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Eh, we saw yesterday, as we introduced ourselves to the topic, that Galatians is one of the epistles in the New Testament that talks about our Christian freedom. It's an interesting little exercise to take a concordance and to look at the occurrences, both of the, uh, noun freedom, the adjective free, and the verb to liberate, to set free, and to see, uh, how many times they occur in the sundry epistles, and you will find, of course, that Galatians, though it is a very short epistle, rivals First Corinthians for the epistle that talks most about the matter of our freedom in Christ.
Of course, uh, you will remember the words of the Lord Jesus himself. If you can, uh, uh, continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. The slave doesn't abide in the house forever, but the son abides. If therefore the son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. They are magnificent words on the part of our Lord, aren't they? The house is, of course, his Father's house. It is not just the whole vast universe, but all that lies beyond it. He is the son of the house.
He is the son of the owner of the universe. Eh, do you see? God doesn't wish to fill his house with slaves. And, uh, Christ has come to set us free, to give us the freedom of the universe. And so Paul, likewise, the great champion of freedom in the New Testament. And in this epistle to the Galatians, that, uh, stirring, uh, a cry with freedom did Christ set us free. Stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage. We've nothing to be ashamed of in the gospel.
It sets people free. And we noticed yesterday that all this is said against the background, not particularly of atheism and the world, it is said against the background of religion. One of the faults about, uh, mere religion is that instead of setting people free, it in the end brings them into bondage. So we set about looking at the epistle to the Galatians, uh, from a particular point of view, primarily from a particular point of view. As junior workers in the Lord's, uh, harvest field, eh, we are reading the epistle to get ideas from Paul as to how to argue.
We notice that some people think arguing is a very bad thing. You should just witness and leave it to the Lord. Uh, all right, well, so long as you witness like the Lord witnessed. He argued, most of his conversations are arguments, you'll see, uh, uh, uh, you'll see when the Pharise- uh, Sadducees came and said there was no resurrection, but gentlemen, he said, what about the scripture that says thus and thus and thus, and therefore this and therefore that. He was arguing, or disputing, if you like, or discussing from scripture. And if we would be, uh, uh, uh, capable and effective at this level of delivering folks who are not yet believers from bondage to Satan and bondage to false religion.
Millions are in that position. And if we would, uh, protect our fellow believers from being drawn back into ideas that they don't immediately realize are harmful, but which, if they accept, will drag them back into bondage, then we shall need to learn from Paul, one, how to argue, and two, what kind of arguments are there that should be applied, and what kind of proportion to give them, and what order to do them in, and this and that and other. So that's what we're looking at. And we notice that Paul begins Galatians using the greeting for a statement of his authority as apostle, that he was not, uh, appointed by the church, he was appointed direct by God and by Christ.
Secondly, he he was appointed by God, but he was not appointed by God through the church. He was an apostle, uh, neither from men, neither through men. He was appointed directly from the Lord, they will say. Secondly, he, he points out that there is no other gospel than the gospel he preaches. That's a very important. Because some people could have said, ah yes, Paul, well, you have one version of the Christian gospel, and of course there are others, they have other versions of the Christian gospel. We like to think it that way, you think it the other way.
Ah, but when it comes to the gospel by which men are saved, there are not two or three versions of the gospel, there is only one gospel, and Paul preached it. Yep. If he preaches any other gospel, says Paul, let him be accursed. It is the fact that, uh, some people tried, as we saw from Acts fifteen, to suggest that Paul was preaching a gospel. Well, okay, but the apostles at Jerusalem wouldn't have agreed with him. Acts fifteen records how Paul and Barnabas and the church of A- Antioch scotched that rumor. When Paul and Barnabas went up to Jerusalem, they secured a letter from the apostles and elders in Jerusalem to the effect that they agreed one hundred percent with Paul.
And those chaps that had come down, uh, from Jerusalem and made out that Paul, uh, Peter and James and the others disagreed with Paul, they were quite, quite false. They had no authority from us, says James. We agree absolutely with Paul on the gospel. You see, that is exceedingly important. Eh, defining, uh, the whole question of of justification by faith. We had, didn't we, the other year, the Archik report. It was Archik Two. Archik Two, the discussions between the Anglican theologians and the Roman Catholic theologians, eh, was prompted by our good friend, forgot his name now, eh, he was at the time headmaster of the grammar school in Coleraine, sorry, in in in Iskilen, and he suggested that one of the topics that should be discussed was the question of salvation and justification and thus, thus, and thus, and thus, to say.
Well, Archik two came up with its report, which was, of course, eh, very inadequate. The Presbyterians, uh, of America came up with their report, which was a very thoroughgoing theological analysis of the uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, thing, and came to the conclusion that the doctrine of justification by faith is expounded by Luther and Company et and others forthwith to the present, and Rome's doctrine was theologically different and irreconcilable. Nonetheless, said that report, you can say they're both valid. Truthy.
We live in an age, ladies and gentlemen, where people are inclined, uh, to fluff the gospel because of all the terrible persecutions and fightings and sometimes wars where people have tried to further or defend Christian gospel by force of arms and that kind of thing. Now there has been a reaction the other way around. Let's forget all the doctrine and be nice. But you see, that is not Paul's attitude. That is only one gospel, and if anybody preaches a different gospel from what I preach, says Paul, let him be anathema. They are some of the most solemn words in the New Testament.
That isn't religious spite and vendetta. He's standing for people's, um, freedom. Yeah. And next he says, uh, uh, when he got converted, he didn't get his gospel. He wasn't appointed an apostle by, by, by the other apostles or by any man or by the church or by anybody. He was appointed directly by Christ and God. Secondly, the gospel he preached is the only gospel there is. Thirdly, he didn't get the gospel from men. That's a slightly different point, isn't it? He wasn't appointed apostle by men.
