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Begin to read this evening in the Epistle to the Romans and chapter six. Epistle to the Romans, chapter six. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein? Or know you not that all we who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin.
For he that has died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more. Death hath no more dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once. But the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey the desires thereof. Neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves unto God as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? God forbid.
Know you not that to whom you present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants you are, whom you obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness. But thanks be to God that whereas you were servants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto you were delivered. Being made free from sin, you became servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification.
For when you were servants of sin, you were free in regard of righteousness. What fruit had you then at that time? In the things whereof you are now ashamed. For the end of those things is death. But now, being made free from sin and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification and the end eternal life. For the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. Or don't you know, brethren, that I speak to men that know law, how that the law has dominion over a man for so long a time as he lives.
For the woman that has a husband is bound by the law to the husband while he liveth. But if the husband die, she is discharged from the law of the husband. So then if, while the husband lives, she be joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if the husband die, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress, though she be joined to another man. Wherefore, my brethren, you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you should be joined to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God.
For when you were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were through the law wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were holy, so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter. The Lord give us understanding of this difficult but important part of his holy word. Tonight, if I may begin by confessing one thing before you, one little secret, I tell you it quietly, that I shall have to be very careful what I say, because tonight I preach in the presence of one of my bishops.
Mr. Cartner, I see here, and his wife, and he is one of my elders. It's really good to see him here and kind of him to come, but if I seem a little tongue-tied, you'll know what it is. Preaching in front of your bishops is sometimes a difficult thing. And when we broke off our, uh, study on the last occasion, we were together thinking on the topic of baptism, believers' baptism. How we came to be doing that was this. We had been reading in Romans chapter five that God gave his law, not so much that people would keep it and earn their way to heaven.
He gave his law in order that the transgression might abound. You see, that chapter had told us that sin was already in the world, even at a stage when men had no positive commands to obey or prohibitions to observe. Sin was there. But unless men would be made conscious of their sin and how bad that sin was, they wouldn't perhaps be moved to come to God to be saved from sin. Just as it is possible, isn't it, for us to have a very serious disease in our internal organs and yet never go to a doctor because we haven't realized that the thing is there.
So God gave his law that the sin which was inside should now be made apparent, and apparent as the evil thing it is, as a positive transgression of God's holy law. He gave his law then that the transgression might abound, but he wasn't afraid to do it. He was aware that in his grace there was resource enough to meet whatever transgression came out and to save us, in the sense of forgiving us, yes, and more, in the sense of delivering us from those evil habits of ingrained sin.
Gave his law then that the trespass, the transgression might abound, but where sin abounded, the grace did much more abound. God's grace more than enough to cope with all our actual and potential sinfulness. And then Paul comes around to imagining somebody is saying, oh, Paul, but if there's enough grace to cover all my sins, does that mean I should go on sinning? That God's grace may abound. God is good at forgiving, Paul.
If he likes forgiving, if it honors his grace that he forgives my sins, however many they are, well, why shouldn't I go on sinning? Then God will get a bigger opportunity to show his grace. God forbids this all. How shall we who died to sin live any longer than it? And of course, it brings from us the retort of, what do you mean, Paul, we died to sin? In whatever sense can it be true that we died to sin? So that's where we came in to talk about baptism and what Christian baptism means.
And we were observing, along with Paul, that Christian baptism is first a burial and then a resurrection. The person goes down under the water. That's a burial, but comes up out of the water forthwith and immediately, that's a resurrection. And of course, God has designed it that way. Let us be careful to note it, because baptism is meant to be a very vivid illustration. That's why we should never change the form, should we? It's meant to be a very vivid illustration of the way God leads us into a holy life.
So let's ponder it for a moment. Baptism is, first of all, says Paul, a burial, an indication that the person being baptized has died and is now being buried. You say has died? In what sense? Well, in this sense. Don't you realize, he says, don't you know that as many of us as were baptized unto Christ were baptized unto his death? Every believer believes, doesn't he? Christ died for our sins.
