What About Salvation?, Pt. 1 (Articles of Faith Series)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. You are listening to Outer Brightness, a podcast for post Mormons who are drawn by God to walk with Jesus rather than turn away. Outer Brightness.

There's no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth here, except when Michael's hangry that is. Welcome to this episode of the Outer Brightness Podcast. We were all born and raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, more commonly referred to as the Mormon faith. We may use nicknames or abbreviations of the Church, such as LDS, Mormon, etc., but not in an attempt to be pejorative or insulting, but as a reflection of our personal experiences as Latter-day Saints, where these terms were used interchangeably in reference to ourselves and or the Church. All of us have left that religion and have been drawn to faith in Jesus Christ based on Biblical teachings. Some might consider us sons of perdition, the inheritors of outer darkness who supposedly knew the truth and rejected it. The name of our podcast, Outer Brightness, reflects the Gospel of John, chapter 1 in the Bible, specifically verse 9, which calls Jesus the true light, which gives light to everyone. We have found life beyond Mormonism to be brighter than we were told it would be, and the light we have is not our own. It comes to us from without.

Thus, Outer Brightness. Making the transition from Mormonism to broader Christianity can be exciting, scary, confusing, challenging, and ultimately life-giving. Our aim here is to share our journeys of faith and what God has done in our lives in drawing us to His Son. We'll have conversations about all aspects of that transition—the fears, challenges, new beliefs, surprises, and joys.

We're glad you've found us, and we hope you'll stick around. I'm Matthew, the Nuclear Cowanist. I'm Michael, the Ex-Mormon Apologist. I'm Paul Bunyan.

Let's get into it. The third article of faith states, We believe that a man may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel. I spent two years as an LDS missionary trying to convince others, including Christians, to accept the LDS Gospel. I was a Christian, and I was a Christian. Part of that process included repentance, or turning away from sin. However, repentance was to be a lifelong pursuit.

After all, we were always going to fall short. But repentance was a way to gradually overcome sin and be the righteous men and women God expected us to be. I believe that faith alone was not sufficient to grant eternal fellowship with the Father in the Celestial Kingdom. James 2-20 was always at the forefront of my mind, reminding me that faith without works was dead. The trouble came when after 32 years of trying, I kept falling short.

Instead of gradually climbing the stairway to heaven, my life was a rollercoaster of highs and lows. I couldn't bring myself to be righteous, no matter how hard I tried. As I studied the Bible, I began to wrestle with concepts I didn't understand. How could Paul preach easy believism without batting an eyelash?

Where were his qualifications explaining that free actually meant after all we could do? Slowly, a belief system I had scoffed at and viewed as two dimensional came into focus. Grace as a sufficient and totally free gift was something I thirsted for desperately. I began to see the Gospel as elegant and simple, a true beacon of God's unconditional love for His children. Today, I and the other Sons of Light will be discussing how our view of salvation changed during our transition into Christianity. I'm going to ask Matthew this question first. How important, Matthew, do you think it is to believe in a correct Gospel to be a Christian?

Are there gray areas to this? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I guess it depends on how you define the parameters of what you call the Gospel, because sometimes people might make a very specific declaration of what the Gospel is, and anything outside that is a false Gospel. You'll find this in particular with a lot of hyper-Calvinists. I guess that's kind of like a tangent, but basically they would say that if you don't follow their particular stream of theology, you're not saved. So, that's just one example showing where people will define what the Gospel is narrowly or broadly, I think, on an individual level. But I think what the Gospel presents, or what the Bible presents as the Gospel is very simple, and there aren't many Gospels.

I forget where Paul says this. Oh, it's in Galatians, where he's speaking to the Galatians who have turned away to another Gospel, and then he immediately says, well, it's not another Gospel. So, if there's any other truth that's contrary to the truth that they presented to them, it's not another Gospel, but it's a false Gospel. And the Gospel that the Galatians were being tricked into believing was from a group called the Judaizers. They're kind of like a group of Jewish people who had kind of accepted the Gospel, but they wanted to bring Christians back to their Jewish roots. So, we don't have a ton of information on them, but we know that one thing they were trying to do is to convince people to go back to circumcision, that you couldn't become a Christian until you had already been a Jew, or if you're a Gentile, you had to be circumcised. And so, Paul rebuked the Galatians for going after these false teachings from these Judaizers, and he doesn't just explain in very soft terms that, oh, you know, you got the Gospel mostly right, so, you know, I'll forgive you there.

