Mike Winger and Pastor Joel Webbin dissect theonomy, defining it as God's law encompassing moral, civil, and ceremonial aspects. They argue against antinomianism, asserting that while Christians are not under the law for salvation, they must adhere to the moral law and derive general equity from Old Testament civil codes for societal issues like public health mandates. The discussion clarifies the separation of church and state spheres, noting that the church holds spiritual keys while the state wields the sword to punish crimes but not sins. Ultimately, the dialogue suggests a post-millennial future where Christian influence transforms governments through teaching rather than direct theocratic enforcement, challenging modern secularism without mandating full Mosaic civil codes. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Mike Winger's Christian Reputation00:06:19
Hi, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
In this episode, I was very privileged to get to have a long conversation with Mike Winger.
Some of you guys are familiar with him.
He's got about half a million followers on YouTube, so you've probably heard the name.
He's got a large audience.
The reason why I invited him to this conversation is because Mike, I think, has a reputation, right?
Me and him have differences on what we talk about in this episode, but other things as well.
However, what I appreciate about Mike is that he's not woke.
He's not progressive.
He's kind of in the realm of like Elisa Chilters, if you're familiar with her.
I think a conservative Christian, holding to orthodoxy, holding to the inerrancy of scripture, those kinds of things, teaching some really good doctrinal, practical things, but also not really super conservative.
And you guys who listen to me, you know, I would be super conservative.
And I wear that as a badge of pride.
I believe that that's what the Bible teaches.
I'm not doing it just to do it.
I'm not trying to be conservative just to be conservative.
But I would be, you know, in the Doug Wilson and James White and Jeff Durbin and, you know, like, I'm over here, and guys who like us don't always like Mike, but there's a ton of Christians who are faithful and I think love the Lord who really like Mike and either don't know anything about us or think that we're extreme.
And so, what I wanted to do is I wanted to talk about theonomy, which tends to get a bad rap and tends to be viewed as an extreme Christian view and extreme doctrine.
And I wanted to talk about theonomy not just with Doug Wilson, which I've done in the past.
You can go listen, or with Jeff Durbin, which I've done in the past, or with James White, which I've done in the past, but I wanted to talk about theonomy with Mike Winger.
The guy who's not progressive, but also not super far right.
That guy.
The guy who is known, I think, has a reputation in the Christian world, at least the Christian YouTube world, of being a faithful and biblical, but also moderate Christian thinker.
And I wanted to see what Mike has to say about the anime.
If you're curious, tune in.
Big news.
Really big news.
Our next Right Response Conference is in the works.
We've got a number of things already lined up and organized.
This is what we've got so far.
The whole conference, three days long, on post millennialism and theonomy.
And the speakers Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Gary DeMar, and of course, yours truly, Pastor Joel Webbin.
We've got a great lineup.
We've got great topics.
If you want to find out dates and location and registration and anything else, go and visit our website, rightresponseconference.com.
Rightresponseconference.com.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
Hi, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Weber with Right Response Ministries, and I am very privileged and pleased to have Mike Winger as a special guest on this episode.
Mike, welcome to the show.
Well, thanks for having me on, Joel.
I'm excited to talk to you today about theonomy.
Yeah, I'm excited too.
So, the goal of this show for everybody watching is by the end of this show, Mike Winger is going to declare his allegiance as a theonomist.
He's going to invite theonomy into his heart.
And that's, no, that, I mean, that is kind of, you know, in a joking sense, I believe it's right.
And so, with all things that I believe are right, I certainly want to be as persuasive as possible and convincing other people with things that I think are biblically true.
But the biggest thing that I wanted to do in inviting Mike on the show was Mike has a reputation.
You have a reputation, Mike, I think, within the Christian world and especially within the Christian YouTube world, which I'm kind of learning this world.
It's a very interesting world.
But within this framework of all these people, I think they view you as he's, you know, you've been very outspoken against progressive, you know, Christianity, liberal Christianity.
So, you're known as being thoroughly orthodox, but I think a lot of, in the same breath, a lot of people see you as being reasonable.
So they're like, Mike Wiener, he's not wacky, he's not woke, he's not progressive, but he's also, he's also, he's the kind of guy that I could, you know, that I could get behind.
He's not extreme or he's not, you know, so I think you're viewed as kind of this moderate conservative instead of hard, you know, biblical thinker.
And so I wanted to run some of these.
Ideas by you, these doctrines that I've embraced over the last few years and understanding God's law, and just have my audience, your audience, be able to hear your take.
Does Mike Winger give this a check mark, or does Mike Winger, the moderate, reasonable, yet also biblical Christian, say, no, that's extreme and way too far?
So that's kind of my idea for this episode.
Yeah.
Let me share a few things, my own little caveats.
Yeah, go for it.
One is I don't have a problem with signing up for something if it's like that seems solidly biblical.
Sometimes, though, someone's going to give me a thought, and I go, Well, I have to just, I have to marinate on that.
Like, I have to spend time on that.
Even in my own studies, there's things where I'm convinced of something upon first studying it, and then I think, Well, I'm not going to teach it yet.
Like, I need to just sit with this, and I think of other scriptures that are related, or I see it from a different angle, and then I go, Boy, I'm glad I was patient.
So, I want to be very patient about that.
But also, you know, I don't know much about theonomy, and it's not really anywhere near, you know, my scheduled study times.
Like, I've got so many other things I'm going to cover.
So, this seemed like a great way to sort of Learn about it a little bit.
Almost, honestly, this is kind of fun for me.
Like, I'm going to, for once, I'm not being asked to make a case for something.
I'm just like listening to somebody else provide their explanation and some of your case for this sort of stuff.
And so, to me, that's an interesting discussion, interesting theological chat we can have.
But I will share with you my unfiltered thoughts about that stuff.
So, I'm not going to try and play the fence.
I hate when people do that, right?
When they won't tell you what they really think.
So, I won't do that.
Cool.
Thanks.
All right.
Well, so, Okay, so theonomy, just for our viewers, your viewers, everybody who's not familiar with the topic, theonomy is just a combination of two words, theos and namos.
Namos meaning law, theos, so it's two Latin words.
God's Moral Law Explained00:14:51
It's God's law.
And so I would advocate and say that every, not just a mere professing Christian or a progressive Christian or somebody who, but every genuine regenerate Christian, born again, true blue Christian, delights in the law of God.
Now, you have to humor me a little bit here because you probably are aware I'm a Calvinist.
And I know that you're not last time I checked, but you've been respectful towards that doctrine.
But I am.
So I'm going to look at that.
I'm going to say, all right, once saved, always saved, security of the believer.
The one point in the tulip that everyone in the Christian world likes, the one that they'll borrow, not so much limited atonement, but perseverance of the saints.
So if someone's saved, they're not losing their salvation, and they have this new heart, malleable heart, softened, receptive to the things of God, the heart of stone taken away, and that the Christian, not only are they secure in their salvation, but they have a genuine desire to be pleasing to the Lord.
Right?
And Jesus says, if you love me, you will obey my commandments.
So I'm working with the first premise being that theonomy is God's law.
God's law is a good thing.
It's not only the right thing, but David delights in the law of God, that it's good, that it lends towards blessing and not just eternal blessing in the life to come, but that I would have this qualification.
Ordinarily, obedience to God's law, outward obedience to the law of God, will bring even temporal, intangible blessings in this life to varying degrees.
I say ordinarily because It does depend what context you're in, right?
You can obey God's law in North Korea, and it may not bring some of those temporal blessings.
But in a nation like ours that has remnants of Christianity and certain freedom and certain measures of justice within our system and those kinds of things, the person who applies the principles of Christ, even if they reject the person of Christ, they're unregenerate, but they simply outwardly live according to God's laws.
God will not be mocked.
A man reaps what he sows.
A person who casts his seven bread upon the water, there's a return, there's a tangible benefit.
So I see the law of God not only as the right, morally right.
Thing, but it's something that lends towards prosperity and blessing to varying degrees ordinarily in this life.
And the regenerate Christian desires to please the Lord and sees that as a good thing.
Thoughts?
I guess for me to understand what you're saying here, I think I wanted to know what you mean by the phrase God's law and maybe some examples of what that includes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And how that is the same or different from, say, the law of Moses.
Right.
Great question.
So when I say God's law, I'm primarily in mind, I'm thinking of a woman going.
Outside of the camp for seven days when she's on.
No, I'm not.
No, so thank you.
Thank you because this is why it's helpful to have you on here.
So I don't just start.
I know I'm being super basic.
I'm being super duper basic.
That's helpful.
Let's just start there and then we'll move forward.
You're absolutely right.
So I'm coming from a Reformed tradition.
I'm a Reformed Baptist and confessionally Reformed, not just Calvinistic Baptist, a Baptist who has adopted Reformed soteriology view of salvation, but confessionally Reformed is what I mean when I say Reformed.
So There's Westminster Reform guys, that's on the Presbyterian side of the aisle, lots of great brothers there.
I'm on the Baptistic side of the aisle, Reformed Baptist, 1689 Confession.
In the Confession on the Law of God, what you see both in the Westminster and the 1689 is that the law has three uses within the Reformed understanding and three divisions.
And the three divisions of the law would be ceremonial, civil, and moral.
Moral being synonymous with the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.
And so we find the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20.
Obviously, they're reiterated in multiple places throughout scripture, but the Ten Commandments would be God's moral law, and the Reformed tradition is going to see God's moral law as eternal.
That the law of God, in terms of his moral law, did not enter into human history merely through Moses at Mount Sinai on tablets of stone, but it actually is eternal, and it first enters human history.
It is eternal in the mind of God.
God is law keeping himself.
But it comes in human history in the garden with Adam and Eve.
And so the reform perspective is that to Adam was given 11 commandments, not merely one.
He was given 10 moral commandments written on his heart and one positive precept, in addition to that, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
So that if Adam did not eat of the fruit, but he murdered his wife Eve, the covenant of works between God and Adam still would have been broken.
Any thoughts on that?
So when you say I'm a theonomist, is.
I'm getting, I'm just not clear on how to distinguish your current explanation from what every Christian already holds.
Right.
That's what I'm trying to do here, is to show how common it is.
Go ahead.
Let's tease it out a little bit, right?
So, would you suggest that a theonomist is a person who believes that Christians should obey God's moral laws?
Because that obviously would be something that would be indistinguishable from probably every Christian group out there.
Yes.
So, there's obviously.
In writing.
Yes, there is.
So there is more specificity.
But to start with that point, you're right.
Every Christian says we should obey the Ten Commandments, but not really.
And I'll push back just a little bit there.
Antinomianism, I think, is one of the most pervasive false doctrines in the church today.
So many people are afraid of, oh, that's a Pharisee or legalism.
Legalism is one ditch on the side of the road, antinomianism is the other.
And I think that American evangelicalism at large is far more frequently falling into this ditch of antinomianism than it is legalism.
So, that being said, I think sadly, What I've described so far, you're right, is really not some special brand of Christianity known as theonomy, but it's really just Christianity.
Sadly, though, I think even just Christianity has become a little bit few and far between these days.
But I'll add to that with the Ten Commandments, even within faithful Orthodox Christianity, there would certainly be a spectrum of debate about the Sabbath, the fourth commandment.
Right.
And I guess then we're getting down to really saying God's moral law.
Is inclusive of the Ten Commandments.
Not just that there's overlap, but it's actually inclusive.
These commandments, now I'm trying to think about how you expressed it.
You said those Ten Commandments were known to Adam.
That they're eternal, known in the mind of God first, and then in human history, in the created order, those Ten Commandments didn't just come to Israel at the moment of Mount Sinai and Moses, but they were written on Adam's heart.
And we would look at Romans chapter 2, Romans 1, natural revelation.
We can see certain attributes of God can be known, clearly known, even to the Gentile.
The unregenerate person by what he has made.
So that's natural revelation.
