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And so, once more, a very good evening to you. Our topic for consideration this evening, ladies and gentlemen, is realistic holiness. It is, of course, common knowledge. We are all aware that the Bible calls on all those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, it calls on them to lead a life of holiness. I have entitled our consideration tonight realistic holiness, because I want to inquire what exactly is the nature of this summons by the New Testament to lead a holy life.
Is it simply an exhortation? Now you have become a Christian and have been forgiven your sins by God's grace, pull your spiritual socks up and try your hardest to lead a holy life. Or is it more than that? Has God's made some provision for us to live a holy life? Is it an addition to salvation? Or is it an integral part of our salvation?
And if so, is it really practical? Is it down to earth? Does it really work? Or is it a lot of old theory that breaks down the moment you try to put it into practice. Realistic holiness, therefore, for those who have become believers. But of course, it has relevance to those of us who may not yet be believers. Perhaps even in these previous lectures, as you have listened to the gospel saying that we are justified by faith without works, you have had your suspicions.
How can that possibly be true? Because if God saves us and forgives us and justifies us and guarantees us heaven at last, and it's all together and simply by faith, and we don't have to do our best to earn it. Doesn't that mean that once you're saved, so to speak, by grace, apart from your works, you can jolly well live as you like, and it doesn't really matter. And therefore, to find out what God's word has to say on this topic, that those who have been forgiven by Christ are expected to live a holy life, and God has made provision for it, is, of course, of extreme importance for those who are debating whether they can trust this gospel, whether if they come to accept forgiveness of sins, it will make a real change in their lives, and they shall find new powers to live as Christians ought to live.
For this purpose, then, I want in your hearing publicly to address a question to the Christian apostle Paul, and then to let him answer the question in the words of that tremendous book about salvation, that is his epistle to the Romans. You'll see when I turn the first pages of what he's written, I hear him almost boasting. He says, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, and why not? Because, says he, it is the power of God unto salvation, and because it works by faith, it really works.
I say, I hear what you say, Paul, but it begs a prior question, doesn't it? You're not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God unto salvation? Then pray tell us, sir, why do we need, why do we need to be saved anyway? If we pose that question to Paul, why do we need to be saved? He will come up not with one answer simply, but with two. The first answer he gives to the question is this. We need to be saved, because until we are saved, we stand, so to speak, with the wrath and indignation of God over our heads.
Our sins have offended the divine majesty and holiness. And says Paul, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. In past sessions of these lectures, we have considered together how the sacrifice of Christ comes there to our, uh, our rescue. The guilt we have occurred before God is real. It is not just some psychological feeling. We are not only sinners, says the Bible, we are guilty sinners.
Guilty because we've not merely sinned, but we have on times committed sin, knowing it was sin, and have done it in spite of it. We've done it, says Paul, in the face of the evidence of God and his power and his holiness. The evidence of creation around us that there is a God. And we have gone on living in sheer ingratitude to God, independent of him, and gone our own way, sinning against the evidence for his existence.
Sinning against the light of conscience that he has placed within us. So that time and again, when we have proposed in our hearts we're going to do this, and conscience has warned us this is not right. We've done it nonetheless. Sinning against God in spite of the light of conscience. And others, like the Jews, who have had the Bible in within reach or even in their hands, and know from the text of the Bible that this or that is sinful, we have gone and done it.
Sinning against the light not only of creation, but the light of conscience and the light of Holy Scripture. We are not just sinners, we are guilty sinners. We have sinned when we need not have sinned. Sinned on many occasion when we cannot claim I couldn't help it. And therefore we stand under God's displeasure, under that great sword of Damocles, which is the coming wrath of God. And just there, Christ meets our need. For the Bible says that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, not waiting for us to improve, but coming alongside us just where we are, while we were yet sinners, while we were still enemies of God, and God loved us, and Christ died for us.
I wonder if you ever read that book, it's a little ancient now, entitled The Road Up to Hell. It was written by a mountaineer, and the story briefly told is that in this part of the Alps in Switzerland, the guides had grown very tired of foolish people trying to climb the north face of the Eiger in the winter. And then when they got stuck, expecting the guides to risk their lives to rescue these foolhardy mountain climbers. So they issued a general public notice that if anybody tried to climb this mountain in wintertime and got stuck, the guides would not come and rescue them.
