If There is Any Gospel Centrality It’s the Spirit and NOT Christ
Indicative of the under law gospel of the institutional church is the everything Jesus gig, aka Christocentric this, and that, and the other. It’s not at-all complicated; the overemphasis on Christ is directly related to the false gospel of the institutional church. In this false gospel, “Christ” partners with the law to cut out God the Father and the Holy Spirit. In this false gospel, Christ is central, and the other two members of the Trinity play supporting roles. In fact, supposedly, according to many well known evangelicals, Christ came to save us from God; the God of grace, Jesus, saving us from the God of wrath. So, right off the bat, the Father is defined by wrath and not love. That identity is subtly shifted to Christ. But again, all in all, these distortions of the Trinity seek to slip the law back into the good news.
To the contrary, it was God the Father who elected the means of salvation AND the Son. Furthermore, it is God the Father’s righteousness that is imputed to us because we are born of Him—that’s what makes us righteous, and nothing else. Think about what the church did: it made Christ’s obedience to the law the standard or definition of righteousness, not the fact that we are born anew by our heavenly Father. This imputation of Christ’s obedience to the law cuts the Father out of the salvation equation.
We are therefore, according to the church’s under law gospel, only declared righteous through the imputation of Christ’s perfect obedience to the law, and not MADE righteous through being born anew by the Father. We are righteous because of the infusion of God’s seed within us (see 1John chapter 3). Moreover, Christ was called on to die so that the Spirit could be promised to him, that is, Christ, Abraham, and all of Abraham’s children. That’s right, the promise of the Spirit was to Abraham and Christ. It was a promise that the Spirit would not leave Christ in the grave, but would resurrect him and make him the first fruits of many.
Galatians 3:16 – Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.
The promise was made to Abraham AND Christ by the Father, and executed by the Spirit when He resurrected Christ from the grave. The idea that we are righteous because Christ obeyed the law for us, and by believing on him we have the “righteousness of Christ,” makes the law a co-life-giver with God the Father. This is the exact same false gospel that Paul was arguing against in Galatians 3:
Galatians 3:17 – This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. 18 For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
If the law has anything to do with the gospel at all, the promise is voided. Hence, you see how egregious double imputation is; this whole idea that Christ not only died for us, but also came to keep the law in our stead. The law has NO part of the promise at all. Christocentric soteriology makes it possible to include the law in the promise. In effect, it is a righteousness by the law in contrast to being made righteous via the family we are born into—that’s what makes us righteous—not law regardless of who keeps it. We are reborn as a particular species: righteous, like our Father who gave us life.
We see this in how the church defines the word translated “perfect.” It is defined as perfect law-keeping. Take note of that, this is almost too simple: that’s a righteousness by the law; that’s NOT a righteousness “APART” from the law (Romans 3:21). The church’s definition of righteousness voids the promise.
So, you see, this is why Christ is the whole thing according to the church and the other two members of the Trinity become out of sight and out of mind—they are replaced by the law. Christ died to pay the penalty of sin against the law, but also “fulfilled the righteous demands of the law,” and frankly, continues to do so.
But in reality, the work of the Spirit is the fulfillment of the promise apart from the law. By faith, we “receive the Spirit.”
Galatians 3:1 – O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?
Here, we see the two different roles of Christ and the Spirit and both exclude the law. When the law is included, so is the flesh in regard to the use of our members for unrighteousness. Why? Because the new birth is replaced with ritual. Christ was crucified to end the law, not obey it for us because it is the definition of righteousness for justification. The Spirit’s baptism puts the old us to death with Christ, and resurrects us in the same way He resurrected Christ, and that’s what makes us righteous:
Romans 4:18 – In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” 19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20 No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.”23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
The constant thread is the Spirit’s miraculous births throughout the ages, culminating in our new birth, made possible by raising Christ from the grave. The law cannot give life (Gal 3:21) and has nothing to do with justification at all. The law is for sanctification only, and to the extent that we fuse justification and sanctification together, we usurp the new birth. The everything Jesus motif is for the express purpose of fusing justification and sanctification together, or in other words, fusing the law with justification via Jesus while devaluing the roles of the Father and Spirit.
