Through Faith Alone: The Church’s Unity in Christ Alone

In this episode of Christendom and the World, Pastor Andrew Preus sits down with Pastor James Wilshusen to reflect on Jesus’ words in Luke 12 about bringing fire and division. Together they discuss how Christ’s Word both divides and unites—separating His Church from the world while gathering believers into true fellowship. They examine what genuine unity in the Church looks like, why it must be grounded in the truth of God’s Word, and how attempts at false unity inevitably fail. The conversation also engages with recent comments by Donald Trump and Michael Knowles on salvation, highlighting the Lutheran confession that our righteousness and certainty rest only in Christ—through faith alone, by grace alone, in His Word alone.

 

 

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah [The Daily Show]. (2025, August 24). Everyone Is Mad That Trump Wants to Go to Heaven [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/J7osXCiEhK0 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I have come to bring fire on earth, and how glad I would be if it were already started.
I must be baptized with a baptism, and how I am troubled till it is done.
Do you think I came to bring peace on earth?
No, I tell you, to bring division.
From now on, five in one family will be divided, three against two and two against three.

(00:23):
A father will be against a son, and a son against a father.
A mother against a daughter?
and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and adaughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." These words of our Lord Jesus are difficult
words to hear.

(00:43):
He who is the Prince of Peace speaks of coming to bring division even in the family.
So today we're going to talk about church fellowship with our guest, our regular guest,Pastor uh Jim Will Susan.
from a neighboring congregation.
We're going to talk about church fellowship in light of what our Lord says here about fireand division.

(01:08):
And we're also then going to respond to a video clip uh from a recent episode of theMichael Knowles show, where Michael Knowles is responding to something that President
Trump said about going to heaven.
And so,
We hope that you enjoy this episode of Christendom and the World.

(01:33):
I'm your host, Pastor Andrew Price.
Well, Pastor Will Susan, thanks for being on again on Christenham in the World.
Yeah, so now you were there, you were just sitting next to me when I read those words ofour Lord Jesus Christ from Luke chapter 12, ah where he says that he has come to bring

(01:57):
fire on the earth, he's come to bring division.
And so, I recently recorded an episode on Closed Communion.
And I'd like to continue that discussion maybe more broadly into the topic of churchfellowship.
so church fellowship has to do with that we agree on doctrine, that we're one in thefaith, there's one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

(02:24):
We are encouraged to strive for that unity.
But how can these words of Jesus, which seem to be saying the exact opposite at firstglance, how do they...
inform our understanding of that unity of church fellowship.
that the fellowship we share is with Christ, not as much with one another.

(02:50):
That what we build together is a fellowship based upon what he says.
We don't get to make it up on our own.
And that indeed we are divided from the world.
that the church is not the world and cannot be the world.
In fact, other places Jesus tells us, in this world you will have tribulation.

(03:15):
But take heart, I've overcome the world.
He has told us that this world's gonna hate us, and if the world hates us, you know what,that is gonna create some division.
And that's actually a good thing, that we should be divided from the world.
We should not look like the world.
As I watch a lot of our, we'll call them Christian,

(03:35):
brothers and sisters in other denominations that have embraced the ways of the world, Ireally don't think we can unite with them.
Because Christ himself would tell us we must separate ourselves or we lose ourselves inthat.
oh
Yeah, I mean, when you look at what Jesus is talking about here, He says, He's come tobring fire on the earth.

(04:01):
And it's helpful to understand our Lord's words in light of the rest of Scripture, becauseHe has come to fulfill the Scriptures.
And when you consider the use of fire, we were just reading today from 1...
Kings kind of muddling through the Hebrew.

(04:23):
First Kings 19 where Elijah is on Mount Horeb or also known as Mount Sinai and thatthere's a fire that comes.
The Lord is not in the fire.
He's not in the earthquake.
He's not in the wind, but he's in that still, you know, it comes in that still smallvoice.
Yeah.
Which of course that's that that gentle voice is, he does, he will not clamor aloud in thestreet, you know, as, as proverb says,

(04:50):
ah And so, of course, that's the gospel, but the fire, that theme of fire still has withit that sense of holiness, that act, and that's just not just the sense of holiness, but
the actual act of making holy.

(05:13):
So, I think of Psalm 12 as silver tried by fire.
is true, so is the word of God tested like silver.
I was thinking of of uh was it second Peter three was the first Peter three where hespeaks of fire that will come up on the earth.

(05:35):
And it will.
Yeah.
Second Peter three that will uh purify.
Yeah, and burn up all the works.
Yeah
Paul in Second Corinthians.
Yeah, and if I remember correctly, the Greek word there is like...
Can also be translated as like creations or like kind of the manufactured things ofpeople.

(06:01):
And all those things are burned up.
And so there's a purifying...
And this gets to one thing that we teach about when we teach on the third oracle, thecreed.
What does the Holy Spirit do?
He makes us holy, He sanctifies us.
What does it mean to be holy?
And I think you and I were probably taught the same thing in catechism class.
To be holy is to be set aside.

(06:23):
Yeah, to be set apart.
And you see this in Deuteronomy, for example, where God says that, I've sanctified you,I've made you holy, and I've taken you away from the nations.
So you don't belong to the nations.
And so fire, the function and usefulness of fire,
is that it burns away the dross and separates or sets apart the actual thing that it'spreserving from everything else.

(07:01):
And so, yeah, it's meant to be a difficult thing.
But we talk about Jesus using hyperbole.
Which I think he does use, I mean, he employs that rhetorical device hyperbole, but inthis case though, he's, he really is speaking very plainly.

(07:21):
It's, you know, very candidly.
Yeah.
Because we've seen even in our own, in our own experience, whether in our own families orcongregations that
mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, know?

(07:44):
Families do divide.
And that is...
And this should be a comfort for us that this is not...
Yes, divisions happen because of sin.
So we can say that the devil sows seeds of discord.
But Jesus comes in and says, yeah, but I bring division.