Christ died for me, so that I can be forgiven. Hey, but wait a moment, what does that mean? Christ did the dying, so now I can go on living in sin? Oh, indeed not. Oh, indeed not. There is no such gospel. Let me point out to you how it is that God can count Christ's death to our account. How can God's holy law accept the death of Christ instead of me?
When I was the one who did the sinning. The answer to that is this. When we receive Christ, when we believe Christ, Christ and we become one. And therefore, what happened to Christ can be counted as having happened to me and to all who believe him. Because there is a gentleman over here, and when he became twenty one, he inherited a hundred thousand pounds from his great-grandfather.
Him. Now it is. It's nothing to do with the girl around the corner who lives at number forty two Ada Street. Do with her whatsoever. She's nothing to do with him. The hundred thousand pounds is his. So when he inherited it, well, it meant nothing to her. Legally, nothing to do with her whatsoever. Ha ha ha. But suppose this young gentleman, this young gentleman I want to do, is walking down Ada Street one day and catches sight of this good young lady and admires what he sees and presently proposes, uh, that, uh, tremendous question, and the two get married and become one.
Well, now, of course, the fact that he inherited a hundred thousand pounds is very much to do with her. In the later government, that way it'll be a lot more to do with her too. Yeah. And there was a time, mark it well, there was a time when the death of Christ had very little to do with us. The fact that Christ died on the cross doesn't mean we are automatically saved or automatically forgiven. It is possible that Christ die on that cross and men and women perish.
When does that death become valid for me? When I trust him. When he and I become one, and forever and forever in the sight of God's holy law remain one. No prospect ever of divorce, but one forever with Christ. Because I become one with him. And God regards legally as what has happened to him at Calvary happened to me. He died for my sin.
That means then I die too. When a believer is baptized, he is now saying, yes, that's right. Christ died, but not for his own sins, he died for me. My sin was such an evil and bad thing that it brought Christ to death and the grave. Then I take my place with him. I own the justice of God's sentence.
I too deserve to die and be buried. There can be no thought, can there, of a true believer saying, since Christ died and took the penalty for my sin, I can go on living in sin and he can go on taking the penalty. That is impossible. A man that talks like that is just not a believer. But then at the same time, we notice that, uh, baptism is not only a burial, it is a resurrection. That too is meant to be a very vivid illustration.
It would be a somber thing, wouldn't it? If when people were baptized, they were put down under the water and left there. That would be a solemn thing. But certainly that's not how it happens. Baptisms are the happiest funerals you could ever attend because they are, uh, followed immediately by resurrection. And the person comes out of the water, that too is a part of the symbol, part of the meaning. It is, so to speak, enacting a resurrection. What for? To put a cry across the second half of the gospel. Christ died for our sins, and we who trust him legally are counted as having died with him.
But Christ rose again the third day, and we who have received him and are joined to him possess now a new life. So that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. I ask you to notice what that phrase means, newness of life. It isn't just a pious wish that perhaps this new convert will now change a little bit. It's far more than that.
It is saying that our mighty Savior has risen from the dead. All that wonderful new life. Think of him one moment dead, his body dead in that eastern sepulcher, bound hand and foot with the grave clothes. Stand and watch in your imagination that tremendous new surge and incoming of life that brought that body out of the grave. Newness of life indeed. This verse is saying that that new life is available to all who have received the Savior.
Was not just talking about turning over some new leaf. It means what it says when it talks of a newness of life. A new source and kind of life. This is what being saved is. It's coming into contact, yes, more than contact, it's coming into union with a living Lord Jesus Christ. He's not merely believing a text of a Bible, though that is very important. It is receiving and being joined with a living person.
That then is going to be the sort of the basic secret of a Christian's holy life, symbolized in our baptism, dead and buried because of our sin under the judgment of God, rising again to live in the power of the life of Christ. Now, if we're going to do this, get used to doing it. What we shall need to do is to get whole bits of knowledge into our heads. Now, I know that's not perhaps as exciting as you hoped it was going to be.
