May 28, 2025 • 60 mins
This week on Christendom and the World, Pastor Andrew Preus responds to the video "Catholic vs Protestant: Is Faith Greater Than Love?" by The Logos Project, which critiques our original episode on “Faith, Hope, and Love.” Pastor Preus delves deeper into the theological virtues, emphasizing love as the greatest virtue flowing from true faith. He contrasts Lutheran and Roman Catholic views on justification, clarifying the relationship between faith and works, and discussing the distinctions between fulfillment and satisfaction in the law. The episode also explores the mystical union with Christ, the certainty of salvation grounded in God's promises, and the role of good works as evidence of genuine faith. Additionally, Pastor Preus addresses the nuances of theological terminology and the importance of clarity in interdenominational dialogues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RSVUdq9I40
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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What I'm gonna do here is I'm just gonna get right into it.
I'm not even gonna say like, ah Christendom in the world.
um If you want to, what you could do is could you put like a caption that just says likeand subscribe?
And then I could just kind of get right into it.
All right.
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Can you hear me?
Is this fine?
Should I put it up a little bit more?
Undo that.
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do this.
It'll pick me up.
All right.
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that.
Should I go here?
Real quick,
It kind of comes down, weighs down after a while.
Is that fine?
Are you sure?
Okay.
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A month or two ago, I uh gave a video explaining faith, hope, and love, and the object ofeach being God, the triune God, but that each uh sees God in a different way.
And this affects the way that we understand uh the role of love in the Christian life, therole of hope in the Christian life, and the role of faith in the Christian life.
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And what makes love the greatest virtue, as Paul says, the greatest of these is love.
is not that love justifies you before God.
It's not that love saves you before God or gives you salvation.
It is that love is the manifestation, the fruit of and a uh foretaste of that inheritancethat we already have by faith.
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ah And so, to say that love is the greatest is simply to say that heaven
the inheritance that we have in heaven that we're going to enjoy in heaven, where we arefully united to one another and we are without sin, to say that that is the greatest,
because that's what we look forward to.
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It's not to say that love has a greater power to save us than faith.
And what that brings up then is that assumes that faith
saves us because of—that if faith does save us, that faith saves us because of an inherentpower that faith has.
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And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because uh a friend of mine, uh whom I haven'ttalked to in a long time—I've corresponded with him over the years—a friend of mine
responded to this uh video on faith, hope, and love.
And uh in the caption he had written is faith greater than love.
which of course I never said faith was greater than love, because St.
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Paul clearly says that love, these three abide, faith, hope, and love, and the greatest islove.
ah But he responded to my arguments and made the case for the Roman Catholic position thatfaith is formed by love and that this is how love, ah this is how we are justified um by
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faith when it's formed by love.
He made the point that God
justifies ah and faith is the instrumental cause uh of that justification.
And of course, I'd agree with that statement.
But the issue comes down to what is faith and what do we mean by the act of justification?
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So you can check out his response to my video.
We'll put the links to both videos down in the description of this video.
uh But my friend Eric, I'll just give a little bit of background here.
He was good friends with my cousin Peter.
They went to Bethany Lutheran College together and my older brothers also knew him and heknew them.
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um And so I would go hang out with Peter's friends when I was going to college in Mankato.
And then after I finished college and I lived in Mankato before I got married,
And Eric, I always enjoyed talking to Eric because he liked to talk theology and he wasalways very, uh he always had something to say and he seemed to uh track uh with a lot of
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the same things that I was tracking with and have the same kind of concerns.
um I do remember though, and if Eric listens to this, which he probably will, I rememberthat you were grappling with...
faith and works even at that time.
This is back in 2009 and I think it was like within a few years, I don't know exactly whatthe timeline is, that Eric met a girl who was Catholic, invited him to Mass, and he then
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found his home, so to speak, in the Roman Catholic Church.
Of course, I would pray that he would come back to confessional Lutheranism and realizethe error of the papacy.
and return to the clear fountain of Israel in the Holy Scriptures.
But I'd like to address some of the questions that—and by the way, I'm not going to do thekind of response video that you usually see where I'll play a clip and then respond to it.
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His video isn't that long.
You can go and listen to it yourself.
You can listen to mine as well if you'd like.
But a lot of this is going to be review anyway, so I'm just going to respond to some ofthe questions or the rebuttals that he gave, and not necessarily in the exact same order,
but more in a way that I think is going to be helpful.
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So first, uh the first thing that he brought up was when I was saying that faithjustifies, and I said that the Roman Catholic Church teaches also that faith justifies,
they
they say it justifies in a different way.
um And I'll get into that.
And he took me to task on saying that faith justifies and that he said that the CatholicChurch doesn't say that faith justifies.
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He said, says that God justifies.
Well, of course.
And so I just want to make the record straight there.
I was uh speaking metanomically.
um Or, uh, synectically, um, those terms, basically what I mean is that, that I'm speakingin jargon, speaking in shorthand.
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So if I say faith justifies, and St.
Paul does this too.
He says, that's why it's by faith, right?
Romans, uh, Romans 4 16, it's by faith that it may be by grace, that the promise may beguaranteed to all of Abraham's offspring.
uh It's just speaking in shorthand jargon, and what I of course mean is that God is theefficient cause.
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That is, He's the one actually doing the justifying.
But faith is that instrumental cause through which we lay hold of God's act ofjustification, through which we receive uh God's uh act of justification.
uh
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and which God therefore counts as righteousness in His sight.
So yeah, so faith is not the efficient cause, God is, and I think that we both agree onthat.
um But here's the thing is that the Roman Catholics teach that faith is the beginning ofjustification, ah because they see justification as a process.
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um And in that sense,
They can say that we're justified by faith in so far as this faith is formed by hope andlove.
And again, they take it from that uh passage from Galatians 5 that, and I suppose otherpassages too, where Paul says that this is, circumcision, uncircumcision count for
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nothing, but faith working through love.
And Eric made the point that working through love uh can also be understood as formed.
by love.
uh And okay, so, and I'll talk about that really what we're talking about here is activefaith.
When we talk about faith working through love, or if you even want to say faith formed bylove, uh I don't think you can really make a strong case that it could be translated that
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way.
And we run into some errors, some problems that really undermine how, you know, whatfaith's relation to justification is.
Okay.
uh
So second, uh he took issue with the distinction that I made between fulfillment andsatisfaction.
uh What I mean to say, just to repeat and clarify and reiterate what I was saying aboutthat, there is a difference between the fulfillment of the law and the satisfaction of the
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law.
But satisfaction entails fulfillment.
So Jesus...
did fulfill the law.
It's just that He fulfilled it perfectly.
That is, He made satisfaction.
He set God at ease.
He propitiated God.
That is, He turned God's wrath away.
He made atonement.
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Now, St.
Paul is very clear that we fulfill the law.
We fulfill the law by faith.
Romans 13 says, love is the fulfillment of the law.
He says in Romans 8,
that the righteousness of the law is being fulfilled in us who walk not according to theflesh but according to the Spirit.
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So there is this—here he's describing that new obedience, that fulfillment of the law.
But of course, that fulfillment of the law is imperfect because we still have our sin.
Now, I don't know if I'm going to really get to this.
I want to talk more about sin and what sin is because
That is a huge issue between the uh Lutheran position and the Roman Catholic position onwhat sin is, and that plays a big role in our understanding of how one is justified.
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uh But anyway, going on, now, I said I was going to get to this.
Now, speaking of faith working through love or faith formed by love,
The reason why we would say uh faith is not formed by love is because, one, the textdoesn't say that.
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I mean, you can make the argument that the Greek term, uh I think it was a kat, uh aner,gamai.
um Here, I'll look it up real quick.
ah There's like different words.
There's like, work out your salvation.
might be...
Let's see.
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It's in Galatians 5 verse 6.
So he says, in Christ Jesus, there's neither circumcision uh nor uncircumcision have thepower, but faith working through love.
that's where we get the word like energy, energeo.
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um So to be at work, um it can mean to accomplish.
But again, you know, what is it accomplishing?
What it's accomplishing is the Christian life.
It's bringing about the Christian life.
And so, really, in either case, even if you do take this as formed by love, Paul is notspeaking about being justified before God.
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He's speaking of faith that is active.
The term faith is sometimes spoken with respect to its activity in the Christian life.
And in this case, it grows, and uh it bears fruit.
uh And other times, faith is spoken of with respect to its object.
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That is, what does it hold on to?
What does it rest in?
And this is by which it is counted righteous.
uh
And so, we can see an example of this in 2 Peter 1 verse 1 and following.
So, I'm going to just use my phone here because that's what you do these days, use yourphone.
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I'm just going to read a bit of 2 Peter 1, and you can see both how faith is spoken of asuh in relation to justification.
but also how faith is spoken of in relation to the Christian life as we press on and as wepersevere.
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So, Peter says, uh
Peter is right off the bat setting the record straight that the people to whom he iswriting have a faith that is just as precious as the faith of the apostles, of Peter and
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all these great saints, that we have the same precious faith.
How?
Through the righteousness of Jesus Christ our God and Lord.
So it's in relation to Jesus' righteousness.
We have the same faith.
And this is what Paul says when he says, since we have been justified by faith, we havepeace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and through whom we have access into God's
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grace in which we stand.
And so, this is the status of faith when it pertains to justification, when it pertains toGod's act.
of justifying, to God's act of righteousness, which Paul describes uh clearly as Jesus'obedience in our place in Romans chapter 5.
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Through one man's obedience, righteousness and life, justification and life came to allmen.
Now, as we go on with 2 Peter chapter 1, he goes on to talk about, this is what we'vereceived through uh his
uh through His promises, He says, His divine power has given to us all things that pertainto life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.
