Mentoring the New Believer - Lesson 4

We are on lesson 2: building anticipation in the new believer that things are going to change. This is a good thing. It’s a natural thing. It’s a supernatural thing. So we want to get them going. So the way the sermon goes on this is that again, you understand that the sermons are obviously a week apart, so if I were just working straight through, I probably wouldn’t summarize the previous message much. But I started the sermon by summarizing. You remember, we talked about the trailhead. We talked about that we got off the wide road. We got onto the narrow road. We were changed at the gate, and changed people live changed lives. So I summarize the conversion stuff. 

What I try to do is to find a way for people to understand that the changes that are going to be happening in their lives are the most natural thing in the world. They’re not a list of do’s and don’ts. These are things that we want to do. And so I said, “Well, let’s have a new believer,” especially since it’s been about a week since we’ve emphasized their conversion, to say “So what happened to you at conversion? What are some of those changes that you’re aware of, even if you knew almost nothing at all, what did you know?” And again, since you’ve already done lesson 1, then they have an answer. If they don’t have an answer, they’re not a Christian. They probably would say, “You know, I have sinned. I live separated from God.” I understood they wouldn’t use the word ‘dead in their sin,’ but they probably would say, “There was nothing I could do about my situation. I was pretty hopeless,” (for whatever be the reason). 

My little brother tells a great story of his conversion that when David was 16, he didn’t want to have much to do with his parents or his parents’ God. And so he walked out of the house. And when David was 22, he was sitting in an empty apartment, and he said, “Okay, God, if there is such a thing, if there is such a person, then most everything else, none of it works. I’ll try you.” And that was when my brother became a Christian. And what he was saying in biblical language is “I’m dead. I have nothing. I’ve tried. There’s nothing.” And I think most believers, new believers, whatever language they use, they’re going to understand that they were pretty hopeless. David understood; he had gotten to a place, God had taken him to a place that he knew things were hopeless. And certainly a new believer would know they’ve been called to repent. Repent for your sins and repent of your misunderstanding who Jesus is. 

The point I make in the sermon is that if you take these three points and you put them together, what you see is people know something happened. I’ve been changed. I heard a great story this Sunday. We had some friends over after church for dinner, and they were telling us about their wedding. And apparently the bride’s parents were absolutely horrible people. Her husband was telling the story, you know, it’s 30 years earlier, and she was sitting there…”Yeah, they were! They were really lousy.” And he was talking about how vicious they were and cruel they were and whatnot. And on the way to the rehearsal dinner, the husband’s-to-be best man, who at that time was in seminary with him, said, “I want to ride with your in-laws soon.” 

“Because nobody wants to ride with my in-laws, why would you want to ride with them?” 

He said, “I think they’re close to accepting Christ,” and the guy led them to the Lord on the way to the rehearsal dinner. 

And when they gave…the bride’s dad asked to pray, and the first thing he said was, “Thank you that my wife and I are now in your family.” You know, the whole wedding party going, “No, no, no. Yeah. God can’t save someone like you.” But they knew they’d been changed. They just knew; they didn’t know much about it, but they knew that things were different. That’s the point. We want to make sure that new believers understand; you’ve been changed. Things can’t stay the same. Things are going to change. And then what I do in the sermon is I say basically, “Let’s fill out your understanding of what happened in conversion.” And what I’m trying to do is to get them to celebrate what God has done. And I go through a whole list of theological terms which no new believer could possibly understand, at least not all of them. 

The idea was to overwhelm them, just overwhelm them with what God has done. I start by talking about how, “You know, when you started getting interested in Christianity and things that weren’t interesting to you before were becoming interesting, and things that made no sense to you before were kind of starting to make sense. Do you know what that was? That was God calling you to himself. You’re not doing that. You can’t all of a sudden become interested and knowable of the things of the Spirit. That’s God starting to draw you to himself, because in fact, nobody comes to him unless he draws them. You were experiencing God as you were thinking about stuff.” I said, “You’re rescued from the kingdom of darkness. You were justified. You’ve been declared not guilty of your sins. You’re free from all condemnation,” which is a really big deal to a lot of people. People who were raised in fundamentalism, people who were raised in, “I’ve got to be careful when you say this,” but historic Catholic kind of culture. There’s a lot of condemnation. There’s a lot of guilt, right? 

But it’s also true of certain Protestant denominations, too. I said, “You’re redeemed. God paid a price. He bought you with the price of his Son. Did you know that you were sanctified, that you were made holy in God’s eyes? You are a saint.” “Really, me?” “Do you know you were adopted?” I love adoption terminology. One of my children are adopted and we usually just leave it up to people to guess. We have three kids and nobody guesses the one that’s adopted. They’ve never guessed because he looks just like me. And unfortunately, he acts just like me in many ways. “But you’re adopted. You’re adopted into a family. You have brothers and sisters now. You were given the Holy Spirit. Did you know that? You know that God is now residing in you, the God who raised Jesus from the dead is at work starting to change you? Do you know all these things?” And we just go through this stuff in an attempt to overwhelm them. “Well, I had no idea. So many things happened.” And of course they can’t. There’s no way that they can know. 

