Fall '26 Study Guide 3 | Faith Alone & Christ Alone

Hello, my name is James Rathman.

And my name is Bruce Nickley.

And this is the Redemption Church Denver Podcast.

This is study guide number three, and we are covering chapters three and four of What is Reformed Theology, our book study uh for fall of 2026.

Um and uh yeah, I think we've gotten pretty good feedback.

People seem to be liking it.

Good.

Which is good.

Yeah, it's very rare for Bible study selections, in my experience.

Uh so that's uh that's a good sign.

Um this episode of the podcast is brought to you by man-made C.R.

Wiley's book.

This is our book for uh the October Book Club, which will be meeting on October 12th at Leavers Locavore.

Um and uh which means you still have plenty of time.

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Yes.

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Um, so you can pick this up and uh begin tearing through it.

Um uh St.

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If such a thing is upon us, then it would be nice to have read at least one book about it.

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Yeah.

They're they're trying to scare the fat out of us.

Yeah, they are this thing.

I'm sure it's has nothing to do with raising capital for these startups.

But uh yeah, that's the uh it's produced a lot of good books.

I read another one.

The blurb on top of this one is by a guy named Paul Kings North who wrote a good scare book called Against the Machine, which is pretty good.

It was a book that I finished and like 90% agreed with, and then I sat with after having finished it.

And by the time I had sat with it for like a month and a half, I like 20 to 30 percent agreed with it.

But it's a very good book, I recommend it.

Interesting.

For you may have a like experience.

But anyway, that's what's coming up.

So today let's uh talk about chapters three and four.

We've got uh um uh justification by faith alone.

Right.

And in Christ alone.

These are really the topics that are covered in chapters three and four.

Um lot of good material, and um yeah, I had to clump some chapters together and kind of laying out how we'd cover it.

And these, you know, faith alone and Christ alone go pretty well together.

Yeah.

I think the way he starts out here, um, he asks the uh deepest existential problem of man is how can a sinner, an unjust person, ever withstand the judgment of a holy and just God?

Yes.

Um I heard on a podcast recently, oh I someone wrote into Al Moeller and um and asked kind of I'm a good person, why would God send me to hell?

I don't I'm not a Christian, but I've I've not done a lot of the bad things that the Bible talks about.

Right.

And um it was it was just such a a clear statement that uh what sprawl calls the eclipse of God has occurred.

He's not disappeared, but there's so much uh stuff in front of of him that it doesn't shine through as it as it ought to be.

Um because if we if we understand again who God is, um Psalm 130, verse 3, who could stand?

Psalms 130:3

Who could stand before this one?

Yeah.

So the proclamation of his nature in in the whole council of God is once again top priority for the church, I think.

I think that that framing, which is true, it's certainly true, this actually is your greatest problem.

I think that feels miles away from the average person walking down the street.

Yeah.

I think it's very hard to even like after a lot of conversation, lead somebody to thinking that their greatest problem is estrangement from God.

Yeah.

Because of their ethical failure, because of their unrighteousness.

Yeah.

Um those are uh I don't know, do you have any thoughts on like helping people to see the greatness of that problem?

Well, I remember Lewis said one of the hardest things in his generation was to awaken people to a true nature of of their sin.

Yeah.

Um, and I think when you look at scripture, um, what does that is the law, the law of God.

Um you know, you ask a person, um, and unfortunately, probably like you were saying in in your Ten Commandments series, can we even say what the Ten Commandments are?

Yeah, I think most most can't.

By heart?

Yeah.

Um, so God's given us ten laws.

Ten.

Yeah.

He doesn't, it's not like the federal registry that's 40 feet tall every year.

Right.

Um, and we can't take the time to learn those ten laws.

Because I think when um when you're trying to help someone get awakened to their sin, the law of God is something that uh God the Holy Spirit will use.

Yeah.

You you you not only do you not keep my law, you don't even take the time to know it.

That's pretty serious.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

For sure.

It's like a it's a timing of just cauterized consciences.

Yeah.

Yeah, and the idea of like the like there, it's such a clever trick.

Like our culture's in such a in such a clever trap because the one law is that you can't impose a law.

Yeah.

And so even broaching the conversation is to break the only one to break the one moral constraint.

Yeah.

Then I think you've got to do some teasing.

You have to press in on uh what I found or and even what I've been trying to do is find where people are making moral judgments and really press in.

Um and uh when they're when they're right moral judgments, which they often are, press in and just keep saying why.

Yeah.

Or even like call them strange and backwards for making such a moral judgment.

Yeah.

Um, to kind of help break the um myth that they aren't operating under a framework of rights and wrongs.

Right.

Because they they may consciously think that they're operating under a framework of openness, but since that's impossible, um they you you have to show and expose where they're operating under a framework of rights and wrongs.

Right.

And how impossible it is to be operating under a framework of mere openness.

Exactly.

I um I I love uh I first picked it up from Francis Schaefer, um, but Bonson, uh Damar, these guys are all good at um pushing um, I think they uh Bonson called it, you know, pushing the antithesis.

Yeah.

You want to you want to force them um in a good way, in a gentle way, to account for the things that they're operating on in their worldview that they can't account for.

Right.

Uh, for instance, morality.

How do you account for morality in an atheistic worldview?

You you can't do it.

I had a a friend that I was talking with a few years ago, and and I love the guy, and and uh I want him to know the Lord, but I remembered Bonson's one fundamental question: by what standard are you making these judgments?

