Judge (Not)

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Cory J. Mahler. And I'm Wo. Blessed are those who are perfect in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with the whole heart. Yea they do no unrighteousness, they walk in his ways. You have commanded your precepts, that we should observe them diligently. O that my ways were established, to observe your statutes. Then shall I not be put to shame when I look to all your commandments. I will give thanks to you with uprightness of heart, when I learn your righteous judgments, I will observe your statutes, do not forsake me utterly. How shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to your word, with my whole heart have

1:25 I sought you. Let me not wander from your commandments. Your word have I laid up in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes. With my lips have I declared all the ordinances of your mouth, I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies, as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and look to your ways, I will delight myself in your statutes, I will not forget your word. Those were the first two sections of Psalm one hundred and nineteen, which is the longest psalm in the Bible. There's some beautiful structure to it, and it's a it's really a almost a book unto itself. The reason that we opened with that is that those first two

2:13 sections in particular are a testimony to the fact that the Christian life is one of following the precepts of God, which is something that is alien to the way a lot of Christians talk today. Last week we spoke at length about the fact that all sins are not equal, because that is one of the first arguments that is used against the notion of saying that something is a sin or that we should stop sinning. Uh fundamentally what we're talking about last week and this week is about the different ways that Satan tries to track Christians into ceasing to speak as Christians, which in turn is ceasing to be Christian. So today our discussion has moved on from all sins not being equal to a couple different things.

2:59 One is the follow-on doctrine that comes out of that, which is judge not. Now the way it's used in the world today is fundamentally satanic, but we have to make the case for that because judge Not is literally a quote from Jesus. So one of the tricks that gets played by Satan himself in Scripture when he quotes Scripture is that he will say things that are true and yet twist them in ways that are false. And so as Christians, we know that in Matthew seven, Jesus said, judge not, and the world is redefining, is exegeting that for us in a way that's completely contrary to Scripture. So today we're going to be talking about what it means for Christians to judge or to refrain from judging. And then the second part of this episode we're going to be

3:45 talking about what Lutherans call the third use of the law and the manner in which all of these come all these things come into play where Christians say, Well, yeah, there's that law stuff, but I live in the gospel now. I'm free. And so I guess what the Bible says doesn't matter. And that's kind of where some people end up. And they don't necessarily phrase it that way, but fundamentally that's where their version of Christianity takes them. And so when comes along, so when a person comes along and says, Hey, scripture said we should do X, Y, and Z. They fire right back. What do you are you saying your sins are better than mine? That I'm a worse sinner? Are you judging me? And so we have to deal with these piecemeals so that we

4:29 can show the whole picture in which Satan tricks Christians into saying things that sound Christian in a way that fundamentally destroys Christianity. And I think that's I think that's one of the chief things that's the hardest for us to deal with is the idea that's in all of our heads that I'm a Christian, so what I think must be Christian because I have a clean conscience. I read the Bible sometimes, I go to church most of the time, I pay attention, I believe it. So whatever I think about whatever we're talking about, I must be right 'cause I'm a Christian. And that's that's an incredibly dangerous place to be because it's entirely possible to be a Christian and to have a malformed conscience.

5:13 It's one of the things that scripture talks about, to dwell on God's teachings and his precepts so that we understand the ways of God. Because when he says my ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts, that's part of it. These things that God tells us to do, they're not instinct for a f for a human. we're fallen sinful men. We naturally rebel against God. And even in our sanctified nature where we're given faith, there's still part of us that's constantly fighting it. And so Satan pits the part of the Christian soul that wants to fight God against the part that wants to follow God. And we have to listen to scripture. We have to listen to be the thing that's outside of us to determine which part of us we should follow.

6:00 Even with our conscience. You know You know, s we we would never advocate that you disobey your conscience if you disagree with something that we say, but at the same time, if we make an argument for your conscience being malformed, I would hope that people would take that seriously wherever it comes from if it's if it's a credible source, because the Christian conscience is a powerful thing in the Christian's mind and his in his heart. If your conscience says this is sin, for you to do it is sin. And James I think James four seventeen, I believe, is where that's found. That's true, but it's also the case that your s your conscience can be malformed by false teachings, by the world. And so what you believe to be sin, which would be sinful

6:49 for you if you did it because you would think you were sinning, is in fact not sin. That happens sometimes. And more and more we're seeing in the world things like racism and sexism and some of the other topics we've addressed recently, those are worldly sins that are imported into Christian consciences. And so when when the Christian says, I can't do that because that would be sin, there's an immediate concern to figure out, well, is that actually true? Which is why we did those episodes. As but as we talk about whether or not we can judge, as we talk about whether or not certain sins are worse than others, as we talk about whether God's instruction has any meaning for the Christian in the Christian life, it's fundamentally about informing our consciences

7:32 according to God's will, not according to a podcaster or necessarily even a sermon, but according to what is coming from God's word. And whatever you hear, if it's informative, if if it's Christian Teaching, it should be coming from God's Word. But it's God's word that must be paramount. That is what has the sole authority to inform your conscience. Your television doesn't have the authority to form your conscience. Your nagging spouse doesn't have the authority to inform inform your conscience. They will, and they do, because that's how human beings work. But a malformed conscience is one of the worst nightmares for a Christian because you think you're acting in good faith and in good conscience when in fact you're acting sinfully.

8:18 And I think the first example of that that we're going to discuss is from Matthew seven, is part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. When he says, judge not, the discussion there goes directly to the heart of what the world tells us about this. So I'll just read that briefly and then we'll get into talking about it. Judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take that speck out of your eye when there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and

8:58 then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. Bleason the reason I included that last verse is because I think the superficial reading of judge not they were handed by the world, and increasingly by some of our own pastors, is defied by what I think is verse six, do not give the dogs what is holy, and do not cast your pearls before swine. If you take the world it's exegesis of this passage at face value that judgment means you can't you can't judge anyone or anything. How can you then follow the next passage that says do not give dogs what is holy?

9:40 The only way a Christian can know that someone is a dog or someone is a swine or that they're going to trample underfoot while you speak to them and turn and attack you is to judge them. So regardless of what the that second passage means, we're not going to talk about the meaning of that. Simply the fact that it's present and immediately follows the passage about judge not demonstrates clearly that the idea that you cannot judge means you cannot discern one thing from another or you cannot say that one thing is evil and another thing is not is false on its face. Jesus could not have said this in in this context by that reading unless he was an idiot. He would have he would have been telling the people who were

10:22 listening and to us, do not give dogs what is holy, but don't judge who's a dog. You can't do that, that would be sin. And then don't do this other thing, no. So just right out of the gate, the very context of this passage makes clear that everything you've been told that says judge not means, hey man, just back off. you can't you can't believe this too strongly. You can't condemn someone's sins. The very passage itself completely eliminates that sort of exegesis from any possible reading. There's a sort of inversion actually of this that happens in politics, particularly on the right wing and particularly amongst Christians, we make hypocrisy out to be everything. We always try to play a gotcha game with a politician or

11:10 a public figure being a hypocrite about something and then we turn around and ignore it in scripture in Matthew seven. Now in politics, someone being a hypocrite is not a very effective charge for a number of reasons. reasons at the discussion for another time, but here the central issue is that hypocrisy, And that should be obvious by the last sentence of Christ's words in the first part of this little section of Matthew. You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, etc. The issue is that hypocrisy, if you are judging others, if you are condemning others for a sin, acting holier than thou, while you yourself are committing the same type of sin, you are being a rank hypocrite. And that's the issue here.

12:02 So if you're engaged in an adulterous relationship and you spend all your time teaching against sexual immorality? This section is for you. So Christians do have to judge, of course we have to judge. God's law wouldn't be worth anything to us, and we'll of course get into the law more in the next part of this episode, but God's law wouldn't be worth anything to us if we couldn't judge at all. Well What would you do with the law if you couldn't judge if something is or is not adultery, if it's not sexual immorality, or if it is sexual immorality? The sixth commandment wouldn't be any good to you. How can you judge whether or not something is slander, whether it runs afoul of the eighth commandment?

