The Protestant Twisting of 1John, Part 4 – A Clarification: Gospel and Obedience
Originally published April 20, 2015
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Welcome to Blogtalk Radio False Reformation this is your host Paul M. Dohse Sr. Tonight, part 4 of “The Protestant Twisting of 1John: A Clarification.” If you would like to add to our lesson or ask a question, call (347) 855-8317. Remember to turn your PC volume down to prevent feedback. Per the usual, we will check in with Susan towards the end of the show and listen to her perspective.
If you would like to comment on our subject tonight, you can also email me at paul@ttanc.com. That’s Tom, Tony, Alice, Nancy, cat, paul@ttanc.com. I have my email monitor right here and can add your thoughts to the lesson without need for you to call in.
Initially, I wanted to just address 1John 1:9 in a thorough way to debunk this whole Protestant idea that we keep ourselves saved by returning to the same gospel that saved us. And, the way we reutilize the same gospel that saved us is a continued repentance for “present sin.” It’s this whole idea that Jesus died for our past sins, but we must ask forgiveness for known present sin in order to keep ourselves saved. When we do that, it’s a reapplication of Jesus’ death for present sin. Hence, 1John 1:9.
But it doesn’t stop there in Protestant soteriology. They then concern themselves with the question of true righteousness. If our sins are forgiven, that keeps us out of hell, but it doesn’t make us truly righteous. What to do? So here is what they came up with: Jesus came to die for our forgiveness, past and present IF we return to the same gospel that saved us by faith alone, but He also came to keep the law perfectly so that His perfect obedience could be imputed to “Christian” life. The Reformed call this “double imputation.”
And it turns the true biblical gospel completely upside down. First, it makes the law the standard for justification. There is no law in justification, we are justified APART from the law. Why would Christ obey the law for us when justification is apart from the law? Then what is the standard for righteousness? NOT the law, but rather God’s righteousness. What’s that? For one, and primarily, it’s the new birth. For us, the standard of righteousness is being a child of God. Being the offspring of God is what makes us righteous. Kinship, not law.
Secondly, we are not justified by the law, no matter who keeps it—who keeps it is not the point, the law itself is the point, because there is no law that can give life. Only the new birth gives life (Galatians 3:21).
Thirdly, double imputation is obviously a covering for sin with the righteousness of Christ and not an ENDING of sin. Our sins are not “taken away” they are only covered. “Christianity” is about living a life of faith only to maintain a covering for sin. Therefore, we are not the ones really obeying, and therefore, we are not the ones performing love either.
And boy does this notion land us right where we are at in 1John. I have invested so much in the untwisting of 1John 1:9 in this series, that I thought, “I might as well finish the book out and make it our 1John commentary.” And so it is.
This is our theses: the new birth creates us anew into people who love the truth, and therefore practice oblove. That’s a new word that I made up. What is the definition of oblove? It’s the combination of the words “love” and “obedience.” Biblically, you cannot separate these two words, they are synonymous. The law is the Bible, and it is a book of condemnation to the unsaved and a beloved love manual for those born again. This is also why our sins are not covered, they are taken away (1John 3:5). Christ came to take away sin, not cover it.
You know, many go to church and sing the hymns, and many listen to Christian radio and raise their hands in praise while stopped at red lights, but a lot of that good Protestant music is just really bad theology that imperils the soul and stops far short of inciting the curiosity of the unsaved. One example is a beautiful song by Steve Camp titled, “He Covers Me.” But again, the premise of the song is that our sins are covered and not ended.
You know, there is a quiet revolution going on in Christianity. Christian husbands are beginning to stand up and assume their rightful role as spiritual leaders. This necessarily means leaving the institutional church which deliberately seeks to emasculate the men among us. One thing that I hear back is that fathers are beginning to stand silent and not sing traditional songs that are deviations from the truth. Good for them. I even hear back that their children ask, “Daddy, why aren’t you singing?” And they tell them why. Undoubtedly, children and wives will get way more out of these types of examples rather than 365 different versions of the same gospel that saved us.
“Why is it that all we ever hear about in the church is the gospel?” Because we have to keep returning to the same gospel that saved us to keep ourselves saved, and by the way, the only place that this continued atonement is valid is in the institutional church. Sure, Protestants will deny salvation by church membership; they will rather become indignant and state that salvation is only found in the gospel. However, the fact remains that they also believe that authority to preach the gospel is vested in the institutional church.
If our sins are only covered, the focus of the Christian life is to keep ourselves covered, not obedience because now obedience is defined by law-keeping. We have been trained mentally to think of obedience as something demanded by the law. This makes the law a co-life-giver with God. At least in one regard, the idea of one God connects with this idea. There is only one life-giver (Galatians 3:10-21).
I strongly suspect that when the Bible talks about God being one, it in no way includes the context of the Trinity. It’s interesting to note that in context of Galatians 3:10-21, the point is that the law is not a coequal with God—there is only one God.
1John 3:1 – See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
The law is not the standard for justification; it is the standard for our love, obedience, and submission. If there is a standard for justification at all, it would simply be defined by the new birth. We are justified by virtue of being in God’s family. The first man was a created being. God did not decide to save man by restoring a covenant of works, or restoring man’s image created in the likeness of God, or to restore paradise lost. He decided to save man by making him His literal family. The gospel isn’t about restoring things; it’s about making all things new. This defines you as pure, albeit in mortality. Nevertheless, being born of God in mortality results in the inevitable morphing into more and more purity:
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
Let’s ask an interpretive question here. What did Jesus mean when He told John the Baptist that His baptism by John would fulfill all righteousness? I think it fulfilled all righteousness by representing the literal new birth, or Spirit baptism. Though we still reside in mortal bodies, the decision to be saved is a decision to follow Christ in baptism, or a decision to be born again. That’s the gospel. That’s what the gospel is.
Romans 6:1 – What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
The more you study the apostle John, the more you will see the apostle Paul. Romans 6 is key here. The perfection of the law is not the standard for righteousness, passing from life to death is the standard. Though we still sin, we are dead to sin. Being deemed righteous in our present state is defined by a reversal of slavery leading to a new direction in life. Romans 6 explains, as we shall see, 1John 3. The literal new birth, in essence reverses slavery (Romans 6:20). This also debunks the whole Reformed total depravity song and dance. Before the baptism of the Spirit that comes by believing on Christ, the unregenerate are free to do good, but enslaved to the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2).
