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So thank you, my dear Mr. Chairman, sir, for those kindly words of welcome. It goes without saying, surely, what a pleasure it is for me to be here and to see again many well-known and long-loved friends, along with a multitude of friends that I hope yet to make. It is a pleasure to be with you, but I have to thank the organizers of the conference for the additional pleasure that they have invited me to be with you to consider such a delightful theme as the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer.
They have not been, they have not only invited me to come and discuss this with you, but wonder of wonders, they have within the subject given me perhaps, uh, the most delightful aspect of it, namely the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer. Others have been given the great theologically testing topics of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, and then the exciting ministry of the Holy Spirit within the church, and the challenge of the Holy Spirit as he leads the church's evangelization of the world.
But to me, they have given this lovely, intimate topic, the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer. Of course, in itself, that topic is a vast topic, and maybe if you had been given the, uh, task of leading the thinking and discussion, you might have put the emphasis in different places from what I shall put it. So let me say now in advance briefly the theme, the three, the three particular topics that I shall be engaging with here today, God willing.
In the first session, this present session, I hope to deal with the foundational work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer. That work that the Holy Spirit does, which is the foundation of all that subsequently follows, as he sheds the love of God. That is not our love for God, but God's love for us, that delightful ministry of the Holy Spirit, as he takes the love of God for us, and as a woman might take a pitcher of water and turn it out, and the water go here and there, and spreads like water does, you know, in jumps sometimes.
Or freely flowing. The Holy Spirit takes God's love for us and pours it out into our hearts. Oh, blessed ministry, that. Forming the solid foundation of security and peace within. It gives us to courage, the courage to face all the future program that God has for us. So that in this first session, the foundational work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer. And in our second session, God willing, we shall then consider the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.
And as I suggest that topic, I am thinking of such passages as are to be found in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapters one and then three. Those two great prayers of our brother Paul. For people who he says have already received the Holy Spirit. They have been sealed with the Holy Spirit. They possess the earnest of the Spirit in their hearts. You say, what more could they want than that? Ah, but Paul twice bows his knees, so he tells us, and constantly prays for an ongoing work of the Spirit in the heart of the believer.
And then in our third and final session, I want to raise with you from Holy Scripture the role that the Holy Spirit plays in the work of our progressive, our initial indeed, and our progressive sanctification. So this morning, the first session, the foundational work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer, just let us turn to Romans five and read the paragraph in which we find this delightful description of his ministry. This is the epistle to the Romans in chapter five.
and the translation that I read is like me, somewhat elderly, you'll see, and therefore creaking at the joints a little bit, uh, uh, uh, and not quite so with it in its language as some of the more modern. But you must pity my old age. You'll be old one of these days as well, do you see? And your translation will one day be old. The Lord doesn't hurry up and come. So if you notice strange words and things and different from yours, uh, don't suffer any heart attack or anything like that. We shall try to explain ourselves as we go along. But here we have it, and I'm reading from the Revised Version.
Romans chapter five and verse one: Being therefore, having been therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace, wherein we stand, meaning stand fast, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we rejoice also in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience probation, and probation hope, and hope putteth not to shame, because the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
For while we were still weak, in due season, Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die. For peradventure for the good man some would, someone would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God through him.
For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life? And not only so, but also we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. And may that same Holy Spirit that inspired all those words be now our teacher as we ponder their meaning.
Here then we read the delightful phrase that it is the work of the Holy Spirit to pour out God's love for us into our hearts. And I have suggested that this is, in some sense, the foundational work of the Holy Spirit for the believer. And the question is, why do I so say? Why foundational? Perhaps I can answer that question by briefly pointing out the context of this paragraph in this marvelous epistle of Paul. The epistle to the Romans, rightly loved by the church through all the centuries, or should have been.
It, you'll see, um, deals systematically, doesn't it, with the topic of the gospel. No small thing, the gospel, for the systematic exposition of it, it takes sixteen whole chapters. And here, in chapter five, as far as the individual believer is concerned, is the first mention in this epistle of the Holy Spirit. He is mentioned, of course, in the early verses of chapter one in connection with the resurrection of our Lord and the declaration to the world at large that he is indeed the Son of God.
But as concerns the individual believer, this is the first mention of him pouring out the love of God in our hearts. With the result, we might sum it up at once, look at verse nine, this tremendous affirmation of assurance that is the birthright of every believer in the Lord Jesus, the utter certainty that we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him is absolutely foundational. We'll see as we open the epistle to the Romans and read in chapter one, we find Paul talking about the gospel and how he's not ashamed of it, says he.
