Dever, Duncan, Thomas, and Sproul: Questions and Answers #3

we'll start off with an easy question this morning after purchasing the ESV Bible it had been based on the RSV is it possible to be based on the RSV and be accurate that's for our C well as I mentioned in the pre-conference seminar I believe the RSV which appeared in the middle of the 20th century and captured much of the church world and away from the King James Bible as the Revised Standard Version certainly had within it a decided liberal bias and I for one was glad when the RSV sort of fell into disuse and was lying dormant as it were by owned by the National Council of Churches or so on well crossways publishing house I believe it was was able to secure the publishing rights of that RSV and they went back and fixed it basically with a team of evangelical scholars led by dr. J I Packer to revise the revised version back to the original sources and and as I said clean up this obvious liberal bias and so what we have now with the English standard version is not simply a reprint of the RSV so please don't get that idea anyone else wouldn't respond to that but just historically I think the two things that the RSV was always said to be liberal over particularly Isaiah translating the word they're not as virgin but as maiden and they saw that as a strike at the virgin birth which it was and in in first John it's translating Alaska my not as propitiation but is expiation because CH Dodd who was chairing the committee then for the RSV in the New Testament did not like the idea of the personal wrath of God and expiation just means covering over our sin where's propitiation is turning away God's wrath so at the King James had rightly his propitiation the artist he had his expiation it was those two matters particularly that sent off conservative evangelicals against the RSV in the 1940s correctly I think and those two things were certainly among the many things changed and improved by the ESV is there a place in worship for children's messages if worship is primarily for the balloon well let's just deal with that one first our practice is to do children's devotional message on Sunday evenings now different churches do it different ways if you were in a Free Church of Scotland very conservative Presbyterian denomination in Scotland they very often have children's messages on Sunday morning as well and so their different ways of doing it but what we try and do is we model reading the scripture praying the scripture and singing the scripture with the children in that message it's very tempting for some people to be cutesy and a children's message and actually sometimes to speak to the adults more than you're speaking to the children and so it's important to speak in language that they understand and it's in sport and important to fill them with scriptural knowledge and facts about the stories of the Bible they very often will use complex analogies and children's messages that are completely lost on them especially when they're very young they're more concrete and so if you can repeat them the stories and then focus on the main lessons of a particular passage and then allow someone else to follow up we will very often use a catechism question as the idea around which the scripture reading and the song is focused and then in their time with a children's teacher outside of the service they'll focus on and elaborate that lesson and we encourage them to talk about that catechism question the scripture passage in the song with their parents on the way home and so will we'll do that on a Sunday evening as as a way of reminding the children that we are focused on them as a part of the larger congregation of God's people assembled desiring to Minister the Word of God to everyone who is there and so again it follows the same pattern of read the Bible explain the Bible seeing the Bible pray the Bible one of the most remarkable things for me to observe every now and then and it's a beautiful thing that ligand as the senior minister of the church will will sit down on the steps in the sanctuary surrounded by these little children and speaks to them in baby-talk in children's vocabulary and I I just think that's a beautiful thing to see and I think it's a mark of servanthood whether you do it as a separate section of the liturgy or whether in preaching you you you force yourself to stop and say now I want to address the children here which which I've done in the past there are certain sections of a sermon that are particularly appropriate to children and and whether you do that as a separate part of the liturgy seems to me to be neither here nor there anybody else I just had my cell story when I was in seminary and I was serving as a student assistant in the church in western pleasure in the steel town of Charleroi Pennsylvanian one of my Jobs was to do the children's sermon and we were on the radio and I was sort of asking the children the question and I said what happens if we turn our backs on Jesus and this six-year-old girl just screamed it out she says we go right down to hell to Satan the devil she preached my sermon for me said it well we sort of had this question last night but a little twist if worship is primarily for the believer is there a place in worship for an invitation to salvation in Christ the administer is always conscious of pressing the claims of Christ on every here whether that here is a believer in Christ and those claims are Christ claims for discipleship or whether that here is an unbeliever in the congregation who has not submitted himself or herself to the lordship of Christ and rested and trusted on him alone for salvation is he's offered in the gospel and so the minister is always