Ephesians 4

Ephesians 4
Sanctification: The Honorable Obsession Jan 2/22
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-14/sanctification-the-honorable-obsession
Ephesians 4:1, Unity in the Body of Christ

1
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the
calling to which you have been called,
2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in
love,
3 making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
4 There is ONE body and ONE Spirit, just as you were called to the ONE hope of
your calling,
5 ONE Lord, ONE faith, ONE baptism,
6 ONE God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
7
But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
8 Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he made captivity

itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.”
9
(When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also
descended into the lower parts of the earth?
10 He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens,
so that he might fill all things.)
11 The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some
evangelists, some pastors and teachers,
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of
Christ,
13 until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son
of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.
14 We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every
wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.
15 But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who
is the head, into Christ,
16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with
which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s
growth in building itself up in love.
This is a very loaded portion of Scripture, we’ll dig down into the riches of its
depth and the rest of what is ahead of us in Ephesians. V1, “the prisoner of the
Lord,” implores us to: “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you
have been called.” This is a very important introduction to this second half,
because so much of what is about to come relates to walking in a worthy way.
Walking? That’s a term used in the epistles to refer to daily conduct, daily life,
living my Christian life one day at a time, step by step.
Worthy? That´s a very interesting Greek word (axiōs), it means “equivalent.”
Another way to define it would be to say that something has to balance
out. Axiōs is something that’s in balance, that’s found equilibrium.
How does that relate to walking as a believer? It is simply this: Here is the
command to live a life that is in balance, in perfect harmony with your position
in Christ. It should be in perfect balance with all the spiritual blessings that are
ours in Christ that began to be laid out in Ephesians 1, “ 3 Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 just as he chose us in Christ before
the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.”
It really took us all the way through the first three chapters. We have been
given union with Christ. We are in Christ. All the privileges that come with that,
all the honors, all the blessings, all the promises, and all the power that comes
with that should be matched up with how we live our lives. Our lives should be
a true reflection of our condition and our union with Jesus Christ. This is the
essential reality of Christian living.
This is also the definition of sanctification. What does it mean to be sanctified?
It means to live a life that is consistent with your spiritual union with Christ, it
embraces all that is in that union by way of privilege, honor, blessing, promise,
and power. That’s why “therefore” is here, because in consequence of what
we’ve learned in Ephesians 1 to 3, this is how we are to live. Everything that is
ours in Christ, all the spiritual blessings laid out. Based on that doctrine, we
have a duty to follow up and live in a way that is in balance with our privileges.
This is a very common theme in the New Testament epistles.
1 Thessalonians 4:3, A Life Pleasing to God
1
Finally, brothers and sisters, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as
you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God (as, in fact, you
are doing), you should do so more and more.
2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain
from fornication;
4 that each one of you know how to control your own body in
holiness and honor,
5 not with lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God;
6 that no one wrong or exploit a brother or sister in this matter, because the
Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we have already told you
beforehand and solemnly warned you.
7 For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness.
8 Therefore whoever rejects this rejects not human authority but God, who also
gives his Holy Spirit to you.
This is how I ought to live, I have the responsibility to live that way. Doctrine
lays out the standards, lays out the commands, lays out the divine
expectations; and we are to respond to those in obedience.
2 Corinthians 6, The Temple of the Living God
14
Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there
between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between
light and darkness?
15 What agreement does Christ have with Beliar? Or what does a believer share
with an unbeliever?
16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of
the living God; as God said,
“I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
17
Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you,
18
and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”
2 Corinthians 7,
1
Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every
defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God.
Paul talks about the fact that we have been made children of God, we have
been adopted by God, God has become our Father; and having become sons of
God, we are really the recipients of everything in the divine treasury; it is all
ours. Sanctification is the consequent expectation of every believer, from
having received all spiritual blessings. In that I have been granted all spiritual
blessings in the heavenlies in Christ, this is how I am to live. This is a constant
theme, let us see it: that duty is always built on doctrine, that practice is
always built on position, that behavior is always built on truth, that I only live a
life to the glory of God when I understand of the glory of God. That is to say,
when I understand the fullness of God’s glory revealed in redemptive blessing,
I then have the foundation to live the way God wants me to live.
1 Peter 1, A Call to Holy Living
13
Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your
hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.
14 Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly
had in ignorance.
15 Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct;
16 for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
17
If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to
their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.
18 You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your
ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold,
19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or
blemish.
20 He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the
end of the ages for your sake.
21 Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead
and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.
22
Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that
you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.
23 You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed,
through the living and enduring word of God.
24 For
“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers, and the flower falls,
25
but the word of the Lord endures forever.”
That word is the good news that was announced to you.
Sanctification should be my preoccupation. As a believer, the election is done,
justification is done, glorification is coming. And you’re living in the middle
between justification and glorification, and the preoccupation of every believer
must be sanctification. That is the separation from sin, becoming increasingly
holy. Many denominations, in my judgment, have a very low view of
sanctification. It doesn’t seem to be particularly preoccupied with
sanctification at all. It’s perfectly content to accept divine, sovereign election.
It’s very happy about the doctrine of justification. It looks forward to
glorification, but has a very nominal, minimal, indifferent attitude toward
sanctification.
That is a core sin. I mean, that is a monumental failure in the Christian world,
the reason why the Christian world is so full of disappointment, sin and
defection—because there is little, if any, interest in sanctification. People are
interested in self-fulfillment, social issues. They’re happy to embrace the
sovereignty of God and know that they’re saved and on their way to heaven.
But very little is expected of people with regard to sanctification.
In 1759, a man was born by the name of William Wilberforce; you will probably
recognize the name. He died in 1833. Everybody who knows anything about
English history knows about him because he had a long career in the English
Parliament. He was a Christian man, but he is very famous for his commitment
to the abolition of slavery; and that was his contribution, politically, to the
world. He waged a 40-year battle in the English Parliament to get them to pass
a law to abolish human slavery. His first speech was in May 12, 1789, he gave a
defense of the call to abolish slavery. His first speech lasted three and a half
hours, to lay out his case.
Over the duration of the next number of years, he proposed laws in the English
Parliament six times. All six times, the abolitionists laws were rejected. Finally,
they passed abolition days before his death, long after he had left Parliament.
But that was not his obsession, people assume it was, because it’s a noble
cause. Historically, people think of him as obsessed with abolition. He had a lot
of enemies who thought that was the most important thing in his life, they
wanted to make sure he never got what he wanted. But that was not his true
obsession.
I know what his true obsession was. How do I know that? Because recently his
journals have been discovered. He wrote journals so that there is a mass of his
first-person writings that reflect his obsession. He was obsessed with his own
sanctification. This is what drove him day after day after day, was the sense
that he was not the man that Christ wanted him to be, he was not worthy.
At the age of 20, Wilberforce started making resolutions and writing them
down, as many in the 1700s did. His first one was something simple like, “Go to
bed by 11:00, and get up by 6:00,” from there he wrote all kinds of resolutions.
Here’s a quote: “I fully hope to write down every night whether I have been
faithful to my Lord or whether in the course of that day I have in any instance
clearly transgressed.” You’re going to write down whether you have been
faithful to the Lord or whether you have transgressed, and you’re going to do
that every day? You’re going to keep that kind of intense inventory on your
life? You are an obsessed person.
He made many resolutions. “I made many resolutions and broke them almost
as soon as I made them.” His resolutions have now been collected and
published, one of the words that appears is a classical Greek word: oy moi. It’s
onomatopoetic—oy moi. It was a classical Greek word used to describe the
mourning of women who are hired to mourn at a funeral. He uses that word
over and over again. There was this constant sense of unworthiness; there was
this constant cry of sadness at the lack of sanctification in his life.
He kept lists, “I wrote down the chief mercies of God that day, the chief
operations of His divine providence.” Then he listed the day’s troubles, the
day’s failures, the day’s evils, the day’s suffering, his main defects,
temptations, and sins. After he listed all of it, he would write down the
behaviors that glorified God, advanced the gospel, then—in his own words—
cultivated a taste for heaven. Imagine doing that every day. You would really
come to grips with your spiritual condition. He knew that because he was not
obsessed with slavery, he saw it as an evil, to make a difference, he was
obsessed with his sanctification.
Here are a few things from his journals, “How should I be ashamed if others
could see me just as I really am? I often think I am one grand imposter. My
heart is heavy. Oh, there is nothing that can speak peace to the wounded spirit
but the gospel promises and the promises sure. God is love and is able to save
to the uttermost, and He will cast out none who come to Him. He it is I trust,
who has excited in me a disposition to come. And I will therefore press
forward, humbly indeed, but trusting to His mercy, who has promised so many
blessings to them that seek Him. O Lord, yet strengthen me. And if it pleases
Thee, fill me with all peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
“I humbly hope that I have felt this day, and still feel somewhat of the powers
of the world to come. I feel indeed the deepest sense of my own sinfulness. But
blessed be God for His gracious promises. To Thee, O Lord, I humbly devote
myself. Oh, confirm me to the end. Make me perfect. Establish, strengthen,
settle me. What cause have I for thankfulness? Which way whatsoever I look I
am heaped up with blessings, mercies of all sorts and sizes. I wish not to spend
time in writing, but oh, let me record the lovingkindness of the Lord.”
“To Thee, O God, I fly through the Savior. Enable me to live more worthy of my
holy calling, to be more useful and efficient, that my time may not be frittered
away unprofitably to myself and others, but that I really may be of use in my
generation and adorn the doctrine of God my Savior. I am a poor, helpless
creature, Lord. Strengthen me.”
He was hard on himself, he was honest; he knew he wasn’t what he should be,
as every honest believer knows. As Paul said, “Not as though I’ve already
attained,” right? “But I press toward the mark.”
On his deathbed, as heaven was ready to receive him, Wilberforce said, “I hope
no man on earth has a stronger sense of sinfulness and unworthiness before
God than I do.” He was, at that time, 73 years old and 11 months; and he had
been obsessed with sanctification since he was 20. All he could think about on
the brink of heaven, at the age of 74, was how unworthy he was to enter
heaven. He died on Monday, July 29th, in 1833, just a month before his 74th
birthday.
What’s the point of this? This is to help you understand what a real obsession
with sanctification looks like. You know, we have heroes in our culture, mostly
celebrities and politicians; and if those are your heroes, you’re in sad shape.
We need heroes like this.
The Word of God calls us to walk worthy of our calling. He writes down
thousands of these personal inventories because he understands he’s not what
he should be. Very often he uses Titus 2, “9 Tell slaves to be submissive to their
masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk
back, 10 not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in
everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior.” and
cries out that he would be able to live a life that adorned the doctrine of God,
that brought honor to God and fame to Christ.
This is how every believer should live. This is both a divine expectation and a
divine command. This is what walking worthy means. You are in Christ. In Him
you have all spiritual blessings. You’re not worthy of that, but you spend your
life trying to elevate your life to some approximation of what it means to be
worthy. It’s not that you will sometime reach a point where you don’t need
mercy and you don’t need grace; you will never have that experience in this
world. You will never attain that. But this should be the obsession of your life.
It’s this kind of obsession with sanctification that was on the heart of the
apostle Paul. That’s why he would say about himself, “I am the chief of
sinners”—because he knew no matter how he longed to be conformed to the
perfections of Christ, and no matter how worthy he was; because he said to the
Corinthians, “Follow me as I follow Christ,” he had reached some maturity,
some level of worthiness; it was never what it could be or should be. There is a
necessary and concomitant humility in the sanctified believer—that the more
sanctified he or she is, the more unsanctified they feel. But the passion of our
lives should be to adorn the doctrine of God, to make sure that our lives bring
honor to Christ.
Ephesians 1 to 3, all the spiritual blessings were laid out: privileges, promises,
blessings and power; these are our possessions. These define our position in
Christ, our union, our identity with Him. Then in Ephesians 4 come the expected
and commanded duties in response, so that I am living worthy of my calling.
That’s why you have at the beginning the word therefore. A very important
word because there is a transition here of monumental significance.
At the end of Ephesians 3 we have been granted the riches of glory, we have
been given strength through the power of the Spirit, that Christ has taken up
residence in our hearts, that lives that live with Christ in the center are rooted
and grounded in love to the degree that the love that we experience in Christ
surpasses knowledge, so that we can literally be filled to the fullness of God
and be able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think
according to the power that works in us. This is the culminating description of
what it is to be a believer. That’s me, so that through me, connected to Christ,
He receives “glory in the church . . . [in] generations forever and ever. Amen.”
The “amen” at the end of chapter 3 is the final affirmation of the doctrinal
section.
Transition then, immediately, is to duty. Doctrine to duty. This is not a random
move; this is critical. This is to be understood in the same sense that you would
understand a flower’s connection to its stem. As closely and vitally
correspondent would be the branch of a tree and the leaf of the tree, or the
root and the trunk of the tree; they all derive their life from what is below
them. And Paul is saying you have to have a foundation of doctrine to live a life
of worthy behavior. This is very common to Paul and the other writers. We
don’t have time to go through all of it, but I’ll give you one very dramatic
illustration.
You have the word in Romans 12:1, “Therefore I urge you”—same thing he said
in Ephesians: “Therefore I implore you” or “I beg you” or “I plead with you.”
And here’s the basis on which Paul pleads in Romans 12: “by the mercies of
God.” On the basis of the mercies that God has dispersed to you, you need “ to
present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your
spiritual service of worship. And not be conformed to this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you [function within] the
will of God . . . .” So the point is this: You need to present your bodies because
of what God has done for you, in giving you His mercies.
What are the mercies of God? What’s he talking about? Well if this were the
book of Ephesians, we would say everything that he laid out in chapter 1. But
this is the book of Romans. And Ephesians has, you could say, three chapters of
the mercies of God to the believer, but Romans has eleven chapters of the
mercies of God; the opening eleven chapters lay out all that God has given us.
And let me just remind you of what’s in those eleven chapters:
We have been granted the righteousness of God. We have been given an
understanding that all that the Law can do is condemn and it cannot save. We
have been granted salvation through the power of faith. We have been granted
peace with God, standing in grace, the promise of glory, the gift of love, the
indwelling Holy Spirit, adoption as God’s sons, reconciliation to God, union with
Christ. We are now priests offering sacrifices to God—acceptable ones. We have
been given deliverance from sin, freedom from judgment, conversion,
transformation, glorification, eternal security, and unfailing promises. Those
are all the mercies of God, which is to say you don’t deserve them. What a list.
Romans 12:1, “Therefore . . . present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice.”
Go down the path of sacrificial sanctification; that’s my spiritual service of
worship. What is God asking out of me? He gave me all spiritual blessings in
the heavenlies. They’re laid out in Romans 1 through 11; they’re laid out in
primarily in Ephesians 1 and expanded in 2 and 3. On the basis of what God has
done for me, what should He expect but that I should walk in a worthy way,
which is to present your body as a living and holy sacrifice. I want to live a life
that’s acceptable to God, and that, of course, means a holy life.
1 Thessalonians 4, “A Life Pleasing to God
1
Finally, brothers and sisters, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as
you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God (as, in fact, you
are doing), you should do so more and more.
2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification : that you abstain from
fornication;
4 that each one of you know how to control your own body in holiness and
honor,
5 not with lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God;
6 that no one wrong or exploit a brother or sister in this matter, because the
Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we have already told you
beforehand and solemnly warned you.
7 For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness .
8 Therefore whoever rejects this rejects not human authority but God, who also
gives his Holy Spirit to you.
1 Thessalonians 2, “11 As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father
with his children, 12 urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a
life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.” What has
God given me? Everything in His Kingdom and Eternal Glory. What does He ask
of me? That I walk in a way that is worthy, my life corresponds to my
privileges.
In Colossians 1, “9 For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not
ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of
God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you may lead
lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good
work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.” I can’t separate knowledge
from holiness, neither doctrine from duty, nor practice from position.
1 Peter 1, “A Call to Holy Living. 13 Therefore prepare your minds for action;
[c]
discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will
bring you when he is revealed. 14 Like obedient children, do not be conformed to
the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. 15 Instead, as he who called you
is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; 16 for it is written, “You shall be
holy, for I am holy.” Line up your living with your privileges. Teaching
behaviors without doctrinal foundation is not good. Because when you try to
live a Christian life without doctrinal understanding, it’s disappointing,
discouraging, it’s work, it’s vain, it seems like I am just constantly pushing
myself to do something that I am not committed to do.
People trying to live the Christian life without sound doctrine are disappointed
and disillusioned, because what makes the Christian life the thing I love is my
understanding of doctrine. It’s when I understand the full range of the mercies
of God, when I understand the nature of God and all the spiritual blessings in
heaven in Christ, then my whole life becomes a spiritual sacrifice of
thanksgiving. Then I love the Lord for all that He’s done, love motivates
obedience. Where I don’t have enough theology to understand all that God has
given to me, then I´m trying to push yourself into the direction of being holy,
and I don’t have that profound motivation that turns my obedience from duty
to love. Some preachers try to emotionally motivate people; that doesn’t last
very long. Ephesians 4:23 says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” It’s
how I think that makes my obedience joyful, because it becomes an act of
gratitude, thanksgiving, love, praise and worship.
Colossians 3, 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the
old self with its practices 10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self,
which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11 In
that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised,
barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.” Let me give you
an illustration of what that is.
You are constantly being renewed. Think of your cell phone. Every once in a
while you get something from the cell phone company that says, “We want to
give you an update on the system. We’ll do that overnight if you plug your
phone in.” And what happens is the system is renewed; it’s upgraded. That is a
classic and simple illustration, of how God functions in the life of a believer.
There’s constant renewal, constant refurbishing, constant upgrading going on
in the life of a believer who is exposed to divine truth. I´m an upgraded version
of what I was, more efficient, fruitful and productive. It comes through the full
knowledge of God. That’s why Peter says, “Grow in grace and in the knowledge
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s my prayer for you.”
So doctrine is the foundation for conduct. Our walk is to be axiōs, it’s to be
equivalent to our restored, renewed, transformed, converted self in Christ. I
have all the spiritual blessings I have everything; I need to live consistently
with that. I can’t do that if I don’t know the mercies of the Lord, if I don’t have
the doctrinal truths, because then I’m making an effort without the knowledge
that catapults my effort into loving gratitude and worship. Critical transition
passage.
I know my standing in Ephesians 1,2&3. In Ephesians 4, I study my walking in
the world. We’re going to find that we have a unity walk, a different walk, a
love walk, a light walk, a wise walk, a spirit walk, a warfare walk. But all our
walking basically is motivated by our standing.
Sometimes I hear people say, “Doctrine is divisive. We don’t want to talk about
doctrine; we just talk about Jesus. We don’t talk about doctrine; we just live for
Jesus.” That’s not only foolish, that’s devilish. You can’t live a Christian life
without a doctrinal foundation and live it with joy and love as an act of
worship. When I understand what I deserve, who I am and what Lord has
granted me in my salvation, there’s ample motivation in that to live a grateful
life.
We are trophies of divine grace who are being completely updated all the time
—renewed, updated. We have risen from the dead; we have risen in Christ. We
are children of God, members of Christ’s body, living stones and living temple,
the dwelling of the Holy Spirit Himself. We need to live heavenly lives. “Set
your affections on things above,” as we read, “not on things on the earth.”
Ephesians 4 takes us into the category of a Christian walk, a Christian living, a
Christian behavior. Can we walk the way that we are called to walk? Yes, we
can because we have been given the Word and the Spirit.
Ephesians 4:1, “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord.” On the basis of Paul’s
command to walk in a manner worthy of the calling, I might conclude that,
“Well, this is the path to happiness, this is the path to prosperity.” There might
be the fact that I would say, “Well, look at who I am: I’m a child of God, I’m a
son of God, I’m in union with Christ, Christ lives in me. All the resources of
heaven are basically deposited in my account; an inheritance awaits me in
heaven, eternal life, all that. I’m pretty significant. That ought to show up in
my life, right, if this is all true?” So Paul reminds us that he is the prisoner of
the Lord; he is in jail. But he’s never going to admit that he’s a prisoner of men
or any government. He’s in jail because that’s where the Lord put him.
On the basis of all that Paul has said about doctrine and walking a worthy walk,
a worthy life, a life that is consistent with exalted doctrine, I might think I´m
going to end up with an exalted life. But no. He already told us he was a
prisoner in Ephesians 3:1, “I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus.” Why is he
telling it again? Because what he wants us to understand is this: You can walk
a worthy walk and end up in jail. That’s what he wants us to understand.
He has been faithful to the trust given to him. He has carried out his calling.
Even though he was under no illusions about spiritual perfection, he said, “I
have not attained, but I press toward the mark.” He said, “I’m the chief of
sinners.” But nonetheless, he was loyal enough to his Lord to say, “Follow me
as I follow Christ. And guess what? I am a prisoner. That’s what I get for
walking in a worthy way.” The point is this: Walk worthy even if it lands you in
prison. This is asking for loyalty at all costs. We know what happened to Paul:
Eventually they chopped his head off.
Bondage to Jesus is sweet. Fulfilling your duty to the Word of God and the God
of the Word is joyful because you’re a prisoner of love. Even if you end up in a
jail, you are still the recipient of all the mercies of heaven. On the basis of all
preceding doctrine, on the basis of all of his life lived out in a trustworthy way,
he ends up as a prisoner and still says, back to verse 1, “I implore you to walk
in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,” “and I’m
saying it from the vantage point of a stinking, wretched, rotten, vile prison.”
He’s not saying, “You know, if you walk worthy, you’re going to end up in a
palace. If you walk worthy, you’re going to have all your desires met.” No, if
you walk worthy, you might end in a prison. But still, with joy and love for the
Lord, he can say, “I implore you to walk in a manner worthy,” “I beg you, I
exhort you, I beseech you”—parakaleō, strong word.
This was always his goal. In Colossians 1:28 he says, “We proclaim Him”—that
is Christ—“admonishing every man, teaching every man with all wisdom, so
that we may present every man complete in Christ. For these purpose also I
labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.” In
other words, “My goal in ministry is to teach and admonish with all divine
revelation, to present everyone complete in Christ. This is what I labor for, this
is what I strive for, and this is what the power of the Holy Spirit in me works
for.” This is what he said in Galatians 4:19: that he was in birth pain until
Christ was fully formed in the people.
This is the goal of pastoral ministry: to see the folks that God puts into your
care sanctified, ever-increasingly like Christ. Paul says, “That’s what I live for.
That’s what I minister for. That’s what I seek in my own life.” He cried: “O that
I may know Him and the power of His resurrection in the fellowship of His
sufferings.” A servant of God gives his life and his breath and all his strength
and all his energy to see the sanctification of His people through the Word and
the Spirit.
So Paul begs and says, “Look, I’m pleading with you, walk in a manner worthy
of the calling with which you have been called.” What is that calling? That’s a
divine call to salvation; that’s not an invitation. When you see “calling” in the
epistles of the New Testament, it’s talking about the effectual call to salvation,
in which God awakens the dead person, overcomes their death, and gives them
life and brings them to justification through the path of repentance. So he says,
“You need to walk in a way that’s worthy of this incredible calling, sovereign
calling of grace and mercy from God with which you have been called.” You
need to walk consistently in light of that calling.
His calling to me awakened me from the dead; it gave me life. Paul says to the
Corinthians, “Consider your calling,” 1 Corinthians 1:26, in calling them to
holiness. Philippians 3:14 it’s called a high calling because it’s the highest
calling that any person could ever have. It’s called in 2 Timothy 1:9 a holy
calling. It’s called in Hebrews 3:1 a heavenly calling. And Romans 8 sums it up:
“Whoever He calls, He justifies; and whoever He justifies, He glorifies.” So this
is a calling that leads to justification, which leads to glorification. And we are
called, 1 Corinthians 1:2, to be saints, holy ones.
So Paul is saying, “Look, I can’t tell you there will be a happy outcome in this
life, because I’m a prisoner because I have been faithful. But you need to be
faithful as well and walk in a worthy way, whatever the price. And you’ll gladly
pay that price out of the joy and the love of obedience that comes from one
who understands the depths of the mercies of God that have been deposited in
his or her life.”
Joseph John Gurney visited Wilberforce in his final days, and this is what his
friend wrote: “I came and saw him, a Christian man, reclining on a sofa with
his feet wrapped in flannel and his face showing the increased age since I had
seen him last.” This is days before his death. “He received me with the
warmest marks of affection. I freely spoke to him of the good and glorious
things which, as I believed, assuredly awaited him in the kingdom of rest and
peace. In the meantime, the illuminated expression of his furrowed
countenance, with his clasped and uplifted hands, were indicative of profound
devotion and holy joy.
“He told me that the text on which he was then most prone to dwell, and from
which he was deriving peculiar comfort, was a passage in Philippians: ‘Be
anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God,
which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through
Jesus Christ.’”
Gurney said, “While his frail nature was shaking and his mortal tabernacle
seemed ready to be dissolved, this peace of God was his blessed and abundant
portion; then he spoke,” writes his friend. “‘How admirable,’ said Wilberforce,
‘are the harmony and variety of St. Paul’s smaller epistles: Galatians, a noble
exhibition of doctrine; Colossians, a union of doctrine and precept, showing
their mutual connection and dependence; and Ephesians is seraphic; and
Philippians is all love.’ And then he said, ‘With regard to myself, I have nothing
whatsoever to urge but the poor publican’s plea: God, be merciful to me, a
sinner.’” There he is, hanging on the edge of death and knowing he needs
mercy because he did not attain perfection; he was still a sinner needing
mercy. Gurney wrote, “What a lesson may we derive from such an example. It
may awfully remind us of the apostle’s question: ‘If the righteous scarcely be
saved, where shall the sinner and ungodly appear?’”
A few days later, Wilberforce spoke the following words to his son: “You must
all join with me in praying that the short remainder of my life may be spent in
gaining that spirituality of mind which will fit me for heaven. And there I hope
to meet all of you.” Amazing. Having walked with the Lord for half a century, he
asked for prayer that in the short remainder of hours he had left, that he would
gain greater spirituality of mind. This is the dissatisfaction of a heart that longs
for sanctification.
In his will, he asked to be buried humbly with no special honors. He said,
“Honor would be preposterous and unseemly.” But he couldn’t prevent the
English Parliament from burying him at Westminster Abbey and placing a
magnificent statue of him close to his grave. Here’s what is placed on that
statue to this day as tribute: “To the memory of William Wilberforce . . . .
Eminent as he was in every department of public labour, and a leader in every
work of charity . . . his name will ever be specially identified with those
exertions which, by the blessing of God, removed from England the guilt of the
African slave trade, and prepared the way for abolition of slavery in every
colony of the empire: in the prosecution of these objects he relied, not in vain,
on God; but in the progress he was called to endure great opposition: He
outlived, however, all [hatred] . . . . He died not unnoticed or forgotten by his
country: The Peers and Commons of England, with the Lord Chancellor . . . at
their head, in solemn procession from their respective houses, carried him to
his fitting place among the mighty dead . . . here to repose: till, through the
merits of Jesus Christ, his only Redeemer and Saviour, (whom, in this life and
in his writings he had desired to glorify,) he shall rise in the resurrection of the
just.” What a tribute. Even the Parliament recognized that in this life, all he
wanted was to glorify his Lord.
Sanctification must be our preoccupation; and we’re going to learn the
elements of that in this wonderful portion of Scripture as we continue. Let’s
pray.
Father, as we think about the apostle Paul, we thank You for his faithfulness.
As we think about William Wilberforce, we thank You for his, and many other
stalwarts. For Paul, it meant a prison. For Wilberforce, to live this way meant
that he was hated by many, and it meant that he had to live his whole life with
an overwhelming sense of discontent, because the passion of his heart, the
obsession of his soul was so strongly to be sanctified that the failure for that to
be realized in this life left him with a kind of deep disappointment. And yet
never, even in the disappointment in himself, did he indicate any
disappointment in his Redeemer. His only disappointment was that he would
enter into heaven less than heaven deserved. And so he asked for prayers that
he would be more spiritual in the few days before he entered heaven. That’s
the cry of a heart obsessed with sanctification.
Lord, that should be our driving passion in this world. There’s so many things
that can obstruct that, so many things that can take the place of it, so many
things to be preoccupied with, so many temporal things. One could hardly
imagine a greater earthly cause than the abolition of slavery—maybe the
abolition of abortion or any other massive kind of criminal conduct. But in the
end, the obsession that must drive all of us, no matter what our temporal
objectives may be, the obsession that must drive us all is to become more like
You, our Savior. Sanctify us, because we know that’s Your will. Give us through
the Word and the Spirit the power to overcome sin and to live righteously and
godly in this present age, for Your glory. Amen.
Invisible Unity Made Visible Jan 9/22
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-15/invisible-unity-made-visible
Ephesians 4, Unity in the Body of Christ