(08:09):
But the division that he brings is not one of discord as such.
I wonder, I've been wondering about this for a while, should we translate that almost as Iam the dividing line?
That it at Jesus is what divides right and good and salutary and filled with the love ofGod and the gospel message of Christ and what's not with Jesus is this morass of

(08:39):
immorality we see going on around us.
well that brings up what and I think this is also in this same chapter.
I know this is in I usually go to Matthew 11
where Jesus says, he who does not gather with me, scatters.

(08:59):
He who is not with me is against me.
And it's in this, you know, it's in this same kind of vein that Jesus is speaking thislanguage of division and fire and the sword.
And you know when a sword goes out of his mouth, know in Revelation I remember 19, youknow the Word of God comes and the sword is coming out of his mouth and

(09:23):
Hebrews 4 we're told that sword is that the word two-edged sword dividing to the
Bone and marrow, spirit and soul.
yeah.
And then you have Isaiah, is it Isaiah 12?
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth.
So, there is this, there's a judgment.

(09:46):
And the thing about God's word is it brings judgment.
And the judgment, we think of the final judgment, but before that, you have sort of theripples of that judgment that we experience already in our lives.
And it happens when people reject the Word and others are found faithful to the Word.

(10:11):
And that's something you can't circumvent that.
You can't go around that.
oh
23, the last half of Jeremiah 23, when Jeremiah is called to proclaim against the falseprophets, they say, I have a dream, I have a dream, and they've got all these wonderful
things, and you go do you, you get to be whatever you want to be, and you can worshiphowever you want to worship, and it's all great, because hey, you're God's people, but

(10:37):
Jeremiah has to tell them that's not true.
Yeah, yeah, you know, I remember seeing a plaque ah on the outside of what was calledSeminacs.
So seminary and exile, they moved their seminary to Chicago.

(11:00):
Yeah, it was what was it?
St.
Louis University?
Yeah, then they eventually went to Chicago and they and by that time they had rebranded itas Christ seminary, right?
Because they they weren't allowed to call it Concordia because there was the you know,that was already the Concordia seminary.

(11:21):
Well, yeah, but see what was interesting about so I saw this plaque for John Teachen.
OK.
And I want to say it was at the seminary in Chicago, and it was in memory of John Teachen,who, and it says something like, who proclaimed the unifying power of the gospel.

(11:44):
Yeah, and because that's what they would emphasize.
Now, the gospel does unite and, you know, scripture speaks of this, the unity of thespirit and the bond of peace.
But that only exists for those who believe the Word.

(12:04):
Yeah, yeah.
But to insist that the Word of God is always and only uniting and not dividing is where, Imean, that seems to be one of the key facets of Gospel reductionism, where you turn and
you end up turning the Gospel into just our own

(12:27):
uh way of saying, peace, peace, when there's no peace.
But this is...
It's a very hard pill to swallow that Jesus himself brings about the division.
But the division that Jesus brings about is not a schismatic division uh as much as it isa purifying division.
It is one that exposes those who...

(12:54):
are in error, those who are stubbornly holding on to their own opinions and rejecting theWord of God.
And this is, yeah, it's a hard pill to swallow, but it also should be comforting to knowthat our Lord tells us that this is to happen.
So like when you go through a division, when you experience these divisions, which arenever fun to go through, you can find, you know, that kind of solace in knowing that Jesus

(13:21):
said that this would happen.
And kind of to your point before that you don't have this, you don't have unity from theworld.
Yeah.
Any unity that exists from the world, from our own efforts is, is just a dream.
It's not, it, it, it, it's not going to last.

(13:45):
will never last, yeah.
It will never last.
I've been pointing out recently to my members in Bible study as we're working through someof this.
You take a look at the history of the world.
Israel fell to the Assyrians and the Assyrians were taken over by the Babylonians and theBabylonians were destroyed by the Persians and the Persians were destroyed by the Greeks

(14:11):
and the Greeks were destroyed by the Romans and then there was somebody after the Romans
have the goths and the vandals and yeah.
And we have to take seriously the reality that probably even our own great nation willsomeday cease to exist as it does today if we continue down the path of rebellion against

(14:32):
God and separating ourselves from the truth of God.
That God will bring, the Lord will bring judgment on that as well through some means andthey're probably going to be a pagan means.
Yeah.
Yeah.
it's, and, and your, church has always looked at from the world as divisive.

(14:57):
And that's, that is, that's what really hits home here for me is that we don't want to bedivisive.
Like we don't want to be schismatic.
We want unity.
We strive to live at peace with all people as much as depends.
unity.
Yeah, we want truth.
uh
comes only in unity with the one who created us, who redeemed us, who sanctifies us.

(15:21):
that's right.
And that gets to where we find the certainty of our salvation.
Like, this is the thing with the gospel.
I was making this point um in our last installment here, that the gospel is comforting,not because it's easy and palatable to our reason.

(15:41):
The gospel is comforting and easy, as Jesus says, like, my burden is easy, my yoke iseasy, my burden is light.
uh
because of what Christ has done and because of His promise.
And only faith can lay hold of that easy and light burden and yoke of Christ.

(16:05):
Only faith can really identify the comfort uh of the gospel.
Otherwise, our flesh experiences it as a burning away.
of the dross, you know, because our flesh can't lay hold of it.
Our flesh wants to lay hold of other things.

(16:27):
ah And it reminds me of uh my brother Mark and I were talking years ago, we were on someinternet forum and we were arguing about whether a Christian can fall away and whether you

(16:47):
can have faith while committing
you know, grave manifest sins like adultery and murder and stuff.
And, you know, we cited what Luther said about David in the Smoky Lyricals that David didlose the Holy Spirit for a while when he committed adultery with the Shiva and murder
against Uriah.

(17:08):
And then someone responded and said, well, you've just made me question my salvation.
or I have a lot less certainty of my salvation now.
My brother responded, well, that wasn't true certainty.
That was carnal security.
And this is the thing about faith alone is that...
Faith alone, being justified by faith alone, brings with it, first and foremost, the greatcomfort for the burdened conscience that, hey, it is only by God's grace.

(17:39):
It is only by the promise, which you can therefore have full certainty in because it'sfully accomplished by Christ and fully given.
But it carries also with it the fact that you can't have any certainty.
in your own strivings.
And that's...