But natural law, and I'm not using it in the John Lockean kind of way, but natural law in a theological, biblical way, that's not natural revelation, Romans 1, natural law, Romans 2.
That the Gentiles are a law unto themselves, Paul says, because their own conscience would testify against them, even if they've never received a single page of the Torah or anything like that.
They instinctively know that murder is wrong and therefore are morally culpable.
And but you would include the entirety of the 10 commandments.
I think this is where maybe me and you, at least the starting point, would be different.
I would say there's overlap with the 10 commandments, so like murder, theft, um, even idolatry.
Um, I think that because God is revealed in creation, right, that it would be a natural understanding, an innate human understanding that we'd be accountable for, just as scripture says, they're without excuse, right?
Romans one.
So, so like you know, idolatry, but when you get to say the Sabbath, probably the biggest dividing point, so maybe we could talk about that a bit, but yeah, um, my view is that the 10 commandments were not.
There overlap the moral law.
They don't represent God's sort of overarching moral law, such that Adam would have known.
And I'm willing to change my mind, but such that Adam would have known that he was supposed to rest on the Sabbath.
Yeah, I think so.
I think Adam would hold that he did.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
I'm sorry.
Okay.
No, no, go ahead.
But this helps.
Here's like a point where, oh, so there isn't just overlap with the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments is maybe even the pinnacle representation of God's moral law.
Yes.
And it's all inclusively necessary and known to all mankind intuitively or in some natural fashion.
Yep.
That would be the reformed view is that the Ten Commandments is synonymous with the moral law.
It is the moral law.
And to further confirm what you're saying, the Ten Commandments is, we would use the phrase summary law.
And so basically, so you have ceremonial law, civil law, moral law.
The civil law that God gives to Israel, both the Westminster and the 1689, would say that the civil law was.
Uniquely given to Israel in that dispensation, and that doesn't make you a dispensationalist, but just that time period under that old covenant given to the nation state of Israel, and it was unique to Israel, and that it has been abrogated.
Now, the word abrogated is helpful because in all three divisions of the law, moral, which again I'm saying is synonymous with the Ten Commandments, and that the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, is summary law of all the morals that God has given to people and written on their hearts in every time period, every tribe, every tongue, every language, that God has given his moral law, which is the Ten Commandments, a summary law for what God demands of people.
The thing about the civil law, that's moral law, Ten Commandments, that's eternal, that comes before the nation state of Israel is organized and it lasts.
It's still here today.
Now, Jesus, what's important to understand is that Jesus fulfilled all three divisions of the law, the whole of the law, moral, ceremonial, and civil.
But the moral law, it's important to understand Jesus fulfilling the law and Jesus abrogating the law are distinct.
Those are two different things.
So the Reformed tradition, 1689 in Westminster, would say that Jesus actually abrogated, he fulfilled, but also abrogated the civil code given to Israel.
But then it specifically says in the confessions, the general equity.
Still remaining.
And that's what the Apostle Paul does.
And I appreciate the Apostle Paul doing this as a pastor who is paid vocationally.
He's taking a civil code about oxen do not muzzle the ox when he treads the grain.
But then he takes that civil code and he gets down to the general equity, the moral fabric, the blueprint morality underneath it, the principle.
And he says, and this applies to why you should pay someone if they're working hard and preaching the word of God.
And so that's the Apostle Paul saying, okay, it's not a one to one ratio of the civil code in Israel is now still the civil code in America.
I don't have a border around my roof.
But what you're getting at in this understanding, and this is kind of a general equity theonomist, so there's a spectrum of theonomists disagree, but a general equity theonomist, what he's trying to say is this that the moral law of God makes sense, it's eternal, it's right, and it's good, but also even the civil law of God is not arbitrary.
And I think there's so many Christians today.
That thinks that, oh, you know, okay, maybe the Ten Commandments.
I don't know about the Fourth Commandment or the Sabbath, but all these civil codes, God was just kind of a stickler.
He gave so many different rules and regulations to Israel.
And what they're saying, although they may not verbalize it exactly, but they really, in their heart of hearts, think that God is arbitrary in his law giving.
And so what we're saying is, no, no, no, there was a general equity behind every single one of those hundreds of civil codes.
And the one to one ratio of apply that civil code in Israel and now apply it in America, that's not how we do it, but there is a reason.
A reason behind each civil code, and that is eternal.
And the reason why the general equity of the civil code still stands today is because the general equity of every civil code is actually one of the Ten Commandments.
It is the moral law.
It would seem to me that that would create a lot of room for varied interpretations of how government should be run in that realm of, oh, you know, here's the one to one correspondence of what I think is the principle behind this law.
Although I would say, let me just say, here's some things I totally agree on, right?
Jesus fulfilled the entirety of the law.
I even agree that it can be helpful to talk about civil, ceremonial, you know, these different branches of the law and moral.
But I also would see them as overlapping in all sorts of ways, and probably a lot of people would, I imagine.
But the, oh, and I agree with the principle.
I do agree that with the Old Testament, we do principalize things.
We don't turn them into rules that we follow today in the same fashion, but we do try to understand the reason behind it.
And so, like, if So, for example, if the reason behind the ceremonial law was to point to Christ, well, then the reason is to point to Christ.
There you go.
If the reason behind it was to prevent abuses and the manipulation and abuse of the powerful over the weak or something, then we recognize that that's a principle we should incorporate in our culture and stuff like that.
But I don't try to do it one to one exactly.
Personally, I don't know that that's just because it's done sometimes, does that mean it becomes this sort of thing where I do go throughout the entire Old Testament law and I basically write new laws for a government?
Trying to find one to one correspondence of something from each law.
Which is kind of what King Alfred did in Great Britain.
That's where we get the whole concept of case law first originated with King Alfred.
And then later on, that ultimately became the bedrock and the fabric behind the American experiment was this case law system.
And what I mean by that, the civil code given to Israel, we would say is case law.
The Ten Commandments, the moral law, we would say is summary law.
So you have this big summary that's the general equity, the Big principle of God's morality, his standard, his transcendent, universal, holy standard for all people in all times and all places.
And then case law from the summary law, case law that has its root in this transcendent moral law.
And so, in that sense, it's universal, but it does have particular applications based off of culture and time and place and technology, right?
Civil Law and Universal Principles00:02:22
So, a precipice around the roof, people say, well, we don't do that in America.
And I would say, well, wait a second.
I don't know many two story houses with a balcony.
That don't have a border.
And the only reason we don't have the border on the roof is because we don't hang out on the roof.
In Israel, they did hang out.
You know what I mean?
But we still have the principle of high up places where someone can fall, need some kind of walling to esteem human life.
And the principle, the general equity, roots back in terms of the Ten Commandments.
Primarily, that would be the sixth commandment Thou shalt not murder, stated in the positive sense, Thou shalt esteem and protect the sanctity of human life created in the image of God.
And we could apply that even to our technology.
So getting a Same transcendent principle, universal principle, but with relevant and differing applications based off of things such as technology and cultures, we could talk about speed limits or seatbelts.
Now, I would bifurcate speed limits and seatbelts because seatbelts, I think that if I'm driving in a car by myself, I think that I have a right not to wear a seatbelt.
Now, I do wear a seatbelt because I'm a law abiding citizen, and that's just a certain level that I would say technically is tyranny, but I don't have to stick it to the man every single day of my life.
There are some things that I can just play along.
You know, and be submissive in that regard.
And it doesn't go against my conscience or anything like that or cause me to compromise my faith in Christ.
But the speed limit is different than the safety belt because the speed limit is protecting others, right?
And so, just like a precipice on your roof.
And so, anyways, my point is a varied application based off of time and place and technology and culture, but a transcendent universal principle underneath.
So, for now, I just want to kind of understand and comprehend the view, and then maybe I can offer some.
Some pushback, great, yeah, yeah, great, you know, in ways that would help me understand it even better, or maybe understand it where the biblical justifications that you'd see as biblical justifications.
So, first, just understanding um, so I see the 10 commandments as like kind of verbatim, like this is should be enshrined not only in the hearts of every Christian, but in every government, yeah, because that's that's a layer that's in here.
We haven't, oh, you haven't really pointed it out, but right, in every government should have the 10 commandments as part of their laws, yes, sir, and yeah, I don't see them, okay, and in addition to that.
Moral Reasons Behind Cleansing Laws00:04:32
There's then, let's look at the rest of the law outside the Ten Commandments.
We're going to say the civil law, we have principles we can draw from that.
We're going to say the ceremonial laws, that is stuff that is fulfilled in Christ and points to Christ.
And we're probably not going to find principles or at least as many.
Right.
So, with the ceremonial law, I would say that they're so, and this is what's difficult, right?
So, I think the three division of the law phrase, that language, three divisions of law, is vital and necessary and helpful for the most part.
It falls apart at some level.
It's not.
Perfect language because, okay, so ceremonial.
So, for instance, there are certain ceremonial laws that I've got some theonomic friends that were using that as part of their biblical argument against when it came to some of the civil tyranny that we saw during the last two years related to COVID.
And so, some of the forced lockdowns or being quarantined and these kinds of things pointing to certain.
Cleansing laws that are technically actually ceremonial laws.
The priest has to go and look at the house and declare it clean or not.
And it's a ceremonial law.
It's actually dealing with because why does the priest do it?
Why doesn't Fauci do it?
Well, one, the priest you could probably trust more than Fauci.
But beyond that, it's because it's spiritual, it's religious, it's a cleansing ceremonial law.
But in it, though, there also is the God who gives that law has moral reasons.
And the God who gives that law also understands leprosy and understands.
Science and disease and pathogens and the way that they spread.
And so you can actually look at some of these laws and say, but is there something from the Most High God that we can learn who understands sickness better than we do and blah, blah, blah?
But then again, it's like, but how far can you stretch that?
Because this was technically a ceremonial law and it may be good for leprosy.
Is it good for COVID and those kinds of things?
So, anyways, I say all that to agree with you in saying that it does get a bit hairy at times because the three divisions of the law I think is helpful.
And I think it covers 98% of most laws that we can look at in the Old Testament.
It's like, yeah, that clearly is a civil code.
Yes, that clearly is a transcendent moral principle.
Yes, that clearly is, you know, like a woman on her period, but those kinds of things.
But then there also is some of the moral reasons, like, you know, back in the day, if you're not good, if you don't have some of the sanitation and high heat cooking mechanisms and all the things that we have, then yeah, pork will kill you, you know?
And so maybe, you know what I mean?
So there are moral reasons.
But these dietary restrictions and cleansing laws are first and foremost ceremonial.
And we're saying Jesus fulfilled that.
And when we use the word abrogated, just for the record, on the ceremonial law, there is a sense in which some theonomists like Rush Dooney and these guys say, well, there is a sense in which the ceremonial law, it's not like God changed, right?
Behold, I am the Lord, I changeth not.
The ceremonial law continues in the sense that God is a thrice holy God and he demands that his people be clean.
But the reason why it is abrogated in a sense, it is effectively abrogated.
Is because, not because God's cleansing laws no longer apply, but because Christ was such a sufficient and perfect final sacrifice and such a superior high priest, not in the order of Aaron, but in the order of Melchizedek, forever high priest.
And because Christ has entered the heavenly temple, not the earthly temple made with human hands, but the substance of these shadows that we saw in the Old Covenant, because Christ has fulfilled the ceremonial laws so well and so finally, The ceremonial laws, in a sense, we could say do continue.
We just don't have to do anything about them anymore because they've all been done, if that makes sense.
So, I think I understand.
Yeah.
So, okay.
Keep me on track.
I feel like you're helping bring us back to, okay, but what about theonomy, Joel?
This is my learning process of course, which I just kind of keep walking around an issue until I go, I can put it all in compartments and understand it better.
So you've got the moral law, which is 100% of the Ten Commandments, is an essential part of the moral law.
But you would say there's moral laws that spill out into other things that are in throughout the law.
