All The Factions

Philip All right, welcome to All Are Yours. We are back with another episode, and Sean is freshly back in Marysville.

Sean All are yours.

Philip That’s right. He was hanging out with some coveys, drinking some whiskey and eating some food, and practicing all are yours.

Sean Yeah. In fact, at a dinner, a guy that I had just met — he was super excited about all the things that he was learning, and I had been introduced to him by somebody else. And they were like, yeah, what are you again? You’re a — you’re a dispens— like, post-millennial dispensationalist? Like, what are you?

I said, yeah: Kuyperian dispensationalist.

And the guy that I was getting introduced to, he actually brought it back up about an hour and a half later. Super energetic, kind — he was being kind. He wasn’t being fighty at all. He’s like, yeah, can I ask you a question about that? How do those even go together? How do you justify that?

Philip There you go.

Sean So I tried to give a super happy thirty-second explanation.

Philip Right. Well, and I think there’s a way to have even all are yours where you’re just holding everything — maybe like you’re trying to hold a bunch of separate balls, bowling balls or whatever kind of balls you think are uncomfortable to hold a bunch of in your arms without anything falling out. Maybe there’s an approach to it that way.

And so, even “all are yours” from 1 Corinthians 3, right — the verses there. “So let no one boast in men.” This is 1 Corinthians 3:21–23: “So let no one boast in men, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.”

And so the context there, that even our podcast is named after, is Paul exhorting and even rebuking the Corinthian church for being divisive over who is their favorite preacher, who is their favorite teacher. Maybe even to an extent what kind of subtleties of doctrinal camps they might fall into — where there are maybe different emphases that different teachers like to make, and so why this emphasis is better than something else. And you could apply that to different sorts of things.

But the context there is the Corinthians choosing camps or tribes based on their teacher, and Paul is saying, hey — just take them all. All are yours. And so that is what even this podcast is named after. We’re trying to go after all the things.

Sean It’s biblical.

Philip That’s right. It is biblical.

Sean It’s actually verses. In which — it’s said twice in the three verses that you read. “All are yours” is in there twice.

Philip And it’s like he knew people would be like, what? What did you say? He’s like, I said: all are yours.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so you have people asking questions like, “Kuyperian dispensationalism — what is that?” And then we just throw them all are yours. We take it in.

Well, so there’s one way to kind of do that. And we wanted to talk a little bit about how, in some sense, we’re not just trying to hold things together that we believe are contradictory. That, hey, we’re just going to agree to disagree with these different camps and we’ll all just get along.

How does that maybe connect and work in with what we’re trying to do? When we say all are yours, does it mean that there is no disagreement? Does it mean that there is no room for disagreement?

So in the same book, 1 Corinthians 11:19, when Paul is talking again about certain sorts of divisions that they have — he says that he believes that there are divisions among them, and he goes to this principle, 11:19: “for there must be factions among you, in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.”

So Paul leaves room for factions and divisions that are necessary for certain things to boil up, for certain clarity to be exposed. So we wanted to talk about all these sorts of things. How does all are yours connect to even things like doctrine, things like agreeing or disagreeing with certain Christian denominations or camps or teachings?

Sean Yeah. You’ve got things like Bible, in terms of all are yours theologically. You’ve got all are yours in terms of other spheres as well.

So does all are yours mean that public school, private school, homeschool, no school — because you’d have to put “no school” into that category, that’s part of it all.

Philip Yeah.

Sean So, educationally.

Philip Working in the field.

Sean Yeah. Does that mean that all are yours, that all of those are actually then the same? Are they equal? Can you be thankful for all of them? And therefore that means you have to just let them all be — you want to do one way of education, I want to do another way of education, we don’t have any more to talk about, because all are yours?

How about Scotch and whiskey? Can Alaskan Amber — is that the same as, because all are yours, is that the same as —

Philip Triple IPA.

Sean Yeah, triple IPA.

Philip I could answer that one.

Sean Is that the same as other kinds of food, entertainment, music — so, liturgy? What we sing on Sunday mornings: should that be the same as what we listen to on the radio, if all are yours?

And there’s significant application, and attitude actually, that the all are yours is supposed to help us get to. So it actually applies to a lot of things, because all are yours. Even in the things that Paul lists in 1 Corinthians 3, including the world and life and death and the present and the future.

Philip Sounds encompassing.

Sean Not necessarily exhausting, but exhaustive.

So, does the “all” mean — if all are yours, does that mean that all are equal in value? That all should have the same sort of value, and then affection, you have the same kind of love? How do you handle people who are, at the moment, maybe appreciating one part of the “all” differently than you? Can you have fellowship with them?

Because, for example, all are yours does not mean sin is yours.

Philip So there are some obvious exclusions.

Sean Yeah, that perhaps people who are listening to us emphasize that phrase need to make sure that they keep in mind. Every time we say the phrase “all are yours,” we don’t qualify it with “comma, except for the unlawful things.”

