We thank you for listening to
this message. This is being preached by Trey Mason, a pastoral intern
and research assistant with Grace Truth Church. You can learn more
about our church at gracetruth.org, and you can also listen to more
of this series entitled Ephesians Studies at gracetruth.org slash
teaching. So I'm going to read verses 3
through 14, and then we're going to pray. Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Even
as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love. He predestined
us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the
purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which
He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through
His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the
riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom
and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according
to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for
the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, things in
heaven and things on earth. In Him we have obtained an inheritance,
having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works
all things, according to the counsel of His will, so that
we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise
of His glory. In Him you also, when you heard
the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed
in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is
the guarantee of our inheritance, till we acquire possession of
it. to the praise of His glory. So we're going to begin in verse
3 with some review of where we've been, because I have been teaching
through Ephesians, verse by verse. This is the 4th sermon in this
series, and I'm in the 4th verse. But, I started it in February,
and it is now in May. And so, I want to remind you
of where we've been so that we can have the context for what
Paul is going to be teaching us here in verse 4. So starting
in verse 3, Paul begins with an exclamation of praise to God
the Father. And he does this to set the tone
of the discourse that is to follow, and he does this to identify
who is the chief actor in the discourse that is to follow.
So when Paul says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, he's not simply praising God for the things that
he's going to tell us that God has done. He is actually identifying
God the Father specifically. as the chief actor, the one who
is doing these things that we see in verses 3-14. God is the one who does these
things. And this is an important distinction. We cannot simply here say that
God has done these things, because we lose some of the details of
the truth that is going to make the context of these verses clear. And so, we want to make a distinction
here between God the Father doing these things and God the Son
doing these things. But we also have to be careful,
because we cannot say that God the Father has done something
outside of the knowledge of God the Son, or against the will,
or outside of the will of God the Son, because there is only
one will in God. God is one, there is one nature,
there is one will. And so these things that God
has done, they are the will of God the Father, they are the
will of God the Son, and they are the will of God the Spirit. Now in my third sermon, on Ephesians
1, I set up a framework of biblical covenants. And I use that covenantal framework
to interpret the things that God the Father does for us and
for God the Son, through God the Son. And so we need to review
that, because that is also going to be fairly important as we
move forward. I'm going to try to be brief
with this. And so first, when we saw in
verse 3 that God the Father is the chief actor in these verses,
He's the one who is doing these things, this tells us that God
the Father is going to be the mediator of a covenant here,
because there are covenant transactions happening here in verses 3 and
4. And there are two primary covenants
that we are concerned with. There are lots of covenants talked
about in scripture, but two of them are of utmost importance
over the rest, because the covenants of the Old Testament, the covenants
of Moses, the covenant with Abraham, the covenant with David, these
covenants are merely shadows of these fully revealed covenants,
these two covenants that are most important. And so I'm going
to briefly review, then I'm going to give a more detailed review,
and so hopefully we can all have sort of a working understanding
by the time I get done reviewing. So the first covenant that we
are concerned with is called the covenant of redemption. Let me remind you what a covenant
is. A covenant is an agreement or
a transaction between a mediator and parties wherein the parties
satisfy conditions or stipulations laid out by the mediator. And
upon the satisfaction of these conditions, the mediator dispenses
the promises given in the covenant to the parties. And I'll give
these as examples, so that we can understand what we're looking
at here. So, in the covenant of redemption, we have a mediator,
God the Father. We have the party, the recipient
of the blessing, is God the Son. And the promise, the blessing
that comes with this covenant, is that 1. Christ would be glorified. God the Father would glorify
God the Son. And two, Christ would be given
a bride. Christ would be united with His
bride in eternity. So obviously there is some sense
in which the bride also benefits from this covenant. But we'll
see this more in the second covenant, and that is the covenant of grace. See, we didn't
mention the stipulation for the Covenant of Redemption. That's
because the stipulation for the Covenant of Redemption is the
Covenant of Grace. The mediator in this Covenant
of Grace is God the Son. The party, the recipient of the
blessings in this Covenant of Grace is the Bride. And these are those given to
the Son in the Covenant of Redemption. The promise to God the Son in
the covenant of redemption is that God the Father would give
God the Son a people and they would be His bride. The promise of the covenant of
grace, remember this is the covenant between God the Son and His bride,
the church, the people who are given to God the Son by God the
Father. The promise is that they would
be given to the Son, and that the Son would be given to them. In other words, eternal life.
