Vine Abiders Podcast

Get the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/How-Quit-Drinking-Forever-Christians/dp/B0HHR129DX

What does it mean to truly repent—and how can faith in Jesus Christ change your relationship with alcohol?

In this complete audiobook, Chris White shares his own journey out of drunkenness and examines what the Bible teaches about repentance, the fear of the Lord, and freedom from sin. He explores faith as allegiance to Christ, the seriousness of Scripture’s warnings, and the power of the Holy Spirit to help believers live differently.

Written for Christians who struggle with drinking or have grown comfortable making excuses for it, How to Quit Drinking Forever challenges familiar assumptions and offers a direct call to turn wholeheartedly to God. Alongside biblical teaching, Chris addresses common questions, offers guidance for beginning the Christian life, and tells the longer story of how his own life changed.

Listen to all 13 chapters of How to Quit Drinking Forever: The Hard Truth for Christians by Chris White.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vineabiders.substack.com

In this episode of Vine Abiders, I’m sharing an interview I recently did with Phil Baker on his excellent podcast, Reclaiming the Faith.

Phil and I discuss my book The Deformation and explore some of the major theological shifts that have shaped modern Christianity. We begin with my own journey away from Once Saved, Always Saved and then dig into what the New Testament means by the “gospel” and “faith”—including the idea of faith as allegiance to Jesus as King.

From there, we discuss Augustine’s influence on Christian theology, original sin and total depravity, Romans 7, Martin Luther and the Reformation understanding of “works,” the Sermon on the Mount, and how the early church understood the death and atonement of Jesus.

Toward the end of the conversation, things become more personal as Phil asks me about losing my wife to cancer and what that experience taught me about suffering. We talk about the biblical idea that life is a test, why trials matter, and why the choices we make in the midst of suffering may have eternal significance.

Also Mentioned: How to Quit Drinking Forever

I recently released a new book, How to Quit Drinking Forever: The Hard Truth for Christians. It tells the story of my own freedom from alcohol and lays out what I believe Scripture teaches about repentance, freedom from bondage, and the genuine power available to Christians—not merely to stop drinking, but to become free from the desire to drink.

How to Quit Drinking Forever: The Hard Truth for Christianshttps://www.amazon.com/How-Quit-Drinking-Forever-Christians/dp/B0HHR129DX

In This Episode

* Why I changed my mind about Once Saved, Always Saved

* The gospel as the announcement that Jesus is King

* What “faith” means and why allegiance matters

* Augustine, original sin, total depravity, and free will

* A different way of understanding Romans 7

* Martin Luther, “works,” and the Sermon on the Mount

* How Reformation theology changed the understanding of atonement

* Penal substitutionary atonement, Christus Victor, and the Old Testament sacrificial system

* The scapegoat and what it means for Jesus to “bear” our sins

* Why suffering so often becomes a test of faithfulness

* What losing my wife taught me about endurance, trials, and eternity

Thanks again to Phil Baker for having me on Reclaiming the Faith.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vineabiders.substack.com

Chris White talks with Chris P. Bacon, a brother he’s followed on X for years, about how theology actually lands in a person’s life. They cover once-saved-always-saved, the hard verses, and what it means to abide in Christ instead of living under a cloud of defeat.

Bacon’s story is that a change in what he believed about Scripture changed how he walked. He talks about 1 John, the warnings, and the difference between half-hearted repentance and real freedom in Christ. Audio only.

Chris P. Bacon’s X profile

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vineabiders.substack.com

There is a line in Hebrews that Christians quote often, but I am not sure we have always stopped long enough to ask what it actually means.

Hebrews says that Jesus became flesh and blood so that through death he might destroy the devil.

Hebrews 2:14-15

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;

And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

That passage raises several questions.

What is “the power of death”?

In what sense did Satan have it?

How did Jesus’ death destroy the one who had that power?

And why would Satan participate in the crucifixion if the crucifixion was the very event that would undo him?

That last question is especially important. The New Testament gives us reason to believe that the crucifixion was, in some sense, a mystery hidden from the rulers of this age.

1 Corinthians 2:8

Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

That verse may refer to earthly rulers, spiritual rulers, or both. Either way, the logic is striking. Had they understood what was happening, they would not have crucified Jesus.

So what did they misunderstand?

More specifically, what did Satan misunderstand?

My proposal is that the answer has been hiding in the Day of Atonement ritual, especially in the part of that ritual Christians often neglect: the scapegoat.

The Day of Atonement did not involve only one goat. It involved two. One goat was “for the LORD,” slain, and its blood was brought into the holy place. The other goat was sent away alive, bearing the sins of the people into the wilderness, to Azazel.

If Christ fulfills the Day of Atonement, then we should expect Him to fulfill both goats, not merely one. The first goat helps explain Christ’s blood, priesthood, resurrection, and heavenly offering. The second goat, I believe, helps explain His descent into Hades and the defeat of Satan.

The scapegoat is the Satan-defeating part of the Day of Atonement.

That is the thesis.

Blood, Life, and the Logic of Atonement

Before we can talk about the scapegoat, we need to begin with the first goat and the broader logic of atonement.

Jacob Milgrom, the great Leviticus scholar, argued that blood functions in the sacrificial system as a kind of ritual detergent. That may sound strange at first, but the logic is biblical. Blood cleanses because blood contains life.

Leviticus gives us one of the clearest explanations in Scripture for why blood makes atonement.

Leviticus 17:11

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.’.

The blood is effectual because of the life that is in it.

This matters because sin pollutes sacred space. Israel’s sins defile the camp, the tabernacle, and the place where God dwells among His people. If sin leads to death, then it makes sense that life cleanses what death has polluted.

This also means that, in the Old Testament sacrificial system, the slaughter of the animal is not itself the whole act of atonement. The animal is slain so that the blood can be obtained. The blood is then applied to the holy place. That application is the atoning act.

This is where David Moffitt’s work on Hebrews becomes important. Moffitt has argued that Hebrews does not treat the cross as the whole of Christ’s priestly offering. Christ dies, rises, ascends, and then enters the heavenly sanctuary as the true high priest.

Hebrews says:

Hebrews 9:11-12

But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building;

Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.

And again:

Hebrews 9:24

For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:

On this reading, the resurrection is not an afterthought. Christ must rise because a dead priest cannot enter the heavenly holy place. He must ascend because the true sanctuary is in heaven. He must present His blood because atonement involves priestly application, not merely slaughter.

That explains one half of the Day of Atonement.

But it does not yet explain Hebrews 2.

Hebrews does not merely say that Christ makes atonement. It says that through death He destroys the one who had the power of death, that is, the devil.

How does the Day of Atonement defeat the devil?

A recent scholarly proposal by Katie Marcar turns to Passover and Exodus imagery. In that model, Satan is like Pharaoh, the realm of death is like Egypt, and Christ leads a new exodus out of bondage. I think that typology is valuable. But it still leaves a mechanism question unanswered.

How, exactly, is Satan’s power broken?

My contention is that the missing mechanism is the second goat.

The Forgotten Goat

Leviticus 16 describes two goats.

Leviticus 16:8-10

And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat.

And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the LORD’s lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering.

But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.

The first goat is killed. Its blood is taken into the holy place.

The second goat is not killed. It is presented alive. The high priest lays both hands on its head, confesses Israel’s sins over it, and sends it away.

Leviticus 16:20-22

And when he hath made an end of reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat:

And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness:

And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.

That second goat is not a decorative appendage to the ritual. Leviticus says it is part of the atonement. It bears the people’s sins away.

So if Christ fulfills the Day of Atonement, where does He fulfill this goat?

The New Testament repeatedly describes Christ in sin-bearing language.

Isaiah 53:6

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:11-12

He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

2 Corinthians 5:21

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

1 Peter 2:24

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

Hebrews 9:28

So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

This is scapegoat language.

Christ does not merely die. He bears sin.

The crucial question is where He bears it.

The first goat’s blood goes up into the holy place. The second goat goes out, away from the camp, into the wilderness, to Azazel.

If Hebrews’ heavenly sanctuary is a real place, and Christ’s priestly ascent is a real movement, then we should at least consider whether the scapegoat movement also has a real fulfillment. Not merely metaphorical. Not merely poetic. Real.

Christ bears sin outside the camp. Christ descends into the realm of the dead. Christ carries the sins of His people into the domain associated with Satan, death, and accusation.

That is where the scapegoat becomes central.

Christ’s Descent Was Victory, Not Punishment

The descent of Christ into Hades is an ancient Christian doctrine. It is confessed in the Apostles’ Creed. It also appears in several biblical passages.

Ephesians 4:8-10

Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.

Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?

He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.

1 Peter 3:18-22

For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:

By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;

Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.

Romans 10:6-7

But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:)

Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)

Matthew 12:40

For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Matthew 27:51-53

And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;

And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,

And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

What is striking about these passages is that Christ is not pictured as a victim being tormented in hell. He is victorious. He descends, leads captivity captive, proclaims victory, and emerges with authority.

Revelation makes the outcome explicit.

Revelation 1:18

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.

Before Christ’s ordeal, Hebrews says the devil had the power of death. After Christ’s ordeal, Christ has the keys of hell and death.

Something changed.

Christus Victor theology has rightly emphasized the victory of Christ over Satan, death, and the powers. But Christus Victor often does not explain the mechanism. It tells us Christ conquered, but not always how.

The scapegoat supplies that missing mechanism.

Azazel and the Return of Sin

The Hebrew text of Leviticus 16 is uncomfortable.

Many English translations say the second goat is “for the scapegoat.” But the Hebrew word is Azazel. The lots are cast: one for Yahweh, one for Azazel.

That parallel matters.

If one goat is “for the LORD,” and the other is “for Azazel,” then Azazel looks less like a vague location and more like a personal being. This is why scholars such as Jacob Milgrom argued that Azazel is best understood as a demonic figure, not merely a cliff or a wasteland.

The later idea that the goat was pushed off a cliff is not in Leviticus. Leviticus emphasizes that the goat is presented alive and sent away. It is not sacrificed to Azazel. It is not a gift to a demon. It is a living sin-bearer sent into the wilderness.

Second Temple Jewish literature strengthens this connection. I am not treating 1 Enoch as Scripture. But it is an important witness to ancient Jewish thought, and Jude itself quotes from Enochic tradition. In 1 Enoch 10, Azazel is connected with the corruption of the earth.

1 Enoch 10:8

And the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin.

That line is crucial: “to him ascribe all sin.”

1 Enoch also depicts Azazel as bound in the desert.

1 Enoch 10:4

And again the Lord said to Raphael: Bind Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert, which is in Dudael, and cast him therein.

