every time it pricks me or makes me feel guilty, I would just say, "Yeah, but I'm free. I'm free. I'm free. I'm free." In fact, I've seen that happen in this free grace movement. I've seen those guys read the blogs and books, and they're down with guilt over sin in their life, they read the books, they come to me the next day, and they say, "I'm free. I've got no issues, man." No change in their life, still rampant carnality, but they're ignoring the warnings of conscience. And yet Scripture teaches that failure to obey God's word always brings heaviness upon the conscience, Psalm 32, Psalm 38, Romans 2:15, 1 Corinthians 8:12. And when the conviction of the Spirit is ignored, your guilt will compound and the conscience will become dulled, and it will become speculative, 1 Timothy 1:5-7, and it will eventually to pride. And if you don't confess that and repent, the result will be spiritual lethargy, the very thing Tchividjian and others are calling the exhaustion that's the result of trying to work too hard. And I just don't think that's always the case. I'm not willing to say it's never the case. It's not always the case. In fact, the danger here is that if we always comfort someone's tired heart with justifying grace, they might not see the squandered sanctifying grace behind their spiritual troubles.

Two and a half decades of shepherding souls, I'm convinced the more common problem in the church today is not hordes of people burned out in treadmill of self-atonement and divine merit. In fact, I chuckle at this. You mean to tell me that we're looking at evangelicalism and saying, "You know what our problem is in evangelicalism in America? Pietism. Rampant pietism. We're all just conforming to holiness." Really? That is not the problem at all. Sure, there are pietists. You know them. You can spot them. And when you can't, you ask God to reveal them, and you deal with them. But that's not evangelicalism. Evangelicalism's problem is that we told an entire generation

that evangelism means go immerse yourself in the culture. And they did. And now their life is riddled with all kinds of sensuality, carnality, and the dumbing down of God's standards. They don't see sin rightly. They don't see the standard of God's holiness where they need to see it. And so they're living a sensual life, but they're burdened because they're hearing gospel truth from your pulpit. They're hearing the word of God in your pulpit, and they're burdened. And they come to you and say, "What's wrong? I sing songs to the cross. I pray. I contemplate grace. What's wrong?" I tell you what's wrong, beloved. You haven't repented of those moment-by-moment times when temptation presents itself and you believe God for your justification, but in that moment you won't believe him and his promise for your sanctification. You believe lies in the moment.

And so it's dangerous to tell every defeated, sin-worn Christian that his or her disobedience is really nothing more than a failure to bask in grace, a failure to be joyful that they're already acceptable in Christ. That isn't the point. I can know and believe that I'm forgiven and acceptable to God. I have many times in my Christian life and still resisted God when my will didn't want to lay aside for God's when I didn't want to prefer Christ. I never doubted my justification. Eventually, my assurance started to get kind of shaky if I saw some patterns in my life, which 2 Peter tells me would happen. But at first, oh man, I can ignore the will of God and believe lies and stay in a particular sin for quite some time and still have all kinds of manufactured joy over my justification. Sure. It happens all the time. Resisting God's will in favor of my own is a sin of unbelief. So we're back to the faith issue. And no amount of joy or relief over having been justified will eliminate the demand by God to trust and obey at the precise moment a carnal lie is testing me. God saves us by his grace so that he can empower us with grace to deal with the flesh victoriously, Romans 8:13.

So I would suggest that what this sensual, culture-immersed generation needs is not another excuse for their guilt and weakness but a message of real power, real power, the power that God assures us in the very gospel of grace and the power that comes by the means God chose. The Bible never pits indicatives against imperatives. The grace that affected and secured my justification is the same grace that empowers me in the use of God's intended means, which are the word and prayer and service and praise, et cetera. And the key that unleashes the Spirit's power in sanctification is through faith. When you entrust yourself to God's word in the moment of temptation, that's what starves the flesh. That's mortification. The Scripture teaches us that Christ's victory over sin and death in the past assures us of dynamic power over sin in the present, Romans 6:11 and following. And when we're weak and experiencing defeat, the Bible's answer has never been hit reset on your justification and stop trying. On the contrary, even an exhausted believer who's been wrongly trying to perform for God shouldn't gloss over the sorrows or some fresh-coated justification because they need to get at the roots of unbelief that prevent them from dying to self.

I've often thought, you know, when I lack joy, my first diagnosis is not, "Hey, I need to go search for some joy." My first diagnosis is why have I been obeying God's word in self-righteousness? Or why have I not been repenting of those sins that I'm committing? Those are the two questions I want to ask. Because the problem is not joylessness. Cold orthodoxy is not a joyless issue; it's a self-righteousness issue. It's unbelief. Since obeying the will of Christ is the only sure proof of genuine faith, and I need to always fight discouragement not with less striving but with more faith-filled effort, faith-filled effort. And so that's really what I want to say today is look, conquering sin will never happen apart from the Spirit's power working in us. He helps us see sin rightly. He helps us grasp biblical truth as our counteroffensive. He helps us develop discernment and avoid deceptions. He helps us have the endurance and stamina. He's the one that produces gratitude and love and

the peace that passes understanding. And he's the one that produces the victory and the maturity. On the other hand, conquering sin will not happen apart from my efforts to flee from sin and to pour truth into my mind and think soberly about life and morality and eternity and to press on in faith and to be prayerful and express gratitude in everything and desire God's glory through spiritual victory and maturity and not concern myself with my own assessment of my visceral temperature. Those things are not reliable. They're not reliable.

I don't want to grind an ax on this movement, but I am concerned that we are separating churches. I had a friend say to me recently, a Bible-believing, Bible-expositor extraordinaire in a really healthy church, said to me that a young man came in saying they were not sure they could stay at the church. I'm talking about a reformed guy. I've been talking about eaten [SOUNDS LIKE] up with justification by faith alone. He's one of us, a young man, and he went to the pastor. "I'm not sure I can stay at this church. It's not gospel-centered enough in the preaching." That should not be happening. That should not be happening. We should talk about all that God has promised. Jesus plus nothing equals everything God promised. And he promised not only the freedom we find in justification by faith alone, but he promised that through the means he has chosen and our empty-handed reception of his word, because it's him, that he has in that granted us the power to work and will according to his pleasure, right? So let's try to bring this together. Let's try to keep from separating. Let's talk terminology. Fine. Let's talk Bible verses, but let's not get on either side of the aisle and break up what has been really a wonderful resurgence of reformed soteriology. Let's go back to what the Bible says about the power granted to us in sanctification.

Father, thank you for the time that these men have given me to sort of share my heart and talk about these things. Thank you for their diligent ministries and the struggle that they've had or they wouldn't be in this seminar. Thank

you for their giftedness, their faithfulness. And wherever even in this room we've come to this seminar either questioning or confused or having been party to some of the divisiveness, I pray that we would no longer do that. It would be wrong for us to judge someone for submitting out of duty to Christ. It would be wrong for us to judge their heart. Lord help us not to do that. That's to wander where we cannot see and have no authority. And may we never chide someone who glories in the wonderful joys of their sanctification. Let us always measure things by how mature our faith is, both in what we've been given and in what we are commanded to do. May we help each other and strengthen each other's faith by helping each other obey and enjoy all the great motivations that you give us in Scripture, knowing they're all grounded in you and in your power. We take no credit. Keep us from the error of self-righteousness and keep us from the error of ignoring the fear of God, the lordship of Christ, and the faith-filled effort that you have designed for our growth by your Spirit's power. We pray this for your sake. Amen.