Pastor Joel Webbin and David Reece critique fifty years of theological minimalism, advocating instead for "theological maximalism" rooted in Ephesians 4. They propose a framework of "theological triage" to distinguish essential doctrines from secondary issues, urging evangelicals to rally around the Westminster Confession as a binding covenant. The discussion details distinct roles for elders and deacons, suggests forming "Christian boroughs" with shared economic resources, and insists that true unity requires strict adherence to high-watermark standards like TULIP rather than mere tolerance of disagreement. Ultimately, they argue that only by governing households well and accumulating resources can believers establish a civil covenant capable of defending the faith against external pressures. [Automatically generated summary]
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Lowering the Bar for Unity00:02:05
Welcome back to another Theology Applied episode.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
In this episode, I am welcoming the CEO of Armored Republic, Mr. David Reese.
He's also a local pastor.
We're talking about civic covenanting, ecclesiastical covenanting.
Basically, to break it down, we get very practical.
Theological terms will be included, but so will definitions and explanations and practical marching orders, applications, takeaways, things that we can do, the average Christian on the ground.
But basically, this is it.
We want a theological maximalism.
And unity.
And not just unity of common care.
Hey, we disagree, but we still love each other.
No, a unity of common conviction.
We're united not just because we tolerate one another in the midst of disagreement, but we're united because we're actually achieving the knowledge of the faith.
The knowledge, the same knowledge of the Son of God.
In Ephesians 4, unity of common conviction, unity of knowledge.
Not just a unity of common care, but a unity of common conviction.
So, A lot of what evangelicalism has done over the last 50 years and even longer is a theological minimalism, lowering the bar doctrinally as low as we can get because, well, doctrine divides and we need to be united.
And the only way to be united is to stop caring about truth or to care about a lot less truth.
But is there a way from the scripture?
Does God give us a method, a strategy for being united and not lowering the bar?
Theologically, I think there is.
Mr. Reese thinks there is.
And that's what we're going to lay out for you today.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webben with Right Response Ministries.
In this episode, I'm welcoming back to the show Mr. David Reese.
He is the CEO of Armored Republic, he's also a local pastor.
Biblical Precedent for Unity00:13:47
And we're going to be discussing balkanization, division, and also unity.
Truth unites, it also divides.
But there's got to be some kind of stopping measure.
We want truth to matter, but we don't want to unnecessarily divide over the most minute expressions of tertiary truths.
And right now, it seems like in the evangelical world, we are fracturing and splintering further and further and further.
And When brothers dwell in unity together, it's pleasing to the Lord, and God hates division.
And so, we're trying to think of ways and offer some practical principles in this episode for what things are worth dividing over, what things are not worth dividing over, and how can I ensure that the people that I align with today are not their enemies 15 minutes from now.
I think a lot of us, you know, in the woke wars 1.0 of 2020, we had a lot of co belligerents and a lot of guys that we would have said are on the team.
And it hasn't been that long, and just a Few short years from 2020, guys who we would have said initially were all on the same team, now we find ourselves splintered and fractured.
So at a certain point, that's got to stop.
Otherwise, yes, we are Protestants, but we don't want every individual Protestant to just be his own Pope.
So, Mr. Reese, what do we do about that?
Thanks for having me on, brother.
So I think that what we have to do is we have to realize that there are different rallying points for unity.
And there's the rallying point for the state, there's the rallying point for the church, for the household.
And then for the individual.
And so I think that thinking about these different covenant spheres and how they're supposed to think about functional unity is key.
And so, you know, we are Americans, and so we're very used to thinking about the individual operating just sort of atomistically.
And so we go, okay, so the goal is to glorify God.
Great.
So now we have a joint, you know, North Star.
We have a target that we're ultimately getting to.
It's a few light years away, but we're going to be moving there.
And so then you have sort of this, okay, the law of God is the means by which we're supposed to get moving towards that target.
And so in addition to that, we kind of go, okay, so that's what we're supposed to do.
matters of preference.
You're supposed to be able to do all sorts of things.
And we just think about the individual.
And so we forget that individuals are supposed to be cooperating inside of the other covenant institutions.
And so we've spent time talking about the household and how the household functions well.
And so if individuals are in covenant with God, they're supposed to glorify God, then we go, okay, how do we interact with other people?
And the principal places are the household, the church, and the state.
So with the household, you're looking for extreme unity, right?
Because you think about this, if you're a man, you're looking to lead somebody and have her be your help meet for the rest of your life.
And she's going to have to be able to deal with you in all sorts of details and be able to submit to you in enormous detail.
And so a wife is looking for, you know, you're looking for a godly man, but you're choosing a boss, right?
And so this idea that you've got to pick a man that you think has good character, that has good doctrine, and that you feel like you're able to resolve conflicts in a way that is ultimately going to go appealing back to the word of God.
And you've got the church to protect you in terms of there being, you know, abuses or whatever.
But the state I mean, you know, a man can be unfaithful or a woman can be unfaithful and then just leave with half the stuff.
Right.
You know, and so the church is sort of the only public protector we've got there right now.
But so choosing well in marriage and raising your children, you have all sorts of room for, you know, ordering your children to fulfill preferences.
Right.
So there's a way the household sort of becomes a place where you're training unity and you're training, you know, obedience and you're training operational unity and where you have more minute detail.
And then you can pay people to do work inside of the household.
And if they want to keep taking the money, then they've got to keep obeying in detail.
So that's sort of the unity is easier to obtain there.
What we find is when we move to the church, when we move to the state, we start to have a lot more fracturing, and it's difficult.
And people tend to either kind of try to make the church like the household or the state like the household, or they try to make the household like one of those higher institutions, and then you don't have efficient management.
So we need to recognize there's a different form of government, generally speaking, in the lower governments than in the higher governments.
As an individual, it's monarchy, you're governing yourself.
In the household, you've got essentially a monarchy where the patriarch is ruling the home.
But then you get to the church, and you've got a monarchy in the form of Christ as the king of the church, but there's supposed to be a plurality of elders.
There's supposed to be this ability to deal with the removal of officers and all that kind of stuff.
So you've got this issue of there's sort of more of a power struggle that could occur, and there's less centralized power.
And with the state, even though you could have a monarchy that is a valid government, That God himself appointed generally a republican form of government.
And those things have different tendencies.
But you're going to have a hard time, even with the absolute monarchy, there's a difficulty of knowing what's actually going on.
The tendency of absolute monarchs is to start delegating out everything to a bunch of different bureaucrats, and they don't even know what's going on.
It's kind of like in the book of Esther, where Haman has ordered the genocide of the Jews, and Darius, Hashuarus, the emperor, he doesn't even really know.
Who's been ordered to be executed, and he finds out his wife is one of those people, and then he finds out that there's this general order of genocide, and he goes, Oh, oh, this is a problem.
That's the level of disconnect that even in an absolute monarchy you can have from having to manage a large realm.
So I think that what we're talking about principally today is unity in the church and unity in the state and getting rallying points for that.
And so I want to suggest that the rallying point in the church, in short form, is covenanting around some sort of unity that's defined and the same as in the state.
And those don't have to be the exact same covenant.
I think ideally they would be, but I think that the reality is that in a church you have to have more unity than than you have to in the state.
And eventually, the goal would be to see this idea of a covenanted uniformity where you have unity in doctrine, but you then capture that in a form, an external form.
And that external form is called a confession.
And then you also have an external form that's the form of government of the church and the form of worship that's going to be dealt with.
And in the state, you have similarly a constitution for the state.
And so these are the things that are getting worked out.
And so, in the interim, the question is, what are the intermediate steps?
To advance towards those goals.
So I'd be curious if you have disagreements with those perspectives on the goals and the rallying points.
No, so far I agree.
I think one thing that's important in the church and with the state in both of those realms is just triage.
So in the church, a theological triage of saying what must one believe, what should one believe, and what may one believe.
You must believe this in order to be.
A member of this church.
You should believe this, although it may be an arena where we leave room for some degree of disagreement.
But we still have a position that we think is right.
We're not relativists.
You should believe this.
And then there may be other areas where it's like, well, this is something that you may believe, but not necessarily even should believe.
So, must and should and may, theological triage, so that there So that you can have unity, but unity with hopefully more than just four people.
That we're not so particular in our covenanting together that all of our covenants are inherently small.
That it's just this very, very small group of people that align on everything.
And then you keep fracturing and keep fracturing and keep fracturing.
Yeah, so I think that when we look at the history of the church, When we look at what the scriptures teach about the idea of how the church deals with things, there has to be an authoritative distinguisher between what we have to covenant around versus not.
And so if you divorce the church from any history and you don't say that there's any covenants that have ever been reached before, then you can sort of just say, well, we're just going to make up a new one that we think kind of meets the minimum bounds of maybe a Christian.
And then you can say, Maybe we're going to have some definition for what we think is acceptable for our officers.