Philip Right.

Sean No unlawful thing is yours. But all are yours. So again, there’s some reason that Paul is using that expanding, broadening phrase.

Philip Right.

Sean And he doesn’t qualify it there. So I don’t think we should feel the need to have to qualify it every time. But since we’re talking about it explicitly, here we are.

So yeah: all are yours does not mean you get to sin.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean All are yours does not mean that it’s okay to be a prostitute. “All are yours — whoa, so I can be whatever I want to be when I grow up. Yeah, I want to be a prostitute.” No. “I want to be an idolater.” So it also doesn’t mean that all gods are yours, because we know you can have no other god before him.

So yeah, all are yours does have some limitations. Some of them presumably should be more obvious.

Even in the context in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 — because I was rereading the chapter earlier today — there are distinctions in the chapter. So Paul, even in the whole chapter, and moving then immediately into chapter 4 where he talks about being a steward: these are things that God is giving. All are yours, that God gives.

And he’s talking about that in terms of his own ministry. And even in his own ministry, he’s like, well, you can build on the foundation with gold or silver or wood or hay. And some of those are going to get burned up, and you’re barely going to survive. So even in terms of our ministry — well, all are yours, and not necessarily all are equal in value.

So how do we think about that? How do we appreciate that there are the factions?

Philip Right.

Sean You already read that verse.

Philip Well, and —

Sean Big discussion.

Philip Right. And we have received direct questions, to us.

So, you and I both have opinions. We have stronger than preferences — we have principles. We are principled men. Well, we know that we like peated Scotch.

Sean Yeah. Preferably cask strength.

Philip Yes. Peated Scotch.

Sean So, I recently had a flight of three. And one was 40 percent — uh, 40 proof.

Philip I think so, yeah.

Sean That’s how it counts, right? And then the alcohol by volume — no, alcohol by volume is the smaller one, and then proof is when you double it. So if it’s 40 — if 40 is a good one. This is not the —

Philip Contrary Texts podcast. But we’re trying.

Sean But I had a 40, a 48, and a 59-point-something. And they were all peated Scotch. And I would drink the 59 ABV — or ABB, or whatever it is; I should know what that is — man, I’d drink that all day long.

Philip Isn’t it 90 proof and it’s 40 percent alcohol? Is that how it works?

Sean Let’s go with that.

Philip Okay.

Sean So 40 percent ABV makes 80 proof.

Philip Okay.

Sean And then 48 ABV would make 86 proof. So the 59 would make, what, almost 120? So, like, 118 proof. Yeah, give me that.

Philip There you go.

Sean We prefer that. And now you are — because the Alaskan Amber.

Philip That was pre-2020. 2020 changed the man.

Sean Yeah. I mean, all are yours. Still, they shouldn’t stop making —

Philip Oh yeah, absolutely not.

Sean — because there’s always got to be young people who need to be able to do that.

Philip That’s right.

Sean Yeah. I mean, this is a good example. I cut my teeth, so to speak — I actually told this on a Contrary Texts podcast, when they had me on as a guest. I mean, you’ve been on there a bajillion times; me just once.

But when I actually had the conviction that I thought I was wrong, I thought I was sinning by not enjoying part of God’s gifts in wine or alcohol — I asked for some help from my in-laws to learn. My ABCs were on a super hot summer afternoon after I had mowed the yard: my mother-in-law offered me a super cold Coors Light.

Is that all are yours? Of course it is. Is that what the most mature, thankful person would be drinking?

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Probably not. So I have grown. I have matured. And that doesn’t mean I poo-poo Coors Light drinkers.

Philip Right.

Sean So that’s an example. Okay, well, that actually is not a mature drink — and also is not an anathema drink either.

Philip Right. Well, and there are different perspectives that Paul comes at that sort of growth from. So when he talks about meat and milk —

Sean Yeah.

Philip — he even exhorts the church that they should be eating meat by now, but they’re still in the milk stage. So he’s saying: your approach of lowest-common-denominator doctrine level is insufficient. It’s not good enough. You should be moving further up and further in there.

Sean Yeah. So that’s Hebrews 5:14 — it has verses around it as well. “Solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

Now, we would actually say we’re trying to not just distinguish between good and evil, but between good and better and best.

Philip Right.

Sean There are other passages, which we can talk about later as well, but in particular the ones that talk about proving what is excellent.

Philip Right.

Sean And the way that Paul talks about it makes it sound like that’s an area that you can grow and get better at — determining what is better. So at the beginning, you are trying to distinguish, but you can actually get your powers stronger.

Which — he never then says that the only problem is when you decide you’ve arrived when you just took your first step. He doesn’t say anything is wrong with what you decided at your first step, necessarily. He says what’s wrong is when you should be 5,000 steps later and you’re still acting like you’re at your first step.

Philip Right.

Sean So spiritual growth includes growth of palate. And this would be in terms of, again, music — not just food, drink, but music, liturgy.