They would live together forever with God, the Son. So, that was the Covenant Light
version. I'm going to go into more detail
now, in reverse order. So, we're going to review the
Covenant of Grace in more detail. We see three times in Hebrews. Turn to Hebrews with me. We're going to be in Hebrews chapter
7, and I'm going to sort of rapid-fire these citations. We're going
to be in Hebrews 7, 22. The author writes this, which
is the discourse that came before, makes Jesus the guarantor of
a better covenant. In Hebrews 8 verse 6, the author
writes, But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that
is as much more excellent than the old, as the covenant He mediates
is better, since it is enacted on better promises. Hebrews 12
verse 24, Jesus, the mediator of a new
covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that he speaks a better
word than the blood of Abel." So we see that Jesus is declared
in Hebrews as the mediator of a better covenant. And Hebrews
is a source of much of our New Testament understanding of covenants.
In fact, John Owen's commentary on Hebrews is probably the largest
work on covenant theology there is. So much about covenant theology,
in fact, that a Baptist minister named Nehemiah Cox wrote a short
pamphlet on covenant theology, and then for the rest of the
book, he did the 17th century version of copy and pasting,
and he just put John Owen at the end of the book. Hebrews
is about covenants, because Israel, in the first century, They were
still obsessed with the Old Covenant. They had lost sight of the substance
of this Old Covenant, the idea that this Old Covenant pointed
to Christ. It pointed to the coming prophesied
Messiah. They lost sight of this. And
they decided that because of their adherence to the law, these
stipulations of these ancient temporal covenants, they decided
that they were righteous. And so the author of Hebrews
has to go through great labor to dismiss and refute the teachings
of the Jews of the days in order to make more clear the truths
of the Old Testament that these truths pointed to Christ. So Jesus is the mediator of a
better covenant than the old. Now, we see in John 17 too, Christ
is granted the authority to be the mediator of this covenant.
God gives Christ, God the Father gives Christ the authority to
dispense the graces of this covenant of grace. Turn to John 17. We'll
get there in like seven years on Sunday morning. Eventually. Starting in verse
1, this is the high priestly prayer. When Jesus had spoken
these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father,
the hour has come. Glorify your Son that the Son
may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all
flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.
Christ receives authority from the Father to give eternal life
to his bride. He is given the authority to
mediate this covenant. And so the party of this covenant,
those who receive the blessing of this covenant of grace, I
mean, it says it right here in 17 too. All whom you have given
him. This is all whom God the Father
has given to God. We have a word for this group. It is the elect, the church,
the bride. These are the people that have
been given to the Son by God the Father. They are the ones
who are party to this covenant. And the promise is there in what
Christ has the authority to give them. Eternal life. The promise
is that they would have eternal life upon the fulfillment of
the conditions or stipulations of this covenant. So we ask the
question, what are the conditions of this covenant? The stipulations.
So we can figure this out through the context of what we know about
salvation. The stipulations are derived
from what is required for Christ to have the authority to give
eternal life. And that is that God's justice must be satisfied. God the Father cannot arbitrarily
forgive sin because God is just and righteous. He is a judge. and a righteous judge. And so,
when a sinner sins, there is a due punishment for that sin. God's wrath must be upon that
sinner. Unless Christ takes that wrath. So, for a sinner to be justified
and to have eternal life, God the Son must satisfy God's justice
on their behalf. This is the stipulation of this
covenant. For there to be grace, there
must be justice. So that's the covenant of grace. And we see more about these promises,
the rewards, the blessings of this covenant here in Ephesians
1.3. Paul writes that God, the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, has blessed us in Christ with every
spiritual blessing. So when it says that we've been
blessed in Christ, this is referring to this covenantal framework
we have in the covenant of grace. To be in Christ is to be united
with Christ. And what we see in the Covenant
of Redemption and in the Covenant of Grace is that God the Son
is united with His Bride. And so when Paul writes, In Christ,
and when Paul writes, In Him, we have this covenantal framework
that we can use to understand what is going on. And so we've
got the details of the Covenant of Redemption. That was the Covenant
of Grace. Now we need the details of the Covenant of Redemption.