And then we're going to have sort of a definition that we think could be maybe other officers that we could unite with, even though we're not in part of the same church.
So, but I want to suggest that covenants are binding across generations.
And so if that's the case, if covenants are binding across generations, then we, whether we find it convenient or not, may have to think about covenants that have been reached before or decisions of the church that might have been reached before.
So, and we also have to ask ourselves, is there a cumulative work that's been done?
Or is this sort of this chaos hodgepodge where everybody has to like study everything that's ever happened from the first century forward and kind of piece it all together?
Right.
So to cut to the chase on that, I mean, what I want to communicate is essentially I would suggest that the Reformation reached a new high watermark and that there's a rallying point that's defined there.
And so whether you're, if you're Baptist, you're basically going to say the London Baptist Confession is the high watermark.
If you're Congregationalist, you're going to say the Savoy Declaration.
And if you're Presbyterian, you're going to say the Westminster Confession.
And you look at those documents, they agree about basically everything except for baptism and church government.
Right.
And so the idea that it's not possible to get to significant doctrinal unity is something that I just say, that's not the case.
I mean, the Holy Spirit simply does it.
The Holy Spirit does that.
So right preaching of the word, careful guarding of those things.
And so I want to suggest that on an institutional level, we need to rally to, as churches, a confessional standard.
And then as we disagree, so like in your case, being Baptist, my case, being Presbyterian, our job becomes arguing with each other about those disagreements to where we can come to unity.
So one of us is wrong.
And so either children need to be baptized or they don't.
And so I can deal with you as a brother and as a friend and say, hey, let's talk about other stuff.
We could do other things.
And then we have to keep coming back to the point of disagreement.
And the goal is not simply to to keep re saying the same things exactly, but the goal is to say, okay, here are the verses, let's talk through them, let's work through them, let's work through the points of disagreement on those.
So you go back to the scriptures itself.
So this, I think, a commitment to seeking unity, not just seeking to shut up, right, but seeking to actually come to agreement.
And that happens while arguing with each other.
And I think a lot of the times, you know, the problem is that we're impatient with each other and we say, if I've talked to this person about this doctrine, Once or twice, I'm just not going to talk to them about it anymore, or I'm going to not be their friend anymore, or whatever.
And so you go, this stuff that is not the gospel proper, if we're not in some sort of a church covenant together, then we can still be pushing to try to come to resolution on those things.
So I think the confessional standard is what we have to use to say that.
And so a lot of people are going to say the Westminster Confession or the London Baptist Confession is too long.
There's too much detail there.
And so I think they're going to criticize that as too detailed.
So what do you think about those as the points to rally around?
I think that's good.
I, you know, one, I think there's a misunderstanding of unity.
So I think that's part of the hang up the Bible actually speaks to at least two different types of unity.
Because when we think unity, I think that we've been indoctrinated with a light, fluffy, watered down Christianity that, you know, anytime it discusses unity, it's only talking about one kind of unity, which is a biblical unity, but even that, Has been perverted.
And so the type of unity in 99.9% of sermons that discuss unity, the type of unity in view is what I would call a unity of love, or you could put it another way, you could say a unity of common care.
So this would be the type of unity that insists in Scripture that we should bear with the weak, that we should exercise charity towards one another in the midst of disagreement.
And that is biblical.
There is a biblical precedent for that type of unity.
The problem is not that that type of unity is wrong.
The problem is that there's more than one type of unity.
Ephesians 4 is probably one of the premier chapters that speaks about not a unity of love or common care, but rather a unity of the faith or a unity of the knowledge of the faith, which is a unity of common, not care, but common conviction.
Foundations and Church Offices00:02:55
Ephesians 4, what's being asserted there is that one, Christ is the head of the church, and as a good head, he gives gifts to the church in the form of leaders.
Leaders are not a burden, but good leaders is the ideal, and they should be viewed as a blessing, a gift to the church.
Christ gives different kinds of leaders, and I would say not just different kinds of leaders for different roles and tasks, but also different stages of this church building project.
So he gives Ephesians 2 20, cross referencing that from Ephesians 4, he gives apostles and prophets for leg one.
That, you know, if we're thinking of a construction team, it's not just that the same men are working from the project from start to finish, but there are different teams of men who are particularly skilled in different forms of labor.
And one team of men, namely those who lay a foundation, they come first.
And then when the foundation is firmly laid, then we don't need to do that part of the house building project over again.
And we don't need those men.
We still need their foundation.
We need their work that's already been done, but we don't need those men.
So we still have the foundation, which is, I would say, that it's the apostles and prophets inscripturated.
So we still have the apostles and prophets, we still have their work.
But we don't still have modern day apostles and prophets working.
But we still have the work of the apostles and prophets.
And it's a work that was good.
It's a sufficient work.
It's a perfect work, inspired by the Holy Spirit with Christ Himself as the capstone.
And so it's a work that we don't need to do over.
And now you have evangelists and shepherds, teachers coming in.
And I think that's who is working now.
And there's some debate to be had.
Maybe evangelists are a second wave.
And now it's shepherd teachers in the last wave.
So whether it's two waves, two stages of the work, or three.
Three, you know, and whether it's a five fold ministry or a four fold ministry, that Shebras and teachers are two sides of one coin, there's debate for that.
It's two phases and there's four offices.
You're good.
Two phases and four offices.
That's my view, believe it or not.
And so, that being said, I think that that's really helpful for people to realize.
But here's the big point.
So, Jesus is the head of the church, he gives gifts to the church in the form of men, leaders, qualified leaders for two separate waves, stages of this work.
All building one project.
We're not building two different, it's not two different projects.
It's not two different houses.
It's one house in two stages.
We need to know what stage we're on now so that we're not trying to, so that we're actually framing walls and not taking a jackhammer and trying to undo a foundation.
No, that's done and it's good.
And then the last thing is what is the chief aim, the ultimate purpose, the goal?
And the goal is not unity of common care.
Two Phases of Leadership00:07:58
It's not unity of charity in the midst of disagreement.
No, the goal is so that we would achieve.
A unity of faith, the same knowledge of the same Son of God.
Not, well, I think Jesus looks like this and I think Jesus looks like that, but we love each other and we'll tolerate each other nonetheless.
That is nowhere in view with the type of unity being discussed in Ephesians 4.
It's not a unity of common care or love.
It's a unity of knowledge, faith, common conviction, so that we would no longer be like children tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of doctrine, but we would actually grow up into the fullness of the maturity of Christ.
And Christ is not bipolar.
Christ is not schizophrenic.
He doesn't have multiple personality disorder.
Christ is one person, and so too his body should be one body that is not merely held together by love, but held together by agreement.
And so I even wrote part of that in my book.
I wrote a whole chapter saying unity of common care, right?
Toleration of one another, charity towards one another in the midst of disagreement is good.
But let us never forget that the first kind of unity, the best kind of unity that we're aiming for, is not that we're united merely through love in the midst of disagreement, but we're actually united because we agree.
And the way that we get there is not through tolerance.
The way we get there is through persuasion.
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That's excellent.
I agree with everything you said there.
And I think that the idea that we begin with, we have this unity of care in order to get to the unity of the faith.
Exactly.
So that the conversations and persuasion have the relational context to keep happening.
Absolutely.
And so I think.
Exactly right.
So we care for each other in that way in order to make it so that we can keep discussing.
So we're removing as many offenses as we can.
So the offense of disagreement is the thing that's there, is the focus.
So the goal is to close it out.
In manufacturing, you talk about the idea of work in progress.
And work in progress is a really dangerous thing because you just end up with all this.
You got raw material inventory.
You take it in, you make it work in progress.
It's been altered.
It can't be made into something else now.
So you have all the illiquidity.
You can't turn it into something different.
That you would have if it were a finished product, but you have none of the value of a finished product.
And so the finished product is valuable because you can sell it.
The raw material is valuable because it's able to be turned into all sorts of stuff.
And the stuff that's work in progress has all of the negatives of both and none of the positives of either.
And so it's when you have disagreements, it's sort of work in progress.
And I think the goal has to be between Christians to seek to limit the work in progress.
We don't try to bring up everything under the sun that we can think of that we might disagree about.
But instead, your goal is to find unity, have a common care, and to then seek to resolve disagreements by seeking to be careful and self-control.
And I think some people who like to debate, I think a lot of people who are really gifted in a prophetic way just like to debate.
And they go and they want to debate with people whether they're mature or not.
And because those people haven't matured into a place of being careful about what disputes they're opening up.
They sort of end up making strife all over the place.
And we could joke about this as the cage stage, which is basically people who care about doctrine coming to realize some important doctrine and then realizing they want to debate about that.
And then they learn about other neat things that matter in the Bible and debate about those.
So, I think one of the really important things for pursuing unity is recognizing what you talked about as the unity of care and the unity of love, but then using those things to help to resolve disputes.
So, the question becomes what order do you pick disputes to have?
Because I could just walk around finding people and being like, let's argue about head coverings.
