65: Pardon (Belief-Based Identity, Part 5)

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Season 1, episode 65. Today we are continuing to look at our new covenant identity.

Hello, Father.

[00:29] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. It’s good to be back.

[00:31] Stephanie: Always. And you know what? We had a sleeping cat next to us for the last episode we recorded and he is still going strong in his sleep. I’m very proud of him.

[00:43] Marcus: Yeah. Every cat has a gift.

[00:45] Stephanie: Yeah. This one is to sleep and to chomp. He thinks he’s a puppy.

[00:51] Marcus: I’ve always heard that if you want more joy, get a dog. If you want more peace, get a cat. I don’t know if that’s true.

[00:57] Stephanie: It’s good. Well, for today’s icebreaker, I want you to tell me what is your favorite fruit?

[01:04] Marcus: My favorite fruit? That’s changed through the years. I would say probably strawberries. Some of that’s just sentimental because I always think of my dad when I have strawberries. He used to tell very endearing stories of being in Africa and having vanilla ice cream with strawberries on top of it and talking to the other missionaries. And the most special dessert was when there would be strawberry pie with whipped cream on it. So I think there’s still sort of a sentimental connection there.

[01:39] Stephanie: I love it.

[01:40] Marcus: How about you?

[01:41] Stephanie: Mine? Oh, yes. I mean, I love so many fruits and so every now and then  I’m like, is this my favorite fruit? But no, the one that I always come back to, and I am my mother’s daughter, is grapefruit actually, with a little bit of salt on it. You should see the faces he is making.

[01:58] Marcus: Grapefruit has to be doctored for me to like.

[02:02] Stephanie: Okay. On the other side of things, if not grapefruit, I will choose cherries. Yeah, I love cherries in all forms.

[02:09] Marcus: Yeah, cherry jelly is my favorite jelly on toast that’s for sure.

[02:13] Stephanie: Yeah, I know some people who love real cherries and hate fake ones or maraschino cherries or whatever, and vice versa. And I like all cherries. Unless it’s like a really fake cherry syrup like cough syrup or something. All right, well, we are in the midst of a long trek through the topic of identity. We looked at attachment based identity. Now we’re looking at belief based identity where we examine how the kosmos is trying to shape us.

And last episode we started talking about how the kingdom defines us with a look at our new covenant identity. So today we’re pushing into that with a look at the first letter of an acrostic P-A-C-T, Pardoned. Let’s get super basic Father. What does that mean? What are we pardoned from?

[03:09] Marcus: We’re pardoned from sin. It’s in the angelic announcement to Mary when Jesus is going to be born to save people from their sins. So pardon is the word that I use to cover that whole idea of being saved from our sins. We’ll look at that from a number of different angles, but that’s the basics.

[03:30] Stephanie: Okay, and I might have jumped too quickly. Maybe you should give just a really quick refresher for people. What is PACT?

[03:38] Marcus: So PACT is our four buckets for helping us remember the “who I am in Christ” statements in the Bible. And so it’s pardon, adoption, citizenship, and title. And the title is saint. We’re going to be looking at pardon. And honestly, the passage that jumps out to me first when I think about this is Colossians 2:15, where Jesus is on the cross. And the Greek word there actually has the idea that there is a document of debt of all the accusations. I picture it this way, the devil has written out all of his accusations against us and everything he says we owe.

And you think of how often the Bible uses debt and sin interchangeably. It’s the same idea here. So there’s this document of debt that has been written against us. The devil’s written out everything that he can claim against us in the courtroom of heaven. They owe this, they owe this, they owe this. And it says that that document has been nailed to the cross.

And on the bottom when a document of debt was fulfilled and there was no more debt to be paid, in Greek they would write the word Tetelestai, which means it is finished, it is done. And that’s what we’re told in the Bible Jesus did when the documented debt was nailed to the cross. It was taken away and Satan has no more accusation against us because all of those accusations were dealt with at the cross. And the Greek word there means erased. It’s like his charges against us have been erased. They can’t stand because of what Jesus did at the cross.

