Now let's turn in our Bibles
to 1 Timothy chapter 1. The Apostle Paul told Timothy
to stay at Ephesus to preach the gospel of Christ. That's
what he was there for, to preach the gospel. And he tells us why
in verse 3. 1st Timothy 1.3, look at where
it says that. He says, this is the reason,
that thou mightest charge, that is command, some that they teach
no other doctrine. Neither give heed to fables and
endless genealogies which minister questions rather than godly edifying
which is in faith, and so do. Paul gives the same description
of these people over in Titus. And he tells us there who they
were. He said this in Titus 1.10. There are many unruly and vain
talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision. That was the legalist. The circumcision
says to believers, except you keep the law of Moses, you cannot
be saved. Except you keep the law, you
cannot be saved. Except you keep the Ten Commandments,
you cannot be saved. That's what the legalist says.
Now it's the opposite of sound doctrine. That's the very opposite
of sound doctrine. Because sound doctrine declares
Christ is the righteousness, the sanctification, and the salvation
of his people by grace apart from our works. Now that's sound
doctrine. That's sound doctrine. In our
day, most have turned from the gospel. to teach man's version
of the law and man's version of the gospel, and it does not
edify in godliness. Now, the first thing we see in
our passage today is to what edifying end God's Word brings
His child of grace. Now, this is the edifying end
to which God brings His child through sound doctrine. Verse
5. Now the end of the commandment
is charity out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith
unfaithful. Now the legalists claim to be
guardians of the law. They claim to be zealous for
the law, the guardians of the law. And when Christ walked this
earth, they set Christ against Moses. They set Christ, the lawgiver,
against the law. They said this. They do the same
thing in our day. They said this, Master, Moses
said, what do you say? They said, Moses in the law commanded
us that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou? You see
that divisiveness? They're setting the law against
Christ. Choosing the law over Christ.
That's what men do in our day. Of Paul, they cried out, and
they said, Men of Israel, help! This is the man that teacheth
all men everywhere against the law. They said, Christ is an
antinomian, that's what they called him, and they called Paul
an antinomian, against the law. Christ and every child he saves
had been accused of being against the law. Did you hear me? Christ and every person he saves
has been accused of being against the law. It was why Cain killed
Abel in the garden. Grace and works never mix. They're diametrically opposed
to one another. It's because what men are really
saying is this. We have a law and by our law
He ought to die because He made Himself the Son of God. In other
words, men who say, we think we should keep the law, we think
we must keep the law to be saved, they're saying that Christ ought
to be crucified all over again. He ought to die. But Christ said,
had you believed in Moses, Had you really believed in Moses,
were you really zealous for the law? You would have believed
in me because Moses wrote of me. Christ is the end for which
the law was given. Christ is the end for which God
gave the law. Now in our text, Paul says that
that kind of divisive spirit is not the end and it's not the
design which the law brings God's elect to. And when I say the
law brings God's elect here, I mean God brings them there
by teaching us the truth of the law and the truth of the gospel. He says, verse 5, the end of
the commandments, charity and a pure heart and a good conscience
and faith and fame. Whenever God blesses His child
to hear what the law really says about us, when He makes you to
hear the law say that you're vile, that you're a God-hating
rebel who has never once kept the law of God at all, and then
He shows you Christ Jesus who fulfilled the law for His people
and justified His people, He makes you to believe on Christ
with unfamed faith. Unfeigned faith. That man's no
longer a man who's setting the law against Christ anymore while
he pretends to believe on Christ. That's the worst kind of disguise
there is and rejection of Christ there is, is to pretend to believe
on Christ when in reality you think you've got to be saved
by your obedience to the law. That's feigned faith. Now, that
man who's given a true faith, Christ is everything to him.
Christ gives everything to Him. He's taught of God and He's led
of the Spirit, not the law. He walks by faith in Christ,
trust in Christ, relying on Christ and not the law. He does good
works which are produced by Christ in His heart and not produced
by the law. To reject this sound doctrine
is to reject Christ entirely. I know men say, no we believe
in salvation by grace, but we're saying you also must keep the
law. That is to reject Christ entirely. You can't have both. We can't have both. Now God brings
him to have a pure heart. A pure heart regenerated by the
Spirit of God, sanctified by God, by Christ the sanctifier
and our sanctification. His heart is made to be set on
Christ alone. His heart is made to have a singleness
for Christ only. That's a pure heart. That's a
pure heart. He abhors his selfish, sinful,
self-righteous self. That's to have a pure heart.
