Pursuing Godliness? You Need Both Law and Grace.

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Mike Kruger
Well, welcome and good afternoon. Great to see all of you here. Welcome to this session. Here. The title is does Grace oppose hard work, a conversation about legalism, moralism and the gospel and I’m joined by my friend, Jen Wilkin here who really needs no introduction in this circle of people. But you know, we’re as an author, speaker, writer, and on the staff of the village church, in Dallas, Texas, and my name is Mike Krieger. I’m the president of Reformed Theological Seminary, in Charlotte, North Carolina. And we’re just excited to do this session today. And I want to give an acknowledgement to our sponsor, the Good Book Company, is sponsoring this session, and they have a table here, actually, at the conference, you can go check out their books, and I’m appreciative in particular, because my new commentary and Hebrews comes out with a good book company this week. And so thanks to them for sponsoring this conversation. And Jen, I just got to start by saying how excited I aim to do this. We have a backstory here. We’re going to share in a moment how we got here, but I’m just thrilled to finally have a chance to have this conversation. And on this topic today.

Jen Wilkin
I feel the same way. I feel like we’ve waited a long time to do this.

Mike Kruger
Yeah, this is this has been something that’s been brewing in our own thinking and minds for a long time really dating back to 2014. And ever since we sort of see each other at conferences and pick up a little of the conversation, and then someone had the crazy idea this year to do this session. I don’t even know who whose idea this was. Was this your idea? I think it was, was it my idea. I can’t remember this is the story of my life right now. I don’t remember what I wrote what I say what I teach and what I come up with. But either way, this is a topic on legalism and moralism and the gospel and how they interface together. And it began with us in 2014. With an article that Jen wrote, I think it was on the gospel coalition, if I’m not mistaken. So that’s fitting for this conference. And I love the title of this article, Jen. Failure is not a virtue. Tell us about that article, because that’s where this conversation really began.

Jen Wilkin
My mind Twitch if I started trying to talk about it, because at the time that I wrote that I was writing on my own blog, and what would happen is someone at TGC would email me and say, Hey, we saw what you wrote, can we put it on our website? And the first time that happened, I had to Google what TGC was, I had never even heard of it. And and then I saw that my pastor’s name was on there. So I’m like, Okay, well, they’re probably not Kooks, and then they would run something. And you know, you never knew how it was gonna go usually meant every first year seminary student was going to troll me in the comments, because I still had the comments open at that time, which was truly horrible. So I wrote this piece, because it’s something that I was actually seeing in in mothering circles, like, I was seeing a lot of advice to young moms, etc, saying, you know, Hey, girl, you’re just gonna fail. And you’re just as you can, you’re, everything you do is going to fail. But there is grace for you, there is just grace for you. And there were some pieces that were written about, like Jesus just wants you to rest. And I was like, Man, I feel like this is bubbling up a lot. So I had written this piece TGC picks it up. Well, unbeknownst to me, there was a much larger conversation going out there about this and your Yeah, and that’s where my eye starts to twitch, because they put it on the site and it exploded.

Mike Kruger
No, that’s exactly right, this article, and I’m gonna come back to a phrase, you use an article in a moment, which I think is fascinating, this article push back against this idea that all you can do is fail in keeping the law and the only thing you can really do is just admit you failed. No, you’re gonna fail again, go to the cross, and then repent and just let the cycle repeat. There was no real, no real conversation in the circles about how God empowers us by His Spirit to obey the law or on the laws of positive guide in the Christian life. And so when I read this article by Jennifer, this is really insightful. This is really useful. And then like you said, it’s like someone dropped a match into the whole conversation about law, grace and the Gospel. And someone had wrote a rebuttal to you. That came to my attention. And I read the rebuttal. And I thought this was entirely unfair to what you had written. And so I wrote on my blog, a defense of her blog, and then my website blew off. In fact, you’ll laugh at this Jen last night, just for old times sake. I went on my blog, and I thought, I wonder how many comments I have on my comments out there. I still have some comments out there. So for those of you who are curious, you can go after those. Don’t do it now. Do it. I can see you taking your phones out. Don’t do it now. ever read the comments. Yes, go you can go on my website and dig up the article. And there’s page after page after page. I mean, went on forever. And I realized, wow, this touched a nerve.

