The Problem of Ongoing Sin #2

Introduction and Prayer for Illumination

0:02 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, August 12, 2007, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now may I encourage you to follow as I read a brief portion out of John's first letter, the book of 1 John, chapter 1 and verse 5, and then the first two verses of chapter 2. I will not be focusing upon this passage as a primary passage of exposition, but I will be making reference to it, and I felt it would be helpful for us to have its content

0:45 brought freshly to mind on the front end of our exposition. 1 John, chapter 1 and verse 5. And this is the message that we have heard from him, that is, from the incarnate word, Jesus, this is the message we have heard from him and announce unto you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk about in the darkness, we are lying and are not doing the truth.

1:28 But if we are walking in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

2:13 My little children, these things write I unto you that you may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins and not for our sins. For ours only, but also for the whole world. Now let us again seek God's face in prayer for the blessing and help of the Spirit of God in our study of the word this morning.

2:56 Our Father, in the language of the psalmist, we have asked you to teach us your way. And so we come again to plead that your Holy Spirit will be present to do his work for us. To do his work of illuminating our minds with the word of truth. That he will be present, inclining our hearts to receive that truth with eagerness, with faith, and with a disposition of obedience.

3:29 We pray that your servant may know the present aid of the Holy Spirit as the spirit of utterance, that I may speak as I ought to speak. O God, come. Come to us at every point of our need. And so minister to us that when this time of engagement with your word is over, we may be able to say with the two on that road to Emmaus, did not our hearts burn within us?

3:59 Lord Jesus, be present to open to us the scriptures and show us the things concerning yourself. We ask for our good and for your peace. Your praise. Amen.

The Pastoral Duty to Teach Justification

4:18 Many of us are familiar with the words of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 4, where beginning in verse 10, he states that the risen Christ, among the other things that he does, is the one who gives gifts to his church. And in that passage, he not only identifies some of those gifts, among them pastors and teachers, but he tells us some of the reasons for which God gives them. And he says that he has given some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of service.

5:02 And then he goes on to say he has given them also that we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the Spirit of God. And so pastors are given, among other reasons, in order that God's people may not be immature children, tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. Pastors are given, among other reasons,

5:46 Pastors are to be useful to the end that God's people become stable in their understanding of and obedience to the truth. And it is this weighty pastoral duty and privilege which has driven me to this present series of studies in that amazing, soul-ravishing provision of God's redemptive grace called justification.

6:19 Since this is God's way of making sinful man right with himself, and since the gospel is the revelation of God's way of doing that, Romans 1, 16 and 17, and the gospel alone is the power of God unto salvation, if you were the devil, where would you constantly load your efforts to confuse men and women? Surely you would seek to confuse them concerning that message which is the revelation of God's way of making sinners right with himself.

7:02 And so in each generation the devil stirs up instruments to blur, to confuse, to deny, to distort the clear teaching of the word of God concerning what it means for God to be right with himself. For guilty, hell-deserving sinners to be brought into a right relationship to God by being justified. And so I have given myself in these twenty sermons thus far to open up this doctrine in all of its leading lines, and I have done so unashamedly, standing on the shoulders of my spiritual forefathers

7:47 in use, using as the basic framework of opening up the scriptures that marvelous definition of justification found in the larger catechism of the Westminster Standards. Justification is an act of God's free grace unto sinners whereby he pardons all of their sins and accepts and receives their persons as righteous individuals in his sight not for anything done in them or wrought in them or done by them but only for the full satisfaction

8:31 and perfect obedience of Jesus Christ imputed to them and received by faith alone. And so in the opening up of this doctrine I sought by God's will to be a Christian. God's grace to drive home those major pivots of truth that are crucial to an accurate understanding of this doctrine which is God's answer to this most profound and ultimate of all questions. How can I appear in the presence of a holy and a just God and be anything other than damned as a sinner?

Justification and the Problem of Ongoing Sin

9:15 The answer of the Bible is if you appear a justified sinner you will be fully absolved and welcomed with joy into the presence of God. Well having opened up the doctrine and having addressed what appears on the surface to be a contradictory strand of thought out of the book of James I began last Lord's Day to address what I am calling pastoral concerns growing out of the Bible. And out of the doctrine of justification. And I took up the first one for the first time last Lord's Day under this title.

9:57 Justification and the problem of ongoing sin in the life of the justified. Justification and the problem of ongoing sin in the life of the justified. To put it in kind of first person colloquial language I'm justified. Bless God.

10:20 But I still have sin in me and I still sin. What in the world am I to do? It's that very practical pastoral concern that I am seeking to address under this title justification and the problem of ongoing sin in the justified. And I'm going to give a rather extensive review for two reasons.