Now Leviticus 16 begins to take on a sharper logic.

Why send a goat laden with sin into the wilderness to Azazel?

There are two possible explanations.

The first is what I call the “trashcan view.” On this view, Israel’s sins are simply being removed from the camp. God’s presence dwells in the midst of Israel, sin pollutes the sacred space, so the sins must be taken outside and dumped far away. Azazel is incidental. The wilderness is the trash heap.

The second is what I call the “return to sender view.” On this view, the goat is not merely removing sin from Israel. It is returning sin to its true source. If Azazel is the one to whom sin is ascribed, then the goat is sent to him because the sin belongs to him.

This does not mean Israel is innocent in the sense that they never committed the sins. They did. But the ritual transfers the confessed sins away from Israel and sends them back to the one who introduced corruption, deception, and death into the world.

In that sense, the scapegoat is not a sacrifice to Azazel. It is a return.

“Here is the sin. It is yours.”

This is where the scapegoat begins to explain the defeat of Satan.

What Is Satan’s Power of Death?

If Christ defeats Satan by bearing sin into Hades, we still have to ask why that would defeat him.

To answer that, we need to understand the nature of Satan’s power.

Hebrews says Satan had “the power of death.” But this does not mean Satan is omnipotent, independent, or equal to God. Scripture consistently portrays Satan as powerful but limited. He acts, but he acts by permission. He has authority, but that authority is bounded.

Job gives us one of the clearest examples.

Job 1:12

And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.

Satan may act against Job, but only within limits.

Jesus says something similar to Peter.

Luke 22:31-32

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:

But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.

Satan desires Peter, but Christ intercedes.

The New Testament also speaks of Satan’s ongoing dominion in the world.

2 Corinthians 4:4

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

John 12:31

Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

Ephesians 6:12

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

1 John 5:19

And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.

In the temptation of Jesus, Satan even claims that the kingdoms of the world have been delivered to him.

Luke 4:6

And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.

Jesus does not answer by saying, “That is not true.” He resists the temptation, but the claim itself appears to have some real basis.

So Satan has authority. But what kind?

The first piece is temptation.

Satan is called “the tempter.”

Matthew 4:1

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

Matthew 4:3

And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

1 Thessalonians 3:5

For this cause, when I could no longer forbear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain.

1 Corinthians 7:5

Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.

Satan tempts.

But temptation is not the whole story. He tempts so that he can accuse. He accuses so that he can claim death.

That is the chain:

Temptation leads to sin.

Sin leads to accusation.

Accusation leads to death.

This is why Satan’s power of death is sin-conditioned. He cannot simply kill at random. He must have a claim. He needs guilt. He needs a record.

The biblical connection between sin and death is everywhere.

Genesis 2:17

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans 5:12

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

Ezekiel 18:4

Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

Satan’s power is not raw power. It is juridical power. It is legal power. It is accusatory power.

He has the power of death because sinners really are guilty, and death really is the sentence attached to sin.

Testing, Temptation, and the Strange Permission of God

This raises another difficult question.

Why would God allow Satan to tempt anyone?

Scripture repeatedly presents trials as tests. God does not tempt anyone with evil, but He does permit testing. He permits circumstances in which faithfulness is proven or exposed.

Abraham is tested with Isaac.

Genesis 22:12

And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

Israel is tested in the wilderness.

Deuteronomy 8:2

And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.

Peter says trials prove faith.

1 Peter 1:6-7

Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:

That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

Revelation even describes the devil casting believers into prison so that they may be tested.

Revelation 2:10

Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

James holds both truths together. Trials come, and they matter. But God is not the author of evil temptation.

James 1:2-4

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;

Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

James 1:12-13

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.

There is a tension here, but it is a biblical tension.

God tests. Satan tempts. Sometimes the same event can be described from both angles.

David’s census is the classic example.

2 Samuel 24:1

And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.

1 Chronicles 21:1

And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

The same event is attributed, in different senses, to God and to Satan. God permits the test. Satan performs the temptation.

Even Jesus’ wilderness temptation follows this pattern.

Matthew 4:1

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

The Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness. The devil tempts Him there.

This is not because Satan is God’s faithful servant from the beginning. The temptation in Eden was rebellion, not obedience. Satan was cursed for it.

Genesis 3:15

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

But after Eden, Satan’s rebellion creates a terrible new arrangement. Humanity now possesses the knowledge of good and evil. Man’s eyes are opened. Man is accountable. Satan, the deceiver, now has access to weak humanity. He tempts. Humans sin. Sin brings death. Satan accuses.

That is his power.

The Handwriting Against Us

Now we can return to the cross.

If Satan’s power depends on sin, guilt, accusation, and death, then the cancellation of sin destroys his claim.

This is exactly what Colossians 2 says.

Colossians 2:13-15

And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;

Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;

And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

The order matters.

First, we are forgiven all trespasses.

Second, the handwriting against us is blotted out.

Third, the principalities and powers are disarmed.

Why are they disarmed?

Because the record is gone.

The “handwriting” is the record of debt, the charge sheet, the accusatory document. Satan’s power rests on that record. If the debt is canceled, the accuser loses his weapon.

This is where the scapegoat mechanism becomes so powerful.

Christ bears our sins. Those sins are not His personally. He “knew no sin.” Yet He is made sin for us. He is numbered with the transgressors. He carries what belongs to us.

Then He descends into Hades.

But in doing so, He is not merely descending as a victim. He is descending as the true scapegoat. He carries the transferred sins into the realm of death, to the one whose power depends upon those sins, and returns them to their ultimate source.

The sins are removed from us.

The record is canceled.

The accuser is disarmed.

Satan’s deed claim collapses because the guilt on which it depended has been forgiven, removed, and returned.

That, I believe, is the mechanism by which Christ destroys the one who had the power of death.

Why Did Satan Take the Bait?

But this creates another problem.

If Christ’s descent into Hades completed the scapegoat movement and disarmed Satan, why would Satan do it?

Why would Satan kill Jesus?

Why would Satan take Him into the realm of the dead?

Why would Satan participate in the very event that would destroy his own power?

The answer must be that Satan was deceived.

But deceived how?

Some versions of Christus Victor suggest that Satan knew Jesus was sinless but killed Him anyway, not realizing that he had no right to hold a sinless man in Hades. There is truth in that. Satan could not hold the sinless Christ. Christ’s victory in Hades is real.

But I think we can go one step further.

If Satan’s power is sin-conditioned, then Satan would not knowingly kill a sinless man as though he were guilty. That would be an abuse of his own authority. It would be reckless, and Satan is not stupid.

A more plausible explanation is that Satan believed he had finally succeeded in bringing Jesus under sin.

He misread imputed sin as personal guilt.

He saw sin on Christ and thought it was Christ’s own.

That was the trap.

Satan’s Campaign Against Jesus

From the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, Satan tries to tempt Him.

Matthew 4:1

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

The temptation fails. But Luke adds an important detail.

Luke 4:13

And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.

Satan does not give up. He leaves until a more opportune time.

This makes sense. Satan knows the promise of Genesis 3:15. He knows that the seed of the woman will crush his head. When Jesus appears, Satan recognizes a threat. If he can get Jesus to sin, he can bring Him under the same death power as everyone else.

That is Satan’s ordinary strategy.

Tempt.

Accuse.

Kill.

But Jesus does not sin.

The Gospels repeatedly show people attempting to kill Jesus before His hour has come, and they cannot do it. Sometimes they try to stone Him. Sometimes they try to throw Him from a cliff. But He passes through their midst. His hour had not yet come.

Those failed attempts may have taught Satan something. If Jesus says things that would be blasphemous if He were not who He claimed to be, and yet death cannot touch Him, then perhaps those things are not blasphemy. If Jesus acts on the Sabbath in ways that would be unlawful if He were not Lord of the Sabbath, and yet He remains untouchable, then perhaps He truly is Lord of the Sabbath.

Satan’s direct campaign fails.

So, I suggest, he turns to an indirect one.

The Judas Gambit

This part of the argument is more speculative. It is not necessary to accept this in order to accept the larger scapegoat thesis. The core claim is that Christ defeats Satan through the scapegoat mechanism: He bears sin, descends into Hades, returns sin to its source, cancels the record, and disarms the accuser.

The Judas piece is an attempt to explain how Satan may have misunderstood what was happening.

Here is the proposal.

Having failed to make Jesus sin directly, Satan tries to implicate Him through Judas.

Jesus chose the Twelve after a night of prayer.

Luke 6:12-13

And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.

And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles;

If one of those chosen disciples becomes a traitor, Satan may think he has found an angle. Perhaps Jesus chose wrongly. Perhaps Jesus failed to hear the Father. Perhaps the betrayal of Judas can be charged back to Jesus’ account.

But the Gospel of John repeatedly insists that Jesus knew about Judas from the beginning.

John 6:64

But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him.

John 6:70

Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?

John 13:11

For he knew who should betray him; therefore said he, Ye are not all clean.

John 13:18

I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.

John 17:12

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

John seems very concerned to tell us that Judas was not a mistake.

Jesus did not choose wrongly. He knew. The betrayal itself fulfilled Scripture.

That matters because it answers the very charge Satan may have hoped to bring.

Satan enters Judas personally.

Luke 22:3-6

Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve.

And he went his way, and communed with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray him unto them.

And they were glad, and covenanted to give him money.

And he promised, and sought opportunity to betray him unto them in the absence of the multitude.

John also says:

John 13:27

And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.

Why does Satan enter Judas?

It is not merely to locate Jesus. Jesus often went to Gethsemane. The authorities could have found Him. Judas had already agreed to betray Him before Satan entered him in this final way.

The point was not merely location.

The point was betrayal.

The kiss mattered.

In Satan’s mind, the betrayal may have been the mechanism by which he thought he had finally compromised Jesus.

Gethsemane and Imputed Sin

The timing is fascinating.

Satan enters Judas at the Last Supper. Judas departs. Then comes Gethsemane. Then Judas returns with the soldiers.

Gethsemane is bracketed by Judas.

This suggests that something crucial happens in the garden.

I am not saying the cross is unimportant. Of course not. Christ bears our sins on the tree. But I am suggesting that the imputation of sin may begin in Gethsemane.

There, Jesus is overwhelmed.

Matthew 26:38

Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.

John gives us a similar window into the anguish of that hour.

John 12:27

Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.

And in the same context:

John 12:31

Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

The ruler of this world is being cast out.

The question is how.

If the scapegoat thesis is correct, then Gethsemane may be the moment when the sins of the world are placed upon Christ. Satan, returning in Judas, sees Christ under the weight of sin and misreads it. He thinks it is personal guilt. He thinks his Judas gambit has worked.

