Permanent and Provisional Pt 2

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast making Theology Central. Good afternoon everyone. It is Friday, February the seventh, twenty twenty five. It is currently four eighteen pm Central Time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Well. I don't know if you still have that paper in front of you that you were to use a few episodes back, but if you do, you need to pull up, pull out that piece of paper. I know what you're thinking. You always tell me to grab a piece of paper. You're telling me to write this down, and write this down. I stop doing that three years ago. I don't participate anymore. I understand. But grab that piece of paper. If you didn't listen to the last episode or the last few episodes, you have no idea what we're talking about. But grab that piece of paper, and on that piece of paper, you're supposed to have two very important words written down. One is permanent, the other one is provisional. Permanent and provisional. And I'm going to explain what you're supposed to be doing with these two words, permanent and provisional because you're supposed to be determining what things are permanent, what things are provisional, from a specific list that I gave you in that broadcast.

1:24 I did what yesterday, I don't even know what day. It was. A few broadcasts back, all right, and you can go look for permanent, permanent and provisional or permanent. I think permanent and provisional, I think, is what I called it Part one. I didn't have the part one there because I was going to call this something different. But we're just going to go with permanent and provisional Part one, Part two, Part three, Part four, and then I think maybe then we'll break this down to individual words as we move through. So we've got to I think this is going to turn into a pretty lengthy kind of discussion and hopefully over time, will you know, people will think it to be beneficial. Some people may not even see why it's important. I think it's important.

2:05 It brings in a lot of very important philological issues that we will discuss as we move forward. But before we really get started, just a very quick reminder I did kind of a quick broadcast a few days ago, just reminding you we talked about the Spotify podcasting charts, and if you look at the religion a spirituality chart, it's filled with just I mean to say, heresy is an understatement in some cases, some really messed up stuff. And I'm like, the only way you're going to get anything, You've got to get the Spotify algorithm to pick up more biable, central Bible based theological sound podcast And the only way you're going to do this is people have to go listen. They have to download that to stream on Spotify. You don't need a Spotify account. You can just use it as a podcast app for free. You don't have to subscribe to it anything. It is the number one podcasting app out there. So if Sound Biblical Theology is not being found on Spotify, you may say, well, who cares, we don't want to be a part of that.

3:12 Well you can do that, and you can go hide somewhere, and you can just stay on a Christian site, you know, and not let anyone find your content. Or you can just have a church website somewhere that no one's ever going to look up and find because they have to look for your specific church. Or you can be a place your content out there in the you know, the marketplace, and hopefully people will stumble upon it when they're looking. So I really not even about my podcast. I say, whatever you feel as a biblical based podcast, listen to it, download it, stream it, search for it on Spotify, and gauge it over and over and over. Give it a five star rating, anything you can do so that the algorithm will pick it up and hopefully enough people will find it and it'll show up on that chart. And along with it, I said, hey, Theology Central is on the Spotify app. Please go give it a five star rating, follow us, listen, stream, download, and within what was it, forty eight hours? I believe that was the timeframe. I looked.

4:14 Within forty eight hours, we'd had six hundred people go look on Spotify, listen stream, they engaged it in some capacity. So six hundred is not a you know, we get far bigger numbers everywhere else. But hey, that's a good start and we're going to continue to build on that. So if you have Spotify, look for Theology Central. When you do a search, you're going to see two of them. One of them is going to be the black background with the microphone and the green lettering that comes from the Church one Sermon's two point zero Sermon Audio feed RS feed, it's coming from there. Get the other one that's the green background with the circle and the Bible in the middle of sys Theology Central. That's our actual podcasting feed. That's the one that's the one we kind of typically try to build off of because that one's already in the top five percent of all podcasts in the world, So that that's the one we kind of and that's if that that's the one that has the greater chance of getting on the Spotify chart. The sermonadio feed has no chance because all the numbers we get from the church one Sermon's two point oh app doesn't have any impact on the podcast ratings because they don't pull those numbers from from anything associated with the sermon audio platform. It's just those numbers are not available for some reason. So yeah, it's just weird how it all works.

