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Post by Admin on Jul 31, 2023 9:31:14 GMT -5
Hugh Binning on Romans 8:6;
Verse 6—For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace
It is true, this time is short, and so short, that scarce can similitudes or comparisons be had to shadow it out unto us. It is a dream, a moment, a vapour, a flood, a flower, and whatsoever can be more fading or perishing; and therefore it is not in itself very considerable. Yet in another respect it is of all things the most precious, and worthy of the deepest attention and most serious consideration; and that is, because it is linked unto eternity; there is an indissolvable knot between them, that no power or art can break or loose. The beginning of eternity is continually united to the end of time; and you know all the infinite extension of eternity is uniform, it admits of no change in it from better to worse, or worse to better; and therefore the beginning of our eternity, whether it be happiness or misery, is but one perpetuated and eternized moment, so to speak.
Seeing then, we are in the body, and sent unto the world for this end, that we may pass through into an unchangeable eternal estate; truly, of all things it is most concerning and weighty, what way we choose to this journey's end: seeing the time is short, in which we have to walk, and it is uncertain too, we ought, as the apostle Peter speaks, to give all diligence: as long as the day remains, we should drive the harder, lest that eternal night overtake us. The shortness and uncertainty of time should constrain us to take the present opportunity, and not to let it slip over as we do. Seeing it is not at all in our hand, either what is past, or what is to come,
—the one cannot be recalled, the other is not in our power, to call and bring forward,
— therefore the present moment that God hath given us should be catched hold on, and redeemed, as the apostle speaks, Eph. 5:16. We should buy it at the dearest rate of pains and expenses, from all those vain, impertinent, and trifling diversions, that take it up, that we may employ it as it becomes, suitable to eternity that is posting on. And then, as the shortness of it makes it the more precious and considerable, in regard of the end of it,
—eternity; as the scantiness of a thing increases the rate of it, so that same consideration should make all worldly things, that are confined either in their being or use, within it, to be inconsiderable, as Paul, 1 Cor. 7:29, 30, 31, shews, seeing the time is short, it remaineth, that we should rejoice, as not rejoicing; weep, as not weeping; buy, as if we possessed not; use the world, as not abusing it. Seeing all its worth is to be esteemed from the end of it,
—eternity never ending; then certainly whatsoever in time doth not reach that end, and hath no Connexxion with it, we should give it but such entertainment, as a passing bird, that is pleasant to the eye, gets of a beholder, while it is in its flight. The shortness of the day should make us double our diligence, and put on the harder in our walk or race, that so we may come in time to our place of rest. And that same should make the passenger give an overly [i. e. superficial] and passing look to all things that are by the way, and which he must of necessity leave behind him. Seeing these things, then, are so important, let us draw our hearts together to consider what the Lord speaks to us in this word, for in it you have two ways and two ends, opposite and contrary ways and walks, and as contrary ends. The ways are, walking after the flesh, and walking after the Spirit; the end to which they lead are, death and life. We spoke something of the ways, and the wide difference that is between them,
—what excellency is in the one beyond the other. But truly it is hard to persuade you to leave off your accustomed ways and walks, because your inward sense, and the inclination of your hearts, is wholly perverted and corrupted by nature. You know the moving faculty is subordinate in its operations unto the knowing, feeling, and apprehending faculties. The locomotive power is given for a subsidiary and help to the apprehensive and appetitive powers, because things are convenient and disconvenient, good or evil, to the nature of the living creature, without it; and it could not by mere knowledge, or desire, or hatred of things, either come into possession of them, or eschew them.
Therefore God hath given them a faculty of moving themselves to the prosecution and attainment of any apprehended good, or to the eschewing and aversion of any conceived evil. Thus, when beasts savour or smell that food which is fit for them, their appetite stirs them up to motion after it, to obtain it. Now, I say, if this inward sense be corrupted, then things that are destructive will be conceived good, because they are suitable to that corrupt humour or quality that possesses the senses, and thus all the motion and walk will be disordered. The truth is, my beloved, our spirits and minds are infected with a poisonable humour. Fleshly passions and lusts are predominant naturally. And, as in them that are in a fever, their organs being distempered with a bitter unsavoury humour, the pleasantest things seem unsavoury, because not suitable to that predominant humour; even so it is with you by nature. That which puts all upon motion is out of course, since the first distemper of man. Your spirits and minds are fleshly and carnal. They have a strong and deep impression of all the lusts that are in the body, and are accordingly affected. And therefore you cannot fitly judge what is good or evil for you, but according to these, Isa. 5:20. You must call evil good, and good evil, bitter sweet, and sweet bitter, because you are already prepossessed thus. And therefore the ways of the flesh, those paths that lead to destruction, you cannot but look on them as pleasant, because they suit and please your corrupted sense or spirit. And so this disordered savour or smell of some fragrant perfume in the ways of the flesh, puts you upon walking in these ways; and being thus possessed and engaged, you cannot but stop your ears to all contrary persuasions. You think it against your sense and reason, to tell you that these are loathsome and unsavoury, and that the other ways of wisdom and spirit are pleasantness and peace. I say, you cannot believe this, till your hearts and spirits be purged, and your taste be pure and uncorrupted. It is certainly upon this ground, that our Saviour puts such characters upon the way to heaven and hell, to life and death. The one is strait and narrow, and few walk in it; the other broad and easy, and many walk in it, Matt. 7:13. Certainly, it is not the way in itself simply, that admits of such a motion,
—to speak properly, as the thing is. The way to life, by the guiding of the Spirit, is easiest, plainest, shortest, and broadest. It hath all the properties of a good way—none so pleasant and plain. How sweet and pleasant sights all the way! It is an alley of delight. The way of hicommandments
—it wants not accommodation in it to refresh the traveller. The most delightful company is here. The Father and the Son, who sought no other company from all eternity, but were abundantly satisfied and rejoiced in one another. This fellowship the Christian hath to solace himself with, and he is admitted to be partaker of that joy. There is nothing that doth disburden the soul so of care and anxiety, nothing doth rid a man of so many perplexities and troubles as this way. But the way of sin in itself is most laborious, most difficult. It hath infinite by-ways that it leads a man into, and he must turn and return, and run in a circle all the day, all his time, to satisfy the infinite lusts and insatiable desires of sin. Ohow painful and laborious is it to fulfil the lust of the flesh! How much service doth it impose! How serious attention! What perplexing cares and tormenting thoughts! How many sorrows and griefs are in every step of this way! Do you not perceive what drudges and slaves sin makes you! how much labour you have to satisfy your lusts! And you are always to begin, as near that which you seek in the end of your years, as in the beginning. How thorny, how miry is the way of covetousness! Are you not always out of one thorn into another, and cut asunder, or pierced through with many sorrows? 1 Tim. 6:10; Matt. 13:22. Is that a pleasant and easy way, I pray you, that makes all your sorrow and your travel grief, and suffers not your hearts to take rest in the night? Eccl. 2:22, 23. What pains of body! What plotting of mind! What labour and vexation of both must a sinner have as his constant attendants in this way! The way is intricate, deep, unpassable, that leads to that satisfaction you desire to your lusts. Your desires are impotent and impatient. The means to carry you on are weak and lame, no ways accommodated or fit for such a journey. And this puts you always, as it were, on the rack, tormented between the impatience of your lusts, and the impotency of means, and impossibility to fulfil them. Desires and disappointments, hopes and fears, divide your souls between them. Such is the way after the flesh,
—an endless labyrinth of woes and miseries, of pains and cares, ever while here. But these ways receive such names from the common opinion and apprehension of men, because of our flesh, which is predominant. The way after the flesh being suitable to it, though in itself infinitely more toilsome, seems easy and plain; but the way after the Spirit seems strait, narrow, toilsome, and laborious. Though there be infinitely more room in the way to life, because it leads to that immense universal good,
—it expatiates towards the all-fulness of God; yet to the flesh how narrow and strait is it, because it cannot admit of those inordinate lusts that have swelled so immeasurably towards narrow and scanty things! The true latitude of the way of the flesh is not great, for it is all inclosed within poor, lean, narrow, created objects. But because the imagination of men supplies what is wanting really, and fancies an infinite or boundless extent of goodness in these things; therefore the sinner walks easily, without straitening to his flesh,
—it is not pinched in this way of fleshly lusts. But alas! the spirit is wofully straitened, fettered, and imprisoned, though it be not sensibly found. What is the reason, then, that so many walk in the way to death, but because their flesh finds no straitening, no pressure in it? It is an easy way to their natures, because suitable to the corruption that is in them; therefore men walk on without consideration of what follows. It is like a descent, or going down a hill, and so easy to our flesh. On the other hand, the way to life, after the Spirit, is an ascent upward, and it is very difficult to our earthy and lumpish flesh. Our spirits, by communion with, and subjection to the flesh, are made of an earthly quality, near the element of the flesh, and so they bow naturally downward. But if once they were purified and purged, and unfettered by the Spirit of God, and restored to their native purity, they would more easily and willingly move upward, as you see the flame doth. And till this be done in you, we cannot expect that you would willingly and pleasantly walk in these pleasant walks after the Spirit. Your walk will never be free and unconstrained in the paths of godliness. You may, from some external motives and impulses, move upward for a season, in some particular duties of religion, as a stone cast up. But as that impression is not from an inward principle, so it will not be constant and durable, but you will fall down to your old bias in other things, and move quite contrary, when the external impression of fear or favour, of custom or education, or such like, wears out. But the true Christian hath a spirit within him
—the root of the matter in him. This carries him upward in the ways of obedience, after the motions and directions of God's Spirit. At the beginning, indeed, it is strait and uneasy to his flesh, but the difficulty is overcome, if once you begin well. The beginning, as you used to say, is the half of the whole. Truly, to be well entered, is half progress. Afterward the bulksome and burdensome lusts of the flesh are stript off, at least in a greater measure, and then the spirit moves easily and willingly. This walk becomes a recreation, that at first was a labour. Now delight and desire are as wings to mount the soul aloft. Now it is the good pleasure of the soul to walk to all well-pleasing. Indeed the way of this world is dirty and filthy; and therefore a Christian had need to watch continually, and to gird up his loins, that his thoughts and affections hang not down to the earth, else they will take up much filth, and cannot but clog and burden the spirit, and make it drive heavily and slowly, as Pharaoh did his chariots when the wheels were off. We had need to fly aloft above the ground, and not to come down too low near it, thinking withal to double out our journey, for we shall find, because of the remnants of flesh within us, that this world hath a magnetical attractive virtue to draw us down to it, if we be within the sphere of its activity. It is not good coming near fire with flax; we should endeavour to keep our hearts at much distance, and disengage them from our lower consolations. This world is like the pestiferous lake of Sodom, that kills all that flies over it, and makes them fall down into it. If we fly low upon the surface of it, we cannot think but that the spiritual life will be much extinguished. But to prevent this, we would take our flight straight upward after the Spirit, (for that is the proper motion of the more pure and spiritual part of this world), and give no rest, till we be out of the reach of that infection,
—till you be fully escaped the pollutions of the world. But if you cannot be persuaded to come off this way, that seems so pleasant to your flesh, that way which is the very course of the world, (for these are joined, Eph. 2:2.)