Not ashamed of the gospel, says Paul. Why? Because it works. That's why. Because it is the power of God to salvation. This is not just a philosophical theory. This gospel actually works. It works because it works on the principle of faith and not our meritorious struggles. But if we should at that moment ask Paul, all right, Paul, you say that you're not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God to salvation, but pray tell us, Paul, why we need to be saved in the first place.
Why do we need to be saved? In this letter, Paul will give us, amongst other things, two fundamental reasons why we need to be saved. The first one in chapter one: the power of God unto salvation, for, now here comes the reason why we need to be saved, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness of men and women. Our first need for salvation is because in and of ourselves, we stand under the wrath of God.
Now, I'm aware that that has become an unpopular topic in modern day. We are a much more easygoing people, aren't we, in these modern times than our forefathers were. But the fact is, the first reason for needing to be saved is that in and of ourselves we stand under the wrath of God. The second reason is given us in chapter five from verses twelve onward. We need to be saved because we suffer from the wreckage produced by Adam's sin.
For as by one man's disobedience, sin entered into the world, and thus death passed on all men, for that all have sinned. A colossal wreckage that has spoiled every member of the human race born into this world since the time of Adam and Eve. And we need to be and can be saved and shall be from the wreckage induced by Adam's sin. We need both things, and you will notice that in this epistle, Paul puts first, not second, first the need to be saved from the wrath of God.
I'm not thereby saying that this is what how we should approach each of our friends that is not yet saved, or the public in general. Sometimes it is appropriate to come to people where they are, and they've come to feel the wreckage of life, their own disabilities, the crime and criminology around, the infirmity of the body, and death staring them in the face. And we need to come alongside with the glorious comfort of a gospel that has a program to save us from the wreckage of our sin. But if you were going to put the gospel in its, uh, logical order, you wouldn't start there.
You would start with the prior need to be saved from the wrath of God. And this is what the, uh, Holy Spirit is desiring to assure our hearts about in this lovely passage we have read, to bring us to the point where we can be utterly sure that we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. Let me use a little homely illustration of the point. I want you to imagine a young gentleman with more money than sense, and his father with even more money and even less sense.
And this laddie, of course, has been given the very last word of a jaguar, you'll see, for his seventeenth birthday. And he prides himself at driving through Dublin's Connell streets at fifty miles an hour, just to show what the Jaguar can do, so as to impress the police. And, uh, thus he behaves, but he's a bit of a stupid young man. He doesn't see that the thing is filled up with oil, and, uh, sometimes he drives it when he's under the influence, you'll see. And one of these fair days, being under the influence, he drives it bang, slashes into a concrete block, shatters the thing.
As he gets out of the wreck, the cool night air brings him to his senses. And, uh, he sees the wreck. And then it dawns on him, isn't quite true to say his father gave it to him. It was only lent. It's father's car. What do you do now? He says to himself, Dad better not know about this. I'll keep out of his way. I'll hurry up and find an engineer who can put the thing together again.
And when at last he's put it together again, well, you know, apart from one or two scratches here and there and an odd dent, but more or less together again, then I can take it for father and say, you know, I'm sorry I had a little, uh, little, uh, little, little accident. There's just a dent here and there, you see, left. And he hopes it'll be fit enough for father to say, oh well, never mind, son. It's only a bit of metal anyway. And you know, many folk think of salvation like that. They wake up to find that life is a wreck. They have sinned. They've done wrong things.
The old personality is a bit schoo whiff. Wrong habits and sad results of them. And then they wake up to the fact that, of course, we're not our own. It is God who has made us. And one day we have to meet God. And in that moment, they've heard about Jesus Christ. But for the moment they think of him as someone whose job it is to put our wreckage right. Well, at least help us to put it right. And if by his help we manage little by little through life to put the wreckage right, we may perhaps, we hope, be in a position at life's end to come and meet God.
And we hope that God will then say, well, you have improved considerably. Yeah, still a bit bent here and there, but on the whole enough to pass into heaven. But we can't be sure of it. And the more we try to put the wreckage right, the more distant does the time seem when we have any hope of being perfect. I read a book once, I think it was called God Christ Among Us, that said the whole secret of the Christian life is contact, fellowship with Christ.