And he made the statement that, well, I think um um pedophilia would be wrong.

And so I just started asking him, well, why?

You know, if I'm if I'm if I have the greatest sense of joy in my heart by abusing kids sexually, who are you to say that that's wrong?

Right.

And he said he just kept saying, Well, no, it's everyone knows that's wrong.

Well, I don't know it's wrong.

Yeah.

So I was really plain devil's advocate with him.

Yeah.

Um, and it got to the point, this is where I overstepped a little bit because he ordered me with not real nice language to get out of his house.

Um because he was backed into a corner, and I remember Schaefer saying, You have to leave people some room.

Yeah, to push them to the point where they're swearing at you, and and um you can make your point shy of that.

So that was a good lesson for me.

But I think it put a stone in his shoe saying, I can't account for why pedophilia is wrong in my worldview.

Right.

That's a serious problem.

Yeah, I hope.

Yeah.

Yeah, I hope.

I hope that's a serious problem.

I mean, um 15 years ago, I was reading in college essays on why pedophilia is not wrong.

Oh wow.

Yeah, defenses of pedophilia, and thinking this is an insane thing to read.

I can't believe how esoteric and strange this is.

Nothing like this will ever mainstream.

Yeah.

And now we just live in that world.

Yeah.

You can take an enriment of it.

Take any of the commandments, you know.

Um thou shalt not murder.

I remember Walter Martin pressed this Jewish rabbi years ago.

He was in the downtown New York in the middle of a Jewish community, and it got a little heated, and Walter Martin said, I just want to know if I'm the head of the SS in Nazi Germany, I brought you down here for a little ta-tate-tay, I want to know one thing.

Why shouldn't I kill you?

And and the guy was buttering to have, it's against the collective consciousness of humanity.

And um Mart Martin said, Bouchois.

You're in my society where the collective consciousness is Jews are subhuman people, not even human beings, um, and we can kill you.

Right.

What do you say to that?

Unless you have a transcendent authority above any state, right?

You have nothing to say.

Yeah, for sure.

For sure.

So um so there's this um hopefully, hopefully, a conversation like that could lead to a position of just recognizing the reality of our ethical lives, and how these are these are like the grounds of these are the ways that we're able to say that we there is any such thing as a meaningful life.

And that life is something that is could possibly be thought of as valuable.

Yeah.

Um and then now we're at a place where it's close to say, well, valuable to who?

And with that same question, on what basis, by what standard?

And then if you if you meditate on value or meaningfulness for just a little bit of extra time, then maybe you'd be used to.

You have to arrive at God.

Um because he is the answer to the question of valuable, valuable, like the it just like staying saying it begs the question, you know, to who?

And the only final answer to that is valuable to God, meaningful to God, according to the standards of God.

And the the terror of the standards of God is that they are not hard to know.

And they are not very far from us, and it's very easy to know that we have not measured up to them.

Yeah it's may it's m one of the most obvious things.

Yeah.

And now we're in a you're in a now we're in a real pickle.

I I think the other aspect of awakening a sense of sin is um to help um people understand what their value is from creation standpoint.

Um, you know, a great gospel presentation starts out with, hey, I've got good news.

I can I can help you understand what you are.

Yeah.

And you you are the greatest creature on the planet because you're made in the image of God.

And um that was the chief responsibility of man in the first place, is to accurately reflect who he is to the creation.

Yeah.

And um you might let that sink in a little bit.

How well have you done that?

Yeah.

Do you even think about it?

Do you even think about what I do on a daily basis is a reflection of God?

R.

C.

in another work of his said, this is perhaps the greatest aspect of our sin is to misrepresent the character of God.

Yeah.

Um, because we we know what that's like.

Yeah.

If you've ever been slandered big time by somebody, you know, your reaction is what?

Anger.

Anger.

Yeah.

You and I want to choke the guy, rip his tongue out.

Yeah.

Um if we slander the name of God, should he feel any different than than what he's made us to feel when we're slandered and misrepresented?

So um, I think that's those two aspects, the law of God and the representation of him, are two ways to begin a conversation to awaken a sense of sin that makes a person cry out in Psalm 130, you know, if you were to mark transgressions, O Lord, who could stand?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we should turn into justification by faith, but I have I have a bit of a sort of working theory on sort of an expectation that I have for what conversions are going to look like.

I think that more and more conversions are going to look like um uh from non-belief in God to belief in God, to, well, they'll look like this non-belief in any absolute standard to belief in an absolute standard, from belief in an absolute standard to belief in God, to seeking to participate within the belief in God, and then crushed into despair, and then from there people will discover the gospel.

I think that's what the pattern will look like because a lot of all those first steps were done by culture once the belief in God, belief in an absolute standard, seeking to participate in that belief, and then being crushed into the dust by it.

Now those will only happen, I think, within the church.

I think those will be things that happen like in church community.

Um so I wouldn't be surprised if there's like a lot of folks that come in and then years later they're like, I get justification now.

Well, better late than never.

Yeah.

You know, I was thinking of of what Paul writes in in Romans 7.

Yeah, let me ask you if this is kind of where you're going with that theory.

Um what should we say then?

Is the law sin?

By no means.

Yet if it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin.

I should have not known uh what it is to covet if the law had said you shall not covet.

But sin finding opportunity in the commandment wrought in me all kinds of covetous covetousness.

Apart from the law, sin lies dead.

