No. 26. >> Something tells me that Gospel Reductionism and disregard for the third use of the law are factors in all of this. Can you help me understand? Am I on the right track? And if I am on the right track, how do I avoid having my listeners slip into the doctrine of Trent? >>DR. JOEL D. BIERMANN: I think you're exactly on the right track here, Eric. And you're right to suspect that there's a little Gospel Reductionism going on. Or as its more fully called law Gospel Reductionism. The idea that all that matters is we kill people with the law. Make them alive with the Gospel. And now we're done with the law. Now let's just live in the Gospel. And that notion really drives a lot of the kind of disregard for rules and regulations and I would argue a diminution of marriage. Because marriage is kind of a law. And divorce law. So that's law stuff. We're Christian now. We're living in the Gospel. Who needs that stuff? And if we try to minimize the law and sort of advance the Gospel, we end up disregarding the importance of these things. So that's clearly going on here. So the antinomianism, the Gospel Reductionism, I believe is clearly fueling a lot of this stuff -- well, let's not get hung up on legalities or law stuff. That's very legalistic. You'll even hear that charge: You're being very legalistic. And we're in the Gospel now. And that's nothing more than a disregard for God's will for his creation. And I think that is clearly one of the issues going on. So you're very perceptive to pick up on that. Now, how do we avoid sliding into Trent or the doctrine of Rome, I think very easily by keeping our distinction clear. We have a proclamation of the Gospel for the sake of our standing before God. And the Gospel is everything when it comes to our relationship with God. But when it comes to our responsibilities in this world, the left hand sort of stuff, the law is still very much in play. And it's God's law. And it very much does direct how we do things. And we can't kind of wave the flag of the Gospel as an excuse for disregarding God's will when it comes to my life in this world. That's simply inexcusable. It's not being legalistic to uphold the law in the left hand realm. It is legalistic when you believe that somehow your performance of the law gets you in good with God or earns your salvation. That's legalism. And it's also legalism when you become so hung up on the law that you is start putting burdens on people beyond what God wants to put on them. Or start putting up more laws around things than God does. But to be faithful to what God has established, in a marriage there's no question about what God has established, that's simply being faithful to what God has given us to do. And you can do that at the same time as promoting the Gospel.