—then I beseech you, stand still, and consider whither it will lead. Do but stop a little, and bethink yourselves sadly and seriously, whither this will take you,
—where it shall end. And truly that is dreadful;
—the end of it is death,
—a never-ending death. I am sure, if you were walking by the way, and one came and told you gravely and seriously, that that way is full of dangerous pits, that there are many robbers in it, waiting to cut your throat, you would count the admonition worthy of so much notice, as to halt and consider what to do. But now, when the Lord himself, that deserves infinitely more respect and credit than men, gives you warning once and often, day after day repeats this admonition to you, sends out many ambassadors to call you off, makes this word to sound daily in your ears, Oh! why will you die? such ways lead down to the chambers of death and hell; to be carnally minded, in the issue is death, whatsoever you may promise to yourselves: I say, when he makes a voice to accompany us in all our walkings,
—This is not the way that leads to life; why do you not think it worthy of so much consideration, as once to stop and sist your progress, till you examine what will come of it? Are we so credulous to men, and shall not we believe God, who is truth itself, who affirms it so constantly, and obtests us so earnestly? Are we so wise and prudent in lesser things, and shall we be mad, self-willed, and refractory in the greatest things that concern us eternally? O unbelief is that which will condemn the world,
—the unbelief of this one thing, that the walking after, and minding of the flesh is mortal and deadly! Though all men confess with their tongues this to be a truth, yet it is not really believed. The deep inconsideration and slight apprehension of this truth makes men boldly to walk, and violently to run on to perdition. Did you indeed believe that eternal misery is before you at the end of this way, would you be so cruel to yourselves, as to walk in it for any allurement that is in it? Did you really believe that there is a precipice into utter darkness and everlasting death at the end of this alley, would the pleasure and sweetness of it be able to infatuate you, and besot you so far, as to lead you on into it, like an ox to the slaughter, and a fool to the correction of the stocks? It is strange indeed, though you neither will believe that death is the end of these things, nor yet can be persuaded that you do not believe it. There is a twofold delusion that possesses the hearts of men. One is, a dream and fancy of escaping death, though they live in sin; another is, a dream and fancy that they do believe that death is the wages of sin. We might wonder how they consist together, if we did not find it by so many experiences. Your way proves that you do not believe it, that death is the end of it; and then your words evidence that you do not believe that you are unbelievers of that. O how desperate is the wickedness, and how great is the deceitfulness of the heart! The false prophet that is in every man's bosom deceives him, that it may destroy him. As Satan is a liar and a murderer, and murders by lying, so the heart of man is a self-murderer and a self-destroyer, and that is done by lying and deceiving. There is some lie in every sin, but there is this gross, black, fundamental lie at the bottom of all sin,
—a conceit of immunity and freedom from death and hell; a strong imagination of escaping danger, even though such a way be chosen and walked in, as of its own nature inevitably leads to destruction. And there is something of this bloody murdering flattery even in the hearts of Christians; therefore this apostle gives us an antidote against it, and labours often to purge it out, by stirring up that knowledge they have received: "Know you not, that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?" 1 Cor. 6:9. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for what a man soweth, that he shall reap. He that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption," &c. Gal. 6:7, 8. O that you might listen to this word, to this watchword given you, and stop your course, at least for a season, to think what shall be the latter end. Know you not, that such shall not inherit the kingdom? Know you not, that the way to heaven lies upward? Know you not that your way lies downward towards the flesh and the earth? Are you so far demented, as to think to come to heaven by walking just downward in the lusts of the flesh? Truly this is the strongest and strangest enchantment that can be, that you think to sow one thing and reap another thing; to sow darkness, and reap light; to sow corruption, and reap incorruption. Is that possible in nature, to sow nettle-seed, and think to reap barley or wheat? Be not deceived. O that you would undeceive your poor deluded souls, and know that it is as natural for death and hell to grow out of sin, and walking after the flesh, as it is for every seed to yield its own fruit and herb! Do you then think to dissolve the course and order of nature? Truly the flesh is mortal in itself. It is ordained for corruption; you see what it turns to after the life is out. That is an emblem of the state of the fleshly soul after death. As you did abase your spirits to the service of the flesh here, and all your ploughing, and labouring and sowing was about it; the seed which you did cast in the ground was fleshly lusts, earthly things, for the satisfaction of your flesh; so you shall reap of the flesh, corruption, death, and destruction, that shall make your immortal spirits mortal and corruptible, and subject them to death and corruption with the body, as far as they are capable. It shall deprive them of all that which is their proper life and refreshment, and separate them eternally from the fountain of blessedness, and banish them out of heaven unto the fellowhip of devils. And O that corruption of the incorruptible spirit, is worse than the corruption of the mortal flesh,—corruptio optimi pessima. Now, whoever of you is thus far undeceived, as to believe your danger and misery, and to discern that inbred delusion of your hearts, be not discouraged utterly. There may be hope of recovery, when you see your disease. I say, if you see that hell is at the end of your way, then know that he who sent that voice to call you off that way of death, leaves you not to your own wits to guide you into the right way, but follows with a voice behind you, saying, "here is the way, walk in it,"—turn not out of it to the right hand or to the left. And this voice sounds plainly in the word, and it is nothing else but the sound of the gospel, that blessed sound that invites and allures you to come in to Jesus Christ, the way, truth, and life, the true way to the true life. All other ways, all other lives, have no truth in them; it is but a cloud, a fancy, that men apprehend and lay hold on. But come to this way, and it will truly lead thee to the true life, eternal life; if you fly unto him out of the apprehension of your danger, you have a clear way to come to God, and as plain a way to attain life and peace. Being in Christ, you have assurance of not falling into condemnation. He is such a way as will hold you in, and not suffer you to go out of it again to the way of death. And therefore he will give you a tutor, a guide and director in this way to life and peace, and that is the Holy Spirit, to lead in all truth, and to guide your feet in the way of his commandments; so that in this new and living way of Christ, you shall have both the light of the word to know where to walk, and life of the Spirit, to make you walk toward that eternal life; and thus "grace and truth is come by Jesus Christ." Indeed you mustsuffer the mortification of your flesh, you must endure the pain of the death of your lusts, the cutting off your right hand, and plucking out your right eye, which would make you offend and stumble in the way; but let the remembrance of the life to come sweeten it all. When men undergo the hazard of losing life for a little pleasure, when, for a poor petty advantage, men will endure so much pains and trouble; O! how should eternal life,
—and such a life as the best life here is but death to it;
—how should it mitigate and sweeten the bitterness of mortification! How should it fortify our spirits to much endurance and patience! A battle we must have for these lusts that we disengage from the devil; and the world besides, will lay wait for us in this way; but when for such small and inconsiderable advantages, men will endure all the disadvantages of war, of a long war; O how should the expectation of this peace, which incloses and comprehends all felicity, all well-being, animate and strengthen us to fight into the city of life and peace eternal!
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Post by Admin on Aug 27, 2023 20:34:45 GMT -5
Geoff Thomas Sermon Romans 8:5-9 “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.”
All the world is looking for life and peace, life with a capital L, life with a purpose and meaning, life with satisfaction, life that is fulfilling, life that does not depend on drugs and drink and loud music and having other people around assuring you that you are wonderful, life that is contented and joyous. All the world is looking for it. It is possible to evaluate the trends of society and the way people spend their time and money simply by this factor, their search for life, and their search for peace. Multitudes are so restless, tense and despairing. They long for inward peace, family peace, international peace, peace with God and with man. All the world is looking for it.
These words that we have just read tell us the secret all the world longs to know of finding life and peace. Then won’t you pay attention? Can you afford to dismiss what I say before I have even started? Might not these words bring radical change in your life? Mightn’t you by them find what you lack – life and peace? Remember that the words I have read to you are not my words and my treatment for your restless heart, they are God’s. They are not the very best diagnosis of religious man; they are God’s analysis of the human condition – of your own condition. This is why God sent his Son from heaven, why he died on Golgotha and rose from the dead, to be able to be a just God and yet a giver of life and peace. That is the reason why the God of providence brought you to this passage now, that you might know life and peace. This is what Paul says; life and peace come from having a mind controlled by the Spirit of God. That is where this quality of life is to be found, there alone. Let’s begin where Paul begins in analyzing this problem . . .
WHY MEN AND WOMEN WHO ARE STRANGERS TO THE SPIRIT OF GOD INEVITABLY LACK LIFE AND PEACE. First Paul gives us a very searching analysis of the results of not being a Christian, of being unborn again, of being a stranger to the inward life created and sustained by the Spirit of God.
i] The mind of the non-Christian is fixed exclusively on non-Christian matters. This is what Paul claims; “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires” (v.5). “I am not interested in religion,” they tell you. Not a single non-disciple of Christ has his mind set on the living God. That is shocking. Not one. They may be of very low intelligence or they may be university professors. They may walk the streets and sleep out under the stars or they may be the wealthiest persons in the community, but one thing unites them, they are not interested in religion. Their minds are so narrow and so set on their own interests. “I have made up my mind,” they say. “I don’t want to discuss religion.” Then what are they interested in? What do their minds turn to when they are not thinking about anything in particular? What is the default setting in their minds if they just let them wander? What draws them? What do they find magnetic? Where does their compass needle point to? Paul tells us that their minds are set on what their natures desire. It is that narrow a life. Their thoughts and interests and enthusiasms and humour and zeal are all focused on what their own natures want. They are utterly self-centred; they are pursuing their own agendas. One man’s mind may be aesthetically pure; he loves great classical music and fine literature and his mind is set on that. Another man’s mind is quite different, it is vulgar; he is gripped by X-rated movies and unspeakable websites, violence and pornography; his mind is set on that. But the mind of neither man is set on the living God. Each is living according to his sinful nature. Their minds are fixed on that little dying world which has locked out the living God.
ii] The mind of the non-Christian is death. (v.6). A splendid book came out forty years ago called Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. Its author was Professor Hans Rookmaaker and he and I actually exchanged houses and he stayed here for a couple of weeks and he spoke to us on that theme. He looked at the spirit of our age; he showed us the horror and darkness evident in the paintings of some of its most famous artists, the screams of despair they have captured in oils. Then his friend Francis Schaeffer wrote a book on Jeremiah whose prophecy seemed to be addressing the Western World today. Schaeffer entitled his messages on Jeremiah, Death in the City. You know the solemn word ending Proverbs 8:36, “All who hate me love death.” You think of the abortion culture we live in, and the constant cry to legalize euthanasia, the knife crimes of young men in London, the scene in the Middle East today with nations torn by tyranny and civil war. The statistics of those shot and bombed announced day by day. All who hate God love death.
Schaeffer said, “Modern man thinks there is nobody home in the universe. Nobody to love man, nobody to comfort him even while he seeks desperately to find comfort in the limited, finite, horizontal relationships of life. But it doesn’t go – in his art, in his music, or any other place. In his literature, in his drama, it doesn’t go. In the sexual act, in human relationships, he finds only the devastatingly sterile and the dreadfully ugly” (Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City, IVP, p.19). Man has an inner death as far as the living God is concerned.
iii] The mind of the non-Christian is hostile to God. (v.7). It may not be hostile to the Borodin String Quartet, or to a painting by Lowry, or to a poem by R.S.Thomas. It fears most of all to be dismissed as a ‘Philistine.’ Of course such compositions are the most sublime artifacts of human creation, and they have the capacity to reach beyond the author’s grasp, but why is there such hostility to Jesus Christ? None of those works of art can sit alongside the simplicity of the words with which John’s gospel begins, “In the be ginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God . . .” I remember once as a12 year old hearing someone in a youth rally reading those words and the following verses and they blew me away. I had never heard anything more beautiful than the prologue to the fourth gospel, but why is such blessed truth defiantly ignored?
Paul tells us that the mind of the natural man is hostile to God. He is a negative man, he is against God, against his commandments, against his day, against his people, against his word, against his claims over him. God once sent his Son into the world, and if you could see him with the eyes of faith you would be seeing his Father because there is such a family likeness. He and his Father are one. The Son of God went about doing good. He showed his love to those who did not love him. He helped the selfish and cold-hearted. He prayed for those who nailed him to a cross. He never took a penny from people for healing them. He was the loveliest and the best of men. No one ever spoke the way he spoke. What did men do when they were encountering God? They contradicted and opposed and hated him. They lied about him and murdered him by nailing him through his hands and feet to a cross. So they showed what Paul says here, that in men’s hearts is hostility to God.
iv] The mind of the non-Christian does not submit to God’s law. (v.7) He rejects God’s claim to be his Creator and God’s right to tell us how we should live in his creation, saying, “Who is he to tell me how to live?” He does not submit to God’s law. He sits on the throne of his own life and he says, “I am God.” When Paul speaks of man’s hostility that does not mean that he’ll occasionally express some outbursts of anger against God. We have all met or will meet that, when people’s hearts have been broken at the death of those they love and they cry in their anger, “I could never believe in a God who would do that!” But such bursts of anger are not what Paul is speaking of here. He is talking of a low, foundational undercurrent of resentment and hostility that is determined not to change and will ignore God for ever, saying, “I am doing this my way. I don’t care what the Bible says. If God does tell me to be faithful to my wife, what is that if I should meet someone whom I love and who loves me? Then life is too short to be locked into a loveless marriage, hung up about promises made twenty years ago,” and he’s abandoned them all. Twenty years ago Woody Allen shocked the world by beginning to live with the Korean adopted step daughter named Soon-Yi of Mia Farrow his lover. He was asked, “How could you get involved with someone who was almost your daughter?” His reply was, “The heart wants what it wants.” Then that is the choice before the whole world, whether it will choose what God wants and find grace to live with the will of God, or if it will seize what it wants, irrespective even of the will of God.