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So, we have been given all things by His power, His divine power.
Well, what's the power?
The power is the Gospel.
This is what Paul says in Romans 1-16, I'm not ashamed of the Gospel for it is what,Hannah?
The power of God.
all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
And as Peter says in his first epistle, 1 Peter 1, verse 3 through 5, blessed be the Godand Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has caused us to be reborn, that is born again by
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His great mercy, to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ uh for aninheritance uh that is undefiled, incorruptible, kept in heaven for you.
who by God's power are being kept through faith for the salvation ready to be revealed inthe last time.
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So there is that salvation in the end that we are persevering toward, but what is it, howdo we have it right now?
How do we have this inheritance that is kept for us by God's power, by faith, right?
And...
uh
And so this power then, which is the gospel, is what gives us everything that pertains tolife and godliness.
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Well, then Peter's going to go on, so I'm going back to 2 Peter chapter 1.
He's going to go on and he says, you know, he says that we've been given these greatpromises that we may be partakers of the divine nature, that is, we are united to Christ,
we're baptized into Him, into His death and resurrection, right?
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This is what we call the stymistical union.
So this is that—you can't be justified—there's no such thing as someone who is justifiedthrough faith who is not also united to Christ.
And I think this is a point that we Lutherans really have to make when we talk to ourRoman Catholic friends, our Eastern Orthodox friends, and others.
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uh We cannot shy away from the mystical union.
Paul says very clearly, well, in many places,
But I'm thinking in Colossians 1 that this is the mystery that's made known, Christ inyou, right?
uh He says in Ephesians chapter 5 that we are members of His body, um of His flesh, and asthe received text says, of His bones.
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We are part of—we are called into the one body, as uh he says in 1 Corinthians 12.
As Jesus says, um
that if you love me, you will keep my word, my Father will love you, and we will come, wewill make our home in you, right?
So, there is that union that you have with Christ, uh which uh is a direct result ofreceiving His precious promises.
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And so again, this is what you have.
Now, Peter then goes on to talk about the activity of this faith.
And so he says, uh
He says in verse 5, 2 Peter 1, verse 5, for this very reason, that is because you've beengiven all of this stuff, you've been given the divine nature, you've been given the
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righteousness of Christ, you have the same faith that we have through the righteousness ofour Lord and God, Jesus Christ.
So for this reason, be diligent to add to your faith virtue.
ah to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control, perseverance, toperseverance, godliness, to godliness, brotherly kindness, to brotherly kindness, love.
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Because if these things are yours, He says, and if they abound, will be neither barren norunfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
for he who lacks these things is short-sighted even to blindness and has forgotten that hewas cleansed from his old sins." So Peter is not saying that these things help cleanse you
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of your sins, that these virtues help form your righteousness before God or your standingbefore God.
What he's saying is that these are fruit of your knowledge of Christ, that is, of yourfaith in Christ.
uh
And if you walk in these things and you be diligent to persevere in these things, then youcan be certain that uh your faith is not being unfruitful.
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And so this is another thing too, we talk about certainty of salvation.
We have—the reason why we can have certainty of salvation, full certainty of oursalvation, is because of God's promise.
Because God says so.
He raised His Son from the dead.
God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their sins against themand entrusting to us the word of reconciliation.
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This promise is how we can have that certainty, as Paul says in Ephesians chapter 3, thatwe have, through faith, have boldness and access to God's grace.
So, but at the same time,
There is an element of certainty that God gives us through working fruit in us.
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And this is something, again, that we should be clear about, and this helps kind of uhshave away certain caricatures.
When we Lutherans talk about certainty of salvation, we're going to emphasize the Word andthe sacrament, because that's where the promise is.
We're going to emphasize the merits of Jesus, the works of Christ.
who made full satisfaction for our sins.
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But we also understand that there is an element of certainty that God gives us uh when Heworks good fruit in us.
It's not a certainty in and of itself, though.
It's certainty uh because it points back
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to God's promise.
So consider what Peter says here, verse 10, 2 Peter chapter 1, he says, uh
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and entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lordand Savior, Jesus Christ." So what he's teaching them is not that their works themselves
are uh providing them or gaining them or meriting them.
And I know Eric said that merit doesn't mean earn.
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Well, that's how, you know, just looking through the concordance in the Vulgate, the LatinVulgate, uh merit
uh means earn.
uh It always means earn.
So, I understand that Catholics will speak of merit in this way that might mean more likeobtain or gain something.
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uh But at any rate, when we talk about merits, we're talking about that which actuallyaccomplishes...
uh
whether it's your salvation or other kinds of rewards, which we'll get into that in just asecond.
uh Well, more than a second.
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So, he says, in this way, uh an entrance will be supplied to you.
What Peter's doing here is he's admonishing us to walk in this fruit of the knowledge ofChrist, to supplement our faith with virtue and goodness and self-control, brotherly
affection, all that.
all that good stuff that the Spirit produces, and He's giving us then the assurance thatwe won't stumble.
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He's giving us the assurance that an entrance into eternal life, into God's kingdom, isbeing supplied to us.
So it's sort of like what Paul says about women in 1 Timothy chapter 2.
He says, will be saved through childbearing if she continues in faith and holiness andself-control.
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So, the point that he's making here is not that her childbearing earns for her or meritsfor her salvation, but that in the context of her childbearing, to which God has called
her, that's her calling to be a mother.
God is going to save her if she continues in faith.
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And of course, if you're continuing in faith, you're continuing in the subsequent virtuesof faith, like holiness and self-control.
So the Scriptures often speak holistically here.
uh When they're speaking of perseverance, the Scriptures are going to talk about all thefruit that faith bears.
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And they'll talk about how God saves you in this context, right?
So God saves you—so this gets to this trope that we often use, which is helpful, is thatfaith alone saves—and of course by faith alone we don't mean like without Christ, you
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know, of course God alone saves—by Christ alone through—
grace alone.
When we say faith alone, we're just simply saying we're excluding faith from faith allworks.
So when Paul says, grace you have been saved through faith that is not of yourselves, agift of God not by works, lest any man should boast.
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He who does not work but trusts in him, he justifies the ungodly.
Faith alone simply means excluding your own works, excluding even the good works that Godworks in you.
As Paul says in Titus chapter 3 verse 5,
He saved us not because of works done in righteousness, but because he was merciful.
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uh Okay, now what Peter uh says then, he goes on after saying that we will be supplied anentrance.
He then goes on to say, for this reason, I will not be negligent to remind you always ofthese things, though you know and are established in the present truth.
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Yes?
I think it is right as long as I am in this tent that is in this earthly tabernacle of Hisbody.
So, He's making reference to the tabernacle.
We are the temple of the Holy Spirit, but as we live in this life, uh our old Adam needsto die and be drowned every day and tear it down just like the tabernacle was.
Paul speaks this way also in 2 Corinthians, I believe it's chapter 3.
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But at any rate, Peter says, as long as I'm in this tent...
I find it uh right to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off mytent, just as our Lord Jesus showed me.
Moreover, I will be careful to ensure you always to have a reminder of these things aftermy uh decrease." So, Peter is saying like, hey, you guys already have this stuff.
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He's reminding them of the fruit that they already have.
I say to my son, Robert,
ah Robert is a boy with a lot of energy.
Has he chased you around before?
Yeah, he likes to kind of scrap a little bit.
He's a good kid.
But I try to, I teach him self-control.
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And I'll read to him from Galatians chapter 5 about the fruit of the Spirit.
And the last thing the Paul lists there is self-control.
And I say to Robert, say, Robert, I know you can do it because you have the Holy Spirit.
And I know you have the Holy Spirit because you've been baptized and you confess yourSavior Jesus Christ.
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You believe in Him, don't you?
Yeah, okay.
So you have self-control.
And I'm fanning this into—I'm fanning the flames, right?
I'm fanning it into the flames.
uh That's what Peter is doing here.
He's reminding them of the virtue that they have.
If you have a living faith—
that had—through the righteousness of Jesus Christ that holds on to His righteousness,then you do have these things.
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Now, do they need to be exercised through patient endurance and through trials?
Yes, absolutely.
And that's what Paul—Peter talks about that in his first epistle.
uh But notice here then, as Peter goes on in 2 Peter chapter 1, he then goes on todescribe the
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object of their faith.
And he says that we did not follow these cunning fables and myths when we made known toyou the revelation of Jesus Christ.
And he goes on to describe the transfiguration, that Jesus is Lord and God, and that thisis the same Jesus uh who died for our sins.
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And so, you know, he talks about how the Father spoke and said, this is my beloved Son,
with whom I am well pleased.
And then he goes on to say to them, he says, but we have something that is sure, right?
We have something that's even more sure, that's confirmed.
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And what is that?
The prophetic word.
And he goes on to say, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark placeuntil the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
So...
What Peter is saying here is that your certainty, your true certainty, your greatercertainty is in holding on to the Word, to the Word that has been fulfilled, the confirmed
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Word of prophecy, that the Son of God has come into the flesh, that He has broughtsalvation.
And then he goes on to talk about how uh prophecy of Scripture did not come by privateinterpretation.
ah
And therefore we need a Roman magisterium to tell us what it means.
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Is that right, Hannah?
No, ah no, he doesn't say no scripture came by, no prophecy came by privateinterpretation, therefore we need the pope to tell us uh what the scriptures mean.
And we'll get into that, that's another issue.
I want to record a video on um councils and the canon of scripture, but I need to read upmore on that stuff uh so that I can do that justice or...