I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.

Right.

Is that I mean, here here he's in in the Old Testament church.

Yep.

And and yet he had the law his whole life.

He was tutored in it, yeah, brilliant in it, and yet he it was it didn't come alive to him until the Holy Spirit obviously opened his eyes to see you don't keep any of this.

Right, right.

I think that'll I think it'll be something like that, with a an exposure to the law in in the first place, you know, which will be new.

Yeah.

For people.

Was that part Did you have that kind of experience when you came into reform theology?

Oh yeah.

Justification came later.

I mean, the it was discovering Reform Theology and discovering the gospel were the same thing.

Okay, for you.

For me.

Um and that was uh and it was really a discovery of the I didn't know what the cross really did.

And I didn't know that I could point to it and say done.

It happened there.

The thing that matters most for me happened there.

That's uh that was the shift.

Well, for me, and I I think my experience is probably more typical of people in the church that haven't been instructed in reform theology.

Um, because when I first was exposed to John Gersner, I I was ticked.

I yeah, I sent out, I spent two years trying to refute him on election and predestination.

And when I kind of finally came to the place where he was right and I was wrong, I I was overwhelmed um by two things.

I didn't realize how wretched I really was as a sinful creature.

I really didn't understand what it was mean, what it meant to be dead in trespasses and sins and needing to be born again, needing to be made a new creature.

And when I saw, well, God's already done that.

Because I I was converted two years earlier.

I I know I was.

Yeah.

Um, but I was fully operating in our minions um presuppositions.

Right.

Because I it was just from my own experience.

I believed.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, and there it was.

Yeah, and I did it freely, yeah, exactly, under no coercion.

Um, but man, when when I saw the magnitude of that first um, and we'll get to it in our study, um, total depravity.

Right, I was overwhelmed by the love of God.

Yeah, agreed.

Agreed.

That he would love someone like that who had no ability to do anything to please him.

Right.

That was a feeling like being born again again.

Yeah, I agree.

I agree.

So let's talk about justification by faith.

We've tried to try to find ways to push us into the question of it or the need for it.

Um this is what the Reformation lives or dies by.

Um and I guess we should say, well, I guess just sort of early on, what is it what does it mean to be justified by faith alone?

Well, I don't think um you'll find any finer, succinct definition than question 33 of the shorter catechism.

Um John Murray said the the shorter catechism is the most um comprehensive, succinct compendium of Christian truth ever written.

Yeah, it is so good.

If you're gonna memorize, I hope some of our people will will take seriously the memorization of some of these questions.

Yeah.

Um, because we're all, as we're seeing in this study, we're all theologians.

It's how good a theologian you are.

And um I don't think this can be improved on.

It can be expanded, but as far as one sentence, it says justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness, righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone.

Yep.

Pardoneth all of our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight.

So this is the why can the Christian stand before God and have no weight of sin and and be received as perfectly righteous in the sight of God.

Yeah.

It's because we've been justified by Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

That was the one little phrase that my roommate shared with me that brought me to faith in Christ.

I was reading my Bible and a question entered my head, what why did Jesus have to die on the cross?

And we got talking a little bit later, and he said, Well, Bruce, if this is exactly what he said, Bruce, if we believe in Jesus, God sees us as perfect people.

And for some reason, those words said in that context, the lights came on.

Yeah.

And he wasn't, I think he was talking about this doctrine.

Right.

Um, the the imputed righteousness of Christ, when God looks at my account, what does he see?

He sees the perfect life of his soul and son.

Yeah.

And I can stand in his presence and not have to shrink back in shame because of my sin, because it's been paid for.

All of it.

I think that this is the difference between somebody who it from from what I've just seen experientially, or just like looking at people's lives, people who get this remain Christians.

People who don't get this deconstruct their faith.

This is the hinge point, as far as I can tell.

Like, nobody who understands justification by faith deconstructs their faith.

It doesn't happen.

I've never seen it happen.

Everyone who deconstructs their faith does not understand this.

Yeah.

Because I think it's it's impossible to recognize the fullness.

This is the news of the gospel.

This is what's been done for you.

And it is better than you think.

Everything about it is better than you can imagine.

Yeah.

It's like you were in a worse place than you thought.

What you receive is more complete than you would ever imagine, and it brings you to a better place than you would ever possibly imagine.

And if you are uh like walking around under a burdensome Christianity, you don't understand this.

There's uh it's a it's missing.

I even think that people who are warring against sin.

In my life, when I've had been in patterns of sin, beneath it is a forgetfulness of this doctrine.

Because I'm seduced by there being something better on offer.

Or I'm resigned to the fact that I can't change.

And if I find myself resigned to that fact, I haven't understood that the the change, the the the bondage of sin, the the who I am, uh has been done.

It's been done on the cross.

And then it's like the cage door opens, the lights turn on, the chains fall off, the and I look at humiliation at my sin and and you know feel silly and stupid and in like uh but I see the trick um for what it is now and it loses its attraction.

Yeah.

Like a like how like bait loses its attraction when you see the hook.

Yeah.

You know, I I love the way in this catechism question accepts us as righteous in his sight.

And you know, we don't often think of living in the sight of God on a perpetual basis.

When you were on your sermon on Sunday, you were talking about, you know, doing some work, say this for your glory, God.

This and going back.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, you know, I I know what you were saying, uh, but it's that it's that initial realization, yeah, I'm I'm trying to do everything for the glory of God.

