Salvation as Participating with God — Chester Weaver — Ep. 183

Why did early Anabaptism have so much power—so much power that it, in fact, changed the course of Western civilization? And can we reproduce this theology from generation to generation?

I'm here with Chester Weaver. Chester, you're a board member of Anabaptist Perspectives, and you were also a school teacher for 37 years. And we'll be doing a few sessions with you on the foundations of what is Anabaptist theology, where did this teaching come from, and how can we apply these teachings to our daily lives? Um, so it's fantastic to have you here in our studio again, and I'm very curious to hear what you have to share. So one of the reasons, uh, you're excited, I guess you could say, about Anabaptist teaching is its difference in some of the things it emphasizes and some of the substances of what it teaches.

How would you say the tradition of Anabaptist teaching differs from other church traditions, particularly—I'm thinking in, uh, teachings on salvation and, and so forth? These are very important questions, and they deserve real clear answers. Because, first of all, Roman Catholicism dispenses salvation through its sacraments—seven sacraments. And then Martin Luther came along and says that whole thing is just hocus pocus; salvation is through faith alone and grace alone. And the Anabaptists thought, well, this is part of the answer. Justification is in the Scripture; it is taught there, but there's something that's still missing.

And it's that second leg of what we call today sanctification that the Anabaptist genius kicked in. And so we're going to flesh that out. What does that really mean? Because the Third Way, or the Radical Reformation, presented an entirely different kind of Christianity than what Lutheranism or Reformed theology produced, or what Roman Catholic theology produced. It's a Third Way, and it's a fragile way, but it's a powerful way. And the question is, for 500 years, have we been able to reproduce, can we reproduce, and how can we reproduce this theology? Mm-hmm. So that's what we're hoping to get into with these episodes. What is that core, that essential? Exactly. The central piece, and try to understand and unpack what that is.

That's what I'm really curious, because I've—I haven't seen these, these presentations that you've given these, I think, in a lot of places. So yeah, so I'm—yeah, go for it. I'm—yeah, I'm really curious where you're—okay, so salvation is about the life of God being implanted in human hearts so that he or she can participate in what God is doing in the world. There's pause there. Salvation is not about just getting a ticket to heaven. Salvation is all about getting our lives straight so that God can use us to do his work in the world. Because God is trying to redeem humanity after the fall, and he's not going to do it without human beings cooperating. And so we have to learn how to cooperate with what God is doing in the world.

Now, the Holy Spirit brings humans to this divine stream from which they drink as they're transformed into the divine image. But we have to respond to that. So there is a divine stream that we have to have coming into us, or we cannot have power.

And we need to live out of that power regularly, constantly. And so salvation is all about the reintegration into the divine life from which humans had fallen. This is huge. This is why Anabaptism had so much power. It's because they were participating in the divine life of God that he provided. Because human beings cannot save themselves.

It's like they've understood what God is requiring. He provides the atonement, the power, resurrection power, the Holy Spirit, but we have—human beings have to respond to that. Are you saying almost like a two-way street of interaction between God and man? Well, we have some slides here later on that'll kind of put this in picture form. I like to call it truth walking on two legs. We'll see that shortly. Okay. Okay. Salvation is not about getting a ticket to heaven.

Many of our Reformed theology friends work as if this is what it is. You get saved. You have an experience of getting saved and praise God, you're in. But the New Testament does not teach that. Many of our people have bought that idea. I had that idea whenever I came, but I had to unlearn that idea because that's not what the New Testament teaches.

Salvation is about a real Savior, Savior from sin. He's also a living Lord who is in at the work of delivering human beings from the power of sin. That's what salvation is. You're saying it's not this—I get a ticket to heaven. There's a once-and-done type salvation experience. It's a redemptive process. Is that—is that exactly—is that exactly?

Okay. It begins. It has a beginning moment or moments, but then it's a—it's a process of continuing to cooperate with the Holy Spirit as he sanctifies our lives. That's what we mean by the living Lord delivering us from the power of sin. And nobody ever gets completely sanctified, uh, before the end. Okay, so we were saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. There's salvation as a Trinity. We'll look more at that as we go along. The essence of this whole thing is that the power of sin is to be broken.