(17:59):
So that can be experienced as uh something that's very fearful.
I think that brings into perspective what Paul says, that work out your salvation withfear and trembling, because God's the one working in you.
He's the one who is actually bringing...
Who has given you salvation and is keeping you in that salvation, bringing it all about.

(18:20):
And from the perspective of our sinful reason,
that's actually quite terrifying.
so, yeah, this is one of the crosses that the church has to bear is when the last thing wewant to be as Christians is divisive, but then God puts us in a situation where we look to

(18:48):
the world like we are the most divisive people on earth.
We stand around arguing about things that the world doesn't care about.
the world should care about, but because they are lost and don't know they need it, theydon't care about.
Yeah.
When you consider it, so back to what Jesus says here, he says, I must be baptized with abaptism and how I am troubled or anxious until it is completed.

(19:15):
What's he referring to there when he talks about his baptism?
Yeah.
where he's baptized with the fire of judgment that should have been directed towards us.
Yeah, as John the Baptist says, he will come baptized with fire and the Holy Spirit, whichof course then is manifested on Pentecost.
But that shows though that Jesus' baptism in the Jordan is one in the same with hissuffering and death.

(19:41):
And that's why Paul can say that we're baptized into his death.
And this brings to mind then, so when you think of baptism, water, there's fire andthere's water, water washes away and...
separates you from the filth.
And so it reminds me of Luther's prayer, baptismal prayer.

(20:05):
Or no, well, there's Luther's baptismal prayer, but then there's after the baptism in thebaptismal rite.
It says, separated from the world of unbelievers.
Is that after the baptism that we say that prayer?
I have a baptism coming up this this I'm doing a baptism or I'm administrating a baptismthis Sunday.

(20:27):
things you do it but you're reading it and so it doesn't always you know it's there butyou can't remember where
Yeah, yeah, but separated from the world of unbelievers, right?
So that's what baptism is, it separates you from the world.
And there again, Jesus comes to bring division.
It is the division.
And you see like how Jesus speaks in, especially in John's gospel about when he describeshis death, he describes it as leaving the world, right?

(20:54):
He's leaving the world.
His leaving the world doesn't occur first when he ascends into heaven.
It's actually when he goes to the cross.
That's where he's actually dying to the world.
He's dying for the world, but also dying to the world.
Yeah.
And so it shows that our understanding of...

(21:15):
And I wanna get to the application then of this with church fellowship, maybe dig intothat a little bit more, but this shows that our view of fellowship and of the entire
Christian life can only be seen through the cross of Christ.
It cannot be seen by our own reason, our own strength, our own accomplishments, like thiswhole...

(21:39):
brotherhood of man, kind of generic fatherhood of God, and if we all can just set asideour differences and we all get together.
come on, people now, smile on your brother.
Everybody get together, try to love one another right now.
And that's that kind of humanism that has overtaken Christianity and people confuse forthe Christian message.

(22:06):
But how...
how can we apply this to fellowship without turning the conversation of fellowship intojust simply marking and avoiding everyone?
I mean, the Bible tells us we should mark and avoid those who cause division and withfalse doctrine, not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers.

(22:32):
ah But I think sometimes...
church fellowship is looked at merely in that kind of negative way.
Like, don't commune over there.
Don't pray with those people.
Which is important to talk about and be warned about, but...

(22:53):
Perhaps we should speak more of what we should do rather than what don't do this.
We should be gathering together as the body of Christ around the truth of the gospel,around the truth of what Christ has done and the truth of what Christ tells us we are to
do.
I'm going to speak gospel broad sense as the apology takes us to.

(23:14):
Yeah, and what...
So this is kind of what I'm thinking about this is in light of what Jesus says here isthat he says, have come to bring fire.
I have come to bring division.
I have come to bring the sword.
And so when it comes to church fellowship and the divisions, yes, we are called to bewareof false prophets, to avoid those who cause division, teach falsely, and to positively

(23:45):
gather and agree with one another.
But the thrust of what Jesus is saying here is that He's the one who actually isaccomplishing.
So really then all we're doing is reflecting the reality of what he's already done.
m
Yeah, we are suffering the word to be proclaimed and confessed among us.

(24:11):
And the word is doing its work.
as it has always done.
His work, it's him doing it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was one time when I had to deny someone communion.
And then someone said, it's not what you said, it's how you said it.
And I said, no, it's that I said it.

(24:37):
And uh I just had to correct.
And I said, And again, this is not coming from a uh point of stubborn pride on my part.
uh
I, I, the last thing I want to do is lay a stumbling block before someone because of mylack of tact.
But we have to be honest here that the word of God is what breaks and puts together.

(25:05):
It's what kills and makes alive.
It's what wounds and heals.
It's what divides and unites.
And you can't have one without the other.
your soul and spirit, your bone and marrow need to be divided.
In other words, your old atom needs to be exposed and put to death.

(25:29):
there's no, it's like the children's book about going on a bear hunt.
Have you ever read that to your kids?
Can't go under it, can't go around it, gotta go through it.
But he's by our side upon the plane with his good gifts and spirit.
uh So speaking of doctrine and fellowship and dividing and stuff, the impulse...

(25:56):
When we lose sight of faith alone in the promise of Christ alone, then we end up relyingupon our own reason and our own kind of alliances and stuff.

(26:17):
And this inevitably turns into a kind of works righteousness.
And so in this next installment or this next part of this episode, I was wondering if youhaven't listened to this yet.
I was listening to it last night.

(26:38):
But I thought that we would watch a video from
uh Michael Knowles, who is a conservative talk show host, I usually agree with what theguy says.
um And uh I think that he has a lot uh of uh good wisdom in a lot uh of ways.

(27:01):
He's a Roman Catholic.
um So he's very well read on a lot of history and even theology.
But here he, I want to listen to what he has to say about some statements that DonaldTrump made.
And I'd like to hear your reaction to it.

(27:21):
so I don't know how long we're going to listen to it, but we'll listen to it for, for afew minutes.
So, uh, so let's, let's go ahead and we'll have it on the screen.
Uh, when we, when we air this.
So this is Michael Knowles talking about some statements that Trump made.