And then what I do is I went into a discussion of baptism. I had to discuss baptism somewhere. There’s two ways that I say about baptism. One is that it’s your first act of obedience. We’re going to come back and talk about this. I do not believe we should use baptism for a rite of admission into the visible church. I just don’t think it’s biblical. I’m probably in the minority, but just heads up so you know that I think that. But the main thing that I do is that I want to describe…we were Baptists so we dunk people. But even if you’re more Presbyterian, if you’re going to sprinkle, you can use washing language. But I use baptism… When you’re buried (this is all Romans 6 language), that when you go under the water, you’re buried, you’re dead. You’ve died to that person that you were; the water because of what Christ has done, has washed you clean. And just as Christ was buried and then was raised to a new kind of life, so also in baptism, we died of what were; we’re changed fundamentally. And when we’re brought up out of those baptismal waters, and everyone’s cheering and clapping, what they’re cheering and clapping is because you’re now their brother and sister, you’re in a new family, and you’re united with Christ in some way that none of us understand. You are one with Jesus. And the baptism was a wonderful way to explain the fact of death to who I was and being raised to this new life that I knew. Which is why I’m opposed to withholding baptism for 20 years. I think baptism is your first act of obedience as a believer. But anyway, that’s just me. Probably the best baptism I ever… I tried not to baptize people. Again, this is one of the things that we can talk about. I think that anybody, any believer, can baptize a new believer.

What we always did in our church was we found the person that had walked with the new believer the most, and we gave them the privilege of baptizing them. And it was really hard at first. A lot of people in church said, “No, no, no, preacher’s got to do that.” I said, “Well, soon as you could find the preacher has to do the baptism of the Bible, then I’ll do the baptisms. But until then, the people that are most closely related to the new believer are going to do it.” And we had many, many wonderful baptisms. But my favorite one was baptizing a friend of ours up at a cabin, at her family cabin, and she came to me. There was a ton of people there. She had been a heroin addict. It had been quite a life that she had lived, and she pulled me aside beforehand, and she said, “I want you to do me a favor.” 

And I said “Okay.”

She said “When you put me down under the water, hold me for a long time.” 

And I was pretty sure where she was going. She said, “Jesus has cleansed me of so many sins. I need to be under the water for a while.” 

And she knew it was all symbolic, but it was important to her. So there are about 60 people, I only knew about half of them, and we did the baptism. And I held her down until I could see her eyes…okay, now let me up, and brought her up. But a half hour later, I was just walking around, and a guy I didn’t know came up to me and said, “Interesting baptism.” And I instantly knew what he was going to talk about. 

He goes, “Do you always hold people down that long?” 

And I said, “No, that was at her request because of the life that she had lived.”

It is a wonderful image to help a new believer understand dying, being washed and cleansed, and being raised to new life. So I tell the story in the sermon. 

Student: So before you baptize, do you give a class to an individual as to why we’re being baptized? 

Dr. Mounce: That’s one of the points I want to make. So let’s get to the end and we’ll do that. I would never baptize someone without explaining to them really what it is. I think it’s the kind of thing where you have to do it enough. I remember baptizing someone once; it was a group baptism, and the parents went and baptized two of the kids, and one of them couldn’t explain what conversion was. You always ask for that, right? I mean, even the person is scared spitless and is just going to be nodding. I mean, this is supposed to be a confession time. He couldn’t do it. I should have walked him out of the water. I didn’t, and in retrospect I should have, because he’s not at any way living for Christ and doesn’t even claim to be a Christian at this point. So before you get people in the water, they better know; they better know what it is. So I think an hour in class at a minimum is a good thing to do. But, you know, you got Philip, an Ethiopian eunuch, and we had a good long time in the chariot explaining the Suffering Servant passage and stuff. These people were explained stuff, but we’re going to come back to that, okay? 

I use baptism as an example, and then we always try to have baptisms in conjunction with the class. And then when I go in the sermon real quickly is saying, “What is this new life going to look like? Well, one, you’re going to be a follower. This is what it’s all about. You’re a follower of Jesus Christ. You’re a disciple. You’re learning to be like your Master. Try to lay that out again. Don’t be frightened. This isn’t a bunch of do’s and don’ts, but God is changing your heart. You’re going to want to change. You’re going to want things that are going to be different. And the main way in which the Bible describes this path, at least the main term we use, is Fruits of the Spirit, and explain that God, the Holy Spirit…(and would say you know, if it’s kind of weird that there’s three in one, hang in there). That’s chapter 9, and we’ll get to it. But I said, “God, the Spirit is in your life. And he’s going to start encouraging and helping you to change. And that change is called fruit. And we call it the Fruits of the Spirit, because while you’re doing it, it’s the God who is giving you the desire to change and then giving you the ability to do it. So that’s why we call them, Fruits of the Spirit.” 

Explain to them that life is going to change. It doesn’t happen automatically. Unlike salvation, you cooperate. You don’t cooperate in salvation, but you do cooperate with the work of the Spirit. So again, that’s what this sermon is, just based in attempt to say, “I’ve been changed and God’s going to be at work in me to start changing me more and more in my life.” Okay that make sense? Does this strike any of you as saying, “I would not do this topic next; I would wait.” The pacing of the class is one of those things that I’ve thought a lot about, and I may not be right. Does this sound like too much too fast, or does it feel kind of like a natural to talk about it? 