Now, our Reformed friends think that that is too ideal because they don't believe that the power of sin can really be broken. And we believe that the Scriptures teach that it must be broken. It's not that we live perfect lives, but the power of sin is broken, and the living Christ is living in us. And in everyday experience, we live above sin. Not that we don't ever make mistakes, but we're not controlled by sin. There's a divine provision that Christ has made, and we are responding to that. Here we have these two legs again. This is wonderful. This is why Anabaptism had so much power, and that same power is available for us today.

And so the Gospel of John, in the first chapter, talks about Jesus Christ coming and says he was full of grace and truth, both. Here we go with this two-legged thing. It takes grace, and it takes truth. It actually has to be true.

This is a real deal. This is not about imagination. It's not about positive thinking. It's not about trying. It's about it being real—grace and truth together. And this is wonderful when Jesus Christ is functioning in all his power, all his grace and truth in individual lives. It's no wonder Anabaptism had so much power, and it's still available for us today.

So here we go. It's not one side. It's not just the other side. It's both together. This is some of the genius of Anabaptism. So this is humility on God's part. For God has chosen to limit himself to human cooperation.

He made a cosmos. He made animals. He made them to do exactly what he tells them to do. Dogs just do what dogs are created to do. The birds just do what birds are created to do. But humans had a choice.

And God humbled himself to say, "I will work in them as they cooperate with me." So the provisions are for man are available. The atonement, all the work that Christ did, coming down from heaven, giving himself as a sacrifice, as an atonement for sin.

That's what God could do. We could not. But what God will not do is make human decisions for us. He waits. He's such a gentleman. He stands back and waits. He woos us by his Spirit until we are ready to cooperate with him. And then wonderful things happen. It does ultimately come back to a choice then on our part to accept this. So back to you were saying, getting away from this language of, "Oh, I've been saved. Now everything's all great. I have my ticket to heaven." That's not necessarily the case, but there is very much a point in everyone's life where they do have to choose this, basically. Yeah. When it comes to the salvation Trinity, we have three words: justification, sanctification, and glorification.

Okay, so Martin Luther got this justification right by understanding that men are saved by faith. We would differ with him when he says by faith alone. It's by grace for sure, and it's by faith. And that's where we say, have the quote, "I was saved." That's the justification part. So that would roughly correlate to this idea of conversion experience or getting saved at some point, like the process. Exactly. Exactly. The framework would say, okay. But the sanctification part is the continual work, cooperation with Christ, with the Holy Spirit after that point. It's a lifetime of being sanctified or being set apart for God. Nobody gets completely sanctified in this life.

It's like there's always—he's still working on me. I think he's working in you, isn't he? Yeah. Well, he's still working in me too. I'm 69, and he's still working with me. And that's a wonderful thing. I get a chance to recognize error and to repent and to cooperate with him. And the more I repent and get self out of my life, it's like stones in a jar. How much water can you pour in a jar with stones? Well, you can pour water until it's completely full. But if you take stones out of the jar, you can put more water in. And so as the sanctification work works in me, I get more and more grace in me.

And I can—he always fills in response to us getting rid of the flesh. More grace that comes into our lives. It's a wonderful plan. It's—I am being saved. I get a chance to cooperate with God, the Holy Spirit, so that I have power to work in the world.

The third part, glorification, has to do with being in the presence of Christ. That's whenever I finally cross over, and then the justification is over, the sanctification is over, and now I am saved. I'm in the presence of Christ. Yeah. So that's that final stage where the fallen nature, the corruption of this world is done away with for the last time, right? Exactly. Exactly. It all starts with repentance at the very beginning. I have to come to terms with the understanding that I cannot do it in myself, and I have too much sin in my life. I'm going to have to turn away from that sin love, that self-love sin love, and turn toward Christ.

When that basic repentance happens is when this justification and the sanctification starts. But I have to turn away. See, the old Anabaptist used to say to some of the Reformed friends, "You talk about repentance and you're sorry for your sin, but you keep sinning. How can that be?" It's like they had a word called boosphoraticite, which means finished repentance. If you say you're repenting of the sin, boosphoraticite or finished repentance means you don't sin anymore. You choose not to sin. You forsake the sin. And so once those two things are in place, then the sanctification can really begin to work.

Well, can you explain a bit more of the sanctification process? Like, what does that actually look like? Or how does that play out in our lives? Okay, so how does the sanctification process work itself out? What does being set apart for Christ look like? All right, we're going to look at several examples here.