There is at least biblical precedent for sin or iniquity being visible in a heavenly court setting.

Zechariah 3:1-4

And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.

And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan; even the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?

Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel.

And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.

Iniquity appears as filthy garments in the presence of the accuser.

So perhaps Satan sees the sin-bearing Christ and thinks, “He is guilty.”

Or perhaps Satan does not see it directly, but infers it from the fact that, for the first time, the execution is allowed to proceed. Before this, His hour had not come. Now the hour has come. The arrest happens. The trial proceeds. The scourging happens. The crucifixion happens.

Satan thinks he has won.

But he has not won.

He has carried the true scapegoat into the realm of death.

He has brought into his own domain the sin that will be removed from us, returned to its source, and used to cancel the record by which he held mankind in bondage.

The trap is sprung.

The Illegal Death of the Sinless One

This also means Satan killed Jesus unjustly.

Christ had no personal sin.

The sins on Him were imputed, not His own.

Satan mistook transferred sin for actual guilt. He treated the sinless Christ as though He were a sinner. In doing so, he exceeded his authority.

There may be a parallel here with Psalm 82, where rulers lose authority because they judge unjustly.

Psalm 82:1-7

God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods.

How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.

Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.

Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.

They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.

I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.

But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.

I do not think Satan’s abuse of authority is the whole mechanism of his defeat. The deeper mechanism is forgiveness. Colossians says the record is canceled, and the rulers and authorities are disarmed.

Still, Satan’s unjust killing of Christ may be part of the public shame of the powers. They overreached. They judged unjustly. They condemned the Innocent One.

And by doing so, they unknowingly completed the very movement that destroyed their claim.

The Two Goats Together

Now the pieces can be brought together.

The first goat explains the cleansing movement.

Christ dies, rises, ascends, and enters the true heavenly sanctuary as high priest. His blood, His life, is presented in the true holy place. The heavenly sanctuary is cleansed. Atonement is made.

The second goat explains the removal and return movement.

Christ bears sin. The sins of His people are placed upon Him. He is driven outside the camp. He descends into the realm of the dead. He carries the sins to the one whose power depends upon them, and those sins are removed from us.

The first goat goes up.

The second goat goes out and down.

The first cleanses the sanctuary.

The second removes the sins and returns them to their source.

The first explains the priestly logic of Hebrews.

The second explains the defeat of Satan in Hebrews 2.

Together, they form one atoning work.

This means the cross cannot be isolated from the resurrection, ascension, heavenly offering, descent into Hades, and harrowing of death. The atonement is not less than the cross, but it is more than the moment of death considered in isolation.

The cross is the center, but the whole ordeal matters.

Christ dies.

Christ descends.

Christ rises.

Christ ascends.

Christ presents His blood.

Christ disarms the accuser.

Christ takes the keys.

Why This Matters

This proposal matters because it gives real content to biblical claims we often leave vague.

When Hebrews says Christ destroyed the one who had the power of death, it means Satan’s death claim was broken.

When Colossians says the handwriting against us was nailed to the cross, it means the accuser’s record was canceled.

When Revelation says Christ has the keys of hell and death, it means the authority of death has changed hands.

When Leviticus sends the scapegoat to Azazel, it is not an embarrassing primitive leftover. It is a shadow of Christ’s victory.

Christ did not merely suffer under Satan.

He deceived the deceiver.

Satan thought he was dragging a guilty man into death. In reality, he was receiving the sin-bearing scapegoat. He thought the imputed sin on Christ was Christ’s own guilt. In reality, it was our sin being carried away. He thought the crucifixion was his triumph. In reality, it was the cancellation of the record by which he held mankind captive.

This is why the descent into Hades is not a strange appendix to the gospel.

It is victory.

Christ enters the realm of death, not as one conquered by death, but as the one who conquers it from the inside. He enters bearing sin, but not His own. He enters under the accusation, but not under guilt. He enters the house of the strong man and plunders it.

And He leaves with the keys.

That is the good news.

The accuser has been disarmed.

The record has been canceled.

The sins have been borne away.

The scapegoat has gone to Azazel.

And Jesus Christ is alive forevermore.

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If you have ever sat through an Easter sermon and walked away faintly dissatisfied with the explanation of why the resurrection matters, you are not alone. Preachers rightly treat it as the hinge of the Christian faith. Paul says that if it did not happen, we are still in our sins, so it clearly has something to do with the atonement. And yet the reasons usually given for it always struck me as thin.

I once thought I understood this doctrine well. After a season of reading (the books are listed at the end), I have come to think my old view was not so much wrong as badly incomplete. The reality is stranger and far more important than I had been taught. Let me start with the three answers you have probably heard, and then build toward what I think is actually going on.

Three Familiar Answers

First, that the resurrection vindicates Jesus’s teaching. Tim Keller put it crisply: if Jesus rose, you have to accept everything he said; if he did not, none of it matters. I more or less agree, but I would hesitate to make rising from the dead the thing that certifies a teacher’s words. The Antichrist, by my reading, will appear to rise from the dead too. More to the point, I cannot find an explicit teaching in Scripture that says we should believe Jesus because he rose. It feels more like worldly wisdom than a biblical argument. I will give Keller the benefit of the doubt, but it does not get to the heart of things.

Second, that the resurrection proves Christ’s death accomplished salvation. John Piper frames it as proof that the death of Jesus was an all-sufficient price, that without the resurrection his death was a failure. In this model the resurrection is essentially a receipt: God’s wrath has been satisfied, so he raises his Son to show the transaction cleared. It is intensely cross-centered, and that is exactly what I want to challenge. The atonement could not have been completed until Jesus rose and ascended. If that is true, then the resurrection cannot merely be proof that the work was already finished at the cross. It is part of the work itself.

Third, that the resurrection gives us hope of our own. This is the one you hear on Easter most often and at funerals, and it is the one I fully agree with. Christ is the firstfruits; because he rose, we have solid hope that we will too. But there is far more to say, and the deeper reasons are what I want to walk through.

What Is the Atonement, Exactly?

Before we can say why the resurrection matters, we have to ask a question most Christians never think to ask. What is the atonement?

Most people would answer that it is Jesus dying for our sins on the cross. That is not wrong, but it mistakes the opening act for the whole drama. In the logic of the Old Testament sacrificial system, the death of the victim was never the moment of atonement. It was the preparation for it.

This is not a controversial claim among scholars of Israel’s sacrificial system. The slaughter of the animal, by itself, accomplished nothing. Its purpose was to obtain the blood, and the purpose of the blood was to be carried to a sacred place and applied. The application was the atoning act, whether that meant sprinkling blood on the mercy seat on the Day of Atonement or on the various implements of the tabernacle. Leviticus 17:11 is about the only place in the Bible that explains why this works:

‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.’

The operative idea is that the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.. We meet this theme early in Scripture, in the severe prohibition against eating blood. Blood carries life, and that is precisely why it makes atonement. Atonement is fundamentally about cleansing, and life cleanses because what it cleanses is the opposite of life, which is death.

Here is the picture, and it is worth holding onto. At the center of the tabernacle dwelt God’s own presence, the pillar of cloud and fire between the cherubim. I take this to be the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who will one day dwell in the temple of our bodies. The connection is close to one-to-one, and you will not fully grasp what the New Testament says about the Spirit until you see that the Spirit was that pillar of fire.

Sin, which leads to death, defiled the place where this presence dwelt. (Leviticus 16:16–19)

Atonement was the cleansing that kept it habitable, so that the Spirit would remain in Israel’s midst. When the nation sank into sin and the cleansing lapsed, the presence departed.

So in the old system, atonement was not finished until the blood reached the sacred object. On the Day of Atonement the high priest, having first purified himself so he would not die, carried the blood into the Holy of Holies for one purpose: to place it on the mercy seat and withdraw. Until the blood touched that lid, no atonement had been made. Hold that thought, because it is about to do a great deal of work.

The Lid of the Ark

If atonement requires blood on the mercy seat, then atonement cannot have been completed at the cross, because there was no Ark of the Covenant at Golgotha. That is not a clever objection of mine. It is the very point the author of Hebrews builds his argument around, and it is why Jesus had to ascend to where the true mercy seat is.

The Hebrew name for that lid is kapporeth, from the same root that gives us Yom Kippur. It means, roughly, to atone. The Day of Atonement is the day, and the kapporeth is the place, of atonement. The phrase is almost circular: atonement is made on the place of atonement. The lid is so central that its very name is atonement.

The New Testament writers refer to that same object with the Greek word hilasterion. Translated as “mercy seat,” it renders the Hebrew faithfully. Translated as “atonement,” it is also fair, since that is what the word carried. But some translations render it “propitiation,” meaning the satisfaction of a god’s wrath, and that I think is a mistake. Many of the translators, including those behind the King James, were Calvinists for whom atonement simply was the satisfaction of wrath, so substituting one word for the other cost them nothing. It costs us a great deal, because it smuggles a whole theory of the atonement into a word that never meant it.

Hebrews and the Heavenly Tabernacle

The book of Hebrews was written, in part, to explain how atonement works, and the author is insistent on a point modern readers tend to spiritualize away: there is a real tabernacle in heaven. The one Moses built was a copy and shadow of it. When I have tried to describe this to people, they reach for “in a spiritual sense,” but the writer of Hebrews means something more concrete. The cleansing capable of pouring God’s Spirit out on all flesh, as happened at Pentecost, could only be accomplished by a sacrifice offered not in an earthly sanctuary but in the heavenly original. He grounds this in Moses himself:

Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.

And he presses it further: Christ entered not the holy places made with hands, the mere figures of the true, but heaven itself, to appear before God for us. Whatever reality you grant the earthly Ark, Hebrews ranks it below the heavenly one, which is the real thing.

Around this the author builds a careful case. First he must show that Jesus can be a high priest at all, since he came from Judah, not Levi. His answer is that Jesus belongs to a different and older order, the priesthood of Melchizedek. Then he establishes the real sanctuary above. Then he explains why a new covenant was needed in the first place: the old one was limited at every point, by the mortality of its priests, the earthliness of its tabernacle, the blood of animals, all of which capped how far its cleansing could reach. A greater atonement required a greater priest and a greater place. He brings the threads together in chapter nine:

But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us... How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

The whole new covenant hinges on a logical fact: that Jesus is a real high priest, and that there is a real place in heaven for him to do his work. This, I suspect, is what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 15:17, that if Christ is not raised, our faith is vain and we are still in our sins. Read against Piper, the difference is sharp. For Piper the verse means the resurrection confirms a finished transaction. For Paul it means something stronger: you are not forgiven unless Jesus is raised. That can only be true if the dying was not the whole of the atonement. A Christ who died but never rose and ascended is a sacrifice slaughtered but never presented, blood that never reached the mercy seat, an atonement left unfinished.