1
love,
3 making every effort to maintain the UNITY of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
your calling,
The first three chapters have been doctrinal in their emphasis, as Paul has laid
out the divine truth for us related to the gospel and the unity of the church.
And now there is a transition from that which is doctrinal to that which has to
do with our duty. So therefore, based upon all that doctrine that has been
unfolded in the first three chapters, we are told that we are “to walk in a
manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.”
For three chapters Paul has delineated our divine calling, our calling from
heaven, which brought us into God’s kingdom, which ushered us out of death
into life. We are called, and now we are to live lives worthy of that calling. This
is what we are supposed to be obsessed with, in the present time of our
spiritual journey. We are to be obsessed with our own sanctification and the
sanctification of the people around us, which is just another way to say with
walking worthy of our calling and with encouraging and helping others to do
the very same. Let us remember some important passages:
Ephesians 1, Spiritual Blessings in Christ
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
3
blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly

places,
4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to
be holy and blameless before him in love.
Paul goes from there all the way down to V14 to identify and list these
incredible spiritual blessings. He mentions being chosen in Him before the
foundation of the world for the purpose of eternal glory and holiness and
blamelessness before Him. “In love,” he says, God predestined us so that we
would be adopted “as sons.”
5
He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to
the good pleasure of his will,
6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the
Beloved.
According “to the good pleasure of His [sovereign] will,” so that we would one
day be “to the praise of His glorious grace.”
7
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our
trespasses, according to the riches of his grace
REDEMPTION, SALVATION
8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight
9 he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good
pleasure that he set forth in Christ,
10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in
heaven and things on earth.
11 In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined

according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his
counsel and will,
12 so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the
praise of his glory.
13 In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your
salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the
promised Holy Spirit;
14 this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people,
to the praise of his glory.
Paul summarizes all the blessings, all the promises, all the privileges, all the
glories, and all the graces of our salvation. At the end of Ephesians 1 he prays
that we would understand all of this, that we would have clear knowledge of
our possessions, that we would be theologically astute as to all that is ours in
Christ.
Paul’s Prayer
15
I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the
saints, and for this reason
16 I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.
17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to
know him,
18 so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know
what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of
his glorious inheritance among the saints,
19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe,
according to the working of his great power.
20 God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and
seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,
21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every
name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.
22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all
things for the church,
23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
My spiritual life with God, my transformation, began with my divine calling, and
consummates in my glorification. Paul is praying that God would give all of us a
full understanding of everything from election, you might say, to final
glorification. He wants us to understand the promises, the realities, the
spiritual blessings that are ours in Christ. All the way through that chapter he
mentions, “in Christ - in Christ” because they are ours, He is ours, and we are
in Him.
The sum of it all is this: Based upon all of those spiritual privileges and things
that he further delineates in Ephesians 2&3, as he talks about salvation by
grace and the union of Jew and Gentile in the church; all of those glories, all of
those promises, all of those expressions of divine power are in place, granted
to us to the degree that He, being the Lord,
Ephesians 3,
20
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish
abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine,
21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever
and ever. Amen.
All of it is to say that we have the capacity to exceed our imaginations in things
that God will accomplish. There is so much in deposit in the life of every
believer; there is so much grace, so much power, so much privilege, so much
promise deposited in the church of Jesus Christ, that we should be seeing
things that we can’t even comprehend or imagine, according to that power that
resides in us, the power of God, the power that raised Jesus from the dead, so
that there would be glory given to God in what the church declares and does in
the world.
That is the ideal picture of the church: that the church would be inexplicable on
any human level, that no one would reduce us to a political lobby group or a
right-wing conservative organization, but rather that we would manifest the
glory of Christ in the church, generation after generation.
We have all that is necessary for that, and to do exceeding, abundantly above
and beyond all of that which we could even imagine. So based upon all that has
been given to us and activated in us by the presence of the triune God—we
have all these possessions, we have all this power—we should be only
explained on a supernatural level.
Yet, the church struggles to have that kind of presence in the world. The
problem is that the church doesn’t always live up to what it is. That’s why
Ephesians 4:1, “I . . . implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling
with which you have been called.” You’ve got to start acting like the church.
We looked at that last time, and we said Paul is obsessed with sanctification.
A lot of people are obsessed with a lot of different things. For every believer,
our obsession should be sanctification. We love to look at the doctrine of
election, predestination, divine sovereignty, divine intention, divine will, divine
providence. We love to think about the doctrine of glorification, what is to
come. But our real obsession as believers and the zone in which we live,
between justification and glorification, is this sanctification process: The Spirit
of God is working out in us in the world, so that the glory of Christ can be seen
in the church because the church manifests that glory through its own
sanctification.
This is Paul’s passion. He is obsessed with sanctification, this should be every
believer’s obsession. He says to the Galatians that “I’m in birth pains until
Christ is fully formed in you.” In other words, “I suffer pain until you’re Christ-
like.” That is the ultimate goal of salvation, the goal of sanctification.
Paul also makes it very clear at the end of Colossians that is what he works for,
what he sweats and toils for, what he agonizes for, is that every believer would
be made complete in Christ. Colossians 4, he says the church is structured with
leaders so that the church may grow up into the fullness of Christ.
Sanctification is his obsession, and it must be the obsession of the church. And
I would venture to say, it appears in the church in our world today, for many
local congregations, it’s far down the line, if it even appears in the top ten. But
for the apostle Paul, sanctification is the objective of the church in the world,
and therefore every believer’s obsession.
Now Paul is very strong about this, notice V1, “I implore you.” A word that
means “to beg,” “plead.” So we would say Paul is a beggar here. He is begging
believers to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which they have been
called. And what exactly does he mean by that calling? Romans 8:28. It’s
unmistakable. It’s not just an invitation; it’s far more than that. “And we know
that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to
those who are called according to His purpose.” So whatever that calling is, it
is a calling that results in people loving God and God causing all things to work
together for good according to His purpose. This is a saving call; this isn’t an
invitation. This is a call that awakens the dead sinner. This is a call to life.
V29, “For those whom He foreknew,” that is, He predetermined to know
savingly. “He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.”
So you have divine sovereignty and election in the term foreknow; you have
predestination, that reaches all the way to conformity to the image of His Son,
which is glorification, when we’re like Christ and when we see Him as He is.
Notice what he says in V30, “Whomever He predestined, He also called; and
these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also
glorified.” So this is not an invitation, this is an actual calling to life. They are
predestined, they are called, therefore they are justified, therefore they are
glorified; and no one is left out of that process once that process is set in
motion in eternity past.
So we are the called. This is to say that we have been called to life in Christ.
You know, you might think of it this way, although perhaps you don’t: You
think about the conversion of the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. We all
remember the story. He was persecuting Christians. He was a hater of the
gospel and a hater of Christ. He had known about Christ but had been hostile to
the truth of the gospel. And he had papers from the authorities to do whatever
persecuting work he wanted to do on behalf of Judaism, that was hostile
toward Christianity.
But what happened to him on the Damascus Road was extremely dramatic.
He’s going along. All of a sudden, he’s struck blind, and the Lord gives him life,
awakens him from his spiritual death, and calls him to be an apostle. We might
look at that and say, “You know, that is just so dramatic; that is just so
dynamic; that is just so rare.” I would just encourage you with this: That is
how every conversion happens. There’s not always a Damascus Road, there’s
not always a light in the sky. But every conversion is a divine calling that turns
somebody’s life completely in the other direction, and it is an operation of God
the Holy Spirit. It is a divine work of God.
Somewhere along the line, if you’re a Christian, you were stopped dead in your
tracks, and the Lord opened your mind, awakened your heart; you repented,
and you believed the gospel because He granted you repentance, and He
granted you faith. So it is not an anomaly to conversion to see the conversion
of Paul on the Damascus Road; it is how it happens. And his life was completely
transformed. And that is what conversion is: It is a complete transformation
that sends somebody going in the opposite direction.
So Paul had that calling, and he knew that God was continually calling people
out of darkness into light. He was continually calling and justifying and setting
them for eternal glory. That was God’s work and God’s business, and Paul
would always be faithful to preach the gospel so that the call could be
activated, because the only way the call can be activated is if you hear and
believe the gospel. The Spirit can only enable you to believe the gospel if you
have heard the gospel. So Paul preached the gospel. But when it came to the
church, his burden was sanctification. That’s why, in verse 1, he says, “I beg
you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been
called.”
We saw last week that the calling of God is a high calling—it is a holy calling; it
is a heavenly calling. We have been called into the kingdom of God. We have
been called to become sons of God. We have been called to become children of
God. We have been called out of death into life, out of darkness into light, out
of deception into truth. And you know all those realities. And now that that has
happened, we ought to live lives that are consistent with that new identity. We
are in Christ, and we should walk in a manner worthy of that reality.
Notice that Paul uses the word implore or beg, I would just remind you that
there’s an element of Christian ministry that pushes us all, including you as
well as me, into being a beggar. We are beggars. But we’re not begging for
ourselves; we’re begging for people to reach out and take what God is offering
them.
I think sometimes we may look at our evangelistic opportunity as some kind of
a cold, calculating, straight-up conversation, and if it doesn’t go anywhere you
just say, “Well, there wasn’t any interest.” That wouldn’t work with Paul. He
was a beggar, used to pleading and begging with sinners. That’s what the
original verb there means. He uses this verb and a few others all throughout
the New Testament to describe this aspect of begging. Let me give you some
examples.
Acts 26:3, he begged Agrippa to listen to him patiently to the story of his
conversion. He begged this man who was a civil authority. Romans 12:1, he
begged Christian believers to present their bodies as sacrifice to God, living,
holy, and pleasing to Him. 2 Corinthians 2:8, he begged Christians to reaffirm
their love for him. 2 Corinthians 5:20, you remember he begged sinners to be
reconciled to God. Second Corinthians 6:1, he begged sinners not to reject the
gospel. Galatians 4:12, he begged Christian brothers to follow his example
away from legalism. Philemon 9-10, he begged for the church to love a
repentant son of the faith. He was always begging.
Just summing up what I said, he begged for people to listen to the gospel, he
begged for people to be saved, he begged for them not to reject it. He begged
for people to follow his example, to love others, to live in the freedom Christ
had given them; and he begged believers to walk in a worthy way, consistent
with their identity in Christ. This is a matter of what our Lord said when He said
that “you are to be holy,” way back in the book of Leviticus, “as I am holy.”
And Peter picks that up, in his epistle: “Be holy, for I am holy.” This is how we
are to live. We are the children of God. We are to manifest the very nature of
God planted within us.
So we looked at that verse last time, and we looked at it from the vantage point
of the call to the worthy walk; and it was a divine call from God Himself. Now I
want to take it a little further, not very much further, but a little further. Look
at V2, “With all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for
one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace.”
All through the second half of Ephesians 2, all through Ephesians 3, unity was
the issue. Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is calling for the church
to be one, to manifest its unity. Unity that it already possesses spiritually needs
to manifest in terms of its conduct and behavior. So we’re going to look in
verses 2, 3 at how we get to that kind of manifest unity; and it all starts with
this, verse 2. Here’s the beginning: “With all humility.” So if you’re going to
walk in a worthy way, you start “with all humility.”
Pride is the default position of every human being who is fallen. Pride is
natural. It is probably our most natural sin. Because we are by nature as
sinners, we tend to protect ourselves, defend ourselves, justify ourselves,
satisfy ourselves. That is why all sin can be categorized this way: Lust of the
flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of
life. “It’s what I see, I want; it’s what I feel, I want; it’s what satisfies me, and
I’m the most important person.” That is the character of all fallen sinners. So
they default to being proud. Therefore, in history and ethnology (the study of
people groups), you will find that most societies basically turn pride into a
virtue. They turn pride into a virtue.
A good illustration of that is to make a very simple statement that will explain
it clearly: “Gay pride.” Why would you ever attach pride, a wretched sin, with
another sin, and therefore somehow make it noble, when it is the most ignoble
possible? But that is what sinners do. They’re proud about their deviations;
they’re proud about their wretchedness. That’s the default position of all
sinners.
When I have been called by God, I have been awakened and granted eternal
life, there will be in my heart a completely new impulse, generated by the Spirit
of God, validated by the Word of God, and set into motion in my new nature,
toward humbling myself. It happens from the very beginning of my salvation,
because I wouldn’t have been saved if I didn’t humble yourself, right?
What did Jesus say? “Unless you become as this little child, you can’t even
enter the kingdom of heaven.” So you came in humble. “What do you mean by
that?” You came in not offering anything that you had done as meriting your
salvation. You came in not having achieved anything which God would accept
as sufficient enough to have Him accept you. You came bankrupt, dead in your
trespasses and sin, you offered Him absolutely nothing, and that is as humble
as you can get. You have nothing to offer God at the point of your salvation,
and you start at that point of lowliness and humility, and frankly, you stay
there. You start there in salvation; you stay there in sanctification.
Now we know that pride is the original sin because if you go back to the fall of
Satan, which is described in Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28—you have two passages
where we find Satan, who is the anointed cherub, who was in the garden with
God; and he decides he wants to elevate himself and he wants to take over for
God. And so he says, “I will, I will, I will, I will, I will,” and tries to elevate
himself; and that was the fall of Satan and the demons that went with him. In
the garden, it was Eve’s desire to be godlike that caused her to disobey God.
It’s always the sinner’s pride that keeps him from God. In the end, the sinner
wants to hold on to what he wants, what he desires, what he lusts for, and
what he finds satisfying. So pride is always the default position. So it’s not
surprising that you have to humble yourself to be saved, nor is it surprising
that you have to be marked, as a believer being sanctified, by all humility. So
let me just see if I can’t talk about that for a little bit.
Proverbs 16:5 says, “Everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination to the
Lord.” Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit
before a fall.” Proverbs 21:4, “A high look, and a proud heart . . . is sin.” Isaiah
2:11, “The proud look of man will be abased” and that man “will be
humbled.” Malachi 4:1, “The day is coming” when the arrogant will be set on
fire. God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble, James 4:6.
Proverbs 15:33 says, “Before honor is humility.” Proverbs 22:4, “By humility
and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life.” Proverbs 27:2, “Let
another man praise you, and not your own mouth.” “Humble yourselves in the
presence of [God[,” James 4:10, “and He will lift you up.”
So when we’re thinking about this idea of walking worthy, when we’re thinking
about sanctification, here’s where you start, OK, here’s where you start: You
start with all humility. That’s the beginning. In other words, the worthy walk is
a walk that demands, at the very outset, humility. This is a major reality in the
believer’s life and a major factor in the unity of the church.
We’re going to look at the gospel of John in a few places to illustrate this. But
in John 17:21, our Lord prays for those who are His disciples and those who
will be His disciples in the future, “That they may all be one, even as You,
Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world
may believe that you sent Me.” This is amazing. He’s praying that we would all
be one in the same way that the Son and the Father are one.
So in what way are the Son and the Father one? In nature, right? In essence.
So He is praying here, not for some external unity, not for some association,
not for some get-along effort; He is praying that there will be a spiritual unity
in the church that is like the spiritual union in the Trinity. “That they may . . .
be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in
Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” The power of the church
to demonstrate to the world that Christ is the Savior is when the church has the
same kind of unity that the Father and the Son share.
V22, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may
be one, just as We are one.” You can tell He’s not talking about something
external; He’s talking about something internal, something profound here. Just
as the Father and the Son are one in nature and being, so He prays that the
church would have that same spiritual common life.
V23, goes further, “I in them and You in Me.” “And if You’re in Me and I am in
them, then we’re all one in Him, that they may be perfected in unity.” In other
words, it’s a unity of essence; it’s a unity of real life. It’s the unity of the
eternal life, which is God, which dwells in the believer in the presence of God
the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit “so that the world,” as He says it for the
second time, “may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have
loved Me.”
How is the world going to know that Christ is the true Redeemer; how is the
world going to know that God loves them? When they see this unity of life in
the church. This is a very profound thing. This is not organizational; this is not
external in any sense. This is a spiritual union.
So do you think that the Father answered that prayer? Are we not one with
Christ? Are we not indwelt by the Father? Are we not indwelt by the Son? Are
we not indwelt by the Spirit? Are we not one with each other? “He that is
joined to the Lord is one spirit.” We’re one with Him and therefore one with
each other. This is our common eternal life; we share the same life.
So Jesus is actually praying for unity in the church that is essential, that is like
the very unity of the Trinity. I’ll give you an illustration of it, John 5:16, the
Jews had confronted Jesus and were highly disturbed because He had broken
their Sabbath, and this brought up the issue of why did He have a right to
break the Sabbath. And Jesus gives them an answer that goes way beyond
that. But what He does here is He talks about how He and the Father are one.
The whole conversation, starting in John 5:16 and going on through that
chapter and even beyond, defines the way in which the Father and the Son are
one.
V16, “The Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing things on the
Sabbath”—which you’re not supposed to do. “But He answered them, ‘My
Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.’” The Sabbath was never
for Jesus; the Sabbath was made for man. It was never for Jesus.
He and the Father were one in rights. The Sabbath put no limitation on the
Father, then it couldn’t put a limitation on the Son. They are one in rights:
“Whatever the Father has a right to do, I have a right to do.” And this
catapulted them into V18, where they’re seeking “to kill Him because He was
not only breaking the Sabbath, but . . . calling God His Own Father, making
Himself equal with God.” They got it. He actually said, “I have the same rights
as God.” That’s Trinitarian unity. The Son and Father have the same rights.
V19, they have the same purpose: “Therefore Jesus answered and was saying
to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it
is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these
things the Son also does in like manner.’” They have the same purpose, they
have the same rights, and they have the same objectives, the same goals, the
same purpose; thus, they do the same things.
Not only are they equal in rights and in purpose, but look at V21: “Just as the
Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to
whom He wishes.” They are one in power, the Father and the Son have the
same divine power to raise the dead in this case.
V23, they are one in honor: “So that all will honor the Son even as they honor
the Father. He who doesn’t honor the Son doesn’t honor the Father who sent
Him.” One in rights, one in purpose, one in power, one in honor.
V26, “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son to
have life in Himself.” They are one in being the source of life. They are one in
being the source of life.
V27, “And He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son
of Man.” They’re one in authority. Whatever the Father has a right to do, the
Son has the authority to do as well.
They’re one in will; John 5:30, “I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I
hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but
the will of Him who sent Me.” This is a stunning portion of Scripture, where the
Son saying, “I and the Father are one in rights and purpose and power and
honor, in the ability to give life in authority and in will.”
V36, “The testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John; for the
works which the Father has given Me to accomplish—the very works that I do—
testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me.” They are equal in work. They
are one in works.
V43, they are one in name: “I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not
receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him.” “I am one
in name with the Father”; that is to say, “We come from the same eternal,
divine, everlasting Godhead.”
John 7:16, Jesus says, “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me.” They’re
one in doctrine.
John 12:44, “Jesus cried out and said, ‘He who believes in Me, does not believe
in Me but in Him who sent Me.’” They are one in being the objects of saving
faith; they are one in salvation.
John 17:1, Jesus says, “lifting up His eyes to heaven . . . ‘Father, the hour has
come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You.” “Glorify Your Son, that
the Son may glorify You.’” They’re one in glory.
This is understanding the Trinity by the very words of Jesus: one in rights, one
in purpose, one in power, one in honor, one in life-giving, one in authority, one
in will, one in works, one in name, one in doctrine, one in salvation, one in
glory and one in holiness.
“What is this all leading to?” It’s this: Jesus prays in John 17 that we may be
one as the Son and the Father are one. It’s not talking about a superficial kind
of unity; it’s talking about this profound spiritual reality, where we are one
with the very communion of the divine nature. Peter puts it this way: We are
“partakers of the divine nature.” God lives in us; He dwells in us. This is the
prayer our Lord is praying. And if that manifests itself the way it manifested
itself in the Lord Jesus, then the world will know that God has sent us. Unity is
very important. Being of one mind, one heart, one will, one purpose, we all
partake of the divine nature. We are one in Christ. It doesn’t always show up,
that’s the sad thing.
What’s the path to make it visible, to get it from the invisible reality to the
visible reality? The answer is in Ephesians, “with all humility.” If I want to walk
(daily conduct) worthy of my divine calling and this incredible spiritual union
with the Trinity, I have to start “with all humility.”
It’s a high calling with a lowly walk. That may seem a little bit counterintuitive.
It’s typically human to think that if you have some kind of elevated calling,
then you should perhaps make sure everybody else elevates you to the place
where you belong. But the opposite is what the Bible calls for. We are elevated;
we are the sons of God. God is alive within us; the Trinity lives within us. We
have all things that pertain to life and godliness; we have all spiritual blessings
in heaven. So in response to this high, heavenly, holy calling, we are to be
lowly.
Sanctification starts with humbling yourself. “All humility,” and
the humility word here, it’s made up of two Greek words. One means “to think
or judge,” the other means “low”—it could be “poor,” “insignificant,”
“unimportant,” “ignoble,” “cowardly.” Think of yourself in a lowly way. This is
the irony of being a child of God. You are so elevated as to have the Trinity
alive in you, and yet you have to think of yourself as lowly. “Neither the
Romans nor the Greeks had a word for ‘humility.’” Because they saw it as
weakness.
In secular literature, first couple of centuries AD, humility, if it does appear
anywhere in culture, appears as a weakness: to think lowly, to be weak, to be
cowardly, to be fainthearted. One lexicon says, “To have a servile mind.”
Pagans, as we would expect because this is the default position of all fallen
sinners, look on humility as a weak virtue, if a virtue at all. It’s pitiful, that’s
why there’s no word in classical Greek that would in any sense elevate
humility. But God elevates it and calls not just for occasional humility, or
perhaps one or another kind of humility, but “all humility,” total humility,
nothing but humility. It’s the basic position, the default position of
sanctification. Start by humbling yourself.
Now, we have an incredible model for this, and not surprisingly. Turn to
Philippians 2. You might be saying to yourself, “I thought we were supposed to
think of ourselves as significant children of God, kings and priests and all of
that.” All of that is true. And one day you will be exalted, but that’s for the Lord
to do in His good time. For now, even though you have a high calling, you are
called to a lowly walk, and your example is Jesus.
Notice how Paul’s concern for unity comes out in Philippians 1:27, he speaks as
if he were talking to the Ephesians; it’s the same emphasis. “Conduct
yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ,” worthy of your calling,
“so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you”—this
is what Paul wants; this is his passion and his obsession. “I will hear of you
that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the
faith of the gospel.” This is his passion for the sanctification of his people,
which sanctification is manifest to the world when it is one, when unity is its
result.
So Paul wants to hear the church is united in one mind and one spirit, standing
together for the faith of the gospel. But how do you do that?
Philippians 2, Imitating Christ’s Humility
1
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any
sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy,
2 make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in
full accord and of one mind.
3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as
better than yourselves.
4 Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11
and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
His joy is complete at this point; he’s not asking for a laundry list of things.
“Make my joy complete”; this will do it: “[Be] of the same mind, maintaining
the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.” In other words, live in
the world in a way that reflects the image of God that you see even in the
Trinity. The Father and the Son and the Spirit have the same mind, maintain the
same love, are united and intent on one purpose. This is how the church is to
live in the world: Let that invisible unity be visible.
That’s a challenge for us, but V3, tells us we have to say no to certain things.
“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind
regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not look out for
your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” Selflessness.
This genuine spiritual unity cannot be made manifest unless we decide that we
are going to be of the same mind, the same love, the same spirit, the same
purpose.
In other words, we get our theology together, and then that we live utterly
selfless and unselfish lives.
Somebody might say, “Well, for those of us who are elevated in Christ, this
seems like going down pretty far.” Well, I’ll help you with that if you go to V5.
Here’s your model: “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ
Jesus, who, although He existed in the morphē [mor-fay'] [???] of God, did not
regard equality with God a thing to be grasped”—the eternal Son in the
presence of the eternal Father, equal in every sense eternally, did not hold on
to that, V7, “but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, and being made in
the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself
by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
So if you’re thinking it might be beneath you to humble yourself, you have to
look at Jesus and see what He did. It is the greatest condescension of all. It is
incomprehensible to us to understand how far down He came because we can’t
comprehend how high He was. But He didn’t hold on to it. He emptied Himself.
He took on the form of a slave, made in the likeness of men, humbled Himself
by being obedient, then humbled Himself to death, and then humbled Himself
to the kind of death (crucifixion), most ignominious; brutal kind of death.
So Jesus is your example of humility. For the purposes of God and to
accomplish God’s will, He humbled Himself. V9, “For this reason also, God
highly exalted Him.” Leave the exaltation to God, right? Isn’t that what we
know from what Scripture says? “Humble yourselves, and the Lord will exalt
you, lift you up.”
Jesus was an example of humility. He was acquainted with grief. He was hated
without a cause. He had nowhere to lay His head. He was persecuted, betrayed,
condemned, delivered up, despised, lifted up on a cross, mocked, numbered
with criminals, killed. He did it all because it was the will of God, and left
Himself in God’s hands, and God highly exalted Him, and gave Him a name
above every name, that at the name Lord every knee would bow.
Sanctification is a battle for humility. John the Baptist, Jesus said he was the
greatest man that ever lived. And yet he said about his Lord he wasn’t worthy
to unstrap His sandal. And he said, “I must decrease, and He must increase.”
The pathway to sanctification is down. Humble yourself, and the Lord will lift
you up. Where His church is humble, it is united, and its love is manifest, and
the world can see the power of Christ and the gospel. If the world is to believe
that the Father sent the Son, it’s going to be because the church manifests that
power of the Father and the Son and the Spirit in making visible its invisible
spiritual unity. Let’s pray.
Father, we are again grateful for the privilege of accessing the truth of heaven
through Your Word. There is no confusion about what it calls for, what it
demands of us. And we know that the path to exaltation is a path of humility.
The apostle Paul said that he would never judge himself, but he would wait
until the secrets of the hearts were known; and then every man would have his
praise from God. Help us not to seek the praise of men, but to humble
ourselves in love toward one another, that we may make manifest the true
spiritual unity in a visible way by the love and unity in the life of the church.
Thank You, Lord, that You have shown us this, and You have led us to this truth
through the years. And we want this church to be a testimony to the true God
and the true Redeemer and true salvation and the true gospel, by the
manifestation of its unity: one mind, one love, as there is one Lord, one faith,
and one God and Father who is over all and in us all. Be pleased, Lord, to put
Yourself on display in that way, we ask in the Savior’s name. Amen.
The Strength of Gentleness Jan 23/22

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-16/the-strength-of-gentleness
1

