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Brenton
 Welcome back to Further. I am Brenton Grimm.

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Brenton
 This week we got Chris Carr. How you doing? Pretty good. So a little bit of a weird preaching week here. Sure. Chris actually preached-- First time ever.

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Chris
 Yeah. It was kind of different.

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Brenton
 For sure. It was good, though. So Paul-- we'll start with you. Paul Fishbach, welcome, by the way. Thank you. So you preached in Danville. Yes. And then Burlington for the 830 had Chris. And then Chris actually went down to our new, brand new Fort Madison campus and preached live there. So yeah, talk about the Fort Madison opening. How was that?

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Chris
 It was great. I don't think it could have gone better. Such a beautiful facility. You had so many people that did just an amazing job.

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Chris
 You, in fact, were a part of that, part of the technology for that, which is really important.

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Chris
 Everything's working so far. Yeah. So yeah, we're five or six days in.

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Chris
 My warranty's expired. But no, just so many people spent so much time and effort on that. And of course, this comes about by the generosity of the people of Harmony Bible Church, whether at Fort Madison or Danville, Burlington. We're all in this together. And it really, for an opening, you can have a lot of different things potentially go wrong when you've never done it before. And it really went off nearly without a hitch. And we had a great attendance. A lot of people came out.

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Chris
 And yeah, I can really imagine a better way to start. So it's a privilege for me to be able to be down there in person and looking forward to what God's going to do. We got another big week with Easter. So the other first Easter in the building. And yeah, here we are.

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Brenton
 Yeah, a lot going on. Yeah, it's a beautiful building. And there's so many people to call out. And we had a lot of work going on. But it was really good to see all that come together. And it was a great Sunday.

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Chris
 You know, the problem is, this week, I'm going to be bigger down there than I was the previous-- I'm going to--

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Chris
 I don't know if it's a problem. I'll grow this week three times.

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Paul
 At least three times. Right?

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Chris
 Because the screen is quite a bit bigger. And yeah.

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Chris
 Which, you know, probably be better. You know, they always said I have a face for radio. People have. So I don't know. That's going to be a blessing or not.

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Speaker 4
 I think it's really exciting, too. A lot of people have been talking about, you know, we're not quite even halfway through our all-in journey, our two-year journey. And we have a new facility already in Fort Madison. That happened in less than a year. It's just pretty exciting. People are pretty pumped about that. And it's exciting to see how God is using already so quickly the generosity of the people to have a ministry impact. Absolutely.

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Brenton
 Yeah.

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Brenton
 All right. Well, let's move on to the sermon from this week. So very short passage you guys had. One verse. What's it like to prepare a message on one verse?

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Chris
 Well, this one actually is maybe more challenging than you would think, just because there's so much packed into those. It's not even one verse. It's literally three words.

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Chris
 So, you know, there's not a whole lot of text to study and to figure out, like, what it's saying. But what's behind those three words, I think,

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Chris
 we were only honestly just scratching the surface on it.

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Speaker 4
 When Chris and I talked about this,

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Speaker 4
 before we're going into this, as we are getting ready to write our sermons, Chris made the point, and I totally agree, I mean, this could be a series on those three words. There's so much to talk about. And so, yeah. We did the best we could with the time that we had. For sure.

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Brenton
 Yeah, so both of you pushed hard against this idea

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Brenton
 that we need to earn it, right? And this is a common thing that we talk about in Christianity a lot, that we have nothing left to earn.

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Brenton
 But why is that instinct so deeply wired into us? Like, even after we understand the gospel, why are we so quick to want to earn it?

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Chris
 Yeah, maybe I would respond.

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Chris
 I think the best way I can explain is probably because of nature and nurture. So our sin nature makes us want to be self-sufficient

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Chris
 and wants to be independent. Like, we can do it. I don't need help.

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Chris
 So that's kind of our sin nature. And then by nurture,

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Chris
 I'm just really talking about, for many of us, church kind of backgrounds and teaching

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Chris
 could be as well. The families that we grew up in is like, you gotta, you know, and here we are, especially in the Midwest, you gotta pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right?

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Chris
 And so it really is, we can laugh about that, but it is somewhat of a, not a unique, but a special Midwestern value that we're the people that like, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. And so I think both by just by our nature and then by the environment, it's literally the air that we breathe that we've got to do that.

