No Area of Passivity 1 of 4

Review of Previous Principles and Introduction to the Third Principle

0:06 This adult Sunday school class was held on June 27, 1982, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:15 Now we've come this morning to our sixth lesson in this current series of studies in our adult class. And will someone tell me, please, who perhaps has not done so in the last few Lord's Day mornings, when we've asked you to help us in giving a brief review and synopsis of what we are doing, will someone tell us what is the basic subject matter of these lessons thus far?

0:42 All right. I doubt they'd hear you beyond three rows behind you, Jeff.

0:51 All right. Major principles of living the Christian life. And I've reminded you again and again that we have a threefold goal, and I have found it very helpful in keeping this goal before me in my preparation. And that threefold goal is to sketch in a basic theology of the Christian life, to seek to immunize you against various erroneous teachings on the Christian life, and to purge away any existing errors that may be resident in our thinking.

1:20 And we're doing now this, or we're approaching this subject in terms of articulating certain basic principles, and then looking for the biblical warrant for those principles from passages in the Old and the New Testaments. And thus far we've covered two principles. And someone give me the first one, the first major principle of living the Christian life. All right, Charles? All right. There is no one master key to living the Christian life.

1:52 We need the whole of Scripture, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, to make us whole men and women to do the whole will of God. Then the second principle that we've spent a number of weeks amplifying and supporting is, Ralph, all right, there is no freedom. There is no freedom from tension and conflict in living the Christian life. And we establish that on the basis of four realities that are always present in a true believer.

2:24 And what are those realities which make this principle valid? No release from tension and conflict in living the Christian life. The first one, all right, the presence of remaining or indwelling sin. All right. The second one, Spence?

2:44 All right. The pressure from the world, seeking to squeeze us into its mold. The third reality, the factor that makes release from tension and conflict impossible in this life. All right.

2:56 The devouring, vicious intentions of the devil. And then, fourthly, you can use the abbreviated version that Pastor Nichols gave you last week. One word, hope. All right.

3:08 The very nature of our salvation is that we are saved in hope. That is, we only have an earnest or a down payment or a first installment. Of our completed salvation. But the problem arises from the fact that in that first installment, God has implanted both the principle and the longing for all that that full salvation will be in the age to come.

3:33 And therefore, the Bible describes the Christian not only as a man who rejoices, who has peace, but as a man who groans because he feels the pressure of this tension and conflict between what he now is and what he longs to be and what he knows one day he shall be by the grace of God. Now, just in conclusion of this review, and then we're going to move on to the third principle. I want to read a couple of paragraphs from Bishop Ryle. I didn't get time to read it last week.

4:03 We, the class came to an end and that was the last thing I wanted to do. And this, I think, is a very good summary in a sense of all four of these things. And they point to the paragraphs. They point in the direction of this principle, no release from tension and conflict in living the Christian life.

4:24 In his chapter on the fight in his classic book entitled Holiness, which is a collection of essays really on living the Christian life, he speaks of this fight as of perpetual necessity. It admits of no breathing time, no armistice, no truce. On weekdays as well as on Sundays, in private as well as in public, at home by the family fireside as well as abroad, in little things like the management of the tongue and temper, as well as in great ones like the government of kingdoms, the Christian's warfare must unceasingly go on. The foe we have to do with keeps no holidays. He doesn't take off on the 4th of July. Keeps no holidays. Never slumbers.

5:15 Doesn't get his 8 hours. Never sleeps. So long as we have breath in our bodies, we must keep on our armor. And remember, we are on an enemy's ground.

5:26 Even on the brink of Jordan, said a dying saint, I find Satan nibbling at my heels. We must fight until we die. Let us consider well these propositions. Let us take care that our own personal religion is real, genuine, and true.

5:45 The saddest symptom about so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight in their Christianity. They eat. They drink. They dress.

5:58 They work. They amuse themselves. They get money. They spend money.

6:02 They go through a scanty round of formal religious services once or twice a week. But the great spiritual warfare, its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests, of this they appear to know nothing at all. Let us take care that this case is not our own. The worst state of soul is when the strong man armed keeps the house and his goods are at peace, when he leads men and women captive at his will and they make no resistance.