Being under the curse of the law is both a forensic statement and a state of being. It is true, while under law, a perfect keeping of the law is demanded. But this is key: when it gets right down to it, unbelievers are indifferent to the Bible or the law of God. And remember, the law and the Bible are the same thing. Man is capable of doing good, and in fact does do good, but because he/she has no love for God’s truth, and in fact are indifferent to it, life decisions lead to many-faceted forms of death, and ultimately, eternal death. Unbelievers that live according to conscience will suffer a lesser punishment in this life and the life to come.
Believers can in fact make life and death decisions, but are inclined towards obeying the law because of the new birth. Clearly, the Bible states that there is a reversal of slavery. The believer is enslaved to righteousness, but unfortunately free to sin. But according to Paul, a believer can stupidly enslave themselves to certain sins by obeying the desire that the sin produces. The believer is no longer enslaved to sin, but can be ignorant of this fact. And keep in mind, Protestantism is predicated on the idea that we are still enslaved to sin as believers which goes part and parcel with still being under the law and law continuing to be the standard for justification.
Listen, here is why the home fellowship movement is going to eventually take off: the alternative is Protestantism which defines the believer according to how the Bible defines an unbeliever. Eventually, people are going to figure out that they have been proudly proclaiming themselves as unregenerate in the name of Christ.
Lastly, this is defined by the fact that believers have the freedom to present their bodies as living sacrifices, or in other words, present their members for holy purposes that please God. The body is not inherently evil because it is part of the material world. Whether saved or unsaved, the body can be used for good purposes. However, in the case of an unbeliever, good behavior doesn’t lead to life more abundantly, it just leads to lesser punishment and a more bearable eternal state. For the unbeliever, good behavior merely leads to less death. For the believer, obedient love leads to more life.
Now with all of this in mind, let’s read further in 1John Chapter 3:
4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
John wrote what he wrote in 1John 3 because of what Paul wrote in Romans 6—it’s saying the same thing. Obeying the law isn’t the issue, a “commitment” to obey the law isn’t the issue, the reality of the new birth is the issue.
1Corinthians 15:1- Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
This is, as Paul called it, the gospel of “first importance” or literally “the gospel of first order of importance.” There is way more behind this than a mental ascent to the facts of the gospel. You have to believe that this first happened to Christ in order to believe that it really happened to you spiritually. Repentance is a change of mind in regard to many things concerning your life and the life of Christ.
By the way, there was an evangelical movement for a while that emphasized the new birth. It peaked in the 70’s and was considered to be the most egregious of all false gospels. The Australian Forum, the think tank that gave birth to the present-day return to authentic Reformed soteriology, actually published an article titled, “The False Gospel of the New Birth.”
John continues in chapter 3 to explain one of the characteristics of being born again, love. But let me insert this, and this is VERY important: the characteristics of the new birth are framed in what the Bible refers to as “abiding.” If God’s seed “abides in” us (1John 3:9), other things also abide in us: the fact that we abide in Him also; the truth abides in us; we know the truth; we love the truth; we love fellow Christians; we do not practice sin, but rather practice righteousness as a life direction and pattern; we love God’s law; we submit to need; we obey; we seek to please God; we have a hunger for learning more of God’s word, and many more can be listed.
Let’s read more of John 3 with this in mind:
11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
See, the order in which John discusses these things is in no wise disconnected. We need to start thinking about “obedience” in reference to love and the new birth. Really, the Christian life is about love. But listen, any love that flows from you starts with a love for truth. Also, please take note of a more biblical definition of love: love is a submission to need—that’s love. When the Scriptures tell women to submit to their husbands, that’s just another way of telling wives to love their husbands. When the Bible tells men to love their wives, it’s simply telling men to submit to their needs. Look at 1John 3:17 again. How does benevolence get parachuted into that body of text out of nowhere? John goes from discussing murder to meeting financial need; it seems like he is all over the map, but not really.
Lastly, working out the new birth with love leads to assurance.
19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
Assurance of salvation comes through working out our new birth in fear and trembling. Assurance of salvation is grounded in the ending of the law because the old us died with Christ resulting in no condemnation, while our new relationship to the law leads us in love and life. Now listen, even a casual student of the Bible can begin to hang Bible verses all over this framework.
Next week, we will build on this as we go into chapter 4—let’s go to the phones.
An Introduction to TANC 2015: Why the Protestant Reformation is a Lie
Protestants don’t know anything. That’s not a derogatory remark, it’s merely a staple of Reformed ideology. It’s who we are supposed to be. Protestantism is predicated on the idea of spiritual caste as an accepted norm. The average Protestant parishioner is not supposed to know anything, and again, this is an accepted norm. In fact, many Protestant laymen who didn’t get the memo will concur; knowing something in the institutional church will usually get you in trouble. If you know something, you lack humbleness, and are trying to undermine… The Pastor.
This should not surprise us at all if we understand our authentic roots and the ideology of our spiritual heroes. Though Martin Luther’s 95 Theses is credited with launching the Reformation, its first and defining doctrinal statement came six months later in the form of the Heidelberg Disputation to the Augustinian Order. In the 22nd thesis of that document, Luther declared knowledge to be a vice that does nothing but puff people up, and like with all lust, it can never be satisfied. Luther’s disdain for reason is well documented, referring to it as…
Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom … Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets.
Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and … know nothing but the word of God.
There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason… Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed.
Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.
Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason.
To be a Christian, you must “pluck out the eye of reason.”
In our day, this fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree as reflected in this quote by a pastor sent to our ministry by one of his former parishioners:
Paul told the Corinthian church that “‘knowledge’ puffs up but love builds up” (1Cor 8:1). So, if you love knowledge and look into the word of God to gain mere knowledge and you absolutely love doing it to the exclusion or ignoring of everything else, you may be “puffed up” and indeed not “building up.”…. Puffiness rips and tears. Puffiness pushes people away. Puffiness divides. Perhaps even more critical is the fact that puffiness portrays a small gospel and devastatingly distorts God’s glory.
To the puffy I say, “Stop studying your Bible.” Go on a quest for Jesus. He is the Word! Study Him, not it.