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Speaker 4
 Yeah, I would agree. I was thinking about just in a little different terms, but same thing, nature and nurture. And I was thinking more like on the nurture side, it's built into our culture too, particularly American culture. We're very independent kind of people. We like our independence. We say we can do whatever we wanna do, whatever you set your mind to do, you can do, you know? And so we become very independent that way. And so we don't want anybody's help. We wanna do it ourselves and we try to earn it.

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Chris
 Yeah, I mean, we literally tell our kids anything, you know, anything you can dream of or whatever you want, you can do it. And it's exactly not true in so many ways, but it's definitely not true when it comes to our salvation.

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Paul
 Yeah, for sure.

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Chris
 But that's just, we're kind of hardwired for it. And there are a lot of things that reinforce our hard wiring.

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Brenton
 Paul, you specifically framed your message around that there's nothing left to perform, pay or prove. Which of these do you think Christians most naturally drift back into?

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Speaker 4
 Well, personally, I'll say prove.

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Speaker 4
 I probably drift into the, I have to prove myself and prove my loyalty or, you know, whatever it is to God. I kind of touched on that in the message. I think pay kind of comes in there for some people as well.

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Speaker 4
 I think Chris nailed this in his message, the way he set it up with what Tim Keller said too,

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Speaker 4
 about people wanting to say that again, Chris, how do they?

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Chris
 Self beaters and self provers.

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Speaker 4
 Yeah, yeah. So they want, we want to prove ourselves. This kind of comes back to the earning it, you know, what we talked about just a minute ago, but we want to prove ourselves and show that we're worthy.

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Speaker 4
 We had that built into our nature. Again, it's hardwired and God is in the process of sanctifying us. And so we have to keep coming back to resting in who we are in Christ and not continuing to prove that again and again and again.

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Speaker 4
 And then, you know, sometimes, you know, the pay thing, this actually came up in my community group just a week ago.

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Paul
 Really?

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Speaker 4
 There were some people who were asking the question, you know, well, don't Christians have to do something like after they're become believers with their sin? Like, otherwise, isn't that just cheap grace? Like we're given forgiveness and we don't have to do anything and it's okay. And we, so we went to, we talked about like Romans where Paul says, you know, grace abound. So should I just sin all the more? And he says, no, you know, and so he addresses that. But yeah, I think we can tend to drift, to answer your question, I think we tend to drift into the, maybe the pay or the prove. That's my thought.

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Brenton
 Yeah, Chris, you talked about how we can believe, you know, Jesus's words, that it is finished in our heads. And one, a big theme of your message was that we don't actually experience it in our hearts all the time.

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Brenton
 Where do you see that disconnect showing up most often in everyday Christian life?

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Chris
 Well, I just, I think it's shown in so many different ways. But I often, you know, just go back to the guilt and shame. Yeah. Themes. Sure. Is we feel like this condemnation.

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Chris
 We rarely struggle with condemnation. And sometimes that's, like we think people are condemning us when they're not maybe even thinking about us. Yeah.

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Chris
 Or we just like,

[00:11:18:21 - 00:11:28:15]
Chris
 it just beat ourselves up. We get back to the self beating about even the littlest things, it's like they, the little things like, okay, it was a mistake. Like, or it's like,

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Chris
 you know, we just kind of messed up. And that's just that, it's human, but we refuse to accept that's human and we're just like going over in our heads and all that. So I got, this will be an interesting story, but actually give a great illustration here. On Sunday afternoon, a guy I went to high school with sent me a message with a YouTube link to a basketball game from my senior year of high school.

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Chris
 Share it please.

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Chris
 1991.

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Chris
 I had no, it's been-- Will that be in the show notes?

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Paul
 Yeah. Yeah.

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Chris
 No, it will not be. I'll see what I can do. But I'm like, I had no idea it was even, I didn't even know it was recorded. Like, do we even have recording? Yeah, I know. Yes, we did. You know, we used to watch a TV by candlelight back in those days. But I, and so I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I started watching and you know, like, I literally found myself beating myself up about, you know, I threw the ball away and then I missed a bunch of free throws and I'm like, what am I doing here?

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Brenton
 You watch your NBA career go down the tubes again.

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Chris
 Right, but like, I don't know how many YouTube views it has, probably five.