12:50 If you can't judge whether or not someone is being slanderous, being a defamer. Christians have to judge, and there are other verses in scripture that instruct us to judge. We'll get into those in a little bit. But the issue here, for judge not that you be not judged, is clearly given in the second verse the judgment you pronounce, if you are being a hypocrite, if you are committing the very sin you are condemning, you are going to be condemned with your own words because you are a hypocrite. And so Christians do have to judge, but the issue is not being a hypocritical judge, not being a faithless judge, not being an unjust judge. And the question of hypocrisy is also one of degrees of sin.

13:36 Hypocrisy doesn't necessarily just mean I'm committing sexual sin and I accuse you of sexual sin, and so that's hypocrisy. Maybe I'm a murderer and you're an adulterer. Murder is worse than adultery. If you know like that's a preposterous example, but like as sins are ranked and as sins are known in a community, the hypocrisy itself becomes corrosive. Cause if someone comes along and says, Hey, you need to stop what you're doing, it's and I know that you're doing something similar, you're doing something maybe worse, I'm not going to be able to receive that Christian admonition because of the hypocrisy. So the sin itself that you are committing by being a hypocrite is corrosive to my sanctification because if I am sinning and I'm

14:20 sinning in a way that needs to be rebuked, I am less likely to receive the rebuke in a Christian fashion because of the hypocrisy. And so it's fundamentally destructive to the use of the law in the Christian life for someone to judge hypocritically. it it separates the two people. They're no longer being Christian brothers, but one is being an accuser of the other. And that's a demolition of what should be the natural order inside the Christian congregation. And that actually ties right into one of the verses that tells us that we do in fact have to judge from Corinthians five, for what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside, purge the evil person from among you.

15:07 And so here we are commanded as Christians to judge, specifically to judge fellow Christians. Part of this, of course, is going to be so that we can rebuke them from the law with they transgress when they are living in sin, because if we do not do that, we are not behaving properly as brothers. Brothers are to look out for and to care for each other. The answer to the cry of Cain, Am I my brother's keeper is yes. Yes, you are. You are your brother's keeper. And so if you cannot judge, if the world's supposed interpretation of Matthew seven is that Christians are never allowed to judge, how can you possibly rebuke a brother, according to scripture, which instructs you to rebuke a brother who is in sin?

15:50 How can you do that? If you cannot judge what he is doing, and further if you cannot discern what the law actually means, what the law instructs him to do in that scenario, what it instructs you to do in that scenario, you must as a Christian be able to judge in order to do the things that scripture instructs you to do. And so the world's eisegesis of Matthew seven is indeed very clearly eisegesis, not exegesis. It is a deliberate misinterpretation, it is a malicious interpretation of Jesus' words in order to get you not to act as a Christian, in order to get you not to rebuke your brother when he is in sin, in order to get you not to care for your brother by putting him back on the straight and narrow, in

16:35 order to get you not to rebuke the world, which is living in heinous sin, growing worse by the day, because if you cannot judge, then you cannot actually apply the law. You cannot use God's law to rebuke sin, which is one of the things that Christians must do in this life. And that includes our own sin, which is fundamentally what's upstream from all of this. See if all sins are equal, and if you can't judge anyone, eventually if you adopt those beliefs as your core beliefs as a so-called Christian, Satan's gonna pay you into a corner where you're gonna be at the point where you aren't you're going to convince yourself that you can't actually tell if you're sinning. See, never mind what the other guy's doing.

17:21 I'm not going to be a hypocrite. I'm never going to confront anyone else. But I'm not even sure if I'm sinning anymore. Sure, I'm doing something that, you know, used to be said was terrible, but I I can't judge and no one can judge me, no one can be a judge over me. So if I'm not even sure if I'm sinning anymore, Satan's got you. That is the death of the Holy Spirit in your soul. That is you driving out the Holy Spirit by these little things, by these things that are seemingly small errors, where you know some people think that maybe you're quibbling if you say all sins are not equal. That's actually a big deal. Judge not. What are we doing? Saying actually you should judge. What like you're a hypocrite.

18:04 You're a sinner, right? Corey and I are sinners, right? So how can we tell someone to judge or not to judge? As soon as you go down the path of saying, Well, it's it's you versus me and there's finger pointing, what has gone away? Scripture has gone away. What God has commanded us to do has gone away. And that's what how all of this plays out in our lives. Because if you circle the wagons and you say, I'm not going to go after anybody else because that would be a bridge too far. I don't want to judge. Eventually you're going to stop judging your own sins. And that's that's the Christian conscience. Your conscience is for the Christian, the Holy Spirit, speaking inside you and saying, What I am doing is sinful.

18:44 Turn away from this. Go pray, leave the room, leave the state, whatever I have to do. I need to separate from this evil and flee from it. Flee from temptation and flee from evil. Well, if I can't even tell what sin is anymore, how am I gonna know to run? And besides, I'm still a Christian, so I'll be all right. I'm I'm living in in Christian freedom, so what could possibly go wrong? I'm baptized, Jesus died for me. The further you go down that path, the easier it is to just gobble up all the evil in the world and and to say, yeah, this is mine, and eventually you're just gonna forget about God. It won't be an act of repudiation like some Reddit atheist. You're just gonna think that you belong to Jesus and you're a

19:26 Christian, and you'll quit caring about what any of those words actually mean. In first Corinthians six, Paul again amplifies that. When one of you has a grievance another against another, does he dare go to the law book? Before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more than matters pertaining to this life? So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? So this on its face completely elaborates the question of whether or not Christians are to judge. We are absolutely to judge.

20:10 We are commanded to. We have no choice. And the second thing I want to highlight in here, which goes to something Corey was saying, is that this in particular is also talking about church discipline. it's not talking about an individual having a grievance and going and accusing someone directly. Now Matthew eighteen says if you have if you have a problem with someone, you go to them first. This is talking about the next step of Matthew eighteen. First Corinthians six is talking about if you have a problem with someone, you've gone to them privately, you take it to the church. You don't try to judge it yourself. You say, look, as a Christian body, we need to deal with this together because it's what Christ commands.

20:51 So this is important because again, it goes to the question of how are you to judge whether or not the church is to judge? Even if you say that the church collectively has the right to judge these matters, which is true, the only way something can be brought before the church righteously is if you individually have judged it privately to be a matter to be brought before the church. Do you see what happens if you say you can't judge? If you can't know of something's sin, how can you even obey the Bible and bring it to the church, to the elders or to whomever, to address a sin between you and another believer. It's only possible if you're capable of actually discerning God's law, obeying God's commands, and confronting evil where it's found, even when it's found

21:35 within the church. To give one more verse that relates to the very clear requirement, the duty of Christians to judge other Christians and to rebuke them when they sin, Luke seventeen three Pay attention to yourselves, if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. Again, if the world's supposed interpretation of Judge Naught is accurate there's no way to know if your brother sins. Because if you determine that he has sinned, you are judging what he did to have been a sin. And if you cannot judge that he has sinned, then you cannot rebuke him. So very clearly, what the world says about judge not cannot be true, because scripture does not conflict with scripture. Scripture is not going to tell you to do two things that

22:29 cannot be done simultaneously. Scripture is going to tell you to do things that you cannot do, because in your fallen state you cannot uphold the law. But Scripture is not going to tell you to do A and not A at the same time. And so Scripture is not going to tell you you cannot ever judge, you can never judge anyone, you can never judge anything, you have to stay in your own lane, you have to ignore these other sins, it's not your place to judge, and then turn around and tell you here in Luke and elsewhere, Rebuke your brother when he sins. That's telling you to judge. So you must be able to judge what is sin. You must be able to judge the actions of fellow Christians in order to rebuke them, and then, if they repent, forgive them.

23:16 Part of the reason why it's so important to get this right is that going to a brother in Christ privately and saying you are sinning, whether you've sinned against me or you're sinning in some other context that I become aware of When someone comes to you privately, or perhaps it's gone beyond that, and it's a matter of some church discipline where the church elders or whomever else are coming to you as a group and saying, 'What you are doing is sinful, you need to repent,' the reason it's so important to get everything up front right is that our natural inclination is to shout hypocrite. It's to say judge not. As soon as as soon as the light is shown on your sins, that's exactly where your heart's gonna go.