You know, we're pretty close. He gives very strong terminology for the things that they were being caught up in. So, let me find a passage in Galatians. I think it's Galatians 2. No, Galatians 3. So, Paul says in Galatians 3, starting in verse 1, oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It is before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by the works of the law or by hearing with faith, just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness? Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham and the Scriptures for saying that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preach the Gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, and you shall all the nations be blessed. So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. He continues on and speaks of how the righteous will live by faith. So he's really rebuking them for they're basically trying to be righteous by following the law, and he speaks in no uncertain terms that they're basically cutting themselves off from Christ.

So yeah, that's a really long answer. I guess to boil it down, I would say that you can't deviate from the core message of the Gospel, and that is that we're righteous through faith in Christ, just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. If we try to add anything else to the Gospel or take away anything from it, then that's a different Gospel.

So there's no real gray area there. I think it's pretty clear cut, but as for there are a lot of issues as for how baptism fits into the Gospel, as to how regeneration fits into the Gospel, there's a whole lot of aspects of salvation that you can get into and it can get kind of weedy, but I think it's very clear that we're saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and I think that's an essential that we just can't deviate from that and still call it the Gospel. Amen. I agree completely. Paul, what do you think?

I agree. I think it's very important to believe in the correct Gospel to be a Christian for a number of reasons, and I think first we have to define what we mean by Gospel, right? The Greek word in the Bible in the New Testament that's translated as Gospel is euangelion, and it means good news, and we get our English word from a similar phrase in Old English, God spell, which basically means God good spell announcement.

So the word means good news. So the question is, what is the good news that was being preached by our Lord Jesus and by his apostles in the New Testament? Matthew touched on Galatians.

I was going to touch on that as well, but he covered that really, really well. I just want to kind of emphasize what Paul says in verse seven of chapter one there, where he kind of clarifies that there is no other Gospel. He's astonished that the Galatians are so quickly deserting him who called them into the grace of Christ, and he says they're going after another Gospel, but then he clarifies and says there is no other Gospel, right, as if there was any other good news. So I think based on that, you know, it's critically important to believe in in the correct Gospel, but then the question becomes, what is that, right?

And if you look at the Bible, you can kind of take a broad approach or a narrow focus to kind of define what the what the Gospel is. So you can start with like Isaiah 52 7, which says, How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, Your God reigns. So, you know, there Isaiah is saying that the Gospel, the good news, is related to the reign of God, the kingdom of God. And in Mark 1 verses 14 to 15, it says, Now after John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the Gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the Gospel. So Jesus there is proclaiming the reign of God. He's proclaiming the Kingdom of God is there. In Mark 10 45, Jesus says, For even the Son of Man, referring to himself, came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. And then you have 1 Corinthians 15 1-4, which is kind of like the classic place where a lot of people go to define what the Gospel is biblically, where Paul says, Now I would remind you, brothers, of the Gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you, as of first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures. And then you have 1 Peter 3 8, 3 18, where Christ, where Peter says, For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, so there's this exchange, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit.

So that's kind of like a broad survey. The good news is that Christ died for our sins as a ransom for many. He was buried. He was raised on the third day as a powerful witness to what he had done on the cross. And because of that, there's this exchange that takes place, the righteous Jesus for the unrighteous, us sinners.

And then you can kind of take a narrow focus. Philippians 1 27 to 28, and staying in Philippians, but Philippians chapter 1 verse 27 to 28 says, Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come to come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you, that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. So salvation is from God, and there's an aspect of it that's related to faith. Philippians 3 verses 8 and 9 says, and we hear this in the song that is our outro of the episode, Indeed I count everything as loss, because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ, and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, that comes from the law, but that which comes comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. So Paul makes it clear there that the good news is tied up with being in Christ, being found in Christ, and having a righteousness that is not your own, but that comes through faith, a righteousness from God that depends on faith. And then in Philippians 2 6 through 9 Paul says, But he emptied himself, speaking of Jesus, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross. So it's the obedience of Christ that is the righteousness from God, right? His obedience for our disobedience, that exchange that takes place. And so why is it important then to believe in the true gospel?

I think for a couple of reasons. One, so you understand it, and two, so that you have the assurance of your salvation. Because if you don't believe that your salvation is wholly reliant upon God and upon what he offers to you through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, if you're counting on your own righteousness to in some way save you, then that leads to a whole host of issues that I can get into later and will get into later as we continue to discuss. But to cover the part of the question about gray areas, salvation is an individual matter.