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Chris
 We can change that. Right, yeah.

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Chris
 But like nobody, literally nobody is thinking about this. I wasn't thinking about it. Why am I beating myself up about that?

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Chris
 But it's just, there's so many different, so there's the guilt, then there's the shame of,

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Chris
 that we experience of like, I'm just not good enough. I'm just tied into the guilt, but I'm not good enough. People don't want me.

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Chris
 I'm an imposter here if people really knew, you know, what I'm struggling with and all of those kind of things. And so because of that, like we can theologically say, like Jesus paid for my guilt and he covered my shame. And we can affirm all of that. And then in our heart, we really struggle to grab hold of it. And then I didn't really talk about this very much. I quickly alluded to it, but actually living it out, what I mean by that is that when we struggle with guilt and shame, in my opinion, those are the sources of most of the problems that we face in the way when we mistreat people or we respond poorly to people or situations is because like we're trying to deal with this self condemnation, this shame that we're struggling with.

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Chris
 And so it's not the source of all of them or anything, but a lot of them because like, we're not good with us and we're stuck on these things. And so then we're lashing out or we're just responding poorly to those things.

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Chris
 So that's in short how I would answer that question.

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Brenton
 So, you know, what we're talking about, the way the gospel impacts our shame is our relationship with God, our shame is taken away.

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Brenton
 How does that then relate to our relationship to other people?

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Chris
 Sure, well, shame is ultimately about feeling like there's something wrong with us,

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Chris
 that we're not enough to use a popular phrase today, that we don't have worth or we're worth less. So it's those kind of things. And I think the answer is like the gospel tells us that God has shown us or he has made us worthy. He has shown us that we're valuable in his sight.

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Chris
 He has covered the reasons that we have to feel shame. He always clothed us. Shame is about naked, like feeling naked and vault, like I'm vulnerable, right? And he's covered that.

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Chris
 Isaiah 61 talks about he's closed us with righteous and like we've been literally robed in his righteousness. And when we have a deep understanding of that and we really grasp it in our hearts, then it frees us from shame is a communal emotion, right?

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Chris
 I can feel guilt like without somebody else, like something I've done. I'm only gonna feel shame in relation to other people.

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Chris
 Like it's gonna be connected with other people. And I guilt a lot of times because I do something wrong to somebody, I hurt somebody, but I can feel guilty without anybody else being president.

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Chris
 Shame is generally gonna be, it's like exposure.

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Chris
 Others like to each other. So when we know deeply that God has covered us and he's taken away our shame, then that frees us up even when other people,

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Chris
 frees us up from other people's opinions or what people think about us or what people might, what we think that people might be thinking about us. And it just enables us to be less concerned about how people are viewing us. And that really what ultimately matters is how God views us and what God says to us. And then, I find myself when I'm not grabbing hold of this is like I will react negatively.

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Chris
 Well, here's the two ways. Like in most of the time, more often this is with Eva than with anybody else. But when I'm struggling with shame, there's two responses. I'm either gonna pull away from her, okay? Because I don't wanna feel it, I can't deal with it. Or I'm gonna go on the attack.

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Chris
 It goes, I'm defending myself.

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Chris
 And this is true, I'm using her as an example. This is true with everybody, okay? When I am rooted in what the gospel says that it is finished, then I don't have to run away from people and I don't have to attack people. And I can take those things that were maybe I have done a shameful thing or I have hurt somebody and it just enables me to acknowledge it and accept it and to be able to say to her, "You're right, I'm sorry.

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Chris
 Will you forgive me without having to try it?" Even in that, without having to say, "I'm sorry, but I can just put a period on the end of it."

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Chris
 And I think it's a great illustration of how, I know personally, I think we all have more, there's always more work to do here because those things are, I don't know if you ever get to the point where you're just easily able to not run away or attack, but just like, "Yeah, hey, I got it wrong, I'm sorry."

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Chris
 Are you there? Nothing. I mean, it's like there. Does that, yeah, no, it's good.

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Brenton
 Both of you brought up the word to tellest I,

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Brenton
 which is in the original language, it means paid in full.

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Chris
 Do you have a tattoo of this by the way?

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Paul
 Zero tattoos, surprisingly.

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Chris
 You can mention a guy, right? Your brother-in-law?

