Those Justified Then Live Sanctified

Transcript

GR 2222
11/03/2019
Those Justified Then Live Sanctified
Romans 6:1-2; Ephesians 2:1-10; 1 John 3:1-10
Gil Rugh

We’re going to the book of Romans in your bibles. And we’re coming to the beginning of chapter 6.

There’s much more that could be said in any of these sections of Romans because of the depths of the truths that are being covered. But we want to move along, and they provide perhaps of there things that come to your mind for you to delve into more deeply. It’s of utmost importance, I think, that we understand and have a firm, thorough grasp on the truths that are unfolded in the book of Romans because this is the in-depth development of what we just had presented in some simplicity and maybe abbreviated way, the gospel of Jesus Christ. If we’re not clear on this, everything else will become muddied and it won’t get clearer, it will get more muddy. I was reading one writer that was using the illustration of when you tramp around in a stream where there’s clear water. You tramp around in there and it gets muddy. The more you tramp around, the muddier it gets, the less you can see. Sometimes that’s the way people deal with the word of God.

So, we want to be clear on the subject of the gospel. We have the brief outline that we’ve looked at a few times because we’re coming to a new section. It’s just one way to look at the book of Romans. The major sections between the introductions and the conclusion. Condemnation, you have to understand the issue of sin. People haven’t come face to face with the reality of their sin. They deny their guilt although they are aware of their guilt. And Romans made clear, that clear beginning in chapter 1:18 – 3:20. Not that they don’t know the truth, but they suppress the truth. Whether it’s the general revelation of God in creation or the specific revelation of His word. The attitude of fallen men is to suppress that truth, corrupt that truth. But refuse to submit to that truth and believe. But having established the condemnation of all, that includes all and the Jews which had special revelation. That includes why we have general revelation, particularly in chapter 1 of Romans, and special revelation to Jews, who had the word of God. But just having that word didn’t make them any cleaner before God, acceptable to God then the Gentiles. And in a real way, the Jews were more guilty and were handling the special revelation of God’s word, in a similar way that the Gentiles were dealing with the revelation of creation. They suppressed it. They did not respond to it in faith and submit themselves to it. So, you have the condemnation and then as God is so merciful and gracious, if all that He told us is that we were condemned and going to hell and was going to leave it there, we’d just live lives of empty despair. There would be no out, no help.

But Justification is the second major division, begins in chapter 3:21 and goes through chapter 5:21, where we have just worked through. And He unfolds in detail how He could be just and the justifier, remain true to His own character, as a just God and yet declare us righteous by providing His Son to be the savior. So, through faith in Him we could have the work of Christ applied to us. We come into chapters 6,7 & 8, we come to the doctrine we call, sanctification. Ok, we’re sinners under condemnation and God has provided His righteousness for us in Christ. What does that mean for our lives and how we live? How are people, who have been declared justified by God in Christ, to live their lives? There will be a radical, dramatic transformation that begins in the heart where God’s cleansing, making new, takes place. So, He’s going to unfold the details of God’s work in our salvation that has set us free from the power and control of sin, to live now under the control of God and His righteousness.

An area of great confusion in the evangelical world, there’s confusion over what the gospel is and somehow ideas have entered in that. How you live the Christian life is just out there for everyone to figure out. But God is just as clear in laying out His plan and provision for how we live new lives in Christ as He was on the provision that He made in Christ. We’ve talked about this before. The whole area of sanctification and dealing with life, often given over to the realm of psychology and counseling. The whole issue of Christian counseling has exploded. How did the church get by without that for centuries of time? Somehow, we just can’t cope with life. We can’t live life, even as God’s people. Somehow, we’re going to reach out and mix in the thinking of the world with the scripture. Not for how you’re saved, but how you are sanctified, how you now live your life.

Sanctification, the word comes as you’re familiar, sanctify. The word sanctify, the word holy, the word saint, all come from the same basic Greek word. It means to be set apart. Now we are a new people, set apart from sin and so on. Details of that will come out. Something’s wrong, people have been made new in Christ, have been transformed. God’s salvation, it’s total package is complete. It includes our sanctification. Somehow even believers seem to be having an awful hard time living out their new life in Christ. They can’t get by without, you know, I need… and we end up more like the world. The world prides itself and who their counselors are, and you know, those stars and so on, they’re proud to tell you that they are in counseling. We’ve got all kinds of pills to resolve everything. You say, how is a believer different? Somehow, we jump off of the word of God because we think it’s not sufficient. It’s sufficient for our justification but it’s not sufficient for living the reality of life.