pressing those claims of Christ now it may well be that that person is talking about a separate invitation that would be given at the end of the service we don't practice that especially so that people don't believe that by doing some physical act there by doing that physical act that's not commanded anywhere in the scripture that they have been ushered into the kingdom of God it's possible for them to be sitting right where they are in the pew and do business with Christ by faith and so they're very as you heard Derek do today in the message on servanthood he was pressing home the claims of Christ preaching the gospel to us even in a message to believers on servanthood and the minister always ought to be doing that I told you the story of of Jay Adams sermon on worry at Thomas Road what I didn't tell you is the punchline which I shared with with RC afterwards that that whole sermon was designed to to comfort and encourage and strengthen believers and to encourage them not to be filled with anxiety and worry at the end of that sermon he said after he had given comfort every believer in that church he said now I want to say one thing if you're here today and you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior then you really do have something to worry about because you have a meaningless life and an eternity of separation of God to face and the only way that you can be spared from that is to trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation as he is offered in the gospel he was a beautiful way to preach a message of discipleship and yet bring that truth to bear and he didn't need to give an invitation in order to press the claims of Christ there he was doing it right there he was as it were giving an invitation in the message I realized it last night when we addressed this question we all agreed that worship for Sunday morning is not to be designed for the unbeliever but for the believer because that is the assembling together of God's people yet at the same time the Scriptures tell us that as agustin pointed out the Bible the church has always say corpus / mixed them a mixed body our Lord said there will be tears among the wheat and so I assume that if we have a hundred people or five hundred people in the congregation just in terms of the odds the odds are there gonna be people there maybe who have been church members for years and years and years who are unconverted never have really come to Christ and so there are many times in my sermons that I direct my comments specifically to those people and mana Shing warning exhorting and so on calling them to faith in Jesus Christ I never used the language of invitation because I think it's not only unbiblical I you know I I don't see where God invites people to come to Jesus Christ that comes from the sawdust rail evangelism Charles Finney and all that I said God commands people to come to Christ you know invite him on an invitation you know usually as RSVP it says you can decline with impunity but you can't decline the call of Google gospel with impunity you decline that call you are going right straight down to Satan the devil and the other thing that scares me as you say is that we have an epidemic in the evangelical world where people have confused the making of professions with saving faith everyone who does have saving faith is called to profess that faith but we somehow think that the mechanics of a public profession is what gives people their salvation so we have myriads of people out there at ease in Zion with a false sense of assurance because they can say I walked the walk I went down the aisle I raised my hand I said the sinner's prayer saying the sinner's prayer never justified anybody walking down an aisle never got anybody into the kingdom of God raising your hand to an evangelist has never gotten anybody the kingdom of God the only way you're gonna be saved it's through faith in Christ and in Christ alone and I can't manufacture that we want to we're so jealous to win people that we try to prime the pump and get them out of their chairs and then then we go and we count them now and we end up with what we call evangelistic statistics which aren't very helpful so you don't just woo him well now wait they've been saying we and all this you've got three Presbyterians in here wait just second mark this will handle the next question which they've addressed give your thoughts on the altar call and the sinner's prayer mark well yeah the the we they've been sort of graciously saying really means to cover us the Southern Baptist and other Evan Jellicle is out there because I haven't been in too many PCA services where I've seen an invitational altar call at the end but as let me speak as a Southern Baptist pastor I think the altar call is a wretched idea it's a horrible idea and I always point that out there brother leg says humbly invented by Presbyterian that's right though I read a thesis recently you'll be interested in which actually blames it on the Methodists but anyway it was Charles Finney the Presbyterian and Billy Sunday the Presbyterian who who particularly helped us in that but the the desire for people to come to Christ is wonderful and so I don't think any of us would want to discourage you or your pastor from seeing people to come to Christ we would just very earnestly urge on you and on your church to think if that is a good way to do it in all four of us I think we haven't heard from Derek but I'm sure he'd agree we conclude that is not a good way to do it when I was being interviewed by my congregation before they called me as their pastor the very first question I got was from an 80 year old graduate from Bob Jones and he puts up his hand and he says dr. Denver if you