Transcript

00:00 Paul Tripp: Well, it's wonderful to be doing another one of these podcasts, Shelby.

00:04 Shelby Abbott: Part four.

00:05 Paul: As you know, I've been six months in Southern California and just a little over a week back here in Philadelphia, and I'm so happy to be here in the in the studio with you and with JP, who everybody can't see, but he's real and here.

00:24 Shelby: If you weren't real, we wouldn't be. You wouldn't be seeing this.

00:29 Paul: That's right, I don't think that's a hologram. And we're going to talk more about God's grace. I've had this thing happened this year. It's unlike anything that's happened in my Christian life. I have a dear friend, Jonathan Olsen, who is a pastor in South Philly, and we ministered together in Tenth Presbyterian Church and we've been dear friends. And one morning, he text[ed] me a passage of scripture and I wrote a commentary on it.

01:12 Shelby: Just back to him, just a personal thing?

01:12 Paul: Yes, and the next day, he sent me another passage. I wrote a commentary on that and we've done that since the middle of December; and so, there's quite a list of these things. And it's been a wonderful fellowship on the word of God and sort of rethinking together passages. I think someday this may end up being a book.

01:35 Shelby: I was just going to say do you collect these things because it would be good.

01:38 Paul: It's so sweet and the reason I was mentioning that is I think that's just another example of God's grace. God put it in this man to send me this passage, I responded, he liked that; and we've just done it every morning since. And it's a wonderful way to start the day and I'm fellowshipping with this person who's not in the room with me, but who I know very well and I know his love for the gospel; and it's been very sweet. And that's just how God's grace works.

02:17 He just raises up these things for you that are unexpected. You didn't see them coming, but they become a real part of your spiritual life and I was thinking about the question that people may have — why would you spend so much time talking about God's grace? And I think I said this when we began how many months ago...

02:47 Shelby: Yes, when we first started, I think it was over a year ago when we first started this, yes.

02:51 Paul: ... that I think we have such a small view of grace. I think when I say the word "grace", people think saving grace, but even that — the saving part — is a whole bunch of things...

03:11 Shelby: Yes, you can double-click on that and expand.

03:12 Paul: Yes, and so, I just think it's really, really important for people to get the wide range of what the Bible means when it tells us that God is a God of grace, that we're the objects of His grace. And I thought about this sentence that grace is not one thing, but it's an ecosystem of divine help.

03:40 Shelby: Okay, say that again.

03:41 Paul: Grace is not one thing, but it's an ecosystem of divine help. It's like I woke up today into an ecosystem, so it's air that I breathe, it's the sun, it's the atmosphere, it's gravity. It's all those things that have to operate at the same time for me to be physically healthy and be able to live. You remove oxygen, we're gone.

04:13 And in the same way, grace is this system of all these things together that have to operate in order for me to have spiritual life and spiritual health and that concept of an ecosystem of divine help, I thought, was a word picture that's helpful to understand the nature of grace. It's a system that surrounds us of divine help, apart from which we would not be spiritually live alive or we could not spiritually continue.

04:54 Shelby: Yes, like oxygen. Yes, that's good. I'm checking with you.

04:57 Paul: And so, we have a few more of these elements of the operation of God's grace. I want to talk about keeping grace. One of the things that I remember impacting me when I was studying theology is the concept that we were kept by the power of God and I think I'd fallen into thinking that God saves me, but then He gives me His commands and my job is just to gut it out.

05:44 Shelby: Yes, I dare say most Christians believe that.

05:48 Paul: And if I didn't gut it out, I'm cooked.

05:50 Shelby: Yes, I certainly have fallen into that as well.

05:54 Paul: And can I say this? Well, I'm going to say it. I don't know why I'm asking permission. That's terrifying to me because I'm very aware that I still have a wandering heart. I mean, there are moments when in my marriage, Luella and I are not agreeing, and I quickly wander into, "I would rather win this argument than love her."

06:26 Shelby: Yes. Maybe you don't think exactly those words, but that's how you behave, so you're living that out.

06:30 Paul: Yes, and at that point, my heart is wandering away from what God calls me to, that I should love her and be willing to lay down my life for her. I mean, let alone be willing not to win an argument for her and so, the thought that I'm the one that keeps me is terrifying.

06:54 When you think about it, the only way it wouldn't be terrifying is if you would deny the presence and power of remaining sin. In other words, I have been justified by grace. Positionally, I stand righteous before God, but I'm not yet righteous.

07:19 Shelby: Right, it's a sanctifying process at work.

07:22 Paul: Sin is progressively being eradicated and our hope is God won't quit until every microbe of sin is delivered from every cell of every heart of every believer. That's my hope. I'm glad that's not on my shoulders and so, it's really important to emphasize keeping grace.

07:41 I want to start with what is just such a precious portion of God's word. It's John 17, where Jesus is about to leave His disciples and He's praying for them. It's the one place in scripture where we have a lengthy prayer of Jesus for His followers. That prayer also expands to those who will come after the disciples. I'm going to read John 17:10-18.

08:25 Shelby: This is part of the high priestly prayer.

08:28 ¹⁰All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. ¹¹And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. ¹²While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which You have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction [that's Judas], that the [scriptures] might be fulfilled. ¹³But now I am coming to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. ¹⁴I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁵I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one. ¹⁶They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁷Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸[Just] as You sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

09:47 Paul: It's very sweet, Jesus is essentially saying, "Father, You know what's been going on. Well, I've been with these guys. I've been guarding them. I'm the one that's kept them, but I'm leaving to take my position at that royal throne at Your right hand and so, I'm praying that You will keep them." And He says a couple [of] things that I think are important.

10:28 First is, "I'm not asking you to take them out of the world." That's very, very important. Isolated, self-protective, separated-from-the-world Christianity is not biblical. I should not divorce myself from the world so that I can be safe because there's a reason that the Lord wants us in the world.

11:01 In fact, Jesus says to His disciples, — this is shocking because this is messianic language — "You are the light of the world." Well, He's the light of the world. He's basically taking His name and putting it on them and he said, "You're supposed to be like a city on a hill that cannot be hidden so men will see your good works and glorify the Father who's in heaven."

11:21 Jesus is saying, "Listen, I mean for you to be in the world, in the world so bright and shining that you can't hide," just like, you know, you're traveling. You look up the mountains and you see these lights twinkling. You can't miss them.

11:36 And so, it's the intention of our Savior for us to have direct and continual, intentional, and influential contact with the world. So the easy safety is not separation because that's not biblical and it doesn't work.

12:03 Shelby: Being separated doesn't work.

12:04 Paul: Here's why.

12:05 Shelby: Yes, tell me.

12:06 Paul: Because I got worldliness in me.

12:08 Shelby: Yes. It reminds me of the story of the monks who were in the city — I don't remember exactly when this was, I heard this was an illustration — that they decided that the city was sinful and horrible and influential, so they removed themselves from the city to go to a monastery, only to find that the sin wasn't in the city. The sin was in their hearts because all the same things they were repeating in the isolated environment because sin was in them.

12:33 Paul: It doesn't work, so this is deeply humbling. But Christ, when He prays that I would be kept from the world, He doesn't mean location. He means worldliness, but got to go further here. He's actually asking for me to be kept from me, kept from my selfish thoughts, my self-centered desires, my attractiveness to things that are on the other side of His boundaries, a life that's shrunk down to the small confines of my wants, my needs, my feelings. All of that stuff is worldliness.

13:30 Shelby: The evil inside of you.

13:33 Paul: And so, I don't need just to be kept from the idolatrous world around me, I need to be kept from the idolatry that still lives inside of me. That's why I can't keep myself because it's still there. It still operates and one of the things that I think this depicts is this imbalance in the Christian life between a humble awareness of the presence and power of remaining sin; and the reason that doesn't just make me flip out in anxiety is because I know the power of God's keeping grace, but you got to have both of those because if sin isn't an issue anymore, there's no reason for keeping grace. You know, I'll be fine, thank you.

14:34 Shelby: If there's no threat, yes, there's no need to even talk about or pray for, which is what Jesus is doing here, pray for a solution. There's an intentionality that Jesus has in praying for these things and we should always pay attention when He's praying for specific things like this, even though we may not understand it.

14:50 He's praying for these things, so that we would pay attention and that the Lord would work in and through us to avoid those kind[s] of sinful temptations of the world and the sinful evilness inside of my own heart, which is what Jesus said Himself, you know.

15:08 Paul: If there's no ongoing danger of sin, then this prayer doesn't make any sense.

15:17 Shelby: Yes, why pray for it in the first place. That's good.

15:20 Paul: And it's important to say that it's only ever the evil inside of me that hooks me to the evil outside of me.

15:29 Shelby: Okay. Only? Okay?

15:30 Paul: Yes, so to the pure, all things are pure.

15:32 Shelby: Okay, explain that. Yes, okay.

15:34 Paul: So it's because I still have susceptibility in me, that is why I fall into temptation. If I didn't have that susceptibility, there'll be a day — new heavens and new earth — where I'm no longer susceptible.

15:47 Shelby: Yes, okay, you're going to have to talk about that a little bit more because I would dare say that most people go, "The reason I did that was because of this," and they point outside of themselves instead of pointing inside of themselves. Wouldn't you say that's fair? A lot of people say that? You know, "Oh, this person tempted me or they were goading me on," or whatever.

16:03 Paul: Oh, I think it's absolutely fair, but it's just not biblical...

16:08 Shelby: Okay? Talk about that.

16:09 Paul: ... because the presence of sin in me makes me susceptible to temptations outside of me. If none of that was there, if every thought, every intention, every desire, every choice, every passion, every craving — whatever you could say — was completely pure, I wouldn't be temptable; but I am because those I'm not there yet. Sin still remains inside of me and it hooks me. For example, why would you ever get envious?

16:55 Shelby: Looking at other people, comparing myself to them, wanting what they have — that's where the nature of envy is from.

17:03 Paul: Oh, but without the sin of discontent, you would never be envious.

17:11 Shelby: Yes, that's good.