10:46 Number one. As I've reflected and meditated I believe God's helped me to see the issue even more clearly. Secondly, I'm conscious there are a number of you who were away on vacation last week and weren't here. And if I jumped right in to continue at the point I had hoped to on the front end, you'd be lost.

11:05 So bear with me. And I could give a third reason. I think there may be one or two of you who don't have perfect recall and the review might be of help to you. I think there may be one or two of you who don't have perfect recall in the review might be of help to you.

11:17 If you didn't get it, that was tongue in cheek. Alright? So, what did I do? Well, I did two things last Lord's Day.

11:25 I attempted to identify this problem, identify it and describe it, and then secondly, to direct your attention to two wrong ways of attempting to resolve the problem. That's what I did last Lord's Day morning. First of all, I attempted to identify this problem. And in doing this, I stated the problem arises from two foundational Biblical realities.

11:52 These are matters that cannot be denied if you believe your Bible. Number one, the reality of the nature of God's justifying act. And secondly, the reality of sin in the life of the justified. Those are two undeniable facts that put together, create this problem of justification.

12:15 Those are two undeniable facts that put together, create this problem of justification. And the ongoing problem of sin in the justified. We go back then to those two elements that comprise the problem by way of review. First of all, I said the reality of the nature of God's justifying act.

Review: The Nature of God's Justifying Act

12:35 As we have seen in our previous examination of this amazing privilege and provision of God's salvation in Christ, our justification consists of the fact that we are justified. We are justified. We exist in two distinct but always inseparable acts of God. Two distinct but inseparable acts of God.

12:58 When the Scripture says it is God that justifies, what does God do in that justifying act? When it is said of the publican, this man went down to his house justified. What had God done with respect to him? What comprises God's justifying act?

13:24 Well the Shorter Catechism very accurately defines it. He pardons all of our sins. In the New Covenant God says there are sins and iniquities I will remember no more. He says I will bury them in the depths of the sea.

13:44 God takes all of the sins, all of the sins of the penitent believing sinner who goes out of himself and into Christ by faith and God pardons, God blots out all of the wrath deservingness of that person's sins, past, present and future, so that with respect to the damnation that even one sin demands all of the aggregate Sins of the justified sinner are pardoned. But then secondly, God does something more, for that would only put us back where Adam was after he was created and before he sinned.

14:28 God in the second place in justification accepts and accounts our persons as righteous in His sight. He regards us not only as not having broken His law, since all of the penalty has been paid by Christ, but He also regards us as having fully kept the law in all of the length and breadth of its demands. The Scripture tells us that on the basis of the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ in His death, God imputes to us, God puts to our account,

15:12 God reckons as ours what Christ did in His death in fully satisfying the law of God that said the soul that sins shall die, the wages of sin is death, Christ paid the debt, and all that is demanded to be rewarded with eternal life by a perfect life of righteousness. Romans 5.19 tells us that Jesus Christ has rendered, that righteousness as our covenant head, our representative, and therefore in Christ our sins are fully pardoned

15:52 and our persons are accepted and accounted as righteous in His sight. It's a marvelous thing that when a guilty, hell-deserving sinner despairs of saving himself and casts himself upon Christ alone in order to be saved, all of the claims of God's law, which must be met if he is justly to be forgiven and justly to be made an heir of heaven, are immediately, fully, and irreversibly satisfied the moment the sinner is justified.

16:36 You've got to get hold of that, dear child of God, or you will never know the bells of joy, and liberty ringing in your soul when you think of what it is to be a justified sinner. Every single claim of God's law in God's court with God's statute books open, every claim is met with respect to the justified sinner in the person of the Savior. Now, this law that the sinner has broken,

17:16 this law that the sinner has not perfectly obeyed, what is to be his relationship to that law in the future? Well, this is what brings us into this problem.

17:36 And I don't want to anticipate where I'm going too much, and I've got to keep my face here more to my notes, because, as I said last week, this is spiritual. This is spiritual neurosurgery, and I don't want to lose the close track of the reasoning that I think is vital. As surely as the death of Jesus satisfies all the penal sanctions of the law in our place, so likewise, by his life of sinless obedience, all the precepts of the law, he has met as our representative and in our place. So, for the one truth,

18:18 only believing in the Lord Jesus with that living faith, which is the gift of God, a faith that will always be evidence in a transformed life, such a believer in Jesus has nothing more to do with God's law in its penal sanctions and sin-condemning authority. Nothing more whatsoever. Romans 8.1 There is therefore now no...

18:47 No. No condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. You've got to lay hold of that truth, that if I have gone out of myself in the despair of any attempt to save myself and cast myself solely upon Christ, as he's offered in the gospel, all of the penal sanctions of the law, that is, all the penalties which the law demands, have been met in my Savior. When he cried, it is finished.