Student: I think it’s the right sequence. 

Dr. Mounce: Justine was sharing how that when she became a Christian, she didn’t know, “I didn’t know any of this stuff.”

How do you think you would have responded early on to this message? Would it have been a welcome message? 

Student: Yeah. I mean, I was convert… like in 2003 I didn’t even know, there was… [inaubible] until, like 2006, and the pastor did not explain what it was, but I did it as an act of obedience. So if somebody can explain to me what baptism was earlier, it would have been helpful. 

Dr. Mounce: Yeah. Okay. What about the more general topic? “Justine, now that you’ve become a Christian, things are going to change.” Would it have been a welcome thing? 

Student: Oh, my gosh, I wish someone had told me. I did experience…the Bible tells us, the experience first. I had no idea. I thought it was that. 

Dr. Mounce: See, that’s the problem right there. It’s going to happen right away. I mean, in India and in China, you’ve got to tell people right away, the persecution’s coming. It’s probably going to come from your parents; they’re probably going to kick you out of the house and disown you, and in some cultures try and kill you. But in the US culture, it can still come pretty quickly. And I was more concerned about helping people understand there’s going to be conflict because you’re different. And so, okay, well, I’m not going to change it, then. 

Student: And if that is the method I would be upfront so they don’t hate you.

Dr. Mounce: I think so, yeah, yeah. The Sermon on the Mount’s not addressed just to the twelve; the whole crowd was listening. “Blessed are you when you’re persecuted.” I mean, he’s letting people know up front, beginning of his ministry, that this is not a bed of roses. 

Student: But the people who are ex-cons or…a lot of them have issues of condemnation. 

Dr. Mounce: Yeah. I don’t understand the issue of condemnation because I was raised in a real family of grace, and I never experienced, ever. I mean, my folks never condemned me. I mean, they whipped the living daylights out of me, broke one by twos on my legs when I deserved it. “There’s no condemnation now for those are in Christ Jesus,” Romans 8:1. For some people that’s an amazingness…it comes from inside. You know, I had a good friend of mine read this very, very carefully. And I mean, my copy is already because of what he did. And that was one of the major points he made. He said, “I don’t think you understand how for so many people, they become Christians, but they are so convinced that they were so bad, that while they want to be Christians, there’s no way that God is able to forgive.” 

Student: And even after that. 

Dr. Mounce: And that’s a second but a related thing. The issue that comes afterwards is: “When I keep sinning, how can we…” and we all have our favorite sins, right? And at some point in time, okay, that’s what, the 8,000th time I’ve done that? God, he’s going to stop forgiving. So this whole condemnation thing, I’m glad I don’t…it’s not something that’s far from me, I have to deal with other things, but it is a big deal. 

Alright. Things are about to change. There are some wonderful discussions. This is the heart of conversion. And it’s one of the few places I disagree with Wayne. And so I need to lay out some stuff, just so you’re aware of what you’re going to see when you read his book, okay? 

Student: How much does that book cost? 

Dr. Mounce: I don’t know. What is the value of your soul? It’s 45 bucks. You can get electronically within software. But I was thinking I’m a big electronics guy, but from my basic books, I want paper. I don’t care how you highlight and annotate in accordance, or whatever. My main reference books are everything’s paper for me, but that’s me. I mean, Amazon’s probably under 35 bucks. It’s worth every single penny. It really is. There are four chapters in Grudem that are very closely connected to these topics, and I want to go through them. 

The first one is the whole issue of regeneration. Okay, here’s how…I’m going to put these three chapters on the timeline so you’ll understand what he’s saying. Regeneration, chapter 34. Wayne’s definition of regeneration is that regeneration is a secret act of God in which he imparts new spiritual life to us. So this is “being born again” kind of stuff. So regeneration is we once were dead, now we’re alive. And so we’re going to put regeneration right here on the timeline, making us a new creation; fulfilling the Ezekiel 36 promise. All that kind of stuff. The issue is the word ‘secret’ that he uses, or ‘ordal salutis.’ You’re going to learn this in theology. Have you come across this phrase yet? It’s Latin, it means “order of salvation.” What is the order in which these events happen? 

Whether you are Reformed or Wesleyan, this is the absolute, very core of the issue. When I was hired at Azusa Pacific (I was out there 10 years; it’s a Wesleyan school), and they hired me as a token Calvinist, which I think is really cool. And I wish some of the Reform schools would hire token Wesleyans; I think it makes for a healthier environment. And so I had a lot of firsthand experience dealing with the difference between Reformed thought and Wesleyan thought. While some followers of Wesley are over here and some followers of Calvin are…they’re talking different languages.

Calvin and Wesley, themselves, were very, very close. For example, Calvin absolutely insisted that you had to persevere in your Christian life. Wesley’s over here, with all his emphasis on holiness, saying we have to pursue God and be sanctified [inaudible]. It’s kind of like that ad that Mobil or Exxon (whoever it is) is pushing now. You have these two people talking and you think they’re disagreeing with each other, and they’re really saying the same thing. Calvin and Wesley are so close with God. Salvation is purely an act of grace. It is received by faith, not by works. It must show itself and to change life. Calvin and Wesley both say that. 