You hoped I was going to say that when you come to receive Christ, you will have four beautiful experiences of lovely feelings inside you, and that could be true, and couldn't. If we are going to walk as a constant habit in this newness of life, one of the secrets is getting really clear hold in our heads of certain bits of knowledge. Would you look at them, please, so that you can, if you, if you one of those that marks your Bible, mark these bits. Verse six, knowing this.
And verse nine, knowing that. And verse sixteen, don't you know? And chapter seven, verse one, or are you ignorant? Don't you know? Four things God wants every believer to know. May I say it again? The business of living a holy life is going for many of us to be a lifelong business of learning. It shan't be perfect overnight.
Learning to lay hold of and use the power that is available to us. It's going to be a long process, and some days we shall seem to do it well, and some days we shall do it not so well. And when we thought the last five years we've been progressing very well, we shall suddenly strike a patch when things don't go quite so well. Yes. And let me tell you, because my hairs now are, are, are nearly as gray as some of my elders are. Don't you imagine because you have overcome every sin up to date, if you have, that you have thereby overcome every sin there is.
There are some sins in your life, some wrong attitudes you may not even discover are there till you're forty five. And believe me, if you dare, that there are some sins that old age is liable to that young folks would never think of. You haven't won your battles, all of them, by the time you're twenty five. You'll be fighting battles against sin until you're ninety five and a half. There will always be the need to lay hold of our armory and to know the facts, so that in the all the warfare, whatever the feelings are, we may have behind us, strengthening us in the fight, God's solid facts.
Knowing this, knowing that, knowing the other, and knowing the fourth thing. Well, the first thing, uh, we are to know is this, verse six: Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that we should no longer be in bondage to sin. For he that has died has been justified from sin. Some of you may have a different translation there, so let me read that again, my, so we get clearly what it is saying.
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified, not is crucified every day of the week, was crucified. Is crucified is old English, it's a past tense. Was crucified, says the Greek. Was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be annulled, put out of action. For he that has died has been justified. Notice the term from sin. I'm saying now, ah yes, now. First thing I've got to know is what has happened to this old man.
Knowing that our old man was crucified, please, who is our old man? Surprising a variety of opinions exist about who our old man is. We need to get it weighed up very carefully. The Bible's here telling us our old man was crucified. Not is to be crucified every day of the week, was crucified. When was he crucified? When Christ was crucified, then. Was crucified. It's past. Now there are some folks, you know, as I say, I say it kindly, get into despair sometimes over these verses.
They are taught that the old man represents our bad, evil nature. You know, that bit of us that wants to sin, wrong desires, wrong thoughts, evil temper, jealousy, envy, spite, all the nasty bits about us. And old man in English seems a very good term to put on that. They readily think old man means the nasty bits about us. And then they hear the Bible say that our old man was crucified. That sounds a bit odd to start with. And then they hear a preacher say, look here, the Bible says that your old man was crucified with Christ, therefore he's dead. And if you're dead, well, you can't be alive, can you?
I mean to say, a dead man's dead. If a dead man's lying in the gutter in the street, he can't feel anything, he can't hear anything, he doesn't see anything. And the Bible says, says the excitable preacher, that your old man is dead. And the person in the pew says, that's very funny, but mine isn't. My temper, envy, spite is very much alive. How are we going to understand it? No good cheating ourselves, is it? Deceiving ourselves, pretending that the nasty bits about us are dead, when in fact they're very much alive.
So let's try again. Who said the old man is our temper or our envy or the nasty bits? The Bible says here that the old man was crucified. Tell me, when Christ was crucified on a cross, how much of him was crucified? Whole lot, wasn't he? The whole man. Tell me, you who were baptized, you believers that were baptized, when you were baptized, if you can remember that day or night or whenever it was, which part of you did they baptize?
The nasty bits? No, so well, no, no. Whole lot, didn't they? Yes, the whole lot. Lock, stock, and barrel, the whole lot baptized. Yes, of course. You see, it's a mistake to think about us like that as a old man being the nasty bits, and if only we could get rid of the nasty bits, we should be left with some other man that was the nice bit. I know. The old man is me, the whole lot of me, as I was, without Christ, born David Gooding, blue eyes, you know, five foot nine tall, uh, moderately handsome looking, uh, but a a terrible bad temper and all sorts of ugly things about him, but on the other hand, quite a decent chap if he was in the right mood, the whole bang shoot of him.