(27:44):
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(28:04):
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(28:25):
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(29:08):
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We preach Christ crucified.
This is the greatest non-traversy.
We hate Trump because he said this, because he did that.
We hate Trump because he supports Russia.

(29:30):
We hate Trump because he, what, he's, he called Rosie O'Donnell ugly or whatever.
We hate Trump because, all these reasons, all the, 10 years, for 10 years.
All these, he, now, they hate Trump because he wants to end a war, because he wants tosave lives, because he wants to go to heaven, as he explained when he called into Fox and

(29:51):
Friends yesterday.
I just want to end it.
want to end it.
know, we're not losing American lives.
We're not losing American soldiers.
We're losing...

(30:25):
Beautiful.
Can I tell you?
of all of the things to attack a politician for.
This will never be topped.
Attacking a president because he wants to go to heaven.
Now, some people said, well, he's just joking around.
Caroline Levitt was asked in the briefing room yesterday, was Trump just joking around?

(30:47):
Here's her answer.
I know the president said on Fox News this morning that he's partially seeking peace inorder to get to heaven.
Was he joking or is there spiritual motivation behind his peace deals here?
I think the president was serious.
think the president wants to get to heaven as I hope we all do in this room as well.
That was a very good question.

(31:08):
Who was that excellent reporter in the room?
was that Daily Wire's very own Mary Margaret O'Lahan?
I think it was.
There are two groups attacking him for this.
And both attacks are really funny.
The funnier attacks are from the liberals who are upset that Trump is talking aboutheaven.
They're posting this on social media.
say, look at this wacko.
Look at this crazy person talking about heaven.

(31:30):
You know, there was a time not so long ago when political leaders spoke of eternal things.
to believe in our stupid modern degraded age but there was a time when political leaderstalked about things like morality.
felt that they were accountable to a power higher than themselves, actually believed inGod and religion, took seriously the human person and the eternal soul and justice.

(31:57):
There was a time, it wasn't that long ago.
That's what Trump is doing a little bit here.
When political calculations were not merely based on temporal personal self-interest, butactually included things like, I don't know, considering the commandments, uh considered
the Sermon on the Mount.
blessed are the peacemakers, there was a time when such a thing existed.

(32:19):
Okay, so I'm gonna stop there for now.
So, he's going to get into now more of the theological issue.
uh But so far, I guess I can, know, when I, okay, so what are your, what's your reactionwhen you hear a president say, I want to go to heaven?

(32:42):
hope he does, but I hope he realizes what he does isn't gonna get him to have initial.
Yeah, that's my initial reaction too.
And so this is where Knowles is going to...
He's going to respond to that because remember, he's a Roman Catholic.
And now, positively though, I can understand, yeah, it's good to speak of wanting to go toheaven.

(33:04):
And it's also, as he quoted from the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the peacemakers.
If you're driven by a desire to have peace,
to live at peace with people as much as it depends on you.
I think that's a good thing.
as far as...
So on the surface, I pretty much agree, I think, with a lot of what he's saying, althoughas a Bible-believing, Gospel-believing Lutheran, I can see where he's going.

(33:35):
oh And we're about to totally disagree with him.
But so far, yeah, it's like he makes the point that, you know, there was a time when when
political leaders would talk about transcendent things and care about that stuff.
I was just reading uh Aristotle's uh politics, where he's talking about different forms ofgovernment.

(34:03):
And he brings in lot of stuff that he talked about in his ethics, about friendship andstuff like that.
And he says that true friendship is not simply the same as companionship.
uh
true community, a true uh state, polis as the Greek word, is not just those who share incommerce.

(34:29):
That would mean then that like the merchants who gather together at the port.
and might even know each other through business transactions are a community.
And today people want to call everything a community.
But instead he's making the point that no, no, a community or uh a state, a truegovernment.

(34:50):
is something that comes out of like the family and different families.
And Aristotle's right.
You know, this is basically what Luther says, large catechism, know, the all earthlyauthority originates in the family.
Yeah, it all comes from God, but it really originates in the family.
uh And then he makes the point then that we have so we have a common interest.

(35:12):
And one of those common interests should be a transcendent.
interest, know, an interest in uh religion.
Now, Aristotle was obviously a pagan.
But this kind of this idea that there's no room for religion or the hope for that which isto come, that that doesn't play any role at all in a civilized society.

(35:41):
is silly and that secular dream I find is crumbling down before us.
so I think that that's something that Michael Knowles and others do a very good job ofexposing.
So anyway, you have thoughts on that?

(36:02):
My initial thought simply, if Trump thinks he's going to earn salvation, forget it.
Yeah, that's my initial thought.
Should he be striving to bring peace?
Sure.
Yeah.
Is it a good thing that people aren't being killed in wars?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And should he want to go to heaven?

(36:24):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
All right.
So now let's listen to how Knowles continues with this.
The other group that is attacking Trump is extreme Protestants.
You know, I love my Protestant friends and it's not far from every Protestant attackinghim, but there's some people, some really ideological people, who are saying, President

(36:47):
Trump is presenting a false gospel because he's suggesting that you could be saved byworks.
This is a workspace salvation.
This is Pelagianism.
Calm down.
Calm down, people.
This was not a theological treatise from the president.
He was saying a one end of war.
because that would be good and it would save people and bless it to the peacemakers and Iwant to go to heaven and I want it.

(37:11):
The Pelagian heresy which says that we do not have original sin which says that we earnour salvation we can deserve our place in heaven that was condemned.
It was condemned at the Council of Carthage in AD 418.
Okay, so I'm gonna stop there and
And I just want to make one point.

(37:33):
There's something I've noticed about Knowles, and I've noticed this about other RomanCatholics, is that what he does is he...
Okay, so he brings up the heresy of Pelagianism.
Pelagius, who uh was, during the time of Augustine, uh what would that have been like theearly fifth century?
And he's teaching that we have the ability to work our way to heaven, basically.