2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one
another in love,
3 making every effort to maintain the UNITY of the Spirit in the
bond of peace.
your calling,
What clearly strikes you here is the repetition of “one.” This is the foundation
of our unity. That is a theological creed that celebrates the oneness of divine
realities related to salvation. Based upon that we are to be diligent, V3 says,
“to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Everything about our salvation, everything about the work of God has a
oneness to it, a unity. That should be displayed in the church. The church
should manifestly declare its transformation by its unity. John 13, Jesus said,
“By this will all men know that you’re My disciples, if you have love one for
another.” John 17, Jesus prayed that they may be one, that the world may
know the Father sent the Son. This is clear, unmistakable and yet elusive in the
experience and life of the church in the world. Let us take a little bit of time as
we go through this to help ourselves understand these very important
components that lead up to unity, that will make our living consistent with the
creed.
All true Christians possess, started in Ephesians 1:3, we’re all “blessed with all
spiritual blessings in heaven in Christ Jesus.” All true Christians possess all
spiritual blessings, Paul delineates these blessings, all the way from election to
glorification, through V14, culminating in V15, which expresses our love for the
saints. We are all possessors of the same full range of blessings in Christ,
salvation blessings, and they culminate in love for all the saints.
Paul continues to talk about what we all possess as true believers. We possess
these same spiritual riches. We have been lavished with spiritual riches, with
power, with strength, because we are in Christ. He is our life, He is our head,
and we are His body. So we are connected to Christ in that unity, that spiritual
unity.
Ephesians 2, Paul says we all started out in the same condition: We were dead
in trespasses and sins; we were walking according to the course of this world;
we were under demonic and satanic influence. But we were all saved by grace
through faith, not of works, but we were saved unto good works, which God
before ordained that we should walk in them. So we all started out with all the
same spiritual blessings; we all came to engage with these blessings, to receive
these blessings, when we were saved by God’s divine grace through faith. We
have now become Christ’s, and Christ is ours; and we are in Him, and He is in
us. We are His body. We have been basically created anew for good works
which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. Our glorification is
a matter of divine election, so it is our sanctification.
Jew or Gentile, are one new man. It doesn’t matter what their ethnicity is;
we’re all one new man. We are fellow citizens. We are all members of God’s
household, God’s family. We are one building. We are one holy temple for the
Lord. We are built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
Ephesians 3, we read, “fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, fellow
partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” Ephesians 3:19,
“filled up to all the fullness of God,” so that, V21, God can be glorified “in the
church and in Christ Jesus” the church displays its redemption “to all
generations forever and ever.”
So Paul has been going through these three chapters, lavishing on us all our
spiritual blessings, and the idea is to help us understand we all have the same
blessings. We are all one. That comes out of Ephesians 4:4-6, where Paul goes
back to the foundations of our faith: one body, one spirit, one hope of
your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and
Father. All of this is a plea for unity in the church. But even with all these
pleas there are some necessary attitudes and some necessary spiritual
dynamics that have to be at work in a church to fulfill this calling. And that’s
what we find in this passage before us.
1. There is the call to walk worthy. V1, “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord”—
he was actually a prisoner when he was writing this, “the prisoner of the
Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you
have been called.”
The word “worthy” is axiōs; it means equivalent. In other words, our conduct
should match our convictions, our duty should match our doctrine, our behavior
should match our belief. This is Christian life 101. If you say you belong to the
Lord, you ought to walk the way He walks.
This is a message that Paul is giving us right here. He’s begging us "to walk in
a manner worthy of the calling to which we are called. This is such a common
reality, this is so basic, that Paul repeats it frequently in his epistles.
Philippians 1:27, “Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of
Christ.” And what does that look like? “That you [would be] standing firm in
one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.” Again, if
you’re going to be living out the transformation that God has wrought inside, if
you’re going to walk in a manner that is worthy, you’re going to be manifesting
yourself in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith. In other
words, there will be unity.
Different order of words, but exactly the same message. Colossians 1:10, “So
that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects,
bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;
strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining
of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who
qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.” And again he
says, “Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,” which means “[pleasing] Him in
all respects.”
1 Thessalonians 2:12, “Walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into
His own kingdom and glory.” This again is the basic perception of the Christian
life. Walk consistently with your calling. Basically, let your life match up with
what God has done for you and in you.
The Scripture calls it a high calling. It is a holy calling. It is a heavenly calling.
We mean an actual calling, where God sovereignly calls us out of darkness into
light, out of death into life, out of lies into truth. It is the actual, saving call
where the Lord awakens the dead sinner and gives him life. So if that has
happened in your life and you have been called by God, Paul says you have to
walk in a way that is consistent with that calling.
This is the basic reality of every Christian’s life. What you are in position, what
you are in possession, you need to be in conduct. Anything other than that is
hypocrisy, and anything other than that, of course, cripples the message of
saving power, because it doesn’t demonstrate that transformation to the world
if people are hypocritical. Again, we have to come back to the fact that the
unity of the church is the church’s greatest testimony, yet it seems to be the
hardest thing to see realized.
A worthy life or this worthy walk, the characteristics might be a little surprising
because given that this is such a high calling, heavenly calling, holy calling,
what the Lord wants from us is lowliness. V2, “With all humility and
gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being
diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” The goal is
always the unity of the Spirit; that is the demonstrated testimony of
transforming gospel power. But in order to get to that unity, there has to be
some virtues that are manifest and that are established as the priorities in the
life of every Christian. V2, essential to being a Christian in the church in such a
way that the church becomes one and its testimony is clear; “with all humility.”
The Christians invented this word. Literally, the word means to think lowly of
myself.
That is a far cry from the unconverted world’s interests. In fact, no such word
existed in classical Greek. Apparently the Christians coined this word because
thinking lowly of yourself was the last thing that Greek culture wanted to
advocate as a virtue. We would be the same in our culture today, as would be
almost every culture throughout human history. You’re supposed to think
highly of yourself, promote yourself, because of course, in your fallen
condition, pride is the default position of every human sinner.
But Christians have come up with this: by virtue of God’s design and God’s
revelation, that we are to be defined by all humility, not some, but all humility.
This is the virtue of the person who is aware of his own unworthiness and
weakness. In other words, to walk worthy you have to recognize you’re
unworthy.
Acts 20:19, Paul described what he did as “serving the Lord with all humility.”
So he’s passing on what he actually was doing. He is not just the teacher; he is
the example, “serving the Lord with all humility.” I would think if I was Paul
and I had his credentials. I´m an apostle, yes. I’ve had at least four visions of
Christ, and nobody else had any. I had a trip to heaven and back. I have been
used more than any human being in history. I have taken the gospel to the
Gentiles; I´m the apostle to the Gentiles. I have been marked with honor. Just
about everybody in the Gentile world who was a believer was a believer
because of my influence. I would think that for Paul there would be a tendency
to have a high view of himself; humanly speaking, I would be right to think
that. That’s a tremendous amount of success, a tremendous amount of spiritual
success. So the Lord had to mitigate that in his life.
2 Corinthians 4:5, “We do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and
ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.” Now that’s about as low as you can
go. Paul’s high calling, apostolic calling, missionary calling still had to have the
perception that he was a slave of Christ and a slave of those to whom he
ministered. In fact, V7, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels”—the
treasure meaning the glory of the gospel shining in the face of Christ. “I’m a
clay pot,” “So that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and
not from ourselves.”
Paul is never going to be the explanation for his spiritual success. V8, “We are
afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing;
persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying
about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be
manifest in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to
death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our
mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you.” His life was just a constant
exposure to death, to hostility, to enemies. It was a crushing thing, but it didn’t
put out the light; it didn’t daunt his spirit. That’s why he says: “I’m all the way
committed—to death, if need be. So let death work in us if life can work in
you.”
So there is an immense humility in that recognition that you are disposable,
that you are dispensable, that you need to look at yourself with a sense of
unworthiness.
2 Corinthians 12:7, He talks about his trip to heaven and all the visions and all
the revelations that he had. “Because of the surpassing greatness of the
revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given
me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from
exalting myself!” This is Paul, who had the most preeminent credentials of
anybody in the New Testament except our Lord Himself. In his fallenness and
in his recognition of his own sinfulness, he knew that he was tempted to be
proud because of his spiritual success and spiritual accomplishments.
Perhaps there were those expressions of pride, because the Lord has to do
something to humble him. “Thorn,” not like on a rosebush, but it really means a
point of a spear. The Lord literally took a spear and ran it through his otherwise
proud flesh.
What was that? What was that tortured instrument? What was that torment
driven into his flesh? He says, “A messenger of Satan to torment me.” What is
“a messenger of Satan”? Well, “messenger” is used many times in the New
Testament. It always means a person. Doesn’t mean malaria or eye disease, or
things like that that some people have said. It’s a person. In this case it could
be a human person, because aggelos is used, at least in Revelation, to refer to
a human person. But better to understand—it’s the word aggelos, so what is a
satanic aggelos? That’s a demon. I think he’s talking about the demon who was
leading the opposition to the church at Corinth and tearing up his work there.
Paul was heartsick about the fact that he had left after immense effort there,
and false teachers had come, possessed by demons, to destroy his ministry.
They were saying terrible things about him. They were brutal and merciless.
They said he was in it for favors from women and to make money, and he lied
about his credentials. They made up everything possible, and this was
damaging to the church that he loved so much. This was as deep as pain
because in 2 Corinthians 11, he says, “I can take the physical pain. What’s hard
for me is the care of the churches, because who’s weak and I don’t feel the
pain; who sins and I don’t feel the agony?”
So what was going on in the church was a torturous experience for him. He
uses the term “torment.” Why would the Lord allow a demon-possessed false
teacher to do damage to a church? To humble Paul. That is a stunning reality.
Unless you think it’s some kind of isolated reality, remember that Jesus said to
Peter in Luke 22, “Satan desires to have you that he may sift you like wheat.
And he’s going to do that; I’m giving him permission to do that. And when it’s
over and you’re converted, you’ll be able to strengthen the brethren.”
There are times when the Lord lets Satan loose on one of His own, to humble
him. There are times when God commands demonic forces, because they are
under His command, to be the instrument of the humbling of a preacher like
Paul. That’s how important humility is. I say to friends: “Embrace your
suffering, embrace your disappointments, embrace your failures, because in
those embraces you’re going to find your greatest spiritual growth and
usefulness.”
Paul prays, 2 Corinthians 12:8, three times for the Lord to get that demon-
possessed influence out of the church at Corinth. The Lord says to him, “My
grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” This is the
divine principle to be noticed: “No; I’ll give you sufficient grace to endure this,
and it’ll produce in you distrust and weakness that’ll make you dependent on
Me.”
There’s so many people who are too strong to be useful, so few who are weak
enough to be useful. Paul was humble; and where he wasn’t humble, he was
humbled in very epic fashion. But he learned a lesson, V9, “Most gladly,
therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ
may dwell in me.” So that’s where Christian life begins: with my recognition of
my weakness.
But far too much fake preaching these days that tries to elevate people, telling
them that because they are a child of God they should think of themselves in
some elevated fashion. That is absolutely the opposite of what the Scripture
would say. Paul calls himself the chief of sinners. Paul says, “I don’t do what I
want to do, I do what I don’t want to do. I’m a wretched man.” This is the kind
of humility that is honest, and it’s not what the world exalts or elevates, but it
is the foundation for all Christian living.
Matthew 5:3, our Lord starts the Sermon on the Mount, He’s inviting people to
His kingdom. Notice the nature of those who will be received, “Blessed are the
poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Intuitively you might say,
“Blessed are the rich in spirit, blessed are the super-spiritual, blessed are the
highly educated,” whatever. But it’s the opposite, “Blessed are the poor in
spirit.” It means spiritually bankrupt. Blessed are the people who have nothing
to offer. That’s how you come to the kingdom: with an empty hand.
In fact, not only are you bankrupt in your spirit, but, V4, “Blessed are those
who mourn,” they’re the ones that are going to be comforted. They’re
mourning over their insufficiency and unworthiness.
V5, they’re the gentle—or they’re the meek—who don’t asset themselves.
They’re the ones that inherit the earth. And then they are described as “those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” which means they know they don’t
have it, but they’re the ones “satisfied.” They’re “the merciful” who will
“receive mercy.” They’re “the pure in heart” who will “see God.” They are “the
peacemakers”—not the troublemakers; they are the ones, V10, who are
“persecuted . . . . Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you,
and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the
prophets who were before you.”
It is nothing new for God’s people to be vilified, mistreated, and persecuted.
What it does is it just humbles the heart. Paul is trying to get us to the place
where we don’t look on our own things but we look on the things of others,
where we humbled ourselves.
Again, this is the foundational attitude in the Christian life. First Peter 5:5, “Be
clothed with humility: for God resists the proud, and gives grace to the
humble.” It’s not just an item of clothing; it’s the robe.
When we’re talking about humility, what are we talking about? I think there
are three things that would simply help you to see what humility essentially
perceives.
1. Self-awareness. A humble person is aware of his own limitations, his own
boundaries, his own competencies and incompetencies, his own
weaknesses, his own sins. Self-awareness, I start by being honest about
myself. Hear Paul, “I’m the chief of sinners,” or hear him say, “I don’t do
what I want to do; I do what I don’t want to do. I’m a wretched man.” Paul
is declaring his unworthiness. So the worthy walk is a walk of one who is
convinced he is unworthy. Honesty about yourself because, as we said, the
default position for fallen sinners is to overestimate themselves; and pride is
the dominating, default sin.
Occasionally I like to read psychologist Jordan Peterson because I think he’s
got some amazing practical insights. He loves to confront university students
who tell him they want to change the world. When he asks them what they
would like to do, they might say, “End global warming.” They might say,
“Eliminate poverty. Eliminate sexual traffic. Eliminate drugs. Eliminate crime.”
They’ve got these grandiose ideologies; they want to have a large impact on
society; they want to fix the world. And I love how he responds to that. He
says, “Well, why don’t you start by fixing your own life? That’s a big enough
challenge. And you may find that you’ll never be able to do it in your whole life,
but it’s a good place to start. Before you fix the world, fix what’s wrong with
you. That’s a big challenge.”
I mean, it comes down occasionally to something like this: “You’re going to
change the world, but you can’t even stay on a diet. Really? Maybe you can
start by cleaning your room. And then, when you get yourself fixed, fix your
family. You want a job? Forget the world; just try to fix your family. Maybe you
ought to start there.”
It’s bizarre for people to think they can leave their own weaknesses and
inabilities where they are and somehow, with all of that weakness never dealt
with, they can make a change in the entire world. I’ve got to start by being
honest about my weakness because that throws me at the mercy of the Lord,
doesn’t it? That’s why I come with a Beatitude attitude. That’s why I live the
Christian life with all humility. Humility says, “I’m not worthy; I’m not capable;
I’m not able. I understand that.
So whatever suffering the Lord brings into my life, I want to embrace that
suffering. Whatever He’s doing to refine me and break my confidence in myself,
I want to embrace that because it’s only when I am weak that I am strong.
When I get out of the way and trust Him, then there’s real strength.” So it
starts with an honest self-awareness.
2. Christ awareness. When I’m overestimating my significance, my importance,
my value, my competencies, I probably have been looking to compare my
with someone less than me, not likely Christ. But as I gaze at the glory of
Christ, and as I see Him for who He is, I get smaller and smaller. John the
Baptist said, “He must increase, and I must decrease.”
3. God awareness. Isaiah, who’s the prophet, sees God; and having seen God,
he puts a curse on himself and says he’s a man with a dirty mouth, and
pronounces judgment on himself.
So humility comes from an honest evaluation of myself and a true vision of
Christ and a true vision of God. The purer my vision of myself and my Lord and
God, the more useful I become.
Jeremiah 9:23-24, “Thus says Yahweh, ‘Let not a . . . man boast in his wisdom,
let not a mighty man boast in his might, let not a rich man boast in his riches;
but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I
am Yahweh who shows lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for
I delight in these things,’ declares Yahweh.” If you’re going to boast, boast in
the Lord. That’s what we’re after here.
So this is humility. But we talked about that last time, so let’s go on to the next
word, and the next word will be enough to occupy us for a few more minutes:
“gentleness.” You might say, “Well, I get it,” but you probably don’t. Now
listen, this is foundation, right? We’ve had three chapters of doctrine—
incredible, lavish layout of doctrine—and now we’re supposed to walk worthy.
We’re supposed to match up our living with our doctrine. And he gives us these
very simple words: “in all humility and gentleness.” So we’d better know what
they mean.
What is gentleness?
Or some translations translate it “meekness,” prautēs in Greek. It means
“mild” or “gentle,” so “meekness” works, “gentleness” works. It’s gentle-
hearted. On a negative side: no spirit of revenge, no spirit of retaliation, no
vindictiveness, no bitterness, no hostile anger, no angry assertions. It’s
gentleness.
Sometimes the word was used to describe a soothing medicine in ancient
times. Other times it was used to describe a gentle breeze. Other times it was
used to describe a young colt that had been broken; where it was unruly, it
now became tame, gentle, and its power could be channeled in a productive
way.
Secular Greek uses it of people who are mild or friendly or gentle or pleasant,
as opposed to rough, harsh, hard, violent, angry. It’s a godly virtue. It’s used
twelve times in the New Testament. We saw it there in Matthew 5:5, “Blessed
are the gentle,” or the meek. We see it in Galatians 5:23 where it appears as
part of the fruit of the Spirit: “gentleness.” We see it in 1 Timothy 6:11 as a
virtue of a man of God who is marked by his gentleness.
Again, there might be people who think, “Well, this is weakness. How can you
be a strong leader and be gentle?” You can if you understand this term. I think
one of the best ways to understand it is to see it defined as power under
control. It doesn’t refer to impotence or lack of power or lack of courage. It is a
byproduct of humility. If I’m a humble person, I may have immense power, I
may have immense capabilities, I may have immense competencies. I may be a
force. But if I´m humble, all of a sudden I´m transformed into someone who’s
gentle because this is a product of self-humiliation; this is a product of self-
emptying. This is the product of a broken will.
Again, it doesn’t mean weak; it doesn’t mean impotent; it doesn’t mean
cowardly. What it means is that your powers, which are formidable in Christ,
are under the control of the will of God and the Holy Spirit. Proverbs 25:28,
“Like a city that is broken into and without a wall is a man without restraint
over his spirit.” On the other hand, Proverbs 16:32 says, “He who is slow to
anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his own spirit, than he who
captures a city.”
Gentleness means you have self-control. There is a meekness, there is a
gentleness; and let me see if I can’t define it in some specific ways by giving
you some specific illustrations:
Matthew 11:29, “Come to Me and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly. I am
gentle and lowly.” So if I´m looking for an illustration of what gentleness and
lowliness looks like, look no further than Jesus. Was He weak? Was He
cowardly? Was He short on convictions? No. Paul says: 2 Corinthians 10:1 that
we need to follow the meekness of Christ, the gentleness of Christ.
How is it that we can even look at Jesus in that way? After all, He blasted the
Temple system twice, once at the beginning of His ministry and once at the
end. He condemned the hypocrites, the leaders of Israel; He unleashed
judgment on their heads. There’s no cowardly Christ; that is inconceivable. He
stood fearlessly before a crowd that wanted to stone Him and disappeared. And
then He took whips to clean out the Temple when His Father’s house had been
defiled. Yet the Bible says He was meek; He’s the model of meekness, total
selflessness. How is this possible: to be both meek and such a force against
evil? And the answer is this: that Jesus never wielded His power to defend
Himself. He wielded His power to defend His Father, His Father’s reputation,
and His Father’s house: “You have taken My Father’s house, which is a house of
prayer, and you’ve turned it into a den of thieves.”
When I think about the incarnation of Christ, I understand that He became
truly a man; I see much of the human part of it in His living, of course. But I
think we tend to overlook the unique characteristic of gentleness that is, on the
one hand, fiercely defensive of God and not of one’s self. For Him, His Father
mattered. For Him, Isaiah 53, “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not
open”—what?—“His mouth.” He didn’t open His mouth. He was like a sheep,
dumb before its shearers. He had power, but He never used it for Himself. You
don’t find that. He was always humbling Himself, taking on the burdens, taking
the hostility, the hatred, and eager and fiercely loyal to His Father. And He is
our model of what meekness looks like: You defend God, you defend His
kingdom, you defend His truth; you don’t defend yourself. That’s the power
that’s under control.
You know, as a person who knows the Word of God, you’ve got a lot of power.
You can wield your knowledge of Scripture with some serious force; so can I.
You can use the sword of the Spirit to cut and slice and dice; and that’s what it
does. I can use it to defend yourself, and I can become a cutting, domineering,
overbearing, self-defensive person. And if it’s all about me, then I haven’t
understood the basics of the Christian life: meekness. I will rise to the battle to
defend the Lord, to defend Christ, to defend the Holy Spirit, to defend the
Scripture. I don’t wield powers to defend myself against someone who accuses
me falsely, persecutes me.
Meekness is that power under control, used only at the right time and the right
occasion, for the right length at the right cause. An illustration of it, 1 Samuel
24. Saul is hunting David; he’s got a few thousand men, he’s trying to get to
David so he can eliminate him because he’s a threat to his throne. They’re
down by Engedi, which is the spring of goats down by the Dead Sea, David and
his men are in a cave. Saul and his men come by, Saul came in the cave to
relieve himself, the very cave where David and his men were hiding. The men
immediately thought, “This is it. With the stroke of a blade, Saul is dead and
David is free from his would-be murderer.”
David could have killed Saul there, taken the throne that really belonged to
him. They urged David to do it—but he wouldn’t do it. He just cut off a piece of
Saul’s robe and kept that piece. He had the power to take a life. He had maybe
the right to take a life because he was God’s choice king. But that power was
under control, the controlling element was the will of God. He followed Saul out
of the cave, showed him the piece, and told him, “I wouldn’t touch the Lord’s
anointed.”
With all the power that a believer has, the power of the truth and the power of
the Spirit, we don’t want to wield it as if it’s ours, for the defense of ourselves.
Paul said: “Power is perfected in weakness.” So I would rather have
persecutions and suffering. I don’t want to defend yourself, because when I’m
in difficult times, that’s when God does His best work in shaping me.
Second Samuel 16, David’s son Absalom took over the kingdom and forced his
father to flee into the wilderness. One of Saul’s men, Shimei, cursed David. And
so David’s people said, “Let me take his head off!” And David said, “Let him
alone.” He had the power, he had the opportunity; but he wouldn’t take
vengeance because, as I read in Romans, “Vengeance is Mine,” says the Lord.
Saul could have and would have killed David if the tables had been turned, but
David wouldn’t take Saul. He had the power, but it was under control, and it
was never used for him. And Jesus had the power. He said this: “If I ask My
Father, He would send twelve legions of angels to deliver Me, and you couldn’t
do anything.” But He didn’t because in the will of God, suffering was the divine
purpose.
Numbers 12:3, “The man Moses was very meek, above all the men who were
on the face of the earth.” Do you think of Moses as meek, gentle, more so than
anybody in the earth? He was fearless, he was bold, he was courageous, he
was powerful, he was strong, he was confrontive. He stood toe-to-toe with
Pharoah and said, “Let my people go.” He came down from the mountain,
smashed the tablets of stone in fury over idolatry and caused a slaughter of the
idolaters right in the camp of Israel. Moses was a force for the defense of God.
But on his own, you remember in Exodus 3, he says, “You don’t want me; I-I-I-
I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I stutter.” But what he did have was the rod of God.
So this is a virtue that goes right along with humility. Where, as believers,
we’re not into defending ourselves because if we are all busy defending
ourselves, there can’t be unity because we don’t look on the things of others,
we’re too absorbed in our own issues. Follow the pattern of Christ.
Do you experience that kind of control? Is your anger controlled? Is your self-
defense common, or do you save your anger for holy things, righteous
indignation? Are you honored only when God is dishonored, His Word is
dishonored? Do you always seek to make peace, no trouble, no gossip, just
forgiveness, restoration? Do you respond to the Word humbly, meekly? Do you
receive intrusion and instruction and love the people who disagree with you?
This is power under control. The final question is, “Do I rise to the defense of
my Savior, my God and His truth?” Because that’s when I should express that
power.
John Bunyan put it simply. He said, “He that is already down need fear no fall.”
A meek person is not proud of themselves, nothing of which to boast, demands
nothing, is not self-protective, self-defensive, self-pitying. It is to be finished
with yourself altogether. And that’s the twin of humility.
Sums it up when you read how our Lord responded to His mistreatment. 1
Peter 2:21, “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also
suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps.” Now
look, Christ died as a substitution, but He also died as an example. What does
that mean? “Follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit
found in His mouth”—so He didn’t deserve the mistreatment that He got. But
“while being reviled, He didn’t revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no
threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.” Jesus set
the example: You don’t retaliate; you suffer righteously, and you leave the
vengeance to God. This is the kind of humility and gentleness that leads to true
unity in the church. Never think you should get your way; you should always
want to get God’s way. Father, we thank You for Your truth and Your Word.
The Priority of Unity Jan30/22

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-17/the-priority-of-unity
We have been talking about unity because this is what Paul keeps talking about in this
epistle over and over again. This will be our fourth look at this text:

1
another in love,
bond of peace.
your calling,
This is a profoundly significant portion of Scripture, and the heart of this text is
in V3, where the apostle is calling for us to be diligent, to “preserve the unity of
the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Our Lord wants unity in His church. In fact, V3,
is really the sum of this. It’s the highpoint of this text: “[Be] diligent to
preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” That is important to Paul.
But more strikingly, Paul picked its importance up from Jesus Himself.
The unity of believers, which obviously Paul writes about a lot, this unity which
the other New Testament writers speak of and write about basically is a
reflection of the prayer of our Lord in John 17. The unity of believers is crucial
to our Lord and crucial to the mission of the church. It is the unity of the church
that puts power on display, saving power. The divine gospel is most powerfully
displayed in the unity of the church, this “unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace.”
It goes without saying that just making that remark probably conjures up in
your mind the reality that that doesn’t seem to be the fact. Churches seem to
be divided, filled with friction, conflict, animosity, breakups; and you would be
right. Christianity, as a church, could never be defined as one church; it is so
fragmented. This is a far cry from what our Lord desired and prayed for.
John 17, what did He pray to the Father. He prays for many things, but He
culminates it toward the end in V20. These are the words of Jesus praying to
the Father: “I do not ask on behalf of these alone”—meaning these disciples
who were with Him there that night—“but for those also who believe in Me
through their word”—so, “I’m praying not only for the disciples but all the
people in the future who will believe in Me through the word of the apostles,
which essentially is the New Testament.” So He’s praying for all believers
through all history who will become believers because of the apostolic doctrine
contained on the pages of the New Testament.
John 17,
20
“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe
in me through their word,
21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in

you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you
have sent me.
22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be
one, as we are one,
23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the
world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have
loved me.
24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me
where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me
before the foundation of the world.
V21, “That they may all be one.” This is not some superficial oneness. This is
not some organizational oneness. It is the kind of oneness that the Father and
the Son enjoy. “As You, Father, are in Me and I am in You, that they also may
be in Us.” This is a profound union of shared divine life.
V22, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them.” The Father
and the Son have shared glory, and that glory has been given to us so that we
literally are partakers of the divine nature. Further defined in V23, “I in them
and You in Me, that they may be become completely one.” This is a profound
unity of shared divine spiritual and eternal life, and our Lord’s ultimate prayer
request.
For all believers through all ages, V20 says, all “who believe in Me through [the
word of the apostles],” meaning the New Testament. What is the prayer? V21,
“That they may all be one,” again V22, “That they may be one.” Why is this?
What is the importance of this? Back to V21, “So that the world may believe
that You sent Me.” Or V23, “So that the world may know that You sent Me, and
loved them, even as You have loved Me.”
The bottom line here is that the credibility of the gospel is built on the ground
of the unity of the church. The purpose of our unity is so that the world may
believe the gospel. Individual testimony is words in the wind if it’s not
substantiated by a living, transformed, supernaturally infused church. It is the
unity of the church, the power of the church that lays the groundwork for
individual testimony.
All of us have experienced this, trying to give somebody the gospel, and they
immediately jump into discrediting the church. One national evangelical leader
this week said, “I love Jesus; I don’t like the church,” trying to distance himself
from the discord represented in the visible church. Makes individual testimony
difficult, because the ground of credibility is the unity of the church; and where
that doesn’t exist, individual testimony is crippled.
Now what kind of unity are we talking about? Well first of all, let’s identify it as
internal unity. That is, it is the possession of the divine life. Anyone who’s in
Christ is a new creation. Christ lives in us. We have become partakers of the
divine nature. We have become temples of the Holy Spirit. We have become the
abiding place of God; God has taken up His abode in us.
Literally, the Trinity dwells in every individual believer; and therefore, when
the church is the church, it is collectively the dwelling place of God. It is the
unity of divine life. It is the unity of spiritual life. It is the unity of eternal life.
It is the unity of common mind, common truth, common will.
That will which is reasonable, as Romans 12 defines it, and pleasing to God. It
is the unity of a common motive, a common purpose, a common mission. So
that prayer for the internal unity of the church was answered by the Father. We
are one; all who are in Christ are one. We are the one church. We possess that
internal spiritual life.
We all received all spiritual blessings in heaven, in Christ, Ephesians 1. We
have received justification, sanctification, redemption, conversion, adoption,
and with all of that, comfort, peace, joy, security, inheritance, and one day,
glorification. Literally, we have the promise and the reality of V22, that we
already possess a shared glory, which will expand into full glory when we see
Christ. We will be like Him, for we see Him as He is.
But even now, Paul says that as a believer in sanctification, you grow from one
level of glory to the next, to the next, as you come more into the image of the
all-glorious Christ. We have this glory in clay pots, Paul says. But it is glory.
That is to say, it is the divine life. It is the real divine life. It is the divine nature
placed in us. We therefore should possess all of the evidences of that, not only
in our individual lives but in our collective life together.
The internal life of oneness with God, by the Spirit, in Christ should provide
more joy, more comfort, more peace, more satisfaction, more tranquility, more
love than anything and everything the world has to offer. This is where you
ought to find all your satisfaction, all your joy, and all your delight in the reality
that you are the possessor of already the glorious life of God, which is eternal.
If that’s not your most precious possession, then heaven will be a big
disappointment to you because none of what you have in this world will be
there, none of it. If there’s something more important on this earth than all
that is yours in Christ, heaven will disappoint you. Only if your highest joy is
the reality of your eternal life and union with the triune God, only if that is your
highest and supreme joy is heaven attractive to you, because there will be
nothing but that, and all the distractions will disappear forever.
Pretty easy to do a little inventory to find out just exactly where your priorities
are. Ask yourself whether you would immediately give up everything to enter
heaven; and if you can’t say that you would, you are prizing something passing,
temporal, and earthly, rather than what is eternal and heavenly.
So we’re talking about an internal unity. We have the same, shared, divine life.
It is miraculous. We all possess it. But it’s not just internal, because the whole
point of this unity, back in John 17:21 is “so that the world may [know] that
[the Father] sent [the Son],” and V23, “the world may know that [the Father]
sent [the Son],” and that we are loved by God.
John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” You
can quote that and say, “God so loved the world that He sent His Son.” You can
read John 13:1, “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them
to perfection.” But how do you put on display the fact that the Father sent His
Son because He loved you so much that He wanted to make you one of His own
children and give you His very eternal life? How do you make that believable?
It has to be more than saying it is so; it has to be demonstrated that there is, in
the presence of those who are redeemed, an inexplicable joy, peace,
satisfaction, tranquility, patience, love, obedience, that could never have been
caused by any human experience.
So the Lord prays that we would be one internally, we are, but that we would
also be one externally because that’s the ground of our testimony. That’s how
we demonstrate to the world the transforming power of the gospel; the
collective unity of the church and the power of its united joy and peace and
love makes individual testimony believable.
So the question that Paul is bringing us to is, how do we make the internal
external? How do we make that which is invisible, as to the life of God, visible?
How do we live to make our divine calling visible? That’s what Paul is talking
about here. V1, “I . . . implore you . . . walk in a manner worthy of the calling
with which you have been called.” Axiōs is the word for “worthy”; it means
equivalent. Your life ought to demonstrate your transformation since you have
a high, holy, heavenly calling that has taken you out of the kingdom of
darkness and put you into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, that’s taken you out
of death and put you into life. Since you now possess the life of God, it ought to
be manifest; there ought to be an equivalence between that identity, that
spiritual internal reality, and your external life.
How do we take what is true of us internally and make it visible externally?
What does a worthy life look like? The characteristics of a worthy life, V2, “with
all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another
in love.” That will lead to V3, “[The preservation of] the unity of the Spirit in
the bond of peace.” The goal is in V3, “the [manifest] unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace”; the means is V2.
So what is the Word of God asking of me? What is Paul begging for in this
worthy life, this worthy walk? He starts with “all humility.” Yes, it’s a high,
holy, heavenly walk. It is a privilege beyond comprehension that God, the
triune God, lives in us. It is the most exalted reality in the universe for any
created being. And yet we are to demonstrate it, not by being proud about it
but by “all humility”—lowliness. Walk worthy of the Lord by recognizing how
unworthy you are.
What is the Lord demanding of us? That we be gentle-hearted—no retaliation,
no anger, no bitterness, no vindictiveness, no hostility, no revenge. This is not
weakness; It’s power under control. This is not passive acceptance of all that is
wrong or all that is sinful, but it is righteous indignation only when God is
dishonored, not when things don’t go well for you or me. “It is zeal for Your
house,” the psalmist said, “that eats me up.” And Jesus fulfilled that.
Second Corinthians 10:1 says about our Lord that He was meek; talks about the
meekness of Christ. Matthew 11:29, “I am meek and lowly.” And yet the meek
and lowly Jesus thundered divine truth, thundered judgment, took out a whip,
at the beginning and the end of His ministry, and attacked the false religion of
the temple. But He was never defending Himself; He was always defending the
honor of His Father. In fact, 1 Peter 2:23, “was reviled, [He] reviled not again.”
When they attacked Him, He didn’t attack back; He “committed Himself to [His
Father].” This is the meekness and the gentleness that doesn’t get angry,
doesn’t get self-protective, self-assertive, vindictive, bitter, hostile, go after
revenge.
There’s a third virtue in V2, “with patience,” makrothumia, very common word
in the New Testament. “Patience”—it’s just that. It’s patience. It’s endurance—
endurance in trouble, testing, temptation, deprivation. It’s the ability to stay
faithful, joyful, peaceful, content, no matter what. Like Paul said, “I’ve learned
in all conditions to be content.”
Patience, let me just give you some ways to think about it. It is the attitude
that never gives in, in the midst of negative circumstances, never. It is said of
Abraham in Hebrews 6:15 that Abraham patiently waited and received the
promise. God made a promise to Abraham, and it didn’t look like it was ever
going to come to pass, or that it was even possible for he and Sarah to have a
child. But he waited patiently in a very difficult situation.
James 5:9, “Do not complain, brethren, against one another, so that you
yourselves may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing right at the door.”
Be careful about complaining because things aren’t the way you wish they
were. “As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets
who spoke in the name of the Lord.” They were the blessed that endured. The
prophets never saw what they prophesied come to pass; Peter says they looked
at what they wrote, as to what person and what time it would even come
about. Patience is the attitude that never gives in, in negative circumstances. It
never loses its peace, its joy, its contentment, its sweetness, its delight, and its
affection.
I could stretch it even to a second aspect: This is the attitude that takes
everything that comes from everyone. First Thessalonians 5:14, “Be patient
with everyone.” That’s everyone. And not all people are easy to be patient with,
and no one who maybe mostly is patient is always patient. What is this saying?
This is to say that you are patient when you bear insult, injury, persecution,
unfairness, false accusations, criticism, hatred, and those two ugly sins,
jealousy and envy, you take it; there’s no bitterness, there’s no irritation,
there’s no complaint, there’s no wanting to strike back. First Corinthians
13:4 says, summing it up, “Love is patient.”
Patience is this third virtue. The attitude that can endure negative
circumstances for a very long time, the attitude that takes anything from
anyone and never retaliates. A third way to look at it is the attitude that
accepts God’s plan and time for everything. James 5:7, “Therefore be patient
brethren, until the coming of the Lord.” Well that’s a long time. We don’t have
any guarantee of any intervention until the Lord comes back. So that sets the
standard.
How long should I be patient? Until the Lord gets here. “The farmer waits for
the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early
and late rain. You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the
Lord is near.” We are basically told to be patient in extended negative
circumstances, to be patient no matter who gives us what, and to be patient
until the end of life or the return of Christ.
So how do you have unity in the church? You have it when you have humility
and meekness and this astonishing endurance and patience. None of these
were virtues in the Greek world. They’re not virtues today. You couldn’t sell
this today if you tried to suggest that people live life humbly, gently, patiently;
you’d go against the grain of everything in this culture.
Meekness is a positive virtue that replaces anger with love; long-suffering is a
negative virtue that withholds anger and waits on God. This is what you need
to see in the church. Paul is a living testimony of this. 2 Corinthians 6:4, “In
much endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses, in beatings, in
imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in hunger, in purity, in
knowledge.” Which is to say with all of that, he remained pure, he remained
faithful to the truth that he knew, “in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit,
in genuine love, in the word of truth, in the power of God.” What amazing
truth.
You want to be able to endure anything? Remain “in purity, in knowledge, in
patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in genuine love, in the word of truth, in
the power of God.” Paul took anything and everything: evil report, good report,
persecutors after his life. It was important to teach the early believers this
because there was so much persecution. 1 Peter 3:8, “To sum up all of you be
harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kind-hearted, and humble in spirit; not
returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you
were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.” You’re
willing to inherit a blessing, maybe you might be willing to give one, right?
This is Christian living: humility, meekness, patience. There’s a fourth
characteristic: “showing tolerance for one another in love.” I like the LSB on
this one: “bearing with one another in love.” Bearing something, carrying a
person in love, even though they’re hostile, difficult, an enemy. Matthew 5,
you’re never more like God than when you love your enemy.
So the path to preserving the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace is the path
of humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearing love. What do we mean by
that? I think Peter gives us a good insight in 1 Peter 4:8, “Above all”—now this
is above all; again, we’re back talking about the priorities of our Christian life
—“keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of
sins.” “Keep fervent,” it’s ektenēs. It means to stretch a muscle as far as you
can stretch it. In other words, extend love as far as it is possible to extend it—
to the point, Peter says, that it “covers a multitude of sins.”
This is where the unity of the church comes: from humility and gentleness, and
from patience, and forbearing love that extends itself, even to covering
people’s sins, even sins against us. Listen to the love defined in 1 Corinthians
13, “Love is patient,” verse 4, “love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not
brag, is not arrogant, doesn’t act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, is not
provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in
unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” This is a love that
endures everything and covers that with silence. Love covers; that’s taken
from Proverbs 10:12, “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all
transgressions.” This is a love that seeks nothing but someone else’s good.
No matter what anyone does to me, I will never seek harm on that person; I
will never seek to get revenge. I will ever and always only seek for that
person’s highest good. This kind of love is unconquerable benevolence. It is
invincible good will. “Love” agapē, the love of the will. You can’t command
people’s emotions. This is not emotional love, this is the love of the will that
says, consciously and matter-of-factly, “I will set myself aside for the sake of
another even though the other is my enemy who has done evil against me.”
This is the love that we control.
It doesn’t mean that we’re spineless and sentimental, because times come
when we have to speak the truth in love. Nothing more loving than confronting
sin. We have to rebuke and speak the truth in love when it is appropriate
because that’s what love does. But look, only humble people can live like this.
Only humble people are gentle and patient and so extensive in their loving that
it’s godlike, and they actually love their enemies and they stretch their love to
cover a multitude of sins. When you live like that, V3 becomes a reality: “being
diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” You get to
unity. You don’t create it; it’s been created internally, right? We saw that, by
the Spirit. But you get to preserve that and make it manifest when you take the
path of humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearing love.
This is the diligence required “to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace.” Be “diligent”—that’s spoudazontes; it means to endeavor. Paul used it,
writing to Timothy and Titus. “Make every effort,” the NAS translates it, “Make
every effort.” Or 2 Timothy 2:15, same thing: “Make every effort to rightly
divide the word of truth.” Do everything possible in your life to preserve this
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace by the path that we have just laid out.
Working at unity is primarily working, not on somebody else but on your own
life, right? Working on unity means humbling yourself. You pursue it by being
concerned about others, not being concerned about yourself.
What is the bond of peace? If we’re going to preserve the unity of the Spirit—
that is the internal unity of common life, in the bond of peace, what is the
bond? What causes peace in a congregation to be a reality? Paul answers it
in Colossians 3:14 when he says the bond of perfection is love. That’s why Paul
in 1 Timothy 1:5 says, “The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart.”
“The goal of our [commandment],” the LSB says, “is love from a pure heart.” I
mean, the goal of everything we do in teaching you the Word of God is this kind
of love that leads to the preservation of unity, so that the testimony of the
church is one of loving transformation; and that ground, in the collective
assembly of God’s people, becomes the ground of credibility for personal
witness.
So what do we say to sum it up? It’s the obliteration of self; that’s what it is.
That’s the path. As long as self is at the center, as long as your feelings, your
desires, your rights, your privileges, your prestige, your place, your concerns
are the chief concern, we will never see this kind of unity. And if we don’t, we
will have denied the very essence of the Christian faith, because the Christian
faith is all about unity. And that brings me to a few comments about V4-6.
We saw the call to the worthy life in V1, the characteristics of the worthy life in
V2-3. Here’s the creed. This is magnificent, V4: “There is one body and one
Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one
faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and
in all.”
This is absolutely stunning. In my mind it is the single greatest statement on
the exclusivity of the Christian faith, anywhere on the pages of Scripture.
There’s one body; that’s the church. There’s just one church. I know people
say, “We have denominational distinctives.” Well, get rid of them. There’s only
one church, and there’s one Spirit, and there’s one eternal hope, and there’s
one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father. That is as narrow as
it gets. That is the exclusivity of biblical truth. That is the exclusivity of
Christianity.
There’s only one church, one body, not many churches, not many acceptable
religions, only one. There’s only one Spirit: The Holy Spirit. All other spirits are
demonic, false spirits. Only one Spirit. Only one hope of your calling; that is to
say, one heavenly hope, one eternal calling, one election that settled that
eternal calling. There’s only one Lord, just one. There’s only one faith, the
objective common faith, the faith once for all delivered to the saints, the
content of the gospel. It’s called by Jude the “most holy faith.”
There’s only one baptism; that is to say, there’s only one union with Christ, in
His death and resurrection, that brings about salvation and eternal life. There’s
only one God, not many; This is the most hated of all Christian truths: that
there’s only one, and anything else is a fabrication of hell; it’s a lie.
I reiterate what I said, I am in favor of preaching the one true religion and
exposing all others as concoctions of hell. If you’re looking for a place where
you see the exclusivity of Christianity laid out, it is there in the seven
repetitions of the word “one.” It’s a sad evidence of the doctrinal ignorance of
the church that it is so doctrinally diverse. That’s not a good thing, because
there’s only one true doctrine. Just to remind what is obvious: Our visible unity
is built on doctrine.
Having said all that he did about the virtues V2&3, he goes back to the
foundation of all of it: back to God and His purposes. V4 relates to the Holy
Spirit; V5 relates to the Lord, the Son; and V6, God the Father. Trinitarian
theology, with its elements in singularity, expresses the utter and absolute
exclusivity of the Christian faith. So we have to have sound doctrine; we have
to have the right creed to know how to live the right kind of life.
The worthy walk, then, is to be a preservation of the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace. It will appear as a manifest reality in those churches where
people are marked by lowliness, gentleness, patience, and love. That’s the
prayer for our church, as it always has been. Where that unity is put on display,
the world can see that the Father loved us and sent His Son to save us; and
that’s the only explanation of why we are who we are. Let’s bow in prayer.
We’re literally overwhelmed, our Father, that You have sought us in Your
sovereign love, and redeemed us, and brought us to Yourself, and given us that
internal spiritual life, that we are partakers of the divine nature, the very
dwelling place of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that we have eternal life.
You filled us with Your own glory. May our lives reflect this reality as we live
humbly, meekly, patiently, and lovingly with one another, so that the unity of
the Spirit, which is manifest as peace and love, can lay a foundation to make
individual testimony believable.
Thank You for the calling You’ve given to us. Thank You for the empowerment
we have by the truth and the Spirit to live in a way that honors You and that
fills our lives with joy. Be glorified in Your church, we pray in the name of
Christ. Amen.
One Lord, One Faith, One God: The Exclusivity of