17:14 Paul: And you can just go through any list of sins and you can identify things in you that make you susceptible.

17:27 Shelby: Yes, which is why maybe some people are more prone to different sin the way that they are, like greed or, like you said, envy or lust or a litany of things that different people wrestle with in different ways. I could look at somebody else and go, "That'll never be an issue for me," or, "It hasn't been an issue for me." But they could look at me and go, "The things that you're wrestling with aren't an issue for me."

17:51 Paul: Sure, we all sin, but we don't all sin the same and, as a matter of fact, I think one of the good exercises of the Christian life is to try to examine yourself and suss out what are your susceptibilities. What are things that you are uniquely susceptible to? It's also how self-righteousness works because we look at somebody and, "I don't struggle with that," where we have equal and severe struggles ourselves.

18:27 Shelby: It's important to look for the chinks in our own armor and be able to say that these are going to be the natural areas that I'm prone to sin. So when things come along that stimulate those areas, I need to be aware and protect myself, and maybe partially, that's what Jesus is praying for here, like to be with us so that we could be aware of those things and not walk in sin, but walk in righteousness.

18:50 Paul: Absolutely and here's the beauty of that. It's not just God is guarding us from outside of us, He's within us and He is the ultimate knower of our hearts. And so, we couldn't possibly keep ourselves as well as He is able to keep us because one of the things that sin creates in us is inaccurate self-knowledge because sin blinds, sin deceives. We've talked about this. No one can say, "No one knows me better than I know myself."

19:36 Shelby: Yes, I was going to say talk about that because that's really, really helpful.

19:39 Paul: Because I'm sort of looking at myself like in a carnival mirror. There [are] accuracies. And when I was going through early in our marriage, I was just such an angry person and Luella would say to me, "You're angry." I'd say, "No, I'm not angry. I'm not angry. I'm not angry."

20:04 I just didn't see it. I didn't see it and if it hadn't been for God putting me a situation where it was just in front of me, I would have never seen it. But once my eyes were open, everywhere I looked, I saw that anger

20:21 Shelby: Yes, yes. What was the catalyst? It was that moment with someone else? It wasn't with Luella?

20:25 Paul: Yes, it was someone else. And then, I went back that night after talking with this person and said to Luella, "I know you've been trying to talk to me about my anger for years and I've been unwilling to listen and unwilling to hear, and I would really love to hear." She told me that she loved me, which was [inaudible] amazing grace and then, she talked for two hours.

20:57 Shelby: "Let's start with this. I love you and that's not going to change. Now, let's get into the specifics."

21:04 Paul: But that's an example of the fact that I just don't know enough about me to keep me and this really goes to the next part of what Christ has said. First of all, He says, "My will is that they're in the world. I'm not asking You to take them out of the world." And we know — we're going to talk about this later — you know there's reason He wants His disciples and those that follow them in the world.

21:36 "I'm asking You to keep them as they're in the world," and then, He says this. ¹⁴I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁵I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one. ¹⁶They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. ¹⁷Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

22:07 So we've got to talk about this second element, that there is a keeping mechanism and God's primary keeping mechanism between the "already" and the "not yet" is His truth. That's why He says, "Sanctify them in truth."

22:32 The word "sanctify" actually means set apart. "Set them apart in Your truth because Your word is truth." And so, one of the operations of keeping grace, one of the ways that God keeps His people is by gifting His people with His word. That's why there are few disciplines more important in the Christian life than being in the word of God, being a student of the word of God.

23:11 I'm doing, this year, a deep dive in Exodus. I started in January 1 and we're midway through April, and I'm in the seventh chapter or something like that. And it's just been mind-blowing to me when I slow down and just really dive into God's word, and I'm using the ESV Study Bible and reading all the study notes and corollary passages of the scripture.

23:53 I thought I knew Exodus. It's just been layers and layers of just incredible things. I've been so incredibly thankful and not only I've been thankful, I've been convicted, I've been instructed, I've been motivated, sometimes full of joy, sometimes full of sorrow.

24:25 And I thought this is keeping me. This is exactly what Christ is talking about here, that I'm being guarded by the word of God. So if you want grace to operate in this way in your life, you have to put yourself in the presence of the means of grace.

24:52 It's like if you're sick and you need help, you got to put yourself in the presence of a medical person. It just makes sense. I sometimes wonder if people understand the vital importance of the word of God in the spiritual warfare that we're in.

25:19 No wonder the church is worldly. No wonder the debt load money of the people of God is itself a scandal. No wonder we're seeing people deconstruct and fall away and redefine God's expectations for things like gender and sexuality. You've got to be in the word. Jesus is praying something specific there and He's asking for God to draw us toward His Word, to keep us in His truth.

26:04 Shelby: Yes, as I work with young people, one of the major things that I have seen that's characteristic of what Gen Z, of course, and then Gen Alpha coming up, is the biblical illiteracy that they have. They just don't know some of the basic things and I've had to purposely remind myself that, "Hey, what you're assuming right now [me, Shelby] what you're assuming is not common knowledge amongst a young person because they don't open their Bibles. They don't read their Bibles. They don't memorize the scripture."

26:40 And I think that we've set the bar very low for the next generation. We assume that they don't want to know these things or they're going to be bored by these things. But if they're understanding calculus at the age of 16 or they're going through scientific method and all that kind of stuff, there's some complexity in the stuff that they're learning in school. Why would we not raise the bar for them and challenge them to get into scripture, ask hard questions, but learn in ways that they're learning in other areas of life? We just assume way too little of them and that's on us as the grown-ups.

27:15 Paul: So let's talk about this. That lack of literacy... the very... in the truth, in the word because the word is true thing that Jesus is talking about makes all kinds of things hard. Let me give you some examples.

27:35 It makes preaching hard because a preacher can't assume understanding and so, when I prepare a sermon, I have to do so much background stuff before I ever get to the point of the passage because I can't assume a general biblical literacy.

27:59 It makes counseling hard. I sat in a counseling office for twenty years with people and there were biblical principles I wanted to share with them, but they didn't have the theological background from the word of God to understand those. And I thought so much of what I'm doing is just teaching because the advice giving that comes out of the teaching, I couldn't do because they didn't have those things in place.

28:25 Shelby: And not just, yes, they don't understand the depth, they haven't even read all of it. We did this in our church recently amongst a group of, not just the youth, but the parents. And it's like, "How many people in here have actually read the Bible, cover to cover?" Three hands came up out of a group of a hundred.

28:45 And I looked at the youth pastor and I was like, "That's pretty low-hanging fruit when you think about it." Really, you could type into Google "Bible in a year" and get 800,000 reading plans on how to do it and people just don't take the time to do it.

29:02 Now, when you get to the harder books in the reading plan, like Deuteronomy, it gets tough, yes. But again, why aren't we challenging people? If this is the word of God — and Jesus right here is talking about the Old Testament, we need to remember that — He's talking about the Old Testament, so why would we not soak up everything that God has to say to us.

29:22 Even the genealogies that seem "boring" to people, there's purpose and every word of God is important and proves true. So we should be challenging, not only the next generation, we should be challenging ourselves to dive into this. This is how God keeps us, according to what He says in and of Himself. This is how He keeps us. Why would you not grab onto the lifeline?

29:44 Paul: Let's talk about another area that's made difficult.

29:49 Shelby: You talked about preaching, counseling, what else?

29:51 Paul: The fellowship of the church. My brother, Ted, once said to me somebody ought to write a book called The True Limits of Christian Fellowship because he said, "The things I'm hearing, the advice I'm hearing Christians give one another, it makes me want to tear my hair out as a pastor because it's not biblical."

30:11 People are well meaning. They love one another. They want to help but because their thinking isn't rooted in scripture, they're giving bad advice to one another. He said, "I know I shouldn't do this, but sometimes, I want to say, "Just don't give advice to one another. Our church would be healthier."

30:34 Of course, he's never going to do that, but you get the point because there's so much of the world's thinking and the world's values and the world's methodology of solving problems and whatnot that gets infected into that system. Or rather than having a confidence to worry and go into the word, my first response is to Google and get Google advice. I mean, the number one counselor of the world right now is Google.

31:09 Shelby: That's terrifying.

31:11 Paul: Well, it is terrifying. Well, let's talk about parenting. There's no more helpful body of information for what you struggle with parenting and how to gain ground than the gospel in the word of God, which is a central theme of the word of God.

31:31 Shelby: All right, talk about that for a minute.

31:32 Paul: Well, because the gospel is the best diagnostic, it tells us what's wrong with human beings and the gospel provides the best cure. It tells me how that gets solved. That's what I'm dealing with as a parent and you know that effectiveness of cure is always attached to our accuracy of diagnosis. If you diagnose it wrong, you're not going to get a good cure.

32:02 And so, as a parent, I need to know what's wrong and then, how it gets solved, so I can be part of that system of change because what is parenting about? It's all about change. And again, I know for a fact because I've seen it on Facebook, Christians saying, "We struggled with this with our children. I Googled this and I want to share that advice with you." And what I think is — that was probably loving and kind for them to do, I'm not judging that — and their advice was probably a temporary fix, but it didn't really address the problem.

32:48 Shelby: Yes, and that's what the gospel does. It goes after the roots. It gets into the soil. You're not just clipping off rotten fruit from the tree and saying, "There, it's better." And I think that's what self-help or any of that advice that's not the gospel is tantamount to.

33:05 Of course, there is some great advice out there. There is, but again, if you're not going after the heart of stuff — and you've said this before — we are our heart. That's where we act. That's where we live. That's where our words and our thoughts and our actions come from, is the heart.

33:16 So if you're addressing symptomatic things, you're cutting off rotten fruit from a tree and you're going to expect that good fruit comes out the next season? It's not going to unless you go after the roots in the soil and that's what the gospel is able to do. It's able to change the roots of who you are, so that it produces good fruit.

33:35 And fruit is always the last part of what comes out of a tree. It's not the beginning, it's the last part and so, if we're just looking at the fruit on the tree and trying to address the actual problem, we'll never get there. We need to go into the roots and apply the gospel there, and that's where lasting change happens. Any parent can see that, right?