19:23 When Paul says in Galatians 3.13, he has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for us, whatever my dealings with sin in the future may be, I must never allow them to bring me back under the thunderings of the penal sanctions of the law. Those have been satisfied in my representative, my representative, the Lord Jesus. Likewise, that believing sinner has nothing more to do with God's law with its precepts promising acceptance and life upon condition of perfect obedience.

20:04 In Romans 10.5 and Galatians 3.12, we are told the principle of the law is, do this and you will live. Perfectly keep the law and life would be the reward of that obedience.

20:18 But when we have run to hide in Jesus and in His perfect law keeping, we have nothing more to do with the law not only condemning us, but the law commending us. For in Christ we have a perfect righteousness wrought by the perfect obedient suffering of Jesus and the perfect suffering, obedience, obedience of Jesus. That's terminology I first found in the contemporary writer and the more I studied and read, I found it in old John Owen who wrote in this way. There is,

21:04 but there is here in no color of probability, number one, it is acknowledged that there was a near conjunction and alliance between the obedience of Christ and His sufferings. And though they may be distinguished, they cannot be separated. He suffered in the whole course of His obedience from the womb to the cross and He obeyed in all His sufferings to the last moment wherein He expired. So by His suffering life of obedience and by His obedience suffering, Christ has wrought a perfect righteousness that satisfies all the legal demands of the law of God

21:48 in the court of Christ. In the court of Christ, with the statute books open and with the burning eye of God knowing all that I am and all that I ever will be. And God says, my law has no penal claims upon you. My law has no claims for acceptance and commendation upon you.

22:11 In my Son, my law sleeps and rests. That's the blessed, blessed reality of the nature of justification. We may say in summary, because of disobedience, suffering, and the suffering obedience of our surety, our legal representative, our covenant head, the Lord Jesus, all of our sins, past, present, and future are so dealt with that we must never view them as exposing us to their guilt, their justly deserved punishment. Furthermore,

22:55 because Christ's full obedience to the law is credited, imputed to us, we must never view any of our spirit-empowered acts of obedience as contributing to the ground of our acceptance with God. The Scripture says we're accepted in the Beloved One. But of Him are you in Christ Jesus who is made unto us righteousness. Not nine-tenths of the righteousness awaiting our spirit-empowered acts of obedience presented through the mediation of Christ to complete the righteousness.

23:32 No! In Christ we have a perfect righteousness as perfect now. Hear me now. As perfect now in the court of heaven as it will be in eternity.

23:46 In the court of heaven. Not in our own experience, but in our own experience. And in our own character and in our own behavior that awaits our being glorified. Either in two stages when we die and our imperfect spirits join the spirits of just men made perfect and then our bodies raised to glory at the coming of Christ or for those alive it is coming they'll get both installments at once.

24:14 Much work yet to be done in us in our sanctification, in our being perfected into the image of Christ. But in terms of God settling the issues of the courtroom the moment the sinner goes out of himself despairing of saving himself throws himself upon Christ as offered in the gospel he is united to Christ by faith and he is justified. All the legal demands of the law are met on his behalf in his glorious salvation. Well, that's the reality of what justification imparts.

24:53 That's the reality of what justification imparts. You say, Pastor, that sounds too good to be true. Yeah, I know. That's why it's so hard to grasp it.

25:00 Because we are all Pharisees at heart. And we want to be able to stand before God and tell him, Lord, look what we did. Here's my brownie points. Here's my stars on the refrigerator chart.

25:08 We don't want to stand like the public and beating on our breasts saying, God, there's nothing in this world that's going to be good for you. You don't want to stand like the public and beating on our breasts saying, God, there's nothing in this world There's nothing in me. There's nothing I can do to commend myself. Be merciful to me, the sinner. The sinner casting himself wholly and unreservedly upon the Savior.

Review: The Reality of Remaining Sin in the Justified

25:36 Now, it is this reality, the nature of God's justifying act, that is the first of the two facts that cause this problem. And the second, it'll take me less time to review it and establish it, it's the reality of the presence of sin in all who are justified. The reality of the presence of sin in all who are justified. While sin no longer reigns as a welcome master, in every, any one of the justified.

26:08 The Bible makes that clear. Romans 6. While sin no longer reigns as a welcome master in any one of the justified, it does remain as a vexing troubler in every one of the justified. That's the Bible's teaching.