Or I can say, let's argue about whether the scriptures are infallible and systematically true.
Just out of curiosity, are you a head covering guy?
Yeah, we do head covering in our church.
And so people bring it up early because they see women covering their heads and they go, So do I have to, we have to like cover our heads together?
Like, well, to the men, no.
Exactly.
Yeah, to the women, no, either.
But we think that you should.
But that's something that we don't require, for example, for membership.
Exactly.
We don't require it.
But my wife and daughters wear a head covering and I've talked about it.
And I try not to make it a point of division.
But it's another one of those things.
It's like, you know, the Bible has something to say about this.
There is a right position.
And especially when you study that one in light of the text, but also throughout church history, I mean, it's the dominant lion's share of church history is head covering until really, you know, I mean, late 1800s and especially, you know, the 1950s and 60s.
And they were even, you know, with the temperance movement, you know, and first wave feminism and things like that, they, certain groups of women in local churches even scheduled like the same Sunday that they, in protest, they were all going to take off their hats and throw them down.
And you look at that and then you look at what it was teamed up with, and it's like this.
The same group that was anti-head covering was the same group that was propelling feminism.
And when you look at the history of it, it's like, it's hard to argue that this is a good thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I think it's very clear in the scriptures, but I also think that one of the things that we try to look for is how can you avoid making additional barriers without dishonoring the Lord?
Our goal is to honor the Lord.
And then how do we also make it so people can initially come in?
The idea that one thing is, I think the goal actually is over time, we want the church to come to unity in a place where we actually end up making it more complicated to become a member and more complicated to become an officer, right?
An officer today should be required to have a lot more knowledge than an officer would have been required to have in the third century in the church.
Right.
And that's because we have all the work that was done beforehand.
But also probably less knowledge than a Puritan officer would have had in the 1700s because sadly, we have regressed.
Absolutely.
So, I mean, you read the commentaries that the great Baptist John Gill wrote or the great Presbyterian Matthew Poole or something like that.
And the scholarly level on that versus the stuff that gets published today, you go, I'm going to keep reading Gill and Poole.
So, I think this idea of the pursuit of the goal of greater unity of the doctrine, one of the things that happens, I think, in Ephesians in the text is it talks about the idea of the bond of peace and this idea of bearing with one another.
Levels of Maturity in Faith00:15:02
In love and endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
I think the bond of peace, whenever you see the word bond in Scripture, you should be thinking about covenant.
This idea that you form a bond that's established by oaths or by vows.
And so the bond of peace is the covenant of peace or the covenant of grace.
But it's also a bond that establishes peace between Jew and Gentile and all that, where there's this in the new administration of the covenant of grace, we're sharing together in this covenant administration.
And so, this idea that the context of covenant.
And so, I think the other thing you mentioned is this idea of how do you make it so it's not impossible for people to join.
And I think that you have to recognize the biblical idea that there are levels of maturity.
And so the Apostle John talks about children, young men, and fathers.
And so what I think is important is that you have sort of a minimal set of doctrine that's necessary to teach people in sort of, you know, membership classes are typically how this gets done in churches.
But you have some sort of a church government.
And I think the idea of a shorter catechism, like the whole purpose of differentiating between a larger catechism and shorter catechism.
In the Presbyterian tradition, is to say the shorter catechism is the milk that's necessary to help somebody to come to the table so they can commune.
And then the larger catechism is how you mature somebody and it's meat.
And I think this realization that there are stages in the process of development of the Christian life, and we're so individualistic in America that we like to pretend like everybody's journey is totally unique.
And it's just like, no, actually, my experiences are overwhelmingly going to be.
Have points of reference that are similar in the experiences of believers throughout history and that are referenced, obviously, in the scriptures.
And the scriptures give us a complete set of all the stuff we need to address all the experiences that we have in the Christian life.
But so, this idea that there's sort of stages.
So the child, the young man, and the father.
And I think that what we need to recognize is what's really necessary for the child is going to be essentially you're going to have a commitment.
To the doctrine of the scripture and its authority, you're going to have a shorter catechism or something like that for introductory teaching for people.
And then you're going to have, in that introductory category, you're going to necessarily have the solas, tulip, trinity, incarnation, and a basic federal headship of Adam and Christ.
You don't have to have a really elaborate covenant theology or whatever, but you need to understand that you're sinful in Adam and you're righteous in Christ.
And so those things are going to give you here's the stuff we've got to give to people.
And so often people treat like tulip, like it's some like grand thing that you need to deal with when you're a father or whatever.
It's just like, no, that's milk that guards the solas.
And so then you also need to have a commitment to the basic law order that the Ten Commandments summarizes and some sort of a commitment about, based upon that local church, you're going to have to deal with how the sacraments are administered.
You're going to have to deal with some sort of submission to church authority.
And then you're going to have to deal with, With prayer because it's essential to the Christian life.
So that's actually the content of the shorter catechism.
And so, you know, those things, I don't think you look at the shorter catechism, I've had a lot of really solid Reformed Baptist friends that basically are like, yeah, I agree with the shorter catechism and elaborate the tale, except when we get to the baptism part, right?
And so it's just, you know, you could just grab that slightly, if there's not a better Baptist catechism that can be used, you can grab that, you know, replace the baptism part, and you've basically got something.
So I think that those, that idea, if there's a rejection of what's there in the shorter catechism, There's a fundamental rejection of the basics of the faith.
Right.
No, you're right.
This is not elite theological higher education for theologians.
The bar has fallen so far that I remember Vodi Bakum saying years ago that anytime you find a young man who's zealous for the Lord and possesses some theological.
You know, inclination, like, hey, he's got some potential, you know, in the theological realm.
Seems like he's got a sharp mind and he's zealous for theology and he knows a few things.
Many people in the church just instinctively begin to push him towards the pastorate and say, well, you should consider going to seminary.
I think you're called to be a pastor.
And part of the reason we do that is really to protect ourselves, our own apathy towards doctrine and these kinds of things.
So, what we want to do is because he's got to be called to pastoral ministry, because if he's not, that's how we assuage our guilty consciences.
Because if he's not, well, then maybe he's just, maybe this is actually normative.
Maybe he's just your average young Christian man.
And so, then what do I say about myself?
But if I can say, like, oh, well, he's, you know, He's a Christian 2.0.
He's one of those rare, special guys.
Then I can maintain the illusion that I'm not bad.
I'm just the average Christian and he's above average.
When the reality is, no, the bar has slipped and fallen so much that the guys right now that we send to seminary to be pastors, again, going back to earlier times in the 1700s and 1800s, these just would have been, many of them would have just been your average Christians.
Yeah.
And I think one of the things you pointed out in a lecture that I was able to enjoy hearing you give, you had said that all over the place, we're essentially in a place where we keep promoting people to their point of incompetence.
And I think a part of that is any gifting at all that might relate to some office, the tendency to push people up.
And I think what you just brought up, that idea of trying to assuage your own guilt, is a part of why.
And so you have been an advocate in your book, you advocate this idea that.
Gathering around a particular location so you can work together that need to concentrate because we've diffused too much.
We've dissipated our energy as a church and therefore made it so we're incapable of accomplishing anything.
So we're too spread out.
We're led by people who are in positions that are just above their point of competency.
And so that's obviously a recipe for success.
And so that's why we're winning all over the place.
We're all tired of winning, right?
This is what we're going through winning exhaustion.
So that's obviously destructive of all those ends.
So, I mean, If we think about the process of maturing and we think we need to pull people in and mature them and have well ordered sort of teams, I think there's also this idea that the young man is differentiated in John.
In 1 John, he says the young men fight.
And so the fighting of the young men is an indicator.
You're trying to raise children until they've got basically those things in place where they understand the basic doctrines, they understand the basic law order.
They understand how to use the means of grace.
And then they're kind of getting into the rhythm of Christian life with, you know, how does their worship go and stuff like that.
And then they're also trying to get into how do I get into Christian community, right?
So once they're plugged into those things, most people, a lot of pastors look at that and are like, great, success, we're done here.
Like, this is like masterful, like this guy, this is done.
Well, that's when they're able to now be useful fighting men.
Right.
And so that idea that the fighting, then you have them go and do ministry, you have them do evangelism, you have them work through you, and you're starting to go through things like, Let's talk about the confession.
Let's talk about the larger catechism.
Let's get an overview of the Bible.
Let's make it so you have some idea of how the books of the Bible fit together.
You're starting to really get them the system, and they're going to get lumpy in different areas, and they're going to be really good at this and terrible at that.
And your goal is to help to make a more mature, developed individual where their weak points are not disastrous anymore, and their strong points are really able to be used powerfully.
Right.
And so, in 1 John, you're right, because it's those three categories.
I remember preaching through 1 John, and For the little children, there's a major emphasis, really only two emphases.
One is on that you recognize that it's the doctrine of adoption, that you recognize that God is your father.