Jen Wilkin
It did now at the point that your website blew up, I was hunkered down in a room making my husband check to see what was going on out there because I’m like, I cannot look I don’t know what just happened. And it meant so much to me that you spoke up and you were not the only one who spoke up but I just I didn’t expect that and it was so kind. And it gave me courage to continue thinking about this and thinking about how it might be important for the church. And I think then you and I have enjoyed a lot of years to sort of dialogue around this. Thankfully, I actually really like your wife. So even if you were intolerable, she said yes. And time when

Mike Kruger
that’s actually what most people say, you know, I’m saved by my wife most of the time. She is the better half for sure. So you use a word, Jen. And that article called, helped me here celebratory failure ism, that

Jen Wilkin
there’s nothing like name calling when you want to make a point. Yeah, I was really just trying to kind of capture what was going on with with what I was seeing. And it was just that it was actually something to be glad about when you could not obey the law, because it meant that grace was magnified that much more. And I do think that the way that this conversation hits people, like I know why people love and value the message of grace so highly, it’s usually because they either came out of legalism, and it burned them, or they came out of license. And they have so much residual shame around the way that they lived in the past. And so I don’t look at this in a way that is removed from the pastoral elements of the conversation. But at the same time, it was alarming to me that specifically in the centers that call themselves gospel centered, something was missing, like obedience had become a bad word.

Mike Kruger
No, I think that’s exactly right. I mean, when in the Christian life, if you try to obey God’s law, you’re considered a legalist. If you strive towards holiness, you’re labeled someone who doesn’t understand grace. And we thought ourselves, well, this doesn’t sound right, because Paul’s very concerned with holiness, even though he was the champion of justification. So there seem to be a confusing here of the confusion here between justification and sanctification. Yeah, that I think needed to be spoken about. And you know, just to be clear, and I think this audience would know this, both Jen and I, of course, love the doctrine of justification and hold wholeheartedly, obviously embrace justification, by faith alone on the finished work of Christ alone, and his imputed righteousness to us, so that there is no law keeping that can meritoriously earn our salvation, of course. But does that mean that we’re not supposed to try to keep the law? And here’s where I think your article pushed back, hopefully, Jen and said, Hey, wait a second, there was a positive use of the law that we seem to have forgotten. And that that reminds me this whole discussion of second versus third use of the law, right? I don’t know if you want to say something about that. Because that I think, is a missing category.

Jen Wilkin
Well, and I think if you’re missing this category, what can happen is when you say we want to be gospel centered, you’re, you’ve reduced the gospel to a call to repentance and justification. And it is, it is true, though, I’m gonna I’m actually going to riff on a John MacArthur comment here. But that our justification does, in fact, cost us nothing. But our sanctification will cost us everything. And I think that’s a mess. And that’s, that’s actually good news. Like sanctification is every bit as good of news as justification is, and yet it felt like our in this this was increasingly on justification as the gospel. It is such good news that I don’t have to stay the way that I was when I came to faith. And if you have seen any, sanctification take place in your own life. Since the point of your justification, you can say amen to that, you can look back on how you used to be Now granted, you continue to understand with a deeper sense, how your sin has impacted you. And so you increasingly are aware of your sin at the same time that you might be moving away from old sin patterns. But it is important for us to acknowledge that the hope of the gospel in our sanctification is that we would be conformed to the image of Christ. And how does that conforming happen? It happens when we examine the role of the law in the life of the believer. So the second use of the law, right is this issue of justification. It points out our need for salvation. Christ is the only one who fulfills the law perfectly. But then it was that third use of the law that we really needed to kind of return to do you want to talk about that one?

Mike Kruger
Yeah, so most of you familiar with the theological categories of different uses of the moral law, theologians have historically distinguish between what we call second use in third use course there’s a first use. I’m not going to talk about that today. But the second use of the law is the one that we typically talk about in relation to justification, and that is the law condemns it, it traps you it cannot justify you in in the thing it serves to do is expose how deep a sinner you really are. Why? So you will flee to Christ for forgiveness. But that’s not all that can be said about what Jesus has done because there’s also the third use of the moral law. The third use of the moral law is that yes, the law exposes our sin and drives us Christ but it’s also a positive I tried in our life, to holiness, the law is something we should love is something that we should follow is something that we should embrace. In other words, I tell my students all the time in seminary, if, if you don’t love God’s law, you’re not going to love God because the law reflects his character, that the law is a reflection of who God is. So if someone says, I’m anti law, I’m like, well, then you’re not a follower of Christ, because Christ was not anti law. Christ wrote the law. It’s his own words, and it reflects his own character. So there has to be some sense in which the law condemns us that we try to use it as a meritorious works righteousness. But it’s also a positive guide, when we’re looking at it from the perspective of someone who’s been saved. I think that’s the distinction that was missing.

Jen Wilkin
Yeah, Jesus is both our Savior and our example. And we can acknowledge that and I think of it to like in just relational terms, my husband Jeff has this is you’re gonna super want to be a part of my life after you hear this. He has recently, in the last several years taken up birding, he’s gotten really into birds. And he’s often staring out the window at birds using different apparatus so that he can see birds and tell me about birds. And let me know about the new bird that’s in the yard and how there are birds here and there, and everywhere, there are birds. Birds are all over the place. And so I have actually developed a love for birds. My because he loves birds. So I love birds, because Jeff loves birds. And I love Jeff. I love the law, because Jesus loves the law. And I love Jesus. So we should think about this, really just in terms of how we even understand human relationships. We want to love the things that the person that we love loves. And we know that he loves the law and delights in it. And so so should we.