Now let's get to work.

Right, right.

Um do it.

Yeah.

Um and that's um I caught in that that famous uh phrase in Latin, corum deo, right, before the face.

I think it's one of the the most important aspects of the fear of God is developing a pervasive sense of his presence, of living in his presence, yeah, moment by moment, um because it's so practical.

It is so practical.

It keeps us from sin.

I mean, yeah, how many you wouldn't dream of doing some things in the presence of another human being that you would think about doing when you're alone.

Yeah, yeah.

But boy, get the the presence of that other person there.

Oh, sin temptation right out the door.

Um that's we'll get to that in that priestly function in that in that next chapter, I think.

But uh that's what a priest does.

He lives in the presence of uh on the sight of God.

So let's just describe forensic justification.

This is the common term, means that uh it's like legal justification.

This is the declaration of God about your state, guilty or innocent.

Um and in the in the court of God, which is the one that matters, um, because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you are righteous in his sight, and your sin is taken away.

And your guilt is gone.

Guilt is gone.

And there's a there's a um, this is like what everybody wants is your guilt to be gone and for you to be accepted as righteous.

Yeah.

And for some reason, we just come up with a bunch of pseudo-ways of achieving this.

Yeah.

That's why our and we think we can do it by eliminating the category of guilt.

Um, or we can eliminate the category of shame.

We all we do we do that's what shameless is.

Yeah.

But shameless is not uh um that's not lack of shame.

That's uh um the shame will just come, it will just come later.

Um it's just our another instance of our culture always confusing transgression with transcendence.

Um that if I can transgress this boundary, it's the same as transcending this boundary, and it and it actually it always becomes destruction.

But what we want is to we we want the guilt gone.

And we want acceptance.

And it the only way to achieve that outside of the only way to achieve that we can we think we can achieve that outside of by ignoring the law of God and by creating a law unto ourselves that we could be justified by.

But it takes um it takes tyranny in order to accomplish something like that.

Because if just one person steps out of line and says, um, you should feel ashamed of uh homosexuality, then the whole charade is broken.

Um and uh uh we're unable to we're unable to accomplish this this joint work of justification that we're trying to do.

But I think it just shows that the the tendency of the human heart, what we really what we're constant what we're constantly vying for this, for the guilt to be gone and for acceptance as righteous.

Um we will come up with our own code to do that with uh or we will seek to uh like like m uh we'll we'll either come up with our own code by which to do that.

These are kind of the same thing I'm realizing as I'm saying it, or we'll just trying to we'll we'll we'll try to make everybody pretend that there is no code.

That's kind of the same thing.

I um when you were talking about guilt, um earlier we were talking about how you awaken a person to the sense of their um posture before holy God.

Um and I remember hearing RC talk about this when he gets a lot of questions, you know.

And sometimes sometimes you'll get one that is just what he would call obstrephorous.

Um and that's one of the things Calvin said the apologetics is used for is to shut the mouths of the obstrephorous that are just throwing question after question.

You answer them, they just go on to another one.

They don't care, they're just trying to get you chasing your tail around in a circle.

And so he'll say, Okay, I've answered every one of your questions.

I want you to answer one of mine.

This is what's that?

What are you gonna do with your guilt?

It goes right to the heart.

Yeah.

Everybody knows they're guilty.

Yeah.

Not just guilt feelings, although they're related to that.

That's the that's the that's the distinction, I think.

Yeah.

Um, but it's not what are you gonna do with your guilty feelings?

Right.

We have you can drown those.

We can we've got ways.

Yeah, you know, have you ever listened to a country song?

Yeah.

Like there are surefire ways.

Yeah, that's right.

But there's uh what are you going to do with your guilt?

I think we know nothing.

Yeah, you can't do it.

Nothing I can do with it.

Nope.

There's nothing.

Why would we even try?

Yeah.

Like what would what would be better is to moralize the feeling of guilt itself and then and then use the technique of psychoanalysis to um overcome it.

Yeah.

Like the only thing that you should feel guilty about in our culture is feeling guilty.

Yeah.

You know, or you can uh do what Islam does is just uh continue to say, well, there's this great scale in the heavens that the angels are uh monitoring your good deeds and your bad deeds.

Right.

So if you if you want to make it to where we are, you better make sure that those good deeds outweigh those bad deeds.

And that's yeah, that's fundamentally no different than than Old Testament Judaism.

And and um Paul's falling into that pharisaical type of works righteousness.

Oh yeah, it's the it's the it's a karmic wheel.

Yeah, yeah.

So, and to to have one true religion that breaks through all that and it makes sense.

It's the only thing that makes sense.

Yes.

God, God would do this, he'd have to do it all by himself.

You know, this is really I think that's really important because I think that the question that we started out with, which is man standing before God, this is the essential question of your life and of existence.

And I think that to like, you know, normal person on the street, or like everyday person on the street in um Denver or whatever, uh that question feels like it comes out of nowhere.

Like, what what are you what are you talking about?

But if you look at if you look at the religions, um this is the fundamental question that is being asked across it's a question of justification.

And is there a manner in which I can uh justify my existence or transcend the present humiliating state?

And I think those are basically the same.

And so you can get on the karmic wheel and try and transcend your present humiliating state, or you can have your good deeds outweigh your bad ones in order to justify yourself before God.

