 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, go to nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 201 Hebrews Q&A part one. I'm the layman, Tray Strickland, and he's scholar Dr. Mark Heizer. Hey Mike, how are you? Pretty good. Good week. I think we're going to have a good Q&A. I was able to, you know, obviously look at these ahead of time. Lots of questions, and we apologize that we couldn't get to everybody's questions, but we certainly picked most of them, but just know, you know, we did get your questions and we can't answer everybody's questions, but... Because some of them are thesis topics. Yeah, but we've got some good ones for you. So, depending upon the length here, we may break it up into two episodes, but I guess we'll find out as time goes here, Mike. Yeah. I mean, they are good. You know, I had a chance to look at them, you know, with... And, you know, Tray sent me a list and then we picked what we thought we could do in an hour, so that might be wishful thinking because they're all good questions. A number of them are either kind of involved or I think require some extended discussion and illustrations, so, you know, that's why we're talking about this episode already the way we are in terms of time, but Tray, I guess we can just jump right into it. Yeah, and we also know once you get going, it's hard to... Yeah, right. It's hard to pull you back, so... Yeah, thanks for that. All right, let's just get it. Chad has our first question and his question is, he was wondering if Mike could expound a little bit on the implications that are projected by Hebrews 10, verse 14, quote, for by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Yeah, the emphasis on a little bit, well, that's going to fly right out the window. You know, where do I want to jump in here? I think that it's really helpful in something like this. Why don't we just read the actual verse so people, you know, kind of get the context for the specifics of the question. The verse says, Hebrews 10, 14, for by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. So you have this element of something that's already happened, but then you have this ongoing, you know, sort of thing. And ultimately, the question revolves around the relationship of what Jesus did and our life, you know, our works, so to speak. And, you know, how does all that fit into this, you know, and I think we really need to distinguish, not just for the sake of this question, but, you know, some of the other questions just generally in the wake of the Hebrews series. We just have to distinguish the scriptural concept of discipleship, i.e. sanctification from merit-based thinking. If you're able to do that, trust me, it's going to be a boon to your Christian life. So obviously, Scripture talks a lot about discipleship, a lot about holy living. It obviously talks about something, you know, your sanctification being accomplished already. So we have these two things, and I think where, you know, things get muddled is when we start, you know, thinking about works, as though they have something to do with merit. And again, this is a one-string banjo for me. You've heard this many times. I have a whole sermon, you know, on the internet about it called While We Were Get Sinners, where I talk about this. And for the sake of our discussion here, we have to be able to distinguish the concept of discipleship from merit-based thinking, earning eternal life. Those are two different things. And, you know, we need to stop thinking about works in terms of earning God's love and earning God's favor. God loved us while we were get sinners before we care to wit about being a disciple or living holy. What we do behaviorally doesn't spark or stimulate love in the heart of God for us. That's already there. It's been there from the get-go. So I think we need to, you know, just sort of get these kind of things fixed on our head. In the case of Hebrews 10-14, and really any other passage that uses a word like sanctify, you know, to make holy, we have to realize that, you know, sanctify can mean different things, and it really depends on who's doing what. Now, what's really interesting here is that if you have software, if you have some other means of doing this, you can. If you actually look up the verb that's used here in Hebrews 10-14, we have the verb hagiadzo, to make holy, to make sacred, to sanctify, okay? It's used 28 times. In the active voice, that means this subject is doing the action, that occurs 11 times, and it occurs 17 times in the passive voice. This is where someone is being sanctified by some external agent. Interestingly enough, in the active voice, the passages that use the active voice for hagiadzo to sanctify, they never describe believers sanctifying themselves by their works. Never. Okay, and I'm going to actually take the time to read those to you. All those verses, these are the 11 instances where hagiadzo, this verb in Hebrews 10-14, occurs in the active voice. You know, different tenses, but active voice. So we have Matthew 23-17, you blind fools for which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred. So there the temple is, you know, sanctifying the gold. John 10-36, do you say of him whom the Father consecrated, whom the Father sanctified, hagiadzo, and sent into the world, you are blaspheming. So the subject there isn't, you know, believers. John 17-17, Jesus' praise, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. So he's asking God to sanctify us. Okay. His disciples. Ephesians 5-26, that he might sanctify her. Who's the he? Well, you know, God, Jesus, he might sanctify her in the church having cleansed her by the washing of the water by the word. So God is the active agent. Hebrews 13-12, Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. 