They would hang and freeze to death. In spite of it, a couple of Italians came and began to climb the face of the mountain in winter, and got two-thirds way up and got stuck, dangling on a ledge. The guards remained impassive. We told them if they did it, we should not come to help. Let them die. But a French mountaineer heard of it, and as quickly as he could, raised a team of volunteers to rescue the men.
They arrived at the spot, they took the mountain railway up the shoulder of the mountain, and then by foot the rest of it, till they were, as they thought, over the place where at least one of the mountaineers was, but they couldn't see him because of the overhang of the snow and had to rely upon signs from the hotel opposite the valley as to where the man might be. They had a big winch. They got it as near the edge as they dare. They called for a volunteer to be tied to the winch and take with him a mountain stretcher.
And then little by little, they lowered him over the edge, down to where the man sat on his ledge. As he reached the man, alas, there was a gap between him and the man, and he thought to swing himself, but couldn't. He had to signal to the people ahead to call him back up again. And the man on the ledge was almost frantic. He couldn't jump the distance between the two. So they pulled him back up to the top.
They moved the winch. Once more he went down, and this time right where the man was, and stood on the ledge and picked him up and put him on his back and tied him, and the man was half crazy with fear and cold. And then the rescuer put his feet to the mountain face and leaned back on the rope and gave the signal, and little by little, as the crew on top pulled him up, he walked up the face of the, of the mountain till he had brought the man to rescue and eventually to life and recovery.
And the story stuck in my mind as a brilliant example of the realism of God's gospel. He comes to us sinful men and men and women that deserve his wrath and indignation for our willful sinning. And he has a salvation realistically geared. He comes to exactly where we are. While we were still sinners and still sinning. While we were still rebels and kicking God in the shins, then God loved us. Then it was Christ died for us and comes exactly where he we are, not asking us to provide some self-help, but prepared to do the saving because he died that we might be forgiven and reconciled to God.
And in the virtue of his sacrifice for us, he can make peace between us and God, so that God can accept us just as we are. As a famous Christian hymn put it, just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come. Forgiveness, reconciliation, justification, all together of God's grace, and not dependent on our works, solely dependent on our repentance and faith, that is grabbing hold of the Savior as ours personally.
So that's the one reason why we need to be saved, and there is God's provision for saving us. Paul concludes that part of his book by saying, because that is so, then it is absolutely certain that we shall be saved who have trusted Christ from the wrath of God through him. But if that were the only part of salvation, it would have a very serious lack, wouldn't it? Our salvation is not merely an entry ticket into God's heaven. There is another reason why we need to be saved. And from the middle of his chapter five, Paul discusses it at great length with us.
And the reason is not merely the bad deeds that we have done, but the way sin has damaged us as people and twisted us, made parts of our personality crooked. It's not merely then that we have done sins. It is the fact that we are sinners. There's something very wrong with this, you know. The old preachers used to illustrate it this way.
They would say, is it the fact that a tree grows apples that makes it an apple tree? So before it grows apples, it isn't an apple tree, but after it's grown apples, it is. Well, of course not. The reason a tree grows apples, if it does grow them, is it, is that it's an apple tree. And if this year, as apple trees are want to do, it goes into a huff or something and doesn't grow apple tree, apples at all, it's still an apple tree. It grows the apples because of its essential nature. It is an apple tree. And ladies and gentlemen, God word, God's word points it out.
We do sinful things because of our fallen nature, because we are sinners. But it follows that when the Bible urges us who have found forgiveness in through Christ to live a holy life, the Bible is being realistic. He knows the damage that sin has done to us, and it points to the marvelous provision that God has made for believers in Christ, realistic provision, that they can live a holy life and learn and be schooled and be trained to progress in holiness.
And I would like you, ladies and gentlemen, for a moment to consider the order in which the Apostle Paul tells us of these two bits of our salvation. First, how to be saved from the wrath of God because of our guilt. Second, how to be saved from the power of sinning. In that order. Now, you know, some people get the order the wrong way round. And people come, some of them very soon in life and some rather slowly, to the conviction that not all is well with them. Their life is ragged, undone, broken, di- unsatisfactory.
And as they think of God, they feel they ought to try and put their lives right. And then they hear of Christ, and they hope that Christ somehow will help them to put their lives right. And if they try hard enough, with Christ's cooperation, of course, but if they try hard enough, eventually their lives will be put so right, or so nearly right, or so nearly, nearly, nearly right, that God in the end might consider accepting them into his heaven. It is a big mistake. Christ isn't in that kind of business. Let me illustrate it to you by an analogy. Simple analogy, don't force it too far.
