Does Church of Christ Doctrine Downplay Grace?

[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome in to Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. Jack Wilkie here with Will Hareb and Joe Wilkie once again, and talking about something that I think is incredibly important. It's been a big focus of mine lately, and so these guys, same thing, kind of seeing some of the same problems, and hopefully we're going to help solve some of those problems here this week. But before we get to the episode, I do want to tell you I published about a book giveaway both on the Think Deeper Facebook page and the Deep Thinkers private group about giving away a copy of my book, Sunday School Catch Up. And I have to be honest, I forgot I went on vacation, forgot I had posted that, and then I came back and thought, I need to actually give this book away. So thank you to everyone who commented. The prompt was to comment with episode ideas. He gave us some really good ones, so I appreciate that. And then I entered all your names into a randomizer. And the winner of the book is Sora Battlehammer. So, Sora, appreciate you commenting, appreciate everyone who did, but you are the winner. So message us on the Facebook page or comment on the Deep Thinkers group and shoot us an address. I'll get a book out to you as soon as possible. So, again, thanks to everyone who participated in that. We used to do that the first year of the show, and it had been a long time. I thought, well, let's just give somebody a book. So I wanted to take care of that. And now let's go ahead and get to the episode. Will's gonna be driving this one for us. [00:01:31] Speaker B: Joe, you look like you're about to say something, so I paused there for a second. [00:01:34] Speaker C: The last name of Battlehammer is legit like that. [00:01:37] Speaker A: I'm just. [00:01:38] Speaker C: That is a great last name. So, yeah, that's, you know, you can't really go pick last names now. And Battle Hammer doesn't work for a first name. So guess I'll, you know, we'll pass on that one. But, yeah, good for you. Congrats on winning the book. Sorry, that's just a great last name. Sorry. We'll go. [00:01:53] Speaker B: Love it. No, no, you're good. All right. So we have talked about this episode for a while. We did something similar our first year. I think it might have been within our first five or ten episodes that we ever recorded. The episode was called Once Saved, Barely Saved. But with us being in rookie podcasters at that point and, you know, probably had not figured out the chemistry and flow of the show yet, we figured let's just, you know, completely do Something, do something do. An episode brand new from scratch. We're talking about grace with this episode. We're talking about kind of how grace according to God's word, grace for the New Testament Christian, can be misunderstood. How grace can honestly be hindered by some of the way that the Bible is taught. Some of the doctrine, some of the beliefs that are held by specifically the Church of Christ is kind of the area. And we know that we have some listeners to this podcast who might not be members of the Church of Christ. I think that's probably our majority, but, you know, we might have some that are not. And so I do think it's helpful to remind people that we do operate from a Church of Christ perspective. And with that in mind, all three of us have grown up in the Church of Christ our entire lives. It's pretty much all we've ever known. And so we do feel pretty qualified to kind of speak to this idea of how the Church of Christ presents the idea of grace. And it's our proposal, I guess you might say. And we're gonna. We're gonna hash this out throughout the episode. We're gonna kind of ask questions, just really explore this idea of does the Church of Christ kind of doctrine, does the Church of Christ, the way it teaches, hinder people's belief in grace? And what. And not necessarily belief in grace, but hinder their assurance, their Christian assurance. And obviously the grace of God plays a big part in a Christian's assurance. And so that's the direction we're headed with this episode. Again, the themes of Christian assurance is going. Or the theme of Christian assurance is going to be a heavy theme for this episode. But guys, I think it's pretty, pretty obvious once again, as all three of us have grown up in the Church of Christ, our whole lives, we struggle with this one. We brought this up on podcast before, you know, mentioned it here and there as it relates to various points and such. But the Church of Christ struggles with this idea of grace, in my opinion. And it's a hard thing to teach. It's a hard thing to really emphasize. And so I guess the way that I want to start the episode is kind of talking about the nobility of that position, if that makes sense. Like, I think there is a nobility in not wanting to rely on grace. I think kind of the way that I've always seen it is we don't want people thinking that they can live however they want to, and they've just got grace as their get out of jail free card. They've just got grace as their ace of spades, their trump card that they can fall back on. And so that pretty much is going to free them up to live however they want. I think again, the nobility in that position for us in the Church of Christ is that we don't think that's acceptable. And so we in turn under emphasize grace so as to not give people that get out of jail free card. Does that make sense? And so again, I don't think it's necessarily a, again, malicious thing that pulpits do that church members of the church Christ do. I just think that's part of the overcorrection, you might say, is that we don't want people to use grace as an excuse. Obviously, Paul talks a lot about this in Romans, Romans 6:15. What then shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? And he goes on to say, certainly not. We emphasize that part exceedingly, obviously. Six, verse one as well. Shall we continue to send the grace my bound? So, guys, what thoughts do y'all have on that as we get started? And I know y'all probably got some questions, some points to bring up as well, but I did want to at least establish that there is some level of nobility, I think, in the position that the Church of Christ holds, which is, listen, you can't just live however you want and then just say, well, I've got God's grace, so I'm all good. [00:05:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I'm really glad you brought this up. I think I take this for granted, that we are strong on this and you just don't get away with some of the stuff you see people get away with. And some of the others, especially the big box community churches, people who are just all about church, all about spirituality, all about Jesus, all that. And you just see the way they live. And it's like Monday through Saturday, you're not a Christian at all. And you wear the cross and you wear the T shirts and stuff like that, and you treat people like garbage or you're worldly as could be. And yeah, I think it's really important we have an emphasis that says, no, you don't just get to come in here and do whatever you want, live however you want, and call yourself a Christian. And that's a really good thing. You're right. Like I said, I'm glad you brought this up because I think a lot of us that are in the churches of Christ can take this for granted, that these things are not allowed, these things are not encouraged. What's, what's really, the word I'm looking for. These things are not part of our DNA, generally speaking, to just do whatever you want as a Christian. And so, yeah, that does lead to the overcorrection we're going to talk about. But it's a really good point. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:47] Speaker C: And I think this is, in my opinion, the Church of Christ struggles with maturity more than anything. In some ways, we're incredibly mature on our Bible knowledge. In other ways, I feel like when I got baptized, the reason I got baptized is very much kind of a hellfire and brimstone. I'm going to hell if. If I don't get right. And I don't think that's wrong. A lot of people kind of push back on that, and it really should be because of your love for God and his grace. And just you're. You're so thankful for his grace. Like, to me, that's more of a mature position. Initially, though, you do need to be afraid of hell. And initially I think there needs to be this level of, hey, get right. You can't just coast your way through and go, okay, yeah, you know, I changed, but you're still doing the same stuff. And I think that's a very, very important place to start. I think if we don't, if we stay there, that shows that we haven't fully come into maturity. [00:07:40] Speaker B: Well, you even see that would be. [00:07:42] Speaker C: Loving or taking it from a place of love. [00:07:45] Speaker B: I was just gonna say, you even see that on Pentecost. It does. The text doesn't necessarily say that they were fearful, quote unquote, but you see that they were. They were cut to the heart. They're like, man, oh, yeah, we got to do something. What should. What, you know, what. What do we do here? And there was. It wasn't like a, oh, man, we just love Jesus so much, so we're going to convert. And I was like, what do we do here? [00:08:05] Speaker C: You put him to death and you stand condemned. You know, it's like, oh, man, that's not good. Put the Son of God to death. So there's absolutely this level of fear in that moment. Exactly. And I think it's okay for us to start with that. But you look at the 60s preaching, 50s, 60s help. Iron brimstone is something that we are well known for in our tent preaching, and it bring a lot of people forward. And this is why people struggle with grace. And initially, to back up your point, well, I agree with both of you. There is a level where that makes sense, where that's a very good thing. To say you can't just rely on grace and ask Jesus into your heart and think that your life doesn't have to change one bit and feel like you are good, your life ought to be changing. The struggle with grace is you have two, as far as I can see, you kind of have two different camps. You have people that do rely on it. Which speaks more to in my opinion, some of the denominations where they're just, yeah, they're not living like a Christian like Jack said, Monday through or. Yeah, Monday