When God's law caught up with him, it didn't say, David Gooding, you know, on the whole, you're not a bad chap. It's just this little nasty bit about you here. Now let's let me take out that nasty bit. Oops, now it's out. Now you're pretty decent. No, indeed it didn't. It looked David Gooding straight in the face, and it was said, you know this man Gooding, he's a sinner. And the penalty of sin is that the man who did it must die. All men. Not just the nasty bits. Of course, the law of the country takes the same view too, doesn't he?
Suppose one of these days, and God forbid it happening, but suppose one of these days you get into a fit of temper and you knife somebody and kill him. And suppose by that stage they have, uh, put back capital, capital punishment for murder, and you stand in the dark, and you are found to be guilty of murder, and the judge goes to pass the sentence on you, and you say, half a minute, your lordship, you know, I myself am pretty decent, I am a pretty decent chap, and really it wasn't me that did it, it was my bad temper, you see. I do have just that little fleck of a bad temper, and sometimes it blazes out that I can't control it, and that's what happened this day.
The man, uh, I killed, he called me some horrible words, and I lost my temper and killed him, but it wasn't me. On the whole, I'm a pretty decent chap. What's that got to do with it, says the judge. Perhaps you are a pretty decent chap. You say it's your temper made you kill him? But then I must tell you, you shouldn't have let your temper make you kill him. And we shall not hang your temper, we shall hang you. And the prison, prison officers won't merely bury your temper, they'll bury you. And our old man is not some nasty little bit inside us, and the rest is all nice.
The old man is the complete man, as he was born into this world, a fallen creature, the complete man, condemned by God's holy law to die, be executed, and buried, and finished with. Know it, says God. That you, the old you, the whole of you, and all your ugly deeds, past, present, and future, and the lot. You as a child of Adam. You came under the sentence of God's law. You agreed it was just.
As far as God's law is concerned, you were condemned, executed, buried. Oh, this is radical stuff, isn't it? You will notice that at this stage we're still dealing with God's holy law, and our situation before that holy law. Our old man was crucified. You see, he that is dead has been justified from sin. You say, what does that mean? Well, that means this. Suppose you, as I say, have been charged with murder, you've been convicted, the judge has sentenced you to death, they hang you, and they lay you out on the prison floor.
Well, now you're quit, aren't you? What would be the good if one of the warders came up suddenly, uh, or one of the lawyers bewitched and beguiled and said, half a minute, don't bury him yet. We just found out he not only murdered his grandmother, he murdered his mother-in-law as well. So what? What will they do? You say they have to somehow haul him up and hang him again, don't we? Of course not. Now, once a man's dead, he's quit, as far as the law of the land is concerned. And all the wonderful thing is this, I wonder, would you get it, you who believe in Christ?
You, as a child of Adam. Because you have received the Savior, God's law counts it this way, that you, the old child of Adam, are finished with, done with, passed beyond God's law forever. He that has died has been justified from sin. I Go want and to grab add that. There used to be a page in God's ledger up in heaven with my name on. Gooding, born, I won't tell you when, but a long time ago.
Entry under my name. And under the name were all the things that old man Gooding did. If you had eyes to see that ledger tonight, do you know what you'd see? Struck out in red words, account closed, prisoner died. And you say, that's a funny thing, I saw him walking down Broadway this afternoon. So you may, but as far as God's law is concerned, the account's been closed, the prisoner's been executed. Dead and buried. The law has no more to say to him.
So how can it be? Because I trusted Christ, my good friend, and God's law counts it, legally counts it. What happened to Christ happened to me. Oh, what a marvelous thing that is. At the start of one's Christian, Christian career, to know it, that I'm in that sense, cripple. The long penalty of the law, because the penalty has been paid. You say, but what's that got to do with my leading a holy life? What this, my good sir? You couldn't even start up to live a holy life unless you were quit, could you?