And so understanding Father God, and in that, the Father is God, but the Father is not the Son, and the Father is not the Spirit.
Your basic Trinitarian doctrine, you could include, you could derive from that that there's at least a minimum understanding of Trinitarian theology.
So understanding God as Father, adoption.
And then the second emphasis for little children is the forgiveness of sins.
That from the first day of conversion, there is inherently a basic understanding of salvation.
And so I think a lot of, when I think of catechisms for the new believer, a lot of it is going to be basic doctrine of God, theology proper, knowing God is Father and the Father is distinct from the Son and the Spirit, and then the forgiveness of sins, soteriology, and an understanding of salvation that God saves and also how God saves.
But then for young men, you're right, I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.
And then when he repeats all these things twice, And then the second time when he says it, I write to you, young men, because the word of God dwells richly in you.
And so then he gives the means by which they have overcome the evil one.
They haven't just done it by brute strength, they've done it by the indwelling, rich indwelling of the word of God.
And so now it's moving from just theology proper and soteriology to a more comprehensive biblical theology, from Genesis to Revelation, is how you could exegete that.
And the whole word of God is now dwelling in you.
And then with the word of God, the law word of God.
Understanding more of God's law.
And then lastly, I write to you, fathers.
And that one almost seems the most simplistic, but I think it's actually the most beautiful and complex of all.
But I write to you, fathers, for you know He who is from the beginning.
And so now there's this ancient of days, and not just ancient of days, speaking of God Himself, but this ancient, passed down, historic body of doctrine.
You know Him who is from the beginning.
And you now are the embodiment, the Full embodiment of all those saints who came before you, the full work of the Christian theology and doctrine that's been passed down generation from generation.
And 1 John will preach, I guess is what I'm saying.
So, no, that's that's amazing.
Thank you for that, brother.
That's awesome.
And I think one of the glorious things about the tail end of it with the fathers is it basically repeats, you know, you know the father.
It's like twice, right?
There's a full circle.
Yeah.
It's like this emphasis on the deep, deep knowledge of God, right?
It's like it's a Hebraism of this, like, you know, God, you know, God, like this, the deep knowledge of God.
So, we just the knowledge of God is how we are sanctified.
Right.
And the word of God is how we get the knowledge of God.
And that results in the bearing of fruit.
And so I just, you know, this idea that the deep knowledge of God, the rich knowledge of God is how we're matured.
And that as pastors, we have to teach the doctrine.
We also have to rebuke people because we become blind.
And so this rebuking part, it's always been the hardest part for me of the pastoral ministry, is just the rebuking, the correcting of showing them what to put on.
Right.
And then you have this training in righteousness.
This is the 2 Timothy 3 16 stuff.
Where the word of God is profitable for or useful for.
And the training part of walking through it, giving the example, giving on the spot rebuke and correction, and helping to watch and give critique and all that kind of stuff, where you're helping them to work it out.
I think that that's what the young man stage is really about.
The young man stage is really about helping them to do that in the context of fighting.
And the child stage, you're doing that in the context of sheltering, right?
You're giving the protection of the Christian community.
You're trying to protect them from heresy and all that.
The young man stage, you're like, hey, go read this heretical stuff.
Let's talk about it.
Like, you know, critique this thing.
You're like, let's go out here.
Let's go engage on the street and do evangelism with other people.
Or, okay, do apologetics in your own community and network and the people that you know and try to evangelize and pull them in.
We oftentimes just try to get people saved and then just try to get them to go evangelize right away.
And I go, hey, let's get you saved.
Let's create.
Now let's disciple.
Let's get them basic stuff in there.
And then once they're young men, you kind of go, okay, now let's train.
Now you can start to take some risks more in your network.
Opportunity arises and you're immature.
Okay, great.
But there's sometimes times where you have to kind of push past boundaries where people don't want to talk about things of the Lord, don't want to know what's going on with you becoming a Christian or whatever, and you got to take risks of pushing past.
I think that young man stage is really where you want to encourage people to take those risks in their network.
It's by the time when they've become a little bit competent at using the sword.
And so that thing, I think from there, the young man, I think a lot of times a young man who's learning to fight, that's really a great place for a guy to be a deacon because there's two promises with the office of deacon.
The office of deacon has the promise that you'll gain boldness by exercising it well and that you'll get good reputation.
And those are things you really need for the office of elder.
And I wish, you know, God's providence and everything, but, you know, I didn't go through the office of deacon before becoming an elder.
And I think that in a lot of ways, it may have been a good thing for me to help me to be better at things like rebuking because I would have had to go through more of that grind in that less high office, being kind of forced to go through some of those conflicts without as much stress on it.
Right.
And so that's just something that is a lot of the diaconate.
People don't think, they think of the deacon's food drive.
They think, you know, well, it's just charity, it's just welfare.
You're caring for the physical needs of widows and orphans.
And that's just to misunderstand the descriptive nature of Acts chapter six with these seven men.
Number one, like just the bar, seven men filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom.
It's not that we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom so that we can pass out soup.
The saints are doing, back to Ephesians 4, the saints are responsible as the executive office of carrying out the work of ministry.
But what these deacons are going to be doing is organizing that work, seeing to it that no widow is overlooked.
But not just that, widows have already been overlooked.
And so they're doing a ton of reconciliation and conflict management.
Distinct Qualifications for Deacons00:03:17
You have not just two individuals or two households, you have two entire sects of a massive church in Jerusalem.
This is a large church because 3,000 are added to the faith at Pentecost when Peter preaches in Jerusalem.
A massive church, and you can basically look at it and divide it in half.
Half of the church is upset at the other half, and vice versa.
The Hellenistic Jews, who are saying that our widows have been overlooked in the daily distribution, and then the Hebraic Jews.
And so the deacons are coming in, and they're not just making sure that poor people get fed.
The deacons are coming in, and people are at each other's throats, and they have to solve this conflict and seek reconciliation, restoration between two halves of the church that are right now.
On the verge of threatening to, they're right on the verge of a church split.
And we're not even a century into the Christian gospel.
And so this is a massive task laid before them.
And then I think of, you know, that's all descriptive and things that, you know, principles we can glean from the text.
But then prescriptive in terms of the qualifications of deacons that we find later in 1 Timothy 3.
It totally makes sense when you cross reference Acts 6 and 1 Timothy 3.
Implication that an elder should have this qualification as well.
But the fact that the Apostle Paul, underneath the inspiration of the Spirit, finds it necessary to specifically mention one distinct qualification for a deacon that's not mentioned for the elder, which is he must not be double tongued.
And I think there's something unique to the office of deacon that it's kind of like mom in a household that can get, if the kids are being manipulative, pitted against.
You know, mom becomes this mediator, this going back and forth in between dad, head of household, and then the children, the citizens of this household state.
You know, mom can be tempted if she's not wise and sanctified and godly to say one thing to the kids and then another thing to dad.
And so, too, I think, deacons between elders and congregants, right?
The congregants, there's things that eventually do need to rise to the level of elder, but there's a lot of things that don't, where the elders need to devote themselves to the reading and preaching of the word of God and prayer and study.
But, you know, the deacons should care for this, and there could be a temptation in the diaconate.
To, you know, just to hush, hush, tell the congregants, tickle their ears, tell them what they want to hear, and even bad mouth the elders, like, yeah, I know that, you know, he's not sensitive.
And yeah, he's kind of, you know, was harsh the other day, this elder, this pastor, and I'm really on your side.
And then, you know, in a deacon and elders table and in a meeting, oh, yeah, I understand, you know, the congregation's immature.
And so there can be this temptation when you're doing conflict resolution between two parties.
And the deacons probably had that same temptation, not just with elders and congregants, but to To groups of congregants, the Hellenistic Jews and the Hebraic Jews, and the temptation to be double tongued.
And so, all that being said, for that particular portion of an elder's role that does include conflict management, man, you can really cut your teeth in conflict management as a deacon because I think that's a massive portion of what the diaconate does.
Avoiding Petty Divisions00:12:06
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Brother, that was excellently described.
I mean, like the scenarios, I have scenarios flashing through my head from stuff I've seen throughout my life of exactly that.
And I think so.
What we do in our diaconal training is we go, okay, there's a doctrine portion, but the part of the practical portion is.
Conflict resolution, which requires you to know basic biblical counseling, and catechesis.
And so you think that's all private ministry stuff, right?
It's not a function of church government.
But deacons, as they're doing that, as they're engaging people's lives, so often they're going to, people go, hey, I need mercy ministry help.
It's like, great.
Do you know how to, are you running a budget or are you just like blowing your money?
Right.
And so, this idea of like basic life management stuff like budget and how to deal with conflict, how to deal with basic biblical counseling, how to deal with basic catechesis.
And so, you get so much done that way.
And I love that work, actually, of like going in and doing that.
And I've recently had to, You know, get that more off of my plate because I just don't have time for it.
I'm drawn to doing it.
And so I'm having to deal with that.