1 Peter 3-15, but in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy. Okay. Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asked you for a reason for the hope that is in you. So here believers are told to honor Christ as holy to sanctify Jesus in their hearts. Doesn't say anything about working, you know, behaving a certain way so that God, you know, feels affectionate or feels love for us. Back to the Gospels. I'm just going through a spreadsheet here of the different tenses. These are all active voice. Matthew 23-19. So back to the Gospels. You blind men for which is greater the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred near the gospel. It was the temple here. It's the altar that sanctifies John 17-19. For their sake, I consecrate. I sanctify myself. And this is Jesus praying that they also may be sanctified in truth or by truth. Hebrews 2-11. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. In the active one, he who sanctifies, again, that's not believers. We don't sanctify ourselves through our works. It's somebody else doing, you know, playing the active role and we are the passive recipient. Hebrews 9-13. For if the blood of bulls and goats, the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, so on and so forth, you know. So here he's talking about the blood of bulls and goats sanctifying, you know, someone or something. Of course, then he says, well, it doesn't do that. So those are all 11 occurrences of Hagiazzo in the active voice. The passages never describe believers sanctifying themselves, making themselves holy, solidifying their standing before God as, you know, set apart individuals by their works. It never happens. Passive voice 17 times. This is where believers are sanctified by an external agent. Again, you caught the drift in some of those verses I already read because the passive voice occurs in the same context as an active voice. I'm not going to go through all those because, again, the passive voice is some external agent or force, i.e. God or Jesus or the sacrifice of Jesus sanctifies us. We don't have, it's not our job. We don't have a role in it. Now this takes us to the question of what makes us sanctified and what does that mean? We often think of this term as though it is the result of spiritual disciplines, but that isn't the way it's presented in the New Testament. We are set apart, made holy in the sense, just like the Old Testament, of being made a possession of God. I mean, think of the temple. You had objects that were sanctified because they were used on sacred space exclusively. You had people who were sanctified, priests who occupied sacred space, specifically God set them aside. This setting apart idea, that's the way that we are talked about as believers. We are set apart by God. We are made a possession of God by something God does or something Christ did. Nothing we do, again, think of the active voice. Nothing we do achieves that status. That's why sanctification is presented the way it is. However, scripture is pretty clear about holy living and discipleship. It's just that other words and descriptions are used for those concepts. We don't achieve the status of being God's children or his possession by our works. We are to live holy because we are God's possession, because we are God's children. We are to be holy and live holy in light of what God has done, what Christ has done, not to obtain it. We are to be pure vessels so as to be of use by our owner, not to convince him to own us. He didn't need convincing. God loved us while we were yet sinners. Our performance wasn't the issue, and it's not the issue now in terms of being sanctified. I realize this runs contrary to the way a lot of this is preached. I can't help that, but like I said, you can run the search for yourself and see how Hagi-Azu is used, and you're going to find just what I read to you. I don't need to make it up because it's just there. Let's try not to think about how the way these things are preached to us, and let's try to think about what the text actually says. The text affirms two things. It's God who sanctifies us, but yet we are supposed to live holy. We're supposed to be disciples, followers of Christ. A lot of the questions are sort of tracked along this trajectory, so we're going to be returning to these themes and other questions, but just keep going here a little bit more with Hebrews 10-14. If we go back to the verse, I think we should read it in light of verse 10. We've actually got two passages here, two verses to sort of consider and be mindful of. We've got Hebrews 10-14 and Hebrews 10-10. So let me just turn there real quickly. So we have here in verse 10, and by that will, this will, Jesus, this intra-Trinitarian conversation, I have come to do your will. The son says to the father in verse 9, I have come to do your will. Verse 10, by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. It doesn't need to be supplemented. It's not going to run out. It's not going to become obsolescent. We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Then we get down to verse 14. For by a single offering, well, that's the offering back there in verse 10, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Now what we have here, again, we have this statement of something that has occurred, and really it even