This is where they’re going to differ, though, right here. And so this is kind of that dividing point. What Wayne will tell you is that regeneration is a ‘secret’ act of God. And it is secret in that is still mysterious. But for them, for a five point Calvinist, faith comes after regeneration. In other words, what happens is that God, by his sovereign choice, makes you into a new creation. And at some point in time later, a minute later, a week later, you respond to the Gospel call with faith. In the “order of salvation,” a Calvinist puts regeneration before faith. God makes us new and we respond in faith. And the reason for that is before God makes us new, we are dead in our trespasses and sin. The Ephesians 2 passage by which a Reformed person understands that to mean, unable to respond. So in Reformed theology, before God makes you into a new person, you are unable to respond in faith. You are unable to accept the Gospel call. So you have to have God make you into a new being, which will, of necessity, mean that when you are presented with the claims of the Gospel, you will repent and you will respond in faith.

Student: How will that fit in Acts 2 then? 

Dr. Mounce: Long discussions in Wayne. He would say… I mean, in all these passages in Scripture, we’re not told the whole story. I mean, you can’t spell out every theological doctrine every single time there’s a conversion story. So what they would say, I mean, Acts says, “as many as were ordained into eternal life believed,” right? That’s Acts 2, not Acts 4, right? “As many as were ordained unto eternal life believed,” or is that Acts 4, Acts 4. 

There is a statement of election at the end, I think. The way Wayne would look at it is that Peter is proclaiming the Gospel. God, even though text doesn’t say it, God is drawing those 3,000 future converts to himself. He regenerates them. They are now able to respond in repentance and faith, and they do so. And as many as they were elected received him, or whatever the statement is. So, I mean, so, for example, in Acts 2, you don’t have any doctrine of God drawing people to himself, and “no one can come to me,” Jesus says, “unless the Father draw…no one can come to the Father unless he draws them to himself.” So you don’t have every theological doctrine at work described in every situation, but that’s how he would explain it. In Wesleyan theology, they don’t understand the dead and their trespasses and sin as unable to respond. Thank you. You know, and this is part of the problem with systematics. They’ve got all these square holes and they want to make square pegs and put them in every single one. And I would just say, you know, I don’t know. I don’t care. It’s a mysterious process. 

I know God called me to himself when I was a little kid. And when my mom said, “Billy, do you want to be a Christian?” (She read Bible stories every single night to us.) I said, “Yeah, course, duh.” You know, I don’t know the whole process, but I do know that God had been drawing me to himself as a witness through my parents and my Sunday School teachers at church. And I responded; God made me a new being. I repented, and I had faith that I was what I was not before. And because I’m more of an exegete than a theologian, I never really felt the need to kind of get everything organized. But that is the task of systematics. Everything needs to be organized. And so that’s why there’s a lot of this going on. 

By the way, what they’re going to do is, and we’re going to see, is that the ‘ordo salutis’ is regenerate, which then allows us to repent and express faith. So that’s, you know, and Wayne will say this stuff can all happen in a blink of an eye, or it can happen over a minute period. And so he’s very good to do that. But he’ll even use this to talk about, if you’ve seen it in the book, what about babies who die? Yeah, he’ll talk about, well, if God regenerates us, that’s his secret work, making us new. He can do it whenever he wants. The Holy Spirit was with John before he was born, right? So there’s one example of a baby being regenerated before he was born. Why not other children? So, I mean, it’s a very interesting discussion I read this afternoon again. It’s an interesting discussion in the book. But I wanted you to be aware that as your people use Wayne for a resource, this word ‘secret’ might throw them.

But that’s what’s going on. It’s not Wayne’s position; it’s the reformed position. They would say the biblical position is that people are dead in their trespasses and sin, and apart from the work of God in their life, they’re going to go to Hell. And God, I guess would say, draws, starts drawing them to himself. And then he makes them able to respond, makes them into a new creature, and they respond in repentance of their sins, and in faith in what Jesus has done on the cross. That’s what’s going on in this chapter. So I just wanted you to be aware. This is about as intense as it gets in the book. 

Student: Why did he even use the word ‘secret’?

Dr. Mounce: He uses the word ‘secret’ because the Spirit blows where it wills, and you do not know (the John 3 passage). When God makes you into a new being, it’s mysterious, what happened? Well, what happened was that he reached a norm and he took out his hardest stone. And he gave him a heart of flesh, something that was malleable, something that could be influenced by the work of the Spirit, which could receive the promised eschatological outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Okay? You understand that? Well, not really. There is mystery in this regeneration. How does he do that? 

Student: But we’ll never know. 

Dr. Mounce: Yeah, but the point is, he says it’s a secret, partly because it’s a mystery, and partly because we don’t know, again, in their theology, exactly when it happens. Here’s what we’re aware of. We’re aware of the whole of God drawing us to himself. And at some point in time, we respond in repentance and faith. But what we may not understand at the time is that it’s God who did a work in us so that we could respond in repentance and faith.

