Word of Salvation – October 2018
B.C.24 – New Life, New Life-style
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp
Scripture Readings: Matthew 7:13-29 & Romans 6:1-14
Text: Romans 6:1,2
Introd: Last time we examined the Bible’s teaching of justification by faith alone.
The teaching that God declares us righteous on the basis of faith alone.
But it’s a teaching that has always had opponents.
Rome has traditionally opposed it… claiming that it makes God a liar.
How can God call a sinner holy?
How can He declare the guilty, “Not Guilty”?
Others oppose it because they say:- this teaching breeds carelessness.
It’s hard enough to get people to live Christian lives.
Parents find it enough of a battle to get their children to shape up.
Without telling them that the Christian life is not about what we do!
Here is this key Biblical doctrine that Christ has done it all… that it is all a matter of GRACE.
It is totally GOD’S work… He provides our salvation – all of it from beginning to end.
Surely that’s dangerous… that breeds carelessness.
“Don’t worry about Christian living… because Jesus has done it all!”
The apostle Paul deals with this problem… he could just imagine someone saying:
If sin provides the opportunity for God to show His graciousness… then let’s sin a little more!
That way God will be able to show even more graciousness…!
Another common reaction (to the preaching of grace) is that people say:
Yes… but we really should put more emphasis on the OUGHTS of the Bible.
That’s what’s important:
That we ought to live God-honouring and God-fearing lives.
That we ought to be obedient to the Ten Commandments… God’s will for us.
That’s far more profitable than always talking about faith and justification.
After all on Judgment Day we will be judged by the works we have done.
So please… no more justification by faith alone sermons.
Instead preach on texts such as: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling…!
That’s what our young people need to hear too, to sort out their lives.
Lay it on the line for us that this is what God demands from us.
–
A] THE NEW LIFE.
- Article 24 of our Belgic Confession deals with these problems.
It spells out loud and clear that you can lay down the law all you like
and you can stress the OUGHTS of the Bible till the cows come home
but that will not change people’s lives…
at least… not in any significant way that really matters.
At most it will bring about some external conformity… a bit of an outward show.
Instead we are told that it is precisely this justifying faith we have been talking about…
that brings about the real change in people.
It does not breed carelessness about godly and holy living.
Instead it is just this which produces a God honouring lifestyle.
Our faith, we are told, is not a vain… a futile faith…. but it is a faith that does something.
It recreates and renews a man… it radically transforms a woman.
It changes a foul-mouthed, drunken, wife-basher into a hymn-singing, home-loving spouse and father.
And if you don’t believe that then just consider a few examples.
In the late sixties Charles Colson was convicted as one of President Nixon’s hatchet men.
After the Watergate scandal he was sentenced to a long prison term.
He was a man who had ruthlessly sought power and would go to great lengths to get it.
In prison and afterwards he came to faith in Jesus Christ.
After his conversion he became one of the foremost leaders in the world in prison reform.
His work in setting up “Prison Fellowship” is acknowledged around the globe.
True faith transforms a person.
Eldridge Cleaver was a leader of the Black-Panthers… a black militant group.
And his militant activities eventually landed him in jail.
But that happened because he surrendered himself voluntarily to the authorities.
All because he had had an experience of Jesus Christ.
And in the prison he came to personal faith in that Jesus Christ.
True faith transforms and renews.
- It is important that we realise the close connection between these two key Bible teachings.
Last week we studied JUSTIFICATION.
God’s legal declaration that the believer is NOT GUILTY.
And we saw that this is a statement about the believer’s standing before God.
It is NOT a statement about our inner condition.
We used the analogy of a thief who steals a work of art.
He is caught and tried… even though the painting is never found.
But then the sentence is handed down and the judge says: “Not guilty!”
There wasn’t enough evidence to convict him even though he did steal it.
So his standing before the law and society is that of innocence.
Yet his condition is one of being a criminal at heart.
That is an illustration of God’s work of justification.
On the basis of Christ Jesus being our substitute God says of us, “Not guilty!”
Our standing is one of RIGHTEOUSNESS as far as God is concerned.