come here are you gonna give an Invitational and I said to him I said you know being asked about an invitational of a Southern Baptist Church is a bit like being asked about the mass at a Roman Catholic Church I said if I come here in fact I would not give an altar call but the reason I wouldn't give one is not the reason that a lot of preachers around here today wouldn't give one a lot of preachers around here today wouldn't give one because they don't believe in Hell they don't really think it makes a difference but I do believe that there is an eternal self conscious torment there are other a lot of other people who wouldn't give it because they don't think your decision really has anything to do with it they don't think you have a decision to make I do think you have a decision to make you do have to decide to follow Christ and the reason I won't give an altar call if I come here is because I have to know that at the end of the day I don't give a count to you I give account to God and I have no intention of standing before God on the last day holding the hands of 300 people I've never even met assuring them that they're gonna go to heaven when their eternity may be something different because you as a church tell me you have 500 members but you only ever have a hundred or 150 here well I want to know where those are the 300 are and once it's there a lot more important to me than you because we as a church have given them assurance they're gonna go to heaven and any kind of evangelism that produces those kind of false conversions in that number I want no part of because I have to ultimately give account to God and then our persistent brother who asked the initial question shot back well then how somebody's supposed to get saved and I said well I would suggest the same way they got saved for 18 hundred years before there were altar calls they repent of their sins and they trust in Christ and then I just got to tell one more and then go ahead preach it and an older sister from Kentucky puts up her hands dr. Deborah will then how will anybody ever make a public profession of their faith I said well for goodness sakes I'm in a Baptist Church in the same way Jesus suggested by being baptized I just happen to notice that I have the sort of blue watery tie on I what do you really think more but not now seriously if you all go back to churches and your to church that does practice an invitation or an altar call I would not make that my headline issue you want to see people come to Christ what I think what RC said was wise you just realized the issue here is false conversions and false assurance that does not help our evangelism a way I put it to individuals before is nowhere in the New Testament are you told to pray a prayer to receive Jesus that just doesn't happen what you're told to do is to repent of your sins and trust in Christ so that's the message you want to tell people of course you want to pray to God but there's not a little sacrament of a sinner's prayer that you pray and then that person knows they're converted repent of their sins they trust in Christ just like you or I did the serendipity guy here let me just add a couple of things one is and and you know even even in sadly even in my circles I will hear all too frequently somebody who goes on a two-week mission trip and they'll come home and give a report that there were four or five hundred professions of faith and I'm always I'm always squirming because a I feel guilty because I just don't believe this and I want to believe it I really want to believe that that is the case but I just don't believe it there would be revival on a scale the world has never seen if that truly were the case and the whole of Eastern Europe you know must have made professions two or three times over if any of this is to be believed one of the one of the dangers I think that we adopt in the Protestant church and in in our own circles there's a kind of twist on Catholic absolution that that Protestants feel as though they must give a kind of Protestant absolution and say you are converted now you are a Christian and you must never doubt it ever again and assurance it seems to me is not something that that I am obliged to sort of bestowed to someone else assurance is the gift of the Holy Spirit it is the testimony of God's Spirit with our spirits that we are the children of God it's none of my business to try and give somebody assurance of faith my business is to point them to the means by which they get assurance through faith in Jesus Christ and repentance of their sins and obedience in a walk you know in a life walk with with Jesus Christ you know the Puritans I've just been teaching a course on on Puritan piety in Brazil but one of the things I was saying to them was that the Puritans had a very remarkable grid that they operated under whenever they were preaching and they would do what I think what we would call today something like audience analysis but in any given congregation they would see five six seven broad categories of people there were there were Christians who were experiencing trials and tribulations there were mature believers there were young believers and the needs and concerns of mature believers are often different from the needs and concerns of young believers there were what they would call seekers somebody who is under conviction of sin somebody who's who's engaged who's the the law the the pedagogic use of the law is convicting them of sin so law work is taking place but they're they're not yet Christians and and then there were there was a category which the Puritans very often would call gospel hypocrites people who thought they were converted there were members of the church but actually