But to say that this is like an arbitrary question, that the center that the central question comes out of nowhere and is arbitrary, I think that there's there's huge denial in our cultural moment of the ordinary human experience being this terrible question thrust upon you, which is why do you exist?

What are you doing here?

And I think we've tried to answer for a lot for a while of these are silly questions that um and we and we've been able to kind of keep the lid on the thing for a while with those are silly questions.

Questions like that are representative of deeper traumas that you've experienced that need to be explored, or these are these are pathologies, these are repression, these are whatever, you know, and we've developed techniques that are that approach those problems as diagnosed.

But those techniques have been such demonstrably failures, and so it's so plainly obvious now, having run like the 20th century experiment, um, which went on like 24 years too long.

20th century went like 24 years too long.

And um anyway, uh that's to say, like, whenever anything feels like a little arbitrary, uh that's that's obviously like a key Bible thing, I always like want to rush right into it because I'm like this feels arbitrary because there's something wrong about me.

Yeah, and the the wrong thing is this denial of the the fundamental reality of the human experience.

Yeah.

I think again, operating on Christian presuppositions about uh man being made in the image of God, um, I know that every soul on the planet, I think, longs for the same, what I call the big three.

Yeah.

Certainty, uh-huh, security, and significance.

Yeah.

And and the person who says, oh, those questions are just arbitrary coming out of nowhere.

They spend their whole life trying to try to lit on those things, but trying to answer, answer them in a materialistic world.

Yeah, yeah.

Not looking to the ultimate realm of the heavens.

Um, but they they'll spend their whole life pursuing certainty, security, significance.

Every day they're out there in the temporal realm longing for this.

That's just another way of saying meaning, purpose, and value.

Right.

Um you're longing for them, but it's like the old um Willie, was it Willie Nelson or Whelan Jennings that looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, um we long for that security of relationship, but we seek it in just human relationships because we're personal relational beings.

We can't escape that.

That's the image of God in us.

But we we try to make the temporal the ultimate.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, some pseudo-transcendence.

Yeah.

Um, can we uh we're we're kind of just like bouncing across the topics for the chapter, which I'm actually fine with.

Everybody read the book.

You you we don't we don't have to read the book for you, you know.

There's a um can we just talk about imputation?

Yeah.

Imputation for me was like a hang up for so long.

Uh, because it felt like a magic trick that just feels very strange.

Um now I think of imputation as like um it it feels almost it feels like almost obvious to me now.

Uh it doesn't feel uh like a strange magic trick.

But the the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us.

This is the claim of justification by faith.

By faith in Jesus Christ, his righteousness is imputed to us.

God says, you're as righteous as Christ.

Christ's righteousness is yours.

Um anyway, can you talk what what can you try and explain imputation to me?

Well, um, you know, there's a passage in um Zechariah, I think it is, where you get a kind of a beautiful Old Testament picture of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us because we we talk about it, um Zephaniah or Zechariah?

I think it's Zechariah.

Um we talk about it in New Testament terms of being clothed in the righteous robes of Christ.

Um it's like his you never see the old movie The Robe?

No.

Oh, that was a great Cecil Bill B.

DeMille.

Yeah, the guy that got the the garment of Christ.

Oh, wow how it impacted him.

It's a great movie.

It's a found money movie.

Um But it is, I mean, we talk about living in the sight of God.

Well, what does he see when he looks at me?

He sees the righteous robes of Christ that are on me.

Yeah.

Because I'm in him.

And there's an account in Zechariah 3 where he showed me Joshua, the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.

And the Lord said to Satan, The Lord rebuke you, O Satan.

The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you.

Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?

Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed in filthy garments, and the angel said to those who were standing before him, Remove the filthy garments from him.

And he said to him, Behold, I have taken away your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich apparel.

And I said, Let them put a clean turban on his head.

So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments.

And the angel of the Lord was standing by.

The angel of the Lord, I think, here is Jesus.

Jesus, yeah.

He's standing by.

Because this is what this is what he's going to do with all his people.

He's going to clothe them in rich apparel that that I mean you could almost see him.

Here, take mine and give it to him right now.

But that's the the the notion of imputation that I keep in my head.

Yeah.

There's reality in how God really does view us.

Yeah, in clothed in his righteousness.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's so good.

That image is just one of the best.

The accuser standing right there, the dirty robes.

Oh, yeah.

And then just the there's put on the righteousness of Christ, his robes.

Yeah.

The presence of the angel of the Lord.

And you know, there's a um for me, what helped break open the mechanism of it was Romans 5.

And seeing the imputation of Adam's sin to us, and then the imputation of Christ as the second Adam, uh, the imputation of his righteousness to us.

And just this just the sense of uh God is the the that imputation is an is a natural reality.

You're you're always receiving from above um who you are.

That's that's being handed down to you from above, that's coming from like your parents.

Like it's just the nature of being a made thing, being a not self-created thing, is that you are uh uh that your state is imputed to you.

And we are born into original sin with the righteousness of Adam imputed to us.

And the righteousness of Adam?

Yeah, the meaning it's a bad one.

It's as good as Adam's righteousness.

Yeah, the unrighteousness of Adam is better.

Yeah.

But there's uh um and that that's what we that's what what we receive, and and then there's a n a new man, a new first man who by faith we enter into his he becomes our federal head, the covenant head, by whom we are represented and judged.

And because we are his body, he he takes on the fullness of account for who we are.

Well, and that's crucial to understand because there's really a double imputation.

Yeah, our sin is imputed to him on the cross, right?