But just like that art thief we have an inner condition of unrighteousness.
But now at this point God does something no human judge can do.
No human judge can do anything about the condition of that thief.
The judge doesn’t even have the power to prescribe some counselling.
At least… not once he has declared him “not guilty” from a legal point of view.
But what that human judge cannot do… God does with us.
He not only gives us a right standing… He also begins to change our condition.
When God creates true faith in us thru His word and thru His Spirit
then that faith becomes not only the means by which we are given a right standing with God
it also becomes the means whereby God changes and transforms us.
He causes us thereby to live a new life.
IOW here is the key… the key to the believer’s new life.
It begins with a radical renewal that the Bible calls the new birth.
And it continues thru the whole of our lives
as this new life grows and matures in the believer… a process we call sanctification.
So God not only deals with the guilt of our sin in justification.
He also deals with the power and influence of sin in what we call sanctification.
He gives us a right standing… but then He also renews our condition.
B] NEW LIFE-STYLE.
- Now let’s come back a moment to the matter of us living the Christian life-style.
There is a real problem with trying to bring about Christian behaviour.
We struggle with that on many fronts.
We battle with it in our own lives… as well as in the lives of our children.
We struggle with it in the society in which we live. How can we bring about godly living?
At this point we have to say this quite clearly:
That we cannot have the Christian life-style without this new life.
If the life isn’t there then you cannot have the life-style.
You may want to argue about that:- “Many others around us do good things.”
And that’s true…. by the grace of God man is not as bad as he might be.
But why is it that all kinds of people around us do good things in so many ways?
And can we call the good living of others around us Christian living?
The answer to that is “No!”
It’s a little like the artificial flowers you sometimes see.
They look nice… you can arrange them and make them really attractive.
But there is one thing wrong with them – and that is that there is no life in them.
No matter how realistic they look – that one vital ingredient is missing
It’s the same with the behaviour of those who are not justified by faith in Christ.
Their works may look the same as those of the most dedicated Christian.
Very good and very appealing… but there is no life in them.
The B.C. says: there is no love for God in them.
They may even be done out of self-love… or simply out of a fear of damnation.
You cannot have the life-style where you do not have the life.
In fact this is where our frustration comes in.
We try to get everyone living by the Word of God and by the Judeo-Christian ethic.
We are involved in that battle to change our permissive society.
And we want our children to fight against it and to live Christianly too.
But the trouble is that we lose the battle on so many fronts.
And one of the key reasons is because so often we make this mistake:
We can lay down a code of conduct and we call it Christian behaviour.
And then we try to have people adopt it and live by it.
And all the time their sinful human nature… their condition… has not altered.
That will not work.
It is like trying to stick apples on a dead apple tree.
You grab an apple and a bit of string and tie it on a dead twig. That’s ludicrous…!
- The only way we can get any satisfaction is to pick apples from a live apple tree.
Jesus said: A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
So the new life-style relates to the new life as fruit does to a tree.
The fruit is good only because the tree is sound and healthy.
So we not only encourage our children to do the right thing… to live good moral lives.
But we especially pray that they may know the new life of God in themselves.
And maybe sometimes we should do a little bit less…
in the way of laying down the law with our children…
and a bit more… in the way of speaking of what Jesus has done for them.
The new life which produces this new life-style flows out of that justifying faith.
The same also holds true for our involvement in our society.
It is right and proper for us to seek to uphold Christian principles and Christian morality.
And we should keep doing that – thru protest…. letters… legislation etc.
But we should especially be busy with the gospel proclamation in our land.
For the faith that brings about the new life
comes thou the hearing of the Word of God and the operation of the Holy Spirit.
I was reminded of that very vividly some years ago.
I was involved – via the Ministers’ Fraternal – in a debate about morals in the media.
One of the participants was from what was then called the Aust. Broadcasting Tribunal,
He made a very perceptive comment privately later.
“If you want to change people’s tastes and opinions…
what they watch and listen to and read…
then you’ve first got to change people themselves.”
Good works cannot be good anymore than the fruit of a tree can be good unless the tree itself is good.
You cannot have the new life-style without the new life.