v] The mind of the non-Christian cannot submit to the law of God. (v.7). In other words it does not possess the ability to change, and that is the reason it won’t change. It will not turn around 180 degrees because it can’t do that. Unaided, and by its own wits it will never change. It is impossible for it to change and suddenly to start grieving over its rebellion, and begin to love God with all its heart and mind, confessing its sins, and pleading the death of God the Son as its atonement and the ground of its pardon. It cannot kindle in its heart of stone a warm growing love for Jesus Christ that will lead to dedicated service him and work for him, spending his life and be spent for the Saviour, and even laying down his life for him – all because of his own unaided decisions and endeavours! No. He cannot submit to the law of God that tells him to repent and to believe on Jesus Christ. He has no power to save himself. No man can come to me except the Father which has sent me draw him,” says Jesus. He can never pat himself on the back and say, “Wasn’t I smart to change and submit to the God? Didn’t I do a good thing in choosing heaven rather than hell?” No he cannot turn himself around like that. He doesn’t have the ability to do that. The hostility is always stronger than the desire. What is his state? It is one of death. He is dead in his sins. What does Paul say here? “The mind of sinful man is death” (v.6). Can a corpse resurrect itself? Of course it cannot. It is utterly impotent. How did Jesus rise from the dead? Through the Spirit of holiness. God the Holy Spirit raised him. That’s what Paul says in the fourth verse of the opening chapter of this letter: “through the Spirit of holiness [Jesus] was declared with power to be the Son of God, by his resurrection from the dead” (Roms 1:4). How have any of you come to submit to the law of God? The same way. The Holy Spirit changed you, and made you willing to confess your sins to God, and believe on Jesus Christ and begin to do what he tells you to do. Without God we can do nothing. We have no ability to do anything without the power that made the universe. We have to cry to him for help.
vi] The mind of the non-Christian cannot please God (v.8). That does not mean that every non-Christian is a devil. No. Every non-Christian man and woman is made in the image of God and has been influenced by the earlier generations of his family, and the salt and light of Christians, and the translation of the Bible into his language many years earlier, and generations of preachers and Christians during an earlier grace in the land, and so there are grand people who are not Christians. They are faithful in their marriages, encourage family activities, are thoughtful about others, are involved in the caring professions, make splendid nurses and firemen and inspirational teachers. Aren’t there mothers who sacrifice themselves for their children and wives who spend years caring for their husbands? Millions of them are good, compassionate, laudable and virtuous men and women, many of them better than some Christians. Do they please God by acting like that? Of course they do. So what does Paul mean when he says that those who are controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God? You can answer it in many ways. What man is able to do on a horizontal level in his behaviour to other people he cannot perform on a vertical level in his behaviour towards God. He cannot do that! While so good to others he ignores God his Creator and the author of all the goodness and wisdom he’s ever had. He’s done nothing to the end and purpose that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ should be glorified. He has done nothing out of conscious obedience to the will of God. He has certainly done things with which God is pleased, yes, and far better that he do them than not do them, but he has done them with utter indifference to the glory of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That then is the situation of the natural man, those six points show his guilt, rebellion and helplessness. What do we learn from that? That if he is going to be saved then it must be entirely from outside of himself. Salvation has to come to him from the Lord, as a gift, as an irresistible work, as a deep, inward, transforming power coming upon him. Salvation is the rescue of an unconscious drowning man. Salvation is the raising of the dead. Salvation is the sudden rising of the west wind blowing cool air on a scorching day. Salvation in its conception, its continuance and in its consummation is of the Lord.
Paul tells us that there are only two groups of people in the whole world, and that everyone belongs to the one or the other. There are those in the flesh and there are those in the spirit. There are those who live according to the sinful nature, and there are those who live according to the Spirit. There are those whose mind is death and there are those whose mind is life and peace. To which group do you belong? There is line that runs through this congregation and all are either on one side or the other. Are you under the law of sin and death or under the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus? You must be in the one or the other.
“How do I know?” you ask me. I will tell you. It is really very simple. When your thinking is challenged by the Bible, who wins? You or God’s word? Have you been rejecting this verdict of God on your life? Then you are the one who has won not God. But if you bow before this divine diagnosis in reverence and say, “What God says about me is absolutely true” then God has won. It is often at such crisis points in our lives that we show our true colours. When our thinking and our emotions and our choosing comes into conflict with the word of God then we haven’t yet set him on the throne of our lives.
So what is the result of these words being true? If we are controlled by the sinful nature we cannot please God. What then? Certainly keeping the law can’t save you. And the message, “Love your neighbour” can’t save you. And the message “do this and live” is death for you. I can’t do the will of God. You need another message, and here it is: “You must be born again.” Do you understand that Paul here in Romans 8:8 is virtually duplicating what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3? ‘Nicodemus, unless you are born again, you cannot even see the kingdom of God.’
So you see there is good news for those in the flesh, even in Romans 8:5-8, and here’s the good news: The gospel is that Jesus Christ has died as the Lamb of God so that you can have new life, and you must receive that new life, or you will die.There is nothing that you can do for yourself to get this new life. Jesus must accomplish and apply all that is necessary in order for you to have this new life – he must take away your inward state of death putting it to death in his death – and then the Holy Spirit must bring you to life. But if you find yourself today under the conviction that you’ve been walking after the flesh for a long time, that you’ve been setting your mind on the things of the flesh far too long, that they’ve become more important to you than God is, that they’re more important than his word, his calling, his people, and his gospel then you’re in the flesh. Or maybe your heart’s set on sinful things. God is telling you in his word not to do these things, but you’re getting excitement from what you’re doing and you thumb your nose at God and you say ‘I’m getting pleasure from this; I have no intention of quitting.’ You’re in the flesh. If you find yourself in that place but under conviction today, then you need to be born again. You need to throw yourself at the feet of Christ and say, “Christ, save me. Christ, forgive me. Spirit, change me. I need new life, and I need a new nature, and I need pardon, and acceptance, and acquittal, and forgiveness, and I can only find that in your gospel.” Men and women do not fail to listen to God’s word today. You must be born again. So to be carnally minded results in death.
SOME OF THE MARKS OF BEING SPIRITUALLY MINDED. Being spiritually minded is all important. It is the ultimate result of escaping from the kingdom of death into the kingdom of life and peace. Paul says in verse 6, “The mind of the sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.” He is saying in our text that as a result of the new birth the Christian has a new mindset, the mindset of the Spirit. It is not just “mind” but also “attitude.” He is referring to the whole frame and disposition of our minds, and our affections and values and our enthusiasm, our very laughter and sorrows. To say that we have a “mind controlled by the Spirit” is to say that the Spirit is shaping our inner life according to the mind of the Spirit of God. John Piper says that spiritual mindedness exalts Christ, and it values God, and it cherishes the Word of God, and it sees people and things with a relentless God-consciousness.
When people say to me whether I would like to see changes in the Aberystwyth conference, I say that indeed I do. I would like to see all the speakers and all the attendees at the conference spiritually-minded people. I am not interested in some cosmetic changes with different hymns and music and times of meetings and numbers of meetings, and all that human engineering can do. I long for what only God the Holy Spirit can do. I long to see here a growing spiritually minded congregation week after week led by a spiritually minded pastor. I want us to see the world with spiritual eyes, whether it is sport and computers and politics and education and eating out and celebrations and fashion and the media and everything. So what are the marks and goals of being spiritually minded? I have taken and changed some of the marks of John Piper.
i] Taking radical steps to keep our minds pure. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” (Matthew 5:27-29)
ii] Making God our supreme joy. That is being spiritually minded. Knowing that our chief end is to glorify and enjoy him, and that we are doing that! “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God” (Psalm 43:4). Literally the phrase “my exceeding joy” is “gladness of my joy.” I take this to mean that in all our joys God should be the supreme glad joy. Every joy should be like a spoke that leads back to the hub, God. It should become a joy in God. Family relationships, our meals, a walk with the dogs besides the sea, listening to fine music and so on . . . if a joy cannot offer a taste of who God is, and be enjoyed the more for that reason, then it is unspiritual joy.
iii] Seeing each person you meet as you will see them a hundred years from now. “The poor man died and was carried by the ang els to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side” (Luke 16:22-23). Each one destined to live as long as God, each one to spend that eternity experiencing God’s blessing or his woe. “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 5:16)
iv] Pondering that at every moment, even your happiest, there is misery and wailing in 10,000 places, some of them very near. Don’t be smug in your little religious world. Behind many front doors in this town there is pain. Won’t that consciousness kill all our joys? Why should it? Better to be real and sad than happy and fake. But I don’t think we have to choose. Real and happy and also sorrowful is possible. That is why Paul says that he is “sorrowful yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).
Listen to this moving story from David Brickner who is the head of ‘Jews for Jesus’. “Some months ago I was flying home from a meeting when the man sitting behind me began gasping for breath. An announcement over the plane’s intercom called for a physician. Soon a doctor and several nurses came to the man’s aid but to no avail. I began to pray for the man and his wife, who was sitting beside him. The pilot announced that due to a medical emergency the plane was going to land in Edmonton, Canada. I could hear the activity behind me escalate as the doctor and nurses took turns doing resuscitation. If you’ve never been near a person who is dying despite these efforts, I can assure you that it is not much worse than what we see on television. The sound of air being forced out of a human being’s lungs, the sounds and smells of the death rattle were horrific. I heard the doctor pronounce, “Time of death, 10:25 a.m.” And then the captain announced to the passengers that the man’s situation had “stabilized,” and therefore we would continue to San Francisco. I don’t know how many people realized that what was announced as though it were the passing of the emergency was actually a veiled announcement of the passing of this man’s life. Certainly those of us nearby knew. The flight attendants pulled a blanket over his head. His wife, still beside him, was sobbing and moaning . . . and then the flight attendants began to come through the aisles . . . serving lunch! Lunch!? How could anyone in that cabin eat after what had just happened? But they did.” (Jews for Jesus Newsletter, Nov. 2006, p. 1). That is a parable of the world at any given time. Some are eating lunch and thousands are wailing. It helps to remember this when we are carried away from reality with some computer problem or promise.
v] Remembering Jesus’ warning about what chokes spiritual life: worries, riches and the pleasures of life. There are those who hear the gospel and make some kind of response, but as they go on their way they are choked by the worries and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. (Luke 8:14). That is repeated in Mark’s gospel. “The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:19).
vi] Pondering what is divine perfume to the Lord, and what he delights in. For example, “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). “For we are the aroma of Christ to God” (2 Corinthians 2:15). God’s delight “is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love” (Psalm 147:10).
vii] Being friends with spiritually minded people. Overcome your shyness and get to know other Christians, how they’re doing and what encouragements and battles they are experiencing. “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm” (Proverbs 13:20). And again remember the exhortation, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals’” (1 Corinthians 15:33)
viii] Reading God-besotted, spiritually minded writers. For example, read Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Read any books written by Iain Murray, or any of the Banner of Truth Puritan paperback series especially John Owen’s Spiritual Mindedness. Read J.I. Packer’s Knowing God or his Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God.
ix] Pondering that your life will very soon be without a body. “Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). How attached are all your pleasures to the senses of the body?
x] Telling yourself how short life is. “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you” (1 Peter 1:24-25).
Only one life – ‘twill soon be past;
Only what’s done for Jesus will last.
xi] Asking day by day for spiritual-mindedness. “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (Psalm 90:14). The psalmists pray often for the heart and mind that they long to have.
xii] Understanding and remembering definitive sanctification, in other words, your position and status in Christ which cannot be taken from you ever, that you died with Christ and have crucified the flesh. That carnal nature is no longer your lord. It i s not the Lord of any born-again Christian. It is hung up on Golgotha, crucified with Christ, under the judgment of God – what you once were. Who would obey a dying, fatally weakened power as it whispers out its temptations? “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). The most basic key to spiritual-mindedness is the deep assurance that the unbeliever you once were, under the lordship of sin, has really died and today you live by the control of an indwelling Saviour.
xiii] Accepting God’s trials as part of his fatherly discipline to bring about greater spiritual mindedness. Listen to spiritually-minded Paul sharing with us his experience of the afflictions he endured: “For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). Again, think of those familiar words in Hebrews 12 concerning responding to various hardships. “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:7-11)
xiv] Risking being considered foolish and weird. You don’t have to be cool. “It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:25)
xv] Realizing that millions of people trapped in the other religions of the world are not looking for people with more western cultural sophistication and techno savvy. They are looking for a “holy man,” a “man of God.” The questions will not be, “Has he got the latest Blackberry? Is he quick-witted and fast-talking and clever?” The questions will be: “Does he pray a lot? Does he know his holy Book, much of it by heart? Is he self-denying and focused on God? Is he powerful in his weakness? Is he patient, compassionate and understanding?” Those are some of the hundreds of marks of spiritual-mindedness, and they are all the stuff of life and peace.