Okay, so as long as we love ourselves, we don't love God. And repentance says, "I'm going to stop loving myself and my own carnal lusts, and I am going to turn toward God." He is a whole lot more worthy of being loved than I am of myself. You know, human beings who love themselves eventually get sick of themselves. Some people commit suicide because they're so sick of themselves. But I learned how to love God. It's like, I remember earlier, I did not like the things of God. But when I really repented, I learned to love the things of God. Is it because I tried hard to? No.

It happened. When God's work happens inside of our souls, we stop loving sin and we start loving God. Well, as soon as we start loving God on a vertical level, he teaches us how to start loving others on a horizontal level. A man cannot love God whom he has not seen if he doesn't love the people he has seen. The two are vertical, horizontal. It's a—it's here we go, but it's this way, but it's a kind of this way at the same time. We really don't know how to love other people until we love God. And we really cannot love God unless we love other people. It's just these two commandments are put together. And Jesus says, "These are the two great commandments."

And this is what Anabaptism focused on. We got to love God, but you don't have to love God. You get a chance to love God, and you get a chance to love others by being redeemed. Okay? This is wonderful, wonderful stuff. People like to say, "Well, I just have this wonderful relationship with God."

But we don't really prove that until we live with and work with other people. I can say I love God all day, but unless I can love you, Reagan, how do I prove I love God? You know, human beings rub each other the wrong way sometimes. How can I forgive unless I have somebody to forgive? How can I forbear with somebody unless I have somebody to forbear with? How do I be selfless unless I have somebody to be selfless with? You know, marriage is a very good illustration of how this kind of stuff works. No marriage really flourishes until the partners in that marriage learn how to do these things.

It's no wonder there's so many failed marriages in the world. It's because people don't love God. They don't love each other like this. So this is the one of the key ways then. Key ways. That show the—if we love God, this is how it's going to start showing itself. That's exactly right. No living church reproduces itself from generation to generation apart from this principle. We've been around now for 500 years, and I know our history has an awful lot of failure with it. A lot of stuff that's embarrassing. But it's because not all people get this, and they want to do their own thing, and the flesh resurrects itself in interesting and strange ways. But there's been enough people in our tradition for the last 500 years who understood enough about this that we have survived to this very moment.

And that's why I love being an Anabaptist, because they've captured some of the essence of what the New Testament teaches. And that's what you're saying. You're saying we've survived these 500 years. That's the early Anabaptists, beginning in the early 1500s. Yes. Up to this point. And yeah, you're right. It hasn't always been perfect, but this is making a lot of sense, actually, of how this redemptive process begins in our lives. But it's not just within me that I hoard to myself. I share it with others as well. See, the Roman Catholics had their theology, and they had their theologians where they reproduced a lot of their theology. Menno Simon said when he was preparing for the priesthood, never once did he open the Bible.

He studied their theology. They formed a package, a systematic package, and that's what they used. But really, did it create true Christianity? Well, Martin Luther came along and says, "Well, no." But the strange thing is, if you go to Reformed theology, it's just a different kind of theology. It's just a different package. It's all about what you think, what you believe. It's an abstract kind of thing. And Martin Luther says a church is a true church where the gospel is correctly preached, not this old Roman Catholic package, but where Reformed theology is correctly preached. Anabaptism says, "Well, you know, correct preaching, correct theology has a place, but until we are living it, then we still don't have the true church."

The true church happens when people actually believe and live. I was at the Young Center in Elizabethtown College here just recently, and they have this on the wall. And this, I'm not going to take time with this picture, but these ideas have worked themselves out now for 500 years. And we can study the various groups and their histories to see how it has worked out. And so the real question I have is, what is required for generational faithfulness? And I think that's why we're doing some of these interviews, so that we can think about what is required for generational faithfulness. I want my children, I pray for my children, that Christ would encounter them so that they can get ahold of these principles and live this way themselves and pass this on to their children, which are my grandchildren.

I care very much about that. I don't want to hand over a set of traditions that are just empty. I don't want to transmit to them just a basic theology that's just head knowledge and abstract. I want to pass along a living faith to my descendants. And I think you do too. Okay, so let's just examine some of this.