He didn't get the gospel from men. But when he was converted, he went off into Arabia, and we saw yesterday the practical implication of that. If we had been living in the time of Paul, let me point say again, concerned how we might be right with God, and we had gone to Paul in Arabia and asked him, uh, tell us, you are a Christian apostle, how can I get right with God? And Paul had told us by word of mouth what he writes in his letters. Could we have believed it there and then, accepted it, and been saved and justified and at peace with God and be absolutely certain of it. Or should we have to say, ah, well, I hear what you say, Paul, but now, of course, I couldn't possibly understand that myself.
I must take all this to the apostles at Jerusalem to see, one, whether they agree with you, and I must let them interpret it to us. That's a very big point. Are we free as individuals to come straight to Paul, so to speak? Or do we have to come through the church? That is a very big point. And to enlarge it in another direction, the whole question of whether the Bible comes to us from God through the apostles, or is it so that the church gave us the Bible?
Now that's a very big issue, and it's a very live issue still today. Who gave us the Bible? If you are working in Russia, as some of us do, of course, or in Greece, uh, the reason why very little emphasis is placed by, say, the Orthodox Church on people reading the Bible, and in some places they positively forbid it. Still, the answer will come back, but don't be silly. It's the church that gives you the Bible. And therefore, uh, the church has not only what the apostles and people wrote, but all those unwritten things that they taught, and the church is the vehicle that contains all the unwritten tradition, and it's for the church to g- it's the church that gave you the Bible, and as the church we're telling you that the main and most important thing is not the Bible, but to listen to the church.
Well, that's, that's a very big claim. What would you mean that the church gives you the Bible? The church is rather a large thing, isn't it? Multi-millions, did they all? But how many millions have there been in the church since the day of Pentecost? Let's have a, a, a hazard to guess, a million, million, a billion, say. Did all the billion give you the Bible? What do you mean by the church gives you the Bible? When they say the church gives you the Bible, they don't mean the church gives you the Bible. What they mean is the teaching authority within the church, the Curia in the Roman Catholic sense, or, uh, the ecumenical councils in the Orthodox sense, you'll see. That isn't true.
The church didn't give us the Bible. God, Christ gave the Bible to the church via his apostles. So we got the Bible. The church is not above the Bible, therefore. The church stands under the Bible. When Paul writes, I Paul say to you, as he will in this epistle, of the church to say, but wait a minute, Paul, it's the church that gives us the Bible, the church has the ultimate right to interpret it. No, no. The church stands under the Bible. Bible given us by the inspired apostles, given to the church.
Very, very important. That's not, that's not splitting hairs in the straws either. That belongs to our basic freedom. Has each individual person right to come, therefore, to the apostles and their apostolic writing, or must they go through the church? That, if I may say so, within these four walls also, in the larger sense, applies to the question of what the Bible contains. Who decides which book should be in the Bible or shouldn't be in the Bible? The, uh, answer some would give is that the church decides it. That isn't true. That's manifestly not true if you look through history.
When the church recognized the canon, they were recognized a fait accompli. They were recog- they were simply officially saying, uh, and recognizing officially what was already, uh, accepted and regarded by Christian people. It is not true that the church gives the Bible authority. Including the a book of scripture in the canon is not a way of giving that book authority. You see, a book of scripture doesn't get its authority by being canonized and put in the canon. It's the other way round.
It's because the book has authority, and that authority is recognized, and therefore the book is in that sense accepted into the canon because it is authoritative. The church doesn't give the Bible its authority, in other words. That is exceedingly important. And, as you see, it pertains to our freedom in the practical sense. In the bad old days, it used to be said, didn't it, in Spain, for instance, where I worked, uh, very frequently under Franco and all the rest of them. It used to be said, you see, the church gives you the Bible.
The church also gives you the Mass, and the church tells you it's far more important to attend the Mass than it is for you to read the Bible. You cannot come and understand it yourself. You may read it, but don't you try and understand it. You must accept the interpretation of the church. It pertains to people's freedom. You'll see. And therefore, it is worth, uh, uh, cluing ourselves up on these matters, not to be argumentative, but if we love people and are concerned for their freedom, then this is very important. And if you were in a country like Russia or Serbia or Bulgaria or Fran- uh, Franco Spain, eventually, of course, you would meet the question.
Now then, uh, uh, Paul, pardon? Can I ask you, uh, this might reflect my own ignorance, but I'm just wondering how it all came together, the scriptures, in particular the New Testament, in your knowledge of literature, how did the whole thing come together into what we know as the New Testament? That's a very interesting question. Do you belong to this organization of which this is the director and chairman? Uh, well, sort of, uh, I know of them. You know of them? Because if you were very kind to them and talked to them nicely, you could might persuade them to put on a number of studies on that topic. Don't you think? Uh-huh.
I- if you suggested, you know, uh, proposed the motion, I would second it. I said propose. You propose it, I second it. Any objections? No. No. What is important, my boy? Is it practically important? Uh, you'll say, um, hmm, well, I'm telling tales out of school, that's a bad thing to do, isn't it? But you'll say, if you're interested in getting people studying the Bible, then underneath somewhere, these are matters of very big practical concern. Nowadays, the United Bible Societies have taken to the practice of, of publishing Bibles with the Old Testament apocrypha attached.
You'll see, that has been a very big change in policy. That is because people say, look, now the Catholic Church is concerned to get people to read the Bible. That's a very new thing, of course, comparatively. Uh, um, new, very new in places like Spain and so forth. Uh, and that's a good thing. Of course it is marvelous. So now the Catholics, uh, are, uh, uh, uh, in in this part of the world and in, say, places like Greece, uh, the Orthodox Archbishop is now chairman of the Bible Society in Greece, the Greeks of Bible Society. And of course, they published the Bible plus Apocrypha.
It raises some very big questions. One, the Apocrypha teaches purgatory. If you're going to witness to such people with a Bible in your hand that has the Apocrypha in it, and they hold to the doctrine of purgatory, you're going to have a very difficult job to show it isn't in the Bible, if it, if in your Bible, because you have the Apocrypha in it, it is in the Bible. Do see. Uh, secondly, who decides whether it shall be in the Bible or not? This Apocrypha. Well, the church decides that the, the church to decide who was, was in the Bible.