It’s kind of funny: most of our kids — we’re about ready to go to our next youth retreat next week — and the majority of our young people, when they get asked what they want to sing, they want to sing a psalm, or maybe a hymn from the Cantus. That was not what it was like when I was a kid.

I don’t even think that some of the people my age and older at our church, if you were like, hey, any song you want to sing, make a recommendation —

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean — if we were at one of our all-church choir sings, I think they’d pick something from the Cantus.

Philip Right.

Sean But our young people have a taste for, when they get together, they want to sing something that has parts.

Philip Right. And we have grown into that.

Sean Yeah.

Philip As a community. I was recently asked the question, like, so when are we going to change toward more contemporary songs? That’s funny, because we’ve been changing toward more of the hymn singing and psalm singing.

Sean Yeah. So, on the contemporary songs that generally don’t have parts — even in that category, which I think is a lawful category. I’m not of the opinion that “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” are three different ways to refer to the inspired Psalms. I’m not of that perspective. I can appreciate people who have that conviction; all are yours. I don’t think that that’s good exegesis, let alone a conclusion, let alone a necessary limitation.

Philip So divisive, Sean.

Sean I guess I’m a faction. I’m a faction that says you can sing some of the contemporary things. But the people who are like, you can only sing those, you can’t sing hymns or actual psalms — I would want to know, well, why are we limiting it only to contemporary songs?

Philip Right. Why are we singing it in English?

Sean Right.

Philip So there’s that sort of meat and milk that the Bible does present in those categories.

The other part of it — even in Romans 14, when Paul is talking about the weaker brother, stronger brother, and how they are to relate to one another and work with one another. How the weaker brother is not to judge the stronger brother on what kind of liberty the stronger brother allows for himself; the stronger brother then is not to resist or push away the weaker brother.

But the goal of that peace, of that unity, that Paul ends up calling for in Romans 14:19 — he says, “So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.” So there is still a trajectory forward. It’s not, hey, let’s all stay at the level that we’re at. It’s: we are aiming to build one another up.

So how does the stronger brother help build up the weaker brother, as opposed to just push him away or reject him? And also as opposed to keeping him weaker? The point is not to stay in your weakness. Paul is calling the church also, then, in unity, in peace, to build one another up toward maturity. How do we do that? What’s the best way? That, yes, we’re not to stay in our immaturity, we’re not to stay in our ignorance.

Sean Yeah. Because all are yours.

Philip Right.

Sean Yeah. There’s a way in which these things require maturity, they require wisdom, they require getting better at. And so be it. I guess that means God wants us to keep having fun as we are related to one another, trying to be growing.

Philip Wants us to keep interacting.

Sean Yeah. But it is possible to have some people who are committed to staying where they’re at. And actually, for their good, I think it’s part of our job to stir them up.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean It’s part of our job to poke at — if it’s apathy, if it is a wrong kind of comfort, a wrong kind of peace. Well then, the shepherd’s job is actually, you know — the sheep got comfy in the ditch. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a sinful ditch; obviously if it’s sinful —

Philip Or there’s no more grass here. We have to move to greener pastures.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Right.

Sean So there’s some admonishing, some exhorting, that is actually appropriate to get people to move toward meat, away from milk. In the milk and meat passage, Paul is actually confronting them for being satisfied with milk.

Is there anything wrong with milk? No — not for those who are only mature enough for milk. But again, when you commit yourself to “milk is enough for me” —

Philip Right.

Sean — well then potentially that needs to be addressed. And some discomfort on the way to better levels of comfort.

Philip Right. It’s not just that you’re allowed to eat meat; it’s that you must move toward that. It is not okay for you not to be progressing, growing, going deeper.

And again, we’ve said this here before, but: what parts of God’s word is it okay for us to leave at the level of ignorance, at the level of apathy, or of not really caring to figure it out? If God has revealed it to us — like Deuteronomy 29:29 says, that belongs to us, those things which God revealed for us to figure out, understand, get at.

And I think God does everything on purpose, and it’s on purpose that it requires some work. It requires some mental work and even some spiritual work — like what you were saying, you had to repent. So there’s repentance involved in understanding God’s word the way it was meant to be understood as well.

So it’s all sorts of straining and work that we are to do, and we are to not stop.

I do think that there will be more clarity in heaven, in eternity. But if God is eternal, then we will continue getting to know him more. It’s not that we’re going to know everything there is about him from day one of our eternal existence. We’re going to continue uncovering and knowing. And so even what we’re doing here is practice, for us to get further up, further in, in getting to know the specificities of it.

Sean Yeah. So the limits that we have are God-given. The fact that even in glory, in a resurrected body, we won’t immediately become infinite in knowing everything about God or all of his gifts, immediately upon arrival, or resurrection to our glorified bodies and lives — certainly then, even now, we have limits.

We’re never going to be omnipresent. We’re never going to be omniscient. We’re never going to be omnipotent. We are always going to be limited, even when we get away from sin. Currently it’s still God’s idea for us to live here, and in the fallen world, which means that there are all kinds of extra constraints.