4th March 2012 GEOFFREY THOMAS
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Post by Admin on Aug 27, 2023 20:51:39 GMT -5
Romans 8:14 “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”
We believe that the eighth chapter of the letter of Paul to the Romans is the richest chapter in this entire epistle. It is up there in the Bible alongside the opening chapter of the letter to the Ephesians. They are two chapters that stand apart as the most majestic pieces of writing to have been recorded in the history of mankind. They are words that will last for ever, and that is why we are considering the teaching of Romans 8 these Sundays. The chapter is particularly important because of the observations it makes about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. No other chapter in the Bible has as many references to the Spirit as Romans chapter 8. I want to consider today this theme that every Christian is led by the Spirit of God.
HOW THIS TRUTH OF BEING LED BY THE SPIRIT IS EXPRESSED. I would have expected Paul to express himself in another way, in other words, to have turned these phrases around and to have written something like this, that those who are the sons of God are led by the Spirit of God. This would then be a word of assurance and comfort. “Every child of God, however new, can rely on this reality, that he is going to be led by the Spirit of God,” That is true but Paul writes it in the way our text expresses it, which is very challenging. That is not unique. Let me draw your attention to its similarity to words written by John in his first letter. You would have expected the apostle John to write in his letter something like this, “Everyone who is born of God loves and knows God.” That is what we think we are reading, that the mark of every truly born again man is that he loves and that he knows God, but again John like Paul turns it around quite unexpectedly. He says this, “Everyone who loves . . . has been born of God and knows God” (I Jn.4:7). In other words, you see a really loving person and you say, “That person is a Christian.” So Paul in our text is saying, “When you see a person being led by the Spirit of God then you know that such a person is a Christian.”
Do you understand? The character of those who have been given a new birth by God, and have been adopted into the family of God – those who have been given the right to be called the sons of God – theirs is an utterly different lifestyle and character from everyone who is ignorant of God. So as you Christians start to meet and know other believers and as you watch them, sometimes year after year, then you come to this conclusion about them, “Only someone who is in Christ, and Christ is in them, could behave in that way; only a Christian could love like that. They are sons of God. That is why they live like that. That is what makes them tick!” Unbelievers will of course never come to that conclusion. They don’t nudge one another as they stand behind you at the check out counter while one mouths to another “He is a Son of God!” Of course not. They don’t know Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and so they certainly don’t know that we are led by the Spirit of God. But we do know that someone is born of God. Warfield tells the story of a riot in a city in America and the soldiers had been sent onto the streets to keep order. One officer saw another officer in command, so efficient and wise and sensible, marked by such authority, and he went up to him, looked at him and said to him, “What is man’s chief end?” The man looked back at him and said, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.” “I thought you were a Shorter Catechism boy,” he said to him. Christians can see the character of men and women and know that they are led by the Holy Spirit.
Let me make this as clear as I can; the apostle John is saying that everyone who loves as Paul describes love in I Corinthians 13 must be born of God and knows God and is being led by God. Here is a description of a born again person; “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. [It hears the gospel, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried and he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” and the person who loves rejoices with that truth. “Praise the Lord,” that person says]. Paul continues about love in I Corinthians 13 that, “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (I Cor. 13:4-8). A man or woman who lives year after year like that can only do so by the energy of the Holy Spirit in their lives as a result of their being born by the Spirit and indwelt by the Spirit.
So here in our text Paul is saying that if you see someone being led by the Spirit of God all through their lives, year after year, then you can know one thing for sure, that he’s a son of God. “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (v.14). The choices that they have made, the beliefs that they hold dear, the errors they reject, the compromises they shun, the kindnesses they continue to show, the mortification of sin that they’re engaged in, the sacrifices they are prepared to make – all bring you to this blessed conclusion, “The Spirit of God is in them and they are being led by him; they are sons of God.”
2. HOW INDISPENSABLE IT IS TO BE LED BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD.
In 1961, over half a century ago, I crossed the Atlantic in a German cargo boat from Liverpool. The journey took 11 days and I got to know the ship, the chief engineer and some of the crew well; we four passengers had lunch with the Captain each day. When we got to Chesapeake Bay in Virginia a boat came alongside us and on board came the young American pilot who navigated the ship the twenty miles through the Bay to our dock in Norfolk. We arrived without any mishaps because we had a pilot who knew the dangers of rocks and shallow water, where they were located, and what was the safest route to our moorings. We had someone to lead our ship to safety.
Again, when American pioneers traveled west 150 years ago they crossed the continent on wagon trains and they forded rivers and went through deserts and blizzards and the Rocky Mountains; they faced hostile Indians and outlaws. How indispensable was the role of the experienced wagon master leading them to their appointed destination. Again, imagine that you are climbing a mountain and a thick mist falls; how crucial to have a guide who knows that peak like the back of his hand. He knows the path and where the dangers lie, and he is leading you.
We all need leaders; we may believe that the eva ngelical church is weak today because of its lack of leaders. Consider the world stage; who can name more than two of the presidents or prime ministers of the countries of Europe? Where are the inspirational political leaders? Who are your own role models whom you follow? But we need more than role models and leaders, we need personal guides in the pilgrimage before us.
You are a young person facing the great journey of life. A career, buying a house, marriage, fatherhood or motherhood, old age, losing those you love, facing death – who is going to lead you? How then should you live? What should be your values? What is truth? What should you do with your gifts and energy? What can prepare you for death? Who can guide you aright? What if you should fall in with people who would lead you astray? It’s always a possibility, especially if you are a weakling. Think of the opening chapter of Proverbs and see an identical situation to the gang culture in London today: “My son, if sinners entice you, do not give in to them. If they say, ‘Come along with us; let’s lie in wait for someone’s blood, let’s waylay some harmless soul; let’s swallow them alive, like the grave, and whole, like those who go down to the pit; we will get all sorts of valuable things and fill our houses with plunder; throw in your lot with us, and we will share a common purse.’ My son, do not go along with them, do not set foot on their paths; for their feet rush into sin, they are swift to shed blood” (Provs. 1:10-16). Don’t be led by the in-crowd, by your peers, by cruel, stupid, thieves. Be led by the Spirit!
Do you have a leader? Does everyone here have a leader, someone whom you know will guide you well, lovingly and safely through life and then when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death he is still with you comforting you? Do you have such a person? If so who is that one? Who leads you? Who is your example? Name him now in your mind. I am not that leader; I cannot be because I am not so good a man, and I cannot be with you always; we are warned of putting our trust in princes. Paul is speaking here in Romans 8 to every single Christian in the congregation in Rome – all were being led by the Spirit without exception. Paul is addressing the mere Christian, a child of God, and that the great privilege every believer possesses is that he is led by the Spirit of God. You remember that wonderful scene in Genesis 2 where God makes Eve from Adam and he leads Eve to Adam. He introduces her to her husband. God the Spirit leads us all.
The same word is used of Jesus after his baptism that he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. We also find Paul telling the Galatians, “if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law” (Gals. 5:18). In Matthew 21 the word is used of leading a donkey, but generally it describes persons who are being led. In the parable of the Good Samaritan it is used of the way he led the wounded traveler to the inn (Luke 10:34); it is also used of the blind man of Jericho being led to Jesus (Lk. 18:40). It is used of Jesus being led to Caiaphas (John 18:28); it is used of Stephen being led to the council (Acts 6:12); it is used of Christians being arrested and led bound to Jerusalem (Acts 9:2); it is used of Simon Peter being led by his brother Peter to Jesus (John 1:42).
The Holy Spirit leads just like that; this is very personal guidance; he has a loving, controlling influence over the sons of God. You see it in Psalm 73, “Yet I am always with you;” that is what he says to the Lord, and “you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterwards you will take me into glory” (Psa. 73:23&24). A Christian is someone who has a new leader. Everyone’s got a leader. No escape from having someone to lead you, but we have the very best leader. We’ve been delivered from the leading and guiding of sin. Sin once told us, “You ignore God, and ignore the Bible, and the ten commandments, and the church and ‘morbid thoughts’ of death and eternity.” Sin told us the lie that no one has come back from the grave and no one knew what happened afterwards, and we believed that falsehood. We were all led by sin as sheep going to the slaughter, but that slavery to that cruel master is all behind us. Our chains have fallen off and our hearts are free. We’re no longer doing what sin once told us to do; now we are being led by the Spirit. Praise God! And you appreciate that we’re not being compelled against our wills to go reluctantly along with him – “Well, I suppose I’d better go along with what the Spirit tells me . . . it’s not fair,” talking like a whining teenager. We have been given life from heaven, real delight in God, the power of a new affection, and a pure heart, and that causes us to walk as the Spirit directs us. Of course we sigh and we acknowledge that we are “prone to wander, Lord we feel it, prone to leave the God we love” but we could never leave God completely; we could deny him at a fireside surrounded by non-Christians; we could know a season of luke-warmness but always at the back of our minds we’d rather be led by the Spirit; that is our chief desire, and we find that when we do wander the good Spirit is constantly bringing us back. The Spirit turns us and leads us in the right path again and again. He gives us repentance, like he gave it to Peter when he went out and wept bitterly. Because we are the sons of God we are going through life not where we want to go but where he wants. We don’t do what we might wish but what he determines. We don’t fill our cups each day with what we want to drink but we take the cup our heavenly Father gives and we drink that. Every single Christian without exception is led by the Holy Spirit because he is a son of God. If you were a father would you let your children be led to think and speak and act in any way they pleased? Would you permit them come under all kinds of harmful influences and just do nothing? Of course not. Neither does the heavenly Father of all his children let them walk into hell. He leads us by the Spirit.
3. WHAT IT IS TO BE LED BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD.
What is this leading? First some negatives and then some positives:
i] This leading of the Spirit is not that we may stop thinking and choosing, simply to let the Spirit do the choosing for us. You remember how Paul captures the tension of the Christian life in Philippians chapter two and verses 12 and 13 where he says; “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” You work because God works. You think! You consider! You make wise judgments. You work out what it means to be a Christian inwardly, in your heart and mind, and then in the home, and in your place of employment, with your neighbours, with the members of the congregation – wherever God puts you, because he is working in you. You apply yourself to working out with dead seriousness what it means to please God as a redeemed person in every activity of life. You must do that. It is not a thoughtless automatic activity like breathing. It is not guaranteed, like your heart beating. In the leading of God you get caught up; you have to make wise choices continually. < /span>
ii] This leading of the Spirit does not consist in a series of hunches. Don’t we get hunches? I get them all the time. Impulses, certainties, sudden convictions that I should do this or that. Once you have one it becomes obsessive, certainly for me. “Surely this is of God,” you think. “I am being led by the Spirit of God – like it says in Romans 8.” The dangers are these. Firstly, that everyone in the world gets hunches and does the most terrible things because of impulses. Secondly, they are the easiest things for Satan to initiate. He can counterfeit the divine leadings in the realm of our emotions very, very easily. The third danger is this, that at times such promptings are absolutely right, of course they are. It was a good hunch! But at other times, alas, they land us in deep trouble and our problems are compounded. We have all heard of the man who says to the surprised woman – who hardly knows him – that he has been led by God to marry her. Every organization and political party and cultural group and church has a crank or two like that. We’ve got them! There are times when you get zapped, when you feel strongly that you must move away, or change your job, or invest in some shares, or apply to a certain university. Paul tells the Thessalonian church to test the spirits to see whether they are of God or not. Let me say some things that will help you to understand how the Spirit leads us:
A] Leading means two things, firstly that the big picture is made clear to every Christian. We are going home to God in heaven and so we’re purifying and preparing ourselves each day for the sight of Christ. That is where our compass is pointing every single day. That is the general direction, but then there is something more, that God will reveal the next immediate stage to us, a few more steps, day by day . . . this summer, no more than that, that is all. Not the whole journey; never the complete route. Be content with little by little. As your days so your leading will be.