Kind of like we dealt with in going through Ecclesiastes, that has it’s great bright days and has it’s terribly dark days. And I can’t cope. Wait a minute! We have a God who is unable and don’t make the connection. Well, we have drugs for physical problems. I’ve recommended the book, a couple of us were talking about it. I was talking earlier before the service on mental illness and how we get duped into things. We ought to be careful; we have a biblical view here on this whole area.

We’ve had a battle over Lordship, the lordship of Christ and what that means. There are still people who come out of IHCC that are still muddled in a puddle. It’s not so confusing for a believer. For the unbeliever, this is all confusing. For a true believer who has the Spirit of God indwelling them, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, we have been given the ability to understand all things that God reveals. That doesn’t mean immediate full knowledge of everything, but as we come to the word of God and seriously study and work through it and allow the Spirit of God to guide us and teach us, it comes together. We don’t have to look to the world. They’re out there on their own. They don’t have a clue, as we’ve seen in Ecclesiastes. Insanity can characterize them. There’s no rational. You have to begin with God and a relationship with Him and work out there. Somehow believers think the world has something to offer. And we run to them, even as believers, to deal with facing life.

So, the doctrine of sanctification is crucial. John Calvin, the reformer, said something important on the connection of justification and sanctification. He’s talking about Romans. And he says throughout this chapter, “the apostle maintains that those who imagine that Christ bestows free justification upon us without imparting newness of life, shamefully render Christ asunder.” In other words, justification and sanctification are not the same thing. But neither can they be separated from one another. That’s why often in sermons as we study the word, talk about the fact that if you’re having certain issues and certain problems of life, you want to back up and find out if you’ve ever experienced salvation, justification. Because sometimes you have people that have grown up in the environment or been exposed to the environment and made adjustments to fit the environment, but the heart has never been changed. So, they just can’t cope and figure out how to live the life that they are supposed to live, and so we look to the world. I’m always concerned, the person is not dealing with life relatively biblically. Understand we’ve been through Ecclesiastes, it’s a great book, but even Solomon says, you come sometimes on days where you say, I wish I was never born. But that’s not where you live your life day after day. And God has made provision for us to live differently.

That’s why scripture can talk, come over to 1 John 3. In this chapter, it starts out about talking about the love the Father has bestowed upon us, which we just observed in such a real way. “The love the Father has bestowed upon us,” 1 John 3:1 “that we should be called children of God,” that’s who we are. We are the children of God. That’s why as we talk about when we’re not functioning as we should as God’s family, it’s a reflection on Him. And He not only expects, He requires that we deal with it. The world doesn’t know us, because it doesn’t know Him. So, we don’t go to the world to look for spiritual solutions. God in his common grace has provided, as we talked about this morning. We’re thankful for medicine and the physical problems that we can get help with today. God has allowed men to find out, discover even though they can never come to complete knowledge of things.

So, we benefit, but the world doesn’t know Him. We don’t go to the world to solve our spiritual problems. We’re to learn how to live godly lives. The world has nothing to offer. Anything they offer is a counterfeit. The Devil is great at that. I have something to offer you, but it’s not real. The world doesn’t even know us because it doesn’t know Him. 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, now we are children of God.” There are greater things ahead for us. One day we will be like Him, when we see Him. When He comes to gather us before Him. The fullness of God’s redemptive work will be realized in us. So, look at verse 3, “And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” That’s our responsibility. We decide positionally in Christ we have been cleansed but in our daily life, it’s a process.

But you see, something’s been changed. Now I want to live a life that reflects the character of the God to whom I belong. I am His child. I don’t fit the world. The world is clueless, doesn’t even know me as I truly am. But we purify ourselves, so you see the goal and desire of our life. This is why we’re not on a crusade to try to get the world to clean up itself, to be more pure. We’d all like that, there are benefits that come to the nations. Sin is a reproach to any nation. We are saddened to see the openness display of impurity. But the reality is, we can’t fix that from the outside. That’s why we are doing it with the gospel. What we do have, is the cure that God provides. And when you become His child, now purity can become a characteristic of life. When we invert that, we undermine the gospel. The gospel becomes one of the solutions. The right supreme court, the right president, the right senator, the right… that is where we think this will fix things. And then we begin to deny the gospel. We started out where everyone is apart from the saving work of Christ.