occurred for all time. It has eternal ramifications. And then we have this being sanctified kind of language. So what we have here is we have by a single offering, Jesus has perfected. He's brought this into being. It's complete. He has completed for all time this status, our status before God. The being sanctified idea describes the ongoing result. The result of what Jesus did through this one offering, this once for all, for all time offering, the result of that is still in process. It's still effective. It's still good. It didn't run out. The result of it is still in process. Put another way, Christ's offering set us apart to God, and that set apartness is still in effect. It's ongoing. It will remain to the end if we keep believing other other passages in Hebrews that get into this. And I think, again, this is really an important passage. If you want to refer to sort of a theme passage in the Hebrews, for all the stuff we've been talking about, we talked about in this series and what we're talking about now, it's Hebrews 3. Here's verse 12 through 14. Take care, brothers. He addresses them as brothers. Lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart. Oh, he's talking to brothers about the danger of having an unbelieving heart. We don't want that to happen. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. What's the deceitfulness of sin? Well, it's what he just was worried about, the evil, unbelieving heart. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed. If indeed. We share in Christ if indeed. We hold our original confidence firm to the end. Now, what's really interesting here, we don't have time to mention everything when we do these episodes on book studies. But the phrase deceitfulness of sin, sin there, the noun, has the definite article in front of it. You could make an exegetical point here that this is what Wallace and other grammarians call the dictic, the pointing article. It has demonstrative force. In other words, we don't want any of you to be hardened by the deceitfulness of this sin or that sin referring back to the problem of the evil, unbelieving heart. So you could make an exegetical point to reinforce the idea that this is what he's concerned about. He's talking to believers about not falling into unbelief. That's what freaks him out. It's the only thing that will impede the natural progression of us being set apart by what Jesus did. What Jesus did is still in effect. It's going to see us through to the end. We will have eternal life. We will be a member of God's family. We will be part of the household of God if we believe. That's it. It has nothing to do with performance. We don't sanctify ourselves. We're already sanctified, but we just need to keep believing. And then, again, discipleship is an issue that's covered in lots of different passages. It just doesn't use this sort of vocabulary. So Hebrews 10, 14, Hebrews 10, 10 and verse 14 have nothing to do with our own effort. Our growth as disciples is the subject of other passages, not this one. In any event, we seek to grow. We seek to be holy for many reasons. Earning God's favor, earning the status of being God's child for his possession is not one of those reasons. So honestly, it seems like we need a whole episode on this, but let's just transition to another question since we'll kind of pick up with this theme again. All right. Justin has four really good questions here. So the first one is in Hebrews 3 verse 18 through 19, is it unbelief equated to being disobedient? The disobedience would have been to the Torah, the only word they had. So couldn't we say that being disobedient to the parts of Torah we can keep today would be unbelief in the word? So on the one hand, we just read Hebrews 3. And yeah, the disobedience, the thing that the sin that he's worried about there is an unbelieving heart. But that is not the same as, oh, I could have kept the Feast of Tabernacles today. I could observe that on the calendar. And so that's like the same as the sin of unbelief. No, not so much. Again, you can't extrapolate a specific episode that the writer of Hebrews is drawing on, that he's really worried about people just giving up the faith to, oh, I'm not really going to do the Sabbath. I'm not really going to do this point of Torah, that kind of thing. Deciding to not believe is different than either saying, well, I don't really think this pertains today, so I'm not going to keep this festival. Or some other point of Torah that you might do either accidentally or let's just say that you, I don't know, you steal something or whatever. You could still believe, but you were weak or you were stubborn, you were hard-hearted, whatever. The context, let's just say it this way, let's approach it this way. The context refers back to the sin of unbelief. That's kind of obvious. The specific episode makes disobedience noted here on belief. It's illegitimate to say that any disobedience is the same sin of unbelief. How do we know that? Because you can disobey out a rebellion, you can disobey out a self-interest as a believer. If every disobedience was unbelief, now think about this, if every disobedience was unbelief, then you couldn't have believers sin. Because by definition, every sin would be evidence that they're not believing. I mean, it implodes on itself. Every sin would be evidence that it would be an act of disavowing belief in the gospel. Honestly, that's just not coherent. By definition, that would make you an unbeliever. If every sin is the same as the sin of unbelief, I guess we don't have any believers