That is false, of course. But you accept the Apocrypha, the Old Testament Apocrypha in your Bible, you'll do it because the church said so. Do you really want to accept that? That's a very far-reaching implication. And thirdly, do you just imagine, uh, coming to an atheist with a Bible that includes the Apocrypha with all those stupid stories of Bell and the dragon, and I don't know what have you, and having to argue to your atheist friends that these are inspired. What absolute nonsense it is and piffle. And with one of the chaps saying, as he does at the end of second Maccabees, I've done the best I could.
I fear I've made a lot of mistakes, but I've done the best I could. Don't criticize me too badly, kind of thing. Well, that in the Bible. That's a big thing, isn't it? So that, uh, yeah, we need to inform ourselves on these matters. And why there has been this big move is a complicated thing, just to pour on the agony for the moment. We'll see, but it comes, has been made much more easy because in the liberal sections of the Protestant church, uh, the question of what is in the Bible or isn't has become almost irrelevant.
I suppose thirty years ago, I sat in Queens and listened to Professor C. F. Evans of London University, the theologian of that name, and he was discoursing on the Bible, and he told the gathered assembly that the Bible was like a light, an electric light, uh, uh, to see hanging down from the ceiling. Uh, at the center it was very bright. As you moved out from the center, it was not quite so bright. Presently, you got to a distance, uh, you see, uh, near the edges when it was more dark than it was bright. And in the end, you couldn't distinguish the light from the darkness.
That was what the Bible was. And therefore, the question of what the canon is was nowadays irrelevant. Because the Bible itself was light in its central bits, wherever they might be placed, and progressively darker and darker as you get to the edges of the Bible. Professor of New Testament at the University of London, and the audience in Queens clapped. He's left, I prayed, I didn't clap. If the canon of scripture is like that, if the Bible itself is like that, you don't need to bother whether the Apocrypha is in it or out of it, do you?
That is serious then. But let me come back to good. Hello. Because there was a truth to it, uh, the Jewish canon of scripture never included. Oh, surely. And Jesus never quoted. Ah, that's right. Oh, surely. Oh, surely. Yes, actually, the, the question of what the Old Testament and the, uh, the ca- the Apocrypha, what are now called the Deuterocanonical. It sounds more elevated, doesn't it? Apocrypha has all sorts of funny connotations these days, uh, apocryphal stories. Um, they're called deuterocanonical in theological circles, isn't it? There, the question is easy.
The Jews of our Lord's time never did recognize what are now called the deuterocanonical or apoc- apocryphal books. They never recognized them. They're not likely to have done either. Some of the books in the Apocrypha were written straight in Greek, some are translation of Hebrew works, but some are straight written in Greek. No Jew of our Lord's day would have accepted a book that was composed straight in Greek as part of the canon of the Old Testament. Well, of course not. You see? So that is, uh, so if you follow our Lord and his, uh, uh, uh, idea of the canon, it is the canon that we now have. You'll see that from various, uh, uh, observations.
Our Lord i- in his resurrection, eh, Luke twenty four, he preached to them all things that were written in Moses, in the prophets, and in the Psalms. They are the three divisions of the Hebrew canon. Moses is the first five books. The prophets are the former prophets and the later prophets. The former prophets are the historical books. Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings. They are the former prophets. The Jews regarded them as prophetic writings. They are prophetic interpretations of history, of course. The later prophets being the big, uh, prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the minor prophets, as we call them.
They're not, uh, Daniel isn't included in that, uh, a lot, and all Lamentations. Eh, then the third division called the Psalms sometimes, because the Psalms were the biggest component, or the writings, Kethuvim, and they contain the rest of the canonical books, you see, including First and Second Chronicles. Uh, so our Lord is witness to this, you see. And likewise in his remark about the blood of the martyrs, from Abel to Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the house. Abel, of course, is comes in Genesis, and in the Jewish can- canon, Second Chronicles is the last book of the third division.
And it is Chronicles that tells us of the assassination of the prophet Zechariah in the court of the house of the Lord. So our Lord is quoting the martyrs from one end of the canon to the other, so to speak. You'll see. So, uh, that is, uh, um, very important. It also to be noted why those, uh, non-canonical books came to be included in scripture. It was a, uh, among the Jews, as you know, their books of scripture were on scrolls, individual scrolls. So you get the Genesis, then you get the Leviticus, and you get Isaiah or so on, scrolls, individual scrolls.
And so the Jews went on writing their scriptures, uh, uh, quite a while, even in the Christian era. The early Christians, however, partly because they were poor, I suspect, and maybe for other reasons, uh, began to use the book form like this, what we call a codex. A book form is distinct from a scroll. That's much handier. You can get far more in a book than you can in a scroll. It would take an enormous scroll to get the whole New Testament on it, and the early Christians started to use scrolls. For being poor, they used papyrus instead of parchment and so forth. Now, when they came to write, uh, to write the scriptures in the book, they had to choose this scroll and put it in, uh, write it down in, and this scroll and that scroll and that scroll.
And in some parts of Christ- Christendom, uh, in the century after the apostles, later in the second century, uh, there were circulating, of course, naturally, all these other bits of literature, bits and pieces. Just like if I came to your library, I might well see, uh, a Bible, uh, uh, on your shelf, and beside it there'd be a p- uh, a prayer book maybe, and then beside it there would be a book by John Stott, and here would be John Bunyan, uh, do you see? Uh, and thus, the fact that they stood side by side on your bookshelf didn't- wouldn't mean you gave equal authority to all them.
But some of the Christians of wide parts of the Roman Empire, when they put these things together, began including all these other things in the codex. It is the fact that now, if you look at the big handwritten, the manuscript codices containing the New Testament and the Old Testament, you will not find two that have the same list of apocryphal books. They all have a different list. And in the big manuscripts, like Vaticanus B and Alexandrinus A, there are far more books, other books, than are commonly accepted even in the Apocrypha. You see, it's very curious, complicated, isn't it?