But in the final analysis, if there is any gospel centrality at all, it should be the centrality of the promise made possible by the Spirit who gives life apart from the law. He resurrected Christ because Christ ended the law so that life in the Spirit can be by faith alone.
paul
Christians Should Know What Forgiveness Is, But…
Here we go again: after every tragedy like the Paris massacre, an even worst tragedy follows: Christians start talking. Like everything else in life, Christians have no answers and the world would be better off if they would just keep their mouths shut. And it would help if Christians knew the gospel and stopped attending the ULC, or “Church Under Law.” This doesn’t lead to the dreaded “legalism,” but really bad behavior of every sort. In reality, under grace honors the law through love. In the former, Jesus keeps the law for us, and from the world’s standpoint, He’s not dong a very good job. And after all, if He kept the law for us perfectly, we wouldn’t know that we are sinners, right?
And then there are Jesus’ rulers on earth who think for us. Irregardless of how illogical or antithetical to the Bible, we must not “touch God’s anointed.” We must not criticize, “The Man of God.” Gag, gag, gag. Jim Jones weeps from the grave that he doesn’t live in our day.
So, here we go again…“If we don’t let go of our anger, if we don’t forgive the way we have been forgiven, we are in bondage to ‘bitterness.’” Yes, yes, “if we don’t forgive, we will be the ones that are destroyed.” I even heard something this week like, in essence, “Ok you rapist, you got my virginity that I was saving for that one special man, but you are not going to get my hatred.”
Um, really? Actually, the reason I am so passionate about this is because our ministry is contacted from time to time by people who have been trying to make this work for like, twenty years. And, they think it’s not working because something is wrong with them. They think they are not saved because they “can’t forgive others the way they have been forgiven.” And you know, “If you don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive you.” So, in addition to the tragedy that took place in their lives, they also doubt they are saved because they are not “experiencing the joy of the gospel.” Basically, like the vast majority of evangelicals, they are in bondage to bad theology and the under-law false gospel of the institutional church.
I have written many, many articles on this issue with “that-there highfalutin deep thee-ology that Christians use to sheeeew how learned they are.” Oh, my, we can’t have no learnin’ in Christianity, and trust me, we don’t, so let me try another approach. Yes, let’s have, instead, an agreement. Let’s agree that logic is not relevant here. Let’s agree that regardless of what the Bible seems to plainly say, the only thing that matters is what the “Men of God” say.
So first, I will use a really, really basic biblical principle to make my point, and then we can agree that it doesn’t matter. Fair enough? Isn’t agreement wonderful? Here it is: true biblical forgiveness is also fellowship. If you have really forgiven someone, you fellowship with them. You see, that’s why we have fellowship with God, because He has forgiven us. Soooo, if we forgive others “the way we are forgiven,” we have fellowship with those whom we have forgiven. You absolutely CANNOT separate true forgiveness and fellowship.
See the problem here? Not that it is the only, um, sorry, theological problem, but it is one. Here is another one: if we forgive everyone, we wouldn’t have any enemies. So, what I am saying is this: there is a difference between granting forgiveness and loving our enemies, and it has to do primarily with the revenge issue.
Now, I understand this is why I am enjoying all of the “forgiveness” that I am presently experiencing from the Christian community for challenging their “Men of God,” you know, “God’s anointed” even-though the emails seem to be a little hateful.
But it’s ok, run along now to your pastor and he will tell why this biblical commonsense is all wrong, and you will be spared the agony of thinking for yourself. And don’t worry, you will not be held accountable for aiding and abetting the bondage of others, you will only be judged on how well you obey those who “have the rule over you.”
That’s what the Bible plainly says, right?
paul
Good Works, Sin, and the Law
“Tullian Tchividjian once said that his assurance, as far as he could have it, was based on the fact that he has never done a good work; that’s just good solid Protestant soteriology.”
“ Sin has a foe in both the lost and the saved…Child psychologists say their deepest challenges abide with children who have no conscience.”
Truth be known, most professing Christians are uncomfortable with the idea that salvation is a mere legal declaration by God based on a signed contract. According to the contract, we are declared legal by God if we denounce all self worth, declare all of our works and the works of others as “filthy rags,” and submit ourselves to “godly authority.” According to Luther and Calvin, we are in breach of contract if we think we can do a good work. And because of our supposed natural pertinacity to think we have some goodness within us, we can never be sure that we are upholding our end of the bargain. Tullian Tchividjian once said that his assurance, as far as he could have it, was based on the fact that he has never done a good work; that’s just good solid Protestant soteriology. Of course, this so-called gospel is couched in spiritual sounding terms like “covenant” and “grace” and “justification,” etc.