in the world because everybody sins, and John says quite clearly, 1 John 1-10, that if we say we don't sin, we make God a liar. It's not coherent, it implodes on itself. Now, let's look at some examples. When Moses disobeyed God, he gets angry and hits the rock. Did that make him an unbeliever? Was he now an unbeliever? What didn't he believe? Where did he throw his believing loyalty to? He sinned because he was angry. Maybe he had too much self-confidence. Before, when he was called, the problem was he didn't have any confidence. He was faithless, and now maybe he just has a big head. People believe that God is always the God of gods. That hasn't changed. When people violate Torah, are they treated as Gentiles in the Old Testament? Are they looked at as unbelievers? If they violate anything, like some ritual impurity or some moral impurity, the reason that they're punished is because they're part of the community. They're not all just exiled, or the community doesn't just evaporate every one sins. Every sin is not the same as the sin of unbelief. Because then, by definition, you wouldn't have a believing community. At any given point of time, you just wouldn't have it. When David commits adultery, did he stop believing in Yahweh? I mean, you look at David, the whole situation, his prayer, it's obvious that he still believed in Yahweh, but he knew he had done terrible things. Since no Old Testament person did they all unbelievers. You kind of see where this is going. It's not logically coherent. It's not theologically coherent either to make that specific equation. Now, I would say, and again, I'm going to say this not because of the question, or the question, or I'm going to make this broad, because I have heard this kind of thing come over the pulpit, so I'm going to shoot at a pulpit in my past. This sort of mindset leaves no room for being human. There's no need to be a person who knows human frailty of which God is quite aware. In other words, it implicitly requires perfection for fellowship with God. And honestly, that's dangerous. That's just dangerous. And I would say on biblical, both by precept and by example, the lives of people that you read about in the Old Testament, and the New Testament for that matter. This sort of extrapolation, this approach, this idea. Again, it's just dangerous. You know, again, I've just heard this thing in my own past and so I'm taking a few moments to shoot at it a little bit. It's a way of saying behave a certain way or maybe you're not saved or you'll lose salvation or your conduct, your life, your works. You have to do a certain thing. You got to measure up to a certain standard of behavior because you're out. You're not a believer. And every sin equated with the sin of unbelief, it's just really, really dangerous. After all, if you ever sin, then you're just like an unbeliever. That's what you are. Again, I have heard this from the pulpit and again, it is unscriptural by precept and by example. And it's just something that I know is common. Again, I'm not here to beat up on my own context because I still believe that my own original context as a believer had far more benefits than liabilities to me personally. But again, I just know really good people that were disciples. They wanted to follow the Lord and this just crushed their spirit. It crushed them because as soon as it entered into their minds that well anything I do is the same as the sin of unbelief and I'm lost. And I'm always going to be lost because I'm always going to sin. I can't be perfect. That is crushing. And honestly, it's a different gospel. So we can go on to another question. Justin also wants to know in Hebrews 914 what is the meaning of purify our conscience from dead works? Yeah, we touched on this in whatever episode it was when we were in Hebrews 9. It means stop trusting in dead works that can't save. The contrast to the dead works in the actual passage is seen in the preceding verses. Christ secured an eternal salvation in the following verse. Hebrews 915. I'll read that verse here. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. So if the first covenant couldn't save you the first covenant centered on all these rituals and all these rules and whatever the good news is that there's a different covenant operation now and something was done for you. Christ is the mediator of a new covenant and a death has occurred. That would be Jesus' death. That is what you should be trusting and don't let your conscience be troubled by believing that the first covenant, again this system of all these rules and stuff that doesn't save you. Purify your conscience from dead works. Don't get tangled up. Don't get enmeshed. Don't get spiritually strangled by all this work stuff. It couldn't accomplish salvation in the first place. So now we have something that does accomplish salvation. Christ did something that sets us apart to God puts us in the family of God and that's what we need to be believing in. That's what we need to be trusting. What is your opinion on what Hebrews 4-9 means by there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God? Yeah, whenever we were in Hebrews 4 we spent some time on this too. I'm going to go back and read just verse 8. For if Joshua had given them rest God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then verse 9 there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. What this means is it means that the rest that Israel obtained under Joshua the inheritance of the promised land that was temporary there remains a different better rest