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at least begin to fulfill.
ah You can never satisfy, right?
ah We only have that by faith in Christ's merit.
ah But at any rate, he says, uh never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spokeas they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
And so, again, he's pointing us to the Word as it is revealed in Scripture, as the HolySpirit has inspired the prophets and apostles
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to write down as Peter goes on at the end of this epistle, he identifies Paul's epistlesas uh scripture.
um so, we—so faith, to sum up, faith has the righteousness of Christ.
It is the same faith, the same precious faith as St.
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Peter's faith.
But why?
How?
Through the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
And then it follows that faith is active.
and faith is active in its fruit.
So when the Roman Catholics talk about faith being formed by love, perhaps we could speakof faith formed by love if we're simply speaking of its activity.
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We can talk about faith as a habit if we're simply talking about its activity.
Well, then we're talking about love.
uh
And so, but when we talk about how faith justifies, that is, how faith is countedrighteous before God, it is apart from works.
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That's very clear.
Especially when Paul says that he who does not work but trusts in him who justifies theungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
Okay.
Now, there are a bunch of other things that came up there which I want to address.
And so I want to go in and address some other things that Eric brought up.
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So another thing Eric brought up was that he took issue with me saying that by faith youhave everything.
um So what do I mean by everything?
And he said, well, do you have the beatific vision?
Well, yeah, in a sense you do, you just don't see it yet.
So I guess then you don't because for it to be a vision, you have to actually see it.
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If I give you, um if I transfer money, Hannah, if I transfer a million dollars into yourbank account and you don't see it, but I give you the record of it, um you haven't paid,
you haven't used it for anything, right?
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You haven't begun to fully enjoy it yet.
ah You haven't bought a new house, right?
um
Or let's say even I transfer the deed of a house over to you, but you haven't gone intothe house, but I transferred it to you.
Is it yours?
Have you seen it yet?
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No, you haven't seen it yet, but is it yours?
Yes, it's yours.
So that's the point.
You have everything.
So you say, you don't have the beatific vision.
Well, yeah, we haven't seen it yet.
As Paul says, we see in part like in a mirror dimly.
But this is why love is the greatest, because love will finally fully see and faith andhope, which...
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Remember, you don't hope in what you see, you hope in what you don't see.
Faith is the assurance of things unseen, ah as the apostle says.
uh But once we see it, faith and hope have run their course, and so then we finally seeit.
But that's not to say that we don't have what we don't yet see.
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We have it all by faith.
um
know, John the Baptist, for example, and Jesus both speak in this way of the presenttense.
They say that if you believe, then you have eternal life.
Just look in John's Gospel, John chapter 3, John chapter 5, John chapter 6, that you haveeternal life.
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You have passed from life into death.
Jesus says to have eternal life, or he actually describes what eternal life is in John 17.
It is to know the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ.
And then of course, Paul says to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, you have allthings, all things are yours.
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And this is before he admonishes them to then live like it, live like everything is yours.
You have everything.
Why are you wasting your time figuring out who is better, you know, who follows whom andwho is better than whom?
um Like, or who's better than who?
I can't remember.
Would it be...
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Would it be, would never mind.
I'm not gonna go down that bunny trail.
So, so like Peter and Paul and Apollos and stuff like that.
So they have these factions and that's what Paul's addressing.
And that's why he says like in 1 Corinthians 12, he talks about the different spiritualgifts.
And then 1 Corinthians 13, he talks about the greatest one, which is love.
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And love is great because it entails faith.
It entails hope.
It believes all things and hopes all things.
And when he says that if I have all faith as to move mountains and have not love, I amnothing, it's the same thing that James is saying.
The faith without works is dead.
That is, it's not faith.
It's not really faith.
It's just a uh fides generalis, uh as the theologians call it.
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That is a general faith, uh a historic faith, which even the demons have, but that's not asaving faith.
Faith doesn't justify you because it just knows facts about God, um or it just agrees withdogma.
Faith, it justifies you because of what it receives.
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That is the righteousness of Christ, as Peter says.
uh And that is in the promise, the great promise of God's power, that is of God's gospel.
uh Okay, so now there are some other questions that came up that...
uh
there were other questions that Eric had in his video, but other questions that came up,and they're really helpful to clarify this kind of stuff.
(38:06):
So, one of them was past salvation and future salvation.
And I think Eric may have talked about this a bit in his video, but other people broughtit up too.
So, the question is, okay, well, Paul says we're justified, the he who uh does not workbut...
trust in Him who justifies the ungodly, His faith is counted as righteousness, um and inother places like that, that He saved us because of His mercy and not because of our
(38:37):
works, Titus 3.
And so the Catholic response to that is going to be something like, okay, well, that's thebeginning of justification.
That's you being brought into uh God's gracious covenant.
um
standing in God's grace and being in a state of grace, but then your justification is aprocess.
(39:01):
You're not fully justified before God uh by uh faith alone, apart from works.
It's just you're initially brought in through faith.
But even then though, they're going to say that you cooperate with God's grace by usingyour natural grace.
And that gets into the issue of grace, which uh we'll talk about in a little bit.
(39:28):
But I just want to say this when it comes to past salvation and future salvation andpresent salvation.
So in other words, can we say—so we might agree that, you were saved apart from works, butyou continue to be saved by your works, forming by your virtue, know, forming your faith.
(39:48):
oh
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that we are presently being saved by the gospel if wecontinue to believe it, unless we have believed in vain.
Peter says in 1 Peter 1, which I quoted before, that we are kept by God's power throughfaith for the salvation ready to be revealed in the last day.
(40:11):
Now, it's true that there is, the Scriptures will speak of persevering.
By your perseverance, you will gain your life, as Jesus says in...
Luke 21.
ah But this is persevering again is always dependent upon that which is preserving you.
(40:31):
And what is preserving you is the power of God through faith.
Your works are not themselves preserving you.
God himself is preserving you.
And in the meantime, he is producing works in you for you to uh
you know, to persevere and keep moving forward.
(40:53):
Because God loves you, you know, He's going to give you little glimpses of the fruit of uhfaith.
ah I already mentioned that love is the greatest because that's what will remain forever.
Faith and hope will no longer exist in the end since they will have served their purpose.
ah Now, this I was just talking about then with—so speaking of fruit,
(41:18):
One of the things that Eric was asking is, what do you mean by evidence?
They say that good works are evidence of your faith, right?
They're the proof of your faith.
Well, what we mean by that is manifestation or fruit, and they're little foretastes ofwhat faith already holds onto and what hope perseveres and presses toward.
(41:43):
so Jesus says,
Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, uh out of his heart will flow rivers ofliving water.
This is from John chapter 7.
um John says that he's referring to the Spirit, as John the apostle says that he'sreferring to the Spirit whom those who believed in Jesus would receive.
(42:05):
ah So, and then Paul, as Peter says, know, repent and believe the gospel.
He says, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgivenessof sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
So the gift of the Holy Spirit is, He gives you a new life.
As Jesus says, my words are spirit and life.
uh But the Spirit also then flows out of you with fruit.
(42:30):
So Paul identifies the gift of the Holy Spirit with the gift of love.
The love of God has been poured into our heart by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Romans chapter 5, Galatians 5.
ah He describes the fruit of the Spirit.
Love, ah joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, um goodness.
(42:53):
What's the rest of them?
Self-control is the last one.
uh Sometimes I have those memorized and other times they don't all come out.
uh But this is fruit of the Spirit.
Well, fruit of the Spirit who has given us faith.
And so fruit then is a foretaste of the eternal life ah that we presently possess throughfaith.
(43:16):
It's what the Holy Spirit pours into those who have been justified by faith and have peacewith God.
So the fruit is meant to encourage us.
ah And that's not to say that we then base our faith on the fruit.
A good tree bears good fruit.
So the fruit depends on the tree that's planted by God.
ah
(43:38):
And yet, when the fruit comes, like look at the fig tree, you know that summer is near.
That's to give you some encouragement, right?
When I'm counseling people who are struggling over their sin or over doubts or over uhspiritual turmoil, what I'm going to point them to most forcefully is the gospel promise,
(44:01):
their baptism into Christ, the body and blood of Jesus given for them for the forgivenessof their sins.
um But I'm also going to point out to them that while it is small and often difficult tosee, because we see like in a mirror dimly, God is working fruit in you.
And people do need to have that assurance that God is in you, that Christ is united toyou, and He is, the Holy Spirit is producing fruit in you.
(44:28):
uh So that should be an element of encouragement.
But that's not to say that our faith is therefore
that the object of our faith is the fruit itself.
um It's simply there to encourage us with that kind of manifestation that will finally befully manifested in, as you say, the beatific vision.
(44:51):
uh Okay, so finally, I want to address this issue uh of rewards, and that's another thingthat Eric brought up.
I got a few minutes left here.
So he wanted to know if we have any concept of rewards.
I'm really glad he asked this question because this will hopefully ah clear some things upbecause I think a lot of times Catholics will listen to Lutherans or other Protestants
(45:28):
talk about faith, faith alone, ah and they'll wonder like,
scriptures often speak of rewards, and so do they have any sense of a reward?
uh so let me just quote briefly a couple paragraphs from the Apology to the AugsburgConfession, uh Article 4b, which is on the fulfillment of the law.
(45:55):
The whole Article 4 is addressing the issue of justification and good works and how thatrelates to good works.
So this is the second part of that
long portion of the Lutheran Confessions, and it's really worth reading.
Do you have a book of Concord?
You got one for confirmation?
(46:15):
You should read Article 4 of the—read Article 4 of the Oxford Confession, then readArticle 6, then read Article 20, okay?
And then go and read the Apology Article 4.
It'll be the best—besides the Bible, I think it's the best thing ever written.