23:58 It's gonna say, How dare you judge me? Aren't you a sinner too? And Jesus is teaching us these things so that when we are confronted with our own sins, our first response is not additional sin. Whenever anyone comes to you, whether they're right or wrong, and we're going to talk about that in a second, but the simply the fact that someone would come to you privately or in you know in accord with Matthew 18 to admonish you of your sin sin. Per se that is a Christian act. Now what's going on behind the scenes may not be. And so there are things that you may know that may change the context of it. But by itself, by default, the simple fact that a Christian would approach you privately and say, Hey man, I'm concerned for your soul,

24:45 I'm concerned about what you're doing. Can we talk about what I think is a sin in your life? Your first response must necessarily be humility. It must be to listen and to receive that humbly. Even if they're wrong, your first response can be to get your hackles up and to say, let's fight. Because if you're if you're wrong and you are sinning and they're admonishing you appropriately, you're going to resist their admonition. If you're right and they were falsely accusing you of sin, you still set the wrong tone by eliminating the possibility that sin could be confronted. Because what will happen in some cases, someone will come to you and accuse you of racism or sexism, one of these other made

25:30 up modern sins that is not a sin against God. Whatever it is, whatever has occurred, if someone comes to you and says, I'm concerned about you, which is Christian, it is Christian to be concerned about the souls of our brothers. We should all have that concern. That is the Christian part of that. If their conscience is malformed, if they are adopting false worldly beliefs into their own version of Christianity and then holding you to a moral standard that scripture does not hold. You have to be patient and you have to understand that they're coming to you in Christian concern. In some cases, there may be unbelievers who will do the same things, and that's another matter for discernment. You may have someone who's an absolute liar who's using these things

26:15 as a weapon to destroy you and to drive you from the church because they are evil and they do not want you to be where God wants you. So all of these things may happen, but the first default response of anyone in the situation of being confronted cannot be resistance and rebuke and refutation. However, in the cases where there's error by the accuser, then you are now in the position that they are in. They have come to you accusing you of a sin that if it's a false sin, you must now gently rebuke but firmly rebuke their sin against you, because they are bringing to you a false confession that's in their heart. They're accusing you of a sin that's not really a sin, which means they're trying to get you to confess a false sin to

27:04 a false God. They're trying to get you to apostatize in that moment, even by degrees. And so you as a Christian brother to them must be concerned for their soul. Because the fact that they came to you first as an accuser doesn't maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. And that's the first question. Are they right or are they wrong? If they're right, repent. Let that be the end of it so that you can be reunited with your brother. If they're wrong, there's still a problem there. And you as a Christian, don't solve that problem by just shouting at them or by haranguing them saying you're a hypocrite. You have to clearly show them their sin just as they were trying to do to you. Because when they come to you with Christian concern, if they're in

27:46 error, you then must have Christian concern for them. You see there's an obligation in both directions. When we are part of the body of Christ, when we're brothers in Christ, we are our brother's keeper. And if he's erring by coming to you with false accusations, that's now your problem. His soul is now something that you have to be concerned about for his sake. And that gets incredibly tricky because he must listen to those administs as well. And that's something that's going to be missing in most cases because while he may have a Christian heart when it comes to confronting your sin, if you say actually you're sinning, it's very easy for someone to see that as someone getting their getting their head their

28:29 knackles up, of stiffening their back, of being hard hearted and unrepentant. Because if they accuse you of sin and you say, I don't repent of that, that's no sin at all their first instinct is gonna be, Well, that's unrepentant. You're a sinner. You're even worse than I thought. Well, if it were a real sin, yes, it was a false sin, then the tables have turned. The Christian duty is still there, but the direction has reversed. And so understanding all this up front is the only way to navigate these incredibly tricky situations that are ultimately, if they're d dealt with in a Christian fashion, it's for the benefit of the church. It's for the benefit of your soul and the other man's soul. Because everyone should walk away from those interactions back on the same

29:14 page as God. But everyone in those interactions, everyone who's not a hypocrite, must listen to the voice of God. And the fact that someone else was the first mover, if they're saying something that's false, you still have to deal with that. You have to deal with it gently, but it must be rebuked as the same sort of unrepentant sin that has brought them to you. And that's where the hypocrisy comes into play because they can't say, well you can't accuse me. They're there accusing you. And it's not bad per se to accuse someone of sin. It is a hard thing to do. It's incredibly hard to do it faithfully to go to a brother and say, I'm concerned about you, what you're doing is bad. Let's talk about this.

29:54 I want to make sure that you are still in the faith and you're not making things worse for yourself. That's a hard thing to do, and you have to do it for them even when they are in error in accusing you. Because the alternative is to multiply one sin into many sins. And that's why Jesus warned about the hypocrisy. It just makes things worse, and it can very easily blow up an entire Christian congregation. And this tends to become a particular challenge when that initial party, the first man who comes to you to tell you that he believes you are sinning, either has or believes that he has a particular office that gives him that authority to rebuke sin. Now of course all Christians are told to rebuke sin.

30:46 Scripture is very clear. We went over the ver some of the verses that mention that it's all throughout Scripture. But it is very clear that all Christians are to rebuke sin, but for instance, pastors and teachers. Part of what they do in their office, part of their task, is to rebuke sin, because part of their task is to teach rightly, and if you teach rightly, if you are using the word, you are going to convict others of sin. In the case of a pastor, if you know that there is a particular sin in which some members of your flock are engaging, then you have a duty to go to them and to rebuke them for that sin, to teach them what Scripture says about that sin, to help lead them out of that sin.

31:32 But if your pastor, if you're on the other side now, if your pastor is confused about what scripture means, if he has a false belief, if he has something he's imported from the world, which is very much the case today with many pastors, that is going to put you in a particularly difficult situation because now you are having to tell a man whose duty it is, whose special duty it is, to rebuke sin, to know the word correctly, to speak to these issues, you are having to tell him no actually you are in error. I can show you from scripture why you are wrong, where God says you are wrong. And now instead of just having the issue of that immediate reaction when someone is perceived to be doubling down instead of repenting, there's

32:23 that in initial reaction. That's exacerbated by the fact that not only are you saying, No, I'm not sinning, you are in fact sinning, but you are saying it to someone who is in a position of some authority, who is in a position where it is his duty to rebuke these things, and at least theoretically, and in reality in terms of the duty, he should know these things better than you that makes for a very difficult situation, but many, and particularly those listening to this podcast, perhaps, are going to find themselves in such a w situation in the not too distant future. And so it is incumbent on you to understand these things from scripture. And if you get into one of these situations with a pastor, a teacher, anyone like that, don't go looking for them.

33:15 Don't do that. That's just going to cause you undue trouble. But if you wind up in one of those situations, stick to the plain words of scripture. Don't get involved in complicated theological doctrinal discussions, don't follow the rabbit trails, insist on the words of scripture. If someone tells you judge not, point out that scripture very clearly tells you no, I have to rebuke brothers, and so it is necessary for me to be able to judge them. If I don't judge them, I cannot rebuke them, I cannot obey what God tells me to do. Your best bet is always to rely on the clear words of scripture, particularly in matters like this where scripture is incredibly clear. this is not a complicated matter.