It, you see, uh, uh, well, that's how it went on. And it happened because by that time, very few Christians anymore knew Hebrew. Even great scholars like Saint Augustine didn't know any Hebrew. Doubtful how much Greek he knew, but he certainly didn't know much Hebrew, you see? Uh, and he couldn't check, you see, he couldn't check the thing. Eventually, the Old Testament, uh, uh, in Hebrew was translated into Greek, of course, uh, uh, but uh, before the Christian era. And when the Christian missionaries went to Greek-speaking countries, they took with them these Greek translations already in existence and used them in their missionary work.
So then, uh, these books got incorporated into the Greek Old Testament. Yes, that was the situation. And from that, they were translated into Latin in countries like North Africa and Italy, do you see? So the Latin, the first Latin Bible, the old Latin Bible, was a translation of a Greek translation of the Hebrew. And a pretty pickle, the, the old Latin translation turned out to be. Absolute gibberish in some parts. Never mind. The missionaries used it. It's the best translation they have, and God be praised.
He very often uses the poorest of translations. There's enough of the gospel in it to get those converted, you see. Jolly good stuff. But then the Pope, one of the popes, he got dissatisfied with this situation, and he asked Jerome to revise the Old Latin because the Old Latin was in a terrible old state because people had started to revise it in bits and pieces all over the place. The Pope asked Jerome to revise it. Now, Jerome was a very good Hebrew scholar. He lived in Palestine, Bethlehem, and he got himself, uh, learning Hebrew from the Jewish rabbis. A very unusual type was Jerome to main- keep that contact with the Jews, you'll see. And he tried to revise the old Latin and gave up in despair.
It was just an impossible affair, you'll see. And decided to translate the Bible, the Old Testament, straight from the Hebrew into Latin. You'll see. Which he did, and that became eventually known as the Vulgate. The great Roman Catholic Latin translation of the Old Testament, as you say, and of the New, uh, accepted thereafter for centuries by the Roman Catholic Church, was translated by Jerome. And Jerome would not have the Apocrypha. Called it very un- unparliamentary name, did Jerome. He was a rather irritable old boy, do you see?
But the translator of the Vulgate himself wouldn't have the Apocrypha, and there arose a colossal great dispute between him and also Augustine, who was all for the Apocrypha. And if you are that wide-minded and you have a spare Thursday afternoon, you could go down to Queens and get out the correspondence between Jerome and Saint Augustine and read it still. Augustine's arguments are pitiful, as against the scholarly arguments of, of Jerome, of course. And there was also a practical side to it. Saint Augustine tells Jerome, look here, what you're doing is terrible. You see, poor bishop, he says, somewhere in North Africa, uh, his congregation came to him and said, was this thing in the Bible or wasn't it?
And he didn't know Hebrew and couldn't tell them. And if the bishop had to admit ignorance, you see, before the people, and they eh had to appeal to the Jews to tell them was it in the Old Testament or not. And St. Augustine says, that's an impossible situation you're putting the bishops in. Well, I suppose that's a consideration, but, uh, you'll see. These are things to be remembered. We need to remember our church history. And if you remember to yesterday, I was pointing out how that after the initial paragraphs, when Paul establishes his authority as apostle, and that there's no other gospel.
He then goes off into a large wodge of church history. Not in the modern conventional sense of the Church Fathers plus, but what happened right from the first days onwards. Important that we know that bit of church history. So yes, uh, that you'll find that we will make a minute of that in the notes and proceedings. And there was a motion put forward, seconded, and uh, uh, you know, proposed and seconded, and a vote on it, unanimous, I think, uh, that uh, chairman should put on one or two lectures one of these days on canon of scripture. The question with the New Testament canon is a bit more complicated, but worth exploring.
It's worth getting it under our belts one of these days, even in the most evangelistic session. You should happen to get a knowledgeable Catholic or two, they have a genuine, uh, reverence, of course, for Apocrypha. And therefore, that might come up, and you would need to give some factual knowledge about it, you see. Right? Where are we then? We next notice that, uh, uh, uh, uh, Paul was in Arabia then. He didn't get the gospel from others. Uh, the next thing is that when he went up to Jerusalem, he wasn't summoned there, he went on his own initiative, uh, as a result of a revelation from the Lord.
And when he got to Jerusalem, the apostles, he communicated the gospel, what he preached, he told the apostles what he preached, they added nothing to him, you see. Uh, so that it wasn't a question of the apostles of Jerusalem say, well, Paul, you've got it, uh, five percent, but uh, that we shall have to add certain things. You haven't got a complete gospel. They added nothing to him. Verse six imparted nothing to me. And then finally we noticed, uh, yesterday that sad episode, that on occasions Peter, one of the leading apostles, who when it came to expressing doctrine, as we had seen in Acts fifteen, was a hundred percent with Paul, absolutely believed the same thing, nonetheless had to be rebuked by Paul publicly at the conference at Antioch because he didn't always behave, did Peter, consistently with what he believed.
But compromised the gospel of grace and justification by faith, that Gentiles were equally justified by grace without the works of the law as Jews were, and certainly just as purified in heart, as full Christians as Jews were, without being circumcised. Peter fluffed it by his behavior. And Paul, uh, had to stand him. And that taught us a great lesson, didn't it? Peter, for whatever reasons, lost his nerve or thought compromise was a good tactic or something, and had to be rebuked for it.
So we must learn. We must not, by our behavior, compromise the gospel. We must walk straightforwardly. Do you see? Verse fourteen: when I saw that they walked not uprightly. That means to walk straight. That is to walk as well as preach by your behavior, not to give the impression that you don't believe what you do believe, or conversely, that you do believe what you don't believe. We must see our behavior is straight. Right, now let's come on, let's not spend too long over this.
I'm hoping before tomorrow ends we should do another epistle as well as this, and we're looking, uh, do you see, not this morning for choice devotional words, but for arguments, how we argue. The next big argument, verse, chapter three, verses one to five. argument from experience. Oh, foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you before whose eyes Jesus was openly set forth crucified? This only would I learn from you. Received you the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, are you now perfected in the flesh?