(38:00):
And Augustine responds to him and says, no, but then you have a sort of semi-Pelagianismthat develops later on where you say, well, okay, we can't totally work our way to heaven.
God initiates it and he brings us into his grace.
But then you end up getting a basic workspace.

(38:23):
But you notice the way that he speaks here is he...
he's first going to categorize it in this kind of historic category of Pelagianism andsay, well, we condemn Pelagianism, so he's kind of covering his bases.
And then it was condemned at the Council of Carthage.

(38:44):
okay, great.
So what he's doing is he's portraying for you how everything just fits together.
The Roman Catholic Church has already...
has already dealt with this.
And good for the Council of Carthage.
I would have been right along there with them uh condemning Pelagianism, right along with,you know, standing there with Augustine.

(39:09):
uh But he's speaking in this historic way.
to show that, okay, you guys are all out of touch historically.
And this works often with arguments, and it can be a very good argument to go back tohistory, but what he's doing is he's, it's like he has an almost controlled opposition

(39:31):
that there's, oh, this is just Pelagianism, you're just talking about Pelagianism, butthis isn't Pelagianism.
And he just kind of asserts it, but he never,
Yep.
He never really proves it.
He's gonna try to prove it, but let's just keep seeing uh Where he goes here?
I don't think that President Trump is a neo-neo-pallagian resurrecting this ancientheresy.

(39:55):
I think that President Trump is expressing pretty basic, broadly Christian intuition.
Because there were three parts to what he says there.
He says, I want to the war and save lives because I want to go to heaven.
because I don't think I'm top of the list for getting into heaven.
And that last part is the one that no one's talking about.

(40:17):
But that's the most important part, because that's the expression of humility.
There we have the beginning of wisdom.
saying, he is saying, I don't deserve to go to heaven.
Do you get it?
He's...
I think I'm the bottom of the totem pole and when I and I've said this for years I've saidTrump is a humble guy and none of you get it cuz none of you know had comedy and you don't
know how to talk like a New Yorker and So when when the Libs would say he's so arrogant.

(40:42):
He's so narcissistic.
He's so prideful said I actually think there's a kind of humility to him Like when he wasasked if he was gonna have a beer in Ireland or beer on st.
Patrick's Day.
He said nah, I don't drink beer I'm probably the only president ever who doesn't drinkbeer.
It's the only good thing you can say about me Can you imagine if I drank I'd be the worst?
That's an
of humility.
That's a self-deprecating joke.

(41:03):
Here he says, look, I want to save lives.
Why do I want to save lives?
Just because it's in the American interest?
No, it's actually not necessarily in the American interest to save lives.
That's the parties that...
the liberal grand strategists who have been talking about how important it is to keep theUkraine war going.
People like Joe Biden, people like Mitt Romney, who said, well, this is a great way todegrade the Russian military, and we don't have to sacrifice any American lives to do it.

(41:25):
This is great.
Keep the war going forever.
They are articulating the grand strategy that keeping this meat grinder moving in Ukraineserves the American interest.
And Trump says, yeah, but 7,000 people a week are dying.
I don't want that.
Why don't you want that?
Isn't that good for the American?
I don't want that because I want to go to heaven.
That's why.

(41:45):
You think you earn your salvation, you think you deserve a place in heaven?
No, I don't!
I don't!
I think I don't deserve to go to heaven.
I think that I'm the bottom of the totem pole now.
And I think that if I can, in my power, do any good whatsoever and cooperate with what Ithink God is demanding of me, I think it might help.
That's a very Christian point of view,
not to uh sound like a preacher here, like a Bible thumper, but I am recalling a verse.

(42:11):
I think it's what James 2.24, which is, man is justified by works and not by faith alone.
Do we forget that?
The phrase faith alone appears exactly one time in the Bible and it's in James 2 24 thatsays a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.
Now, this is a little bit confusing of course because we don't earn our salvation andPelagianism is heretical and the initial justification that comes to us is purely from

(42:41):
God.
We do absolutely nothing to earn that.
But that's not the whole story.
because then we are called on to cooperate with God's grace.
James goes on to tell us that faith without works is dead.
What he is telling us, what God is telling us, inspiring the authors of the Bible, is thatfaith looks like something.

(43:01):
What our Lord tells us in the Gospel of St.
Matthew is that a man will be judged according to his works.
That doesn't mean that he earns his salvation.
That doesn't mean that he is not totally in need of God's grace.

(43:33):
But it means that it looks like something.
That's what Trump's saying.
Are we clear on the theological point?
Can we not?
You know, it's like we can't ever take yes for an answer.
We have, for the first, maybe the first time in my life, a president openly expressing alonging to be with God, expressing profound humility in, think, a sincere way.

(43:59):
trying to end wars, which is exceedingly rare at the Oval Office in my lifetime, andsaying that he's humble.
He's saying, I don't deserve heaven and I want to be with him.
What does it mean to say I want to go to heaven?
It means I want to be close to God.
Those are the three least objectionable things I've ever heard out of the Oval Office.

(44:19):
And people find a way to complain about it.
Not just the Libs, but even sometimes people on our own side.
Give me a break.
Okay, so we'll stop there.
uh Okay, so again, what he's doing here is he's compartmentalizing it into thesecategories.
So first he's like, all right, so there's Pelagianism that says that we just earn our wayto heaven, but that was condemned by the church.

(44:46):
ah And...
uh
And he's not uh teaching a kind of Pelagianism.
So he's already kind of covering, like again, he's covering his bass there.
But then he goes in and he says, so there's humility.
So he shows humility because he says, he gives kind of a self-deprecating statement abouthow...

(45:07):
Yeah, low on the totem pole.
And so my impression of this, my first impression of this is that...
Trump is a woefully ignorant, theologically, person.
He's very, very, theologically very ignorant.
He's not well catechized.

(45:28):
ah And this guy, Knowles, is sweeping in to say, well, actually, you are demonstratingthese virtues.
And what this...
The Roman Catholic, so the Roman Catholic dogma is going to say, yeah, so the initial partof grace, it's all God's grace, it's all the work of God, but then we cooperate with it.