And is judged with the wrath of God as a propitiation to satisfy that justice and wrath.

Yep.

So all of the garbage in our lives is put on him.

Yes.

And in turn, what do we get?

We get the righteousness of Christ given to us freely.

So we've got to talk about the importance of justification by faith in opposition to justification by faith plus works, okay, plus works of the law, or plus um acts of penance, as in the Roman Catholic Church, or plus um whatever whatever those things may be, because we we can't drive the point home of the freedom.

This is like where the ref where it hinged historically, right?

Um for the justification by faith becoming the center of the reformation.

Um and uh so I I want to kind of like briefly touch on that, and then I want to just switch gears into talking about Christ in chapter two.

Okay.

Um you know, the the the instrumental cause of the Reformation was the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

And um the reformers, because that was so crucial to free the the church from the bondage under Roman uh oppression um in their doctrine of justification um needed to be very clearly defined.

I think we've talked about this before where they they broke it into three three um Latin words.

Uh the first was notitia.

You have to understand something of the content of the gospel, right?

Who God is, who Christ is, what he did, rose from the dead, and so on.

The kind of the essentials.

Yeah.

And this is in God's normal operations with with um getting the gospel out there.

But it's not just enough to know that content, it has to be assented to.

Right.

They call it a census.

Here's the content.

True.

Yeah, I believe those things.

Yeah.

But they still said that's falling short of what we would call saving faith.

Right.

Because demons can do that.

Yeah, demons can do it.

Yeah, that's pretty easy.

Yeah.

They they put their their final point on the word food uh fiducia or fiducia, whatever you want to call it.

Um, and that's trust.

Right.

Um, and the difference, I think you're moving from kind of a prophetic capacity as the image bearer and understanding, having a mind to receive and understand these these truths, to now the priestly reality of I need to come to the one who has given me all these rich promises.

I need to trust him.

Trust his word, yes, but I am I am bringing my whole soul and my whole need and giving it to him.

Right.

I'm staking it on him.

Yeah.

I'm depending on him, I'm betting it on him.

Right.

And and that's that's the determining factor.

I mean, and you you've got to relate repentance in here with it as well, because yeah, um, they didn't they had certainly teaching on repentance following um or in conjunction with faith.

Right.

Because repentance is that um change of mind, a turning about, a turning away from sin, and a turning back to the person of Christ.

Right.

You're dealing personally with him, that's the key concept.

And then out of that, we get into the nature of the will.

What what difference does it make the way I live?

And um we'll read in Titus, for instance, that he says, let our people give themselves to um good works.

Twice in that third chapter, he says that.

And um, the Latin for that is bonus opera.

Okay.

Noble uh vocations or good works.

And and that's the place in that where it differs from Catholicism.

Catholicism argues that you yes, you need faith, you need Christ, um, but you also need merit.

Right.

You need your own merit, or you gotta get your merit from what they call the treasury of merit, um, especially if you commit mortal sin and are de-justified.

The only way to be re-justified is to um go through um confession um and the sacrament of penance, which means you've got to find some merit either from the treasury of merit or from your own good works to be re-justified and brought back into the communion of the saints.

Before we started, we were talking through this, you used a great phrase, which was um in the Roman view, you merit the merit of Christ.

Right.

Exactly.

That's the right.

And in the Reformed view, the merit of Christ is sufficient.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And and R.C.

made that distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions of justification.

Um the instrumental cause of justification in Rome is baptism.

Right.

Um you uh you don't have a sufficient condition without baptism.

Right.

And for the Protestants, it was faith alone, is the not only the necessary condition, but it's the sufficient condition.

Because it's it's God giving that to you.

It's a gift of God.

So this is where, and this is kind of where I want to turn.

Like the whole it just uh like with Sola Scriptura, to the argument is done when you say it's the scripture is the word of God.

When scripture is the word of God, it's the highest authority that has no equal.

That's what word of God means.

When we say justification by faith alone, we mean it's the merit of Christ.

This is this is what our faith is in.

It's in the the work, the death and resurrection, the sufficient work of Jesus Christ to save sinners.

And what I think we've talked about this before, but it reminds me of J.I.

Packer's intro to the death of death, Jesus saves sinners.

This this is uh what we mean by justification by faith alone is Jesus saves sinners.

That that's the story.

And saved is we don't use the phrase saved when somebody got just the right advice in just the nick of time to apply it.

We don't use the word saved then.

We use the word rightly counseled, advised well, you know, you use the word saved when they you can't get yourself out and somebody got you out, then you were saved.

It's just very it's just what the words mean.

Right.

And so when so to I I think why this hill to die on of justification by faith, why create why still like rehash this old controversy that like has bifurcated the church?

It's because the question is whether or not Jesus saves sinners.

That's the question.

It hinges on that.

Whether or not Jesus's what Jesus merit merited on the cross is sufficient for the salvation of sinners.

And in that question, I think is resolved in the next chapter that we should discuss, even if briefly, so that this podcast isn't like a Joe Rogan experience, is the act that justified me, the death and resurrection of the Son of God.

If that's the act that we're talking about, then I can add no further merit.

It's it's uh you you can't imagine further merit can be added to that.

Because there is this is these are maximum words.

Like like God incarnate, that's maximum type of being that could possibly stand in my place.

There's not another you can't come up with a higher one.

You know?

Like if it even if we said like Zeus incarnate, I could imagine a Titan or something, you know?