Most Christians are uncomfortable with what goes on in the institutional church, but what else is there? Protestantism, like all doctrines of tyranny, seeks to dumb down the masses they seek to control. Why? Because one of the major essences of sin is a desire to control. Collectivist doctrines and Sin have always walked closely together, and always will, be driven by low information. Protestants can make no sense of the world at all without paradox as a primary hermeneutic; and in fact, paradox is the primary hermeneutic of orthodoxy. Funny, if not so sad, would be the Protestant assertion that “walk by faith and not by sight” means that it is perfectly alright that life makes no sense at all. After all, we are “totally depraved,” and cannot really know anything except “Christ and Him crucified.”
The Catholic Church has never been shy about stating that information in the hands of the great unwashed is like handing a toddler a loaded gun, but Protestant academics skinned the cat a different way: knowledge about the fact that you can’t know anything is really, really deep, and shame on any saint that does not “study [this fact] to show yourself approved.” And, but of course there is work in the Christian life; as Tullian Tchividjian also said, seeking to see your depravity in a deeper and deeper way IS hard work! Again, because of our “natural” tendency to think we can do something good.
So, a knowledgeable Protestant will interpret the following event this way: a garage mechanic finds 10,000 dollars left in a car, and the former owner was unaware that her dead husband left it there to surprise her. He turned in the money to his manager; seemingly a good deed. But, this auto mechanic is going to hell because he thinks he did a good work. According to Luther and Calvin, believing you can do a good work is “mortal sin,” and the belief that one can fulfill any aspect of the law perfectly. Less knowledgeable Protestants are merely confused by these kinds of events because they, by design, have no real knowledge of biblical law/gospel.
First of all, we must begin with a very, very short philosophy lesson that dumbed-down Protestants don’t think they need. But, fact is, if you don’t have at least a basic knowledge of Gnosticism, you will be unable to understand little going on in the church today, if anything. However, I am going to make this very simple: holiness can dwell with weakness. The present creation, though fallen, is not inherently evil, but rather weak. Weakness does not equal evil. Let me demonstrate. Are the angels weaker than God? Yes, but are they also “holy”? Yes.
Our mortality makes us weak, and Sin abides in our mortal bodies, but Sin does not define mortality. We have the treasure of the new birth in clay (weak) vessels. Sin has a foe in both the lost and the saved. In the lost who are not born again, Sin’s foe is the law written upon the heart’s of every individual born into the world. The conscience is the judge that sits over this law and either accuses the individual or excuses them. Child psychologists say their deepest challenges abide with children who have no conscience. If the conscience (judge) has no law, there is no condemnation.
Hence, lack of a developed moral compass via teaching will generally determine the potency of a child’s conscience, and also determine one’s moral compass into adulthood. A judge without a law sits silently. We see this dynamic at work in the aforementioned article cited by the embedded link. Christ often noted that the law written on every person’s heart is a sort of thumbnail version of the more specific law that is the Bible. It is not uncommon for the secular “Golden Rule” to be biblically consistent. This is why the mechanic said he gave back the money; it’s the way he was raised (learned common decency that gives the conscience [judge] a law to work with), and he imagined how he would have felt if the money was his and he lost it (do unto others as you would have others do to you).
So did he do a good work? Yes, of course he did. He obeyed the law written on his heart by God. Will that good work save him? No, of course not. The conscience may temporarily reward him with good feelings, but that will not save him either. This is where we must segue into a little more philosophy. What is your perception of God? Is He an invisible aloof God that disdains everything material? Should we be amazed that He would even acknowledge our existence on any level? Or is He a God that makes Himself known and wishes to see all people saved? Does He actively push all to the precipice of salvation through the very design of His gospel? I think it is the latter, and this is where freewill comes into play: God creates a conscience and a law within us, but it is up to us to develop the conscience through choices. If parents understand this biblical dynamic, they have a clear choice in how they raise their children including the acceptance of contrary philosophies regarding the conscience.
So, God sought to further define what we will call the common heart law with the Old Covenant law, or the law of Moses. There are two laws being dealt with here, and Sin is against both laws. Therefore, the increase of law gives Sin more opportunity to condemn. Sin came into the world as an enemy of good, and its mode of operation is to incite rebellion for purposes of condemnation. Sin seeks the destruction of God’s creation on all counts. More law gives Sin more opportunity to condemn through sinful desires. Sin appeals to the individual through sinful desires, and those desires will prevail according to the strength of one’s developed conscience. Have no doubt: there is a warfare going on inside the unbeliever. Remember, the mechanic acknowledged that keeping the money was a desirable thought, but he knew that would be wrong, was not how he was raised, and wouldn’t be treating others the way he wants to be treated. Moreover, he probably knew his conscience would not allow him to enjoy the booty anyway.