B] The Spirit is not a celestial kill-joy. You hear foolish Christians saying that God seems always to be telling you to be doing what you hate most to do, or to go somewhere that’s the last place you want to go to. “That’s the sort of God he is.” That is nonsense; it is a caricature of the Holy Spirit. I have not found the Spirit to be that kind of God. He is kind, and as gentle as Jesus. He delights in bringing joy to those he leads. He is the Creator and sustainer of whatsoever things are true and lovely and worthy of praise and of good report in our lives. The Spirit is like the delighted response of parents at the first steps of a child. The mother sets the toddler down and the father switches on his video camera and they say, “Come on now! Come to Daddy! Come to Mummy.” Arms are open wide! And the child takes two steps and is captured on camera for ever. Hooray. The child likes the praise and he tries to walk again, but he falls flat. They don’t give him a row! They pick him up and tell him he’s a big boy now. The Holy Spirit is anxious that we follow him, that we walk in the Spirit day by day, and he encourages all the early steps we take following him.
C] The Spirit does not lead just white-haired Christians, bald men who have been believers for many years. He leads children and teenagers, new Christians who are in school or who are plumbers and refuge collectors. Joseph was young when the Spirit led him in Egypt; Daniel was a teenager when the Spirit led him in Babylon. Before they had a single grey hair God was leading them.
D] The Spirit does not confine himself to unusually strong feelings or coincidences. There are strong feelings in the Christian life – there have to be such when you are dealing with the living God – but they are neither normal nor necessary. It is more usual for the Spirit to lead us by a still small voice, through constant biblical preaching, through good advice from other Christians, through the directions of providence tested by the clear counsels of the Bible.
E] Most of the mega-important decisions we take in life come about through many mini-important decisions that we’ve had to take, so that the big choices become almost second nature to us. For example, meeting someone or hearing a particular message – occasions that seemed at the time so casual and low key – eventually resulted in great good, but only because of non-negotiable values and standards we have imbibed over the years and stand upon. The little choices are important because they are set in the context of big convictions. Sometimes we ca see that what we saw as little decisions are not so little after all, and so Jesus speaks of the fall of a sparrow to the ground as being determined by God. That fall was important to that sparrow. How much may depend on something very small. The fruit that Eve ate was very small. The red ribbon that Rahab hung in her window was small. The five loaves and the two fishes were insignificant, and yet momentous consequences can come from such small things. That is why we pray about everything. Now I’m glad to find a free parking place in Aberystwyth, but I don’t make that the great evidence that God hears prayer, because many drivers in the town are looking for one and probably some of them need one more than I do. So I am thankful to get one, but examples of answered prayer are rather more humbling than that. So, I don’t pray about what tie or socks I am going to wear that day I just exercise common sense as a gift of God for such mechanical things and so I don’t inevitably pray about parking places. I try to live and drive trusting in God. I am always looking to God for help. But when we set off to Scotland last week before I turned the key in the ignition we bowed and I committed the journey to God. Lead us Holy Spirit!
I was in Machynlleth yesterday at the end of the mission week. They had distributed thousands of Christians evangelistic newspaper to the town and the little villages and homes on the hills surrounding the town. The previous week a truck drew up outside Richard Davies’s home and all these newspapers arrived, half a ton of them on a pallet. “My responsibility is to deliver them to your home,” the driver told Richard, “It is not to bring them inside. That is your responsibility.” “All right,” said Richard. The man had a forklift truck and he deposited this vast pile of newspaper on the sidewalk. “I suppose I should start taking them inside,” thought Richard (who is seriously unwell). He was just beginning when two neighbours came along. “Can we help? Do you need a hand?” they asked him, right at that moment. They were led to come by and they carried into the house all the papers. Now that kindness was shown to Richard because he does the big things; he is a good neighbour; he seeks to love his neighbour as himself; he cooperates with the Spirit and is led by the Spirit in serving others in many mini-decisions, so that when this maxi-need came into his life God had his way of helping him. God led those people to him. Leading is not a series of hunches it is a life that is lived in constant good works. Again, negatively . . .
iii] Again, this leading of the Spirit is not something that only super-Christians experience. This is nothing spooky in being led by the Spirit, but this is the common, normal privilege of every believer without exception, generally when we are not conscious of the Spirit’s work in our lives. This leading is what differentiates us from unbelievers. We may modify the inspired words, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is not led by the Spirit.” It is not a matter of pride for a Christian to claim that he’s led by the Spirit. It’s a matter of truth and daily reality. It’s a matter of gospel privilege which we all enjoy who love the gospel. It’s a matter of necessity and dependence; I dare not trust the sweetest frame of mind I might be in. I’m an unworthy and unstable person and so I have to be led by the Spirit. It is a sheer necessity.
“Holy Spirit, help us, daily by Thy might,
What is wrong to conquer, and to choose the right” (William H. Parker, 1845-1929)
Now for three positive reminders;
i] The purpose of the Spirit’s leading is not to enable us to escape the difficulties, dangers, trials or sufferings of this life, but specifically to conquer sin. The context is mortifying remaining sin. The letter to the Romans begins back in chapter one with a description of the sheer rottenness of sin, and then goes on to describe the great deliverance that Jesus Christ obtains for his people. The Spirit’s work is to bring that new life to us, and clean us from the inside, making us holy people. Another phrase for the leading of the Spirit is the tough, single Latin-based word ‘sanctification’. In other words, we are being led into Christ-like living, and constantly restored to a godlike lifestyle when we fall and repent. Do you see that this can’t be the privilege of a few hyper-Christians who have had the second blessing? This is the blessing which every Christian experiences and its purpose is to conquer sin in our lives.
ii] Again, this leading of the Spirit is a continuous work. It affects the whole of the believer’s person, his mind, his imagination, his affections, his soul and his body. The Spirit has made up his mind that all those to whom he has been sent by God are going to be freed from sin. They will be led into holiness during the years of their earthly pilgrimage, so that every part of us that needs to be delivered from sin the Spirit of God is going to be at work. On our death beds he will deliver us from dying doubts. So when we talk biblically about being ‘led by the Spirit’ we are not talking of special promptings, and insights, and deliverances, and hunches, and feelings. We are talking of the way the Spirit leads us to break with sinful habits, and guides us down the paths of good works and service. In other words, when we deem other people better than ourselves we are being led by the Spirit. When we bear the burden of the weak we are being led by the Spirit. When a husband loves his wife as Christ loves the church he is being led by the Spirit. When a wife respects her husband she is being led by the Spirit. When we are ready to give an answer to a person who asks us for the reason for our hope then we are being led by the Spirit. When we present out bodies a living sacrifice to God we are being led by the Spirit. When we clothe ourselves in the armour of God then also we are being led by the Spirit. That is how and why he leads us.
iii] Again, this leading of the Spirit is always according to the teaching of the Bible. We are going to get a biblical education! It will never be into the ways of sin. However hard the way, and however strenuous the effort and however mysterious the trials and sufferings we pass through, when desirable doors close and undesirable doors open, yet we are making progress because he is leading us all the way. We are not going down the road of life by our own power but by the power of the one controlling us and leading us to the appointed goal, the throne of God. There was a Scottish woman who once said, “I have learned that in the long run the Almighty is always right.” Let me quote a hymn and just change the word ‘Saviour’ to the word ‘Spirit’;
All the way the Spirit leads me; cheers each winding path I tread;
Gives me grace for every trial, feeds me with the living bread.
Though my weary steps may falter, and my soul athirst may be,
Gushing from the rock before me, Lo! A spring of joy I see.
(Frances Jan Van Alstyne 1820-1915)
What a consolation this truth is, that we have been led by the Spirit of God even to this very moment, and to this precious theme. So, we have to acknowledge that as Christians we have found ourselves falling into sin often – sin which is far more powerful than the natural man – yet let us not despair as Christians because the indwelling Holy Spirit is far greater and more powerful than remaining sin. We’d despair if we were simply meeting sin after sin, but we are not. We are meeting mercy after mercy; we are meeting the energy to carry on the journey. The Spirit of grace himself produces the believer’s conflict against sin, and he’s also the spur to continue the fight. The victory is assured. The Spirit is within us and we cannot fail. He will lead us home.
29th April 2012 GEOFF THOMAS
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Post by Admin on Aug 27, 2023 21:04:09 GMT -5
Romans 8:29 “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
We often have such a blinkered view of the Christian life, thinking of it in terms of how some years ago, say 2005, we were introduced to the gospel and received Jesus into our hearts and we are now in 2012 and we are going to go on with him into the unknown future. All that is perfectly true, but very limiting, and that is why these words are so expansive. We are being introduced here to a vast vista of the Christian life. Paul also looks back, but not only to the Damascus Road experience when he became a Christian but back and back to before time began, even before the foundation of the world. Then he tells the congregation in Rome, God loved him and God predestined him to salvation. And when he looks forward, it is not just to the next dates in his diary of visits to Rome or Spain. He is looking forward to heaven and to eternity when every one of the children of God is going to be conformed to the likeness of God’s son. Eternity past, and eternity to come, and, in the midst of it all, today, this brief span of our earthly lives. Our years are flying past as rapidly as a dream in a night. It reminds us again that the trials we pass through are not worthy of being compared to the glory that is to be revealed in us.
GOD LOVED US BEFORE THERE WAS ANYTHING. Paul speaks here of “those God foreknew” (v.29). I want to make this clear that this phrase means that it was his love that God set on his children before the foundation of the world. ‘Foreknow’ means ‘forelove.’ You understand that this passage isn’t saying that God foresaw that we would with our own free wills make a decision one day to choose him, and, therefore, because of that, God chose us. Now, of course, that thinking makes no sense whatsoever. That is post-knowledge not foreknowledge. But, even if it did . . . even it did . . . that can’t be what Paul is saying, because he doesn’t say, ‘for what he foreknew’ (about us making a decision to take him as God) but Paul says, ‘those whom God foreknew’ – people he before-knew.
The idea here is not simply God’s omniscience, God’s knowledge of everything. It is not a reference to God’s intellectual and propositional knowledge of what is going to happen in the future. In the Bible very often the whole idea of knowledge is much more affectionate than intellectual. For God to know means that God loves. For example you go to the words God speaks through the mouth of Amos the prophet and he says to the children of Israel, “You only have I known of all the nations of the earth.” Now that doesn’t mean God was aware only of Israel because God maintains the whole world. He knows sparrows and stars exhaustively. He certainly knew all about the Egyptians, and the Medes and the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans, but there was a knowledge of Israel which was intimate and caring. There was God’s love for his people, God’s choice of them and God’s concern for them.
In the same way Christ will say on the Day of Judgment to rebel unbelievers, “Depart from me; I never knew you.” Of course he knew all about them. That is why he can pass this judgment on them to depart from him because they’d refused to acknowledge him as God and live for his glory. “We will not have this God rule over us,” they’d said in their hearts, and he knew it. I can even appeal to the story of Adam and Eve where we are told that Adam knew his wife Eve. It wasn’t intellectual knowledge; it was very affectionate. Indeed it was a passionate knowledge, and a loving knowledge. So God’s knowing you means that God has been involved in a love relationship with you in particular – before you loved him – and this has set you apart from every other being in the world. We Christians say, “We love him because he first loved us.”
God knows his people like that, lovingly, affectionately, passionately. There are millions and millions of them, all of them once just like the rest of fallen man, worldly, anti-God, rebels, blasphemers, dead in their sins, without any spiritual life or longing, utter rubbish in God’s eyes, and yet he knew them. He loved those men and women who were by nature utterly unworthy of his love. Can I compare God’s love to a husband and wife who go to a large home where those with learning difficulties reside, and they choose six of them to live with them as their own children, to care for them and nourish and nurture them all. Who sniffily complains, “Tut, tut, they should have taken them all”? Rather we say what love to that group of needy men and women when they needn’t have taken a single one of them. They took half a dozen! Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the sons of God.
The message of Hosea is a prophet’s love for his unfaithful wife which mirrors God’s love for the faithless Baal-worshipping children of Israel. Jehovah can’t stop loving them. That is also the message of Ephesians 5 that Christ loves the church as a man loves his wife. A husband should nourish and cherish his wife just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up to die for her. In other words, we must read into the whole idea of God knowing his people all that commitment and all that jealousy of a man’s love for his bride. A man loves his spouse, and God is in love with his people; God goes to Calvary for his people; God gives himself for his people. It is a love that is prodigal. It is a love that is emotional. It is a love that is passionate. It is a love that gives his own Son and spares him not. It is God’s desperate involvement with his own people, and it is out of that that our salvation comes. God loved us ‘before.’ Before he said, “Let there be light and there was light.” Before the angels existed; before you were born; before you began to know God; before you started to love God he before-knew and before-loved you.