It's like God built the universe this way. You know, if we start with energy, the presence of light energy produces light. No energy, darkness. The energy of sound, absence of energy, silence. Heat energy, absence of heat energy is cold. And so these are just realities in the world.

But he didn't stop there. It's like all kinds of parallels exist in the world. Sweet, sour, as far as taste is concerned. And for touch, pleasure, pain.

And when it comes even to space, it's inner space and outer space. We've got telescopes and we've got microscopes. And in mathematics, we've got positive numbers and we've got negative numbers. Infinity, one way, infinity in the other way. When it comes to art, visual art, we've got color and we've got form and texture. When it comes to music, we've got pitch, we have volume and rhythm.

And so, so much of the world is built on this two-legged idea. And when people begin to emphasize one instead of the two, we start to hobble. That's why I say here, error hobbles on one. Natural law, male and female.

Not just one. There's no reproduction with just female. No reproduction with just male. You have to have both. For electricity, no electricity with just positive or just negative. You have to have positive and negative. And for production, we have to work, get something done, but can't work all the time. Got to rest.

But nothing happens if you rest all the time. You got to work and rest. And so this, again, is just the way God built the universe. Okay, so when it comes to the spiritual side of this, we have the divine call, the divine provision, all that God must do because we can't. But then we have to do what we have to do. He will not do it for us. So you put the two together, and then we have eternal life as a result of that synergy. Okay, I like to start at the very bottom there, the spiritual law here. It is a spiritual law. Two companion truths coexisting as pairs.

Okay, so many Christians talk about the principle. Get the principle right. But unless there's a practice, there's really nothing much to the principle. Now, some Anabaptists have degenerated into practice, the form, without the principle. And people react to that and say, "Okay, we're going to get the principle." Well, there are two ditches here. You can be in the one ditch of form or practice, and you can react to that and just go on the ditch of principle and no practice. That sounds real spiritual and holy, but it doesn't work.

It might work for a little bit, but for long term, you have to have both principle and practice. We have to have mercy with other people. You might have mercy on me because suppose I wasted my money, and you can be merciful to me, and you give me a $20 bill, and I go out and spend it on soft drinks, we'll say. But you ought to also speak truth into my life and say, "Look, don't waste your money on soft drinks."

So you have both mercy and truth. And that has all kinds of applications in all kinds of situations, but we have to have both mercy and truth. Okay, so we've been kind of talking about the next one here, love and obedience. We have to say, and in our lives, actually love God, devotion to Him. But then we have to also be obedient to what He says. If we're not obedient to what He says, do we really love Him? I don't think so.

Doesn't James talk about being doers of the Word and not hearers only? Doers of the Word? We just prove our faith by whether or not we obey Him. It's just like if Jesus gives the parable about the people, the house built in the sand, house built in the rock. He said that the one that's on the sand is the one who heard but did not do. But the one who is built in the rock is the one who heard and did, obeyed what I said. That's what it takes. And this differs from work salvation, you're saying, because you're coupling being doers of the Word with actually, yeah, break that apart just a little because I want to make sure we're not, we're not saying it works salvation.

No. But yet, if we actually are believing Jesus, we will also be obedient as well. That's right. You can be cold in obedience. We'll maybe look at that a little bit later. Or you could just do traditions, which are just handed down, very much empty of love. You can do that. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about, if Jesus says it, yes, I will do it. Just tell me, Lord, what to do.

I delight to do Thy will, O God. So this is definitely not a legalism here. No, not at all. Because a legalism would be that dry, exactly formulaic. Exactly. And that's not what you're describing here. Not at all. Yeah. Okay, so this stuff works itself out in all kinds of interesting ways. For example, when it comes to Christianity, it's both defensive and offensive. We have apologetics on the defensive side, and we have missions and evangelism where we go out and are offensive in the world. That applies to all kinds of other things as well. But your local church better have some homework done inside the congregation. We call that congregational nurture and discipline. But your church better not be consumed with just what you're doing inside your four walls and your little community.

I hope that it's taking the message of Christ outside your walls, and you have an organized effort to do something outside your walls, offensive as well. Once again, okay, you're a youngster, Reagan. I don't know what your age is.