Let me use an illustration. Here's a man. He's gone into business. He's decided times are rough, so he's come opened a shop, and for a while it all goes well, and then something or other goes wrong, and the man can't pay his bills, and he's bankrupt. Oh, so he wa- wakes up this Thursday morning and says, you know, I'm bankrupt, I can't pay. Oh, too bad. But guess what? I'll close up here, and I'll open a different shop next door. The law will say, no, you don't, old boy. Don't do like that.
That's no good at all. You can't just walk out and say, well, I'm bankrupt, I can't pay the state, so I'll forget about that. I'll, I'll, I'll start up again and do my very best now to have a successful business. Oh, useless. The law won't let you do that. Not until you have been discharged from that law can you even begin to set up again? You want to live a holy life? Let me tell you, you'll never do it. You haven't any legal right to begin. Until the question of your debt before God is settled, and you get clearance in his court to begin again.
This is the very basis of Christian holiness. All that I am in of myself as a child of Adam, I accept absolute right off and mancraft. In and of myself, I'm not hoping that I shall at last improve so that God will accept me. I'm saying, no, I was such a failure. David Gooding that used to be was such a failure that he had to be executed dead and buried. That's it finished. And the law says, yes, well, I'm satisfied. I'm quit, and I'm legally quit to begin again with a new life.
That is this life of Christ that I'm talking about. So? And now you say there's another thing I want to know. You see, I did certain sins and wrong things and failings before I became a Christian. And I can see that, of course, the penalty of those things was death. But you say, what worries me is this, that since I've become a Christian, I have done some other wrong things. And now and again, I still do, I still fall and fail and sin.
You say, now what about those ones? Now that's the point. You say, do I have to die again? So to speak? Well, that's a very important point to know, isn't it? Because let me tell you, I'm not encouraging you to sin, but we must be realistic. It's no good exaggerating and getting all sorts of unreal ideas in our heads. The most ardent believer that is keen to live for God and live a holy life will from time to time fail. In many things we all fail, says Jane. What happens when I fail?
Does the law come down on me again? Must the penalty be paid again? What is the position? Oh well, this is fact number two you want to know. Not only are we to know that our old man was crucified, we are to know the second thing, this, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more, death has no more dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin. Once, not twice, once, only once. The life that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Even so, in that very same way, reckon you also yourselves to be dead unto sin and alive to God. So we've got to know this. Christ paid the penalty. He died to sin, that is, he bore our sins in his body and paid the penalty. He died to sin. Once, he's never going to die again. Now that he lives, he lives to God. Because you are linked with him. God wants you to get it and know it, please, and count yourself to be in the same position as having died once, now alive to God.
It is the penalty of the law is forever behind you. There is now no condemnation. You'll never be asked to pay the penalty of sin any more than Christ will be asked to pay the penalty of sin. He did it once, he died once, never again. In that same way is the believer equipped, free of the penalty, and alive to God. You know, you say, well, I don't quite see how this is going to lead me to a holy life.
It, it gives me, of course, great security to, to know that there's no more penalty, but I thought, Mr. Preacher, you were going to tell us the secret of living a practical holy life in day-to-day living. Ah, yes, but not quite so impatient. We'll come round to it yet. There is the fact that why some folks don't live a very happy Christian life, or holy for that matter, is because they haven't got these legal things straight yet. And when as a believer they fail, then I fall into the misery of the Slav despond because they think, well, that spoiled everything, now I'm going to, I shall have to give up now because you see I've gone and sinned again, see?
And Satan will say, yes, you have, yes, yeah, you are. I mean, you to call yourself a Christian in the first place was rather absurd, and now, of course, you've gone and fallen, so now you might as well give up. And they get down in the mouth and the misery and worried, and of course all their spiritual strength and joy in the Lord goes. And when we lose our joy in the Lord and our spiritual strength and confidence, of course we start sinning more than we were before. So it will pay us to get these legal points straight. In fact, we shall find this as verses twelve to fourteen footy. Herein is our strength. Let not sin therefore, reign in your mortal bodies.