Ceremonial Law Fulfilled in Christ00:02:28
Absolutely, like to lie with a beast.
Right.
That's not one of the Ten Commandments.
It has its root ultimately, and thou shalt not commit adultery, the seventh commandment, but it's not specifically one of the Ten Commandments that you can't lie with a beast.
Yeah.
Good example.
So, yeah, but that would be an example.
And then you have these, but it seems like that whole area of, for theonomists, would be this very fuzzy area.
Cause if you were just following the law the way the Jews did, it'd just be really straightforward.
Right.
I mean, even, even, even there, they historically made this radically complicated, but.
But it would be fairly straightforward from a basic perspective, right?
When you're not trying to like parse difficult cases, when you're just looking at the basics, it's like, yeah, it's all right there.
I just do exactly what it says.
It'd be straightforward, but hard because there's so many.
Oh, yeah.
But simple in the sense that it could all be easily known and wouldn't require any serious thought.
Right.
Yeah.
Now, what do you guys do with, for example, a law about Israel or about the people who are under the law traveling to Jerusalem every year for various feasts and And feasts in general, what's your perspective on that?
So, feasts, you know, seven main feasts in Israel's annual calendar, the Feast of Booths, you know, and then you have the Day of Atonement and Passover and all these things.
We would say all that is belonging to the ceremonial law.
So, it's been fulfilled in Christ.
So, we would say that Christ has brought us near.
Like every single one of those things, we could look and say, and here's the deeper truth.
That's the shadow.
Here's the substance.
That's the shadow.
So, like, I need to travel, you know, this Mecca pilgrimage, you know, to go to Jerusalem, the holy city.
What we have entered, we've been seated with Christ in heavenly places.
He has brought us near.
We can now boldly approach the throne, not just the throne of David in Jerusalem at a temple, but the throne of God because it's a throne of grace now, no longer any condemnation.
So, all those kinds of things feasts, booths, day of atonement, dove offerings, grain offerings, and cleansing rituals and practices and dietary restrictions.
Christ himself even said we have that parenthetical statement in the gospel narratives it is not what goes into a man's mouth that defiles him, but what comes out of his mouth.
And thus, He declared all foods clean.
And then we have a reiteration of that, speaking about the Gentiles, but also reiterating the basic, you know, the surface level principle of dietary restrictions being removed with Acts chapter 10 and Peter, you know, and the sheet from heaven take and eat, kill and eat.
Not Under the Law of Moses00:14:43
So, yeah, so that would, we would place that underneath the ceremonial category.
Okay.
And circumcision, also ceremonial?
Yep.
Circumcision would be, yes, that would be ceremonial.
Again, So, 98% of this three division of the law, I think, is really helpful, really accurate.
But there is this, no pun intended, but there's with circumcision that bleeds over a little bit, that there's some of the moral is over here and this and that.
And so, again, there may be some good sanitation reasons, right?
So, it is first and foremost circumcision.
What category?
It's a ceremonial deal.
It's been fulfilled in Christ and abrogated.
So, no, so you're not in sin if you don't circumcise your son.
Which I'm about to, we're about to have our fourth child, my first boy, and we plan to circumcise him, but not so that we can be pleasing to the Lord, but simply because that's what I know and that's my tradition.
And I think there's some sanitary practices in that, and that's just what we're going to do.
So, yeah.
Okay.
And then let's, let me ask you a question.
Would you say, and I know this is going to be like 101 stuff to you.
So, no, it's great.
It's great.
But again, it just helps just.
Just kind of asking and hearing you talk helps me understand this stuff better.
What would you say about the phrase, we are not under the law?
Would you agree with that phrase?
Absolutely.
It's a Bible phrase.
I agree with it.
I agree with it.
And then how do you parse that out, like with your perspective that we actually, in some sense, we're under God's law, right?
Which is reflected in the law of Israel throughout its various parts.
So, how do you parse that?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And that one gets brought up pretty often.
We're not under the law.
My friend actually just texted me today about being.
So, 1 Corinthians chapter 9, because he was asking me this question.
1 Corinthians chapter 9, verse 21.
And I know that's not the exact text you're thinking of, but I think the principle is there and I think it's a helpful text.
So, let's look at 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verse 21.
I'm grabbing it.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
I'm using the ESV, verse 21.
Let's back it.
We'll just start with 19.
So, for though I am free from all, and he's talking about from all men, not all commandments at this point, but the all, I think, is referring to people and the certain customs and traditions and regulations they may have.
For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all that I might win.
More of them to the Jews, I became as a Jew in order to win Jews, and I think he's talking about the Mosaic law there.
I think he's talking about even ceremonial laws, recognizing I'm not actually under those laws, but I'm going to behave as though I am, as not to offend that I might actually win Jews.
That they wouldn't be able to so easily, before even hearing the gospel proclamation, write me off as a blasphemer or a profaner.
I'm going to play ball a little bit so that I can actually make a persuasive gospel proclamation be heard to those under the law.
And I think that's just reiterated to the Jews.
And now he's just saying again, I think, to the Jews, but saying it another way, aka those guys who are under the law, I became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law.
So Paul just said in verse 20, he said, To the ones who are under the law, aka Judaism, the Jews, I became, I behaved as though I were under the law, that I might be persuasive and win some of them.
But now, verse 21, he says, To those outside the law, I think he's now talking about Gentiles, I became as one outside of the law.
But then notice, this is so cool.
In the parenthetical statement here, he says, Not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside of the law.
So Paul just said, Though not being myself under the law, verse 20.
And then he says, Not being outside of the law, but under the law of Christ.
So right there, we have, I think that that goes to my argument of divisions of the law.
There's at least.
Two different kinds of laws here, and maybe you could argue three law of God and law of Christ.
Is there a distinction there between those two?
But you have this one law that doesn't give us a law of blank.
It just says under the law, verse 20.
And Paul is not underneath that law.
But then there's this higher law, transcendent law of God that he says, I am under.
And I would argue that that is synonymous with the law of Christ, that the law of Christ is the law of God.
And I think most specifically when he says, well, then why just say law of Christ or say law of God?
I think that what the apostle is doing is he's saying the law of God and he's speaking of the moral law.
The Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, Exodus 20, when he says Law of Christ, I think he's referring primarily to Christ saying, when he says the greatest commandment, Matthew 22, 37 through 40, where that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second greatest commandment is like it, that you should love your neighbor as yourself.
And again, within Reformed thought and other traditions, Lutheran and other traditions as well, they would say that these two commandments, the greatest and second greatest commandment, love God and love neighbor, that Christ gives, are really just two tables of the Ten Commandments.
So the first four of the Ten Commandments, Deal with how to love the Lord your God.
And the next six of the Ten Commandments, starting with Commandment 5 through 10, deal with how to love your neighbor as yourself.
And I think that's what Paul's getting at, is he's saying, So I'm not under the law in one kind of law.
So there's some kind of law that Paul's not under, but he's going to subject himself anyways for the sake of winning the Jews.
And then there's this other law that when he's with the Gentiles, those who do not have that one kind of law that he's actually not under, he's still going to behave, even among the Gentiles, as though he's under this.
Other law, because there's one law he's always under, no matter what, and that is the law of God, which is also synonymous with the law of Christ.
And I think he's talking about the Ten Commandments, the moral law.
I think he's bifurcating the ceremonial law and the moral law.
That's my point.
And so when he says we're not under the law, the text that you're referring to, I would say two things.
One, I think there's a reference to ceremonial law, but in that text, not so much.
In that text, I think, and if you can find that text for me, we can look at it.
If I could find a text that was what?
The one that you first asked, I'm not under the law, I think there's another text.
This is Romans 7, I think, I believe.
But in that text, I don't think the primary interpretation of what the apostle is getting at, I'm pretty sure it's Paul, I don't think he's actually saying, We're not under the law, meaning the ceremonial code given to Israel.
I think in that one, he's actually saying the moral law.
But I think in that sense, he's talking about being under the law in terms of as judge, that we're no longer under the judgment of the law.
So I think that in that instance, he's saying, We no longer, because Christ has been judged for us, Christ has been judged as a lawbreaker, as our substitute, as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
So we're no longer under law, but under grace.
So, in terms of God's view of us, in terms of God's perspective of me, I'm righteous.
Right?
Jesus says, You will not enter the kingdom unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees.
And any Protestant, truly regenerate Christian, if we ask them, they may not know this answer, but this is the correct answer.
If we said, Does your righteousness surpass that of the Pharisees?
The correct answer is, Yes, sir, it does.
Infinitely so.
Why?
Because I've been clothed in the perfect, pure, spotless righteousness of Jesus Christ by grace alone through faith.
And so, you know what I mean?
So I think Paul's saying, I think that's what he's getting at with we're no longer under the law as our judge, but we're under grace.
Christ has been judged for us.
But I don't think he's saying, and therefore the law has no relevance.
So here's an interesting thing.
Boy, I wish I had 10 minutes to form this thought before saying it out loud.
Okay, so, you know, there's kind of a hermeneutical principle of like, you know, just interpreting scripture, of interpreting a word is that you don't want to add, you want to make sure you keep the meaning of the word, what was intended by the author.
One way to do that is to, you know, maybe make a mistake on that is to add more specificity than what they meant.
That's true.
So, like, okay, being a Calvary Chapel guy, my whole history has been very much Calvary Chapel.
They did this with the word dunamis all the time, right?
And the Greek dunamis, which is just power, right?
You know, power will come upon you.
And I heard, and I don't hear it anymore.
Guys, I don't hear them continue to do it, but there was like a season where I kept hearing it from every pastor.
And they'd be like, Dunamis is where we get our word dynamite.
They mean dynamite power.
And of course, this is a big blunder.
A, dynamite didn't exist just because it sounds like the word dynamite, or even if the word dynamite comes from it hundreds and hundreds of years later.
It's not relevant to the first century meaning.
And it just means ability.
So I remember looking up every usage of the word dunamis in the New Testament and going, hey, it just means ability.
Like you could be like, my wife's like, Do you have the dunamis to open this jar of pickles?
And I'm like, yeah, sure.
It's not dynamite power, right?
It's just ability.
Anyway.
All that's a good example.
Yeah.
With the 1 Corinthians 9 passage, it seems like you take law in the first instance when he says, to the Jews, he became as a Jew that I might win the Jews, to those who were under the law, as under the law.
And in there, you're taking law in that very Jewish sense of you're under the law of Moses in its totality, in its plain sense.
And then.
The next passage to those who are without law, as without law, not being without law toward God.
And that one right there, the not being without law toward God, you're interpreting as moral law, which is a segment or a part of that Old Testament law.
Yeah.
So that's a pretty specific interpretation of that phrase, law.
Yeah.
That it is.
That I'm a little suspect of being.
So what translation are you using?
Because the way you just read that parenthetical statement in verse 21 is different than the ESP that I use.
Sorry, that was.
I didn't even realize I was on New King James.
But if I look at the ESV, he says, though, not myself, where are we here?
Oh, not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ.
Now, what's interesting is in the Greek, there is just anamas.
One word that means like without law, meaning like to negate, and namas, which is law, right?
So, which you know, of course.
I'm saying this for the sake of everybody listening.
It's interesting that in the Greek it's that.
He says, To those who were an animas, I became as animas, not being animas theu, right?
Not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ.
So the only time it's a different word is when it's under the law of Christ, which is ennamas, means like in the law of Christ.
And when Paul elsewhere talks about the law of Christ, he seems to be talking, and we don't have time for the whole study, but it seems to be talking, to my knowledge, about the law of love one another.
And you mentioned this connects to you were thinking along these lines, I think, in some sense, because you mentioned like the two tablets of the law.
Right.
Love and love.
Yeah, when Jesus says to love God and love your neighbor, and this, this, it seems he was saying this, this encompasses the law and the prophets, like everything, the heart of all the instructions.
He definitely says that.
Yeah.
Matthew 22, verse 40, specifically, right after saying, here's the greatest commandment, the same greatest commandment.