Studying Jesus and not any knowledge regarding Jesus is the most popular rendering of 1Corithians 2:2 in our day: we are supposed to make every effort to know NOTHING but Christ and him crucified. After all, according to another popular truism in our day, “He is a person—not a precept.”
Of course, most Protestants would deny all of this out of hand when confronted, but the roots and foundation of Protestant ideology has at least resulted in a lax view of knowledge while leaving the thinking to Protestant academia. Some well-known evangelicals such as Dr. Jay Adams have stated the obvious: Protestants are biblically illiterate, and have no wisdom in regard to Christian living other than God-given commonsense and even that is at an all-time low.
Christians, who strive for wisdom and spiritual maturity in the institutional church, if they don’t give up, will eventually find themselves in turmoil and at a crossroads. Striding towards commonsense spiritual objectives will continually put them at odds with the Protestant herd. I was certainly no exception. As someone who was always considered knowledgeable wherever I attended church as a Baptist, in reality, I knew nothing. The knowledge that I had accumulated in various seminaries and Bible colleges was all but worthless. Though I read and studied my Bible more than most, I understood little of it. Most of what I read made no sense at all. Nevertheless, I deemed myself knowledgeable relative to the environment, yet in my heart, I knew the Christian life made no sense and I was for the most part confused. In reality, I was good at constructing Protestant sentences with orthodox bumper stickers and pithy truisms.
So, I set out on a journey eight years ago to search for clarity after 23 years of confusion and strife. The part of my journey that really made everything come together began in 2011 when I embarked on a personal study of Paul’s letter to the Romans. I was determined to make this the time—the endeavor that would reveal once and for all what I was searching for: why my God seemed to be a God of confusion. I prayed earnestly at the beginning of the study that I would just let Paul’s words say what they plainly said. If something he wrote was definitive, I would use that as a building block of understanding.
Though I stayed true to the plan, not much happened until Romans 4:15. That’s the day my life came to a full stop.
For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
What in the world did Paul mean by that? NO law, NO sin: especially in the context; speaking of Christians. I kept it mind and continued to work through the letter. Then I came to Romans 5:13…
for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.
There it was again: no law, no sin. I stopped there in my verse by verse study and read through the rest of the letter and found the following:
Romans 7:6 – But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. 7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
Apart from the law sin lies dead. There it is again. No law, no sin. Then I read the following as well:
Romans 10:4 – For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
Conclusion: Christ died on the cross to end the law, and where there is no law, there is no sin. That’s how Christ took my sins away: He died on the cross to end the law. The true Christian is free from any judgement or condemnation—we are not under the jurisdiction of the law.
I wasn’t the least bit sure where this left the law in regard to the Christian life, but pondering the simple fact that we are no longer condemned was exhilarating and freeing. The old self that was under the law of sin and death died with Christ; you can’t indict a dead person, they are no longer under the law. And even if you exhumed my body and presented it in court, the judge has no law in which to convict me (Rom 7:1-6). There is NOW no condemnation for those in Christ (Rom 8:1).
Again, I was not sure where this left the law in regard to the believer’s life, but I had my building block; part of the pieces fit together which would lead to more pieces fitting and an increased understanding of the bigger picture.
Then I came to Romans 8:2.
For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
Remember, I had committed to simply letting the words say what they say. As a result, I saw something in this verse that I had never seen before; clearly, Paul wrote of two separate laws…the law of the Spirit, which I had always thought of as the Spirit’s realm of influence, and the law of sin and death.
“Wait a minute here,” I thought to myself. “If the law of sin and death refers to the written law that condemns mankind, and the two laws spoken of here are the same Greek word, and they are, why would one refer to a realm while the other one referred to a written law? Could it be that this is two perspectives on the same law?” I knew that a literal take on this verse would demand that, and then John 17:17 came to mind:
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
Then another verse came to mind:
And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment (Jn 16:8).
That’s when I realized that the law has two different applications/perspectives: one for the lost and one for the saved. But verses were not done coming to mind:
Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law (Rom 13:10).
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love (Gal 5:6).
So, the Christian is free to aggressively love God and others through obedience without ANY fear of condemnation:
There is no fear in love, but perfect [mature] love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected [matured, or growing] in love (1Jn 4:18).
Therefore, why the Reformation is a lie is not complicated at all. This SIMPLE fact makes Protestant theology a house of cards: it keeps so-called believers under the law of sin and death; its very definition of a Christian is the Bible’s definition of a lost person…under law (Rom 6:14). Protestantism is predicated on a single perspective on the law that Christians remain under; they remain under condemnation. This condemnation is covered by Christ’s righteousness as the “Christian” lives by faith alone. Living by faith alone works (usually some kind of ritual like “preaching the gospel to ourselves everyday”) imputes the obedience of Christ to our Christian lives as a way to keep ourselves justified. The Reformed call this “double imputation.”
Once one gets past all of the theological Protestant-speak, it boils down to extremely simple theological math: a Christian is NOT free to love—Jesus must love for us lest it be works salvation. And it almost goes without saying that there is a love famine in the institutional church for this very reason. The Protestant is not free to love, but must focus on a convoluted life formula that supposedly imputes the righteousness of Christ to our lives and thereby keeps us saved. Yes, this is the dirty little secret: total depravity doesn’t merely apply to the unregenerate, but also to the “saints.”
Yes, yes, many a Protestant doth protest against this accusation because few Protestants know what Protestantism is. Nevertheless, it is a false gospel that denies the new birth and keeps people under law and not under grace—a grace that frees the individual to aggressively love without fear of condemnation and the mire of unhealthy introspection.
We are saved APART from the law of sin and death…period (Rom 3:21), and it does NOT matter who keeps the law, the law of sin and death itself is the issue. Salvation is accomplished by the ENDING of the law of sin and death—not the fulfilling of it. Christ came to fulfill the law of the Spirit of life (and love) through us (Rom 8:4)…NOT the law of sin and death.
That would make the law of sin and death a co-life-giver with Christ. The law cannot give life unto salvation. If Christ fulfilled the law of sin and death with loving obedience to the Father, that law is a co-life-giver. That is Paul’s entire point in Galatians chapter 3. There is only ONE seed. If we are still under the law, the law is an additional seed that can give life…but there is only ONE!
Hence, Protestantism goes the way of most other false religions; some ritual or tradition fulfills the law of sin and death and separates the individual from the freedom to love without condemnation and according to the law of the Spirit of life. Love is replaced by obeying men and faithfulness to their institutions. The law of love is replaced with the traditions of men and their orthodoxy.