5:38 But yeah, you have to you have to. You have to have a master's degree and trying to figure it out and keep it all all straight. But so yeah, but we do have two feeds, and so some people say, why do you have two feeds? Well, if I got two RSS, feeds. I'm going to use both of them. That's what I'm going to do, all right, So check it out on Spotify and if you can't find it, let me know and I'll I'll send you to the direct one. Now, with all of that said, I gave you plenty of time. See, while I was doing all of that, you had plenty of time to go find your paper. Right you can be yelling at people, where is the permanent and provisional list? What did your kids do with it? Okay? All right, so you got it? All right? Here we go. Remember this all began because in the January the third twenty twenty five issue of the sort of the Lord newspaper, they had an article on page twenty one entitled seventeen things that come with Christ you believe in Christ, and seventeen things follow that.

6:40 That's the key thesis and the article they utilized Hebrew six ' nine as kind of their text, And they only used the text really as just to launch into this kind of topical idea of all the things that follow salvation, because they really, in no way, shape or form handled here six 't nine anywhere anywhere close to the way it should be handled. Remember, in fact, that's what led me to do that entire hour long study on you cannot, I mean, Hebrews must be understood in light of eighty seventy for people who want me to say it correctly or the way it just more naturally flows in English seventy a d. All right, AD seventy or seventy eight. No matter how you say it, you have to understand the Book of Hebrews and light of that date. If you do not understand Hebrews and light of AD seventy, then you you just destroy its actual meaning and you turn it into being about us, and then it comes into debates about salvation. Can you lose your salvation because you're misinterpreting all the warning passages and you're not understanding what it's actually about? All right? So we did that because well, it started with Hebrews and it didn't handle Hebrews correctly. So now what we're going to do when we get through all of this permanent provisional discussion, we will circle back and then do actual work on Hebrew six ' nine and understand that in light of eighty seventy or seventy a D. Right. But

8:11 let me just remind you how the article began, so the first of the quote from Hebrew six ' nine. But beloved, we are persuaded better things of you and things that accompany salvation. Right now, we'd have to go to Hebrew six and work on all of that, but we're not going to do that right now. It's something that happens in the article. Right so they have then the first paragraph, which we've read now numerous times. Let me read it one more time. Good news. When you receive Christ, you receive not only eternal life, but also many other things that came with Christ. At that time, you may have been unaware and unknowing. Even now you may be aware and unknowing of all that, all the bundled things you received with Christ inconceivable. Now, of course you'll notice they quoted Hebrews six 's nine and immediately made it about us. Lose my mind. We had this discussion earlier. Today people do the same thing with Psalm one over and over and over. I don't understand the It just seems the common practice within Christianity to go to the Bible and make it about us. And even though we say we have to care about the original recipients, we really don't but all right, we can get into that discussion later. Right here we go, So then make it about us. You can see the direction they're going.

9:41 You receive Christ. Now what are those things that accompany salvation for us? For me and you? Right, they're gonna make it about us. Okay, we're not going to get into that debate right now. Okay, second paragraph add salvation Christ welcomes you into the family of God with at least seventeen additional we unearned and unexpected gifts. Now, you're supposed to have a list of these seventeen. I gave you that list, right, that list those seventeen gifts. So, according to this the thesis of this article, when you became a Christian, you received seventeen additional gifts that flows from your salvation seventeen. Right, They go on to say, these are Now they're going to give you the seventeen and you're supposed to have these written down. All right, I'm going to give them to you one more time because we may have people who tune into part two.