And then he says, all the law and the prophets.
You're right.
All the law and the prophets.
Depend on these two commandments.
Which is to say, my point in all that, and this is why I wish I had a few minutes to figure out how to explain this better, is that seems to be when Jesus says loving is the law.
I don't think he meant the Ten Commandments is sort of this eternal law because it represents these two sides of loving God and loving man.
He was saying something bigger and more broad than that.
And so I don't want to narrow the law of Christ phrase down so that I interpret it as.
Paul's saying, I'm still under the moral law of the Old Testament found in the commands to Moses.
I think he meant, I'm under this love your neighbor as yourself, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength.
Right.
Which is more broad and less specific than that.
Gotcha.
And so the reason why I would push back on that, that totally makes sense.
And the reason why I would disagree with that is so, for instance, just the last two years would be a great example.
Love your neighbor, love your neighbor, love your neighbor, love your neighbor, said by Francis Collins and said by Tim Keller and said by everybody in the church.
And, and, So, this is what I would say.
G.K. Chesterton, he had a quote where he said, You know, if man will not have 10 commandments, he will have 10,000.
And so, you're saying, I don't want to narrow it down, but I think that's part of the beauty of the Lord and the mercy of the Lord to us is that the Lord actually does narrow these things down.
And that's the beauty of his word and specificity and clarity and simply divine revelation is that God doesn't leave us to the whims of man's interpretation and anything that and everything that could possibly.
And so, what happens, my point is this I think we need.
I think it cannot be so broad as love, God, love people, right?
Every church is a billboard, you know, love, God, love people.
And that's a good billboard in the sense that it's a biblical thing.
Love, God, love people is, they're talking about what Jesus said love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself.
So that comes from Christ, that comes from the scripture.
But the question that we all experienced with COVID and the question that we were experienced with Black Lives Matter, right?
And our summer of love, you know, that we had in 2020 and these kinds of things, the big question is who gets to define love?
Has someone done this before?
Has someone specified love?
And so you were using the word narrow, and I'm with you in the sense that, yeah, you know, we don't want to truncate love.
We don't want to, God is love, and we don't want to truncate, you know, God.
There's an infinite element of love, but there's also, and I guess I just wouldn't use the word narrow.
I would use the word specify or clarify or direction.
Tension Between Love and Law00:08:02
The law of God, that's one of the uses of the law of God.
So the three divisions, but the three uses is the law of God, in one sense, it functions as a mirror.
It reveals to us God's holiness by way of consequence, our sinfulness, and therefore our need for a savior.
So, Charles Spurgeon said, A man will never appreciate the beauty of Christ unless he first comes to see his need for Christ.
So, that's the first use of the law the law does not save.
No man will be saved by works done unto the law, but it drives us to Christ because it reveals sin.
That's Romans 7.
But then, another use of the law is it actually has a common grace use, even for unbelievers, that the law of God restrains outward manifestations of evil, insofar as the law of God is applied and legislated by just governments.
When Romans 13 is happening correctly, that the civil magistrate actually is functioning correctly, As God's deacon, as a servant of God, and he's actually a terror not to those who do good, like a tyrant, but he's actually a terror to those who do evil and rewards those who do righteous, then even unregenerate, unbelieving people will out in terms of outwardly, they will outwardly conform to the standards of God's law.
It won't change their hearts, it won't save them.
So that's another use.
So it's like the law of God is a shield or a mirror, it reveals our need for a savior.
A shield, it has a common grace function, restraining outward manifestations in society.
But the third use, David says, it's a lamp unto my feet.
And so I think that the 10 commandments is, in some sense, it's shedding light and directing us, showing us the path, a light unto our path, giving us not narrowing the infinite element of that is God's love, but specifying, clarifying, and directing.
I would want to use the word directing us of, okay, I know I need to love God and I know I need to love neighbor.
And I've got everybody and their mom.
For the last two years, telling me that love your neighbor is 100% summed up in wearing a mask.
God, do you have any verse in the Bible that could help me understand?
You know what I mean?
And that's why I want to go to the Ten Commandments and say, okay, Commandment number six, don't harm your neighbor.
Okay, so I don't need to be a fool.
But also, Commandment number nine, don't bear false witness and scare the entire public with a virus that actually isn't nearly as dangerous as people are thinking.
You know what I mean?
Without trying to weigh in on all of the stuff you just mentioned.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Go ahead.
Are you suggesting that I wouldn't have the tools to navigate the question of what do you mean by love unless I'm a theonomist?
Well, so again, and we got to get there.
I'm sorry.
But that gets into, you know, what is just the staple definition of a theonomist?
No, I think that you can define love.
I think that you can, well, God defines love.
And so as a Christian, you can agree with God's definition of love without being a theonomist in the way that.
The label has been coined in the last few decades by guys like Gary North, guys like Greg Bonson, guys like Rush Dooney, RJ Rush Dooney.
But like I said at the beginning of the episode, I do believe that every Christian, if they're genuinely born again, desired to please the Lord, if you love me, you obey my commandments, every Christian is a theonomist in the sense that it's theos, namos, it's God's law.
We recognize that God is holy, he has a law, and that we should keep it.
And generally, throughout Christian tradition for 2,000 years, People have held to the Ten Commandments being applicable in all times and all places for all people.
And we had them on our courthouses here in America.
You know, like that was a pretty, that society, even non Christians, should follow that.
And I think so.
No, I'm not saying you don't know how to love if you're not a theonomist.
But I'm saying that as a non theonomist, if we're defining theonomy in the way that Rush Dooney would be a theonomist, but if we're defining theonomy in this loser general equity theonomy that I'm more in the tribe of, although I, I'm kind of in between because I like a lot of Rush Denny stuff.
But if we're in that sense that every Christian is a theonomist because we love God's law, that guy is still going to use, I think, the second table of law, commandments number five through 10, to flesh out what it looks like to love neighbor.
And I think you do that, I guess, is my argument.
I think.
Well, yeah, I don't see why.
Let me just say this I don't know why this would be a point of discussion between a theonomist and a non theonomist because we both see that there's lessons to learn from the law in its various places in the Old Testament, whether it's the Ten Commandments or in other, throughout the laws.
So we both see that.
I don't really know that.
I'm just, I'm a little puzzled as to why I would need to be a theonomist to answer the question of how to love my neighbor.
So, but let me just so I don't have this point lost, all I was saying was 1 Corinthians 9, in my perhaps slightly unintentionally convoluted, because I'm just thinking off the top of my head as we go here, was that if this is meant to be a proof text to demonstrate the use of the word law to refer specifically to being under the moral law found in the Ten Commandments and in the moral laws throughout the Old Testament,
if that's what that, in the theonomist sense in particular, Then I think that that is pushing a definition on a term that doesn't seem consistent to me.
I'd be open to somebody working through that and say producing content to explain how the law of Christ does mean theonomy.
But there's this element of theonomy that's totally different that I want to talk about if we can, which is this the state and the government too.
Right?
That law, that idea that theonomy is the government too.
So that's where we got to get for sure.
Real quick though, with verse 20 and 21, in 1 Corinthians 9, I guess my question to you would be just.
If we just took the two parenthetical statements, 20 and 21, though not being under the law.
So you're saying, well, Joel, I think you're ICGing a little bit.
Like you're getting too specific with the word law and saying that, well, law of God means 10 commandments.
And then law of God, 10 commandments is synonymous with law of Christ.
And that's his greatest and second greatest commandment, which is a summary of the 10 commandments.
And I see what you're saying.
And I think that's fair.
But I think so.
So that's what I have to deal with.
That's the tension that I have to resolve.
I think the tension for you, though, with verse 20 and 21, just the two parenthetical statements, Is that he explicitly says, if we just say, well, law means law, Joel, well, then it's like, though not being myself under the law.
That's the first statement.
And then not being outside of the law.
That's the second statement.
How do you reconcile that?
So, on one hand, Paul is not under the law, though not being myself.
Myself, I'm not under the law.
And then the very next parenthetical statement, though myself, I'm not outside of the law.
So, if law means law, In both cases, he's not under it and he also is not outside of it.
I think that's the tension you have to deal with.
Does that make sense?
That's a fair criticism, but I don't think law means law.
That's not a phrase I use.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Help me.
I don't think law has one definition and then it's like always means the same thing everywhere.
Paul actually uses it in a lot of different ways.
Right.
In Romans 7, he talks about this law in his flesh that fights against the law of his spirit.
And it's like, so he will use the term to refer to Jewish law sometimes, like the law of Moses.
Sometimes he refers to.
He'll say law and refer to tradition, or at least I know like Luke does that.
They'll say, and other gospel authors, they'll say law and they say Jesus broke the Sabbath.
Well, they didn't mean he broke Moses' Sabbath, he meant the Pharisaical laws.
So there's just a variety of usage.
Sometimes he just means it's like a normal operating principle, like the law of my flesh warring against the law of my spirit.
True.
So in this case, I think he doesn't say, he says, I'm not without law towards God.
I'm not anamas, like I have no rules, no laws in my relationship with God.
I am under the law of Christ.
Nations as Christ's Inheritance00:03:46
And then I would say, that's the key.
When I look at the law of Christ, I say it's not explicitly talking, Jesus talking about loving others, that if you are, if you walk in love, you know, you fulfilled the law, but you're not under the law.
And so that's my perspective is that there's overlap, moral law overlaps onto the Ten Commandments, onto the laws of Moses, but it's not, the laws themselves are not an essential part of the moral law.
Such that you have to be under both or neither.
Okay.
Gotcha.
Anyway, I.
No, that makes sense.
But yeah, I get it.
I mean, I would disagree, but we'll keep going around.
But my disagreement would not be like this, you know, full throated, aggressive disagreement.
But I feel like, you know, we could keep going on that.
But the big thing that you're right, like, we kind of got to talk about Christian states, you know, like government.
You're right.
Yeah.
So you're talking about like every government in the world.
And tell me if I'm wrong, because this is how I'm understanding it.
Every government in the world should enforce laws that everyone has to rest on the Sabbath and everyone has to cast out idols.
Cannot practice idolatry in any fashion and they have to put God first.
So, no, that's extreme.
I'm not saying that every nation should do that.
I'm saying every nation will do that.
Because I'm not only a theotomist, Mike, I also happen to be post millennial.
So I was being facetious.
No, I don't think that's extreme.
I think you're absolutely right.
What you just said is my view.
And not only do I think it should be done by every nation, I think it will be.
I truly believe that.
I think the nations are Christ's people.
Oh, so you do think it should be done?
Yes, I do.
Should and will.
Not just should, but will.
Okay.
I was being facetious there, but yeah.
So I don't just think should be.
I think it will be.
I think the nations are Christ's inheritance and they are going to be Christianized and that we are going to have a Christian world.
And when I say Christianized, now I'm not saying that each and every individual is going to be a regenerate, born again Christian.
But I do think that the nations, that societies as a whole in every single nation will be Christianized.
And I think we see this in Isaiah 65.
I think we certainly see it in Isaiah 65.
Chapter 2.
I think we also see it in Daniel chapter 2.
And I think we see the principle and the theology backing it in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
And I'll stop because I know you've got probably lots of questions, but yes, to answer your question, yes, I think should.
And I'd go a step further.
I see your should and I raise you a should and will happen.
So we should, as Christians, we should then, all of us, be working together to ensure that minimally the 10 commandments are enforced.
Through governmental laws across the country.
So, no sports on Sundays or Saturdays.
I'm assuming that you would think the Sabbath is actually Saturday?
No, no, no, no.
So, both Westminster and 1689.
No, you're right.
It's a side issue.
No, no.
But yeah, so both Westminster and 1689, the reform view is they're all Sabbatarian, but they would say that the Sabbath has been not removed but renewed by Christ, who is Lord of the Sabbath by virtue of his resurrection from the last day of the week to the first, is what the 1689 and Westminster confession says.