they weren't and I think whenever we're teaching and preaching yes it's it's absolutely essential never to make the deduction that everybody in the congregation even if they're members and have been baptized in marked Eva's church that they're all Christians one of the other things I think that's so serious about this is the defective theology it tends to generate a couple of years ago I met a young man who claimed to be a born-again Christian he never went to church he was living illicitly with a woman and he was not married to he was not only involved in the use of drugs but he was selling drugs and I said wait a minute how can you live like this and be a Christian and he said oh it's okay it's okay said I'm a carnal Christian and I said we're in a world that you get that and the thing is in one sense ladies and gentlemen every Christian is a carnal Christian because we have the ongoing battle between the spirit and the flesh but we have in our culture today in the evangelical world this doctrine of carnal christians who are defined in this manner these are people who are truly converted the holy spirit has come into their hearts they are regenerated but unchanged self is still on the throne the cross is inside the life crisis in the life but not on a throne this person remains utterly and completely unchanged and may stay in that condition to their life's end and still be saved that is absolutely a horrific distortion of the biblical doctrine of regeneration of justification of salvation and worst of all of sanctification but what's so bad about it at a practical level is that it keeps giving assurance to people of everlasting life who are unconverted that is not our task and again one of the reasons we have to do that is to defend the efficacy and the success of our own evangelism where we want to say 500 people were converted at our evangelistic ministry and I want to count every one of those persons as a success story and then I have I see that 400 out of the 500 go back to their same old lives and I can't say well those were spurious conversions I have to say well they were converted they just haven't been changed yet it's ghastly stuff and yet there it is out there yeah it's been popularized through the teaching if you've heard it in in some churches where they would have you know revival meetings and the preacher is preaching you know you've accepted a savior now accept him as Lord that's an unbiblical dichotomy if you want a good short treatment of this the late Ernie Reisinger did a booklet that a banner of truth published called what should I think of the carnal Christian and it just about 15 pages he looked at this very carefully Reisinger what should I think of the carnal Christian banner of truth excellent resource thank you this were drawn the John MacArthur stood up and was counted in this lordship salvation the Gospel according to Jesus next book mark this can be a brief just are the women deacons in your church ordained would you ordain a woman as a minister we don't we don't practice any ordination so nobody's ordained we would be like Spurgeon we we pray for people so we do lay hands on the elders and pray for them and they take valence we do that with deacons and Deaconess as though they're not understood to have any authority it's no leadership position I think I would agree with I think all of us would agree on this even if it looks a little different our polities what we're concerned about is to be sure that those who are in leadership meet the biblical qualifications and leadership would be elders in our congregation you know Tim in the early days of the formation of the PCA the church was struggling with how many offices are there to be in the church you know teaching elder ruling elder Deacon all that sort of thing and several theologians were asked to prepare papers physician papers to submit to the General Assembly to give guidance in this thing and I was asked to write I was given the task of writing on the biblical meaning of a church office there's an assignment from hell because I'm searching the scriptures I can't find a word for Church office in there and it and that what I found was the concept of da Cunha that the field from were to which were called to minister is the deacon the servant and that servant ministry manifests itself in different ways and different roles but there was no one specific thing that tells you here's where you get ordained and here's where you don't get ordained and that was an eye-opener for me to go go through all that and see how much of our church structures influenced just by our own traditions or see my dad was on that committee with you and he would come home and would say to Shirley could you help me understand what that are six broad guys trying to teach us in this committee baby she would work with him through your manuscripts and he would try and comprehend these conflicts are you saying mama Duncan's been helping me out for a long time said Shirley Shirley's here Thank You Duncan for helping Papa Duncan okay out of consideration for recovering alcoholics shouldn't grape juice be considered also as an appropriate wine for communion so we're using low-carbohydrate bread for gluttons got a little punchy here okay when or should we all confess our sins to one accountable in our church what so you can go back to the wine that was for me well no let's hurry up we don't want to go back to that when when or should we all confess our sins to one accountable in our church I didn't write these in in Lord's Day worship we should of course confess our sins to God together especially in the pastoral prayer or there may even be a congregational prayer of confession and then a scriptural word of