Christianity Feb 6/22
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-18/one-lord-one-faith-one-god-the-
exclusivity-of-christianity
1

another in love,
bond of peace.
your calling,
Here is the singularity of Christianity. Seven times, you have the word “ONE”
repeated. This is a declaration of the exclusivity of the true faith, the true
religion. There is only one body: the church; there is only one Spirit: The Holy
Spirit; there is only one hope: That of heaven for those in Christ. There’s only
one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God. That should make it abundantly
clear that there are no others.
Unlike past generations of Americans, who readily recognized the reality of sin
and the need for salvation through Jesus Christ, U.S. adults today adopt a
“salvation-can-be-earned” perspective, with a near-majority (48%) believing
that if a person is generally good, or does enough good things during their life,
they will “earn” a place in Heaven.
The most recent findings of the AWVI 2020, conducted by CRC Director of
Research Dr. George Barna, also show that these views of sin and salvation
have permeated American culture so deeply that even a majority of people who
describe themselves as Christian (52%) accept a “works-oriented” means to
God’s acceptance.
Only one-third of American adults (35%) continue to embrace the traditional
biblical view that salvation comes through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ,
according to findings from the American Worldview Inventory 2020 from the
Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University.
“This lack of understanding of basic Christian theology is stunning, with
potentially devastating consequences for individual souls and really for all
aspects of American life and culture,” according to ACU President Len Munsil.
If Yahweh is the one and only living and true God, there is no other god. If the
Bible is the one true revealed revelation of God, there is no other revelation. If
the Son of God is Jesus, who is alone Lord and alone King, there is no other
lord. If Jesus Christ is the only Savior from sin and eternal judgment, there is
no other savior. If sinners can be saved only by the gospel of Jesus Christ, then
they can’t be saved by any other means. If people can only escape hell by
trusting in the person and work of Christ, they cannot escape hell by any other
avenue. If sinners will be in hell forever if they reject Christ, there is no other
way for them to escape. If the sole work that saves sinners is the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, then no other work can save sinners. If the gospel
is the only saving truth and all other claims are lies, if there is only one true
religion, then all others are false. If there is only one true God, who is the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—the triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit
—then there is no other God.
All these statements are Bible claims. One God, one divine revelation, one Lord,
one Savior, one gospel, one means of escaping hell. It offends others, so people
cave in, rather than be faithful to that gospel, they come up with things like,
“You can get to heaven by any religion.” A lie from the devil. Deuteronomy
4:35 says, “The Lord, He is God; there is no other besides Him.” That’s the
exclusivity of the true God. Deuteronomy 4:39, “The Lord, He is God in heaven
[alone] and on the earth below; there is no other.” First Kings 8, verse 60, “The
Lord is God; there is no one else.”
God instructed the people of Israel as they stood on the brink of entering the
land that God had promised to them. Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel! The
Lord is our God the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” That is to say, there is
nothing left, for you to love any other god. He demands singular and complete
worship.
Deuteronomy 6:13, “You shall fear only the Lord your God; you shall worship
Him and swear by His name. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of
the peoples who surround you, for the Lord your God in the midst of you is a
jealous God; otherwise the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against
you, and He will wipe you off the face of the earth.” So if you entertain the idea
that there is any other god, you come under God’s fury, and He will wipe you
off the face of the earth.
Deuteronomy 8:19, “It shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God
and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you
today that you will surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish
before you, so you shall perish; because you would not listen to the voice of the
Lord your God.” That’s a spiritual death and eternal death sentence pronounced
on anyone who worships any other God.
Deuteronomy 11:16, “Beware that your hearts are not deceived, and that you
do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them. Or the anger of the
Lord will be kindled against you, and He will shut up the heavens so that there
will be no rain and the ground will not yield its fruit; and you will perish quickly
from the good land which the Lord is giving you.”
God basically pronounces judgment and a death sentence on anyone in Israel
who worshiped any other god, because there is no other god.
First Timothy 2:5, “For there is one God, and one mediator . . . between God
and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
Acts 4:12, “There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under
heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”
John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father
but by Me.”
John 3:36, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not
obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
Galatians 1:8-9, “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, [were to proclaim]
to you a gospel contrary to [the gospel] we have [proclaimed] to you, let him
be accursed”—damned. “As we have said before, so I say again now, that if any
man is [proclaiming] to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be
accursed!”
1 John 5:20, “And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us
understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is
true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.” And in the
next verse, John says, based on that, you’d better keep yourself from idols.
The most serious thing that you could possibly do in this world was to believe
that there is any way to eternal life apart from Christ, apart from the gospel;
that is condemned from the Pentateuch in Scripture all the way to its end.
Christianity is the only way. We’re talking about unity here in this section, let
me remind you that our unity is not based on inclusivity; it’s based on
exclusivity. It is the unity, in V1, ( the calling to which you have been
called.) A sovereign call, a divine call. It is the unity of spiritual virtue in
V2&3, the characteristics of those who are called and gifted by the Holy Spirit.
And it is founded on this creed: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one
Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God.
One body, which is the universal church;
One Spirit, the indwelling Holy Spirit;
One hope, the eternal glory and heaven;
One Lord, Jesus Christ our Savior, Lord and King;
One faith, the revelation of truth in the Word of God;
One baptism, that which declares the believer’s union with Christ in His death,
burial, and resurrection;
and
One God is the true and living God of all, Creator of all, Holy and Righteous. In
His Holiness He is Sovereign, Perfect, Merciful, Omniscient, Almighty,
Omnipresent, Infinite, Personal, Triune, Immutable, Jealous, Immanent,
Patient, Ruler, providential, Sustainer and more…
John 17:3, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” V6, “One God, one God and Father of all
who is over all, through all and in all.” There is no room anywhere for any other
god. He is “the Father of all,” He is the source; He is the Creator. He is “over
all,” He is transcendent and sovereign. He is “through all,” He is imminent and
present, working in His creation. “And in [you] all,” He has taken up residence
in believers.
Only one God created everything, rules everything, permeates everything, and
dwells in the hearts of His people. This is the exclusive truth necessary for
salvation. Apart from this truth there is no hope.
Romans 1:18, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in
unrighteousness.” You suppress the truth of the one true God, and you come
under His wrath. V21, “Even though they knew God.” God had revealed Himself
in His creation, “they didn’t honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became
futile in their speculations, their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be
wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for
an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals
and crawling creatures.” When people reject the one true God who has
manifested Himself in His creation and in the law written in the human heart,
when they reject God, when they do not honor Him or give thanks or worship
Him, they become empty in their speculations. The light goes out inside; they
think they’re wise, and they become fools, and they invent false religion.
Religion is not man at his highest; religion is man at his lowest. Religion is an
invention by man to replace the true God and the true faith. He is inexcusable
because the manifestation of God is in the world and even in him. But when
people reject the true God, they don’t find Him another way; they come up with
religion; they make idols out of fads, culture and fleshly things.
1 Corinthians 1:18, “The word of the cross is foolishness.” In Romans 1 they
rejected God and entered into the folly of religion. Here they reject the word of
the cross, which is the gospel; they reject that. And what did they get? Human
wisdom, V20, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the
debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For
since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know
God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to
save those who believe.”
When you abandon the word of the cross, you abandon the gospel, and you
come up with human wisdom, all you get is more foolishness. Romans 1 says
they rejected God, they became fools, and they invented religion. 1 Corinthians
1 says they rejected the gospel, they became fools, and they went in the
direction of human wisdom, which is foolishness. But that’s what the perishing
people do.
1 Corinthians 2:10, True revelation from God comes “through the Spirit; for the
Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.” If you don’t receive
revelation of the truth from God by the agency of the Holy Spirit—which of
course is the Scripture, author of Scripture, you have no hope of knowing God,
being forgiven, escaping hell.
V11, “Who . . . knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which
is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world.” A spirit of foolishness in
human wisdom, “but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the
things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words
taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual
thoughts with spiritual words.” Where do we find that? On the pages of
Scripture.
All human wisdom does is lead to ignorance. So again I say, at its point of most
sophisticated religion, man is at his most debased point of rebellion against
God. The only way you can ever know anything about God is to know what the
Spirit says about God. The Spirit alone knows the thoughts of God; He has
revealed them on the pages of Holy Scripture. Apart from that, everything is
folly, nothing delivers you from the wrath of God, and you are part of the
perishing.
Acts 17, Paul went up to Mars Hill. All kinds of deities were represented there
by statues, Paul looked over all of it. Supposed to be the highest level of human
reason in the world, Athens, philosophy. They had all these deities, and they
were not satisfied, obviously, because they created one more altar: “TO THE
UNKNOWN GOD.” If you had satisfaction, you wouldn’t need an anonymous
god. Paul then filled in the blank and taught them about the true God who
created everything. You can have all the religions in the world, but if you don’t
have the true religion, you will never know God, and you will never escape
judgment.
Natural reason, spiritual feelings, complex religions are expressions of human
wisdom, expressions of rebellion against the true God and the true religion.
They are foolish, idolatrous, and deadly in an eternal sense. But is it just
human? Go a little further into 1 Corinthians 10. Is man so debased in his
rebellion against God that he concocts these religions which damn his soul, or
is there some other element in that effort? 1 Corinthians 10:19,“That a thing
sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but I say that the
things which the Gentiles or the nations sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and
not to God.” That’s the truth of what’s going on. False religion is not just
human, it is devilish; it is demonic; it is hellish; it is from Satan, whose
messengers are disguised as angels of light because Satan himself is an angel
of light disguised as religious leader.
So this religion is not just a human concoction, it is the trafficking of demons.
Satan is the father of lies. Paul borrows it from, Deuteronomy 32:17, where he
talks about religion being sacrifices offered to demons. I don’t think people
know that, but that’s the truth. Psalm 106:37 says, “They even sacrificed sons
and daughters to demons.” When they sacrificed their children to the god
Molech, they thought they were pacifying a real deity who, if they gave up their
children, would bring favor into their lives. The Bible says they were sacrificing
their children to demons. False religion cannot save anyone; it is an operation
of hell.
Could the Jews have rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ and make it to heaven?
“At least they had the right God in mind: The God of the Old Testament. They
had the right laws in mind: The Ten Commandments and all other expressions
of it. At least they’re looking to the one true God. Isn’t that enough? Wouldn’t
that be enough to get them in?” They should have had the best shot at it.
Romans 9, God’s Election of Israel

1
I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience confirms it
by the Holy Spirit—
2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the
sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh.
4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the
covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises;
5 to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes
the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
6
It is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all Israelites truly
belong to Israel,
7 and not all of Abraham’s children are his true descendants; but “It is through
Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.”
8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God,
but the children of the promise are counted as descendants.
9 For this is what the promise said, “About this time I will return and Sarah
shall have a son.”
10 Nor is that all; something similar happened to Rebecca when she had
conceived children by one husband, our ancestor Isaac.
11 Even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that
God’s purpose of election might continue,
12 not by works but by his call) she was told, “The elder shall serve the
younger.”
13 As it is written, “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.”
14
What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means!
15 For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
16
So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.
17 For the scripture says to Pharaoh, “I have raised you up for the very purpose
of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the
earth.”
18 So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of
whomever he chooses.
Romans 10,
1
Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayers to God for them is that
they may be saved.
2
I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened.
3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and
seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s
righteousness.
4 For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness
for everyone who believes.
Salvation Is for All
5
Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the
person who does these things will live by them.”
6 But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart,
‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down)
7 “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the
dead).
8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart”
(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and
believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved.
10 For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with
the mouth and so is saved.
11 The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”
12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of
all and is generous to all who call on him.
13 For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved .”
But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed?
14
And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard?
And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him ?
15 And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written,
“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news !”
16 But not all have obeyed the good news; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has
believed our message?”
17 So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the
word of Christ.
18
But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed, they have; for
“Their voice has gone out to all the earth,
and their words to the ends of the world.”
19
Again I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says ,
“I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation;
with a foolish nation I will make you angry.”
20
Then Isaiah is so bold as to say,
“I have been found by those who did not seek me;

I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.”
21
But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a
disobedient and contrary people.”
Earlier in the book of Romans, “By the law no flesh will be justified.” No people
were more given the opportunity to know the truth, to know the saving God,
than the Jews, especially when Jesus came. Jesus said, “I’m telling you the
truth, and the truth that I’m telling you can set you free because currently
you’re under the bondage of your father, the devil.” Jesus said Judaism is an
operation of Satan. When He said that, they were insulted and outraged, and it
led to them having the Romans kill their own Messiah.
In Judaism there have always been Pharisees and fastidious rabbis. They saw
themselves as the very agents of the true God. Many of them were venerated
as teachers of the Old Testament. They carried a certain amount of esoteric
authority because of the way they handled the Old Testament. They were the
resident truth-tellers about God. Paul said they needed to be saved. What does
it mean? That their sins were not forgiven; they were under divine judgment,
on their way to eternal hell. Romans 10:1, “My heart’s desire, my prayer to God
for them is for their salvation.”
What was wrong? They came so far; what was missing? Romans 10:2, “I testify
about them they have a zeal for God.” (Right God, right attitude) “But not in
accordance with knowledge,” epignōsis. A misguided zeal for God. They sat
under an eternal death sentence. That is exactly how all false religions are to
be understood, all of them, Judaism and all the rest. They do not have salvation
because there’s only one way to be saved. Let’s look a little more closely at
their condition and the condition of people in all false religions.
Problem 1: They didn’t understand the righteousness of God. Romans 10:3,
“For not knowing about God’s righteousness.” First damning reality: They did
not know how holy God is, how righteous He is. They did not understand that
though in human life there might be degrees of righteousness and degrees of
holiness, with God it is only absolute holiness and absolute righteousness. They
failed to understand that God was just exactly what we and all angels must
sing: “Holy, holy, holy.” Absolutely holy, so holy He is intolerant of every sin
and punishes every sin in full. They wanted to think what most sinners want to
think: that God is love, and God is mercy, and God is compassion, and God is
kind, and that’s sort of His dominant side.
The Holiness of God´s attributes that carries monumental consequences for
any man or woman person in His creation. In ancient Hebrew, the word
translated as "holy" (QOEDISH) meant "set apart" or "separate from." God's
absolute moral and ethical purity set him apart from every other being in the
universe. They didn’t know about God’s righteousness. He is too righteous to
ever tolerate any sin that is unforgiven and not atoned for.
They needed to take a look at the law and define the law the way God defines
it: As a standard of perfect righteousness. The law from, “Love the Lord your
God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” down through the Ten
Commandments, down through all the Old Testament, indications of God’s
moral character in His holy nature and His law, clearly laid out what God loved
and what God hated. Jews, even to this day, lower the law; they lower the
righteousness of God. They make God less holy than He is, less righteous than
He is. They have to do that because if they’re going to ascend to Him by law-
keeping, they’ve got to lower the standard.
Christianism, then, begins with the absolute righteousness and holiness of God
as laid out in His law, His perfect virtue, His hatred of every sin and every
sinner, and the curse upon every sin and every sinner. You can’t lower God’s
holiness; that was the first error.
Problem 2, to accommodate this, they elevated their own righteousness.
Romans 10:3, “Not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to
establish their own, they didn’t subject themselves to the righteousness of
God.” What does that mean? They should have subjected themselves to the
righteousness of God like the publican: fell on the ground, pounded their chest,
“God be merciful to me, the sinner, and save me.” They should have come
under the crushing weight of the law and cried for mercy.
But instead they lightened up the law by lowering the righteous standard of
God. (An attack on His holiness.) Then, they elevated themselves from their
true condition as wretched sinners to a point where they thought they were
righteous enough to come to God on their own. If you’re going to believe in a
works system, you’ve got to lower the righteousness of God and raise your
own. So instead of submitting to the righteousness of God and crying for mercy
under the full weight of that which violates His righteousness, they thought
less of Him and more of themselves; that’s what led them to a works system.
Psalm 95:10, “For forty years I loathed that generation”—“I hated them.” He
said, “They are a people who err in their heart, and they do not know My
ways.” People need to be brought under the full weight of the law, which
damns them. So they were ignorant of the righteousness of God; they were
ignorant of their own unrighteousness.
Problem 3, they were ignorant of the provision of Christ, Romans 10:4, “For
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” They
didn’t understand that the Messiah had come to remove the threat of the law,
to remove the curse of the law. He actually was made a curse for us. They
didn’t see Christ as the one who came to be the end of the law. Christ is the
end of the law in terms of the law’s threat. He is the end of the law in terms of
the law’s reign. He’s the end of the law in terms of the law’s fulfillment. He’s
the end of the law in terms of satisfying the law’s penalty. He breaks the power
of the law by taking on Himself the full punishment, so that the sins of all who
ever believe are paid for by Christ and the cross. The Father can remove the
curse of the law because Christ took the curse.
How does that happen? V4, “to everyone who believes.” Not by works. Christ is
the end of trying to earn righteousness by works, by law. Paul tried that, he
says in Philippians 3, his whole life. Then he came to understand the
righteousness of God, which is by faith, which is given to the penitent,
believing sinner as a gift.
So here is Israel, if there’s any religion that was going to be accepted into
God’s kingdom, it would be them. But no, they’re not saved. Why? Because
they have the wrong understanding of God’s righteousness, the wrong
understanding of their own unrighteousness, and the wrong understanding of
the work of Christ. Then they had another error: wrong understanding of the
place of faith, V4. Righteousness is a gift from God to those who believe.
V5, “Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based
on law shall live by that righteousness.” Oh, you want to live by law? OK, you
have to earn your way to heaven by keeping the law perfectly. If you ever
break one law one time, it’s over. So you want to practice the righteousness
that is based on law, then you have to live perfectly by that righteousness, no
one can.
On the other hand, the righteousness based on faith, V6, “But the
righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will
ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into
the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). I’ll have to go on some
pilgrimage; I’ll have to somehow get elevated spiritually; I’ll have to get into
some gnostic category or some esoteric trance to go up or down or somewhere,
to access this righteousness that I need.” No. That’s not what the
righteousness of faith says.
What it says is in V8 “The word [concerning the righteousness of faith] is near
you, in your mouth, in your heart” (How?) “(that is, the word of faith which we
are preaching).” You don’t have to have some spiritual journey; you don’t have
to have some supernatural pilgrimage. You just have to hear the gospel of faith
which we are preaching. V9&10: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as
Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be
saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and
with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” How incredible is that?
OK, you can’t be saved by law. Do we have to make some pilgrimage into
heaven on some spiritual plane, or do we have to go down into some depth of
spiritual darkness, somehow find Christ and bring Him up or pull Him down?
No. You just need to “confess . . . Jesus as Lord”—that’s how to be saved—“and
believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead.” Why does it say,
“Believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead”? Because if you
believe that God raised Him from the dead, then you understand that God who
raised Him, by raising Him validated every single thing about Him: His eternal
existence, His incarnation, virgin birth, sinless life, substitutionary death—all
validated. And every word He ever said, and every miracle He ever performed,
every thought He ever had, every act He ever did, the Father validated.
To believe that God raised Jesus from the dead is to believe that Jesus Christ is
all that Scripture says He is; and that’s the Father’s validation. Do that, and
you’ll be saved. It’s amazing. Believe, confess, V10, “Resulting in salvation.”
This is the message of the gospel; and this is the only way.
The Jews were ignorant of the righteousness of God, ignorant of their own
unrighteousness, ignorant of the provision of Christ, ignorant of the place of
faith, and ignorant of the extent of salvation. V11, “The Scripture says,
‘Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed’”—or “will not be ashamed.”
That’s so important. If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe
in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you will never be disappointed.
“Whosoever believes”—this is very important because the Jews had a lot of
problems with the idea that Gentiles could be saved. It was hard to swallow,
for them, that God would accept the Gentiles; witness Jonah.
“But whoever believes . . . will [never] be disappointed”—never put to shame,
never rejected. “For,” V12, “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for
the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for
‘Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” I mean, that was
outrageous for the Jews. It’s only one way to get to heaven, one way to be
saved, and it’s through Christ. You have to call on Him, believe in Him.
Now that leads us to a very important moment, as we conclude. What are the
implications of this? If 66% of American Christians think I can get to heaven
through any religion, I would conclude that they have no interest in
evangelizing anybody. Why would they do that? If evangelicals, 50%, believe
that God accepts any religion and hears any religious person’s prayers, then
I’ve just taken the toughest thing out of my life. I don’t have to confront
anybody. That’s convenient, because confronting people about their sin and
divine judgment is the hardest task we have, it is the only reason the church is
in the world.
Here comes the mandate, V14: “How then will they call on Him in whom they
have not believed?” You can’t be saved unless you believe. “How will they
believe in whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a
preacher?” Somebody has to tell them. V15, “How will they preach unless they
are sent?” That’s why we’re here.
The ignorance of the Christian world is partly willful ignorance because they
lack courage, they lack conviction, they lack love and zeal like Paul said, who
could almost wish himself accursed for the salvation of others. There’s a kind
of comfortable Christianity that doesn’t want to have to confront people with
the law of God, pronounce condemnation on them and their false religion. But
that’s not loving; that’s the most unloving thing a Christian could ever do:
make some non-believer think they were okay.
If you do tell them and they believe, V15 says you will fulfill this: “How
beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!” I don’t
know anybody who became a believer who resented the person that led them
to Christ. Those are the most beautiful feet that ever get into our life. “How
beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.”
Now admittedly, not everybody’s going to accept it, that’s V16, “They didn’t all
heed the good news.” They didn’t do it when Jesus came. That’s what it says in
Isaiah 53, “[Lord,] who has believed our report?” Not everybody will believe,
but V17, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”
There’s only one way to be saved, and that’s faith in Christ risen. There’s only
one way to access that faith, and that is that it would be heard and believed.
And so we live to preach the word concerning Christ.
2 Thessalonians 1:7, Middle of the verse says, “The Lord Jesus will be revealed
from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution”
(Judgment) “to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the
gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction.”
How do you avoid eternal destruction? You have to obey the gospel of Jesus
Christ; there is no other way. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we praise You for the clarity of Your Word. Scripture has this
astonishing clarity because it must if people are to be saved.
Help us to understand that we can’t leave anybody in the false comfort of
worshiping demons in some other religion, but we have to bring the gospel.
And we know that not everybody will hear. But for those who do, it’ll be a bond
that can only be expressed in the language of Isaiah: “How beautiful are the
feet of those who preach the good news.”
May we understand that we’re here to fulfill the Great Commission, to go unto
all the world, make disciples, teaching them to observe everything that our
Lord commands, and that You go with us, and You never forsake us. Empower
us, and make us all fruitful for Your glory. Amen.
The True Measure of an Authentic Church Feb 13/22

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-19/the-true-measure-of-an-authentic-
church
How do we evaluate a church’s authenticity?