It's fantastic.
Anyway, this is from Article 4.
(46:37):
Melanchthon writes, here also we add something concerning rewards and merits.
We teach that rewards have been offered and promised to the works of believers.
We teach that good works are meritorious, not for the remission of sins, for grace orjustification, for these we obtain only by faith, but for other rewards, bodily and
(47:04):
spiritual.
in this life and after this life.
Because Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 8, every man shall receive his ownreward according to his own labor.
There will therefore be different rewards according to different labors, which of courseGod himself assigns.
But the remission of sins is alike and equal to all, as Peter says, like precious faithunto us through the righteousness of our Lord and
(47:34):
Savior and God Jesus Christ.
(48:03):
As Paul clearly says, Romans 5 verse 1, being justified by faith, we have peace with Godthrough our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith, etc.
So, of course, God gives rewards.
uh You know, Hannah's parents—okay, let me just use Hannah's mom as an example.
(48:25):
Hannah's mom grew up in the faith, being taught the faith.
She's given saving faith, that is faith that holds on.
to the promise of everlasting life.
Well, now the fruit of this faith, she grew in her understanding, and one of the thingsthat she understood because of this knowledge of salvation is, you know what?
I want this for other people, and I want this for my future children.
(48:52):
And so she meets this guy who's this strapping man, and he's a Christian, but you know, hedoesn't have a full grasp of
of what the gospel teaches, and she wants to make sure that they agree on what the gospelteaches.
And so, he agrees to go through instruction, and he joins the church and confesses thepure gospel, and uh he grows to love it too.
(49:18):
And so now he's growing fruit.
And then they have children, God blesses them with these children, and they're allfaithful Christians.
They all faithfully uh attend a Lutheran church, confess the faith, and uh
And then now, you know, they know that they want to do the same thing.
They want to find godly spouses who will have godly offspring that God will bless with hisword.
(49:45):
So what has God done for Hannah's parents?
He's rewarded them.
He's rewarded them with godly children.
And they're going to be able to see their children in heaven because their children havethe gospel.
Their children know the gospel.
And those are rewards that God gives on your father and your mother.
(50:08):
And you will live long on the earth.
It's first commandment with the promise.
Of course there are promises and—
rewards for our works.
But the reward of eternal life can only be grasped by faith.
And so that's the difference.
And rewards are meant to encourage, just like we give rewards to kids for doing thingsright, you know, to encourage them.
(50:33):
And God treats us the same way because He's our Father.
But He doesn't reward us with us being His children because of our works.
No.
That's a free gift.
His righteousness, which covers us, ah by which our sins are forgiven, is something thatuh was freely given to us by Christ, that was earned for us by Him.
(50:58):
Okay, so now I want to just conclude with talking about one last thing.
And this is the issue of equivocation.
So my friend Eric says that he thinks there's a lot of equivocating going on.
And that makes perfect sense that there would be equivocation going on.
(51:18):
And the reason why there seems to be equivocation and by equivocation is like uhequivocation would be like when, you know, Michael Scott is asked if he's told, he's asked
if he like understands some, like he promises not to make like bad jokes or something likethat.
And they ask him if he understands and he says, what does he say?
(51:41):
Like yesh.
or yish, right?
He equivocates.
He doesn't say yes, clearly.
Or when you use a word that is not, without really defining the word so that you can givethe appearance as if we can both agree because we're using the same word when we don't
really agree.
(52:02):
And so, yeah, it's true that there often is equivocation between Catholics and Lutherans.
And that's a whole nother issue here.
You talk about the ecumenical movement, the joint declaration, and all that stuff.
But the reason why there appears to be equivocation—really, there is equivocation when wetalk to each other—is because we use the same terms, but we don't mean the same thing.
(52:24):
And this is—just to sum this up, and I can spend more time, another time, getting intothis, but what I think is the real difference between the Catholic, the Roman Catholic
definitions of grace and of faith and of hope and love and uh of justification, thedifference between their approach of these terms and our approach of these terms is that
(52:56):
they address them metaphysically.
That is, they first define what grace is in its essence, right?
And course, we wouldn't call, we wouldn't say that grace is some kind of like, it's notlike some material thing, but they would see, but, but, but, or physical thing, but meta
physically, that is in the kind of spiritual realm, it has some kind of quality to it.
(53:20):
Right.
And so they, they define grace in that way, they define faith in that way, and then theyapply it to justification.
And what Lutherans do, Lutherans approach these terms grammatically.
We approach these terms rhetorically.
when the apostle uses the word faith, is he talking about its relation to salvation?
(53:47):
Or is he talking about its relation to the Christian life and the activity of theChristian life?
Well, that's going to make a big difference.
If he's talking about faith in relation to salvation, then it excludes works.
If he's talking about faith...
in its relation to the Christian life, in its activity in the Christian life, of course,he's going to talk about the fruit that comes from faith.
(54:10):
And so, this then brings us to—and I'll talk about grace as well—I mean, I'll just quicklysay with grace, the Roman Catholics are going to define grace first as this quality that
God gives to us, um and then—so then—
Then they're going to apply that to justification.
(54:32):
So then justification, being justified by faith, means that we're justified by being giventhis gift of faith so that we grow in it and that as we grow in it, we are justified.
And that would, of course, include our works.
But see, again, so they're first defining it metaphysically and then applying it.
What we're going to do is we're going to look at when the Bible uses the word grace, whenthey use it in reference to salvation,
(54:59):
in reference to bringing us into God's kingdom, that it is always God's benevolence, it'salways God's free favor toward us for the sake of Christ, and it doesn't include our
works.
ah As Paul says in Romans 11, if it were by works, then it's no longer of grace.
(55:19):
Grace would no longer be grace, right?
But there are times when the Scriptures will speak of grace according to its effect in ourlives.
according to the strength that it gives us to do good things that are pleasing to God.
So like in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, he speaks this way.
You can go and check out what he says there.
(55:40):
He's talking about collecting uh funds for, I think, Macedonia.
And so, yeah, so sometimes the Scriptures will speak of grace in that way.
ah But what they're talking about then is they're talking about the effects of God'sgrace.
Other times...
when they talk about grace pertaining to salvation and eternal life and righteousnessbefore God, it's always excluding works.
(56:07):
And so again, that's the difference between when you first define these termsmetaphysically and then, you know, impose them on the scriptures and on the doctrine.
And on the other hand, what we do is we approach these terms grammatically according tohow they are used in the text.
(56:28):
And this brings us, okay, so finally I'll just make this point about righteousness orabout justification.
One of the arguments that the Roman Catholics will make is they'll talk about theepitomology of the word justification.
So you have the word just, justitia, righteousness, right?
(56:54):
To be made...
righteous is, and then you have the word, you know, facio, to make, right?
Or I make, or I do.
So if you look at the Latin etymology of justification, you can make the argument that itmeans make righteous.
So they're going to say, therefore, justification is this being made righteous through theforming of your faith by love and hope and other virtues.
(57:25):
But the Greek word, dikaiatō, means to declare righteous based on some kind of evidence.
Based on some kind of basis, right?
uh Now, sometimes, this can...
the Scriptures speak of being declared righteous by your works, right?
(57:45):
And like James says, that you're justified by your works and not faith alone.
Okay.
Other times...
ah It's talking about being justified before God.
And that excludes your works.
James says, see that a man is justified by his works and not faith alone.
um But Paul says, if Abraham is uh considered according to the flesh, then he hassomething to boast about, but not before God.
(58:18):
Why?
Because...
No man is justified before God.
No man will be counted righteous before God by his works.
ah But before men, of course, he is.
And that's why we see what Abraham did.
We see that Abraham obeyed God.
And then God rewarded Abraham uh for his obedience.
(58:38):
But before God, his righteousness was in him believing and trusting in God's promise ofthe coming Savior.
So in either case, whether you're talking about being, you know, declared righteousbecause of your own works or your own innocence, that's, we might call that vindication,
right?
(58:58):
ah If I might accuse Hannah of something, of doing something, then God, by His providence,reveals that she didn't do it.
What has God done to Hannah?
He has vindicated her, or you might even say He's justified her on the basis of herinnocence.
But that's not the same thing as her being justified before Him for access into eternallife.
(59:22):
That's her being vindicated before the world, before the angels, before all.
And that's what God promises to do for us ultimately in the end, on the basis of ourworks, to say, boom, see, I proved it.
Look at what He did.
I was hungry and He fed me.
I was in prison and He visited me, right?
And all of heaven and earth will see it and He'll vindicate His people.
(59:46):
So, but in either case, it's judicial.
In either case, it's forensic.
That's how the term is used.
It doesn't mean a process.
And the Roman Catholic theologians have admitted this much.
And that's why they'll say, well, okay, well, you're justified in light of the works thatyou will then finally uh fulfill or accomplish or do or whatever.
(01:00:13):
Well, no, you're justified through Christ.
on the basis of Christ's atonement, as Romans makes clear.
So in either case, the term is judicial.
It's a forensic term.
And even if we do determine the meaning of the word based on the Latin etymology, the termfacio doesn't necessarily mean to form something inwardly.
(01:00:37):
It simply means to do or to act.
So justification is God's judicial action.
as He remains just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ.
So, when we define our terms, when we understand how these terms are used in theircontext, then we're on a better track of understanding what justification is, what faith
(01:00:58):
is, what grace is, what the fruit of faith is, and how all of this plays out in theChristian life, and how we can have certainty of our salvation.
So, this is uh the...
This perhaps was a bit of a scattered one, but that's kind of how I roll sometimes anyway.
(01:01:20):
uh You can, uh underneath this uh podcast, you can see the link to uh Eric's videoresponse to my initial video on Faith, Hope, and Love.