We're talking about God, you know, the true God incarnate.

And then we're talking about death, which is what the wages of sin is.

Well that that that's as bottom as as you can go.

It's as bottom as we can imagine.

Then we talk about resurrection, the life being brought to newness of life, death being conquered.

That's that's as conquered as can be.

There are uh many Odysseus goes into death.

Odysseus goes into Hades, you know, and then he leaves, and Hades is still there.

Death is still intact, death is still reigning among mankind.

Yeah, like this is the the maximum possible version of any story that you could imagine, and so anything that says more is required for my justification, then the maximum possible version of any story of justification that could ever be told is just a trap.

It's a lie.

It's it's plainly false.

Like it's like you don't know what the words mean then if you think addition can be made to this.

Um that's why like I'm a very genial person and I'm very ecumenical by nature, and I you won't be able to wrestle this from my hands.

It's it's too it's the whole world to me.

Well, um, I love the way you you put that.

Um it it's it's a great way to think about it.

There's there's no higher transcendent thing above like the word of God.

Right.

Um, I mean God himself is obviously, but he's he even says he put his word above himself.

Yeah, yeah, he binds himself to it.

So I don't know what that tells you.

Yeah.

Um, so good stuff there.

Yeah, well there that was just my justification by faith rant to tie us into who Jesus is.

So if the claim is at the heart of this that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, he is the Son of God, he is God the Son, he's fully God, fully man, and this is the one who accomplished the work of our justification.

Well then it's done.

You know, I can't add to that.

But it but it but it had to be someone like him.

This is the claim.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, we talked earlier about the distinction between justification and sanctification.

Um, the catechism makes a great distinction there.

When in as I read in uh question 33, justification is an act of God's free grace.

In question 35 on sanctification, sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die into sin and live into righteousness.

Yeah.

Um that indicates justification is a one-time act.

Right.

It's an act.

And we talked about the new perspective on Paul, which kind of ends up, well, you might be justified fully when you reach the eternal realm.

Right.

But um justification is a is a badge of community identity.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, but um yeah, sanctification is the continual renewing of that new creation.

Right.

Um, I love the three analogies, actually four, that um scripture uses about regeneration.

The new birth, being born again, new creation, 2 Corinthians 5, and um what's the third one?

Um life from the dead, being raised spiritually.

Yeah.

Baptism, you might want to throw in there as as well.

But in in Titus chapter 3, um, one of the greatest testimonies to the grace of God in our lives, he says in verse 3, for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by men and hating one another.

Titus 3 · chapter mention

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which he poured out on upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in the hope of eternal life.

Um, those two aspects of regeneration and renewal, I think are in in both reference to the nature of the soul of the believer post um well not post-justification, but post um post-new birth.

Regeneration is the new birth.

But the the process of renewing the the image of God in us is an ongoing thing.

Right.

But the difference is that it's it's begun and it's in baby form for our conversion.

We always start out as as babes.

Yeah.

Um, no matter where we are.

We we start as newborn babes that simply just need to grow and mature.

Right.

You know, nothing, I don't think anything more needs to be done to change the nature of our soul.

That's been done in regeneration.

That's good.

But we we just grow.

Right.

And I believe we're gonna be growing through all eternity in knowledge, holiness, and righteousness.

Yeah.

Those are that's the way we live out the image of God in us, in our relationship with Him and with one another.

So um, and you you mentioned we talked briefly about the infusion of grace.

Do you want to touch on that?

Yeah, in the larger catechism, it describes sanctification as an infusion of grace.

And we uh this is always like a trap question because we you like reformed folks you say you say infused, and we say, yeah, yeah, we get spooked and don't don't like it.

And um uh because the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, it's an alien righteousness, it's his, we have it, and we can stand before the Lord, clothed in his righteousness, done right now.

I don't need anything infused within me in order to that I can then participate with or agree with, and then that becomes the righteousness that I inhabit to stand before the Lord.

I don't need I don't need that.

I have the righteousness of Christ imputed to me.

But the um catechism describes sanctification as the grace of God being infused into us um so that we are uh able to be conformed into the image of Christ, more and more putting to death the deeds of the flesh and conformed into the image of Christ.

And um that means that we are cooperating with the work of the Holy Spirit for our sanctification.

That there is that uh when there is effort for sanctification.

made, that effort is met by the grace of God so that we can act in faith.

We can make actions trusting that God will make these fruitful.

And manifest real righteousness in in our lives.

That is even arcing towards a glorious participation in righteousness with him.

So it's so um it is not just we're justified nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens, we die, and then we're and then we get to experience the benefits of justification in heaven.

It's that we're justified therefore like it you can think of it like a seed is planted and God says that will grow.

And it when then it's like oh well then we're gonna see tree stuff uh w when that happens because that's the way seeds work right is they become trees.

So God plants the seed and says it will it will grow and good fruit yeah is going to come from it.

Yeah.

So it it will according to its kind.

You know I'm I'm reminded of um this process of sanctification um kind of bears on Christ's ministry um to us as prophet priest and king.

Yeah because in effect we all are prophets priests and kings that's right that those are the offices that the image bearer holds individually um not in in the formal corporate nature of it but individually God made us as prophets to receive and communicate his truth as priests to commune with him love him and love our fellow man and as um kings to exercise dominion do what's right right um and I'm reminded of those two commands that are the passive imperatives on two of those functions.

Okay.