34:01 The only reason that it gets supposedly complicated is that so many for so long have bought into what the world says about judge not? The world doesn't want you to judge because the world wants to be able to go on and keep sinning and committing worse sins and merrily waltzing down the road straight into hell. That's what the world wants. That's what Satan wants. It's what the sinful fallen flesh wants. But scripture is clear. As a Christian, you must judge and rebuke sin. That is part of your duty. And I would like to read a little bit here from the large catechism. Martin Luther does a great job dealing with this issue of rebuking sin. This is from the, like I said, the large catechism, part

34:51 one on the Ten Commandments, dealing with the eighth commandment. The true way in this matter would be to keep the order in the gospel In the gospel. In Matthew eighteen, Christ says, If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. Here you have a precious and excellent teaching for governing well the tongue, which is to be carefully kept against this detestable misuse. Let this, then, be your rule, that you do not too quickly spread evil about your neighbour and slander him to others. Instead admonish him privately, that he may amend his life. Likewise, if someone reports to you what this or that person has done, teach him too to go and admonish that person personally, if

35:34 he has seen the deed himself. But if But if he has not seen it, then let him hold his tongue. You can learn the same thing also from the daily government of the household. When the master of the house sees that the servant does not do what he ought, he admonishes him personally. But if he were so foolish as to let the servant sit at home, and went on the streets to complain about him to his neighbors, he would no doubt be told You fool, how does that concern us? Why don't you tell it to the servant? Look, that would be acting quite brotherly, so that the evil would be stopped, and your neighbour would retain his honor. As Christ also says in the same place, if he listens to you, you have gained a brother.

36:15 Then you have done a great and excellent work, for do you think it is a small matter to gain a brother? Let all monks and holy orders step forth, with all their works melted together into one mass, and see if they can boast that they have gained a brother. Further, Christ teaches, but if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. So the person concerned in this matter must always be dealt with personally, and must not be spoken of without his knowledge. But if that does not work, then bring it publicly before the community, whether before the civil or the church court, for then you do not stand alone, but you have those witnesses with you by

36:57 whom you can convict the guilty one. Relying on their testimony the judge can pronounce sentence and punish. This is the right and regular course for checking and reforming a wicked person. But if we gossip about another in all corners, and stir the filth, no one will be reformed. Later, when we are to stand up and bear witness, we deny having said so. Therefore it would serve such tongues right if their itch for slander were severely punished, as a warning to others. If you were acting for your neighbour's reformation, or from love of the truth, you would not sneak about secretly, nor shun the day and the light. And this is another problem that we have today running rampant in the church. Instead of going to our brothers when they sin and rebuking them

37:44 privately, we have We have all sorts of little networks of gossip. We spread rumors, slander, lies. We see that happening in all quarters. That is not what Scripture tells us to do. We are to judge. But there is a way to do it properly. Yes, when it comes to public sins it is a different matter, but right now we are dealing with sins that are not public, private sins, secret sins. In that case, you are to go to your brother personally. If, indeed, he will not reform himself, if he will not repent, then you take others with you, and eventually you take it to the church, and eventually, if he all along the way refuses to repent, you must treat him as an unbeliever. But that first step is not happening.

38:32 We do not have men who are going to other men when those other men are sinning and telling them privately, you need to amend your ways, you are sinning against God, you are not obeying this or that commandment, you are not obeying this or that section of scripture, you are doing these things that are incompatible with the Christian life. We don't have that happening. We have plenty of slander, plenty of rumor, plenty of those things happening that are specifically what is not supposed to happen, specifically what Christians are not supposed to do violations of the eighth commandment. And so if your brother sins against you, yes you have to judge him, but you need to go to him personally to rebuke

39:17 him for that sin. It may escalate from there, but you have to take that first step. And to take that first step, you have to know scripture, you have to know yes I need to judge him, yes, I need to rebuke him, but you have to know according to what standard. And so spend time in your scripture. Spend time in your Bible. Listen to the Word of God. You have to hear God's voice, know what He says about these things if you are then in turn to speak them to your brother. As we've mentioned in the past, one of the tricky things about the word judge in English is that we know that it has two different connotations, but we only really focus on one of them when we're reading these passages. We all know that in a courtroom, I've I've used this example

40:07 before, the jury is judging facts. They're the triers of fact. And the judge determines the sentence. In some cases the jury also passes the guilty or innocent verdict, and then the judge passes a sentence on that. What the juror is doing in the case of a courtroom is what Christians are called to do. We are not called to pass the final judgment on the person who is accused. What we are to to do is to weigh the law, God's law, against the actions of a person, whether it's another person or it's ourselves. you are to do this to yourself too, to be a juror of your own actions, to weigh what God says in his law, in the his eternal will, versus what you have done. And where you find there's a mismatch, you find yourself guilty.

41:01 That's the sort of judgment that is permissible. The sort of judgment that is not permissible is the ultimate judgment on judgment day. We don't know the disposition of most men's souls. In some cases, you It's reasonable to infer based on their confession and their lives. In other cases we don't know. You can say that a man who never heard the gospel who lived three thousand years ago in North America cannot be in heaven because he never heard the word of God. And although that seems unfair to us, we cannot say that there's any reason to believe that he would be saved. Nevertheless, we would not pronounce judgment on him. We would say based on what is given, this is the reasonable Christian conclusion.

41:46 I think a prime example of this is one I mentioned before in Jude. But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke you. Now what's fascinating about this is one, it's the Archangel Michael who has you know he stood in the presence of God Almighty. He is a perfect being, he's without sin. The Archangel Michael is morally on a different plane than us. He's fighting the devil. He's fighting Satan himself for Moses body. Even in that circumstance, the blasphemous judgment that he would not pronounce is this one. Michael would not say to Satan, damn you. He wouldn't say go to hell, even though both of those are

42:34 foregone conclusions. And everyone knows it. Like there's no doubt Satan is damned. Nevertheless, Michael would not pronounce a blasphemous judgment, not because it was not true, but because it was not his place. He was not to pronounce the final judgment on Satan. And so that's hard for me personally. I d I d I like saying damn you. I don't do it often. I don't I don't want to. But at the same time confronted with evil, that is my natural inclination. It's an evil one. This verse in the other passages tell me it's evil, but that is an outflowing of part of my nature. It's part of my sinful nature. God says no, don't do that. But there's the other side of judgment, the juror's side of judgment,

43:18 that I am absolutely not only empowered to undertake, but commanded to and forbidden not to. And so that's what we're talking about. On the subject of slander, there's James four, where he writes, Do not speak evil against one another brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is only one law giver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But you are you to judge your neighbor. Now, I looked up in the on Bible Hub to look at what the Greek word was for do not speak evil. I guess I guess that it was about blaspheming. I was wrong. Uh it's a Greek word katala, which basically means to slander, to

44:04 rail at, um means to speak down in a hostile or deriding manner, to mock or revile, to defame, to slander or backbite, which as Corey was r referring to, that's something that's rampant in our churches. I've seen it for the first time on a shockingly widespread scale within the Missouri Synod, where dozens of pastors whom I could name, and surely hundreds whom whose names are not familiar to me, some of whom I considered friends, have participated in slander in this case against both Cory and me and some of our friends. What's interesting about this Greek word is that there's another word that's related to it not by etymology, but by act. And this is a word that's going to be more familiar to

44:52 you. Diabolos. Devil, Diablo, slandering, accusing falsely, it's the adjective form of devil. So devilry is slander. And I think it's really important when we when we look at the places in scripture where murder appears, slander usually appears in the same breath. Murder and slander almost always go together. And as I was thinking about this while we were preparing for this episode, murder is worse in that it it comes first in the in the ten commandments and it destroys the body. However, the damage done by slander I think is far greater. And I think it's the reason why God ties these two together and why the devil is called a murderer and a slander, again in the same breath. Think about this.

45:49 if I were to kill you, if I were to commit the sin of murder against you personally, there's been one sin, there's been my sin, a horrible sin. And then there's the outcome in your life. You're dead, you've been murdered unjustly, your family is injured, your friends are grieved, your community, your neighborhood is shocked that something terrible could happen like this in their community. That's always unsettling whenever it happens. But the only sin would be mine acting as a murderer. If on the other hand, I commit the less serious sin of slander, if instead of going to your neighborhood and taking your life, I go to your neighborhood and I take your reputation, I slander you, I go to your friends and your family, I go to

46:38 your neighbors, I go to your workplace, I go to your community, and I spread all manner of filthy lies about you. I say that you're a racist, you're a sexist, you're all of the worst things in the world, all the things that the world hates. You're not dead, you're still walking around, but what are you functionally? You're basically a dead man walking, because many of your friends and family are going to believe the slander, they're going to turn against you, and many cases, without ev ever even talking to you, they'll just never talk to you again. If some stranger comes to them with accusations, they will cut you off, they will treat you as though you are dead. So while I haven't taken your life like a murderer, by taking

47:19 your reputation under the eighth commandment, I have effectively rendered you dead. Now what makes it, I think, in some ways a worse sin, and the reason that it's one that Satan often prefers, and that the reason that one of his name is the is the devil, is that how many sins are there then? If I murder you, there's one sin. There's my sin. I've I've committed murder, you're dead, everyone's hurt. If I slander you, everyone who entertained my slander is also a slanderer. They have received the lies that I spread to them, they believed them against you. They have robbed you of your reputation in their hearts. They have murdered you in their hearts with their hatred and anger against you. I have effectively incorporated my sin into the entire community.