And of course, you can push back on it.
I won't even push back on it.
Yeah, of course, you can push back on it.
But I'm just articulating my position.
That's why I would stay with the Sabbath.
But yes, the Sabbath, I think nations should observe Sabbath keeping laws.
And then you shall have no other gods before me, which the only way to really obey that command is to also have God.
You can't just not have other gods before God.
Church and State Distinctions00:16:07
Obviously, you have to have God.
What would you propose as laws that would enforce that?
That is so insightful.
I want to repeat what you said because our listeners need to get it.
The only way to keep, because you can preach a whole sermon on that, the only way to keep the first commandment to have no other gods is to have God.
Because it's not whether, but which.
We are, culture comes from the lack of cultists, worshipers, we're homo worshipers, you know, like we cannot help but worship.
And if we don't worship the triune God, the God that is, then we're going to worship some other God.
Even if that God is self.
And I would say that's what humanism is man, the measure of all things.
And so, right now, this is one of the things that I would say is number one, I think that Christendom, because we've had it in the past, and I think the solution is not to do away with it.
I think there are bugs and features, right?
So, Spanish Crusades, not our brightest, finest moment.
But I think the solution is not to back away, but to press in.
I think we need Christendom 2.0.
And it's like, what that man, what like Christian as this world religion enforced by civil governments?
And I would just say it's not whether but which.
Look at the alternative.
What has secularism given us?
I think that Christendom, on its worst day with Constantine and on its worst day, Christendom can't even come close to putting up the death toll numbers that secularism has brought us.
Brought to you by your sponsors of humanism and secularism by Joseph Stalin, brought to you with Planned Parenthood and a million abortions a year.
Like, we, it's not even close, not even close.
And I think people, they're just afraid, like, but what are Americans going to do?
Start rounding up Muslims and putting them in internment camps?
It's like, nope, that's already covered by China.
And it's not because of the Christian worldview.
Not, not, not with, not speaking of Chinese people, but the CP, Chinese Communist Party, the government is not Christian.
They are a secular, atheistic government.
And the oppression that we see in the world, I, I, Truly believe it's not the fruit of Christianity.
There are bugs within Christianity that get it wrong at times, but nothing compared to anything else.
So, go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
So, the question is, how do you enforce that?
So, how do you enforce that?
That was my question.
How do you enforce that?
So, the way that you enforce it is first, you have to understand three sovereign spheres.
So, there has to be this understanding of autonomous separate spheres.
So, the church has been given the sword of the spirit.
My job as a minister of the gospel is the art of persuasion.
We've been given the keys of the kingdom.
I administer the sacraments of the Lord's Supper and baptism.
I preach the word, pray the word, sing the word, and see the word.
And the only images prescribed to the church, which is baptism and the Lord's Supper.
And then the keys of the kingdom have been given not just to me, but to, I believe, the church within my Reformed Baptist view.
That's Matthew 18, tell it to the church, and they get to bind and loose.
So that's the idea of what authority, and it also gives me the idea of my jurisdiction.
But these three sovereign spheres of the home, the church, and the state, they're not just spheres of human society, but I think we have to understand them as governments.
And it's not a hierarchy of the state is above the church and the church is above the family, but it's three parallel governments side by side.
And at times, their jurisdiction does overlap.
And that's what happened with John MacArthur and Gavin Newsom, right?
And you got to duke it out and figure out who actually has jurisdiction here.
How do we move forward?
What do we do?
Does the church and its rights, the rights of the saints and their obligation under God to worship in spirit and truth, trump the concerns of the civil magistrate that needs to protect people?
From physical harm with, you know, whatever, with the deadliest bubonic, black death plague that we've ever had.
And so, but as far as like how to, so first understand three sovereign spheres as three sovereign governments.
The next thing that you need to understand is there's a distinction.
I think this is what people, where theonomy gets a bad rap and people misunderstand.
There is a distinction between sins and crimes.
And the law of God is, James says, the law of liberty.
And one of the things that Christianity, as a worldview, a full orbed, robust worldview, has done, In individuals, but then also in states and governments, insofar as it's been applied at a governmental level, is it has esteemed and protected and honored individual conscience more than any other worldview, more than secularism.
I mean, we've got the thought police, right?
They tried to literally set up like a George Orwell Ministry of Truth, and then it just got booed and laughed, and then they quit.
But the left, I mean, they're trying to govern thought, they're trying to govern speech, all these.
And again, it's not whether, but which.
So, how do you enforce it?
Your question.
The civil magistrate has been given the physical sword, not the church.
So the church does not enforce it.
Ministers don't enforce it.
Fathers in the home don't enforce it.
They've been given a tool.
They've been given the rod.
The church has been given the keys, and the church's state has been given the sword.
The state would enforce it, but at the level only of crimes, not at the level of sin.
And what's the determining factor between the two?
It's not the two tables of law.
So, some guys, that's a John Lockean kind of, more of a Christian view, like some of the Christian founders, but more of a Unitarian, you know, a deist kind of view that's not, I don't think, is robustly Christian.
It loosely comes from.
King Alfred and these kinds of things, but they want to break up the two tables of law and say, well, the state can enforce the second table of law, commandments number five through ten, what we are commanded to do as it pertains to neighbor, but the state can't enforce the first four of the Ten Commandments, which would be no other gods before me, no graven images, do not take the Lord's name in vain, and then remember the Sabbath.
And I would say that theonomy is going to say, no, that it is the state's obligation to enforce not just the second table of law, but all Ten Commandments, but at the level of crime, not the level of sin.
And one of the determining factors between the two is private versus public.
So, in a theonomic, let's just say that I'm right and not just about theonomy, but also post mill and all this stuff happens in a hundred years or a thousand years, and we're watching from heaven.
My bet, what I'm betting on, and I could be wrong, but what I'm betting on is that you would not see a mosque be permitted to be erected.
But you also would not see thought police going into people's homes to stop private Muslim worship.
So, if someone was a Muslim, they could worship privately in their home because the state does not have jurisdiction there.
It's that that is not we are we are not policing sins in the same way that you know looking at the second table of law, if a man gets drunk in his home, we're not going as but if public intoxication is a do you think the commandment about idolatry was was not applied in the home in ancient in ancient Israel?
Well, I don't think that it was policed, I don't think that it was enforced because ancient Israel, one of the beauties of their law is that it wasn't a policing system, that's why they didn't have a bloated state.
And it's like I understand that there was no separation of church and state and the theocracy of Israel.
But even in that, see, some of the theonomists would argue, and I think I agree with them, is that there was kind of a division.
There were priests, right?
And there were.
Okay, well, let me throw something else out there.
So you mentioned the priest.
I was thinking about this.
I was recently studying stuff for my big series on women in ministry, and it was about the role and function of judges in the Old Testament.
And I could try to find the verse, but the Old Testament talks about how the priest would assist the judge in informing them about the law.
So, they would be better equipped to make decisions.
So, the judge was like a Supreme Court.
When the local city leaders sit in the gate and you bring a case to them, and they're like, hey, this is just too tough for us.
Like, I don't know.
We're going to pass that on up.
Or maybe it's an issue between two cities.
They pass it on up to the local judge.
It could be Deborah.
It could be Elihu.
It could be Samson, Gideon, Jephthah.
And they make kind of the Supreme Court decision.
Here's an interesting thought.
Doesn't that mean that the leaders in the church, studying the scripture, knowing the word of God, are supposed to be part of the functioning of government so that there isn't this totally independent sphere?
Or would you agree with that?
Absolutely, but not functioning.
I would say that the goal, one of the goals of the pastor is, for one, to feed my sheep, right?
So it's not just the seeker friendly model that it's always focused on lost people, and then you have all these malnourished, starving Christians.
With 20 minute TED Talk sermons, like, no, feed my sheep.
So, my focus as a pastor, I believe my obligation is, in one sense, it's to the people of God, nourishing them, feeding them, tending sheep, tending lambs.
But there also is a prophetic function, lowercase p prophetic function, of calling out to kings and kingdoms and principalities.
Just like John the Baptist said to Herod, it is not lawful, and Herod's not a Jew, but John the Baptist doesn't see him as getting away from this.
He's like, this applies to you.
It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife, Herodias.
And that ultimately causes him to lose his head.
The difference, though, is the priests aren't the ones who ultimately get to put someone to death with the sword.
I think that the priests go in and inform the judges.
And in a Christian, in a perfect Christian theonomic state, this example that we're talking about, a hypothetical example, yes, I think that pastors, ministers of the gospel would be working hand in glove.
They would be working in tandem with the state, but still with a clear delineation that they are not.
A part of the state.
But they would be absolutely, they would be honored by the civil magistrate and informing them and educating them on this is the law of God.
Do what is right.
I'm really skeptical that this division between church and state is reflected in the Old Testament law.
Like, I think that it's reflected in modern times and modern cultures and stuff like that.
And I don't know the church history that well about this stuff, but I don't think it was reflected very much at all.
Except by force, when a king was able to get enough power, and then maybe the reigning pope and his abilities were diminished, then they could cast off that kind of role.
But the integration of church and state has been a pretty consistent thing, I think, in the Old Testament and in church history, except for more recently, historically.
So I like the idea of that for my own reasons.
The idea of three sovereign spheres, is that what you're talking about?
I like the idea of that.
For my own purposes, it fits more my own view, which is not a theonomist view.
It seems to fit well with that view.
But I think if I was on board with the theonomist view, I would be like, yeah, no.
I mean, in fact, I even think I have to somehow enforce belief and obedience to Jesus with laws from the government.
Yes, I would feel like I'd have to do that.
Yes, the government does have to do that.
But first, to the separation of church and state, I think what the theonomist is saying is that there is a separation of church and state.
And I think we see it in the Old Testament, even.
Like Saul loses, the kingdom is ripped out of his hand.
Samuel, you know, rips his robe, and so the kingdom will be ripped because he assumed the prophet's role as the king.
And it wasn't, it was outside of his jurisdiction.
It wasn't his business.
I'm afraid to go off on that rabbit trail.
I don't hold to that view with Saul because he did prophesy even so long ago.
That's true.
Yeah, he prophesied.
But anyway, that kind of takes us down a path where that doesn't help us with our current discussion very much.
So, one thing, so the theonomist is going to say, I think there's supposed to be a separation of church and state.
And a theonomist would say, and we see tenets of that even in the nation state of Israel.
And you would disagree or certainly disagree with the Saul example I just gave, but I think there are examples of that.
But the big idea for the theonomist is that in our culture today, when we say separation of church and state, it has become a placeholder for what people actually believe, which is a separation between Christ and state.
And that is not taught in Scripture.
There's a difference between the church and state being two sovereign spheres with delineated authority and jurisdictions and responsibilities and rights and duties versus saying that the state is this neutral plane.
Politics is this neutral plane where, you know, Christ has no power here, you know, and they just kind of.
No, the state must be Christian and therefore it must, insofar as it's within its jurisdiction to punish crimes, it must.
Punish those things which go against the Christian faith.
And that would include, for instance, that there would be blasphemy laws.
So there would be certain things, even within freedom of speech, that couldn't be said.
But again, it's not whether but which.
There are certain things within freedom of speech that we can't say right now, determined by who.
Every culture has worship, it has a God, it has orthodoxy, it has sacraments, and corresponding with its orthodoxy, it has blasphemy laws.
There are things that you can't.
That you can't say.
It's hate speech.
You get canceled.
You could lose your job.
All these different things.
And it happens by a kangaroo court instead of actually tried with a fair jury.
And so to me, it's just this inescapable reality.
Separation of church and state is one thing, but separation of God and state, I don't think the Bible teaches that.
And so again, it wouldn't be policing.
I would agree with you there on that point.
Yeah, I don't.
God and state, no.
I mean, maybe.
Okay.
How much time do we probably have left in this discussion here?
You know, it's kind of up to you at this point.
Let's see, it's 9 13.