We're going to be in John 17 again. I'm sorry if you flipped
away to go back to Ephesians. But we're back in John 17. In John 17, Jesus identifies
the Father as the mediator of this covenant. It might not be
plain to you, but He says, You have given Him authority over
all flesh. What did we see in the covenant
of redemption? That God the Father stipulates that God the Son would
make a covenant with His bride, and that He would satisfy the
conditions of that covenant on their behalf. So because God
is the one giving the authority to satisfy these stipulations,
that means God is the mediator of this covenant. God the Father
is the mediator of the covenant. It is the Father's prerogative
It is His responsibility and it is His will to dispense the
blessings and the promises of this covenant. And then the party
of this covenant. God the Son, here in John 17,
identifies Himself as the beneficiary of the promises of this covenant.
He says, Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son. that the Son may glorify you." So God the Son is the one who
is glorified, and in this we also see the promise of the covenant,
and that is that the Son would be glorified and that the Son
would be given a bride. And we see the condition, the
stipulation of this covenant is that God the Son would do
the will of the Father. that He would mediate the covenant
of grace, satisfy it on their behalf. And now we can get to verse 4
of Ephesians 1. That was verse 3 and first half
of verse 4. Let's see. Yeah, first half of… That was just verse 3. Verse
4, we see that He chose us in Him. So, we have to use what
we know to figure out these pronouns. So, we've got a He and we've
got a Him. The He chose. He is doing something. He, a
verb. What did we say in the beginning?
God, the Father, is the chief actor in this passage. So He chose, God the Father chose
us in Him. The Him is Christ. We see that
we have been blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing
in the heavenly places and we have been chosen in Christ before
the foundation of the world. This is God's decree of election. Paul identifies the church as
those who are promised to and given to Christ in the eternal
covenant, the covenant of redemption. So that is a property, a characteristic
of this covenant of redemption that we need to keep in mind.
It is an eternal covenant. It is a covenant that happened
before the creation of the world. It is a covenant that God the
Father and God the Son made in eternity. It is eternal, before the foundation
of the world. This tells us the timing. It isn't really timing, because
there was no time. We can call it timing, but it's
not timing. It just doesn't really make sense to talk about time. So, this phrase, before the foundation
of the world, indicates the eternity of this covenant of redemption. So with that in mind, we are
prepared to get into the main argument that I want to go over.
And I think I made okay time. We're doing good, it's only 7.30.
We're really going to be looking at
the second half of verse 4, because I think we've done the first
half talking about covenants. So we need to remember, I'm going
to be using some of the Covenantal language as we go through. I'm just going to begin the argument.
So first, we're going to argue the guaranteed effectiveness
of the blessings of the Covenant. We touched on this a little bit
when we were in verse 3, when we saw that we have been blessed
with every spiritual blessing. The blessings described in this
passage are effectual. It works. They are effective
and they are effected according to the timing that God prescribes
in His Word. So, all the blessings that we
see in verses 3-14, they actually happen, believe it or not. You might not be surprised at
the number of people out there who would tell you that these
blessings are not a guarantee. But these blessings are a guarantee,
and we're going to do more than just state it. We're going to
make an argument, and we're going to sort of do it in two ways. So first, These blessings are part of the
covenant transaction. These blessings are the promises. It's a promise. They are the
promises of the covenants that we've talked about. And then
we're going to argue that these blessings are for sure effective
based on the infallibility of God's decree. So, what do we
have? In verse 3, we see that we have
been blessed with every spiritual blessing. In verse 4, we see
that we are holy and blameless before Him. In verse 5, we've
been predestined for adoption. We've been blessed in love. There's
forgiveness of sin. There's redemption through His
blood. All of these things work together within the two covenants
we described. When we were in verse 3, we talked
about the fact that we've been blessed with every spiritual
blessing. And I used it as an opportunity
to teach against a doctrine that says that everyone receives some
measure of this spiritual blessing, and then it is up to them to
take hold of the rest of them. But Paul tells us that if you
have been blessed at all, you have been blessed with every
spiritual blessing. Because this is effective, because
these blessings are promises of covenants. And who fulfills
these covenants? Christ does. In the covenant
of redemption, it is promised to us that we would be given
to Christ. Who fulfills that covenant? Christ. In the covenant
of grace, it is promised that we would have Christ given to
us. His righteousness would be ours.