6:37 The worst chains are those which are neither felt nor seen by the prisoner. We may take comfort about our souls if we know anything of an inward fight and conflict. It is the invariable companion of genuine Christian holiness. It is not everything, I am well aware, but it is something.

6:59 Do we find in our hearts a spiritual struggle? Do we feel anything of the flesh lusting against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh so that we cannot do the things we would? Are we conscious of two principles within, contending for the mastery? Do we feel anything of war in our inward man?

7:20 Well, let us thank God for it. It is a good sign. It is strongly probable evidence of the great work of sanctification. All true saints are soldiers.

7:31 Anything is better than apathy, stagnation, deadness and indifference. We are in a better state than many. The most part of so-called Christians have no feeling at all. We are evidently no friends of Satan.

7:46 Like the kings of this world, he wars not against his own subjects. The very fact that he assaults us should fill our minds with hope. I say again, let us take comfort. The child of God has two great marks about him, and of these two we have one.

8:07 He may be known by his inward warfare as well as by his inward peace. That is a great mark of a child of God. He is known by his inward warfare as well as by his inward peace. So when people claim to be beyond the reality of the conflict, one of two things is true.

8:31 Either they are poorly describing their valid Christian experience or their self-deceit. Because a Christian is one in whom there can be no release from tension and conflict until he is glorified. Well, we come this morning now to take up the third major principle of the Christian life. And I remind you again that there is no significance in this order.

Defining the Faculties of Redeemed Humanity and the Principle of No Passivity

8:56 Look at them rather as pieces in a pie that we are taking out one by one. Although we will refer back to some of them, there is basically no logical progression. We probably could have started with any one of these. Now this third principle, I will state it, and I hope you don't go to sleep when I do because it's quite a mouthful, but I've labored long and hard to reduce the principle to the simplest terms possible without oversimplification that would open the door for error.

9:26 So listen carefully. I'll state the principle, then we'll exegete the principle, that is, take it apart phrase by phrase. Then we'll direct our attention to the specific errors which this principle is intended to expose. Now by the very nature of doing this, I'll be doing more straight lecture in at least the first part of the class this morning than I normally do, but I don't know of any other way.

9:50 It might take me six weeks to get you to compose the definition of this principle or the substance of this principle, and so in the interest of time, I feel this is the best way. The principle is this. There is no negation or suspension, there is no negation or suspension, of the conscious engagement of any faculty of our redeemed humanity in living the Christian life. There is no negation or suspension of the conscious engagement of any faculty of our redeemed humanity in living the Christian life.

10:32 Now for a memory crutch, if you want a simpler little statement that can be a springboard to remember the larger, you may use this. There is no area of passivity. No area of passivity. Now let me explain what I mean by the words of the principle, alright?

10:49 Key to an understanding of this principle is my terminology, faculties of our redeemed humanity. Now what do I mean by the faculties of our redeemed humanity? I'll explain what I mean. As human beings, God has endowed us with certain faculties.

11:12 We describe them as the faculties of what? When we usually think of our heads, we think of the faculty of what? Alright, of the mind. Alright, our thinker, the capacity to follow, to hear the words that I'm speaking and to put them together in a certain relationship.

11:31 Alright, the faculty of the mind. When we think of our hearts, and we use the term hearts, what faculty are we usually, do we usually associate with that? The emotions or the affections, okay? And then also in the realm of the heart, there's another faculty that we almost always include when we think of what we are as human beings.

11:53 It's the faculty of the will, alright? Our choosing, alright? The faculty of the will. What are some of our other faculties that we have as human beings?

12:07 Are you pure mind, emotion and will? I ain't looking at some disembodied mind, emotion and will this morning. What are some of our other faculties? Alright, all of our physical appetites, our physical senses, alright?

12:24 Physical appetites, physical senses, and then our actual physical members, our hands, our feet as they are called in Romans chapter 6. We have our desires. Well, we're not going into a technical description or delineation of these things. This is enough to give you an idea of what I mean when I speak of the faculties of our redeemed humanity.

12:47 Now, when we are in a state of sin and bondage to sin to the devil, as we saw in previous studies, all of these faculties are under the influence of sin. There is no faculty of our humanity which has been insulated from the effect of sin. And when we use the term total depravity, this is what we're talking about. We are not saying that the Bible teaches that any man or woman is as evil as he could possibly be.