33:57 Paul: Yes, there was a study several years ago that was looking at who is the buying audience of all these self-help books because, you know, every six months you get a whole new group of the. If they were helpful, why would they... and the number one buyer of self-help books were church goers.

34:21 Shelby: Was it really? Wow!

34:23 Paul: So here's why, because they take life seriously. They want to make decisions that matter, but they don't have confidence in the word of God. I mean, it makes perfect sense to me because that's the serious community. They're spiritually minded. They want to do what's right. Yes, there's so many things that are made more difficult.

34:54 Let me just take one more — marriage. Luella and I have been married over 50 years and people ask us all the time because of that, what is the key to longevity in marriage? I only ever say two words: confession and forgiveness.

35:24 If you want a long-term marriage, be humble enough to confess when you do something wrong, when you blow it, you're selfish, whatever; and be ready to forgive when the other person comes to you. You can weather so many things when there's confession and forgiveness.

35:47 Now, where did I get that? I didn't think of that. I got that because those are major themes from Genesis to Revelation, the word of God. You can't read the Bible without realizing, "Wow, confession and forgiveness are super important." It's the cross.

36:10 So there it is. If there is such thing as keeping grace, then keeping grace has a means and Jesus is naming the means is His word. I want to say one further thing about this passage and go to another passage. As we're talking, I'm thinking it'll be absolutely hilarious if we don't finish this time.

36:34 Shelby: When we did the first one, we're like, one or two. And we get to the second one, was like, "Well, we'll finish next time." You got to the third one, "We'll finish next time." If we don't finish today, it's clearly your problem, not mine, because I'm not the one doing the talking here, you are.

36:50 Paul: I know. I've got a grace problem. So we've talked about the fact that Jesus was leaving. He says, "I've been guarding, Father. Would You guard Your people? The means of that guarding is Your word because Your word is true."

37:08 And there's a third element there that I think is very important. He said, "They hated Me and they're going to hate them, too." I need to be kept because I'm going to be hated. Listen, I don't like to be hated. I want to be loved. I want to be accepted. I want to be understood and we're seeing it even more and more in our culture, where if I say things that I believe are true, I'm called hateful and unloving; and we're seeing people not make it through an interview.

37:39 We're seeing people lose jobs, careers ended — good, loving people because they spoke truth. And my temptation is to run and hide or to compromise; and Jesus will keep me even when life is incredibly hard. I think the words here are such a significant warning. Jesus is looking down the years and He knows it's going to happen, and we need to listen to Him; and if you live in His Word, you will be hated.

39:07 Shelby: That's not, I think, what people initially sign up for when they move into the kingdom of God. They think, "Oh, this will benefit." They do a cost-benefit analysis and they go, "Yes, this is going to be good for me in a number of different ways."

39:23 And the reason I say that is because I look back on my original motivations for coming to Christ and if I'm honest, I think they're mostly selfish. I was scared that I was going to go to hell. That's what I was scared of.

39:42 And so now, when I said yes and God brought me into the kingdom by His grace, His grace revealed to me more and more about what I was actually saying yes to when I was inviting Him to purchase my sin so that I wouldn't be punished.

40:03 And over the you know decades, as I've walked with God, God has revealed to me more and more of the relational aspect of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and that there's going to be a cost; and I have been hated sometimes.

40:17 If you talk about Jesus on a college campus, you're probably going to get some hateful commentary. Or if you post something online that's pretty definitive about what you believe and it's "offensive" to other people, you're going to get hated. It's just going to happen and I've had my fair share of that.

40:35 You've had your fair share of that from people, seemingly, inside the church, too. And it's really important to know that Jesus was hated first, therefore, we can be hated for Him because of who He is and He gives us His power to be able to endure that. It's not an easy road.

40:55 Read Luke 14. I mean, "Die, renounce all you have, hate other relationships in comparison to Me." This is before He talks about the prodigal son of God welcoming the son, like loving and all that kind of stuff.

41:10 He talks about, "Okay, first, renounce all you have, take up your cross and die, and then other relationships that you have should seem like hate in comparison to Me." That's tough stuff. That's a lot of cost, but is it worth it? Ultimately, of course, yes, it is worth it. But being hated by other people? Some people are like, "No, I don't know if I could do that."

41:32 Paul: Well, the Father who kept the Son will keep me because I am in the Sun now. I was watching a video of a pastor who was defending his change on issues of sexuality and he said, "I just want our church to be known as an accepting, loving community."

42:11 Now, if that had been out of context, I would say, sure; but that's not the first thing. The first thing is I want a church that's absolutely committed surrender to the word of God and because they have, they're accepting and loving.

42:37 Because, you know, love without truth isn't love. It falls below the border of love. You can also say truth without love ceases to be truth because it gets bent and twisted by other human agendas. But you have to accept your call and your calling is to be so committed to following your Savior that you're willing to be hated.

43:17 I love how 1 Peter begins. These people are suffering. They're misunderstood and mistreated and he addresses them as aliens and exiles. What happens to an alien? They're misunderstood, often mocked and mistreated because they're different. They're weird.

43:41 I mean, those words are provocative. That's who we are. This kingdom is not our kingdom. We're made for another kingdom. C.S. Lewis says if you feel like you don't fit in this world, it's because you've been made for another world.

44:01 Shelby: Yes, I remember that. It's good. That's really good. And I think all of us feel that internally. We know that something's off. I don't feel the way I should. It's like, "Well, maybe if there's nothing to satisfy you in this world, maybe there is a key to the lock.

44:19 Paul: Yes. So this passage very powerfully argues for the necessity of keeping grace. It's the prayer of the Messiah for His own and it very clearly lays out the means by which God keeps us. It's a tremendous helpful passage. I'm want to go to 1 Peter 1:3-9 because the construction of this passage, the structure of this passage is really, really helpful and let me just read.

45:02 ³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, ⁷so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. ⁸Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, ⁹obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

45:55 Shelby: Peter wrote this. Peter. Remember Peter, that guy, the one who denied Jesus three times. He wrote this. It's amazing.

46:02 Paul: Yes, because Peter was kept.

46:04 Shelby: He was kept. Exactly, right.

46:06 Paul: This is a then-then-now passage. So it's the "then" of the past. ³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That's the past.

46:26 Here's the future. ⁴To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. So you got the past and the future. That's just the brackets for Peter, just so he knows you're on board. What he's really interested in is now. So he said what's happening now?

46:47 Right now, ⁵who [that's us] by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, ⁷so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

47:10 So here's what's going on. God has acted by divine mercy to breathe new life into me and to give me living hope. That's a transaction done. He has, by grace, secured my destiny. There's an inheritance waiting — I love it — kept in heaven for me, but He's not done.

47:43 He's guarding me and here's the way I think about this. Imagine I realize that some rich person in my family has left me an inheritance. It's mine. And let's say I'm a young man and at 50, that inheritance will be mine. It's sitting there. The inheritance is protected, but the problem is, I'm not.

48:14 And so, part of the inheritance is I'll have a bodyguard, I'll have the best physician, I'll live in a secure place. Everything is done to make sure that I will be alive and well. Now, in human inheritances, that never happens.

48:39 No one guards the inheritor. That's what makes it so amazing — that God not only secures my past and my destiny, but "I'm going to make sure you're okay so you can get the inheritance that I've reserved for you".

48:57 Shelby: This explains to me so much and it's something that is missed quite often when it comes to living the Christian life. You've been infamous for saying it not an entrance and then a doorway into glory at the end at your home-going, but also for every moment in between.

49:17 People don't understand why you've coined the phrase "the now-ism of the gospel", that it's protecting me right now, that there's no Plan B with God. Everything's Plan A. I'm middle aged now, 47. I can look at my life because this is what midlife crisis does, it makes you look at your life in the past and go, "Did I make the right decisions here? Did I do the best that I could? Am I shepherding and stewarding the gifts God has given me the best way that I can?"

49:55 Those are good questions to ask, but I also need to know that as I'm walking with God — if I'm not making foolish, sinful decisions — if I'm walking with God, there's no plan B. Everything that comes into your life is Plan A.

50:09 He knows exactly what's happening with you right now. He's guarding you right now. He's keeping you right now and as you walk with Him, even though it might seem like weird circumstances or kind of chaotic, everything's under His control.

50:22 There's nothing going wrong for Him at all and I need to believe that and attach myself to that, instead of attaching myself to the circumstances that are going on in my life because if you do that, everything will seem like chaos. It won't seem like God is in control of everything and then, you'll start to go, "Does God really know what He's doing? Is God really in control? Is God really loving?" And those are important questions to ask, but if they come into your life in a way where you're like, "No, I'm going to abandon God and go the opposite way," you're in a lot of danger.

50:57 Paul: So you're anticipating where this passage goes. So you got the "then-then". Peter's focus on "now", this awesome thing that I'm being guarded so I can actually get that inheritance. It's just so beautiful.

51:20 But then, what he does is he flips the script on trial. Because often you say, yes, yes, yes, that's just wonderful and then, difficulty, suffering, trial, loss hits, you think, "Well, where's God now? I thought He was keeping me. I thought He was guarding me. Why is this going through?"

51:48 Shelby: Yes, talk about this.

51:50 Paul: What Peter is telling us is trial is a tool of His guardianship because the danger isn't just outside of me, the danger is within me. I need to be refined so there's less and less danger because I'm less and less susceptible because of being refined by the fires of trial. Isn't that beautiful?

52:14 It's not where you expect Peter to go because these people are already suffering. "Don't tell us about trial. Just give us comfort." And Peter said, "Don't you understand what's going on here? This is part of His guardianship. This is how He guards you."

52:34 Let's go back to what I talked about as it's a combination of His word and the refining fires of trial that make me love His word and want His word and live in His word and run to His word. I'm changing and you know, the word picture here is metallurgy.