Mike Kruger
Yeah, it makes me think of the Psalms, right? Psalm one, you know, Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night. He doesn’t say the man who loves the law of the Lord is a legalist. It says, The one who loves love, the law of the Lord is the one who’s going to have fruit in his life and so forth. And the implication, of course, isn’t that he’s using the laws of meritorious works righteousness to be right, earning God’s favor, but because already redeemed by grace, now you look at the law differently. Now, the law is no longer the enemy. But now your friend. And I think that’s the key difference. Yeah.

Jen Wilkin
And you know, the second use of the law is Allah is the one that’s compared to a mirror, right? It’s the diagnostic. And so then you you go to James, the Epistle of James, where he’s actually saying, hey, you know, you’ve looked in the mirror, but no one looks in the mirror and walks away and doesn’t try to change like they want to be different after looking in the mirror. Well, that’s actually not true of the unbeliever, the unbeliever wants to avoid the mirror. But those of us who have been been made new in Christ, we welcome what the mirror is showing us, even though it may be painful, because we so much want to please the one who gave us the mirror in the first place. So it’s a joyful obedience out of gratitude, instead of a grudging obedience out of fear.

Mike Kruger
Now, part of the issue that I want to diagnose with you for a second gen is kind of how we got here. And so one idea I have and we can kick this around is, it seems like many Christians today in the reformed world think that the biggest enemy of the church is legalism. Yeah. And forget perhaps that another enemy of the church is also antinomianism. And if you’re convinced that the biggest enemy of the church is legalism, then you’re gonna love the second use of the law, because that’s a legalism killer, right? But if you’re concerned about antinomianism, you’re gonna love the third use of the law. So how did we get to the place where Christians love to think that the main problem is always legalism, but kind of forget that the main problem could also be antinomianism? My theory is that I think we rightly love books like Romans and Galatians, a lot. And those are wonderful books. I’ve studied and written on both of those in various ways. But if those are your only tools in the toolbox, you’re gonna basically think the only church problem is legalism. Well, that’s on that,

Jen Wilkin
I think, I think that’s a good point. I think also. And, honestly, it has a lot to do with just the length of books in the Bible, because the typical pastor is looking for a sermon series of a certain length, which means you’re only going to spend time are predominantly going to spend time in shorter books of the Bible. And you’re probably not going to spend time in the Old Testament law books a whole lot, because those are longer and they take a lot of work to get through. I actually think that a big symptom or a big contributing factor to this is our ignorance or neglect of the Old Testament. We spend so much time in the New Testament, which is intending to pick our Old Testament memories at every turn. You know, the New Testament authors loved the Old Testament and they delighted in the law and they meditated on it. But they are pointing toward a muscle memory that a lot of us just haven’t developed, or we have been told wrongly. that the God of the Old Testament was thunderous and grumpy. And then the cross happens. And the God of the New Testament is now welcoming and loving. But you know, you can, if you do a word search in the Old Testament, you find out that God is described as compassionate over and over again, in the old days, the same God, therefore, his law should be equally beautiful in the life of the Yawei follower, whether you are on one side of the cross, or on the other. But I do think a lot of this is a Bible literacy issue related strictly to the length of predictable or teachable books that keeps us only in the shorter books of the Bible and gives, which means you’re gonna be in the Epistles a ton. And if you’re in Paul’s epistles, you’re probably talking a lot more about justification. And so I think that’s a lot of how we got here.

Mike Kruger
No, that’s, that’s a really interesting observation. I mean, you know, another angle on this, as you mentioned, the book of James, and I tell my students this a lot, I was like, Look, if you want to get a balanced view of the law, you’ve got Romans and Galatians, on the one side, which are wonderful, and you just have to have those. And then you have James on the other side. And what I love about what James does is he’s fighting against a different enemy. So if Paul and Galatians, is fighting against the Judaizers, the legalist, so to speak, James is really fighting against antinomianism. And so the book of James is a book about how to live, it’s filled with ethics, it’s filled with what you should do. And of course, famously, everyone knows that Luther wasn’t a big fan of the book of James. And there’s no surprise with Luther was really, really concerned about the doctrine of justification. But any thoughts on how James really helps bring balance to this? Because I really think it’s a key book.