I want you to imagine a young gentleman. He has been lent a beautiful Lincoln Zephyr or something, or some modern equivalent thereto. Absolute beautiful thing. But, like occasionally you might find a young man, none of you, of course, uh, is a bit stupid in the head, and he likes showing off and, uh, driving at s- uh, uh seventy miles an hour on the motorway and putting it in reverse to see what happens. And one night he's drinking at having had, uh, he's driving at having had too much to drink, and he bashes a thing against a concrete wall and shatters it.
And the shock and the cool of the evening clears his head a bit, and as he gets out and sees the wreckage, suddenly remembers the car isn't his anyway. Borrowed the thing. Now what shall he do? And frantic ideas run through his skull. What will the owner say if he sees his car like this? So he hits upon a scheme. He'll keep out of the way of the owner as long as he possibly can, and he'll find himself a clever mechanic and engineer who put the car right.
Well, nearly right anyway. So at long last, when it's nearly right, he- he- he'll meet the owner, and the owner will say, how are you getting on? Oh, I love the car. What's that little scratch there? Well, I had a little thing, but not much. It's just a scratch there, you see. I hope the owner will accept his excuses. Many folks are like that with salvation, you know. They know their life is not right. And they've heard of Jesus Christ, and they want Jesus Christ to help them make their life better. Meanwhile, they're going to keep as far away from God as they possibly can, and hope they have a long time to live before they're summoned before his judgment throne.
They hope that will be a long while hence because they want to try and improve enough at least, with the help of the Lord Jesus, so that when at last they appear before God, God say, well, you're not perfect, but reasonable, I accept you. It's not like that, ladies and gentlemen. What is Christ's salvation? Well, to use my analogy, Christ will come to the young man as he stands in the wreck of his car, in the wreck of his life. And the young man has now got a clear head, and he knows there's a God, and one day he must meet God. He's hoping to keep clear of God until he gets right.
And Christ will say, no, young man. We don't start first with putting the car right. I must bring you, but you better come and meet God right now. As you stand in the mess that your life is, you must come and meet God, and let God deal with the matter of your guilt and your sin. And glorious news is that if you would admit your sin and confess it, God is prepared to forgive you right now, as you are, and guarantee you that you will never be cast out.
And if you come like that and receive God's savior, God will accept you here and now. What about the wreck, you say? Ah, that's the second stage. First, he will embrace you and give you the kiss of his pardon and assure you that you are forgiven and accepted even as you are, but then he'll take your hand, and Christ will say, now we start on putting the wreck right. I say it's a realistic provision for realistic holiness.
And the first point Paul makes in this part of his great exposition of the gospel is this, that the fact that we are sinners is not our fault. How did we become sinners? The Bible says as following, you'll see. For as through one man's disobedience, the many were constituted sinners. That's how it was. Someone says to me, do you believe the story of the fall in Genesis?
Good sir, good madam, I believe it with all my heart. If you went into an orchard and found one or two trees with blight, you'll say it's, well, it's just an accident. If in an orchard, every year, every year, every year, every year, every tree was blighted and every fruit on the tree was blighted, you'll say this is no accident, there's something wrong with this kind of tree. And ladies and gentlemen, that is the human state, isn't it? Some better than others, but for these long centuries, never have we ever come across anybody completely sinless, except Jesus Christ our Lord.
And for a universal effect, there is, of course, a universal cause. By the disobedience of one, our forefather of the race, the race suffered a catastrophe, and the many that followed constituted in their very nature sinners. Oh, somebody objects. You're not going to tell me that I'm going to be damned for what somebody else did, some Adam or other. No, of course you never will be. It wasn't your fault that you were born a human being.
Didn't mine either. Nobody asked me whether I wanted to be born. I don't know about you. Born of a fallen race. You will not be damned for that. What you would be damned for at last is for rejecting the salvation that God offers you. You see, if it is true that through one man's disobedience we were constituted sinners, then the glorious truth of the gospel is that through the obedience of one, that's Jesus Christ, we can be constituted righteous. You see, we were born sinners by what somebody else did.
We can become children of God through what somebody else did, namely Jesus Christ, our Lord. So now we're separating two things in our minds, aren't we? The first lesson was that we are guilty sinners because we have deliberately sinned, and we are to blame for it. But now we're thinking about a possibility of becoming holy, and we have to face the realistic state of affairs. We have sinned in the past, ultimately because we are sinners, broken, wounded, screwed up.