48:07 I've turned your entire network of friends and family in your community into a circular firing squad. Not only is your reputation murdered, not only are you socially isolated, but everyone involved is guilty of sin too. And it's a sin that many will not repent of. They're gonna think that they did justice by destroying your reputation and cutting you out, by treating you as a leper, by treating you in the worst possible way because someone came to them and told them lies about you. So slander when the devil uses it in our lives is it's a way, it's a contagious sin. It's a It's a sin that does damage unlike a murder or a violent crime. A murder or uh other violent crime doesn't scale. if I were to kill people, it would be one at a

48:57 time. it's it's a one sinner and then a victim. If I slander, I'm lighting a fire. I'm lighting a fire encircling my target and everyone who participates, they catch on fire too, and they become a slander. They become a center just like just like me. Now the devil does this because it's a way to corrupt entire communities. Rather than just destroying you individually by robbing you of your reputation, it's involved everyone you know in a sin that destroyed your community, destroys your family, it destroys your life in such a way that there's there's no way to repair that damage. in many senses, that's worse than if you'd just been killed. If you were alive one moment and dead the next, you never

49:41 know. You're Christian, you go to heaven. If I come along and I slander you and I destroy your name, you'll never get it back. And that's why God spends so much time preaching against it. It's but why this devil spends so much time using it as one of his favorite attacks because it indicts everyone and it's a sin that people love to commit and they won't stop and they won't repent. And in the end, it will destroy communities in a way that if I had big, for example, committed a murder, might have unified the community in a loving Christian way. If I slander you instead, I can burn your whole community down with one lie. And we see that in our churches today, and we see it everywhere. Satan knows what he's doing.

50:21 He doesn't just want to destroy the body. He wants to destroy the soul forever. And slander is one of the chief ways that he accomplishes that. I'll resist the temptation to read the entirety of Luther's comments and the large catechism on the eighth commandment into this episode, but I will link it in the show notes and I do recommend going through and reading the entirety of it. But just one additional paragraph here. Actually I'll I'll start with the one before it so there's context. God therefore would have such behavior banned, that anyone should speak evil of another person even though that person is guilty, and the latter knows it well, much less if anyone does not know it, and has the story only from hearsay.

51:03 And the second part of this gives the context here, so bear in mind this context when interpreting what I just read. But you say, shall I not say something, if it is the truth? Answer Why do you not make your accusation to regular judges? Ah, but I cannot prove it publicly, and so I might be silenced and turned away in a harsh manner. Ah, indeed, do you smell the roast? Now that do you smell the roast, I don't know why the translators made the decision not to translate German idioms into English, but the closest English idiom is do you smell a rat? And so the issue here is that if you bring something that is rumor and slander to whatever person, you tell it to your neighbor, you're gossiping, whatever

51:51 have you, if you are doing this, but this is not something that you could prove to a proper authority, this is not something you should be spreading. You are violating the eighth commandment. You do not always have to spin something to the best construction in the wrong sense of that. We've gone over this before, but best construction properly applied is if is if I lend my lawnmower, weed whacker, chainsaw, whatever it happens to be to my neighbor, and he hasn't brought it back in two months, I put the best construction on that that he forgot, not that he's trying to steal it. That's best construction. Best construction is not when a politician stands up and starts lying and you say, well, he must be he must think he's telling

52:37 the truth. That's not best construction, that's stupidity. And there's a difference. So So you're not supposed to spread these rumors about your neighbor, your fellow Christians, members of the congregation, these people whom God has put into your life for you to deal with them according to what scripture says. There is a difference when you are speaking about someone who is a public individual, so the politician really is the best example because we don't have kings and nobility and such, you should speak well of them as well, but as a different standard. Because that is a public forum. But privately, dealing with your neighbor, dealing with your brother in Christ, do not spread these rumors.

53:26 If it is something that is a very real problem, and you can very well prove it, go to him first and speak to him, and if necessary eventually bring it to the church. But do not again at risk of repeating myself too much, do not spread rumors. Spreading rumors, gossiping, these are violations of the eighth commandment. You are slandering your neighbor. If it were something that you could prove, and it were something that should be proven, you would not be telling it to your neighbour. You are telling it to your neighbor, your brother, your sister, your parents, whatever person, to whomever you are speaking this, you're telling that person because you cannot properly prove it, or it is something

54:16 not worth properly proving. Hold your tongue. The Christian response is to hold your tongue when you cannot do things in the right way. And if someone comes you with slander, the only Christian thing is to tell 'em to shut up if they if they start spreading lies about someone, or even something that might be true, but as Corey said, if if it can't be demonstrated and it's not appropriate for you to deal with it, tell them to be quiet. So I don't want to hear it. If you have a problem with that person, go to them. You should not entertain slander against others. And an example of not saying that which cannot be proven is something that Corey and I talked about a few weeks ago in the episode against the Antichrist.

55:00 We talked about the fact that Corey and I knew that Matt Harrison, the president of the Missouri Senate, was a false prophet in two thousand. It was clear as day to us. We did not say it publicly because it would have violated the eighth commandment, even though it was true. And it wasn't until after Harrison published his apostate screed against us in February that he proved it to the world, that he proved it from scripture that he rejects God. So at that point it was permissible and we will say from now on, Matt Harrison is a false prophet. Despite the fact that we knew this terrible thing was going on in our church, because we could not demonstrate it clearly, we kept our mouth shut. And that's unpleasant because he's been doing damage for years.

55:48 And by the grace of God, the damage that he did in the large cataclysm and the pedochism has now made all of this visible to the world. And because this is public sin, we don't have to go to him privately. We have in the past. There's no longer any need to do so. He has made his willful apostasy, his false prophecy clear to the world. So there's a time and a place for dealing with things. It's sometimes impermissible to deal with things privately. It's sometimes mandatory to deal with things publicly. There's no one set rule that applies universally to all situations. That's why God spends so much time talking about this. That's why there's so many different passages dealing with different aspects of

56:31 these questions. I'm actually going to read one more paragraph from the large catechism because it deals exactly with the issue you touched on earlier about damaged reputation and emphasizes what you just said. It's just slightly on from what I read before, therefore if you meet an idle tongue that betrays and slanders someone, contradict such a person promptly to his face so that he may blush. Then many a person will hold his tongue who otherwise would be Would bring some poor man into bad repute, from which he would not easily free himself. For honor and a good name are easily taken away, but not easily restored. And that is just a simple truth. Many philosophers, statesmen, other thinkers have commented on this.

57:17 We all know it to some degree. Your reputation is very easily taken away, is very easily destroyed. But it is a very difficult thing to restore a reputation after it has been destroyed. And this is one of the reasons that we have some of the protections we have in our legal system, particularly on the criminal side. Unfortunately, the the media and certain politicians and others have turned it into a bit of a circus these days, but theoretically it is supposed to work where much of this is conducted publicly and privately simultaneously, because you have to have public exposure to make sure that things are being done properly, but privately to protect privacy, reputation, various other things.

58:08 But that is why you are innocent until proven guilty. And we used to understand what that meant. Today many, of course, will assume that someone who is charged is guilty, which is a violation, of course, of the eighth commandment. If you do not have evidence clearly demonstrating the guilt of the person and you simply assume that he is guilty because he has been charged, that is slander. You are believing evil about this man without adequate warrant. But it's supposed to be that you are innocent until proven guilty, and that the mere fact that you have been indicted, that you have been charged, that you have been brought before a tribunal does not imply in any way, shape, or form that you are guilty.