13:19 In his mind, emotions, will, the use of his physical appetites and senses and capacities. But what we are saying is that the Bible clearly teaches that sin has influenced the mind, so that in the language of Ephesians 4 and 1 Corinthians 2, it is darkened. It cannot perceive the things of God, the emotions, the affections. We love what we should hate.

13:43 We hate what we should love. The will is enslaved to sin. So that the scripture says the carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God.

13:54 Neither, indeed, can it be. The lust of your father, it is your will to do. We are not will-less, but the will is in bondage to sin. The physical appetites and senses and members, Romans 6, Paul says you presented your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin.

14:12 Well, all of the faculties have come under the terrible influence of sin. Now when God regenerates us, and when we are united to Jesus Christ, none of these faculties is destroyed. But neither are there new faculties introduced. In regeneration, God does not give us a different mind.

14:37 He doesn't give us a totally new set of emotions or a new will obliterate the old. In regeneration, God influences by His Spirit and radically alters the governing principle, the powers that operate upon all the faculties. But God neither cancels the old faculties, nor does He create, I'm sorry, nor does He create totally new faculties. But in the mysterious operations of grace, the powerful workings of His grace in regeneration, all of these faculties are radically altered as to their governing principle, as to the motives that influence us, the objects to which they respond, all of these things, so that this person can be called a new creature in Christ. But he's still a human being, with a mind, with affections, with a will, with physical appetites and senses, and all of these other faculties. Now in our principle, what we are asserting is this, that in living the Christian life, none of these God-given faculties are, and I've used two words, negated or suspended. Now by negation, let's take the faculty of the will, by negation we would say

16:04 our human will is utterly cancelled out. By suspension we would mean our will still exists, but there are other powers that enter in and suspend its actual operation upon our lives. Now as we'll see in the opening up of this subject, this is a very vital principle with regard to evaluating so many theories of how to live the Christian life, and any approach to the Christian life which teaches either the negation or the suspension of any one of our redeemed faculties is unbiblical. In living the Christian life, there is no negation or suspension of any of our human faculties which all have now come under the power of redemptive grace and activity. So there is no suspension nor negation, and then I've used the term of the conscious engagement of our faculties. That is, we are not passively caught up in some kind of overriding influence of God so that we no longer are conscious of the acting of our wills, of the actings of our emotions,

17:33 of the conscious deliberate activity of our minds. And here again, you'll see this is vital because so much erroneous teaching on the Christian life, though it would not perhaps say that the will or the affections are negated or suspended, they would teach that somehow we do not consciously engage all of these faculties in living the Christian life. God comes and, as it were, so overpowers various dimensions of these activities that our conscious endeavor is no longer necessary. In fact, some go so far as to say that's the biggest problem in living the Christian life.

18:16 It's only when you cease consciously willing and seeking to feel as you ought and think as you ought and just totally let yourself go that you begin to live the Christian life as you ought. Now, have I explained the basic meaning of the principle? Now, I'm not going to, we're going to demonstrate what we're heading at subsequently, but do you understand the basic meaning of the words? Now, when we speak of no negation or suspension of the conscious activity of any of our redeemed faculties in living the Christian life, that's what we're talking about.

Critique of Imbalanced Doctrine of the Indwelling Christ

18:50 All right? Very well then, let's move on now and consider together the several major characteristics of the teaching which we're attempting to expose by articulating this principle. We're not only attempting to set forth a positive theology of the Christian life, but there are certain fundamental errors that I am attempting to expose. And I've gathered them under three headings.

19:21 Heading number one, an imbalanced doctrine of the indwelling Christ. This principle is calculated to attack and to destroy, I trust, an imbalanced doctrine of the indwelling Christ. Now, the Bible teaches a doctrine of the indwelling Christ. Can you give me two or three texts which clearly teach that Christ dwells in his true people?

19:53 All right? Brian? That speaks of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and that we are united to Christ. But I want a text that speaks explicitly of Christ dwelling in his people.

20:09 Henry? All right, Galatians 2.20. I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

20:22 Now, that's a biblical terminology, a biblical concept, all right? Another text that deals with the indwelling Christ. Louise? All right, his seed remaineth in us, but that doesn't actually say that Christ dwells in us.

20:38 It speaks of the divine seed remaining in us. Paul? Okay. All right, Romans 8.10.