Consequently, we are in a Protestant dark age. In the same way that secular America has awakened to the failure of the elitist political class, Christians must awaken to realize the failure of Protestant academia. The assembly of Christ was a laity movement, and only the laity can return God’s people to the truth of the gospel. This is a repeat of history when God’s elect where continually troubled by the 1st century Gnostic elitists. Paul wrote to them…
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.
Likewise, the beloved James addressed the problem as well:
Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?
This is our mission at TANK, to aid the priesthood of believers in rediscovering the truth of the gospel and kingdom living robbed from us by 500 years of Protestant orthodoxy. The light has been covered by the Protestant basket long enough, and this is a matter of simple theological math: the new birth is the standard of righteousness, NOT the law of sin and death, and it matters not who keeps it—it CANNOT give life.
So, the speakers at this year’s conference are partaking in this journey in the arena of ideas. This is an issue that addresses every area of life and culture. Other than the gospel of first importance stated here, everything is being examined and revisited. It’s not group think, it’s collective truth made up of individuals seeking the one mind of Christ, not the traditions of men.
Let all be convinced according to their own conscience. Protestant elitists will not stand in our stead regardless of their claims, but each person will give an account for the sum and substance of their own lives. Let us do it with trembling and fear; not any fear of condemnation, but a fear of trading the life of Christ for the death of tyranny.
Because only truth sanctifies,
Paul M. Dohse
The Magnum Opus of the Reformation: Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation; Part 5
Connecting the Dots: Tullian Tchividjian and Luther’s Theologian of the Cross
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That’s pastor Tullian Tchividjian…
…welcome truth lovers to Blog Talk radio .com/False Reformation, this is your host Paul M. Dohse Sr. Tonight, part 5 of “The Magnum Opus of the Reformation: Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation.”
Greetings from the Potters 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 (347) 855-8317. Remember to turn your PC volume down to prevent feedback.
Per the usual, we will check in with Susan towards the end of the show and listen to her perspective.
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If you would like to comment on our subject tonight, you can also email me at paul@ttanc.com. That’s Tom, Tony, Alice, Nancy, cat, paul@ttanc.com. I have my email 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.
At the beginning of tonight’s program, you heard an excerpt from a sermon via pastor Tullian. It is an example of what drives other Reformed leaders nuts, but they can complain all they want to, pastor Tullian is a Luther purest. His resignation last week from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church brought me to remembrance in regard to what an excellent example he is of Martin Luther’s application of the Heidelberg Disputation in our day. So, tonight, this is an interlude of sorts that we are going to use to solidify what we have learned to this point.
Tullian lends credence to two accusations that the Reformed fear most: the charge of progressive justification, and antinomianism. I don’t know exactly why, but these are the two accusations that set a fire under their rumps, and along with it, a flood of cognitive dissonance. Yes, we are going to examine the arguments used to refute the charge of antinomianism and progressive justification, and as we will see, the arguments are so pitiful they would be deemed ridiculous by an adolescent which should be telling.
But first, I want to unpack the opening excerpt as a segue into the program tonight. Short excerpt, but packed with Luther’s foundational theology. In that short statement, we see the Reformed doctrines of mortification and vivification, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, deep repentance, double imputation, and total depravity.
Tullian stated first that we, as Christians, don’t merely need help with our walk, but we need to be raised from the dead. Let me pause here for a moment. What we are about to discuss are facts about the Reformation and Protestant soteriology in general that Protestants don’t understand. Fact: 98% of professing Calvinists really have no idea what Calvin believed, taught, and propagated. This is why the New Calvinism movement creates so much division between so-called Old Calvinists and New Calvinists; when the original article was rediscovered, by a Seventh-Day Adventist by the way, present-day Calvinists believed it was a false gospel. I was one of them. I set out to expose the New Calvinists and discovered they are the real Calvinists. I also discovered the fact that the Reformation is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind. The facts are irrefutable. So, is there hope? Of course there is; stop listening to men, turn on the light switch of the brain God gave you for a purpose, and read the gospels, the book of Acts, and Romans for yourself. Read those books, think for yourself, and just let the words say what they say. When the meaning isn’t apparent, don’t immediately run to a book full of someone else’s thoughts, what we call a “Commentary,” do your own independent research.
Why would Tullian say that Christians continue to be raised from the dead? That’s right out of theses 16-18 of the Heidelberg Disputation (HD). As I have stated before, the HD which came about 6 months after the 95 Theses is the foundational document of the Reformation, and then Calvin articulated and expanded Luther’s foundation in the Calvin Institutes. This progressive justification component of dying and rebirthing ourselves into heaven came to be known as mortification and vivification in the Calvin institutes. This brings us to Tullian’s mention of “Christians” being confessors, or the doctrine of deep repentance; that is the mortification component of mortification and vivification. By continually seeing our sinfulness in a deeper and deeper way, and being brought to the point of despair, or what Luther called “death at hand,” we then experience resurrection, or a revisitation of the joy of our salvation. Reformed scholars such as Michael Horton call this, “reliving our original baptism.” Listen, New Calvinist mantras like “We must preach the gospel to ourselves every day” do not come from nowhere. This is the source. We get to heaven by perpetually revisiting the same gospel that saved us. Those of you familiar with this ministry are worn out from me citing Michael Horton and Paul Washer on this, so let me change things up a little by quoting a guy that commented on a Tullian article posted on Justin Taylor’s blog over at TGC (The Gospel Coalition).
It’s not that complicated: the ground of all Christian obedience is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. Justification occurs EACH time a believer confesses and receives forgiveness for his sins. The pattern of justification is illustrated by Paul in Romans 4. Abraham believes in the God who justifies the ungodly (in this case gentile Abraham), David is forgiven for his adultery and murder. God’s condemnation for sin has reached into history at the cross, glorification has reached into history at conversion where believers experience a foretaste of glory. Neither Old or New Covenant obedience require moral perfection, they both require obedience of faith….so, having been justified from faithfulness we have peace with God!