(45:55):
But if you dig more into what they mean there, that cooperation of grace actually is doneby...
what they would call natural grace or prevenient grace.
And so their view of grace is that it's the virtues that God pours within you.

(46:17):
And then what you end up having is a grace, a definition of grace that includes your ownmerits.
So he can't on the one side say, well, we don't earn our way to heaven.
But then he goes on to say that
our good works do gain heaven.
So which one is it?

(46:37):
And this is the thing that like I, you go back and forth, back and forth around and aroundwith these Roman Catholics and they'll say, well, you guys, this is a caricature that you
guys are giving of us that we earn our way to heaven.
We don't say that we earn our way to heaven.
Merits are not the same thing as earning something.
Yeah, they are.
Merits are earning things.

(46:58):
In the Boy Scouts, you get merit badges because you
earned them.
That's what merits are.
So they're playing all these word games with and defining these terms and having a specialcategory of virtue, of various virtues, so then they can see evidence of those virtues
like humility and say, there is, you know, this is how God's grace works.

(47:23):
So that's kind of my first initial reaction to that.
But what are some of your reactions?
I heard very much Roman Catholic doctrine, but just grace gets you in, but then it's up toyou from there on out.
You have to cooperate and you have to do and you have to earn and yeah, it's not gonna getyou into heaven, but it will if you follow their doctrine far enough, it gets you out of

(47:51):
purgatory.
Sure, well, it does, but I think they would say it gets you into heaven.
It's what they're doing is they're saying, okay, the initial grace is all God.
But then after that, you cooperate.
you've got to earn it.
Yeah.
got to earn it.
the metaphor, I kind like metaphors, the metaphor that I have found helpful for me tounderstand Roman Catholic doctrine here is you've got this car.

(48:22):
Your faith in effect is a car.
you
And God fills it up, fills the gas tank up with grace at your baptism.
And then you go down the road and you sin and you empty out the gas tank as you'resinning.
And now somehow you've got to put grace, fill that gas tank back up again.
And how do you do that?

(48:42):
Well, you do that with your works.
You earn that so you can fill your gas tank back up again.
You merit more grace from God so that you can use that grace to keep
to keep going down the road.
And okay, so it's true that, okay, God calls us into the faith.
He gives us faith.
He makes us new creatures in Christ.

(49:03):
And then now we do, by His grace, have new powers, new thoughts, new abilities, which thenby which we are able to walk by the Spirit and cooperate with the Spirit, consent to the
Spirit's work.
But this is the problem, though, is that for the Roman Catholic scheme, they're going tounderstand that cooperating grace as part of the free will, part of reason, right?

(49:36):
And so, it's like a natural grace.
And so, you have this habitual grace, and really then, what grace is, it's not simplyfaith
holding on, it's not God's favor toward the sinner to declare him righteous.
and the granting of faith to be able to grasp the promise in the gospel, it's rathersimply a virtue that God has already poured into everyone by nature, and then which God

(50:11):
initiates, then you by your natural grace or free will are going to kind of cooperatewith.
So ends up being...
So like we don't necessarily have a problem with synergism that is working together withGod when we're talking about
sanctification.
When we're talking about, you know, responding in the daily life as a Christian to God'sWord and striving to do what is pleasing to him.

(50:40):
Whole third release of the law.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And uh we do it in great weakness, of course.
But we are...
It is true that we cooperate according to the inner man, that we have this new man thatwe've received in Christ.
But the way that he's describing it is he's conflating the human virtue, the human kind ofnatural reason and will to

(51:11):
God's grace.
So instead of it being the working of the Holy Spirit only through the gospel, through thepromise to engender and create faith um and strengthen faith through the Word, uh it
becomes rather a just conglomeration of all types of virtues that God just kind of pourswithin you and then you work together with so that you do essentially work your way

(51:41):
heaven.
But then they're gonna say, you don't earn it because God is the one who initiated it.
Oh, okay.
I mean, you're still earning it, though.
What you've done is you've redefined grace to include our virtues.
um But there's also, okay, there's also, what Bible passage does he bring up?
James too.

(52:03):
2 24, of course.
And did you know, Hannah, that the only place, you know, we as Lutherans, we like to saywe're saved by faith alone, right?
Did you know that the only place in the Bible where the phrase faith alone is found is inJames 2 24, where he says that a man is not justified by faith alone?
Did you know that?

(52:24):
You this is, know, these the Roman Catholics, they love to point that out to us.
First of all,
James is.
He doesn't simply say, man is justified by works and not faith alone.
He says, you see that a man is justified by works and not faith alone.

(52:45):
He's talking about being vindicated.
He's talking about your faith being proven.
And he's talking about being justified, in other words, before men.
As Paul says very clearly, if anything is counted to Abraham according to the flesh, thenthere is boasting
or if Abraham is justified according to the flesh, then there is boasting, but not beforeGod.

(53:10):
Right?
So we're not justified before God by anything but faith apart from works.
And that's the other thing then, second of all, saying faith alone is simply...
uh interpreting what and translating, because every translation is interpretation, of whatis said all over in scripture that we are justified by faith apart from works, apart from

(53:33):
the flesh, apart from the law.
So it's excluding everything else.
It's those exclusive particles.
But third of all, he's wrong.
James 2, 24 is not the only place in the Bible that uses the phrase faith alone.
And I've talked about this before, but Luke chapter eight, what is it?

(54:00):
Verse, I was just looking at, yeah, verse 50.
Luke chapter eight, verse 50.
Here's what Jesus says to Jairus.
He says, hearing this, Jesus told him, don't be afraid, only believe, and she will getwell.
only believe.

(54:21):
Now, okay, does he say only have faith?
Yeah, you could translate that way.
He's not using the noun faith, but he's using the verb believe, which is the same thing.
so, Jesus literally says, only believe and your daughter is going to live.
So, Jesus gives to Jairus, but he teaches Jairus by this miracle that life

(54:47):
is given, is obtained, only by what?
Faith.
Jesus teaches faith alone.
He explicitly teaches faith alone.
that, of course, is when we receive from God the eternal life.