58:55 Law enforcement officers make mistakes. DAs will charge and they can make mistakes. There is a reason we have the systems in place that we have, and as Christians, we don't have to trust thing these things perfectly. I won't say that. They are deeply compromised these days. There is corruption. There are many problems. But we should at least have that foundational assumption that a man simply because he has been brought before a court, that does not mean that he is guilty. He is still innocent until he is proven guilty, and we comport our behavior in the kingdom of the left hand of Christ with the commandments, the same as we comport our behavior in the kingdom of the right hand of Christ with the commandments.

59:42 God's law is his eternal will, and we'll of course get into this more momentarily with anything antinomianism. Perhaps not momentarily it won't be quite that brief, but God's law is his unchanging, unchangeable, eternal will. These are not things that pass away. These are things to which Christians are beholden because these flow from God's nature. This is the structure of reality. As a Christian, you must comport your behavior with these commandments, with these strictures, with the way that God has set things up. Incidentally, this specific sin is precisely the moment that Corey and I knew that Matt Harrison was a false prophet in two thousand twenty twenty twenty, when George Floyd committed suicide with a fentanyl overdose.

1:00:33 Within a few weeks, Matt Harrison put out a press release in the name of the entire Missouri Synod where he expressly condemned the police officers of unjustly taking that man's life. He committed libel. He committed an eighth commandment violation unrepentantly. It was an absolutely wicked, godless thing to do. And so we knew at that moment that we're dealing with a godless man with a false prophet. Nevertheless, most people because of the political fire bound up in that situation, which they oh that's overblown, we know based on all the things that we've just said, based on our knowledge and belief in scripture of the things, you know, the explanations from Martin Luther and the large catechism.

1:01:15 Christians don't do this. Christians don't judge a police officer to be guilty of killing when the courts haven't done it yet. That is not how any Christian conducts himself. Even if you believe it in private, which you shouldn't do, for you to say it in public, for you to say it in print, for you to say it as the president of a synod is a unspeakably evil sin. I was honestly praying that Chauvin would be exonerated, specifically so that he could sue the Missouri Synod for libel. That was such a wicked act. And you know, of course the court did an evil thing because the the jury did an evil thing. That's the state of the world today. And to move on to the next part of this, the reason that we're talking about all the ways that God lays these things

1:02:02 out, you know, in the case of slander, in the case of whether one sin is worse than another, God has written all this down for us. I'm just going to read briefly the the introduction to the sixth part of the Solid Declaration from the Book of Concord. The law of God is useful, not only to the end that external discipline and decency are maintained by it against all wild it disobedient men, likewise that through it men are brought to a knowledge of their sins, but also that, when they have been born anew by the Spirit of God, converted to the Lord, and thus the veil of Moses has been lifted from them, they live and walk in the law. Now, as Lutherans, we call these the three uses of the law. The first use, the wild and disobedient man is curbed against his

1:02:47 sin. If someone doesn't have God and doesn't even listen to his own conscience if he goes and commits horrible crimes, the law, the laws that's enforced by the just magistrate will act as a curb. He'll be put to death if he goes far enough. The second case is the mirror. The second use of the law is when it's shown to someone knowledge of their own sins. When you read scripture and you say, Wow, this is me. As I do every time I open the Bible. That's the second use of law. That's the law of God, God's eternal will, acting as a mirror on our own hearts. Now that can apply to both believers and unbelievers. Only a believer is going to understand the full implications, but even an unbeliever, if he reads the Ten

1:03:34 Commandments, can say, Yeah, I I've broken a few of these. And then once he reads what Jesus says about them, he understands he's broken all of them. And then the third use, which is principally what we're going to talk about today, is when someone is born anew by the Spirit of God, they're able to live and walk in the law. Now this is something that Protestants are really allergic to these days because isn't that works righteousness? Well no, because they're born anew in the Spirit of God. That is that is a rebirth through baptism, that is faith, that is having saving faith. You're already a Christian. And then you live and walk in the law. Now, Christian freedom is a term that's completely twisted, warped, and misused.

1:04:21 It is Christian freedom to live and walk in the law, because the law no longer only condemns our lives. Before, when all we had was our wild, untamed witness And then we were confronted with the mirror of the law and like I'm guilty of all this. If you are blessed to receive faith from God, you then are freed from the consequences of the eternal consequences of your sin. There are still temporal consequences for all the evil that we do, not all of it, but it is frequently the case that you will find you receive some punishment in some fashion for your sin, even as a Christian, because the temporal consequences are baked into the sins themselves. The eternal price, however, was paid for by Christ on the cross

1:05:08 when we are covered in Christ's blood and our robes are washed white in that blood, we appear before God as sinless for the sake of Christ's sacrifice. Having put on those robes, being renewed in the Spirit of God, we then can walk and live in the law. And the law is simply God's eternal will. It's all the stuff we're talking about. It's God says do this, God says don't do this. Not once in any episode, in any tweet, in any breath from either Cory or I will you ever hear us say do this and you can save yourself? That's not Christian. That is not what we believe, it's not what any Christian believes. We're talking about the and then of the Christian life. And the reason that all sins are equal and judge not are

1:05:53 so important is that they separate men from being able to look to scripture as a source of wisdom. The Psalms themselves begin in Psalm one, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the ways of sinners, nor sits in the seats of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Now the Psalms are the longest book in the Bible. It's an incredibly beautiful book. It begins right off the bat with delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night. This is the Christian life. Now we're not talking about the law that says you're guilty and you're going to hell. We're talking about the law that says this is how God wants

1:06:34 you to live a godly Christian life. It's the same law, and the difference is Christ's blood. Before, all we had was condemnation. The law only accused us because without Christ's blood, we're guilty of all of it. It is only after we have received faith and salvation through Christ that meditating day and night on God's law does not bring condemnation, but brings wisdom. Wisdom for a godly life that will enrich us in obedience to God has blessings attached to it. And we as Christians must return to being able to speak about things in these ways because that's where temporal peace and happiness it's the only place you're gonna find it. You need this is not prosperity gospel. We're not saying you're gonna have a million dollars in a boat

1:07:21 and whatever crap you want. We're saying that when you obey God, God will bless you in great ways and small ways. Maybe the blessing is simply the knowledge that you're doing what he wants, and everything else is miserable. For some people, that's their lot in life. And God comforts them in scripture by saying, Your reward will be great in heaven. Don't worry about this stuff. Obey me, trust in God, trust in me, you will have your recompense in eternity. And for those who receive nothing more, that is sufficient. So when we talk about the third use of the law, it is explicitly and only for Christians, but it's still the law. It's still God's eternal will for how we conduct our lives day to day.

1:08:02 And so to keep with one of the themes of this episode, I guess, of frequently and pervasively misinterpreted sections of scripture, let's look at Galatians three starting with verse ten for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them. For Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith, but the law is not of faith, rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is every one who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing

1:08:49 of Abraham might come to the nations, so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. And in the both the epitome and the solid declaration, just like the catechisms, there's a small catechism and a large catechism, in the book of Concord for the formula of Concord, there is a shorter version and a longer version there called the Epitome in the Solid Declaration. In the Epitome, there are six points related to this third use of the law that's in Article six, and the first is that as Christians, we are freed from the curse of the law. We are not under the law insofar as under the law means under the curse of the law. We are under the law, in so far as being under the law means being subject to God's eternal will.

1:09:39 Which that's actually the sixth point, that the law is God's eternal will, which is sort of the overarching point of this. The law is unchangeable, the law is unchanging, because it is God's eternal will for everything, for creation for mankind. We are to comport ourselves with the law as unregenerate or as regenerate, because it is God's will for all. Now, we cannot perfectly fulfill the law, of course, as fallen human beings, we will fall short. Unregenerate persons cannot fulfill the law at all. Now, they can do the various outward acts, they can restrain their hands from actually murdering someone. They can restrain their hands from actually committing adultery, etc., stealing, bearing false witness, what have you.