Indeed it is not complicated. “Faithfulness” to “confession” continually re-justifies us. And, as a result, we experience resurrection/joy/vivification. The confession is mortification/deep repentance/death at hand, the rising from the dead that Tullian is talking about is vivification and re-justification. Tullian’s emphasis on us being no different from unbelievers is based on the following idea: the ONLY difference between the saved and unsaved is the saved start getting saved by confessional faith alone resulting in perpetual re-salvation. Then, at the final judgement, we find out who lived by faith alone well enough to be saved and who didn’t. That’s authentic Protestantism in a nutshell, and the facts supporting this reality are irrefutable. And of course, it’s an in-your-face denial of the new birth as defined biblically in 1John 3 and many other places.
This also speaks to total depravity. Throughout the short excerpt Tullian pounds home the fact of moral equivalency, or the idea that one sinner is not any worse than any other. This comes from justification being defined and based on the law. This is major in the HD, but Calvin articulates this Reformation tenet in 3.14.9,10 of the Calvin Institutes. If you break the law on one point, you are guilty of breaking all of the law. “But Paul, isn’t that what James said in James 2:10?” No, that’s not what James was talking about. James wasn’t proffering a justification based on law as its standard. That concept is really the Achilles’ heel of Reformation soteriology. James was pushing back against the idea that some tradition of some sort replaces the law of love. Only love can fulfill the law. James was pushing back against the idea that justification’s standard is the law. No, there is NO law in justification; law and justification are mutually exclusive. In essence, what James was stating follows:
You can’t live by some orthodoxy devised by men and then live anyway you want to. Whatever your tradition is, it doesn’t fulfill the law. If your justification is based on the law, you break all of the law when you break it at any given point. Only love according to the law fulfills the law. The apostle Paul called this “faith working through love” in his letter to the Galatians. The standard for justification is what? Right, the new birth, NOT law! What is the official Reformed position on justification’s standard? Right, the law. This idea is what Paul spent his whole ministry refuting—this very idea that turns the gospel completely upside down! Clearly, the Reformers redefined justification by replacing its new birth premise with the law. Again, this concept of law/gospel was Paul’s number one nemesis.
This leads us to the question of how we are justified when we are supposedly justified anew. Tullian speaks of this in the excerpt when he alludes to what Jesus has done for us, not anything we do. In the excerpt, he thanks God that the gospel is not about anything we do, but rather only what Jesus has done for us. This is the Reformed doctrine of Christ for us, or, Christ 100% for us, or…double imputation. This is a huge Reformed mainstay.
What is it? This is the idea that Christ not only came to die for our sins once and for all on the cross, but that He also came to live a perfect life for the fulfilling of the law so that His obedience/righteousness can be imputed to us in vivification. Every time we confess, or according to Luther, “accuse ourselves,” or “visit the gospel afresh” (Michael Horton), the righteousness of Christ obtained by His perfect obedience to the law is imputed to us. Hence, every time we “visit the gospel afresh,” His propitiation and righteousness are both reapplied. This is the exact problem Paul addressed at Galatia. He argued that if the law was the standard for justification, that life is not given by the promise, but by law. He also argued that if law justifies us—there is a law that can give life while only God can give life. Making law the standard for justification is making the law a fourth member of the Trinity. That’s pretty much Paul’s argument.
In contrast, we are forgiven because the old us is dead, and no longer under the law. Look at Romans 7; one who has died is NOT under the law or its jurisdiction. This is why Christ died once: to end the law via us following Him in death. The new us is resurrected with Christ by the Spirit and able to fulfill the law through loving God and others. If perfect law-keeping, even by Christ, is the standard for justification rather than our death and resurrection through the new birth, it is impossible for us to love God and others—Christ must love for us; our love must be substituted by Christ’s love. And that in fact is the meaning of “Christ 100% for us.” Yes, Christ loves for us along with anything else that would be meritorious before God and the “righteous demands of the law.” Consequently, you often see these Reformed written motifs about sinners coming to the law with nothing in their hands but the obedience of Christ. That puts the law on a throne sitting beside the Father and the Son as a co-life-giver. That’s heresy in the extreme and a blatant denial of the new birth.
In concluding on this point, we now come Tullian’s mentioned disdain for “theologians of glory.” What’s that? That’s right out of the HD. It’s the counterpart, or one piece of the two-fold metaphysical theme of the document. The more I learn about this stuff, the more I am annoyed by Protestants who think they know what they are talking about, and we will soon be discussing one of them.
Luther divided the interpretation of all reality into two categories: the cross story and the glory story. Luther saw all of reality as a metaphysical narrative written by God with the cross being the primary epistemology; not only the cross, but the suffering of the cross in particular. Luther believed all wisdom is hidden in suffering. Luther, in keeping with Augustine’s Neo-Platonist worldview, demanded that all invisible things be interpreted through the suffering of the cross. Said Luther in theses 19:
That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the »invisible« things of God as though they were clearly »perceptible in those things which have actually happened«
Thesis 20: He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.
The manifest and visible things of God are placed in opposition to the invisible, namely, his human nature, weakness, foolishness. The Apostle in 1 Cor. 1:25 calls them the weakness and folly of God. Because men misused the knowledge of God through works, God wished again to be recognized in suffering, and to condemn »wisdom concerning invisible things« by means of »wisdom concerning visible things«, so that those who did not honor God as manifested in his works should honor him as he is hidden in his suffering.
Thesis 21: This is clear: He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers ,works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil. These are the people whom the apostle calls »enemies of the cross of Christ« (Phil. 3:18), for they hate the cross and suffering and love works and the glory of works. Thus they call the good of the cross evil and the evil of a deed good. God can be found only in suffering and the cross, as has already been said Therefore the friends of the cross say that the cross is good and works are evil, for through the cross works are dethroned and the »old Adam«, who is especially edified by works, is crucified. It is impossible for a person not to be puffed up by his »good works« unless he has first been deflated and destroyed by suffering and evil until he knows that he is worthless and that his works are not his but God’s.
Thesis 22: That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.
This has already been said. Because men do not know the cross and hate it, they necessarily love the opposite, namely, wisdom, glory, power, and so on. Therefore they become increasingly blinded and hardened by such love, for desire cannot be satisfied by the acquisition of those things which it desires. Just as the love of money grows in proportion to the increase of the money itself, so the dropsy of the soul becomes thirstier the more it drinks, as the poet says: »The more water they drink, the more they thirst for it.« The same thought is expressed in Eccles. 1:8: »The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.« This holds true of all desires.