now for the people of God because if that land had, if Joshua had given them rest, God wouldn't have talked about another one to come. We are too strived to enter that rest. Does that mean work so hard that God accepts us? No. The second half of the verse tells us what it means that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. What was the disobedience? This is verse 11. What was the disobedience we are supposed to strive Hebrews 4 11 to enter into that rest that remains? Okay, do we have to work so hard that God accepts us? No. The objective is to not fall by the same sort of disobedience. What was the disobedience that was hearken to back in chapter 3 here in chapter 4 again? It was unbelief. It was unbelief. The disobedience that kept Israel from their rest was unbelief. That's earlier in chapter 4. Again, you just go back in and look at that. So, the striving to enter the rest, the new rest that's offered through Jesus is to believe it and keep believing. Therefore, if we do that we'll enter into God's rest. And by analogy, God stopped working when he rested, works were over. When we enter into the rest that God has provided for us, works are an issue. It's been accomplished for us. So, we have the analogy of the whole ceasing from work to enter into rest idea. Okay, Justin's last question is, salvation is a gift. Do you believe that works done on earth determining a level of reward or responsibility in the kingdom? Yeah, I do. I think that works have nothing to do with kingdom residents. Okay, salvation. But Scripture does suggest rewards in the kingdom are not all the same. I mean, not everybody has the same reward, that kind of thing. You know, 1 Corinthians 3 10-15, I think suggests this. I'll just read the passage. Paul says, beginning in verse 10, According to the grace of God, given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation, and the foundation is salvation or that's Christ, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he'll receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he'll suffer loss, though he himself will be saved but only as through fire. So, the works here are not the foundation. The works are what goes on top of the foundation. The works do not replace or displace salvation through Christ. That's very clear in this passage. The works are something, again, put upon top, in addition to this status that was gained for us by what someone else did, namely Jesus. So, the real question here, is it an all or nothing idea? Are we going to get to a some people will take this, and I've heard this preach too, that if you're not they wouldn't say it this way, but basically if you're not nearly perfect or as perfect as I am the preacher, if you don't have a life of this endless string of victories here, spiritual victories, then you're going to get to heaven. If you don't have more spiritual victories than not, then everything's going to burn up in flames before your eyes, and you'll be with the Lord empty-handed. I think that's bunk. It's not an all or nothing idea. It's very doubtful. I doubt that it's a total loss because what that implies is that on the other side you have a total success. There are no total successes in discipleship. Why? Because we're people. We're humans. We're fallible. We aren't deities. We're not God. We're not by definition. We're perfect. If you're going to say that having failures, spiritual failures and struggles with sin, sometimes you'll lose. You might even lose a lot. It might be a huge struggle that that wipes everything out. I just don't see the coherence of that because then you're taking unequally, you're taking an imperfect scorecard. Let's say you have more victories than failures. Your scorecard is still imperfect. So God gives you everything. It's like a total success. If the scales tip the other way, it's a total loss. I don't think that's the picture at all. What I think is going on here, I should just go to a quick reference in 1 Corinthians 4, verse 5. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive I think this verse needs to be part of preceding chapter, at least consideration in tandem with 1 Corinthians 3. I think what the point is that everyone is going to suffer some loss and everyone is going to get some reward. But the tallies as it were, what that amounts to, I don't see any evidence in Scripture where it's equal for everybody. I think we're all just going to see how we could have been used, where we fell short, where we rebelled, where we stumbled, where we just failed. And we'll see again what might have been what God could have done with us in a given circumstance. And we'll suffer loss, but we'll also see what God was able to accomplish with us when we present ourselves as a useful tool. And that's one of the motivations for holy living, to be useful. It has nothing to do with earning a place in God's family, meriting it enough. Everything to do though with being useful. God wants to use people. He wants to use believers to help other people become believers, to help believers grow, to do things for the kingdom. You have to make yourself useful. And basically if you're just not a disciple of Jesus, if you're not trying to live with him as your model, you're going to become pretty darn well useless, in certain contexts. That's the whole. That's really where the rubber meets the road as far as the debate. Do we have Christians that are like 1% useful and 99% useless? Ultimately, I don't know. The Spirit of God takes up residence in someone and encourages them to prompt them to do certain