1:10:33 But they cannot actually perfectly fulfill the law because of course they will commit these sins in their hearts, they will hold hatred in their hearts such that it rises to the level of murderous, violating the fifth commandment, they will desire a woman who is not theirs, violating the sixth commandment, they will desire things that are not theirs violating the seventh commandment and also the ninth and the tenth against coveting. But the overarching issue is not that they cannot fulfill the law perfectly because of course Christians cannot do that either. The overarching issue is that the unregenerate cannot do any good works, as we have mentioned previously in other episodes, they cannot do any

1:11:13 good works because they are not in Christ And therefore as sinners, everything they do is sin. As Christians, we still cannot fulfill the law perfectly. However, our failures are not counted against us because we are in Christ. In so far as we comport our behavior with is so far as we uphold the law, we are given credit for that as good works, because again we are in Christ, for the sake of Christ, those good works are counted to us they are credited to us. We get credit because Christ has made it possible. And so that is the the point here that third use Christians are to organize their lives according to the law. The law remains, even for Christians. It is no longer a curse. And so the law is not this thing looming over you, damning

1:12:10 you to hell, because you cannot uphold the standard, you cannot perfectly fulfill the requirements of the law. That is the case for those who are not in Christ, because no matter what they do, none of it will ever be good. For Christians, the law is a way that God speaks to us so that we can order our lives according to what He wants. And again we get credit for our good works as we order our lives according to God's eternal will, according to the law. We will fall short, we will not succeed, we will continue to sin, because the old Adam is not fully removed in this life. That's actually the third point under the six points is that regeneration in this life is incomplete. The old Adam remains.

1:13:07 We are still living in the sinful fallen flesh. We We will be fully regenerated at the resurrection, but we still get credit for our good works in this life because we are in Christ. And much of what you just said is straight from Romans 8, where Paul Where Paul writes, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death, for God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. by setting his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemns sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

1:13:53 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their mind on the things of the spirit. So again, that's that's basically straight from Psalm one, delighting in the law of the Lord and meditating on his law day and night. This the law of God, God's eternal will, the scripture, all the things that God says to do, they're still binding on us, not binding for our salvation, but binding in the sense that this is the path that God has laid out for us. And whereas before it was condemnation when we did not have Christ, now it is a joy. Because forget for a moment what the law does in your own personal life as it illuminates your sins.

1:14:36 If we loved our neighbors as ourselves and if everyone else followed the law of God, what would your life be like? You would be in no danger ever. No one would ever steal from you. No one ever lie to you. They wouldn't take anything, you know, your wife, any of your property, they wouldn't slander you. All the things that we have insurance for and that we worry about and that we lock our doors for, all the things that, you know, our our burdens and things that have to be dealt with in this life would vanish if everyone obeyed God. That's what the blessing is. So when we say the law is a blessing, that's what we mean. it's heaven. That's what the new earth will look like. The law will be perfectly upheld by everyone in the new earth

1:15:22 Those who are believers will receive their bodies fully intact and restored, will be raised from the dead in the flesh that God has given us in this life. We will be perfected, we will have no more sinful nature, we will continue to obey God. We're gonna keep obeying God. I think that's the problem that is that the antinomians bring up, those who hate the law and think, Oh, well freedom in Christ means f just freedom, means libertine. It means the freedom of the enlightenment. No. We are still slaves to Christ because we belong to God. That is not a burden. Our slavery to Christ and our being bound to obey God is a gift. It is not a burden. It is not something it is not a standard by which we

1:16:08 are held or we are damned. God took care of that. It is the standard by which all good things are measured. When you interpret the law as it's found in Scripture, as God's eternal will, all the stuff makes a lot more sense. And that's what it is. The law is what God wants. And because God doesn't change, what God wants doesn't change. So the mouthful of the laws, God's eternal will, is a way of emphasizing that we're not talking about salvation, works, righteousness. We're not talking about justification before God or believing that we're superior to another man. We're talking about being and living in accord with what God wants. Don't use contraception. You'll have more kids. Don't cheat, you won't get in trouble.

1:16:55 Like all the superficial stuff that like on its face is like duh, it's so obvious. That is God's temporal rewards for obeying him, which even which even unbelievers receive. The unbeliever who lives a godly life will by and large be blessed in this life. It's not going to do him any good and good in eternity, I feel, for those people, because they thought they had it all figured out, and in some ways it's harder for them because if everything is good, they'll think I why would I need God? Everything's hunky dory. I'm living a good life. I'm doing what I should. I don't steal from my neighbors. Why would I need this God stuff at all? It's almost a harder sell to that person to than to a career criminal who's a rock bottom who's in prison maybe for the

1:17:38 rest of his life. He knows he need he needs Jesus. He may might not know him by name, but he knows that he has failed where the man who is superficially righteous in this life doesn't know. We're not talking about super superficial righteousness. We're talking about the Christian life being in accord with what God says, meditating day and night on God's law is a blessing. And if we did a little more of that and a little less of just ingesting nonstop worldly culture in a way that deforms our consciences, we wouldn't have as many problems in the church and in the world. You know, Christendom five hundred years ago was shaped very largely by the Word of God because it was the norm in daily life, people didn't stray as far from it.

1:18:27 Even if they weren't Christian, there probably weren't many who weren't Christian. There were terrible Christians. Like we don't know. We know that they were baptized and that they confessed. We open pray the most of the are in heaven. However, in Christendom, because the law of God was also the law of the land, it kept much of the evil at bay in ways that we have since sacrificed by adopting the false God of democracy, this God that has clearly failed us, and yet it's still upheld in some of our own churches as sacrosanct. Uh Cory and I have been accused of false doctrine for disliking democracy. Like I I that's just un it's a never mind the evil. It's just purely insane. And yet that is where the church is in many places today

1:19:12 where people can't understand the difference between God's eternal will and this garbage that we got in our social studies book in fifth and sixth grade. You know what? The guy who wrote the social studies book didn't have the same agenda as the guy who wrote the Bible. Maybe pay more attention to your Lord and Savior. maybe pay more attention to your creator. Because when this stuff is laid out for us, it's not just a good idea. And it's not judgy. It's not saying do this or you get in trouble. It's saying this is what I God want for you in your lives. Fear me, love me, obey me, and all of my blessings will be yours. That should be the easiest sell in the world to anyone, especially to Christians.

1:19:56 And yet today, so many Christians are so far removed from actual Christianity that they get their hackles up at that. They get angry at hearing those words. That is a profoundly scary thing for us in the church because suddenly you realize that someone who seemed like they were Christian, when matters of conscience arise, you find that well your your conscience hopefully is is informed by by scripture. Their consciences in many cases are barely informed by scripture at all. They're informed by CNN. They're informed by movies. They're informed by all of these worldly things that are coming from Satan. To be explicit, all these other things that are not from scripture, it's virtually all satanic today.

1:20:41 That wasn't the case five hundred years ago because we had Christendom. We had a world in Europe that was oriented around the Christian faith. There was no room for pornography and for filth and for all these things that are corrosive to the soul. Today, that's almost all you can find. Even the so-called wholesome stuff usually has some amount of degeneracy because hey, why not? We need we don't want people to feel like we're judging them. We got to include a little bit of that, and then we baptize it and sanctify it by incorporating it into something that we're saying as Christian. We can't do that. And so the things that God tells us to do should be obvious and they should be easy for us.

