Resources:
"The Whole Christ" by Sinclair Ferguson
"Christ the Lord" by Michael Horton
1689 LBC, Chapters 14 and 15
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https://youtu.be/RAzsCOZ-P-E
Semper Reformanda Transcripts
Justin Perdue: Welcome to Semper Reformanda.
Jon Moffitt: This is an important conversation that needs to happen. It really is the introduction to what the next few books are going to be going deeper and deeper into. This is the number one question and common email that we get nonstop at Theocast, where people are just struggling with the same sin, or struggling with something in their past, and they just can't feel rest because they don't think they've done enough, or there's something missing, or they even question their salvation. The reason I made the comment I did about it, being a fruit is that fruits are not perfect. They grow and they fluctuate. This is why Paul even has to rebuke believers and encourage them—and often with strong words. He says, "Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called." Then he names fruit: with gentleness and meekness and patience. Those are all fruits of the Spirit. He even calls the Galatians and the Corinthians to repent, which is also a fruit. "You need to stop thinking this way, or that it's okay to do this." Even in James—James calls them to repent of the way that they're thinking.
Justin Perdue: This conversation... we're having it about repentance right now. But immediately, in my mind, the same thing could be said about faith. And that's really controversial. I'm not trying to derail our train here, but your faith will ebb and flow too, at least in terms of your experience of it. And if we are somehow trusting in the consistency of our faith, God help us.
The apostles have to write things like that, too. I'm thinking of Philippians 3 where Paul is writing again to a church and saying, "I'm writing the same things to you again. No trouble for me. Safe for you. Don't trust in your own righteousness; trust in the racist of Christ."
Anyway, I'm agreeing with you that anything that is a fruit of regeneration, a fruit of God's effectual calling in our lives, our experience of that certainly is going to ebb and flow—and even in terms of just how obvious it is. That's going to go up and down.
Jon Moffitt: That's right. Hebrews says to consider how to build one another up so that you are not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. I think it's important for us to take the ongoing struggle seriously.
Justin, you got on the phone with me this morning and you said, "I'm just beat down. I'm just tired of fighting sin." It's not like you're ready to give in and not repent anymore, but it's just that all Christians will feel the weight of repentance for the rest of their life. It's just what we do. We repent nonstop.
Justin Perdue: I'll just talk really personally for a second in terms of my experience lately. It's a wearying season of life for me and my family, and even for us as the pastors of our church. It has been tough. Everybody's been through it—COVID has been a thing, four small kids in the house, my wife has started a business. Basically, for me, how I've been wrestling lately is that circumstances feel tough at points and I get frustrated about that. I am tired at points of battling selfishness, of battling my tendencies toward pride and defensiveness, and all these kinds of things like the need to justify myself. At times, you just get weary of it. And even as I'm weary of it, something is said, you hear something, and you're just wrecked by knowing you are a wretch. But I know God loves me and He's merciful to me. I don't fully understand it. I know that Christ has provided me with righteousness and he has died for my sins. Jesus, thank you for that. Lord, give me faith, forgive me for my sins, and help me. It's this ebbing and flowing thing of sometimes I'm weary of my sin, I'm weary of fighting it, and yet I want to fight it because I don't want to wound those around me and I want to honor God with my life. Then I am renewed.
It's just like what the confessions say: the Lord renews us with repentance. He gives it to us. I'm not saying that that experience is going to be the same every time, but the Lord continues to do this for us. I think that we need to, again, cast our gaze from ourselves and put our gaze back on Christ and God and His grace in terms of how He does it.
Jon Moffitt: When you read James and it says to count it all joy when you find yourself in various trials, it's really hard to hear that. But in many ways, what God is doing is that He allows the storms of life, and often our own sin, to show us how insignificant our life is outside of Christ. There's so much significance, there's so much that matters inside of Christ.
Some of the petty things that we repent of... someone said it somewhere and I was trying to figure out where. I think it was a tweet you put out recently that we repent of sins that bother us, but we don't really think about the sins that hurt and affect other people, and that really affect the glory and the nature of Christ, and the nature of Christ in our life.
Often, sin bothers us because it's annoying.
Justin Perdue: Yeah. And we're just tired of battling it.
Jon Moffitt: But when we think about what sin really is, we're trying to be satisfied in something other than Christ. That can sound so high level and it can even sound pietistic. Last night in bed—I'll just be open with and blunt with our listeners—I became a little anxious about SR and where that's going. We're about to plant a new church in two weeks with Patrick. I became very overwhelmed and stressed. At one point I said, "Who is in charge, Jon or Jesus? Jon, just chill out. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen. Work hard and trust the Lord, and if it fails then God wanted it to fail." Why do we stress over these things? In the long run, if this is what He wants, then just be faithful and see what happens. But if it's not, it's okay. It's not the end of the world.
Justin Perdue: You're right. I'm going to read a little bit from 1689 and comment on some of these. Chapter 15 has five paragraphs in it. I'm just going to read some snippets because it's all really good. This is the chapter on Repentance to Life and Salvation. I read paragraph one earlier, but paragraph two goes this way: "There is no one who does good and does not sin. Even the best may fall into great sins and offenses, through the power and deceitfulness of the corruption in them, along with the strength of temptation. Therefore, God has mercifully provided in the covenant of grace that believers who sin and fall will be renewed through repentance to salvation." That's something that, again, He gives us. That's what paragraph one said: it's an evangelical grace; it's a grace of the gospel.
This next paragraph is good—and I'm gonna explain some of these words so that we don't understand them in a pietistic way. "This saving repentance is a gospel grace in which those who are made aware by the Holy Spirit of the many evils of their sin, by faith in Christ humble themselves for it with godly sorrow, hatred of it, and self-loathing." All I understand that to be saying is like what I just described from my own experience, where you say, "God, I'm a wretch. I don't want to do this, yet I find myself doing it. Have mercy on me, give me faith, and help me." That's it. "They pray for pardon and strength of grace and determine the endeavor by provisions from the Spirit to live before God in a well-pleasing way in everything." It's just so encouraging.