And he goes on to talk about practicing sin. And Christ came to take away sin, verse 5. He didn’t come to provide, to rescue us if you will, provide escape from hell. Rescue us from that terrible destiny and then leave us on our own to try to make our way the best we can until we’re gathered to His presence. Some Christians live like that. That’s not life. 1 John 3:5, “And you know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him,” that word, in every Christian abides. There’s a misunderstanding of the doctrine of abiding. In some older writers like Andrew Murry and others have written with a misunderstanding that some Christians abide, and some don’t. Every Christian abides because it’s a mutual abiding. He abides in us and we abide in Him. We don’t have time to develop that. Verse 6, “No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.”

Here’s the dividing line. People think sometimes, no one who abides in Him sins, now these present tenses here, no one who is abiding in Him sins. Sins, present tense here, indicates that’s where they live. Obviously, any Christian sins. That’s clear, but we don’t live in that realm any longer. In fact, sin stands out as a blot. It’s something out of character. That’s why sometimes when a believer sins, we say, I’m shocked, I didn’t expect that. No, we didn’t! We’re saddened by it. Like David, it’s not where he lived, so to speak. But he got off track and he committed sin. But that’s different. The unbeliever lives in that realm. Christ came to rescue us from that realm. We’re going to see this in chapter 6 where “the reign of sin is ruling over us,” controlling us, has been broken. Verse 7, “Little children, let no one deceive you.” We’re listening now, He’s talking to the children of God. We are the children of God. He calls us the children of God, “the one who practices righteousness is righteous.” Wait a minute, He declared me righteous, yeah but that’s not all He did. He transformed me on the inside so that I could be righteous, that I would partake of His nature, His very character. As Peter says, we are “partakers of the divine nature.” Can that happen and my life not be transformed? That’s what he says, “don’t be deceived, the one who practices righteousness is righteous.”

Now note, you don’t become righteous by trying to practice righteousness. You have to be born into it. That’s when you are born again. You must be born again. Born from above. Now you can practice righteousness. The world turns it around and says, I’m doing everything I can to live righteously. I keep the 10 commandments, I take communion, I do all that because I want to be a good person. No, you can’t do it. It’s got to start with the new birth. Verse 7, “Just as He is righteous.” 1 John 3:8, “The one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning.”

So, we have the two families. The family of God and the family of the devil and the two shall never meet. I mean, you can’t blend them. They are not going to be a blended family. It can’t work. The devil has nothing in Christ. Christ has nothing in the devil, these are two separate families. Verse 8, “The one who practices sin is of the devil”… “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” When we get into Romans 6, you’ll see why. This is what Romans 6 will develop in detail. Verse 9, “No one who is born of God practices sin.” That’s not the character of their lives. It doesn’t say they never commit a sin, because back in chapter 2:1 of 1 John, Paul says “if any man sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Peter and John were very close to Christ. Peter sinned on a couple of occasions, at least, that we are aware of in scripture. Paul had to rebuke him in Galatians 2 it’s recorded, but you don’t live there. No one who is born of God, we could say, lives a life of sin. Verse 9, “Because His seed abides in him.” You note what the difference is here, because you’ve been born of God. His seed abides in you. That’s the picture of being born. God’s seed brought about the birth, so that we could be born into His family, partake of His character. It is a supernatural truth.

So, you can’t live in sin. That’s why, when you talk to someone who professes to be a believer but they’re living in sin, you have to take them back. Well it’s not that simple. No, because we like to muddy the waters, stomp around in it. So, it seems a lot more murky than it is. I don’t see anything murky here. Oh, you can’t see my heart, you can’t judge me. No, but God can. Here’s what He says. No one who is born of God, practices sin, because His seed abides in him. It’s an impossibility. I want to impress this because when we go through chapter 6 of Romans, we see it from a little bit of perspective. But it’s consistent with the word of God in all it’s parts. He can not live in sin because he’s born of God. It ought to be clear, just not a realm in which you were born into. Anymore that you can fly in the air like an eagle, you weren’t born into the eagle family. It’s just not a possibility. But eagles can, because eagles are born to be eagles. God’s children are born to manifest the character of God. This is sanctification.