Student: I guess the reason I ask that question, because when we were small we used to sing a song in church, “There’s no secret what God can do.” 

Dr. Mounce: I would say that’s a good song not to sing anymore because there are secret things of God, right? Deuteronomy, what’s that passage? “There are things we can know, and then there are the secret things of God that we can’t know, that God has built.” There’s actually a verse, and I wish I can remember because it was a fascinating discussion in translation, and we didn’t translate it this way in the ESV, which is why I can’t find it. But there is a verse that says, “God intentionally built us in a certain way so that we cannot perceive certain things.” In other words, it was intentional on purpose in how he created us. So it’s not this kind of like, “Well I can’t understand all the ways of God.” It’s that God said, “You will not understand all my ways, but you will understand what you need to understand.” 

Student: So that I told Jesus everything, you know, everything, except one thing: he never told him when he was going to return. So would that be a secret? 

Dr. Mounce: Well, it was for Jesus. It depends on what you believe on the doctrine, the internal subordination of the Son to the Father. If you believe that that statement that not even the Son of God knows the time when all things will end. There are people that argue that’s Jesus the Messiah talking; it’s not Jesus, the Son of God, speaking. Jesus, Messiah, did not know. But some people have trouble with the second member of the Godhead not knowing what God the Father knows. I don’t. I think that is something that is secret to the mind of God, the Father. And God, the Son is perfectly patient, waiting. 

Section C is that regeneration comes before saving faith. And then he goes on. He talks about that genuine regeneration must bring results in life. And I guess Wesley and Calvin are both in their graves going—well, they’re in heaven going, “Yeah, that’s right.” 

Student: What was Wesleyan’s view of that? 

Dr. Mounce: I don’t know, on the ‘ordo salutis’ exactly. But they just don’t believe that a person is incapable of responding to the Gospel call to the point that they’re dead, at the point they have to be regenerated. My guess is this is where some people will put regeneration, that we hear the claims of the Gospel; we respond with repentance and faith, and God makes us new. To a reformed person, this is work salvation, because regeneration has to be an act of God, not something we deserve or anything like that. So that’s why they tend to put it back here. 

Student: When it says,”Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God,” and you have faith there at that point, this is kind of a new thought that we got; so you’ve got to help me through this. 

Dr. Mounce: It was for me, too. I remember when I first read this, I went “That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever read in my entire life.” And we’re still in the ESV, so I got to see Wayne and said, “Would you please walk me through this? Because this isn’t making any sense to me.” But the whole key is, is a person capable of responding to the Gospel message in and of themself? Now, we would all say at one level, absolutely not, because no one comes to the Father unless the Father draws them, right?

So we all recognize whatever we want to do with the dead in the sin, if God’s not involved, if the Holy Spirit is not bringing a conviction, there’s no way anyone is going to respond to the Gospel, right? It’s just not going to happen. It’s a real typically systematic fine tuning kind of saying, we need to know the exact order in which it happens.

Student: I just thought that maybe faith probably came before. 

Dr. Mounce: He’s got a wonderful description of that. So the question wandered… 

Student: Is this something that you would actually get into? 

Dr. Mounce: I don’t think you would get into it, but what’s going to happen is that if you’re using this as a resource, your mentor is going to read it and go, “This is bizarre.” So what I would encourage you to do is to tell your mentors just skip point C; at this point, it’s going to confuse you and maybe we can come back and look at it, okay? 

Student: Have you ever seen John Bunyan’s map, pretty much the ‘ordo salutis’ drew out; huge, you can get like a poster of it? 

Dr. Mounce: No, I’ve never seen that. I didn’t know that he’d done that. 

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Mounce: Tim Challies is one of the most popular bloggers out there. His blog is called Informing the Reform. Thousands of people read his blog. He’s very, very influential. He’s 28, 29, it looks like. 

Student: What’s that verse you have up there…draws? 

Dr. Mounce: Oh, draws, that God…no one comes to the Father unless he draws. 

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Mounce: Common grace, you know the doctrine of common grace. The doctrine of common grace is that God extends his goodness to all creation. He makes the rain to come on the saved and the not saved; the sun to shine… You know the verse in Acts; that he ordains government to have control over societies; that if God were not in a common way, extending His grace to all people, society would not function, would have Rwanda all the time. Right? Rwanda is a good example of what happens when apparently, I don’t know…say God withdrew his common grace, but I think the slaughter of Rwanda is the best example of what you and I would do if God did withdraw his common grace; everything would descend into murderous chaos. 

Student: What is the chance that perhaps (and you probably covered it) that those become so interchangeable, that conversion or faith simultaneously occur…? 

Dr. Mounce: Well, see, that’s what I always held to. It was one simultaneous event. In order to say that, you have to define “dead in your trespasses” in Ephesians 2 in some other way; you have to define ‘dead’ as being separate from God, not unable to respond. I mean, that’s how I always thought of this stuff, because that’s generally how it’s presented. What must we do to be saved? Well, you have to wait for the secret work of God, and then you respond to repent. I mean, obviously you wouldn’t do that. But again, this is part of the mind of a systematic theologian. They want to specify; they want it clear. And so you can’t have it all be simultaneous because then you don’t have “dead and you trespasses and sin.” You don’t have the Romans 3. No one does good. You know, everyone is evil kind of stuff. 