Thesis 24: He, however, who has emptied himself (cf. Phil. 2:7) through suffering no longer does works but knows that God works and does all things in him. For this reason, whether God does works or not, it is all the same to him. He neither boasts if he does good works, nor is he disturbed if God does not do good works through him. He knows that it is sufficient if he suffers and is brought low by the cross in order to be annihilated all the more. It is this that Christ says in John 3:7, »You must be born anew.« To be born anew, one must consequently first die and then be raised up with the Son of Man. To die, I say, means to feel death at hand.
Luther’s worldview calls for the condemnation of anything that can be perceived by the five senses, and that would of course include any work by mankind, in exchange for the work of faith that seeks death at hand by self-condemnation and the incessant confession of our own sin. All or any good work performed by us must be disavowed. This is the only work of faith that a Christian is to do; deep repentance that results in vivification. This is Luther’s definition of the new birth. Our only task is deep repentance resulting in only experiencing works that God may, or may not perform according to His own will. It is interesting what I am learning from Susan and her research on Jonathan Edwards. He believed that saving faith is a sixth sense that is able to perceive the works of God. That fits with what we are discussing here. Faith only confesses and then experiences the work of Christ following.
Any notion that man, saved or unsaved, can do anything at all that has merit with God is the glory story propagated by theologians of glory; this is what Tullian was referring to specifically in that sentence, no more—no less.
Before we move on, let me say this: to me, the more I study all of this, the more I am incredulous that congregations are forcing these guys caught with their hands in the cookie jar to resign. Why? It plainly shows the disconnect between the average Protestant’s understanding of their own faith and what their leaders teach. It’s totally inconsistent with the doctrine. “They sinned, well duh, so what?”
However, this is not always the case. Tullian has a close friend, also a pastor, who pretty much was fairly impious in broad daylight and never had to resign. In fact, he was the subject of a whole chapter in a book titled Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace by Cathleen Falsani. This is where we segue into our second part. As I said, the two accusations that the Reformed camp is sensitive about are progressive justification and antinomianism. And especially in the area of antinomianism, the denial is beyond cognitive dissonance. It’s just borderline childish.
Let’s start by asking where Cathleen Falsani got the title for her book. “Sin Boldly,” do you know where she got that? It’s a quote by Martin Luther. Here is the whole quote from his letter to Philipp Melanchthon:
God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world.
Here, we see plainly that Luther saw salvation as ongoing for condemning sin. God does not save imaginary sinners. What is the tense there? That is answered in the next sentence: “Be a sinner.” So obviously, it’s a present continuous idea; it’s progressive. And if condemning sin is present continuous, obviously salvation must be present continuous as well. You must continually deem yourself a sinner in need of salvation. Be a sinner, or else you are denying that you need salvation.
Nevertheless, the arguments we hear against the idea that Protestantism is progressive justification sound like this from John MacArthur Jr.: “Justification and sanctification cannot be separated, but are distinct.” So, the two are distinct because one is progressive and the other is not, but yet, they are not separate. This is an attempt to answer the accusation that Reformed soteriology fuses justification and sanctification together which would of course be progressive justification. MacArthur attempts to deny that Protestantism fuses the two together by stating that the two are “distinct.” But this is like saying that a cat is never separate from its catness, but distinct from its catness when it progresses by walking. A cat is never separate from its catness, but distinct when it is walking; the argument is ridiculous.
In an article I wrote on PPT titled The Gospel According to John MacArthur’s Reformation Myth, I deconstruct MacArthur’s position on this in agonizing detail. Along Reformed lines, he states that justification is solely a forensic declaration that doesn’t change the individual. He then makes a distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism. The former infuses righteousness into the individual, and according to MacArthur, that is the fusion of justification and sanctification together resulting in progressive justification. In contrast, Protestantism disavows this infusion and replaces it with the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and obedience to the believer for sanctification, or Christian living if you will. So yes, justification and sanctification are not separate, but distinct in the fact that one declares us justified while the other is the manifestation of Christ’s righteousness. They can’t be separate because both are a predication on a single dimension of the law, ie., it’s for condemnation only and can only be fulfilled by Christ in our stead.
I am not going to get into the Protestant misrepresentation of Catholicism, suffice to say for now that it is also progressive justification based on Aristotelian philosophy instead of Platonism, but both are progressive justification. However, we can pause here to define the word “antinomianism” according to the Reformed: it is the absence of law as the standard for justification. In other words, that makes me an antinomian according to them. This is in contrast to the true definition of antinomianism from the Bible: the absence of the law for faith working through love. In other words, the use of the law for love is denied. In addition, the biblical dual perspective on the law is refuted and replaced with a single perspective on the law—condemnation instead of the Spirits twofold use of the law: to convict the world of sin and the judgement to come, and for sanctifying the saints. True antinomianism circumvents the law for sanctification and deprives the saints of their calling to love God and others.
If law is the standard for justification, a perfect keeping of it must be maintained by double imputation which calls on the “believer” to use it for gospel contemplation only rather than using it to love God and others. All obedience points to justification instead of love. This is why Christ said that in the latter days the love of many will wax cold, because of an increase of “anomia” which is “antinomianism” according to the English.
It’s ironic, the Reformed camp recently had a hissy fit over a statement made by Joel Osteen’s wife during one of their services at Lakewood Church—the largest Protestant church in America boasting some 25,000 members. Apparently, she stated that we should not obey God to please God, but should obey God to please ourselves. Pray tell, a single focus on deep repentance to keep ourselves saved through double imputation is better? At least Osteen is propagating a many faceted obedience that might lobe some love at somebody. Moreover, isn’t a single focus on sin for purposes of joyful vivification, in fact, delighting in evil? Sure it is.
As some of you know, I got into a little back and forth on Twitter this week with Janet Mefferd. It started with me pushing back against her assertion in a recent article that Tullian isn’t an antinomian. My contention centered on a tweet by Tullian that read…
Where does that come from? That comes right out of the HD, and if you are keeping up with this series, you see this plainly. Because Tullian sees all of his works as mortal sin, even stopping the blind grandmother from walking out into traffic, all of his sin is therefore venial and can be forgiven by perpetually revisiting the gospel. Mefferd replied with the same old worn out Reformed responses. I am particularly amused by the classic one I call the cat hermeneutic. If Calvin writes in the Institutes that he saw a cat run across the road, Calvin doesn’t necessarily mean that he saw a cat run across the road. You see, you must read the whole corpus of his writing to really know for certain that he intended to say that he saw a cat run across the road. Really? Am I here right now?