Last little snippet just to encourage us even more. Paragraph five: "God has made full provision through Christ in the covenant of grace to preserve believers in their salvation." Let that wash over you. "Thus, although there is no sin so small that it is undeserving of damnation, yet there is no sin so great that it will bring damnation on those who repent. This makes the constant preaching of repentance necessary." So we live a life of ongoing repentance as Christians.
Jon Moffitt: Justin, when do we need mercy?
Justin Perdue: When we sin.
Jon Moffitt: Okay. So when he says, "So let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."
Justin Perdue: When are we in need? When we sin.
Jon Moffitt: That's right. So we run with boldness. But the point of it is this: what do we do when we sin? We want to fix it. We want to show penance. We want to do what the prodigal did; we want to prove to the father that we can earn it. And the writer of Hebrews says, "No, no. You run into the presence of God to receive mercy in time of need." What's so hard is that when we preach repentance, Justin, it's like we're preaching penance. It's like you got to grovel, and people feel like, "Have I groveled enough?"
Justin Perdue: And the answer to that question is certainly no. You've never done enough even when you're repenting.
Jon Moffitt: And my kids struggle with this, and I struggle with this within my marriage. I hurt my wife and then I go back to her and she's like, "Do you really mean that? Or were you just being sarcastic and saying sorry so you can be done with it?" And we feel that. Did I grovel enough before God?
Justin Perdue: In human relationships, whenever we mess something up, it's like I got to do something to make it right again.
Jon Moffitt: I will say no one has fully repented ever. This is why we have an advocate. This is mercy to receive that which you don't deserve.
Justin Perdue: Martin Luther is sort of famous for saying something along these lines: we need to repent of our repenting. What he means by that is that our repentance is inadequate. Even it is so imperfect and tainted with mixed motivations and sin that we ought not ever look at it as something that's going to give us comfort. We're always looking to Christ, and if we're looking anywhere else, we're going to be ultimately let down. We're going to be constantly doubting and wrestling and struggling.
Jon Moffitt: Right. And that doesn't mean that you don't repent. Some people hear me say, "No one's ever fully repented, so therefore, why should I repent?" Because being in sin and not falling on Christ is horrible. It's miserable. "The way of the transgressor is hard," is what Proverbs says. I say amen to that. That is like one of the best Proverbs ever written because it's a fact, and we run to Christ to receive mercy because sin is what causes us to feel that separation from the Father—and we don't want that.
Justin Perdue: Psalm 32: "Blessed is the man against whom the Lord does not count his iniquity. Blessed are the forgiven." But then are verses one and two summarized. But then verses three to five, David says that basically, when he didn't confess his sin, he wasted away. He was eaten up from the inside out. "But then I confessed my sin to you and you restored me." It's just true. Sin will bleed us out. And when we don't confess it and when we don't take it to the Lord, it's harming us and our neighbor, but it'll destroy you.
Jon Moffitt: When he says in the Psalms, "Restore unto me the joy of my salvation," this is again 2 Peter 1 where he says, "If these are not true of you and increasing," when he's talking about the fruits of the Spirit, "you have forgotten that you have been cleansed." That's another way of saying what David said: restore unto me, remind me, pull me back under the joy of what I have received from you. This is why the preaching of Christ in the gospel is mandatory to the pastor, the shepherd.
Someone just put on the Facebook group—I saw it and I loved it—it says that Jesus says, "Feed my sheep." Not motivate them. Feed them. Let them feast on Christ because that's what keeps us sustained and trusting and resting in the sufficiency of Christ because we're so sinful. We're so distracted. We're so pulled away that we often try to feed on our own sufficiency—and we shouldn't be doing that; we should be feeding on Christ.
Justin Perdue: I think this is clear. Even to confess sin and to repent of sin is to acknowledge our insufficiency. It is to acknowledge our need, ultimately, and we're acknowledging our need of God and what only He can do and has done for us.
I know I summarized it just a minute ago, but I was just looking at Psalm 32. I just think they're so edifying and very relevant to what we're talking about. So this is Psalm 32:1-5. "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,' and you forgave the iniquity of my sin." It's beautiful. Even that whole idea of "in whose spirit there is no deceit" is not saying that you don't have any deceit in you. What he's saying is that the forgiven, our people, are not trying to play this game with the Lord like they're better than they are. No. I am a sinner in need of forgiveness, I'm going to confess it to God, and He will cover my iniquity and forgive my sin because of what Christ has done.
Jon Moffitt: We stand naked and bare before the Lord. And when believers can learn to do that spiritually, where we all stand in front of each other saying we are all in equal need of God's grace, that's where real ministry and love and care can happen—which I hope can happen in these groups, where you'll begin to learn how to care for one another and then take that back to your church and love and care for your body.
Justin Perdue: Well, friends, thank you for listening in on this conversation. We hope it's been encouraging to you. It has been to me, to consider these things. Keep trusting the Lord Jesus Christ. Keep confessing your sins to the Lord, and to one another, and with your church on Sundays. Then have the wonderful news of absolution and forgiveness heralded over. It's the only way to live in this fallen world as we battled against sin and battle against our flesh.
We're grateful for each of you and the ways you've partnered with Theocast. We pray that you continue to do that. Continue to spread the word about this message and this movement, dare I say we can call it such a thing. And we pray this thing continues to grow and continues to bless more and more saints all over the place. And you're a part of that so thank you. We look forward to talking with you again in this format next week. Until then. Grace and peace.