Are you 30 yet? Nope, not yet. You're in your 20s. Yes. Okay, so we need young people like you who have some energy. And I hope you need old people like me who are getting tired. It takes two. We need the vision and the energy of what young people say and realize in their bones what ought to be. But young people sometimes are too idealistic. They need a little bit of wisdom and age with it. And so right here does tend to help a little bit. And so when you put the two together, what happens to a church just made up of, we'll say, 20-year-olds? It probably is not going to last unless they really get some things right.

But we all know what happens to churches that are just made up of old people. They disappear. It takes both. Okay, so the next one here is proclamation and meditation. The Word needs to be proclaimed over the pulpit and on other venues. It's proclaimed. It's given out. But you can't just be hearing, and you need to take the Word yourself and meditate on it. We call that quiet time. I hope you do it every day. I try to do it every day.

Where it's not proclaimed, it's just like we get a chance to meditate on what we've both read and heard. We have to have enough time to process all this because it's like putting pieces together in a puzzle. The more the puzzle pieces fit together, the clearer the picture gets. We need both. Masculine and feminine. Okay, so here, we're not talking about just the physical parts here. When I think about masculine, I think about logic and analysis. When I think about feminine, I think about intuition.

It's like, it's amazing what women know. And if you ask them to explain what they know and how they know it, they can't explain it. They just know it. Okay, so really, men and women need each other. And the church both needs men, feminine, and masculine input.

Even though we have brothers' meetings, we say, we sure hope there are feminine minds and hearts behind the brothers' meetings because we need both. Okay, moving on here. Firmness and gentleness. Once again, the ladies of the feminine side is where the gentleness comes on. But when it comes to discipline from children, you know, we need firmness and the gentleness, not just one or not just the other. We need both.

So when you have children, you'll understand more about that.

Okay, I have eight of them, so I know something about that. Okay, so when it comes to love, we'll say, it's both giving love. I don't just say I love you. I get a chance to serve you. And then sometimes we need to receive love.

And for myself, in the past, I've been wanting to just too much give love and not be humble enough to receive love. You have to both give and receive. Give love, receive love. Care and be cared for. Giving money whenever we have a chance. And then if we have needs, be willing to receive money for difficulties in our lives, adversities, and that kind of thing. Well, we learned to do this. You see that ball on top of that V?

Okay, balls don't stay on top of Vs naturally. That's why I put it there. Because this is divine. There's something about that blessing that's divine. It stays on top of that V where it does not naturally and normally stay. And that only works if these things are in balance. Perfect. Right? Exactly. So you have these two things building up to this pinnacle. And in this case, it's the blessing that we receive from these things. But if we start getting things out of balance, this starts breaking apart. Exactly. Right? Yeah. Right on. Okay, so here's more.

Okay, so vision. By looking at some of these foundations, we're actually looking at the original vision, which many times in our past has been lost. And so that's where the history is. I am so grateful for the history books that are around. I didn't understand all this. I got this by both reading history and the scriptures, and I saw that this is not just a theory, but this has been done. And churches thrive and prosper as long as this is done. So we have story. So why did God stop the canon with, we'll say, 100 AD? Why did He have 1900 years with no canon? Well, I think He wants us to read the story of people who've been before us.

He's told us. He showed us how it began in the book of Acts. And the basic principles are given. Now work it out. And now we have 1900 years' worth of story as to how successfully people worked it out.

And there's this great cloud of witnesses. And yet in our day, some people just seem like they want to reinvent the wheel. And I think, duh, why would you do that? There's 1900 years of story. Get the books out and read what different people have done because there's nothing new under the sun. All the new issues are the old issues. Just new faces and new places, same issues.

So that's why history is so important. Okay, the next one up here is analysis and intuition. We somewhat already talked about that. We have to analyze, tear something apart into its constituent pieces so we understand what's in this. But intuition is not about tearing things apart. It's just about knowing without being able to explain it, tear it apart.

Okay, moving on to prophets and encouragers. Healthy and happy is the church who has both prophets in its community and encouragers in its community. If you have all prophets, people, it doesn't sit too well. If you all have all encouragers, it doesn't sit too well either. You have to have both of them. And they have to love each other, giving and receiving love to make it work together. You know, Reagan would be a whole lot easier if we wouldn't be in each other's hair. Do you know that?