God is offering us a way of salvation and a way of holiness. And he will point out to us, will Paul, that among the effects, among the damage that sin has done to us, is that it has brought us into three slaveries. What the Bible calls dominations. The slavery of sin. The slavery of the law.
And ultimately... the slavery... of death. And the question is, how can we be delivered... from these slaveries? The main passage we have to consider is, when you first hear it, a little bit complicated. So I'm going to read it to you, if you will listen. And I'm reading from an old translation because you see I am a very old man, as you see. You probably have a better modern translation. Never mind. Check it out if you want to.
I'm going to read to you the verses, the first, uh, fourteen verses of the letter by Paul to the Christians at Rome, and it's chapter six that I read. I warn you, it will contain a number of technical terms. We shall try to explain them later. Romans six one begins, 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 are you ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus 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 by the likeness of his death, we shall be also by the likeness of his resurrection. 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 who has died has been justified from sin.
But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more. Death no more has 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 pity dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lusts. 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. And I concentrate your attention for the moment on that last verse, because here you meet the first slavery that I mentioned. Sin shall not have dominion over you. Sin shall not lord it over you. Sin shall not keep you down captive. Why is that? What is the secret of breaking the domination of sin?
Now, we must be careful here to notice exactly what the Bible says the reason is. For if we weren't looking too clearly at the text, you might come up with this kind of answer. The reason, my dear fellow Christian, that sin shall not have dominion over you is that God has given you his Holy Spirit to strive against your sinful flesh, so that you might, in the power of the Holy Spirit, rise above the temptations. And you know what? That is perfectly true. And because it is true, let me tell it to you now again. The ultimate secret of overcoming the power, the drag of sin, is that when we come to Christ for salvation, Christ receives us, and not only receives us, but by his spirit comes to live within us, so that we have the living Savior with us to strengthen us.
We still have to take the decisions, but he is with us to support us, to strengthen us, to guide us in our ongoing search for holiness. Now, that is perfectly true. Whether we shall get round to talk about it tonight, I know not. Because to start with, we need to think of the other reason why sin shall not have dominion over us. Listen to what Paul says. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.
What does that mean? How is that the secret of overcoming sin? Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. Does that mean that you can say, bother the law, I don't need to listen to it, I can do as I like? No, indeed not. Then what does it mean? Well, let me tell you what law is in the Bible and what God's law is. The Hebrew word for law is Torah, and it means instruction. And God's holy law is marvelous instruction on how to live our lives.
But it's more than that, ladies and gentlemen. God's law is not just instruction. God's law is command plus penalty if you break it. God's law is prohibition, plus penalty. God's law is not just advice. God's law comes alongside us and says, now this is the sum total, this is the principle of the law.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength, all your soul, and your neighbor as yourself. And if you don't, says the law, I curse you in the name of God. Well, I'm a Christian, and I'm not a very good one, but I am a Christian, and I have come to Christ for salvation, and I do trust him, and I have his assurance that I shall never perish, I shall never come into condemnation. But now I really want to please the Lord.
I want to lead a holy life. For Christ's sake, I want to do it. Don't you? You don't take his salvation, his forgiveness, do you, and then say, I don't care what I do? You want to please the Savior, surely. Now here's me, therefore, in bed Monday morning. And when I wake up, can you imagine it? There's the law by my side. The law says to me, goodie, get up. And today, Monday, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, Gooding.
And if you don't, I shall curse you. What do you think I would do? I think I know what you'd do. You'd get out of bed and have a go at it. I've lived too long for that. I should say, sorry, that's a standard. I would love to attain it, but experience has taught me that try how I will, I still come short. If you're going to curse me for coming short, well, then I, I shan't make the attempt. I shall stay in bed. And then the law would say, well, I curse you for staying in bed then. What practical possibility would there be for me under those conditions to begin the pathway that leads to holiness?
I might as well give up before I started. For the first mistake I made, and I say, I'm sorry about that, I'll do better next time. No, you won't, says the law, there won't be another time. The whole thing would be unpractical. If as Christians we were under law. How then does Paul say, sin shall not have dominion over you because you are not under law? How did we ever get out from being under the law? That's a big point, isn't it? Well, to illustrate that, Paul uses our Christian baptism.