things. Do they believe or not believe? Ultimately, I don't have the answer for that. Only the person knows that and only God knows that that's why. All I know is that we have to believe to have eternal life and we need to be grateful. We should want to be useful. We need to be grateful for our salvation and live accordingly. Those are the clear things that are taught in Scripture. How we take that information and look at somebody else and wonder, well, that's a human thing to do. I understand that. We're someone else. What's really going on there? I think we need to... We all know people like that. We need to talk to them and be honest with them about their sin. We need to challenge them to think about what's really going on inside. Are you really believing the Gospel or not? I don't really care that you prayed a prayer 10 years ago and now you've basically taken that and said, well, I said the incantation. I can do whatever I want now. I can do the validity of your faith because you've given me no choice. I wonder because you've given me reason to wonder. But I can't decide for you. I can't tell. I don't know. But you need to examine yourself. Isn't that a scriptural phrase? Let a man examine himself. I'm not going to examine you. I'm going to tell you that from what I see, it prompts a concern. But that's about all I can do. I can just tell you I'm concerned. I can't produce the answer for you. Only you can do that. So we need to encourage people to examine themselves. That's what the New Testament does in any number of places. And I think we ought to stick to that and not try to position ourselves as some sort of wise spiritual authority able to see behind the veil and penetrate a person's mind and really know what's going on in there. So we need to encourage a person, hopefully, to consider themselves and then talk to them about the Gospel. The answer is always the same. Whether they are a believer or they're stuck in sin or the answer is still the same. Do you believe this right now? Do you believe the Gospel right now? I don't need a scorecard. I don't need a box score. I don't need to be omniscient. It doesn't matter. What matters is right now. You need to make this decision, whatever. But I'll let this go on to another question. I don't want to be too sermonic here. Alright, Jim from Mississippi and actually a few others like Steven have asked about Matthew 7. So I'm going to read Jim's from Mississippi. Throughout the series, Mike has frequently identified the passages where the writer of Hebrews stresses the importance of belief in Jesus. Yet it seems the folks to whom Jesus refers in Matthew 7 21-23 thought that they believed in Jesus. Yet he says he never knew them and he cast them out because they did not do the will of his father. In my own attempts to reconcile these passages, I find that the same word justified appears in James 2, 24. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. As well in Romans 3-28 but they are justified freely by his grace throughout the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. So maybe the folks in Matthew 7 21-23 either did not believe or they didn't believe the right stuff. I think I'm in the red zone. Can Mike help me get this across the go line? I only hope he said that because you're on fantasy. I don't know. I love the football references. There's a nice turn of a phrase there. I think the key here is verse 23. This is Matthew 7 21-23. Verse 23 Jesus calls these people quote, workers of lawlessness. I would say that Jesus is targeting pretenders here. They had a profession you know, Lord, Lord, you know, I mean this profession of their allegiance to him. But their lives showed they did not really believe workers of lawlessness. Now, if that isn't the way to take that passage then we'd have to affirm that Jesus called genuine believers workers of lawlessness. I think that's a stretch to say the least. Another way of looking at this let's ask who is Jesus exposing? Who is he targeting here? Is he targeting disciples or believers whose behavior was imperfect? Is he targeting disciples or believers who struggle with sin? Is he targeting disciples or believers who have times of weakness? Well, guess what? All three of those things describes the 11 disciples who weren't Judas. They all got scared. They all forsook Christ. They bickered with each other. They debated their own self-importance. Would Jesus really call those guys workers of lawlessness? I don't think so. I think, again, he's targeting pretenders. Where do we get the idea? Honestly, sometimes we subconsciously have this idea that the apostles and Paul were perfect. This becomes part of this works problem, this discussion. They faltered. They faltered. Disciples forsook Jesus. I mean, how bad can it get? They struggled with sin. Paul, Roman 7. People love to try to argue Paul out of that passage that he wasn't really a believer struggling with sin. Frankly, I think they do that because they somehow assume that Paul was some sort of peon of perfection. Paul is human. He's as human as anybody else. He might sin less, but his sin will probably bother him more. You could look at things like that, but he's struggling. He's struggling. There's no reason to think that he didn't struggle. He's not glorified. He's Paul. He's a human being. Again, that list. Struggling with sin. Behavior is not perfect. They chicken out. They're weak. Those are the 11 disciples. I don't think Jesus would look at those 11 guys and say, you guys are workers of lawlessness. Just don't believe that. I think