10:41 He didn't tune into part one. That happens all the time. Are you ready? Here we go? These are Here are the seventeen number one oh, I'm not going to count them out. Just write them down if you haven't. Faith, belief, repentance, atonement, imputation, reconciliation, ransom, regeneration, justification, grace, mercy, propitiation, adoption, redemption, sanctification, peace, and eternal life. Besides these in my list, there may be more incomprehensible, right, So those are the seventeen. Now, when I originally read this article, like, okay, seventeen, what I wanted to do is make a list of the seventeen.

11:38 And I thought, well, you know, it would be kind of cool maybe to just do, here are the seventeen things that come with Christ, and then we would do an episode per one, every word right for each one, faith, belief, repentance, and break it down that way. We still may do that, but that was my initial thought, let's do that. However, it was the next well, the next thing is just a sentence, so that didn't do much for me. It just says, when you receive Jesus, you also receive these seventeen things. Okay, So for every single Christian who receives Jesus, according to this article, for every single Christian who receives Jesus, you receive these seventeen things. So those seventeen things you received, and I'm like, okay, got you all right, all right, now let's take these apart. But the article then did something interesting. The article then broke those seventeen things down into two groups or two categories. The article claims that ten of those that I listed are permanent and seven are provisional. Now, permanent means you got it once. It doesn't change, it doesn't increase, doesn't decrease, it's just there.

13:01 It's permanent. To be provisional, the way they argue is that it provides, it's provided when it's needed. So ten are permanent, seven are provisional. That caught me off guard, right. That's when the article I was like, wait a minute, what Okay. I've definitely had plenty of classes and courses and different things about all the things that follow from salvation. Okay, I had to do an entire project, and I loved working on that and it was it was interesting and fun. But I don't think I ever saw it broken down into permanent versus provisional. If I did, I completely forgot, but it caught. So this caught my attention. I'm like, okay, so how do we process this. Well, what we're going to do is this is the kind of the strategy we're going to do a little bit of work on just trying to understand this argument about permanent and provisional.

13:58 We then will kind of go back at Hebrew six ' nine in its original context, and then we're going to work through slowly but surely, I don't know over the next I don't know how long. My goal is to try to just take one of these one word, one word, each one of these things I should say, not the word, well, the word itself, but each one of these things and talk about it, so whether it's propitiation, whether it's regeneration, whether it's redemption, and just maybe do one broadcast for each one. I know it's going to be hard to do that in one to do one to cover one in one broadcast, because each one of those could be you know, an entire semester in Bible College. But I think that's what we're going to do. So I hope this all fits together, But for today, I just want to take this time to kind of just step back and look at this whole permanent provisional distinction and see what we can do with it all right. So, as we've now stated, the article breaks these seventeen things that come with Christ into two categories. Now this is now I'm gonna give you. I challenge you to come up with your own breakdown and how which ones you would put in which category. Now I'm gonna show you how the article categorize these. All right, here are the ten permanent gifts. According to this article, these are fixed.

15:22 According to the article, these are unchangeable, and they are given equally to all believers. They cannot be lost, altered or taken away. So, according to this article, the permanent gifts are you ready, are fixed, unchangeable, given equally to all believers. They cannot be lost, they cannot be altered, and they cannot be taken away. The permanent gifts include number one, atonement, number two, ransom number three, imputation number four, reconciliation number five, regeneration number six, justification number seven, propitiation number eight, adoption number nine, redemption, and number ten eternal life.

16:29 So according to this article, this thesis is that there are ten permanent gifts that you receive basically at salvation, it flows from your salvation, and that these are fixed, they are unchangeable, They are given equally to all believers. They cannot be lost, they cannot be altered, and they cannot be taken away for anything. These are permanent. And those ten things that are supposedly permanent are atonement, ransom, amputation, reconciliation, regeneration, justification, propitiation, adoption, redemption, and eternal life. Some would say all of these would be then very much connected to salvation itself. I think you can see that right now. There's a lot there.