There is one more strand here I want to flag without overreaching. A high priest also maintains the covenant through ongoing intercession, which Hebrews ties to Christ’s endless life: he is able to save completely because he ever lives to intercede. I do not yet understand this aspect as well as I would like, so I will only note the obvious point. A dead savior cannot intercede. The resurrection is the condition of his ongoing priestly work as much as of his finished sacrifice.

How Jesus Becomes Lord

The second reason runs through the whole New Testament and is easy to miss: the enthronement, the way Jesus comes into his lordship.

This is delicate, because in one sense Jesus was already Lord before his ordeal on earth. Yet the New Testament returns again and again, not in a stray verse here or there but as a steady theme, to the claim that through his resurrection he is given something. He is appointed heir. He is declared Son of God with power. The passages are worth reading rather than summarizing, so let me set several of them down.

Romans 1:4:

And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.

The verse ties the declaration to the resurrection. Was Jesus the Son of God before that? Yes, and we will come to it. But notice the qualifier: Son of God with power.

Another important passage is as follows:

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth. Philippians 2:8-10

The hinge is “wherefore.” Paul does not say Jesus was exalted alongside his humbling but because of it. The exaltation is the Father’s response to the obedience of the cross, and a reward genuinely earned cannot be something he already possessed in full.

So this is not a return to a position temporarily set aside. It is an exaltation earned through suffering and issuing in a rule acknowledged everywhere, exactly the pattern the argument has been tracing. The one caveat: this need not mean the eternal Son changed in nature. The change is one of office and exercise, which is why it fits Orr’s middle view rather than the stronger claim that Jesus was not Lord at all before Easter.

Ephesians 1:20 through 22 makes the same move more fully, speaking of what God accomplished in Christ:

Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church.

Here the two themes arrive together, resurrection and enthronement at the right hand, and Paul tells us what the new authority amounts to. It is dominion. Nothing in Christ’s nature changed. What changed was the throne and the power that go with it.

The picture I keep returning to is a king and his son. In the ordinary course of things the crown prince is royal by birth but does not rule until the old king dies and authority passes to him. They are of one substance; the son will be king; but the power transfers at a moment. The analogy breaks at the obvious place, since God never dies, so instead the Father voluntarily hands the Son all authority, in effect saying, “You take care of it.” And this happens only after a particular sequence: resurrection, ascension, enthronement.

Hebrews 5:8 through 9 carries the same logic, that something was gained through the ordeal itself:

Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.

Whatever else is happening there, the Son who needed nothing nevertheless learned obedience through suffering and then became the author of eternal salvation. The nature held constant; an office was entered. Jesus says it of himself in Revelation 3:21, speaking to the churches:

To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

He had to overcome in order to sit down with his Father on the throne. A change comes through the cross.

Revelation 4 and 5 dramatize the whole thing. In chapter four the Father sits enthroned, worshiped without ceasing by angels crying “Holy, holy, holy,” surrounded by twenty-four elders, holding in his right hand a scroll sealed with seven seals. Then the scene turns on a crisis:

And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.

There is weeping in heaven, because no one is worthy. Then comes the resolution, announced by one of the elders: the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed. What John actually sees, though, is not a lion but a Lamb:

And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne.

Before this the living creatures and elders had sung “Holy, holy, holy” to the Father. Now they fall down before the Lamb and sing a new song:

Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth. And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.

The slain Lamb becomes worthy to take the scroll because it was slain, and recieve the dominion of all things.

Scholars handle the obvious tension here in different ways, and Peter Orr has usefully mapped them. At one end, Christ is fully Lord throughout and merely lays his lordship aside at the cross, so that the resurrection discloses what was always true without adding anything new. At the other end, the pre-Easter references to his lordship are anticipatory, so that when Jesus accepts the title “Lord” he is claiming what he will only truly hold once he receives the throne; the enthronement is what actually makes him Lord. In between, and this is where Orr himself lands, Jesus is truly Lord beforehand but enters his lordship in a fuller and more real way afterward. The one born Christ and Lord, whose lordship was silenced at the crucifixion, is made Lord and Christ through his literal enthronement at God’s right hand, like a prince who is royal by birth yet not king until the day of his crowning. Nothing changes in his nature, only his coronation.

Because he humbled himself to the point of death, God highly exalted him. The resurrection and exaltation let him enter the full reality of his Davidic role.

The Spirit Withheld Until the King Was Crowned

The third reason is the most surprising of all. The outpouring of the Spirit was deliberately held back until the King was enthroned.

It is not simply that Pentecost had to wait for the cross. Jesus says something stranger than that. He tells the disciples plainly that it is to their advantage that he go away, because only if he departs will the Spirit come to them. Read that slowly. His leaving is not an unfortunate cost that the Spirit’s arrival makes up for. His leaving is the precondition. The implicit claim is bold: the universal outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh depended on Jesus being glorified, ascended, and seated on the throne. The whole case turns on Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, his explanation to a stunned crowd of exactly what they are seeing and hearing.

One detail first, because it knits this section back to the first. The flames that rest over the disciples’ heads are not a random sign. The pillar of fire that led Israel through the wilderness and dwelt above the Ark was God’s own Spirit, and that is why fire attends the Spirit here as it did there. What had once filled a single sanctuary now rests on people, and it can do so because the atonement accomplished in the heavenly sanctuary has made them clean enough to hold it. The fire on their heads is the visible sign that the cleansing worked.

Peter opens by reaching for Joel: God will pour out his Spirit on all flesh, on sons and daughters, young and old, menservants and maidservants alike. The point is that an ancient and almost impossible hope has finally landed. Under the old order the Spirit came upon a prophet here, a king there, and rested on him for a task. Moses had wished aloud that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that God would put his Spirit on every one of them. The prophets had gone further and promised it: a new covenant, with the law written on the heart and a Spirit set within, so that obedience would finally come from the inside out. The crowd at Pentecost would have known those promises well. Peter’s announcement is that the wish has come true in front of them, and then he tells them precisely how it happened:

Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear... Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.

The sequence is exact, and every step matters. Jesus is exalted to the right hand. There, in that enthroned state, he receives the promised Spirit from the Father. From there he pours it out, and the pouring is the very thing the crowd can see and hear. And because they can see it, Peter says, they may know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ. The outpouring is not merely a blessing that happens to follow the enthronement. It is the public evidence of it. This is the same Jesus who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, overcame, became worthy to take the scroll, and sat down on the throne. The Spirit falling on the disciples is the proof, visible to anyone standing in Jerusalem that morning, that he is seated.

If that inference feels like a stretch built out of one sermon, John states the principle flatly and removes all doubt. Commenting on an earlier promise of Jesus that rivers of living water would flow from the believer, John adds an editorial note:

(But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

This is as plain a confirmation as the argument could ask for. Why had the Spirit not yet been given? Not because the disciples were unready, not because the time was not ripe in some vague sense, but for one specific reason: because Jesus was not yet glorified. The giving of the Spirit is made directly contingent on Christ’s glorification. And we already know from Peter when that glorification occurred. It was his sitting down at the right hand of God, the moment of enthronement, which could only follow the ascension, which could only follow the resurrection. So John 7:39 supplies the missing link in the chain. Peter shows us the enthroned Christ pouring out the Spirit; John tells us that the Spirit could not come at all until that glorification had happened. The two passages lock together. Pentecost, and I would argue the whole purpose of the new covenant, waited on the throne.

Max Turner names the mechanism behind all of this as well as anyone:

You cannot pour out the Spirit as the executive power of your reign until you are reigning. The throne must be occupied before the Spirit can flow from it. The outpouring is not a separate event that happens to come after the enthronement. It is the active expression of enthronement itself.

There is one last implication, and it is the sharpest. Every one of those prophecies said that God would pour out his Spirit. It was always God’s promise, God’s act, God’s prerogative. So when Peter stands up and says that Jesus has poured this out, he is saying far more than that Jesus is enthroned. He is identifying Jesus as the one doing what only God said he would do. If Jesus is the agent of an outpouring that was always God’s to give, then Jesus stands in the place of God, at his right hand, fulfilling a divine promise as only the Son could. The Spirit at Pentecost is proof of the throne, and the throne, in turn, is a quiet but unmistakable claim to his divinity.

Pulling It Together

Three things, then, that the usual Easter sermon leaves out.

The atonement was completed in heaven. In the logic of Leviticus, it was never made at the moment of slaughter but when the high priest carried the life-bearing blood into the holy place and set it on the mercy seat. The cross is the slaughter. Hebrews insists the heavenly sanctuary is a real place, and into it the risen Christ carried himself as the offering. This is why Paul can say that without the resurrection we are still in our sins. A sacrifice slaughtered but never presented atones for nothing.

Something happened to Jesus’s status at the ascension. He is made Lord, declared Son with power, given the name above every name, seated with all authority in heaven and earth. The eternal Son did not become something he was not. The King who laid his lordship aside at the cross entered its full and active exercise, a crown prince crowned at last.

The Spirit was always meant to be universal. Moses wished for it, Joel promised it, Jeremiah and Ezekiel made it the heart of the new covenant. But a Spirit poured out on all flesh required a universal cleansing, which only the completed atonement could provide, and it required a throne, since the Spirit is how an enthroned Lord rules and stays present to his people.

So the cross opens the door, but the risen Christ carries the offering through it. The ascended Christ takes the throne, and from that throne the reigning Lord pours out his Spirit and draws his people into union with himself. Easter is not where the story ends. It is where the risen Christ steps through the doorway into the true sanctuary, and from there reaches back to bring us with him.

Further Reading

The ideas in this post lean heavily on the work of several scholars. If you want to go deeper, these are the books that shaped my thinking, roughly in order of how central they are to what I argued here.

David M. Moffitt, Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The technical work at the heart of everything I said about atonement being completed in heaven. Moffitt argues that in Hebrews, Jesus’s death does not by itself accomplish atonement. It is the presentation of his resurrected life and blood in the heavenly sanctuary that does. This is the dense, academic version, but it is the foundation.

David M. Moffitt, Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives on Jesus’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. A more accessible collection that gathers and extends his argument, reaching beyond Hebrews into Matthew, Acts, and 1 Corinthians 15, with a foreword by N. T. Wright. If you only read one Moffitt book, this is the one to start with.