what Jesus is targeting is pretenders. We have to remember, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. Everyone is going to sin. Everyone is going to struggle. Everyone is going to fail. If Jesus is shooting at all those people who struggle and fail, well, I guess he doesn't have any disciples there. I guess nobody is a believer. Again, you have to think about the ramifications of where these different conclusions lead. Everyone fails. Who would Jesus have as a disciple? I don't think he's targeting believers who are struggling here or who fail. I think he's targeting pretenders. They're not really believers. They might think they are, but they're not. That takes us to James. This whole faith and works show me a man's faith show me his works and then I'll consider his faith real. All this kind of talk that James 224 was quoted in the question. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. What we mean by that, what James means by that, I don't think it's terribly complicated. I think it gets complicated because we have been brow-beaten into a merit mentality. We think we have to merit God's love. If we believe that, if we swallow that pill, we create these conundra. Works according to James justify faith and what that means is they validate faith. Works don't replace faith in anything James says ever. He doesn't replace faith with works. Works show faith is real. Works serve to point to genuine faith. Faith is the thing that we need to find out if it's real. Real faith is shown by works. The problem is thinking of works like they can be interchanged with faith or that they replace faith. Works are not a substitute for faith in the book of James. He never says that. I like to marry Ephesians 2-8 to James. For by grace you're saved through faith without works is dead. Smash the verses together. To me it's helpful anyway. Maybe it's not helpful at all. If you think about that, for grace you're saved through faith without works is dead. The absence of works doesn't say I just didn't work hard enough to merit eternal life. No, the absence of works says faith isn't here. Works are not a substitute for faith. Faith cannot be exchanged for works. Works show that faith is in the building. This isn't a syllogism, but to try to illustrate this way, I've been thinking a lot about this. Let's try to do it this way. Let's try to illustrate it this way. Let's try to swap in some other terms. Let's start with works and faith. Works or actions maybe if that helps you. Works don't produce faith. Works don't replace faith. Works validate or demonstrate faith. In other words, works shows us that faith is there. Works are necessary to show that faith is real. Their absence invalidates a claim of faith. Now, he's really talking about basically a total absence here. Remember, James says faith without works is dead. He doesn't say faith with 60% works. He says faith without works is dead. So he's really talking about the situation where there's basically a total absence. But we have to fix our minds. Works don't produce faith. They don't replace faith. They validate or demonstrate faith. Now, let's use some other vocabulary and see if this doesn't help. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I have three sets of these. Let's use the phrase kind gestures and love. Kind gestures don't produce love. Just think about the truth of these statements. Kind gestures don't produce love. Kind gestures don't replace love. But kind gestures validate love. In other words, kind gestures are necessary to show that love is real. Their absence would invalidate a claim of love, wouldn't they? Let's try obedience and loyalty. Obedience doesn't produce loyalty. Obedience doesn't replace loyalty. In other words, obedience is necessary to show that loyalty is real. Its absence would invalidate any claim of loyalty. To be a little more philosophical here, let's try effects and causes. Effects don't produce causes. Effects don't replace causes. Effects validate causes, though. In other words, effects necessarily require a cause. If there's no effect, there's no need to look for a cause. I don't know if any of that helps, but I think if we start substituting other words because we have this works and faith thing that creates a lot of confusion. My advice is always to people focus on merit and discipleship. Merit and discipleship. As soon as you start using the word merit, it sort of cleans out the room a little bit. In some cases a lot. We're talking about works. That's got to be part of salvation. What you're really saying is that we merit eternal life in some way. Anybody who really understands the gospel is going to be caught short by that and go, boy, I sure don't want to say it that way because then it sounds like God owes us something. Yeah, you're right, it does. But that's actually where you're at theologically. If your behavior is a necessary ingredient to salvation itself then that's merit. That's merit. That's what that is. There is no merit before God. God doesn't want it. He doesn't expect it. He doesn't need it. He knows he ain't getting it. He's just not. That's why we have Jesus. That's why Jesus is the one who sets us apart and sanctifies us and so on and so forth. So merit I think can clear the room in a lot of ways. When we talk about sanctification, things like let's use the word discipleship and hopefully we know enough about discipleship where we realize that that involves imitating Jesus. It doesn't have anything to do with merit, but it has everything to do with trying to mimic the experience, the