God's wrath against us would be satisfied. He fulfills that
covenant. Christ. Christ is fulfilling
these covenants, and so the promises of these covenants are effectual. They are for sure, they are secure. But one of these covenants specifically
is eternal. And that actually tells us something
about how the blessings of that covenant are communicated to
us. And I'll try to spell this out
for you without getting too much in the weeds of systematic theology.
It would be easy to do. There's a book back there on
the table, unless James picked it up so he could read it, called
All That Is in God. And it's a book about divine
simplicity, and I'm not going to explain to you what that is
right now. But there's a chapter where the author has to defend
the eternality of God as Creator. Because there are theologians,
reformed by name, theologians, who say that God was not eternally
the Creator. The Creator is something that
God became when He created. And in rebuking that falsehood,
James Dolezal, the author of that book, points out that the
divine mode of action is not something that God does in time. It's not something when God does
something in time. It's not something that requires
extra action from God. The divine mode of action, the
way God does stuff, is through His decree. If God does it, He does it because
He decreed it. God did not have to use His hands
to create the world. He doesn't have hands. He said. He decreed. He spoke by the power
of the Word. So God acting is God decreeing. When God does something, that
something happens because that something was a decree of God. So, when Paul teaches us in verses
3 and 4 that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing, that
we are holy and that we are blameless before Him, Those things are
sure, those things are secure, not only because Christ Himself
has secured them on our behalf, but because God decreed that
it would happen. And God is infallible. God is all powerful. God's decree cannot fail. Job 42.2 says that none of your
purposes can be thwarted. God has decreed and surely it
will happen. And so we have these blessings,
surely happening. And the timing, we'll talk about
the timing later. Okay, so the particular blessings
that we are interested in tonight are found in the second half
of verse 4. And that is holiness and blamelessness. We have holiness, which we will
define, because it's very important that we define it. It says that,
even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy. And so, we can sort of take the
grammar and remove some pieces to understand how the grammar
fits together. He chose us in Him that we should
be holy. God the Father chose us in Christ And God the Father chose us in
Christ to be blameless. And so we can explain how these
things happen, where they come from, how they are secured. Each
of these two things, holiness and blamelessness, each is secured
on the cross of Christ. I will proof text it later. I'm
going to use the Covenant. It doesn't work right now. The
Cross is the fulfillment of both of the Covenants. Because the
conditions of the Covenant of Redemption, that's the Covenant
between God the Father and God the Son, the conditions of this
Covenant are that Christ would make and fulfill a Covenant with
His Bride. And that covenant is the covenant
of grace. And that covenant is satisfied
by Christ on the cross, in taking God's wrath and satisfying God's
justice on behalf of the bride. So in the fulfillment of the
covenant of grace, we have the fulfillment of the covenant of
redemption, both on the cross. Both of these things happen on
the cross. Holiness, blamelessness. The interesting thing is, one
of these properties, attributes, one of these promises, is incident
to the Covenant of Grace, and one of these promises is incident
to the Covenant of Redemption. I'm not going to tell you which
yet. I'll tell you later. One of these things of holiness
and blamelessness, one of them is promised to us in the Covenant
of Redemption. I intentionally didn't tell you
exactly how yet. And the other is prompting us
to the covenant of grace. Okay, we need to define some
words. We have two words that we're
interested in defining. Holy, or holiness, and blameless, or
blamelessness. And so from holy, we actually
get four words that we need to define. That's holy, holiness,
sanctify, and sanctification. Holy is an adjective. It describes
something. Holiness is a noun. It's the
state of being holy. Sanctify is a verb. It means
to make holy. And sanctification is another
noun. It's the process, the act. I didn't mean to say process.