Patrick Schreiner, The Ascension of Christ: Recovering a Neglected Doctrine. A short, readable book on why the ascension belongs in the gospel itself, not as an afterthought. Schreiner works through Christ’s ongoing ministry as prophet, priest, and king. A great on-ramp to this whole subject if the others feel too heavy.

Peter C. Orr, Exalted Above the Heavens: The Risen and Ascended Christ. The source for my discussion of how Jesus “becomes” Lord, and the survey of scholarly views on what changed at the enthronement. Orr looks at the exalted Christ through his identity, his location, and his present activity.

Max Turner, Power from on High: The Spirit in Israel’s Restoration and Witness in Luke-Acts. The basis for the third movement of the post, that the Spirit could not be poured out until the King was enthroned. Turner’s line about the Spirit as the executive power of Christ’s reign is drawn from this work.

Related Reading

Matthew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism. Not cited directly above, but closely connected to the post’s underlying logic that atonement is about life cleansing death. Thiessen shows how the Gospels depict Jesus destroying the forces of death and impurity rather than abolishing the Jewish law. Worth reading alongside the others.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vineabiders.substack.com

In this personal podcast, I talk about the death of my wife, Connie, after her battle with a rare and aggressive form of ovarian cancer. I share memories of Connie’s extraordinary life, our marriage, her faith, and the many lessons I learned through suffering, caregiving, cancer, prayer, and grief. I also discuss the realities of the cancer industry, the spiritual nature of trials, and the peace that can come through enduring hardship faithfully.

C.E. White Books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/C.E.-White/author/B077V7FVPT

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vineabiders.substack.com

This was a impromptu podcast in response to a question I received.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vineabiders.substack.com

There are two words that sit right at the center of everything Christians talk about. Two words you’ve heard a thousand times.

Gospel. And faith.

Every pastor assumes that everybody knows what these words mean.

But what I want to suggest to you today is that most of us don’t really know what either of them means.

And I don’t mean we’re fuzzy on the details. I mean we’ve gotten the definitions of these words completely wrong.

I want to be clear. This is not some fringe idea. The scholars behind this reassessment, people like Drs. Matthew Bates, Scot McKnight, Nijay K. Gupta, N.T. Wright, are not radicals. They are working from the original Greek texts, from the historical context of the first century, and from church history. And they keep arriving at the same conclusions.

This presentation will be in two parts. Part One: what the gospel actually is.

And Part Two: what faith, that is the Greek word pistis, actually means in context.

PART ONE: THE GOSPEL

First, let’s talk about what the Gospel Is Not

If you ask most Christians today to define the gospel, you’re likely going to get one of two answers.

The first answer sounds something like this: we are all sinners. We’ve broken God’s law. And because God is holy and just, that sin has to be dealt with. The good news, the gospel, is that Jesus dealt with it for us. He died in our place.

And now, if you believe that, if you put your faith in what he did, you are forgiven, you are right with God, and you have eternal life.

Those are real things that Scripture more or less teaches.

But the argument we’re going to make is that that’s not the gospel. Or at least, it’s not a complete definition of the gospel. And treating it as the whole thing produces real problems.

The second common answer to what the gospel is is similar: that the gospel is specifically what happened at the cross, that Jesus died for our sins.

Different traditions offer various theories about how his death paid for our sins, but they would say that understanding and believing that our sins were dealt with at the cross is the gospel.

The fact that Jesus died for our sins is absolutely part of the gospel.

We’re going to see that Paul explicitly includes it in his gospel presentations. But saying the gospel is essentially the story of how the cross dealt with our sin problem, taking that one piece and calling it the whole thing, that’s where we start to go wrong.

Both reductions, justification by faith as the gospel, and atonement theory as the gospel, share the same underlying flaw: they make the rest of the ministry of Jesus theologically unnecessary.

If justification by faith is the gospel, the four books we literally call the Gospels don’t contain the gospel.

Everything Jesus said and did becomes background material. You could construct the entire gospel without ever opening Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

So if those things aren’t the gospel, what is?

Start with the word itself. Euangelion, the Greek word we translate as gospel, means good news. Specifically though, it’s the kind of news that gets publicly proclaimed.

And in the ancient Greco-Roman world, it had an even more specific meaning. It was the kind of announcement you made when a king won a battle.

When a royal heir took the throne. When the political order of the realm fundamentally changed.

It was a public proclamation so that the people of that realm would know that everything is different now, that they had a new king.

However, in the Christian context I like to think of the gospel this way: you’re trying to convince someone that Jesus is their rightful king, and to do that, you often need to explain the story of Jesus’s royal career, his pre-existence with God in heaven, how he became a man, his fulfillment of these ancient prophecies about the coming king, his death for sins, his resurrection, his enthronement, and his coming return. The four books called the Gospels tell this story because the whole story matters when trying to convince someone that they have a king and that king is worthy of their devotion.

For a first-century Jew, part of that case was genealogical. They already knew a king was coming. So you had to show them that Jesus came from the line of David, that he fulfilled what the prophets said, that he was the king that they had been waiting for.

If you had to pick a single part of the gospel that best captured this idea, it might be the resurrection and enthronement, because that is when Jesus took his seat at God’s right hand on the throne prepared for him.

This is why Hebrews can say Jesus endured the cross “for the joy set before him.” There was something waiting on the other side of his mission on earth. The throne was the prize. The suffering was the path to it.

The resurrection and enthronement in heaven was the moment of transfer.

Jesus moved from Son of God to Son-of-God-in-Power. And this idea is given prominent place in Romans 1:2-4, which is one of the most clear definitions of the gospel according to Paul:

“This gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning his Son who was a descendant of David with reference to the flesh, who was appointed the Son-of-God-in-power according to the Holy Spirit by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 1:2-4)

Then there’s the passage in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul spends at least 25 verses explaining the Gospel. He says that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures (v. 3), that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day. Paul then goes on to describe at length how Jesus appeared to specific witnesses.

After that, he explains why the resurrection matters for his readers, showing how it is connected to their own eternal life. Finally, in verses 24-25, he connects the resurrection to Jesus’s reign in heaven, stating that Jesus must reign until all His enemies are put under His feet.

And then there’s Paul’s gospel presentation in Philippians 2:5-11 which says:

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

Paul’s highlights here include the pre-existence of Christ in divine form, his voluntary self-emptying and incarnation as a human being, his life of servanthood, his obedient death on the cross, his subsequent exaltation by God, and his universal lordship over all creation, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.

Notice where the story ends in all three of those gospel messages. With Jesus as a ruling, authoritative king in heaven. That’s the climax. Not the cross. The throne.

Different people will need to enter this story from a different angle. The guilt-ridden need to hear about the death that cleanses. The enslaved need to hear about the king who broke the powers. The skeptic needs the historical witnesses. The person drowning in meaninglessness needs to know history has a king and a destination.

The entry point varies. But the destination is always the same: Jesus is the rightful king of the universe, not one option among many, but the actual Lord to whom every life is accountable.

PART TWO: WHAT IS FAITH?

But now that we know what the gospel actually is, we need to know how do we respond to it? And that brings us to Part Two of this presentation: what is the meaning of faith?

We know that the correct response to hearing the gospel is faith. We have heard it all of our lives.

The problem is, we have forgotten what that word means too, and it is causing significant problems.

The Greek word pistis, which is often translated as “faith,” has been so stripped of its original meaning that what most Christians mean when they say “have faith” has very little to do with what Paul meant when he wrote the word pistis.

Here’s how Matthew Bates, author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone and Gospel Allegiance, puts it: pistis, generally rendered as faith or belief, as it pertains to Christian salvation, quite simply has little correlation with faith and belief as these words are generally understood and used in contemporary Christian culture, and much to do with what we think of as “allegiance.”

Now, an important clarification before we go any further. Nobody is arguing that pistis means allegiance in every single place it appears in the New Testament. The word has a genuine range of meaning, and most of those meanings are perfectly captured by our English words.

When a leper comes to Jesus and says I believe you can heal me, that’s trust, that’s confidence, and “faith” is exactly the right translation. When Jesus says “your faith has made you well,” nobody needs to redefine anything.

The argument is narrower than that. It’s specifically about the salvation passages, the texts where Paul and the other New Testament writers describe what it means to respond to the gospel, what puts you in right standing before God. In those passages, pistis means something far richer than what most modern Christians picture when they hear the word “believe.”

As we saw, Matthew Bates, and many scholars agree with him, proposes that the best English translation of pistis in this context is allegiance.

Here’s why that word fits. In political and royal contexts, and this is well established in the Greek literature of the New Testament era, pistis consistently carries the meaning of loyalty, fidelity, allegiance to a king or sovereign. The same word your New Testament translates as “faith” was the word Greek speakers naturally reached for when describing a subject’s sworn loyalty to his king.

And here’s the thing about Paul: he is always talking about a king.

Every single time Paul writes “Jesus Christ,” Christ is not a last name. It is a title. It means the Messiah, the Anointed One, the King.

Paul is constantly speaking about the enthroned king when he uses pistis language. The gospel he proclaims climaxes with a coronation. Given that context, what is the most natural meaning of the required response? Not a private internal feeling of trust. Allegiance.

Sworn loyalty to the one who has been installed on the throne.

In Romans 1:5, Paul describes his entire mission as bringing about “the obedience of pistis” among the nations. Not obedience that follows pistis. Not obedience alongside pistis. The obedience of pistis.

That construction only makes sense if pistis already contains loyal commitment within it. You would never say “the obedience of belief.”

But “the obedience of allegiance” is completely natural, because allegiance by definition is the kind of thing that produces obedience.

So the way to read some of the famous justification passages would be something like this:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through the allegiance of Jesus the Christ for all who give allegiance.

Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through the allegiance of Jesus the Christ, so we also have given allegiance to Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by the allegiance of the Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. (Gal. 2:16)

Now, brothers and sisters, I bring to your attention the gospel that I gospeled to you, which you received, on which you stand, and through which also you are being saved, that is, if you hold fast to the word that I gospeled to you, unless you have given allegiance in vain. (1 Cor. 15:1-2)

So what does this resolve?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

One of the things that has fractured Christianity into so many competing traditions is that the New Testament seems to require different things for salvation depending on which passage you’re reading. And different traditions have built entire systems on one or two of those passages while quietly setting the others aside.

John 3:16 emphasizes belief, while Acts 2:38 calls for repentance and baptism. In Luke 13:3, Jesus warns that unless you repent, you will all likewise perish, and in Romans 10:9, Paul teaches that one must confess with the mouth and believe in the heart. Furthermore, Matthew 24:13 speaks of enduring to the end in order to be saved, whereas James 2:24 states that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

Pistis as allegiance holds all of it together. Because what does genuine allegiance to a king actually include?