26:29 We could go over many passages. Romans 6, 1 Corinthians 6, 9 and 10, 1 John 3, Galatians 5, 19 to 24, et cetera. However, we also consider those texts that just as clearly teach that sin does remain, though it does not reign as a welcome master, it does remain. 1 John 5, the passage I read in your hearing, if anyone denies he has an ongoing problem with sin, he's a liar and the truth is not at home in him.

27:02 What words could be plainer than that? Galatians 5, 17, the flood, flesh, lust against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh. James, an author of one of the books of our Bible, in many things we all offend. After this manner, pray ye, Jesus said to his disciples who said, Lord, teach us to pray.

27:23 And he said, you must pray this way. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, assuming that the community of his followers are trespassers who need, who need, continually to acknowledge their sin. And then Biblical biography records the full range of human sin in the best of God's people. It records Abraham, father of the faithful lying.

27:51 Noah, who is spared from a generation that is drowned under the judgment of God. And we find him drunk in a cave, committing incest. We find Peter denying his Lord. We find, the sins of the best of people.

28:11 Yes, sin remains in all the people of God. Now, these two realities create the problem. I'm justified. All my sins are pardoned as to my legal liability to God's wrath and judgment.

28:25 I'm regarded by God as being fully obedient to the demands of his law. In Christ, I'm declared righteous. Therefore, I'm accepted in the beloved. Yet I know I sin.

28:40 I don't keep the law perfectly. What shall I do?! I know that sin is still in me.

28:47 That though I commit sins. Bless God I don't commit anywhere near the sins that I know I'm capable of committing, that I am tempted to commit. How do I deal with this matter of the reality of my sin against the backdrop of the reality of my status, as a justified man or woman. Well, we looked last week at the problem wrongly handled.

The Problem Wrongly Handled: Antinomianism and Legalism

29:15 And I said there are two ways it is wrongly handled.

29:19 Some make a wrong and soul-destroying use of the doctrine of justification. They reason this way. Since I'm justified and all the claims of the law are met in the work of Christ in terms of any penal punishment, any judgment, I shouldn't take my sins too seriously. Since all my sins are forgiven as to their legal liability, past, present, future, there's no need to seek ongoing forgiveness.

29:49 Since I can't be brought back into legal condemnation, no need to be watchful, to flee temptation, to engage in radical mortification of sin. They do what Jude says. They turn the grace of God into unbridled living. That's a wrong.

30:07 Some make a wrong and soul-destroying use of the doctrine of justification. On the other hand, some make a wrong and soul-weakening response to the reality of their remaining sin. They don't make the distinction between reigning sin and remaining sin. They know that they must take sin seriously.

30:31 And because they take it seriously, they're constantly doubting the blessing of their justification. Justified state because they see, look, I still get irritated. I still have lustful thoughts. I still feel in my heart at times the stirrings of that foul-smelling thing called envy and jealousy and unbridled passions that I want to break out in angry words.

31:00 And though I may keep my lips shut, I know that they were there in my heart. And I know that Jesus said, He said, unjust anger is equal to murder and it's breaking the sixth commandment. And so because they don't make a distinction between reigning sin and remaining sin, they are constantly doubting their justification. They say, how can I be justified?

31:27 If sin is still such a real and virulent and active principle within me, how in the world can I... How can I be in God's sight as though I have perfectly kept the law?

31:46 How can it be that there's no punishment for these wretched sins yet to be meted out? No, they doubt their state as justified. They read their Bibles and Christian biography and they see that God's eminent saints take their sin seriously and that mourning over sin and grieving and confessing are virtues in the Bible. And they allow them to become the dominant motifs of their Christian experience.

32:16 They seldom know the fulfillment of Romans 14, 17. The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. They see a Daniel mourning over his sins and the sins of the nation in Daniel 9. They see the Lord calling the churches to remember their sins and to repent of their sins.

32:40 In Revelation 2 and 3. And these become the dominant elements in their life. And as a result, their experience is much like John Bunyan's before he grasped the truth of what it meant to be justified. John Bunyan, one writer says, speaks for thousands when he says, one day, this is quoting Bunyan, as I was passing into the field, this sentence fell upon my soul.

33:12 Your righteousness is in heaven. And me thought with all I saw the eyes of my soul. Jesus Christ at God's right hand. There, I say, was my righteousness, so that wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, that man Bunyan lacks my righteousness, for that righteousness was in front of him in the person of the Lord.

33:39 Jesus! I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart, that is, my present spiritual state that made my righteousness better, nor my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. Indeed.

34:09 I was loosed from my afflictions and irons, my temptations fled away, so that from that time those dreadful scriptures such as Hebrews 12, 16, and 17 left off to trouble me. Now went I home rejoicing for the grace and love of God. You see, Bunyan was wrongly handling the reality of his remaining sin, allowing it to keep him doubting. Am I really what God says I am in Christ until the truth broken upon him?