Did you suffer so many things in vain, if it didn't be, indeed in vain? He therefore that supplieth to the Spirit and worketh miracles among you, do- doeth he it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? And the answer to it is going to be in verse six: even as Abraham believed God and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness, it was by faith. It is, of course, proper to argue from experience. And in our witnessing from the Lord, sometimes experience is almost the best thing you can do, and the first thing that you do. I used to be a wife beater, do you see, and a drunkard and a drug taker and all these things, uh, and uh, now look at me now.
Do you see? My house was a pigsty, my children were in rags, my wife was a nervous wreck, uh. Now look at my home and my charming wife and my children. That's good experience. Uh, it's only, it only takes up five verses here. It's good. How did you get saved, in other words? When did you get the Holy Spirit? With all the wonders of his ministry among you, at peace with God, the pouring out of the love of God in your heart, the new birth.
How did that come about, and by what message? Well, he makes it clear. Verse one, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified. What a vi- vi- vigorous, uh, imagery that is, describing his preaching. What he did was to set forth Jesus Christ crucified, like a great tableau in front of them, to see, so that they should, eyes and ears and mouth and everything, should be impressed by this message. This is the gospel, Jesus Christ crucified. Mm. And it was by faith in the crucified Son of God that they received the Spirit, not by circumcision.
Well, if you've begun in the Spirit, are you now going to proceed in the flesh? You'll see, when all is said and done, important as Christian progress is, it isn't so important, is it, as that great, absolute, fundamental, and immeasurably important step that brings a man out of darkness into light. That takes a woman dead in trespasses and in sins and gives her life, on which you cease to be simply a creature of God, the God, and become a child of God. That move is the biggest thing that will ever happen to anybody. That is the colossal great thing.
And if that was done by the spirit, you'll see, the rest will be, and not by the works of the law. Right? But to settle the point, he quotes their experience. How did you get converted? About what message, listening to what message did you get converted? Right? But he doesn't leave it to experience. He answers their question, or at least he doesn't allow them to answer, he answers it for them. And now comes a, a, an argument which is a battery of scripture quotations. Do you notice that? From six to, uh, fourteen, A set of arguments based on how many scriptures?
Have you counted them? What a technique for arguing. Look at verse six, one. Even as Abram believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness, is a quotation from where? Oh, Genesis 15:6, yes. Know therefore that they which are be of faith the same are sons of Abram. And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abram, saying, in thee shall all the nations be blessed. Another qu- quotation from Genesis. So then they which be of faith are blessed with the, uh, the faithful Abram, or the believing Abram.
For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed is every one which continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them. And that's a quotation from? Deuteronomy twenty seven. you see. Yeah, he says the man, the man is cheating. Uh, yes, I don't think people should be allowed Bibles. You see, they make the bishop himself, you know, I, um, they take away all his kudos, don't they? And they see the lame man there got, got the answers. Oh. We set to one side and allow them to carry. I just put the scripture.
Yeah, so that was Deuteronomy, you see. Now that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for the just shall live by faith. We appeal to our same authority, yes, and that is? Habakkuk. And the law is not of faith, but he that doeth them shall live in them. Is? Leviticus. Leviticus, quite. Yes. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree, and that is? Deuteronomy twenty one twenty Yes, good faith. six quotations fired off like rapid machine gun. On the surface, that tells us something about arguing, doesn't it?
At certain places, it is very important to have actual verses of the Bible at one's fingertips and know where to find them in the Bible. That's jolly good. Even if you have to have a list written for you in the Bible, it's jolly good stuff, you see. There's no good saying, now look here, you need to, you need to be born again, you know, I, um, like the Bible says, now wait a minute, mm, it's where does that come? Amos, um, no, sorry. Well, it does say it somewhere, you need to be born again. I think it's Timothy. Well, no, well, I can't tell you where it is now, but that is there somewhere. That's no use, is it? You've got to have them at your fingertips. And here is Paul, because he did a lot of this kind of personal work and preaching in the marketplace and in the synagogue and had to answer people's objections, and he knew he had them at his fingertips, the scripture to that nails that one.
And you notice, of course, that this isn't just re- uh, ditto repeato stuff. It's the pursuance of an argument that he would have used on many occasion, knowing the reactions if he cited one scripture, the kind of reaction he would get to that, and he would need to nail that reaction by another scripture, and then he'd get another reaction, need to nail that. He's a wise old boy, of course. This is how he proceeded. So, how do you get converted? He didn't need them to tell him. He told them, even as Abram believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness. That is not a type or a parable, it's an actual case, a man that walked on two legs.
This is what the lawyers would call a precedent. It is case law. If Abram was justified by faith, then anybody can be and everybody must be. This sets the precedent. He was an actual man. It isn't a picture or a type, it's an actual case of a literal man who got justified, and how did he get justified, and when did he get justified? Was Abraham justified at the final judgment? Well, certainly not. He was justified, Genesis fifteen six, and the terms are spelt out, justified by faith. Know therefore that they which be of faith, the same are, uh, do see, um, uh, the same are sons of Abraham.
But now somebody has got an objection, perhaps. Yeah, but that was Abraham. This is really applied to us Gentiles. Hmm. What do you say to that then? Abraham was the special case, you see, he's a very advanced Jew, you know, pagan by this time. So, um, yes, Abraham might be justified by faith, that doesn't necessarily imply that the Gentiles. Oh, yes, it does, says Paul. And proceeds to quote Genesis twelve three and eighteen eighteen. Do you see? The scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying, in thee shall all the nations be blessed.
In thee, what do you mean in thee? Well, just as he has explained in verse seven, those that are of faith are, in that sense, spiritual sons of Abraham. He set the thing going. He was the mold. He was the prototype. He was the, uh, case law precedent, and they that are of faith are his spiritual sons. Paul is going to argue that throughout this epistle. It is in Abraham, following his example. In that sense, in Abraham, doing what he did, that you get justified. And it is said that in him, in thee, shall all the nations be blessed.