So, it’s not murky, you know why? God says the water is clear, verse 10, “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious; anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother,” is not of God. We’ve got a lot of fake Christians. That’s what he says. Just like the Jews thought they were righteous and the children of God, God’s people. Jesus said, “you’re of your father the devil.” How do I know? You do just what he does. Same thing in John, chapter 8.

So again, we want to be careful. Sometimes we as Christians think we’re being kind and understanding by allowing them to tramp around in the water of the puddle, muddying it, and then we can’t see anything clearly. Then say well, I guess I don’t know. We need to come to the clarity of the Word. It’s clear. That doesn’t mean a Christian sins, you’re not a believer, it’s obvious. No, let’s sit down and talk about it. Do they realize it’s sin? Do they love God and love the brethren? They’ll pull out that periodically they will go to church. Oh yeah, I trust Christ, but I don’t feel you need to go to church. Well how do you show your love for the brethren? God’s children love God’s children. Yeah, I go to a church. I mean it’s…well you know, I don’t think that church believes the word of God. Yeah, I know, but there’s some good people there. Oh, you love those people? That tells you where you are. Some of these things that we allow to cloud our thinking do not help things and we’re not a help to people. We’re trying to be so understanding. We ought to do it in a loving way but that doesn’t mean allowing them to act like the word of God is not clear. “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God nor the one who does not love his brethren.” Verse thirteen, “do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you. We know we have passed out of death and into life because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death.” That’s where he lives. That word “abide,” the word that talks about where you live. We use it that way today. Where’s your abode? May be a little archaic but same idea. That’s what the word means, to abide, to live someplace. If you don’t love, you live in the realm of death. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding him. We know love by this, He laid down His life for us. Little children let us not love with word or deed but in deed.” You see where we’re going? We’re calling the biblical doctrine of sanctification when we see it from John. Come back to Ephesians.


Ephesians we’re going to chapter two. I won’t take as long with this but you’ll see it’s saying the same thing. The chapter opens up, Ephesians 2, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” Everyone. That’s where we started out in Romans. There are no exceptions. “All have sinned.” “There’s none righteous” until we are redeemed through faith in Christ. “You formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,” you see there, the devil. The devil’s child. You walked according to his desires, his will. You thought you were free. You needed to be set free. When Christ sets you free, you are free indeed. “The prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” You see how God characterizes the unbeliever? That’s one who’s living a life of disobedience to God. So, they’re called sons of disobedience. They partake of the character of disobedience, and who is the ruler of disobedience? The devil himself. That’s the realm that he rules over. “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” And we all lived there formerly. We were just like the rest. Just like the rest of the world.

So, this idea, I don’t understand what’s going on, I can’t believe. You know why? We’ve let go of our firm grip on these biblical truths. The doctrine of sin and where people really are. We are taken aback. When God’s restraints are progressively loosened, look where the world goes? And it goes there rapidly. In a semi-profane world, they talk about “going to hell in a handbasket” but there’s a literal truth to that. It just breaks out everywhere. How did we get here so quickly? Well, restraints were taken off the human heart’s desire. People that had external morality had no different internal condition than the worst of sinners because “the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things.” Only God knows it. Jeremiah 17, 9 and 10. That’s the reality. What rescued us, verse four, “God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us even when we were dead in our transgressions.” That’s what he said in verse one, “you were dead.” Spiritually dead, cut off from God, me a baptized Methodist baby. My Dad who had pins for not missing a Sunday in his Presbyterian Sunday School, clueless. Clueless about life in Christ. I was ten years old before my Dad ever came to know Christ. What were those pins good for? He showed up on Sunday. Did he ever learn the truth? Dead.

We need to realize this is where the people we are dealing with are. We’re not trying to clean things up. We’re not helping them to live their dead life. They’re dead spiritually. Until they hear the Gospel, they can’t believe it. Until they believe it, they can’t live it out. Anything else is undermining and eroding the foundation. That’s why when the Christian church, the evangelical church, that broad term, using it for churches that claim to be bible-believing in the doctrine of sanctification, begin to merge it with the ideas and teaching of the world, we’re just eating away the foundation. And when the doctrine of justification collapses on it, well, we wonder how did that happen? We brought the world in to the biblical truth of salvation because we didn’t think what the bible had was adequate and sufficient for dealing with life. It’s a constant battle.