It obviously includes believing he is who he claims to be. But it also includes turning from your former life, that’s repentance. It includes public declaration of whose side you’re on, that’s confession. It includes following his specific instructions, one of which is baptism. It includes doing what he says, not just nodding along, that’s the works passages. And it includes staying loyal over time, that’s endurance.

None of these are separate requirements bolted onto faith. They are all aspects of allegiance to a king.

And this also makes sense of something that has puzzled interpreters for centuries. If works are the enemy of faith, why does James say flatly in James 2:24, “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone”?

Now, Paul does contrast faith and works in many places, and he is right to do so. You cannot earn your way into the kingdom. You cannot bring circumcision, or moral achievement to that first moment and use it to purchase access to God.

When Paul says we are saved by pistis and not by works, he means the door is open to anyone who will simply bend the knee to the new king. You don’t have to qualify first. You don’t have to clean yourself up first. Allegiance is the only entry requirement.

But allegiance is not nothing. It is not a private feeling you have once and then move on. A subject who swears loyalty to his king and then ignores everything the king says hasn’t given allegiance. This is exactly what James is saying when he says:

But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? (James 2:18-20)

James isn’t contradicting Paul. He is describing what real allegiance looks like from the outside: it produces works, it endures, it obeys. Pistis without works isn’t a weak allegiance. It isn’t allegiance at all.

So the tension that has puzzled interpreters for centuries dissolves. Works cannot get you in, only allegiance can do that. But once you are in, allegiance requires works. The same word covers both realities, because that is what loyalty to a king has always meant.

So what does this actually look like in practice?

If you genuinely have pistis, if you have truly bent the knee to Jesus as your king, then the natural, obvious next move is to go find out what he wants.

And here’s where the four Gospels come back in, because this is exactly what they’re for. The Sermon on the Mount isn’t a list of impossible demands designed to show you how badly you need grace.

It’s the law of the king. It’s what life in his kingdom looks like. This is what all the earliest Christians believed.

When Jesus says love your enemies, turn the other cheek, don’t lust, forgive, he means it. He’s not winking at you. He’s telling you what he wants from his subjects. And if he’s your king, you go and do it. Not by white-knuckling it in your own strength, but through the Holy Spirit he gives you when you come to him.

As Jesus himself said, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do the things that I say? The word Lord means master. If he’s your master, you do what he says.

Now none of this means sinless perfection. Sanctification is a process. The picture is not that you bend the knee and immediately get everything right. The picture is that the king points to the next thing, and you work on it, and there is grace on the road while you do.

Salvation is not a single moment but a journey. God is continuously at work in the believer, progressively transforming them from the inside out. The new birth is the beginning, not the destination. What follows is a life of growth, of the Holy Spirit working in you, of being conformed increasingly to the image of the king you’ve submitted to. That is the normal Christian life as the New Testament describes it.

And here’s the good news that gets missed when people hear this framework for the first time: you have an advocate. First John 2 says:

“if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

An advocate. Someone pleading your case before the Father. Not because you’ve earned it, but because you belong to him.

But repentance comes before the refreshing, not after. Acts 3:19, repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.

You must repent. People wait to feel ready. They want the desire to go away before they commit to stopping. But that’s backwards. You draw the line first. You give your allegiance, which includes the relinquishing of the sin that has you in bondage. And then the power to walk in the new direction is given. You can’t ask the king to take away the desire for something you haven’t surrendered to him yet.

So here is the gospel, and here is the proper response to it.

Jesus is the King of the Universe. He was promised, he came, he lived, he died for your sins, he was raised, and he was installed on the throne. He is reigning right now. And every knee will soon bow to him. The only question is whether yours bows now, willingly, or later, at the judgment.

The proper response to that message is allegiance to this king.

What that looks like, practically and concretely, is that you go read the Gospels. You find out what he says. You do it. Not by your own power, but through the Holy Spirit he gives you the moment he cleanses you with his blood and forgives every previous sin, every failure, everything, completely forgotten.

And if you once knew this and walked away from it, if you’re in the pigsty right now, pointing to some moment in the past as your assurance while your life tells a different story, he’s got his hand out to you too. As long as you have breath in your lungs, that hand is there, but you don’t get unlimited chances. Come back now. Not to a prayer, not to a decision. Come back to the king.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vineabiders.substack.com

There’s a kind of honesty that sounds cruel at first but turns out to be exactly what people need to hear.

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton reportedly placed an advertisement in a London newspaper for his Antarctic expedition. The ad read something like this: Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. Whether the ad is apocryphal or not, the story endures because it captures something true about human nature — the brutal honesty of it didn’t drive people away. It drew them in. Something in us responds to a call that tells the truth about the cost, because when the stakes are real, the reward is real too.

I want to make a similar case here. What I’m about to say might sound harsh — but I think it’s exactly what people need to hear. Life contains real tests. Your choices have real, eternal consequences. The suffering you’re going through right now is the very place where that test is being administered. And the outcome of that test is not just about whether you become a better person or whether God uses your pain for some greater good down the road. The outcome could be about heaven or hell.

I genuinely believe that hard truth is actually more encouraging and steadying for the person lying in a hospital bed than anything they’ll typically hear from a Christian trying to explain their suffering. Not because it’s easy — it isn’t. But because it’s real. And people who are suffering don’t need comfortable half-answers. They need to know that what they’re going through actually matters, that there is a real enemy trying to use their pain against them, and that there is a real and eternal reward waiting for those who endure faithfully even unto death.

But we need to build the case carefully. So let’s start at the beginning.

Everything Downstream of One Conviction

Before we get to suffering, we have to talk about the theological premise that makes all of this necessary.

If once saved, always saved (OSAS) is true, then nothing in this post matters much. Whatever you do, however you behave in your suffering, the end is secured. But if OSAS isn’t true — if free will really matters and your choices genuinely have eternal consequences — then everything changes.

Free will, when you actually believe in it, is a serious thing. It’s much more comfortable to believe it’s all going to work out no matter what you do. But if your choices really matter, then the question of what your suffering means stops being merely pastoral or philosophical. It becomes urgent. It becomes a matter of life and death.

What the Bible Actually Says About Testing

There are not one or two isolated verses about testing in the Bible. There is a consistent, pervasive, Old Testament-to-New Testament pattern of God explicitly testing people to see what they will do.

The Old Testament Pattern

Genesis 22:11–12 — When Abraham raised the knife over his son and the angel of the Lord stopped him, God’s own explanation for what had just happened was this:

“Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”

Deuteronomy 8:2 — Moses, looking back on forty years in the wilderness, gives us the interpretive key for that entire season of Israel’s history:

“You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.”

The wilderness, in its totality, was a test. The explicit goal was to find out what was in their hearts — whether they would obey or not. And it’s worth pausing here to remember that many people failed that test catastrophically. The earth swallowed some of them. Others were destroyed. This was not a test with automatic grace for failure. The consequences were real.

Deuteronomy 13:3 — On false prophets who might arise and perform signs:

“You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Judges 3:4 — On the pagan nations left in Canaan after the conquest:

“They were for testing Israel, to find out if they would obey the commandments of the LORD, which He had commanded their fathers through Moses.”

God left nations there — nations that would tempt Israel toward idolatry, toward compromise, toward sin — on purpose, as a test, to see what Israel would do. The surrounding culture is not an obstacle to the test. The surrounding culture is the test.

Exodus 16:4 — Even the manna in the wilderness was a test:

“Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether or not they will walk in My instruction.’”

2 Chronicles 32:31 — Of King Hezekiah:

“Even in the matter of the envoys of the rulers of Babylon, who sent to him to inquire of the wonder that had happened in the land, God left him alone only to test him, that He might know all that was in his heart.”

Jeremiah 17:10 — A summary statement from God Himself:

“I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.”

The Book of Job: The Test Laid Bare

Job is the Old Testament’s most transparent window into why testing happens and what is actually at stake. We get to see the backstage conversation that usually remains hidden.

Here is Job: blameless, upright, fearing God, turning away from evil. And Satan comes before the Lord with a charge. The charge is not that Job is a sinner. The charge is that Job’s righteousness is bought — that he serves God only because God blesses him. Take away the blessing, Satan says, and Job will curse God to his face.

What is at stake in the book of Job? Exactly one thing: whether Job will sin. That’s it. Everything — the loss of his children, his wealth, his health, the horrific suffering of his body — is all organized around that single question. Will he sin? Will he curse God?

And the answer, at the end, is: “In all this, Job did not sin.”

Job passes. And I believe one of the reasons he passes — is that what God initially says about him is true, he has a genuine fear of God. He knows, in some form, that sin has real consequences in the afterlife. m

The New Testament Raises the Stakes

The New Testament picks up this testing theme and sharpens it.line.

James 1:12:

“Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”

This is an if-then statement with eternity on both sides. Once he has been approved — that approval is not guaranteed. The blessing is conditional on perseverance. The crown of life is what’s at stake.

Luke 8:13 — Jesus himself, explaining the Parable of the Sower:

“Those on the rocky soil are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no firm root; they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away.”

Jesus is not describing unbelievers who never responded to the gospel. He is describing people who heard, who received the word with joy, who believed. These are people who had a genuine response to the message of the kingdom — and then, in time of temptation, fell away.

1 Thessalonians 3:4–5 — Paul writing to the Thessalonians about why he sent Timothy to check on them:

“For indeed when we were with you, we kept telling you in advance that we were going to suffer affliction… For this reason, when I could endure it no longer, I also sent to find out about your faith, for fear that the tempter might have tempted you, and our labor would be in vain.”

This passage is a remarkable window into how Paul actually thought about suffering and temptation. Notice what he was afraid of. Not that the Thessalonians had become discouraged. Not that they had lost hope or grown weary. He was afraid that the tempter had gotten to them — that Satan had used their suffering as an opportunity, and that their faith had not survived it. And notice what that would have meant: Paul’s labor would have been in vain. Not diminished. Not partially wasted. Vain.

Revelation 2:10:

“Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, so that you will be tested, and you will have tribulation for ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.”

These are Christians. They are going to suffer. They are going to be tested. And the instruction is: be faithful until death. The implication of that instruction is clear — faithfulness is required, and its absence has consequences. The crown of life is not promised to those who simply endure passively. It is promised to those who are faithful in the endurance.

The Two Typical Explanations Of Suffering — And What They Miss

When Christians suffer, there are typically two explanations offered, both of them biblical, both of them true, and both of them incomplete.