I thought this is a delightful book. It said, you see, that's at the very heart of Christian grace. It's, um, contact with Christ, living with Christ in daily life, by his grace, gradually progressing in the life of holiness. Of course, if we sin, we can confess our sins and then be restored to fellowship. But here is the secret, fellowship with Christ, indeed, Christ in us. I thought this is a delightful book. I kept on thinking that till I came to a chapter, what happens when we die. And in that chapter it said, when we come to die, none of us will feel we've ever done anything worthy of being damned.
I thought that's distinctly odd. I thought the Bible said that that is precisely what we've all done. Because it says, doesn't it, in chapter three of this epistle to the Romans, that all have sinned in the past and still come short of the glory of God, and that we deserve to be damned, and we stand before God with our mouths shut, with no excuse. I felt this is decidedly odd for the book to say, though none of us or very few of us will feel we've ever done anything worthy, worthy to be damned.
We all have done such things, and in ourselves must suffer the condemnation of God's law and the wrath of God. Ah, but the book wasn't finished. It went on to say, and when we first see God, we shall be utterly terrified. And we're glad to go away into a period of further improvement and purgation. I said, what on earth is the writer thinking of? When we first see God, we should be terrified. Does not the Bible itself say of believers that when we see him, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
Wherever had the book gone wrong? It'd gone wrong right to the start for failing to face the wrath of God, you see. The foundation was wrong. Ah. The gospel is wonderfully kinder than we think, isn't it? As we stand in the wreckage of our lives, because we sinned, Christ hasn't come to help us put it right as best we can through life's fevered years, in the hope it will be good enough when we meet God.
No, the marvel of the gospel is this, that Christ comes to us standing amid the wreckage of our lives and says, look, you better come and meet God right now, here now. What, within the wreckage? Yes. Without improving the wreckage? Yes. As you are. The delightful hymn puts 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 and meet God as I stand in the wreckage.
Yes. And you see, to begin the marvelous lesson, the Holy Spirit beginning to pour into our hearts God's love for us, even as it is written, that while we were still weak, sinners, ungodly. Enemies of God. Then marvelous to tell. God loved us then. And not only loved us then, but gave his son for us.
For God commends his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, in proper time, Christ died for us. That is the gospel. So that standing in the wreckage, so to speak, would be reconciled with God and be at peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Know ourselves accepted now, and that we shall be accepted by God for all eternity. It is only then, according to this exposition of the gospel, that the Holy Spirit then raises the question, you know yourselves accepted by God, you have peace with God, you know you'll never come into the wrath of God.
Very good. Now, says the Holy Spirit, let's start about putting the wreckage right. That is very important. You'll see, you could put it in some this way, that the first five chapter, four and a half chapters in Romans deal with what we call justification, and the rest of five up till eight deal with sanctification. Why that order? Well, frankly, because the work of sanctification is a long, drawn out work. On times it will be pleasant, on times it will be painful.
The work of making us holy. You see, it's not a work of a moment, is it? We can't wake up one Monday morning and say to ourselves, you know, I feel funny this morning, I feel a bit different. I don't know what it is. Oh, I think I've become holy overnight. Doesn't happen that way. Genuine holiness will mean that God, as we can bear it, will have to make us face ourselves and our wrong attitudes and our sinful actions and our bad tempers and our lack of self-control and our bitternesses and our pride, and all the rest of that ugly brew.
And being made to face ourselves is painful. And God will require us to face ourselves and to repent. For repentance is not just a thing we do the very first moment we get converted, but as you gather from our Lord's letters to his churches in the book of the Revelation, he is ca- constantly calling on us, his people, to repent of this and that and tother. The progress of sanctification will not all be unpleasant, of course not. And the gracious Holy Spirit who is in charge of our lessons, will lead us graciously, step by step, as we can bear it.
Like the Israelites, you know, who toiled foot slogging across the desert from Egypt to Palestine, and God led the way. Well, he didn't make them walk non-stop. Sometimes they had to cover three or four miles a day. They felt that was tremendous. Other times they stayed put in a nice oasis for a month or two. But God is kind, isn't he? And knows what we can bear. But if we're going to be holy, then we shall have to be prepared to face the unpleasant experience, getting to know ourselves, and repenting, and perseverance, not expecting that it will be perfect in one day.