I talked with a pastor who was also president of a university, a college. We were having lunch and he said, ‘Gil, our college does not need a department of psychology and counseling, it needs a department of sanctification.” Great. Twenty years later they advertise that they have the largest Christian counseling program in the country. What changed? I thought you needed a department of sanctification. Well, people want this. So, for them to come to our college, we need to give them what they want. We’ve lost something. I mean, I’m where you were twenty years ago. Remember our lunch? We need the doctrine of sanctification. Now you pride yourself. You can get your degrees in counseling which is the merging of the world.

We can’t forget these truths. Why do we keep going? You know its been ten years since we did Romans. We’re doing Romans again. Why? Because I think we could lose our hold, our grip. How do these people get to where they are? Somewhere along the line we started to hold some of these truths. Remember Paul told Timothy, ‘hold these things fast.’ Have a tight grip on them. It amazes me how quickly Christians get unsettled. Well I’m not sure. There may be something to this. There may be something to that. That’s why the elders have a solemn responsibility to guard the flock. “From among your own selves’ men will arise speaking perverse things.” They don’t come out….oh, these are perverse. There are things that are contrary to the truth, but they look alright. They look good and they come from good people. Ephesians tells us it’s a matter of death and life. You have to be removed from one realm to be able to live in the other realm. Now look at verse eight. “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” I tell you I’m going to go more brief here, I can’t help myself. Verse eight, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” I think he’s talking about the gift of salvation there. Salvation is a gift. We’ve seen that in Romans already. It gets further emphasized in the Scripture.

Now look at verse ten. We’ve been saved by faith on the basis of God’s grace, as a result of God’s grace. “Not as a result of works, for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus.” Now what’s next? “For good works.” If you get the order reversed, you don’t have the true biblical gospel. That’s why Paul starts out Galatians and says anyone that puts works as necessary for salvation, cursed to hell. There’s no middle ground here. There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t care if it’s an angel from heaven. Cursed to hell. Now note this. It’s “for good works which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” It’s part of our salvation package, living a new life. That’s not something I might get at, at a later time, like it’s optional. Like you know, you buy a car and you can get options. You have a house built and you can get options.

Salvation is a package. That’s why John Calvin, the great reformer said, “you cannot have justification without sanctification.” But they are different. One is the result of the other. God prepared the works beforehand because it’s His intention we walk in them. That’s why I want to be clear. Where is this believer? Want to go back? How terrible that I’m sitting with a person who claims to be a believer, maybe even grew up in this church, but they’re walking like an unbeliever and I talk to them like they are a believer. I want to be clear, something’s wrong here. You say you’re a believer by your own testimony. Your life has been a life of sin and continues to be. Now there’s a liar in here. It’s either you or God, and it isn’t God.

So, we have to get down to the basics. God tells us what His children are like and those who have been saved by Him. You know what it is like. As a believer you walk and you do stumble, even the misuse of the tongue and that. But you’re convicted by it. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have done it that way. Sometimes we still want it for a while. We have to be careful because sin not dealt with has a tendency to grow on us, to get a hold on us. It spreads into other areas. We’ve talked about that. David for a year, but no, you can’t stay there. So ultimately, I want to be careful. Do you think I’m saved or not? I can’t see your heart. I can only see the evidences. If you are a believer, you’re obviously where you shouldn’t be, and you need to get it fixed. If you’re truly a believer, you’ll really want to get it fixed. If you don’t that will tell you where you are.

So, you see the place of works. We could look in Titus as well, Titus, chapter 2 “the grace of God has appeared.” It says it teaches us to “deny ungodliness.” You note, God’s grace teaches. What it teaches is God’s grace didn’t come…