The first is Romans 8:28 — God is going to work this together for good. Something redemptive will come out of this. You don’t know what He’s doing, but He’s doing something. He’s going to use your cancer, your loss, your crisis, to accomplish something good in this world.

The second is the refining explanation — suffering is the fire that purifies gold. It is producing something in you. Romans 5:3–4:

“We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope.”

Both of these are real. Both are biblical. I’m not dismissing either of them.

But here is the problem: both of them are almost entirely this-life-focused. God is going to use this for good — for someone, somewhere, in this world. Or: this is going to make you a better, more complete person in this life. The application is horizontal.

But we need the third explanation — not to replace the other two, but to complete them. And it is this: this suffering is often a test of whether you will sin in the midst of that suffering or not, and the outcome of that test has eternal consequences.

What Is Actually Being Tested

Here is something that almost nobody in modern Christianity is talking about: when you are suffering, you are often being tempted to sin.

Satan’s weapon of choice is suffering, because suffering is where we are most vulnerable — when everything is taken away, when the body is in pain, when the losses mount and the isolation deepens, that is when the temptations hit hardest.

The first and most obvious temptation is bitterness toward God. It usually doesn't start with outright cursing — it starts with a question. Why is He doing this to me? What did I do to deserve this? Where is God in all of this? That spiral, if you follow it long enough, ends in the same place Job's wife ended up: cursing the God who allowed the suffering. Satan will push on this one with everything he has, because it's his easiest win.

But when that doesn’t work, he changes tactics. He goes after unforgiveness. In any prolonged suffering event — a long illness, a financial collapse, a broken relationship — there are going to be micro-betrayals. Doctors who make mistakes. Friends who don’t show up. Family members who say the wrong thing. People who were supposed to help and didn’t. And Satan is going to use every single one of those as a wedge.

Unforgiveness is not a minor matter in the New Testament. Jesus says it plainly, more than once, if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you.

Satan will also come after you with sensuality, with anger, with the temptation to numb the pain in ways that lead to death. He is prowling around looking for whom he may devour, and suffering is his hunting ground.

The Hard Truth Is the Encouraging Truth

Now I want to come back to where we started. Because everything I’ve said so far might sound grim. Life is a test. Suffering is a temptation mechanism. Your choices matter. Hell is on the line.

That sounds like bad news. But I want to argue that it is, in a profound and perhaps surprising way, the most encouraging thing a person in the midst of suffering can hear.

The person who is dying of cancer, who has been told by everyone around them that God is going to work this together for good, who has been reassured that God loves them and has a plan — that person is still in pain. And the reassurance, as well-intentioned as it is, doesn’t reach them in the place where they most need to be reached. Because the suffering is not mostly about God’s plan for the world. The suffering is happening to them, now, in their body, in their life, today.

But now tell that person the other thing. Tell them: what you do in this suffering matters. Your soul is on the line. Satan is coming for you right now, and he wants you to curse God, to hold on to unforgiveness, to give up. And if you fight him — if you endure faithfully — you will receive the crown of life. And not just the crown of life in some abstract doctrinal sense, but the real thing: an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, something no eye has seen and no ear has heard.

Paul says it plainly in 2 Corinthians 4:17:

“For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

The Narrow Road and the Shape of This Age

Let me say something about the bigger picture, because the testing framework isn’t just about individual suffering events. It’s about what this age — this whole period of human history — actually is.

The earth, as originally intended, was not a test, or at least not in the way it is now.

Something was disrupted when the enemy entered the picture and death entered the world through sin. What we are living in now — this broken, painful, morally charged existence — is not Plan A. It is the working out of a cosmic disruption, and God is, as He always does, working even that together for good.

And the good He is working toward is this: He is choosing people. He is identifying, out of the whole of humanity, those who will pass through the narrow gate. Very few find it. Jesus is explicit about this:

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13–14)

This is a choosing ground. That’s what this age is. The ones who pass through — who endure faithfully, who keep their allegiance to King Jesus — they are not just kingdom citizens. They are heirs. Paul says it: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. That is a designation beyond what any of us can fully comprehend.

What comes next — what these heirs are being prepared for — is something about which the Bible says: “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)

Think about what eternity actually means. In eight hundred million years — in ten trillion years — the people who passed through this narrow road, who endured faithfully in this brief and brutal training ground, will still be alive, still be who they are, still be the ones who endured. This age — this whole age — will be looked back on as the early days.

The mythical time when a cosmic rebellion happened and God, rather than simply undoing it, used it to call out a people for Himself. And not just any people — heirs. Sons and daughters. Those who passed through something the angels never faced: a free will gauntlet, a world filled with suffering and temptation and real consequences.

There is reason to think that what comes out of this age is something greater than what existed before it — beings who are not merely created righteous, but proven righteous. Who chose God when they didn't have to. That may be precisely why Paul says we will judge angels.

What Faithfully Enduring Through Suffering Actually Looks Like

I want to be specific about what it means to endure faithfully, because it is not passive. It is not gritting your teeth and surviving. It is active warfare.

When Satan comes at you and tells you to hate the person who wronged you: you love them instead. You forgive them. Not because it feels good — it won’t — but because you know what is at stake. When Satan comes at you and tells you to start drinking again, to give in to whatever the flesh is drawn toward in the darkness: you resist him. James 4:7: “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” That promise is real, and it is for people who are fighting, not coasting.

The Gospel of the King and the Only Response That Makes Sense

All of this leads back to the gospel — the actual gospel, not the reduced version.

The gospel is not primarily “Jesus died so your sins are forgiven.” That is part of it. But the full announcement is: Jesus Christ is the King of the universe. He has been raised from the dead and enthroned. He reigns. And the appropriate response to that announcement is allegiance — bending the knee, pledging your loyalty to him as King.

And if he is your King, then the next thing you do is ask what he wants. You open Matthew. You read the Sermon on the Mount. You hear what the King says about how to live, and you do it, because he is your King and that is what allegiance means.

The end of the Sermon on the Mount says it plainly:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell — and great was its fall.” (Matthew 7:24–27)

The floods are coming. The winds are coming. Suffering is coming. And the only question is whether you’ve built on the rock of obedience to the King or the sand of believing that it doesn’t really matter what you do.

It matters. It matters enormously. And the good news — the genuinely good news — is that you are not alone in the fight. The King knows you are being tested. He has passed through his own test and emerged victorious. He has sent his Spirit as a deposit and a help. He does not want you to perish. He is testing you because he loves you and because he is choosing you, and his deepest desire is that you pass.

A Word on Failing Tests — and God’s Patience

I want to make sure I’m not being misunderstood here, because this is important.

When I say that these tests are pass-fail and that hell is on the line, I am not saying that if you fail a test, that’s it — you’re done, you’re going to hell. That is not how this usually works.

God does not want anyone to perish. That isn’t a platitude — it’s a theological conviction that shapes everything about how He deals with us. He is patient. He is long-suffering. And because of that, He keeps sending tests. He keeps giving opportunities. He is, in a very real sense, rooting for you to pass.

Think about Israel in the wilderness. They failed constantly. They failed spectacularly. And God kept working with them, kept pursuing them, kept offering another chance. The tests didn’t stop after the first failure, or the fifth, or the fiftieth.

But here’s the other side of that: there are only so many years in your life. There are only so many opportunities. A life is a finite thing, and eventually the tests stop

This is why the urgency matters. Not because one failure condemns you, but because patterns form, and habits harden, and the person who keeps failing the same test — who keeps choosing sin when the pressure comes — is moving in a direction. And that direction has a destination. The good news is that you can change direction at any point. The door is open. But it will not be open forever.

So if you have been failing your tests — if suffering has made you bitter, if you have been holding onto unforgiveness, if you have been running toward sin instead of away from it — this is not a eulogy. This is a warning with an invitation attached. God is still testing you because He still wants you to pass. The fact that you are still here, still reading this, is itself evidence of His patience.

Don’t waste it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vineabiders.substack.com

A deep dive into the gospel, allegiance, and why understanding one Greek word resolves some of the New Testament’s most perplexing tensions.

Most of us think we know what faith is. You believe something. Maybe you trust it. It happens in your head, it’s invisible, and according to a lot of modern Christianity, that’s basically the whole thing — have the right belief in the right moment, and you’re in. But what if the word we translate as “faith” in the New Testament carries a far richer, more demanding, and ultimately more liberating meaning than that?

This post is inspired by two scholars who have done substantial work on this question: Matthew Bates, author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone and Gospel Allegiance, and Scot McKnight, author of The King Jesus Gospel. Their thesis — and I think it’s compelling — is that we’ve fundamentally misunderstood both what the gospel is and what faith means. And getting both of those things wrong has enormous consequences for how we live as Christians.

First Things First: What Is the Gospel?

Before we can talk about faith as a response to the gospel, we have to be clear on what the gospel actually is. Because there’s a good chance your picture of it is incomplete.

Both Bates and McKnight argue — and I think the early church would agree — that the gospel is the objective facts concerning the entire career of Jesus as Messiah. That includes:

* His pre-existence (he was with God in the beginning)

* His incarnation

* His death for sins

* His burial

* His resurrection

* His post-resurrection appearances

* His enthronement at the right hand of the Father

* The sending of the Holy Spirit

* His future return

This is why the four books are called Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — the whole story matters. Paul lays this out explicitly in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8:

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.”

And in Romans 1:1-4:

“Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The gospel, in this framing, is the story of how Jesus became the Christ — the Anointed One, the Messiah, the King. If you think about it from the perspective of a first-century Jew, the whole point was convincing them that this man, Jesus, is the promised King. That’s why Matthew’s Gospel opens with a genealogy tracing Jesus back to David. It’s legal evidence for the throne. You’re not just announcing a theology — you’re announcing a coronation.

Yes, “he died for our sins” is in there. But notice what Paul does and doesn’t say in 1 Corinthians 15. He says Jesus died for our sins. He does not explain the mechanism of how that death accomplishes forgiveness — no atonement theory is named. What he does do is spend considerable time establishing the resurrection, the appearances, and the reality of the risen Christ. The death is one part of a larger royal story. You could say it’s roughly one-tenth of the total picture.

The gospel, then, is everything that convinces you that Jesus is the rightful King of the Universe — the King of Kings and Lord of Lords to whom all power and authority in heaven and earth have been given.

So What Does It Mean to Have “Faith” in That King?

Here’s where things get really interesting — and where a single Greek word becomes a kind of Rosetta Stone for the entire New Testament.

The Greek word translated as “faith” or “believe” throughout the New Testament is πίστις (pistis). Its verbal form is πιστεύω (pisteuo). In modern English, we typically render these as “believe” or “trust” — mental states, things that happen inside your head. You assent to a proposition. You trust that something is true. That’s it.