And the all are yours is intended to get us to be humble. Like, okay, well, I maybe found the thing that I think is awesome. Good — but there are actually way more awesome things than just what I am limited in my ability to grasp, to appreciate, to drink. I mean, I can only drink so much peated Scotch any given day.

Philip Unfortunately true.

Sean In fact, to drink too much of it could lead to being drunk, which would be a sin.

Philip It’d be out of the all are yours.

Sean Yeah. I’ve crossed the threshold.

Philip Right.

Sean But I ought to be wanting to increase my capacity — which requires being humble and recognizing I don’t have it all figured out, I don’t have it all good.

So I think he wants us to recognize our limits that he’s given. He wants us to be thankful for what he’s already put inside of our limits, that we do grasp. He wants us to seek him to train us even more, so that we can approve what is good, and what is perfect, what is excellent.

So even — you quoted Romans 14 — the kind of hinge in Romans that moves from the theological to the practical, at the beginning of chapter 12, includes being transformed by the renewing of our mind so that we can test and prove what is good and perfect according to God’s will. So that renewal and transforming is an ongoing process. It doesn’t happen immediately upon conversion. So we’ve got to continue to be transformed, so that we can continue to go through that process of testing.

The verb that’s used there is a typical New Testament verb for proving something or testing something — like when you’d put gold over fire to get the dross to the top and eliminate the dross, so that you’d have a more pure and therefore more valuable block of gold when you tested it.

So we’re to be — if we’re going to be those living sacrifices, which everybody quotes that part, which is good — if we’re to be living sacrifices, then we’ve got to be in an ongoing process of testing, of refining our own palate, our own appreciation for what God has given that is good and approved and perfect according to God’s will.

Which means that somebody who is more mature, spiritually speaking, is better at that than somebody who is less mature, who is at an earlier stage of the renewal of their mind.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Doesn’t mean anything is wrong with them. And they might actually be the weaker brother, who has decided to make rules for knowing what’s in and what’s out. Well, okay — let’s keep loving each other and growing.

But ideally, the stronger person who comes up in those chapters is somebody whose palate for thankfulness is broader. They need fewer checkboxes.

So the checkbox person can still be a Christian. We love them. We’re going to help them and try to expose them, at the appropriate time, in love and wisdom, hopefully expose them to things that maybe are more on the spectrum of good than what they’ve limited the good to be.

So, all are yours — yeah. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying, like you said, to understand more, or to have more wisdom to see what the good things are that God has given us.

Philip Right. Well, and as parents, we have to make these sorts of decisions for our kids. Decisions not just between good and evil, but between good and better and best.

We understand that our kids have a limited capacity of their time, their attention. We have a limited amount of resources, money, time, that we could invest into them during this time. And so most of our decisions that require parental wisdom are not even good and evil — it’s good and better, or better and best. As parents, what do I think is the best allocation of resources and time for my kids?

Well, in the same way, these sorts of limitations, like what you’re talking about — whether it is for ourselves or for the rest of our church body — we must decide what we think is better and best.

This is not a — maybe it’s not a whether but which. If you’re going to limit something, it’s: what are you going to limit? You’re not going to be able to hold all of it.

And so there actually are contradicting doctrines. There actually are contradicting positions. Yes, it is possible that when two doctrinal positions collide, they are both missing something.

Sean Yeah. So when you say there are contradicting doctrines, do you mean contradicting from our perspective? Do you mean contradicting within what people think is Christian — and they could both be wrong? Like, covenantalism, dispensationalism, is a thing that we care about, we talk about, we get grief about from all different kinds of angles. And it could be that both of those — this is just an example, again, that we tend to care about.

Do you mean contradicting doctrines that I myself could hold at the same time? Or do you mean contradicting doctrines that people think are both Christian? Or do you mean contradicting doctrines in some other way that I’m not tracking with?

Philip Yeah. I mean there are positions that Christians have taken that one Christian cannot hold consistently together.

So, Calvinism and Arminianism. Is God the one in charge of everything, or do I have some deciding factor here? Well, it’s one or the other.

Sean Which is different than “God’s sovereign and man is responsible.”

Philip Right.

Sean Which — it may be difficult to always see how those go together, but we wouldn’t say those are contradicting.

Philip Right. Exactly right.

Sean The contradicting would be: God is sovereign, or God doesn’t know what’s going to happen, man is basically the one and God is always responding. Those —

Philip Correct. Right, exactly right.

So that’s what I mean by, there, you can’t actually hold both things together. And so you have to choose one.

Now, should you be hasty or quick? No. Should you be agnostic? No. So work at figuring that out — but eventually you must land on something.

And I do think that where we are with church history is, we are standing on a lot of shoulders that have gone before us, of men who have worked through a lot of these sorts of questions, whatever the doctrinal disagreement is. Before we’re trying to come up with our own idea, we should understand what has come before us and why certain men chose certain positions. Before we try to break down a fence, we should figure out why this fence was built in the first place, sort of thing.