It's wholly a gracious work of God from front to back. And John Piper, I was reading an article where he's talking about Roman Catholicism because he was answering a question about, you know, whether a devout Roman Catholic can be saved. And he had this to say, and I agree with what he says here. He said, If a person has a genuine encounter with the living Christ and recognizes the depth of human sinfulness and of the hopelessness we are in without grace and without Christ, and if they see in Jesus the substitute that God provided to bear our punishment and provide all we need for acceptance with God, and if that person throws himself on the mercy of Christ, despairing of all self-reliance, and cherishes Christ as his supreme treasure and hope for eternal life, then that person will be saved, even if many doctrinal ideas are confused or erroneous. In other words, it is possible for a person's heart and his essential grasp of Christ to be far better than the structures of his own doctrinal framework. We all may be very, very thankful for this.

Great. Well, I'm going to kind of echo what you guys have already said, that what really got me thinking about this question in the first place was, I was going to church and they started doing this series in Sunday school, talking about what all the denominations believe and kind of what sets them apart, which I was really excited for because I'm like, oh, good, I can finally play some catch up here and learn a thing or two about the different denominations. And the instructor was just saying how there's different views of how grace works. And he kind of listed Roman Catholicism in there with the other denominations. And he said, you know, a lot of people don't believe that Catholics are Christian.

He's like, he said, I disagree with that. I think that it is a gray area. So, he used that specific word and it really got me thinking about things a lot.

It actually didn't really sit well with me, to be honest. Kind of gave me some anxiety because I know that Roman Catholicism does not believe in imputed righteousness. That's one of the reasons that the Reformation had to take place because it wasn't biblical doctrine. They believe in something called infused righteousness. And it reminds me a lot of what Latter-day Saints believe in. You know, I'm seeing more and more Latter-day Saints say that it is Christ's righteousness that saves us. But they'll even use the word imputation, which drives me crazy because I'm like, you guys wouldn't even know what this word was if we weren't, you know, trying to witness to you all the time. And now you're trying to say that it's your word and it's not.

But they'll say, oh, we believe in imputation. Yeah, Christ gives his righteousness to us little by little, as we are obedient, you know, like it's some kind of reward system. And that's exactly what Paul talks about in Romans. You know, he who works, that basically that grace has become a wage rather than a gift.

And that's what it turns it into, in my opinion. I know that's not necessarily a popular opinion, but I'm going to go into Galatians 2. Apparently, that has inspired all of us tonight. But in Galatians 5, 4, it says, you are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law. And I remember talking to one of my family members right after I left the church and saying that, you know, Christ's grace was enough. And she thought about it for a few days and came back to me and she said, you know what, I agree with you, actually, Christ's righteousness, his grace, it is enough, but there can always be more.

To imply that we can always be better, we can always present something else. And, you know, we've talked about Christ exchanging his righteousness for us on the cross. And the real question is, what can we add to his righteousness? And the answer is nothing. We can't add anything to his righteousness because it is already perfect.

It is already full. It is infinite righteousness, and you can't add anything to infinite righteousness. And I'm kind of surprised that Latter-day Saints don't understand it because they do ordinances for the dead. Take baptism for the dead, for instance. They believe that the work that they are doing on the behalf of the deceased counts as a full baptism. The dead people don't have to do anything except what has been done on their behalf. That's it. So, the work is completely done and it is very symbolic of what happens with the real gospel.

And yet, they think that they need to produce works to receive some of Christ's righteousness. So, I find that very interesting. But other than that, I really don't have anything to add than what you guys haven't already said. Chris I think you guys both give really good responses. I really appreciated your biblical responses also. Like, I had some passages written down that I kind of referenced, but like Paul just laid them all out in a really cohesive manner. So, I think you really laid a case down really well for what the gospel is, and we've kind of also kind of brushed on what the gospel isn't. So, we'll probably go more in depth on that, I would imagine. Chris Alright, Paul.

I want to ask you this question. How would you respond to a critic who says that forensic justification is just a fairy tale? Paul So, I'm going to turn it back on them. If this critic claims to be a believer of the Bible, I would counter that they must believe the Bible to be a fairy tale because the Bible proclaims forensic justification. And if we define forensic justification, it's the idea that a sinner who is drawn by God to faith in Christ and repents is saved and is free from all the guilt and penalty and condemnation of their sins. So, let's talk about the Greek noun that's translated into English as justification.