Okay, so I could say, you get in your little box, you stay out of my hair, and I'll stay out of your hair. But that's not a statement of love. That's a statement of selfishness. Because you ought to speak into my life, and maybe you allow me to speak into your life. We just need encouragers along the way.

Compliments are okay. Do you know that? No, flattery is not. When if you do something well, I owe you a compliment. There's not a thing prideful about that if it's an honest compliment. Flattery is a different story. Okay, orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Orthodoxy is correct belief.

We often hear that word. But orthopraxy is correct practice. What is appropriate practice that fits orthodox theology? Going back to where this episode even started was how you were saying how the early Anabaptists got that. They had to be coupling the orthodoxy with actual living this out. Am I getting that right? That's right. That's right. We have to actually live this stuff out in some way.

And so, for example, people who throw away tradition ought to think, you know, why did this tradition ever get here to start with? I wonder what's behind this. For example, originally, Anabaptist churches did not have pulpits.

It's because one of the principles of Anabaptist theology is egalitarianism. We're all on the same level. And it's symbolized by the speaker standing on the same level that the hearers are. There's a symbol there. But we've borrowed an awful lot from our neighbors. And so, since the neighbors had pulpits where you go up a step or two, we say, in the interest of being able to be seen, we've actually created this idea or helps feed into the idea of clergy above laity, which is not egalitarian. So the clergy goes to college and gets a degree.

They're the ones that understand and figure all this stuff out. And they come home and they start shoveling it to us. And we're supposed to say, yes, sir. Yes, sir. Just take it in. That's not what the scripture says.

We have clergy. We don't have clergy and laity. We have brethren. Some brethren are appointed by the congregation to do the lead. But we work together. And our leadership listens to what the lay brothers have to say. And they have a process of leadership that they work through. But they always listen to what the brothers have to say. It's not, and I just don't even think we should be using this term clergy and laity.

There's something not egalitarian about that. That's more because it's more of a high church type feel. Exactly. And you're saying, at least historically, that was not the case for the Anabaptist movement. That's exactly right. Okay, so the next one here feeds right into a theology and application.

Well, what I'd like to talk about here in terms of us, it's important for us to think about correct theology. Okay, so we're kind of doing some of that right here. But we've got to apply this too. If we don't apply our theology, we really don't have correct theology either.

See, we would differ from some of our Christian friends on this one. Our theology is really not complete until there's application. Bruce Wilkerson says that a study of Jesus' teaching turns up 50% application. Now, I have not done that study myself. But our tendency is you preach the truth and then you say this, may the Spirit make application to your individual lives. That's a huge cop-out. Okay, so why don't ministers and preachers and teachers want to do that? Because the moment we start application, we tend to feel like our toes are getting stepped on. Well, Reagan, if I'm not doing something right, I want you to step on my toes.

I want you to help me understand application. I want to be obedient to Christ. I don't want to be hurt by you and just ouch and not receive the application. That'd be stupid on my part. So we help each other apply this theology. You would basically be saying that the theology isn't even complete unless we've figured out, figured out, I'm not sure if that's the right word, but you know what I mean, actually applied it or done something with it. Okay, so I wrote this book with Aaron Schenk. One of the things he discovered in his church whenever he was ordained, that the ministers would wash feet together, never with their congregation. And he said, that's a tradition that has to change.

Because once again, the theology is that the congregation and the leader are egalitarian. But our practice is not that. Yeah, that's true. So we have to correct our practice to meet our theology. And we shouldn't be afraid of that. You know, human nature is basically conservative. It doesn't want to change. But we have to be humble enough to change so we can match our application to our theology.

Okay, so long-term vision and short-term vision. When I think of this, I think of Paul Kaczynski, who has a picture. He drew a picture of a ladder on the wall, up against the wall with darkness behind the wall. There's light up at the top of the wall. Somebody could climb that ladder to get over the wall, but instead, they have built a fire at the base of the ladder in the darkness, cutting off the rings of the ladder to build the fire.

The immediate is I need warmth and light. The long-term would be if I would climb up this ladder and get up there. That's long. I don't want to do all that hard work. I'm going to be right here, and I'm going to enjoy myself when I have right in front of me right now. Now, sometimes we have to have short-term vision, but human beings tend to be preoccupied with short-term vision, not enough with long-term vision.

But you can't be so preoccupied with long-term vision that you don't solve practical problems. You've got to have both. Okay, so when it comes to education, we've got to talk about theory, and we've got to talk about technology.