53:01 It's a miner mines a metal and when he finds it, it's in ore shape. Ore is not very attractive and not very usable because it's got imperfections in it. So you add white hot heat, it liquefies the metal, it boils out those impurities, so it reaches its highest state of beauty and its highest state of usability. I mean, what a metaphor.

53:25 And so, that's what God's doing to us. The test is not a pass fail. It's tempering. It's developing us, developing our strength, developing the beauty of our character. That's one of the ways He guards us. It's a primary way.

53:44 You see it in Romans 5, you see it in James 1 that it's not God failing in His guardianship. It's so important for us to get that and I think part of the reason we struggle with that is that we sort of bought into the surrounding culture saying the good life is the comfortable life. It's predictable. It's pleasurable.

54:14 No, it's not and, Shelby, if God's primary purpose is to make us comfortable, He's a massive failure. It's not primarily what He's after. He's after this strength of faith that's found to result in the praise and honor at the revelation Jesus Christ. It's faith that's made it through. It's been strong enough to get us to the end.

54:45 Shelby: I think the question that we naturally ask is maybe the wrong question or we're asking why is this happening to me? We're making the assumption that we're good and that bad things are happening to us from the outside.

55:02 Even the way that I phrased it before you started talking was I was making the assumption, without even knowing it, that I'm the hero of the story, that I'm the one who needs to be protected from the evils on the outside, never making the assumption that the evil inside of me is really what I need to be rescued from as well.

55:24 And you use the metallurgy. It's a word that I haven't heard, but it makes sense to me, too, because you talk about the crucible of your own life, putting ore into that crucible and turning up the heat. It brings the perfections to the top. Those get scraped away by the one who's working with it, raises the heat again to get it purer and purer and purer.

55:47 And if you think about the metaphor of metal, the purest metal is when you can see your reflection in it and if the one who's working with the heat is able to peer into the crucible and see a reflection of himself, you become more and more and more like God. The more you suffer, the more those impurities come out of you.

56:07 So asking the right question and making the assumption that the problem is not just outside of you, that it's inside of you, is actually going to be helpful when trials come along because life will smack you in the face.

56:21 Maybe you've had a good life up until now, but in some form or fashion, you live in a broken world, you are a broken person. Hard things will come. They will come. And are those things going to make you more and more like Jesus or are they going to make you more and more hard hearted, bitter, angry at God, shaking your fist at God? "How dare You do this to me." Maybe we're making the wrong assumptions when we're going through the hard things. I know I do.

56:46 Paul: Yes, and you need to accept the identity of this metaphor. When I come to Christ, I'm mined out of the mass of humanity by His grace. I'm in an ore state. I'm now His, but I'm in an ore state and He loves me too much to leave me in an ore state. No man who has ever bought jewelry for his wife handed her ore because it's just not usable or attractive. And so, our Savior will never leave us in that state.

57:31 But I think what's important about this passage is when he's talking about God's guardianship, he addresses the question that everybody has about that. When we hit difficulty, where's God now? Where's His guardianship?

57:46 And Peter is flipping the script and saying that is Him guarding you because you're the problem with you. The greatest difficulty in your life is you and so, He's got to refine you because that's one of the ways He guards you, He keeps you.

58:04 Shelby: Yes, and again, that this is not the default of how we process life and information. We're always the one who's the victim of some other person or some other event. Like right now, and I've told you about this, there's water coming up in our basement and we spent a lot of money to try to try to finish our basement.

58:28 We saved up for almost a decade to finish our basement and now, two and a half years, three years later, there's water coming up right in the middle where there's the only patch of carpet in our basement, which is in my office. It's exactly where I don't want it to be right now.

58:43 If it was any other part of the house, I'm okay, we could deal with it, but now it's displaced me and I can't work in my office the way that I need to; and I have no idea what the problem is. It could be just groundwater coming up. And my first thought is, literally, my first knee-jerk reaction is why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to me?

59:04 This is the worst-case scenario for me because now, I can't do all the things that I needed to do. My computer is now up on the dining room table in the highest traffic area of our house and I'm not able to get things that... "God, I'm working for You. I'm doing ministry for You and now, this is stopping me?"

59:23 God doesn't need me, for one and two, I don't initially stop to consider I'm the problem in this just as much as the earth is flawed because of sin, I'm more flawed and maybe God wants to work in me. I don't know. I'm doing my own therapy session here right now, but this is all stuff you taught me.

59:42 Paul: The very last thing Peter says is the answer to that struggle.

59:46 Shelby: Yes, get me to the answer here.

59:48 Paul: So as we're going through trial, which is a function of God's guardianship because He's refining us, what are we getting? Obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. While you're complaining, you've got what you've believed for. You're getting what you're praying for. Your soul is being saved.

1:00:17 Why do we complain? We're getting exactly what we cried out for. We just don't like the means. It's such a powerful thing Peter writes to these people that are going, "This is what you're getting? You're getting everything that you're believing heart has reached out for. You're being saved." It's beautiful.

1:00:41 Shelby: It's absolutely beautiful and it's not what initially comes out of us. I'd say that and maybe that's a good thing. I don't know. You squeeze a toothpaste tube and you expect toothpaste to come out, right? What's ever on the inside comes out when you apply pressure and often, I don't like the particular shade and smell of toothpaste that comes out of me when I get squeezed. You know what I mean?

1:01:07 But even that, in and of itself... well, I think you talked about a bottle of water and you tap the bottle of water, and whatever's on the inside, it gets out by the disruption. And same principle, I don't like what comes out and God is working in me to change that stuff that comes out, so that when I do get rattled, it's good water that comes out. I got rancid toothpaste.

1:01:36 Paul: I know this is heretical, but I've jokingly said to Luella, "You know, if God would just quit saving me right now for just for a moment so I could breathe..."

1:01:50 Shelby: That is heretical.

1:01:50 Paul: But I don't actually mean that. But I just see Peter turning. He's just this man who's now been tenderized by the grace of God turn to these people and says, "Don't you know what you're getting? You're getting what you've hungered for, you cried for, you prayed for, you've forsaken all things in life for. You're getting the salvation of your souls. You, right now, are being saved. This is why you rejoice even when the guardianship of your Lord has led you through things you would have never wanted for yourself."

1:02:36 Shelby: And again, I think you were right. A lot of people are deconstructing, a lot of people are walking away, a lot of people are throwing their hands up and being like, "I'm done with this. I'm not coming back because it didn't turn out the way it did." Would you say that the vast majority of those people didn't understand the means of God's keeping grace in the process of deconstructing Him?

1:02:58 Paul: Oh, I think a lot of that I think just goes back to... it's the gospels' entrance and an exit, and they don't get all the stuff that's going on between. I mean, so much of that has been put back on the church. Of course, the church is a mess. There's no finished person in the church, but it's God's mess.

1:03:25 It's God's glorious mess. It's God's glorious sanctifying mess and I get that sometimes that's massively discouraging, and I get that some of the greatest hurt that you experience comes from the church. It's an awful thing, but it's God's mess. What's a better alternative? Do I walk away from God's ordained systems of help and I take life on my own, and I'm going to manage myself from now on?

1:04:03 Shelby: Yes, get ready to buy the newest self-help book every six months.

1:04:06 Paul: Yes, and, I mean, I watched one person who walked away and then, what started coming out of their social media feed was the same old pablum that they would have mocked. It's just empty. It doesn't last. It doesn't really work and I thought, "You exchanges this for this? Seriously?"

1:04:46 I mean, these are just precious passages that just talk about the importance of keeping grace and I don't think there's... there are few passages in scripture that have been more of a friend to me than 1 Peter 1:3-9.

1:05:04 The way that passage is constructed and the way he flips the script on trial and then, addresses at the end, sort of, "Why are you complaining? You're getting exactly what you hoped and prayed for — the salvation of your souls." It's beautiful. At the same time, it's deeply convicting.

1:05:31 Shelby: And it's veiled, you know? It doesn't look like what we want it to look like sometimes. Maybe it's right there in front of us, but it's veiled. Reminds me a little bit of the resurrection of Cleopas and the other disciple walking on the road to Emmaus, and Jesus shows up and He's walking with them. And He unpacks the scriptures for them and then, He's going to keep walking and they're like, "No, stay with us," and then, they stay. They eat a meal. He breaks bread and then, the scripture says that their eyes were opened.

1:06:03 Well, what was going on there? Why weren't they able to see? It was because Jesus was purposefully veiling Himself. He was doing the work and it's noteworthy that they talk about the work. They talk about, "Did our hearts not burn when He opened the scriptures to us?"

1:06:18 He was working. You just couldn't see Him for who He actually was and then, at one point, He reveals Himself, too. And I love this story, too, because then, their eyes were open, they saw Jesus and what happens? He disappears.

1:06:32 So it just happens they're able to see the resurrected Lord, but it's in a veiled way and perhaps, that's what's going on in our lives, too. Water bubbling up from the basement and ruining my carpet, it's veiled. It seems like a curse but perhaps, it's actually a blessing in ways that God wants to use to change me.

1:06:55 Let's look at our lives that way, circumstantially. All those things where you can't see the veiled image of Jesus, He's right there. He's right there walking alongside you on the road. We can move on to another part of grace.

1:07:07 Paul: Yes, we're going to talk about conscripting grace.

1:07:12 Shelby: Which, admittedly, when you sent this to me, I was like, I don't know what conscripting means. So can you define it?

1:07:18 Paul: So you define it, since you're a new [inaudible].

1:07:22 Shelby: Okay, from my understanding is it's a bit of military language. It's basically like, "I'm charging you with joining the forces to be part of the mission to take My good plan out into the world." You're joining the military, so to speak. "I'm having you join the military to be a soldier in what's going on in the world as My means of grace. You're going to be a conduit."

1:07:53 Paul: It's a good description, except for the word "join" because the normal way the conscript is talked about is to draft. The draft is not your choice. You're chosen to be part of the mission and so, what we need to understand is that from the moment that new life is breathed in me, my life no longer is my own. I am drafted into the service of the King.