I suspect you've seen many a Christian baptism. Mm. And, uh, well, if you haven't, let me tell you what happens. You should go and see the next baptism if you've never seen one. Because Christian baptism is a very interesting symbol. It is, in the first place, a symbolic burial, where the candidate who confesses Christ as Savior is placed under the water like a burial, right under. But it's a very happy occasion, unlike most burials, because it is forthwith followed by a resurrection, you'll see. And, uh, the person is brought up out of the water.
That too is symbolic. It's symbolic of a resurrection. And a Christian who gets baptized is not, uh, proclaiming his eff- as rather specially good, super duper good. No. To be baptized you have to be super duper bad. But what are you saying? What are Christians saying when they get baptized? They're saying this, now listen. Not only did Christ die for me that my sins might be forgiven, but since I have now received him and he and I are one, then God counts me one with Christ, and as far as God is concerned, when Christ died, I died.
And when Christ was buried, I was buried. I died to the law. The law considered my life, do you see, from first to last. And the law, being realistic, said there's no hope for this gooding chap, for if he lives till he's ninety nine and a half, he'll still come short of God's holy standard. He is a failure. He deserves the penalty of the law. All talk of improvement as far as the law is concerned is nonsense. He already deserves to be dead, buried, and executed.
And Christ came alongside. And God in his grace has joined me to Christ. And now God counts it that when Christ died, he died under the sentence of the law, the law's sentence against me, and bore it for me, and because of that I died with Christ, and I was buried with him. You know, if you could go up to the throne of God just now and ask permission to look at the record books, you'd find it very interesting, wouldn't you? You'd turn to the page headed G and ask to find out the record of this Gooding that's been preaching here.
What kind of a chap has he been, you? Telling us to be good. Wha- wha- what what's happened to him then? And if you were allowed to see the record book, oh, you'd see the red ink all over the place, sins against God. And then you would see the pen through the whole lot, and underneath account closed. The accused has died. You'd say, that's funny, because I saw him preaching the other day. Ah, yes. But as far as God's law knows, the law that condemned me to death, I have died.
How, you say? When Christ died under the curse of the law, I died. He paid the penalty from first to last, was buried, and in symbol I take my place with him. I'm buried with him. It's marvelous, isn't it? And that's how I got out under, from under the law. And sin shall not have dominion over me, because I'm not under law. I'm under grace. All the costs, the penalty of my sin from first to last has been paid by Christ.
And I'm free. And that means that when, as a believer, I try to please God and then I fail, I, of course, can confess it to the Lord, and Scripture has it, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and I can get up and have another go. Oh, I thank God for being such a realist as that. You see, to make me holy, ladies and gentlemen, has taken a long while, and I'm far off it yet, but I'm learning. And all the failures and the faults paid for by Christ in advance.
You know, I went to a very old-fashioned school. And, uh, in the third form, we all had to start learning some physics and chemistry. Mind you, it was very Dickensian and crude in those days. But you see, the school had much experience. They were afraid that if some of these boys were to get in the la- chemistry laboratory, they'd blow the whole place up, you see. Ah. So if our parents wanted us to learn chemistry, they had to pay in advance, you see, put down a lump sum in case we blew the place up in the course of learning our chemistry, and if so, the price, uh, had been paid already.
I want to tell you, my dear fellow believer, God is determined to make you holy. The process will take longer or shorter. We shan't be perfect overnight. It will mean a lot of education in the family of God, and God's correction and chastening hand and patience, the learning of his will, learning how to cooperate with the Spirit of God, and in the course of it we shall make progress. There will be many failures. I want to tell you, God has paid for your education in advance. Oh, praise God for it. But God is a realist.
For he has. It's realistic. But because God is realistic, he can't say that my sins as a believer don't matter. My failures still matter, but Christ has paid for them in advance, and I shout hallelujah in my heart. The education of God, educating me to live whole in a holy fashion, is realistic. God knows the material he's dealing with. Christ has paid the expense of it in advance. But baptism, we're told, has another effect.
It's put in this way. We are to know 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. And of course, people, when they read that, are all agog to find out who is this old man, do you see? That the old man, so it says, do you see, uh, uh, uh, is crucified with Christ. Who is this old man? Now here we shall have to go slowly, for if we don't, we shall, uh, make a mistake.