34:45 Remember I quoted Luther, this marvelous truth. Outside of myself and in Christ I am no sinner. Outside of Christ and in myself I am yet a sinner. And you must hold tenaciously to both of those realities.

The Problem Rightly Handled: Sin as Violation of God's Law

35:08 Some make a wrong and so. Some make a whole weakening response to the reality of their remaining sin. So we've identified the problem rooted in the two realities, the two wrong ways of responding. Now I just begin this morning to take up thirdly the problem rightly handled.

35:28 We've looked at the problem identified, the problem wrongly handled, now the problem rightly handled. And there are no doubt several ways that one could attempt to send forth the biblical, the biblical truth and the right way to deal with the problem of sin and the justified. And the way I've chosen involves an attempt to collate the biblical directives for dealing with this problem in terms of several simple assertions. They will all begin with the words, sin in a justified person, and then the statement will be completed.

36:06 Each assertion contains a principle, and I trust God will help us to grasp them. We simply begin with number one this morning. Sin in a justified person must always be recognized and dealt with as sin. That is, a violation of the law of God, and the front to the person of God and a provocation of the displeasure of God.

36:39 As long as sin remains the same, sin will not happen. That cannot be done. And that cannot be done. And that cannot be done.

36:41 That cannot be done. That cannot be done. That cannot be done. remains in you and in me.

36:45 Sin in us as justified men and women must always be recognized and dealt with as sin. That is, a violation of the law of God, an affront to the person of God, and a provocation to the displeasure of God. And I urge you, child of God, sitting there to plead that God the Holy Spirit will help me to be as clear as I can. I've labored long and hard.

37:18 I've read hundreds of pages tracking this matter down with the proven guides of the present and the past. And I frankly have been surprised at how little is written on this very practical problem. Am I preaching where you live? Yes.

37:39 And when I'm striking out and I don't... I don't have a few of the masters who've laid the path very clearly like the definition of justification.

37:47 I stand on that and I feel all kinds of liberty and confidence that I'm not leading you down a primrose path. But there's very little. But I've sought to have the quality control of the masters in Israel and above all of the Word of God. So listen, hang in there with me, and I think with God's blessing you'll be helped.

38:08 All right? How do we handle this problem? I am not going to relinquish the glorious provision of justifying grace. All my sins are pardoned.

38:19 There is no legal, juridical threat that I will be punished for any of my sins. I am accepted in the Beloved One. God regards me as being in possession of the very righteousness of His Son. Yet I know I sin.

38:37 I sin daily. There are times I sin hourly. I know sinning. Sin yet resides within me.

38:43 How do I handle this? Well, the first principle is this. Sin in a justified person must always be recognized and dealt with as sin. That is a violation of the law of God and a front to the person of God and the provocation of the displeasure of God.

39:08 Now, you remember way back in the beginning of the series, I started out with preaching on the importance of this doctrine. Then my next point was, what is the biblical context of the biblical doctrine of justification? Can some of you remember way back? And I said it's important to recognize the doctrine of justification does not come hanging on a sky hook.

39:33 It comes in the context of other related biblical truths. And I said those truths are who God is in Himself, and who God is in relationship to us and we to Him. And you'll see now how relevant that assertion was. Who is God in Himself?

39:54 He is a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable holiness. We saw that from the Scriptures. He is a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable justice. He will by no means clear the guilty.

40:09 If He's to save, He must save in a way that does not, not stain either His holiness or His justice. And thirdly, He's a God of infinite, eternal, and unchangeable truth. He cannot lie. And He says, the soul that sins, it shall die.

40:27 Now that's what God is in Himself. And then we saw from the Scriptures who God is in relationship to us and we to Him. He is our Creator to whom we owe our existence and our unrivaled love and allegiance. He is our lawgiver to whom we owe our implicit, whole-souled obedience.

40:48 And He is our judge to whom we will give an account. Now what has happened in the case of the justified sinner? The guilty, helpless, hell-deserving sinner has laid hold by faith of the sinner's Savior. He has embraced a salvation secured in such a way that all of the perfections of God, His holiness, His justice, and His truth, rather than being clouded or shaved off in their right angles, they are displayed in their most overwhelming brilliance.

41:28 God's holiness was never more displayed than when His Son is hanging on a cross,

41:37 battered with His own blood, mingled with the spittle of wicked men, dripping from His, His face. God is so holy and so opposed to all that is unlike Him, that which is called sin, that He will sooner see His Son immolated at the hands of men and see His Son come under the billows of the clouds of the wrath of heaven so that the Son cries out, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? And the answer is, because God is holy, of purer eyes than to look upon iniquity. And even God cannot conceive a way

42:22 of forgiving sinners while staining His holiness, while paring off the demands of His justice. The justice of God said, Cursed is everyone that continues not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them. Paul says Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. How?