And that new life flows out of the faith whereby we are justified.
C] THE NATURE OF THE LIFE-STYLE.
- At this point we should also consider how this new life-style is then lived out in us.
We must beware of giving the impression that this is something we do…
as a kind of contribution to God for His work of saving us.
We certainly know that this new life-style doesn’t save us.
That God justifies us even before we do anything good.
What then?
We need to avoid two opposite mistakes.
The first mistake assumes that living the new life-style is now totally up to us
It’s as if God gives us the new life, and then says: Now go for it! Produce that new lifestyle!
No! God doesn’t just give us this new life and then leave it all up to us to live out of it.
It is far more wonderful then that.
The other mistake is to think that it is all up to God.
The work of renewal is God’s work… so sanctification and growth is something He does in us.
And so we can coast along…. we can be kind of passive in and thru it all.
God does it in us…. and we really don’t have to do anything. No!
It is true, of course, that in the new birth we are passive.
Just as birth is something that happens to us so is the new birth.
But the renewal that goes on daily – our Christian growth involves our participation.
That’s why Paul calls the Christians at Rome to count themselves dead to sin and alive to God.
That’s why he warns them not to offer their bodies to sin but to God.
We are involved in this work of sanctification… this new life-style.
That’s why the Scriptures are filled with many exhortations to Christians.
The new life-style is lived with our fullest involvement.
We are not passive in it… inactive… we are to devote ourselves to it fully.
- And yet the B.C. makes this interesting observation when it speaks about the Christian lifestyle.
It highlights that there is no merit in our good works…. as if we could earn something by them.
But then it goes further and remarks:
God is not indebted to us for the good works we do but we are indebted to God for them.
IOW the source of those good works….
and the source of the whole new life-style of the believer is in God alone.
That is a very Biblical picture.
Eph. 2:10 says:
“We are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God created in advance for us to do.”
God already prepared the Christian life-style for us to life it.
In fact we could put it even stronger.
Before I mentioned a verse that many people would love to see stressed much more:
“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”
But that very same verse goes right on to say:
Because it is God who works in you both to will and to act. (Phil.2:13)
So we have this situation – Scripture calls us to do all in our power to live a new kind of life.
And yet we recognise at the same time that sanctification too is God’s work in us and with us.
Paul repeatedly pictures it in terms of the life of Christ in us.
In fact… that’s why it’s crazy to say that justification by faith is a dangerous doctrine.
And that it will make people careless.
To say – just go on sinning so that God has even more opportunities to be gracious – is nonsense.
The whole point is that we have the new life.
We have died to sin… and we have been raised with Christ.
How then can we just keep on living in sin?
We have the life of Christ in us – that is what it is all about.
And when Christ lives in us then things have to change…. it cannot but be otherwise.
C.S.Lewis once spoke of it this way:
Many people first call on God to do a little fixing in their lives.
They realise that something is wrong and that they need help.
Like a homeowner who calls in a plumber of a carpenter.
So they call on the Lord Jesus Christ.
But once this repairman gets in the house he doesn’t just fix a leaky tap, or a broken pipe.
He remodels the whole house… installing new windows and doors.
And He doesn’t stop the rebuilding and remodelling until the shack has become a mansion.
We know that this work of remodelling and rebuilding is going to take the rest of our lives.
It won’t be finished until that day when we stand before the Lord in glory.
But until then let us be determined to let Him have His way in our life.
If we have been justified by faith then we do have the new life as believers.
And it is just as certain that we also have the new life-style.
Now let’s make sure that we keep on living it – to God’s glory.
Amen.
BC stands for Basic Christianity. What are the fundamentals of the faith?
BC also stands for Belgic Confession – a document in which the Christian church (in a time of great persecution) spelled out the basics of what she believes.
When Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep it needs to grasp again the basics of the faith and confess them in a world where the faith is increasingly under attack.
Those who drew up the BC declared that they were ready to obey the government in all lawful things, but that they would “offer their backs to stripes, their tongues to knives, their mouths to gags and their whole bodies to the fire” rather than deny the truth expressed in this confession.