You know we don't have any problem with go do what's right.

Right.

Okay we're active there.

Yeah but when we come to Romans 12 2 it says be renewed in the spirit of your minds and that verb form is a passive imperative how do you obey an imperative a command to be passive to you that the the subject of the verb is being acted upon.

Right and the same in uh 1 Peter 1 when it says be holy as I am holy another passive imperative.

Yeah what do you just stand there and yeah yeah extra yeah and being renewed right now yeah no I I think you have to the activity that we have I think Schaefer talked about this a lot is active passivity.

Uh-huh what you can do with your the renewing of your mind is put your mind in the one place where you know it's going to be acted upon yeah where is that the word of God the word of God yeah you want a renewed mind man study the scriptures read it think about it and you want your affections to be renewed in holiness where do you put your heart you put it in the presence of Christ yeah you seek his presence you know you want to be led into that holy of holies yeah and and spend time personally with him consciously intentionally and um you know you're gonna be a changed changed person when you come forth from the Holy of Holies.

Yeah yeah you will and then go do what's right yeah exactly so do the be acted upon in your sanctification in the way I think he Jesus himself was as as fully man where did where did you see him?

You saw him knowing the word of God retreating in prayer retreating in prayer doing only doing what the Father wills.

Yeah all three of them yeah you know and and didn't hesitate on claiming to be the king of the Jews.

Right yeah I'm the king this is the way kings work yeah this is what they do yeah um so that's that's a a great I love the end of the of chapter four there.

Yeah the prophet priest and king yeah you want to touch on the any of the uh councils Jesus is fully God and fully man yeah they they determined that a long time ago yeah um and this is deeply mysterious and wonderful and the only thing that is as strange as uh uh God uh creating everything from nothing uh is God himself coming into creation yeah I feel like it's stranger yeah and he was it's the only analogy the only analogy for the incarnation is um uh creation itself yeah yeah and we gotta cut these guys some slack I mean they're they're trying to figure out one of the great mysteries that was being revealed in the New Testament oh yeah that nobody you would never arrive here yeah but man it is completely essential like if you if you don't have this at the center of it then you miss the whole story if you don't have Christ as fully God and fully man yeah um and if um because he needs the type of life that he can lay down and he needs the type of life that he can take up again yeah well the type of thing that can do that is one that's fully God and fully man yeah yeah because you can't you you you can't lay your life down if you're just fully God.

Yeah that's impossible.

What are you gonna die?

That's can't happen.

No and you can't take it up again if you're not fully God what are you what are you going to make life from nothing?

Well we've got the type of thing that makes life from nothing is God.

We have a word for that um for that category of being and there's nothing else that fits in that category of being the type of thing that can make life from nothing is only God yeah the um maybe in closing here the last um formulation in Chalcedon um that it it's put in kind of um defined in negative terms which is okay yeah um but the two natures of Christ were not mixed confused separated or divided and with that one sentence they they dealt with so many of the heresies yeah that came before them um that tried to to do those mix them confuse them separate them um or divide uh the two natures of Christ and uh this has stood for what for 1500 years one person two natures unbelievable insight yeah insane yeah what's the difference between a person and a nature uh John frame is uh I like his kind of take on that and he's like well he's like by person we mean the thing that's not the natures and by natures we mean the thing that's not the persons.

That's good um and there's uh um uh we're we're we're at the limits of being we're at the limits of of what what we can describe right um uh but also a a person it it does seem plain that like a a person is the type of thing that can have two natures yeah and it is and and hold them at a at a level of unity that's inseparable but hold them at a level of distinction that's um no mixture or confusion yeah um maintaining the fullness of deity um yeah Calvin affirmed the substantial or the real presence of Christ for instance in the sacrament right um because he did not want to make a physical separation uh in in well he he did make a physical separation in the sacrament this is not the real body and blood of Christ right um but because he's God he's omnipresent he can be everywhere at the same time as that person yes and he spiritually attends it yeah and and so there's a distinction but not a not a separation of his natures in that regard.

Right right that's the danger of um transubstantiation which would be to say that um the body of Christ which is fully man is scattered all over yeah the you know and and is uh made to appear you know that's not the type of thing that fully man bodies do yeah um we it isn't the the location of Christ's body is not a mystery no it's revealed yeah we um know that he is ruling in the heavens now at the right hand of the father and he's in a he's in a body uh and he always will be always will be that's the astounding thing to me is that he so humbled himself and condescended to come to our level that he says I'll stay with you guys for eternity yeah in this body yeah mind boggling mind boggling mind boggling Jesus paid it all that's the um that that one's true it's true you know so justification and Jesus they go together yeah um yeah we we talked kind of around it but man I I enjoyed talking through these things and hopefully um uh uh this one starts to land like this is one that if you when you catch um there's no going back.

Yeah that's that's absolutely true and if you if you did you say this in our time here or in our previous time about in your experience the people who don't get this are the ones that usually leave the church or yeah commit apostasy or whatever.

Yes I I think this is the difference.

Yeah um and once you get this it's like it's too late there's no there's nowhere else to go.

Yeah yeah because he did it it's done um so yeah this is the news it's the news so thanks for talking through it and um uh yeah just continuing to pray for everybody in these studies and that these doctrines are just uh they still work realize it's been such a long time for me since I've like looked directly at these sort of core ones you know and like getting to do this this time like man these things still work these are still the ones yeah really good so alright thanks Bruce you bet