Indeed, when you get to ninety nine and a half, and I'm nearly, I'm approaching it fast, you'll say, well, so are you, at the same rate. Ah. You'll still have to say by the time five minutes before you get to glory, yes, it's true I have sinned, and I still come short. How can we find the courage to face that? And this is why this lovely chapter comes here in its position, after we know ourselves justified, and now we're facing the long period of sanctification. Oh, just hear, watch the mustelidness of the Holy Spirit.
He pours out the love of God into the heart of the believer, to give the believer the confidence that he is already accepted, already has peace with God. You see, if a believer doesn't have that confidence, then he can fall into a grievous misunderstanding that his acceptance with God depends upon his progress. And then when folks get to middle age and find the progress hasn't been as much as they hoped. If they thought their pro- uh, acceptance with God depended on their progress, then they would despair, wouldn't they?
And if we weren't sure to start with that we're accepted with God, psychologically there would be a temptation with many of us to hide up and make out we're better than we are really. It is of the utmost importance, it is the foundation of true holiness that we know that love of God poured out in our heart by the Holy Spirit that is given to us. Let us briefly run down those terms, shall we? Being therefore justified by faith. This is justification.
The tense is a past tense. It- Paul is talking to believers, and from the moment they put their faith in God through Jesus Christ our Lord, they were justified. And it means, just allow me to remind you of the elementary fact. It means not we have been made just, but God has counted us just. That's a very important difference. In the New Testament, in such passages as this, the word justify doesn't mean to make somebody just. It means to declare somebody just.
You see that, for instance, in the way it is used in the Gospel of Luke, for instance, to quote a passage, Luke chapter seven eh, and verse twenty nine: And all the people, when they heard, that is heard John the Baptist, and the tax gatherers, they justified God. Did they really? What does that mean? It can't mean, can it, that all the sinners and the tax collectors made God just. God never needs to be made just.
He is just, has been, is, shall be forever just. Nobody is called upon to make him just. And these folks that justified God, they didn't make him just. They declared him to be right. As they listened to John the Baptist, calling on them to repent because they were sinners in danger of the coming wrath of God. Prostitutes and tax gatherers said in their hearts, yes, God is right. Agreed with God against themselves. Many of the religious people wouldn't do it.
They felt John was extreme out there, preaching a wrath of God, and that they were decent people. So they didn't declare God to be right. Ah. So the verb justify means to declare to be right. And when God justifies the ungodly, as the Bible has it, because they've repented and put their faith in him through Christ, God himself declares them right. Right in what sense? Right with God. In the right relationship with God. But here is the declaration of God himself.
Oh, my brother, my sister, you've known it since you were six, maybe, but put both feet down on it this moment, the glorious fact that the moment you trusted Christ for salvation, God declared you just. He will never alter that declaration. Oh, joy of the justified, joy of the free. I'm washed in that precious blood poured out for me. And on that basis, we have peace with God. Not necessarily peace with ourselves. We can be very disgruntled with ourselves. Most days of the week I am.
I don't know about you. Oh, if I had room on my shins, I should kick them again, but I've never left room on them. You see, ha, disgruntled with ourselves, not at peace, wanting to make progress, but with God. Oh, the joy of it. Peace with God. Peace, perfect peace in this dark world of sin. Blood of Jesus whispers peace within. And having peace with God, therefore, we have also, it says here, access, through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand.
The old theologians, God bless them, used to coin their terms, you know, and they talked of, they used two words. I found them helpful in my youth, and they've remained with me. The believers standing on the one side, and the believers state on the other side. And first of all, our standing before God. What does that depend on? Well, we have have access into this, into this what? What is it in which we stand? And the answer is we have access into this grace wherein we stand. That's right, you've got it.
In this grace. That's not just a sort of a little, um, icing on the cake or something, just a little decoration. No, no, this is a serious theological term. It's telling us that the believer's standing before God is unconditional. It is in grace, and if it's of grace, it is not of works, as scripture declares. We stand before God in grace, he's accepted us for Christ's sake, and the standing remains firm, like that crowd that John saw in his vision and recorded it in Revelation chapter seven.
Of the great multitude of Gentiles that no one could number, and they stand dressed in robes of white. And when the elder gets John to see who they are, the description is this: they came out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, are they before God's throne. Firm on the ground of sovereign grace, we stand before Jehovah's throne. Yeah. And then, of course, we rejoice, and the word means to be confident, actually, in hope of the glory of God.