Sean Yeah. People who say: do the reading.

Philip Right.

And so, when you do — when you get down to the fundamentals, the premise of the argument, at the root level, there are actually opposing premises. I don’t know if “contradicting” is the right word — competing, maybe.

So, for example, coming at Scripture: taking a typological approach in your hermeneutics would be competing with taking a contextual approach to your hermeneutics. So how does that play out? In what instances is it which? You’re using wisdom in all of that — but when you’re saying all are yours, it doesn’t mean we’ll do typology and contextual reading of Scripture in that way.

Sean Yeah. Take them both, or it doesn’t matter.

Philip Right.

Sean Yep.

Philip Right. So you have to decide, cut off, in that way.

But even Paul’s point there in 1 Corinthians 11:19, where he says there must be factions among you so that those who are genuine among you may be recognized — there’s a certain type of sincerity, a certain type of genuineness, that is revealed when a person is working at making a decision, cutting off.

When there are factions or disagreements — even disagreements that you are working through in your own head on landing — what type of integrity, or do you have integrity, in your biblical studies, in your approach to figuring out these questions, wrestling with this? Or are you after a different sort of end?

Even, for example, an end could be: I don’t want to ruffle any feathers with the camp that I’m currently in. So even if I’m seeing or reading Scripture in a different way, I’m not going to push that angle. I’m not going to ask those questions, even in my own heart, because I don’t want to ruffle feathers somewhere else.

That seems like an example of a disingenuous approach, where you have some other agenda that you’re bringing to your Scripture reading — as opposed to figuring out the truth and working it out between you and God.

Sean Yeah. I feel like maybe this is a good time to say some things.

Philip Finally.

Sean So, again, with an example: we’ve got at least four quadrants that I’m thinking of that relate to reading and fruit. So you can have good or bad on those categories.

So you could have bad reading and bad fruit. The person is not really giving attention to how to rightly divide God’s word, and so then their life manifests immaturity, comfiness with sin, selfishness, maybe even what they would consider to be a virtuous isolation. All kinds of ways that the fruit could be bad that would be consistent, actually, with their bad reading.

Philip Right. Yeah, you keep skipping around churches because there’s that sort of bad fruit.

Sean All kinds of bad fruit, and potentially all kinds of ways to do bad reading.

You could also have good reading with bad fruit. So you actually could be able, at least in two dimensions, to make a case for “this, then this, therefore this.” You could make your syllogisms, you could defend your answers, you’ve got questions and answers, you’ve got sentences that are not just grammatically correct but seem to connect with the rest of what’s on the pages. But you could be a hypocrite by not doing then what you say the Scripture says that you’ve read.

So you could have bad reading, bad fruit. You could have good reading and bad fruit.

You could also have bad reading and good fruit. And I love a lot of people who I think have genuine spiritual good fruit, whose reading does not match with all the questions and the answers that get applied to it. It’s not as consistent. It depends on some extra-biblical assumptions or principles to come up with their conclusions. And I think I’d call that bad reading, even though they have good fruit.

Philip And that category — bad reading, good fruit — spans across different subjects, different disagreements. So, like —

Sean For sure.

Philip I know of Arminians —

Sean The Wesley brothers.

Philip Sure, right. Who, yeah, we would say doctrinally are wrong. This is bad reading.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And had very tasty fruit. Certain kinds of examples, or a certain kind of way of living, that would be example-worthy.

There are current, modern-day churches — a certain type of charismatic church, maybe, that our type of Christianity would associate with a bad reading of Scripture — but in 2020 stood up to the government and had very good fruit there.

And so there are different examples. It’s not just the covey/dispy question, but across the spectrum of this sort of what we would say is bad reading but good fruit.

Sean Absolutely. And this could actually go with good reading, bad fruit: dualism.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean You could actually know that the Bible says that God says what is good includes wine — and refuse it.

Philip Right.

Sean The other way around, you could actually think that God only cares about spiritual things and actually be an awesome employee, or an awesome business owner. So dualism actually could hit a couple of those boxes.

Philip Right. Or a certain kind of Calvinist who is angry and bitter.

Sean Good reading, bad fruit.

Philip Right.

Sean Or, like you’re saying — an Arminian who is bad reading, but is totally patient and bold, not a jerk.

Philip Right.

Sean So then you obviously could have the good reading, good fruit. And presumably that’s where everybody would want to be.

Philip Why would you not want to be there?

Sean Right. Except that when we get into discussions where people are happy — “oh, they’ve got good fruit, it must not matter, the rest of the things must not matter.”

And in the all are yours application, I think, in my own personal attitude: I actually think I not only can, but I should be thankful for the good fruit that God is producing in another person, in another community, in a group who is making a particular statement. I can absolutely be thankful for the good fruit that God is giving them, without saying, “and their reading doesn’t matter.”