Ah, yes, somebody says, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. What? Oh, yes, I'm a dear son of Abraham. I, I, yeah, yeah, I do, but I, I, I do do like Abraham, you see. I believe like Abraham did. In fact, I have, um, um, a faith, you see, that if I keep the law, I shall be justified. I have strong. And I do believe that if I keep the law and do the best I can to keep God's law, I shall be saved. No, that isn't faith. Strong faith that you, if you keep the law, you'll be justified is not Abraham's faith. Do you see? So then they which be of faith are blessed with the faithful Abram, for as many are as of the works of the law are under a curse.
Mm-hmm. So that deals with this question, what do, what do you mean by faith? Abram believed. Does that mean he had great faith that he could keep God's law, and if he kept it well, he would be saved? No, no, that's impossible. If you take your stand on keeping the law, instead of getting justified, you are cursed. I do remember, these are old men reminisce, don't they? Years and years and years and years ago, Queen Victoria was dead, and uh, it was just after the war, and we in our church inherited the right from I don't know who to go into the local corn exchange in Cambridge City, which was turned into a rough cafeteria at weekends because rationing was still on, you'll see, and the people were not fed very well.
And this was turned into a rough cafeteria run by the city council, and you could go in there and buy doorstep sandwiches and mugs of tea or c- cocoa or something. And people used to come in off the streets on a Sunday night, rough old trestled tables and things all over this vast cavernous place. And we had the right to go in, stand up a corner with a microphone, piano, accordion or something, and we sang hymns and choruses, and we preached about twenty minutes, and then afterwards we went and bought ourselves a cup of tea and went round the tables, you see, and sat with the folks and got talking if we could, and gave out tracks. And one Sunday there was a, I came across a table, and they turned out to be, all of them, about half a dozen of them, Irish folks on the promised land, you see.
And they were very pleasant. One was a nav- two or three were navvies, and others were doctors, uh, uh, receptionists, and this that and the other, you see. And so, uh, they, um, uh, told me that what we said was very wrong, seriously wrong. Well, I said, I didn't know that. Uh, I said, no, you can't know you're saved. I suppose we've been preaching on you can know you're saved, I said. You can't know you're saved. I said, really, is that so? I thought you could. No, they said you can't. Well, I said, I'm disappointed then. Eh, uh, can you show me, uh, from the Bible that you can't?
I said, you're Catholic, you say. Well, I wasn't brought up a Catholic. I didn't have that advantage, so that, um, uh, um, well, I tell you what, I do believe the Bible, and you believe the Bible too, don't you? So if you can start me off there and show me that I'm wrong, you see? Well, then I, I, I want to be corrected. I don't want to live in a false. I do, at the moment, I do believe you can know you're saved, you see, at that time. You show me, where in the Bible does it say you sh- could can't be... We haven't got a Bible with us. I said, I tell you what, I have a Bible, and, and I had Knox's translation. We had that in the, in our box. I went and got Knox's translation. I had to prove to him it was a Bible with the imprimature of I don't know who on it, you see.
So I said, well, now you show me. Oh. Well, now they, I didn't know where it quite was, but I said, righto, you take it away. Will you take it away and read it and show me, you'll see, and we'll meet next week. And that led to months with two of them particularly. We used to come to our rooms in Trinity or elsewhere with a friend of mine, and we used to search the scriptures, and they used to bring along tracts from Catholic Truth Society, which I read diligently, and when we met, I said, well, I read that, that was very interesting, but I couldn't understand how, what it says here, you know, you, uh, and because the Bible seems to say the opposite, and old Knox's translation is very good for that.
I do rem- I do remember, uh, that, that, that, that they were telling me once that you have to keep the commandments, so I said, how, how, how, oh, you have to keep the commandments. To be saved, yes. I said, how well have you kept them? Well, said Bridget, fairly well. I mean to say, thou find no other gods but we. We don't have any other gods but God, do we? She said to her sister. No. No, right. And no, we don't bow down to idols, do we? No. And uh, uh, thou shall not commit adultery. We haven't committed adultery, have we? No. Uh, now honor your father and mother. Oh, we do. We don't steal. No. So they decided they kept the lot.
I congratulated them. It was marvelous. That's what you have to do, you see. And they brought me the track to say, this is how you have to do to be saved. So they came. I said, well, that's the bit I don't understand. You're saying to me, if you keep the whole law, like that, that's, and then you'll be saved. Yes. So I said, what about this? And I opened to, um, uh, Galatians three verse ten in Noxus translation, and got them to read it. All who take their stand on the law are under a curse. Wow. You see the color drain out of their face when they were sincere Catholics. Wow.
You see the point of the argumentation. First, it's Abraham, but does it apply to Abraham only? What about Gentiles? Ah yes, he's got the scripture to cover that point. It applies to Gentiles. Ah yes, but I have great faith that if I keep the law, I shall be saved. I mean, that's what faith means. Oh, oh no, excuse me, no, it doesn't. Another scripture says, he's got them like a shepherd with a sheep dog, you know. The sheep goes that way, he's going to get it into that door. If the sheep goes that way, he's got the scripture to say, no, you don't. And if it runs all that way, he said, no, you don't. Yes, but he was used to the thing. He'd led thousands to the Lord, hadn't he? It's good to have scriptures at our fingertips, uh, at each turn.
Righto. Cursed is everyone which continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them. Oh, says somebody, oh yeah, yeah, yes, well, that's right. You see, if you don't keep the whole lot, of course you'll come unstuck. But I, I, I think I can keep the whole lot, you see. Like my two girlfriends from, from, from Ballywocen, they were. Uh, you see, I, I, I, I, I feel I, I can keep the lot by God's help, you see. Well, I have great faith in that. Well, that's no good anyway. That no man is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for the just shall live by faith. What do you mean, faith?
And the law is not of faith. So two quotations now. Uh, having great faith that if you keep the law, you'll be all right. No, that is not what faith means. The law is not of faith. What is it then? He that doeth them shall live in them. And in Pauline theology, doing and faith in this sense are opposite. Very, very important to see. Eh, uh, well then, uh, the law is not of faith, how can we get saved? Also, somebody, Christ kept the law for us.