And you can also look, if you haven't seen my other past video about Faith, Hope, andLove,
And in the meantime, we'll see you next time, and thank you for listening to Christendomand the World.
(01:01:47):
Please like these videos um and subscribe to them, share them if you think that they'reworth being shared, and join us next time for another episode of Christendom and the
World.
What I'm gonna do here is I'm just gonna get right into it.
I'm not even gonna say like, ah Christendom in the world.
um If you want to, what you could do is could you put like a caption that just says likeand subscribe?
And then I could just kind of get right into it.
All right.
(00:23):
Can you hear me?
Is this fine?
Should I put it up a little bit more?
Undo that.
(00:47):
do this.
It'll pick me up.
All right.
(01:08):
that.
Should I go here?
Real quick,
It kind of comes down, weighs down after a while.
Is that fine?
Are you sure?
Okay.
(01:35):
A month or two ago, I uh gave a video explaining faith, hope, and love, and the object ofeach being God, the triune God, but that each uh sees God in a different way.
And this affects the way that we understand uh the role of love in the Christian life, therole of hope in the Christian life, and the role of faith in the Christian life.
(01:58):
And what makes love the greatest virtue, as Paul says, the greatest of these is love.
is not that love justifies you before God.
It's not that love saves you before God or gives you salvation.
It is that love is the manifestation, the fruit of and a uh foretaste of that inheritancethat we already have by faith.
(02:23):
ah And so, to say that love is the greatest is simply to say that heaven
the inheritance that we have in heaven that we're going to enjoy in heaven, where we arefully united to one another and we are without sin, to say that that is the greatest,
because that's what we look forward to.
(02:44):
It's not to say that love has a greater power to save us than faith.
And what that brings up then is that assumes that faith
saves us because of—that if faith does save us, that faith saves us because of an inherentpower that faith has.
(03:11):
And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because uh a friend of mine, uh whom I haven'ttalked to in a long time—I've corresponded with him over the years—a friend of mine
responded to this uh video on faith, hope, and love.
And uh in the caption he had written is faith greater than love.
which of course I never said faith was greater than love, because St.
(03:34):
Paul clearly says that love, these three abide, faith, hope, and love, and the greatest islove.
ah But he responded to my arguments and made the case for the Roman Catholic position thatfaith is formed by love and that this is how love, ah this is how we are justified um by
(03:55):
faith when it's formed by love.
He made the point that God
justifies ah and faith is the instrumental cause uh of that justification.
And of course, I'd agree with that statement.
But the issue comes down to what is faith and what do we mean by the act of justification?
(04:18):
So you can check out his response to my video.
We'll put the links to both videos down in the description of this video.
uh But my friend Eric, I'll just give a little bit of background here.
He was good friends with my cousin Peter.
They went to Bethany Lutheran College together and my older brothers also knew him and heknew them.
(04:43):
um And so I would go hang out with Peter's friends when I was going to college in Mankato.
And then after I finished college and I lived in Mankato before I got married,
And Eric, I always enjoyed talking to Eric because he liked to talk theology and he wasalways very, uh he always had something to say and he seemed to uh track uh with a lot of
(05:08):
the same things that I was tracking with and have the same kind of concerns.
um I do remember though, and if Eric listens to this, which he probably will, I rememberthat you were grappling with...
faith and works even at that time.
This is back in 2009 and I think it was like within a few years, I don't know exactly whatthe timeline is, that Eric met a girl who was Catholic, invited him to Mass, and he then
(05:37):
found his home, so to speak, in the Roman Catholic Church.
Of course, I would pray that he would come back to confessional Lutheranism and realizethe error of the papacy.
and return to the clear fountain of Israel in the Holy Scriptures.
But I'd like to address some of the questions that—and by the way, I'm not going to do thekind of response video that you usually see where I'll play a clip and then respond to it.
(06:11):
His video isn't that long.
You can go and listen to it yourself.
You can listen to mine as well if you'd like.
But a lot of this is going to be review anyway, so I'm just going to respond to some ofthe questions or the rebuttals that he gave, and not necessarily in the exact same order,
but more in a way that I think is going to be helpful.
(06:33):
So first, uh the first thing that he brought up was when I was saying that faithjustifies, and I said that the Roman Catholic Church teaches also that faith justifies,
they
they say it justifies in a different way.
um And I'll get into that.
And he took me to task on saying that faith justifies and that he said that the CatholicChurch doesn't say that faith justifies.
(07:00):
He said, says that God justifies.
Well, of course.
And so I just want to make the record straight there.
I was uh speaking metanomically.
um Or, uh, synectically, um, those terms, basically what I mean is that, that I'm speakingin jargon, speaking in shorthand.
(07:26):
So if I say faith justifies, and St.
Paul does this too.
He says, that's why it's by faith, right?
Romans, uh, Romans 4 16, it's by faith that it may be by grace, that the promise may beguaranteed to all of Abraham's offspring.
uh It's just speaking in shorthand jargon, and what I of course mean is that God is theefficient cause.
(07:52):
That is, He's the one actually doing the justifying.
But faith is that instrumental cause through which we lay hold of God's act ofjustification, through which we receive uh God's uh act of justification.
uh
(08:14):
and which God therefore counts as righteousness in His sight.
So yeah, so faith is not the efficient cause, God is, and I think that we both agree onthat.
um But here's the thing is that the Roman Catholics teach that faith is the beginning ofjustification, ah because they see justification as a process.
(08:38):
um And in that sense,
They can say that we're justified by faith in so far as this faith is formed by hope andlove.
And again, they take it from that uh passage from Galatians 5 that, and I suppose otherpassages too, where Paul says that this is, circumcision, uncircumcision count for
(09:02):
nothing, but faith working through love.
And Eric made the point that working through love uh can also be understood as formed.
by love.
uh And okay, so, and I'll talk about that really what we're talking about here is activefaith.
When we talk about faith working through love, or if you even want to say faith formed bylove, uh I don't think you can really make a strong case that it could be translated that
(09:30):
way.
And we run into some errors, some problems that really undermine how, you know, whatfaith's relation to justification is.
Okay.
uh
So second, uh he took issue with the distinction that I made between fulfillment andsatisfaction.
uh What I mean to say, just to repeat and clarify and reiterate what I was saying aboutthat, there is a difference between the fulfillment of the law and the satisfaction of the
(10:02):
law.
But satisfaction entails fulfillment.
So Jesus...
did fulfill the law.
It's just that He fulfilled it perfectly.
That is, He made satisfaction.
He set God at ease.
He propitiated God.
That is, He turned God's wrath away.
He made atonement.
(10:22):
Now, St.
Paul is very clear that we fulfill the law.
We fulfill the law by faith.
Romans 13 says, love is the fulfillment of the law.
He says in Romans 8,
that the righteousness of the law is being fulfilled in us who walk not according to theflesh but according to the Spirit.
(10:44):
So there is this—here he's describing that new obedience, that fulfillment of the law.
But of course, that fulfillment of the law is imperfect because we still have our sin.
Now, I don't know if I'm going to really get to this.
I want to talk more about sin and what sin is because
That is a huge issue between the uh Lutheran position and the Roman Catholic position onwhat sin is, and that plays a big role in our understanding of how one is justified.
(11:20):
uh But anyway, going on, now, I said I was going to get to this.
Now, speaking of faith working through love or faith formed by love,
The reason why we would say uh faith is not formed by love is because, one, the textdoesn't say that.
(11:40):
I mean, you can make the argument that the Greek term, uh I think it was a kat, uh aner,gamai.
um Here, I'll look it up real quick.
ah There's like different words.
There's like, work out your salvation.
might be...
Let's see.
(12:03):
It's in Galatians 5 verse 6.
So he says, in Christ Jesus, there's neither circumcision uh nor uncircumcision have thepower, but faith working through love.
that's where we get the word like energy, energeo.
(12:25):
um So to be at work, um it can mean to accomplish.
But again, you know, what is it accomplishing?
What it's accomplishing is the Christian life.
It's bringing about the Christian life.
And so, really, in either case, even if you do take this as formed by love, Paul is notspeaking about being justified before God.
(12:54):
He's speaking of faith that is active.
The term faith is sometimes spoken with respect to its activity in the Christian life.
And in this case, it grows, and uh it bears fruit.
uh And other times, faith is spoken of with respect to its object.
(13:16):
That is, what does it hold on to?
What does it rest in?
And this is by which it is counted righteous.
uh
And so, we can see an example of this in 2 Peter 1 verse 1 and following.
So, I'm going to just use my phone here because that's what you do these days, use yourphone.
(13:38):
I'm just going to read a bit of 2 Peter 1, and you can see both how faith is spoken of asuh in relation to justification.
but also how faith is spoken of in relation to the Christian life as we press on and as wepersevere.
(14:05):
So, Peter says, uh
Peter is right off the bat setting the record straight that the people to whom he iswriting have a faith that is just as precious as the faith of the apostles, of Peter and
(14:40):
all these great saints, that we have the same precious faith.
How?
Through the righteousness of Jesus Christ our God and Lord.
So it's in relation to Jesus' righteousness.
We have the same faith.
And this is what Paul says when he says, since we have been justified by faith, we havepeace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and through whom we have access into God's
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grace in which we stand.
And so, this is the status of faith when it pertains to justification, when it pertains toGod's act.
of justifying, to God's act of righteousness, which Paul describes uh clearly as Jesus'obedience in our place in Romans chapter 5.
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Through one man's obedience, righteousness and life, justification and life came to allmen.