GOD DESTINED US FOR SALVATION. “For those God foreknew he also predestined” (v.29). He pre-knew them and he pre-destined them. He foreknew them and he fore-destined them. There is an election and four candidates are standing for the position of Member of Parliament for our county. One is chosen and the others are passed by. So there was a choice that God made, like David choosing five smooth stones out of the brook and passing by others. There was a process of selection in which some stones were passed by and others were destined to be taken u p by David and put in his pouch to be used in his battle with Goliath.
That is the very simple concept that lies behind the whole biblical doctrine on this subject. Predestination is, in its very essence, God’s selection, and it is always a selection out of a certain constituency, and out of a certain proportion. It always means the non-selection of others. We find the same thing in the challenge uttered by Joshua to the Old Testament church when he says to them, “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.” You are confronted, Joshua says, with a whole multiplicity of gods, a tremendous variety of claimants to religious devotion and service. He says to them plainly that they must determine this day whom they are going to serve. Make your own selection, and in that selection of one god there will be the non-selection of all the other gods. You have the same basic idea of a selection involving a non-selection. Paul tells us that there were “those God foreknew [whom] he also predestined . . .”
But why did God predestine them? You get the glorious answer, because he loved them. Because he was in love with them so he predestined them. The logic of the whole foundation of God’s predestination is God’s love, and we can go back beyond God’s predestination to God’s love. Then we can also ask, “Why did God know them and love them?” And to that there is no answer. I can get back behind predestination to God’s love, but I can’t get behind the love to anything. The love is the ultimate reality. The love is the rock of ages. The love is the foundation. The love is the great source of all of God’s redemption. The river of the waters of life flows out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. It all comes out of God’s sovereign love. I don’t have the least answer to the question, “Why did God love?” I cannot get beyond the love to something more rational, more explanatory, more logical. The love is the headwater; the love is the source; the love is the ultimate reality of God. God is love, and beyond that I cannot go.
The Lord has loved his own people, and I stand before the magnificent fact that God has never been, without knowing his people. It is an eternal love. I cannot conceive of God as not existing. I cannot conceive of God as not being eternal. I cannot think of God as not being triune. I cannot think of God as not being in love with his people. It’s a marvelous thing. It never ‘became’ with God. It never arose in God. It did not suddenly emerge in God. It is part of the reality of God. I cannot deny that it is voluntary in God, that it is discretionary in God, that it is gracious in God, that it is an act of his will, but it is still eternal. It is the only way that God has ever been. He has always known his own people. He has always loved his bride, the church. He has always been completely passionate for the salvation of his people. And it is in that fact that our predestination is rooted. He chose us and he selected us because he loved us with an eternal love before the foundation of the world.
God has predestined us to be sprinkled with the blood of Christ. You see that his predestination was not simply purposing that we would have a lot of privileges. The Christians in the congregation in Rome to whom Paul was writing this letter were not simply predestined to hear the gospel; they were not simply predestined to receive the benefits of common grace – intelligence, creative skills, a powerful conscience and a taste for religion. They weren’t simply predestined to have some evangelist plead with them to come to Christ. They were in fact predestined to have the blood of Christ sprinkled on them and be saved from their sin and guilt. Listen to the words of another apostle, the apostle Peter, his opening words in his first letter. He says that those Christians to whom he was writing, “have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood” (I Pet. 1:2). They had indeed been predestined to hear God’s gospel, and to have Christ offered to them, and to have men plead with them to turn and believe, but, more than that, to be actually sprinkled with the blood of Christ. In other words they were predestined to have the work of Christ and all the benefits of the Saviour actually applied to them in their own personal experience.
You remember the Old Testament incident in which Moses at the directive of God established a covenant between Jehovah and Israel (Exodus 34). Moses was told explicitly that he must take the blood that had been shed and he must sprinkle that blood half on the altar and half on the people. It was by that symbolic act that they became the covenant people of God. And when Peter says that we have been predestined to be sprinkled with the blood it was certainly the blood of the Lamb of God, but that blood is the blood of the new covenant that is shed for many for the remission of sins. They were predestined to be brought experientially and practically into covenant with Almighty God.
In other words, if today the blood of Christ, the blood of forgiveness has been applied to our souls then we owe that to God loving us before the foundation of the world and God predestining us. If today we are members of God’s covenant community then we owe that to divine predestination. If we are members of Zion’s city then that is a matter of sheer vertical sovereign love. Our participation in every spiritual blessing is a matter of the predestination of God because the blood is the symbol of every covenant blessing. The blood secures our forgiveness; it secures our adoption; it secures our assurance of God’s love; it secures peace of conscience; it symbolizes our immortality; it symbolizes our glorification; it symbolizes every single benefit of God’s covenant of grace. Predestination is concerned with the destination of a specific people determined by God. Their destination, God decides, is Golgotha and the cross of Christ to be sprinkled with his blood. Their destination is the empty tomb to be raised up into newness of life with Christ. Their destination is the throne of God in glory there to be seated with Christ in the heavenlies. Their destination is to be conformed to the likeness of God’s Son. Predestination is specifically a saving act of God. We are predestined to salvation; we are predestined to redemption; we are predestined to adoption; we are predestined to union with Christ; we are predestined to be baptized with the Holy Spirit of God. We have been predestined to be Abraham’s seed. We have been predestined by God to be heirs of Abraham’s promise, and that promise, says Paul in Galatians 3, is “that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”
In other words, our being predestined covers the whole spectrum of our redemptive privilege. If we are born again then that is because of predestination. If we are converted that is because of predestination. If we are forgiven it’s because of predestination. If we are God’s sons then that’s because of predestination. If we are kept by God’s power then it’s because of predestination. If we are glorified it’s because of predestination. If one day we shall see Christ as he is then it’s because of predestination. If God will wipe away ev ery tear from our eyes it is because of predestination. If we are to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, then we are specifically told in our text that it is because God predestined us.
Here’s Paul’s word to you. You’re in the midst of nasty stuff, and you can’t see a way out. How can things work out? You’re thinking, “This time I’m done for. This time I don’t see how I can make it through. This time I’m in the dark as to how the pieces are ever going to fit together.” And here’s Paul, and he comes in, and he says, “God set his love on you before the foundation of the world, and he foreknew you, he predestined you, he chose you. He made up his mind about you, and his purposes are not able to be overthrown. You are going to be conformed to the likeness of God’s son. You are! God’s purposes are invincible. There is nothing, there’s no combination of circumstances, there’s no opponent in the world that can overthrow those purposes.” What wonderful teaching, the reformed doctrine of predestination.
But a common logical objection to the doctrine of predestination is raised and it is this; “If what you have been saying about predestination is true then surely men can live any way they please.” Time and again people will say to us, “Surely this insistent emphasis upon God loving us before we were born or had done any good or evil, this emphasis on God choosing our destiny to go to heaven, surely it is a dangerous doctrine. If people have this assurance that it is all a matter of predestination that that will prejudice any walk with God. It will compromise the whole tone and tenor of their discipleship. “Surely,” they say, “that doctrine is prejudicial to the interests of holiness.”
Now if that is ever put to me I reply, “I have no logical answer to that objection. I cannot answer it logically. I can in fact see only a few logical answers to the plea that it can be inferred from the reformed doctrine of predestination that we can go on sinning because that gives God’s grace plenty of scope. It magnifies God’s grace to save a terrible sinning rebel. I have no logical answer to that inference, but I would claim that I have an answer that is greater than a logical answer. I have a great practical answer. I have an answer that says that the very purpose of predestination is to change a man into the likeness of Christ. I am saying that if a man is loved and predestined then the very meaning of that predestination is that God is determined to make him holy.
Now that man cannot say to himself, “God has predestined me therefore I don’t need to be Christ-like,” because if I’m predestined I can’t avoid being Christ-like, because if I was chosen before the foundation of the world I can’t dodge being Christ-like. The very concern of predestination is that men are borne along on the invincible wave of the grace of God that is carrying them along to the point where at last they are characterized in intellect, emotion, commitment and aspiration in total conformity to the image of the Son of God. Those predestined by God cannot go on living in sin, under sin’s dominion. Those predestined by God cannot live lives of antagonism against God. Those predestined by God cannot live in defiance towards the will of their Saviour, because being the object of predestinating grace means that God has taken steps to make it impossible to live like that. He has set up the whole machinery of effectual redemption to the end that he will conform every one whom he has fore-known to the likeness of his Son. God is determined to make us holy – that is the goal of predestination and God has committed all the glory of his own resources, and he has dedicated his omnipotence to making us absolutely Christ-like. He has destined us to absolute holiness before the foundation of the world. He has before decreed that we shall be as holy as Christ.
I would put it to you that it is in many ways a marvelous privilege, this tremendous position given to us in the New Testament, whereby the reality is that just as God predestined the cross of Calvary and the resurrection, so he has predestined our holiness, my holiness and your holiness. Paul speaks of ‘good works’ elsewhere and he says of them that God has foreordained that we should walk in them. It is indeed a marvelous attitude to life today, that as we walk along this road, the journey of this life, and as we go our own way, then we expect to meet here and there those good works which God has predestined for us. It means that as we get up each morning of every single day that we say to ourselves, “I wonder what good works God has prepared for us this day?” If I may be so bold as to use language for which I am surely given every ratification in the New Testament, there is each day something beautiful I can do for God – something beautiful for him – good works which he has predestined for me to do. Just as Christ was predestined to bear the sins of the world and rise from the dead and ascend to heaven with authority in heaven and earth and from there build his church, so we have been predestined to be Christ-like. And it is to that Calvary commitment, not to our own logical powers, that our own defence against antinomianism and against unholy actions lies. It is the very meaning of the atonement itself. “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephs. 5:25-27).
Let me add this, that there is not the least connection between this doctrine of predestination and the idea that only a tiny proportion of people will be saved. You know that this is something that troubles people greatly. They read the Bible and they meet the word ‘predestination’ four times and the word ‘election’ fourteen times and they hurry over these God words, because they think such words mean an inevitable contraction of the number that’s going to be saved, as if predestination meant at last God would only have a tiny minority, a small proportion of mankind. I see no reason whatever in Scripture to believe that only a tiny number are going to be saved. Abraham is promised that his seed shall be vast like the sands on the seashore and the stars in the heavens. The great vision John has in the book of Revelation of the numbers in heaven is that they are a multitude that no man can number. We should have that view of God predestining numerous millions upon millions to become glorified in heaven. Even arithmetically where sin has abounded grace will much more abound.
This is a wonderfully encouraging doctrine for evangelism. God gives Paul the singular task of being the first preacher to bring the gospel to the million strong city of Corinth in Greece. It was a seaport of sailors, travelers, temples and priestesses. And if Paul had been apprehensive the day before he began his mission and entered the town then God spoke to him that night, and this is what he said to him; “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no-one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city” (Acts 18:9&10). Paul is told to keep o n speaking, in the synagogues, in hired halls, in town squares, privately to individuals. Don’t stop speaking about Jesus Christ and all he is and all he has done. Do not be silent. That was his task. God then said that his task was not to leave Paul, but be right by him to protect him. No one was going to attack and harm him. There was no need for Paul to be afraid of this in Corinth. His safety in this city was guaranteed by God. Then God spoke of his eternal predestinating love, that he had foreordained many people in Corinth to become his own chosen redeemed people. “I have them,” said God to him. “I have them in the grip of my eternal love. I have them in my eternal foreordaining grace. I have them, and you will find them as you go on doing what I tell you to do, “keep on speaking, do not be silent” because that is the way you are going to find them. They are the ones who will respond to your message. And never forget that I am with you always. What wonderful encouragement, when we are so few, when our hearts don’t feel love for the people to whom we are speaking, God loves his people and he has chosen them, and he has made up his mind that they will listen to what you have to say and believe your words. What encouragement to evangelism this is, that success does not depend on us but on the eternal predestinating love of God.