1:08:32 Now, why is that grace? Because that protects me from giving my life to the service of every other thing I could give my life in service for. His higher, more eternal purpose protects me from lower, more temporal purpose. It's beautiful.

1:08:54 So I would argue that every command of God is a grace because it's drawing me away from something toward Him. His commands are not Him screaming at you. His commands are Him wrapping His arms around you and drawing you near.

1:09:11 Shelby: Yes, inviting you into goodness and joy.

1:09:14 Paul: It's like you sit down one of your daughters and you put your arm around them. You say, "You know I love you. Well, you can't do this." You're not beating them up, you're loving them and so, God's call to His service to live for something bigger than myself is itself an aspect of His grace. So it's really important for us to talk about what this looks like and I'm going to start in the Old Testament with Micah 6:6-8

1:09:59 ⁶“With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
⁷Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression [or]

    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

1:10:22 Shelby: Here's the famous part.

1:10:24 Paul: Well, what's the question? What can I do to satisfy the Lord? And the answer is absolutely nothing and that's why the language gets so evocative. Now, here's how this passage operates. It's absolutely true that there's nothing I can do in and of myself, no sacrifice, no performance, no duty, whatever you would say that can satisfy the requirements of relationship with Him. Nothing. But that doesn't mean there aren't things He's called me to do.

1:11:26 So that's the balance. So I can't work myself into relationship with God, but God has called me to work. That's this passage. So He throws out the rhetorical question, expecting you would answer, "There's nothing I can do," but then he says,

^8aHe has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you.

1:11:58 Isn't that an interesting turn?

1:11:59 Shelby: Very, very opposite of what you'd expect.

1:12:00 Paul: So He doesn't require you to atone for your own sin because you can never do that. He's provided atonement. Old Testament is a sacrificial system which is looking toward the ultimate Lamb of God, Jesus. But he's saying, "But there are requirements He makes for you and he says,

1:12:24 ⁸What does the Lord require of you.
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

1:12:35 Now, I think it's a tragedy that this passage has become so controversial in our culture. In fact, I talked about this passage on social media and got canceled all over the place.

1:13:01 Shelby: The element of justice.

1:13:03 Paul: But I was talking about the whole passage. So I think it's important for us to have this conversation. Why those three words? Justice. Loving kindness is elsewhere translated mercy. Justice, mercy, and humility. Why those three words? Think of all the things, character qualities, godly activities that Micah could have chosen. Why those three words?

1:13:38 Well, I'm going to answer my question here. Because those words summarize the whole narrative of redemption God, who is perfectly just looked at His world damaged by sin and could not leave the world in that condition. But because He's not just a God of justice, He's a God of mercy, He chose to act in mercy, not in condemnation. So He's going to rectify the injustice of sin by mercy.

1:14:21 How's that going to happen? There's got to be atoning sacrifice. So humble Christ comes. This is Ephesians 2 and He stands in that place and He provides the means which mercy can satisfy the requirements of God's justice. There's the whole biblical story in three words. Justice, mercy, and humility.

1:14:54 Now, more than just focusing on justice, what the passage is saying [is], "You go represent My narrative on earth." How do you do that? You'll be a just people. You'll be a merciful people. You be a humble people.

1:15:15 "I've chosen you to incarnate My character and the zeal of My mission on earth. I hate sin. You hate sin. I hate how sin destroys the lives of people. You hate that sin destroys the lives of people. You meet them with mercy. Not just the mercy of acts of goodness, but the mercy of the gospel." How do you do that? Not by being arrogant, self-righteous, and condemning, the ultimate spiritual know-it-all looking down on everybody that's not as righteous as you. No, no, no. "You be humble."

1:16:07 I mean, I love this passage. I can remember the morning I'm reading this passage and you know, it's helpful when you're reading the Bible just to ask yourself, "Well, why did he say that?" And I was asking myself why those three words? And it just came to me, that's the biblical story.

1:16:42 A God of justice, a God of mercy who sends His humble Son, so that mercy can satisfy the requirements of justice. There it is and He's saying, "You go and represent Me. Now, it's interesting. This is presented as a universal requirement of all of God's people. What has the Lord required of you? This is it.

1:17:19 Shelby: Yes. It reminds me a little bit of what a pastor I heard that one time said you don't lean up against a shovel and pray for a hole, meaning you get involved, you do stuff, and there is a responsibility that we have as God's people.

1:17:40 And what has drawn me multiple times is Proverbs 21:31. It says,

³¹The horse is made ready for the day of battle,
but the victory belongs to the Lord.

1:17:49 If you're getting a horse ready for the day of battle, you're preparing the horse, you're putting the blanket down on it, you're putting the saddle on it, you're equipping it, you're putting whatever armor you need to on it.

1:18:00 You're proactively involved in getting this horse ready for battle, but ultimately, the victory belongs to the Lord. There is a responsibility that we have and God will fulfill His responsibility. He will always follow through, but that doesn't mean that we just kind of sit there idly and wait for Him to do stuff.

1:18:18 No, you get the horse ready for the day of battle and the victory will belong to the Lord. You don't lean up against a shovel and pray for a hole. You pray for the hole and then you grab the shovel and start digging. There are two elements that are working there in tandem with one another.

1:18:35 Paul: I want to give people an exercise. Draw a circle on a piece of paper and then, draw a larger circle around it. In the inner circle, entitle it "My Responsibility." And then, write, "These are things that God has called me to do that I cannot give to anyone else." What's the only proper response is to carefully obey, but that's not all of my life.

1:19:10 There's the outer circle. These are things that I do not have the power to do or to control and what's the only thing to do with those? Entrust those to God. I did this a thousand times on a counselee. I'd say, "You go home and you write all the stuff in your life that's your responsibility. Write the things you can [inaudible]."

1:19:38 Again and again, people would get these mixed up, like, "It's my responsibility to make my children believe." No, it's not. You can't do that. In fact, you're probably not going to be a really great parent if you try to do that.

1:19:49 Shelby: Yes, you're going to be a manipulative, controlling parent.

1:19:54 Paul: Yes, you're to teach and instruct them. You're to model the gospel in their lives, but only God can draw us [inaudible]. Well, here's a clear depiction of the draft. This is what God requires. "You represent the grand narrative in your life — wherever I've placed you — that justice, mercy, humility." Where do I do that? I do that in my marriage. I do that with my children. I do that with my neighbors. I do that in my culture. I do that at my work. That's what we've been called to.

1:20:36 Now, how many believers actually live with the weight of that responsibility on them? This is now in the category of a weird passage that we fight over because I think what I said the passage is doing, that is actually a description of the biblical narrative. This is how God has acted toward His broken world.

1:21:05 We've missed that and we have this provocative discussion over, "What does justice look like or are we too merciful," you know, "Or being too empathetic and we just become weaklings," and just end up somehow, you just missed the point of the beauty of this passage. That God's saying, "You know what I'm like. You know what I do? Go represent Me."

1:21:34 Shelby: Yes, I like the idea that you talked about, too, as we're unpacking conscripting grace of the idea of the draft. I saw a video — you probably remember it live — I saw a video about history of a broadcast happening of the draft for the Vietnam War; and people were pulling birth dates and they were putting them up on this big board.

1:21:59 And the commentary they're written under it was people watched nervously about whether or not their birth date was going to end up on the board with terror in their heart, really. And if you saw your birthday, that meant, "I'm being drafted to the war." This is the opposite of that though.

1:22:21 You're hoping, like a lottery number, that your date will show up and God, conscripts you and has you to join a part of what He's doing. The amount of terror that maybe, you felt when you saw that on TV, think of the opposite of that.

1:22:37 Paul: Yes, my number was 64. I remember that night and that meant I was going to Vietnam. And I discovered that if I went to seminary, I would get a religious service deferment, so I went to seminary. Part of how God got me to seminary.

1:23:00 Shelby: Wow. He's coming to shove you this way on purpose. Even through mixed motives, I'm sure.

1:23:05 Paul: And we should hope for this, but we don't even have to hope because we've been chosen. It's just beautiful. Let's look at a second passage that really is a New Testament kind of unpacking of what we've just looked at. This second Corinthians 5. I'll begin with verse 16.

1:23:34 ¹⁶From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard Him thus no longer. ¹⁷Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. ¹⁸All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

1:24:26 Shelby: One of my favorite pieces of scripture.

1:24:28 Paul: Well, there's a couple things I think we need to clarify in this passage of scripture. Let's start with that provocative title, ambassadors. I mean, what does an ambassador do? The only thing ambassador ever does is represent.

1:24:49 If you're an ambassador and you're getting sent by a president to represent him in another country, you're aware of your representational calling if you're having tea with somebody because a side comment could create international conflict. And so, what is an ambassador?

1:25:14 It's "I'm committed to an intentional, faithful, constant representation of the One who sent me". Message, methods, character of the king. What is His message, what's His way of operating, and what is He like? And, man, I think you want a good passage for parenting? There it is.

1:25:46 If you're stomping down the hallway, saying, "You don't want me to come into that room one more time," you've forsaken your calling because that's not what the king does. Again, it's a very, very convicting passage.

1:26:05 Now, here's what I want to clarify because we have largely — I'll say "we", evangelical Bible-believers — have thought of this as an evangelistic passage. Let me demonstrate that it may not be. ²⁰Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ... making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Who's the "you"? It's the Corinthian church.

1:26:42 Shelby: It's not the people outside the church?

1:26:44 Paul: No, it's the church. That means that my first calling as an ambassador is to people who are already in the kingdom. Why? Because they're not done yet. What does it mean then, to be reconciled to God? Because the Bible uses reconciliation two ways — the reconciliation of justification and the ongoing reconciliation of sanctification.

1:27:19 To the degree that I'm still serving something else other than the Lord, I need to be fully reconciled to Him. That's the ongoing work of salvation and so, is it right to use this as [an] evangelist passage? Well, sure it is because surely, those people out there need to be reconciled to God and surely, I'm called to be an ambassador; but we miss the fact that his direct application is to the Corinthian church, a church that we know is a bit messy.