Why don't we, you want to do like 20 more minutes?
I'm down with that.
Okay.
And then maybe if I could just throw out several things that are all rattling around in my head, I'm afraid I won't get a chance to talk about it.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Go ahead.
So, one of them would be let's just talk quickly about the Sabbath.
So, with the laws about the Sabbath, it would require obviously government enforced Sabbath rest, whatever day people see that on.
And, In the Old Testament, my own view of what God expects of governments is I don't actually look at the law of Israel primarily.
I look at the prophets, like, say, Genesis and passages where God judges all people for specific things.
And I go, ah, all governments are supposed to be accountable for these specific things.
So, you know, defending the oppressed, being just having good, good, like, genuine justice in their systems and all that kind of thing.
Also, when he tells, like, Babylon, here's the burden of the Lord against Babylon, Isaiah says, or something, right?
And he goes through this list of things that they've done wrong.
I'm like, look at this.
God's judging a non Jewish nation.
These are policies God must have in place for all nations, at least, or there's some principle that's there.
So I tend to look at it that way as far as what God expects of all nations.
I don't see, now along those lines, I don't see anywhere in the Old Testament that I'm aware of where God ever judged a nation for disobeying the Sabbath.
Yet he was so strict with Israel about it that they spent, you know, How many years carried away to Babylon to let the land have its rest, right?
It was 70 years because they had 490 years of not giving the land its annual Sabbath where you couldn't farm for a year.
And he was so strict about that that he carried off Israel and let the land have its rest for 70 years.
Then he brought them back in.
That's 490, 70, you know, that the math works.
The Nineveh Violence Debate00:02:41
And I don't know anywhere where he judged a foreign nation for that.
What are your thoughts on that?
Is there a passage I'm not thinking of?
Or is there maybe something else they're thinking about?
No, that's a classic argument against theonomy.
There's one debate, it's called the theonomy debate.
Here I thought I was being original.
No, no, no, no.
I'm encouraging you, saying it's a good thought.
It's, you know, and that's why it's been used so often.
No, there's not a clear passage that I'm aware of that says, you know, and God punished Nineveh for their sin of violence and Sabbath breaking.
It's, you know, you're not going to find it.
One of the, and that's the argument.
So that's an argument that JD Hall, which unfortunately some things have not gone so well as of recently, but seven years ago, he did a debate.
It's called the Theonomy Debate.
You can find it on YouTube between Joel McDermott, and he's also, it's funny.
Those two guys, it's crazy to see where they're at now and their respectives versus where they were there.
But Joel McDermott was in the affirmative.
Position of defending theonomy and JD Hall was against it.
And that's one of the arguments that he used, saying, like, I don't see, you know, we see God, you know, judging the nation for this or that or these kinds of things, but you don't see listed as one of God's reasons for judging the nation the Sabbath or one of these specific civil laws that's given to Israel.
So, yeah.
And it's not a slam.
It might seem to people like that's the slam dunk argument.
I don't think it is a slam dunk argument.
I think it's, Support for a perspective, but yeah, I think it's a good argument.
It's you know, and just to provide the counter, you know, Joel McDermott, his counter was just saying it's an argument from silence, and an argument from silence isn't necessarily you know, like there's something there, certainly, there's something there, but but but we don't have prescribed in scripture explicitly that the nations aren't underneath a moral obligation to these, you know, we don't see God saying no, we just we don't also see specified in a list,
and there are plenty of times that God judges the nations and and and And specific sins aren't listed, right?
With Nineveh, the only specific sin that's actually mentioned in the case of Nineveh is their sin of violence, that they were barbaric.
And we know that Nineveh, Assyrian's capital city in Assyria, that they would fillet people, their victims, alive and hang their skin on the walls of their city.
And the king specifically says, Let us repent from our sin and the wickedness of our hands.
And so even that, God doesn't necessarily say it, but Jonah says to repent, and the king recognizes.
His own conscience identifies, and one of the sins in particular we need to repent of is the sin of physical violence.
Jesus Kingdom vs Caesar's Role00:15:00
But my point is, in that, I don't think God was going, and God relented, Nineveh repented, but I don't think that God was only going to judge Nineveh and more largely Assyria for the sin of violence.
It's just the particular sin that the conscience of the king, you know, it was one of the highlighted, clearest things that they had done that was immoral, but I don't think it was exhaustive.
So, anyway.
Okay.
So, here's some more quick questions for you.
I take it, well, I'll stay off that one for now.
For Jesus, Jesus did not carry any political positions.
And when he was asked if he was a king, he had this really interesting qualifier with Pilate.
And he was like, basically, he says, I'm a king, but not really in the way you're thinking.
My kingdom is not of this world.
Otherwise, my servants would fight.
What is the theonomist perspective on that idea that Jesus did not carry political power, did not use political power, and then when he was asked about his kingdom, he says, It's not of this world, otherwise his servants would fight.
What would your view on that be?
So the view would be that Jesus was coming to bring a little bit of leaven and that the leaven gradually was going to work through the whole batch of dough, that Jesus was planting a mustard seed and it would gradually grow.
So, it's kind of a combination of theonomic thought along with the postmillennial eschatology.
Whereas, you know, like premillennial, especially dispensational premillennial, it's just this worse and worse and worse.
And then just suddenly the rule of Christ.
Whereas the postmillennial view is that Christ is setting the stage, particularly to your question about Christ being a king and those kinds of things.
There are political statements and certainly political issues that Jesus deals with, like it's a political issue in terms of, do we pay taxes to the state?
And Jesus says, Well, let me see a coin whose image is on it.
Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, what is to God's.
And so Jesus actually affirms tax paying to the civil magistrate.
However, that's taken out of context a lot.
Jesus doesn't say, and Caesar gets to decide what belongs to Caesar.
It's render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.
And the implicit, I think, principles and God dictates by his law what belongs to Caesar and what doesn't belong to Caesar.
That's my opinion.
In terms of his kingdom not being of this world, the theonomy counter to that would say, Yeah, Jesus' kingdom is not of this world, just like he tells the disciples.
You know, the Gentile lords, they're domineering, they lord their power over you.
Do not be like them, right?
That his kingdom functions in a different way, it has different methods.
But I think there's a difference in Jesus saying, My kingdom is not of this world, versus saying, My kingdom is not in this world.
So the theonomist would say, Jesus says his kingdom is not of this world, and to that, yes and amen.
But his kingdom very much is in this world.
All authority on earth and in heaven has been given to him.
And that we're called to go and Christianize the nations.
And part of the Great Commission is not only to baptize and dealing with evangelism, but to teach them to obey all of Christ's commandments because Jesus is king.
And he is king in real terms, in real life.
And he was not setting up a physical kingdom in his first coming, his earthly ministry, but that he is ruling now in a real sense at the right hand of the Father.
And that rule and that reign and that kingdom does have a presence.
In the world, although it functions with methods that are not of this world.
So, would you say when Jesus says, My kingdom's not of this world, when he says, My kingdom, that is talking in addition to the gospel going out into men's hearts, it's also talking about political kingdoms where Jesus is supposed to be king and theonomy, where the law of God is reigning on earth right now.
Is that inclusive?
Is that his kingdom is both of those things?
Can you rephrase the question again?
I didn't quite.
Uh, maybe I'll say it a different way.
I understand what you just said now.
I understood to mean that Jesus's kingdom is both inside the lives of those who follow him, but also part of political power that's supposed to be subservient to Jesus through a theonomy view.
Yes, yeah.
I don't think the kingdom refers to both, not one or the other, but both.
Yes, I would so one, I would distinguish the church from the kingdom of God.
The church of God and the kingdom of God, I think, are two distinct things, massive overlap and massive similarities.
The church.
You're a Pado Baptist, Ray.
No, I'm.
Oh, okay.
Because that's what I usually hear from the Pado Baptist.
I'm a credo.
I'm credo.
But my point.
Which I should have known because you said you were 1689.
But with that, so no, the church only numerically grows one way conversion.
But the kingdom of God, I think, can grow even if the church isn't numerically grown.
It doesn't have to grow in a one to one ratio of the church.
Okay, but wait, wait.
But here, I'm getting at something here.
I wanted to get this if I could, which was to say if that's what Jesus means, if that phrase kingdom refers to the political powers that.
Are subservient to Christ and the church, both those two spheres.
This qualifier becomes really strange because he says, otherwise my servants would fight, which implies, if it's talking about both spheres, that the government can't fight.
No, I don't think so.
Can you explain that another way?
Because to me, that doesn't matter.
To you, I'm looking at your face and it seems like just a clear logical conclusion, but it's not so clear for me.
Which is fine.
Go ahead.
Say it again.
I'm sorry.
If the phrase my kingdom refers to.
To you, you've used this three sphere discussion, a way of framing home, church, and government or state.
Um, if the my kingdom refers to not only the church but also the state, that's also his kingdom.
The state is a part of Jesus' kingdom, amen.
Yeah, is are you asking that right?
Yeah, he's king of kings.
So when he says, My kingdom's not of this world, otherwise, my servants would fight.
I've always taken to be followers of Jesus wherever they're at, and you're you would you would say this also means.
Whole governments that follow the theonomy way they can't fight.
Oh, I get you.
Okay, that makes sense.
No, I would.
And so the way that I would counter that is I'm just to be clear for anybody who's watching, I'm using this as a way of saying, see, I think this interpretation doesn't fit the text because as you try to be consistent throughout the text, it starts to go away.
That's not really working.
But what was your rebuttal to that?
My rebuttal would be, my kingdom is not of this world, doesn't mean that it's not in the world, and doesn't mean that it doesn't encompass the state.
Jesus is king.
He's not just king of the church, he's head of the church, but he's King of kings and king of civil magistrate kings.
His kingdom is in the world.
But I would say that when Jesus says it's not of this world, what he's getting at is the way that his kingdom functions and especially, particularly, the way that it's going to get its start.
So you're right.
I believe that Jesus is king over the government.
And Romans 13 says that the civil magistrate is his servant, deacon.
It literally means servant.
That's right.
So if he says, you know, if my kingdom was of this world, my servants wouldn't fight, well, then you would have to embrace a pacifist.
View that we just shouldn't have governments at all, or they shouldn't bear the sword.
But Romans 13 completely would debunk that because Paul says that God gave them the sword and they're supposed to be God's avengers, you know, to be a terror to those who do evil.
So, what I would say is that when Jesus says that my servants are not going to fight, well, elsewhere, Jesus says them to take a sword.
And they say, well, we have two swords.
And he said, yeah, that's enough.
I think what Jesus is saying is that it's not my kingdom's not of this world, it's not with these methods.
I'm not going to get my start.
This way.
It's not a hostile takeover of Rome today, but it is going to be a gradualistic takeover of Rome in real terms, not just a spiritual reign, but a real, tangible, physical reign, even over kings and kingdoms on earth, Christianized governments.
But it's going to start like a mustard seed.
It's going to grow.
We're not going to take over in a day, a moment of revolt, but as a gradualistic mustard seed slowly going into a tree.
And first, that mustard seed has to go into the ground.
It has to be planted.
I have to die.
So let me recap what I think we just said to each other.
You tell me if you agree.
Your statement was hey, my kingdom's not of this world.
What it doesn't mean is that his kingdom's not in this world.
Okay, that I would actually agree with.
The in, not of thing, I was a youth pastor for many years.
So, yeah, I've said that many times.
But I don't think that alone is enough to establish a theonomy view.
But what would establish the theonomy view is if when Jesus says, My kingdom, he's talking about both spheres, church and government, and he's claiming that they're his kingdom as well.
But then my pushback is, but if my kingdom means that, then he says, my servants don't fight because my kingdom's not of this world.
This would imply that governments can't fight if they're going to follow the theonomy way.
Your response to that was, it sounds like it was, well, Romans 13 shows that they don't bear the sword in vain.
So obviously they do need to fight, which I would agree with.