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Speaker 4
 My brother-in-law?

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Chris
 Yeah, you would be kind of a guy to have, no, zero.

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Chris
 No tattoos. It's time, I can see a half sleeve, right? I'd love it.

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Speaker 4
 Tank is a representation here in the room. He's got some tattoos.

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Brenton
 Oh yeah, someday. Anyway, so Paul, you said that you think that this means more than some of us even are willing to accept. What did you mean by that?

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Speaker 4
 It kind of comes back to that desire to prove ourselves, but I think this plays out in a lot of different ways

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Speaker 4
 depending on your background and experience, church background, all that kind of stuff. Churches, I think, sometimes promote that desire to prove themselves based on theology or just maybe practice. Maybe they might not explicitly teach it, but I think that one of the ways that can kind of come out is in trying to live the Christian life, to live a life of purity, we develop rules around that. Some of those are spoken or unspoken, written or unwritten, and that can lead to legalism.

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Speaker 4
 And I think legalism is one of the ways that we try to continue to justify ourselves and prove ourselves to the Lord.

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Speaker 4
 And so then we know that we're okay with God because we're following all the rules that we've created and that kind of stuff. And those who aren't, it's a way for us to kind of separate each other and judge one another and that kind of thing. But yeah, that's one of the ways that I see that we try to kind of atone for our own sin. Yeah, for sure.

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Brenton
 One thing that came to mind when I was looking at this was that I think it's so common for Christians to instinctively pull back from God for a while after they sin, right? And some of that is obviously shame, but how does this topic of accepting that everything is paid in full change how we approach God when we're experiencing this shame?

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Speaker 4
 When you said that, I immediately thought of Adam and Eve in the garden.

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Speaker 4
 They sin against God and they felt shame

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Speaker 4
 and they hid from God. And that's our natural instinct is to hide.

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Speaker 4
 But when you look at God's response to that, he comes looking for them.

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Speaker 4
 He comes seeking them out and he wants to address it. He wants us to be back in relationship with him. And so I know, I shared in my message that for quite a while, I often, early on in my Christian life, I would pull away, I would hide from God when I felt that shame.

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Speaker 4
 And the way I tried to re justify myself and reprove myself to God by the way that I acted or tried to be good for a while or whatever it is. And then I would feel worthy of being back in his presence.

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Speaker 4
 But someone pointed out to me years ago, that's not the way God wants us to react. He doesn't want us to pull away. He doesn't want us to hide. He wants, not that we shouldn't feel,

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Speaker 4
 shouldn't confess and repent of our sin, we should.

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Speaker 4
 But God wants to restore that relationship and he wants us to come to him with those things. And so for me, it was learning to discipline myself when I felt that shame to not hide

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Speaker 4
 and to actually go to the Lord to confess and repent and restore that relationship rather than pulling away.

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Chris
 Any thoughts on that, Chris?

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Chris
 I got lots of thoughts that I could share, but I mean, in one way, it's the approach that you're talking about,

[00:23:11:15 - 00:23:18:01]
Chris
 is actually an anti-gospel approach, is like, I've got to go away till I can earn, like I can make it up, I can earn it. It is anti-gospel.

[00:23:19:08 - 00:23:20:20]
Chris
 And that actually is,

[00:23:24:00 - 00:23:27:22]
Chris
 maybe even a greater sin than the sin that you committed, that you were,

[00:23:29:04 - 00:23:34:02]
Chris
 and I'm saying you, we, I think many of us do this.

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Chris
 Hebrews is such a great, I found myself in Hebrews a lot this week as I was preparing because it really talks a lot about Jesus being the sufficient, the sacrifice.

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Chris
 But one of the passages is chapter four, we do not have a high priest who's unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. He's able to sympathize with our weaknesses, not because he gave in to sin, but because he's tempted, and those weaknesses there, like are, we gotta be careful with that, oh, I'm just weak, and well, it's actually,

[00:24:14:02 - 00:24:40:07]
Chris
 you're more sinners, you know, too. But then it goes on, it says, "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace and help in the time of need." And what God actually wants us to do when we feel shame is he actually wants us, he literally not wants us, he tells us to draw near. And it's the exact opposite, but I thought, my shame makes me, doesn't it make me have to go away?