I'm really enjoying preparing some of our newer diaconal nominees, for example, on some of that.
So it's been a fun training process.
But that is so practical.
I think something that people don't understand.
And so that if you're a deacon and you're giving mercy ministry, you're going to see the details of someone's house.
You're almost there and you're unavoidably going to run into those problems and helping people to get to that place.
And that Jethro principle from Exodus 18 that you just mentioned, not everything gets to the elders.
Not everything gets to, you know, if you believed in a series of courts, for example, that were beyond the local church, you might say not every one of them goes to those higher courts, too.
So that whole thing.
So how does this all fit into unity?
And I think that people, you know, you go read the Ephesians text that you mentioned before, Ephesians 4.
You're going to find everybody operating according to their station makes it so that, People are able to divide the labor efficiently and encourage people to be trained.
So, if immature believers are being trained by young men in the faith, by deacons and stuff in the faith, then that's able to be done.
And the more complex problems are able to be dealt with by the fathers in the faith.
Right.
And so, you're able to have well reasoned, well done stuff as opposed to overloaded officers, overloaded elders.
They're able to really do a great job of teaching through the points of disagreement that become more complex.
And they can start to give you handouts and organized information and all that kind of stuff.
And so I think one of the examples that this has happened in the church just in our own time, Pastor Philip Kaiser has like amazing handouts for like every sermon he gives, just these great like handouts of the organization of the stuff.
And I think that must testify to the fact that at their church, they're able to really well organize that to give this guy the time to actually put together these amazing documents for these sermons.
And so that kind of stuff where the teaching is able to be done well.
Have it be here's handouts, here's information, here's stuff you get to look at as a congregation.
That's going to encourage unity in the faith.
And so, this proper division of labor.
And so, then with the fathers being those who are really, really deeply knowledgeable, being those who are able to teach the more advanced elements, and they're able to carefully guard the confessional standard.
And so, they're going to be able to pick.
And we talked before about the idea of when you pick conflicts, you want to pick the more basic ones as opposed to less basic ones.
Right.
And so, The Westminster Confession, the London Baptist Confession, you look at the order of the chapters, they're systematically ordered.
The first one's on Scripture, how do you know?
And the last one's going to be about the Day of Judgment.
And so you have this stuff that it kind of builds.
Chapter one, Scripture.
Chapter two, the nature of God.
Chapter three, the decrees of God.
So how does God do things in terms of creation and providence?
And it just rolls out in this logically ordered way.
When you have disagreements, your goal is to see, well, do we agree about the more basic things?
And you avoid fighting about all the hot button issues, and your goal is to drive the discussion to the points that are more systematically foundational.
And that way you can actually find where the real source of disagreement is, as opposed to fighting about a bunch of little hot button issues at the top.
Trying to go, okay well, do we actually agree that the word of God is is true?
Do we agree that the word of God is systematic and non-contradictory?
Okay, do we agree that god is, is?
Is this god?
And so when you get to disagreements with, for example, between Calvinists and Arminians you're disagreeing at at chapter two, you're disagreeing about the nature of god um, and so talking about a bunch of other stuff.
There we need to come to agreement about who god is, what he is, and so you're trying to find the point of departure where it is in the system, and to be able to work through that there, and and that's That's, I think, part of what fathers train the young men in.
The young men who like to fight are going to kind of pick whatever battles.
And part of how you help them to have discipline is to say, don't fight about everything that comes across your path.
You find the point of disagreement that's most basic with the person and try to focus on that.
And sometimes there's practical things you've got to deal with along the way, like a sin that manifests itself that's less basic.
You've got to deal with it.
But you're also trying to overlook as many sins as you can.
So you're not rebuking people about everything all the time.
So I think these are some of the practical tactics.
Of unity before we go back to some of the bigger, broader ones.
I don't know anything you want to add about the tactics of unity.
Yeah, no, I think that's really good.
You need the theological triage so that you have an order of priority for fighting.
What's worth fighting about?
Where do we fight first?
Which hills to die on?
And in order to have the theological triage, you need systematic theology.
Biblical theology is indispensable, but I think for purposes of triage, systematic theology is key.
And people are bothered by that.
They don't like They don't like systems, you know, and all those kinds of things.
And you'll put, you know, pretty little cliches in order to defend your position for why you don't like, you know, systems or labels.
But really, it's a rejection of authority.
It's a rejection, it's wanting to be your own pope and make all of your own decisions and atomistic, individualistic.
It's arrogance, it's rooted in arrogance.
Systematic theology, just for the listener, is not imposing man's systems on the God breathed text.
Instead, it's going to the text.
Reading it carefully and then discerning out of the text, not reading systems into the text, eisegesis, imposing our systems, but it's looking at the text and saying, well, what do we know about the character and nature of God?
Well, we know that He's a God of order.
He's not a God of chaos.
He's not a God of disorder.
So I'm not imposing a system on the text.
I am counting on the God of order that He has placed a system in the text and I want to find it.
So I'm not bringing a system to the text.
I'm drawing out of the text a system.
And then when we have systematic theology, it is constructed.
In not biblical order of Genesis to Revelation, but in logical order.
And in that logical order, there's an order of priority.
And so that sets the triage of must believe, should believe, may believe.
And then we're able to start there.
And that helps us, I think, from some of the further fracturing and dividing to be able to, you know, because part of the reason that we're dividing on some things is because, you know, part of it is being too petty and too particular, but part of it also.
Is putting the cart before the horse.
Some of these divisions we're dividing now on social justice or the solution for social justice with so and so, which ironically, we should have been divided with so and so from the very beginning.
I think, for instance, you know, people in the last couple of years have felt shocked that James Lindsay is not on our team.
And I'm like, guys, he's an atheist.
He's not even in the realm of, like, we're shocked.
Oh, we're shocked.
So, James Lindsay turns out he wants to guard all the benefits of a Christian nation that afford him the ability to just go through life, to have, you know, to not be, you know, just it preserves his liberty and all these kinds of things.
Like, all that comes from the Christian faith.
There is no liberty apart from the Christian worldview.
So, turns out he wanted to defend, you know, seemingly defend some basic, you know, But he was never defending the Christian faith.
He was defending what the Christian faith produced for him, its blessings.
But then, when it comes to actually the solution, he doesn't want a Christian nation.
He just wants classical liberalism as a later fruit of the Christian worldview.
But that's not my goal.
My goal is not to bring us back to the good old days of the 1980s.
My goal is no, I want to distinctly.
Christian nation.
And of course, I'm not going to be able to count on someone like James Lindsay to be a co belligerent towards that aim.
And so, my point is, you know, some of the fracturing that we're having now, not all of it, but some of the fracturing we're having now is we're actually just starting to realize that we're divided on chapter, for instance, to put it into like confessional terms, we're divided on chapter 27.
Well, you know, and it's like, oh, I'm losing allies, I'm losing friends.
Yeah, but honestly, you're divided on chapter 27.
But if you'd been a little bit more discerning, you would have realized that you were already divided on chapter two and three and four.
And of course, of course, this was not going to happen.
So I think, assuming the center, that's what, you know, I think there's a geographic application of this.
I think there's an ideological and methodological application of this, certainly a theological application of this.
But right now, in terms of what time is it, sons of Issachar, what do we do today?
They knew the times and they knew what Israel should do.
So they weren't just commentators.
Oh, I know the times.
I know how bad it is.
No, no, they also had a plan, they knew what Israel should do.
And I think right now, what Israel, the church of Jesus Christ, needs to do, given the times, is we need to realize that our high water mark, like you've so wonderfully said, is behind us, unfortunately.
Geographic Strategy for Unity00:14:10
We've actually regressed because of sin, because of foolishness, because of compromise.
So we need to go back, and also we need to assume the center.
It is not a time for spreading out.
That is the ultimate goal to be fruitful and spread out over the whole earth and subdue it through the Great Commission and the cultural mandate.
But right now, I think we need to fall back.
We've spread too thin.
We need to fall back from behind enemy lines.
We need to consolidate.
I think the name of the game right now is consolidation geographically, theologically, and then going and finding what's the lowest, you know, the, well, not the low, but what's actually the highest common denominator where we can agree?
And how close is that towards the highest watermark we have thus far in 2000 years of church history?
Okay, so here's where we can agree now.
Here's the Westminster Confession of Faith.
Okay, let's consolidate here where we can agree.
Let's spend the next 50 years seeing if we can get back to the high watermark that we had 500 years ago.
And now let's push forward.
And now we can talk about maybe spreading out again.
Those seem so clear to me, like just practical, basic strategy and tactics.
But man, you'd be surprised.
That's basically some of the content from my talk that I gave at the New Christendom Conference.
And I was encouraged, a lot of people loved it.
But it was a love hate kind of lecture that I gave.
The people who loved it really loved it.
And then there were a few people that really, really, I mean, you know, they're like, this is my least favorite talk because I told, because I just kind of straight up told people what to do.