A lot of people, I find, are convinced that they are not just one person, but two. There's the old man, and that's the bad bit, and then there's the nice new bit. Do you see? And they like to think that the nasty bit has been done away and has ceased to exist, and now they're left with the new bit. They like to look upon themselves as a nice rosy red apple that just has a bit of, um, uh, uh, you know, it's gone bad on the side here, speck of badness, do you see? And if only they could get the little badness out, then they'd be left with a nice rosy apple, you see. And so when people make a mistake, they say, that's my old man did that.
They like to think the old man is crucified, but he has a way of living on somehow, you'll see. Funny that, isn't it? You know, that's not true. The old man is not a nasty piece inside us alongside of the nice new man. The old man is the complete me. You've been ba- baptized? You're a believer, you should be. Of course you should. So let me ask you a question. When as a believer you were baptized, which part of you did they baptize? They baptized the old man and left the nice bit...
standing on the side of the baptismal, uh, uh, font. Did they? No, you say, when I was baptized, the whole lot of me was baptized. Oh, quite so. You died with Christ, for you were crucified with Christ. The old man was crucified with Christ. Not just a nasty bit, the whole lot. God's law take that view, you know. Here's a man, he's going home from work, and the traffic is heavy, and he's late, and he's fearing his wife's wrath, and, uh, he's getting impatient because the traffic is so heavy, and at last he gets the chance to get in front, and he puts his foot down, and he's doing a hundred along the road when the police gonk him down, you see.
And so he's summoned before the magistrate, and the magistrate says that, uh, I must fine you a thousand dollars or something, eh, because you were speeding. And the man says, please, sir, it wasn't me, it was my old man. What would the magistrate say? I'll fine the old man, I won't find you, fine you. So, well, I can't help whether it was the old man or who it was. You shouldn't have let the old man do it anyway. I'm going to find you. And so says the law. No good squealing before the law, that was my old man did it. That's nonsense. You did it. That old man, therefore, is me from first to last.
As the theologians put it, I in Adam, I as a mere human being, a failure, the law surveyed me from start to finish and says he must disappear, he must be executed. When I was buried in baptism, the whole of me, that in the eyes of the law was the whole of me gone. The glorious thing is, however, that baptism isn't just a burial of a dead person. It is a symbolic resurrection. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the glory, by the glory of the Father, we should walk in newness of life.
And here is the wonder of it. We rise from the water of baptism. There's no virtue in the water. It's simply a physical demonstration that though the law can- commanded our death and execution, God has given us new life in Christ. His glorious resurrection of life. And when the Bible says we are raised, like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of God the Father, so also we should walk in newness of life. It's not exhorting us, it's stating the fact. In Christ, God has given us new life.
The life of his Holy Spirit, the life of the risen Lord. And the conditions upon which we get that life are not that we deserved it. It is a pure gift given to us freely by the risen Lord. My, that is wonderful to my heart. I say there's hope for me anyway, that I shall, with Christ, become holy. And one day, as the Bible puts it, I shall be conformed to the image of God's Son, and I shall be like him eternally, because of this gift of the very life of Christ to me, and if you will, to you.
Reckon you yourselves therefore dead unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ. What does that mean, you say? Does that mean that when sin knocks at the door and you feel strong temptation, you try to say, no, no, I'm dead to sin, I'm dead to sin, I'm dead to sin, I'm dead to sin, I'm dead to sin, I'm dead to sin, until the sin goes away. Well, it may be good practice, but it isn't what this verse is saying. It is saying, please observe that when Christ died, let me read it to you again, knowing that Christ, uh, 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, and the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead to sin and alive unto God in Christ Jesus. When the Bible tells me to reckon thyself dead to sin and alive to God, it says do that, reckon yourselves in the same way as Christ. How did he? He died to sin once. Now that he lives, he dieth no more. Death hath no more dominion over him. He died to sin once.
What does that mean? Doesn't mean that Christ had to struggle against sin, and so at last died and escaped the power of sin. That would be blasphemy almost to think it. It means that when Christ died for me and for you and bore my sins in his body on the tree, all my sin, past, present, and future, he died, and he died once. And if tomorrow, as a believer, I fall, I confess my sin, of course, to the Lord. He forgives me. Does Christ have to die? No, no, you say. He only needed to die once. That covered the whole of my debt to God's law.
Now that he liveth, he liveth, uh, uh, in the power of an insoluble life. So reckon yourself to be dead to sin and alive to God. And present your members, therefore, not to sin, but present your members alive to God, for God, by his grace, to use and empower you. You say, Mr. Preacher, we're disappointed in you tonight. We thought you were going to give us some practical advice on how to live a holy life, and all you've done is to tell us about legal things.