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Chris
 And no, he says draw near so that you can find mercy and grace helping in your time of need. And there's a secular book on shame,

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Chris
 I'm not actually gonna say the name or the author of the title, because I don't really want to recommend it, but it talks about the power of vulnerability.

[00:25:03:09 - 00:25:19:12]
Chris
 And I think that that's a really helpful idea here is that there's power in being vulnerable if we are actually, we are vulnerable. So it's not a question of whether we are or not. Like we're human beings, we are vulnerable.

[00:25:21:06 - 00:25:34:22]
Chris
 And as long as we want to keep up the charade that we're not vulnerable, or we want to make things up so that we cover up for our vulnerability, then there's no actual healing

[00:25:35:22 - 00:25:40:06]
Chris
 and there's no actual experience of it is finished.

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Chris
 You have to kind of in some ways admit that it isn't, like it isn't finished by me.

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Chris
 And to be vulnerable enough to step into God's presence and to believe his word that he's not gonna meet you there with judgment, but rather with mercy and grace.

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Brenton
 Okay,

[00:26:04:20 - 00:26:07:04]
Brenton
 so both of you,

[00:26:08:13 - 00:26:09:09]
Brenton
 obviously,

[00:26:10:18 - 00:26:29:04]
Brenton
 we've talked about what it is finished means in a lot of different areas here, but again, nothing left to pay for for our salvation, but there are still many different religious groups today that function as though this is something we need to keep up that we need to pay for.

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Brenton
 And Paul, you specifically mentioned the doctrine of penance

[00:26:33:21 - 00:26:35:10]
Brenton
 that the Catholic church practices.

[00:26:37:16 - 00:26:52:09]
Brenton
 And I'm sure that's just one example, but like what are some other examples of stuff that's practiced today? And maybe give an explanation of what those are, either one of you can take that, but.

[00:26:56:06 - 00:27:01:23]
Chris
 Yeah, so I wanna say first that it's,

[00:27:05:19 - 00:27:33:09]
Chris
 this is something that can be really clearly in certain religions, maybe pointed out, okay? It can be very, very clear. And then in other places, it can actually not be necessarily clear in what is taught, but practically the implications of the way that the scripture may be taught, or you talked earlier about legalism.

[00:27:35:07 - 00:27:36:19]
Chris
 Very few churches,

[00:27:39:07 - 00:28:04:21]
Chris
 evangelical Protestant churches are gonna say, yeah, we're a legalistic church. Nobody's writing that on their byline anywhere. And yet they emphasize rules so strongly that whether they would preach, you're saved by grace through faith like Ephesians 2, 8, 9, that practically, if you're part of the culture of the church, you get the message that you have to do these things

[00:28:06:02 - 00:28:26:09]
Chris
 in order to be saved. If you don't do these things, they wouldn't say it that, they don't say it this way. And I've been in and around this enough to know, but there's just such judgment put on, you don't follow these rules, that the only thing that you can take from that, even if it's just subconsciously is what saves me is following the rules.

[00:28:27:11 - 00:28:59:01]
Chris
 So there's a heavy dose of legalism. Then we can talk about Roman Catholicism, and there's just a number of things about Roman Catholicism that are an error on this issue. You talk about the mass, where you go, and every week, it's the Eucharist and the body in blood of Jesus, the elements are literally physically being turned into the body, and it's transubstantiation. And so Christ is being sacrificed every week.

[00:29:00:10 - 00:29:04:11]
Chris
 Now, if you talk to a Roman Catholic priest,

[00:29:05:11 - 00:29:10:10]
Chris
 they would say it's just a re-representation, and yet again, this is,

[00:29:11:12 - 00:29:16:04]
Chris
 you actually have to partake in the mass, and if you don't, it's a mortal sin.

[00:29:17:18 - 00:29:42:11]
Chris
 Okay, so I mean, so just practically the way that it works out there, and you can just talk about a whole host of other things with Catholicism. You mentioned penance, that coming to play there is that it's very clearly in Roman Catholic theology, doctrine, that it's not finished.

[00:29:43:16 - 00:29:46:11]
Chris
 And we have to do things to finish it.

[00:29:47:19 - 00:29:57:20]
Chris
 So sometimes we can struggle with being that strong about it, and I'm not saying that Catholics are not saved.