Jen Wilkin
Yeah, James is New Testament Wisdom literature. And if you’ve paid attention to what’s happening in James, and you know, there’s so much crossover to the Sermon on the Mount. He’s not saying a new thing. He’s saying the thing that he probably heard Jesus say, over and over again during His earthly ministry. And so repetition has probably done its work in the mind of James. And now he is re articulating the ethic that Jesus has presented in the Sermon on the Mount. And that is actually where this whole conversation started. For me as I was writing and teaching a study on the sermon on the mount and just came face to face with the idea that Jesus really means what he’s saying that he’s not the one who fulfills all of those things that he’s saying. And that only that he’s actually calling us to live lives that look like this. Because that is the way his disciples would have received the message. He’s trying to overturn all of their expectations of what it means that the kingdom of God is at hand. And he’s doing it by saying, You’re not going to look a little different, you’re going to look entirely different than the world around you. And here are the guardrails that are going to make that be true. And he is pulling on the Old Testament tradition, Wisdom literature, he talks about two trees and two paths, and two kinds of teachers and two kinds of speech and two kinds of treasures, which is all of the language of Proverbs, which is telling us the way of wisdom or the way of folly, wisdom, literature being the path that shows us how to live God’s way in God’s world. And so when you think about what James is trying to do, it’s the same thing. He’s saying, Look, you’re on the ground, here you are, you have the grace of your justification. And now here is the path to walk forward on and it is in his guard rails are delineated by God’s good and beautiful and delightful law.

Mike Kruger
Yeah, the Sermon on the Mount, I think, is just a wonderful challenge to the misconception. Because what you realize when you read that passage is that Jesus views the law beautifully, because that’s what he does when he talks about misconceptions of the law that he’s fixing. But also he doesn’t mind teaching the law. This is this is one of the things that I think comes up a lot, is the idea that if you call people to obedience in a sermon, if you call people to obedience in a message if you teach the law that that’s somehow unChristian. And as I think about that, like, Well, does that mean, the sermon on the mount is unChristian? Right? Because if you read the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus doesn’t talk about justification anywhere. It’s just a long, several chapters of how to live. And I think well, does that make also James unChristian, because James is just chapter after chapter after chapter of how to live. And then I also think, what about a book like Proverbs, you know, which is, again, you know, wisdom on how to live chapter after chapter after chapter. So the idea that you can’t talk about how to live or talk about the law? Because if you did, it makes you a legalist. I think just as out of sync with the Bible’s on witness. Well,

Jen Wilkin
and I think we’re the conversation kind of has broken down is that people have come to wrongly think of the Pharisee or the legalist, as someone who is good at obeying the law, and that the antinomian is someone who just throws the law out. So the antinomian is law less, and then the Pharisee is law full. But the reality is that both the fair See, and the ants and Omean are practices of lawlessness. They are the lawless man who is described to us in the Bible, because what the antinomian disregards the Pharisee twists to his own purposes, his obedience is to self elebrate, elevate and self exalt. And so that’s why sacrifices and offerings from him are not acceptable to the Lord. They’ve offered the fruit of their lips, but their hearts are far from him. And so what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mountain, and what James is doing in his epistle, is he’s saying, no, no, the the obedience that pleases God is right motive combined with right action. And so he the thing that blew me away in the Sermon on the Mount, is that Jesus doesn’t say you should obey the law. You know, here’s the line and walk up to it. He actually says, if you know the line for sin is here, you should flee the other direction, you should have an expansive obedience to the law, not merely a letter of the law, obedience, but a spirit of the law of obedience.

Mike Kruger
Yeah, so once again, Jesus is a lover of the law. And I think once again, when you realize that you’re like, so it’s not unChristian. To love God’s law, it is unChristian to use the law as a means of meritorious works righteousness, but it’s not a sin to use the law as something that you love and want to and seek to follow. Now, when we talk about celebratory failure ism, the word you used, it makes me think that people are convinced that they can never really obey. And I’ve heard this and maybe you’ve heard this language to those who are listening and those who are listening on the video, this idea that, well, yeah, you’ll try to keep the Sermon on the Mount, you’re just gonna fail to submit, you’re gonna fail in advance. There’s nothing you can do about it. I know you’re gonna try to keep the book of James, we’re just going to fail, you’re gonna fail, and nothing can do about it this sort of this defeatist perspective on on the way we live the Christian life. And I wonder if there’s a misunderstanding there of total depravity. And and I want to get your thoughts on this generally, in that, you know, when we talk about total depravity, in theological terms, we’re talking about every purse, every part of our person being fallen. So it’s not just our actions, but our will and our minds all fallen, that’s what the total means. It doesn’t mean you’re as sinful as you can possibly be. We know that’s just factually not true. It just means that all aspects of you are broken, and affected by the fall. But is there a difference after someone’s converted? This is almost like the thing that no one talks about. The non Christian trying to keep the law is one thing, but once, once the Christian has a spirit in them, is that not a game changer? What are your What are your thoughts on that as a paradigm that somehow people are missing?