And you shall obey the lust thereof, neither present your members as, uh, unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves unto God as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God, for sin shall not have dominion over you. Why not? Oh, you say because you're free, full of the Holy Spirit. That's not what it says here, is it? That's what we shall have to think about on Saturday, God willing. But what is said here is, sin shall not have dominion over you because you are not under law, but under grace.
Well, let's consider what we have to do as believers. We're like a lot of soldiers, aren't we? And we've got a lot of weapons. Five fingers on this hand and five on that, and a tongue and goodness knows what else. All of them members, weapons that we've got to use. There's a question of whose side we're going to use them on. Are we going to present them to sin, to let sin rule them, or are we going to take these weapons and present them for God, for God to use them. In the moment of temptation, I'm called upon, as every other moment of the day.
But in a moment of temptation, when I have all sorts of urges to do this or say the other that I know are wrong, then what I'm exhorted to do is to take my members and present them to Christ and say, oh look, Christ, I shall be overcome if you don't help me. You use them. Ah, now that's the theory, and believers do try to do it, don't they? One of these days, uh, I forget, and uh, I yield my members to unrighteousness, to sin of some kind, and then what? Oh, I say I've ruined it now.
Ah, gone and done the o- old thing again, you say. Now I have lot of it. I can't live well now, it's no good. So what? So I might as well go on doing the wrong thing, mightn't I, you know? Might as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb, mightn't you? And sin once more establishes its supremacy and reign over you. Because you think, well, I have no more, I've gone and done it again, and I, well, that's useless. Don't let it do that, says Paul. Don't let sin reign like that.
You needn't. Why not? Because you are not under law. Please notice that it doesn't say not under the law, but under law. So what on earth has that got to do with it? Well, this. Law as a system is a very serious thing, isn't it? God's law in the Old Testament. It doesn't just say to us, now I shouldn't tell lies if I were you, you know, it isn't really a nice thing to do. It says, thou shalt not tell lies, and if you do, the penalty is death.
God's holy law doesn't merely say, now try hard, try a bit harder today. Love the Lord your God with all your soul, mind, and strength. Go on, have a go and try to do it a bit harder. It doesn't say like that. It says, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength, and if you don't, God will curse you to your face. Now here's me, even as a believer, and I'm joined to Christ, and I wake up Thursday morning, you know, like I wake up some mornings a bit bleary-eyed.
Ooh, the thought comes to me now, I've got to get up. And I've got to, I've got to love the Lord my God today with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. And I've got to do everything perfectly. And if I don't, God's law will curse me. Justly curse me. Do you know what I should do? If I were under God's law, I should say, oh well, I can't get up then. Well, yes, you smile, you may be a ton better than I am or something near perfect, but in the realities of the thing, if I were under law, I tell you straight, I shouldn't get up.
I should say, what's the use? I shan't last out the day, shan't last out the morning. Me do everything perfectly this Thursday morning? Ah, that's no good. My elders may, but not me. Therefore, I might as well stay in bed. Ah, but if I tried that, that ploy, the law would say gooding, if you don't get up, I shall curse you for staying in bed. Yeah. I haven't got any option whether I will serve God or no. God commands it. If I were trying to face my Christian life under law.
Well, the first time I made a mistake, I say, well, that's finished now. I'm going to go dive in the river or something. Uh, I'm finished. I, I've earned the penalty of the law. It's done. I should be forever defeated, and sin would reign, wouldn't it? You know, there are many folks walking the streets of Belfast, they'd like to be saved, only they say to themselves, ah, well, it's no good, there's no good. I did make a profession once, but then I fell, and uh, well, just that's no good. I- I- I've broken it all, and uh, that's a finish it. So now what? Well, I say you might as well be killed for a sheep as a lamb, might you, mightn't you?
I- I mean, that's my resistance, so I- I don't try these days at all. Just go on sinning. Or if I speak to a believer here present tonight, won't you listen to God's word? Won't you learn these facts? Sin needn't have dominion over you. It's possible for you to get off and start again as a believer. Why? Because the penalty of sin has been paid. I'm not telling you sin doesn't matter. Sin matters a lot. And if we've got away from the Lord and gone into sin as Christians, there's no penalty, but coming back can be difficult, can't it?