Philip And maybe even with warning against that sort of reading.

Sean Yeah. And it is — I don’t know, “frustrating” is the right word, maybe — decisions to then say, good fruit, that’s all that matters. And then being, to one degree or another, dismissive, or even arguing against trying to also have good reading.

Philip Mm-hmm. Right.

Sean Because I think that bad reading, good fruit — and I know that you hold these categories as well — we’d say that’s inconsistent. Bad reading, bad fruit is consistent. Good reading, good fruit is consistent. The other two are inconsistent.

Philip Right.

Sean And between those inconsistencies in the quadrant, I’d much rather have bad reading, good fruit, if I had to choose. Good reading, bad fruit, or bad reading, good fruit — I actually do think I would choose, ten times out of ten, in that snapshot, I would choose good fruit.

I’d rather have a person who was loving his wife, had no clue how he was doing it, but he was loving his wife.

Philip Right.

Sean Good. The person who knows that the Bible says that the man is the head — like we talked about in the last episode — and is a complete jerk to his wife, well, that’s actually worse in some ways.

Philip Right.

Sean So yes, if I had to choose between inconsistencies, I’m much more excited about bad reading, good fruit.

Philip Right.

Sean But looking in the long term, that doesn’t seem — inconsistency is not as sustainable as consistency.

Philip Right. But also, if you are planting an orchard, or working a garden, or you’re a farmer, you are not looking for fruit just for one season, just for one year. You are not looking for fruit just for a couple years.

If this is a family business, this is your farm — you want the fruit to be cultivated and sustainable, so that your grandkids can still be receiving fruit from this orchard, could still be sowing and reaping from this patch of dirt.

And so when we are judging the fruit, to be able to judge just at a snapshot is okay, but I think insufficient to be able to grade the fruit. We’ve seen denominations who at a snapshot would be pretty decent, but then the end result of that denomination is a life lesson.

And so even when Paul says to Timothy — he’s talking about sins here — he says this in 1 Timothy 5:24–25: “The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later. So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden.”

So there are sins and good works that are immediately visible, and also sins and good works, or the results of those things, that eventually become manifest, that eventually are visible.

And so when we are after fruit for what we’re responsible for — my business. I want my business to be fruitful. I don’t want it to be fruitful just for this year, or just for the next couple of years. There are business practices that I can take that will make it very fruitful and it’ll burn out right away. I don’t want that. I’m trying to build lasting fruit that I could hand over to the next generation. Same thing with my family, same thing with my church.

And so, we do believe that a lot of the good reading is where the lasting good fruit is generated from. So you could have a specific, isolated event of bad reading, good fruit — but how is that duplicatable? How can you recreate that? How can you reproduce that?

When the Bible does connect our results, our fruit, to a certain kind of approach toward God, to a certain kind of approach toward his word — how do we deal with that? That’s what we’re after.

And so: yes, are there people who have bad reading, good fruit? Yes. But should we imitate that, if we’re trying to evaluate or define good fruit on a much broader level, or a longer-looking horizon? I think that’s a different question. It’s harder to say it doesn’t matter, on the reading part.

Sean Yeah. So being thankful, finding things to be thankful for, does not actually require full agreement. In fact, it doesn’t require even attention on the same thing all the time.

The all are yours in chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians does, in the letter, set up for there being different members in the body who have different gifts. They are all supposed to be trying to edify the body, but they’re doing it in different ways.

Okay, well, so which way is better? Is it the preacher who is the best edifier of the body? Or is it the person who is serving in some way, or praying at home, or whatever the speaking or serving gifts are?

Well, Paul actually does distinguish, in chapter 14, between speaking in tongues and preaching. And he just came out of saying that all the gifts are good — and then he goes ahead and distinguishes between two different ones in particular, that the Corinthians had wrongly elevated. The one that made them look super spiritual, in speaking in tongues, they thought. And it turns out you could do either one of them and not do it in love, and it’d be useless — which is chapter 13, in between. So the love chapter is about how the motivation for a spiritual gift’s use absolutely matters. So I guess that’s even another category.

But so, distinguishing between things is not wrong. Distinguishing between where I put my money as investments, where I put my time. Talked about earlier with even parents raising their kids. Or who parents are supposed to love.

Christians are being made to feel guilty about immigrants.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Well — and maybe we’re not saying that there’s nothing to be thought about there, or that there’s never a time to care for somebody that is not like you. But also, in Scripture, it goes out of its way to say that you need to especially take care of those of the household of faith. Or you need to especially take care of your family — if you don’t provide for your family, then you’re worse than an unbeliever.

So, okay. The parable of the Good Samaritan is a reminder to take care of what’s right in front of you. It’s actually not “take care of the person who is foreign,” per se.

Philip Right.

Sean It’s: don’t excuse yourself for not taking care of what’s immediate, because of some other reason that you don’t want to love the person that God put in your path. So that’s not saying we’ve got to care for everybody who’s at the border. That’s saying we need to take care of the people that we can see, and not come up with excuses to not serve them.