Look, I could make the point very well tonight that Mefferd, like most Protestants, is completely clueless. But I think I will close with another angle. Tonight, I have picked this apart from a doctrinal standpoint, but we must remember that Jesus liked to give folks a really simple rule of thumb while they are in the process of learning the doctrine. Here it is: “By their fruits you will know them.” Yes, I am simply going to close with a comment that was posted on PPT today, and then we will go to the phones:
Sean, and others, do any of you know what Janet Mefferd’s background is? Specifically, what is her education? She obviously does not know that Luther advocated the use of state-sponsored violence, torture and murder against the Mennonites and other Anabaptists, that Luther was an anti-Semite, and had horrible demeaning attitudes towards women. On the latter, here are some quotes:
“The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes.”
Martin Luther, Works 12.94
“Men have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts, and broad hips, to the end they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children.”
Martin Luther, Table Talk
“Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with child-bearing, it does not matter; let them go on bearing children till they die, that is what they are there for.”
Martin Luther, Works 20.84
“God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoilt all, when she persuaded him to set himself above God’s will. ‘Tis you women, with your tricks and artifices, that lead men into error.”
“We may well lie with what seems to be a woman of flesh and blood, and yet all the time it is only a devil in the shape of a woman.”
“No gown worse becomes a woman than the desire to be wise.”
I could go on and quote his anti-semitic statements too. Oh, and Martin Luther despised reason. Here are some quotes:
“Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom … Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets.”
Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148
“Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom … Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets.”
Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148
“There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason… Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed.”
Martin Luther, quoted by Walter Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic, (Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1963), p. 75
Also, Luther was an advocate of drinking alcohol in excessive amounts. I could go on, but Luther’s quotes make me ill and nauseous. Obviously, Janet Mefferd has studied Christian history well.
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The Protestant Twisting of 1John: A Clarification, Part 4; Gospel and Obedience
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Welcome to Blogtalk Radio False Reformation this is your host Paul M. Dohse Sr. Tonight, part 4 of “The Protestant Twisting of 1John: A Clarification.” If you would like to add to our lesson or ask a question, call (347) 855-8317. Remember to turn your PC volume down to prevent feedback. Per the usual, we will check in with Susan towards the end of the show and listen to her perspective.
If you would like to comment on our subject tonight, you can also email me at paul@ttanc.com. That’s Tom, Tony, Alice, Nancy, cat, paul@ttanc.com. I have my email monitor right here and can add your thoughts to the lesson without need for you to call in.
Initially, I wanted to just address 1John 1:9 in a thorough way to debunk this whole Protestant idea that we keep ourselves saved by returning to the same gospel that saved us. And, the way we reutilize the same gospel that saved us is a continued repentance for “present sin.” It’s this whole idea that Jesus died for our past sins, but we must ask forgiveness for known present sin in order to keep ourselves saved. When we do that, it’s a reapplication of Jesus’ death for present sin. Hence, 1John 1:9.
But it doesn’t stop there in Protestant soteriology. They then concern themselves with the question of true righteousness. If our sins are forgiven, that keeps us out of hell, but it doesn’t make us truly righteous. What to do? So here is what they came up with: Jesus came to die for our forgiveness, past and present IF we return to the same gospel that saved us by faith alone, but He also came to keep the law perfectly so that His perfect obedience could be imputed to “Christian” life. The Reformed call this “double imputation.”
And it turns the true biblical gospel completely upside down. First, it makes the law the standard for justification. There is no law in justification, we are justified APART from the law. Why would Christ obey the law for us when justification is apart from the law? Then what is the standard for righteousness? NOT the law, but rather God’s righteousness. What’s that? For one, and primarily, it’s the new birth. For us, the standard of righteousness is being a child of God. Being the offspring of God is what makes us righteous. Kinship, not law.
Secondly, we are not justified by the law, no matter who keeps it—who keeps it is not the point, the law itself is the point, because there is no law that can give life. Only the new birth gives life (Galatians 3:21).
Thirdly, double imputation is obviously a covering for sin with the righteousness of Christ and not an ENDING of sin. Our sins are not “taken away” they are only covered. “Christianity” is about living a life of faith only to maintain a covering for sin. Therefore, we are not the ones really obeying, and therefore, we are not the ones performing love either.
And boy does this notion land us right where we are at in 1John. I have invested so much in the untwisting of 1John 1:9 in this series, that I thought, “I might as well finish the book out and make it our 1John commentary.” And so it is.
This is our theses: the new birth creates us anew into people who love the truth, and therefore practice oblove. That’s a new word that I made up. What is the definition of oblove? It’s the combination of the words “love” and “obedience.” Biblically, you cannot separate these two words, they are synonymous. The law is the Bible, and it is a book of condemnation to the unsaved and a beloved love manual for those born again. This is also why our sins are not covered, they are taken away (1John 3:5). Christ came to take away sin, not cover it.
You know, many go to church and sing the hymns, and many listen to Christian radio and raise their hands in praise while stopped at red lights, but a lot of that good Protestant music is just really bad theology that imperils the soul and stops far short of inciting the curiosity of the unsaved. One example is a beautiful song by Steve Camp titled, “He Covers Me.” But again, the premise of the song is that our sins are covered and not ended.
You know, there is a quiet revolution going on in Christianity. Christian husbands are beginning to stand up and assume their rightful role as spiritual leaders. This necessarily means leaving the institutional church which deliberately seeks to emasculate the men among us. One thing that I hear back is that fathers are beginning to stand silent and not sing traditional songs that are deviations from the truth. Good for them. I even hear back that their children ask, “Daddy, why aren’t you singing?” And they tell them why. Undoubtedly, children and wives will get way more out of these types of examples rather than 365 different versions of the same gospel that saved us.
“Why is it that all we ever hear about in the church is the gospel?” Because we have to keep returning to the same gospel that saved us to keep ourselves saved, and by the way, the only place that this continued atonement is valid is in the institutional church. Sure, Protestants will deny salvation by church membership; they will rather become indignant and state that salvation is only found in the gospel. However, the fact remains that they also believe that authority to preach the gospel is vested in the institutional church.