Jen Wilkin
I don’t want to give you my thoughts, I want to give you Tituss thoughts or your thoughts that were addressed to Titus, I should say, where it says, Grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness, that we would be a people zealous to do good works. So Grace actually gives us the means to view rightly our relationship to the law, and to benefit from it. Like the law becomes a means of grace in the life of the believer. And it trains us to renounce ungodliness. And so the law is a gift to us. And I think that’s something that people have missed. They actually think that grace and law are in opposition to one another.

Mike Kruger
No, I think that’s exactly right. I mean, we forget that the word of God, which includes the law is a means of grace. It’s a means of encouraging, it’s a means of enlightening, but all of that’s possible for the believer with the Spirit. And this is the thing that I think we often forget is that the non Christian looks at the law and its pure enemy. Right? Maybe there’s some external things that can do for you. But as a whole, it’s going to just condemn you. But for the believer with the Spirit, regenerating your heart, you now can begin to obey it. In other words, I felt like someone else needs to say it real obedience as possible. Perfection is not possible. This sort of higher Christian life, that’s not what we’re talking about. But the idea that you can wholeheartedly pursue a life of obedience, it seems like we sort of just tried to say, that’s impossible to stop talk, stop talking about it, because we

Jen Wilkin
keep screwing up and then we feel bad. Yes. You know, you’re like, and you’re like, maybe I’m the worst at this. And so then you’re, then you’re like, can I find some buddies who are bad at this too, so we can all feel better about this. And I’m actually not trying to be funny. It is a horrible thing to know that you have missed the mark. Again, as someone who is indwelt by the Spirit, nobody wants to feel that way. And I think that we do need to acknowledge that the path of sanctification is filled with failures. It is. But over the course of a lifetime, we should see increasing distance between the frequency of our besetting sins and a shrinking distance in between the committing of our sins and are repenting of that sin. That’s what we’re wanting. We want to be quicker to repent and we want to be slower to repeat a sin that has been something that has followed us around for a long time. I’m, there are very few times I think in the Christian life, that people would report that they stopped doing something and never did it again. But we can trust, that’s where we can trust, the depth and the width and the length of the mercies and grace of God, we can trust that and lean on it. And if you think about it, like if you’re a parent, well, even if you’re not a parent, you’ve been a child. So stick with the illustration here. A parent gives the child, here’s the rules, here are house rules and those rules. The important thing about the law, too, that we don’t talk about is that it’s not just good for you, you and your personal relationship with Christ. The law is good for community. That’s why we have it, it’s so we can live in communion with God and in communion with others. And so as a parent, when I give law to my children, and I say this is the way we can all live in harmony with one another in this home, I don’t like post the rules on the refrigerator and assume that all will be well. I know straight up because a child’s resolve is always exceptionally high, when it comes to violating the rules on the fridge that we’re going to have over and over and over again, and opportunity to reset the expectation, there will be a consequence, if there’s failure, but there will also be grace to get up and try again. I’m an evil earthly parent, but my heavenly parent knows how to do this perfectly. He knows how to deal with me gently and perfectly as he draws me ever increasingly into the very good law that shows me how to love Him and love others so that we can function as the community of God.

Mike Kruger
Now one word you use there is try. So this raises the question, and of course, we better talk about it. It’s in the title of our whole session, right? Is effort or is Grace opposed? Hard work? So we’re talking about striving towards obedience. Think about the conglomeration of words there, strive try, dare I say at work towards obedience, some will say, Now, if you do that, you’re a legalist. You’re so you’re just falling works righteousness. You just gotta just, it’s not about effort. It’s about just going back to your justification over and over again. And that’s what makes you more holy.

Jen Wilkin
Well, and, and what often will be said at this point in the conversation is, it is finished, like the Sabbath rest of our souls has been secured for us in Christ. So why are we talking about striving and laboring? And I would just say, well, we talk about it, because the New Testament talks about it. It says, To run the race, it says to fight the fight, it says to, to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. And yes, we have been secured the Sabbath soul rest of our justification, when Christ speaks, it has finished on the cross. But if you’ve paid attention to the flow of the biblical narrative, that’s not the last time it is finished, is spoken. It comes up again, in Revelation, when we see the new Jerusalem descending, and from the throne is spoken, it is done. Why? Because that is the moment at which sanctification is finished and glorification begins. And so we haven’t even actually talked about glorification is the third part of that, that salvation definition. But so if we look at the whole expanse of the scriptures, those of us who are on the other side of justification, awaiting our glorification, we labor and we strive during this life, to be conformed to the image of the sun. That’s our whole charge. And how do we do that we obeyed the law perfectly. So we strive to do as he did to walk as He walked.

