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Will The Real Heretics Please Stand Up  /  Chapter 5: Why They Succeeded Where We Often Fail  /  Discussion Questions
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Question 10
The chapter challenges the “sit back and pray” approach tied to Luther’s teaching of total inability, and replaces it with early Christian “joint venture” obedience (Clement: God works with “willing souls,” Origen: “not blocks of wood”); what specific sins, habits, or relational patterns in your life expose whether you actually believe holiness is cooperative—and what would “eagerness” plus dependence on God look like this week in concrete actions?
Another way to ask: What sins, habits, or relationship problems show whether you believe holiness takes both your effort and God’s help? What would eager, God-dependent obedience look like for you in specific actions this week?

Direct Answer The transcript suggests your real belief shows up where you keep waiting for “magic” change rather than actively pursuing obedience while continually seeking God’s power. “Eagerness plus dependence” means real effort (including painful inner warfare) paired with ongoing confession of need for God’s help.

Support from Transcript:

  • Bercot describes trying the “let God change my faults…Then I waited, but nothing happened,” and says historically it “hasn’t worked for the church.”
  • He critiques Luther’s “totally incapable” view as not producing obedient Christians, citing Lutheran Germany’s moral collapse.
  • Early Christians believed humans can obey, but must love God and have commandments in the heart: Hermes, “in the Christian’s heart, not simply on his lips.”
  • Origen: God helps those who, “after doing all that their powers will allow, confess that they need help.”
  • Clement: “God works together with willing souls…if the person abandons his eagerness, the spirit…is also restrained,” and eagerness includes willingness to “suffer painful internal persecution.”
Discussion Follow-ups Pick one area where you’ve been passive (temper, lust, bitterness, entertainment choices, marriage conflict) and ask: what is one concrete act of obedience you can do this week while also praying daily for God’s power to sustain it?

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