through Saturday. The other side of it, and this is where a lot of church Christ people get into and where I want to kick off some of the discussion is I think we have a lot of people who are incredibly hard on themselves. They do want to attain that standard, they do want to be sanctified. But the fruit of the Spirit is more like they are trying to glue fruit to the tree instead of letting this naturally grow and realizing this is something that takes place again, maturity, this takes place over time where you will change and grow and desire more things of God. I think you have a lot of people that are afraid that they don't desire God enough and afraid that they're not doing enough or they're not producing enough fruit. And that's where I see the main problem with the Church of Christ. So great questions to ask on the front end of am I just milking this? Am I actually a Christian Monday through Saturday, not just on Sunday, but also we have a lot of people who are very hard on themselves. Kind of still under that hellfire and brimstone. I'm going to hell if I don't get this right. And so I really have to get this right. Like it's, I got to get an A on a test. And to me that now we drift into workspace and and so maybe my question, I'm curious your guys thoughts on that. My question would be where does grace end and workspace salvation begin on this spectrum? [00:10:11] Speaker B: Well, can I ask a follow up question to you Joe, before answering that question? You talk about gluing the fruit to the tree as opposed to. I think the words you use was letting it kind of naturally outflow from walking in the Spirit practically. What does that look like just for our listeners from your perspective of gluing fruit to the tree? Is it checking off my Bible study? I got to check off my Bible study for the day. Did I serve anybody this week? Ah, let me go figure out a way to do that. Is that kind of what you mean or like what was what was your line? [00:10:41] Speaker C: That's what I mean. Yeah, they, they beat themselves up for, you know, I haven't done this. I haven't a big one. You see, is evangelism really hard on themselves? Jack's done a great job of talking about this. People who haven't gone out and baptized 10 different people, they can be really hard on themselves and feel like I'm not doing enough. And so they try to make up for it in other ways. And the heart behind it's really good. It goes back to your point. Well, the heart behind this I think is really good, which is I do want to serve God more. But instead of seeing that, you know, I'll take for instance, you may have a stay at home mom who feels really bad that she hasn't evangelized or feels really bad she's not stepping up with the local work at church or whatever else it is. And so she's constantly brow beating herself or she goes and steps up, but it might be the detriment of her family. And so you are, you know, she doesn't realize her role is to serve the family. Right now she's trying to bounce from thing to thing to prove that she is a Christian, to prove that she's doing enough. And it's really hard to consistently do that time again without getting burnt out. And this is why, in my opinion, you have so many burnt out Christians, so many people who are so desperate to try to prove that they are Christians and to prove their works. You know, they're constantly, what can I do next? What next? What next? What next? What next? What next? And it's such a good heart in so many ways. But I still think it's coming from that place of fear, which is okay to be baptized with and to initially start with, but we're not coming into a place of like, man, I'm just, It's a joy to be able to do these things. God's putting work works in my path, Ephesians 2, 9, 10. And I'm walking in them. So I don't know if I'm explaining that right or if that makes sense, but. Yeah. And Jack, it seemed like you had a thought there. What are your thoughts on that? [00:12:15] Speaker A: No, I was enjoying your back and forth on this one because I had, I pulled some stuff up to take it in a different direction. There is a phrase, and we did a survey at Focus Press in 2013 of people who left the church. As far as I know, it was the largest one of people who have left the churches of Christ. And I'm always hesitant about this, especially with people who just left it for nothing, for atheism or whatever, because they just come back, oh, well, the Bible is sexist, racist, whatever. You know, like all those things, like, okay, that there's not much value in that. But people who still wanted to stay close to God, maybe went to a denomination, went elsewhere in the religious world, but they still respect the Bible, they still respect God. And that was a recurring theme that kept coming up was. And one of the phrases was that somebody let me just read it. They sat in a Sunday school class where the teacher actually said, some people depend too much on grace. And so to Will's point earlier of like, you can see what that teacher means, but you can also see why the person took it to. Took it wrong. And what the teacher means is, you know, get up and do things. But then like you say, maybe that, that stay at home, mom, maybe somebody takes that. I can't. I don't want to depend too much on grace. And so I've got to do all these things. And it is always, you're working from your salvation, not to your salvation. And yes, I mean, like the faith without works is dead thing. We really trip over the order of those things. You have to have works as a result of your faith, and you don't have to have all the works all the time. But a working faith shows itself in various ways. And that's, I think, sometimes where people get tripped up. [00:13:50] Speaker B: I think this is on the surface, hard to understand, but then in another way, I think it's somewhat easy to understand. And what I mean by that is, you know, I always think it's a cart before the horse discussion. Are you trying, like you said, you said Jack, are you. Are you doing the works to try to gain favor and, you know, gain your salvation in God's eyes? You've got it out of order. You need to be, you know, those works need to come out of your foundation of, first of all, love for God, I think is enormous, a love for God, but then also the assurance that you have been saved. Walking in the spirit, all those things. And that's where the good results or good fruits are going to come from. What I mean by, I think it maybe is a little bit easier to understand than we think is apply it to your marriage. If you're constantly doing things, try to, you know, try to please your wife so that she will love you or your spouse, if you're a woman, so that they will love you like man. But what if I picked up flowers? Oh, man. What if I cooked their favorite meal? What if I cleaned the whole house? What if I got the car's oil change, like, whatever it is, like. But if you were doing those things so that your spouse would love you, or. Or like, in an effort to gain your spouse's approval, first of all, that's exhausting. Or that would be exhausting. And then second of all, it's just. It doesn't put you in a good frame of mind. Once again, there's no assurance here. There's no. Like, I know my spouse loves me. [00:15:13] Speaker A: It. [00:15:13] Speaker B: It's all a matter of I'm going to try to gain their favor, try to get on their good side, so to speak. Try to. Try to. Try to get them to love me. That's an unhealthy marriage. That's a very unhealthy relationship. Obviously, what makes for a much healthier marriage and a much healthier relationship is I know my spouse loves me. I know that we are committed to each other. And so that inspires me to do all those things and maybe not all of them. That's the other thing. It doesn't mean you have to work yourself to death, but I've got a little extra time today. I'm gonna pick up some flowers on the way home. Or I've got some extra time today. I'm gonna clean this portion of the house, like, all these things. And so I feel like maybe when you put it in a different light, in a different framework, it might be easier for people to grasp again, like, you don't do these things for your spouse so that they'll love you. Hopefully, people are not doing that. You're doing that out of a foundation of, we love each other, we're committed to each other, we want to serve each other. Doesn't, you know, there's. There's going to be days where we just don't. Because we're. We're tired, got stuff going on, whatever. But when we do it, it's out of a love for our spouse, not just because we feel like we have to or we're trying to gain their approval. Does that make sense? Joe, what are your thoughts on that? [00:16:16] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. No, that lingering question, like, is it enough? When have I done enough? [00:16:20] Speaker B: There's a foundation. [00:16:21] Speaker C: Yes. When will I know that it is enough for God? Well, it's never enough for God. Okay, well, that's exhausting. This is why people walk away, I think. But there also has to be that, like you said, we can. We're very good on the intellectual. I know God loves me. I know we're just afraid that his love or his salvation. And we can easily say, I know he'll love me and still send me to hell because he, you know, he loves those who he's created. But there's a lot of people that are going to go to hell. He wishes for none to perish. But we can easily say, well, I know God still loves me, but he's going to snatch away salvation if I'm not doing enough, if I'm not. And so that word enough, I think, in my opinion, is what we get stuck on. And it's the same with you, Will, what you're talking about in the marriages. Well, when have you done enough for your spouse? If it's not coming from a place of love, and because I genuinely want to, it will turn into resentment toward the spouse because it's like, it's never enough. She's never fully satisfied. Or if it is, then I get it, but I'm afraid of losing it. Or I'm always trying to get it, but there is never getting ahead. There's never, like, okay, I can now coast for a while and now I gotta catch back up. Like, it doesn't work that way. But practically speaking, I do think there's a lot of Christians that do have that approach of wanting to know when they are enough in God's eyes. Like, this is the point of Romans. You've already been made righteous. Righteous