So again, we’ve got our all are yours. Should we care about sending missionaries to the ends of the earth? Well, yeah. Should we care about making sure that we raise our kids in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and educate them so that they’re maximum image-bearing ready when they start their own households? Well — all are yours. Foreign missions, missions in my house.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean But actually, God does tell us which one is more necessary immediately. And then, as we try to increase our capacities, we pray for God to increase our love muscles.

I don’t actually want to just love the people who are under my roof. And as a pastor, I don’t get that privilege of limiting my loves. I’m required to love the flock. But I actually don’t love the flock instead of my family.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean I don’t love them over my family. One of the qualifications to be an elder is that he knows how to manage his own household well.

So again: all are yours, yes. And there are still ladders of value — a hierarchy of loves, the ordo amoris, the ordered loves, which Augustine talked about as the thing you’re trying to accomplish in education. That you know what is lovable and what is more lovable, and you train your loves accordingly to reality.

So that requires that there’s a God who made things. And if we recognize that there’s a creator who made all the things — which 1 Corinthians 3 says they’re all his, that he then gives to us — we’re paying attention to what he says is good, and to what he says is gooder. We’re paying attention to what he says to love, what he loves, what he tells us to love, and then what he tells us to love even more, and in what ways.

So all are ours. I can love candy. Maybe I shouldn’t love candy, but it happened to be in my periphery, so I saw the Starburst. I can love candy — but I ought not love my son like I love candy, just because all are mine.

And theologically, it comes to Bible translations. Well, why don’t you read many of the translations? Why don’t you learn a little bit about which ones are more accurate? If you’ve got time, why not learn Greek and Hebrew? But as soon as you learn Greek and Hebrew, don’t become a jerk and tell everybody that their English translations are all horrible.

Philip Right.

Sean We’ve got things that we are allowed to love. We’ve got things that we must love. We should have the amount of intensity of affection that matches the lovability of the thing that God has made, or God has given to us — and try to be consistent in our capacity growing to put that into practice.

So again, I think that all are yours in 1 Corinthians 3 is especially exhorting us to not be fussy and narrow. It is exhorting us to be thankful and broad — which is not the same thing as flattening everything —

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean — to be equal.

Philip Right. And I mean, there’s a way — you can love Starburst and Snickers. But you can love Starburst more than Snickers, sort of thing. That’s not to say that you can’t do both.

But there’s also a different way where your love for righteousness means you hate sin. So you can’t love both. There are actually contradictory, or competing, affections. So it’s not just competing because we’re limited, but it’s competing because they are opposed to one another.

You cannot love your kids and tolerate their abuser. That doesn’t work. So because you love, you also must hate. That is part of that cutting off, dividing.

And so, even in doctrine — when we love God’s truth, and through study and work certain truths are revealed, certain truths become apparent, then we do cut off things that are in disagreement with that. How do we interact with people who hold to those things that we disagree with is a different question than us saying, no, actually this one is right and this one is wrong. It’s not just that we are allowed to say that something’s right and wrong, but that we must.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Like —

Sean So — and layers of interaction. Like, I meet this person for five minutes.

Philip Right.

Sean I am going to have to work with this person. I am trying to partner with this person to actually accomplish a project, or some kind of endeavor in the community.

Philip Right.

Sean Or I’m not just trying to partner with them, but we’re going to be together on the same team. We’re going to worship at the same church. We’re going to be on the same elder board writing the same doctrinal statement.

Philip Right.

Sean Well, you’ve got layers there of how much, then, you are again not just allowed to — like you’re saying — but you actually are required to have some more distinctions clarified and agreed upon, depending on what kind of level of partnership or agreement or interaction you’re going to have.

At no point, if the person says Jesus is Lord and they’re not living in ongoing unrepentant sin — well, no matter what else they think, we actually don’t need to not love them.

Philip Right.

Sean And you know, you pass by them, you find out that the person that is helping you check out your groceries is a Christian who goes to the church that you’d never even think about — well, of course you can still be kind and patient with them, and even encouraged.

Philip “I refuse to buy groceries from you.”

Sean Yeah. I actually can be thankful that there’s a Christian who is talking to people about his or her faith there, in the checkout line.

Philip Right.

Sean Awesome. Great. Thank you, Lord. Bless them in that good fruit. And also — teach them.

Philip Right.

Sean Help them learn.

Philip Yeah. What — do I want this person to teach my kids theology? Well, not necessarily. And that question is not before me. But if it were, I would have to make a decision.

Sean Yeah. Okay, so that person finds out that we have a Christian school, and they’re like, yeah, I wish I was not at the checkout line anymore. I wish I was teaching; that’s what I got my degree in.

Okay, well — actually, I have no reason to treat you poorly, and also I can’t offer you this job.

Philip Right.

Sean Because we’re trying to do something different at that level.