Now, as we go on with 2 Peter chapter 1, he goes on to talk about, this is what we'vereceived through uh his
uh through His promises, He says, His divine power has given to us all things that pertainto life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.
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So, we have been given all things by His power, His divine power.
Well, what's the power?
The power is the Gospel.
This is what Paul says in Romans 1-16, I'm not ashamed of the Gospel for it is what,Hannah?
The power of God.
all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
And as Peter says in his first epistle, 1 Peter 1, verse 3 through 5, blessed be the Godand Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has caused us to be reborn, that is born again by
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His great mercy, to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ uh for aninheritance uh that is undefiled, incorruptible, kept in heaven for you.
who by God's power are being kept through faith for the salvation ready to be revealed inthe last time.
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So there is that salvation in the end that we are persevering toward, but what is it, howdo we have it right now?
How do we have this inheritance that is kept for us by God's power, by faith, right?
And...
uh
And so this power then, which is the gospel, is what gives us everything that pertains tolife and godliness.
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Well, then Peter's going to go on, so I'm going back to 2 Peter chapter 1.
He's going to go on and he says, you know, he says that we've been given these greatpromises that we may be partakers of the divine nature, that is, we are united to Christ,
we're baptized into Him, into His death and resurrection, right?
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This is what we call the stymistical union.
So this is that—you can't be justified—there's no such thing as someone who is justifiedthrough faith who is not also united to Christ.
And I think this is a point that we Lutherans really have to make when we talk to ourRoman Catholic friends, our Eastern Orthodox friends, and others.
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uh We cannot shy away from the mystical union.
Paul says very clearly, well, in many places,
But I'm thinking in Colossians 1 that this is the mystery that's made known, Christ inyou, right?
uh He says in Ephesians chapter 5 that we are members of His body, um of His flesh, and asthe received text says, of His bones.
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We are part of—we are called into the one body, as uh he says in 1 Corinthians 12.
As Jesus says, um
that if you love me, you will keep my word, my Father will love you, and we will come, wewill make our home in you, right?
So, there is that union that you have with Christ, uh which uh is a direct result ofreceiving His precious promises.
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And so again, this is what you have.
Now, Peter then goes on to talk about the activity of this faith.
And so he says, uh
He says in verse 5, 2 Peter 1, verse 5, for this very reason, that is because you've beengiven all of this stuff, you've been given the divine nature, you've been given the
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righteousness of Christ, you have the same faith that we have through the righteousness ofour Lord and God, Jesus Christ.
So for this reason, be diligent to add to your faith virtue.
ah to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control, perseverance, toperseverance, godliness, to godliness, brotherly kindness, to brotherly kindness, love.
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Because if these things are yours, He says, and if they abound, will be neither barren norunfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
for he who lacks these things is short-sighted even to blindness and has forgotten that hewas cleansed from his old sins." So Peter is not saying that these things help cleanse you
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of your sins, that these virtues help form your righteousness before God or your standingbefore God.
What he's saying is that these are fruit of your knowledge of Christ, that is, of yourfaith in Christ.
uh
And if you walk in these things and you be diligent to persevere in these things, then youcan be certain that uh your faith is not being unfruitful.
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And so this is another thing too, we talk about certainty of salvation.
We have—the reason why we can have certainty of salvation, full certainty of oursalvation, is because of God's promise.
Because God says so.
He raised His Son from the dead.
God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their sins against themand entrusting to us the word of reconciliation.
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This promise is how we can have that certainty, as Paul says in Ephesians chapter 3, thatwe have, through faith, have boldness and access to God's grace.
So, but at the same time,
There is an element of certainty that God gives us through working fruit in us.
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And this is something, again, that we should be clear about, and this helps kind of uhshave away certain caricatures.
When we Lutherans talk about certainty of salvation, we're going to emphasize the Word andthe sacrament, because that's where the promise is.
We're going to emphasize the merits of Jesus, the works of Christ.
who made full satisfaction for our sins.
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But we also understand that there is an element of certainty that God gives us uh when Heworks good fruit in us.
It's not a certainty in and of itself, though.
It's certainty uh because it points back
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to God's promise.
So consider what Peter says here, verse 10, 2 Peter chapter 1, he says, uh
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and entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lordand Savior, Jesus Christ." So what he's teaching them is not that their works themselves
are uh providing them or gaining them or meriting them.
And I know Eric said that merit doesn't mean earn.
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Well, that's how, you know, just looking through the concordance in the Vulgate, the LatinVulgate, uh merit
uh means earn.
uh It always means earn.
So, I understand that Catholics will speak of merit in this way that might mean more likeobtain or gain something.
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uh But at any rate, when we talk about merits, we're talking about that which actuallyaccomplishes...
uh
whether it's your salvation or other kinds of rewards, which we'll get into that in just asecond.
uh Well, more than a second.
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So, he says, in this way, uh an entrance will be supplied to you.
What Peter's doing here is he's admonishing us to walk in this fruit of the knowledge ofChrist, to supplement our faith with virtue and goodness and self-control, brotherly
affection, all that.
all that good stuff that the Spirit produces, and He's giving us then the assurance thatwe won't stumble.
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He's giving us the assurance that an entrance into eternal life, into God's kingdom, isbeing supplied to us.
So it's sort of like what Paul says about women in 1 Timothy chapter 2.
He says, will be saved through childbearing if she continues in faith and holiness andself-control.
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So, the point that he's making here is not that her childbearing earns for her or meritsfor her salvation, but that in the context of her childbearing, to which God has called
her, that's her calling to be a mother.
God is going to save her if she continues in faith.
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And of course, if you're continuing in faith, you're continuing in the subsequent virtuesof faith, like holiness and self-control.
So the Scriptures often speak holistically here.
uh When they're speaking of perseverance, the Scriptures are going to talk about all thefruit that faith bears.
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And they'll talk about how God saves you in this context, right?
So God saves you—so this gets to this trope that we often use, which is helpful, is thatfaith alone saves—and of course by faith alone we don't mean like without Christ, you
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know, of course God alone saves—by Christ alone through—
grace alone.
When we say faith alone, we're just simply saying we're excluding faith from faith allworks.
So when Paul says, grace you have been saved through faith that is not of yourselves, agift of God not by works, lest any man should boast.
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He who does not work but trusts in him, he justifies the ungodly.
Faith alone simply means excluding your own works, excluding even the good works that Godworks in you.
As Paul says in Titus chapter 3 verse 5,
He saved us not because of works done in righteousness, but because he was merciful.
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uh Okay, now what Peter uh says then, he goes on after saying that we will be supplied anentrance.
He then goes on to say, for this reason, I will not be negligent to remind you always ofthese things, though you know and are established in the present truth.
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Yes?
I think it is right as long as I am in this tent that is in this earthly tabernacle of Hisbody.
So, He's making reference to the tabernacle.
We are the temple of the Holy Spirit, but as we live in this life, uh our old Adam needsto die and be drowned every day and tear it down just like the tabernacle was.
Paul speaks this way also in 2 Corinthians, I believe it's chapter 3.
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But at any rate, Peter says, as long as I'm in this tent...
I find it uh right to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off mytent, just as our Lord Jesus showed me.
Moreover, I will be careful to ensure you always to have a reminder of these things aftermy uh decrease." So, Peter is saying like, hey, you guys already have this stuff.
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He's reminding them of the fruit that they already have.
I say to my son, Robert,
ah Robert is a boy with a lot of energy.
Has he chased you around before?
Yeah, he likes to kind of scrap a little bit.
He's a good kid.
But I try to, I teach him self-control.
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And I'll read to him from Galatians chapter 5 about the fruit of the Spirit.
And the last thing the Paul lists there is self-control.
And I say to Robert, say, Robert, I know you can do it because you have the Holy Spirit.
And I know you have the Holy Spirit because you've been baptized and you confess yourSavior Jesus Christ.
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You believe in Him, don't you?
Yeah, okay.
So you have self-control.
And I'm fanning this into—I'm fanning the flames, right?
I'm fanning it into the flames.
uh That's what Peter is doing here.
He's reminding them of the virtue that they have.
If you have a living faith—
that had—through the righteousness of Jesus Christ that holds on to His righteousness,then you do have these things.
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Now, do they need to be exercised through patient endurance and through trials?
Yes, absolutely.
And that's what Paul—Peter talks about that in his first epistle.
uh But notice here then, as Peter goes on in 2 Peter chapter 1, he then goes on todescribe the
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object of their faith.
And he says that we did not follow these cunning fables and myths when we made known toyou the revelation of Jesus Christ.
And he goes on to describe the transfiguration, that Jesus is Lord and God, and that thisis the same Jesus uh who died for our sins.
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And so, you know, he talks about how the Father spoke and said, this is my beloved Son,
with whom I am well pleased.
And then he goes on to say to them, he says, but we have something that is sure, right?
We have something that's even more sure, that's confirmed.
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And what is that?
The prophetic word.
And he goes on to say, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark placeuntil the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
So...
What Peter is saying here is that your certainty, your true certainty, your greatercertainty is in holding on to the Word, to the Word that has been fulfilled, the confirmed
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Word of prophecy, that the Son of God has come into the flesh, that He has broughtsalvation.
And then he goes on to talk about how uh prophecy of Scripture did not come by privateinterpretation.
ah
And therefore we need a Roman magisterium to tell us what it means.
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Is that right, Hannah?
No, ah no, he doesn't say no scripture came by, no prophecy came by privateinterpretation, therefore we need the pope to tell us uh what the scriptures mean.
And we'll get into that, that's another issue.
I want to record a video on um councils and the canon of scripture, but I need to read upmore on that stuff uh so that I can do that justice or...