A couple of interesting things about it. One is that it's from the same family as the Greek word that we get the terms from which we get the terms righteous and righteousness. And so, this suggests that justification has something to do with righteousness. If I am justified before God, then that has something to do with righteousness, but as Paul made clear, not my own righteousness.

It is the righteousness that comes from God through faith in Jesus Christ. And this relates to what I was talking about earlier with regards to the gospel. Recall what Isaiah wrote. The one who brings good news publishes peace. And Paul in Romans 5-1 says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace when?

Now. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It's not something that comes later after we're obedient because we have been justified. We have peace now through our Lord Jesus Christ. So, those who've been justified have moved from a state of being in rebellion to God to being in a state of peace with God.

And so, what's at stake here when we talk about forensic justification? It's nothing more or less than the assurance of salvation. To say that salvation is dependent on anything more than the exchange of Christ's obedience and righteousness for my own filth and sin is to make grace dependent on my own ability to rid myself of all ungodliness. And that's to say that the saved person is still not in a state of peace with God. And it's to rob me of blessed assurance.

There is no other good news. So, I would just turn it back on and the Bible proclaims forensic justification. All right.

Excellent. Matthew, how would you answer this charge? Paul really nailed it. He brought up the word for justification from the Greek dikaiosune and I'm guessing that's how you pronounce it. I'm not a Greek scholar, but as I was thinking about this question, I was thinking about just the reformation itself. And because Michael, you brought up how there's a divide between evangelicals or Protestants, however you want to label us, and Roman Catholics and it's because of the historical event of the reformation. So, like you said, when Luther was looking at scripture, you know, I actually wanted to quote this kind of video that's a transcript from something that R.C.

Sproul said. It was when Luther was reading scripture and he was reading Romans and it quotes Habakkuk where it says, that just shall live by faith. And so, Luther was trying to wrestle with all this, what this really means. And there was so much history of the Western church using the Latin text, the Latin Vulgate for their theology.

So, in here, R.C. Sproul speaking of this, he says, there's a linguistic trick that was going on here too. It was this, that the Latin word for justification that was used at this time in church history was, and it's the word from which we get the English word justification, the Latin word justificare, and it came from the Roman judicial system. And the term justificare is made up of the word justus, which is justice or righteousness, and the verb, the infinitive, facare, which means to make. And so, the Latin fathers understood the doctrine of justification is what happens when God through the sacraments of the church and elsewhere make unrighteous people righteous. But Luther was looking now at the Greek word that was in the New Testament, not the Latin word, the word dakaios, dakaiosune, which didn't mean to make righteous but rather to regard as righteous, to count as righteous, to declare as righteous. And this was the moment of awakening for Luther.

So, I really like the way the R.C. Sproul kind of explained that distinction between making someone righteous, which is pretty much like infused righteousness as you're explaining, Michael, and being declared righteous. And Paul uses this very specifically forensic, this judicial courtroom language to really drive home this idea that we're not infused with righteousness upon faith. We are declared righteous. It's God declaring that we're innocent, that we're innocent of any sin and that we are righteous.

And this is a righteousness that comes from Christ. Give me one second. I want to see if I've deviated too far from your question. So, yeah, I think it's very clear that in Romans chapter three, that Romans chapter three and chapter four, have we already quoted that?

My mind's kind of been fluttered recently because of my paper I've been working on. Okay. So, I was going to quote parts of those if that's all right. I know this is going to mess up your editing, Paul. Sorry about that. Paul You're all good. Okay.

You're fired. Sorry. Okay.

Romans 3, 27 through 31. Then what becomes of our boasting? Hold on. I should go back. Okay.

3, 21 onward. But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed as attested by the law and the prophets. And this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God presented him as the atoning sacrifice through faith in his blood in order to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance, he had passed over the sins committed beforehand.

He did this to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of works? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too?

Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. And I wanted to read part of chapter four, starting with verse one. What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, has discovered? If Abraham was indeed justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Now the wages of the worker are not credited as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work, but believes in him, sorry, but believes in him who justifies the wicked, his, oh, this is a weird version, sorry, uh, that's fine. Who believes in him who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. And David speaks likewise of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works. Blessed are they whose lawless acts are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man whose sins the Lord will never count against him. So, sorry to read that entire passage, but I think that's really important for this too, because if they say that forensic justification is a fairy tale, it says this, it says multiple times in that same passage, just read through Romans three to four, it says, we're justified by our faith apart from works of the law. So for those critics who say that, well, you can't just be justified by faith alone, it never says, quote unquote, faith alone in those specific words, except for in James, which is a really terrible argument because here it says that we're justified by faith apart from the works of the law. And I don't think Paul could have made it any clearer that we're declared righteous through faith.