This is where we will pick up. Come back to Romans 6. We’re not going to get very far in Romans 6 but that transitions here. The grace of God teaches us. But it doesn’t teach us that we can now live a godless life, sin all you want for there is remission. No! As I’ve shared a theology professor who was president of a seminary when I was there said, “when you are saved, God changes your ‘wanter’.” The very center of the desires. There’s something different. He teaches us to deny ungodliness. We want to live holy, righteous lives. That’s where we pick up in chapter six of Romans if you’ll note, verse one. Just introduce this verse, to see the connection. “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?” Where do you get this? Well, at the end of chapter five Paul talked about the fact that where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. Verse twenty, “the Law came in so that the transgression would increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more so that as sin reigned in death, grace would reign through righteousness.” You see those realms here, and you can add more to each realm as you look into the Word. Sin reigned in death. Grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life. Well, you know, the Law came in and it magnified sin because it revealed sin more clearly. Because there were all these specific commandments, you could see how consistently we break. But God’s grace was great enough to magnify that, so maybe grace and my sin is an opportunity to magnify God’s grace. Well, wait a minute. That’s getting to be somewhat inconsistent. Back up to chapter three. Paul evidently had accused of this. Verse eight of Romans three, “why not say as we are slanderously reported and as some claim that we say, let us do evil that good may come.” Now we’re going around.

You know in those days you didn’t have immediate communication. You know you could use letters, but they could take weeks and so on to get where they are going. You know, you’re going to have it transferred from one place to another and carried on a ship and all this. But some people, oh yeah, I know Paul. I’ve talked to Paul. I’ve sat under his teaching. He teaches that God’s grace is magnified when we sin because now we can testify, look how much I’ve sinned and yet God’s grace says it covers that. You know Paul summarizes that. They deserve to be condemned to hell. I mean you see how scripture divides the line. The end of verse eight when he says “their condemnation is just” you know what he’s talking about. Same thing as the Galatians. They deserve to be condemned to hell for so twisting the gospel that grace becomes licentiousness. Now some have a misunderstanding. If you don’t believe we have to keep the Mosaic Law, you’re antinomian, you’re anti-law. All these things get confused. That’s why we want to be clear.

So back in chapter six, verse one. “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may increase?” So, life goes on now, but we can declare forgiveness. Oh yes but let me tell you how you can have that same sin. If I continue to live in sin, then God’s grace continues to forgive me, so you see you take an element of truth and you misuse it and you corrupt the gospel. The answer is “may it never be.” King James translated that “God forbid” but the word God or name God is not used but they wanted to give the force of it. It’s something you can’t even think of. Such a thought is inconceivable. That’s what Paul was dealing with in chapter three. Anybody who somehow twists the gospel truths as an excuse for sin is revealing how truly lost they are. The fact that they would have access to the gospel and deal with it that way shows they deserve to go to hell. By God’s grace, some who twist the gospel were eventually saved by that grace, but they are not saved when they are twisting the gospel. And the question is, how shall we who died to sin still live it? You see, you don’t understand the gospel.

We looked a little bit ahead like in Ephesians two. That’s where he’s going now. Beginning with verse three, he’ll explain how we died to sin because a misunderstanding of sanctification is a misunderstanding of how we were justified. It takes death. So, the misunderstanding in sanctification shows a more basic misunderstanding of what the gospel really is and what it means to have the work of Christ applied to our life so he’s going to walk through the details here. You see how a misunderstanding out here may have a faulty foundation back here. That’s why if we don’t maintain a firm grasp on the details of the gospel we’re out here trying to deal with the doctrine of sanctification by merging the thinking of the world and dealing with problems of life and living with some verses of Scripture and think now we’ve got a Scriptural cake and we’ve poisoned the cake. You don’t help God out by merging the thinking of the world with the truth. What God has provided for us is adequate and sufficient, so we leave it there. “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” It is not a possibility.

That’s where we were in 1 John and where we were in Ephesians. There is no salvation that does not transform a life. Now remember. Salvation doesn’t come by you trying to live a transformed life. You have to experience salvation. In some ways you know this confusion, this is the danger of growing up in a Christian home, in a Christian church, being exposed to truths, like the Jews who were exposed to the Word of God. That can have somewhat of a dulling effect and only God can open the eyes, so we don’t change the gospel. But we pray for our kids, we pray for young people who grow up in the church that the Lord will open eyes. For the workers with those children to handle the word of God accurately so the Spirit of God can use it in time to open eyes. But it’s never the solution to move from the sure foundation of God’s Word.

Let’s pray together. Thank You, Lord for the riches of Your word. Lord it is a treasure entrusted to us. We are to guard the treasure entrusted to us. We are to hold it fast. Sometimes it seems like the pressures around us seem to be loosening our grip, but Lord we want those pressures to drive us to the Word, not drive us away from the Word. We pray for the week ahead of us. The days that contain things we have planned for and things we haven’t planned for. Lord may we walk with wisdom that only You can give. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.