17:38 We can get into a discussion about it, as you want you to see. According to the article, these ten are permanent. And again, the way this would be understood is these are fixed, unchangeable, given equally to all believers. They cannot be lost, altered, or taken away. Those are the permanent ones. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Now your theological is gonna have lots of opinions here, but that's okay. Now, what are the provisional gifts? Well, the provisional gifts, there are seven of them. Now you can already look at your list and probably know the seven that's going to be considered provisional here. Now, provisional this means these seven are available when needed. They may increase, they may decrease, they may change based on a believer's spiritual condition and situation. So those others are fixed or unchangeable.

18:38 These seven they're available when they're are needed, and they may increase, they may decrease, and they may change, and they may change based on a believer spiritual condition and situation. Your spiritual condition could change one of these seven provisional gifts that supposedly flow from salvation. Now, what are these provisional gifts faith? Say? Now, already I have a problem to some level because I don't see faith is simply provisional. I see faith is also permanent in what way? Well, faith is a gift. We are saved by faith alone, right, and that is given to us. It's a gift. That faith is a gift given to us by God. And the faith God gives to us, that's a permanent thing.

19:30 We never will lose that faith given to a faith given to us by God cannot be lost, It cannot be altered, it cannot be changed. So that says I almost want to put that in the permanent category. Now, you could argue there's a provisional aspect of faith a changeable that our faith may increase or decrease based on certain circumstances, situations, struggles, difficulties, sin, pain, tragedy, what I mean, all the different things you can go through. But your saving faith is not altered or changed. So already I have a little bit of a struggle here. The second one is belief. Now, what's the distinction between faith and belief? Now?

20:14 I see that's a good one, right, what's the distinction between faith and belief? I'm asking you the question? Third is repentance. Now, see, I would believe. I believe faith and repentance is given to me by God. God gives me the faith, God gives me. Repentance and repentance is a change of mind. I believe that change of mind is permanent. I will permanently change my mind about God. I will permanently change my mind about sin. Now is there a provisional aspect where that may fluctuate or change? Now, if you want to say repentance is something different, well then we get into a whole big argument about the devil definition of repentance, which we'll we'll have to discuss later on. We've talked about that a million times, but So is that a provisional thing? You get more repentance, you get less repentance. It changes, well maybe to some level, but at least the saving repentance, the saving faith, those are given to you by God. Peace. Okay, now peace, I can see that being. But see again, is there not a permanent aspect of peace? When you become a Christian?

21:31 You are now at peace with God. You're no longer at war with God. Look that animosity, that war, that conflict, it's over. And now in Christ you are at peace with God. That's permanent. That will never change because you have Christ. So is that not permanent? Is there a provisional part of that? You see? Now this gets a little confusing. Grace now they put the provisional side. They put faith, belief, repentance, peace, and grace in the provisional side. Are we gonna say grace is provisional. I'm saved by faith.

22:13 I'm saved by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone. Are you gonna say, now, maybe there's an aspect of grace that's provisional. Can you just separate? See this distinction here is what just threw me off big time. Right, Sanctification Now, I think most people would eat. Well, yeah, sanctification is provisional, but I will look wait wait, wait, wait, and Christ, I am sanctified. There is a permanent aspect of that. When I became a Christian, I am permanently, positionally sanctified. That that will not change. I cannot become more sanctified. I cannot become less sanctified because I'm sanctified in Christ Jesus. I'm declared to be. I am set apart.

23:00 I'm declared to be perfect, righteous and holy in Christ Jesus because of an imputed righteousness. There is a permanent aspect of sanctification. Now you could say there's a provisional, but then the provisional aspect of sanctification, it's like when I need it, it shows up, like do I have any control over it? Like, okay, how does that work? Mercy is the last one. Mercy is provisional, Mercy is provisional. Well, I'm having a hard time putting any of these and strictly a provisional category. So according to this article, the permanent gifts are atonement, ransom. Now, if I was if I was in front of a live audience, I would make everyone repeat these the permanent gifts are atonement, ransom, imputation, reconciliation, regeneration, justification, propitiation, adoption, redemption, and eternal life. The supposed provisional gifts are faith, belief, repentance, peace, grace, sanctification, and mercy, and these are described as continually available but varying an experience depending on the believer's needs. The distinction is made to emphasize that some things are guaranteed at salvation while others fluctuate in a believer's life. Some things