The law is also good. The more law the better. The law is the standard for loving God and others. What if God ended the law’s ability to condemn and only made it useful for love? This would disarm Sin; if sin cannot condemn, it has no power, purpose, or incentive. This is where we talk a little bit about the gospel of Moses. The law can condemn leading to death, and it can love leading to life. As far as those born under the law, they can choose life or death, but ultimately, their end is death. They will suffer lesser death to the degree that they obey their consciences.
This is where the true gospel comes in according to the new birth. The law of Moses not only defines all sin leading to death, but it also defines all love leading to life. Until Christ came, all sin was imputed to the law as a possible indictment. The law held sin “captive” until “faith” came. Of course, the law could still be used to love as well. Christ’s primary gospel role was to die on the cross to pay the penalty of sin, and thereby ending it. Sin or the law? Both. Christ’s death ended the law’s ability to condemn. His death on the cross paves the way for the Spirit to baptize a believer in His death, and resurrect the believer in the same way He resurrected Christ. The new creature born of God cannot be condemned by the law, and therefore, Sin is stripped of its power. That is, IF the believer knows this. Sin can still make an appeal through desires, but the new birth counters that with NEW DESIRES infused by the new birth, specifically, a love for the law that did not previously exist. A believer can still experience the consequences of temporary death from disobedience and the fear thereof, but not the fear of eternal death because there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ, viz, born into His literal family with God the Father.
So, yes, everyone does good works, but for the unsaved it is lesser death; for the believer it is more life. The unbeliever is still under the condemnation of the law, has an indifference to God’s law, and doesn’t see God’s law as the definition of love. This is why unbelievers often distort the meaning of the word, for one example among myriad, “I love you, but I am divorcing you.” This makes the unbeliever captive to sin. Depending on one’s upbringing, and consequently the strength of their conscience and good habits, their life will be commended by lesser death, but not more life.
In contrast, the born again believer is free from all eternal condemnation, thus stripping Sin of its power, is given a new-found love for the law and truth, and experiences life more abundantly unless he or she obeys sinful desires still present leading to death albeit temporary consequences.
BUT, if so-called believers are taught that they cannot obey the law “perfectly” (which is not the point to begin with) which is supposedly the standard for being truly justified, and thereby leading to a relaxing of the law, you can now easily understand why secular people often live better than church members: their lesser death looks better than lesser life. In other words, the lost world can obey their consciences better than “God’s people” can obey the Bible because they don’t believe they can.
Moreover, so-called saints can also see the law written on their hearts as equally futile because law is law either way—law can only condemn. This totally eliminates the concept of justice which is not absent from the law written on the hearts of all born into the world. This means that the world will have more of a concept of justice than the church. Sound familiar?
Justification is not a mere “legal declaration.” In fact, law has not one wit anything to do with justification. The law either condemns or loves depending on whether a person is saved or unsaved. For the true believer, the law is for love—not justification. The belief that Christ keeps the law for us, because all are unable, accomplishes nothing because the law cannot justify—it can only love.
paul
Galatians 2:20 and the Gospel According to Phil Johnson, Parts 1 & 2
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PAUL DOHSE: Welcome, truth lovers, to BlogTalkRadio.com/False Reformation. This is your host Paul Dohse. Tonight, part eight of the Magnum Opus of the Reformation, Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. Greetings from the Potter’s House and TANC ministries where we are always eager to serve all of your heterodox needs. Our teaching catalog can be found at tancpublishing.com. If you would like to add to our lesson or ask a question, call 855-8317. I failed to put the area code in there. That’s (347) 855-8317. Remember to turn your PC volume down to prevent feedback. If you choose to use Skype to listen to the show, my advice is to just dial direct from your Skype account without using any of the Blogtalk links. And again that number, just dial direct from your Skype account is (347) 855-8317. Per the usual, we will check in with Susan towards the end of the show and listen to her perspective. Remember, you may remain anonymous. When I say, “This is your host. You are on the air. What’s your comment or question,” just start talking. If you would like to comment on our subject tonight, you can also e-mail me at paul@ttanc.com. That’s paul@Tom-Tony-Alice-Nancy-Cat.com. I have my e-mail monitor right here and can add your thoughts to the lesson without need for you to call in. You can post a question as well.