1
love,
3 making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of
your calling,
5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
7
But each of us was given grace according to the measure of
Christ’s gift.
8 Therefore it is said,
“When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;

he gave gifts to his people.”
9
(When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had
also descended into the lower parts of the earth?
10 He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens,
so that he might fill all things.)
11 The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some

prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers ,
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the
body of Christ,
13 until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge
of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of
Christ.
Measures of a church’s success are identified by the culture like this: the ability
to grab attention; provision of entertaining experiences; money to fund
projects and events; large, well-equipped facilities; creative, innovative
programs; attractive media; cultural influence; large crowds. But, those have
nothing to do with the measure of a church, and yet they are offered to this
generation.
But, in reality the text says that the measure of the church is the measure of
the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ, V13. There’s only one way
to measure a church, and that is its Christlikeness.
until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge
13
of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of

Christ.
That makes the duty of the church:
15
But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is
the head, into Christ,
We’ve been talking about how important the unity of the faith is, V13; “Until all
of us come to the unity of the faith.” How is the unity of the faith there
described? As “the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of
the full stature of Christ.” So the unity of our faith is a common Christlikeness.
The theme here is unity. There are virtues that work toward unity; we saw
them in V2&3: humility, gentleness, patience, tolerance, love, diligence to
preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Those are the kinds of
attitudes that it takes to produce the unity of the church.
And unity is the way the church was designed from the beginning because, V4,
5&6 says, “There’s one body” (or one church) “one Spirit . . . one hope . . . one
Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” Theological unity is
the foundation of the church. The church is based on common divine truth, the-
once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith. That is the foundation of unity. The
goal of unity is the measure of the stature of Christ.
So how does this work? How can we attain this kind of unity of Christlikeness?
What’s the pathway to that? It may at first seem a little bit contradictory.
We’re supposed to be united, we’re supposed to be one, everything about us is
one. How do we express that oneness with so many different people? The
answer is that our unity is found in our diversity. That may seem
counterintuitive, but it is the truth, V13, it is “the unity of the faith,” the unity
of maturity, and “the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of
Christ.”
We’re all headed toward Christlikeness, and it works like a body. V12 ends with
the body of Christ. V16 talks about the whole body, the building up of the body,
the growth of the body. Paul’s image here is of a body. V16 he talks about each
and every joint and the proper working of each individual part, which causes
the growth of the body.
So we have a very simple illustration: The body of a human being functions well
when all the individual components that make up that body function well. If
something is wrong with a functioning organ on the inside or a functioning limb
on the outside or something in the brain, whatever it might be, the body is in a
sense of dysfunction.
We understand the illustration: Like a body, we have to have all the component
parts to have one, whole, healthy body. And that’s how the church works. Our
unity is found in our diversity. Our unity is found in our diversity. All the
various people, with all their uniqueness functioning in diverse ways,
contribute to the unity of the church like all the features of a human body
contribute to the united functioning of a human being.
The key to unity is diversity—that’s a popular word these days. I read an article
this week that was very interesting. This from a pastor of a large Southern
Baptist church in Orlando, Florida, who was trying to describe the diversity of
the church, and I’m quoting: “We [have] a diverse, welcoming, multicultural
gathering of people. We have transgender, LGBTQ, straight, single, married,
divorced, and cohabitating people. [They’re all attending together. They]
attend, [they] listen, [they] serve, [they] grow, and [they] give. We have
Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and non-registered people. We have
documented and undocumented people. . . . We have pro-life and pro-choice
[people] . . . . We . . . support the Blue and Black Lives Matter sitting together
and serving together. We have Trumpers and Never Trumpers. We have
Biden . . . and Harris supporters.” And I was out of breath at that point. That is
the most absurd understanding of the diversity of the church that I have ever
seen in my life.
The diversity of the church doesn’t come from collection of sins, personal
experiences, and political viewpoints. What is the source of the diversity of the
church? V7, “But each of us was given grace according to the measure of
Christ’s gift.” To each one of us, as individual believers, grace was given in the
form of a gift from Christ. If I understand anything about grace, I know that
grace gives, right? God gives by grace. I can’t talk about grace without talking
about giving. God’s grace always gives; it is the nature of divine grace to give.
Grace gives what is necessary, what is needed, but what is undeserved.
Ephesians 1:3, we all understand that grace and peace, V2, have been granted
us “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” What does that grace do?
It “[blesses] us with every spiritual blessing in heaven in Christ, just as He
chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and
blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through
Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise
of the glory of His grace.” He graces us so that we will praise His grace and
give Him glory. End of V7, it says that His grace is rich. V8, He lavishes it on us.
I understand that at salvation I receive saving grace; this is far more than that.
This is the grace of all spiritual blessings in heaven in Christ. Ephesians 2:5,
speaks about us being saved by grace, “By grace you have been saved.” Then
it’s repeated again in V8, “For by grace you have been saved by faith.” That’s
saving grace.
Paul talking about his ministry:

Ephesians 3,
7
Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God’s grace
that was given me by the working of his power.
8 Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to
bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ,
9 and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages
in God who created all things;
10 so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now
be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
He received saving grace, we understand that; but he also received the gift of
grace that defined his ministry. He says, “I was made a minister, according to
the gift of God’s grace.” That is what we just read in the Ephesians 4:7, is that
God’s grace gives every one of us a gift for the sake of the building of the body
of Christ. Paul’s ministry was a gift of grace.
1 Corinthians 15,
10
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not
been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was
not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so
we proclaim and so you have come to believe.
I am what I am by the grace of God, not only what I am as a believer, but what
I am as a minister. I was given saving grace, and then on top of that, that
saving grace lavished me with all spiritual blessings in heaven, and on top of
that, that grace gave me a gift to function within the church so that I would be
part of the necessary operation of the Spirit through the multiple gifts to build
the church into Christlikeness. This grace really is God giving Himself. This
grace doesn’t come to us apart from God; this grace comes to us because God
comes to us. And Paul has made that absolutely clear.
Ephesians 1:22-23, “And he has put all things under his feet and has made him
the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him
who fills all in all.” Grace comes because the Lord comes. He fills His church.
Ephesians 2:21-22, In him the whole structure is joined together and grows
into a holy temple in the Lord; 22 in whom you also are built together
spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
So in Ephesians 1, Christ is in us, the fullness of Him. In Ephesians 2, the Spirit
is in us. Ephesians 3:20-21, “ Now, to him who by the power at work within us
is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21 to
him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and
ever. Amen.” This encompasses the whole Trinity. Christ is in us, the Spirit is in
us, and God Himself is in us, to whom that very prayer is directed.
Grace is God giving Himself. That’s the idea: You are the temple of the Spirit of
God; Christ dwells in you; God has set up His abode in you. His coming is not
only the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, self-control), the virtues that are a part of the inheritance of the
believer by the power of the Spirit, but what comes is illumination to
understand the Word of God.
On top of it comes this special grace, Ephesians 4:7, “But each of us was given
grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” A gift is literally measured out
to us for the purpose of building up the body of Christ.
As part of His self-giving, the Lord gives two kinds of gifts. The first one we’re
going to look at this morning is the gifts that He gives each Christian, each
individual Christian. Then next week, we’ll come down to verse 11 and look at
the gifts He gives the whole church. First, the gifts He gives to every believer,
then the gifts He gives to the whole church.
Let’s look at the individual believer in Ephesians 4:7-10. Here we see the divine
diversity necessary for unity. Unity has been Paul’s theme since Ephesians 2,
and he wraps it up, with the one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one
faith, one baptism, one God. Then verse 7 begins with, “But.” In spite of
everything that’s been said about unity, on the other hand we have been given
grace, each one of us, in a unique way, so that we function in diversity that
produces this unity.
Notice the word “measure” there, the idea is the Lord gives every believer a
specific portion, a specific unit of gifting so that he or she can contribute to the
building of the body of Christ to the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ. V16, it’s broken down into “every ligament.” The key to unity in the
church is diversity, not political, not sinful, not ethnic, it’s irrelevant. The
diversity he talks about here is the diversity of gifts according to the measure
of Christ’s gift.
Similar passages to illuminate this:
Romans 12:3,
3
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of
yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment,
each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
There it is, grace again, “the grace given to me.” Now we had a measure of
grace in Ephesians; now we have a measure of faith in Romans. God sort of
metrically gives us, by grace, a gift, and then He measures out an equal amount
of faith to operate that gift. That’s how you ought to view yourself. You ought
not to think more highly of yourself than is consistent with your gifts; you
ought to rightly assess your gifts. You need to have sound judgment, as God
has allotted to you a gift by grace that can function in the body of Christ to
build the church into Christlikeness by a measure of faith that He also provides.
Romans 12,
4
For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the
same function,
We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of
another. Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given us.”
This comes every time we talk about gifts: We’re talking about grace. You don’t
earn them; they’re not built into you; they’re not hardwired in your human
disposition. I’m not talking about talents, not talking about some kind of
manual skill or the ability to do math or something like that. This is a grace gift.
This transcends what you got when you were born into this world. This is
something supernatural, that comes only at the point of salvation.
A measured gift and a measure of faith, and we are to exercise that gift
according to that faith. He gets specific in V6, “We have gifts that differ
according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith;” So if you
have been given a measure of the grace to preach or prophesy, speak forth,
then do it according to the proportion of your faith. Do it to the degree that the
Lord gives you the faith to do it.
If you wonder whether you have the ability to stand up in front of a large
crowd and preach, but you know you can’t stand in front of three people
without becoming a nervous wreck, that’s probably not the proportion of faith
you need to operate that gift. So the Lord matches up the power with the gift.
So whatever your gift is, you do that. If it’s preaching or proclaiming truth, do
it. If it’s serving, then serve. If it’s teaching, then teach. In V8, if it’s
exhortation, then exhort. If it’s giving, then give with liberality. If it’s leading,
then lead with diligence. If it’s showing mercy, then do it with cheerfulness.
Some gifts maybe, but not limited to: preaching, serving, teaching, exhorting,
giving, leading, showing mercy, compassion. Those are just broad categories in
which everybody is unique. Everybody is like a spiritual snowflake because
you’re all different. But those would be categories in which the gifts operate.
1 Corinthians 12:4, “4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 and
there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of
activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.” This is
the same exact teaching that we saw in Romans and Ephesians. Do you see the
Trinity there? The Spirit in V4, the Lord in V5, and God in V6. They’re all
resident in the believer, they all operate in the believer to make that believer
effective in contributing to the growth of the church. The ministries are many,
the varieties are many and the effects are many.
To each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. This
is how you have to see your gift: It’s for the common good. Your gift is not for
you, it’s for all of us. My gift is not for me my gift is for you; this is how I serve
you. Your gift is how you serve others. It’s for the common good. That’s where
you have to understand that your service is vital.
Some people say, “I love Jesus, but I don’t like the church.” I do not possess,
all on my own, everything necessary for me to become like Christ, by myself?
That is a sad delusion. I don’t know how much I need one another; that’s why
we don’t forsake the assembling of ourselves together. We gather, to stimulate
one another to love and good works. We need each other the same way a body
needs all its component parts.
The church is not just to be a spectator event. For many churches it is that: It’s
just a show, and nobody has to do anything but show up, give your money, join
the party. True believers in an environment like that languish terribly because
there’s not an understanding of the vitality and critical nature of people using
their gifts.
V8 gives us some suggested categories of gifts: some providing “wisdom
through the Spirit.” “Utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit.” “To
another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one
Spirit. Usually shows up in intense commitment to prayer. “To another the
working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of
spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of
tongues.”
In the apostolic era there were “gifts of healing by the . . . Spirit,” there were
miracles by the Spirit, there was prophecy by the Spirit, there was discernment
by the Spirit, there were “various kinds of languages,” and interpretation; but
it was “one and the same Spirit [working] all these things, distributing to each
one individually just as He wills.”
That is how the body works, you come into the body of Christ; the Spirit takes
up residence in your life and grants you from heaven itself as a grace gift, a
place and a way to function effectively in the body of Christ, so that you make a
contribution to everyone else so that the body grows into Christlikeness.
We know what the Spirit does. Jesus said “When the Spirit comes, He will point
to Me.” It’s the work of the Spirit in your heart, 2 Corinthians 3:18, as you gaze
at the glory of the Lord, you’re changed into His image from one level of glory
to the next by the Holy Spirit. So the church collectively is not going to be
Christ-like unless the individuals in it are Christ-like. That is the work of the
Spirit.
There are many varieties of gifts as there are people. “How do I know what my
gift is?” It may be the combination of a lot of these various categories. What do
you love to do when you’re walking in the Spirit, and what do you do that gives
you joy and blesses other people?
I can follow the prompting of the Spirit in my heart. If I keep saying to myself,
“I think I’m supposed to be a priest,” and everybody who’s heard me says,
“No, you’re not,” I probably ought to go down the box to the next opportunity.
But there will be both a confirmation in my own heart and in the hearts of all
those people who know you and see how you serve.
You lose your life in serving others when this gift operates. That’s how the
body works; V12, “or just as the body is one and has many members, and all
the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” The
whole idea of this is when the church functions as the church, when it functions
in the measure of its gifts with the measure of faith under the power of the
Holy Spirit, it becomes like Christ, that’s the measure of the stature of the
fullness of Christ. That’s the only way to judge a church: special gifts measured
out to us by grace, in addition to our human talents and intersecting with them,
for sure, but employed by the power of the Spirit and the measure of faith.
The Spirit of God has dispersed grace gifts through the church to every one of
you to bring the church to Christlikeness. 1 Corinthians 1:4, “I thank my God
always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus
that in everything you were enriched in Him.” Those are the riches of grace
from Ephesians 1. “In all speech and all knowledge.” Now we’re talking about
gifts; you’ve been enriched even to the degree of knowledge and to be able to
communicate that knowledge. “Even as the testimony concerning Christ was
confirmed in you.” Then this amazing statement: “so that you are not lacking in
any gift.” The Lord is saying that to this very troubled church. “The Spirit of
God has dispensed among you, with a measure of grace, a gift to everyone and
a measure of faith for everyone to operate in that gift, so that the church would
become like Christ; you lack no gift.” It’ll be that way until the revelation of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
I think the way you evaluate a church is whether that church is Christ-like
because the people in that church, with a measure of grace and a measure of
faith, are faithfully serving one another. This is not about a spectator event;
this is the divinely designed diversity that produces unity. John Calvin said, “No
member of the body of Christ is endowed with such perfections as to be able
without the assistance of others to supply his own necessities.”
If you’re struggling as a Christian the tendency is to stay away from the
church, when the reality is you’re probably struggling because you’re not there,
and there are huge areas of your life where people need to minister their gifts
to strengthen you, when you’re not around. That is one of the most absurd
things that I hear: “I love Jesus; I don’t like the church.” You can’t love Christ
and not love the church He loved and died to save, and you can’t be a Christian
who is effective unless you are being ministered to effectively by all the gifts
poured out in the church.
Again, if a church is nothing but a smoke a light show and a concert, and you
attend the event and that’s it, that’s really never going to produce spiritual
growth, and that’s not going to be a church that manifests Christ. So these gifts
are inseparable, then, from the presence of the Trinity in us. When we use
these gifts, the sum of them is the church begins to look like Christ.
Paul does something very special here, Ephesians 4:8, he uses an Old
Testament passage to make his point, V8, “Therefore,” in other words,
“connected to the point I’ve just made, I want you to understand that every
believer by grace was given a gift from Christ measured out for that individual
to build the body of Christ.” “Therefore it says, ‘When He ascended on high, He
led captive a host of captives, and He gave gifts to men.’ (Now this expression,
‘He ascended,’ what does it mean except that He also descended into the lower
parts of the earth? He who descended is Himself also, He who ascended far
above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.)”
I know you’re saying to yourself, “What does that have to do with whatever
he’s talking about?” I’ll tell you what it has to do with: everything. This shows
us the cost for Christ to give you the gift. You can’t take it lightly; that’s what
Paul’s going to show us. You may, at this particular point, not have any
functioning role in the church. This will come to you as a shock, no doubt, but
the Lord paid an astonishing price to be able to gift you so that you, for the
common good, could help build the church into Christlikeness for the glory of
the One who paid the price.
Ephesians 4:8, Paul is quoting Psalm 68:18. When the people of God came into
the land, Jerusalem was a Jebusite city, a pagan city. God conquered the
Jebusite city; symbolically the Ark of the Covenant was taken to the pinnacle of
that city, Mount Zion, and God was the conqueror of that city, and it became
Jerusalem. This is what kings did in ancient times: When they conquered, they
went to a high point and declared their triumph. Psalm 68 is a triumphal hymn
to honor God who conquered the city and ascended to reign over it. Pretty
common in ancient history.
There would be whatever they gained of the valuable things in that country,
represented by symbols of that value; there would be prisoners that they would
bring back from the captive country; they would bring back their own soldiers
who had been imprisoned by the enemy and were set free. And they would all
parade through the streets of the city to the highest point of the city. That’s
what they did—that’s what the Roman generals did.
It wouldn’t be much different for any other nation in ancient times. An Israelite
king would parade into Jerusalem in a victory parade, bringing some of the
captives with him and some of the spoils, and he would go to Mount Zion,
which was the pinnacle. There would be victorious soldiers, and there would be
the soldiers that the enemy had taken prisoner that then were recaptured by
the king that owned them and had a right to them, and all of this would be a
parade of triumph through the city.
V9, Christ is pictured: “He ascended on high,” according to Psalm 68; He went
to the high place. Christ did this as a triumphant general. “He ascended on
high”—this depicts the triumphant Christ returning from the battle on earth.
What does He do? He brings with Him essentially the trophies of His conquest.
It’s a picture of the Son of God ascending triumphant to His throne.
V9, “This expression, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean except that He also had
descended into the lower parts of the earth?” He can’t ascend unless He’s
descended. That’s exactly what this is saying to us. It’s very powerful.
Before He went “far above all the heavens,” V10, He went “into the lower parts
of the earth.” What does that mean? A dramatic statement. It’s used four other
places in Scripture.
Psalm 63:9, “But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the
depths of the earth;” had to do with death by murder, death by execution.
Matthew 12:40, “Or just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly
of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in
the heart of the earth.”
Isaiah 44:23, “Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it; shout, O depths of the
earth. break forth into singing, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For
the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and will be glorified in Israel.”
Psalm 139:15, “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in
secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.”
Interestingly enough, they all have a connection to Christ. It is amazing!
He descended into the lower parts of the earth. He was formed in the womb,
Psalm 139. He lived on the earth, Isaiah 44. He was buried in a grave, parallel
to Jonah in the belly of the fish. His death was an execution, Psalm 63.
Why all this? Paul wants us to understand the price He paid to be able to gift
you. He had to be formed in the womb, live on earth, suffer all that He did, be
executed, and be buried in order that He might ascend triumphantly to heaven.
Only when He went back to heaven in triumph could He give gifts to men.
He went back, V8, borrowing again from Psalm 68, “He led captive a host of
captives.” In His descent into the earth, in His life and death and burial and
resurrection, He took captive, you could say, the elect of God, and took them,
or their right, to heaven. He captured all who would ever live who were part of
the elect. He won their right to be brought to God and to His kingdom because
they belong to Him.
Then “He gave gifts to men.” He couldn’t pass out the spiritual gifts until He
entered into heaven at His ascension. Like a triumphant, conquering hero, He
goes back with all the spoils. He arrives, and He’s honored as the triumphant
King, and then He begins to disperse the treasures. The point is this: Your gifts
didn’t come easy. The spoils that turn into the gifts of grace to each of us were
won with a massive battle against Satan and a willingness to bear divine
wrath. He ascended and He gave the gifts because He had descended and won
the right to be called Lord.
So when you think about the gift that you have, you should treasure that gift.
He purchased that gift with His own life, V10, when He “ascended far above all
heavens, so that He might fill all things.” He went back triumphant. His
glorious presence and power is expressed in universal sovereignty. But I don’t
think that’s the main idea; I think this is just a repeat of chapter 1, verse 23:
“His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” He went back to disperse the
gifts that allowed Him to fill all things—yes, of course, in sovereign
omnipresence, but more significantly—He fills His body the church with His
presence and power and gifts, to manifest His glory in the church. So consider
the grace of Christ in giving you salvation and giving you a gift to serve in His
glorious church for His honor.
1 Peter 4:10-11, “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one
another with whatever gift each of you has received. 11 Whoever speaks must
do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with
the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things
through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever .
Amen.” It’s not for you, it’s for them; that’s your stewardship. The cost was
immense to provide that for you.
Peter breaks the gifts into two simple categories: some speaking gifts and
some serving gifts. Again, Peter understands that the gifts, when they’re used
in the church in the strength which God supplies, bring glory to Jesus Christ,
which glory will redound forever and ever. And he says, “Amen.” That’s the
measure of the church, and that’s what we strive for.
Perfecting the Saints Feb 20/22
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-20/perfecting-the-saints
Ephesians 4:11–16,
11
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some
evangelists, some pastors and teachers,
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of
Christ,
13 until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son
of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.
Ephesians 4:1, “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life
worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” We’re to walk worthy of
the divine summons by God to come out of darkness into light and become a
part of His kingdom. That’s a high calling and a holy calling and a heavenly
calling. How do you walk worthy of such a high calling? You walk in a lowly
way. It’s a lowly walk for a high calling. Ephesians 4:2-3, “with all humility and
gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every
effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Unity is a very important thing to our Lord in His church. Jesus prayed that we
would be one; we are spiritually one in Christ, He prayed that we would be
manifestly one, demonstrably one because of the love that marked our
relationships in this world. We are to be “diligent,” V3 says, “to maintain . . .
unity.” V13, “until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge
of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ .”
Unity is critical in the life of the church, critical to the church’s testimony. In
order to be united, we have to be marked by the virtues we saw in V2&3:
humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, love, and diligence in preserving
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
The Lord reminds us of our doctrinal unity, our true spiritual unity: “one body,”
the church; “one Spirit,” the Holy Spirit; “one hope of your calling,” the calling
to eternal life in heaven; “one Lord,” Jesus Christ; “one faith,” the gospel and
divine revelation; “one baptism,” baptism in the name of Christ; “one God and
Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”
We’ve been talking about unity since chapter 2. It is so important for the
church to maintain unity, and yet that seems to be such a struggle in the
church. It shouldn’t be.
There’s a pathway to this kind of unity, and we saw last time that it involves
diversity, V7, “But each of us was given grace according to the measure of
Christ’s gift.” The unity of the church, the unity of the body of Christ, is
produced by a diversity of gifts.
Every believer is given a gift by which that believer ministers to the church and
that way helps to build the body of Christ. Unity is our objective and unity is
our goal and unity is what we strive for, necessary to that unity is diversity of
gifts. So the Lord measures out, proportions out spiritual gifts to everyone in
the church by which they can contribute to the growth of the church, which
growth produces that ultimate unity.
To each one of us was given a free gift, a spiritual gift. We looked at some of
them in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12. V8, borrowed from Psalm 68, where
it pictures the king who triumphs, wins the great victory. God is that King; He
wins the victory over Jerusalem and then ascends to His throne with all the
spoils that are His for such a triumph. That’s a picture of what has happened
with the Lord. He came down to this earth, He died on the cross, was buried,
rose again, and by His work on the cross and through the resurrection, He won
souls for His redeemed church; He ascends back to heaven, sits down at the
throne of God, having purchased the redemption of His people. Then He takes
the spoils of that triumph and gives them back to His church in the form of
spiritual gifts given to every individual believer; not only spiritual gifts to every
individual, but gifted men.
That is the second part of this triumphant gift that comes from the Lord of
heaven; we are in V11, “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles,
some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.”
Why? We know He gives spiritual gifts to individuals, but what are the function
of these gifted men given to the church? The answer comes immediately in
V12, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of
Christ.” Katartizō in the Greek means fully equipped, full-grown, mature,
complete, perfect. What is the perfection that this is talking about? V13, “until
all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”
So the objective of our Lord, in the church, is to give everybody in the church
spiritual gifts so they can minister to each other and build up the body, and
then give the church gifted men whose responsibility is to aid in their spiritual
growth and development by spiritually perfecting them. Anything short of this
is to fail to understand what ministry in the church is about.
God is not demanding sinless perfection because it’s clear in 1 John that if you
say you haven’t sinned, you lie. It’s clear in Romans 7, “I don’t always do what
I want to do, and I often do what I don’t want to do; there’s a certain
wretchedness clinging to me.” So we’re not talking about perfection as the kind
of perfection that characterizes Christ, not until we get to heaven.
But for now, it’s completeness in the sense of maturity, being a grownup
believer. First Corinthians 1:10, “Be made complete,” and then he defines it by
saying, “[being of] the same mind and . . . the same judgment.” So part of that
maturity is understanding the truth, so that you think alike about the truth and
you discern things with the same judgment.
2 Corinthians 13:11, “Finally, brethren, rejoice, be made complete.” Again,
“Grow up; be full-grown spiritually.”
Galatians 6:1 says that if someone is caught in a trespass, those who are
spiritual are to—same word—complete, mature, or even “restore such a one in
a spirit of gentleness.” So we are to be about that in our own lives, and we are
to be about that kind of maturing, that kind of completing, in the lives of those
around us as well.
First Thessalonians 3:10, “Praying”—“Praying . . . that we may . . . complete
what is lacking in your faith.” So part of this is the responsibility to pray for
one another so that we will receive what is lacking in our faith, so that we will
grow in our faith and trust.
Hebrews 13:20-21, “[May] the God of peace . . . equip you”—perfect you—“in
every good thing to do His will.” That’s what the equipping does: It enables you
in every good thing to do His will, “working in us that which is pleasing in His
sight.” So the objective here is to mature believers so that they do the will of
the Lord, that they do every good thing that honors Him and everything that’s
pleasing in His sight.
It takes some suffering to help us along the way, so Peter adds, “After you
have suffered a . . . while, the God of . . . grace . . . will Himself perfect . . .
you.” So there’s some suffering that is necessary to develop us spiritually.
That’s why James says, “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials,”
because they have a perfect work.
Second Corinthians 7:1, “perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” So we can say,
then, that the objective of the church is to become Christ-like, to reach the
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ that is a kind of maturity. That’s
why the word mature is used in V13.
A number of times, here, you see the term grow or growth. We’re all in the
process of growing in sanctification toward Christlikeness. Now the apostle
Paul reminds us that we’re not going to achieve it in this life. Listen
to Philippians 3:12, “Not that I have already obtained it or have already
become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I
was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.” Christ Jesus laid hold of me to make me like
Himself; that’s what He will do, and that’s what I need to pursue here in this
life. “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ
Jesus.” What’s the prize of the upward call? We’re like Christ. That is the prize
and goal. We won’t realize it fully until we get to glory, but in the meantime
that is what we pursue in this life.
That’s a great challenge. We have the Holy Spirit, or else it would not be
possible at all to move one step forward in sanctification. But we need more
help than that, so the Lord has given to the church, V11, apostles, prophets,
evangelists, pastors and teachers. These are the gifted men who, V12 says,
equip the saints.
First Corinthians 12:28, “God has appointed in the church, first apostles,
second prophets, third teachers.” Now what do the gifts of men do? Perfect the
saints. That’s pastoral responsibility. That was the responsibility of the
prophets; that was even the calling of the apostles.
The preachers of perfection, V11, presenting the gifted men. “The gifts he gave
were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some
pastors and teachers.” These are spoils that our Lord won at the cross. He
Himself, as He gave the gifts to all believers (V7), He gives the gifted men.
They are His gifts to His church. Some of them are apostles, some prophets,
some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.
What about the apostles? We know who they are. The apostles were those
whom Jesus chose. The original twelve—Judas disqualified. In Acts 1 he was
replaced by Matthias. Later on, Paul became the final apostle. They are
identified as specifically apostles of Jesus Christ. We know that they had some
very extraordinary duties and extraordinary power.
They were basically called to do three things:
1. To preach. They were the first generation of preachers trained by Christ.
2. To attack the kingdom of Satan and cast out demons, Mark 3.
3. In order to validate them as truly the representatives of the true and living
God, 2 Corinthians 12:12 says they were given the power to do “signs and
wonders and miracles,” the apostles. How else would you know that this is a
true apostle, when there are teachers everywhere? Believe the one who
does the miracles; he demonstrates divine power.
The apostles had serious responsibility. Ephesians 2:20, “built upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the
cornerstone.” Ephesians 3:5, “In former generations this mystery was not
made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles
and prophets by the Spirit.” The first two responsibilities were unique. They
were the foundation, Christ being the cornerstone. They had received divine
revelation.
They are identified as apostles of Christ. Apostle means messenger. They were
sent to proclaim Christ, the kingdom of God, the gospel; in the book of Acts, of
course, to proclaim the cross, the Resurrection. So they are unique. In 2
Corinthians 8, it does mention “apostles of the church”; this would be sort of a
lowercase “a.” This is a messenger from the church.
So there were messengers of the church, 2 Corinthians 8:23, but we’re talking
here about apostles of Christ, companions of Jesus for three years. They will sit
on twelve thrones in the kingdom according to Luke 22, and they will be
identified in the glory of heaven by twelve stones in the heavenly city of
Jerusalem, and their names will be on them. Now there’s a little bit of a debate
about whether number 12 is Matthias or Paul; I vote for Paul. But the point is
this is a very small group of people, and no one ever succeeded them in that
sense. They were the ones that our Lord talked to in the upper room and said,
“Holy Spirit’s going to come and bring to your remembrance everything I’ve
said to you.” It was through them and their associates that the New Testament
was written. That’s why the early church in Acts 2:42, when it got together,
studied the apostles’ doctrine, divine revelation.
Now what about the prophets? The difference seems to be bound up in the fact
that the prophets don’t give doctrine, as such, but they do receive revelation
from God on a practical level, like Agabus, who got a word from the Lord about
what was going to happen to Paul when he got to Jerusalem. The prophets
seem to be associated with a local church. In fact, when Paul was a pastor at
Antioch, he is identified in Acts 13:1 as a prophet. It means a preacher.
They did a foundational role, there was some extraordinary elements of that in
the first generation. They were preachers, but they didn’t have the New
Testament yet. So the Lord not only made available to them the apostles’
doctrine but may have given them other revelation. Certainly he did give them
revelation on a practical level about life in the church. So they are foundational.
The prophets might preach something that was new from the Lord, or they
might reiterate something that had been revealed already to an apostle and
passed on to the prophets. They seemed to be more involved with practical,
pastoral, church ministry, where the apostles were like ambassadors and
missionaries traveling with the gospel. So they are the foundation of the
church, and it lets you know that at the very foundational level, you have some
who take the gospel to the people who haven’t heard it, and you have others
who preach and shepherd the church, namely the apostles and prophets in that
foundational generation.
V11, and you will meet those who replaced them: the evangelists and the
pastor-teachers. The evangelist would be like an apostle; he’s sent to preach
the gospel. That word is not used very often, evangelist—only three times here;
and with regard to Philip the evangelist; and Timothy, 2 Timothy 4:5, “Do the
work of an evangelist.” But the verb form, euaggelizō, and the noun
form, euaggelia, which means the gospel or proclaiming the gospel, appears
maybe a hundred times in the New Testament. So the responsibility of the
evangelist was to preach the gospel; that’s what the word means: to preach the
good news.
In the early church there needed to be evangelists; they would be church
planters. They would have the strength of the building up of the church
because they would lead the charge in doing evangelism and proclaiming the
gospel. They were the trainers of the congregation to do evangelism. Typically,
when churches would build a staff, there would never even be a discussion
about an evangelist. They would hire a pastor, an assistant pastor, a youth
pastor, and on and on and on they would go through the litany of people.
But where are the evangelists? Where are those who have the passion to
proclaim the gospel, those who can train the congregation? So very early on we
were committed to that, to having evangelists who developed evangelism
training for our church, discipleship evangelism. Thousands of people, including
many of you, have gone through that, who would build all kinds of evangelistic
outreaches and efforts, whether in the community or beyond our church
neighborhood or to the ends of the earth. We would have people whose passion
was the proclamation of the gospel to the people who had not heard. As a
pastor, that was the first thing that I wanted to see. I need some evangelists
because my job is to preach and teach to the saints. Somebody’s got to lead the
charge to reach the lost, and that is what evangelists do.
If you’re going into ministry, and maybe you see yourself as an evangelist,
many churches need you desperately. Or if you see yourself as a teaching
pastor, you need to find some people who are basically designed by God to
reach lost people. We have those kinds of people; they go door to door in this
neighborhood. They go down to abortion clinics. They go down into the middle
of the city down in Hollywood, or wherever they go, and they take people with
them to do personal evangelism. They go to the jails and the prisons
everywhere. That’s the role of evangelists.
Then teaching shepherds, the ones who feeds the flock. The word pastor there
is actually shepherd. Every other time this word appears in the New Testament,
it’s translated “shepherd,” poimēn. It’s shepherd. What does a shepherd do?
Three things: guide, guard, feed; guide, guard, feed. So these are the people
who shepherd the flock of God. First Peter, “Shepherd the flock of God.” That’s
what teaching shepherds do.
Now I have no problem with this being sort of hyphenated: teaching-shepherd.
The little kai there in the Greek could mean teachers, that is preachers. Why do
I say that? Because in 1 Timothy chapter 5 and verse 17, we read, “The elders
who rule well”—so that’s a very important element of it—“are to be considered
worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and
teaching.” So there’s really no separation of preaching and teaching for the role
of the shepherd, the pastor.
There’s a different function: Preaching is proclamation; teaching is more
didactic. And it is true that churches have teachers because that’s what 1
Corinthians 12:28 says: teachers. A church should have many, many, many
teachers. A church should produce teachers of the Word of God.
I tell the young men at the seminary, “You will attract the men who want to do
what you want to do and what you do.” Whatever it is that you do, you’ll
attract the people to your ministry that want to do that. So be all about
preaching and teaching, and you’ll raise up a force of people who can handle
the Word of God and feed your flock from all different kinds of tables.
Now these evangelists and teaching pastors are really the elders of the church;
the elders and the shepherds are the same. And as we read, you also rule well
as an elder, so that’s the word episkopos, or overseer, translated in the old
King James “bishop.” So pastor, bishop, or overseer, elder—all the same
person. Shepherding describes the role of guiding, guarding, feeding; elder
describes the maturity, the age; and overseer shows the responsibility to rule.
1 Timothy 5, “Rule well.” And unless that might seem to you a little bit heavy-
handed, I would draw your attention to Hebrews 13:17; this is instruction to
the congregation: “Obey your leaders and submit . . . for they keep watch over
your souls as those who will give an account.” You say, “Well, if we’re
supposed to obey and submit to our leaders, that gives them too much power.”
No, that gives them immense accountability.
Obey your leaders, submit to them, for they watch over your souls. That’s what
pastors do: They watch over your souls as those who will give an account. “Let
them do this with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for
you.” A miserable pastor makes a miserable church and a miserable
congregation. So it’s a very simple structure. Early on it was apostles and
prophets, now it’s evangelists and pastor-teachers. Those are the preachers of
perfection. So the Lord doesn’t expect you to become mature, become
complete, to grow into Christlikeness all on your own. He gives the church gifts
in the form of gifted men for the perfecting of the saints.
So let’s look, then, at the progress to perfection. We saw the preachers of
perfection; here’s the progress, V12, “For the equipping of the saints.” The
gifted men equip the saints. What do they equip you with? With the Word of
God, right? “Preach the Word in season and out of season.”
The passion of any faithful pastors, evangelists, and teaching shepherds—any
of them, their passion is to see their congregation made complete. Galatians
4:19, “My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in
you.” Colossians 1:28, “We proclaim Him admonishing every man and teaching
every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in
Christ. For these purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which
mightily works within me.” This is the pastor’s task: the equipping of the
saints, the perfecting of the saints. That’s the first step in the path of a faithful
church. How do we do that? We do it with the Word of God. It is a serious
responsibility.
1 Thessalonians 3:8, “For now we really live, if you stand firm in the Lord.”
That’s what satisfied Paul: people standing firm in the Lord, growing up, being
mature. “For what,” V9, “what thanks can we render to God for you in return
for all the joy with which we rejoice before our God on your account.” So in
Hebrews 13, it says if you don’t submit to your leaders, they’ll do it with grief
and not with joy. Here is Paul saying to the Thessalonians, the most faithful
church in the New Testament, that he is thankful to God. He doesn’t even have
words to say to God “in return for all the joy with which we rejoice before our
God on your account. [But still,] night and day, keep praying most earnestly
that we may see your face, and complete what is lacking in your faith.” “It’s
not that you’ve arrived; and I would love to be with you—you bring me so much
joy—and continue to help you grow spiritually.”
That’s what a pastor’s job is: the equipping of the saints. The pulpit sets the
pace for that, clearly. The preaching of the Word of God, the preaching of the
cross, it might be foolishness to the world, but not to the church.
The second step in this progression is when the saints have been equipped,
they do the work of service, diakonia, the word from which you get “deacon.”
This just means ministry, all kinds of ministry. They use their spiritual gifts to
do that.
What happens in the church so often is you get lay spectators and sort of
professional preachers, and that’s far from the Lord’s design. The preachers
perfect the saints; the saints do the work of the ministry using their spiritual
gifts. That’s what we’ve done for over half a century here. And what comes
from that—and I’m just going to touch lightly on it—what comes from that: the
building up of the body of Christ.
How do you build a strong church? How do you do that? You have gifted men
perfecting the saints who do the work of the ministry; and because they’re
doing the work of the ministry by using their spiritual gifts and applying all the
one anothers of the New Testament, they’re building each other up; and the
whole body of Christ grows. The body is built up; it’s built up internally and, no
doubt, it’s built up externally as well.
So the preachers of this perfection are identified. The progress of it, pretty
simple: Perfect the saints, they do the work of the ministry, the body’s built up.
Then we come to the purpose of perfection. What is the purpose? V13, “ Until
we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
to a mature man, to the measure of the stature that belongs to the fullness of
Christ.”
What is the purpose? Christlikeness. The unity of the faith, unity around the
truth, the knowledge of the Son of God. This is at the very heart of this. I don’t
think you can perfect the saints unless they’re growing in the knowledge of the
Son of God.
I think back over all the years of preaching through the gospels; twenty-five
years of the fifty years here I was in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. But those
aren’t the only books that tell about Christ. The epistles describe His atoning
work. All the sound doctrines that are around the gospel are laid out and
explained in the epistles. Book of Revelation, we’ve gone through that a couple
of times, His coming glory. We spent a few years in the Old Testament looking
at all the places Christ appears. As we grow in our knowledge of the Son of
God, we come to a mature man.
The unity of the faith: We all unite around the true and revealed faith in
Scripture, we focus on the Son of God, gazing into His glory, 2 Corinthians 3:18,
and are changed into His image from one level of glory to the next by the Holy
Spirit, so that the church manifests the fullness of Christ. That’s an absolutely
magnificent picture. God is not satisfied that you go to church; He’s not
satisfied that a church has a certain number of people. He demands that we all
come to bear His image and that collectively the whole church is Christ-like;
that’s the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That’s what maturity
looks like in the church—looks like Christ. We should be, then, showing the
world Christ. Sad to say that that’s not what the world sees from most
churches, but that’s what the Lord requires of us.
That’s a long-term process, it's a long-term discipling process. And we’ve had
the amazing privilege here at Grace Church of a half a century together, so that
we’ve gone through the entire New Testament, much of the Old Testament, and
you’ve been taught in fellowship groups, in Sunday School classes, in home
Bible studies, in all kinds of endless other collections of believing people
around the Word of God. The church begins to look like Christ—it begins to
think like Him and to act like Him. That’s where witness becomes powerful.
Benefits of this perfection. First is protection, V14, “As a result, we are no
longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by
every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful
scheming.” There are lots of false teachers, false apostles, false pastors;
they’re everywhere. But the church that has the deep knowledge of the Son of
God—the epignōsis, that’s a deep knowledge, not a superficial one—and has
come to the unity of the faith that is characteristic of a mature man, and comes
to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ, that
church is mature enough to be protected.
Like John said in 1 John, we have overcome the evil one: “You are strong . . .
and you’ve overcome the evil one.” How did we get strong? He said, “You’re a
spiritual young man.” In other words, “You started out a spiritual babe, and
you got tossed around. You grew and you became a spiritual young man, and
you overcome the evil one.” It’d be very difficult for somebody to come in here
and seduce us away into false teaching. There are men trying every possible
trick. “Trickery of men” may be contrasted by the “craftiness in deceitful
scheming,” referring to Satan, the New Testament talks about the schemes of
the devil.
So how do you protect yourself from the trickery of men and the schemes of
the devil? You have to be grown up; you can’t be a child. And I would hasten to
say that many churches are childlike, hopelessly childlike, and there are many
of the leaders in those churches who are equally childlike and childish. You
don’t put the children in charge of anything. You don’t want a church that feels
like a seventh-grade event.
The second benefit is proclamation. In our maturity, we speak the truth, V15,
in love. When you do that, you have reached the apex of the church’s purpose
in the world, right? Why are we here? To go into all the world and preach the
gospel, to live godly lives, lives marked by love that makes the gospel
attractive.
We speak the truth in love, and as we do, we “grow up in all aspects into Him
who is the head, even Christ.” Paul kind of goes back, at that point in the
middle of V15, and picks up sort of a summary: the end of this progress is
we’re now “speaking the truth in love.” “The goal of our instruction is love
from a pure heart.” We are “speaking the truth in love”—that’s the reputation.
That’s what people see. That can only be explained supernaturally by the
power of Christ.
He goes back as if to summarize it: We are then “to grow up in all aspects into
Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and
held together by what every joint supplies”—every individual with every
individual gift—“according to the proper working of each individual part, causes
the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” You can only speak
the truth in love if you have been built up in love. You can only be built up in
love if you grow in all aspects into Christlikeness, the body functions as He
designed it to function so it grows and it becomes manifestly marked by an
inhuman, supernatural love. That’s how the church is supposed to be in the
world.
I just have to say how thankful I am to the Lord to have been placed in such a
church. This is that kind of church; not perfect, but we’re not expecting
perfection. But this is a church that has followed this pattern for half a century,
that has had faithful evangelists and teaching pastors, and still does, equipping
the saints who continue to do the work of the ministry. The body is built up. We
enjoy unity, deep knowledge of the Son of God, spiritual maturity, and all that
comes with the fullness of Christ permeating everything in this church. We are
not children, we are not easily seduced by false doctrine, and we are
committed to speaking the truth in love; and that’s because all the parts of this
body are functioning, and it’s being built up in love.
Even God declared the importance of love in reaching the world. He said this
through the apostle John: “For God so loved the world.” Whatever the world
needs to see in the church to make the gospel believable, whatever people
might think that is, it comes down to love, the supernatural love, and that
again is John 13: “By this shall all men know that you’re My disciples, that you
have love one for another.” We are marked by love when we speak the truth in
love. That’s a mature church where everybody is doing their part; and being
built up, the body of Christ looks a little bit like the Lord Jesus Christ and
manifests His love. That’s the pattern for the church; that has to be our
exclusive goal.
The only way to grow a church is to stay within the boundaries of Ephesians
4:11–16. That’s a faithful endeavor that honors the Lord of the church.
Let’s bow in prayer.
Father, so much comes to mind in all these wonderful realities. Thank You for
what You’ve done in this church, not that any of us are worthy—we’re not—nor
are any of us to gain the credit. We have all given so much—everything we
have—to this church. But even all of that, if it were just a human effort, would
amount to nothing.
So we know the Spirit has been alive and working in this church through the
Word, through the leadership, through the saints, and we are seeing the fruit of
it.
We would desire nothing more than that You would look at this church and say,
“I see a reflection of Myself, not perfect, but I see at least a faint reflection of
Myself in that church.” That’s our desire.
And may the world see it as well and be drawn to You, our Savior.
Serious Worship and Self-Examination March 10/22
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/SC22-3
God puts severe restrictions on who comes to worship Him. If what you’re
doing is worshiping Him, those restrictions apply. If you’re just holding a rock
concert, then that’s different. God puts severe restrictions on worship; it’s for
the righteous, it’s not for the wicked. Many of them don’t know what category
they’re in, and that’s why they show up in Matthew 7 saying, “Lord, Lord,” and
they find out they had no relationship with Him. So here is a distinguishing
portion of Scripture that will help you and your people do a spiritual inventory.
Ephesians 4:17, The Old Life and the New
17
Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the
Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds.
18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God
because of their ignorance and hardness of heart.
19
They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to
licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
20 That is not the way you learned Christ!
21 For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in
Jesus.
22 You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt
and deluded by its lusts,
23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
24 and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness
of God in true righteousness and holiness.
You know what salvation does? It takes you from being described as futile in
mind, darkened in understanding, excluded from the life of God, ignorant, hard-
hearted, callous, sensual, impure with greediness; and it makes you righteous
and holy. That’s how you know the difference. I don’t hear much about
transformation; I hear a lot about decisions. That’s never the evidence of
anything. It’s the transformation that is the evidence.
God knows His children, and we ought to know His children as well. When the
good shepherd of John 10, said, “I know My own,” He also said, “My own know
Me.” How do they know that? Because of the transformation of their life. It’s
not enough to just fire the gospel all the time; you have to bring people to a
constant, incessant, honest inventory of their spiritual condition. That’s part of
shepherding.
We should expect that if someone has been regenerated, converted, that they
would be transformed. Is that a stretch? 2 Corinthians 5:17, “So if anyone is in
Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see,
everything has become new!” That truth has been around since the Pentateuch.
Deuteronomy 30:6, “Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart
and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live.” Whoa.
Deuteronomy 6, The Great Commandment
1
Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that
the Lord your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are
about to cross into and occupy,
2 so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear
the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his
commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long.
3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well
with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and
honey, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.
4
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.
5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,
and with all your might.
6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.
7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and
when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.
8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead,
9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Now wait a minute, that’s the great commandment: “Love the Lord your God
with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” You mean God will enable us to
do that? It’s just what it said. This is what salvation is: It’s when God
circumcises your heart, does surgery on your heart, cuts off the diseased part,
so that the result is you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul.
How can you tell when somebody’s been transformed? They love the Lord with
all their heart and all their soul, as much as we can in our fallen limitations. If
we have been born again, we love the Lord with all our soul and all our heart.
That’s what He does; it’s not because we drum it up. Something else we do, V8.
When the Lord does that, circumcising the heart, “Then you shall again obey
the Lord, observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today.”
So how can you tell when someone is really a believer? They love the Lord with
all their being, and they obey. John 14:21, “If you love Me keep My
commandments.”
When the prophets revealed the nature of New Covenant salvation, they
declared the same thing. Jeremiah 11:4, “Listen to My voice, and do according
to all which I command you; so shall you be My people, and I will be your God.”
We’re talking about Jeremiah, and the definition there of belonging to God was
that you do what He commands. Again, obedience.
Jeremiah 24:7, another prophetic description of salvation: “I will give them a
heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be
their God for they will return to Me with their whole heart.” If somebody’s
saved, the Lord gets their whole heart; that’s what He says. This is New
Covenant salvation. Let’s look at those blessed New Covenant passages.
Jeremiah 31:33-34, This is what God does when He saves because this is what
He’s going to do when He saves Israel: “‘This is the covenant which I’ll make
with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will put My law
within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they
shall be My people’”—“If I’m their God and they’re My people, My law is on
their heart.” And “‘they will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each
man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they will all know Me, from the
least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will forgive their
iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.’” When God forgives and God
forgets sin, the same time, He gives a new heart, He writes the law in that new
heart, and it is the law of the new man.
Jeremiah 32:38, “They shall be My people, and I will be their God; and I’ll give
them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me always, for their own good
and for the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting
covenant with them that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; and
I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from
Me.” There’s the doctrine of eternal security in Jeremiah. God totally
transforms the inner person: new heart, new affections, new law, new love.
Ezekiel 11:19, the Lord talks about removing all detestable things and
abominations. “I will give them one heart, [I’ll] put a new spirit in them.” A
new law, a new heart, a new spirit. “And I will take the heart of stone out of
their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes
and keep My ordinances and do them. They will be My people, and I shall be
their God.”
What defines the reality of that relationship is loving God, loving the law of
God, fearing God, worshiping God, and walking in joyful obedience. I just don’t
think that has been communicated to people in this evangelical movement. It’s
like if you prayed a prayer sometime or you had an emotional experience, or
you felt a buzz when somebody talked about Jesus and the cross, that’s all it
takes. That’s not a transformation.
Ezekiel 36:25, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I’ll
cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.” So this is amazing.
Salvation is not just forensic; it is that, but it’s not just that. It’s an actual
cleansing. Paul says we’re washed by the water of the word, right? “I’ll clean
you up; I’ll get rid of your filthiness and your idols.”
Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit with you; and I
will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I
will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will
be careful to observe My ordinances.” That’s salvation, unless you’re a dumb
dispensationalist, and you want to stick that somewhere it doesn’t belong.
That’s salvation. Salvation is transformation.
Ephesians 2, From Death to Life
1
You were dead through the trespasses and sins
2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler
of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are
disobedient.
So what do we expect salvation to look like? We were in serious condition. We
were dead. That’s as low as we can go; there’s nothing below dead. So the
metaphor to describe your condition is the lowest possible concept: We are
“dead in our trespasses and sins.”
We’re walking, our conduct is “according to the course of this world, according
to the prince of the power of the air (Satan) “the spirit . . . working in the sons
of disobedience.” V3, we are essentially living in the lusts of the flesh,
“indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and [are] by nature children
of wrath, even as the rest.” We’re like everybody. Everybody’s like that. “But
God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with
Christ.”
This is a monergistic work of God. He took the dead people and made them
alive. By grace we were saved. Not only did He make us alive, but He “raised us
up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” In
other words, we are elevated to the very throne of heaven with Christ, “so that
in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace [and His]
kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you’ve been saved through
faith; that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so
that [you] may boast.” But look V10, “For we are His workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus for good works” (now look at this) “which God prepared
beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
We talk about the sovereignty of God in our salvation; that’s the sovereignty of
God in our sanctification. Do you know He has foreordained your good works?
He has foreordained your life. He has foreordained your preaching, your
praying. He has foreordained every expression of love toward Him, every act of
worship; He wrote it down before you ever existed. His sovereignty covers our
lives, so that if God has given you a sovereign salvation, He has also given you
a sovereignly designed sanctification.
There shouldn’t be any mystery about who’s a Christian. Part of the
responsibility as a pastor is to know that and help people know that. The last
thing a pastor want to do is make people feel secure when they shouldn’t.
Ephesians 4, the description here is very obvious. The Gentiles, or the ethnē,
the ethnicities, there is only one race, one human race, but a lot of ethnicities,
and they all basically are the same. Only one human race, and all the ethnicities
in that human race can be described the same way: They are futile in their
mind, darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, ignorant,
hard-hearted, callous, sensual, impure, and greedy.
V20, “But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him
and been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus.” The language describes the
past. When the Ephesian congregation was exposed to the gospel, heard the
gospel, and believed, they learned Jesus. That’s an expression to describe their
salvation. They learned the truth of the gospel. They were taught the truth in
Jesus, V21. They learned Christ, and they learned Him at the moment of their
salvation; and at that moment, they passed from one kingdom into another,
from one family into another. The transformation was absolutely epic because
immediately, they “[laid] aside the old self . . . corrupted in accordance with
lusts of deceit.” They were “renewed in the spirit of [their] mind, and put on
the new self.” Created again by sovereign design by God, foreordained,
“created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” What a dramatic change.
That’s normal for real salvation.
Romans 6:17-18, “But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of
sin, have become obedient from the heart (Jeremiah Ezequiel) to the form of
teaching to which you were entrusted, 18 and that you, having been set free
from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.” This is not forensic—this is
conversion; this is transformation.
Romans 6:19, “I am speaking in human terms because of your natural
limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity
and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to
righteousness for sanctification.
20
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So
what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are
ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed
from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end
is eternal life. Wow, what a dramatic transformation.
First John 5:20, “We know that the Son of God has come, and has given us
understanding”—we’ve learned Christ—“understanding so that we may know
Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is
the true God and eternal life.” We are now in Christ.
Ephesians 4:20, That is not the way you learned Christ!
Mathew 11:29, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle
and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
John 6:45, “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’
Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” Borrowed
from Isaiah. We have to learn to come to Christ. “What do I mean, ‘Learn’?”
You have to hear truth; it has to be taught to you.
Romans 10:17, “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes
through the word of Christ.” You have to learn the gospel.
We have in these passages a stunning transformation of conversion laid out.
Colossians 3:6-7, “On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those
who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you
were living that life.” What things? V5, “fornication, impurity, passion, evil
desire, and greed (which is idolatry).
But now you also, put them all aside.” Why? V10, because you “have put on the
new self, being renewed to a true knowledge,” created in “the image of the
One who created him.” You’ve been made new. It’s not enough to just accept
someone’s notion that they made a decision for Christ, or they understand who
He is, or they understand the gospel; part of your responsibility is to constantly
call your congregation to an honest inventory of self-examination. The
transformation is so dramatic that, in Ephesians, you go from being an old self
to being a new self. Same in Colossians.
Romans 6:3-4, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into
Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried
with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
Again, the depth of this metaphor takes you down as far as you can go. You
can’t have anything more transformative than to be dead and then come to life.
This is not like some minor alteration.
Romans 6:5-6, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will
certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old
self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we
might no longer be enslaved to sin.” Really? The body of sin is done away with?
Yes. “For whoever has died is freed from sin.” V11, “So you also must consider
yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
That ought to show up in how you live, right? I mean, I get it. I understand
Romans 7 is there. I mean, we’re not perfect, but we are transformed. Puritans
used to talk about affections. It’s not the perfection; it’s the direction and the
affection.
Back to Ephesians 4, when Paul says, “You don’t walk like the Gentiles walk,”
you don’t do that anymore; that’s not you. I don’t know if you get this question
asked you as much as I do; people very frequently ask me, “How do I know I’m
saved?” This is the answer: Do you love the Lord your God with all your heart,
soul, mind, and strength, as much capacity as you have?
Matthew 13:45, Could we say about you that you have no other loves? Could
we say that you saw the pearl, and you gave everything up, and you bought the
pearl?
Could we say you saw the treasure hidden in the field, Matthew 13:44, and the
treasure hidden in the field is Christ, and He is so valuable, you gave up
everything?
Can we say we heard Luke 9:23, “If any want to become my followers, let them
deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”? Did we give it
all up? Is there any other love in our life? Is Christ not the supreme and only
love?
You can love the Lord with all your faculties because that’s what He does to
you. We saw that; that’s New Covenant salvation promise. So you look at what
you used to be; it’s pretty serious. Let me just give you a few words that you
can use to describe this.
1. Futility of mind. What is that? Well, let’s just call it selfish. In other words,
you literally, in your own mind, spin out your own worldview. “Mind,”
“understanding,” “learned,” it’s all about how you think. But since our Lord
said, “All . . . evil things proceed from within,” Mark 7. So yeah, this is what
it’s like to be an unconverted person: You just live in your own world; you
just spin out your own truth.
There was a time in human history, I suppose many times, when people having
their own truth was suspect. But if you are suspicious of anybody’s truth,
you’re liable to get canceled. “Futility,” mataiotēs, that which is useless,
worthless, empty, void. They’re braindead; everyone doing right in his own
eyes. I mean, we’re seeing this all over the place. This is what it means to be a
fool and think you’re wise, Romans 1.
2. Senseless, V18, “darkened in their understanding.” Lost in the foolishness of
their own mind, they become so senseless, because they are “excluded from
the life of God”; in that ignorance they become hard-hearted.
3. Shameless. V19, they become “callous,” being past feeling. Philippians 3:19,
“[Their] glory is in their shame.” Can you imagine? People parade their
shame. That’s what pornography is. That’s what pride does, blatant,
boastful, arrogant, brash, pride.
4. Unconverted people are selfish, they are senseless, they are shameless, and
then he says also they are sensual. They literally “deliver themselves over
hand themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity
with greediness.” They are impure, and they can’t be satiated; they can’t be
satisfied. “Practice,” by the way, is a term ergasia, used to mean “business”;
turning yourself over to the business of “impurity,” big business.
That’s a picture of the people who haven’t learned Christ. That’s a picture of
those who are described in 1 John 3 as “the children of the devil.” But it’s not
true of us. We have been transformed. We learned Christ.
V22, “In reference to your former manner of life”—it’s gone. The implication
here is that these things have happened, and you are being “renewed in the
spirit of your mind.” You’ve literally been renewed. You have a new mind; you
have the mind of Christ. You “put on the new self . . . in the likeness of God,” or
literally, which in God “has been created in righteousness and holiness to the
truth”—and that’s godlike. So what marks you is righteousness, holiness, and
truth. This is a very high standard, isn’t it? But it just happens to be the right
one.
So you want to worship? You’d better stop at the door and do a heart
examination before you come in. When you enter the presence of the Lord to
worship, He knows the truth about you. As a pastor and a shepherd, you need
to know the truth about your people, and they need to know the truth about
them; and that is part of what we heard earlier, of doing the work of an
evangelist. And it doesn’t mean necessarily that you’ve always preached the
gospel, what it does mean is you always describe the fruit of true salvation.
Malachi 3:16, The Lord is going to judge the people who do wickedness; “Then
those who revered the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord took note and
listened, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who
revered the Lord and thought on his name.” So they “spoke to each other.”
Malachi 3:17, “They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, my special
possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their
children who serve them.” Because that’s who they are, and that’s what they
do.
Malachi 3:18, “Then once more you shall see the difference between the
righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not
serve him.” This is the word of the prophet to the people: “You better help
people sort out which group they are in. He’d better know whose children you
are.”
I think that’s huge part of pastoral responsibility, especially here; maybe not so
much in dire conditions of persecution, which purifies the church. But in an
insipid, superficial, shallow form of Christianity, this really doesn’t have much
of a place. If you do the work of God and you do the work of an evangelist, your
people are going to know whether they are the devil’s children or the children
of God. And you’re not going to make the crowd feel comfortable as the
children of the devil and the children of God stand side by side and sing the
same hymns. Very important part of shepherding.
You say, “Does that make your ministry harsh?” Well, I’ll tell you what it does.
It makes people who’ve been in church a long time get saved; that’s what it
does. Every Sunday night, we have this baptistry behind me. Sunday night after
Sunday night after Sunday night we have the same testimony: “I grew up in
the church; I always thought I was a Christian. I thought I believed; I thought
I knew the Lord. I found out when I was tested by the Scripture, I didn’t love
Him; I didn’t love His Word; I didn’t have a new heart; I didn’t have a clean
heart; the filthiness wasn’t cleaned out—and I knew I wasn’t a believer.” Can
you give a greater gift?
You can’t be content with somebody saying, “Lord, Lord,” and hearing, “Depart
from Me, I don’t know you.” You don’t want that blood on your hands. So doing
the work of an evangelist is more than just giving them the gospel all the time;
it’s confronting them with the realities of what the gospel does, and is it a
reality in their lives. Do that, and they will thank you forever. Let’s pray.
You called us, Lord, to such a high and holy calling. It’s so overwhelming, such
a massive responsibility. We’re so inadequate, so incapable. We need You. We
need Your power, we need Your strength, we need Your wisdom, we need Your
compassion, we need Your love. We need to take seriously, sober-mindedly,
the calling to which we’ve been called. Help us to remember judgment has to
begin at the household of God. We have to evangelize the people sitting in the
seats of the church, particularly in a day like today. Help us to be faithful to
give them the gospel, but then to know the sheep well enough to see which
lives don’t give any evidence of transformation. Help us to find those people
and lovingly confront them with the truth.
What a privilege for us as pastors to be instruments by which You save Your
own, even inside the church. What a joy. Thank You for that calling. We’re
unworthy but grateful. Bless these men, Lord. Use them. Send them from this
place with a greater sense of their duty, but a greater understanding of it. And
may they do what they do with full joy, knowing You triumph in the end, and
they triumph with You. Thank You for that promise, in Christ’s name. And
everyone said, Amen.
What’s Wrong with Everybody? March 13/22
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-21/whats-wrong-with-everybody
We live between God’s judgment and God’s salvation. We live between divine
wrath and divine mercy. Human history is full of judgment. From the time of
the Fall in the garden, judgment fell; death came. Human history is the
chronicling of all the relentless judgment of God on the unrighteous and the
ungodly.
At the same time, history is the story of God redeeming His people. So we find
ourselves, along with everybody else in human history, living between God’s
judgment on the unrighteous and God’s mercy on the righteous. God knows
exactly what He is doing:
2 Peter 2,
4
For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into
hell and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the
judgment;
5 and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a
herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world
of the ungodly;
6 and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned
them to extinction and made them an example of what is coming to the
ungodly;
7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the
licentiousness of the lawless
8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in
his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard),
9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the
unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment,
10 especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise
authority.
The text of this passage is focused on judgment, God not sparing the ancient
world, Flood drowning the world except eight people: the family of Noah. When
that judgment fell and God didn’t spare the ancient world, He preserved Noah,
a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon
the world of the ungodly. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and protected
Lot.
That is because of V9, “The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials,
and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.” That’s
the separation that essentially tells the story of human history, judgment on
the ungodly, and rescue and salvation on those who are righteous.
We find a wonderful passage in the book of Malachi, final book in the Old
Testament. Judgment has been proclaimed, there’s a response among the
people who are faithful to God.
Malachi 3, The Reward of the Faithful
16
Then those who revered the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord took note
and listened, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who
revered the Lord and thought on his name.
17 They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, my special possession on the day
when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve
them.
18 Then once more you shall see the difference between the righteous and the
wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.
We will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one
who serves God and one who does not serve Him.” That’s always the dividing
line in human history; the dividing line in all of humanity. History is the story of
judgment and salvation, wrath and reward, condemnation and forgiveness.
Mark it: There’s only one race: the human race. Only one humanity, but two
families: The family of God, and the family of Satan.
1 John 3, makes it very clear.
“1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of
God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it
did not know him.
2 Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been
revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for
we will see him as he is.
3 And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
4
Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.
5 You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.
6 No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known
him.
7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is
righteous, just as he is righteous.
8 Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been
sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to
destroy the works of the devil.
9 Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed
abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of
God.
10 The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in
this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are
those who do not love their brothers and sisters .
There are marks of the children of God: love and righteousness. That’s what
distinguishes the children of God from the children of the devil. There is only
one human race. We need to understand that: just one race. We talk so much
about race issues; there’s only one race. As Ken Ham says, “And if you think
I’m white, guess again. I’m just a different shade of brown from everybody
else.”
There’s one race. The division comes between the children of wrath and the
children of mercy. They live in two kingdoms: the kingdom of darkness and the
kingdom of light, which is the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. The difference
between the two is not superficial; the difference between the two is profound
and far-reaching because salvation is such a radical transformation. The
distinction between those who are in the kingdom of darkness and those in the
kingdom of light is salvation. It isn’t just something God declares to be true; it
is manifest in the transformation of those individuals who are redeemed.
Ephesians 2, is a great illustration of it and fits wonderfully with what we’ll see
in Ephesians 4 in a moment.
Ephesians 2, From Death to Life
1
You were dead through the trespasses and sins (The worst thing that
can happen to somebody is being dead. When I’m dead, nothing worse can
happen to me. A metaphor that is chosen to describe humanity.)
2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world , (the
system of satan) following
the ruler of the power of the air, (satan) the spirit
that is now at work among those who are disobedient , (A
description of the whole human race.)
3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh,