It's the act of making something holy. From these four words,
we actually get them from three Greek words. Someone's going
to make fun of my pronunciation. We have three Greek words used
in the New Testament to represent holiness, to represent sanctification,
to represent being holy, having holiness. Three words. Agiazzo. It is a verb. It means to make holy, to sanctify. Agiazzo. Agiosmos, it is a noun,
it means holiness or sanctification. So we've got two of those words
wrapped up in that noun, agiosmos. And then we've got the adjective,
agios, holy. So these are the words, holy,
sanctify, agios, agiosmos, agios. So I've defined the Greek words,
but I haven't actually helped us understand them, because we
still don't know what holy means. And I'm sure you know what it
means. And it might be wrong. And this
is one of the things where I said that I was going to teach against
something that I believed my whole life, even after coming
to the doctrines of grace. And that's the definition of
holiness, what it means to be holy. We'll get there. All three of
these Greek words appear in the Septuagint. What's the Septuagint?
It is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. When
in the New Testament, when one of the apostolic authors or when
Jesus himself quotes the Old Testament, he was quoting from
the Septuagint or the LXX. That means 70. Septuagint means
70 gent. LXX is the Roman numeral for
70. These three Greek words for holy,
holiness, sanctify, to make holy, they appear in the Septuagint,
coming from the Hebrew. The Hebrew word used is kadash. All these words for holiness
come from different forms of the Hebrew kadash. And kadash
has a very specific meaning. We get something, we understand
what holy means from this word. It means set apart. Set apart for a specific purpose,
or set apart from common use for uncommon use. And this word
is used to describe all types of things. The Ark of the Covenant
was called holy because it was not something for common use. It had a religious use, it had
religious significance, so they said it was holy. It was set
apart for religious significance. And so, holy, the English word
holy, means in English, set apart for a specific purpose. Now, I grew up understanding
holiness to have another definition. And you probably did, too. And
if you read dead white men who have written about the Bible
for the last 800 years, they all used this definition. Ancient theologians, Reformed,
Catholic, it didn't matter who. They used this definition of
holiness. They associated holiness And the Greek words that we get
holiness from, they associated it with moral living, purity
of works, good works. It was always associated with
good works. If you read any Reformed theologian,
since the Reformation. They will have, in their chapter
on sanctification and holiness, they will have something they
call positional holiness, which means to be set apart. And they
will have something else, referring to the works that we do, that
they associate with holiness. So in order to figure out where
they got this from, because if you read the systematic theologies,
they just say it. They just assert it. It's standing
out there, bare before everyone, with no citation to undergird
it, no reason to take it as fact, except that they are a theologian. Holiness means right living. Couldn't figure out why. So,
I figured maybe somewhere along the way, between the first century
when these words were written, and today, there's a dictionary. And these old guys were reading
this dictionary. And I had a friend who's something
of an amateur ancient Near East historian, and he's familiar
with a lot of ancient history of the Middle East area. And
I said, find me the oldest Greek dictionary you can find me. And
he sent me a database that has every Greek dictionary. At least
it has the titles of every Greek dictionary from 200 to 1,400.
And of the ones that I could find, not a single one associated holiness
with works. I consulted something called
the Suda. It's from about 1200. It's a
Greek lexicon that draws from Christian theologians, Christian
authors, and other academics of the time, philosophers, and
it makes a Greek dictionary of the ancient world. And it's got
three citations concerning holiness, just like I've got right here.