20:49 So, we've got two texts now. Galatians 2.20. Romans 8.10.

20:56 And if Christ be in you, there's a clear text. Another text on the indwelling Christ? Yes. All right, we will come and make our abode with him.

21:19 Another text on the indwelling Christ. Yes.

21:24 All right. Whom we preach, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Can someone bail him out? Where is that text found?

21:30 All right. Galatians 1.27. Now, there's a text to our translational problem.

21:40 You'll find, I think, in your margins, it says Christ among you, but at least that's a text we can keep there with an asterisk, maybe. All right. Another text that teaches the doctrine of the indwelling Christ. Ken?

21:51 All right. Abide in me, and I in you, the whole John 15 passage of abiding in Christ and Christ in us. Heart? Right.

22:10 John 17. All right. We can bring forward, I'm sure, a number of other passages. Colossians 3 says, Christ who is our life.

22:18 So there is a biblical doctrine of the indwelling Christ. So you see, when people come up with a theology of the Christian life, which starts with the reality of the indwelling of Christ, they have not imported a notion, a fundamental notion, into the scriptures. They have begun with a biblical concept. Christ dwelling in his people.

22:43 But now what has happened is that doctrine has become imbalanced. Imbalanced to the place where taking the concept that Christ indwells us, they have spun out a theology of living the Christian life, which has at its very heart the very negation and suspension of the conscious activity of all the faculties of our redeemed humanity, except those faculties necessary to trust in the indwelling Christ. You follow what I'm saying now? To demonstrate that I'm not setting up a straw man, I want to quote from several who have been the leading teachers of this imbalanced doctrine of the indwelling Christ. Now many have never heard it, but if you're around long as a Christian, you will sooner or later encounter it, and so hopefully this study will have that influence of immunizing you. Now two of the great leaders of the popularizing of this doctrine in the past generation were Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

23:55 Hannah Whitehall Smith's book, The Christian Secret of a Happy Life, is known to some of you, I'm sure. It has gone through numerous editions. Well, she and her husband were great expounders of this imbalanced doctrine of the indwelling Christ. Listen to some of the terminology that is used by Mr. Smith in one of the lectures he gave over in England in 1874 on the promotion of scriptural holiness. I quote him now, as Warfield quotes him, as you definitely turned your back to the world and accepted pardon through Christ, so now, with equal definiteness, give yourself to be the Lord's, holy the Lord's, forever the Lord's, to accept His will, to let Him live your lives for you. You see what he's saying?

24:55 Let Him live your lives for you. So Christ will actually so take over that He lives my life for me. It is not me living my life in the strength of Christ, in the power of Christ, in dependence upon Christ. It is Christ replacing my life with His own.

25:21 I go on and quote now from his wife, Mrs. Smith, and she waxes even more eloquent in this area. The same grace that saved us must keep us. And we agree.

25:35 The same Savior who bore our guilt for us must do our daily work for us also. As you trusted Christ to bear away your guilt, now you so trust yourself to Him that He does your daily work for you. Not that you do your work in His strength. You do your work by His power.

26:00 He does your work for you. The indwelling Christ performs all on your behalf and for you. I go on to quote then from Charles Trumbull who lived and ministered in the early 1900s. And he took the teaching even further and popularized it in great measures.

26:24 I had assignments when I was in Bible college to read some of his writings. Now listen to Charles Trumbull on this imbalanced doctrine of the indwelling Christ. In his tract called Real and Counterfeit Victory, Trumbull says, quote, Any victory over the power of sin whatsoever in your life that you have to get by working for it is counterfeit. Any victory you have to get by trying for it is counterfeit.

26:58 If you have to work for your victory, it is not the real thing. It is not the thing that God offers you. Alright, then we go on to quote further from Mr. Trumbull.

27:13 The simple fact is that whenever a life that trusts Christ as Savior is completely surrendered to Christ as Master, Christ is then ready to take complete control of that life and at once to fill it with Himself. When we surrender and trust completely we die to self and Christ can and does literally replace our self with Himself. Thus it is no longer we that live but Christ lives in us in His person. Literally fills our whole being in actual personal presence.

27:58 And He does this not as a figure of speech but as literally as we fill our clothes with ourselves. Now what is that jacket right now? It's an empty piece of some cloth sewed together so as to conform to my body. It has no faculties of its own.