God's pardon to those who have truly repented of their sins and the Scriptures encourage us to confess to one another but not to some priests or priestly figure who can pronounce again some earthly absolution upon us as a mediator for God Christ forgives sins and the minister points the repentance Center to Christ and and does not stand in as an intermediary in the be stole of that mercy and so we should be accountable to those to whom we have offended in our sin Jesus will say that if we are on our way to to worship to offer sacrifice and we remember that our brother has something against us that we're to go and be reconciled to our brother and so we're to be accountable to one another and and not to some priestly figure that pronounces absolution can I point out that there is no Welsh flag hanging from the balcony up here that's Wales or country I think they're shipping is part of a part of the United Kingdom over there the the confession you know we call it the confession but forgive me I mean the Westminster Confession of faith does use some extraordinary lang hopefully helpful language at this point that when it says that particular sins should be repented of particularly and I think that that private sins should be repented of privately and sins which are which are committed in public should be confessed and repented of publicly but I've been at meetings where somebody has stood up and unannounced to the person that they've offended they will say I want to say to my sister who's sitting here you know I've been lusting after you and I want I want to ask for your forgiveness and I don't want to hear that stuff it's like it's it's virus its virus dick it's Christian via ism and I don't think that there's any place for that in the church well you know that's important the private part one of the things I've seen that I think can be devastating is in the case of marriages that have been healed or restored and I've heard men and I've heard women stand up like that and say God has really blessed our marriage you know my husband used to do this this this and this to me but praise be to God he's repented and now we're living a happily ever after and she has just exposed all of his weaknesses and sins to the whole congregation where it's none of their business and and she's just violated her husband and and yet we somehow want to applaud that kind of thing it's I'd like what you say their private sins should be confessed privately public sins publicly yeah and James 5:16 we are commanded to confess our sins to one another and as has been said that doesn't mean a particular clergy class that they're to be confessed to it's each other and I think that the prudence that you've heard here is is true I think it is good to encourage particularly individualistic Americans to confess their sins to each other now there are certainly examples Derek like the one you give that are very inappropriate not only that's in public but even in private it would be even worse I think he were to go to confess to her that he was lusting after her John Stott has a book called confessor sins in which he talks about this well but I think is a regular practice of a prudent practice of confessing your sins to others is both obedient to Scripture and is helpful in growing as a Christians is that what we're thinking about in this conference I would add that what what we call today a mentor or an accountability partner but actually the Puritans you know it's interesting I've just done a series on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress in Sunday school for the third time now and every time I read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress I am impressed again in the game by the way Christian and faithful are good Christian friends and the concept of friendship you know you know the caricature of Puritanism that we sometimes have you know HL Mencken's definition that the the nagging fear that someone somewhere may be happy but but actually actually it's it's very interesting in pilgrims progress how important the concept of a close Christian friend to whom you can talk about the deepest spiritual truths and and in that context I think it's perfectly appropriate to say to somebody that you implicitly trust not somebody who's gonna gossip but somebody whom you love and trust as a brother or as a sister in Christ well let me explain that I mean I mean a man should have a man to confess to I think a woman should have a woman to confess to not not a man to a woman I just think that that concept is a perfectly biblical concept we have enough time I think to do these to what extent should the church speak to the culture example address cultural and political topics in an active manner well there's a lot of division of this historically some people believe you know then the total separation of the two worlds or the two cities the City of God in the city of this world and that the church's business is spiritual and that they ought to stay out of the public square and not have anything to say about cultural political sociological ethical issues on the other hand you have the rich tradition not only in the Old Testament in the New Testament that the prophets of God were called to exercise the Ministry of prophetic criticism God has not given us the sword but he has given us the word and when the one that when the church for example when the state fails to be the state when God authorizes the state as a minister to minister justice and gives to them the basic foundational responsibility of protecting defending and maintaining human life and then that state becomes demonized and sanctions the one destruction of human life then the church has to stand and say that's wrong