42:43 By persuading God, to lower the standard of His justice. No! He redeemed us by becoming a curse for us. Never is God's justice more brilliantly displayed than at the cross.

42:59 Never was God's truth more dazzlingly displayed than at the cross where God has displayed that without the shedding of blood there is no remission. God's attributes, all of them, His holiness, His justice, His truth, His love, all of them come to their fullest display in the cross of Christ. And what has happened then for sinners? The condemning power of the law is swallowed up forever in the death of Christ.

43:36 And the commending influence of the law kept has been secured for us by Jesus. Yes! The condemning power of the law swallowed up in the death of Christ. The commending power of the law, if it is kept, has been fully kept in Jesus.

43:57 So the law condemning and the law commending has nothing to do with us if we are in Jesus. However, what of the law commanding?

44:14 Is anything done at the cross and in the perfect way? Perfect obedience of Christ that neuters the pressure of the law commanding all of God's creatures?

44:28 For the law to lose its commanding authority over us, God would have to un-God Himself and un-man us. As long as God is God and we are His creatures, it is essential that God maintain His rights to govern us, to tell us how we should conduct ourselves to please Him and to honor Him and as His creatures we are obligated to render full and perfect obedience. It will be right after a million ages in heaven to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and our neighbor as ourselves.

45:14 Now you see where we're going? So I come away from some understanding of what I am as a justified man or woman and I say to the law, bark out all of your threats. They were swallowed up in my Savior's death. They have nothing to do with me.

45:33 Bark out all your demands saying this do and live and you will not find me trying to produce works to attain life. My Savior's obedience has attained life for me. I hide in my Savior. Mr. Law,

45:49 shut your mouth. Condemning, shut your mouth. Commending. Now the law comes and says you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.

46:01 You shall love your neighbor as yourself and growing out of those two great commands are all the other imperatives. Can you tell the law to shut its mouth and say, hey, shut up. I'm no longer under your condemning power. I'm no longer in relationship to your commending power.

46:21 Therefore, I have no relationship to your commanding power. No. That's why Paul could say, do we make void the law of God by faith? No.

46:32 We establish the law. Romans 3.31 So that as a justified saint, I must deal with my sin as sin. Wherever that sin rears its lovely head, because sin is any transgression of or lack of conformity unto the law of God.

47:06 So though I'm a justified man or woman, when my heart is cold to God, I must own as sin against the law of God my failure to love Him with all my heart, mind, soul and strength. And I must deal with that sin as sin. Sin that is a violation of God's law. Sin that is an affront to the person of God.

47:36 An affront is an insult. It's an insult that I would not give to God. The undivided love of my heart and of all of my faculties and of all of my energies. And it's a provocation of the displeasure of God.

47:55 Notice I didn't say the anger or wrath of God. God is displeased with the sins of His people. The thing David did, it says, displeased the Lord. The Lord did not say, well David, I see you as a justified man.

48:13 That sin of adultery and that sin of murder by proxy were all to be taken care of by the death of my son and I see you as clothed in the righteousness of my son. So what you've done really doesn't matter. I have no response to it. No, it says this thing displeased the Lord.

48:35 Sin in itself is as ugly and displeasing to God in the life of a believer as it is in the unbeliever. In fact, it's even more heinous because we now have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. We have been given what the Bible calls a new heart. We've been given a disposition of a prevailing desire to obey the law of God.

49:00 God has written His law upon our hearts, placed His Spirit within us. Sin in itself is indeed a provocation of the displeasure of God. And if you look upon it in any other way, you're in la-la land.

God's Attributes and the Law's Authority

49:18 Sin in the justified person is a violation of the law and a front to the person of God. A provocation of the displeasure of God. And what I want to do God willing next week is to go to a number of scriptures which will demonstrate in incident after incident justified people facing their sin in precisely this way.

49:48 Professor Murray has wonderfully captured these lines of biblical truth and our confession of faith has a wonderful statement that helps us in this matter.

50:02 The question arises, what is embraced in the remission which justification involves? It is true that forgiveness continues to be meted out to the justified person. Does this mean that justification is progressive? If it were, and some are teaching that today, if it were, this would interfere with the definitive, complete, irrevocable nature of justification and it would conflict with the express statement that there is therefore now in the present no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.

50:36 We must therefore believe that there is a remission of all sin past, present, future in justification. If this is so, how are we to explain the need and fact of continued remission of sin? Perhaps the most satisfactory and proper way to express the distinction is that judicial condemnation of all sin is removed in justification. Judicial wrath does not rest on any justified person for sin that resides in him or which he continues to commit.