28:18 When I put it on, a person, Albert N. Martin, now fills it and gives it all of its motion and shape and form. Mr. Trumbull says, as literally as we fill our clothes with ourselves, you and I can get so empty that all we have left is the cloth of our humanity and Christ fills it with Himself.

28:40 He moves. He acts. He gives it form and shape and substance. That, I say, is an imbalanced doctrine of the indwelling of Christ.

28:50 Let me give you one more quote because this notion is carried to one of its most frightening extremes in the teaching of A. B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. And in his tract, well-known tract, I read it more than once when I was in the Alliance, called Himself.

29:09 This is what he says. The fundamental idea of this tract, Warfield is here summarizing, and it's an accurate summary, is that we may have not only gifts from Christ, but Himself. And to have Christ Himself is better than to have all His help, all His blessings, all His gifts. When this has been said, however, the reins are thrown on the neck of fancy and it is permitted to have Christ Himself.

29:36 Let's get away with the idea. To have Christ is to have Him in such a sense, we are told, that whatever Christ is becomes quite literally ours. Not only does Christ's righteousness become our righteousness, Christ's holiness our holiness, Christ's wisdom our wisdom, Christ's strength our strength, but Christ's spirit becomes our spirit, Christ's mind our mind, Christ's body our body. Dr. Simpson was speaking on this occasion at Beth-Shan. He very naturally laid his strength on Christ's body becoming our body in such a sort that having Christ we have bodily wholeness. Not merely freedom from disease, but perfect bodily holiness. For is not Christ's body whole?

30:22 But He sweeps His hand over all the strings. He has taken Christ for His mind, for His memory, for His will also. And we learn that He therefore no longer makes mistakes, no longer forgets things, no longer is irresolute or stubborn at the wrong places. Christ in Him has become the real agent of all His mental and moral activities.

30:46 Even His faith is not His own, but Christ's. This is especially puzzling because He tells us elsewhere we must take Christ for all these things or else we do not get them. And that this taking is our own act, only subsequently and consequent to it. Well, then he goes on to enlarge on this teaching.

31:06 Now, sooner or later, you're going to encounter this teaching. And as Warfield says, it has a fundamental appeal to the Christian, the true Christian, because it puts a strong emphasis upon Christ and a strong emphasis upon faith. And wherever a true Christian hears much attention drawn to Christ and much attention drawn to faith, there's something in his heart that responds in a very positive way. And furthermore, when Christ and faith are set forth in such a way that you are told, you can so experience Christ and so come to a position of faith that the struggle and the agony with a remaining bent in your will that is contrary to God, with remaining darkness in the mind and perversity of the affection that you can be raised above that, that's tremendously appealing. And therefore, without in any way, without in any way questioning either the character of the men and women who have taught this doctrine or the motives, their sincerity, this is not an attack upon persons, but when we examine what they have taught in the light of the Word of God, we see that what they are teaching is that there is a negation or suspension of many of our faculties in living the Christian life.

32:33 And it's only when we come to that place of negation that Christ can truly live his life through us, think his thoughts through us, will his will through us, and then as Warfield accurately says, A.B. Simpson went on to say, even to say, experience his present health at the right hand of the Father through us. And I've read Dr. Simpson's tracks on physical healing and that's his emphasis. Christ at the right hand of the Father is perfect health. If Christ is in you and you healed up to the power of the indwelling Christ, and I don't mean to be blasphemous, this is his teaching. This is his teaching.

33:08 His perfect liver becomes your perfect liver. His perfect heart becomes your perfect heart. How in the world we die by degenerative diseases, I don't know, but that's the teaching. That's the teaching.

33:19 That is the formal official teaching of A.B. Simpson. Well, dear people, can you see the tremendous, tremendous open door for all kinds of error and downright sinful conduct that this leaves?

33:34 Not in any way saying that it led to that in Dr. Simpson or those who necessarily followed him. But truth will eventually have its way, or error will eventually have its way, logic will have its way, and when people imbibe this, they're vulnerable. So we're attacking by this principle an imbalanced doctrine of the indwelling Christ.