1:27:55 Shelby: It's pretty messy, yes. It also looks a lot like culture today, yes.

1:28:02 Paul: That's that ongoing ministry of believers to believers that we have been drafted to. That's why in Ephesians 4, Paul says that God's given prophets and pastors, teachers and evangelists to equip God's people for what? The work of the ministry. We call those guys the ministers. They're not actually the ministers. They're the equippers. We're supposed to be doing the work of the ministry.

1:28:46 I can remember when this first hit me that I have a moral responsibility to the ongoing sanctification of the person sitting in the pew next to me. Wow! Do I care about people that way? Do we call casual, fairly meaningless greetings on Sunday fellowship? Would I follow up after a small group when somebody said they were struggling with something on Tuesday and say, "How are you doing? I've been praying for you."

1:29:31 Shelby: It's not looking at the church as a family. It's looking at it as a transactional thing. You come to church on Sunday to be entertained or inspired and then you attend; and so, you're being part of the "solution of growth". And maybe you give but then, you don't really interact with other people and family is not like that.

1:29:58 Family is you're a part of it and whether you like it or not, you're involved in what's happening in the lives of other people. You are the most authentic version of yourself. You're very real. You're not putting on a mask at all when you show up and you're having people ask you comforting questions.

1:30:19 They're there to be the hands and feet of Christ, but they're also asking you difficult questions. They're the hands and feet of Christ that are actually helping to rescue you from you. You're being reconciled.

1:30:32 Paul: So let me give you just a practical street-level example of what we're talking of appealing, be reconciled to God, of being an ambassador to the people of God. We need a worship service. Don't stand there and not sing because part of the glory of corporate worship is you are singing the gospel into the ears of the person next to you.

1:31:03 Maybe that person can't sing. Maybe they're struggling. Maybe just hearing your voice singing this is part of what's happened. I mean, you've had this experience. I felt my heart lifted in worship service just hearing God's people sing.

1:31:20 Luella and I were in London. I was speaking in a conference there. It was at St. Helens, old Anglican Church, and it was about 700 pastors and we sang classic hymns. The first hymn I wept through. Hearing these guys at the top of their voice singing the gospel. I thought it doesn't get any better than this.

1:31:46 I mean, I could have left that day with no preaching and felt it was worth gathering because these guys were serious about worship. I don't know why I was so emotional. Obviously, I needed that that morning.

1:32:05 Well, that's just a little thing. All the ways that God brings us together because we're all needing that further reconciliation to God, further drawing closer to Him, further joy in Him and not in something that replaces Him. Are we actually committed to that? Does anybody know that their ambassador calling is not just evangelistic, but it's to one another in the body of Christ?

1:32:47 Shelby: Yes, the way you talk about the gospel, too, is that the gospel is not only something that we share with other people who need to hear about it for the first time so they can enter into relationship with the living God.

1:32:58 The gospel is for me and it's for every moment of every day of my life. It's not just this message that we preach to non-believers. It's something that we live and need ourselves and so, that's what the ministry of reconciliation is. It's the gospel.

1:33:14 It's your way of being connected with God. It's not just something that you need at the initial stage so you can enter into the kingdom. It's for every moment of your life until you go home and it's even applicable there, so it's important to think about it this way.

1:33:29 I would dare say, almost every single time someone preaches about evangelism, they're thinking about 2 Corinthians 5 or if they preaching from 2 Corinthians 5, they're thinking it's an evangel. It's a motivational thing to be evangelistic toward people who don't believe. I mean, this is the first time I'm hearing it.

1:33:46 Paul: Yes, and that is surely not a heretical handle in that passage. What we need to understand, his first line application is to the church. "We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God." The "you" is the Corinthian church and the reason he's doing that is because he knows what's going on in the Corinthian church; and he knows it doesn't need just one person. It needs a company of believers to address that.

1:34:19 Shelby: Yes, it makes you think about church in a totally different way. It's not just something that you attend on Sunday. You are a part of it. You are the hands and feet of Christ in that context, in that body of believers. That's why membership is so important. That's why giving is so important. That's why when messiness happens and it gets hard, you don't just bolt and go to the next church. You should take church membership and involvement incredibly seriously, and we don't treat it like that in our culture today.

1:34:49 Paul: Yes, the way I'd say it is a house well-built is the result of the work of many hands; and I am the process of being built into the image of Christ and I need many hands on me. And I was aware of this recently, I had lunch with a dear friend of mine and I just made a side comment, and he just looked at me and he smile and says, "Sounds like the preacher needs to live what he preaches." It was so good.

1:35:22 Shelby: Yes, you need to hear that.

1:35:26 Paul: I just bowed my head and said, "You're exactly right." Now, it was said in a sweet, almost humorous way, but that's that. Beautiful.

1:35:35 Shelby: And who do we have in our lives who's bold enough and kind enough to say those things to us?

1:35:43 Paul: Or has been given the invitation?

1:35:45 Shelby: Yes, because there's no doubt an element of trust between you and that guy — bonding, friendship, love, kindness, caring, gentleness, all that's good stuff — preexisted before a comment like that was made. So a comment like that is going to be received by you, you're not going to recoil.

1:36:04 Paul: Yes, that's the optimum, but think about — I mean, I think you're absolutely right — but think about an ambassador. Ambassador has to be willing to step into difficult, awkward conversations and we should be willing to do that, too.

1:36:19 If all I want is comfortable relationships, I won't be an ambassador. I mean, he was sticking his neck out there and, you know, I could have gotten offense and he would have had to hang in there. Now, that didn't happen, but it could have.

1:36:39 You've been through that with people that you've tried to approach, and it's been hard and difficult. And people push back and they treat you like you're the problem; and I surely had that experience and so, again, you've got to be willing to do what's necessary to be God's ambassador.

1:37:08 Shelby: Yes, address these things. You can see it in marriage easily because you see the flaws of the person you're married to the most often. You get sinned against by that person most often because you're around them most often, but it's important to address these things and not just be like, "That's fine. It's fine," because it's not fine. You need to work at those things, not only in your heart, but in the heart of the person you're close to. You and I have had conflict and...

1:37:30 Paul: Shut up.

1:37:33 Shelby: And I've told other people it's not easy to get into an argument with someone like Paul Tripp.

1:37:39 Paul: Would you quit recording right now because we need to talk.

1:37:44 Shelby: Well, we did talk and you owned a few things that you did wrong. I owned plenty of things that I've done wrong. Dare to say I had more things that were wrong, but what did that do? It actually made us more like Jesus and it drew us...

1:37:56 Paul: Okay, I was insensitive. What do you want from me?

1:38:00 Shelby: But we can joke about that. We're closer now as a result of that, right? Yes, no relationship is going to be smooth sailing all the time, but we're better for it because we both addressed it. God wants us to be involved in that process. Did I just derail everything?

1:38:16 Paul: No, no, no. Micah 6 is just you're called to represent the grand narrative, God's way of dealing with sin in this world. In 2 Corinthians 5, just be an ambassador and realize that calling is not just a people outside of the kingdom, but inside as well. And then 2 Corinthians 1, this is a goodie. Well, all the Bible is. This is verses 3-9, 2 Corinthians 1.

1:39:01 ³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, ⁴who comforts us... all [in] our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. ⁵For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. ⁶If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation... if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. ⁷Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

1:39:49 I love what Paul is saying here that you and I don't just have a sense of calling because we've been blessed by God, we have a sense calling when we're suffering. You know, it's often true that the place where we allow people to be selfish is when they're suffering. They can be cranky and they can be demanding, and we say, "Well, yes, they're going through this or that. It's fine."

1:40:28 And Paul is saying you don't even own your suffering. It belongs to Lord and He wants to do something through your suffering, so that... I like this. ³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, ⁴who comforts us in all our affliction.

1:40:52 Well, I'm into that, but then, "so that" — those two words grammatically are the introduction of a purpose statement — "for the purpose that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God".

1:41:15 So God intends to do something in you, in your suffering that qualifies you to do something with people who are suffering. I mean, do the preposition again. God intends to do things in you as you're suffering, so you can do things with people who are in suffering that you wouldn't be able to do any other way.

1:41:44 Shelby: So it's purpose for what you're going through, not only for your own process of sanctification — becoming more and more shaped into the image of Jesus Himself — but He wants to use you in that process so that you can comfort and provide a blessing to other people who are going through a certain type of suffering that maybe, you could relate to or at least connect with. So God's going to use you in order to help other people who are going through difficult times.

1:42:17 Paul: He's qualifying you and equipping you for ministry to suffering people. Now, we know how important this is and I can give you an illustration right away. You're going through something and somebody who you know doesn't have a clue comes up to you and says, "I understand exactly what you're going through." And then, they give you advice that doesn't fit at all, and you walk away and say, "You didn't know what I was going through and what you offered didn't help."

1:42:54 So God's keeping us from that kind of unhelpful ministry and so, how does He do that? He puts us through things we wouldn't want to go through so we have to cry out for His comfort. We experience the fact that He really is a friend that sticks closer than a brother and now, we get a sense of how we can comfort a person who's going through that.

1:43:25 For example, when I was going through the worst of my physical suffering and surgery after surgery, the thing that comforted me the most was not you telling me about the sovereignty of God. I believed in the sovereignty of God. What comforted me most was people incarnated for me the presence and the help of the Lord, the tender care of the Lord.

1:44:14 You know, it's so easy to say, "Well, God's in control and because He's in control, this, too, will pass at some point." And when you've been through suffering, you know that's not what people need to hear. They need to know that God is there and God is with them, and they won't go through anything alone.

1:44:34 Shelby: Yes, and you might be the physical representation of that.

1:44:37 Paul: Absolutely. God makes His invisible presence visible by sending people to represent that presence in the life of people who need to know of that presence. That's how it works and that's what he's saying here; and how does he define God, mercy, and comfort? So my suffering is meant to hammer me into the shape of mercy.

1:45:07 Shelby: Hammer is a good word.