I didn't know what a self-righteous lawmonger I was till God gave
me a pure heart to know it. And the end of the commandment
is a good conscience. A good conscience. It's purged
by Christ's blood from dead works to serve the living God. Purge. A sinner... Now get this now. A sinner can only have a good
conscience. The only way a sinner can have
a good conscience is by trusting Christ to be our wisdom, our
righteousness, our sanctification and redemption. That's the only
way you can have a clear conscience. The only way you can have a clear
conscience. Until the end, you always got to do a little more
because your conscience isn't clear that you've ever done enough.
That's just true. And the end of the commandment
is charity. a charity, a God-given love toward
God and toward brethren and toward all men. A God-given love. That's the spirit of the law
in which believers worship and serve God and serve one another.
In Matthew 22, 36, somebody came to Christ and they said, Master.
Now, when they addressed Him as Master, they were not addressing
Him as Lord like believers do. They were calling him a teacher.
And that was actually a condescending address because they said he
was only a teacher. They said, Master, which is the
great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul,
with all thy mind. And this is the first and great
commandment. And the second is likened to
it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the law and the prophets. That's what Christ taught. That's
what His apostles taught. And that's what we teach. We
teach, O no man anything but to love one another. For he that
loveth another hath fulfilled the law. That's the spirit of
the law. That's the spirit of the law.
For this, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill,
thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou
shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it's
briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself. What does it do? What do you
do when you love your neighbor? Love worketh no ill to his neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling
of the law. Someone says, well, you don't
know the law. You say believers aren't under
the law and so you don't know what the law says to do and not
to do. So how can you keep the law? No, faith and charity constrains
true believers so that we have no desire to sin against God
or one another. Faith and charity does that. The law of faith and the law
of love is what does that. Not the law of Mount Sinai. The law of Sinai does not teach
me that. It doesn't teach me that. Christ
does. He does it by the law of faith and by the law of love
written in the new heart. Listen to the Scripture. Listen
to this. I can support it. Galatians 5.22 says, the fruit
of the Spirit, not the fruit of the law, the fruit of the
Spirit is love, joy, Peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance. That's all from God. That's all
produced by God. That's all created in the heart
by God. And against this, there is no
law. There is no law. Now, let me
show you secondly a sad truth in verse 6. He says, 1 Timothy
1.6, From which, from this gospel, and this true teaching of the
law, from this sound doctrine, some, having swerved, have turned
aside to vain jangling, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding
neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm. Now in our day,
rather than using the law to declare all flesh guilty, And
rather than preaching Christ being the end of the law for
everything, men teach the law according to man's understanding,
and they write creeds that men can obey. Because they bring
the law down to man's level. That's not teaching God's law,
that's teaching man's commandments, not God's commandments. If we
teach God's commandments, we're going to have to say what God
said, that is, no man can keep this. But they're not God's commandments. Their so-called holy obedience
is not true sanctification. It's the church's rule and it's
obeying the church and it's pollution, it's defilement, it's unrighteousness
and unholiness altogether. They understand neither what
they say nor whereof they affirm. They prove by teaching law, by
bringing sinners under the law, by saying men can keep the law,
they prove that they don't hear what the law says. Paul said,
you that desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? Paul said, the law is spiritual,
but I'm carnal, sold under sin. They neither know what the law
says, and they don't know the truth about themselves. Or you
wouldn't be trying to come back under the law. Not at all. Paul said when he was lost, look
at Romans 7. Paul said when he was lost, he
did the same thing. In Romans 7 verse 8, he said,
Sin, taken occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. He's saying, because I was dead
in sin, blind in sin, he said, I took that commandment of God
and worked all kind of concupiscence. That is, I thought I was righteous
by my law obedience and I thought others were unrighteous because
they didn't measure up to me. That's what law mongering produces. Self-righteous folks who think
they're better than other people. He said, for without the law,
sin was dead. That is, until God made me hear
the law, my sin was dead. I couldn't understand my sin.