No, he didn't. He did keep the law, that's true, and if he hadn't kept the law and had been a sinner, he couldn't have saved us, but he didn't save us by keeping the law. How did he save us? Well, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, not by keeping the law and giving us an example, but taking upon himself the curse of the law that we deserve, the curse of a broken law. That's how we get saved. For it is written, now another scripture, he's sixth in the row, for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree.
And you can see from that, the final climax of that series of quotations, the kind of gospel he preached. He determined to know nothing among them save Jesus Christ and him crucified. No, he did not preach a sermon on the Mount. As J. B. Phillips noticed a long time ago, if you read the Acts of the Apostles and the evangelization of, evangelization of the apostles, you will scarce find one citation from the Sermon on the Mount from chapter one to chapter twenty eight of the Acts of the Apostles, will you? Uh, it's not that the apostles didn't believe in morality.
They would have denounced sin, as you see Paul doing in Romans one and two and three. But in the actual record of the sermons they preached, in the Acts of the Apostles, it was the death and the resurrection of Christ that they preached. That is the gospel. Yes. So, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree, that upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Yeah. Righto. six compact quotations, know where to find them, how they apply, and what each one is being used to deal with, the twists and turns of the discussion, you see.
That's a very important method of arguing. Then comes a long argument from Old Testament, and a very technical one. Verse fifteen: Brethren, I speak after the manner of men, though it be but a man's covenant, yet when it hath been confirmed, no one maketh it void or addeth thereto. Now to Abram were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He saith not, and to seeds as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ. Now this I say, a covenant confirmed before by God. The law, which came four hundred and thirty years after, doth not disannul, so as to make the promise of none effect.
For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no more of promise, but God hath granted it to Abraham by promise. Now, what on earth is all that about? Not the kind of stuff, is it, that you raise in your preliminary first stage, uh, evangelistic Bible study with a group of downright atheists. Why bother about it then? Because you'll find a lot of your fellow believers need to know what this is saying. What we now meet is this. Paul is out to, uh, uh, uh, to, uh, maintain and demonstrate that justification is by faith.
In order to show that justification is by faith, he now demonstrates that certain other things are by faith too. One, the blessings of Abraham. They are by faith. He's just said it, that the blessings of Abraham might come upon us Gentiles. And then the promises in the plural are through faith. And then the covenant is through faith. Not only the initial justification then, but the blessings and the promises and the covenant, all these are by faith. And the importance of that is that you will find from time to time dear Christian folks that are quite clear that justification is by faith, but they think the inheritance isn't.
Some of them go so far as to say a believer can miss the inheritance altogether. You'll see. So now it's worth our while, uh, uh, giving heed to this next lot of, uh, arguments. And not merely from an argumentative point of view, but, ladies and gentlemen, uh, so that we might, on the side, be rejoicing in the colossal salvation we have. You'll see. One of life's difficulties is convincing believers that they are wealthier than they think they are. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to convince them. Ask a question that way. On that issue of actively saved and well, is it worth stopping to make an issue?
Worth with who? With believers who, two or three weeks ago, told me they were astonished that I took such a position and was teaching it. What position? The position of being saved and knowing you're saved. I'm saved for all eternity. And they didn't like that. No, they did not. I think they were Arminians. Arminians. Ah. Well, you'll find, uh, sir, as you probably know, that, um, the further, it's not only, uh, Christian folks in this part of the world, it is a, uh, um, some many feel that they can fall away and be lost forever.
That is true, isn't it? Uh, it used to be, I don't know if it still is, our dear friends, the Salvation Army. Uh, they used to have to swear an oath, didn't they, upon conversion. Uh, in my youth they did anyway. Uh, and they had to swear to ten conditions. uh, conditions. One was that they swore an oath before God that they would serve God in the ranks of the Salvation Army for the rest of their lives. One of the other conditions was that they swore before God that they did believe that a true believer could fall away and be lost in hell forever. Do you say they had to swear that? But the more east you go into Eastern Europe, the more you will find that is a predominant view amongst believers, uh, do you see?
And they get, um, very distressed if preachers come along and preach what they call eternal security. If you say, is it worthwhile troubling? Well, my answer to that would be, well, look, here are dear believers in Romania, in Bulgaria, and places like that that have suffered enormously. And they look at us in the West and say, what have you suffered for Christ? And they feel that what we're preaching is such a heresy as would encourage believers to misbehave. It doesn't matter how you behave, you're still saved. To them, that is outrageous. You see? And when you've had situations in churches where, uh, the elders of a church have been doing work with young people, for instance.
And the secret police have got at a couple of cases I know of, a couple of chaps in the church and put the pressure on, as the KGB knows how to do, until eventually they got those two fellows so scared that they betrayed the two elders in the church who were working with children and teaching children the gospel, and the two elders were put in prison. You try telling the elders of that church that those two fellas that betrayed him were saved eternally. You see that, can't you? You'll say, if you...
and pastorally too, take an analogy. If your father goes upstairs one night and his seven-year-old daughter, you see, is still awake at midnight, and he says, Deary, what's happening? Why didn't you sleep? You see? And he says, I can't sleep. What's wrong? And then she breaks down, so I'm afraid you're going to throw me out and give me to the dustbin man. And dad says, no, no, sorry, not my dear, I'd never do. You said the other day you don't, you don't, you don't wear like that. I'll give you to the dustbin man.
I'm afraid you're going to throw me to the dustbin man. Oh, so what's the father say now? Does he turn around and say, you wicked girl, if you go on believing I would ever throw you out, I will throw you out. Huh? Would be daft, wouldn't it? If you find folks who can't believe that they are eternally secure, well, first thing you must do not to frighten them. Question of God gaining their confidence, isn't it? If their view of God is that he's a God that would eventually throw them out. You don't charge them with heresy or something and scare the daylights out of them.