That's it. So to say that forensic justification is a fairy tale, you really have to, you have to kind of interpret the scripture or pass over it in such a way that it completely destroys the context. It destroys the whole meaning of the letter because Paul spends four chapters saying, all our works do is condemn us.

So if all our works condemn us, if we can't do anything to make us righteous, how are we righteous? And then he says, the solution is trusting in God as Abraham did, who was declared righteous, who was counted as righteous by his faith. So you just, if you just read it and just pray for understanding, I mean, that's really the passage of scripture that God used to help me to understand forensic justification. It's just so clear when you just read it from the beginning to the end. And I love how it's capstone in verse one of chapter five, as Paul mentioned, and he says, I want to quote it so I don't mess it up. I was using the Berean Study Bible earlier. That was weird. So I said wicked, but I was going to say ungodly.

So that's why I was all that messed up. It says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And that's, like Paul said, when we're declared righteous, we have peace, we have true peace with God. It's not something we gain and lose and gain and lose again based on our works.

Once we trust in Christ, we're righteous and we're righteous forever. I think if somebody came to me and said that forensic justification was a fairy tale, I would probably appeal to James chapter two, some of the things that James says that, you know, like if faith were alone, then yes, it would be a fairy tale. But the fact is that there's proof of it through the sanctification process.

The fact that we have an actual new heart, that we do not want to be in sin, that we long for this relationship and have a heart for God is an obvious change and something that you can actually see in somebody. So it is evidence. But the other thing I would say, you know, kind of like Paul turning it back, I would say, you know what the real fairy tale is? It is your earned righteousness. That is the fairy tale. In Romans chapter three, starting in verse nine, I'm going to read a little bit of this. I probably should have gone first so it would flow a little bit better with what Matthew read, but it says, What then? Are we Jews any better off?

No, not at all. We have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin. As it is written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands.

No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless.

No one does good, not even ones. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruin and misery and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Then in verse 19, Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

And so that's one thing. As a Latter-day Saint, I thought that the commandments of God were there to make me righteous, but all along they were there to condemn me. And you see this pattern through the scriptures. You know, if somebody believes that they are righteous, I think that they don't have a very good grasp of what God's law actually entails. And the example that comes to my mind is the rich young ruler who tries to tell Jesus that he's kept all the commandments his whole life. So he's basically sitting there and saying, I'm righteous. And then Jesus says, go and sell all that you have. And suddenly the young man's eyes are opened and he sees the gravity of God's law.

And he, you know, he realizes this is something that he loves more, and he goes away sorrowing because he's incapable of that kind of sacrifice. And he realizes that his righteousness, you know, it's an illusion. And so that's what I would say if somebody said that forensic righteousness was a fairy tale.

You know, anything other than that is the fairy tale. There is no other way that we can be righteous save that that righteousness is, that we are declared righteousness and it is exchanged with Christ. Chris It's interesting when you're brought up the rich young ruler because I think that that passage is one of many that's just abused by so many. I don't know, maybe we can chime in.

I know we're supposed to kind of like, you know, keep our comments contiguous, but I'd like to kind of get a like short, you know, back and forth from you guys, maybe. Because, I don't know, maybe it's just my experience, but it seems like the understanding that I had as a Latter-day Saint of the rich young ruler is that, oh, you know, if that guy had, he wanted to keep all the commandments, but there's just that one thing he couldn't let go of. But if he could have kept that, you know, he would have been okay. You know, like if he were willing to give up that one thing, then he could have, you know, he could have reached the kingdom. So it's like, you know, you've got to, so kind of the idea that I had was that like when it comes to obedience, you have to go all the way. You can't stop halfway there. And if you, but if you keep going and keep pushing through, then that's how you will, you know, receive eternal life. But really, you know, reading it now, like you said, Michael, it's like you said it perfectly.

Let's see. I was going to quote a verse really quickly. So the disciples, it says after, you know, after the rich young ruler, he was rebuked. Jesus said, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. They were exceedingly astonished and said to him, then who can be saved?