3. GOD BEFORE DESTINED US FOR LIKENESS TO HIS SON.
Paul shows us the great design of God’s predestinating grace; “He also predestined [us] to become conformed to the likeness of his Son.” Now we know that this does not mean that we are going to become divine. We are never going to become gods. We are never going to become omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. Never, ever! The Creator-creature distinction will always remain intact without any blurring by God or man. Paul is talking here about moral and ethical likeness to Christ, being totally free from sin, loving God with all our hearts, loving our neighbours as ourselves, full of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. We shall be always presenting our glorified bodies to God as our reasonable service. Everything we do shall be done to the glory of God. We shall be as holy as Jesus Christ. The work of sanctification which has had a beginning in our lives will be completed and perfected, and we will be glorified. We will love the things that the Lord Jesus loves, and hate the things the Lord Jesus hates, and live like him, and think and imagine like him, and care like him. That is what God has determined to do for us all. God loves his Son so much he has foreordained that the redeemed heavens and earth – the new creation – shall be full of men and women, millions upon millions of them, who are all going to be filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
That is part of the exaltation of Christ. Paul’s mind turns to the resurrected Christ, the ascended Lord, who is now sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He rules the universe. He will first return to this world, the scene of his conquest of sin and the devil on Golgotha, and when he does he will come on the clouds of glory surrounded by hosts of angels. The whole world will bow and worship him, and the apostle Paul is telling this congregation in Rome to consider who the Lord Jesus Christ is, that glorious image of the Son of God. When John saw him on the prison isle of Patmos he was overwhelmed with the spectacle with Christ’s voice like the sound of many waters and John fell at his feet as one dead. That likeness is the end of our journey; think of that! God is going to grant that you will reflect his likeness. You’re going to be a partaker of his glory.
The prophet Isaiah gave an illustration to his hearers of the glory that one day God would give them when they were restored from their long exile in Babylon; their captivity would be over. The people who had abused them and held them hostage would be silent, and Babylon’s soldiers would have to carry their children on their backs. There would be great joy and acclamation as they come back into the land. That is the picture of the end of captivity, but the apostle Paul tell these oppressed Christians in Rome under Nero’s fearful reign, “Let me tell you something better than that. Let me tell you something more magnificent. You are going to share in the glory of the ascended, the resurrected, the reigning Lord Jesus Christ.” But he’s not done there.
He goes on to say that then the Lord Christ would be supreme, that he would be the firstborn among many brethren. So our transformation into his likeness will not pull him down and make him indistinguishable from million of people like him. Our glorification won’t diminish the exaltation of Christ; it enhances it and magnifies it. In other words, as we are glorified, and as we share in the glory of our older brother (our ‘older brother,’ isn’t it glorious to be able to refer to the Lord Jesus Christ that way?) his glory will not shrink. In fact, it will be more magnificently manifested because he is the only reason why we are all there in that glory. He alone has been the way. There’s been no other way of anyone else to enter that glory. Consider the holiest men and women you have ever known. There will not be one of them who will think they had anything to do with the extraordinary change that will take place in their lives, that they who died skeletal, weak, yellow, in great pain and not at all like the Son of God, are now transfigured, They are people before whom angels bow. I’m going to know, and you’re going to know, and God our Lord is going to know that the reason that we are there and have been changed is only because of what the first-born Jesus has done.
So our participation in that glory itself is going to display more clearly the fact that Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren. He is the first fruits of the resurrection. He’s the first fruits of the ascension, and we reflect his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The dust of the earth is going to sit on the throne of heaven. In our flesh . . . in our flesh we shall see God. And that will only enhance the glory of the embodied Son of God. And the apostle Paul saying that that is what God has destined before the foundation of the world for you, when he first knew and loved you. “I will do this for them,” he determined. That was God’s purpose for you. That’s the purpose that Father, Son and Holy Spirit had set out for you. And no event of your life can interfere with that purpose, just as every event of Jesus’ life, every part of his humiliation contributed to his exaltation now. I don’t understand exactly how, but it’s so helpful to know that the manifold experiences of your life, many of which we don’t understand, will one day be understood. Now I see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known. We don’t understand them now, we may not understand them in five years, we may not understand them in twenty-five years, we may never understand them in this life. And though they will be much clearer in heaven we may not understand all about them there, but that will be no frustration to us because of that. We will be as contented as Jesus was with what he didn’t know just as much as with what he did know. God has the right to his sec ret things; they belong to him.
15th July 2012 GEOFF THOMAS
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Post by Admin on Aug 27, 2023 21:07:46 GMT -5
Romans 8:30 “And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
These memorable words are part of what has been called the Golden Chain of Salvation. I think it was given this name by one of the Westminster divines named John Arrowsmith, and it is a curious fact that he had only one eye losing one in an accident with a bow and arrow – John Arrowsmith. He is the one who said that God lets down this golden chain from heaven to draw up all his people. Children can learn verses about each specific link; they recite these verses, and they stand holding large pieces of cardboard cut into the form of a link on which are written each of these five Bible words. The children move closer together so that the separate links become a chain. The picture is vivid and simple enough. You can see it in your mind’s eye. I don’t think it would be improved by my printing it on my computer and projecting it on the wall by Powerpoint. You can imagine a great chain like one keeping an aircraft carrier moored in its berth.
This ‘Golden Chain’ is God’s. He designed it and he made each link. God has not made the links dependent on man’s ability to make the chain but on God’s power and purpose and love. In 1955 an Indian Hindu and mystic named Rao announced that he could walk on water and a large crowd gathered in Bombay around a swimming pool to see him do this. He stood in silence for a moment at the end of the pool and then he took a step forward and plunged right to the bottom of the pool. He came out of the water gasping and angry and turned on the crowd, wagging his finger, “One of you is an unbeliever,” he said. Do you understand? He blamed his failure to perform this miracle on other people’s unbelief. God did not hang these five links on the ability of man because we mess up everything, but on his own loving, gracious purposes. He determined and planned and accomplished this.
The Golden Chain were fashioned in the foundry erected on Mount Golgotha. In the heat of Calvary the Saviour forged each link and joined them together in this order as he obeyed his Father – even to dying on a cross. He foreknew, and he predestined, and he called, and he justified, and he glorified. It is all the action of God; it is all his work. Salvation is of the Lord. You will also see that two of those links came into operation in eternity past, foreknowledge and predestination. Two of those links come into operation during our lives, calling and justification, and the last one comes into operation in heaven, glorification, but you will notice that it too is written in the past tense just like all the other four divine decrees.
THE FIRST LINK IS FOREKNOWLEDGE. For God to know is to love. Adam knew his wife Eve with a passionate knowledge. God knew his people Israel with a loving, caring knowledge. It is God cherishing people before they loved him. We love him because he first loved us. God’s foreknowledge is what we call a proactive knowledge, in other words, God takes the initiative. He does not sit back and see how things are going to pan out hoping for the best. The foresight of God is not a blessing. To know that God has seen everything I have ever done is not any comfort to me, but to realise that God loves us in spite of all he knows about us is amazing grace! What God foresaw was a valley of dry bones. What God foresaw was a world of sinners dead in trespasses and sins. What God foresaw was each heart at enmity against God. What God foresaw was sinners saying, “We will not have this Man ruling over us.” What God foresaw was men without the Spirit not accepting the things that come from the Spirit of God, because the gospel was foolishness to them. And yet many of these sinners God loved beforehand. God’s foreknowledge is not the knowledge of passive observation, God looking in surprise and saying, “Oooh! Ah! So he did this! Wow! She did that!” You understand that foreknowledge is not a non-intrusive gathering of facts.
On the Internet there are chat rooms where people discuss ideas. Some get involved and express their opinions and argue and debate, but others just visit the site and read what is going on. There is a name for those visitors. They are called ‘lurkers.’ They are a fly on the wall. They observe but they do and say nothing. God’s foreknowledge is not the foreknowledge of a celestial fly on the wall. I can change the metaphor radically. God is not like John Simpson the famous BBC war correspondent gathering and reporting the facts as he’s observed them. God knows these people personally. God loves them. There is friendship for ever in this word ‘foreknowledge.’
Foreknowledge is not God judging a history-long beauty pageant, so that there are certain standards for what real beauty is, your face and your figure are beautiful, but you’re not a dumb blonde. Your personality is also attractive and the judges have these criteria and they judge the girls one by one according to these standards. They each award them points. In a sense the winner has chosen herself through her own beauty, and her own talent and her own pleasant personality. The judges have merely recognized this fact and acknowledged it when they have chosen here.
God’s foreknowledge of his people is not a beauty contest. It is not God looking at us and ticking all his boxes and saying, “I’ll certainly make her one of my children, and him, and her.” It is not God effectively allowing people effectively to choose themselves based on their merits and accomplishments. It is not God stating the qualifications for winning the prize and then looking to see who the winners are. Foreknowledge is God saying to millions of sinners, “I love you not because you meet all my standards and not because you are in any way worthy of the choice. I choose you though you are nothing but I am planning to make something of you through what Jesus Christ my only begotten Son will do and by the work of the Spirit.
He saw us with all our liabilities and poverty and shame and he loved us and he made us his bride and determined to present us to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that we should be holy and without blemish. If you are a true believer in Jesus then God foreknew you from before the foundation of the world, and your response should be, “Why me?” Not the “Why me?” of complaint – “Why is it always me?” But the “Why me?” of happy wonder. I am talking of the “Why me?” of the happy husband who says, “Why did she ever accept me?” I am referring to the “Why me?” of the happy wife who asks, “Why did he ever want me?” We have no idea why we became the recipients of God’s love before the foundation of the world. We sing wi th wonder, “Loved with everlasting love; led by grace that love to know.” We never deserved it; there was no beauty in us to win the divine pageant. It is amazing grace.
So God’s foreknowledge, says Ray Pritchard, is his divine ability to know what’s going to happen before it happens because he intends to make it happen. We see this in a limited way in our own experience. For instance, you may say, “When church is over this morning, I’m going to go home and I’m going to eat Sunday lunch. I know that. In fact, I know I’m going to have roast lamb.” How do you know that? You know it because you have already decided that you will do it. You aren’t guessing or theorizing. You are really just announcing a personal decision. You know you’re going to have roast lamb not only because your wife told you that’s what you were having but because you yourself have bought the lamb and you began to prepare it last night. But there is a limit to that kind of foreknowledge. Something could happen to change your plans. You could faint in the service and end up in hospital. You could have a crash on the way home. Lots of things could happen. So even though you think you know what’s going to happen, you can’t totally control the future.
God is not like that. God’s foreknowledge doesn’t simply mean that he knows by looking down the corridors of history what’s going to happen because he’s God and he can see what’s going to happen. That’s true, but it doesn’t go far enough. God knows what’s going to happen because he is sovereign over all the earth. He reigns over all creation. He knows what is going to happen because he either directly causes it or gives his permission for it to happen. Every event in the universe falls under one of those two categories—directly caused or divinely permitted. Knowing all about you he loved you first; he foreknew you.
THE SECOND LINK IS PREDESTINATION. This is a Bible word; a Holy Spirit word; a holy term. Two words, ‘pre’ and ‘destination’ are here. A destination is a final stop. You set off in your car or you get on the train and you are going somewhere, to Shrewsbury or to Swansea. That is where your trip ends. The prefix ‘pre’ means ‘before’. So what does predestination mean? It means to decide beforehand where you are going to end up. It means deciding, before you step aboard the train, where the journey is going to end.
Our text says that God has predestined you to reach a certain destination and what is that? Someday you will be like Jesus Christ. You’re going to be conformed to the likeness of God’s Son. On those days when we’re foolishly making a mess of being disciples of Jesus we have to remember this word, that God has taken personal responsibility to see that one day we will be like Jesus. If it all hung on me, or if it depended on you, then it would never happen. Me, transformed into the image of God the Son? As holy as he is holy? I say that if I had to do that then I’m a lost man. Impossible! But all things are possible with God. He has predestined us “to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (v.29)
Paul says that God has decided not to treat rebel sinners the same way as he treated rebel angels and condemn every one of them to eternal darkness. He decided not to justly send them to hell but to send a number as great as the sands on the seashore to heaven to be changed into the image of his Son. The problem with the doctrine of predestination is not, Why didn’t he send them all to heaven? but Why did he send any of them? Why wasn’t he fair and just and treat them as they deserved? How amazing that at such a cost, bringing the judgment they deserved on the Lamb of God, and pardoning them, God not only loved them but he made up his mind that they would be like Christ. We believe this because Jesus taught it and rejoiced in it. He said, “I praise you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure” (Matt.11:25&26)
So, when predestination has homed in on a person it will find him out and call him to God’s destination – from wherever he sets out. Zacchaeus set out from Jericho. Abraham set out from idolatrous Ur. Nicodemus and Paul set out from the college of the Pharisees. Dionysius and Damaris were on Mar’s Hill in Athens when they set out, but they all reached the destination of being transformed to the image of God’s own Son. Of course they all heard the word of God and they obeyed it. They turned from the sin of unbelief. They repented of worshipping idols. They confessed their sins to God and surrendered their lives to him. They believed in their hearts in Jesus and they confessed with their lips that he was alive. They did that. We believe in moral responsibility and the accountability of man. We believe in obeying the Lord when he says, “Come unto me . . . Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ.” But what made us go to Christ and confess him with our lips?