Like, we don't have time.
Stop being cute.
This is what you need to do.
And, you know, and I think that's kind of what we need right now.
We need a few people to say, like, okay, that's enough.
That's silly.
It's always been silly.
Stop it.
And this is what we need to do.
And I think the need, you know, essentially, one of the things you pointed out to people is they need to move to a place where there's already a solid church and really, a solid Christian burrow where there's economic activity, church activity, there's hospitality, there's people that are going to be helping to work together that are desirous of accomplishing the same goals.
And you need a good amount of unity there.
That's hard to find in a lot of places.
So being willing to move there.
And if you can't move for some reason, like you've got duties, you've got stuff that ties you there, whatever, maybe you've already got some of the beginnings of it.
Okay, well, focus the energy on making that work.
If you can't make it work there, then you've got to leave.
So there's either already a solid church there where this is happening, or a solid church and it requires a little bit of pushing and effort to get to building that borough, or you have the capacity to do it and a duty to stay, or you need to leave.
And that's it.
And so that's how simple that is.
And I think most people, we over-evaluate what we're able to do on our own in timeframes.
And so we need to realize the need to divide labor, to accumulate capital, to make it so we can build off of what other people have already started.
And so I think a lot of people miss out on that.
And so places where that's happening, there's education, Christianity in the church, households that are in good order, money being made with businesses, all that stuff together.
That's sort of the stuff that's necessary for a Christian borough or a, I've been calling it the Geneva strategy before I'd heard the idea of that, just the idea that you flee to a place where you can consolidate, get control, and then you can project power out.
And so you're going to look at what happened in Geneva.
And so, but I think there's two things there that have to also be focused on, which is, Church unity through confessional covenanting.
Right.
And then the civil order.
And so you talked about, I think you might, you know, I might disagree here.
I'd be curious about whether it would be helpful for people to think about how the order around this is in the civil order.
I would say we can have a highest common denominator without regard to really the history.
And we just kind of go, can we agree on a basic political platform of seeing Christ acknowledged as the King of Kings, his word acknowledged as the authoritative thing, biblical Christian liberty defended as defined by the Bible?
And biblical justice administered as defined by the Bible is.
It'd be sort of, four big political goals, and and then they?
How do you make that happen?
Well, I think you.
There's, there's an ordinance of civil covenanting um, that we have to be willing to swear to pursue those things together and then we have to be willing to commit to certain actions around that.
That's going to be things like having a shared arbitration system.
It's going to be swearing to defend each other if if, if they start to come after each other you know they come after you as a Baptist, or me as a Presbyterian.
The idea that we'd be willing to come and defend each other or provide sanction for each other, This idea that we would swear to argue with each other about the disagreements in order to seek to come to greater unity until we die.
And that's where I think that context happens of having that debate to try to get back to the high water mark.
It's inside of a civil covenant where we're already swearing to accomplish certain things together.
And then our goal is to see ecclesiastical unity and greater unity inside of that.
So I think we have the freedom because of our context.
To have a more loose civil covenant where we're swearing certain things to each other than we might have in an ecclesiastical context.
Because I think it'd be sin for us to fall away from the, in the church, kind of the high water mark that's been attained.
And I think it's our job to rally around that.
And so that other thing that's necessary inside of a civil covenant is we need to start having commitments to meet in some areas to make sure that we are physically fit and prepared to competently make sure that we do our duties as men and to have some sort of way where that's financed.
And so those are the components of the civil covenant that I think are necessary.
And those are the places that make us that we're meeting physically.
One of the things you said in your speech that you gave at the conference recently was this idea that when you're seeing each other in person and interacting in person, how it helps.
Now, that happens at the local church, but I think also this idea of some sort of regular training together in the context of a civil covenant is another place where that occurs, where you have that camaraderie in the trenches and everything.
And as you're doing business with each other and doing hospitality from house to house, Those are the things that would encourage that growth in unity and the discussions, and would also create social pressure on elders between those churches that are connected in that way to keep talking with each other and to try to work through those differences and to have public discussion where they're accountable for the words that they say to each other.
Right.
That's good.
Yeah, no, I agree with all of that.
I think you and I, the only disagreement we would probably have would be minor, but it matters.
But it wouldn't be a grandiose, you know, massive disagreement, but would just be on the civil covenanting.
Just, you know, how theologically, what is that, you know, that highest common denominator, you know, that we would accept for that?
But everything, all the other elements of, you know, arbitrating our own disagreements per 1 Corinthians chapter 6.
That's just a clear biblical principle that we're not, you know, we're not going to the pagan courts unless we absolutely have to.
We're first trying to arbitrate disputes among Christians with our own courts, that there would be some kind of shared, Resources, financial resources in order to accomplish our goals, all those kinds of things completely agree with.
At the local church, ecclesiastical covenanting, I think there must be a higher watermark for that theological standard within the ecclesiastical covenanting realm.
And I think that the highest watermark that we currently have within 2,000 years of church history is from the Reformation.
And so going back and saying this is what we need at the church level and then at the civil level, At this point, you know, and I'm open to being persuaded, but at this point, I'm convinced that at the civil level, that we need it to be a pan Protestant project.
So it must be distinctly Christian.
I would advocate for, you know, a prelude or a preamble, you know, adopted to the Constitution that is the Apostles' Creed, that distinctly names the Lord Jesus Christ and the triune God as the sole object of our worship, that we are a Christian nation.
And then, you know, from that, I think there can be no debate in terms of legislation that the state is obligated under God, that the state won't be blessed and a nation won't be blessed any other way, that the state is mandated by God to reward the righteous, punish the evildoer, and that that necessarily includes both tables of the law,
that you cannot just have a state that legislates horizontal laws in terms of the second table of the law, love for neighbor, commandments 5 through 10.
But that's to.
Basically, to try to hang the laws, the second table of the law in regards to love for neighbor in midair.
And so it has to necessarily include the first table of the law.
So, I would say, you know, Apostles' Creed and Ten Commandments, you know, and I would add to that the Apostles' Creed, I would add the solas and saying, and this is the gospel.
So, that we need the solas added to that.
And that's what gets you not just a pan Christian, but a pan Protestant project that's distinctly Protestant, that says to the Catholic, hey, you're welcome to be a part of this, but this is Protestant, and we're not going to abandon.
The gospel of Jesus Christ.
And so this is what we're doing.
You're welcome to participate, but we're going this direction, and you don't get to, you can be in the car, but you don't get to drive.
The Protestants are driving.
And I think the only area, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, where we disagree is I think everything I said, I think you're on board for.
So ecclesiastical covenanting, confession, give us the Westminster, give us the 1689 over here, creed, and then we'd add the solas.
We're both two tables of the law guys in terms of the state and legislate, blasphemy laws.
Blue laws, Sabbath laws, those kinds of things.
And then, you know, the last thing is I think you would say, yep, give me the solas and give me tulip.
And I think that's the, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's the only place where I say, ah, you know, maybe 500 years from now, we'll get tulip in there.
I don't know if we're ready for it yet.
Yeah.
And I would say the reason I think that is because I think tulip is sort of the guardrails for the solas, right?
When you, if you abandon total depravity and you abandon, The idea of limited atonement, you're abandoning with total depravity that it's by grace alone.
You abandon limited atonement, you're abandoning that it's by Christ alone.
So these are almost definitional guardrails, I would say, for that.
And so I think that's what the purpose was.
And I think when you look at the Synod of Dort being an international Protestant synod, capturing that and trying to guard the gospel, the reformed view of the gospel, I think that the historical context, they're saying if you abandon this stuff, you're really abandoning the reformed view of the gospel.
And so I think that it's It's necessary if we're going to be able to guard it as being a Christian movement as opposed to rejecting that.
So that's obviously a controversial statement.
Many people will be outraged by that.
But, you know, if Christ, on a basic level, limited atonement's where the rubber hits the road here.
Everybody freaks out at limited atonement.
So just John Owen's solution here is this.
Okay, let's think about this logically for a second.
If Christ died for some of the sins of some people, nobody's saved.
If he died for some of the sins of all people, still nobody's saved.
If he died for all of the sins of all people, everybody's saved.
And if he died for all the sins of some people, then some people are saved.
The only one of those is biblical, it's the last one.
It's limited atonement.
He paid for all the sins of some people.
And if he paid for all the sins of all people, then everybody's saved.
That's universalism.
That's unavoidable.
And you want to say, oh, well, faith is the connector there.
It's like, okay, is faith, is unbelief a sin that Christ paid for or not?
Yep.
Right.
That's what I was going to say.
Yeah.
So it's like, oh, he paid for all of your sins, but you still have to accept his payment.
Well, is the rejection of his payment a sin?
Yes.
Did he pay for that sin?
Yes.
So, yeah.
So I'm with you in terms of, I think it's thoroughly biblical.
John chapter 10, the shepherd, he doesn't lay down his life for goats.
