Understanding Faith: Jesus, Covenants, and Moral Goodness
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"Listen, this is a really good question and as I thought about this question I thought this is kind of difficult because we don't know how sophisticated we should be with our children when they're at a young age regarding theology. We don't want to blow their minds, we don't want to speak in a way that's far above them, and so I don't know how much you need to go into the details of the Trinity that there's one God in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." [00:01:18]
"I think the important thing to tell our children is this: that Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible right here, that Jesus is truly God and truly man. I think that that's something that can't be reinforced enough with our children. So if they have playmates that are kind of telling them, as the question came, if the playmates are saying, 'Well, Jesus is the Son of God but not God,' our children should be secure enough in understanding, 'No, the Bible says that Jesus is God.'" [00:01:54]
"Now, your question is, is the church participants or partners of the biblical covenants? Look, I would just put it to you this way: No, except for the new covenant. The church or God's people are brought into the new covenant. Now, I would say that the new covenant created the church because what was revealed in the Old Testament again and again was that the Gentiles would be blessed by the new covenant that was prophesied in the Old Testament." [00:04:50]
"I think that's the important way to understand it, that the New Covenant in a sense created the church, this new body of Jew and Gentile coming together in one group which had not been known before the new covenant was established. I think one of the reasons why I want to write a book on this, so I think this is worthy of discussion, is I think that there are some different understandings of the covenants out there in the Christian world." [00:05:50]
"There's a very real sense in which the power of the New Covenant, the power of what Jesus did for us on the cross, breaks any kind of sense of generational sin. Now, I do want to say though that I think we can all agree that environmentally speaking, there's such a thing as generational sin. If a young man or woman grows up in a home where there's a lot of sin, a lot of rebellion against God, a lot of dysfunction going on because of that, they are going to suffer from that." [00:07:57]
"But God does not hold later generations responsible for the sins of previous generations, and I believe that we can say that any kind of generous thing is broken by the power of Jesus Christ at the cross in his death and resurrection. By the power of the New Covenant, we do not have to feel that we are cursed by any previous generation's sin in our lineage, in our ancestry." [00:09:14]
"Paul was very strong in the idea that Christians were not bound or obligated to keep the Mosaic law. Look, I think this is the best way to understand this: if you are a believer and you want to observe aspects of the Mosaic law, you want to keep the Sabbath as the Jewish people do, you want to eat kosher as the Jewish people do, you want to observe some other ceremonies and customs, now as long as we're not talking about sacrifice for sin and all that, of course, which in the modern context we're not talking about that." [00:12:24]
"If you want to follow those customs, you have complete freedom in Jesus Christ to do so, but don't for a moment think that it makes you any more righteous before God. The ground of your righteousness, Messianic believer, and the ground of my righteousness, Gentile believer who loves the Jewish people, by the way, the ground of our righteousness is not any of our obedience. The ground of our righteousness is who Jesus is and what he did for us, especially at the cross and the empty tomb." [00:13:01]
"The philosophical dilemma is simply this: if God commands something because it is good, does it mean that there is something higher than God in moral principle or nature, something that even if God were to disobey, that would be wrong? Robert, I'm gonna tell you as someone who hasn't thought through this very much, I'll be honest with you, even though, like I said, we had a fascinating discussion on this just this last week." [00:25:54]
"My inclination is to say it is to put more emphasis on the idea, even though, listen, I understand there's some dilemmas involved in this, but I'm just being straightforward with you. My inclination is to put the emphasis on the idea that God commands things because they are good, that there is a transcendent goodness that even God conforms to in goodness." [00:27:15]
"James says that we should be careful not to teach because of a stricter judgment. Does that only apply to this life or will teachers be punished in heaven? Well, alright, great question, Sean. We need to take serious this idea that the Bible says that teachers will be liable to a stricter judgment. However, I don't see that stricter judgment in terms of punishment in heaven, but it could be the denial of reward in heaven." [00:29:20]