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at least begin to fulfill.
ah You can never satisfy, right?
ah We only have that by faith in Christ's merit.
ah But at any rate, he says, uh never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spokeas they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
And so, again, he's pointing us to the Word as it is revealed in Scripture, as the HolySpirit has inspired the prophets and apostles
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to write down as Peter goes on at the end of this epistle, he identifies Paul's epistlesas uh scripture.
um so, we—so faith, to sum up, faith has the righteousness of Christ.
It is the same faith, the same precious faith as St.
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Peter's faith.
But why?
How?
Through the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
And then it follows that faith is active.
and faith is active in its fruit.
So when the Roman Catholics talk about faith being formed by love, perhaps we could speakof faith formed by love if we're simply speaking of its activity.
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We can talk about faith as a habit if we're simply talking about its activity.
Well, then we're talking about love.
uh
And so, but when we talk about how faith justifies, that is, how faith is countedrighteous before God, it is apart from works.
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That's very clear.
Especially when Paul says that he who does not work but trusts in him who justifies theungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
Okay.
Now, there are a bunch of other things that came up there which I want to address.
And so I want to go in and address some other things that Eric brought up.
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So another thing Eric brought up was that he took issue with me saying that by faith youhave everything.
um So what do I mean by everything?
And he said, well, do you have the beatific vision?
Well, yeah, in a sense you do, you just don't see it yet.
So I guess then you don't because for it to be a vision, you have to actually see it.
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If I give you, um if I transfer money, Hannah, if I transfer a million dollars into yourbank account and you don't see it, but I give you the record of it, um you haven't paid,
you haven't used it for anything, right?
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You haven't begun to fully enjoy it yet.
ah You haven't bought a new house, right?
um
Or let's say even I transfer the deed of a house over to you, but you haven't gone intothe house, but I transferred it to you.
Is it yours?
Have you seen it yet?
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No, you haven't seen it yet, but is it yours?
Yes, it's yours.
So that's the point.
You have everything.
So you say, you don't have the beatific vision.
Well, yeah, we haven't seen it yet.
As Paul says, we see in part like in a mirror dimly.
But this is why love is the greatest, because love will finally fully see and faith andhope, which...
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Remember, you don't hope in what you see, you hope in what you don't see.
Faith is the assurance of things unseen, ah as the apostle says.
uh But once we see it, faith and hope have run their course, and so then we finally seeit.
But that's not to say that we don't have what we don't yet see.
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We have it all by faith.
um
know, John the Baptist, for example, and Jesus both speak in this way of the presenttense.
They say that if you believe, then you have eternal life.
Just look in John's Gospel, John chapter 3, John chapter 5, John chapter 6, that you haveeternal life.
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You have passed from life into death.
Jesus says to have eternal life, or he actually describes what eternal life is in John 17.
It is to know the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ.
And then of course, Paul says to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, you have allthings, all things are yours.
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And this is before he admonishes them to then live like it, live like everything is yours.
You have everything.
Why are you wasting your time figuring out who is better, you know, who follows whom andwho is better than whom?
um Like, or who's better than who?
I can't remember.
Would it be...
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Would it be, would never mind.
I'm not gonna go down that bunny trail.
So, so like Peter and Paul and Apollos and stuff like that.
So they have these factions and that's what Paul's addressing.
And that's why he says like in 1 Corinthians 12, he talks about the different spiritualgifts.
And then 1 Corinthians 13, he talks about the greatest one, which is love.
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And love is great because it entails faith.
It entails hope.
It believes all things and hopes all things.
And when he says that if I have all faith as to move mountains and have not love, I amnothing, it's the same thing that James is saying.
The faith without works is dead.
That is, it's not faith.
It's not really faith.
It's just a uh fides generalis, uh as the theologians call it.
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That is a general faith, uh a historic faith, which even the demons have, but that's not asaving faith.
Faith doesn't justify you because it just knows facts about God, um or it just agrees withdogma.
Faith, it justifies you because of what it receives.
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That is the righteousness of Christ, as Peter says.
uh And that is in the promise, the great promise of God's power, that is of God's gospel.
uh Okay, so now there are some other questions that came up that...
uh
there were other questions that Eric had in his video, but other questions that came up,and they're really helpful to clarify this kind of stuff.
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So, one of them was past salvation and future salvation.
And I think Eric may have talked about this a bit in his video, but other people broughtit up too.
So, the question is, okay, well, Paul says we're justified, the he who uh does not workbut...
trust in Him who justifies the ungodly, His faith is counted as righteousness, um and inother places like that, that He saved us because of His mercy and not because of our
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works, Titus 3.
And so the Catholic response to that is going to be something like, okay, well, that's thebeginning of justification.
That's you being brought into uh God's gracious covenant.
um
standing in God's grace and being in a state of grace, but then your justification is aprocess.
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You're not fully justified before God uh by uh faith alone, apart from works.
It's just you're initially brought in through faith.
But even then though, they're going to say that you cooperate with God's grace by usingyour natural grace.
And that gets into the issue of grace, which uh we'll talk about in a little bit.
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But I just want to say this when it comes to past salvation and future salvation andpresent salvation.
So in other words, can we say—so we might agree that, you were saved apart from works, butyou continue to be saved by your works, forming by your virtue, know, forming your faith.
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oh
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that we are presently being saved by the gospel if wecontinue to believe it, unless we have believed in vain.
Peter says in 1 Peter 1, which I quoted before, that we are kept by God's power throughfaith for the salvation ready to be revealed in the last day.
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Now, it's true that there is, the Scriptures will speak of persevering.
By your perseverance, you will gain your life, as Jesus says in...
Luke 21.
ah But this is persevering again is always dependent upon that which is preserving you.
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And what is preserving you is the power of God through faith.
Your works are not themselves preserving you.
God himself is preserving you.
And in the meantime, he is producing works in you for you to uh
you know, to persevere and keep moving forward.
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Because God loves you, you know, He's going to give you little glimpses of the fruit of uhfaith.
ah I already mentioned that love is the greatest because that's what will remain forever.
Faith and hope will no longer exist in the end since they will have served their purpose.
ah Now, this I was just talking about then with—so speaking of fruit,
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One of the things that Eric was asking is, what do you mean by evidence?
They say that good works are evidence of your faith, right?
They're the proof of your faith.
Well, what we mean by that is manifestation or fruit, and they're little foretastes ofwhat faith already holds onto and what hope perseveres and presses toward.
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so Jesus says,
Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, uh out of his heart will flow rivers ofliving water.
This is from John chapter 7.
um John says that he's referring to the Spirit, as John the apostle says that he'sreferring to the Spirit whom those who believed in Jesus would receive.
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ah So, and then Paul, as Peter says, know, repent and believe the gospel.
He says, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgivenessof sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
So the gift of the Holy Spirit is, He gives you a new life.
As Jesus says, my words are spirit and life.
uh But the Spirit also then flows out of you with fruit.
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So Paul identifies the gift of the Holy Spirit with the gift of love.
The love of God has been poured into our heart by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Romans chapter 5, Galatians 5.
ah He describes the fruit of the Spirit.
Love, ah joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, um goodness.
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What's the rest of them?
Self-control is the last one.
uh Sometimes I have those memorized and other times they don't all come out.
uh But this is fruit of the Spirit.
Well, fruit of the Spirit who has given us faith.
And so fruit then is a foretaste of the eternal life ah that we presently possess throughfaith.
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It's what the Holy Spirit pours into those who have been justified by faith and have peacewith God.
So the fruit is meant to encourage us.
ah And that's not to say that we then base our faith on the fruit.
A good tree bears good fruit.
So the fruit depends on the tree that's planted by God.
ah
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And yet, when the fruit comes, like look at the fig tree, you know that summer is near.
That's to give you some encouragement, right?
When I'm counseling people who are struggling over their sin or over doubts or over uhspiritual turmoil, what I'm going to point them to most forcefully is the gospel promise,
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their baptism into Christ, the body and blood of Jesus given for them for the forgivenessof their sins.
um But I'm also going to point out to them that while it is small and often difficult tosee, because we see like in a mirror dimly, God is working fruit in you.
And people do need to have that assurance that God is in you, that Christ is united toyou, and He is, the Holy Spirit is producing fruit in you.
(44:28):
uh So that should be an element of encouragement.
But that's not to say that our faith is therefore
that the object of our faith is the fruit itself.
um It's simply there to encourage us with that kind of manifestation that will finally befully manifested in, as you say, the beatific vision.
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uh Okay, so finally, I want to address this issue uh of rewards, and that's another thingthat Eric brought up.
I got a few minutes left here.
So he wanted to know if we have any concept of rewards.
I'm really glad he asked this question because this will hopefully ah clear some things upbecause I think a lot of times Catholics will listen to Lutherans or other Protestants
(45:28):
talk about faith, faith alone, ah and they'll wonder like,
scriptures often speak of rewards, and so do they have any sense of a reward?
uh so let me just quote briefly a couple paragraphs from the Apology to the AugsburgConfession, uh Article 4b, which is on the fulfillment of the law.
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The whole Article 4 is addressing the issue of justification and good works and how thatrelates to good works.
So this is the second part of that
long portion of the Lutheran Confessions, and it's really worth reading.
Do you have a book of Concord?
You got one for confirmation?
(46:15):
You should read Article 4 of the—read Article 4 of the Oxford Confession, then readArticle 6, then read Article 20, okay?
And then go and read the Apology Article 4.
It'll be the best—besides the Bible, I think it's the best thing ever written.
It's fantastic.
Anyway, this is from Article 4.
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Melanchthon writes, here also we add something concerning rewards and merits.
We teach that rewards have been offered and promised to the works of believers.