You say, what is the glory of God? Well, it's what we came short of to start with. Romans three, we have all sinned, and we still come short of the glory of God, that is the glory of God's character as declared in his laws and requirements. We come short of it. Ah, but we shan't forever come short. Oh, look at this lovely statement, inspired by the Holy Spirit. We've been justified by faith. We not only stand in grace, but we are confident, and therefore we exult in it with God-given confidence that one day we shall most certainly attain the glory of God.
And enough to cause us to shout hallelujah, isn't it? Perhaps no, you've you've made such good progress, aha, but uh you've never felt in any doubt at all. But you see the likes of me, when the going's been rough, and it has seemed that I've made one step forward and two backwards, and say to myself, shall I ever master this evil habit or this bad idea? When shall I learn to behave like the Lord Jesus, and shall I ever? Listen, before we start the great story of sanctification, as Romans will develop it, it says, if you have been justified by faith and you stand in the grace of God, you may exult.
Not rejoice in the sense of happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, crappy stuff, but rejoice in the sense of exulting in it, boasting in the true meaning of the word boast, not pridefully, but triumphantly. Glory in this certain hope of the glory of God you shall attain. We shall see him, and we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And what is more, we can rejoice also in our tribulations. And that at first sight is a very puzzling thing. How can you possibly be rejoicing in your tribulations?
If your tribulation comes at you as it came at the early Christians in the form of a lion with his jaws open and and about to devour you, can you rejoice in it? Or the misery suffered by our brothers and sisters in Kosovo or places like that. How could you rejoice? Well, the word doesn't mean rejoice, happy, happy, happy. It means the same word, to exult, confident. You can be confident in your tribulation, knowing that, that tribulation works. My Bible says patience. What it ought to say is not patience as distinct from impatience, but, uh, patience in the sense of endurance.
We'll see. According to our blessed Lord in his parable of the sower, Luke chapter eight, the mark of the good seed, do you remember what that was? The mark of the good seed is that people who receive the word of God into an honest heart and bring forth fruit with... Ah, here again, here's the word, key word in, uh, in Christian, New Testament Christian doctrine, bring forth fruit with endurance. Any tomato will tell you that, you'll see. Ha! There's no other way of growing fruit.
The old tomato plant has to persevere. So say. My fruit trees don't always do that. The mark of the genuine thing is to persevere. Keeping on, keeping on. They may be very impatient if you cross their path or other things, that's not the point. It's are they sticking it out, carrying on, persevering. Perseverance is the mark of the true believer. They who are sown on the rock, uh, uh, spring up at once and then wither away in time of persecution, they're not the genuine thing. They have no root. How can I be, be confident then in the face of tribulation?
What happened if a tribulation arose so big that it smashed my faith? How then can I face tribulation confidently? Knowing certain facts, says Holy Scripture, that tribulation for those that have genuinely trusted the Savior, tribulation produces endurance, perseverance. And perseverance produces, my Bible there says, uh, you'll see it produces probation. The Greek word actually means the state of having been proved genuine. Yes. That's how you know a tomato plant's a jolly good tomato plant, don't you?
Keeps on persevering and brings forth a fruit. You say, yes, that's a, that's a jolly good plant. And though we're not yet to glory, my good brother, my sister, hasn't it been true of you too, that as the years have gone on, you will be the first to admit many a failure, but you would say, if you were challenged today, yes, but I proved salvation real. I proved God real in my life, through sick and through sin. And being proved genuine gives a second ground for hope. And what is more, that hope doesn't make us ashamed, says the old version.
That's what the Hebrew says and not the Greek term. Doesn't make us ashamed? It means doesn't let us down and cause us to lose face, do see, and disappoint us. But then how can we be sure? And with this, we come to this foundational work of the Holy Spirit. And you say, I was wondering when you were going to get round to that. You seem to have missed your, your, your brief, my dear sir. You were asked to speak about the Holy Spirit. You've been speaking about all these other things. Well, my excuse is that these things too were inspired by the Holy Spirit. You believe that, don't you? These are the words of the Holy Spirit, and he's having an argument with us, and he's about to really pull out the stops and have a big argument as he pours out the love of God into our heart.