"Not so much as a punishment in heaven, we're not going to be punished in heaven for anything. Heaven's heaven, but reward may be denied, and we may find that things that we did on earth that we thought would gain much reward before the Lord end up gaining no reward before the Lord, and we are saved, as the Bible uses expression, by the skin of our teeth." [00:29:57]
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"I think the important thing to tell our children is this: that Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible right here, that Jesus is truly God and truly man. I think that that's something that can't be reinforced enough with our children. So if they have playmates that are kind of telling them, as the question came, if the playmates are saying, 'Well, Jesus is the Son of God but not God,' our children should be secure enough in understanding, 'No, the Bible says that Jesus is God.'" [00:01:54]
"Now, your question is, is the church participants or partners of the biblical covenants? Look, I would just put it to you this way: No, except for the new covenant. The church or God's people are brought into the new covenant. Now, I would say that the new covenant created the church because what was revealed in the Old Testament again and again was that the Gentiles would be blessed by the new covenant that was prophesied in the Old Testament." [00:04:50]
"I think that's the important way to understand it, that the New Covenant in a sense created the church, this new body of Jew and Gentile coming together in one group which had not been known before the new covenant was established. I think one of the reasons why I want to write a book on this, so I think this is worthy of discussion, is I think that there are some different understandings of the covenants out there in the Christian world." [00:05:50]
"There's a very real sense in which the power of the New Covenant, the power of what Jesus did for us on the cross, breaks any kind of sense of generational sin. Now, I do want to say though that I think we can all agree that environmentally speaking, there's such a thing as generational sin. If a young man or woman grows up in a home where there's a lot of sin, a lot of rebellion against God, a lot of dysfunction going on because of that, they are going to suffer from that." [00:07:57]
"But God does not hold later generations responsible for the sins of previous generations, and I believe that we can say that any kind of generous thing is broken by the power of Jesus Christ at the cross in his death and resurrection. By the power of the New Covenant, we do not have to feel that we are cursed by any previous generation's sin in our lineage, in our ancestry." [00:09:14]
"Paul was very strong in the idea that Christians were not bound or obligated to keep the Mosaic law. Look, I think this is the best way to understand this: if you are a believer and you want to observe aspects of the Mosaic law, you want to keep the Sabbath as the Jewish people do, you want to eat kosher as the Jewish people do, you want to observe some other ceremonies and customs, now as long as we're not talking about sacrifice for sin and all that, of course, which in the modern context we're not talking about that." [00:12:24]
"If you want to follow those customs, you have complete freedom in Jesus Christ to do so, but don't for a moment think that it makes you any more righteous before God. The ground of your righteousness, Messianic believer, and the ground of my righteousness, Gentile believer who loves the Jewish people, by the way, the ground of our righteousness is not any of our obedience. The ground of our righteousness is who Jesus is and what he did for us, especially at the cross and the empty tomb." [00:13:01]
"The philosophical dilemma is simply this: if God commands something because it is good, does it mean that there is something higher than God in moral principle or nature, something that even if God were to disobey, that would be wrong? Robert, I'm gonna tell you as someone who hasn't thought through this very much, I'll be honest with you, even though, like I said, we had a fascinating discussion on this just this last week." [00:25:54]
"My inclination is to say it is to put more emphasis on the idea, even though, listen, I understand there's some dilemmas involved in this, but I'm just being straightforward with you. My inclination is to put the emphasis on the idea that God commands things because they are good, that there is a transcendent goodness that even God conforms to in goodness." [00:27:15]
"James says that we should be careful not to teach because of a stricter judgment. Does that only apply to this life or will teachers be punished in heaven? Well, alright, great question, Sean. We need to take serious this idea that the Bible says that teachers will be liable to a stricter judgment. However, I don't see that stricter judgment in terms of punishment in heaven, but it could be the denial of reward in heaven." [00:29:20]
"Not so much as a punishment in heaven, we're not going to be punished in heaven for anything. Heaven's heaven, but reward may be denied, and we may find that things that we did on earth that we thought would gain much reward before the Lord end up gaining no reward before the Lord, and we are saved, as the Bible uses expression, by the skin of our teeth." [00:29:57]
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