And so this is the foundation of the whole concept of pardon. Isn’t that good news? That what Jesus did on the cross is he took care of the sin problem. Now we can lean into that or we can still act as if that didn’t happen. We can act as if there’s a disconnect for a lot of us on the full significance of that. But that’s the passage for me that made this whole idea the clearest because it was very visual for me. It’s a document, here’s all the debt and Tetelestai, it is finished, it is done, and it’s taken care of.

And so what that means is whenever I come to God my sins are already forgiven because I’m in Christ. And so what I am doing when I come, is I am confessing those sins saying about them what God is saying about them. And I am receiving forgiveness, which is kind of like forgiving myself by receiving that forgiveness. And some of us get stuck on both of those things. We get stuck because we don’t confess and when we don’t confess our sins it’s usually because we’re justifying it, or we’re denying that it’s actually a sin. Well, I didn’t really do anything wrong. It was actually their fault that this happened. In other words, that’s not confession. We have to own what we’ve done.

And it’s not that we’re not forgiven until we do, it’s that we don’t experience freedom from our bondage until we do. So let me jump to the Lord’s Prayer for a second, because one of these passages that has bothered me for a long time was the Lord’s Prayer, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And then afterwards it says, unless you forgive debtors from your heart, your Heavenly Father won’t forgive you your debts.

And I’m like, what? Because what that meant as a kid reading that, I’m like, so if I don’t forgive everybody for everything God’s not going to forgive me. Which translated to that I don’t get into heaven. But that’s not what that’s saying.

What that’s saying is if I don’t forgive people the way that God has forgiven me, then God’s not going to forgive me in the sense that I’m going to stay in my spiritual and emotional bondage. I’m not going to be set free. I’m not going to experience the freedom that forgiveness gives. And so again, the word forgive here like we talked about last week about grace, that there’s a semantic range and there’s context and all the rest of it. There is a forgiveness that is ours in Christ that is related to this document where everything is taken care of.

But then there is this experiential forgiveness that involves relationship. In other words, I have to confess to you, you offer me forgiveness, and I receive it. There’s this process that has to happen experientially, but that’s different from the legal transaction that took place at the cross which says sin has been taken care of.

[08:17] Stephanie: Yeah, this is very important stuff to understand. So on that note, there are many churchy terms that get associated with pardon.

[08:31] Marcus: That is the technical term, “churchy.”

[08:33] Stephanie: Yeah, churchy. I mean, there’s a whole debate that goes on about how much do you take the churchiness out of the terms and explain. And how much are you like no, you should learn what these words mean. And I thought it’d be nice to bring some of that together and say, okay, what are some of these churchy words and what do they mean?

[08:51] Marcus: Well, probably the two biggest churchy words are justification and sanctification. I don’t know the last time that either of those words ever came up in everyday conversation anywhere because we don’t talk like that anymore. But for justification, there’s three words that I use related to explaining pardon. There’s justification, there’s purification, and there’s sanctification. And I may have redemption in there too, so I’ve got four words when it comes to explaining what’s happened with our pardon, and they each have a different context. So justification, the context is a courtroom. Purification, the context is kind of our life and sin functionally in my life. Sanctification, the context is worship. Then redemption, the context is a slave market.

And so each of these in a sense is a metaphor that explains what it is that God accomplished in our lives when he pardoned us of our sins. So starting with justification, that’s the courtroom one. And I think of this like a coin that has two sides to it. So justification side one is that this debt has been erased, right? It’s the document picture from Colossians 2:15 where this document has been taken care of and there is no more owed.

Our debt has been paid. And in this sense Christ paid the penalty for our sins. And so by paying that penalty he paid our debt and that’s why we don’t owe anything. But you can take the other side of this. Not only have I been justified in the sense of forgiven or that my debt’s been erased, but I have been justified in the sense that the righteousness of Christ has been given to me. I have become the righteousness of Christ. The breastplate of righteousness that I wear in the armor of God is that the righteousness of God has been given to me in Christ. It is a gift.