51:13 This, however, does not make unreal the sin he commits, nor does it eliminate the displeasure of God. All sin is the contradiction of God and so he must react against it. With displeasure he cannot be complacent to it. The relationship of God to the justified differs, however, because of that new relationship expressed particularly in that of fatherhood.

51:43 It is the fatherly displeasure that is evoked and it is the fatherly displeasure that is removed in the recurring remission that is administered in response to repentance and confession. And now from our confession of faith, God does continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified. And though they can never fall from the state of justification yet, they may by their sins fall under God's fatherly displeasure and not have the light of His countenance restored unto them until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.

52:26 Justification immediately and permanently changes the relationship to God and to law and to justice. It includes remission of the penalty of all sin. That is, it removes judicial, penal condemnation for past, present, and future sins. God is no longer a condemning judge, but a loving Father.

52:51 Nevertheless, they by their sins fall under His fatherly displeasure and so they need daily forgiveness, the removal of this displeasure and restoration to the light of the divine countenance. Their sufferings, therefore, are not penal inflictions. They are not inflictions that come from the courtroom. Hebrews 12 says our sufferings are the rod of a loving Father in the living room, not the rod of an angry judge in the courtroom.

53:23 They are either corrective to the end of their suffering sanctification or that they may be grounded in the divine purpose to increase their godliness or they may be dispensed in pursuance of the gospel so that they fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in their flesh for His body's sake which is the church. That's out of Colossians 1. Well, my brothers and sisters, I don't know if I've been clear enough for you to get any help from what I've been trying to lay before you. But I'm persuaded with all of my heart if we don't get hold of these distinctions, we're either going to be living

54:06 below the joy, the peace, the holy delight that we ought to have in the confidence of who and what we are as justified sinners in Christ, or, and I fear this is our greater danger, we will treat our sins lightly. Carelessly. In a cavalier way. Because we do not see them in relationship not to the law condemning, that's behind us.

54:39 Not to the law commanding, that's behind us. But to the law commanding. So that every violation of the law which is the essence of sin is indeed an affront to God and provokes His displeasure. And as God takes it seriously, so we too must take it seriously.

The Necessity of Taking Sin Seriously

55:06 Now there's some sitting here who this whole message has been nothing but an exercise in tedium for you to listen. He said it's all been about sin, sin, sin, sin, pardon, sin, forgiven, sin, not forgiven, sin, this, sin, this. I've got no time to think of sin. Listen to me.

55:25 Listen to me. And this sobered me in the early hours of the morning. There's not a one of you sitting here who will not eventually take your sin very seriously.

55:41 Hear me now. There is no creature of God who will not eventually take his or her sin seriously.

55:51 You take it seriously now while the door of mercy to deal righteously with it through the work of Christ or you'll have an everlasting hell to push under with the deepest seriousness, the reality,

56:12 the heinousness, the God-cursedness of your sin.

56:22 Take that thought with you.

56:25 You're going to take your sin seriously, my friend.

56:29 You will. You must. You shall.

56:36 God will help you to take it seriously now while a serious God who sent a serious son by way of Mary's womb to live a serious life of utter obedience to his Father and obedience that carried him onward and onward until he was impaled upon the cross. And this God who takes human sin seriously, seriously imputes sin to his Son and seriously plunges him into the felt abandonment of hell. That's how God takes sin seriously.

57:15 And that God will make you take your sin seriously. I believe. I believe. I believe.

57:19 I believe. I believe. I believe. I believe.

57:20 I believe. I believe. I beg you. Take it seriously now while this serious God gives you a serious invitation through the lips of his Son saying, Come unto me.

57:32 All you that labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. This God says, Ho, everyone that thirsts, come to the waters. He that hath no money, come buy wine and milk without money, without price. Seek the Lord while he may be found.

57:46 Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil one and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord for he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly part. God's a serious God. Take him seriously.

58:05 Take your sin seriously. And child of God, until you and I take our sin seriously, there'll be very little growth into the very purpose for which God has laid hold of us in saving mercy whom he did foreknow. Romans 8, 29, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son and no little part of that confirmation to the image of his Son is the mortification of our sin, the pruning away of those things that are unlike him and the cultivation of the opposite graces. And that doesn't happen without taking sin seriously.

Personal Testimony and Exhortation

58:46 And it's a humbling process.

58:51 Let me tell you how humbling it is.

58:56 I seldom give testimonies from this pulpit, but I'm going to give one as I close.