I'm saying that that view is not consistent with that interpretation of my kingdom.
I mean, we both agree on Romans 13.
So I'm not really sure what that means.
I get what you're saying, but just Romans 13 alone, if Caesar is God's deacon, is it fair for me to say that God is Caesar's deacon?
Well, the word deacon is very tricky there because the word servant we all understand, but deacon is a very religious terminology for modern English, but it wasn't, diakonos was not a religious, special religious term for ancient, for Greek.
So I just wanted to be clear there.
He is God's servant.
Even you could say God's minister, but outside the country of the United States, you know, they literally have, oh, I'm in the ministry of agriculture.
Like it's normal to call those ministries because they're services.
They're not religious things.
But anyway, I do think God is sovereign over the nations, but I don't think the nations are part of Christ's kingdom.
I think the Daniel 2 example, right, of this like sort of tiered structure of all these different kingdoms, and then the kingdom of Christ comes and smashes in and replaces them.
Rather than invade them.
My own view on this the kingdom of Christ is meant to come in and invade with teachings of Christ all of these different governments in the world.
And we could fit in a socialist government and a capitalist government.
We could fit in a communist government.
We could fit in a you name it, a royal, what are those called?
Aristocracy.
I can't remember the right term for when a king is in charge.
I can't remember what that was.
Monarchy.
Monarchy.
There you go.
Thank you.
Monarchy.
It's not the hardest word, but.
But I think we're supposed to blend in, and that's why we don't fight.
We spread the word and not the law, so to speak.
But here's a verse I'd like to get your thoughts on 1 Corinthians 5, verses 12 and 13.
And here's where Paul talks about how he doesn't judge the world.
And my understanding of the context here is he's judging a church member for sleeping with his father, probably his father's stepwife, or his stepmother, I mean, his father's second wife, most likely.
And, um, And it says in 1 Corinthians 5 12, he says, you know, kick him out of the church, but I'm not talking about judging the world.
And he says here, I'll read 1 Corinthians 5 12 and 13.
For what have I to do with judging outsiders?
Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?
God judges those outside, purge the evil person from among you.
And I'll just offer my quick understanding of this, and I'd like to hear your thoughts.
I'm sure you've probably heard this one before.
So, judging, most Christians that I encounter see this phrase, Don't judge those outside, which means like don't disapprove of the behavior of people outside the church, which is totally not what this verse is talking about.
We should absolutely expose error and go and preach the gospel and even confront sin.
He means judge like in the sort of judicial sense of using this sort of, I have this elder's authority to say, you are excommunicated from the church.
You are not part of our fellowship until you repented these sins.
We want to have you back, brother, but you are in rebellion against God.
That kind of judgment.
And he goes, What do I have to do with judging those outside the church?
God judges those outside.
You guys need to judge those within the church.
And this, it's fuzzy in my head, other than saying there's two spheres.
Oh, that's the church sphere versus the government sphere.
But it doesn't seem like the perspective is those outside that the government is dealing with or whatever are part of that kingdom of Christ at all.
They're just outside and God's judging them.
What do you think of that?
Yeah.
It's exactly what you just said at the end, would be my view.
It's just this separation of church and state, you know, three sovereign spheres, home, church, and state.
So what have I to do?
Well, who is I?
Paul, what is Paul?
What's his role?
What's his Function.
He's an apostle of Christ.
He's not a civil magistrate.
He's not a judge or a ruler.
And so I 100% agree with you that he's not saying don't make any judgments, but it is absolutely talking about the just judicial judging, which the church does even that, but the church only does it of its own.
And that's the same thing principle for states, right?
Like we, you know, America should not make judicial judgments for a citizen of Brazil, right?
There's jurisdiction.
You do that with counties and with cities and all those kinds of states, you know, and then.
And then countries.
So authority always has boundaries.
It always has a jurisdiction.
It's always limited.
You know, nobody has limitless authority.
You know, it's all, it's this divested.
It's not inherent authority.
It's divested.
All human authority is divested authority.
And so with that, there are limits, there are jurisdictions.
And I think Paul's just, I think that that's what he's highlighting.
You do judge outsiders, you judge anybody in terms of making a judgment.
Because really, if we say that we can't do that, then we're basically getting rid of the whole Christian principle of discernment.
What is discernment?
But to.
Make judgments.
So I'm with you 100% on that.
Discernment ministers, all those kinds of things.
So the church can make certain judgments about people outside of the church, like Joe Biden say, Yeah, I judge that I'm not going to vote for Biden in 2024 if he's still alive.
You know, like, so we should make judgments like that.
But no, we don't have this judicial, I can't go and punish Joe Biden.
Ecclesiastical Courts and Discernment00:02:53
So I would say that the church does have judicial authority.
There are ecclesiastical courts.
And Paul talks about that in 1 Corinthians 6, this idea of why are you going to the pagan courts?
The church is supposed to have more wisdom than them.
And so it's not just, oh, it's fleshly and carnal to sue your brother.
That's said also.
But it's also this sense of, like, do you not know you're going to be judging angels?
Why are the pagan courts trumping the ecclesiastical courts?
If it's a brother, if it's two brothers, you can settle this at home in the church.
And the church not just making a judgment like discernment, but a judicial ruling for the members of the church.
But any government, including ecclesiastical government, the church, it has its tools, keys of the kingdom for the church, sword for the state.
And it also has its jurisdiction.
The church can only deal with people that are within the church in that judicial sense.
And so, if we're talking about somebody who's not also a member of the church, they're unregenerate, then no, we can't give this judicial thing.
And I think that's why Paul's saying, I don't have the authority to do that.
They don't belong to this church.
I'm an apostle of Christ sent to the church.
I'm not a civil magistrate.
It's outside of my jurisdiction.
When he says, Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?
In a theonomy perspective, Wouldn't a lot of the government leaders and a lot of the people enforcing the laws be those inside the church?
Absolutely.
A lot of them would be Christian.
Again, not necessarily each and every individual, but yes, many of them would be members of Bible preaching local churches, but there still would be a separation.
So they could be judged by their church that they belong to for certain matters under that ecclesiastical court.
But again, it'd just be the separation, a distinction of those two sovereign spheres of the church and the state.
But not told what.
What laws they have to pass, or something like that?
Well, they would be told that, but not with governmental binding.
Their pastor, right?
So if George Washington, these guys, I mean, it's not a crazy hypothetical situation.
We're talking about things that have happened in this nation not that long ago.
Like George Washington was a church member and he was influenced by his ministers and their preaching influence law.
But being influenced and being under the control of another is the difference.
That's right.
And within theonomy, it likewise would still be influence.
It wouldn't be the minister.
Because there's a difference between a theocracy and an ecclesiocracy.
And theonomy is not advocating for a church run state where the pope is over the president.
And a pseudo governor.
So, we're not talking about an ecclesiocracy.
We don't think there should be a church run state.
We also don't think there should be a state run church like in China with the three self church, you know, those kinds of things.
But we think there should be a separation of church and state, but not a separation of Christ and state.
And it should be a theocracy in the sense that God is over the state.
Discipleship Beyond Church Walls00:13:35
Now, would you say that any government in human history has ever successfully done this and been a good example of this?
Yeah, I think Constantine did a pretty good job.
I think that he.
Again, there are plenty of bugs, but I think that the people of God, genuine regenerate people at the time, rejoiced.
I think they rejoiced when Constantine came into power.
And then I think America has been the closest, with many of them being the founders, being American Puritans.
And so I would say Constantine and America would probably be two of the closest examples that I can think of.
Right.
Now, if the church is supposed to push for theonomy, Then you would say that, other than two, one partial instance and one best example we have in early, you know, well, Rome, Constantine's Rome.
Right.
That, other than that, you'd say it's basically theonomy hasn't been a reality for the vast majority of places where the gospel has gone, gone rooted, had massive responses that theonomy wasn't there.
And then it took about 300 years before it started to have that effect.
In the one example that you would say is like, Here's like a good example of it.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And I'm interested in this.
Yeah.
In line with that, I would also say, I think that we're still within the early church.
Yeah.
Like you and me are, I think it's likely that Jesus could tarry for another 30,000 years.
And people will say, hey, you know, it took him, you know, three, four, 500 years to get the, you know, to understand the hypostatic union and just the nature of Christ as fully God and fully man.
It took him 500 years for that.
And maybe it took him 5,000 years to understand the scripture as it applies to government.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So I guess I still have more questions, but I think I just have to like sit and marinate on all this stuff.
Do you have any explicit New Testament teaching that just straight up says, like, you know, like, well, I should, let me put it this way.
What are your best proof texts for theonomy?
If you could just maybe list a few of them for me to think about.
Yeah.
That's a great question.
I, you know, I would hang my hat in many cases just on Matthew 28, all authority, you know, Jesus.
So this is now the resurrected Lord.
About to ascend, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all of my commandments.
Theonomy, in many ways, it's not so much that there's just this explicit text, although I think 1 Corinthians 15 would be another one.
He must reign until all his enemies are put under his feet.
That would be kind of theonomic, but also that'd be like a blend of a text for post.
Yeah, exactly.
Because in the pre-Mill.
Now, would you be a theonomist if you weren't post-Mill?
That's a good question.
I don't know.
I don't think it's a coincidence that I came into both at the same time.
I don't think that's a coincidence.
So, yes, I do think they play into each other.
And then let's look at this verse.
So, okay, let's take these two spheres idea, right?
You have Matthew 28, 18 through 20.
Imagine that we've got this idea there's two spheres, church rules here, government rules here, both part of the kingdom of Christ.
Who is this instruction to, Matthew 28, 18, right?
All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.
Would you say that's church, government, or both?
Well, the command is being given to the disciples.
All scriptures.
For us, not all scriptures to us.
There's an immediate human audience.
He's speaking to his disciples, which would represent the church.
They need to go and do that.
Right.
And so they're to baptize, go to make disciples of all nations.
So you take nations there not just to refer to peoples of all nations, but of the whole government structures themselves, right?
Well, I think fundamentally it's absolutely dealing with individual people who need to be baptized into the triune God, into the name of the triune God.
So I think it's talking about preaching the gospel, conversion, and giving them the initiating oath sign of the Christian faith, which is baptism.
But then I think it's also teaching them to obey all of my commands, which I think have civil application.
Okay, so doesn't that make the church the one that's enforcing theonomy?
Doesn't that put the sphere of the church over the state?
That's a great question.
Again, I think George Washington, you know, is, you know, but it's that same concept of when you have.
So, first, so one question, this is what I asked some of my friends is, Do we believe that a Christian can serve in a position of government?
Can a Christian be in the military?
Can a Christian be a police officer?
Could they run for city council?
Could they be a governor?
And I believe that Christians can and should.
Not that every Christian, people have individual calls in their life, but that this is not only permissible, but it is commendable.
And so, in those cases where you have a Christian serving in government, you have a dual office.
Just like I have certain authority as a pastor in the realm of the church that I don't have with my wife and children as husband, dad.
In the home.
And then I have certain authority with my wife and children.
Like, for instance, with spanking, which I know is controversial, but I believe in spanking.
So I can't spank members in my church, but I can with my kids.
And so I'm holding, you know what I mean?
How's it the weirdest?
Yeah.
Okay.
Don't try to picture it.
Yeah.
Don't try to picture it.
But, you know, but I can't, that would be highly inappropriate and weird, you know, and make people cry and laugh and it'd just be bad.
So, anyways, the point is, but I'm holding, it's the same, it's one person, Joel, who is dad over here.
And pastor over here, and has one tool, keys of the kingdom over here, a rod over here, this responsibility and that responsibility and jurisdiction in between.
Right.
So I would actually agree with all of that, everything you just said there.
I think I'd agree with all of it.
My pushback on Matthew 28, and this will be the last pushback I'd give you, but my pushback would be that if we do, okay, I'm sensing what I think is an inconsistency, right?
I would take this to be go into all the nations, make disciples of all nations.