He doesn't lay it down for wolves, you know, but he lays down his life for the sheep.
So there's a particular redemption, definitive redemption.
So I think it's firmly biblical, but it's also thoroughly logical because it really does call into question the justice of God.
If Jesus died for people who ultimately go to hell, what is hell but the wages of sin?
It's the wages of sin, the payment of sin.
For sinning against a thrice holy God.
And if people are paying that price, that penalty themselves, and Jesus died for them, and Jesus' death on the cross is penal substitutionary atonement, which is the heart of the gospel, it's the penalty for sin, then you're actually accusing, it's levying an accusation against God himself in regards to his own essence and character that God is unjust.
God is demanding double payment.
He's demanding two punishments for one crime.
This person sinned against him, and that person has to pay it off for eternity.
And also, his son Jesus, God chose to subject his own son, his beloved son, to make a second payment for something that is already being paid for eternally by that person in hell.
And so, logically, biblically, in terms of theology proper and doctrine of God, his essence, his character, his nature, justice being called it.
Challenges Among Christian Boroughs00:05:47
So, I'm fully on board with that.
And I think I could even get on board in terms of, I think you're right, in terms of the five.
Points of Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, not being even a separate category, in so much as they are just a further, they're the footnotes and the further fleshing out of the five solas.
So I like that as well.
I think that's true, which is why I would absolutely demand the tulip for ecclesiastical covenanting.
But I just still not quite there for civil covenanting.
So let's talk about the pragmatics of this for just a minute, right?
So you're advocating that people gather around a point.
I think that's brilliant.
I think it's absolutely necessary.
I think that's.
That's a practical point that people need to hear.
And I think that you pushing on that and helping people to feel freed from the guilt mongering that's been done that you need to be a missionary in Blue Land and you also need to send your kids to public schools so they can become communists and gay.
So this whole problem, you're trying to free people from it and saying, no, no, no, no, come into a Christian enclave.
That's absolutely the case.
I want to say those enclaves are what need to organize and need to connect.
What's going to happen is those things, we need to be very careful about that.
And the reality is, we're going to make cities on the hill, and every place else is going to be hell on earth.
And so, if we have light and we're careful there to guard it, I think that the idea of connecting the international reform, the reformed throughout the states, we're going to end up having that network.
And if we carefully guard that, the reality is there's about 30 million evangelicals in the country.
Maybe 10 million of those are Calvinistic or whatever.
And so, if that's the case, a few million gathering together and becoming more unified is going to be far more powerful than a dissipation of our doctrine and trying to have a larger coalition.
What's going to happen is there are two things that the Lord promises.
I just still see that.
Here's where I'm confused.
I still see that as an ecclesiastical, so not a local church covenanting.
But still, this broader ecclesiastical, because what you're describing is still between churches.
Okay, so what I'm talking about is these words.
So here's the deal.
So, being Presbyterian, right, I believe in covenanting between multiple local churches.
And I think historically, a lot of Baptists and Congregationalists would have held the idea of a covenant between them, but the covenant wouldn't have been enforced by court.
You'd have had an association where you meet to discuss things, but it doesn't have the authority to do anything to remove the issue.
They would have seen the value, but you're right, it would have been volitional and it would have not been formally binding.
So I'm saying there should be the church court as well that's shared, but there should also be an ecclesiastic or civil covenant.
Covenant.
So there's going to be an ecclesiastical covenant and a civil covenant.
And I want to see the churches covenanting with each other, but I also want to see their boroughs, the towns, the zones, these little, we have a civil sphere.
So, for example, you know, in Phoenix, there's Apologia, which, you know, I have a lot of confessional disagreements with them.
They hold a, not quite the London Baptist, but I think, for example, I think we disagree on like Sabbath and some other stuff too.
And so I'm happy to argue with them about that stuff and say, you know, I think you're wrong about that.
I think that's sin, whatever.
And they can say the same thing about there, and we're debating it, trying to come to unity.
But then, on a civil level, we should be able to be in covenant.
I should be happy to come and protect Jeff Durbin or James White if something happens to them in the civil sphere.
So then we'd be arguing with each other also in that context of being under a shared one.
So I think the same thing with you.
So that'd be the civil element, and I'd be trying to encourage you.
So when you were describing boroughs, that's what threw me off.
When you said boroughs, I instinctively thought churches.
And in that, you know, because I would put it in the category of not the state, but households, the family, I was thinking about.
Christian classical schools.
So I was thinking churches and schools, but you were thinking more like not Christ Church, but Moscow, right?
Not Calvin's Church, but Geneva.
So you were thinking towns.
And so included in that is not just the church and the school, but businesses, economy, not just household things, but even civil leaders in that realm.
And so I hear you on that.
But one thing I definitely agree with is, and you may be right, but one thing I definitely agree with is at the ecclesiastical level, And this is even coming from a Baptist, you know, so you know it's something.
But even at the ecclesiastical level of churches, going back to just that and leaving towns on the side for a moment, one of my concerns is that people will assume the center, they will congregate, they will fall back behind enemy lines, but they'll have 17 different boroughs to choose from, which is good.
I don't think we just need the whole world can't move to Moscow.
So we need more than one borough.
Right now, I think we need to be honest with ourselves.
We don't have 10,000 boroughs.
A lot of guys might think, oh, I have a borough.
You probably don't, you know, but.
So, I don't think we have a thousand boroughs, but we better have more than one borough.
So, let's say it's 100 boroughs spread out around the states.
We need to consolidate, fall back from behind enemy lines, and assume the center and go to these boroughs.
But then, those boroughs this is one of my biggest concerns the leaders, ecclesiastical leaders of these boroughs, they better be getting in some serious face time with each other because it's not helpful if we go to the Christian boroughs, but then our 100 Christian boroughs all disagree with each other.
Yeah, and that's been really one of the things I found really hard and that I have found refreshing specifically about you, but also David Shannon, Chocolate Knox.
Consolidating Into Fewer Boroughs00:02:41
I've seen the two of you really be connectors who are trying to help other people.
And I've seen you be open-handed with things like honor, where there's this willingness to spend time to talk to people and to argue through things and to try to be charitable in interpretation.
The willingness to sit down, to talk.
to communicate through the electronic means we've got and to get time, but also this idea of trying to spend time in person and to argue about stuff, talk through things, try to flesh things out in detail, spend the time that you have to spend on it, and then to connect other people and try to encourage that.
And so I think that, God willing, let's say we don't lose and end up in the concentration camps, but instead we win.
The victors that write the history, hopefully we'll get to the point of the two of you guys as significant connectors in the cause.
And so I think that that's a key part of it.
And that's a priestly gifting, right?
You think about leaders, what kind of gifting they've got.
If they've got prophetic gifting, they're great teachers.
They can argue well.
They can deal with the logical ordering and all that.
The priestly is the relational and trying to build the hedges and protect the team and the cause.
And then the kingly really can get stuff done, making things happen, organizing things, making sure the trains run on time.
And so that stuff, we need all of that.
And that's why we all have our clay feet and we need the giftings of each other.
And so I think that the priestly are going to be the ones that really help to gather people together to work.
And then the prophetic are going to be able to really focus on arguing to try to come to greater unity.
And the kingly are going to really make sure stuff gets done.
And everybody's got those giftings to various degrees.
So, I mean, nobody's like free from doing any of those things.
We all have to do all of them.
But some people are going to be better at others and lean in on some of those pieces.
And so, I just think my hope is that people see the value of working with each other.
It's so easy to just not do it.
You can build your own fiefdom, you can do all this stuff.
Like, if you're not making the effort to connect, it's so easy to try to.
To isolate and try to build your own thing and to be away from other people.
Right.
Yeah.
Especially, you know, the PTSD can click in, you know, especially if you've, if you feel like you've been hurt in the past, you know, then it's just, I'll just, I'm going to build a moat, build up the walls, and we'll just, we'll do our own thing, we'll insulate and, and we won't partner with anybody.
And that's part of the reason why I, you know, why I want to do things like host conferences.
Achieving Theological Maximalism00:12:16
And have as many guys there as I possibly can.
Because honestly, it works as an accountability measure.
So, you know, like we've announced our conference, it's 10 months away.
So, one of the things now that all 15 guys, you being one of them, that we, you know, it's not written in a contract necessarily.
And one day, you know, maybe it should be.
But just informally, in the back of all 15 of these men's minds, it's like, I've got 10 months where I need to play nice.
I can't, you know, like for because I'm going to see all these guys, we speak in their conference with them.
So, for at least for the next 10 months, I probably should be a little bit nicer to them on Twitter.
I probably don't need to burn these bridges.
I probably, you know, those things really help.
And, you know, to, you know, I think together for the gospel and those kinds of things, you know, with the gospel centered movement and, you know, new Calvinism, massive problems.
For one, just new Calvinism.
I don't want new Calvinism.
I want old Calvinism.
But, you know, to at least one particular area where it wasn't an utter train wreck, there was.