But Matthew Bates argues — with considerable historical and linguistic evidence — that in its first-century context, especially when used in relation to kings and kingdoms, pistis carried a much richer meaning: faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, allegiance. Not a one-time mental event, but an active, ongoing state of being a faithful subject.

Bates puts it this way: pistis is better understood not as “faith” in the passive, intellectual sense, but as allegiance — the kind of sworn loyalty a subject owes to a king.

The Evidence: Josephus and the Language of Kings

One of the most illuminating pieces of evidence Bates presents comes from the Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote in Greek roughly contemporaneously with the New Testament authors. In his autobiography, Josephus recounts a moment where he commands a rebel leader to “repent and believe in me” — using the very same Greek root (pistis).

The context makes clear that Josephus is not asking for a religious conversion or a change of mental propositions. He is commanding the rebel to turn away from his current course of action and become a loyal, obedient subject of Josephus as his military commander. The “belief” in question was a public declaration of loyalty expressed through obedience. That is what pistis meant in the real-world context of rulers and subjects.

When a king announced his reign, the required pistis from his subjects wasn’t merely believing that he was king. It was pledging allegiance to him and demonstrating that allegiance through obedience.

Bates also points to passages like Romans 1:5 and Romans 16:26, which use the phrase “the obedience of faith” (hypakoē pisteōs). This isn’t faith plus obedience as two separate things. It’s the obedience that flows from allegiance — the obedience that is inherent to what faithfulness means.

How This Resolves the New Testament’s “Contradictions”

This is the part I find most exciting, because it resolves what looks like a hopeless tangle of competing salvation requirements in the New Testament. Let me walk through it.

The “free grace” camp points to John 3:16:

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

And they say: all you have to do is believe. One mental act. Done.

But then the Church of Christ tradition points to Acts 2:38:

“Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’”

And they say: you must be baptized. It’s right there.

And then there’s Luke 13:3, where Jesus says:

“I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

So now we need repentance.

And Romans 10:9:

“that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

So now we need public confession too.

And Matthew 24:13:

“But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.”

Endurance to the end.

And James 2:24:

“You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.”

Works. Explicitly not faith alone.

And Romans 2:13:

“for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.”

Doers, not hearers.

So which is it? Believe? Repent? Be baptized? Confess publicly? Endure to the end? Do works?

The answer is: all of them, and they’re all the same thing.

When you understand pistis as allegiance, all of these passages snap into a unified picture. Bending the knee to Jesus as King — genuinely, not just intellectually — necessarily implies:

* Repentance (metanoia — literally “a change of mind/direction”): You turn 180 degrees away from your previous lord (yourself, sin, the world) and toward Jesus as your Lord. Repentance toward God simply means you’ve decided that He is now your King.

* Baptism: If you’ve just declared Jesus your Lord and he says “get baptized,” you get baptized. That’s what allegiance means. You do what the king says.

* Public confession: Pledging allegiance to a king was always a public act. You don’t whisper it privately. You declare it.

* Endurance: Allegiance is not a one-time event. A knight who pledged fealty to a king and then switched sides two years later wasn’t a faithful subject — he was a traitor. Enduring to the end is what faithfulness looks like over a lifetime.

* Works: If you call someone your Lord but never do anything he says, you don’t actually think he’s your Lord. Jesus makes this point with devastating clarity in Luke 6:46:

“Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”

James is making the exact same point: works aren’t an addition to faith; they’re the evidence of it. Faith without works is dead because faithfulness without action isn’t faithfulness at all.

The Luther Problem

At this point, you might be wondering: why haven’t we always understood it this way? The answer involves one towering historical figure: Martin Luther.

Luther’s great contribution to Western Christianity — the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide) — was forged in polemical reaction to a corrupt Catholic system of indulgences and purchased merit. And in many ways, he was right to push back on that system. But in doing so, he overcorrected in a way that has shaped Protestant Christianity to this day.

Luther essentially taught that when Jesus gave his commands — love your enemies, sell what you have, keep my commandments — he was using them to show us how impossible obedience is, so that we’d give up on works altogether and rest in grace alone. It’s as if Jesus was winking at us when he said “do this” — what he really meant was “you can’t do this, so stop trying.”

Luther went so far as to say that even teaching that Jesus’s commandments need to be obeyed is itself a sin. His theology systematically disarmed the church from taking Jesus’s own words seriously as instructions for living.

This is not a small thing. If the King issues commands, and you tell people the King was winking when he gave them, you’ve fundamentally undermined the entire concept of allegiance. You’ve made the kingdom a fiction.

The deeper issue is free will. Luther followed Augustine (as an Augustinian monk), and Augustine taught that human beings don’t have genuine free will — a position that led directly to the doctrines of total depravity and unconditional election as systematized later by Calvin. If you don’t have free will, you can’t bend the knee on your own. God has to save you first, and then you can have faith. Salvation precedes faith, rather than faith being the moment of allegiance that initiates salvation.

This is why Calvinist and Reformed traditions tend to react so strongly against the allegiance framework: it requires free will. It requires that you can actually hear the gospel, decide that Jesus is Lord, and give your allegiance to him. The Reformed tradition says that’s structurally impossible without prior regeneration.

It’s also why “once saved, always saved” (or perseverance of the saints in its more technical form) feels necessary in that framework. If your salvation was entirely God’s unilateral act, it can’t be undone. But if salvation is covenantal allegiance — if it’s a real relationship involving real loyalty — then the possibility of breaking that covenant, of ceasing to be faithful, is built in.

And the New Testament is absolutely full of that possibility. You can be cut off (Romans 11:22). You can be spit out (Revelation 3:16). You can begin to grow and then wither (the parable of the soils in Matthew 13). You can be a branch that fails to abide and is gathered and burned (John 15:6). Jesus says in John 15:1-6:

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit... If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.”

A Personal Note: Scales Falling from Eyes

This framework didn’t come to me through intellectual argument. It came through a crisis.

I had what I genuinely believe was a real salvation experience years ago. Then I learned about “once saved, always saved,” and — I won’t sugarcoat this — I went back to my sins for about ten years. I believed I was safe because I believed I had been saved, and I believed that couldn’t be undone. I had a theological permission slip for continuing in the very thing I needed to be freed from.

What broke the cycle wasn’t a Bible study or a debate about OSAS. It was an overwhelming conviction — I believe from the Holy Spirit — that I needed to stop drinking alcohol or I was going to hell. Not “it might not be ideal.” Not “consider whether this aligns with your values.” I was going to hell. And I couldn’t shake it. So I quit. For good.

And the morning after I did, I had the same experience I remembered from my original conversion — that same freedom, that same supernatural change of heart. It was like waking up.

My wife Connie had the same experience. We’ve talked about it. It was as if we both had scales over our eyes — we knew all the passages about losing salvation, we’d read them dozens of times, but somehow couldn’t see them. And then, suddenly, we could. Not because someone showed them to us for the first time. They were already there. The scales just fell.

I believe that’s what spiritual blindness looks like. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:4:

“in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

I think one of the ways we keep ourselves blind is by refusing to repent, because we know — somewhere deep down — that genuine allegiance to Jesus would require giving up the thing we love more than him. And so we find a theology that makes that unnecessary.

What Repentance Actually Does

This connects to one of the most practically important things I want to say: repentance comes before the refreshing.

Acts 3:19 puts it plainly:

“Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”

The sequence matters. The freedom from sinful desire — the supernatural change of appetite that people call sanctification — does not come and then enable repentance. It comes after repentance. You turn first, and then the power to walk in the new direction is given.

This is crucial because a lot of people are waiting to feel ready to repent before they repent. They want the desire to sin to lessen before they commit to stopping. But it works the other way around. You commit to stopping — you draw the line — and then the burden lifts.

Start with the biggest one. Not the minor sins, not the gray areas. Start with the sin that has its hooks in you so deeply that you’d almost be willing to go to hell for it. That’s the one the allegiance decision actually costs you. And that’s the one that, when you give it up, opens the door.

Jesus says in Luke 9:62:

“No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Don’t start unless you’re willing to go all the way on that one. But when you do — when you make that decision with your whole will — you will find, as I did, that it’s not the burden people think it is.

Assurance Without OSAS

One thing I want to address directly: if this framework is true, does it mean you can never have assurance of salvation? Are you always white-knuckling it, terrified you might fall?

No. And this is important.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 13:5:

“Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you — unless indeed you fail the test?”

Assurance comes not from a one-time event in the past — “I said a prayer in 1997” — but from being able to look at your present life and honestly say: yes, I am in the faith. The Holy Spirit is here. I am on the narrow road. I am His subject. I am doing what He says. There is grace for my failures, there is ongoing work to be done, but I am genuinely His.

That kind of assurance is actually more secure, not less. It doesn’t depend on correctly remembering a prayer. It depends on a living relationship with a living King.

David Bercot tells a story that I find helpful. When he was in college, he got a question right on a test but was marked wrong. He went to the professor, who admitted the answer key was wrong — but said he wasn’t going to change the grade because it would require changing everyone else’s too. Bercot protested. The professor looked at him and said: “Don’t sweat it, Bercot. You’re going to pass the class.”

That’s kind of how sanctification works. I’m not going to get every answer right. There are sins I’m still working on, areas where I’m not yet where I need to be. But I can examine myself and know: I’m in the faith. I’m on the road. And there is plenty of grace on this road for those who are genuinely walking it.

The King doesn’t present 50 failing grades all at once. He tends to point to the next big thing when you’re ready for it. That’s what sanctification looks like — not perfection, but progress under a patient King who is actually invested in your growth.

The Bottom Line

The gospel is the announcement that Jesus is the King of the Universe — the Messiah, the risen Lord, to whom all power and authority in heaven and earth have been given, and who is coming to judge the world.

Faith — pistis — is the appropriate response to that announcement: allegiance. Bending the knee. Agreeing that he is your King and that what he says goes. Not just once, not just in your head, but as an ongoing state of faithful obedience.

Repentance is what that looks like at the moment of entry — a 180-degree reorientation of your life toward a new Lord.

Baptism, confession, endurance, and works are all simply what genuine allegiance looks like from different angles.

And the gospel, understood this way, is not a burden. It’s the most liberating announcement in the history of the world: the King of Kings is standing with his arm outstretched, asking if you’ll follow him. Not just acknowledge him. Follow him. And he promises — through his blood, through the gift of his Spirit — to actually change you from the inside out so that you can.

As long as you have breath, that offer is open.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vineabiders.substack.com