and call the state the repentance just like John the Baptist called the King to repentance for his illicit marriage and his desecration of the sanctity of marriage and but we have been in a way much like what happened in the nineteenth century with the conquest of the the Native Americans after the Indian wars were over to keep the peace we gave land to the Indians and we called it a reservation and we put a fence around it and said hey you can go and be Indians all you want as long as you stay in the reservation and where we are in America right now is that the Christian community has been banned from the public square we've been placed in exile on reservations and says the church says you can we'll protect your right to to pray and sing your hymns and preacher sermons and be a spiritualist one as long as you're staying the reservation but keep out of the schools keep out of the public square keep out of the halls of Congress keep your agenda everybody else that America has a right to express their position on morality and so on except the Christian Church and I think that that we have rolled over and played dead where we shouldn't do that marked ever equipped so many servants who served publicly as well as serve the Lord in his local congregation in Washington I'm sure he has wisdom on this I would say that a minister has an obligation to help his people know how to live and interact Christianly in their culture in their society in their community and we also have unique privileges as American citizens and as Christians we need to think about and act on those privileges Christianly and take advantage of the enormous resources that are given to us for influencing and having a positive effect in our own cultural setting and so a gospel Minister is going to be concerned to do that and Paul was concerned to do that Romans 13 Peter was concerned to do that the prophets the latter prophets in the Old Testament were very often speaking to people who were in exile about how to be believers in the one true God in an alien culture and so those things are going to be standing concerns from ministers that are preaching expositionally from the Scriptures I think that there are moral issues that are clear that must be addressed so for example our C is alluded to abortion that is not fundamentally a partisan issue for us as Christians the parties may make it a partisan issue and that's their business but for us as Christians it's an absolute clear moral issue there are other issues that are more political in nature without a moral consensus on one side of the other so for example I was the pastor of the church I serve now in 96 97 when the balanced budget amendment came up and there were senators who were bombarded by Christian leaders who had never spoken to him telling them that they would be in sin if they did not vote for that amendment to the Constitution now regardless of what you think about the merits of that amendment that doesn't do the Christian leaders much good in their reputation and wait with the elected officials because those elected officials some of them very conscientious Christians who want to things through his Christians are not helped by people elevating an issue that they think is clearly a moral absolute and seeing no difference between that and something that I think is as clear as abortion so I think as Christians who particularly those of us who are preachers we have a couple of different roles on the one hand we need to as RC and lives that we need to educate the congregation on how to think biblically what is a biblical worldview on the other hand all of us have responsibilities as citizens of a democracy and we can rile up our base which is one thing we learn to do politically but at the end of the day that's only going to get you so far we have to be able to craft arguments that are useful for a common life together and I've had to sit down and think through with public officials in high places whether or not they should appoint people who they personally disagree with on some matters to positions of public trust because that would be acceptable in our culture and those are thorny issues but as Christians we do have to think through do we want to be a part of a country where we don't control it can we not only get each other riled up about things that we know are wrong and they are wrong but can we also think there is enough in common with non-christians that we can fashion arguments to have a public life together even with people we disagree with we made a deal with them we did when we found my country made a deal we said look you give us the right to exercise our freedom of religion we'll let you have freedom of speech freedom of press freedom of a bubble and that deal is being violated exactly and but it's been violated on both sides it has and but what we need to do is then not therefore try to make sure that we can violate it our direction exactly we need to think carefully again about how is it that we can have a common country and frankly it was always called an experiment by the founders and I'm not sure the experiments gonna work but I don't know of any better experiment can I bring it down to the micro that's the kind of the macro us in the world let's bring it down into our reformed community issues which I love you I'm glad that you came and I know that you can speak to this the so called new perspective on Paul seems to be gaining momentum in the Reformed Church what is your response to this is it our minion ism Romanism or unadulterated heresy all of them I'll just make a few comments but but my good friend ligand this is the expert here I am greatly greatly alarmed by the new perspectives because there there is more than