(55:08):
So anyway, the...
And he is conflating the idea also that our confessions pick up so well that yeah, we aresaved by faith alone, but faith then never stands alone.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
A good tree must bear fruit.
Yeah, so he's going to say, okay, so God brings us into it, but that's not the wholepicture.

(55:32):
Well, yeah, of course, there's more that happens.
God tests your faith, but that doesn't mean that your works contribute in any way to yourgetting into heaven.
what James is saying too.
When he says faith without works is dead, it's dead faith.
Okay, fine.
Because faith will naturally produce good works.

(55:58):
It should.
And if it's not, then you got to wonder if there's faith.
Yeah.
Yeah, and you know, when it comes to rewards, our confessions also admit that there areplenty of rewards, both in this earth and in the life to come, that are given to works.

(56:18):
uh one example is, if you diligently teach your children the Word of God,
and teach them the gospel and raise them in the fear and instruction of the Lord, uh onereward that you will have in heaven is that your children will be in heaven.
God does reward her.

(56:40):
Yeah, and grandchildren.
God rewarded Mary for her obedience and faith by giving her the great honor of being themother of God.
Does that mean that she was saved?
and justified by her uh exercise of her free will?
No.
uh God rewarded Abraham.

(57:02):
He said, because you obeyed me, then in your seed all the nations of the earth will beblessed.
So it's not that Abraham's salvation and righteousness is anyway dependent upon his ownobedience, uh but...
his vindication is, that is, uh proving that his faith is genuine certainly happenedthrough the testing of his obedience.

(57:28):
But there is a reward that God gives to Abraham to make him the father of many nations, tohave the seed, the Savior come through his lineage.
And that is a reward that God gives to obedience.
eternal life, the forgiveness of sins, the righteousness by which we stand before God, thekingdom of heaven is not rewarded to anything but to faith.

(58:01):
To faith holding on.
To Christ.
Yeah.
Faith that holds on to Christ, holds on to the promise.
And this is so important because otherwise you can't have certainty of your salvation.
If you're like me, you'll like to read a few different translations of the Bible.

(58:21):
Cross-referencing various passages in the Bible gives me insight into how words andphrases are used and repeated throughout the Scriptures.
And of course, as a pastor and teacher of God's Word, I often consult the Hebrew and theGreek sources as well.
But if you're like me, you also want your children to read and understand the Bible.

(58:42):
While there are many cross-references we can find when we dive deeply into scripture, it'snice for the simple Christian to see the basic connections between the Old and New
Testaments without getting overwhelmed.
An American translation of the Holy Bible, first translated by Rev.
Dr.
William F.
Beck, is specifically translated in the words of American English.

(59:08):
I especially appreciate using Pastor Beck's translation while I'm at home leading mychildren in devotions and daily Bible readings.
It reads almost like a novel, as the biblical accounts are clearly presented from theiroriginal languages into contemporary American English.
The simple references between the Old and New Testaments, found on almost every page, alsoshow the reader

(59:34):
how all the scriptures point to Christ and His fulfillment of God's will.
The maps in the back are also very simple and straightforward and detailed without beingintimidating to the simple student of scripture.
An American translation of the Holy Bible is a perfect gift for confirmation or for anyonewho is looking for an accessible translation of scripture in plain American language.

(59:58):
To order a copy for yourself or for a loved one, visit ChristianNewsMo.com.
You can click on the link at the bottom of this podcast.
Then just scroll down on the home page and you'll find a link on the left side of yourscreen.
An American translation of the Holy Bible.
A Bible for every English speaker who needs to learn of Jesus and His redemption.

(01:00:23):
you
Can I have certainty that I'm going uh to uh know the Scriptures uh as well as I mightexpect to know them as a pastor who's been a pastor for a number of years?

(01:00:45):
Can I have certainty in that?
Well, no, not in the same way that I can have certainty in my salvation, because mysalvation is fully found
in the promise of the Savior who died and rose for all people.
with that baptism of fire for us.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
He's the one who endured that baptism of fire.

(01:01:06):
And this gets to kind of going full circle then with this idea of Jesus bringing fire.
Yeah, okay, politically speaking, I agree that someone who strives to end wars or to comeuh to peace treaties, that's good.
That's what you should be doing, you know?
That's, if you're in that role as a ruler uh or a diplomat, you know, that should be yourgoal.

(01:01:31):
and you should be commended for that.
And in fact, God will reward you in this life for that.
But just because you see someone who shows an element of humility, and I would agree thatfrom a human standpoint, you can find humility in those kinds of statements, we're not

(01:01:54):
justified because of the virtue of our humility.
We're not even justified by the virtue of our faith.
We're justified through faith in the promise.
That's how we are justified.
That's how we have the certainty of our salvation.
And so what this ends up doing then is this kind of romantic theology uh allows you tokind of polish over...

(01:02:23):
uh polish over, you know...
misunderstandings of God's grace and just kind of sanctify with your own reason and yourown kind of churchy theological talk really what amount to be worldly endeavors.

(01:02:45):
And again, I'm not saying that like from a worldly standpoint, it's not...
Again, I commend it, you know?
Good thing.
It's a good thing to want to bring about peace in your...
you know, according to your office and station in life.
But just because someone demonstrates some outward virtue of humility, which again, I'mnot arguing that he's not doing that, you know, self deprecation.

(01:03:12):
Yeah, sure.
That's the show is a little bit of you don't take yourself so seriously, but that is that.
So, so, so, so that's in the category of humility.
So now therefore this is how he then is, is a
is being justified or being saved.
um Yeah, is, true humility is much deeper than saying, oh yeah, I'm not the best guy inthe world.

(01:03:44):
True humility is realizing I can't save myself.
Period.
End of story, full stop.
Yeah.
And true humility, true humility is, is the other side of the coin of true humility istotal confidence in God's word and God's promise.

(01:04:05):
Because when we say that God's promise is the only thing that takes us across the finishline, that brings us into his kingdom and keeps us in.
his grace, then we are excluding all of our own uh works and virtues and qualities,whether they are feigned or we might sincerely feel them.