For I was alive without the law once. Before the law came to
me and God taught me, I was alive. I thought I was. But when the
commandment came, sin revived and I died. Here's what had taken
place. Sin, taken occasion by the commandment,
deceived me and slew me. The sad thing is, one day, me
and that are trusting their works, are going to wake up before the
thrice holy God, who knows every thought we ever had, and He's
going to declare them guilty. Now, lastly, let me show you
the truth about the law. Verse 8, 1 Timothy 1.8, He says,
But we know, that is, those taught of God, we know that the law
is good if a man use it lawfully. knowing this, that the law is
not made for a righteous man. but for the lawless and disobedient,
for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers
of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for whoremongers,
for them that defile themselves with mankind, for men-stealers,
for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing
that's contrary to the gospel, contrary to sound doctrine according
to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which is committed
to my trust, God's law is like God. It is God's holy, just,
and good, and therefore His law is holy, just, and good. So if
a man, any man that could keep the law of God, he is as holy,
just, and good as God is. There's only one man that ever
did that. That's the God-man, Christ Jesus the Lord. He kept
the law. He fulfilled the law. And He
is as holy, just, and good as God His Father. That's right. He is one with God. Now they
claim to be the guardians of the law. But only believers love
the law of God so deeply that we will not bring the law down
to a man's level, but we will declare, no man ever kept it
but Christ the Lord. And the only way you will ever
keep that law and be found before God as being holy, just, and
good is by trusting Christ, our law keeper. That's the only way. He's the only one that kept the
law and He did it for His people. Now, in Him, we're holy, just,
and good in Christ. In Him. The law is good if a
man uses it lawfully. And to do it, to use it lawfully
is to declare all flesh guilty before God. That's the lawful
use of the law. That's the only reason it was
given. Did you know that? That's the only... Was then that
which is good made death unto me, Paul said? This good law,
was it made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it
might appear sin. Working death into me by that
which is good. that sin by the commandment might
become exceeding sinful. That's what the law was given
for. That I might see how exceedingly sinful my sin is. Now you understand
from what Paul says in other places, Paul's not talking, Paul
was not a drunkard and a whoremonger. Paul was in the temple. Paul
said, if you looked at me, you would have said, that man's without
spot. He's never broken the law outwardly. But he said, when
God made the commandment come to me, I saw all I am is sin. And that's what the law was given
for. We know what things soever the law saith, it says to them
who are under the law. That's who the law speaks to.
And if you're trying to come to God by the law, or trying
to get more holy by the law, you're under the law. And now
the law does speak to you, and here's what it says. their every
mouth may be stopped and all the world become guilty before
God. Therefore by the deeds of the
law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, not justified as
being righteous by the law and not justified as being sanctified
by the law. For by the law is the knowledge
of sin. That's what the law is given
for. But God's regenerate people know this. We know the law was
not made for a righteous man. The law was not made for a righteous
man. Now the sanctified believer who's
been brought to cast all his care on Christ, that man is righteous. He's a righteous man in Christ
Jesus the Lord. He's perfect before the law.
The law has nothing else to say to him at all. Just like the
law can't say a thing against Christ, the law can't say a thing
against him. That's how perfect we are in
Christ the Lord. And furthermore than that, the
sanctified believer is a righteous man in that he lives his life
doing what Christ compels him and constrains him to do by working
in his heart. And that is, he walks by faith
in Christ, working by love. That's the constraint. Not the
law, but Christ who he trusts by God's grace, works in his
heart and constrains him to do what he does out of a love for
God and for his brethren. Because he seeks the great love
God had toward him in putting his sin away. By the constraint
of Christ's love working in our hearts, believers do not live
in sin. To make that, when men hear this,
I've heard it thousands of times in my life. Men will say, you
teach sinners to live in sin. It's a good thing I'm under the
constraint of grace. If it had been, if somebody said
something like that to me, about something I cared that much about
before I was under this constraint of God's love, I'd have knocked
them out. I'm not kidding you. I would have. That just fires
me up. Don't say that. God forbid. We don't teach men to live in
sin. We're telling you the only way you can be without sin and
be purged of your sin and be found in Christ having His righteousness
and not any kind of righteousness of the law. We don't live in
sin. The law is not what works this
though. The law doesn't work this. Christ
does. Let me give you an example. Say
there's a sign in the store. It says anybody caught stealing
is going to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Well,
the man that does not steal, that law is not made for him.
That sign is not made for him. It has nothing to say to him.
He doesn't steal. He doesn't steal. It doesn't apply to him. And
listen to this. He doesn't need that sign to
make him honest. He doesn't need that law to make
him honest. And it's not that law that's making him honest.