Does that mean that we’re being inconsistent with all are yours? “Well, you should just be able to hire if they’re a Christian.” Well — who even said why do they have to be a Christian, right? It can get sort of absurd if you’re not willing to consider any of the limits or levels.

But yeah, when we’re trying to do different things. So I actually can, again, appreciate genuinely — I think even be convicted and learn from — some who have really, God obviously given, fruit, and desire more of that kind of fruit in my own life. Without then also needing to agree that the reading doesn’t matter, or necessarily then having to change my mind and say, oh, that reading must be right.

Because again, I think that one of my most significant needs to repent was what I’d consider to be good reading and bad fruit.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean It was my failure to be consistent in attitude and effort — what my interest was, what I called good. I think I would have answered all the questions correctly on the test, on paper, but not embodied. Well, that’s wrong. It’s not okay. It wouldn’t be all right to defend that bad fruit, or immature fruit, because my reading is good.

And likewise, I don’t think it’s necessary to defend, or to not call out, less good — all the way to, no, that’s really dangerously bad reading — even if you’re doing some really good things.

Philip Mm-hmm. Right.

Sean All are yours promotes thankfulness. It does not eliminate discernment. It does not eliminate developing discernment, and desire to increase capacity and consistency.

Philip Right. All are yours includes doctrinal studies.

Sean Yeah.

Philip It includes biblical theology and systematic theology, and learning it and getting it. This is also in “yours,” so get after it — as opposed to saying, I’m not interested, or it’s too difficult, or that’s going to create division.

So there is a place for us to pursue those sorts of things as well.

Sean Causing division is — and I mean, maybe you and I are not the people who get to weigh in on how awesome it is to cause division.

Philip There’s no one else here in the room, so —

Sean But take it back even from division, from an end result, to friction ahead of time. I think that God gives us friction to learn a lot of things.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And there are ways to have a bad attitude in the time of friction. But the friction itself is not the end part that concludes that therefore things are wrong.

Philip Mm-hmm. If there’s friction, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong.

Sean Right. Well — it could be. It also could be the exact sign that things are right.

Because we know this with what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, about there being friction and even division when unbelievers are irritated with disciples. And the disciples — he tells them to rejoice when they are being slandered.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean I recently had a conversation with a guy who thinks he lost his job because he was asking questions about an unrighteous thing he saw.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And he said, but if I was really doing what was right, then God wouldn’t make me have this difficulty. And I said, well, I’m not completely sure — but based on what you’re telling me, actually you losing your job could be the exact right sign that you did the right thing.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So again, I don’t know all of the factors. But “because there’s a problem” might actually be evidence of God at work.

Philip Right.

Sean Even with a failure of nerve, which we’ve talked about a few times — healthy cells are the ones that attract viruses.

Philip Right.

Sean Viruses are looking for a host. So the fact that you got a virus doesn’t necessarily mean you were unhealthy. It could mean you’re super healthy and the virus decided, hey, that’s a good thing to attach to.

And when it comes to families or institutions, which Friedman is applying it to as well — why go attack something that doesn’t matter? No, you’d attack a thing that looks like it’s doing good.

So when there is opportunity for some measure of iron sharpening iron — is that okay? Well, the proverb says that that’s good. So there are sparks that are flying when iron sharpens iron.

Could that be because one of the irons is just looking for a fight? Could be. So maybe that’s not as beneficial. Still doesn’t mean that the other iron isn’t getting sharpened.

So I think that, as our listeners primarily come from our own flock, it’s a sign of health that we have some amount of the disagreements that we have.

Philip Right.

Sean That doesn’t mean that we are divided necessarily. It means that we necessarily could end up being that — but it also could be an opportunity to demonstrate, you know what, it’s actually okay to ask those questions. It’s actually okay to disagree. And we’re going to keep working at trying to figure out how to read good and do good. Seek good fruit from consistent application of what we think God’s word says, and help people who disagree, help people who don’t understand.

But to act like the goal would be to eliminate every faction means we say to God, we don’t really need to know who’s genuine or not.

Philip Right.

Sean Where he’s giving factions to help test and prove what is excellent from God’s own perspective.

Philip Right.

Sean So we don’t need to try to fix it for him.

Philip All the factions.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So all of them are yours. Take them.

That’s good. No — we’ve got it all figured out. We know the perfect balance. We have this. Now.

Sean High proof.

Philip That’s right. There you go. High percentage, high proof.

Did I close it already? I closed it, but I did look it up real quick. Just to end with it.

Sean ABV and proof?

Philip Yeah. So yes, it is that — proof versus ABV. So ninety proof would be forty-five percent ABV. 151 proof would be 75.5 percent ABV.

Sean Because I guess if we applied our logical, analogical thinking to it: you can’t have alcohol by volume be higher than 100 percent.

Philip Yes, correct. We got this.

Sean Boom.

Philip There you go. All right. All are yours, all the factions. Get yourself some of it.

Sean Amen.