Student: I think one of the things that I have gotten in, it’s not an argument, but I guess that exchange was somewhat about when you look at it from the standpoint of faith being first, the question would be, “Well, what gave you that faith to be able to respond over my cousin?” So if you take those two parallels and you say, “Well, if you’re able to respond, how come they’re not?” You go into an election… You know what I’m saying? So it goes back to the grace. 

Dr. Mounce: Except where Wayne will go “Is that where you chose to respond and your cousin chose not to?” He doesn’t go to the election right away. Now, the ultimate cause of that is going to be election. But Wayne’s really good at saying conversion is a choice. And when God is doing a work in your life, you’re always going to choose to convert. And when God hasn’t done a work in life, you’re always going to choose not to convert; but you still make a choice. 

Student: I don’t know about that, but… 

Dr. Mounce: This is why I use systematics as a separate class. But this is not going to come up at all… It’s not going to come up in new believers, but it’s going to come up as you read Wayne. In chapter 35, he said, “Conversion is our willing response to the Gospel call in which we sincerely repent of sins and place our trust in Jesus for salvation.” So we hear the Gospel call and, on the one hand, kind of in a negative sense, we repent; and then the positive side of that is that we have faith that Jesus did on the cross for us what we could not do for ourselves. 

Student: What page is that on? 

Dr. Mounce: Page 709… I’m sorry, thank you. I need to tell you what page I’m on, and we’ve already talked a lot about that. The other thing that I wanted to mention, go to two things, we’ll take a quick break. Chapter 36 is on justification, and this is where Wayne puts justification. Again, this is just so you can understand where he’s coming from in his discussions. Okay? We hear the Gospel call. We’ll skip this regeneration for now. We respond in repentance and faith. And so what does God do in response to us; and the response is that he justifies us. Sure, we all know justification is a metaphor from the legal system. Do you declare us legally not guilty. And so we respond in repentance and faith. God responds in justifying, stating that we are no longer sinful. The point that both Wesley and Calvin would make was that our justification are being made right with God is solely on the basis of faith. It’s not based on works. We didn’t do anything; we responded, but we didn’t do anything to earn the “not guilty” declaration; but rather because we believe that Jesus did on the cross for us what we could not do for ourselves. God responds by declaring, “You are no longer guilty of your sins. And if I say you’re not guilty, means you’re not guilty.” 

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Mounce: No, but Wayne puts regeneration before; makes us a new person, so that we’re able to respond in repentance and faith. God in turn, responds by, among other things, by justifying us. 

Now, the book is going to go on and talk about imputation. Is that a word that you guys had before? This is something that your mentors will need to be aware of, especially if you are ministering in a Catholic place. This becomes unbelievably important. All right? When we lived in Boston, I taught Sunday School at the church for three years. It was the local Congregational church, and there were a lot of ex-Catholics that were dropping their kids off to get religion. And the pastor wanted a Sunday School that would entice these ex-Catholics in. It was very purposeful. God has only spoken to me twice; I mean, clearly with words. And one of them was in a Sunday School class where we were on Mark, and I was praying something or other at the end. And it was clear as a bell. I heard the voice as he said, he said, “Stop your prayer. There are non-Christians in here: pray for…” 

And it happened to me once before. So it didn’t scare me like it did the first time, which happened in the middle of a sentence when I was preaching now. If you want to get really freaked up in the middle of a sentence preaching, I’ve got to talk to you. It really upsets your theology. But I recognize it turns out there were 12 of them. They were sitting in the back row, and all 12 became Christians. It’s a cool story. And that was where I learned about a lot of, between them and Wayne, is where I learned kind about Catholic stuff. The minute you say Catholic, you’ve got to be careful, right? It’s like saying, “Well, the reformed people think, or the Wesleyans think, or the Charismatics think,” right? There’s this such phenomenal variation in those camps.

The difference in a Pentecostal and someone who goes to Calvary Chapel Church can be like the East from the West, but they’re all broadly charismatic, right? Some of you probably worship, serve in those kind of settings. I need to be really careful. My first cousin is a deacon in the Catholic Church here in Tacoma. And when I talk to George, I’ll swear I’m talking to an evangelical. In fact, he wonders why he’s more involved in serving the poor than I am, and I call myself a Christian… He’s bilingual and he works in an Hispanic community, an outreach of the Catholic Church. And yet he goes every day to Mass, or as he calls it, to the ‘sacrifice.’ So he understands perfectly well that they are re-sacrificing Jesus in Mass; not the same kind of sacrifice in Calvary, but it is a death, and there are things that happen out of it. So you’ve got to be careful. Here’s one of the major ways in which Catholics and Protestants differ. And if you serve in a Catholic area, your mentor needs to be aware of this, okay? 

Wayne’s major source in all this is…he quotes a guy named Ott (O-T-T). On page 728, start at the first full paragraph: “The traditional Roman Catholic understanding of justification is very different from Protestant. The Roman Catholic Church understands justification is something that changes us and makes us more holy.” Let me say this way: he’s got this chart somewhere. In the Catholic Church, and by that I mean the official Catholic doctrine that’s got the Pope’s imprimatur on it (which doesn’t mean that all Catholics believe it). Justification is equal to faith plus obedience. Their definition of justification is our response and faith with our obedience.