people do righteous things. We have a very difficult time grasping that, because at the core of this, in my opinion, is that lack of faith that I am enough in God's eyes. We have a tough time seeing we're enough in God's eyes. Now, I could take it from a psychology perspective and get into attachment and parenting and why we never really feel like we're enough for our parents. And there's a lot of issues there. [00:18:01] Speaker A: That in itself is part of the problem. And I hate that phrase, you are enough. Like, you're not actually. That's the point of Jesus. [00:18:08] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [00:18:10] Speaker A: You have to look to him. And that's where your assurance comes from, is Christ is enough. I had a really bad day. Christ is enough to cover that man. I haven't done really well for a month in my Christianity. Christ is enough to cover that. That doesn't mean, you know, again, as Will brought up, should we just go on sinning? Well, no, may it never be. But we have to do a much better job of letting people know, coming out of the waters of baptism, you are saved. And this is also something you have to work to lose. Right? You have to just walk away when it creates this uncertainty. We do teach, we hold that you can lose your salvation and that creates a, that fear. You're asking, have I lost it? Can I lose it? Am I working towards losing it? The Calvinists would say, yeah, you've got that problem. Well, they've got the problem of never knowing you're actually saved because of all the people who do leave the faith and they go up, they were never a Christian in the first place. [00:19:01] Speaker B: We can assure you perseverance of the saints or whatever. [00:19:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And so every time, you know, a big name Calvinist falls away, they go, well, it turns out, you know, we listened to the guy preach for years. We bought all of his books, we just followed him all over the country. Country. He wasn't actually a Christian the whole time. Like that is zero assurance. So we, we both have a different side of the coin here as where you struggle with assurance, where they would say, well, you think you can lose your faith and I can't lose my faith. So there's that kind of. Which side would you choose? I would choose our side. Because you can know you're a Christian today. And I think this is really an important thing that others do that we don't is at the Lord's Supper each week. They, you know, some have the absolution, hey, you are forgiven. Here's your reminder that you were forgiven. Now there might be some people in the room who aren't. There might be some people in the room who truly have wandered from God, are living a double life, coming into church on Sunday and going on just doing whatever they want throughout the week. But if that struggle is still in you, if you're looking going, man, am I right with God? If you care about being right with God and you're praying to him and you're striving, that's proof that you are right with God. And so we really need our people to have that and say, man, Jesus covers you in. There's not like a this simple boy. I'm tiptoeing right on the edge. Like it is consistent, habitual. If we go on sinning willfully, it says in Hebrews 10. And so I think we really have to establish that of number one, you've got your salvation. Two, nobody can take it from you. Three, you can wander away, but that is not a one time thing. You know, David didn't lose it in one time. Nobody in the scriptures lost it in one time. It was a pattern. It was a decision to walk away. Hey folks, I know a lot of you are looking for more Christian content for your daily walk. Of course, we often tell you about Focus plus and the daily devos and other content that goes up there. Of course, we have this podcast, Think Deeper. We have the Jim podcast Godly Young man by Joe and Will. But I want to also tell you about the Church Reset podcast feed. Every article I put out on my website, Jack Wilkie co goes up on the Church Reset podcast feed, along with audio from all of the videos I post to the folks. Press YouTube like cultural breakdown, Masculinity Monday and Thursdays through the text. And so if you're looking for something to listen to while you're doing chores around the house or on the go, check out the Church Reset podcast feed. Subscribe to get all the latest content as it comes out four or five days a week. [00:21:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to ask a question here, so I brought up kind of the not wanting to overly depend on grace. But I'm curious if you guys have a theory as to why the Church of Christ specifically struggles with this. Like, are there other elements to it or do you think it's all just a matter of, you know, I don't want to give people too much of an excuse, don't want them to rest on grace too much. Like, I. I certainly have my kind of answer and theories to that. But I was curious if you guys have any thoughts as to why, once again, the Church of Christ as a whole, and we're generalizing here, we hopefully everybody will acknowledge that, like, this is a generalization here. But between us, it's 30, 25, what, 75 plus years of church of Christ experience, so to speak. Like listening to sermons, listening to classes, being in that world, we feel like they struggle with it. And so guys, y'all have any thoughts to that as to what is it about the Church of Christ, specifically the way that we operate, the way that we teach? Is it just the not wanting people to use it as an excuse, or is there a little bit something more to it? [00:22:31] Speaker C: So my understanding of church history, yes, I do think we go back to the first century. I get that. But there's a reason we're called Campbellites, you know, Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell. They looked around at every other congregation, every other denomination, and they said, this is not right. We got to go back to the Bible, which is fantastic. Love it. I think that's great. However, what that creates is in my opinion, a very reactionary system. We are always reacting to the denominations around us and going, we don't go there. We're not going to do that. Oh, they use Ephesians 2, 9. You know, you by grace, you even say, well, we're not going to use that verse. Oh, well, they believe that, you know, you can do miracles with the Holy Spirit. Well, let's just not talk about the Holy Spirit. Everything in. Or I shouldn't say everything. That's a broad brush. But there are a lot of things in the Church of Christ where we are very reactionary. You know, my hobby horse of running to and not away from. We run away from a lot of things in the Church of Christ because kind of from day one, we looked around and said, we don't want to be this, we don't want to be that. We want to get back to the Word. And so you could say, yeah, the goal was to get back to the Word. Yeah. But along the way, I think we took our cues to the opposite end. We swung the pendulum back from all of these other places. So what we have is kind of this pendulum approach where we're always on the far end of it. So you see, as you said, people who rely too much on grace, we swing to the other side. You see, people who hardly ever talk for hell, we overcorrect to the other side because we are always reactionary instead of. But what about this? What if we actually chased this line and sometimes it's going to intersect with the Baptists and people are going to, you know, freak out about it. It's like not in the standard, you know, women roles or instruments or things like that that we're very strict on, you know, like. And for good reason. But yes, we may end up looking like them when we preach grace. We might. That's okay. If they get that part right of their theology, that's okay. That doesn't have any bearing on what we should believe because our job is to look at the Scripture and come up with the right conclusion, not be reactionary to those around us. So that would be my theory. Jack, how about you? [00:24:33] Speaker A: Well, just to back it up one step from that. It makes salvation a function of doctrinal rightness. Now, this is the hard part, is you do need to be doctrinally right to a degree. Like, obviously there are things you just can't get wrong. If you go, well, you know, Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha are all equal prophets. No, I'm sorry you're not saved, you know, of. Well, The Bible, it's not really inspired. It's just got some good ideas for. You're gonna have a hard time, like these things you have to get right. The problem is, and to your point about the restorationist thing and coming away from the denominations, and it's really interesting. Campbell's the Christian System. I've been reading it for a while, and it's a fascinating book. It's. It's a really insightful, great book in a lot of ways. But you can tell from the very beginning this was baked into it, this. This purity spiral of doctrinal rightness. Because. And I'm actually doing a project for this at Focus Press. I'm hoping to debut it early next year, Lord willing, of going through that book and actually republishing that book and making it available in a kind of a slick new edition, because it's really good. But at the start, he's talking about breaking free from creed Christianity, from confessional Christianity, of what the Baptists and Presbyterians were doing. And we just want to be Christians. And so he says, what we did was we got a bunch of us in a room together, or we got a bunch of us together to determine what doctrinal things you have to believe to be a Christian. Like, you know what that's called? Like, that's. And so what happens is you kind of come up with this very basic list. You got to believe in baptism, you got to believe in the Trinity, you got to believe in repentance, you got to believe in certain things like that. And then you add on this, and then you add on this, and then this one guy goes, well, I actually am more biblical than you because I'm going to add this thing. And then the next guy goes, I. [00:26:14] Speaker B: Would be more take away this thing. [00:26:15] Speaker A: Yeah, right. And so, yeah, because you've got the leftward thing where it's like, well, none of this really matters. You can basically believe what you want. And I think we're mostly pretty good about going away from that. But then