And we've got the theory of light, and we've got the theory of sound, and all these theories. Atomic theory, chemistry is a lot of theory. Well, how does this become practical? Well, we have all kinds of things in our life now that bring it all together. And we're very grateful for this technology.

And so even the natural world understands this principle. We wouldn't have any technology if they wouldn't understand this principle. Okay, back to Jesus Christ himself. When he came here, he was both the Son of God and the Son of Man. He was the Son of Mary, but he's also the Son of God. With that demonstration, we who are his disciples, we have a duty to God, and we have a duty to man. We kind of parallel Christ. We're not Christ himself, but we kind of parallel that. But we're walking in his footsteps in that way.

You're basically describing how Christianity or following Jesus is really full of dichotomies, I guess you could say. I don't know if that's quite the right word, but these things that are in almost tension. Yes. Well, they are, because, but that's a good thing, I suppose. Yes. Okay, so Jesus Christ, if you look at the book of 1 John, it talks about this. The very beginning of John, 1 John, it says, I touched him. I saw him. I heard him. The early Gnostics said Jesus didn't come in the flesh. Flesh is evil.

It's only spirit that's good. But he said, I actually did that. I'm here to tell you this is real stuff. He came to earth in a body, spirit and body together. But 1 John says, if we deny that truth, that's antichrist.

Once again, we have spirit and matter coming together. It must be that way. And anybody who says, well, it's just about having a relationship with Christ without living that way, that's the spirit of antichrist. Coming to a conclusion here.

If the ball begins to fall down one side, for example, on the left, there are cold obedience, we end up with what we call Phariseeism. It's because the ball is never longer on top. Or if we emphasize the faith only, licentiousness, just do what we feel like doing, there's nothing divine there either. That ball stays up there as long as everything's in balance. But as soon as an individual or a group gets off balance, the ball goes one way or the other way. You see that the divine results, the good works stay up there. The good works exist up there because we have both obedience and justification, which is the two I don't need to further explain.

But it's divine as long as it stays up there. And we ought to be jealous as individuals and as churches that it remains like that. So this is something that is being lost in our flesh-driven age. The spiritual disciplines, they have been available. They're adequate. They're voluntary. The church has known about them for a long time. But within the last hundred years, technology has been so, had so many inroads among us that we don't think disciplines are so necessary anymore. We have technology in our hands. We have power.

We don't need this. But why do we have so much spiritual starvation, spiritual death, spiritual inadequacy, spiritual midgets? Why? It's because we don't do spiritual disciplines anymore. Look, on the one side, it says time. We make a conscious choice, and we make conscious actions.

Now, just think about this as a good idea, but we actually do these. On the other side, we know we should do these, and it is natural to do these if we want to grow. But we have to receive what happens to us in this. And so once again, we have these two. And the intimacy with Christ, it's a proven method. Deuteronomy 4:29 says, you will find me if you search for me with all your hearts.

That's what spiritual disciplines are. They're a special pursuit of God. Grace was not intended to eliminate the need for good works. Rather, grace abolishes the need for sinning. I love that statement by Gary Miller.

Oswald Chambers said, sin is a fact, not a defect. Sin is red-handed mutiny against God. Either God or sin must die in my life. One or the other. The New Testament brings us right down to this one issue. If sin rules in me, God's life in me will be killed. If God rules in me, sin will be killed.

It's that simple. Not complex. On the other hand, worldliness is any attitude of heart or mind whereby a person's primary concern is his own position and pleasure. Self-worship. God's not there. It's sin. Can't have it. So really, it's what you're talking about here as the foundation of Anabaptist theology is holding these things that often feel not quite contradictory, but in tension almost, you know, faith, works, etc.

And keeping those in balance within our own lives and within our churches as well. To actually take, as you were saying, orthodoxy and actually start living it or making theology is not just, you know it, but it's something you live as well. Well, thank you for sharing, Chester. And thank all the listeners for listening to this episode. They can find all our content on anabaptistperspectives.org, which I think we've done a few other episodes with you on some of these things as well. These are important things to be thinking about. Thank you for joining us for this episode. We invite you to join our monthly partner program. Monthly partners are key to the financial sustainability of Anabaptist Perspectives.

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