1:45:09 Paul: And hammer me into the shape of comfort, so I don't enter [inaudible] with a suffering person as a theological know-it-all. It's so easy to do. It's unloving. Now, maybe when we've gotten to the point where this person is really just basking in the presence of the Lord, I can talk about His sovereignty and...

1:45:36 Shelby: Discernment about when to say what.

1:45:38 Paul: Yes, but again, there's a reason why he talks about God's mercy and God's comfort, and God meeting us with mercy and comfort so we can give mercy and comfort. He's telling us something about what people who are suffering need.

1:45:55 Now, got to go back again. This is not a Christian life option. This is you will suffer because God intentioned to qualify and equip you for ministry, and you're required to use your suffering well in the lives of other people.

1:46:18 Shelby: Yes, I've heard that phrase before. Don't waste your suffering. Don't waste your pain. Things like that. It's the Old Testament whole process of what God... you are blessed in order to be a blessing. That's why you're blessed. So you're blessed by me, we're in relationship with one another; now, go be a blessing. And you find that theme all over scripture. You're blessed to be a blessing.

1:46:42 You know, pastor, author, J.D. Greear and J.D. said something one time that really stuck with me that I think is super applicable here. It's a quote that I actually have on my phone and as I was thinking about it, I just wanted to read it to you.

1:46:57 Paul uses the word picture of the body of Christ as the church with the Christ Jesus as the head. Now, think about how the body takes care of itself. I've got a head and a brain that represents Jesus. If my left elbow decides that it itches, it sends up a message to the brain that says, "I itch".

1:47:16 What does my brain do? My brain does not send down magic brain juice down there in order to take care of the itch. It signals, instead, the right hand and fingers. It says, "Hey, Right Fingers, Brother Left Elbow has an itch. Go take care of that," and that's how the body works.

1:47:33 And in the same way, when God has something that you're praying to Him about doing in your life, He usually doesn't send down some magic power from heaven to fix it, What He does is He connects you with another person in the body of His church and that becomes the instrument through which He works in your life.

1:47:49 This means if you disconnect yourself from the church, you are disconnecting yourself from the power of God. I thought that was really, really helpful. I've thought about that often because I've often, in my suffering, prayed, "God, would you just take this away? You can. Would you just take it away?"

1:48:08 More often than not, He said no, but He's also said yes by bringing other people into my life, fellow sufferers, who have helped me to see the benefit of what I'm going through, the benefit of being broken, the benefit of not being stiff-necked, like Proverbs 29 talks about.

1:48:27 Don't be stiff necked or you're going to break it. You need to know that you need to be malleable and soft in this process of going through the torture of what you're experiencing in your suffering, but you're not alone.

1:48:37 You're with someone else in that process and that has provided more comfort than God taking away the pain, which is weird to think about. When I'm in pain, I want God to take away the pain, but God will not just take away the pain because that's easy and it's transactional.

1:48:56 He'll bring someone along outside me to help me know that I'm going through this with someone else and that I'll discover this is actually better than Him just taking away the thing that I'm suffering from. This is the real comfort. The comfort is actually in the process of being in relationship with other people who understand what I’ve what I've gone through.

1:49:15 Paul: Yes. I mean, that's very well said and that quote is really helpful from J.D. Let's put these three passages together. Micah 6, 2 Corinthians 5, 2 Corinthians 1. God's requirement — that's the draft — is that we would represent Him on earth, represent the way He dealt with this fallen, broken world.

1:49:48 The way that we do that is by receiving our ambassadorial calling, that representative identity. And so, what we're doing in relationship is just so, "I want you to like me and respect me and so, we can have a good relationship," but, "I want you to be reconciled to God."

1:50:20 The means by which God equips us for doing that is suffering. If you put these three passages, it's inescapable to understand that I need the softening of suffering so the arrogance of theological always-right-ism, the pride of personal righteousness, all that stuff is hammered out of me and I move into the world with mercy and comfort. Of course, that mercy and comfort is rooted in the person and work of Jesus.

1:51:00 Wow! It just is so incredibly moving to me and I always end after I read this passage saying, "I'm just not there." I can be so proud of what I know and what I've accomplished, and I need the gracious hammer of God's mercy to form me more. "Form me more. Make me more equipped and ready to represent Your mercy and Your comfort," because where is there suffering? Everywhere you look.

1:51:54 Maybe people are suffering because of their own sin, but there's suffering everywhere you look and it's only those who understand the work of the Father and how we sought to make His blessing reach as far as the curse is found is through Jesus that are ever going to be able to help. It's beautiful. So we've been drafted.

1:52:22 Shelby: Yes, and there's an element of humility that needs to come with that, too, like God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Prideful people buck against any kind of authority because they think the authority is in themselves, but God calls us to be humble people.

1:52:38 1 Peter 5:5. You know, it talks about clothing yourself with humility. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. I'd rather be close to God in humility than right and prideful because that means I'm far from God.

1:52:52 Paul: Yes, amen. Well, let's move to guiding grace. I don't want to say much about this because there [are] ways we've covered this [inaudible] it down the other already, but the grace that we've been given is a grace that guides us. And I need to be guided because I don't always know the way ahead and because I'm like a three-year-old.

1:53:25 You try to lead a three-year-old anywhere, they're going to be wandering off at the first thing that attracts them, and you look around and they're not with you anymore. And I find it very helpful Psalm 119:105.

1:53:40 Psalm 119 is just really a hymn to the beauty of God's truth and God's word, but it says ¹⁰⁵Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my [pathway]. Spurgeon said if you have a torch and you're walking in a dark pathway, if it's on your head, both your feet and your head are going to fall into a ditch. I love that.

1:54:11 It's talking about the practical, everyday, street-level guidance of the word of God. I love the fact that the word of God is comprehensive without being exhaustive. In other words, if the word of God directly spoke to everything in life, you would drive your Bible to church in five 18-wheelers. But there's a way in which the word of God, in its guiding wisdom, addresses everything in some way without speaking about everything.

1:54:58 So there are passages that talk about forgiveness that never mention marriage, but are so helpful to your marriage. Or we just talked about how to address a sufferer. Maybe your child has had a really tough day at school. Maybe they've been bullied. How do you enter into that with them? Well, the Bible gives you guidance on that.

1:55:36 So I love the fact that God's given us a guiding lamp. The ultimate moral flashlight and maybe we ought to just say this. What we talked about today is a reminder that between the "already" of our conversion and the "not yet" of our homegoing, other than our relationship with Jesus, God's two best gifts to us [are] His word and His church.

1:56:14 What have we talked about today? Over and over again, His word and His church. And His grace operates through His word. His grace operates through His church. Well, in a darkened world, if you want to know where to go and you don't have your Bible open everyday, something's wrong with you.

1:56:40 Shelby: Yes, you're going to trip a few times. Yes, it's again coming back to the importance of scripture, being in scripture, not as a box to check for the day in order to get through it, but you need this relationship.

1:56:54 And it reminds me a little bit of... I don't know if I've ever been on a hike where there's been a guide, but I know people who have and the guide is there to help you through the terrain. The terrain is going to look rocky or scary or whatever, but if the guide is familiar with the terrain, you could trust the guide.

1:57:14 The guy would be like, "When we come up here, you're going to need to put your right hand on this and your left hand on this, and pull yourself around. It's going to seem scary, but don't worry, you'll be able to get around."

1:57:22 Are you trusting the terrain in that moment or are you trusting the guide? Well, you're trusting the guide, right? You're putting your eyes on the person who says, "I know the terrain. Trust me." That's what we need to do. We need to trust God because our life circumstance is going to be rocky, bouncy, dangerous, scary, but if we trust the Guide, we'll know that we'll be able to get through it.

1:57:41 Paul: So you do this all the time to me. You anticipate the next passage.

1:57:48 Shelby: That's not on purpose.

1:57:52 Paul: See, I'm talking about the flashlight and you're talking about the guide, so let me go to Proverbs 3:5-6.

1:57:57 Shelby: Well, you said we need to move through this quickly.

1:58:00 Paul:⁵Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
⁶In all your ways acknowledge Him,

and He will make... your paths [straight].

1:58:10 Shelby: Sorry, not sorry.

1:58:13 Paul: So God's given us a lamp to light the way, but this is saying He'll walk before us. He's personally taking responsibility to guide us. "Make your path straight" is it's clearing the way for us. Now, I'll give you an illustration. Luella and I were in Cuba and the Cuba government investigated me before we went there, and they hilariously put me in the category of a world leader, which is, I mean, it's just ridiculous.

1:59:00 Shelby: I don't know, you dress pretty cool.

1:59:02 Paul: So we got there and through immigration, these uniformed guys got us and just walked us through immigration. We didn't stand in the immigration line and we just had this wonderful time in Cuba. No difficult whatsoever and the last day, we were sitting with our host.

1:59:25 He says, "Let me tell you what's been going on." He said, "Because the Cuban government put you in that category, you have been protected by government agents the whole time you're here. You haven't seen any of them. They've cleared out areas that they thought would be dangerous for you. Everyday, they called us and made sure that you were safe." And he said, "You're in Cuba, but you've never been safer in your life.

1:59:55 Now, they did that because they were afraid if something happened to me, it would reflect on the Cuban government, but there it is. Our paths were made straight by these guys. We never saw them. We never had a sense of what they were doing, but they were doing their work to make sure that we were safe. That's that passage in Proverbs. Trust Him.

2:00:19 And even the moment you think it couldn't be possible that God's in this or God's working, He's at work. He's walking before you. He's making the way clear, straight because [to use John Bunyan's language] you'll never get to the celestial city without His guiding hand. We're in the journey. We got the best flashlight in the world, but we don't just have that. We have the personal, committed guidance of our Savior.

2:01:01 Shelby: Yes, I love that from these first two verses, the 5-6 and then, the gentle reminder in verse 7. I was like, "Hey, by the way, ⁷Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil." That's a good reminder, too. Like, "No, I got it. I got it figured out. No, I know exactly what I'm doing." It's easy to immediately take your eyes as soon as you get success or comfort or repetition, you're like in a pocket where like things feel familiar to you, it's easy to be wise in your own eyes.