So they probably looked at this rich young ruler and said, man, look at all he does. You know, he kept the law ever since he was young, he kept all the commandments. You know, if he can't even be saved, who can be? In verse 27, it says, Jesus looked at them and said, with man, it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God. And I think that that is alluding to what we've been talking about, to the gospel, to imputed righteousness, because if we're trying to get there with our own efforts, there's always something that God could come to us and say, okay, you know, you've kept this, this, and that, but what about this? Why haven't you kept this? You know, so with the rich young ruler, he could have given up everything he had, but if he was still trying to become righteous through his works, there's always something that Jesus could have said, well, have you given up this? Have you done this?

Have you kept this perfectly your whole life? And yeah, so I think that the interpretation I had as Latter-day Saint was incorrect. I was trying to see it as like, when you're obedient, you've got to be completely obedient all the way to the end, and that's how you receive eternal life, versus, did you guys have that experience?

I definitely did. And another place where I had that same experience, you know, that verse in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. And as a Latter-day Saint, I'm like, okay, cool.

I can do that. You know, no problem, because I read in the New Testament when Jesus reveals their sin, so I'm just like, oh, they're not that great. You know, they're not that righteous. But it's like, if you look at the culture of the times, these guys were viewed as being the most righteous people around, and this was meant to be a shocking statement. And I think the equivalent would be if Jesus came during general conference and said to the Latter-day Saints, you know, unless you are more righteous than the prophet, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. You know, basically saying the most righteous person you can think of is not righteous enough.

Yeah, that's all really good. Yeah, sorry for that tangent, but I think that story alone in Scripture is just so important, because we see a lot of teachings. We've quoted a lot of Scriptures that say what the teaching is, and I think this is one case where it's like, okay, here's where the doctrine of justification of faith versus works hits the floor.

You know, it hits the street. You know, here's an example of someone who was trying to be justified by the law, and it didn't work out for him. Yeah, I remember the moment when the passage that Michael referenced from the Sermon on the Mount, about, you know, unless you're righteous to succeed, that of the described in the Pharisees. I remember the moment when that kind of flipped for me is when I was in seminary, not LDS seminary, I was in the Bible seminary and in a New Testament course and was kind of asked to comment on that passage. And I remember when it kind of hit me that kind of what's being displayed there is sort of the same message as what Paul says about the law in Romans, right? That he never would have known sin without the law, right? It's kind of like Jesus highlighting like the impossibleness of justifying yourself by perfect obedience, right? Because as much as the scribes and the Pharisees tried, they clearly weren't perfect either, right? And they had hatred in their heart towards Jesus at times.

And so, as righteous as they were, as fastidious as they were in trying to keep the law, they were not, in some ways, righteous people. And so, it kind of hit me there that really, you know, there's not this, a lot of times, Latter-day Saints will try to pit Jesus against Paul, right? And when you understand what Jesus was preaching, especially when you look at how he lived his life and the work and the preaching that he did among the sinners and those who were the outcasts of the society that he was part of, you realize that it's not a different gospel than what Paul was preaching. It can be viewed as such. And I think, as a Latter-day Saint, I did view it as such because I was taught to view it as such, but it's not a different gospel. All right. I'm going to pitch this question to you first, Matthew. Do you believe that Protestant Christianity is a safer bet than Mormonism? Why or why not?

Just a quick question. Did we skip number three or did we change number three? We skipped number three. My bad. Hold on. All right, Matthew, how do you feel about deathbed repentance now compared to as a Latter-day Saint? So, as I was reading your questions, I was thinking this might be where we differ slightly on this question, just because my views of salvation are different from what maybe what a lot of other Christians would believe. Well, okay.

Let me rephrase that. The criticism that I had as a Latter-day Saint in my mind of deathbed repentance was, you can just keep this get out of jail free card in your back pocket, you know, that says, oh, well, if I believe Jesus at the last second, I'll just pull out that card and then I get a free pass to heaven. You know, so that's kind of one thing that didn't make sense to me and it seemed cheap. It seemed like easy believe-ism, like cheap grace, you know, this idea that, oh, well, you know, if you can be an atheist your whole life, you can sin, you can do whatever you want and then last second, you can just pull out that card and then you're free. But what we see in, well, the way I understand scripture is kind of the reformed view of scripture. It's this idea that salvation doesn't begin when you believe, it doesn't even begin at the cross, it begins in eternity past and it's where God, he chose his people to, he chose and elect people to save them, to glorify himself. So, even before the world was created, they were chosen to be in Christ and there's different people, different interpretations of Ephesians 1, what it means to be, you know, foreknown and predestined from the foundation of the world to be in Christ. So, I take the, obviously, the Calvinist view of that. So, I don't think that you can squeeze your way into the kingdom last second, you know, in every case, if that makes sense. I think that whoever will be saved has been what has been chosen by God and the faith that they have in Christ is a gift from God.