We were hoping to hear about practical things. Well, come on Sunday then, there's a cure for that. Ah. Why bother about the legal side? Well, friends, actually it's exceedingly important, and I close with one analogy, if you will allow me. This is, after all, Friday night, and if I keep you ten minutes late, well, tomorrow is Saturday, and I give you permission to lie in bed one extra half an hour. I remember when I was a boy, my father used to tell me the way the army used to recruit soldiers.
Now, this is going back into the times of Queen Victoria, you'll see, in the eighteen hundreds. And in those days, the sergeant major or the recruiting man sergeant, he would visit the pubs, you'll see, in our town, and you'd see a lot of Suffolk people. I come from Suffolk, you know, su- country yokels, we used to call them. They had a lot of brawn, they did not have excessive brain. And, uh, do see, uh, the sergeant major, uh, sergeant, recruiting sergeant used to come around the pubs, and when the ma- men he'd buy them drinks, of course, and when they were a little bit confused, he would offer them a shilling, and they thought he was a very nice chap, and they took the shilling, not really realizing that they had taken the Queen's shilling and thereby had enlisted in the army.
And now, if they tried to get out of the army, they were breaking their contract, would be prosecuted in the courts and put in prison. So here they were bound by the Queen's shilling in, in the army, and in those days the army was pretty tough. They had them on the, uh, uh, on the ground there marching with a sergeant major bellowing in their ears and beating them for the slightest provocation until they were more afraid of the sergeant major than they were of the Germans or any other enemy. It's all saying.
I had a pretty tough time. Well, suppose this particular soldier, he'd taken the Queen's Shilling, he was in the army and couldn't get out, couldn't pay to get out. But his, uh, lovely aunt, great aunt Matilda came from Canada, you see, and said, uh, where is Willie? Oh, he's in the army. How'd he get in? Well, he took the King, the Queen's Shilling and didn't know what he was doing, poor chap, and now he's in the army and having a rough time. And coming from Canada, of course, his aunt was very wealthy. And went along to the, to the army, you'll see, and said, now look here, you've got my Willie here, I'm going to pay to get him out.
You'll see. All right, you could do that, cost you a pretty sum of money, but Aunt Matilda bought him out of the army. There she says, Willie, you're free, my boy. He said, thank you, Auntie, I could kiss you. So for a little while he was enjoying his freedom, you see, he's free of the army. And Auntie went off to Canada, back, and Willie was walking down the street one day, turned the corner, there was a sergeant major. And a sergeant major said, what are you doing here? Get back to the army, do. And Willie was flabbergasted. He'd been so trained and the pattern set up in his brain that when the sergeant major shouted, you did what he said.
Oh, and the sergeant major was threatening with I don't want up, and back to the army he went. Psychology is a funny thing, isn't it? And the patterns and habits we form are strong things, aren't they? And sometimes the habits are so strong that you fear you'll never break them. And the sense of guilt but reinforces the chain of the habit. Well, I have to tell you the end of the story. Aunt Matilda came back again. And she found Willie square bashing, do you see?
She went up to Willie and said, what are you doing here, Willie? Willie said, the sergeant major said I got to come back. Nonsense, she said, I bought you out. I've paid the price. You are free. You don't have to listen to the sergeant major anymore. Willie can scarce believe it, but he is legally free. Being legally free, it broke the power of habit and always giving in to the demands of the sergeant major. All the wonderful freedom. This is absolutely basic. On another occasion, we shall look to the practical side of it, but this is the legal side of holiness.
You've been bought out from sin. Oh, my dear fellow Christian, bought out. And Christ has paid for all your shortcoming. It is realistic. You can begin to live a holy life. And when Satan bullies you and says you'll never break the habit, and now you've failed again, and you're no good. Well, then remember what your baptism signified. Remember that pri- Christ has paid the price. You are legally free. The law is satisfied, and you can get up.
Excuse the, the crudeness of the term. You can get up and have another go and start again with Christ and confess your sin, and he's faithful and just to forgive you your sin and will remain with you and lead you in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake and never desert you until under his good training he has prepared you for the heaven that is above. The legal side of our sanctification. Come again if you can, if the Lord spares us, and on Sunday we shall deal with the practical positive side of our sanctification.