life of Jesus. Again, as a follower of him, not trying to earn salvation but just trying to follow him. Trying to imitate his life. The real question again, is why should we live a holy life? Shall we sin so that grace may abound? I want all the grace God has to give me so I'm going to keep on sinning to experience that grace. This is a New Testament problem. Paul says in Romans 6 to God forbid. He says how can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father we too might walk in the units of life. Died to sin is Paul's expression for quote, you know, chose to follow Christ. How can we who have chosen to follow Christ instead of living for our own passions think this? And when we believed, when we chose to, you know, Christ we were united to his body, you know, the body that died and the one that rose again. So the Christian life is the process of mimicking Jesus dying to yourself, not putting yourself above showing gratitude to God as a son or daughter in his household and of course treating your neighbor as yourself. That's what Jesus did. Being conformed to his image now that you believe, that's discipleship. That's what we're supposed to be doing. You know, we're supposed to be dying with Jesus again, preferring others over ourselves and living out, living according to what God wants us to do. We need to try to imitate that, not to earn the status of sonship or daughtership. Jesus was already God's son. He's doing this. He learns obedience by weakness. You know, all this stuff in Hebrews that we need to imitate that. Not so that we merit God's love. God loved us before. This was even an issue. He loved us before. He even sent Jesus. And our behavior isn't what sparks a feeling of love in God's heart for us. That's already there. But in terms of discipleship, we try to imitate Jesus. We die to ourselves. We prefer others over ourselves. We prefer, you know, what God wants us to do over our own desires. This is what we try to do. And you know what? If we do that, it's going to produce suffering. There's going to be a consequence to it, just like it was for Jesus. In his case, he became obedient unto death. But guess what? He rose so we should walk because we're united to his resurrection body, too. We're not just united to the one that's going to die. We're united to the one that rose. And so we should live. We should walk as though we're raised from the dead. Meaning we're freed from the dominion of the curse of sin. We're freed from the penalty of sin. The point is imitation, not trying to merit God's love. Can he already loved you while you were getting a sinner before you ever had any thought about any of this? Your behavior doesn't spark that inside God. It's been there the whole time. So discipleship is to be like Jesus, not so that God will say to himself, gosh, here, she is so good. I want them to appear with me. No. No. Be like Jesus because he did what was necessary to have you up there with him. You serve out of a grateful heart. If you do, God will reward that by using you like he'd love to use you to further his own purposes. So discipleship is about experiencing in your own body what it was like to be Jesus. That includes suffering and struggle. It doesn't mean doing whatever the heck you want. Knowing that God loves you anyway. We are to imitate Jesus' love for the Father which was reflected by the way he lived. And then take the consequences just like Jesus did. Knowing that a more abundant life is waiting for you on the other side. Jesus knew that. No doubt Jesus enjoyed being human, but it came to a huge cost. His life was never about pleasing himself. Rather he, just like Paul says in Philippians, he took upon the form of a servant and he humbled himself becoming obedient even to the point of death. So discipleship this thing we call sanctification isn't filling out checklists. Isn't doing things so that God looks at us and says gosh they're good. I want them up here. They've earned it. No. Discipleship is about experiencing in your own body what it was like to be Jesus. We live for God. We live for others. It's servanthood. There's any number of ways you can express it. There are lots of reasons. Again, these are the big ones. To live a certain way. But meriting favor with God trying to spark some love inside God for yourself is not one of those reasons. Just isn't. Alright, Mike. We're going to stop it right there and save the rest of the questions for part two. But can I just say what great questions we get from such a great audience? I mean, very thoughtful. These are not lightweight questions. Absolutely not. And to be able to articulate it in such a concise, articulated manner is hard to do because usually these questions are, you know, I know you guys y'all send me in your questions and they're a couple of paragraphs long. I do include everything for Mike so he understands the context of your question but then I kind of condense it down to ask the actual question for the sake of the podcast. But nonetheless, please know that he does see the entire context of your questions and it's hard to ask some of these questions because there's a lot to it. Yeah, they have to be unpacked for sure. Like I said, they're not lightweight questions. Absolutely. Alright, Mike. Well we appreciate everybody sending in their questions. We appreciate Mike answering those questions and next week we'll have Part 2. And with that, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast visit www.nakedbibleblog.com To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.rmsh.com