Tonight, we’re going to have another interlude, and I know these interludes drive people crazy. But it is very important to establish and have a sentence by sentence evaluation of Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation because that is the first and founding document of the Protestant Reformation. It was written about six months after Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses which is thought to have launched the Protestant Reformation, and I guess that’s fair enough. But the Heidelberg Disputation is the first and foundational document of the Protestant Reformation. And it is, absolutely, amazing how to this day, literally everything that we see in contemporary, or at least the return to the contemporary authentic Protestantism, flows from that document. But in doing this series, to have a sentence by sentence evaluation of the Heidelberg Disputation, though very important, it is getting the cart a little bit before the horse. Because in our day, Christians, by and large, really don’t understand the gospel. They really don’t understand the gospel. And this is by design. This is the essence of Protestantism, a dumbed-downed congregant. And we’re learning why that is in our study of the Heidelberg Disputation. But foundational to the doctrinal illiteracy of present-day Christians is this whole idea that we’re sanctified by the gospel. So throughout Protestant history, the emphasis has always been the gospel, the gospel, the gospel, the gospel, or the gospel or first importance or going back, discontinually going back to the cross. And this gets a pass, by and large, because people are saying, “Oh, this is just a theory on how to be better sanctified or how to better grow in our faith by returning to the original gospel that saved us time and time again.” But as we are learning, and the contention of this ministry is that our contention is – our contention is that no, this just isn’t one of many techniques to better grow in the Lord according to the Bible supposedly. No. This is a gospel or a soteriology that calls for us to continually return back to the same gospel that saved us, so that we can live by faith alone as a way to keep ourselves saved. This is the dirty little secret of Protestantism.
So in essence, you have a work salvation by faith alone or in essence, a work salvation by doing nothing, kind of like Bachman-Turner Overdrive theology. I work hard at doing nothing all day as a way to keep myself saved. Or the way they put it, living by faith alone. And if you think about those words carefully, one might logically ask, “How do you live by faith alone?” Kind of like saying, “How do you live by thinking alone without doing anything?” So this is why we’re taking these interludes. It’s very important for us to establish what exactly the foundational document of Protestantism is all about. But, again, for contemporary or present practical purposes, we need to get it out there what the true gospel is, the true biblicist gospel in comparison to–I hate to say it, I hate to just put it out there–Protestantism.
Now as we’ve discussed before, the official coined term by this ministry, anyway, concerning the official doctrine of the authentic Protestant Reformation, not the watered down version and the truisms connected with it that most Protestants, Baptists, Methodists, Charismatics, et cetera, are used to, we’re talking about this return to the authentic Protestant Gospel in the body of the new Calvinist movement, which is all but completely taken over the institutional church.
In regard to gospel sanctification, the go-to verse is Galatians 2:20. This is the primary go-to verse. Now a lot of people claim that the Higher Life movement and all these other movements, the Keswick movement and all these movements, they are really big on Galatians 2:20 as well. And what’s in vogue is to think that the Higher Life movement and the Keswick movement, so on and so forth, are somehow different from authentic Reformed Protestantism and their gospel. And such is not the case. The applications are different, but the basic soteriology is the same. And what is that? Here it is. It’s a soteriology based on gospel contemplationism, and keeping yourself saved by going back to the cross. Or in essence, keeping yourself saved through contemplationism of some sort because to actually do something would be works salvation because this is key running the basic premise, running through all these doctrines is that justification is progressive.
And as we’re going to hear, and how we’re going to approach this topic in the show today, what we’re going to hear, Phil Johnson of John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church out in California, he is actually going to call salvation a process. And this is the fundamental basic premise of all of these doctrines, all of these passive doctrines, all of these doctrines that would say, synergistic sanctification is work salvation. Why? Because it’s, and we’ve all said this, “The growing part of salvation.” Well, folks, salvation doesn’t grow. Salvation doesn’t grow, okay? And, again, we’re going to really hunker down on Galatians 2:20 because I stumbled upon a video that’s a sermon by Phil Johnson of Grace Community Church in California where he really articulates Galatians 2:20 in the Reformed view to a T. And, again, in this incredible video, he is also speaking for the Higher Life movement and all these other movements, even though he speaks out against them in this. Again, the basic soteriology is the same, this whole idea that salvation is a process that starts at point A and gets to point B and that we have to keep the process going by doing nothing. So we’re going to look at this, and this ministry is just going to flat out make a lot of hay of this video, and we’re going to slice it, dice it, rework it, keep adding to it, taking away from it. And we begin that process in today’s program. And basically, we’re going to continue that process on Sunday morning as well. And as well, we’re going to post videos on Paul’s Passing Thoughts, the blog, for TANC ministries. And we’re going to, really, work this thing. We better get going because the sermon itself was 50 some minutes. I cut some parts out, and I’ll tell you why when we get into the video. (more…)
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