following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature
children of wrath, like everyone else.
4
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he
loved us
5
even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ, by grace you have been saved ,
6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in
Christ Jesus,
7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his
grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own
doing; it is the gift of God,
9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
10
We are God's work of art, created in Christ Jesus for the good works
which God has already designated to make up our way of life.
https://www.catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=56&bible_chapter=2
10
For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that
God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/ephesians/2
10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which
God hath prepared that we should walk in them.
https://www.mindonjesus.com/ephesians-chapter-2-catholic-bible/
Compare the difference between V1-3 and V10. First, we’re walking according
to the course of the world under the power of the prince of the air, the spirit
working in the world, the fallen world; we are sons of disobedience; we live in
the lust of our flesh, desires of the flesh, and by nature we are children of
wrath.
Second, V4-10, all of a sudden we have been recreated in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God had beforehand prepared so that we would walk in them.
That’s talking about this massive transformation in salvation. It causes a
spiritual separation from what we were that is dramatic and manifest. Now
that is what Paul is going to be presenting to us here:
Ephesians 4, The Old Life and the New
17
Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live
as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds .
18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life
of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart .
19 They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to
licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity .
20 That is not the way you learned Christ !
21 For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as
truth is in Jesus.
22 You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old
self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts,
23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds ,
24 and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to

the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness .
The difference between the description of the old self and of the new self is
stark; it’s massive. I go from being and operating in the futility of my mind,
darkened in my own understanding, excluded from the life of God, ignorant,
hard-hearted, callous, sensual, greedy, to a person who is created in
righteousness and holiness of the truth. It doesn’t seem that we should need to
say that, but that’s one of the most missing messages in all of Christianity.
People who are saved are transformed. God knows His children. John 10:27,
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” His children also
know they are His children because they have been transformed.
Transformation is the nature of salvation, you’re not a Christian if you haven’t
been transformed. This is not something reserved for the New Testament. 2
Corinthians 5:17, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything
old has passed away; see, everything has become new.” We understand that as
a New Testament truth: that when God saves, He makes a new creation, new
birth, regeneration; you’re a new person. And with that newness, all things are
new; everything changes. But that was always the way with salvation.
Deuteronomy 30:6-8, “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the
heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul, so that you may live. And you shall . . . obey the Lord, and
observe all His commandments.”
We’re commanded to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and
strength; but can we do that?” Absolutely, that’s what salvation provides. “The
Lord your God will circumcise your hearts.” There has to be a surgery on you.
It’s a heart work, and as a result, you will “love the Lord your God with all your
soul and all your heart,” and you’ll obey His commandments.
That is the transformation. Those who belong to God Love God with all their
faculties. We must love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, is that
possible? It’s possible because it’s required, and because the Lord actually
produces it when He saves us.
Is it perfect? No, because all that our heart, soul, mind, and strength can offer
is all we’ve got. He doesn’t expect us to love Him the way we’ll love Him in the
perfection of heaven, but it’s a total conviction that He is the one to be loved,
and no one competes with that love. If you’ve been saved, you love the Lord
with every faculty you have. They’re not perfected, but as much as your soul
can love Him, your soul loves Him. As much as your mind can love Him, your
mind loves Him. As much as your heart loves Him, that’s how much you love
Him, deep down; and your strength even reaches up to love Him, strength of
convictions. We obey, we don’t live a life of sin, as I just read in 1 John, that’s
characteristic of the children of the devil. We live a life of loving God and
obeying His Word.
The prophets understood this as well. Moses, Jeremiah, Ezequiel.
Jeremiah 11:4, speaking for the Lord, “Listen to My voice, and do according to
all which I command you.” Did you get that? “Listen to My voice, and do
according to all that I command you; so shall you be My people, and I will be
your God.” “If you’re Mine and I’m yours, then you listen to My commands and
you obey them.”
Jeremiah 24:7, this is how God describes salvation: “I will give them a heart to
know Me, for I am the Lord; they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for
they will return to Me with their whole heart.” It’s about the heart, it’s about
love, and it’s about obedience.
Old Testament prophetic passages about New Covenant salvation:
Jeremiah 31:33-34, This is how God describes what’s going to happen when
people in Israel are saved or, for that matter, when anyone is saved: “‘This is
the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’
declares the Lord,” this is the new covenant; this is salvation: “I will put My
law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and
they shall be My people.” If you belong to God and God belongs to you, then His
law is written on your heart.
V34, “‘They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his
brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they will all know Me, from the least of
them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will forgive their
iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.’” That’s salvation: when God
forgives you and forgets your sin forever. The mark of that is you have a
changed mind so that it is dominated by the law of the Lord, and a changed
heart so that you love the Lord with your whole heart.
Jeremiah 32:38, God says, “They shall be My people, and I will be their God;
and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me always, for
their own good and for the good of their children after them. I will make an
everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them, to do . . .
good; and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn
away from Me.”
The law of God written in your mind, the love of God written in your heart, the
fear of God merely the means by which you express your worship to God; and
there is no possibility that you would ever turn away from that. Why? Because
salvation makes you captive to the love of God, the law of God, obedience to
Him, and worship.
There is a very powerful expression of this same truth in Ezekiel 36:25, Here’s
God’s description of salvation. In this case, obviously, He’s talking about the
future salvation of Israel, but it’s true in every case: “I will sprinkle clean
water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness
and from all your idols.”
If you have been saved, you have been washed, you have been cleansed. You
are no longer going to worship idols; you are no longer going to be marked by
filthiness. Why? Because V26, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit
within you; I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a
heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you, cause you to walk in My statutes,
and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”
How do you know when someone’s a believer? It is obvious. With heart, soul,
mind, and strength, they love the Lord. They willingly, lovingly obey His law.
They fear Him in the sense of worship. This is what salvation does; it is a
massive transformation. That is what our text before us is pointing to in
Ephesians 4:
17
We have a description of the way things are, which describes the world of sin.
‘What Is Wrong with Everybody?’”
What salvation does is described here:
22
You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt
23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
In between 17-19 (which describes the whole world in sin)
and V22-24 (which describe the saints) is,
V20-21, that speak of salvation. Salvation is the dividing point.
20
That is not the way you learned Christ!
21 For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in
Jesus.
It’s another way of saying, “If you’re saved, you don’t live that way.” The
dividing line between sinners and saints, sons of God and sons of the devil, the
righteous and the unrighteous, is expressed in learning Christ, hearing Him,
being taught in Him the truth that is in Jesus. All words referring to the gospel.
The language here refers to an action in the past. This is looking at conversion,
at an action in the past when, by the power of God, the Ephesian Christians
first heard the gospel, listened to it, they were taught the truth concerning
Christ, they learned Him in the sense of real faith, and they were transformed.
Because there’s such a dramatic change, Paul refers to the former life in V22 as
the “old self,” and V24, the “new self.” Literally you go from death to life.
V20-21 look at the work of God in salvation; and that is what transforms people
from what they were, V17-19, to what they are in Christ, V22-24. The moment
of your salvation is the transformation miracle. Not a process; it’s an event. It’s
a divine, supernatural event in which you were transferred from the kingdom of
darkness to the kingdom of God’s dear Son, in which you ceased to be a
member of the children of Satan, and you became a member of the family of
God. It all happened in the moment of your salvation.
The drama of this is in Romans 6. Paul really lays this out magnificently. This is
important because there are lots of people who think that because they believe
in Jesus they’ve been transformed, when they haven’t.
Romans 6:17,
17
But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become
obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted,
18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of
righteousness.
V17, that’s how we define the old: slaves of sin. Again, it's the heart because
God purges and purifies the heart. It’s about teaching, it’s about learning, it’s
about knowing, it’s about the mind.
V18, the transformation is so dramatic that we go from being a slave of sin to a
slave of righteousness.
V19, “…so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for
sanctification.” This cannot be a more dramatic transformation from impurity
and lawlessness, we become slaves to righteousness.
20
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are
ashamed? The end of those things is death.
22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God,
the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life .
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal
life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
To describe salvation in the most severe terms possible, you go from death to
life, and it happens because you hear that form of truth concerning Christ,
which is the gospel. Romans 10:17, “So faith comes from what is heard, and
what is heard comes through the word of Christ.”
First John 5,
20
And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding
so that we may know him who is true;
(The gospel comes to your mind; it isn’t induced by an emotional experience.)
and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and
eternal life.
When you’ve come to know Christ, everything changes. So you didn’t come to
know Christ to live in the way you’ve been living. The verb manthanō means
“to come to know”; the noun form is a “learner” or a “student,” and it’s the
New Testament word for “disciple.”
Matthew 11:29, “Take My yoke and (what?) learn of Me.” Salvation has to go
through the mind and the understanding.
John 6:45, “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’
Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”He’s
quoting Jeremiah 31, which we just read. You learn the saving message of the
gospel. First John 2 talks about coming to know Him.
So salvation is the crux point of this passage. On the front side of it you have
the old self, on the back side of it you have the new self, and the crux is the
marvelous work of God in salvation. There’s a parallel to this in Colossians 3:6,
“The wrath of God will come on the sons of disobedience, in them you also once
walked, when you were living in them.” That’s the way the old life was.
But something’s changed. Colossians 3:10, “You’ve put on the new self . . .
being renewed to a true knowledge”—again, knowledge, understanding, mind,
all those cognitive elements—“according to the image of the One who created
him.” So you were supernaturally, sovereignly, powerfully retrained,
reeducated in the truth of the gospel. Again, this transformation is so epic that
it can only be described as coming from the dead back to life.
Romans 6:3, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into
Christ Jesus” immersed into Him, not water baptism. “have been baptized into
His death? Therefore, we have been buried with Him through baptism into
death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
Father, we . . . might walk in newness of life.” We were dead in sins and
trespasses, but then God in His mercy placed us into the death of Christ. We
were there. He died for us in that, died in Him, and rose in Him.
V5, “We have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we
also will be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that [by that the]
old self was crucified with Him, in order that the body of sin might be done
away with, and we would no longer be slaves to sin.” V11, “Consider
yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” All of these
passages show you to be clear on the fact that salvation is this amazing,
complete transformation.
1 Peter 4:3, “For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out
the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts,
drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatries. In all this,
they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excesses of
dissipation, and they malign you.” He’s saying, “You’re no longer a party
animal, and the people you once did all those sinful things with malign you;
they don’t know what happened to you.”
Peter is marking the power of this transformation. It creates the necessity for
new behaviors, new relationships, new friends, new places. Because this
saving work is so dramatic, 1 Peter 4:17, Paul begins this passage by saying,
“[Therefore] I affirm together with the Lord, you no longer walk just as the
Gentiles also walk” (you can’t live that way anymore.) You didn’t learn Christ in
that way; you can’t live that way anymore. You can’t; you’ve been transformed.
If you’re a true believer you are living in that transformation, and it is marked
by your love for the Lord, your desire to worship Him, your love for those He
loves, and obedience to His law with joy and delight.
What’s wrong with everybody? Why is the world such an evil, chaotic, dark,
demonic place? What’s wrong with everybody? I checked, this week, Journal of
Psychology, and they agreed that everybody’s basically good. So you can wipe
out that field.
What’s wrong with everybody is laid out here. This has to be understood.
You’re different; you’re new. Now look at the word Gentiles. “You no longer
walk . . . as the Gentiles.” That’s ethnē, ethnicities. Again, there’s only one
race, and there are many ethnicities; only one human race in various shades of
brown, depending on how much melanin you have or don’t have. But there is
not only unity over the physical nature in humanity, there is unity over the
spiritual nature of humanity: They are all sinners, the whole human race.
But because of the calling that we have received from God, because of the unity
we have in the truth, because of the truth that is written and the truth
incarnate in Christ, because of the privileges of being granted spiritual gifts,
because we have been graced by God to be a part of the body of Christ,
because of the presence of the Holy Spirit conforming us to Christ, because of
the responsibility to speak the truth in love, we can’t live the way we used to
live. You can be sucked back in; you can be drawn back in. It will never be the
unbroken pattern of your life. But the corrupt world tries to seduce you, tries to
pull you in; but you’ll never again become a slave of sin. You’ve been
transformed. 1 John, if anyone goes out from us, it only manifests they never
were of us—because you’re a new creation, and that’s eternal. All ethnicities
are hostile to God, all ethnicities, dominated by pride, greed, lust, selfish
pleasure—the whole human race, including us before our conversion.
Paul digs down a little bit into the condition of every human being, and he’s
going to give us some specific descriptives. There are four of them here; we
can sum them up in these words: selfish, senseless, shameless, sensual.
This is how ungodly people act because this is how they think, a matter of the
mind. V17, “Futility of . . . mind.” V18, “Darkened in their understanding”; you
notice the word “ignorance.” It’s that they don’t know. First Corinthians 2:14,
“Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are
foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are
spiritually discerned.” It’s always an issue with the mind: “As a man thinks in
his heart, so is he.” Their thinking is corrupted.
The most familiar treatment of that is in Romans 1, “Professing to be wise,
[men] became fools.” V21, “Even though they knew God” (God was revealed in
His creation) “they didn’t honor Him as God or give thanks, they became futile ”
(or empty, or vain) “in their speculations” (their intellectual musings) “their
foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools,” and so
“God gave them over to” sexual immorality, homosexuality, and a reprobate
mind.
It’s a mind game. It’s about the truth coming to the mind so that there’s
understanding. If you’re a Christian, according to what we just saw in V20-21,
you were reprogrammed. You learned Christ, you heard Him speak to you
through His Word, you learned your lesson by the power of the Holy Spirit, and
you embraced the truth that’s in Jesus. And that totally transformed you.
1. But let’s talk about the way people are. V17, they’re selfish. They “walk”—
meaning daily conduct, “in the futility of their minds.”
Their thinking is so warped. I think it’s the possessive pronoun here that we
ought to focus on: “their” mind. This is what happens to sinful people: They
think they are the source of truth. They don’t subject themselves to the truth of
God. They reject the truth of God, again, Romans 1. So their mind is basically
the purveyor of their philosophy, theology, and religion. If you think you are
the source of truth, you are insane.
But this is not new. Back in the Old Testament, “Everybody did that which was
right in his own in his own eyes.” This is what people do; they worship
themselves. And it’s futile, although it’s based on the wretchedness of human
pride. The word futile doesn’t mean pride or conceit, it means that which is
useless, that which is worthless, empty, void, vain.
If you want to live a vain, empty, void, meaningless, useless, worthless life,
then just live in your own head; just decide that everything that you can think
of is the way reality is. This has taken over our culture to such a degree that
there’s a level of insanity we never thought we’d ever come to, where people
even deny their biological, sexual identity, which is like not a mystery.
Intellectual emptiness fills our society.
There’s massive judgment on us, evidenced by the sexual revolution,
homosexual revolution, and the insanity that dominates the thinking of this
culture. People are just fools; they think they’re wise. And the universities are
the places where all the deceived PhDs are, who are espousing things that they
think are wise, when they are the leading fools. Colossians 2:18 describes this
futility of mind as “inflated without cause by his fleshly mind.” Peter says,
however, 1 Peter 1:18, we have been redeemed from the futile way of life. So
what’s wrong with everybody? They’re selfish. They want to design their own
standard of morality, invent their own religion. They want to be their own god.
2. Paul says, they’re consequently senseless: V18, “Being darkened in their
understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that
is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.” Darkened, excluded,
ignorant, and hard-hearted. This makes you into a senseless brick.
Lost in the foolishness of their own mind, they become senseless, and their
senselessness is perpetuated until it becomes hardness. “Darkened in their
understanding”—skotoō, it means “to darken or blind.” They are blind, and in
their blindness they continue down a path of blindness that is defined next as
being “excluded from the life of God,” which is another way of saying they are
dead, they are dead.
They’re dead and blind, estranged from God, and it takes them down a path of
the hardness of heart. “Hardness of heart,” pōrōsis in the Greek, from pōrōs,
which meant a very, very hard stone or was used to describe the tissue that
developed when bones were fused together and became very hard. It meant
“to be hard without feeling.” “Same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay.”
You hear the truth and resist the truth, and what should melt your heart
hardens it. When sin is ignored, when conscience is silenced, when guilt and
conviction are not permitted, the heart grows harder and harder, conscience
becomes scarred. And we are warned in Hebrews 3 and 4, “Don’t harden your
heart. Don’t harden your heart.” It’s deadly, it’s deadly.
3. What’s wrong with everybody? They’re selfish, and they are senseless.
They’re shameless. V19, “They . . . become callous.” This mean being past
feeling. They don’t feel anything. In fact, their callousness is so severe
that Philippians 3:19 says this—this is a stunning statement: “Their glory is
in their shame.” “Their glory is in their shame.” They are shameless. “Their
glory is in their shame.” They parade their shame. What they should be
ashamed of is what they parade. This whole culture does that. The Internet
is just full of it: people parading shame. What people should be ashamed of
is their glory, their claim to fame. The verb here, apalgeō, means “to cease
to feel pain.”
4. Selfishness leads to senselessness, and senselessness develops into

shamelessness. Then you’re into V19: sensual. “They, having become
callous,” or shameless, “have given themselves over to sensuality,” which
releases “the practice of every kind of filthiness with greediness.” They
literally hand themselves over. This is self-inflicted; they hand themselves
over. So selfish, so senseless, so shameless, they hand themselves over to
sensuality.
The word there for “sensuality” is aselgeia, and it means basically “an
unrestrained life.” It’s a step beyond shame, which is a step beyond
senselessness. This is the disposition of the soul where selfishness,
senselessness, and shamelessness reach their ultimate expression. There’s no
restraint; you flaunt everything.
Our culture is there, where people are proud of their perversions. They want to
make sure nobody restrains them. They practice every kind of
impurity, akatharsia, every kind of uncleanness, every kind of filthiness, and
they do it “with greediness”; they can’t get enough filthiness. “Greediness”
is pleonexia, which is the insatiable craving, the uncontrolled appetite, the
unsatisfied passion. This is what’s wrong with everybody.
Before we were believers, it was what drove us as well. It doesn’t always
manifest itself in the same way. There are some restraints in some societies.
Those restraints were ours for a few hundred years; they are long gone.
There’s some restraint offered by families and parenting, and they’re gone.
There’s some restraints offered by education, they’re gone. This is a powerful
picture of those who have not learned Christ.
But the point is to get beyond that and to say this: “You have not learned Christ
in that way.” And that takes you back to V17: You can no longer walk like
everybody else walks. You can’t. You can’t walk in selfishness, senselessness,
shamelessness, sensuality—no, not if you have been saved. The separation is in
V20-21, you learned Christ. You heard Him speak in His Word. You were taught
the gospel in Him. You were taught the truth is in Jesus, and your salvation
separates you from the rest of the world.
History is the story of judgment and salvation, wrath and mercy. You need to
think on which side you would like to be: child of wrath, child of mercy; son of
Satan, son of God.
Father, we’re again grateful for Your truth, the clarity of it. It hits us like a
sword, sharp, two-edge sword, piercing, dividing asunder soul and spirit, joints
and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
May everyone in this hearing look at their own life and ask if, in fact, they are a
new creation, manifest by the One they love, the things they love, the people
they love, the law they love, the obedience they love, and the worship they
love.
And reveal to those who think that because they prayed a prayer one time, one
place, or have warm feelings towards Jesus, that they have received salvation.
No. Salvation is a complete transformation.
And it isn’t that we are everything we should be; we’re not. But as much as our
heart, soul, mind, and strength can love You, that’s how much we love You.
We’re devoted to You, only. There will be no other god, no other redeemer, no
other savior. There will be no other master, no other lord. And we love You, and
we desire to obey You; and we desire to obey You and You alone. No other
authority can command us, only You.
By love and obedience, we give testimony to our transformation, even by being
here, by the joy of worship as our hearts reach out to say thanks to You. We
thank You for saving us.
We pray that You will even this day extend Your salvation to some who are
here, that they might learn Christ, they might hear the truth of the gospel,
come to salvation, and be the new creation that every believer is.
For those of us who are Your children, give us continuing strength to be
constantly renewed every day by the Holy Spirit and to resist the seduction and
delusions of the former life. We ask these things for Your glory. Amen.
Totally transformed March 20/22
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-22/totally-transformed
Ephesians 4, The Old Life and the New