1:21:23 It's not how you save yourself. It's how God is saving you from misery in this life. You'll still suffer. You'll still have bad things happen. Your family members, your pets are gonna die. That's part of the suffering in life that is the result of original sin that never goes away. But all the problems that we cause for ourselves by disobeying God are caused by not meditating day and night on his law. And then when somebody brings it up, rather than saying, hey, that sounds like a good idea. I'd like to learn more from scripture about what God says. The instinct now is is to kill the messenger. A lot of what you just said goes to the second point out of the six points in Article Six, and that is that the preaching

1:22:07 of the law must be encouraged and must always have a place in the church. And this is something that a number of denominations have abandoned in the modern church. And this is one of the the true strains of antinomianism where they just preach the gospel and At least insofar as they perceive it, and they do not preach the law. And here I have to give the reformed some credit, because the reformed, at least the confessional version of the reformed, the the staunch ones have avoided this problem to some degree. Yes, there are some issues with perhaps not preaching the gospel enough in some cases, but and don't think that I'm just saying that oh well Lutheran law gospel, that's not it. I am willing to commend those who preach and teach extensively, exegetically,

1:23:06 properly, on the law, that's good. but you do have to have the gospel in there as well. Because part of the task of the law is to kill the sinner, is to kill the old Adam, but you have to have the gospel to revive the Christian, to bring forth the new man, so both are necessary. You can fall off either side of the horse. You can fall off the left side of the horse by preaching just the law, just fire and brimstone one hundred percent of the time, and nothing of Jesus. You fall off the left side of the horse into the ditch. But you can also fall off the right side of the horse into the ditch, by Just Jesus loves you You're forgiven, Jesus loves you. Go home. No, you need the law as well, because even as Christians, you

1:23:52 have to be told this is God's eternal will. You are to do this, you are not to do that. And the new man, the renewed part of you, the regenerated part of you, loves the law of God, and so you want to hear the law of God if you are a truly regenerate Christian. If you hear the law and you immediately hate it, you should be deeply worried. Because that is not the reaction of a Christian to the law. As a Christian, you will be convicted by the law. You will recognize the sin in your heart. You will recognize that you have not upheld it. You will Perceive of it in that second sense as well, as a mirror, because it is held up to you, and you see your sins in it. But there is also that third use, and Christians will recognize that

1:24:38 third use. This is how I can organize my life, this is how I can order my life according to what God wants. This is how I can behave as a Christian, not how I can save myself. That work is done. Christ did that, I'm saved. That's justification. That's once for all done. But what do I do after I am justified? Now that I am a Christian, now that I have faith, now that I have been given new life by the Spirit, it's the and then. What do I do as a Christian? How do I conduct myself? How do I comport my life? And that is the law, and so Christians need both. Yes, the unregenerate also need both. The unregenerate need the law in full force until they repent, that's why the gospel, but Christians also need the law in full force,

1:25:34 and then the gospel. That is one of the duties, that is the core duty, of pastors and teachers, and many are falling short of that in one way or the other. There are very few to day who preach the law in its full severity, and then the gospel in its full sweetness, who do that rightly, who rightly divide law and gospel, without mingling them, without neglecting one or the other. And that is, as I said, the second point. This is a vitally important thing for the church. It is a live issue, it is a significant problem we face today. Because we have, again, on the one side, those who are just preaching the law, largely ignoring the gospel, fewer of those, granted, and on the other side, we have many of these who are

1:26:25 just preaching the gospel and ignoring the law. And as we keep saying, you cannot do that point six, the law is God's eternal will. You cannot ignore it. As a Christian, you should love the law of God. Read the Psalms, it's all throughout them, particularly Psalm one and Psalm one nineteen. And then points four and five are the only ones we really haven't touched on yet. And that is just the distinguishing between the works of the law and the fruits of the spirit. I actually went over this as well in the in the previous episode, but the works of the law in this specific technical sense. The works of the law are those works that are done out of fear fear of punishment, fear of the wrath of God.

1:27:17 You do not get commended for these. Yes, it is better to do the works of the law than not. Your eternity in hell will not be as bad, if you do the works of the law. In this limited sense. Again, bear in mind, this is a technical sense of that term. The fruits of the Spirit are those works, those good works that flow from the regenerate, because they are regenerate, because they are in Christ. Now, in a looser, less technical sense, yes you can call those things that are done under the law according to the law, even by the regenerate, works of the law, because they are works done according to the law. But ultimately what they actually are is fruits of the Spirit. They agree with the law, because again the law is God's eternal

1:28:05 will. And so good works are those things done according to the law. Because a work is good in so far as it comports with God's eternal will, which is again just another way of saying in so far as it comports with the law. And that is what the Spirit is doing, that is sanctification. Justification is immediate. You're justified, it's done, the work is done. It's not progressive, you aren't more justified tomorrow than you are today. You weren't less justified yesterday. Christ's work was complete when he said it is finished. However However, sanctification is progressive. As you maintain your faith in this life, as you spend time in God's Word, as the Spirit works in you, all these things, you will get progressively better as a Christian.

1:29:01 Some of those sins that cling to you will fall away, some of the temptations will taper over time. Yes, new things will spring up, yes you will recognize new sins. Anyone who has dedicated significant time and effort to the Christian life will tell you immediately one of the things that will happen in the process all along the way, is that you'll find a sin, because the Spirit will highlight it, God's Word will show it to you. You'll get that sin under control. It may take a lot of time, it may take a little time. It depends on the kind of sin, and many other factors. But you'll get that under control. You eventually will, with the help of the Spirit, with God's word, time, patience, prayer, effort, you will get that under control.

1:29:50 But then you'll read God's Word, then the Spirit will convict you of another sin, because there is always another sin. Because in this life you will never be perfect, the regeneration is not complete. That happens in the resurrection. And so you will continue to recognize these things in your life. Now it may be as you go along, they are smaller sins. They are less heinous sins. They're still sin, and all sin is sin, but as we have pointed out, as is the purpose in large part of these two episodes, not all sins are equal, and so it may be when you started out, there were particularly heinous sins in which you were engaged. It may be fornication is going to be a common sin these days. It may be something like that, and you get that one under

1:30:41 control. And then it'll be rage, it'll be all these other various things as you go along. And the Spirit will continue to point these out as you spend time in God's word. You will continue to be convicted of these things, but that is the discipline that God gives to sons, because God is your father, and fathers who love their sons discipline their sons. And so part of that discipline is going to be pointing out these sins and continuing to work through them for the entirety of your life. You are not going to reach a state of perfection in this life. Anyone who says that is a liar and a false prophet and you should burn his books. You will not reach some level of perfection whereby you no longer

1:31:30 sin. No, you will continue to sin, and you will continue to find these sins as you go. You may even find things that you didn't really think were that bad, and then as you continue to grow in your faith and your walk with God, you realize no that's a sin that's been holding me back, that's been separating me from God, and I should have taken that seriously long ago. But that is the Christian life, that is sanctification. As long as you are making that progress, and yes, you will backslide from time to time, and you should not despair because of that. But you will overall make progress in your Christian life. If you do the things that God tells you to do, if you read His Word, if you attend the divine service, if you

1:32:19 make use of the sacrament, these are things that God instituted, that God created for your good, make use of them, and you will grow in your Christian life, and the Spirit will continue that sanctification process in you. And so we've we've mentioned the Psalms a number of times in this episode, and you should be reading through the Psalter. I'm not going to tell you that you have to do it every week. It's not that long, but it's long enough, and most people these days do not sit down to concentrate and read for very long. But add two or three psalms to your your day. Read one in the morning, read one in the evening, whatever it takes, spend some time in the Psalter. The Psalter is Is the original hymnal, as it were, of the

1:33:09 church. You should be spending time with the Psalms. And so after this, I recommend you go at least read Psalm 119 and Psalm 1 because they deal specifically with the goodness of God's law. But we're going to end by reading Psalm 1. And we already went over Psalm 1 in the ESV. That was what Wo read earlier. I'm going to read it in a slightly older translation this one the sixteen fifty Psalter That Man hath perfect blessedness, who walketh not astray, in counsel of ungodly men, nor stands in sinners way, nor sitteth in the scorner's chair, but placeth his delight, upon God's law and meditates, on his law day and night He shall be like a tree that grows, near planted by a river, which in his season yields his fruit,

1:34:05 and his leaf fadeth never, and all he doth shall prosper well, the wicked are not so, but like they are unto the chaff, which wind drives to and fro. In judgment therefore shall not stand, such as ungodly are, nor in the assembly of the just shall wicked men appear, for why the way of godly men unto the Lord is known, Whereas the way of wicked men shall quite be overthrown. Amen