You might have to leave it and say, okay, well, I personally believe you can be eternally sure. There's something that the Lord will show them eventually through his word. Yes? So that's what I ultimately did because they were very, very, uh, distressed. Yeah, they would be. They, they really were absolutely convinced Mhm. that scripture told No, that's right, you see. Yes. to be saved and lost. Mm, mm. were not able, I, I mean, I, I didn't even start to develop Mhm. a discussion of the problem. Mhm, mhm. Yes, surely. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. Yes, that's right. And, uh, very often these things come not simply by, so to speak, a text that proves it in the proof text sense.
They come as the very heart of God is revealed to them through his word, and they sense the arms of the Father around the neck of the prodigal. How, how do we teach some of these things? Obviously, it's risen from Bill and a particular course where we are teaching on assurance, and we're going into like that situation with the Methodist Church, with the Wesley influences and Arminian influences. Thirty years ago, when I became a Christian, that was a big issue, Calvin versus the Arminian viewpoint. Mm-hmm. And you went to fight and you discussed that, and you went, I want to go to the stake for Calvin and against Arminianism and so on. And maybe some of these guys that he's talking to are going back those twenty thirty years to the whole Nantes argument.
It's in the Northern Ireland situation where you're trying to show what the scriptures say, that there are folks maybe who would maybe even use other proof texts, if you want, but have a different understanding, or one group or other taking verses out of context or whatever. Mm-hmm. Does it come down to one's experience, you know, like when you were mentioning with folks were, because of their personal experiences and what they're going through, have a read into the scriptures in a certain way, and others maybe look at particular verses in another way because they don't have that experience, or we just do we look at the authority actually what the word actually says, Yes.
and leave it with people, or how do you deal with it? In a sense, the way. Well, yes, I would be, uh, uh, needing to be taught by you how you found the Lord helped you in this circumstance. I think it's a, a grave pity that so often this thing has been, uh, argued as though it were a debate between Calvin and Arminius. I think that's a pity because I'm not a Calvinist. I wouldn't like it if you said I was an Arminian, but still I'm not a Calvinist. And whatever I am, I think Paul is wiser. Some people say I am of Paul, and then somebody else says I'm of Paulus. Well, you shouldn't be either anyway.
We shouldn't be of Calvin or of Arminian. Arminius. They are, I know, useful shorthand sometimes in theological debate, you see. But to re- to write, to raise that whole question, uh, simply on the grounds, well, the elect are sure that they be saved, in the end comes unstuck anyway. Around the part, uh, parts of East Anglia, notably, eh, around in the villages around Cambridgeshire, where, uh, Spurgeon ministered as a young man, you could find in days gone by, uh, a very strong Calvinist who had no assurance of salvation whatsoever, uh, whatsoever.
A friend of mine, they, uh, uh, was conducting a tent mission in some of those villages, and he visited a gentleman who's about eighty, plus eighty. oh, yeah, had been attending a, a very strict Baptist church, strict in the, the Calvinist sense, do you know what I'm saying? Eh, all his life. They had no assurance of salvation. Why not? Well, the elect, according to them, can be absolutely sure they're saved. The trouble is to know whether you are the elect or not. How would you know whether you are elect? That's the difficulty. If you could be sure you are the elect, you can be sure of salvation.
But how would you know you are the elect? Then in some circles, it comes down to the doctrine of evidences. If you are elect, there'll be evidence, so you have to look around for the evidence. And one of their favorite verses was, I will take away the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. And this poor old boy of about eighty, I don't know what, told my friend, you see, I, I, I, my brother, he, he once upon a time, he broke down and wept. I think that's evidence that, uh, he might have a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone. I've never been able to weep, says he, about such things. And so... So here are they, their eyes on their own emotions.
And in the end, whether they're saved or not, to them now appears to depend on their emotions. Do you see? That's the extreme Calvinism. It gives you no more assurance than the extreme Arminian. I think it's a pity to raise it on that score. But if you ask, I think there are two things, aren't there? One is we need ourselves to be sure that what we teach is what scripture says. There is big debate at that level. I'd had, I told you the other day, I had was last year had a, a Romanian Baptist pastor with me, living with me for three months or so, and he used to believe in the eternal security of the believer, he told me.
Now he doesn't, and it's a raging matter now in, in Romania. I fear it's going to split many churches, alas. Do you see? We had long, uh, not arguments, but discussions. Mm-hmm. Mm. And, uh, I took as a very great compliment when he said to me last time, as he came with one of his revised ideas on him to be marvelously supporting his view. Do you see? I said, oh, that's very, very interesting, very, very interesting. Um, I said, yes, I could think of parallels of that, and we drew out some ideas on a bit of paper, and of course, then they led to conclusions that he didn't altogether want them to lead to, you see what I mean.
But, uh, he said, well, at least there's this, he said, you don't plaster us over the head with it. Pastorally, yes, you don't plaster people over the head with it. For getting God to reveal himself and warm their hearts and and instill the confidence in him. But on the theological side, we've got to be sure that we're preaching the truth. What about those other scriptures that seem to talk about that your Arminians will say, but they actually say you can be fall away and be lost. The branch that doesn't abide in the vine, uh, gets put in the fire, for instance.
What about that? So we have to be sure ourselves on the theological side. And on the theological side, yes, argue we must listen to Paul, but not in any bitter spirit, spirit, humble saying, no, this is what the verse says. Yes? We need to be sure ourselves that way round. And what I would want to do in a passage like this, especially if I were fortified by a cup of tea or coffee. You see, would to take, one of the things you do is to take this matter of the great inheritance, and I propose something other completely.
Paul is talking, look, we're not only justified by faith, but to prove you're justified by faith. There is other things that are by faith, aren't they marvelous, you see? There are the promises of Abraham, and then there are, uh, do you see, there is the inheritance. Joshua. Joshua, you see, the inheritance, and there's a covenant, uh. Oh, what a marvelous thing this is. To come round to the conclusion, if you be Christ, then are you Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise, all this vast inheritance, you know, God is getting at our hearts and getting across the wealth of the gospel, and we need to know about this covenant business and what the covenant means and is, what kind of a covenant it is.