You know, good can truly be said about guys like, you know, Mark Dever and Ligon Duncan and CJ Mahaney with three different, you know, theological positions saying, yeah, but we're going to, you know, we love each other.
We love each other.
The problem is, you know, that 20 years went by and they still had three different theological positions.
And there was no, it didn't even seem like it was on the table as one of their goals was to, hey, but also maybe, you know, what if we agreed?
You know, so it didn't even seem like that was one of their aims.
But I will say that, like, probably the greatest fruit out of that movement was these massive events where everyone said, We're at least united on this.
And what we want to do, you know, I think one of the things that we want to do with whatever you want to call it, with Christian nationalism, with theonomy, new Christendom, you know, whatever, you know, post millennial hope.
But one of the things that we want it to achieve is a theological maximalism.
I think we've had for too long a theological minimalism.
Where you really did have some genuine relationships, and it really did have the ability to pack out a 20,000 person event once a year.
And there really is fruit from that.
There really are some blessings.
I don't want to unnecessarily disparage that movement because there's plenty of things that I can disparage.
That part I don't want to disparage.
And yet, even that part, as good as it was, was still a theological minimalism.
It was, you know, basically, it was just kind of one step above Billy Graham.
From back in the day.
You know, Billy Graham is just like, well, you know, the Great Commission has to be fulfilled.
And the biggest thing that's standing in our way is that we've spread too thin, divided our forces.
You know, so if we're going to fulfill the Great Commission, basically the logic was this we want Jesus to come back.
We need to fulfill the Great Commission for Jesus to come back.
In order to fulfill the Great Commission, we need to be on the same team.
And in order to be on the same team, we need to lower the bar.
Doctrine divides, you know, and that's where you got, you know what I mean?
That's, and, and, And so, you know, and then the new Calvinist, you know, gospel, you know, Calvinist resurgence movement of the last, you know, 30 years or so was basically that, but with a little higher bar.
And hopefully, by the grace of God, what we're doing would be, it would be the good parts, Billy Graham esque and New Calvinism esque, except it would go from basically no theological commitments and then some theological commitments to a lot of theological commitments, a theological maximalism.
That is Calvinistic and not even new Calvinism, but old Calvinism, tried and true, and getting back to the historic watermark.
And then hopefully our kids can take it further.
Absolutely.
And so you used early on in our conversation here kind of three categories the must believe, should believe, and the may believe.
And I think that the way of defining those, the must believe is sort of the here's the stuff you need to positively show understanding of to come to the Lord's table.
And that's sort of the stuff you require for the child in the church, right?
So whatever your church membership covenant is.
And at the same time, you don't want those children in the faith openly denying what you're confessing in terms of your church confession.
But the idea is that they're not going to have thought through a lot of it, right?
And so the point is that once they become aware of points of disagreement, the should believe stuff, you know, pastors come in and spend a lot of time trying to argue through and show them why they're.
Why they're in error and help to get them to the place where they're getting there.
So the young men are being trained up to the should believe, and the fathers are maintaining all of the should believe.
And then there's the may believe stuff, which is stuff that hasn't been captured in a confessional standard yet that your church has adopted.
And that stuff is the stuff that we debate about in the hopes of having another advancement in the high water mark.
And so maybe that'd be the Phoenix Confession, or maybe it's the Dallas Confession, whatever.
And so this idea that at a certain point that we are seeking to go beyond.
Right.
We rally around the should-believe and we have a must-believe bar that's sort of the membership and you're training the must-believe into the should-believe.
And then there's the may-believe stuff.
We're trying to argue about that after we've been able to come together and rally.
And then we're trying to further define.
But we give liberty on the may-believe stuff, you know, in terms of some of the ways of which views of eschatology, of of, you know, because you could have like a historic post millennialism or you could have a, you know, partial preterist post millennialism, which I hold to, you know, and that kind of thing.
And you could even have like an optimistic all millennialism.
Some of the types of, you know, some of the views are going to make it so that you're essentially saying, yeah, I want to be a part of this movement, but I also think we're going to lose.
And I'm not sure where that line draws exactly, but my point would be this probably a broader range on the eschatology, which has not been captured in the confessional views, than you would have on a lot of the other stuff that's lower down there.
And so those are the, I hope those definitions for the must believe, should believe, may believe, I hope that's a helpful divider.
I don't know if you'd disagree about.
How to break that down.
Yeah, no, that's helpful.
I agree.
Well, let's go ahead and start landing the plane.
Any final thoughts for this episode on unity and theological maximalism and civic covenanting and ecclesiastical covenanting?
Any final words for us?
I think that the main thing people need to walk away with is realizing if we want to see a civil unity where we've got a Christian state, what you need to do is you need to be encouraging discussion with people where there's a desire to gather around a civil covenant.
We have to covenant to do these things first.
and to protect each other first before we're going to be able to accomplish it.
Unless we have a duty in place with defined duties, we're not going to be able to accomplish the goal.
So the commitment to do it and then the gathering around and fulfilling those commitments.
In order to see that happen, we need to see churches concerned about ecclesiastical unity as well.
And so we need to have a concern for that.
We need to be praying for it.
The unity of the church is something that powerfully encourages evangelism.
The love of the church powerfully encourages evangelism.
Christ promises that those things cause the world to repent and to be convicted.
And so, if we maintain the law of God carefully and if we seek unity in terms of the forms that we have, those things allow us to have a common voice.
And so, the three to 10 million Calvinists in America should be seeking to unify in that way, and we would see a growth.
And so, that idea of seeking to figure out what's the high watermark to gather around and debating those differences.
So, I really think.
Presbyterians and Baptists are the guys that are generally, most of the believers are Presbyterian or Baptist.
And so there needs to be a focus on discussing those things in the context of a civil covenant where we're discussing coming to those things and coming to agreement about these things to have a shared confession.
Debating about baptism, debating about church government are very important for us to eliminate the practical dividers that prevent us from having a shared church.
Then, in addition to that, you need to, the most practical thing for you to do is for you to make sure your home is in good order.
Where you're leading well, you're leading your family and family worship, making sure they're having stable church attendance, keeping the Sabbath, building up an estate, making sure you and your wife are a good team, that you have resources, and making it so you've got stuff that you can pour into this.
Because if you don't have resources, you can't do any of this work.
And if you're a pastor and you're not bivocational, you're probably in a church that's larger in a lot of cases than it should be, and relying upon that to feed the growth.
Solid men can run their house, run their estate, and be public officers.
And so, the ability to do all of that stuff and build out a robust estate so you can leave an inheritance to your children and your children's children is necessary to make it so you've got the resources to do what you need.
George Washington was able to march a thousand men at his own expense to the relief of Boston when it was under siege by the British.
One of my goals is to make sure I could march a thousand men to Dallas to come to your guys' relief if there were need.
And so, that idea of trying to pull together that sort of utility, the capacity to actually do stuff.
Having resources to make things happen.
And so, if you want to do that, you have to govern yourself well.
The only way to not be enslaved to sin is to have a deep knowledge of the truth.
It makes it so that you're a father in the faith.
If you have a knowledge of God that's deep, if you have a knowledge of God that's deep, then you govern yourself because it's the knowledge of the truth that sets men free from slavery to sin.
And so I want to encourage men to seek the knowledge of God deeply and to make sure they're exercising discipline in all the areas of life, seeing their piety not just be an internal thing that's about a relationship between them and God, but it pushes out to the edges their duty over their sphere.
So I think that's the capacity to see unity occur.
It is to know God deeply yourself, govern your home well, and have resources, encourage your church.
To grow in depth and to encourage unity between other churches by discussing the differences and seeking to covenant together, and by seeing that occur in the civil sphere, having leaders and having Christian men throughout the country who are committed to seeing the acknowledgement of the reign of Christ over the state, having them covenant together and having these necessary components work in harmony.
Amen.
Well said.
Well, thank you, Mr. Reese, for coming on the show, and we will talk more in the near future, Lord willing.
And thank you to the listener for tuning in.
We hope that this has been helpful for you.
We want both.
We want our cake and eat it too because we think that's what the Lord wants.
We want incredible unity and covenant with one another.
And we also don't want to lower the bar.
We want a theological maximalism and unity.
I think that's what Ephesians 4 is.
Ephesians 4 is not just talking about kumbaya love while everybody has a different position, a different conviction.
And I don't think Ephesians 4 is saying, yep, we'll attain the full stature of the maturity of Christ.
And by the time we get there, there'll only be three of us.
I just, I reject both of the, that's just, that's not what the scripture teaches.
The scripture is saying, high bar, and we're all going to make it.
We're going to make it.
So, no man left behind and high bar.
And that's, I think that's a lot of what I've, as I've gotten to know you, I think that's a lot of what you have been giving yourself to outside of the local level as you try to be a voice to the church at large is don't lower the bar, but also let's team up.
Let's agree.
So, God bless you for that ministry, and I hope it's helpful for the listener.