So one thing is taken away and another thing is given to me. So the debt is taken away and the righteousness is given as a gift. And we see this very clearly in Romans 3 where it says that there is a righteousness that you earn by obeying the law and there is a righteousness that is given as a gift. And that’s what we’re talking about in justification, it’s got both of these sides to it. It is the eraser of our debt which is a kind of forgiveness. The theological word is imputation, but it’s the giving to us of the righteousness of Christ.

[11:27] Stephanie: So then we’re going to dig a little bit deeper because righteousness can also be a churchy term unless you’re using it like a hippie, “righteous.”  So can you just give a little bit more clarification on what you mean by righteous?

[11:49] Marcus: In a court righteous means innocent, that I am not guilty. Relationally righteous means that I am in a right standing or right relationship, that our relationship is not broken, it is not off track. We are okay with each other. So righteousness actually carries this relational connotation with us. If I’m declared innocent in a courtroom then  we should be okay with each other now like, that’s been resolved, that’s done.

So what we had said before is that all of these PACT words are all pointing to one goal, and that goal is reconciliation. And so you think, what did Christ do for us in the Gospel? He reconciled us relationally with the Father. How did he affect reconciliation? Through the pardon, through adoption, through citizenship, and through giving us a new title. So all those things are how he affected reconciliation. In this case our justification is one of the things that God did for us so that we could be reconciled with Him.

[12:59] Stephanie: Beautiful. Thank you. All right, purification.

[13:03] Marcus: So purification, the book of Hebrews is the main book in the Bible that kind of camps out on this idea. Not only is our debt paid, but sin has been taken away. It’s like God says, I’m going to take away your sin. I’m going to give you righteousness and you are going to be purified. Because there’s a lot of us who feel dirty, we feel unworthy. We feel like the things that I have done have stained me for life. And the question is, can I ever be clean? Can I ever feel good about myself again? And the answer is yes. So purification is that God has this ability to remove from us.

And so this is where the idea of exchange life comes from. Some people call this the great exchange. I give God my sin and he gives me his righteousness, that’s a pretty good deal. And so that’s kind of the idea of purification. And as the east is far from the west so my sin is taken away from me and that key concept. Different books will emphasize different elements of this. So Romans really camps out on justification, Galatians camps out on justification. Hebrews, not so much, it’s more on purification and a little bit more into sanctification.

[14:28] Stephanie: Well, let’s go there then.

[14:30] Marcus: So sanctification is in the context of worship. So the background is a tabernacle or temple and the tabernacle or temple is sacred space. Now, this is a big conversation in itself, but sacred space is that there is heaven and there is earth and there are places that connect them. And so for something heavenly to be experienced by something on Earth that place on earth has to be sanctified. Something has to happen to that place to allow God’s perfect heavenly presence to be there. So before God and the Shekinah glory could inhabit the tabernacle they went through a whole purification process. Blood was sprinkled on it and oil and all these other things that went on. But primarily blood was sprinkled there.

And God said, okay it has now been sanctified, which means it’s been dedicated to me. It’s been made kind of heaven appropriate, if you will, so that he can now be there. And it’s after that when the cloud of glory fills the tabernacle. Exact same process happened when they built the temple and Solomon dedicated it. There was a cleansing and a purification that they did to sanctify the building so that the glory of God could be in there.

So the same thing happens to us as Christians because now we are his temple. And so there is this purification, but there’s this sanctification that takes place that says, I am now sacred, that I myself have no longer of this world. I am now of the heavenly world and now belong in that space. And because I’ve been sanctified in Christ I am now fit for the Holy Spirit to live in me. Now, this clearly has nothing to do with my behavior because God took care of that sin problem in a different way. This has to do with the fact that God has now dedicated me to Him. I belong to him.

And now that I am sacred, the Holy Spirit can live in me and I can be his temple. You can say the same thing about the church. The church is God’s temple. It’s been sanctified by what Jesus did on the cross. And now, because it is sacred space, I’m not talking about church buildings here, right? The people of God are fit to be inhabited by the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit could not dwell in an unsanctified space. But interestingly, he also is the active member of the Trinity in sanctifying us. We’re sanctified by the Spirit.