We teach that good works are meritorious, not for the remission of sins, for grace orjustification, for these we obtain only by faith, but for other rewards, bodily and
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spiritual.
in this life and after this life.
Because Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 8, every man shall receive his ownreward according to his own labor.
There will therefore be different rewards according to different labors, which of courseGod himself assigns.
But the remission of sins is alike and equal to all, as Peter says, like precious faithunto us through the righteousness of our Lord and
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Savior and God Jesus Christ.
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As Paul clearly says, Romans 5 verse 1, being justified by faith, we have peace with Godthrough our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith, etc.
So, of course, God gives rewards.
uh You know, Hannah's parents—okay, let me just use Hannah's mom as an example.
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Hannah's mom grew up in the faith, being taught the faith.
She's given saving faith, that is faith that holds on.
to the promise of everlasting life.
Well, now the fruit of this faith, she grew in her understanding, and one of the thingsthat she understood because of this knowledge of salvation is, you know what?
I want this for other people, and I want this for my future children.
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And so she meets this guy who's this strapping man, and he's a Christian, but you know, hedoesn't have a full grasp of
of what the gospel teaches, and she wants to make sure that they agree on what the gospelteaches.
And so, he agrees to go through instruction, and he joins the church and confesses thepure gospel, and uh he grows to love it too.
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And so now he's growing fruit.
And then they have children, God blesses them with these children, and they're allfaithful Christians.
They all faithfully uh attend a Lutheran church, confess the faith, and uh
And then now, you know, they know that they want to do the same thing.
They want to find godly spouses who will have godly offspring that God will bless with hisword.
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So what has God done for Hannah's parents?
He's rewarded them.
He's rewarded them with godly children.
And they're going to be able to see their children in heaven because their children havethe gospel.
Their children know the gospel.
And those are rewards that God gives on your father and your mother.
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And you will live long on the earth.
It's first commandment with the promise.
Of course there are promises and—
rewards for our works.
But the reward of eternal life can only be grasped by faith.
And so that's the difference.
And rewards are meant to encourage, just like we give rewards to kids for doing thingsright, you know, to encourage them.
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And God treats us the same way because He's our Father.
But He doesn't reward us with us being His children because of our works.
No.
That's a free gift.
His righteousness, which covers us, ah by which our sins are forgiven, is something thatuh was freely given to us by Christ, that was earned for us by Him.
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Okay, so now I want to just conclude with talking about one last thing.
And this is the issue of equivocation.
So my friend Eric says that he thinks there's a lot of equivocating going on.
And that makes perfect sense that there would be equivocation going on.
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And the reason why there seems to be equivocation and by equivocation is like uhequivocation would be like when, you know, Michael Scott is asked if he's told, he's asked
if he like understands some, like he promises not to make like bad jokes or something likethat.
And they ask him if he understands and he says, what does he say?
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Like yesh.
or yish, right?
He equivocates.
He doesn't say yes, clearly.
Or when you use a word that is not, without really defining the word so that you can givethe appearance as if we can both agree because we're using the same word when we don't
really agree.
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And so, yeah, it's true that there often is equivocation between Catholics and Lutherans.
And that's a whole nother issue here.
You talk about the ecumenical movement, the joint declaration, and all that stuff.
But the reason why there appears to be equivocation—really, there is equivocation when wetalk to each other—is because we use the same terms, but we don't mean the same thing.
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And this is—just to sum this up, and I can spend more time, another time, getting intothis, but what I think is the real difference between the Catholic, the Roman Catholic
definitions of grace and of faith and of hope and love and uh of justification, thedifference between their approach of these terms and our approach of these terms is that
(52:56):
they address them metaphysically.
That is, they first define what grace is in its essence, right?
And course, we wouldn't call, we wouldn't say that grace is some kind of like, it's notlike some material thing, but they would see, but, but, but, or physical thing, but meta
physically, that is in the kind of spiritual realm, it has some kind of quality to it.
(53:20):
Right.
And so they, they define grace in that way, they define faith in that way, and then theyapply it to justification.
And what Lutherans do, Lutherans approach these terms grammatically.
We approach these terms rhetorically.
when the apostle uses the word faith, is he talking about its relation to salvation?
(53:47):
Or is he talking about its relation to the Christian life and the activity of theChristian life?
Well, that's going to make a big difference.
If he's talking about faith in relation to salvation, then it excludes works.
If he's talking about faith...
in its relation to the Christian life, in its activity in the Christian life, of course,he's going to talk about the fruit that comes from faith.
(54:10):
And so, this then brings us to—and I'll talk about grace as well—I mean, I'll just quicklysay with grace, the Roman Catholics are going to define grace first as this quality that
God gives to us, um and then—so then—
Then they're going to apply that to justification.
(54:32):
So then justification, being justified by faith, means that we're justified by being giventhis gift of faith so that we grow in it and that as we grow in it, we are justified.
And that would, of course, include our works.
But see, again, so they're first defining it metaphysically and then applying it.
What we're going to do is we're going to look at when the Bible uses the word grace, whenthey use it in reference to salvation,
(54:59):
in reference to bringing us into God's kingdom, that it is always God's benevolence, it'salways God's free favor toward us for the sake of Christ, and it doesn't include our
works.
ah As Paul says in Romans 11, if it were by works, then it's no longer of grace.
(55:19):
Grace would no longer be grace, right?
But there are times when the Scriptures will speak of grace according to its effect in ourlives.
according to the strength that it gives us to do good things that are pleasing to God.
So like in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, he speaks this way.
You can go and check out what he says there.
(55:40):
He's talking about collecting uh funds for, I think, Macedonia.
And so, yeah, so sometimes the Scriptures will speak of grace in that way.
ah But what they're talking about then is they're talking about the effects of God'sgrace.
Other times...
when they talk about grace pertaining to salvation and eternal life and righteousnessbefore God, it's always excluding works.
(56:07):
And so again, that's the difference between when you first define these termsmetaphysically and then, you know, impose them on the scriptures and on the doctrine.
And on the other hand, what we do is we approach these terms grammatically according tohow they are used in the text.
(56:28):
And this brings us, okay, so finally I'll just make this point about righteousness orabout justification.
One of the arguments that the Roman Catholics will make is they'll talk about theepitomology of the word justification.
So you have the word just, justitia, righteousness, right?
(56:54):
To be made...
righteous is, and then you have the word, you know, facio, to make, right?
Or I make, or I do.
So if you look at the Latin etymology of justification, you can make the argument that itmeans make righteous.
So they're going to say, therefore, justification is this being made righteous through theforming of your faith by love and hope and other virtues.
(57:25):
But the Greek word, dikaiatō, means to declare righteous based on some kind of evidence.
Based on some kind of basis, right?
uh Now, sometimes, this can...
the Scriptures speak of being declared righteous by your works, right?
(57:45):
And like James says, that you're justified by your works and not faith alone.
Okay.
Other times...
ah It's talking about being justified before God.
And that excludes your works.
James says, see that a man is justified by his works and not faith alone.
um But Paul says, if Abraham is uh considered according to the flesh, then he hassomething to boast about, but not before God.
(58:18):
Why?
Because...
No man is justified before God.
No man will be counted righteous before God by his works.
ah But before men, of course, he is.
And that's why we see what Abraham did.
We see that Abraham obeyed God.
And then God rewarded Abraham uh for his obedience.
(58:38):
But before God, his righteousness was in him believing and trusting in God's promise ofthe coming Savior.
So in either case, whether you're talking about being, you know, declared righteousbecause of your own works or your own innocence, that's, we might call that vindication,
right?
(58:58):
ah If I might accuse Hannah of something, of doing something, then God, by His providence,reveals that she didn't do it.
What has God done to Hannah?
He has vindicated her, or you might even say He's justified her on the basis of herinnocence.
But that's not the same thing as her being justified before Him for access into eternallife.
(59:22):
That's her being vindicated before the world, before the angels, before all.
And that's what God promises to do for us ultimately in the end, on the basis of ourworks, to say, boom, see, I proved it.
Look at what He did.
I was hungry and He fed me.
I was in prison and He visited me, right?
And all of heaven and earth will see it and He'll vindicate His people.
(59:46):
So, but in either case, it's judicial.
In either case, it's forensic.
That's how the term is used.
It doesn't mean a process.
And the Roman Catholic theologians have admitted this much.
And that's why they'll say, well, okay, well, you're justified in light of the works thatyou will then finally uh fulfill or accomplish or do or whatever.
(01:00:13):
Well, no, you're justified through Christ.
on the basis of Christ's atonement, as Romans makes clear.
So in either case, the term is judicial.
It's a forensic term.
And even if we do determine the meaning of the word based on the Latin etymology, the termfacio doesn't necessarily mean to form something inwardly.
(01:00:37):
It simply means to do or to act.
So justification is God's judicial action.
as He remains just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ.
So, when we define our terms, when we understand how these terms are used in theircontext, then we're on a better track of understanding what justification is, what faith
(01:00:58):
is, what grace is, what the fruit of faith is, and how all of this plays out in theChristian life, and how we can have certainty of our salvation.
So, this is uh the...
This perhaps was a bit of a scattered one, but that's kind of how I roll sometimes anyway.
(01:01:20):
uh You can, uh underneath this uh podcast, you can see the link to uh Eric's videoresponse to my initial video on Faith, Hope, and Love.
And you can also look, if you haven't seen my other past video about Faith, Hope, andLove,
And in the meantime, we'll see you next time, and thank you for listening to Christendomand the World.
(01:01:47):
Please like these videos um and subscribe to them, share them if you think that they'reworth being shared, and join us next time for another episode of Christendom and the
World.
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