Listen to Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s experience of seeing this; “When I was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all by myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea the Lord was seeking me. I don’t think the young convert is at first aware of this. I can recall the very day and hour when I first received those truths into my own soul – when they were, as John Bunyan says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron, and I can recollect how I felt that I had grown all of a sudden from a babe into a man . . . One week-night, when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not thinking much about the preacher’s sermon . . . The thought struck me, ‘How did you come to be a Christian?’ I sought the Lord. ‘But how did you come to seek the Lord?’ The truth flashed across my mind in a moment – I should not have sought him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that he was the Author of my faith, and the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day . . . I ascribe my change wholly to God” [Autobiography, i, 164-165]. So the first link in the Golden Chain is God foreknowing, and the second is God predestining us.
THE THIRD LINK IS CALLING. There is a sincere offer that God makes to all men and women that if they will turn from their sins and embrace his Son as their Saviour then he will pardon them for their sins. There is a general call that God makes to the world. It’s referred to in the words of Jesus, “Many are called.&r dquo; The Lord gives a great invitation, “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” He wept over defying indifferent Jerusalem where he’d often preached. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matt. 23:37). Jesus longed to protect them with his saving power. He wept over their hostility. The Spirit of Christ in the prophet Ezekiel beseeched the people to turn in repentance. “”Turn! Please turn! Why will you die?” He told them that he took no pleasure in their deaths. There is a summons God makes to all men to repent. That is the general call which motivates us to evangelize and bring good news of a Saviour to all men.
There is also another divine summons that is specific, personal and inward. In every instance of the word ‘calling’ appearing in the New Testament (except for the word in the phrase, “Many are called”) it is this effectual summons of God that is being referred to. It is a call that has the desired effect; it creates a response. You get a letter; “Appear in Court on Friday”; it is an effectual call, a summons. That is what it is called My father’s twin brother traveled by train from Barnstable to Bristol Temple Meads. He was walking along the platform and the announcer was speaking over the Tannoy telling the people of train arrivals and departures. People were being urged to hurry along to certain platforms where certain trains were due to depart, but Uncle Bryn was hardly listening because he knew what he was going to do and where he was going. Then there came another announcement which was very different. It said, “Will Mr. Bryn Thomas from Barnstable please go to the Station Master’s Office?” He heard that call; it was specific and personal to him, and he responded. He went immediately. His child was ill and he was being asked to return home. All his plans changed. That is the effectual call. It is internal and specific. In other words, it not only issues the invitation, it motivates. It provides the ability or willingness to respond positively. It is God’s drawing to himself or bringing to spiritual-life the one who without that call would remain spiritually dead and far from him.
There is no greater illustration of this in the Bible than Jesus’ calling of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, who had died four days before. Lazarus in his grave is a picture of every human being in his or her natural state: dead in body and soul, bound with grave-clothes, lying in a tomb, sealed with some great stone. Let us call . . . let me preach to him, “Lazarus, Lazarus! Come forth, Lazarus! We want you back. We miss you. If you will just get up out of that tomb and return to us, you’ll find that everything is ready. We are all anxious to have you back. No one here is going to put any obstructions in your way. Please rise up Lazarus!” What? Won’t Lazarus come? Doesn’t he want to be with us? The problem is that Lazarus doesn’t have the ability to come back. The call is given, but he isn’t able to come. Ah, but let Jesus take our place before the tomb. Let Jesus call out, “Lazarus, come forth,” and the case is quite different. The words are the same, but now the call is no mere invitation. It is an effectual calling. In this call is an ability to respond. For the same God who originally called the creation out of nothing is now calling life out of death, and his call is heard. Lazarus, though he has been dead four days, hears Jesus and obeys his Master’s voice.
Now let us see those two calls, the general call of the gospel and the effectual calling of God, as we are told about them in Philippi in Greece when Paul visited the town. He heard that there was a group of women who were earnestly religious. They met together regularly near a river and they shared their concerns and they prayed together, and Paul searched for them and he found them. He introduced himself and began to preach to them all. That is the general call of the gospel to every person whom we can persuade to listen to us, and one at least of this riverside prayer group of women responded. Her name was Lydia. She received the personal effectual call, that summoned her to come and believe the gospel message and trust in Jesus Christ who was offered to her by Paul. Why did she of all the women there, respond to Paul’s message? Because God called her. Above the voice of Paul she heard God’s voice and she was constrained to believe. Here is how Luke describes this in Acts chapter 16; “We travelled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days. On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshipper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message” (Acts 16:12-14).
While her ears were still hearing the voice of Paul in a general call to repent and believe in Jesus her heart was hearing the Lord summoning her in this personal effectual call, and she responded to that. That was the reason she could respond to what Paul said and tell him she had become a follower of Jesus and wanted to be baptized. And it happens just like that today. We have all seen phenomena like it. It is not that there were some spiritual attributes present in a woman’s life life – just her out of a whole gang of women and this X factor that she had was the reason she was more susceptible to becoming a Christian. No. God acted and the Lord homed in on her heart and changed it. It had been closed to truth, and closed to Christ, but while Paul was speaking, at that time, God showed her that the message was true. Doesn’t that tell us never to stop preaching the gospel, and to tell all men and women that God is willing to save them? Then as we urge them to trust in the Saviour then God opens their hearts and calls them to himself. So we have foreknowledge, predestination and calling.
THE FOURTH LINK IS JUSTIFICATION. When a judge justifies an accused man he declares that he is a righteous man. He has heard all the evidence about his actions. The witnesses have all spoken up; his advocates have pleaded for him; the case for the prosecution has been made by those lawyers. The judge has heard it all. Now he speaks up with his legal conclusion, and he declares the accused a righteous man; he justifies him. Nothing changes in that man’s past. Nothing changes in that man’s recollection of what he has done. What changes is his status. He was an accused man; but now, to his wonder, he is a justified man. “Righteous,” says the Judge concerning the charges brought against him. “No condemnation,” the Judge declares. “You may go free. Case dismissed.” The change first is in his feelings, his wonder: “’Tis mercy all immense and free, and O my God it found out me.”
That is the meaning of justificat ion, not making someone a righteous man but declaring someone to be righteous in the eyes of the law. There were two men praying in the Temple and Jesus was watching the scene. One man was full of himself and boasted of his righteous life. Outwardly he was a respectable member of society. The other man is described as a Publican, that is, a Jew who was employed in the tax-collection service of the Roman government. Hear how Christ described him: “the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said,`God, have mercy on me, a sinner’” (Lk. 18:13). What do you see here? Not a perfect man; a very imperfect man, but you also see contrition; here is penitence; here is a sense of sin. Out of that sense of sin is born a prayer for mercy. And that prayer for mercy receives an answer from God, as the sincere prayer for mercy always does, for Jesus said, “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk. 18:14). That day that man left home and he came with his past and all that he had done to the Temple, and when he went home the events of that past were unchanged. There is no way that any of the actions that he had done can be altered. But they can be pardoned; they can be forgiven by God, and his guilt can be washed away. God can show him mercy, and when he asked God for it, then God gave it to him. He went back home justified before God!
You know how a man comes to find justification before God? He finds justification at the foot of Golgotha’s cross on which the Prince of glory died. There the Lamb of God took away the sin of the world, and there we too must throw ourselves upon the mercy of Christ. This requires grace; indeed it does. The natural man is a man of pride. He rebels at the thought of pleading for pardon and forgiveness. He rebels at the very thought that his self-righteousness is but “filthy rags” in the sight of God. But when God is calling him effectually he will show that he is hearing the voice of God by repentance. Then he will pray as the tax-collector prayed and throw himself upon the mercy of Christ. This is the blessed fruit of the call of God to him.
What a different journey that tax-collector took returned home, though through the same familiar streets. How different, from leaving his home condemning himself, and then after confessing his sinfulness to God and asking for mercy, returning home justified by God. Paul writes in the opening words of chapter five of this letter, “Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is the fruit of justification: Peace with God. Are many people looking for peace these days! Most of them are not looking for peace with God, but they are not men and women at peace as your daily papers tell you. We live in a nation of unhappy restless people, and yet they have not located the seat of the trouble. They are not seeking peace with God through Christ, yet they are seeking peace within their own hearts and lives. Perhaps someone you love is evidently in that condition today. Perhaps you, for yourself, are seeking a peace you haven’t found. Let me tell you what the Word of God has to say about your condition. The Bible declares that the seat of your trouble is not, first of all, in the world around you, not in your job, not in your family, not in any external condition. The seat of your trouble is in your own heart which is estranged from God. When you have made peace with God, you will have peace in your soul and not before.
Hear me carefully. There is no little formula that I can give you. You will not find peace with God, nor can you find peace with God in religious mumbo-jumbo. You will find peace with God at the foot of Jesus’ cross. In other words you speak to God in the name of the Jesus who died and rose again. You go to God because of what Jesus has done. You are saying, “Deal with me in mercy for Jesus’ sake” and in penitence of heart, you seek and find forgiveness for your sin, and by faith receive the righteousness of Christ. In the day that you are justified before God, you will find peace, and not one day before.
THE FIFTH LINK IS GLORIFICATION. Why does Paul omit sanctification? Why isn’t that one additional sixth link in the chain coming between justification and glorification? Because it is made a part of glorification. Sanctification is glory begun; glory is sanctification consummated. He does not need to add another link, and here how daring is the apostle! The word ‘glorified’ is found in the aorist past tense, not the future tense. In other words, glorification is as absolutely certain as foreknowledge, as predestination, as calling and as justification. Being glorified is not a matter of speculation. It is not even a good possibility. It is absolutely certain. Glory shall be revealed in us. It’s as if it has been accomplished in us already, because we are joined to Christ, and Christ is in glory now in the midst of the throne of God. He is our head and we are his body, and it’s impossible for living head and living body to be separated. We are as glorified positionally and in our status this moment as we shall be when we see him and be in reality as glorious as he is.
This is a golden chain because not one link in it can be broken. This chain comes down from heaven and then it draws up to heaven all that the Father has given to the Son, not one of them being lost. This golden chain gives certainty to salvation. It is the work of God from beginning to end. It is all that Jesus Christ by himself has accomplished. He made every link in this chain, and he attaches that chain to us and he breaks all the chains of condemnation that link us to our wretched past. No chains of sin now can pull us to hell because chains of glory are drawing us to heaven. You have heard the expression that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and if there are five religious links and one of them is the work of man then it is hopeless. That weak link is going to break and then the chain is broken and down, down, down we fall. But if all the links are fashioned by Omnipotence then there is nothing that can destroy them.
You would not dream of driving along in your car, especially if there was ice and frost on the road, without tightening your safety belt around you. Click, clunk! If you did not have that holding you fast one sudden crash and you would be thrown through the windscreen to receive horrible injuries. Yet you are on a dangerous journey today to death, and judgment, and God. You can be lost; you can end up in the pit, but God has provided a wonderful golden chain to hold you safe. Is it wrapped around you? Have you asked God to wrap it around you? Won’t you keep asking until you know it’s got you eternally safe?
What a wonderful chain! Think on its five links. Often we are quite easily satisfied with the way things go on this earth because we have our health; because we have a relative degree of prosperity. Things are going pretty well for us – at least at present. So we soon forget about the golden chain and how it extends into glo ry. Sometimes we become careless and we put aside God’s Word, the Bible; we might not even read it for days on end, and our prayers become so routine. Does the golden chain then mean anything to us?
Think again of this golden chain. It was planned before the world was made, it was formed by the life and death of God the Son. It will last throughout this age and on to everlasting, heavenly glory. Now we are in transition; we are traveling in a foreign land along the narrow way and on one side of us there is a bottomless pit and on the other side is a lake of fire. Only the golden chain of grace can keep us safe. God is offering you this golden chain of salvation. Wrap it around you! Ask God to attach it to you, the heavenly safety belt, to bring you to everlasting glory, keep you safe and secure until the end. There is nothing else like it. Put it on now! Don’t go home without it!
22nd July 2012 GEOFF THOMAS
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