you just add on more and more and more to where you see how easily we use the word false teacher. Oh, well, that person disagreed with me on this interpretation of two verses in the Bible on a minor doctrine, a false teacher. Like, no, that's not what that word means. I mean, you look at false teachers in the Bible, they are people who are heretical on really big things. But you end up in this doctrinal purity spiral where, again, you were saved by having perfect doctrine. You need really good doctrine. You need right doctrine but you're going to get something wrong at some point. And that's why I think so many people are like, what if I am wrong about something? What if I missed something? What if there's something in there that I, I miss? Step on and God's going to get there and be like, okay, you're good. Good. Went to church and you were a good person. You didn't cheat on your spouse. You didn't. Oh, well, you believe this, that or the other thing about consuming meat, you know, this, this meat that you weren't supposed to eat. You're. You're gone like that. That's how petty it can become. [00:27:23] Speaker B: I think that, I think that was very well said. And you use a phrase before, I might have heard it from somewhere else. But like this precision obedience type of thing where I genuinely think, and, but see, this is a result of the way that I think pulpits teach and preach. I firmly believe that we should not be using instruments in worship. We have made that our calling card in the Church of Christ to the point where I genuinely think there are Christians who think we're going to get up to the Judgment Day and God's going to say, were you baptized? Cool. Did you use instruments? And those are the two questions he's going to ask, as if that's the second most important thing out there. Again, I think that's incredibly important. I don't think we should be using instruments, but we in the Church of Christ have, have prided ourselves on getting all the doctrinal things exactly correct with no variation whatsoever. And I even remember growing up kind of that back of my mind question of, like, oh, man, what, what, what if we get. What if we're just slightly off on something? I remember my mom did a big study on head coverings from 1 Corinthians 11. Of course, that, you know, we, we've. I think we've touched on a Q and A episode before a long time ago. But, you know, largely in the Church of Christ, we don't believe. We don't believe in those. We don't practice those. And I remember thinking when I first got exposed to it, like, oh, man, what. What if we got that wrong? What if we get up to heaven and God says, man, you did everything right. No instruments, great. Your wife didn't wear a head covering. Y'all are out of luck. And I. But I guess my point is I feel like our preaching and our teaching lends itself towards that. Where to Jack's point, we. We have to be teaching correct Doctrine we have to. And we have to believe a certain way and believe it wholeheartedly. Like I don't think we should just be up, you know, kind of wishy washy on stuff like it could be this, could be that. Who's really to say? Like I think we should come down on certain issues, you know, on a lot of issues within God's word, specifically within the New Testament. But I guess what I'm trying to get across is a different way of saying what Jack already said, which is we have to be very careful to hinge our salvation and to hinge our really foundation of our faith on have we gotten every single worship practice, doctrinal belief, secondary tertiary belief, right? Because God's going to be up there with his study guide that you know, that he's going to check off our, you know, did what. What do you believe about this? What do you believe about this? What do you believe about this? I just don't think that's the way it's going to be. [00:29:41] Speaker C: I think a lot of people, well. [00:29:43] Speaker A: I'm just going to jump in and say, you know, give the other side of it. People are going to say, well what's wrong with precision, obedience? Don't you want to obey and be precise in your obedience? Or they're going to say, well what you don't want to be right. And so I mean they're framing for this is very easy to see where they're going to come from on this. So I think it's important to address that. The challenge you're going to get on that. Not that I mean I think we can and I think we've kind of, I think what we've said holds up to that scrutiny. But that is going to be the first thing they say, well, why wouldn't you want to be. [00:30:16] Speaker C: Will, do you wanna. I have thoughts on that, but yeah. [00:30:20] Speaker B: No, I mean I would say it's not an excuse to say well you know, we'll just, you know, we can be wrong on this. And like again I'm gonna believe that I'm right on a lot of things but I think Matthew 7 comes into play here as well. Of there's a lot of things in the New Testament that are, I don't want to say they're gray, but there's a lot of black and white. But for instance, the new heavens, new earth thing that we've talked about before, a little bit of gray to that. And yet that's something that, you know, let's say I have my belief on New heavens, new earth. I can believe that I'm right, and yes, I want to be right on that, but I can also acknowledge that maybe that's something that's not necessarily going to determine my salvation or Joe's salvation if he completely disagrees with me on it. And so, I mean, I think this whole thing really just comes down to Jack, to your question, what, if anything, are we allowed to be wrong on and still get into heaven? And I think that's the way a lot of people frame that question as well. But like, again, baptism, though, I don't really think you can be wrong on that and get into heaven. As you talked about believing in the Trinity or even believing in heaven and hell as a whole, like believing in. In those two things, I. I kind of think that you have to be on a certain side of those things. Women's roles, obviously, heterosexual marriage, like, things like that. Once you get down to the secondary and tertiary level, I still, I want to be as right as I possibly can be on every single thing while still acknowledge. I mean, it's like, you know, to maybe give a different example, I'm gonna go take a test for college or for school, take a midterm. I want to be as right as I possibly can be. Do I think I'm gonna get a 100 on every single test? Probably not, but I still gonna do. I'm gonna do everything that I can to get that 100. I'm going to shoot for that 100. I'm going to do everything that I can to get that 100. And if I end up with a 97, it is what it is. Joe, what thoughts did you have? [00:32:08] Speaker C: Yeah. To the question of, don't you want to be right? For what purpose? For what purpose? They're coming from a place of you're going to hell. If not, I'm coming from a place of I want to be right because I want to please God to the best of my ability. This is why our. Our fascination with heaven and hell. I do think we need to tone down a bit. I think we need to make life more about pursuing the glory of God or pursuing being like Christ. I think those are our goals as Christians because heaven is going to be a great place if you want to be like Christ down here on earth. If you care about the glory of God here, you'll really care about the glory of God there. And if it's just about being right and you don't really care about glorifying God and you're just really afraid of Going to hell, that's not the ultimate reason. That is why we want to be right. We want to be right because I want to know what's pleasing to God, right? Like that's, that's the goal as a Christian. That's not their goal. Their goal is to stay out of hell. Their goal is to get to heaven. Fundamental difference. That's. That's why. Or that's the way that I would kind of zero in on it is their framing is. Going back to Jack's point about their framing. Their framing of it is you're missing out on heaven if you don't have it right, which is your points will like, okay, what else am I allowed? What am I allowed to have wrong? What am I allowed to have right? But more than anything, I think you have to come from a place of assurance when you're doing that. I am assured of my salvation. And we have this idea like, okay, I gotta do 95% and God will make up the rest. You know, Christ's grace will make up the rest. That's not how it works. You bring zero to the table. All your good deeds are as filthy rags as Isaiah talks about. You have nothing that you bring to the table. 100% of grace gets you there. So then where do works come in? Because we want to, because we desire God, we desire to be like Christ. That's the fundamental difference between those framings of the question. And where the church of Christ goes wrong is baked into our fabric is running from things, not running to things. That's our problem. [00:33:57] Speaker A: I love this point about heaven and hell because we've the, the, you can't bind that thing we get all the time. Well, you send your kids to, you know, private school or homeschool, you can't bind that. Or, well, women, you know, should take on these roles in the home and men should take on that. You can't bind that. Like, where does that come from? It comes from everything's heaven, hell, everything's pass, fail. And oh, you don't have a book, chapter, verse that says I have to do that, then I don't have to. Or, well, is it a sin if I do this? It's not that I'm going to do what I want. And so everything is through the lens of heaven and hell. Can I go to heaven if I still do this? Okay, I'm going to do it. And to your point, Joe, of this is where maturity is, is discerning. What's the best way to do this? We talked about that. Good, better, Best Christianity, we called it a brain free Christianity was the episode. Because really people just want to turn the brain off and say, give me the list, tell me what I got to do. And as we said at the time, you either make the list really, really, really, really long and you've got to get 100% on 150 questions, or we make it really short. Well, if you love Jesus, then nothing else really matters. Like it can't be that. And so, and this is where we, we lose maturity. And I've been writing on this, I announced the other day, and this is going to be the topic of my next book is Christian Assurance. And this is one of the