How does he do it, you say? He does it here by a series of logical steps. It's a logical argument. You'll see. Sometimes we're afraid of logic, aren't we? We prefer to go by our feelings. Today we feel jolly good and think God has accepted us. I'm pretty decent. And tomorrow we come short of, and uh, our feelings are not too good. We've got a bit of indigestion, we haven't slept very well, uh, our husbands have misbehaved, and I don't know what have you, and we're feeling down in the dumps. And we measure our security by feelings.
That is a very serious mistake. Our blessed Savior, yes, here on earth, was a true man, is able to feel our human condition. But his love is not a question of the will of the wisp of emotion or feeling. His love is absolutely consistent, logically consistent, because it is founded in the very character of God. You pondered it recently? Go on, think of something big. Now you sit there. What would you like God to do to you? Don't have it small, like being given one planet to look after when you get home to heaven.
Do they? Think something big. Would you like a whole glass- cluster of stars to look after? What part of the eternal city of Jerusalem would you like to be in charge of? Uh-huh. Ask for something big. And the answer is, the biggest thing that God will ever do for you, he has already done. It wouldn't impoverish the Almighty God to give you ten thousand galaxies of stars and all the wealth in them. To him, that would be a very small thing.
The biggest thing he'll ever do for you, he has already done. And you say, what could that be? He gave his son for you. Ponder it. What could be bigger? But the second leg of the argument asks us to c- consider this. Exactly when did he give his son for us? Uh, that being such a great gift, surely it was after we'd improved considerably.
Yes? And had ceased to be sinners. And, uh, were making, well, noticeable advance in our spirituality and our holiness. But God said, well, now I can see those folks are really improving and doing their best. So perhaps it wouldn't be too extravagant of me at this stage to give my son for them. Is that so? The whole point is when, and in what state were we, so to speak, in God's way of looking at things, when he gave his son for us.
Here is the Holy Spirit arguing with us. He has to do that sometimes, doesn't he? When we prefer to trust our feelings or this or that or the other, rather than rest in the very unchangeable character of God, and the Holy Spirit has to argue against our emotions and argue against our fears and point us ever to this foundational thing that God gave his son for us while we were still weak.
Sin is the same in one sense. It is, it is different forms and symptoms. Sometimes it's weakness, sometimes it's ungodliness, lack of reverence for God or man and respect. Sometimes it's missing the mark, sin. Sometimes it's positive enmity against God. God commends his love for us. What a, I nearly said, a humiliation for Almighty God. Just you imagine the figure. Have you ever had a clean, easy man come around your door or something, and you didn't want the brooms and the polishers, but the poor chap was, uh, he needed to make a little profit, and rather than let you, uh, shut the door, he put his foot in his door.
You had to listen to what he had to say. It was commercial traveler commending his wares to you. I find it astonishing what Almighty God coming to recommend his love, to commend his love to us. Just imagine it, Almighty God standing at the door of your heart, my dear fellow believer, and commending His love to you, praising its virtues, extolling its details. Here is the picture. It is the Holy Spirit pouring out God's love into our hearts, you will see.
And the argument is this, if when we were sinners, we were justified. Ah. Well, now that we are justified. You think God, having justified, will throw us out? What kind of a God would that be? Love us while we were sinners, unjustified. Now we've repented, we are justified by faith, and God will sling us. What kind of a love would that be? What inconsistency would that be in God? If while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. Notice the term, the death of his son.
As I think of it, I think of our Lord's parable of the vineyard, how that the owner sent many messengers to reap the grapes, and they got murdered or beaten and thrown out. At last he said, I've, I've won, I've won. Son! I send him. Peradventure they'll, they'll take notice of him as my son. And they said, this is the heir, come, let's kill him, and murdered him and threw him out of the vineyard. Will you reconcile to God by the death of his son? Oh, magnificent words. That God could love the very rebels that murdered his son. Reconciled by the death of his son that caused God immeasurable grief.
Well, if we've been reconciled, and you're not an enemy now, are you? You may be, as we all are, imperfect saints, but you're not an enemy of God anymore. Will Christ really give his son to die for you when you're an enemy, and then when you are now a child of God, throw you out? What kind of a God would that be? I've had friends like it, but I, but God? Oh, oh, let us rejoice. Here I know are the basics. You've known it for years, some of you for nearly a century. Ah. But it's foundational, isn't it? To all else, foundational to our progress in holiness, this marvelous thing that the Holy Spirit does his work in pouring out the love of God in our hearts to give us that assurance, much more shall we be saved from the wrath of God through him.
So may he bless his work.