(01:04:33):
None of that.
There's no, as Luther says this to John Brenz in a letter, there's no quality in my heartat all, call it faith or charity.
Instead of these, I set Christ himself and say,
there is my righteousness.
so this is, know, it, it, I think my version of hell would be having to listen to thiskind of smug papism.

(01:05:03):
at least for you.
Yeah, at least, yeah.
Like a very miserable purgatory.
And listen to these guys explain to me, Papal explained to me, how Paul's clear teachingsof justification apart from works are really just, it's really not that simple.

(01:05:27):
It's more complicated than that.
And he even said, you know, this can be confusing.
Yeah, of course, it is confusing.
It's very confusing because the scriptures clearly say that we are saved by faith in whatChrist has done.
And now you're bringing in works.
So is it not simple enough to say a good tree bears good fruit?

(01:05:52):
And if a tree is not bearing good fruit, that's manifest evidence that it doesn't havefaith, you know, that it's not a good tree.
That doesn't mean that you're saved by your works.
It just means that your works are evidence and fruit of your faith.
So, yeah, anyway, this this this dialogue here might uh get one of my Catholic friends todo another video.

(01:06:21):
But yeah.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, we can welcome the discussion.
uh What I what I wish that Michael Knowles would do is read
the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Article 4.
Just read that.
It covers all of these arguments.

(01:06:42):
uh the other thing to mention, and I've already mentioned this before, but to reallyemphasize is that grace, while the Scriptures will sometimes speak of grace as like the
fruit of grace, right?
grace of God has been given you to be able to give to the Macedonian or give to Jerusalem,know, stuff like that.

(01:07:10):
To be, you know, God has caused us to be generous.
But the grace of God, whenever the grace of God is spoken in terms of salvation, it alwaysexcludes works.
And as Paul says in Titus 3, he says,

(01:07:32):
He saved us not by works done in righteousness.
Do we do works in righteousness?
Yes.
Those are the works that we do as Christians.
Even those works don't save us.
That's very clearly taught in Scripture.
So, and what you end up getting then is this...

(01:07:52):
You have a very nice polished political philosophy uh and virtue ethics.
And that's all fine and good on its own, I suppose.
uh But you're not actually talking theology because you're just talking...
You're conflating the promises of God with virtues that even a pagan can recognize.

(01:08:21):
But then what do many uh Roman Catholics end up teaching about the pagan philosophers?
Well, if you read Dante, the Divine Comedy, then Aristotle is in Purgatory at the highestlevel of Purgatory and he stays there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
because he's got that natural grace.

(01:08:41):
Yeah.
Right?
He's got that
They're going to make the jump into heaven, but he's going to stay at that high level.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is something we were talking about this in Bible class, we were going throughthe book of Job.
And Eliphaz, his friend, he has this view of God's wisdom and human wisdom where it'salmost like a ladder.

(01:09:05):
And the older and more experienced you are, and the more human wisdom you are, it's likeyou're that much closer to God's wisdom.
Job, despite the fact that he often misses the mark...
Job does understand that, okay, no, God's wisdom is as far above man's wisdom as heaven isfrom earth.
And it's the same thing as God's righteousness.

(01:09:30):
So this idea that we're going to...
The idea that because someone demonstrates that he has certain qualities and virtues, thattherefore, he must be able to have some sort of like...
link to God through those virtues.
That is just, you can polish it up and say it's not about earning because we stillbrought, because God initiates it with his grace.

(01:09:57):
ah But when you end up defining grace as all the virtues that God gives you, then youstart identifying grace with even the natural virtues that a pagan can have.
then, yeah.
Yeah.
And you've nullified the grace of God.
If it is by works, grace is no longer grace, as Paul says.

(01:10:18):
So it reminds me of this time when Pope Francis said to this boy, I don't know if youremember this, this boy was, it was very sad.
It was heartbreaking.
This little boy was sad because his dad had died and he thought his dad was an atheist.
And so he was thinking, well, my dad wasn't saved.
And uh this gets back to what Jesus says.

(01:10:40):
I came to bring division between father and son.
That's sad kid, that's really sad.
My heart breaks for you.
But remember that the division, that the unity that Christ gives us is not according tothe flesh.
You know, as the psalmist says, leave your father's house because the king desires yourbeauty.
So how did Frank the hippie pulp answer him?

(01:11:04):
he said, father brought you to be baptized.
And so even though he was an atheist, he still followed the virtue that was within him.
And this is what Vatican II teaches, right?
We have this kind of anonymous Christian.
So when the grace of God is conflated with just natural virtues, then all you're doing isjust buttering up...

(01:11:31):
uh carnal thoughts and carnal knowledge and carnal virtues and carnal uh powers.
uh yeah, it's just, what it is, it's an excuse to be worldly while feeling like you arebeing nice and Christian.

(01:11:56):
You're not going to get to heaven because of how conservative you are.
Nope.
It's only by...
Or how liberal or whatever.
Or how compassionate you are or how much you really wish that the wars would cease.
That's not what gets you to heaven.
You're getting into heaven because of what Christ has done for you.
And faith is what grabs the hold.

(01:12:18):
alone, as Jesus our Lord teaches to Jairus, you know, only believe.
Jesus teaches faith alone, explicitly.
so any, so, so yeah, Luke 8 verse 50.
I gotta make sure that's right.
Luke 8, yes.

(01:12:38):
Luke 8 verse 50.
Jesus explicitly teaches faith alone, if you want a proof passage.
And then with that, just read the rest of Scripture and ask yourself, uh do my powerscontribute in any way to the grace of God?
Okay, well, that's uh, I guess that's...

(01:13:00):
I just wanted to rant about that a bit.
Well, I was glad to join you in your rant.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you have any, do you have any other rants?
Yeah.
That's what I got to figure out is just like bringing, figure out what the nickels are forpastor Will Susan and just throw them in and then just let them go.

(01:13:21):
Okay, okay.
We'll get there.
So, all right, well, thanks again for being on with me.
It's always pleasure to join you and to discuss theology.
I love to discuss theology.
Yeah, me too.
All right.
Well, we'll have you on again soon.
And thanks for listening again to Christendom and the World.
I'm Pastor Andrew Price.

(01:13:41):
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