Sin Problem in the Christian Life, Part 2

The point: Base your understanding of God and your responses to Him on the facts of His relationship to you as revealed in Scripture, not on conjured-up desires.

Martin quotes the hymn 'Rock of Ages' to illustrate the posture of a justified person who comes to Christ stripped of self-righteousness, relying solely on His cross for salvation.

As the great and gracious God who sincerely offers salvation in his son, and therefore it demands a response from us. All right, do you see the principle now? That the relationship God sustains to his creatures is a different relationship in terms of the particular position in which those creatures find themselves. And our relationship to God, our thinking of God, our thinking of God, our responses to God should be based upon the facts of his relationship to us. We are not to conjure up what we would like his relationship to us to be, and then respond in terms of the dreams spun out of our own...

12:01 - 13:15 Read in full sermon

The point: Seriously pursue holiness, actively engaging in it as children of obedience, not fashioning yourselves according to former lusts.

He explains the figure of speech 'girding up the loins of your mind' by describing how people would tie up loose garment folds to prepare for earnest activity, applying it to having a concentrated spiritual perspective.

He's using a figure of speech when a man or a woman particularly was in earnest about getting somewhere. They would take the loose folds. They would take the loose folds of the garment and tie them up around the waist. Girding up the loins of your mind.

24:57 - 25:12 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin summarizes the balanced teaching of Peter: the justified person takes sin seriously, pursues holiness, but does not come under legal bondage, knowing God as Father and…

Martin uses the metaphor of a man walking down the center of a highway getting 'smacked with boats, flows of traffic coming opposite directions' to illustrate the difficulty and opposition faced by those who try to maintain a biblical balance between antinomianism and legalism.

He's cast. He's cast from the crippling errors of antinomianism. Oh, dear people, do you see the balance in Scripture? And any man that's determined that he'll hew this line like the man who walks down the center of a highway, he'll get smacked with boats, flows of traffic coming opposite directions.

39:00 - 39:19 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin summarizes the balanced teaching of Peter: the justified person takes sin seriously, pursues holiness, but does not come under legal bondage, knowing God as Father and…

He shares a personal anecdote of being called both 'the rankest form of an antinomian' and 'the most vicious legalist' to demonstrate the common misunderstanding of the balanced biblical teaching on justification and sin.

I've been called everything from the rankest form of an antinomian to the most vicious legalist on the face of the earth. And I'm being called that right to this very day because we insist that the Word of God teaches that when a sinner believes on Christ, all his sins are forgiven. He is accepted as righteous in the court of heaven and God will never bring him into judgment.

39:20 - 39:52 Read in full sermon