Radically Christian

What if the vocabulary you inherited for salvation has left you more anxious than assured?

Justification, sanctification, saved: many believers learned these words as tidy categories, and many sincere Christians still lie awake wondering whether they have done enough. Others have been told it is settled and nothing they do matters. Sometimes neither answer seems to match the way Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6 or 2 Thessalonians 2.

Wes and Marcus take up a listener’s question about the difference between salvation, justification, and sanctification. Is there a clear line between them? Where does obedience fit? Why do so many of us swing between pride and shame? And what might we miss when we read Scripture like a system instead of a story? This conversation is for anyone who has wondered if they are on solid ground.

Links and Resources

* Salvation by Allegiance Alone by Matthew Bates

* Extended Free Trial of Logos Bible Study Software

* Books by Wes McAdams

* VidAngel Special Offer

This description contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend resources we genuinely believe in.

What does it actually mean to be baptized in the Holy Spirit?

For many who grew up in the Restoration Movement, the phrase meant a debate about water baptism or a defensive argument about miraculous gifts, and then the conversation ended. Wes and Marcus return to John’s promise in Luke 3 and the prophets’ vision of the Spirit poured out, wrestling with whether we’ve been reading it too narrowly.

Was this promise only for apostles and a household of Gentiles? And what does the Spirit have to do with God’s mission, new creation, and the way you respond when life bumps you?

If you’ve ever wondered whether the Holy Spirit is a topic to avoid, a doctrine to defend, or something more personal, this conversation about Pentecost, Cornelius, and living water is one you’ll want to hear.

Links and Resources

* Extended Free Trial of Logos Bible Study Software

* Books by Wes McAdams

* VidAngel Special Offer

This description contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend resources we genuinely believe in.

If we’re saved by grace through faith, why does baptism still matter? An elder in Tennessee wrote in with a question many Christians are asking. If love is the heart of everything, is baptism just a ritual tacked on, a modern circumcision, or a hoop someone must jump through before praying publicly or joining a mission trip? Where did this tension come from, and why do so many sincere believers feel torn between Ephesians 2:8-9 and Acts 2:38?

Wes and Marcus wrestle with the history, the Scriptures, and the heart behind the question. Is baptism a work? What does it have to do with circumcision? Is there a way to talk about it that avoids both legalism and dismissiveness? And what does any of it have to do with loving like Jesus?

Links and Resources

* Why Is Baptism Important and Beautiful with Marcus Stenson: Wes and Marcus’s earlier conversation on baptism, recommended for more on this topic.

* Baptism, What Does the Bible Actually Teach: Wes’s earlier conversation with Bobby Harrington on baptism.

* Extended Free Trial of Logos Bible Study Software

* Books by Wes McAdams

* VidAngel Special Offer

This description contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend resources we genuinely believe in.

Is gluttony only about what is on your plate?

Most of us assume we know the answer, and most of us feel a little uncomfortable when the subject comes up. The Bible mentions gluttony far less than many Christians expect, yet the idea seems to surface in unexpected places, from the Proverbs to Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Wes and Marcus wade into a topic that is easy to joke about and surprisingly hard to examine honestly in ourselves.

What separates enjoying God’s good gifts from being mastered by them? Why do we so often swap one appetite for another? And is there a way to look at our own hearts without pointing fingers at everyone else?

Links and Resources

* The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis: Marcus cited Lewis’s treatment of gluttony, including its “dainty” and impulsive forms.

* The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis: Marcus quoted Lewis’s line about desires that are “not too strong, but too weak.”

* Extended Free Trial of Logos Bible Study Software

* Books by Wes McAdams

* VidAngel Special Offer

This description contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend resources we genuinely believe in.

Have you ever been taught that being a faithful Bible reader means dividing the Old Testament from the New?

Second Timothy 2:15 gets quoted for that very purpose, Paul’s charge to Timothy to “rightly divide the word of truth.” Where did that reading actually come from, and is it really what Paul had in mind as Timothy faced false teachers unsettling the church in Ephesus? Wes and Marcus trace this phrase back further than most people expect, and ask whether a common, well-intentioned interpretation might be doing exactly what Paul warned against.

What does it really mean to “cut a straight path” with the word of truth? Is the Old Testament something Christians should set aside, or does it hold the story that makes the gospel make sense? And how does getting this right change the way we love people?

Links and Resources

* Extended Free Trial of Logos Bible Study Software

* Books by Wes McAdams

* VidAngel Special Offer

This description contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend resources we genuinely believe in.

What if your favorite life verse was not written about you?