Let me just really quick check, really quick. It's like I always think of passages beforehand and they end up not being the ones that I need. Chris They have nothing to do with the topic at hand, yes. Jared So, in 2 Timothy chapter 2, Paul's writing to Timothy. He's giving him advice, you know, he says, flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace.

Verse 24, and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. So, I think that even faith in Christ is a gift, repentance is a gift.

So, I don't think that you can, I don't think you can willfully wait till the last second and pull out, you know, like pull out a trick and say, okay, well, I'm going to get into heaven. So, but I do acknowledge that there are people that have sincere death by repentance, that there are people that can be converted upon death. The most famous example is the thief on the cross. He asked Christ to remember him when he enters the kingdom of heaven and Jesus promised him that he would be with him in paradise. And so, there's no indication to show that this was a fake repentance or a fake faith, that he was just trying to cross T's and dot the I's and say, okay, well, I'm dying now, so, you know, please just help me out, you know, trying to squeeze his way into heaven.

I think he had a true saving faith in Christ at that point. And I think there are many people that that's the case, you know, maybe God uses people's last dying moments as a means to bring all the things they've learned and known throughout their life and, you know, use that to bring them to repentance and faith. So, I don't see it as a cheap and easy way out because I don't think that you can use death by repentance as a cheap and easy way out.

It just doesn't happen that way, you know. You can't add to the number of people that God will save. So, if whoever will be saved will be saved in God's timing, you know, whether you're young or whether you're old or whether you're middle-aged or whatever, you know, God has a plan for everybody. So, I don't think this cheap, easy death by repentance thing is a real thing.

And it's not a, it doesn't bother me, you know. Like people will say, well, you can commit atrocities. What if Hitler repented right before his death and became, you know, and then he was saved and he got a free ride to heaven, you know.

Isn't that wrong? Well, the thing is, is that we're all deserving of punishment for our sins against God. None of us is righteous as we've read in Romans 3. So, if God grants us faith in repentance, then we praise God and thank him for that because none of us deserves it.

You know, whether you've committed gross, heinous, terrible sins or quote-unquote, you know, somewhat minor sins, we're all guilty before God and we're all in need of his grace. So, sorry, I feel like I really rambled on that one. So, I hope you can find something useful in there. I didn't think that sounded like rambling at all. I thought that sounded good.

I tried to tie in. All right. Paul, how do you feel about death by repentance? So, I'm going to kind of set this up with kind of a summary of what I, some of the teaching I received as part, as a member of the LDS church and then kind of pivot to talking about some of my own personal experience around this. So, during my time in the LDS church in gospel doctrine, typically, I often heard taught the maxim, quote, resurrection and salvation in a kingdom of glory is the gift of God to all except the sons of perdition. But exaltation must be earned. And to kind of bring home that, you know, I'm not just making that up, right?

I'm not just making up a maxim that I heard. This was actually the teaching of the LDS church. So, Thomas S. Monson, when he was in the first presidency, before he was the prophet and president of the LDS church, stated, it is the celestial glory which we seek. It is in the presence of God we desire to dwell.

It is a forever family in which we want membership. Such blessings must be earned. And the gospel principles manual, which is used to instruct new adult members of the LDS church, states that free will was necessary, quote, in order to prove ourselves worthy of exaltation. And so, the question that many conscientious Latter-day Saints are left with is how do you prove yourself worthy? By freely choosing to rid yourself of all ungodliness, as the Book of Mormon teaches?

Who has possibly ever in the history of the world done that? And so, where does this leave Latter-day Saints? It leaves many Latter-day Saints in fear that they haven't done enough.

There's no peace with God in the message that the LDS church teaches about exaltation. And so, I began attending Bible Seminary in 2011. And that year, my mom had a fall and went to the hospital and then to a rehab facility. And she never again, well, aside from a very brief period where we had her at home with home health, from 2011 on until her death in 2015, she was either in the rehab facility or in a nursing home. And when she was first in the rehab facility, my father-in-law had given me, years ago, a book by Max Lucado called He Chose the Nails. And my mom was an avid reader. But when I would go to visit her, she would ask me to read to her.