And with that comes this idea of holiness and that I’ve been made holy. And one of the ways I think of holiness is that holiness has to do with something that is not of this world. I remember R. C. Sproul said something once that I thought was really interesting. He said, “The counterfeit of holiness is horror.” And that just always stuck with me because he said the idea of something being holy is that it’s not of this world. Meaning it belongs to God, it belongs to God’s kingdom.

So Satan’s counterfeit of something that’s not of this world is like this horror monster that can’t be killed or whatever. It’s unearthly. But that’s a counterfeit of what we’re talking about here. God is saying, I have been sanctified and now the Holy Spirit lives in me. It’s another way of saying I am now a fit temple because of what Christ has done. That’s a long explanation.

[18:02] Stephanie: Really good. It made me think, oh, I could take that in so many different directions. Someday we need to do a series on holiness but for now, do you want to carry on to redemption?

[18:14] Marcus: Yeah. Redemption is the picture that comes from the slave market. And for someone to be redeemed it means they’ve been bought from slavery, and generally they’re bought from slavery and set free. That’s the idea. And so there’s this beautiful picture in the Gospel. What a wonderful thing it is for a slave to be redeemed and to have their freedom bought for them. But how much more amazing is it for that slave to be purchased and adopted. Paul says God’s grace is lavish. It’s amazing, it’s profound. Like it would have been gracious of God just to set us free like, okay go have a nice life, I’ve taken care of that for you. But he says, I’m not only setting you free from the slavery you were in, I am adopting you into my family. I’m going to make you an heir. I’m giving you authority to represent family business in the name of Jesus.

And Paul almost can’t contain himself and in Ephesians he bursts into this fourteen verse sentence. In Greek it’s one sentence, but it’s like this fourteen verse doxology because he’s so happy and excited about what God’s done for us in Christ. Who knew Greek was that fun. I’m telling you.

[19:36] Stephanie: I love it. And we’re going to talk about adoption next episode, so very good. So can you step back and tie this into the sacred romance and also remind people what that is?

[19:54] Marcus: Yeah. So we talk about a kingdom worldview and seeing the world through the filter of the kingdom of God. And that there are three core components to that. Sacred Romance is the idea that God created us for intimacy with Him and he wants us to be in relationship with Him. Two, is sovereign lordship. God is the king, the God who loves us is also the king and he is over everything. So everything is accountable to God. And sovereignty is primarily about accountability.

And that is that everybody has to answer to God. It also speaks to his right and his rule to make whatever decisions he sees fit. Then we get to the third one, which is spiritual warfare. Satan can’t change the fact that God loves us. He can’t change the fact that God’s sovereign. So he tries to sabotage that in every way he can.

And you think about the things that we tend to mistrust about God. We either don’t trust that he loves us, meaning I don’t trust he’s as good as the Bible says he is, or I don’t trust that he’s as in control as the Bible says that he is. I don’t trust that he’s going to be just to me. And so Satan tries to attack the character of God. So you need all three pillars otherwise you end up with that classic argument against the existence of God. Well, how can God be all good and God be sovereign?

The answer to that argument of how can God be good and be sovereign and permit evil is that spiritual warfare is real, and we live in a present evil age, and God is going to bring that to an end. And one of the things that he does is he sends his son Jesus to take care of the sin issue as a crucial step in this whole process, of defeating evil once and for all. So that we can be in that sacred romance and be in that intimate relationship that he’s always desired for us.

[22:02] Stephanie: Yay!

[22:02] Marcus:  All of this connects to that, right? So in the same way again that a wedding connects the marriage, and the wedding is the celebration of the covenant beginning and the formation of this relationship. So the new covenant is defining the relationship and  it’s defining what it means about my walk with God. And so part of the definition there is the sin issue that separated me and God’s been taken care of. The Tetelestai, it’s done and it’s giving that level of definition to my relationship.

So part of that is saying, this is why it’s okay for you two. One of you a sinner, one of you the holy God of the universe, how can you guys be in relationship with each other? How can you be a father and child together? And the answer is because God dealt with that. He purified you, he pardoned you, he redeemed you, he took care and sanctified you. All of that has been taken care of.