Pastoral Implications of the Imbalanced Indwelling Christ Doctrine

33:57 Any question on that point? Yes, Louise? Yeah, exactly. And some of us who took this teaching seriously, I can remember, I've told some of you this in personal counseling, I can remember standing in front of the refrigerator at night before I'd go to bed in terrible agony.

34:34 Is it the indwelling Christ who is moving me to think of getting a glass of milk? I've had my three squares. Is that gluttony? Is that my flesh?

34:42 Is that remaining sin that needs to be mortified? Does the indwelling Christ want that glass of water or that glass of milk? You laugh, but I took it seriously. I took this seriously.

34:55 If Christ literally was dwelling in me, then either He did or did not desire a glass of milk, and if He didn't, it was sin for me to want it. And you take that teaching seriously, and some do. It can lead you to the nuthouse or to total cynicism, as Louise has said, because you've given up to the indwelling Christ, and you've asked Him to take over, and yet, lo and behold, you find your will is still there. He hasn't negated it.

35:27 He hasn't canceled it. You find you still do have affections. You find you do still have physical appetites. He hasn't negated them.

35:35 He hasn't replaced them with His own appetites and with His own will. So it can create tremendous bondage. So you see, we're not just being nitpickers on this matter. It's a matter of tremendous importance in terms of how we regard our responsibility to live the Christian life.

35:53 Someone else had a question over here. Yes, David? Yes, we'll come to that under point number three. All right? Good. Yes.

36:11 Oh, yeah. The only responsibility, the only thing I'm really responsible for is whether or not I let Christ live His life through me. And as you see in most of the holiness literature that comes out of this school, if you give up enough with that whole issue, you find that there is very little in terms of detailed instruction in practical godliness. Because why do you need it?

36:32 If you really give up enough and let Christ take over enough, He's always going to do the right thing anyway. So why do I need to spend time poring over the details of practical godliness since I do not self-consciously choose to be godly? My real choice is to let Christ live His life through me. A very good point.

36:52 Who else had his hand raised? Yes, Bill? Yeah. Yes, and this again is the problem.

Critique of Unwarranted Deductions from Analogies of the Christian Life

37:09 You see, sometimes when God in grace and mercy and in terms of His own sovereign will brings unusual deliverance to someone, as we'll see in terms of crisis experiences later on, then they want to make God's dealings with them a rule for others and build a theology on their experience. All right, let me hasten on to deal with the second thing that is the major characteristic of the teaching we're exposing of the Christian principle. Characteristic number one is the imbalanced doctrine of the indwelling Christ. Second is this.

37:44 Unwarranted deductions from analogies of the Christian life. Unwarranted deductions from analogies of the Christian life. Now in the Bible we are told that the Christian life is like certain things. John 15.

38:02 There are certain aspects of the Christian life that find some parallel in the relationship between a vine and its branches. Certain aspects. So Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches. There are other aspects that are like the relationship between the potter and the clay.

38:23 That analogy is used in the Bible. Well, there are many likenesses used in the Bible to teach certain aspects of the Christian life. Now the teaching we are seeking to expose not only has imbalanced doctrine on the indwelling Christ, but unwarranted deductions from some of these analogies of the Christian life. For instance, let me quote Hannah Smith on the analogy of growth.

38:54 The whole idea that the Christian is like a tree or like a branch in the vine. This is what she says. Let me entreat of you then to give up all your efforts after growing and simply let yourselves grow. End quote.

39:15 This is her fundamental prescription for the Christian life. Quote, a growth without effort. The lilies, says Mrs. Smith, planted in good soil do not strive to grow.

39:27 Their growing is not a thing of effort. It is the result of an inward life principle of growth. All the stretching and pulling in the world could not make a dead oak grow. But a live oak grows without stretching.

39:43 What we are to do then is merely to get within us the growing life. We are to be infinitely passive and yet infinitely active also. Passive as regards self and its workings. Active as regards attention and response to God.

40:01 The fundamental meaning is that our only work is to get into Christ. He does the rest. And I can remember in conferences when I was in a very moldable, teachable age and hungry and thirsty for reality, I remember speakers standing up and saying, look at the tree out there. Look at the apple tree.

40:19 Did you ever see an apple tree struggling and groaning and puffing and panting, saying, oh, I've got to produce an apple. Oh, I've just got to produce another apple. No, of course not. An apple tree just spreads its beautiful boughs, drinks in the nourishment from heaven and it bears apples.