24:31 are guaranteed, but other things fluctuate. All right, look at that list. Look at that list. Do you see the breakdown? Do you have problems with this? So now we're breaking down the basic argument within the article. I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree. Well, obviously you can tell I disagree with some of this provisional stuff. Look, there's just I think you. I don't even know why we're making the distinction. It's more like, these are the things that come from salvation, and then understanding each one of them individually, seeing then the positional aspect, the practical aspect, and I think that's what we're ultimately going to do.

25:16 I think this distinction is more problematic than it is. But let's just try to break this down, all right. The argument in this article is when a person receives Christ, they receive more than just eternal life. You get more than eternal life when you become a Christian. These blessings are categorized as permanent, fixed, and provisional variable. Now we've looked at the ten permanent, and we've looked at the provisional. All right, we've looked at all of these. Okay, permanent means they're unchangeable. They're given a salvation. They cannot be lost, they cannot be removed, they cannot be altered. We've went through all of them. The provisional they are always available, but are experienced differently at different comes, at different times.

26:00 We've looked at the provisional ones. Right. The article emphasizes that true believers have access to all of these gifts. The distinction is meant to help believers understand their security in Christ while also relying on God's continual provision. That's kind of what the article is trying to say, Hey, you have security in Christ because these ten things, these ten things are permanent, unchangeable. You can rest you have these things and these other seven, well they may fluctuate, but that shows you God's always going to be there to provide. I think that's what they're attempting to do. But I think you're misic characterizing some of those seven. Now, some may argue that this characterization, this kind of categorizing, putting them in different categories. Some may argue that it's trying to show the difference between justification and sanctification. Justification is fixed, it is permanent. Sanctification fluctuates, it changes. So it seems like whoever put the article together is trying to say, well, these things relate to justification, permanent, these things relate to sanctification, therefore they're provisional. But my problem is sanctification itself needs to be listed as a permanent thing.

27:25 Because we are permanently sanctified in Christ. We are set apart in our position. So right there, already I have a problem there. I will agree that if you look at that list of the ten, the permanent gifts are foundational to salvation. They are related to justification. I will agree that the ten listed, But I believe those other things. That doesn't mean that they don't have a permanent aspect as well. Many would argue that the provisional gifts align with progressive sanctification, which does change over time. Well, I do agree that when you look at the practical aspect of sanctification. Now, remember there's the positional aspect of sanctification, which is permanent and fixed, but the practical side of sanctification, it does fluctuate, It changes up down. I do agree with that. Some would argue that what the article is trying to clarify, it's trying to clarify why some aspects of the Christian life feel secure and others seem to fluctuate.

28:41 That if you look at a Christian's life, there's some things that seem to be there's a security, there's a you should find security, you should be able to hold on to it because these things are permanent. But there's other things in the Christian life that does fluctuate. So is this an attempt to try to say, well, these things are secure, they don't fluction Wait, you never have to worry about them. You can cling to that, you can find peace security in it because it's permanent. But these things this explains the fluctuation in the Christian life I just don't know if those seven things. Maybe they do to some level. What we'll have to find out well as we work through it, all right, See, the permanent category reinforces eternal security. A believer's justification is fixed and not dependent on emotion or circumstance. I do agree with that justification is permanent, it is fixed. It's based off what Christ did, not what I do. I completely agree with that. I think that makes sense. I think this should be an encouragement for those struggling with doubt.