2:01:38 And that's why I think the more spiritual danger we're in is when we're actually successful, when we're actually comfortable, when we're actually in the world's eyes doing well, or even in our own eyes doing well.

2:01:51 You're in a position of much greater danger there as opposed to a person who's knows that they're in need, knows that they're morally bankrupt, knows that they need God. Blessed are the needy, you know, Blessed are the people who actually reach out to God in those moments when things are going well and when you're suffering.

2:02:15 Paul: Yes, I would just encourage people. Take a note card — put it someplace where you're going to see it every day — that just says, "I need a light and I need a Guide, and I'll need a light and I need a Guide until my feet touch the other shore."

2:02:39 I'm never going to outgrow the need for that lamp that shines in the darkness of the word of God. I'm never going to outgrow the need for the Savior to walk before me to make the way safe. I'm just not and there's no outgrowing the need for that.

2:03:02 In fact, isn't it true that spiritually mature people haven't become independent? They have a greater sense of dependency, a greater sense of need, a greater enthusiasm that I have a light and I have a Guide. "Yes, I remember when I needed that, but I don't need that anymore."

2:03:26 Shelby: Yes, or Paul calling himself the chief of sinners near the end of his time. It's like, "Really? Paul's the chief of sinners?" Oh, he just had a more proper understanding of who he was. Ready to move on?

2:03:37 Paul: Yes. Well, we're actually going to finish with finishing grace. There's no better passage in this than Romans 8:28-30. It doesn't get any better than this passage.

2:04:10 Shelby: Want me to read it?

2:04:11 Paul: Sure.

2:04:12 Shelby: Romans 8:28-30. ²⁸And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. ²⁹For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. ³⁰And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.

2:04:42 Paul: So I think this passage has been weakened often in people's understanding because they take verse 28 alone. ²⁸And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.

2:05:03 And it's like the way it's interpreted is as if at every circumstance is going to be tied with a beautiful bow at the end, that everything is going to turn out for good. Well, that's not actually true. I have conditions in my body that mean I'll be sick 'til I'm on the other side and weak in ways I don't really want to be weak 'til I'm on the other side. That's not going away.

2:05:45 So the key to understanding what this passage is teaching and that is actually talking about the fact that God will finish what He's begun is the word "good". So we know that for those whom God loves, all things work together for good.

2:06:09 What is the good? Is it comfortable life? Is it happiness? Is it the marriage of my dreams? Good job? Fill in the blank.? No. Good is defined by 29 and 30. ²⁹For those... He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. ³⁰And those... He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.

2:06:40 What is he saying? The good is nothing in any circumstance can ever keep God from abandoning the good that He's begun in you. What is that? Saving grace. He'll finish it. It's a beautiful passage. So your struggling marriage can't get in the way of the march of His grace. The crippling injury can't get in the way of the march of His grace. Financial loss can't get in the way of the march of His grace. Name the experience. It's beautiful.

2:07:16 Shelby: I would dare say that most people don't process "good" that way. They think "good" in terms of what their own definition of "good" is and not according to this. It looks like sanctifying. You know, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. That's the sanctifying...

2:07:35 Paul: Sanctifying, glorifying grace.

2:07:38 Shelby: He also called [conscripting] and also justified [saving]. "And those who He justified, He also glorified." Glorification is it's a process of sanctification, becoming more and more like Jesus because that's who ultimately, we are to be like. It doesn't feel like Romans 8:28 is ever used that way though.

2:08:00 Paul: Glorification is basically sanctification completed. So this is the value of looking at a passage of scripture in its context because the larger context of Romans 8 beginning with verse 18, is the universal suffering. We live in a world that's groaning, waiting for redemption. What has God provided for us in suffering? And He's saying to people this is the hope that nothing can get in the way of the march of redemption, of the march of grace. That's the best thing ever. You want good? That's the goodest. It's the best ever.

2:08:54 Shelby: Yes. We need to process "good" through His definition of what is good, not ours.

2:08:59 Paul: Yes, [inaudible] the wimpy way we separate that out because the flow is when he talks about good, he says, "For those He foreknew..." He's completing the thought and what it is is it's the definition of finishing grace. What began with Him calling me to Himself will not stop until I'm glorified now fully into the image of the glory of Christ.

2:09:40 Shelby: That's a beautiful thing to think about because when you process all the things that are going on with your life currently, almost everything is withering. It's almost like a flower cut at the stem. My body is not what it used to be. My house — obviously I just mentioned that — is deteriorating.

2:10:02 Everything is moving towards rot and decay. My wedding ring. Either my wife or I, this is a Keller thing. Tim Keller would always say, "Either I'm going to be looking at her in the coffin or she's going to be looking at me in the coffin." And you know, our bodies are moving and pushing toward death, withering. But to look at this and read this, there's no hope if it's just withering. There's hope of the finishing work of grace in our lives because we will be glorified. It will be ultimate sanctification.

2:10:38 Paul: Well, the fact of the matter is you and me and everything around us is in the process of decay. Everything. This is the opposite. This is a march to a greater and greater life. Life wins, not death. That's finishing grace.

2:11:00 Shelby: And we ultimately find that in the resurrection. The resurrection shows us that death does not win. Life wins. Jesus wins. And if we are in Him, we know that we win because we are in him. That's why Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 names Jesus' resurrection the firstfruit. It's that first tomato that comes on the vine. You know there are more tomatoes to come and so, yes, it's a promise of the march of life. It's beautiful.

2:11:40 There's another passage. It's 1 Peter 5. I love 6-11. I preached this and my title is How to Be a Christian Without Losing Your Gospel Mind. But I want to read just 10-11. ¹⁰And after you have suffered a little while [that's all of us], the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself [I love this, it's so beautiful] restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. ¹¹To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Isn't that awesome?

2:12:43 Shelby: Yes, so good. Proper center stage.

2:12:45 Paul: "After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ" — I mean, Peter is just emphasizing the personal, active, intentional presence of God — "will Himself restore [I'm not totally restored yet], confirm [I'm a little bit wobbly], strengthen [I still got a weakness], and establish you forever. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen." Unbelievable and we should say the same after — how many times have we done this?

2:13:37 Shelby: This is the fourth podcast we've done on grace.

2:13:41 Paul: We should be saying, "To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen." What I like about that last statement — Him be the dominion forever and ever, amen — is, I think, the place we ought to remember we ought to end is all of this grace is ours, not just because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but because of His royal ascension because He now reigns in dominion and in a new way, He's the royal High Priest now interceding for us.

2:14:38 He's the royal reigning Prophet who sends His Spirit to illumine the word for His people. He's the royal reigning King who rules over all things for the sake of His church. Now, He is reigning in glory, the ultimate Prophet, the ultimate Priest, the ultimate King, who as Prophet, Priest, and King, pours down His grace on His children.

2:15:08 Shelby: It's incredible.

2:15:09 Paul: It's hard to put it in your brain and I think that we need to be better at... people talk about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We ought to say life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus because that ascension is the guarantee of the work that we've been talking about these four sessions because this is the resurrected royal King, the royal Priest, the royal Prophet now sitting above the thrones and dominions, next to the right hand of the Father, ruling over all things for the sake of His body, which is the church. That's first Ephesians 1.

2:16:02 Shelby: Yes. I mean, I think there's times in life where we process this a little bit more intentionally. Easter is often a time, you know, Palm Sunday and then, maybe at Christmastime as well; but this is something that should be on the forefront of our minds and our hearts all the time.

2:16:20 We should be looking at life through the lens of His ascension, that He is the Prophet, Priest, and King. We've been in 1 Peter a lot today, but 1 Peter 1 talks about the gospel, the good news that we preach to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things in which angels long to look.

2:16:39 Angels are ancient creatures that have been around for eons and they look at the beauty and majesty of the gospel, that the life, death, the resurrection, the ascension of Jesus and they never get bored. Never. And if they could stare into it for the amount of time that they have, they long to look at it. They're in awe of what Jesus has done.

2:17:02 Why are we so quick to get bored of it? The problem is not God. The problem is us and so, I always want to remind myself of that everyday. You taught me this prayer. "God, I'm a person of incredible need. Would You bring Your avenues of grace into my life to help me in my need? And may I be humble enough to receive them once they come along."

2:17:26 You helped me with that. Specifically, the humility element is like I allow other things to get in the way and my arrogance, my pride, my selfishness tends to filter my decision-making, my thoughts, my words, my actions, all that kind of stuff. But if we put this on the forefront, that Jesus is there on the throne, that He'll do it, He'll establish it for us, I will live differently. I will speak differently. I will think differently. I will act differently.

2:17:55 Paul: So why do we have every grace that we need? All these — I think we've covered 16 aspects of God's grace — because Jesus humbled Himself, was willing to suffer even to death. He lived a perfectly righteous life so He would be the spotless lamb. He rose again from the dead, conquering sin and death; but He wasn't done.

2:18:24 He ascended to the right hand of the Father, so that we would finally get the results of His royal priesthood, His royal prophethood, His royal kingship, so that grace would pour down on us in every way that we need it.

2:18:43 And He's, right now, in His royal reign. And He's, right now, as the ultimate Prophet, ultimate Priest, ultimate King, providing for each one of His children exactly what they need, so that they're guarded, so the inheritance that He has kept for them, they'll be ready to receive.

2:19:11 Shelby: That's best way to end it, I think. Great job. I love this. This was amazing.

2:19:16 Paul: Amen, amen. Let's pray.

Lord, we are blown away by the magnitude and the faithfulness, the expansiveness, the personal-ness of Your grace; and excited now at this vision of You in royal robes, reigning on Your throne, Prophet, Priest, and King, pouring down every grace we need. We are so incredibly blessed. We are so thankful and we would say, Yours is the dominion, Yours is the honor, Yours is the glory. In Your royal name, amen.

2:19:59 Shelby: I love Jesus more because of this and that's probably the best compliment I can give.