And so, I spent several weeks of visits reading to her a chapter at a time from Max Lucado's He Chose the Nails. And my mom was a very staunch and believing Latter-day Saint. She, all of her life, did genealogical family history research for both our family and others to help them prepare their family names to take to the temple and perform the vicarious ordinances that you referred to earlier, Michael. And as she was getting nearer to death, so she had congestive heart failure. And the cartilage in her knees was so degenerated that she struggled to walk and to be able to continue to live and be healthy with congestive heart failure.

You have to be up and active and walking. And so, she was really struggling to do that. But she gave it her all.

And it was very tough to watch her deteriorate. And that experience taught me that when a person knows that they are near death, they think about the question, am I ready to face my Maker? And my mom and I got to have a lot of conversations about what the gospel is contrasted with what LDS teachings are. And my mom shared with me on many occasions that she was afraid that she had not done enough to merit the celestial kingdom, which opened the door for us to have conversations about the true gospel that is good news. Before she died, she told me that she believed in Jesus and relied on him wholly for her salvation. And the day that she died, I went to visit her that afternoon. She was in the hospital. And I went with my son and my father. And we were there. And she asked me to read to her from one of her favorite books.

It's The Great Brain. I don't know if you've ever read any of those books, but they're kind of comical books written by a Latter-day Saint. But I read to her from that book and talked with her a little bit. And then as I was leaving, she stopped me and thanked me. And I like to think that that thank you that she gave me that day was for more than reading to her from her favorite book.

And she died later that night. But what I think about deathbed repentance is basically that, that I think it's time when a person's heart can be softened. A person's heart can be turned to the Lord by the drawing of the Lord. So when I hear or see Latter-day Saints mock the idea of deathbed repentance, I often wonder if that process has ever been in a situation to be with someone who is near death or counsel someone who is near death. Because if they had, they would know that in many, many, many instances, it's an opportunity for that person to consider their standing before God. So I don't have a problem with deathbed repentance at all.

Yeah. I mean, you tied in perfectly to what I wanted to say to Paul, because, you know, as a Latter-day Saint, I remember, you know, just kind of taking this flippant approach to people who are trying to repent on their deathbed. You know, I'm just like, oh, you know, they've, you know, like you said, you get this free get out of jail card. It's like, oh, you just spent your life treating grace like it is a license to sin.

And, you know, just like, oh, I'm going to party it up as much as I want to. And then when you're on your deathbed, like, oh, just kidding. I'm a Christian. But I don't, I don't think, you know, at this point, I don't think that people that are on their deathbed are that flippant about things. I think that they take it a lot more seriously than I thought they did as a Latter-day Saint.

And your story really proves that. Now, if there was, like I said, as a Mormon, I kind of thought it was cheap to repent on your deathbed, but I'm kind of looking back at LDS doctrines and I just see a lot of problems with it not working because in Mormonism, and this is going to lead into the next question I'm going to ask you guys too, but you know, in Mormonism, there's another chance after you died, you know, there's the spirit prison where you're going to have the gospel preached to you and you can accept the gospel and you can still go to heaven. And you know, if that's the case, then how is death really any different from any other crisis that happens during life? You know, how is it any different from losing a child and that, you know, that bringing you to your knees or sickness or poverty or any number of things that happen, if there's a second chance after this life, then death is just another, it's just another thing that happens that is just a crisis that we go through on our way to progression. So, it doesn't really mean anything. It doesn't make any sense for deathbed repentance to be frowned upon so much.

In the LDS church, I really don't understand why they do, given the scope of their beliefs. All right, that brings us to the end of this week's discussion. Next week, we'll be touching on some really good topics as well related to salvation. We're going to cover a question from TJ Trujillo, one of our listeners. He asked us to tell you about the freedom that we have in Christ. So, we have a good discussion on Christian liberty. We'll also cover how justice and condemnation and salvation all play into our current views compared with how we viewed those topics as Mormons.

And then, finally, we'll touch on which passages of biblical scripture helped us most in transitioning to a correct understanding of the gospel. See you next week, fireflies. We thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Out of Brightness Podcast. We'd like to hear from you. You're invited to visit the Out of Brightness Podcast page on Facebook. Feel free to send a message there with comments or suggestions by clicking send a message at the top of the page, and we would appreciate it if you give the page a like. We also have an Out of Brightness Podcast group on Facebook where you can join and interact with us and others as we discuss the podcast, past episodes, suggestions for future episodes, etc. We would love to hear from you and hope to speak with you soon. Stay bright, fireflies. You can subscribe to the Out of Brightness Podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Google Play, Cast Box, Podbean, Spotify, and Stitcher.