29:45 When when you go through those seventeen things and you see the permanent nature of salvation, and you understand the permanent nature of those in that category, it should give you some sense of security, remove worry and anxiety. I think that's true. I think that's true. I think it is an encouragement. I think it acknowledges Some would argue that these categories acknowledges the experience of Christian growth. You see, the provisional category rightly captures that believers don't always feel faith. Well, we don't always feel it, all right, we don't always feel peace, that's true. We don't always feel grace in the same measure. So this would argue that this is trying to fit the reality that believers experience in life.

30:36 I think that now there is some truth. I don't always feel faith, I may not always feel peace, I may not always feel grace. But my feelings does not determine if something is permanent or provisional, right, I mean, the whole point of something being permanent is these things are permanent. I may not feel justified, I may not feel you know, I may not feel sanctified, but from a positional standpoint, from a permanent standpoint, these things are permanent, whether I feel it or not. To me, just because we may feel some of these things as fluctuating, that doesn't necessarily place them in a provisional category, because you could take anything on the list and say, well, I don't necessarily feel this, I don't necessarily experience this. Well you know, yeah, I don't think feelings have anything to do with this. I think the whole point of something being permanent is then you have to learn to see the permanence of something irregardless of your feelings. Sorry, yeah I'm not I'm not a fan of that all right. Now, what is some possible problems with these categories? Those are some possible you know, positives and trying to understand why you would break them into these categories. But what are some of the problems and weaknesses of these categories? Well, the division may be too rigid. Some of the provisional

32:09 gifts have permanent aspect. Okay, thank you that I completely agree with that, right, And I had AI analyze the article for the possible philological problems and weaknesses, and the first one AI pointed out was that, well, some of these divisions may be too rigid because some of the provisional gifts out of those seven, some of those have a permanent aspect, and you would have to acknowledge that these are the ones Ai says have a permanent aspect Faith. While faith may grow, the initial gift of saving faith is permanent. See when we are granted faith for salvation, that's permanent. It's never going away. Sanctification. AI says it is both positional, permanent in Christ and progressive growing over time. Okay, AI is saying the same thing that I had already said. Faith, there is a permanent aspect of that. You can't just say it's provisional. It's a permanent aspect. You can't definitely can't say sanctification is provisional because it's definitely a permanent aspect of it. That's why I get tired when people say, well, how do you know if you're justified? Will you look at your sanctification. No, I'm already permanently sanctified in Christ.

33:30 So my practical sanctification does not prove my justification. It does not even prove a lack of sanctification, because in Christ, I'm perfectly justified, have perfectly sanctified. No, it doesn't matter what I do or don't do, because I'm that by faith. And you say, well, if you truly believe, you'll do this. No, I may truly believe and still not do the right thing because I'm still a sinner. But it doesn't mean I'm not sanctified. Doesn't mean I'm not justified because I'm justified by faith, by fe faith, I'm justified by faith. I'm sanctified in Christ. Those are permanent. Now we can get to the practical aspect, so you can't say faith. You can't say sanctification is provisional. Grace and mercy, while they are experienced daily, they also permanently given through salvation and salvation. We have been We've been given grace and mercy.

34:22 Those are permanent. God never takes away is grace or mercy from us because we are in Christ, Jesus and Christ, we have grace and mercy. So just those right there, faith, sanctification, grace and mercy. That makes it almost impossible to draw a clear line between what is permanent and what is provisional. I will say it is impossible to say these are permanent and these are provisional. I don't know why the article with this direction, like I said, this categorize these, deplacing these in these categories was the most like, where did this even come from? How did you even come up with this idea? AI pointed out. So not only is there you know that these divisions are way too rigid and they don't take into account that some of these so called provisional things do have a permanent aspect, AI it has. It has the potential for oversimplification of Christian struggles. The idea that provisional gifts are always available when needed could be extremely misleading. Many believers struggle with assurance, faith, and peace even when they seek them. This could lead some to think that they're lacking faith if they don't experience those gifts constantly. So it's the idea, Hey, these seven things, they're there whenever you need it, and God will just increase it as you need it. It does not work that way, you know that. I know that.