one perspective on Paul whether that be of the variety of Saunders or Jimmy Dunn or anti right and and then we've got peculiar overtures saying similar kinds of things within our own context reinterpreting Paul but but all of them saying you know even on the surface level in anybody who says that the Reformation misunderstood the doctrine of justification is not to be trusted on anything and you know that that that the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone as articulated by Luther or Calvin the article of the standing or falling of the church is the most crucial doctrine of all and yet if you were to ask yourself if where would the devil where would the devil most want to meddle with and I think I think the obvious answer is create a doubt about whether the Reformation actually understood justification by faith and and you see the church disappearing before your eyes and and quite frankly I think that's what it is but but that's not to answer the question in the technical sense of what the new perspective is but only ligand he sleeps this time I would I would suggest that you pick up a copy of RC sprawls getting the gospel right and think through the issues that are that are raised in that treatment if you want to learn more about the new perspectives let me suggest a CD and three books the CD is an interview that Mark Deborah and I did with Michael Lawrence it's available at 9:00 marks that's the number nine marks org you can go to the site yeah I think you can maybe even download it or you know let's do for it yeah you can do it download mp3 or you can get a CD and it's it's on what justification and the new perspectives on Paul something like that the three books that I would recommend are a book called justification and the new perspectives on Paul by guy waters PNR published it there is a book by Steven Westar home for those of you who are more advanced in this subject Steven Westar Holmes book perspectives old and new on Paul there is a short summary of this whole debate in that book in a chapter form and the introduction is so funny it will leave you on the floor gasping for breath and laughing it is really good and then the second part I love both of the volumes but I can only do one more so the second volume of Don Carson Peter O'Brien and Marx I Freud's book called justification and variegated Noam ISM terrible title great book okay justification and variegated Noam ISM and the Don Carson's summary to the first volume there are two volumes in that set his summary chapter will summarize all the latest what's going on in terms of Old Testament intertestamental early Judaism and New Testament studies with regard to this so-called new perspective issue the second volume will give you positive expositions of historic Christian views on justification including vindicating Luther there's a excellent chapter by Timothy George vindicating Luther from some of the false aspersions that have been laid at his feet by the purveyors of the new perspectives but I think it's problematic and the bottom line is this the the biggest problem that I see with the new perspectives is I continually men and women confused about what the gospel is who get in and that what worse thing could happen then for Christians to become confused about what the gospel is when Luther was standing at the diet of forms before the Emperor and so on there was a table there and they had his book stacked up on there and they told him to say revoke oh I recant of all of his books and he said well you know what is it in there that you want me to recant of I mean there's all kinds of things in my books that are the Orthodox teaching in the Roman Catholic Church would be a little more specific for me give me some help and and that's part of the problem you have with a new perspective because like is the case in most heresies the heretic will cloak his heresy in a backdrop of a lot of things that are Orthodox and so it can get very sophisticated and very confusing when you're examining these things because obviously not everything NT Wright says or Sanders says is wrong but what's the big deal the big deal here is imputation as the sole ground the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ is merit as the sole ground of my standing before Almighty God not just my standing in the Covenant or standing in the church but if for my Redemption before a just and holy God the only way I'm going to be reconciled to that God is based upon the imputed righteousness of Jesus to me which is received by faith you mess with that you've lost the gospel and that's what the issue is here lurking under all this debate it all comes back to the issue of imputation which has suddenly been under attack even in reform circles for heaven's sakes in the last 15 years or so okay we're running a little bit behind but Derek do you want to give one last comment well just that if you were to ask somebody who a devotee of the new perspective how do you become a Christian which is not rocket science question you know any Christian worth his salt should be able to answer that question how do you become a Christian and if you answer that question by saying join a church be baptized take the Lord's Supper which is what they say at the end of the day then I'm sorry but the Catholic Church has been saying that for 2,000 years

Channel: Ligonier Ministries

Views: 22,513

Rating: 4.8679867 out of 5

Keywords: Bible translations, preaching, worship, women deacons, Lord's Supper, wine, confession of sin, New Perspective on Paul, The Bible (Religious Text), Eucharist (Religious Practice), Praise, orl05

Id: Z6ljJt0ei88

Length: 48min 37sec (2917 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 02 2013