big reasons why I'm focusing on that. We can't get people to maturity if we're stuck on these things. If people are still wondering every single day, am I really a Christian? And we're doing all these doctrinal purity spiral debates and all that. It's like we're sitting in the dugout debating how many strikes to an out, how many balls to a walk, how many outs in an inning, how many players on the field, all that stuff. And we just debate, debate, debate. We've been debating that for 200 years. Like, can we please get on the field and play ball? Can we please get out there and do something? Can we build some culture as a church? Can we do any of these things? No, you can't talk about any of that. You can't bind that. We're not going to do that stuff. We've got to talk about, can you believe that heaven's going to be a physical place or a spiritual place? Or are you going to hell for that? Can you believe this, that or the other thing about all of these controversial topics, things we've gotten in hot water for things, I mean, just ridiculous fourth level things that we divide over. We won't get on the field and play ball. We get our lectureships and we spend tens of thousands of dollars to get together and be like, doggone it, we're right about women's roles. Like, great, cool. Now what do we do with that? What do you do with the male headship we just established? Do you take it into the home? Nope, can't buy that. Like, this is where you end up. You end up with a bunch of spiritual toddlers. Because we can't move on and outgrow it because everyone's going, am I even a Christian? All the lectureship set are out there patting ourselves on the back for that. And the Christians in the pews Are like, okay, am I saved or not? What if we're wrong about this? And again, we're stuck. We do nothing. We have zero impact whatsoever. [00:36:36] Speaker B: Let him put that paint on social media clip. [00:36:38] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [00:36:40] Speaker B: I know what our needs to be said, to be honest. [00:36:42] Speaker C: I know what our YouTube short is going to be. Yeah, from this one. This is why we're passionate, though. Let me just say that. Let me back up, Jack. This is why we're passionate. We've been blessed to be able to interact with thousands of Christians around the nation, and this is why this matters. Because you have a lot of people sitting in the pew that are scared of hell every single day. Their preacher is not helping them. Your church leaders are not helping them. They're not helping them live holy or better sanctified lives or anything like that. They are just continually either being browbeat to the point where they're getting burnt out on Christianity or they're being called to nothing. And they have no rules to the game. And so they get out on the field and one of them is playing volleyball and another one is Trump play field hockey and other ones playing basketball. Another one's playing baseball. Somebody's playing it. Right, but how would we know? How would we know, right? Somebody's trying to understand, what do I do in my home, like, legitimately, what do I do in my home? [00:37:31] Speaker B: How do I find that? [00:37:32] Speaker C: It's like, yeah, but I need the rules so I can go play and get this one right. So we have a desire to get it right, but because we have leaders who aren't willing to step up and get their hands dirty and to actually say the things that that might lose them people. You have a lot of people sitting in the pews going, man, am I just hoping I'm doing enough to get to heaven? And they have boiled their Christianity down to that phrase, I hope I'm doing enough to get to heaven. There's that word enough again. We have to, like, delete that from our vocabulary, because Jack's right. We're not enough. We're never going to be enough. And then on the flip side, to my point, God has. Christ has made us enough in his eyes, even though we bring nothing to that equation. And so this whole idea of, like, well, because if you love Jesus, then nothing matters. Like, no, if you love Jesus, then everything matters. Then everything matters. Everything comes into a matter of, how can I bring this under the headship of Christ? And that's a beautiful thing. And it brings purpose to our Christianity in the here and now. Not 80 years into the future, we keep wondering why we're losing kids. It's like, because I got another 60 years on the planet, and I don't want to have to just worry about my salvation for the next 60 years. I'd rather know today. But because we can't give this to them, where do they go? [00:38:37] Speaker B: I think that's the difference, too. As I was thinking about what we were talking about when we got started, of why we overcorrect so much. You even see some, not so much Hollywood celebrities, but, like, you know, somewhat famous people, maybe athletes or, you know, people that will use being a Christian or use God as kind of a convenient tagline, kind of a convenient accessory. I've talked about the Bible verse in their Instagram bio or whatever of, like, yeah, I'll claim Christianity. I'm not to call the guy out, but, like, Steph Curry is big about this, about being Mr. Christian supporting, you know, Kamala Harris, for goodness sakes. Like, I feel like there's a lot of celebrities out there and a lot of people that are kind of in the public consciousness who will claim God, who will claim some form of Christianity, who will claim being a Christian, and yet they'll kind of go live however they want to. And so, once again, that's why we overcorrect. And, Joe, I love what you just said about. It's a love for God. It's a. The foundation of it is I want to be like Christ. And so here's what I'm going to do in my life. That. Or here's. Here's how that impacts what I'm going to do in my life. And so I think if you're operating from that foundation, what you should see is the opposite of what I just described with the celebrities who can kind of live however they want. You should see people who continually look more and more like Christ as the days, as the weeks, as the months, as the years go on, because they're operating out of the foundation of grace, love for God. I'm going to try to please him and everything that I do. It doesn't mean that they're going to be perfect. It doesn't mean that they're going to just be these perfect little Christians in a box. But it means that they're going to start thinking like Christ. They're going. Their homes are going to look more like Christ. Their, their. The decisions that they make, the way they spend their Tuesday nights, the way that they parent their kids, the way that they raise their. Or parent their Grandkids we talked about last week. Excuse me, as we talked about last week, like all of these things, that's, to me, that's what we're talking about here. And to Jack's point, that's what we're not teaching. And so when we're not teaching that and we're not teaching a foundation of grace, it is no wonder why people are absolutely all over the place because they're not getting the foundation, which again, is what every, everything should, should come from, of the, of, of the grace of God and, and being saved. And so then they're also not getting the pattern for what that should look like. And so they're not thinking more like Christ. Their decisions don't line up with Christ. The way they parent their kid is, you know, they're, as we talked about, still send them to public school, still sending them to the prom, still letting him date at 15 years old. Like all these things. It's like if you're, if you're thinking like Christ, if you're trying to move in a certain direction, your behaviors and your habits are just going to change. And again, we're not seeing either one, the foundation or the direction that people are headed. [00:41:11] Speaker A: I think a big part of this is your theology, your view of God. And there's the Savior, there's the King. And sometimes the, the hard line, always doubting and adding and adding rules is the king thing of all, right, Very much legalism, law, keeping at the expense of the Savior side. And so you're always wondering, man, is he going to get me? Is he going to strike me down? Am I going to get there? And he catches me on a technicality. And then there's the other side where it's, oh, it's all Savior. Basically, anything you do, God's happy with it. And you don't really have to look into it. You don't have to train your thinking, have your mind renewed, any of that stuff. God's just, he's kind of that proud grandpa. And so it's just Savior, he'll save you from whenever, whatever. Like it's both of these things. And so as your king, you want to obey him as your savior. You, you, you trust him to save you when you fall short. And Jesus said this so beautifully of God being a good father. You ask him for a fish, he's not gonna give you a snake. You ask him for bread, he's not gonna give you a rock. And he also said, he who asks it will be given to him who seeks, will find him who knocks will be opened. And so a lot of Christians have this, what if I'm wrong about something? What if there's some part in my life that is not pleasing to God or whatever? Trust the promise. Ask him. I love that David prayed this of man. If there's anything in me, any way that that shouldn't be, that I'm not seeing, basically any secret sin, any blind spot, show it to me. Help me to see that part of my life that I would change. And then you trust that God will, and it's not that he's going to speak to you and, you know, tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, stop doing that. As you continue to study, as you continue to worship, as you continue to pray, your heart is trained. And you just kind of. You kind of look around one day like, why do I do this? You know? Or why has our family chosen to do things this way? Is that really the best way to do it? That's God working in the spirit, working to convict you in the sensibilities that the Word gives you. That's how it works. And that's such a beautiful thing. But you have to trust God. And I think there is this lack of trust. In fact, I want to call on that survey again, because this one, again, we did this survey 11 years ago. I don't remember most of it. I still regularly think about this quote that somebody shared. And of course, I clicked away from it right before he said, there's no real understanding