Isaiah 41:10 gets quoted before exams, hard conversations, and hospital waiting rooms: fear not, for I am with you. Wes and Marcus ask what happens when we lift a promise made to a nation still recovering from exile and hand it to ourselves as a private guarantee. It’s the same instinct that turns Jeremiah 29:11 and Philippians 4:13 into fortune cookies, and it says something about how we read Scripture, and about who we think the story is really about.

So who is the servant in Isaiah 41 actually referring to? Israel, the Messiah, or somehow both? And if we’re not the main character of our own Bible reading, what changes when we realize how we fit into the story of the Bible?

Links and Resources

* BibleProject: Isaiah Part 1 (chapters 1–39)

* BibleProject: Isaiah Part 2 (chapters 40–66)

* Extended Free Trial of Logos Bible Study Software

* Books by Wes McAdams

* VidAngel Special Offer

This description contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend resources we genuinely believe in.

Does taking the Bible literally mean believing the earth is flat? It’s a question more Christians are asking than you might expect, and the passages people point to are real: God laying the earth’s foundations, stretching out the heavens like a tent, describing the “circle of the earth.” Wes and Marcus sit with a listener’s question about flat earth theology and what it means for how we read Scripture. They talk about ancient Near Eastern cosmology, the difference between poetic and scientific language, and how conviction about a hyperliteral reading can become its own kind of danger.

What do you do when someone insists a plain reading of the Bible requires rejecting what you can observe with your own eyes? And what does it mean to take Scripture seriously without demanding it answer questions it was never written to address?

Links and Resources:

* Extended Free Trial of Logos Bible Study Software

* Books by Wes McAdams

* VidAngel Special Offer

This description contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend resources we genuinely believe in.

Why do we struggle so much to remain united? On this episode, Wes and Marcus dig into why division spreads so easily inside the church. Underneath the arguments over politics, worship styles, and personal convictions, there is often something more personal: fear, cultural blind spots, and the belief that being right is what keeps us safe with God.

Is unity the same thing as agreement? What’s the difference between a conviction worth defending and one we’ve quietly turned into a test of fellowship? Marcus even introduces a memorable way of sorting theological issues (borrowed from his wife) that might just change how you think about your own dividing lines and what it really means to walk in unity with people who see things differently.

Links and Resources:

* Extended Free Trial of Logos Bible Study Software

* Books by Wes McAdams

* VidAngel Special Offer

This description contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend resources we genuinely believe in.

How much of your spiritual life happens on a screen? Wes and Marcus turn the podcast on itself this week, asking hard questions about online worship, podcasts, and social media (the very tools they’re using to talk to you right now). Is live-streaming church a gift for the homebound and a front door for the curious, or a subtle invitation to become a spiritual consumer instead of a disciple? They dig into what happens when anyone can be a teacher with no elders holding them accountable, why comfort and discipleship rarely coexist, and what gets lost when friction and pushback disappear from our spiritual conversations. This isn’t a rulebook for what to do or not do online; it’s an honest look at what these platforms are forming us into, and whether that’s actually making us more like Jesus.

Links and Resources

* The Democratization of American Christianity by Nathan O. Hatch — Referenced as background on why the restoration movement’s anyone-can-preach spirit took hold in American evangelicalism.

* The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society by Lesslie Newbigin — Cited for Newbigin’s insight on adapting the gospel’s presentation to different audiences and contexts.

* Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture by Lesslie Newbigin — Cited alongside the above for Newbigin’s work on Paul’s strategy of contextualizing the gospel.

* Extended Free Trial of Logos Bible Study Software

* Books by Wes McAdams

* VidAngel Special Offer

This description contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend resources we genuinely believe in.

Christians throughout Scripture fasted before missionary journeys, fasted when appointing elders, fasted in seasons of repentance. Jesus himself assumed his disciples would do it. So why does this ancient, expected discipline feel like a strange, forgotten thing to modern believers? Wes and Marcus start this episode with a confession: neither of them fasts the way Scripture and the early church clearly modeled. They trace fasting from the Old Testament through the Didache, and wrestle with why it quietly disappeared somewhere between the Reformation and our productivity-obsessed, consumeristic culture. Along the way, they connect fasting to Sabbath, embodiment, posture in prayer, and why it actually helps Christians love like Jesus. This one is convicting.

Links and Resources

* The Didache — One of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament.

* Extended Free Trial of Logos Bible Study Software

* Books by Wes McAdams

* VidAngel Special Offer

This description contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend resources we genuinely believe in.