And the lessons we shall have to face can be. But courage, brother, you can do it! And you're free to do it. You're not chained by the penalty of the law. You're free, thank God, thank Christ's sacrifice, free to get up and begin again in the path of holiness and in the school of Christ. Don't let sin have dominion. Don't let it keep you down. For it needn't. Poorly as you may have done, however full your Christian life has been of mistakes, at the very moment you can say, sorry, Lord, now I'm coming back.
Now let me start again. You're free to get out. And some of us, if we'd be honest, we've had to do it a thousand and one times. We've had to start again. Poor old Abram, he wandered off on times, didn't he? He went off wandering around Egypt, what circles he did make. But mercifully, he came back where he started, began again. And all Christian life is the story of ten thousand and one beginning again. There are some days I have to start again, I don't know how many times.
I don't know about you. And I'm free to do it because I'm not under law then, but under grace, um, um, hmm, well, of course it doesn't matter if we sin, does it then? You're saying, Mr. Preacher, are you, that, uh, oh, well, it doesn't really matter after all if you sin, you just say sorry and... No, I'm not saying that at all. You would get me wrong and Paul wrong if you thought that. I'm saying if you have sinned as a believer, you can confess it, and you're free to get up and go again, because you're not under law.
But I'm not saying that sin doesn't matter if you, it doesn't matter if you go on sinning. Why not? Well, says Paul, let me use an illustration. It isn't a perfect illustration, says Paul. But I speak after the manner of men, because it isn't a perfect analogy, but it'll do. Don't you realize that to whomsoever you yield yourself as servants to obey, his servants you are. That's a very simple psychological point, isn't it? But it is the fact. If you keep on obeying somebody, you will become that somebody's slave.
Yes. You know how it is, don't you? At work, somebody comes along and says, do this. Look, you see, but you do it. And the next day comes and do this, do that. Look cheek at the man. It's not the foreman telling me what to do, but you do it. You want to look out because it'll come the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and when you've done it, uh, three hundred and forty four times, it's going to be very difficult to say no again the three hundred and forty fifth. There were some wise, good Christian men when I was a child. Victoria, Queen Victoria had died in those days, but, you know, and their object lessons were somewhat limited, but they used to try and, uh, illustrate it to us kids that sin, constant sinning, forms a habit that you can't break, and they could do it by the old well-worn illustration of pulling a bit of thread around a chap's arm, you know, he could break the first strand, and then he put two strands around, and he broke them.
But when they tied it round a hundred times, even the tough kids couldn't, hmm. His slaves you become. Oh, my dear fellow believer, we're not under law, we're under grace. You want to be a slave because you're under grace? Go on sinning. Go on yielding your members to sin. The very fact you repeatedly do it will turn you into a slave.
Of course it matters. You want to be free? God wants you free. And if you'll allow Paul just to carry on his analogy, it isn't the very best that anyone thought of, but he himself says, oh, I do, you know, I speak out for the manner of men. The best thing to do is to make a habit of holiness, to make a habit of yielding to Christ. Because you then become his slave. They put me on a diet last year. They thought there was too much of me, and I had to be cut down.
My friends warned me that it would be terrible, you see. Terrible sticking to this diet. It was, in a way, but I found very soon it was more terrible trying to do the splits. If I kept by the rules and said, no, that was that. I tried to indulge one day and be strict the next. I lost count of which day I was meant to be on. So indulged all the days. Yeah. Your safest way, says Paul, is to yield your members to Christ and become his slaves.
And that means, in a practical sense, yielding yourself to his teaching. I mustn't liken any of you to jelly. That's the last thing I would do. But, oh, I don't know who it is going to do this talk on, on cooking. I also know one or two things about cooking. How to make jellies with knobs on, like jellies you have, you know, those lovely looking things, you see. You simply get, you don't have to cut the knobs out. You thought that. Not at all. Of course, you don't cut knobs out of jelly and make all those beautiful knobs on the top. What you do is get a mold, you see, and you pour the stuff in, into the mold, and then put it in the fridge, and it all goes hard, you see.