in the churches of Christ of the words Jesus spoke. It is finished. It isn't finished for members of the churches of Christ. Man like that, he's your savior when he says it's finished. That point Joe keeps saying about enough, that finished is enough. The full debt has been paid, so go on with the burden off your back, knowing I can run this race freely and free to get better. Not free to do whatever I want and run around lawlessly, but to grow and to trip and fall and get back up. Free to know you're not being struck down by lightning the minute you go astray. And again, you got to have savior and king, man. [00:43:59] Speaker C: That is powerful. The Savior and King. The first thing that comes to my mind is, man, why do we struggle with this so much today? And my mind immediately went back to our critical theory podcast. We don't recognize a king. We don't recognize authority. So you have a lot of young kids that don't want the authority figure. They want the savior because they want the. The feel good. And this is where you get into the community, churches and things like that is they're going to push the Savior big time because, whoa, Jesus isn't gonna, you know, cramp your style type of thing. He's not about to come down on you. He's not a king in that way. Or they say, well, Jesus is king. What does that tangibly look like? And so we have a lot of authority issues. On the other hand, yeah, I think you. You look at older Christians, their parents were very strict. They very much understood authority. The king part comes easy. It is the grace part. Their parents really didn't pass down grace. They didn't have a whole lot of grace in those moments. And so it was a. Yeah, they're dealing with true evil. You go back to Hitler and things like that. Not that I want to bring history too much into that, but this is why evangelism is so difficult, though. What are you winning people to if you can't say it's finished, you know, it is finished. And Christ has saved me from this, and I know where I'm going, and I know heaven is promised, and I know all this stuff. No wonder why we can't evangelize. Well, how about you come to my church and I'll make you a Christian? And you may have to guess for the next several decades of your life whether you're actually a Christian, but I promise you, it's better. I know I don't make it look better. I know that I'm. I'm, you know, fearful of going to hell every single day, but I promise you, it's better because you'll have the hope of heaven. People aren't going to, like, they're not going to sign up for that one. I'm sorry, they're just not. And guess what? They're not signing up for that. That's why our evangelism is pract dead. Because what we're winning them to is a shaky foundation. People don't want that. And then while I'm going off on this and we're talking about church history, this is one of the issues of church history. As we look back, we just celebrated Martin Miss. My. My wife and I and our family, we celebrate Martin Miss. And there's Michael Miss. And Martin Miss. And other saint holidays where it's just a time to tell the stories of the saints. And St. Martin, you know, cuts his. Cuts his cloak in half and. And gives the beggar his. His cloak and saves the beggar, this blind beggar from freezing in the snow, which is a great story, right? And the kids love it. And we kind of reenact and it's fun. We look back in history and because we can't know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether this person believed doctrinally correct or. Well, we don't know if they were baptized for the right reasons. We effectively have no church history. And so somebody comes along, like the Orthodox or the, you know, an Orthodoxy or the Catholics, and they go, well, here's our history. Where's yours? We go, well, here's Alexander Campbell and back to 2000 years ago. We can't, we're, we're. We kick everybody out if we can't be a thousand percent sure that they believe everything that they were supposed to believe. And so we're missing 1800 years of history and wondering why it's difficult, why we're losing people to somebody who has a storied tradition. In reality, we do, and there's a lot of good Christians along the way, but I don't know if they were fully doctrinally correct. And we can't offer salvation to anybody like that lest it break our brain. So we're also missing church history like this, a bigger issue than people realize. This really does. It's the underpinning of so much of where we struggle in the church. And look, we love the Church of Christ. Like, we're, we're sticking it through, but we have to start running towards something. We have to stop kicking everybody out unless they believe perfectly, because we're losing kids because of that and not just because of the kingship and they don't understand the king because of all the rest of it, because the history, because the evangelism, because everything becomes ten times more difficult when we are just when we have no grace. [00:47:31] Speaker A: Hey, guys, Jack Wilkie here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars, and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening. See, that church history point raises an interesting thing for me of. I think there's a bit of a sliding scale of teachers. As he says, teachers are going to be judged more harshly. You know, the 8th century pope is going to be judged differently than a peasant who's like, you know what? I love Jesus and I'm going to go to church and do what they tell me because I can't read and I don't have a Bible to read. And that person is going to be viewed differently. I'm not going to preach anybody into heaven or hell, but I think that matters and I think that still matters today. Even though everyone has their own Bible of the let not many of you become teachers is important the average person just give your heart to Christ and ask him, seek him. As I said a minute ago, Will. [00:48:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I've got another direction that I want to take it. So if you. Do you guys have anything else on that church history point? I was going to give one more example and then ask a follow up question to something we talked about a second ago. I think I've told this story before, but I think to me this perfectly kind of epitomizes what we're talking about specifically within the Church of Christ of just not understanding grace. I was with a group of people for a get together type of thing and one of the things that we were doing was kind of teaching young men how to baptize somebody. And one of the bit and somebody who was, who was teaching this, it was basically a class teaching. This class was basically came out directly and said that you have to make sure that you say the words. I now baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit for the remission of your sins. And if you leave off that last phrase, just don't. Just make sure you don't leave that you have to say those words. And There was a 12 or 13 year old at the time who about five, 10 minutes later after we had finished, I look over and he's having a somewhat meltdown because he had just gotten baptized three months ago or so and he could not remember if his dad who baptized him said for the remission of your sins. You know, after he said Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And these men that were around that were, you know, counseling, you know, guiding this particular class instead of doing what they should have done. And I'm not trying to call anybody out here, I'm just trying to give an example. Instead of doing what they should have done, which was put their arms around this young man and say did you get baptized for the remission of your sins? If so, then it doesn't matter what the guy said. Like you do not have to worry about that. Again, if you don't think the grace of God is going to extend over whether or not somebody uses the right incantation when they baptize you, then that's exactly what we're talking about. Instead of doing that. They all got out the live stream recordings from the service and for the next five or ten minutes went back to try to find it, to find out if the dad had said it. I'm not making this up. No, I'm not making this up. [00:50:40] Speaker A: That is, it turns out, perfect example. [00:50:42] Speaker B: But wow. Turns out the dad had said it and everybody was like, oh, you know, see you're, you're all good. You know, don't worry about it all. Big hug after this. And I remember just kind of like standing off to the side like there's no way that I'm witnessing what I'm witnessing right now. And it just, it just blew my mind. It was unbelievable. Again, there are four or five older Christian men there who. That was their solution. Let's get out. Let's watch the live stream to find out if this 13 year old is saved based on what his dad said. That'll stick with me forever. But again, I had another question to ask. But that just kind of epitomizes what we're talking about here. [00:51:13] Speaker C: Yeah, this is where you want to reign. [00:51:14] Speaker A: Their next example. [00:51:15] Speaker C: I, I am sorry, but if that is your belief, you better repent and get right with God. That, that is because that would assume that part of my salvation is based off of somebody else doing the right thing. You can't be serious. That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life. But this is the problem. This is the problem. [00:51:33] Speaker B: This is not, never mind the heart of the young man who clearly got baptized for the remission of his sins. Right? [00:51:39] Speaker C: This is not an isolated situation. There are dozens of these, hundreds, thousands of these stories of people that have been basically pushed out of the church because did you do it? Exactly right. And then we wonder why we have an issue, why we are and why this podcast matters is because of stupid stories like that. You can't be serious. That to me let not many of you become teachers for that exact reason. You will incur a stricter judgment and those men will be harshly judged. They could have had a 13 year old, you know, either have to get re baptized or potentially be spoiled on the church and walk away from God for that. Are you kidding me? [00:52:12] Speaker A: Well, people have a hard enough time as is with all the stuff we talked about of am I doing enough? The sin problem I'm