[00:29:59:10 - 00:30:07:08]
Chris
 That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that Roman Catholic doctrine, the official position of the church, is that it's not finished.

[00:30:09:11 - 00:30:09:16]
Brenton
 Okay,

[00:30:10:17 - 00:30:17:07]
Brenton
 so take that a little further. What's at stake theologically if we accept doctrine like that?

[00:30:20:19 - 00:30:24:16]
Chris
 Well, I mean, believe doctrine like that?

[00:30:24:16 - 00:30:25:11]
Paul
 Yeah.

[00:30:25:11 - 00:30:30:06]
Chris
 Well, yeah, I mean, I think everything's at stake, because if,

[00:30:32:00 - 00:30:34:12]
Chris
 so we're talking about the atonement.

[00:30:36:11 - 00:30:41:02]
Chris
 I use that terminology more than Paul did, but we were talking about the same thing.

[00:30:42:17 - 00:31:12:06]
Chris
 And the atonement is almost everything. So how are we made one, how are we made right with God? Yeah. And so I wanna be clear again, and this is not only true, because there are actually Protestant churches that are very close to Rome, right? So this is not just that. And I've tried to make the case is that there are what we call evangelical churches that are legalistic in a place.

[00:31:13:21 - 00:31:22:08]
Chris
 When I really wanna make people upset, okay, I would say that legalistic churches and the Catholic church, they end up in the same place.

[00:31:24:07 - 00:31:28:04]
Chris
 From two different starting points, but they end up in the same place.

[00:31:29:09 - 00:31:34:14]
Chris
 And here's what I mean by that. At the end of the day, what makes us right with God?

[00:31:36:00 - 00:31:40:23]
Chris
 And the doctrine of the Catholic church teaches what makes you right with God is what Jesus did plus what you do.

[00:31:42:03 - 00:31:57:09]
Chris
 And in the legalistic churches, it's what Jesus did plus you. Now it's not their doctrine, but that's practically how it works out in people's lives, is they think that they have to do something in order to be saved.

[00:31:59:01 - 00:32:05:02]
Chris
 And so, yeah, I mean, it's pretty serious. And again,

[00:32:06:13 - 00:32:59:01]
Chris
 I'm gonna keep saying this. My experience is there's a lot of people in a lot of churches, whether it be Catholic churches or legalistic churches or whatever church, that they don't even understand what the official teaching position is being carried out. And so I believe that there are, and some people would disagree with me on this, I believe there are plenty of believers in legalistic churches. I've known many of them, quite frankly, I believe that there are believers, true believers in Catholic churches. And I've known some of them, do know some of them. And we can all have questions, well, how can that be? And I know and all that kind of stuff. But when you really talk to them about what they believe and what their faith and trust it in, it is in Christ and Christ alone.

[00:32:59:01 - 00:32:59:15]
Speaker 4
 Yeah.

[00:33:00:18 - 00:33:05:14]
Speaker 4
 I've met Catholics like that as well. And I had an interesting experience,

[00:33:06:14 - 00:33:15:12]
Speaker 4
 different job that I had with a prayer church ministry. We worked with lots of different churches and I went into a Catholic church fully expecting to

[00:33:17:15 - 00:33:30:13]
Speaker 4
 hear something different than the gospel. And the way that the priest that day talked about the gospel, I was like, I could have heard that in a Baptist church. I was shocked even that the priest would say it that way.

[00:33:31:18 - 00:33:51:12]
Speaker 4
 So I've been surprised by some of the things that I've heard from different believers. One of the things I would say practically an outplay of this is I think if we say it's the gospel, it's what Christ did for us and what we do, that directly impacts whether or not we can lose our salvation

[00:33:52:21 - 00:33:55:00]
Speaker 4
 because it's somewhat dependent on us.

[00:33:56:08 - 00:34:01:16]
Speaker 4
 And if it's somewhat dependent on us, then if we fail on our end of the,

[00:34:03:01 - 00:34:06:07]
Speaker 4
 our half of the bargain or whatever, however you wanna divide that up,

[00:34:07:09 - 00:34:13:08]
Speaker 4
 then we don't have assurance of salvation. We do live in fear that we may not be saved.