And this is why salvation in the Catholic Church is only from within the Catholic Church. Because if you haven’t done enough good, you’ve got to get works from somewhere, right? So you have the merits of the saints; you have the merits of Christ; and over Catholic theology you had purgatory (which was there so that you could be punished for some of your sins). Then the Catholic catechism that I use, pertinent, that’s not their reason for purgatory. The reason they say that purgatory exists is because no one can accept forgiveness, and therefore everyone needs to be punished a bit so they can receive forgiveness. 

Student: For 2,000 years? [Laughter] 

Dr. Mounce: I’ve not read any time frame. Whether it’s a millennium or not, I don’t know. And so anyway, so this is an issue that if you serve in a Catholic area, you’re going to have new converts. For Protestants, and we would say for the Bible, justification is solely by faith that will result in works, right? It will result in a changed life. But in the Catholic Church, the sufficiency of the cross was not one of the doctrines. In Protestant theology, the cross is sufficient to save all who will come, right? No matter how many sins you’ve committed, no matter how many people come, what Christ did on the cross is sufficient to save all those who come to the cross in true repentance and faith; and in Catholic theology, the cross isn’t sufficient. It’s not enough. It needs something else. Wayne’s got this discussion. See, Ott says, bottom of page 728, “Nobody can, with certainty of faith, know whether or not he has fulfilled all the conditions which are necessary for the achieving of justification.” Ott’s catechism is one of the main Catholic catechisms out there; it’s that no matter how much of this you do, you can never know if it’s enough.

I remember we had a church 20 years ago, we had a man come and speak who had been a Jehovah’s Witness, and the basic message that he shared was that you have no idea the amount of condemnation and fear someone has who is trying to earn their way to Heaven. He knocked on over 70,000 doors and he said, “I never knew if I knocked on enough.” And then he became a Christian and realized that 70,000 isn’t enough, and never will be enough, but it’s irrelevant. This is where the condemnation comes in. You understand, in Catholic theology salvation is within the church, right? And so you have the sacraments, which are all ways of moving you forward, which change you, which, whether you have faith or not, make you holy or make you more sanctified, right? They’re all means of grace. This is what you’re going to have to be aware of, okay? So make sure that if you serve in a Catholic area like Massachusetts or Washington State, that they understand this is going to be some of the baggage they’ll get. You’ll get someone to become a Christian, but they’re never really quite sure they’ve done enough. And they need to know that Christ has done enough. The doctrine of the Imputation is that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. The way Bunyan says it is that Christ looks on me as he would on his Son, and God treats me as He will treat his Son. And because God looks on his Son as perfect and holy and blameless, Christ’s righteousness, which he earned by being sinless, is imputed, is given to me so that I am viewed as being righteous. But in Protestant theology, that’s what justification is. Okay? 

Student: You said that the Jehovah Witness guy felt that way, right, not the Catholic guy? 

Dr. Mounce: Right. Yeah. That was the best example I know was a Jehovah’s Witness. 

Student: So the Catholics don’t feel that way? 

Dr. Mounce: You know, I don’t know how my cousin would answer that question; would be an interesting thing to ask him. But since justification is equal to faith plus works, you’re always going to have that question: have I done enough? Well, the Catholic theology, again, if you haven’t done enough, Catholic theology again, understood, there’s a lot of variations. You’ve got purgatory. You’ve got baptisms for the dead back when they were trying to build, was it Saint Peter’s or Saint Paul’s? Saintt Peter’s. You could buy indulgences. Christ could take some of the merits… Saints are people that have more good works than bad works, right? So they have earned merits that they don’t need to get into Heaven and so God can disperse some of their merits to you. And so some of the merits of Saint Francis of Assisi can be applied things. Yeah. Oh, yeah. All saints are dead, aren’t they? Well, in Catholic theology all saints are dead. In Protestant theology we’re alive or dead. 

Student: So why is it so hard to get them out…to get. 

Dr. Mounce: If you were raised in a Catholic, in a strong Catholic, this whole works thing, the condemnation that comes from being wrong, it creates a culture that’s very, it’s very difficult to hear that “Ye have been here”(King James), “Ye have been freely justified by his grace.” 

Student: That’s why the monks beat themselves? 

Dr. Mounce: I don’t know. I don’t know where that’s pummelling the body, or I don’t know where that comes from. 

Student: I was surprised you didn’t mention Martin Luther’s statement on…

Dr. Mounce: Well, I was saving it for you. Actually, I haven’t highlighted the one that says Protestantism since the time of Martin Luther; that one? In the middle of the first full paragraph, 727, “Protestantism since the time of Martin Luther has insisted that justification does not change us internally” (this is a slightly different topic), “does not change us internally, and it is not a declaration based in any way on any goodness that we have in ourselves.” So the second half of the statement is what all would agree with that. So when we are justified, it’s not because we deserve it. Is there anything that is more aggravating to you than the thought that somehow you deserve to be saved? We all deal with this? Don’t, don’t give me this, “Oh, is this your fault?” Yeah, we’re elected; had nothing to do with it.” Yeah. Let’s see how well that one works. 