struggling with, Am I saved? Now you're going to introduce. Hey, for some of you, 40 years ago when you got baptized, you sure the guy said the right words like wow. I know a guy who was pushed out of a pulpit job for a very similar thing of well, you didn't say it in the right order before you baptized somebody. And so we're not sure if it counts. And this is, I mean, this is stuff you saw with the Pharisees. Hey, you didn't wash your hands. Like, that's not a law. That's just something you guys added. But as I was saying earlier, the list gets longer and longer and that just leaves more and more reasons to lack assurance. [00:52:49] Speaker C: Because I'm holier the longer the list gets. [00:52:51] Speaker A: Right, Right. [00:52:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:53] Speaker C: So go ahead. I. I do have a question. I know you may want to go into it. We talked a lot about the heart, getting the heart right. And this is one of the questions I had on my list that I wanted to bring up because we can. I do think the heart matters, like a significant amount. Jack, you talked about the peasants in the 8th century. Obviously, you know, it. We want. They wanted the heart for God. They wanted to have the, the right heart for God. Maybe they didn't know everything to do at the time, but no, we're not preaching anybody into heaven or hell. We don't fully know what happened. I just, I'd like to think that God is a God of grace. The heart very much matters when you come to this, the heart of this 13 year old boy, Right. I mean, it's breaking at the thought that maybe he didn't do it. Right. That's a really good heart. However, how do we balance against those we know the heart is deceptive above all else. Right? Like, how do we balance those who are relying on the heart? And this is a similar question of relying strictly on grace. But I'm specifically talking about those who rely on the heart and go, you know, God knows my heart and I think that I have a heart for God. But maybe their heart for God is leading them to do something that is errant, that is completely against scripture. Because I do think some people have a really good heart in trying to. Let's, let's use women, for instance. I want to make sure that the women in my congregation know how much I love them and how much I appreciate them. And, you know, I'm perfectly fine if a woman gets up and says a prayer or whatever else, and they have a, a heart of gold, quote unquote, where they're really trying to make sure that the women know how much they're loved and appreciated. [00:54:19] Speaker B: You're saying this as somebody else. Just, just theoretically. [00:54:22] Speaker C: Okay, yeah, yeah, theoretically. Clearly, we are not, we do not stand for women getting. [00:54:26] Speaker B: You're saying if somebody said, right but. [00:54:28] Speaker C: If somebody said that they might have the right heart, quote unquote, but they are off biblically, that that is not a biblical take in the least. How do we combat that? What would you say to, to those who are, you know, at what point does the heart stop? And I guess the logic of the works or the doctrine begin, I suppose. [00:54:48] Speaker B: I think I'll be brief, Jack. And that's all yours. I think where people get into this is thinking that the heart is the only thing that matters and that's where they get into trouble. Joe, I firmly agree with you that I think the heart very much does matter to God. I don't think it's the only thing that matters to God. I don't think it's a, a one time examination of the person's heart and okay, they're good to go. And so that, that's why whenever people use that, well, you know, God knows my heart. Yeah, he does. That's not the only thing he knows. That's not the only thing he's looking at. He's also looking at your fruits. He's looking at. I mean Jesus did say, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. And again, we can talk about. There's a lot of things that we don't know for sure. Is it a commandment? Is it not something in like your example, Joe, of women's roles? I think it's pretty clear in scripture that that is black and white. There's not a lot of, in my opinion, nuance or grayness that that is black and white. And so that I think you have to look at the fruits of the person, the way that they're living in, in, in line with the person's heart. You could have a similar guy's living with his girlfriend. Well, you know, God knows my heart. I'm a really good person. You know, God knows I'm, I'm a good hearted person. I come to church. Okay, but what do the fruits say? The fruits say you might have a really good heart, but it's got a blind spot or it's got a weak spot. And so I guess my answer to your question would be I think God does care about the heart. That's not the only thing he cares about. There's a bit of an equation there where everybody wants to put all their eggs in the basket of the heart. The heart, the heart, the heart. Sure, it definitely matters. But disobedience to direct commandments. I don't think the having a good heart. I don't think overrules That, I guess, would be my answer. [00:56:30] Speaker A: I'm going to disagree with that. Not on the spirit of it, but on the semantics of it. If you don't care about obedience or doctrine, your heart's not in the right place. Like, a true heart wants to be right with God. A true heart wants to please God. True heart wants to obey God. As you said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. And so it is the heart. And if you just say, well, like you said, God knows my heart as a cover for I don't have to obey, like, yeah, he knows. He absolutely knows that you don't care to follow him. And so I think. [00:56:55] Speaker B: What about in the context of. [00:56:57] Speaker A: Go ahead. [00:56:58] Speaker B: I think that works in the context of the guy living with his girlfriend. What about the context of the woman? The like, if she truly believes that she's authorized. You see what I'm saying? [00:57:08] Speaker C: Like, I feel like it's an ignorant position. It's not a. And this is what I, you know, to. To clarify from both of your positions, Will, where I would pick yours apart is I would say, well, yeah, you know, taking something that some of the things we've gotten in trouble for the past for, right. That people really don't like that we say they put that on that level of, like, well, clearly you don't have a heart for God because you have done xyz. And so we would look at it and go, when I live with my girlfriend, I'm not doing any of those things. Yeah, but you did this. And so they added the list. And it's the same thinking that gets us there. [00:57:36] Speaker B: That's not the same as women's roles, though, I don't think. [00:57:39] Speaker C: Well, to you. Not to them. To them, the new heavens, new earth is on the same level. I mean, and who are we to say otherwise? And we could look at it and go, yeah, but one's very clear in Scripture. And they go, this is very clear in Scripture. So then we get in, we get down. You know what I mean? Like, they take it down the line where they make everything a matter of first importance. We talked about this. But this is the problem when we start discussing doctrine is if they take it to that next level and they go, this is matter of first importance. And you say, it's not who's right in that situation, we can claim we're right all day long. They claim they're right all day long. We're at an impasse, Jack, from your point of view, there are those that are truly Ignorant of what to do. They are trying to please God, but they haven't come across the scriptures yet. I think about those with instruments, it's like not everybody has seen the church of Christ reasons for instruments. And there are people that genuinely want to please God. They're not all looking for the rock band and, you know, the raising the hands. [00:58:26] Speaker B: And they don't know the ins and the outs. [00:58:28] Speaker C: Maybe they don't know the ins and outs. Right. [00:58:30] Speaker A: And so I point about seeking and asking God, show me where I'm wrong. Because you're seeing a lot more of the religious world start to embrace baptism and things like that. And I think that is part of the proof for things like this of God. Patience. God's patience toward us in our ignorance of giving you time to study a little farther, come a little farther down the road and get there. Because we, we really. And this is kind of the muscle and shovel thing there. There's this view of like, if I just show you the verse, you're going to see it and go, oh, I'm wrong, I'll change my mind. Have you ever done that? Like, if somebody proves to you you're wrong? Where it works for me is in the argument. I go, no, no, no. And the next day I'm like, man, I don't really have an answer. Or a month later, it's like, okay, I am a little more open to that idea. Like, that's how most of the time you've never seen somebody, whether it's a presidential debate or anything like this, a big argument where somebody just stops the middle and goes, you're right, I fully reverse. I'm on your side now. It just doesn't happen. And so I think that's God's patience in these things is if you're asking and seeking and knocking over time, you're moving in the right direction. But this introduces gray area, the people that we comfortable with. [00:59:39] Speaker B: The biblical example of this would be David, of course, who did just some absolutely awful things. What was he known? What was, what was he known as? Man after God's own heart, obviously, clearly had a heart for God. Joe, I, I do struggle with that though, in the sense of. It does seem like it can be a cop out for people of. And Jack, I appreciate the correction. I'm not necessarily talking about the. [01:00:01] Speaker A: Yeah, not a correction, but just a different. [01:00:03] Speaker B: Blatantly sinning. Yeah, not the person who's blatantly sinning, but the people who are in ignorance. I don't know, it feels like, oh, man, got A good heart. I understand what you guys are saying, but, man, that. That does that. I feel like that introduces a lot of troubling area for, like, I. I don't know. I don't think God is, again, just gonna be looking at people's heart on Judgment Day. I think it'll be part of it, but I don't. I don't think that's the only thing. Oh, did you have a good heart? [01:00:29] Speaker C: Did you? [01:00:30] Speaker