Mike Kruger
Yeah, the idea that effort is out of sync with the gospel, I think, is confusing justification and sanctification. Right? Justification is mono GISTIC, we contribute nothing to our justification. It’s utterly, all the work of God. But sanctification includes our involvement in that. And there’s a sense in which effort, obviously gracefield effort, Faith fueled effort, but effort and the last is entirely fitting for the Christian life. In fact, I think of Second Peter one where it says, Make every effort to add these different qualities to your character. So there’s clearly nothing out of sync with striving in the Christian life. I think there’s the sense though, that if you do that somehow, you’re just on the verge of becoming a legalist. And this is where, you know, if you, if you’re working hard at your spiritual disciplines, you’re working hard to read the Bible every day, or you’re working hard to memorize scripture, then you looked at suspiciously. I wonder why is that how that happened? So if I if I say, well, here’s all the 50 things I did wrong this week. You’re patted on the back, almost like Well see, you’re really a Christian. But if you strive towards holiness, and push towards those things, and it’s like, wow, I don’t know about you. I think you’re on the board or how do we, what’s going on there? I just don’t understand that.

Jen Wilkin
Well, you know, I think I think each of us In our, whatever our particular corner of the church is are dealing with where emphasis has fallen on the wrong syllable. So some of you actually, if you came to this, you, you are probably coming from somewhere where you may have picked up on an emphasis that was leaning too far, one direction or another. And I think that the reason that Luther felt the way that he did about James is because of where the emphasis had been during his lifetime. And, and each of us can only speak to the place that the Lord has placed us and address the issues that we see before us there. And so I think that at least where I am, or have been in the bible belt for my whole entire adult life, you know, where you got pins for going to Sunday school, and if you’re a Southern Baptist, you wrote the date you were saved in the front of your Bible, you know, like, I have been a career Southern Baptist. I don’t know when I was saved. Like, you’re like a second class citizen, like you don’t tell people that you’re out if you tell people that

Mike Kruger
I’m not sure you’re safe. Well,

Jen Wilkin
I seriously, so I just I’m like, should I just like write a fake date in there? Like, what do you just don’t show anybody the front of my Bible? So you so where was I, I was confessing to you that I’ve never been saved. But a lot of us, our experience of church was just be good. And so it’s understandable where the message has come from. And anytime a system corrects, it doesn’t do so neatly. You shout something that has someone’s been silent on for a long time. But as the pendulum swings, you don’t want it to swing completely the other direction, we all want to, you know, we want to end up here where you go, you know, what’s important law and grace working together in the life of the believer.

Mike Kruger
Yeah, it makes me think different generations, different churches struggle with different emphases. Yeah, you know, there’s a thought, sorry, baby boomers out there, if you’re listening or in the audience, maybe online is that some people will say, and I’m not saying that this is true, but some people will say that, that generation very much struggled to get grace, and was very much tends towards moralism mode of thinking. So if that’s the problem, well, now you got a heap on second use of the law all the time. But we also know that there’s other generations and other constituencies and other places in the world where that’s not the struggle. Maybe the struggle is antinomianism, not legalism. So I always have a trick question for my students. So I always have a little pop quiz question I put in my notes does, what does the church need more today? second use of the law or third use of the law? And the answer, of course, is yes. Right? Both every person is both a closet Legalist and a closet antinomian at the same time, and we often just hop back and forth between the two on our lives. Yeah, sure. Some people may have a tendency to one or the other. But we kind of are both in churches, or both. And we really need that balance in the Christian life, which is why I think conversations like this are so useful. Here’s here’s one other categories, scripture that’s in my head, Jan, and you can reflect on this with me to one thing I think might help is to recover a category of scripture we don’t talk about and that is the category of scripture of the righteous person. Yes. So most of us know that throughout the Bible, various people are called righteous. You know, Noah’s called a righteous man, you know, even Mary is called righteous, other people are called righteous individuals, persons, etc. Any thoughts on how that might help us here on this conversation?

Jen Wilkin
Well, I think yeah, because we, you know, you read like Abraham believed, and it was credited to him as righteousness. And we’re like, Wait, we’re crediting people with righteousness? Because that doesn’t sound like you know, don’t we just get that? And I do think there’s a lot of confusion about how righteousness functions in the life of the believer and a lot of the failure ism conversation is around the idea that no, no, hey, we have the righteousness of Christ. So we’re good. And that’s a true statement. It’s actually a precious statement to us that we are through Christ, positionally righteous before God, that when he looks at us, he sees the righteousness of Christ, which was secured for us through His perfect obedience, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, the whole ball of wax. But it follows from practical from positional righteousness, that we would live a life of practical righteousness. And that’s the call and being not just called righteous or credited as righteous, that being a person who exhibits righteousness in our behavior. That I said earlier that when Scripture speaks of those who are the enemies of God, it categorizes them as the lawless man. And so it follows that Christians would not desire to be lawless, but the law fool that we would be filled with law, because the law is activated in us through the Spirit and by grace in a way that is absolutely transformational. What would you saying?