35:49 I know Christians love to think that. You know, twenty four to seven, we've just basically got access to all the power, everything we need, and yet the reality is far different. Even AI stands that. AI goes on to say, not only that this does not account for divine sovereignty and provision. The article presents provisional gifts as a believer as believer dependent rather than God distributed. Scripture often speaks of faith and peace is given by God in his timing. This makes provisional gifts not just available on demand, but gracially get given according to God's plan, God's will. We can't just say, oh, these things are available, just get it.

36:30 It doesn't work that way. We're not in control of the process. So I did have AI make me a little chart here, all right. I did have AI make me a little chart here, because you know, I'm not Gonnat making charts. But AI will make me a chart, right, just like that, So a I did this for a chart critique? Is this categorization the best way to explain these gifts? Is this the best way to break these seventeen things down into this category? Well, the aspect permanent gifts, here's the strengths of these permanent gifts. This idea of placing them in that category. It does reinforce eternal security and the unchangeable nature of salvation, the weakness. Some permanent gifts, like faith have a progressive element. So see as soon as you break these down, even some of these things that have that are permanent, there is a progressive element to them. See, this is going to go both ways.

37:39 When you come to provisional gifts, well, it may explain why believers experience fluctuation and faith, peace and grace, But the division is too rigid because some provisional gifts have permanent aspects. Some permanent gifts have progressive elements or provisional elements, and some permanent gifts have provision or some provisional gifts have permanent aspects. So it goes both ways. Some permanent has provisional aspects, some provisional have permanent aspects, meaning you can't put these in these nice little categories. And why I hate this stuff is this stuff. Pastors love this stuff.

38:19 Like they're sitting in there study one night, they come across, oh ooh this is good. This is good. They call their multimedia team, Hey, I need you to make me a you know, a PowerPoint slide of provisional and permanent gifts, and we're gonna break these down and then oh yeah, and everyone there in church is gonna be like, oh, this is so awesome. Yeah, yeah, nobody's gonna stop and going Wait a minute. I think this whole thing is just fraudulent from the start. I think this whole thing falls apart. Now philological balance recognize the distinction between justification and sanctification by putting them in these categories, there's at least an attempt to draw a distinction between justification and sanctification.

39:07 There was at least some effort to do that. However, it doesn't fully address God's role in distributing faith, peace, and grace. And not only that, it seems to completely forget that some of these have a justification aspect. They're connected to justification as well practicality. The chart or breaking this into these categories does encourage believers to trust in their unchangeable salvation while seeking growth, but it could unintentionally lead to guilt if someone struggles to access provisional gifts. So Ai was like, hey, I can offer you a better approach. Do you want a better approach? And I'm like, okay, A what do you have? Right? This chart? I think is a total mess? Are there not this chart? I'm sorry this breaking them into these categories. If you were to turn it into a chart, I believe it would be a complete mess. So but Ai said, do you want a better aproach? Here's what Ai suggests. Instead of dividing these into strictly permanent versus provisional, a more biblical model would be unchangeable aspects of salvation justification and adoption.

40:18 These are fully accomplished and permanent. Progressive growth in salvation, sanctification, and experience of grace. These develop over time God's ongoing provision faith, peace, peace, and strength. These are given by God and his timing and not just dependent on human effort. So Ai says, break it down into basically three under concepts. The unchangeable aspects of salvation focus on all of those things that are unchangeable and a part of salvation, like justification, adoption. These are fully accomplished and permanent. Of course, I still think you need to put sanctification in there, because there's a an element there. What I would say, what you need to do. This is what I would say, Hey, I want it unchangeable aspects progressive growth, God's ongoing provision.

41:11 What I would say is you need to break it down positional reality, practical reality. And how do these seventeen things fit in with the positional reality and how do they fit in with the practical reality. I think that's what we have to do. There is I think everything should be broken down from positional and practice, positional and practical. So I think dividing these if I don't know what you had in your chart, I don't know wrote what you wrote down, But I think what you should have came to this is what I feel should have happened.