40:41 So if you will just give yourself up to the influences of the Holy Spirit and the indwelling Christ, there will be fruitfulness without effort. Well, then the Bible says we are like a tree. Doesn't it? Ah, but likeness is not identity.

41:01 We are like a tree in some aspects of the Christian life. But if you build a whole theology on that likeness, you teach downright heresy and serious error because the Bible has other analogies for the Christian life, calls it running a race. So the next time we see a runner, he's just out there saying, runners to your mark, get set, go. And he says, I'm just waiting.

41:32 Waiting for the impulse. Get me off the blocks. Waiting for the impulse. Carry me along.

41:42 Well, you say, ridiculous. Well, it's no more ridiculous than to build a whole theology on one aspect of what the Christian life is like. It is likened unto running. It is likened unto fighting.

41:56 It is likened unto walking. Well, you see, we cannot, we dare not take any one analogy and press it to unwarranted extremes and make unwarranted deductions from those analogies. Let me give you another example. So again, that you'll know we're not just creating straw dummies and shooting arrows at those dummies.

42:23 The analogy of the potter and the clay is taken up by Hannah Smith in her classic work on this subject. The primary thing to observe here, of course, is the suspension of the whole process on the human will. We say the whole process because it emerges, well, let me skip over that. Here we are.

42:43 Let me quote this part. Hannah Smith says, The part of the clay is simply to be put into the potter's hands and to abide there passively. Put yourselves therefore into God's hands as the clay in the hands of the potter and trust him. But do not take yourselves back.

43:04 Having given yourselves to him, you must abide in him. You must stay there. You must let him mold and fashion you. Warfield very perceptively comments, Very strange clay this, passive in the potter's hand to which the potter can do nothing unless the clay lets him.

43:23 You see his point? Put yourself in the potter's hand. Let him mold you. He said very strange clay this.

43:31 Puts itself in the potter's hand but then the potter can't do anything until the clay says you may. Well you see this is what happens when you take any analogy and deduce from it things for which there is no warrant in the word of God. In a very real sense according to this kind of teaching the only effort you and I must put forth is the effort to come to the place where we have no effort. Put forth all of your effort to get to the place where you make no effort.

Critique of Inaccurate Doctrine of Sanctification by Faith Alone

44:05 The only struggle is to get above struggle. And once you've gotten above it then all is well. And then there's a third characteristic of the teaching that I'm attempting to expose with this principle and I want to touch on it because our time is quickly getting away from us. It's what I'm calling an inaccurate doctrine of sanctification by faith alone.

44:28 An inaccurate doctrine of sanctification by faith alone. Now the Bible is very clear that we are justified by faith alone. Romans 4, 4 and 5. To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace but of debt.

44:47 But to him that believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly his faith is counted for righteousness. Now these teachers say in precisely the same way that you are justified by faith turning from all effort and all merit and all performance of your own you cast yourself completely exclusively upon Jesus Christ as he's offered in the gospel. So they say sanctification not just in its initial what we have come to understand in our context as definitive sanctification but in its entire process is by faith alone in the same way that justification is by faith alone. You are simply to entrust yourself to Jesus Christ if you would be a sanctified and a holy person. Now they are not saying that we look to Christ in faith for grace to cut off our right hands and pluck out our right eyes by the spirit to mortify the deeds of the flesh. They are not saying that we look to Christ in faith for strength to persevere in spite of the tremendous conflict with indwelling sin that is constant and real.

46:10 No, they are saying we look to Christ and cease from our own efforts in order to be holy precisely as we look to Christ ceasing from our own efforts in order to be justified. And this note comes through again and again so the two key words and I heard them for three years in the context in which I was present is or are surrender and faith. Surrender and faith. I was told the two legs by which the Christian lives the Christian life are surrender and faith.

46:45 Surrender and faith. You give yourself up to Christ you trust him to be to you and through you all that he has promised. But of the biblical concept of struggle of wrestling of fighting of the whole soul engagement of all of our faculties in the entire complex of living the Christian life of this I heard precious little if anything. And they were simply being true to the teaching that is set forth by the major proponents of this kind of instruction on living the Christian life.