Every single one of them refers to the setting apart for religious
use. Holiness means set apart for a specific purpose. So in
the year 1200, holiness still meant set apart for a specific
purpose. That means we lost it somewhere
between then and now. Holiness means set apart for
a specific purpose. And I haven't told you what that
purpose is yet. We'll get there. We have another word that we
have to deal with in Ephesians 1-4, and that is blameless. Blameless. Simply put, it means without
blame, or without guilt. Less means without, blame means
guilt, without guilt. But there's something important.
There's an important distinction we need to make with blameless.
Blameless does not mean without sin. Blameless means that when
you sin, you are not guilty of it. Blameless, if you were here
last week, blameless means expiated. Your guilt has been removed.
You are blameless. So we absolutely must keep it
separated from sinless. Because there are many who would
say, and they likely associate holiness with works, they would
say that blameless means that we no longer sin. They would
argue that in verse 4, Paul is promising that when we are saved,
we are now holy in our works, we are now blameless in our living,
and we sin no more. But these words just don't mean
that. Blameless doesn't mean sinless.
It means you sin and you're not guilty. So we actually dealt with one
of these last week when we talked about expiation on the cross. So we get to the main point.
Probably the main point of this entire message. And that is holiness
and blamelessness have nothing to do with the works. If blamelessness had anything
to do with good works, you wouldn't be blameless, because you don't
do them. I don't do them. I do them sometimes, kind of.
But even in my best works, I'm sure that there is some selfish
motivation, some reason I do the things I do, other than the
glory of God. Sure, even in my preaching right
now, there is some measure of sinfulness. Any good that comes
of what we do, any good that we do, is because God has done
that good in us. We can contribute the sinfulness
that goes with our blamelessness. And holiness has nothing to do
with works, because that's just not what the Word means. It means
set apart for a specific purpose. More importantly, and this is
something important to note, it has nothing to do with works
before or after your conversion. Just in case we weren't clear,
that before you are converted, you can't do good works to obtain
holiness and blamelessness. You can't really even do good
works after conversion. I'm not saying you don't do good
works, I'm saying your works are, even in the least bit, tainted
by your sinful flesh. And God's Spirit works the good
in you. There's no works to speak of
here. We'll get there in like 11 years when I make it to Ephesians
2. So where did these things come
from? We've already seen it already. Turn back to Hebrews. We'll be in Hebrews chapter 10. So if you're looking in your
Bible, look up when he said above, you have neither desired nor
taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings. This is in verse
8, by the way, and burnt offerings and sin offerings. These are
offered according to the law. Then he added, behold, I have
come to do your will. That is God, the Son, has come
to do the will of God, the Father. He does away with the first in
order to establish the second, the first covenant. He does away
with the first covenant in order to establish the second covenant. And by that will we have been
sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all. Your sanctification is secured
by Christ on the cross. Turn to 2 Corinthians, chapter
5. What do you think I'm going to
tell you here? I've told you that holiness is secured by Christ
on the cross. So what's the other half of this?
Starting in verse 20, Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ,
God making His appeal through us, we implore you on behalf
of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be
sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness
of God. Holiness and blamelessness are
secured by Christ on the cross. according to the testimony of
Hebrews and Corinthians, are communicated to the elect according
to the promises of the covenant of grace and the covenant of
redemption. These things are promised to us in the covenants,
and they are communicated to us, secured for us through Christ's
work on the cross in satisfying these covenants. So now we can talk about the
bad word. This word has significance right
now in those who call themselves Reformed. We might even see a
proper splitting of Reformed associations of churches over
this. That is progressive sanctification. This is something that your elders
and I have been wrestling with for what a year now, at least.