Mike Kruger
I mean, I think I’m always shocked to hear people’s response to passages of Scripture that call people righteous. It’s almost like they think that shouldn’t be in there. Like, well, that doesn’t fit with the gospel. I mean, I mean, isn’t Romans three saying no one is righteous, not even one. I think of that cartoon I saw on the other day about the Calvinists dog, the dog, who’s on by a Calvinists owner says, you know, you can’t call me good boy, because there’s no good dogs out there. You know,

Jen Wilkin
they’re super fun. Yeah, because on

Mike Kruger
the battle on B, or something, I can’t remember where I saw that. But, you know, we have this idea that if you call someone righteous, that you’re basically breaking some rule. Now, certainly, if you called someone righteous and meant that you’re law keeping justified before God, well, that would be inappropriate. But the Bible is very clear that some people have have a trajectory, or a characteristic of righteousness in them, where God can say that is a righteous man, or that is a righteous woman. And it doesn’t just mean the imputed righteousness of Christ, which we all obviously value in love, it can mean that there’s positive holiness in their life in such a way that God can say this is a righteous person, not perfect, but a trajectory, a characteristic that marks them. And I wonder if we need to recover that a little bit. Just a reminder that there’s nothing inappropriate about that?

Jen Wilkin
Well, and the way that I’ve seen it in women’s circles, and I’ve written on this, is that if if I were to ask women, I’ll say, you know, hey, can you tell me if you think about what is a woman who is just really, you know, just fully embracing her faith? Like, how would you characterize her, and I joke that on Instagram, this woman is standing in a soft focus field of flowers, she has her back to us and both of her arms are out flung, and she’s staring at the sky like this. And we would say that she’s a woman who just loves Jesus with all of her heart, or she just is sold out for him. And she just, you know, adores him. And yet the verse with which women are, are smacked the most frequently in the Bible, Charm is deceitful and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who adores the Lord is to be praised. Now, this is a woman who fears the Lord. And you know, you look at those repeated mentions of the fear of the Lord in the Old Testament, and then guess what, in the New Testament, as well. And we have to ask ourselves, where is our category for that, who is the god fear. And of course, we understand that not to be the kind of fear that was felt at the foot of Mount Sinai, but is the kind of fear that is felt at the foot of Mount Zion hits that we would offer right reverence and awe to him. But that right reverence and awe that we offer to him is not simply a feeling, it is an expression that is formed in our spiritual act of worship, which is obedience.

Mike Kruger
So we’ve kind of built our way up to something that’s been looming in the background here, and now we kind of come to it. And that is the way this affects preaching.

Jen Wilkin
So we’re teaching,

Mike Kruger
yes, teaching, thank you. We hear a lot of conversations today about Christ centered preaching or teaching how when you teach the Bible that you need to make sure that Christ is at the center of it. And of course, I know you and I would agree with that. But one thing I’ve noticed is that some people have a certain understanding of that, that’s pretty limited. And what they mean by it is pretty narrow. And I think it could stand to be expanded. So I’ll give you what I think is out there, and you’ll give me your thoughts. So then I’m sure that those listening probably have seen that some people when they say you should have Christ centered teaching or preaching what that means in their mind, is it every sermon basically presents you with, you can’t keep the law, you’re a sinner, and you just need to give up on your law keeping attempts and turn to Christ for forgiveness. In other words, to put it differently, to preach Christ means to preach justification. Now, I’ve got to say that I think justification is such a wonderful doctrine that, wow, we want to make sure that we preach it. And certainly, that’s one way of preaching Christ. But I would wonder if that’s the only way of preaching Christ as every sermon have to be about justification to count as a Christ centered sermon.

Jen Wilkin
Well, and you just finished a commentary on Hebrews. So you know that Jesus is the true and bitter, true and better jujitsu everybody does on their messages. Now it’s like, oh, and by the way, everybody, Jesus is the true and better fill in the blank, Peace be with you. And then we sing the doxology and you leave. Well, Baptist, we’re trying to sing the doxology. But we feel like it’s a new thing, and we’re gonna see if it sticks. So the problem there is, is that the Bible does not simply say to us, Jesus is the true and better Peace be with you. It says, as Jesus Himself said, when he tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, go and do likewise. And so, just as the pattern in the New Testament epistles is the indicative, this is who you are, which moves to the imperative. Oh, and this is who he is. And then most of the imperative of this, then is how you should live. Good teaching and preaching would do the same thing we don’t simply leave people with behold Jesus, we give them a look now at yourself, know that there’s grace for you. But where are you needing to step forward and obedience to the commands of God that you might worship Him by being more like him?