If our sins are only covered, the focus of the Christian life is to keep ourselves covered, not obedience because now obedience is defined by law-keeping. We have been trained mentally to think of obedience as something demanded by the law. This makes the law a co-life-giver with God. At least in one regard, the idea of one God connects with this idea. There is only one life-giver (Galatians 3:10-21).
I strongly suspect that when the Bible talks about God being one, it in no way includes the context of the Trinity. It’s interesting to note that in context of Galatians 3:10-21, the point is that the law is not a coequal with God—there is only one God.
1John 3:1 – See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
The law is not the standard for justification; it is the standard for our love, obedience, and submission. If there is a standard for justification at all, it would simply be defined by the new birth. We are justified by virtue of being in God’s family. The first man was a created being. God did not decide to save man by restoring a covenant of works, or restoring man’s image created in the likeness of God, or to restore paradise lost. He decided to save man by making him His literal family. The gospel isn’t about restoring things; it’s about making all things new. This defines you as pure, albeit in mortality. Nevertheless, being born of God in mortality results in the inevitable morphing into more and more purity:
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
Let’s ask an interpretive question here. What did Jesus mean when He told John the Baptist that His baptism by John would fulfill all righteousness? I think it fulfilled all righteousness by representing the literal new birth, or Spirit baptism. Though we still reside in mortal bodies, the decision to be saved is a decision to follow Christ in baptism, or a decision to be born again. That’s the gospel. That’s what the gospel is.
Romans 6:1 – What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
The more you study the apostle John, the more you will see the apostle Paul. Romans 6 is key here. The perfection of the law is not the standard for righteousness, passing from life to death is the standard. Though we still sin, we are dead to sin. Being deemed righteous in our present state is defined by a reversal of slavery leading to a new direction in life. Romans 6 explains, as we shall see, 1John 3. The literal new birth, in essence reverses slavery (Romans 6:20). This also debunks the whole Reformed total depravity song and dance. Before the baptism of the Spirit that comes by believing on Christ, the unregenerate are free to do good, but enslaved to the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2).
Being under the curse of the law is both a forensic statement and a state of being. It is true, while under law, a perfect keeping of the law is demanded. But this is key: when it gets right down to it, unbelievers are indifferent to the Bible or the law of God. And remember, the law and the Bible are the same thing. Man is capable of doing good, and in fact does do good, but because he/she has no love for God’s truth, and in fact are indifferent to it, life decisions lead to many-faceted forms of death, and ultimately, eternal death. Unbelievers that live according to conscience will suffer a lesser punishment in this life and the life to come.
Believers can in fact make life and death decisions, but are inclined towards obeying the law because of the new birth. Clearly, the Bible states that there is a reversal of slavery. The believer is enslaved to righteousness, but unfortunately free to sin. But according to Paul, a believer can stupidly enslave themselves to certain sins by obeying the desire that the sin produces. The believer is no longer enslaved to sin, but can be ignorant of this fact. And keep in mind, Protestantism is predicated on the idea that we are still enslaved to sin as believers which goes part and parcel with still being under the law and law continuing to be the standard for justification.
Listen, here is why the home fellowship movement is going to eventually take off: the alternative is Protestantism which defines the believer according to how the Bible defines an unbeliever. Eventually, people are going to figure out that they have been proudly proclaiming themselves as unregenerate in the name of Christ.
Lastly, this is defined by the fact that believers have the freedom to present their bodies as living sacrifices, or in other words, present their members for holy purposes that please God. The body is not inherently evil because it is part of the material world. Whether saved or unsaved, the body can be used for good purposes. However, in the case of an unbeliever, good behavior doesn’t lead to life more abundantly, it just leads to lesser punishment and a more bearable eternal state. For the unbeliever, good behavior merely leads to less death. For the believer, obedient love leads to more life.
Now with all of this in mind, let’s read further in 1John Chapter 3:
4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
John wrote what he wrote in 1John 3 because of what Paul wrote in Romans 6—it’s saying the same thing. Obeying the law isn’t the issue, a “commitment” to obey the law isn’t the issue, the reality of the new birth is the issue.
1Corinthians 15:1- Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
This is, as Paul called it, the gospel of “first importance” or literally “the gospel of first order of importance.” There is way more behind this than a mental ascent to the facts of the gospel. You have to believe that this first happened to Christ in order to believe that it really happened to you spiritually. Repentance is a change of mind in regard to many things concerning your life and the life of Christ.
By the way, there was an evangelical movement for a while that emphasized the new birth. It peaked in the 70’s and was considered to be the most egregious of all false gospels. The Australian Forum, the think tank that gave birth to the present-day return to authentic Reformed soteriology, actually published an article titled, “The False Gospel of the New Birth.”
John continues in chapter 3 to explain one of the characteristics of being born again, love. But let me insert this, and this is VERY important: the characteristics of the new birth are framed in what the Bible refers to as “abiding.” If God’s seed “abides in” us (1John 3:9), other things also abide in us: the fact that we abide in Him also; the truth abides in us; we know the truth; we love the truth; we love fellow Christians; we do not practice sin, but rather practice righteousness as a life direction and pattern; we love God’s law; we submit to need; we obey; we seek to please God; we have a hunger for learning more of God’s word, and many more can be listed.
Let’s read more of John 3 with this in mind:
11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
See, the order in which John discusses these things is in no wise disconnected. We need to start thinking about “obedience” in reference to love and the new birth. Really, the Christian life is about love. But listen, any love that flows from you starts with a love for truth. Also, please take note of a more biblical definition of love: love is a submission to need—that’s love. When the Scriptures tell women to submit to their husbands, that’s just another way of telling wives to love their husbands. When the Bible tells men to love their wives, it’s simply telling men to submit to their needs. Look at 1John 3:17 again. How does benevolence get parachuted into that body of text out of nowhere? John goes from discussing murder to meeting financial need; it seems like he is all over the map, but not really.
Lastly, working out the new birth with love leads to assurance.
19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
Assurance of salvation comes through working out our new birth in fear and trembling. Assurance of salvation is grounded in the ending of the law because the old us died with Christ resulting in no condemnation, while our new relationship to the law leads us in love and life. Now listen, even a casual student of the Bible can begin to hang Bible verses all over this framework.
Next week, we will build on this as we go into chapter 4—let’s go to the phones.
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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