[22:57] Stephanie: He got rid of the obstacle in the way.

[22:58] Marcus: He got rid of the obstacle to the relationship. So that’s kind of how they’re connected.

[23:04] Stephanie: Huzzah! So could you give us sort of, and I know we’re going to start running out of time here, but what does this practically mean? This is a very large question, but what does this mean for my everyday life? Like, yay, theologically I understand I am pardoned and I can have a relationship with God, but how do I walk this out?

[23:30] Marcus: So I was thinking back to people I’ve met in my life who have had a core identity of being worthless, or being dirty, or being a disappointment or something. Their core identity is in this negative thing, and we all struggle with it at times. And I’ve had times in my life where I’ve struggled with, does God really like me that much? Is he really that delighted in me? Because I’m not all that delighted in myself. So if I’m not all that delighted in me how can he be?

And I think we all struggle with that at some level because we look at ourselves and we tend to see the gaps in what we could be and the way that we actually live. We can get fixated on those gaps or we can feel stained in a way. Sometimes it’s helpful just to have things in black and white that are concrete that says this is not just an emotion that you go through but this is objectively true about you. You are objectively forgiven and objectively the righteousness of God has been given to you. You can claim that and in a sense when you’re claiming it you’re not making it happen, you’re just affirming that this is actually true.

Part of the purpose of Biblical meditation is taking every thought captive and saying, you know what, no matter how much I’m tempted to focus on the gaps, I’m going to choose to focus on what the Bible says is true here, and fill my mind with those things.

[25:05] Stephanie: Good answer. So I’m going to pull a really quick note from one of our listeners. This one is short and sweet and brings a smile to my face. Lois says, “Y’all doing great. Praise God.”

[25:20] Marcus: Anytime you get a Y’all.

[25:23] Stephanie:  It just makes me very happy. I just want to remind everyone, if you have a question for us or a testimony to share or even an icebreaker, please reach out. You’ll find a mailbox button in my Monday emails and there’s also a link in the Deeper Walk instagram profile that will get you to that mailbox.

[25:40] Marcus: I just call it the behold button.

[25:42] Stephanie: You’re really fixated on beholding the button. Maybe I should go into a syntactical explanation for what behold actually is in the Hebrew and how maybe sometimes we’re misusing that word. Another day we’ll have a spin off series that’s like in the weeds.

[26:05] Marcus: Have on the trail and in the weeds.

[26:06] Stephanie: I also did want to just give another reminder about the school of ministry. So we talked about that more in the last episode but here’s your reminder. If you have been thinking about school of ministry the next cohort starts in January, so get your application in.

[26:24] Marcus: But the deadline is in December though?

[26:27] Stephanie: The deadline for signing up is in December, yeah. There’s also only like up to 20 spots available so you want to get those applications in sooner than later. All right, Father, any closing thoughts for pardon?

[26:41] Marcus: Well, this was a big one for me personally because we all do things sometimes and we’re like, why did I do that? I know not to do that. I’ve made a specific point to make a determination that I’m not going to mess up in that area again and then I mess up. And for years what would happen is, it would take me days sometimes until I felt like I could pray again or until I felt like I was okay enough to hang out with God again. And what this doctrine really is teaching us is you don’t have to wait. I can be in the middle of sinning and I’m actually better off going, wait a second, God I need you.

Come and be with me. Thank you that you still love me. I need your help now more than ever. And so what I was doing is I was waiting to rekindle my relationship with God until I felt better about myself. And all I was doing was putting a gap in my relationship with God that didn’t need to be there. So the sooner I can invite God into even my failures the better. And so this gives me a doctrinal foundation for why I can do that. And that was really the biggest change in my life that this information made.

[28:00] Stephanie: Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I am excited to continue talking, I almost said On the Trail, which is true. I’m excited to continue talking about adoption with you on the next episode. And everyone thank you for joining us On the Trail. Deeper Walk exists to make heart focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more. And if you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On The Trail podcast, leave a review and share with your friends.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.