Relationship of Faith to Works

The point: Examine whether you have sucked sweetness from eleven weeks of teaching on justification while still holding an antinomian spirit in some area; let this sermon correct your false thinking.

For eleven weeks Martin has trained his 20-inch guns, 6-inch guns, machine guns and BB guns on the legalist front. Now he turns every weapon of artillery to the opposite front of antinomianism and mere notional religion - the same truth can be twisted into poison if unguarded.

For 11 weeks, we've done nothing but zero in our guns on that first front. You will never have peace of conscience till you are driven out of yourself to rest solely in the work of another. And that note has been sounded. All our artillery, our 20-inch guns, our artillery, our 6-inch guns, our machine guns, and our BB guns and everything have been aimed at.

14:25 - 14:54 Read in full sermon

The point: Never dismiss James as secondary to Paul; God gave both letters for our protection against errors on opposite flanks.

Quoting Robert Johnstone, Martin pictures two regiments in the same uniform approaching each other on the battlefield. From a distance they look like they are attacking one another, but they are actually firing from opposite flanks at a common enemy down in the valley. Paul and James look contradictory until you see they are both shooting at error.

But they are soldiers in intense, earnest fighting on the plain for the honor of their Lord. They are captains marshalling their troops of arguments and appeals against various manifestations of error and of sin. Then he goes on to use a very graphic illustration. Back in the days when foot soldiery was the order of the day in a military sense,

21:28 - 21:52 Read in full sermon

James challenges the professor of faith: show me your faith without your works. Martin amplifies it: bring out a faith-o-meter, place it on your heart, let me watch the needle register 'saving faith.' Impossible - faith must be shown by deeds.

without its demonstrable evidence in deeds. Do it if you can. Bring me a faith-o-meter and put it on your heart and let me see it register and say, saving faith. You see, he throws out the challenge. You say you've got faith, but you have no works? Show me your faith without your works. He says, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll demonstrate to you the validity of my faith by my works.

31:28 - 31:52 Read in full sermon

When the life principle leaves, the undertaker takes over. The form and substance remain but the body is dead. So faith without works has the appearance of religion but no animating principle - a corpse dressed up for viewing.

When the spirit, the life principle, leaves the body, the undertaker, the mortician, takes over. The body is there in its form and substance, but it's dead. When the spirit leaves, the life principle is gone. Nothing's left but the carcass. As the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so,

41:35 - 41:58 Read in full sermon

The point: Ask yourself: having professed to cast your anchor on Christ's righteousness, do you seek to walk with all your heart in obedience to Him out of love?

Someone has beautifully said that repentance is the tear in faith's eye. True faith is tearful when it fails the one it loves - a faith never accompanied by grief for sin is a dry and dead faith.

Someone has very beautifully said that repentance is the tear in faith's eye. And true faith is never tearful.

48:26 - 48:38 Read in full sermon

The point: Have no sympathy with any gospel but the gospel of free grace, yet equally no sympathy with a merely notional or emotional faith that has no practical obedience, no grief for sin, no ethical conformity to Christ.

May God grant that we embrace Paul with one arm and James with the other - both apostles our gifts to mark out the path of life received by faith alone, but by a faith that is never alone.

That we'll embrace the Apostle Paul with one arm and James with the other. And thank God that they are both our gifts to mark out the path of eternal life. Life that is in Christ alone. Life received by faith alone. But life received by a faith that is never alone. Let us pray.

55:56 - 56:22 Read in full sermon