41:57 You should have been like, I don't think this works. I don't know if I can make all of these provisional. I think, and I think some of these permanent could have kind of a provisional aspect to it. I think you should have found yourself going this just doesn't work. This kind of falls apart. That's where you should have ended up and said, I don't know if I like this, Now, what do we need to do? Well, the first thing we need to do now, we're not going to do it now. I think that broke it down pretty well, and I think hopefully helped you see the problem here. What we need to do is we need to circle back around, go back to Hebrews six ' nine and try to decide if this verse has anything to even do with us what it's actually referring to, especially in the context because it has something to do with Jews and seventy a d more than it has anything to do with you in my salvation. But then this list of seventeen things faith, belief, repentance, atonement, imputation, reconciliation, ransom, regeneration, justification, grace, mercy, propitiation, adoption, redemption, sanctification, peace, and eternal life. I think we need to become an expert and all seventeen of those things. Now we're going to walk into theological landmines and we're going to tick off somebody. Right, you could also get into a whole order an art an argument about orders. Salutis the order of salvation. Right, there's a whole lot of things that we could get into an argument about. What I think

43:28 we're going to do is just go through and try to get a better understanding of these concepts, how they and we're going to What we're going to do is understand these concepts, how they relate. We're not going to put them in categories. How though you have faith, how does faith relate to our position, our salvation, and how does faith work and relate to our practical daily experience and daily living. There's a there's a positional aspect of faith. God grants me faith, and I am permanently saved, and that faith is a permanent gift. I will always have that faith. Now, you could go, I'm going back to the permanent idea, But there's I'm positionally saved by faith, and the faith that I'm saved by was given to me by God. And that faith never changes, never fluctuates, never increases, decreases, It stays the same now. But at the same time, there's a practical outworking of that faith where me as an individual, right, there's going to be aspects of faith where I'm struggling and I'm doubting, but my faith in Christ should be somewhat unwavery my faith about a lot of things may waver. That's the practical aspect. See, trying to draw that division can be very difficult, but you can see how. I don't know how they separate faith and belief. I'm gonna as what is the distinction?

44:50 What is the difference between faith and belief? I just need to answer that question at some point. But repentance, Okay, we got to define what repentance is. And then again I think there's the salvific part of repentance, and then there's the practical repentance. All right, so we could go through all of those. That's what we will do. That's what we will do, and we'll just make each episode. We'll title it faith maybe faith part one, Faith part two, Faith part three, Faith part four, Believe part one, part two, and we'll just go through all of them. It can't hurt.

45:32 But we'll have to first work on Hebrews six 's nine. All right, there we go. Now, nobody else at all may be interested in all of that, may not even care. But this is what happens. I get one issued sort of Lord newspaper in fifteen hours later I'm still working on one article. That's what I could do with every article in here, Like it's dangerous to give me a paper, a magazine, a book, because I literally I could just go hour after hour after hour talking about it. But there we go. Their division of permanent and provisional is permanently broken. Get what I did there, It's not provisionally broken, it's permanently broken. It doesn't work because they create a list where some of these things have a permanent aspect and a provisional aspect. And I think that fits more with the idea that in our Christianity everything relates to our position and our practice. Everything to some level has some correlation between the two, at least I think, so I could even make maybe even make an argument. I think anytime we create these categories, there's times things can fall apart a little bit. So that's why we've got to be careful about creating categories sometimes. But I think positional and practical definitely far makes more sense than permanent and visional. I think you could go permanent, which ones

47:06 are just permanent alone or any of them just permanent alon? And which ones are both maybe permanent and both permanent and provisional. I don't maybe you could do that, I don't know. All right, there you go, So next time Hebrew six 's nine. After that we'll start working on faith. Thanks for listening, God bless