Student: But also, they felt that, you know, the sacraments held…to purge, you know? 

Dr. Mounce: Right. The chapter that you’re referring to, and again I’m going to keep going back to Wayne because it’s really that good; the technical term for this is “means of grace.” Chapter 48 is “means of grace within the church.” And what a “means of grace” is, is that it is a means by which God blesses us. And so for a Protestant “means of grace” is prayer, worship, Bible study, fellowship in the church, things like that. In Catholic theology, a “means of grace” is something different. When I pray, I’m not automatically changed. I’m not automatically given faith, or whatever be the case. But there’s no change to my being when I pray that’s done, apart from my involvement in it. In Catholic theology a “means of grace” is the way in which (and this is what sacraments are), is it fundamentally changes you; it makes you holier. It doesn’t matter whether you have faith or not; it’s by actually going through the ritual that God changes you.

In Catholic theology, the sacraments are baptism (I’m on page 952 - Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction (which is last rites), Holy Orders (which would be ordination and matrimony) a marriage is a sacrament). “Catholics view these as means of salvation that make people more fit to receive justification from God. For a Protestant, these are simply ways in which God blesses us. But in Catholic theology, the means by which grace is imparted and we are changed.” 

Student: I think that this is why they also believe that the process is the one dying get the last rites. If they miss the last rites, or whatever process of missing the means of grace that they get, that they will spend time in purgatory until their sins are forgiven. And we go to these services in the Catholic Church and they’re praying for the sins of the dead. 

Dr. Mounce: Yeah. Well, there’s two different things. There’s two different things there. “Extreme Unction is Sacrament number five, popularly known as Last Rites, which is the anointing with oil that is administered to a dying person.” You ever watch MASH, the series? Father Mulcahy. It was very, very, very important to him that when a soldier was dying, he would anoint him. Why? Well, because that is a means by which God was extending grace to that person, making him more worthy to go to Heaven. So he was just living out the Catholic theology. The praying for the dead is a verse that comes out of Maccabees, which is in the Catholic Old Testament canon, but not in the Protestant. And it was a means by which you can speed up a person’s time in purgatory. I can still remember when I was a little kid, in 1963 (I was 10 years old then), when John F. Kennedy died. The priest gave a certain number of instructions to Mrs. Kennedy, Jackie Onassis, and she had to walk up the steps of the cathedral a certain number of times (I’m forgetting all the specifics), how to say a certain number of Hail Marys. They were all means by which she was going to be speeding up John F. Kennedy’s time in purgatory so he could get into Heaven. 

I remember seeing that on the news going, you know, “What, what?” Being a Protestant kid I had no idea what they were talking about. That’s where that stuff fits in. Here’s the thing we need to be careful of: make sure that people understand the justification’s based on works. I mean, “You’re supposed to stone me now?” Justification’s based on faith. All right; that Christ’s cross was sufficient to pay the penalty for the sins of all who would come in true repentance. And I’m being careful with the doctrine of election (I don’t know if you can hear me tiptoeing around that or not), and so Christ’s cross is sufficient. We respond to the Gospel call in repentance of sin and faith towards God, and in response only because of our faith, which is just a response; it’s not a work. He justifies us; he declares us legally not guilty, completely and totally and wholly not guilty. You don’t have to go to do any jail time. All right? You go get a DUI now, what’s going to happen to you? You’re going to go to jail, right? You’re going to pay the fine, but the judge is going to make sure you’ve learned your lesson. So he’s going to send you to jail for a day or so. I think in Washington, it’s a 24-hour time period, and you’re going to go see where you’re headed if you don’t learn to control your problem with drinking.

That’s not Protestant theology; it may be good law, but it’s not good theology. justification is complete and totally not guilty. Period. End of discussion. In Christ, righteousness is imputed to us. It’s made. We are righteous because of what Christ has done. 

Let me just real quickly add this and then we take a break. There’s other things that happen. Okay, this is that long list that I cover in this sermon. But the chapter on adoption and Wayne’s book is so good. All right? I really encourage you to read it. It’s chapter 37, and Wayne makes the point I had never heard of before, but his point is that God could have justified us and done nothing else. Well, he didn’t have to justify us; God could allow us all to die in our sins, and He would have remained completely justified, right? But because of his love, he chose to justify us based not on our works, but on our faith. But he chose not to, to do just that. Among other things, he chose to create a family, and to bring us into our family. My child is adopted. Part of our explanation of his adoption story is that we’re all adopted. Every last one of us is adopted into God’s family. None of us are natural children, right? (John 1) None of us are natural children. Every single person who has brothers and sisters where God is our father has been adopted into a family. And he goes through a wonderful picture of the privileges of adoption and all the things that happened. This is the legal, actually those two are legal… The adoption is relational. This is the one part of the relational component of what it is to say that we are different. Okay, that’s a lot.

And I’m only going to disagree with Wayne in one other place, Okay? So we don’t have to do this much. All right. Let’s take a ten minute break and then we’ll come back and finish this off. 

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