And when you take the jelly out, it's taking the shape of the mold. You don't have to do any cutting whatsoever. It's easy, this housework stuff. And the jelly didn't have any difficulty getting knobs. Got them by being, allowing itself to be poured in the mold. Yeah, I don't mean you're jelly. But you know, if you can trust Christ, can you trust Christ? Can you trust him that when he commands something, it's for your good? Or are you one of those people that when you meet a commandment in his words, ah, well, no, I don't see the point of that, and uh, and why should I, and uh, I don't think that was meant for me, and and start making all sorts of reasons why you shouldn't.
What you're saying is you don't really trust Christ. So you see, if only you could trust Christ as a believer, when he said something, let yourself be jelly. To that extent, let him pour you into the mold of his word. And that will begin to form your character. And if you keep on making a habit of it, you'll become a veritable slave to Christ. You'll find it's the way to freedom. One other thing, the other bit of knowledge that we should ought to know. Once more, we're back with the law.
Paul wants now to come to tell us what is the very happy, most intimate secret of a holy life. He's talking particularly to people who once were Jews, who were under the law, Moses. Their method of trying to live a holy life was to take that law as it stood on the page of scripture or on the tablets of stone, and just do their best to try and keep it. They failed, of course. And some of them, when they failed, would like to have got a divorce. Ha ha ha. But God says, no, you don't. You can't just walk away from God's holy law because you don't like it.
Oh no. Take one particular example, the law relating to marriage and divorce in Judaism, just because you didn't, uh, like your husband, you couldn't walk off. He might be a bit grumpy as you and demanding, but you couldn't walk off. You were bound to your husband as long as he or she, as long as he or you lived. Of course, if the man died, then you were free to marry somebody else that was far more pleasant. But so long as he lived, you were stuck with him. Of course, if you died, that was a mess of a release too, wasn't it, one?
Uh, uh, you, I mean, other than death, you couldn't get out of it. And of course, God's law was always like that. No good saying to God, God, I can't keep your law, therefore I don't intend to. Because God will hold you to it. The only way of getting quit of God's law is to suffer its penalty and die. The marvelous thing is that in the person of Christ, because we've been joined to Christ, then for us the penalty has been suffered, and we have died. What for?
Now to go our own sweet way and say, I've got my freedom at last? No, indeed not. So that being free from the law in that sense, we should be married to another, even to Jesus Christ who rose from the dead, that we might thus bring forth fruit to God. This evening we've been talking about hard legal things, but let us just pause a moment to begin to let this new principle sink in. We'll come back to it, God willing, on Saturday. Though there is a true legal basis for Christian holiness, the heart of the matter lies here.
The secret of living a holy life is to let it be an affair of the heart. I mean that, an affair of the heart between you and the lover of yourself. Have you ever come across a couple when they've just been, uh, started courting or newlyweds? She's got his trousers pressed, and she's been studying what he likes for birthdays, and he's been studying the particular flowers that she likes. Never would have done it before, cost your bachelor he was.
Uh, but now you see, it's all this affair of the heart business, and he's wanting to please her, and she's wanting to please him. They'll do the crank, well, I mustn't say that, they'll do the loveliest things just to please one another. Last does God design a holy life to be. Not my trying to keep some hard rule, but an affair of the heart between me and Christ. Oh, you can count it sentimental if you like. Saying, Christ, now, is there something you'd like changed in me? No, well, I, I, that was pretty disgraceful today, wasn't it?
I'm sorry about that. I can't change it myself. Would you, in your mighty arms, embrace me and put your life in me, that I might bring forth your fruit to God? There is a part of our personality that should never be ceded, not to anybody. While the human personality in its most intimate is a marvelous thing, and God gave it to you, don't you let anybody ever trespass on that inner personality of yours.
Be yourself, save for one. The blessed Lord and the lover of your soul invite you to let him penetrate that very shrine of your personality. So, as Paul puts it, it's I. It is no longer I, it's Christ. In me. An affair of the heart. By which I become strong. And full of his life.
Thus to bring forth fruit to Look God. up. The Lord low pass bless his is word. one of them.