[00:34:14:09 - 00:34:38:09]
Speaker 4
 And I think the Bible clearly teaches that we can know that we are saved and that Christ does all of the work and He finished it completely. And we don't have to worry about it because He does it all from start to finish, not only in forgiving our sins, but crediting us His righteousness, sanctifying us through and through all the way to the end. It's all a work of Christ.

[00:34:39:23 - 00:34:43:22]
Chris
 If you're not careful, Britain's gonna want us to talk about the extent of the atonement.

[00:34:46:12 - 00:34:47:08]
 (Both Laughing)

[00:34:47:08 - 00:34:48:22]
Brenton
 I've avoided it this long.

[00:34:50:12 - 00:34:50:15]
 (Both Laughing)

[00:34:51:17 - 00:34:57:14]
Chris
 Don't think it didn't cross my mind. Yeah, I just, a final word here on this question.

[00:34:58:20 - 00:35:09:20]
Chris
 I think there's, we gotta be really clear in terms of if salvation comes by grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone.

[00:35:11:02 - 00:35:33:16]
Chris
 And the gospel is what someone needs to believe and grab hold of in order to be saved. And I believe that as we've talked about, people can be in all kinds of different churches and have, that have different types of teaching and positions and still hold firmly to that. That doesn't mean that that's a good or a safe place for them to be.

[00:35:34:20 - 00:35:34:23]
Chris
 Yeah.

[00:35:36:00 - 00:35:57:13]
Chris
 Yes. Okay. For sure. And so I think we have to make a distinction between can someone go to this church and be saved and should that be the place where they do go and is that a good place for them to go? And those are two different, related, but different conversations.

[00:35:58:15 - 00:35:58:23]
Chris
 Absolutely.

[00:35:58:23 - 00:36:00:21]
Brenton
 Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:01:22 - 00:36:14:16]
Brenton
 So even for us evangelical Protestants who like doctrinally believe that there's nothing we can do to add to our salvation, right? We still struggle to live this out.

[00:36:16:19 - 00:36:23:09]
Brenton
 And we preach ongoing repentance often, right?

[00:36:25:01 - 00:36:40:21]
Brenton
 What's the difference, I guess, between like our doctrine of repentance turning from sin and what someone from a different church or different religion might see is trying to make up for that sin.

[00:36:42:01 - 00:37:00:00]
Brenton
 Does that make sense? What should our role in repentance be where it's not trying to pay any penance, we're not trying to make up for it, but what is proper repentance for a Christian?

[00:37:03:04 - 00:37:12:16]
Speaker 4
 Well, we believe that we have forgiveness of sin because Christ has atoned for our sin. He's took the penalty for our sin.

[00:37:14:20 - 00:37:29:13]
Speaker 4
 And so when we sin and repent and say we're turning from that sin, we're trying to live out the life of Christ that He has put within us. His spirit is within us,

[00:37:30:17 - 00:37:36:10]
Speaker 4
 and we're trying to live that out. We're not trying to earn Christ or God's forgiveness. That's already granted.

[00:37:37:13 - 00:37:43:20]
Speaker 4
 But we're turning from living that way and turning to live in obedience to Christ.

[00:37:45:20 - 00:37:54:00]
Speaker 4
 So it's a change in behavior, it's a change in direction, but I'm not trying to earn anything.

[00:37:55:09 - 00:38:01:21]
Speaker 4
 I'm trying to become the person that God has now made me to be more like the image of Christ.

[00:38:01:21 - 00:38:05:04]
Brenton
 Yeah, it's not the repentance that makes us right.

[00:38:06:21 - 00:38:09:03]
Chris
 Well, I think to add a couple things.

[00:38:11:11 - 00:38:24:21]
Chris
 First of all, you never get repentance without faith. Like those two things go hand in hand. And so they're just the other side of the coin, which means that in some measure,

[00:38:26:13 - 00:38:38:10]
Chris
 when we're repenting, we're having faith there. And then just like faith is a gift that necessitates that repentance is a gift. It's like God gives us the gift of repentance.

[00:38:39:17 - 00:38:47:15]
Chris
 And we really should think of repentance in that way. We don't often do it, we're like, "Ah, I gotta repent." And I'm like, "No, no, no, it's a gift."