59:02 Many of you know that learning to live with these hearing aids is not a simple thing. Social settings are extremely irritating. It seems like everybody's hollering. And after about 20 minutes, you want to just stand up in any social setting and scream and say, well, everyone, please just shut up.

59:21 I was in a setting like that last night, a lovely gathering celebrating Pastor and Mrs. Carlson's 25th wedding anniversary.

59:30 And at one point, we were watching a lovely collage of pictures from their wedding and then some testimonies from their children in a room where different things were being said and I couldn't hear the stuff coming from the video. Couldn't hear conversation. Everyone would be laughing. And I felt so left out.

59:55 And you know what happened?

59:58 My naughty heart said, get some pity while everybody else is laughing. You can't laugh because you don't know what's being said. But put a real serious face on so if anyone sees you, they'll pity you. Feel sorry for you.

60:15 I got up early this morning to pray.

60:19 God showed me. I broke his holy law. I wasn't loving my neighbors as myself. I was loving myself.

60:27 Stuck my nose in my own navel and wanted people instead of enjoying themselves with abandonment to see poor Pastor Martin who couldn't laugh.

60:41 And I had to say, oh, God forgive me. I'm a wretched, self-centered sinner. So self-centered that instead of rejoicing that others are laughing, I want them to pity me. That's sin.

60:59 Now don't any of you meet me at the door and say, oh, Pastor Martin, that wasn't sin. It'll show how you deal with your conscience if you're even tempted to give me comfort. It was self-centered violation of the second table of the law. Oh, loving myself more than my neighbors.

61:19 And don't you try to take out the arrows which the Holy Ghost placed in this heart.

61:27 And I will have a lot more situations where I'm going to have to mortify all kinds of sins that are coming to the surface with these two things behind my ears.

61:38 That's what I mean by taking your sins seriously.

61:44 I didn't dare come and stand and preach and ask for the help of the Holy Ghost with a bloodied conscience of my sin from last night. Say, Pastor, you're serious, aren't you? Yes, I am serious. And the reason some of you are shocked is you haven't begun to learn to live in that way in the presence of God.

62:06 You can spill out sarcastic words, insensitive words to your wife, to your husband, and you'll never confess it to God or to them. Shame on you. No wonder all the preaching and teaching in this church has done so little to give you growth.

62:25 You live with a grieved Holy Spirit. And it's time you said, it's time you said, oh God, have mercy on me. Tenderize my heart. Help me to see that every sin, though I'm a justified sinner, is a violation of your holy law.

62:46 It's an affront to your person. And it's a provocation of your displeasure. Look at that sin in the light of what it cost your Savior. Take it to the foot of Golgotha.

63:01 Look at that sin when it's being imputed to your Savior. Look at his writhing, impolated, blood-soaked, torn body. Listen to his cry. My God, my God.

63:16 And then tell me that you feel no grief when you pop off at your wife, your husband, your kids, and you don't confess it, mourn over it, plead for cleansing, ask forgiveness.

63:34 Shame on you. Shame on you.

63:40 If you can go on in that path after hearing what you heard this morning, you better begin to wonder if indeed you are justified.

63:50 For whether sin so reigns in you that you will not begin to humble yourself day by day, if necessary, hour by hour to deal righteously with your sins before God and before man. The Apostle Paul said, this was his constant spiritual discipline. Herein do I exercise myself to have at all times a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man. Dear people, that's not bondage.

64:22 That's wonderful gospel liberty. It's wonderful to stand here this morning with a fresh kiss of divine pardon upon my cheek for being self-centered and pouting about my ears. That's why, I've been able to preach with joy.

64:45 You getting the message? What are you going to do about it?

64:51 Please do more than shake my hand at the door and say, thank you, Pastor.

64:56 Begin so to have dealings with God that it will be evident to all of us who know anything about you that you're becoming more like Jesus, that you're becoming more like your Savior day by day. Let's pray.

Closing Prayer

65:17 Oh, Father,

65:19 what can we say when we've tried to fix our limited sight upon the glorious privileges that are ours in Christ? To think that your holy law can never, never issue a just threat against any one of us who is in Christ Jesus. That there is nothing we can do to add to the righteousness that he has effected by his perfect life of suffering obedience and obedient suffering. That we are righteous in Christ Jesus.

65:58 In Christ. Yet, our Father, we do desire that we will take our sin seriously. That we will deal with our sin as sin. We pray for grace.

66:13 We pray for the help of your Spirit. We pray for the withering of our wretched pride and our stubbornness and our self-justification and our rationalizing all the things, our Father, that become blankets with which we see to cover our sins rather than confessing and forsaking them. Lord, take your word and seal it to all of our hearts. Blow upon anything that's at the chaff of my own thoughts and do us good for your glory we pray.

66:50 Amen.