That's not what's making him honest. And that's what it is
like between God's people and the law at Sinai. It's not the
law at Sinai that makes us honest. It's not the law at Sinai that
makes us want to walk honorably before God. That's not it. It's
Christ that does it. It's Christ that does it. It's
Christ that does it. I'm not setting the law against
Christ. I'm telling you Christ came and
fulfilled the law. He said, don't think I came to
destroy the law and the prophets. I did not come to destroy but
to fulfill. And He fulfilled it. So that
now the law is nailed to His cross. He's removed it. He's
taken it out of the way. And He's given you and me a desire
now to walk honorably before Him. Not by law, not being willed,
not being constrained by that, but by His grace and His love
and His power working in the heart and making us willing.
We're not without sin. Our old man is nothing but sin.
We break the law every moment continually in the old man. That's why we dare not think
we've not committed adultery or we've not stolen or we've
not done anything the law says because we have in our old nature
all the time. But when we outwardly break the
law in our flesh, God will correct us. But you know, He still doesn't
use the law to do that once He's called us by His grace. He does
it by pointing us to Christ and what Christ did to have to put
away our sin and have to put away that transgression. And
that's how He brings you to repentance and makes you turn and follow
Christ. That's true, brethren. Now, you
can't make a legalist understand this. It doesn't matter. You're
going to waste your time trying to make him understand this.
He won't. You can't understand this until
God works it in the heart. Period. The law was made for
the unrighteous. The law was made for the disobedient,
sinners outside of Christ. That's what the law was made
for. You read that list again, but notice the end of it. He
says, verse 10, If there be any other thing contrary to sound
doctrine according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Anything
contrary to the gospel, anything contrary to Christ and His finished
work, anything contrary to being under grace and not law. Because
we're redeemed by Christ and sanctified by Christ. That's
the glorious gospel now. But anything that's against that,
anything that teaches a sinner to look from Christ to himself,
from Christ our righteousness to the law for righteousness,
from Christ our holiness to the law for holiness, anything that
does that is contrary to the gospel. And any man that's teaching
that, the law's got something to say to him. You're guilty.
You're guilty. You're trying to come to God
in your work. If a sinner's left there in his
law keeping, one day in final judgment, God will use that very
law that he claimed to be keeping, that he claimed to be using to
be more holy and what have you, whatever vain reason he's using
it for, God's going to take that very law and condemn him. Christ
said, do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There
is one that accuseth you. Even Moses in whom you trust. Hear Christ speak. Hear Christ
speak. Anybody under the sound of my
voice is trying to come to God by your works of righteousness
according to the law. If you've been told the lie that
once you believe on Christ, now you've got to go back, you've
got to leave Mount Zion, you've got to leave that and go back
to Mount Sinai and come under bondage and start trying to keep
the law to be holy and chaste and all of these things, that
the law is what's going to do that. If you're here under that
message, listen to me now. Look to Christ Jesus alone. Look to Christ alone. God makes
Him to His people to be wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. That is all we need to be accepted
of God, to walk before God in this life, and at the end, be
called into heavenly glory to live with Christ forever. In
other words, all we need is Christ. And when Christ is your all,
you'll know that. And you'll have peace, and you'll
have a pure heart and you'll have faith and you'll have love
and you'll walk honorably before God for the first time in your
life. That's so. That's so. There's
no other way. There's no other name under heaven
whereby man must be saved. Christ the Lord. Christ Jesus
the Lord. Now the end of the commandment
is charity. Out of a out of a pure heart,
and a good conscience, and faith unfamed, faith undisguised, pure
faith. All this is God's gift. And what
I'm saying to you, what I'm saying to you, we don't live in sin,
believers don't like sin, we hate sin, we look for the day
when we'll be free from it. But brethren, when Christ takes
dominion, there's a new manager, there's a new governor, The government
is on his shoulder and he begins to govern us in which way we
should go in this life, where we should walk, where we shouldn't
walk, what we should do, what we shouldn't do. He does it through
this message I am preaching to you this morning. If he makes
you to hear this, it will be an example. He will turn you
from those works you were trusting in and he will turn you to Christ.
This word is going to do that. The law is not going to do that.
Your works to the law is not going to do that. You will continue
in that. Only Christ can turn you from that to trust Him, to
walk after Him. And He keeps doing that work
for His people in every aspect of our life. Because He is going
to have us believe and understand and know and rest in the fact
that Christ is all. God is going to have Him get
all the glory and His people are not going to get any. Christ
is all. Now, could you really honestly
take that statement, that sound doctrine, and yet still come
back and say, no, I believe there's something more? Really? Will you stand before God one
day and say, I believe there's something more? When Christ says,
this is my Son in whom I will plead, will you say there's something
more? God forbid. Believer, rest in Christ, love
one another. That's the end which God brings
all His people to rest in. Christ the Lord. Amen.