Embracing Grace: Freedom, Justification, and Gospel Truth

"GODFREY: Well, I think one could say in the first place that it's not all bad to have a profound sense of sin before the Lord, if it's a genuine reflection of truth. I think of Psalm 88 and the, the pain the psalmist feels there of separation from God and suffering in the world, and the misery that can be true of this life. But, the gospel constantly points us away from ourselves and to Christ and encourages us to really feast on the truth that, although we are great sinners who deserve only the wrath of God, He has loved us with an everlasting love, He's given His son for us." [00:02:04]

"FERGUSON: Chris, I think I've found getting a better understanding of the doctrine of justification by God's grace through faith is a tremendous help to us, especially to realize that the justification that we have is not dependent on anything that is done in us, but entirely dependent on what God has done for us in Christ. And because it's been done for us in Christ, we can neither add to it, nor subtract from it." [00:03:36]

"FERGUSON: I have never done this, but I've often wanted in a church to ask if the, if the elders would point me to the oldest and most mature Christian in the congregation, and also to the newest Christian, and to bring them out to the front and to ask the congregation, 'Which of these two is most justified? Is it this woman who has served and suffered 50 years, or this girl who became a believer three weeks ago?' Just to underline the point that our justification is not based on our sanctification." [00:04:23]

"GODFREY: You mean beside that the Lord commanded us to do it? Did you see that? I was struck! I was I was persecuted for, well, I, this sort of comes to mind because I was just reading a student dissertation where he talked about John Foxe in the 17th century, and the founder of the Quaker movement, and that John Foxe, had, at least in some ways, rejected the doctrine of the Trinity because he said it wasn't in the Bible. And then he rejected baptism. And I couldn't help as I read that, but think, 'But isn't baptism in the Bible?'" [00:08:51]

"GODFREY: I mean, the Lord gave the Great Commission, that we are to carry the gospel, to disciple the nations, and to baptize them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I think, personally, that we have seriously undervalued baptism in a lot of Protestant evangelical circles, and the Lord intends baptism to be a great promise and encouragement to us, and is a declaration of His purpose to wash away our sins and renew us." [00:09:45]

"PARSONS: Well, I'll just simply say we want to share the gospel with a gay relative or friend or neighbor gently and carefully and thoughtfully and prayerfully. And, we want to make sure, though, that all the components of the gospel are presented, but in the same way that the gospel would be presented to any of us, in one sense. I don't want to be glib about this, but we need to recognize that all sin is deserving of death. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, is salvation." [00:14:25]

"PARSONS: We all need to hear the gospel presented to us in love and care and with compassion. And we need to hear the words of the gospel and the words and the promises of God that are offered to us in the gospel, because we are all weak sinners. It's not to, not to suggest that all sin is the same. We do know that some sins are more heinous than others. We know that homosexual sin is contrary to nature, as according to Romans 1, that it is contra naturum. And so, being a sin that is contrary to nature, it is a more heinous sin in the eyes of God." [00:15:02]

"NICHOLS: I think much of this is just the basics of living the Christian life, and has to be right at the center, is time in God's Word. This is how we come to know the mind of God. This is how we come to know what God approves and what God disapproves. And so, if we're not spending that time in God's Word, we're not having God's Word convict us of our sin, even awareness of what is our sin." [00:33:58]

"NICHOLS: And then on top of that conviction and then the mortification, I think it's not only the Bible reading, but it's the time in prayer. It's, we all recognize what are those sins that we struggle with, and what are those temptations that are unique to us. And so, we spend time in prayer, pleading for the Spirit who dwells within us, to come to our assistance as we try to put to death those sins that we are entangled in." [00:34:56]

"PARSONS: Just a couple of things following what Steve said. We have to understand what repentance is, and I think a lot of Christians in our day, because we've been so inundated and influenced by so much bad teaching out there, that for many Christians, repentance looks a lot like just remorse, and feeling badly about their sin. But, but repentance, and to mortify sin in the flesh, to kill sin in the flesh, we first have to understand what repenting of our sin looks like." [00:37:24]

"PARSONS: And that is a brokenness, a contrition of our sin that we are, we are truly broken by it. We are contrite and humbled by our sin. Then we confess our sin. But we don't stop there. That's where most Christians stop. But we are called to consecrate ourselves to a different way of living, a different way of thinking. And that even means striving to set parameters or guardrails, or noticing what the triggers are in our lives to try to help us not commit those same sins again, because the mortification of our sin is a lifelong process, as all of you know, and even when you think you've killed a sin, it can rear its ugly head a year or two, or ten years later." [00:38:00]

"PARSONS: But as I said earlier, too often we, we try to kill sin, we try to overcome sin by focusing on the sin. And what we read in Hebrews 12:1-2, is, is that's not the way we go about killing sin. We don't focus on the sin which so easily entangles itself, like, like vines and, and weeds growing up out of the ground to strangle us and wrap themselves around our ankles and legs to make us fall. The way we mortify sin is not by focusing on the sin, but by focusing on Christ." [00:38:44]