Mike Kruger
One way I like to say it is, when you think about preaching Christ or teaching Christ, you can teach him in all his offices. So we know that Theologically speaking, Christ has three officers, Prophet, Priest, and King. And when you think about it, it’s his priestly role that he died for our sins that we tend to think about the most when we when we teach Christ. But I’m thinking well, why can’t we also teach or preach Christ in His prophetic role, that He gives us instruction, or his kingly role that he calls us to follow Him and be loyal to Him as King? In other words, it could be could preach Christ in multiple offices, not just his priestly office. And so when you think of it that way, and here’s where we’re coming to it, there is a place I think, to preach a sermon on how to live and and not be moralism. There is a there is a place where you could teach a Bible study on what you should do. People say, we can’t have do messages because that’s anti Christian. I’m like, Well, have you read the Sermon on the Mount? That’s one big, long do message. What if we told Jesus he didn’t know how to do Christ centered preaching? I don’t know. What do you what would you say to that? No, the sermon on the mount is effectively how to live, but it’s not unChristian, when set within the larger context of the doctrines of grace that the Bible lays out.

Jen Wilkin
Frankly, it ends on a super downer of a low note, if you’ve made it to end like, I don’t think Jesus took a good hermeneutics class. Yes, he didn’t sing a hymn at the end he

Mike Kruger
books and he’s the read on how to set up a sermon structure. So

Jen Wilkin
But I digress.

Mike Kruger
I mean, the same thing could be said of James, how are you going to preach the book of James, which is the book of James, if you have a sort of one size fits all category for what it means to have Christ at the center of your message.

Jen Wilkin
If you decide to focus on justification, justification alone, you’re going to grow increasingly silent on bigger and bigger stretches of the scriptures by necessity.

Mike Kruger
Yes, and one of the things will happen is every message will start sounding the same. You know, I don’t know if you’ve picked up on this. But in situations where you have a model of, of teaching that’s so tight around that, no matter what the text says somehow, it’s always about justification. And justification is wonderful. Don’t get me wrong, but not every text is about justification, right? I mean, in one sense, when you hyper impress that model onto a text, you’re actually not letting the text dictate the sermon, you’re letting a model of teaching dictate the sermon, and you just are really wanting to say what you want to say, is wonderful is that message might be letting the text speak allows us to preach Christ or teach Christ more broadly, and more full. orbed.

Jen Wilkin
Well, and you know, my, my sphere of influence is I lead the women’s bible study at my church. And we see women come to faith in the course of an Old Testament study on First Samuel, you know, like, or, I mean, in the weirdest places, someone will profess faith, and I’m always like, Lord, what was it like, tell me what it was. So we can do that again, you know, but again, because what do we want, we want a formula, we do want a formula, but the Word is living in active, all of it. And so it probably shouldn’t surprise us when someone hears the good news in a place where we feel like justification wasn’t clearly articulated, it means the Spirit is drawing together for them the pictures of the bigger story. And I do think it’s so important for us in an instant gratification culture, not to preach instant gratification sermons or teach instant gratification lessons that give people the sense of tying a neat bow on an idea that might stretch across a large section of scripture. But making them live in that tension that is built into the story, so that the spirit resolves the tension for them at just the right time.

Mike Kruger
Now, as we sort of draw this to a close, Jen, you know, we’ve been talking a lot about the law and you have a new book out on the law. Tell us about that.

Jen Wilkin
Well, you know, pandering to the female book market, I read a book on the 10 commandments. Yeah, I wrote a book on the 10 commandments, because I had been spending a lot of time in Genesis and Exodus, but then Exodus, specifically over the last several years, and in the course of putting together a study of the entire Book of Exodus, just in having done the study on the Sermon on the Mount was putting together all of these pieces of this more expansive obedience, and was realizing with increasing clarity why Psalm one says, on it, he meditates day and night because we read the 10 commandments in particular, and they’re pithy and short. Well, most of them are, and we think, Oh, good, great. I will not kill Will anyone today check, right? And that’s why we need the meditation piece on them. Because if you give it more thought, if you really examine yourself and ask the spirit to show you how you might, in fact, be a murderer in spirit, even if you’ve not actually wielded a knife against someone, there is good work to be done in our lives by subjecting ourselves to the mirror of that particular portion of God’s moral law, which is, you know, the ceremonial law, yes, fulfilled in Christ, the moral law, because it’s a reflection of the unchanging character of God. I don’t even want to say binding on us, I want to say a joyful delight for us because that’s the way that is spoken of in in First John, he says, This is love for God that we obey His commands. And then my favorite part is next, he says, and his commands are not burdensome. Now, are they difficult? Yes. But that’s not burdensome. burdensome is a weight that crushes us difficult is an effort that is worth expending, because it yields much fruit.

Mike Kruger
Well, that’s a great place to stop. Check out John’s book. I know it’s in the book stalls. It’s a wonderful book and just a great walk through the 10 commandments. Let me thank the good book company again for sponsoring this. And Jen, this was fun. It was super fun. How about we not wait a whole decade next time? Well, good. Well, we’re gonna stick around for some conversations off the stage and we’re done. But thanks for being here. And we’ll catch you next time around.