[00:38:50:06 - 00:39:10:15]
Chris
 And so when we think about it in those terms, like it's always accompanied with faith and it's a gift that God gives to us, then I think it can help us from thinking that, again, this is something that, like, yes, it's like faith. Is this something that we do place our faith in Jesus? Yes.

[00:39:12:05 - 00:39:12:10]
 (Laughs)

[00:39:12:10 - 00:39:27:17]
Chris
 But it's not a work. Like I'm not something that earns me anything. My repentance doesn't earn me anything. It's just a way that I receive salvation or a restoration with God.

[00:39:27:17 - 00:39:31:06]
Brenton
 Yep, okay. Well, we'll wrap up with this one.

[00:39:32:18 - 00:39:37:11]
Brenton
 After spending the time this week studying this verse

[00:39:38:18 - 00:39:48:17]
Brenton
 in these three words, what did each of you walk away with personally? And not just necessarily what you taught, but like what actually challenged and encouraged you in your own lives?

[00:39:51:14 - 00:40:01:15]
Speaker 4
 I told Chris, I was so excited to be able to teach the truth of what it is finished really means. And having spent so much time

[00:40:02:21 - 00:40:06:08]
Speaker 4
 thinking through that, marinating on it, writing about it,

[00:40:08:02 - 00:40:12:07]
Speaker 4
 it just reminds you of the power of the gospel in my own life.

[00:40:13:21 - 00:40:15:23]
Speaker 4
 And there were times, I remember,

[00:40:17:04 - 00:40:22:10]
Speaker 4
 as I was trying to internalize the message that I had put together,

[00:40:24:08 - 00:40:59:15]
Speaker 4
 I got emotional thinking about what this meant for me. And I've always prayed since I was younger that the gospel message would never get old to me, that I would never take it for granted. And in moments like this, where we get to study this and see how much Christ has done for us and how thoroughly that penetrates every part of our being and who we are to be fully known and fully loved and forgiven and accepted and all the benefits that come with what Christ finished for us,

[00:41:00:18 - 00:41:10:20]
Speaker 4
 it leads to worship and it led me to want to worship and so excited to be able to share that with other people. Like this is incredibly good news.

[00:41:13:10 - 00:41:15:16]
Chris
 I feel like I've already answered this,

[00:41:16:21 - 00:41:28:00]
Chris
 but in many ways it's just like, okay, I've still got a ways to go and just can be confronted with,

[00:41:29:21 - 00:41:52:16]
Chris
 when I'm talking about from head to heart, I'm talking about myself, and that comes out of my own personal wrestling and where I find myself. And not only encouraged that I do, yeah, I talked about how I don't fully get it, but I can also say that I more fully get it than I did not too long ago.

[00:41:53:21 - 00:41:54:07]
Chris
 So,

[00:41:56:04 - 00:41:58:20]
Chris
 and that is, I think the Christian life is, we're not,

[00:42:00:02 - 00:42:03:07]
Chris
 it is finished, but we're not finished, right?

[00:42:04:10 - 00:42:29:13]
Chris
 But we should be able to, by God's grace, be able to look back on how we are more finished than we were previously. And that's not always gonna be the case, maybe, but at least that's where I kind of found myself, is like, okay, it's quite obvious I'm not finished yet, but I can also see growth in that. I'm closer to the finish line.

[00:42:30:19 - 00:42:36:04]
Chris
 Now Paul, you know, that Philippians three passage, that fits right into this, not that I've already obtained all of this,

[00:42:37:16 - 00:42:39:05]
Chris
 okay, but I'm pressing forward.

[00:42:40:07 - 00:42:53:01]
Chris
 And he says that, by the way, after he says I don't want my righteousness of my own, he says I wanna be found in him, not having the righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but righteousness that comes through faith.

[00:42:55:05 - 00:43:00:16]
Chris
 It's a great passage that, you can see it is finished on nearly every page of the New Testament.

[00:43:02:15 - 00:43:08:02]
Chris
 But, and illustrated on so many places are pointed to in the Old Testament.

[00:43:09:13 - 00:43:13:22]
Brenton
 All right, well, thanks guys. Thanks for your work on both of these.

[00:43:15:02 - 00:43:20:08]
Brenton
 And yeah, if you have any questions, ask at furtherpodcast.com. And we'll talk to you next week.

[00:43:22:05 - 00:43:25:06]
 (Upbeat Music)