17
19 They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to
licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
20
That is not the way you learned Christ!
21
For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as
truth is in Jesus.
22 You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old
self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts,
23
and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
24
and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to
the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness .
A comparison between the people before salvation and the same people
afterward. Before salvation—and this is true of all unconverted people—they
walk “in the futility of their mind . . . darkened in their understanding, excluded
from the life of God,” ignorant, hard-hearted, callous, “given . . . over to
sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.”
V22 says this “former manner of life” is one that is “being corrupted in
accordance with the lusts of deceit.” That is the diagnosis of everyone prior to
salvation. When salvation comes, as noted in V20-21, everything changes. V23
says, “That you be renewed in the spirit of your mind . . . put on the new self,
which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of
the truth.” The difference is the salvation that is the theme of V20-21.
When Paul says, “Learned Christ,” he’s talking about salvation. You learned
because the gospel is truth that you have to hear and learn. Faith comes by
hearing the word concerning Christ, Romans 10:17. Jesus said in Matthew
11:29, as we pointed out last week, that you have to “learn of Me.” John
6:45 talks about [how] the Father has taught us. So coming to eternal salvation
is a matter of learning the truth; when that truth is learned, there is a
transformation that is monumental, and that is the transformation that is
described here.
It’s important for us to understand this because there are so many people
apparently confused about who is a Christian and who is not. Some people
would assume that if you go to a Christian church, or if you have good feelings
about Christ, if you’ve prayed a prayer to Him, if you’ve “made a decision,” you
are automatically a Christian.
But the definition here of salvation is far more careful than just those musings
about Jesus that may have engaged a person for a moment or at some point in
their life to cause them to pray a prayer, because what you have here is
spiritual transformation. Salvation is a transformation. It is the divine miracle
that transforms the sinner into the saint. It is what Jesus was talking about
when He said you can’t enter the kingdom of God unless you have been born
again. 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creation; old
things have passed away, and new things have come.” It’s essential for us,
because this is such a constant question that people ask, to understand how we
know when someone is a Christian.
Paul is showing us a dramatic transformation here and not the first time he
does that. In Ephesians 2, 1 “You were dead through the trespasses and
sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the
ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who
are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh,
following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of
wrath, like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love
with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses,
made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and
raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ
Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of
his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
When Paul talks about the condition of the unregenerate, he talks about them
as “dead through the trespasses and sins” in the sense that they cannot
respond to God or divine truth. And then he goes further to describe them as—
saying they “walked according to the course of this world” and that refers to
the evil system that dominates human life, “according to the prince of the
power of the air” who operates that system, namely Satan, who is also “the
spirit . . . now working in the sons of disobedience.” So here is the description
of the unconverted person: dead in trespasses and sins, walking according to
the course of this satanic system that occupies the world under the sovereign
power of Satan, who works not only over them but in them as sons of
disobedience.
V3, “We too all formerly lived in” that same condition, “in the lusts of our flesh,
indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children
of wrath, even as the rest.” So there you have that very detailed description of
every human being who is unconverted. A salvation provision in V4, “But God,
being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even
when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ
(by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with
Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” This is the transformation of
salvation.
As a result of it, “10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for
good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Dramatic
change from all those connotations and directly identified categories of
sinfulness in V1-3. We pass into the section on salvation, and out of it we arrive
at V10, and we have a new creation. This is God’s masterpiece “created in
Christ Jesus,” and the result is “good works.” This is a dramatic change; this is
a miraculous change.
Ezekiel 36:25, describes the time that God saves His people, “I will sprinkle
clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and
from all your idols I will cleanse you.” This is not just a forensic declaration of
justification this is a transformation. This is such a change that it is described
as using clean water to clean “all your uncleanness,” and additionally to free
you from your idols so that you have singular devotion and worship to the Lord.
Moreover, V26, “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within
you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart
of flesh.” It isn’t that something is added; something is removed, and
something replaces it. What replaces the heart of stone is a new heart and a
new spirit.
V27, “I will put my spirit within you, (the result…) and make you follow my
statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. 28 Then you shall live in the
land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be
your God.” Salvation is a washing from filthiness and from all other gods. It is
the giving of a new heart, the removal of the old heart, planting the Holy Spirit.
It is causing us to walk in God’s statutes, observing His ordinances.
Transformation!
In Ephesians 4, we see something that is consistent with the way salvation is
described in Scripture, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Paul
begins in V17 by saying that we no longer walk “as the Gentiles . . . walk.” We
can’t live the way we used to live. It’s not right, and it’s not even possible. Did
you get that? It’s not right, and it’s not even possible. We don’t walk as
the ethne, as all human ethnicities walk. We don’t live the way they live; we
aren’t characterized by the things that characterize them.
The descriptions of ungodly people before they’re converted in Ephesians 2 and
4 sound extreme, and they. It doesn’t mean that everybody lives those out to
the maximum extreme possibility of evil. Not everyone is a mass murderer; not
everyone is a serial rapist. Not everyone is like that. But everyone falls into
those categories to one degree or another; it’s only a question of degree, not
nature.
Why is that? Why is it that everybody isn’t as extremely evil as is possible? The
answer is because God has put restraints in life. The restraints in life: one, the
law of God written in the heart, which informs man even though he doesn’t
know the Bible, about what is right and wrong; a conscience that wounds him if
he violates that law in the heart. That’s a restraint. Family is a restraint.
Government is a restraint. The threat of punishment is a restraint. The threat of
death is a restraint.
So not everybody is as bad as they could be, but everybody falls under the
same definition. The main issue is indicated in V18, all of this is true because
they are “excluded from the life of God.” They do not possess divine life; they
do not possess “the life of God.” Mark that because that is very important.
That’s part of them being dead in trespasses and sins: the absence of the life of
God.
V20-21, you see the picture of salvation: learning Christ, being taught about
Him, the truth in Jesus which is the gospel—direct reference to salvation. In
that saving work Paul uses 3 infinitives to reveal the nature of the
transformation, three infinitives. One is in V22: “Lay aside”; V23: “Be
renewed”; V24: “Put on.” Three infinitives to reveal the essential nature of this
transformation.
It is a laying aside, it is a putting on, and of being renewed. This is not
exhortation, these three infinitives describe the transformation by God, the
Holy Spirit, through the saving gospel of Jesus Christ in the life of a sinner. The
work of God.
V22, “In reference to your former manner of life, you [laid] aside the old self.”
This is a reality: “You [laid] aside the old self.” What is “the old self”? What
you were, the composite of your invisible nature. Why did you lay it aside
under the power of God? Because you heard the gospel, or you were taught the
gospel, or you saw it as the truth, and you believed it. God opened our mind,
opened our heart and gave us life, gave us understanding; a divine miracle took
place. We heard the gospel, we learned the gospel, and we laid aside the old
self.
That’s a very powerful statement: You laid aside the old self. V24, you “put on
the new self.” This is transformation, this is what salvation is. It isn’t that
when you were saved you were repaired. It isn’t that when you were saved you
were realigned. It isn’t that when you were saved that you have an old self,
and added to the old self is now a new self, and so you have the old self and
the new self, competing. No. You put off the old self; you put on the new self.
The old self is not repaired, realigned or removed; it’s replaced. This is very
important for us to understand. If you are a true believer, this is what has
happened to you.
Colossians 3,
1
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where
Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,
3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
4 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with
him in glory.
Paul is essentially saying the same thing. But let’s just capture a few of his
phrases. He describes this transformation in this way, “for you have died.” You
can’t get a more extreme reality than death; and that’s the metaphor he uses
to describe what happened to your old life. Your old self died.
V1, “You have been raised.” You have died, and you have been raised. The old
died, and there was a new creation resurrected. Another way is here:
9
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with
its practices
10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in
knowledge according to the image of its creator.
V9, “Seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices.” When the
old self went, all its evil practices went as well. V10, you “have clothed
yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according
to the image of its creator.” In other words, the new self is godlike.
So “you have died”; parallel to that, Paul says that would be, you laid aside the
old self. “You have been raised”; parallel to that, you have “put on the new
self.” “Have died” corresponds to “laid aside”; “been raised” corresponds to
“put on.” Those four verbs basically tell us what salvation does: It is a death
and a resurrection. It is the removal of an old self, which is replaced by a new
self. This is powerful language. This gets to the core of the identity of a
Christian.
Romans 6, Dying and Rising with Christ
1
What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may
abound?
2 By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death?
4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just
as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might
walk in newness of life.
5
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be
united with him in a resurrection like his.
The language is consistent and particularly definitive here. The transformation,
V2: “We . . . died to sin.” We died to sin. V4, “We have been buried with him
[Christ].” V5, “If we have been united with Him in a death like his, we will
certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.” Again, the language is
the language of death and resurrection. It’s the language of going out of
existence and a new reality coming into existence.
V6, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin
might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For whoever
has died is freed from sin.”
What happened? The old self died, “was crucified with Him, so the body of sin
might be destroyed…” The old self is gone, completely gone—strong verb there.
It’s done away with so much so, “we might no longer be enslaved to sin; for he
who has died is freed from sin.” What happened at salvation is a real death in
which the body of sin was removed, and a real resurrection in which we were
raised from the dead to a new self that possesses eternal life. V8, “But if we
have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” V11, “So you
also must consider yourselves dead to sin ….. and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
This is the language of transformation, and this is what you have to understand
because there seems to be so much confusion about who’s a Christian and
who’s not. This is not only confusion in the minds of people who are trying to
evaluate others, but confusion in the minds of people who aren’t sure what
their condition is. Where you have salvation you have, at the end of V4,
“newness of life,” Romans 6:4.
See it this way; When Jesus said He's coming to the world to die, “God [sends]
His Son to die, and whoever believes in Him shall have everlasting life.” So
that’s not something in the future; you have that now. You possess everlasting
life. That is not a duration; that is not a quantity of life, that is a quality of life,
that is a kind of life. That is the life of God in the soul of man.
Your conversion was a far greater transformation than your death will be
because you’ve already received a new nature; you’ve already received a new
self that will live forever, a new self that has been created in righteousness,
holiness, and truth. I think we have to understand that. It’s not that when you
were saved, the Lord helped you live a better life; you went through a death
and resurrection. It’s not just a better life, it’s a transformed life.
V16, “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves
for obedience, you are slaves to the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting
in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that
though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart.” And that
obedience is expressed by Paul as putting off and putting on. “You became
obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed,
and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness,” V22,
“[Being] freed from sin and [a slave] to God, you derive your benefit, resulting
in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.” If you have been saved, you
possess now eternal life.
This is an amazing thing for us to understand. In the language of Ephesians 4,
you have put off the old self, put on the new self, and are renewed in the spirit
of your mind. You don’t think the way you used to think. You could parallel that
with having a new heart and a new spirit. It’s not just that God treats you
differently, you are different; you’re a new creature.
Colossians 3,
1 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with
its practices
10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in
knowledge according to the image of its creator.
I have been recreated to be like the image of the One who created you. This is
not a psychological change; this is not just the fact that you think a little bit
differently about theology and life.
Ephesians 4,
22
You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt
23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds ,
This is a change, the Holy Spirit goes deeper than that, “the spirit of your
mind,” all the way down to the fountains of your comprehension and your
reason.
According to a poll published by the Family Research Council last year. 51% of
the 1,000 respondents polled stated they believe in a biblical worldview, the
current research found that just roughly 6% genuinely do. To gather the data,
the researchers asked a series of supplementary questions from those who
profess to have a biblical worldview.
They found that there are significant contradictions between what people think
and what the Bible teaches among the 51 % of individuals who profess to have
a biblical worldview. Six of the 12 worldview questions had a minority of those
who claimed to have a biblical worldview really having a biblical viewpoint, and
another indicator had 49 % of those who claimed to have a biblical worldview
having an unbiblical point of view.
If 94 percent of people who have been created anew, given new life, who are
the possessors of eternal life, who, in the words of 2 Peter 1:4, are “partakers
of the divine nature,” those who possess everlasting life, those who have been
renewed in their minds, still see the world the way they saw it before? Not
possible.
They may not know all the elements of Scripture that help them understand
and discern everything in the world, but to say 6 percent of Christian parents
have a biblical worldview, we’d better check our definition of “Christian”
because when we were saved, we put off the old self, we put on the new self by
the power of God, and deep down in our mind we were transformed; and we
don’t think the way we used to think about anything anymore. Ephesians
4:24, “and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the
likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
1 Corinthians 2:16, “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct
him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” I think Christ has a biblical worldview.
Ephesians 4:24, describes a total transformation, not an addition. I´m not what
I used to be, your inner person, your inner man, your new self, replaces the old
self.
First John 3:7, “Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what
is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.” Not hard, is it? Our righteousness
is like God’s righteousness because we’ve been created in Christ Jesus; we’ve
been created in the likeness of God; we’ve been created in the image of the
One who created everything.
First John 3:8-10, “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the
devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for
this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. 9 Those who have been born of
God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because
they have been born of God. 10 The children of God and the children of the devil
are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor
are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.” Not hard to distinguish.
Do they never sin?” No. They don’t practice unrighteousness, because if I do, I
give evidence of being “of the devil.” If that’s the pattern of my life, then I’m
not converted, whatever I think I may have prayed or whatever emotional
connection I thought I had with Jesus. The children of the devil and the
children of the Lord are easy to distinguish: One practices sin; the other
practices righteousness. The dominating pattern of the life is either sin, or
righteousness. It’s not just that Christians are, for some external reason,
better or able to stay away from sin because they work harder at it. It is that
they stay away from sin because they have been recreated in righteousness,
holiness, and truth.
Paul will not locate sin in the new self, his language is explicit about that. He
knows the new self is created in righteousness, holiness and truth. The new
self is the creation of the Holy Spirit, it’s regeneration; it’s a new birth; it’s
created to be in the image of God. The new self, partakes of the divine nature.
The new self, possesses eternal life. You’re not going to get eternal life in the
future; you have it, you live it. It is your life; it is the invisible part of you that
is the recreated miracle of divine, sovereign grace that has made you in
righteousness, holiness, and truth.
Romans 6:11, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to
God in Christ Jesus.” That’s the creation. “Therefore, do not let sin exercise
dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.” Paul locates
sin not in the new self, but in the mortal body, the part of you that is not
eternal, the part of you that is material and mortal. He always is careful to do
that, so that the reality is this: You are a new creation, partaker of the divine
nature, possessing eternal life; you just happen to also be connected to
mortality, and that’s where sin lies, in your mortality, the part of you that can
die. The inner part of you can never die; that’s why it’s called eternal life.
Romans 7:12,
12
So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and
good.
13
Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working
death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin,
and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
The Inner Conflict
14
For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold
into slavery under sin.
HE LOCATES THE SIN ISSUE IN THE FLESH, THIS IS HOW IT REVEALS ITSELF:
15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want,
but I do the very thing I hate.
16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good .
“Something’s wrong; I don’t like it. I am a new person; I am a new creation.
My physical death will be less of a change than my conversion was, because
I’ve already been fit for eternal heaven because I’ve been given eternal life,
which is the life of God. So why is there all this struggle?”
V17, Paul distances his new self from it: “But in fact it is no longer I that do it,
but sin that dwells within me.” The new I say the law is spiritual; the law is
holy, the commandment holy, righteous, and good. Like David, “Oh, how I love
Your law.” It’s not I doing it “Sin that dwells in me.” Sin’s still around. V18,
“For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will
what is right, but I cannot do it.” It’s in the mortal body; it’s in the flesh. My
mortal body and my flesh is dying. This is the part of me that still bears the
Curse, it shows up because “the willing is present in me” (New self) “but the
doing of [it] is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very
evil that I do not want. I’m doing the very thing I do not want, I’m no longer
the one doing it.”
Isn’t that interesting? He says, “It’s not the real me.” He’s not being
irresponsible; he’s just parsing out spiritual reality and saying, “Sin is so alien
to me, I hate it. It’s not what I love, it’s not what I want, it’s not what I desire.
But it’s still there in my mortal body, in my flesh; that’s where it resides. So I
find”—in V21, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil
lies close at hand” There’s that new self, “but I see a different law,” where is
it? It’s “in the members of my body”; it’s in my flesh, it’s in my mortal body,
and it wages “war against the law of my mind” and makes me “a prisoner of
the law of sin which is in my members.” Again, he keeps saying, “It’s not me.
It’s not the new self; it’s not my heart, it’s not my new heart; it’s not my new
spirit. It is in my flesh; it is in the members of my body; it is in my mortality; it
is in my members, my fleshly, mortal faculties.”
V24, he shows his frustration by saying, “Wretched man that I am! Who will
rescue me from this body of death?” Again he says it’s the body. In ancient
times, very often when somebody killed someone, as a punishment they would
take the murdered corpse and strap it to the murderer, and it wouldn’t take
long before the body decayed and brought about a horrendous death to the
killer. Paul feels that way. He is full of divine life, but there’s a corpse strapped
to him. He knows he’ll triumph, V25, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ
our Lord!” He will free me from this corpse.
V25 continues: Not yet. “So then, with my mind (Renewed) I am a slave to the
law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.” Hasn’t happened
yet, right? “I know it’ll happen, I know Christ will deliver me, I know someday
it’s going to happen. Someday I’m going to get rid of this wretched sin that
attaches itself to me.”
Romans 8:1, I know it’s not going to condemn me, for “there is no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Why will we never be
condemned if we’re in Christ? Because Christ was condemned in our place. And
so we struggle, and we will struggle all our life long.
Sometimes young people say to me, “Do you ever get victory over besetting
sins?” Sure. As you grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ, you’ll sin less.
But I warn you: Though you sin less, you feel worse. Paul has this horror of sin
because his inner man is righteous, he sees sin against that backdrop. I think
Paul, and any believer, is far more sensitive to sin than an unbeliever because
he has nothing to compare it to. Unbelievers don’t fight the battle with the
flesh; they’re all flesh. And the old self and the flesh are very compatible
partners.
So the good news is you will sin less as you grow, but you’ll feel worse because
the less you sin, the more you become like God: The more you hate sin. And in
your maturity you will hate your own sin a lot more than somebody else’s. So
Paul recognizes the reality of sin, and he knows there’s going to be a triumph.
When is that triumph going to come?
Romans 8,
22
We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now;
23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the
Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our
bodies.
24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who
hopes for what is seen?
25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
“We ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit”—because the Spirit is in us,
and the Spirit has dispensed into that new inner self love, joy, peace,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control—fruit of the Spirit. We have
those. We have the divine nature. We have eternal life, the life of God in our
souls. We are the temple of the Trinity. Because of all of this is in the new self,
“We groan within ourselves” (there’s an agony in living) “waiting eagerly for
our adoption as sons the redemption of”—what?—“our body.”
Again, that’s all that we need. We’ve already been transformed. When you die,
it’s not a transformation of your inner person; it’s the subtraction of your sinful
flesh. When you see a coffin, I know they always dress people up. But what
you’re really seeing is nothing but flesh, nothing but mortality, nothing but the
occupying part of humanity that holds sin and fights against the new self.
We rejoice when someone goes to glory, not only because they’re in heaven
but because they’ve left the body behind. There will be in the future a new
resurrection body. 1 Corinthians 15, that’ll be like His glorious body. There’ll be
no battle in heaven between the glorified body and the glorified soul. So we are
“waiting,” V23, “eagerly for . . . the redemption of our body.”
When you think about heaven, it’s not so much about seeing Aunt Alice,
although you might be able to find her up there if she’s there, and it’s not so
much about the beauty and the splendor of it, as it is that the struggle with sin
is over.
In the meantime, we need to think about ourselves as new creations created in
the likeness of God, in the image of the one who created us. We have, in our
salvation, been enabled by the Holy Spirit to put off the old and put on the new.
We have a renewed mind. We now love righteousness, holiness, and truth.
How do we gain victory? How do we get the upside of the struggle between the
new self and the flesh?
1. I have the power to do it in the resident Holy Spirit and in the power of that
new life, which is created in righteousness, holiness, and truth. The power is
in the very essence of that life and in the Spirit who dwells within you.
2. I also have the additional power that comes from the Scripture: “Your word
have I hid in my heart, that I might not”—what?—“sin against you.” I have
that new nature, I have the Holy Spirit, and I have the Word of God. It all
comes down to obedience.
Just as a fact: Over 400 commands are found in the epistles of Paul. There are
50 commands to the believer in the book of James alone. It’s not difficult to
figure out that the Lord has given you the steps to spiritual victory in the
commands. Obey the commands. You have the nature to do it, you have a
renewed mind, you have the Spirit to enable you, and you have the Word to
strengthen you. Keep the commandments. That’s what it is to live on the
victorious side.
Just to seal that as we close, when Jesus stood on the mount and was
departing and gave what is the Great Commission, His last words—most
people’s last words are usually significant; His are the most significant of all.
What did He say? “Go into all the world, make disciples, baptizing them”—and
then He said this—“and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I
have”—what?—“commanded you.” That is the path of sanctification: It’s about
obedience.
So you shouldn’t be looking for some mystical sort of personal, spiritual
elevation that might come to you in some moment; it’s just about obedience.
Jesus said, “Here’s My orders: Teach them to obey everything I’ve commanded
you, everything. And I promise you this: Lo, I am with you always, even to the
end of the age. I’ll be there.”
Sanctification is in the power of the Spirit, by the power of the new creation, by
the power of the Word of God, a believer obeying the commands of Scripture.
That’s why Jesus said what He said in His final words. That is the path of
sanctification.
Father, we thank You that You have given us such a clear word. Thank You for
the beauty of salvation, its extent, its character, its nature. Thank You for
transforming us.
We know that the life we have is eternal; it can never end. The Holy Spirit in us
is the seal, the guarantee, the down payment on eternal glory. We know that
there is a reward waiting for us in Your presence, which will never fade away
and never be removed and never be given to someone else because You have
already made us for heaven. We are new creatures.
I pray, Lord, for the application of those commandments that face us all
through Scripture, that we would be diligent to obey them, knowing this is the
way of sanctification, this is the way to please You, and this is the way to bring
joy, satisfaction, and usefulness into our own lives. Accomplish Your will in us,
we pray in the Savior’s name. Amen.
The Walk of the True Christian April 24/22

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-24/the-walk-of-the-true-christian
After death are only two possibilities, heaven and hell, I will live in one of those
forever. So this is a time when it’s understandable that people in the face of
imminent death would want to come to the gospel and embrace that which will
deliver them from condemnation, judgment, and hell. People want to go into
the glories of heaven. This would be a time when believers want to be certain
that their salvation was the real thing.
The church is made up of true believers and false wheat and tares; Jesus said
it. He also said that in the day of judgment, “Many will say to Me . . . ‘Lord,
Lord’”—confessing Him, and He will say, “Depart from Me; I never knew you,
you workers of iniquity.” There are people who will end up in the judgment
moment believing they’re headed for heaven, only to find out they are not. Any
kind of dire circumstance, any kind of life-threatening setting would make a
person who professed to be a Christian want to examine his or her heart to be
certain.
There’s a common question that is asked: How can I be sure I’m really a
Christian? How can I be sure I’m really saved? Anybody who’s a believer has
faced the reality of a doubt here or there, wondering whether my salvation is
real; but any kind of dire circumstance, or even the reality of you’re getting
older, or maybe you’re unwell, or perhaps fearful of something that may
overtake your life before you are sure you’re a Christian. I understand that,
because you want to know for sure.
There are two things I have to consider. One is security, and the other is
assurance. When I talk about security I’m saying, Is salvation forever? That is,
If I have the real thing, is it eternal? Well, that’s easy to answer: It’s called
eternal life. What else would eternal life be but eternal? Yes, if you are truly
saved, you have received eternal life. Nothing can ever separate you from the
love of God in Christ. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ; you
are headed for heaven.
Salvation is forever. You don’t get it, and lose it, and hopefully get it back; it is
forever. 1 Peter 1:3, Peter is writing to some believers who are scattered, being
persecuted. It’s a hard time, and I’m sure they wanted to know the reality of
their salvation. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” God, in His mercy, “His
great mercy . . . caused us to be born again.” You don’t see any role that we
played there. God in His great mercy regenerated us to a living hope that is
attached to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So Christ arose; He lives. We rose
in Him; we live as He lives. So Peter is talking about the eternality of salvation,
because our salvation is in Christ. If Christ lives forever; we live forever. So we
have a living hope, meaning a hope of eternally living.
Peter expands on that in V4, there is prepared for us “an inheritance which is
imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for
you.” Again, Peter is saying, based upon the regenerating work of God, out of
His great mercy, we have been given a hope that lives because Christ lives. And
when that hope is realized, we will receive an inheritance, imperishable,
undefiled, unfading, reserved in heaven for you. It’s reserved in heaven for you
and for no one else. That is the security of our salvation.
Further, V5, “are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation
ready to be revealed in the last time.” The full revelation of our final salvation
and the receiving of that glorious heavenly inheritance is for us and no one
else, and we are protected by the power of God for that final revelation. So
Peter is literally affirming the security of salvation. You will one day be in glory,
as it says at the end of V8, and “greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full
of glory,” because you will obtain “as the outcome of your faith the salvation of
your souls.” This is security. Security is objective; it is based on the divine
revelation: Scripture. Scripture says salvation is forever. If you have it, it is
forever.
But there’s another word that is important, and that is the word assurance.
Security is an objective reality; assurance is a subjective reality. In security,
you know salvation is forever; in assurance, you know you possess that
salvation. That is critically important, so important that Paul says, “Examine
yourselves whether you be in the faith,” so that you don’t wind up having
believed in vain, or for nothing.
What about assurance? Where do we go for that? Where do we go for the
subjective? Where do we go for the confidence that our salvation is the real
thing? 2 Peter 1:3-4, “His divine power has given us everything needed for life
and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory
and goodness. 4 Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and
very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption
that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine
nature.” Again, all that awaits us in eternal glory is promised to us in the
gospel. In other words, we possess the life of God. We have escaped the
corruption that is in the world by lust. We have been given promises that God
will fulfill.
V5-7, “For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith
with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-
control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, 7 and
godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love.” He’s saying
you are secure by the promises of God. You are secure by the power of God.
You are already a partaker of divine nature you possess eternal life now. You
have escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust. But you must add
to that reality these qualities: moral excellence—which is a word for virtue—
knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love.
Why?
V8, “For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you
from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” If these things are characteristic of your life and they are increasing,
they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our
Lord Jesus Christ. What it’s to say is this: If these things are characteristic of
your life, you possess the true knowledge of Christ; your salvation is the real
thing.
On the other hand, V9, “For anyone who lacks these things is short-sighted and
blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins.” Do you understand? You
can be a real believer and forget that you really are a true believer. You can
lose your assurance.
V10, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call
and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble.” Practice what things?
That list of qualities: moral excellence (virtue), knowledge, self-control,
perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, love.
Where you have virtue in your life, you have assurance. You understand? That’s
what he’s saying. If those qualities are not obvious in your life, you have lost
touch, then, with your salvation. If you want to make your calling sure and
your choosing, your election, sure, be diligent to make sure these things are
characteristics of your life.
So how do you know you’re saved? Not by a past event, not remembering a
date, not remembering a prayer, but looking at your life and seeing the kinds of
virtues, patterns of righteousness, godliness, that testify to a transformation.
Assurance can be hard; it can be. We can be insecure. We can lose our
assurance. Assurance is hard to experience, and it’s hard to hold on to. Even
though you know salvation is forever, there are times when you can really
struggle to believe that you’re actually a possessor of the true salvation.
Why? Why is it hard to have assurance? Why do I struggle with my assurance?
I’ll give you some reasons.
Number one: convicting preaching. You come and you sit under the Word of
God. The Word of God is powerful, “sharper than any two-edged sword,”
Hebrews 4:12, it goes into you, it cuts you, it dissects you, it takes you apart,
and it reveals your heart. Honestly, you probably wouldn’t have that experience
of wondering about your salvation if you were sitting in a place where the
Word of God was dealt with superficially. But when you expose yourself to
convicting preaching from the Word of God, you can struggle with your
assurance because you are being convicted by the Word of God. The standard is
so high.
Number two: guilt. A man graduated from a Christian college 50 years ago. He
said, “I was not a believer. I came out of that school, I lived thirty years as a
homosexual”—the worst, dissolute, unimaginable kind of life. He said, “I came
to Christ,” and he said, “Now I spend four or five hours a day in the Word of
God because I need that exposure to cleanse the garbage of thirty years.”
When you have vivid realities of your sinfulness, and the standard of holiness is
high, you can very definitely struggle with assurance.
Number three: it is that they misunderstand the gospel. They think that the
gospel is God’s plan to save you, and then you keep yourself saved; so that
they would say, “Yes, you’re saved by grace, but you’re kept by works.” If
you’re trying to keep yourself saved by your works, you will never have any
assurance.
Number four: they have wrong ideas about forgiveness. There is a viewpoint
that says, “When you’re saved, God forgives all the sins of your past”—that’s
true—“but not the present and the future. You have to work out righteousness
in the future. You have to name your sins and seek forgiveness. There’s no
lifelong, blanket forgiveness; forgiveness is only partial.” If you believe that, of
course you wouldn’t have assurance, because you know you can’t keep yourself
righteous.
Number five: they can’t remember the time of their salvation. That’s true for
most people; I can’t remember. Oh, if you’re like me or many Christians, you
probably grew up in a church, you prayed to be saved a thousand times, and
you were always trying to reach back and find out which of those was the real
deal. You never will know; even when you think was the moment of your
salvation may not have been—maybe a moment you prayed a prayer. But the
divine miracle of regeneration is God’s work, on His schedule, not ours.
So convicting preaching, guilt over sin, understanding a high standard of
holiness, misunderstanding the gospel, not accepting full and complete
forgiveness, no memory of the time of your true salvation—those things can
tamper with your assurance.
Number six: strong impulses of the flesh. You keep going back to the same
sins. Have you noticed? You don’t all of a sudden come up with a brand new
sin. People say to me, “Why do I do the same sins?” The answer is because
they’re ingrained in you. That’s the character or the lack of character, but
that’s the nature of your sinful flesh. You have sins that you prefer; you go
back to them also because you have passed carnal fulfillment in those sins.
When you think about the strong impulses of your flesh that seem to be making
you recycle those same old sins, you might say to yourself, “Maybe I’m not
really saved.”
Number seven: a failure to see God’s goodness in your trials. What do I mean
by that? Well, you find out you have cancer, you find out you have to have
heart surgery, and you say, “Why is God doing this to me?” Or one of your
children denies the faith. Or you thought you had a girl that you wanted to
marry, and she shunned you. Or you had a career in mind, and a goal in mind,
or an objective; it could be a whole lot of things. Life is full of disappointment,
and you can get on sort of the pity side of all of that and say, “If God’s
supposed to be my Father and bless me with all spiritual blessings in heaven,
why is this happening to me?
It’s a failure to see God’s good hand in the trial. It’s a failure to go below the
trial to the providence that’s unfolding. You have to understand that life is full
of those things. But Romans 8:28, right? That’s why that verse is so popular.
God orders all things so that they work out—for what?—for good to those who
are the called.
So all of those things can trouble you with regard to assurance. But there’s one
other thing that is the dominant reality, and it’s just simply this: sin and
disobedience. If there is in your life the appearance of sin and disobedience on
a regular basis, you will forfeit your assurance, for the reason—some of the
reasons we just mentioned: guilt and familiarity with those sins. But also I
have to tell you this: If you’re walking in disobedience, the Holy Spirit will
withdraw that assurance. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,” right? So if
you’re not walking in the Spirit, you’re not going to experience love, joy, and
peace.
We want assurance, and it’s for those reasons. Let me just kind of lay it out
simply: We want assurance because with assurance comes peace, joy, praise,
love, gratitude, strength, patience, purity, hope. With assurance comes love,
joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control—all the fruit of
the Spirit. We want that. We want assurance because we want those wonderful
spiritual blessings.
But you’re not going to have them if you’re sinning and disobedient. If that’s
going on in your life in some kind of routine way, even though the dominant
tyranny of sin has been broken because you have been made a servant of
righteousness, if you see continual pattern of sin for a season or a time, that’s
going to take away your assurance; and honestly, it should. The only accurate
evidence that you’re a true believer is righteousness and godliness of life—not
as a perfection, but as a dominant direction. Let me show you this.
Now we’ll come to Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 2. I want to go back to this,
and we’ll make a few comments. Verse 4, we remember this: “God, being rich
in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us”—again, everything
is divinely designed, planned, initiated, and achieved—“even when we were
dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you
have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the
surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
This is a description of our salvation and its security. Look at it: God, out of His
mercy, out of His love, made us alive with Christ by grace. We have been raised
up with Christ; we are seated with Him in the heavenly places in Christ, which
means we have a place in heaven. That’s what Peter meant when he said we
have an inheritance waiting there. That’s all said and done. And in the ages to
come, the Lord will pour out surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward
us in Christ. So that’s the reality of our eternal salvation.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; not of yourselves, it’s a gift
of God; not as a result of work, so that no one may boast.” But then this: “For
we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” As surely as He
predetermined your justification, He predetermined your sanctification. God
prepared beforehand your good works, that you would walk in them.
Justification and sanctification come together. We are spiritually transformed;
our lives are dramatically changed. It’s not just that God declares us righteous
by covering us with the righteousness of Christ; He transforms us. That’s what
verse 10 of chapter 2 is saying.
Now I want you to go over to chapter 4, which is where we have been for the
last few times in Ephesians. And I draw you to verse 17: “So this I say, and
affirm together with the Lord”—Paul and the Lord agree—“that you walk no
longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind”—you don’t
walk that way anymore.
How do they walk, and how did you walk before your conversion? Verse 18,
“darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the
ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; they, having
become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of
every kind of impurity with greediness.” OK, that’s a description of
unconverted people. They walk like pagans, because they are. They’re futile in
their mind, empty, darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of
God, ignorant, hard-hearted, callous, and given themselves over to sensuality
for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.
You look at the world around you, the unrestrained world in which we live now,
and you wonder, How can people be so dissolute, so reprobate, live at such an
aggressive level of going from one transgression to another as fast as they can
possibly go? It’s because that’s who they really are.
And the last word in verse 19 is very important. Unconverted people pursue
sensuality and impurity “with greediness”—they never have enough. They’re
greedy, they never have enough.
You and I, as believers, may sin, but we’re not greedy to sin. We’re not longing
to sin, lusting to sin. We don’t have this dominating greediness to go to the
next sin and the next sin and the next sin and the next sin. How do I know
that? Because verse 20 says this: “You did not learn Christ in [that] way.” You
don’t live like that; you don’t think like that; you don’t function like that. Yes,
you can fall into sin and disobedience, and you will forfeit your assurance; but
if you’re a true believer, those are the exceptions to your righteousness. And
you don’t pursue sensuality and every wicked thing with intense greed. You
didn’t learn Christ in that way.
Verse 21, “If indeed you have heard Him, have been taught in Him, just as the
truth is in Jesus”—and here’s what you learned: “in reference to your former
manner of life, you lay aside the old self” when you come to Christ. That old
self “is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit.” But you have laid
aside the old self, and you have become “renewed in the spirit of your mind,
and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in
righteousness and holiness of the truth.” That’s exactly what 2:10 says. God
has ordained that we walk in good works. Here, God has created us in
righteousness and holiness of the truth. We are dramatically different.
When Paul wrote Ephesians, he also at the same time wrote Colossians. Turn
over to Colossians chapter 3, just a few more thoughts. Chapter 3, verse 1, “If
you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where
Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above,
not on the things that are on the earth.” This is exactly what Peter says. Add to
your faith moral excellence, which is virtue and all those other things that we
read. “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” You’re a
completely new creature. And “when Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then
you also will be revealed with Him in glory.” That’s security. When Christ
comes in glory, you’ll be there. Because you were raised with Christ, because
you were seated at the right hand of God with Christ, you’ll be there when He
comes to reign.
“Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality,
impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is
because of these things that the wrath of God will come on the sons of
disobedience; in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.”
You once walked that way, “but now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath,
malice, slander, abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another,
since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new
self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the
One who created him.” I mean, the language here is so rich. You have been
transformed, totally transformed, and you see the reality of that in your
righteousness, in your godliness, and in your virtue, even though it falls short.
Now back to Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1: “Therefore I, the prisoner of the
Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you
have been called.” Walk worthy of this calling. This is a calling of—salvation
call. Walk worthy with this calling, consistent with its godly and righteous
nature.
Verse 17, again, “Walk no longer as the Gentiles walk”—not like you used to;
don’t go that way. Chapter 5, verse 2, “Walk in love, just as Christ . . . loved
you.” Verse 8, “Walk as children of Light.” Verse 15, walk wisely. In other
words, this is a call for obedience. This is the definition of the Christian life: It’s
a walk; it’s a step at a time, one step at a time, peripatein, from which we get
the English word peripatetic, which means to walk around. We live the
Christian life one step at a time, one day at a time, one moment at a time.
Romans 8, Galatians 5, says we walk in the Spirit. Second Corinthians 5 says,
“We walk by faith.” Second John—3 John says we walk in truth. First John
2 says we walk as Christ walks. This is the evidence of true salvation; this is
the evidence.
And that is what Paul says. Go back to chapter 4 of Ephesians. Since you have
laid aside the old self, verse 22; since you are being “renewed in the spirit of
your mind,” verse 23; since you have “put on the new self” that had already
“been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” and bears “the
likeness of God,” verse 25—“therefore,” this is how you live, this is how you
live. You “[lay] aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor,
for we are members of one another.” You’re angry, but you don’t sin; “don’t let
the sun go down on your anger.” You “don’t give the devil an opportunity.”
Verse 28, you don’t steal anymore, you share. Verse 29, your speech is not
filthy, it’s edifying. Verse 30, you “don’t grieve the Holy Spirit,” who is grieved
by unrighteousness.
Yes, you were sealed for the day of redemption; that’s your security. But if you
want to enjoy assurance, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor
and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one
another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other”—and this is the key. It doesn’t
say, “If you do this, God in Christ will forgive you”; it says you do this because
“God in Christ”—what?—“has forgiven you.” You don’t earn your salvation, but
this is how it is manifest.
So that’s the character of this section of Ephesians that we barely touched; in
fact, that was one page in my notes. But the messages is simple and profoundly
important: The Lord wants you to enjoy your salvation, not just in heaven but
now. He wants you to have peace and joy and hope and assurance, even
though you’re under the powerful preaching of the Word of God, even though
you understand the high standard of holiness, even though you feel strong
impulses of the flesh, even though you battle with sin. This is the Christian life.
We are new creatures. We struggle to live fully as new creatures because our
bodies are not yet redeemed. But you need to understand—your salvation is
secure, and you can enjoy the assurance that comes with true obedience.
Father, we thank You for Your wonderful Word. Everything is laid out so
specifically. We don’t define our salvation by some mystical, esoteric feeling.
The confidence and assurance that we are saved comes to us by how we walk
one step at a time, as we walk in the Spirit, walk in the truth, walk in love, walk
in light, walk in wisdom, walk worthy—one step at a time. And as we do that,
blessed Holy Spirit, You assure our hearts; the Spirit of God shows us we
belong to You, O God. The Spirit shows us. He gives us internal comfort—not
just the external comfort of Scripture truth, but the internal comfort comes to
an obedient Christian directly from the Holy Spirit, who declares to us that we
are the children of God. And it’s in that fullness of joy that we can and should
live.
And we pray, Lord, for everyone here who doesn’t know the Savior, that they
would come to Him. Grant them life, Lord, for Your own glory. May Your people
always be adding to their faith the kinds of things that bring assurance, and
with it, all the joys of heaven on earth. For Your glory we ask all these things,
and seek Your strength. Amen.

Ephesians 4

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Ephesians 4

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