47:26 And Ryle in his day lived at a time when this kind of teaching was just being first popularized and he sounded a warning note in the introduction to this series of essays entitled Holiness. And he says in his first proposition as to why he's writing this series of essays. I ask in the first place whether it is wise to speak of faith as the one thing needful. The only thing required as many seem to do nowadays in handling the doctrine of sanctification.

48:01 Is it wise to proclaim in so bald naked and unqualified a way as many do that the holiness of converted people is by faith only and not at all by personal exertion? Is this according to the proportion of God's word? I doubt it. And then he goes on to say he certainly understands that faith in Christ is the root of all holiness.

48:29 Faith in Christ is the climate of all progress in holiness. We are to look unto Jesus in the entire sanctifying process or the entire process of sanctification. But is that all we are to do? Is faith the only thing we are called upon to do?

48:48 And of course the overriding emphasis of the word of God as we shall see next week God willing is that we have something more to do than simply to believe. There are a multitude of imperative verbs which do not have as their root stem pisteuo, the Greek word for believe. There are imperatives of all kinds addressed to believers that do not have as their root stem pisteuo. So we have more duties than to believe.

49:22 And any approach to the Christian life that has this inaccurate doctrine of sanctification by faith alone will inevitably lead us to the place where there is either the negation or the suspension of some of our faculties being consciously engaged in living the Christian life. And once we encounter that we know we have gone beyond the balanced teaching of the Scriptures. Now I'd hope to set forth a few more things but we'll have to stop at this point and let me give you a little homework assignment. It's one you can perform hopefully just when you're driving to work and working about the house or wherever you are in the office.

Homework and Concluding Application

50:07 Just try to think of Scriptures in which we have commands addressed to all of our faculties as redeemed men and women. Scriptures in which the entirety of the redeemed humanity is addressed in the Word of God. And then secondly think of the dominant images of the Christian life as set forth in the Scriptures. What are those dominant images of the Christian life?

50:35 Not the exclusive but the dominant images. So try to think of specific commands addressed to our entire humanity where we are called upon to do something with our minds, with our hands, with our eyes, with our feet, with our affections, with our wills. Think of those texts and then think of the text which set forth the dominant images and analogies of the Christian life and that way God willing we will see the biblical roots of this principle that there is no negation nor suspension of any of the faculties of our redeemed humanity in living the Christian life. And I hope for some of us that this will not be just mere theory because I'm convinced that one of the reasons some of us are not making the progress we ought is that there is not the whole-souled engagement of all of our faculties with a view to making progress. You see, living the Christian life is like preaching. Your theology of the Christian life will be reflected in a man's preaching or a man's theology. You see, preaching or teaching involves the engagement of all of a man's faculties.

51:52 You've got to be seeing what's going on. It's distressing sometimes. Occasionally here even in the morning trying to get your involvement, to see people nodding, people looking off obviously somewhere else other than here. But that just makes you work all the harder to try to get their attention and see a little light of comprehension in their eyes.

52:10 You don't just say, all right, Lord, teach through me. You say, that's ridiculous. It's just as ridiculous to think you can live the Christian life that way. Lord, live your life through me.

52:23 It's just as ridiculous, just as ridiculous, just as unproductive, just as heretical in terms of the teaching of the Word of God. So may the Lord help us and may the Lord give us graciousness if we meet people who've imbibed this teaching and don't assume that their motives are wrong, don't assume that their character is fundamentally defective. It just may be that they've come under the very kind of teaching that earnest Christians are vulnerable to. And be gracious and hopefully God will use you to point out some of these principles of the Word of God to be of help to them.

52:59 Well, let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you that you have given to us the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments to be a lamp unto our feet and a light to our pathway. And we confess that we are grieved that good and godly men and women have taken precious truths, even the truth of the indwelling Christ, the truth that Christ is indeed the life of his people, the truth that we are united to him as branches are united to vines and have deduced from those analogies and from those realities things that have no support in Scripture. And our Father, we pray that you will so root us and establish us in the truth as it is in Christ that we will be kept from these errors that can only lead to disappointment or self-deception or cynicism, that we may, by your grace, fight the good fight of faith, that we may run with patience the race that is set before us. We commit to you, then, the matters we've considered this morning and pray that they will bear fruit in each of our lives. We ask these mercies

54:27 through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.