Baptize them, right?
Teach them.
This is all the same category of people.
It's Christians discipling and teaching and baptizing other Christians, and it's not teaching them to make government laws that enforce the commands of Christ.
But if you do view it as making government laws, then it all funnels back to the church as the one that is over the government, not as separate spheres.
So I'm just saying this seems like an internal inconsistency in that view.
The separation of church and state thing, I'm saying, I think theonomy, okay, I don't.
I don't currently think that that's the biblical view, and I haven't heard all the reasons for it either, so I'm not saying more than that.
But I think that this separation of church and state idea doesn't fit if you were to hold the theonomy position.
You would have to say the church is over the state for the reason, and it would conflict with other scriptures, I admit that, but for the reason that the proof text would put it that way.
All authority has been given to me, go therefore, make disciples of all the nations.
That's the disciples.
And then as it filters down to all those who become disciples, go and disciple all nations.
Baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Teach them to observe all that I've commanded you.
If I interpret that as make laws, governmental laws that enforce the commands of Jesus, which I interpret secondarily as being under the law of Moses, but being under the theonomic understanding of the law of Moses, then the church is the one who's in charge of that.
If that's my proof text, then the church is in charge.
That's my point with Matthew 28.
What do you think of that phrase?
If that's your proof text, then the church is.
Is in charge of the state.
I completely understand what you're saying.
So, my response would be I'm not saying so go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptize.
So, I look at it as really it's one commandment.
I think it's disciple.
And I think we have sub commandments that serve that.
So, it's disciple, make disciples.
And to make disciples, it's going to involve going, baptizing, and teaching.
And so, So, with that, the teaching component, it's disciples teaching disciples.
I think you're absolutely right.
Now, that being said, I do think teaching them to obey all my commandments gets into the three uses of the law.
And one of the uses of the law is preaching the law even to the unconverted sinner because the law shows them, like Romans chapter 7, when the law sprung to life, I died.
And, you know, like the law is good and holy and right.
Is it the law's fault?
No, it's not the law's fault.
It's sin's fault.
But the law shed a light on sin.
And that drove me to Christ.
So, I think teaching them to obey all their commandments is disciples' fault.
Teaching disciples.
I think your point is sound.
It's disciples teaching disciples to obey God's commandments, all Christ's commandments.
But in addition to that, I'm just giving the disclaimer.
It's also, I think, disciples in their quest to make disciples, teaching people to obey the commandments, knowing that they haven't obeyed the commandments and will drive them to Christ, but still within this evangelistic effort.
My point is that, and again, because it was very insightful, I think you hit the nail on the head, but I It's the post mill theonomic combo.
It really is a two piece and a ball.
It's a combo.
Because my thing is, I think theonomy is inescapable unless you're just a pessimist.
And I don't mean that as a slam.
I think I'm a pessimist.
But I mean it in terms of, for me, my post millennialism says that the Great Commission, when I look at the Great Commission within my post millennial framework, I think it's actually going to work.
I think it's going to work.
And so I'm going to look at Matthew 28 and I'm going to cross reference Matthew 16.
I will build, not just sustain my weak church, but build, expand my church.
And the gates of hell, the gates, the hell's on the defense.
The gates are a defensive mechanism.
The church is the battering ram of Christ.
It's going to expand, it's going to grow.
And so for me, what I'm thinking about is so, like, when a Roman centurion would say, What does it look like for me?
I've just become a Christian, right?
And it wasn't so much, so it's disciples teaching disciples to obey the law of God.
It's not like, They're going so much, although I think there is this function, but it's not so much like I'm going and I'm telling the civil magistrate what to legislate.
It's no, I'm making disciples, but to me, here's the inescapable reality.
What if the Great Commission actually works?
What if Christ actually does build his church numerically to the point where you have centurions, you have members of the civil magistrate who are also now members of Christ's church, and they're asking the question, which we do see in the New Testament, questions like this being asked What do I do now?
What does it look like for me as a soldier to follow Christ?
And Jesus talks about do not take more taxes than you're told to.
Like there are certain morals that are binding on you, meaning there is following Jesus looks different based off of your station of life.
So, 1 Corinthians chapter 7 remain in whatever station the Lord called you.
And I know that he gets into that and really applies it to singleness and marriage.
But the point is that being a male husband follower of Jesus, I have certain specific obligations that my female wife follower of Jesus doesn't have.
Ephesians 5 and 6, the dynamic of husband and wife, parents and children, slaves and masters or employers, employees, all these different things.
And I think civil magistrate is one of those functions.
So, what does it look like to be a governor who's a Christian?
And what does it look like to be a police officer who's a Christian and a councilman who's a Christian?
And I think that's a foregone conclusion, an inevitability in the mind of Christ, even in the giving of the Great Commission, because he already said in Matthew 16, I will build my church.
And I think the only way to escape Christian governments is the premillennial outlook the church just is never going to get that far.
And Jesus is probably coming back in the next 15 minutes.
Does that make sense?
But I think if you think Jesus is going to tarry and the church really is going to be numerically built, we're going to have to come up with some.
And I'm not saying the Bible perfectly clearly, you know, like, I'm not saying it's easy.
But what I'm saying is I think we're going, Christians are going to have to come up with a civil magistrate doctrine.
We're going to have to come up with issues.
Oh, well, I totally agree with you there.
You know, with an idea of what do Christians in government do.
Yeah, I totally agree with you there.
And I'm not going to try to answer in detail, but my short answer is, Look at what God judges pagan nations for in the Old Testament, and you'll see what he expects of all nations.
And your answer is, look at what God commanded Israel, and you'll see what he expects of all nations.
I think that would be the short version of that.
Your answer, and yeah, you said that earlier.
And my answer would be like, look at what he commanded Israel in the Ten Commandments, and then find the general equity of the civil commandments, and know that the ceremonial has been fully fulfilled and abrogated in Christ.
Yeah, when we give a fuller answer.
General Equity for Civil Magistrates00:07:32
We both would look for general equity, and I think non theonomists would look for general equity, but maybe theonomists would look with more of a fine tooth comb, you know?
Yeah.
And more.
I think the biggest difference is just the 10 commandments.
You would say 10 commandments are binding for Christians, but in terms of governments actually legislating, like commandment one through four, that's where I think that's the biggest difference between us.
I don't think the 10 commandments are binding for Christians.
Well, you believe nine of them are.
I believe there is overlap.
With God's moral rules for mankind, which isn't the same as his expectations on all governments.
But I believe there's an overlap with the Ten Commandments.
But the way I would parse it out would be not that I think nine of them apply to me and one doesn't.
That would be a very weird view and very open to criticism.
That's most Christians' view.
It's not my view.
I think that's how most Christians express it.
But if they think about it carefully, which most people don't, and they've never been challenged to, then they're going to go, Gosh, like, am I under the Ten Commandments?
Or is much of my behavior consistent with the Ten Commandments because there's this massive overlap of morality in the Ten Commandments?
I think that the Sabbath is probably the most obvious outlier because I think that Romans 14 makes it very clear that we don't need to observe the Sabbath.
And you can if you want.
And so I would never criticize someone for doing it.
I'd be like, great, do it, do it unto the Lord.
And you don't, don't unto the Lord.
And my view is that other interpretations of Romans 14 ignore what seems like an obvious application of the passage.
But obviously, I'm just explaining my basic ideas here.
I'm not trying to get a case for them.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah.
So, yeah, Joel, thanks, man.
So, theonomy, it seems to me, is different than what I was expecting from the little whispers I've heard about it, because I've heard very little about it, to be honest.
I've only heard little bits here and there, and you've helped me understand it a lot better.
And I also know that me and you, as brothers in Christ, we agree on so much stuff that we could hold hands together, at least metaphorically.
I'm not really comfortable just holding hands with the guys.
It wouldn't be quite as weird as the spanking analogy.
Not quite.
But we could hold hands together and stand shoulder to shoulder with so many important and essential doctrines in Christ, even against the sway of where a lot of people are going in very westernized countries that are too modern for their own brains.
So that's true.
But I think that my own perspective on theonomy is I'm not really closer to it here.
I'm going, okay.
Yeah, it doesn't seem to me that I've currently understood that there's these clear texts that really strongly establish, at least for my understanding.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, what do you think?
No, that's totally fine.
And I think, you know, if you do explore it more, and I know that one thing that's difficult is, you know, when you're a pastor or even just, you know, in a position of teaching Christians theology, everyone wants to dictate your study schedule.
Have you noticed that?
You should read this book.
And so you're doing.
You've got something lined up.
So you do you and do that and do it to the glory of God and do it thoroughly and come back up for air five years from now or whatever it takes.
But if you ever do get to it, and I'm not saying you have to, if you ever do get to it, you'll probably come back and say, I don't feel like Joel was being honest with me about this theonomy thing because there is such a wide spectrum.
Some people, the simple definition of theonomy is the civil codes, not just the Ten Commandments, but the civil codes given to Israel should.
They are, we are.
Nations today are obligated to enforce that.
So that's what I think I've run into with my whispers that I've heard.
Because it felt very much, this was years ago, and I was like, I'm pretty sure these guys want to enforce the totality of the civil law towards Israel or basically the laws towards Israel, except for what we would consider purity.
Right.
Yeah.
And not the ceremony of the civil codes.
I'd have a hundred more pushbacks against that that I didn't even bring up because that's not your view.
Right.
So I would be of.
Like Jeff Durbin, James White, Doug Wilson, these are some of the guys that I would align with.
And they kind of coined, use the phrase general equity theonomist, which really does seem to be the confessional reform position.
If you're Westminster or 1689, it seems like it is now the confession is not the inherent word of God.
Confessions can err, but I'm just saying if you're going to say, I'm a confessional Presbyterian, confessional Reformed Baptist, then the general equity theonomist seems to be the right thing.
And the reason why we want to, it's like, why not just call it something else?
Why do you have to use the word theonomy?
Because theonomy is a good word.
It's God's law.
I don't think Christians should be having aversion.
We want to take that word, stand on that word.
And guys who are maybe further, a lot of what they said is fantastic.
Greg Bonson, I would agree with 99% of everything that he said.
Rush Dooney, I agree with probably 85 to 90%.
So less.
Gary North, I haven't gotten into a whole lot, but I've heard great things, and especially his application of the Christian worldview, not just to the civil realm, but to economics.
I heard that Gary North has done some phenomenal things.
But the big idea is all of Christ for all of life.
All of Christ for all of life.
Like God has written us a book, and there's a lot of things that can be known about God.
Not everything, but it's not a 30 page pamphlet.
It's 66 books.
There's a lot of information, divine revelation, so that the man of God might be equipped for everything.
Every good work, not just his pietistic, privatized quiet time in his backyard as his kids get shipped off to the gulag and he allows for a total Marxist takeover.
I think the reason why post millennialism and theonomy are on the uprise right now is because of providence.
It is circumstantial.
And that doesn't mean they're wrong.
And it also doesn't make it right.
That's not an argument that proves something either way.
But I will admit, there is something significant to what's been going on in the world over the last two years and in our nation and civil tyranny and medical tyranny and being told you have to get something in your body or you have to.
All the and then all of a sudden it's like, yeah, man, like, does God have something to say about this?
And does the Bible just apply to the home in the church, the home in another conference on parenting, another conference on parenting, or or does the Bible say something about the political realm and the economic realm?
And and I think the general equity theonomists are saying, yes, it does.
And the old school theonomists that get the bad rap, I think they're number one, way better than people are willing to admit, but number two, I think, yeah, maybe there are some areas where they go too far.
So, hmm.
That's so that that would be my that would be my final thought.
There's a world in Theonomy.
Well, thanks for getting me exposed somewhat to it.
I appreciate the talk, the brotherly chat, and thanks for letting me push back somewhat.
And, um, yeah, much stuff.
Yeah, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Really, really appreciate it.
God bless you.
Thanks, ma'am.
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