B: Were you. Was your heart seeking after me? I don't know what I mean. Again, Judgment Day. None of us really know what it's going to be like, I suppose, but I feel like there's just more criteria than that, if that makes sense. [01:00:41] Speaker C: I think, by and large, you know, that a lot of different principles that come in. [01:00:47] Speaker B: If it was just about the heart, I would. Baptism, I mean, baptism matters. Baptism absolutely matters. And if. If somebody has a really good heart and never gets baptized, I still. I would have a hard time putting them in heaven. By putting them in heaven, I mean, like, I would have a hard time saying, oh, they're for sure going to heaven. [01:01:06] Speaker C: Well, this is. This is where Jack's, you know, creeds and confessions and things like that come in, is what matters. And how do we determine what matters? And you look at baptism like, well, have you been buried with Christ and raised again? Romans 6. Nope. Okay, well, then baptism is absolutely a matter of first importance. And I don't care how good your heart is, the times of ignorance have ceased. Acts 17:30, right? Like, he no longer is going to wink at that ignorance and go, well, you didn't know Jesus, but that's okay. Okay. Like, not only do you have to know Jesus, you have to put your faith in Jesus. You have to come into contact with. With the Christ's blood and be buried with him and rise again. Those things are very, very clear to me. Everything else after that, what if a guy comes to. To Christ, you know, at 85 years old and he lives one year and he just doesn't get all the doctrine right. We can't preach people into heaven or hell. But, like, I gotta believe there is a bit of a sliding scale on that, where it's like, man, he didn't have 85 years in the church to really hone his. His Christianity and understand what pleases God. She didn't have that time. And if I'm reading the parable where they come in, into the vineyard, the vineyard workers, they come in at the 11th hour, the last hour of the day, okay, well, they're Getting they might. [01:02:12] Speaker B: Not have all this theology. Perfectly right, you're saying. Yeah, correct. [01:02:15] Speaker C: However, you grew up in the church, you've been in there for 80 years and you didn't grow one bit because you were just trying to cling to for dear life onto heaven. But you never really explored what's pleasing to God. You never really thought about, you know, you didn't pray for God to show you that, yes, you will be judged more. The teachers will be judged more harshly. Those who knew will be judged more harshly. So I do think the heart plays a huge role, but there are unequivocal things that you cannot get around, in my opinion. Now, what that list is, this is the problem is we will differ on that. And the way we've gotten around it in religion in the past is the Catholics decide and they go, okay, this is, this is the list. This is what we're going to do until a Pope comes along and goes, well, what about this? What about that? So it's like, that's a flawed system too. Everybody has tried to determine what exactly the list is. And this is what speaks to the point of a heart, is nobody has ever come down to what is the exact perfect list to keep because that is kind of the point against Christianity. That's what the Pharisees did. Here's the list. Keep it and you're good. There is no faith. There isn't. We will all be on different levels here. And that's the beauty of Christianity is this guy has faith and he's down here, doesn't know very much. This guy has faith and he's way up here, knows a ton. They can both get into heaven based off of where they are because their heart is seeking to do the right thing. This guy didn't get there. This guy got a lot closer. [01:03:31] Speaker A: But much is required, correct? [01:03:35] Speaker C: Correct. I think those are the principles. But as you said, Jack, lots of gray area. We don't really like that. Because if you check off heaven or hell, that's a tough one. Right? We can't necessarily check off the guy at the 11th hour into heaven and go, yeah, he's good. Well, he didn't have this right. He didn't have that right. Like, we have to be very careful about jumping to conclusions and preaching people into one or the other. [01:03:57] Speaker A: Yeah, we got a lot more. We go on to. I will have to save some for the deep end. FocusPress.org// you can sign up for the deep end and join us there. Get your questions in. We, we kind of have changed format a little bit in how we're doing this and where the outline is a little more free flowing which means we all bring points and that means we don't get to all the points we have to say. So you guys might have some on the the cutting board. I do too. So we'll probably get to that in the deep end as well. But yeah, we'll, we'll save that for then. Joe, you want to close us out with our Think Fast for this week? [01:04:29] Speaker C: So I was thinking about I, I bounced around so many different ideas on this. I think we've done political stuff, we've done some fun stuff. I was thinking about church history and I was going to ask a I kind of got into this in the episode because of martinis specifically. With that being the case though, if you I had so many different questions going. So I'm, I'm, this is a tough one on the think you shouldn't I shouldn't be overthinking the Think fast. I was thinking about Martin, I was thinking about Michael. Ms. Why do you think Christians don't make more of a like I said several different questions. I'll go with this one. Why do you think Christians don't celebrate more Christian holidays? We talked about this a little bit in the Halloween, but we didn't really get into this. Waldorf is what my wife follows kind of the Waldorf education system and it was actually Steiner, the guy that started it was had like wrote a commentary on the Gospel of John. I mean he, he wove in Christian principles and everything else. And so they do celebrate holidays like this Saint Michael with, with the dragon. Right. Saint Martin with the cloak and various different ones. Why do you think we don't celebrate those more as Christians bring forward days? [01:05:45] Speaker B: My answer might not be what you're looking for. My answer would be probably because a lot of them don't know about them and haven't like I'm going to be honest, if it wasn't for you, Joe, I wouldn't really know that those are even holidays. Like I've heard of those individuals but like for Martin. Ms. I'm, I mean we got to go but I'm curious like what do you do to celebrate? Like is there specific foods you eat? Is there specific you know, which I'm sure there is obviously. But yeah, like I, I'm unfamiliar with that and so I guess my answer may would be lack of education. Lack of lack of education on those things. Probably a little bit of fear of looking like the Orthodox or Looking like Catholicism, I'm sure, probably plays a big role as well. So I guess that will be my fast answer to the. Think fast, Jack. [01:06:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the saints that. The name itself kind of. You get a little. Why are they saints? Are we, you know, why do we call them that? Is there fully, you know, a Catholic thing to that? So there's that. I mean, saying Christmas, Easter, things like that. We kind of feel like, well, if the Bible didn't say to didn't authorize a celebration, we don't want to venerate people. And so I think there's a lot of those things. I don't think they hold up necessarily when you really get down to just remembering good things that have happened in the same sense, if you can remember Independence Day or President's Day, but because that's not religious, we think that's okay. And it's kind of just a weird cross section of objections. [01:07:09] Speaker C: I think this is a big part of Christian culture that I would love to see brought back, especially with potentially a new president. All the, you know, he's appointing Christian people and openly Christian people. I would love to see this brought back where instead of Columbus Day, it's Indigenous People Day. [01:07:24] Speaker A: Right. [01:07:25] Speaker C: We have. We have certain days that celebrate for people, but, man, in a Christian culture, I think we should celebrate people in the past that. Whether it happened. Exactly. St. Patrick, we do celebrate St. Patrick's Day. It's just for the wrong reasons, but St. Patrick of driving the snakes out of Ireland and everything that goes along with that. We do have some of those days. But, man, I think in a Christian culture, we should be celebrating those a lot more because it does draw us back to people in the past that do matter. You know, people in the past that made a difference or that are teaching really good Christian principles. Yes, you do celebrate with a roast, and you celebrate with homemade loaf of bread and ginger molasses cookies, which are fantastic. And then you do a lantern walk and sing some songs and tell the story, and then you reenact the story and it's. It's a lot of fun and the kids get into it, but more than anything, you're learning principles along the way of taking care of. Of those that are less fortunate and all sorts of stuff. So anyway, I think the days like that are fun to celebrate. We celebrated that recently, and so that's what was on my mind. But anyway, sorry, guys. That was a bit of out of out from left field, I suppose, coming back in. But it's just been on my mind so good. Any other thoughts, questions, comments before we wrap it up? [01:08:33] Speaker A: All right. [01:08:34] Speaker C: Well, thank you for listening. Make sure to sign up for the Deep end. We're going to have some really good discussion coming on Friday. [01:08:39] Speaker B: One other thing I wanted to say, we haven't pushed for reviews in a while and I noticed we have not gotten a new podcast review in a while. And so yeah, if, if you're, if you enjoy our show, if you're listening this long, then hopefully you did enjoy it and got some good things out of it. Just leave us a review on on podcast app Spotify. However you or I don't even know if you can leave reviews on Spotify, but I know Apple podcasts, you can. So yeah, leave us a, hopefully a five star review. [01:09:03] Speaker A: There you go. [01:09:04] Speaker C: There you go. [01:09:05] Speaker A: All right. We'll talk you guys next time.