Maybe more than a year. progressive sanctification. So
back when I told you that Reformed theologians really have two chapters
on sanctification in their systematic theologies, they have a chapter
on the version of sanctification that I just presented to you,
and then they have a chapter on progressive sanctification. And so, I'm going to sort of
paint the problem here by changing the word sanctification to what
it means. Progressive setting apart? The question is, can you be more
set apart for Christ than you already are when you are set
apart for Christ? Being set apart for a specific
purpose is what we call in mathematics, binary logic. There are two options. You are set apart for a specific
purpose, or you are not set apart for that purpose. So the problem here is that progressive
sanctification assumes a different definition of holiness than the scripture does. So what are some problems with
identifying sanctification, holiness, as our works? I think that the
biggest problem with identifying holiness and our works is that
it leads to an identification between our sanctification that
is progressive and made of works, and our assurance. That's a problem. There's this
comical, funny question that I ask people when they start
talking about this. I won't say the name of the famous
preacher specifically. But there are many preachers
out there who will teach you that you know you are saved,
the assurance of your salvation is because you can see the fruit
of good works in your life. And so I ask them, how much good
works is enough good works? So that we know that we've done
enough good works to have assurance of our not works-based salvation. How much good works is enough
good works to know you've done enough good works to have assurance
of your not-works-based salvation? Scripture gives no objective
standard for good works being the assurance of your salvation.
And if Scripture gives no objective standard, then it either gives
no standard at all, it makes no equivocation between your
works and your assurance, or it gives a subjective standard.
There's a problem with subjective standards, isn't there? You don't
know when you've met them. You don't know when you've met
subjective standards. I went to a private Christian
school. When I was in middle school, there really wasn't an
objective standard for how long or short shorts could be. And one day you could wear a
pair of shorts and it would be just fine. And then the next
day a different teacher would see you and it would be too short.
That is a subjective standard. You cannot know you have met
the standard. And if you cannot know you have
met the standard for assurance in your good works, you don't
have assurance. Your assurance is not in the
good works. Your assurance is in the guarantor
of a better covenant. Your assurance is in the promise
that if fulfilled, the covenant promises will be given to you.
If fulfilled, who fulfills the covenant? Jesus Christ, Son of
God, fulfills the covenant on our behalf. He is the guarantor
of a better covenant. Guarantor. When I signed a lease
for my apartment in Statesboro last year, I never even had a
credit card or rented anywhere, so I just had zero credit. I
didn't even have a credit score. And they required a guarantor
that if I defaulted on my rent, someone was going to give them
their money. My dad had to sign as a guarantor saying he guarantees
that they're going to get their rent if I don't pay the bills.
Jesus is a guarantor. He guarantees that the promises
of the covenant will be communicated to the parties of the covenant
through His work on the cross. So now I give a disclaimer. This
is absolutely a necessary disclaimer because our own confession says
progressive sanctification. I don't think it uses the word
progressive, but it says that we are more and farther sanctified. So my disclaimer is this. I am
not rejecting the doctrine found in our confession. It's chapter
18. I'm not rejecting the doctrine
found in our Confession. I'm rejecting one word and replacing
it with what the authors of the Confession actually meant. What
they were talking about. So we can give two alternatives. Our alternatives are, and this
is in another sermon entirely, vivification, And mortification,
those are one together, vivification and mortification. Vivification
means bringing to life. Mortification means putting to
death. So in vivification, our spirits
are brought to life by God, and our flesh is put to death by
God. This is what the confession is
talking about when it says sanctification. In the other word, and this is
a more common term, less systematic theological term, that is maturity. There is a maturity that we grow
in as believers. And now I have to caveat this.
You can be mature one day and immature the next. I can stand up here and be mature
in my faith before you, teaching the Word. And I can go home and
send my wife. I can lead you and go home and
fail to lead my wife. Your maturity changes. You go through seasons where
you are immature. Your faith is shaken but never
taken. That was a big church line for
you. It changes. Your maturity can
change for the better or for the worse. And your maturity
is always incomplete until you die. Your maturity is never complete. So I'll call this maturity pre-glorification. It is incomplete. It changes. It can be taken away. God can
take your maturity away in order that you may grow more mature
later. Until we are glorified. Until
we are finally united with Christ the bridegroom in eternity. And
so I've talked a lot about holiness and that it means set apart and
not works. And we said, set apart for a
specific purpose. And I know it's late, but I can't
stop now because this is the whole point. You are set apart
for a specific purpose. And I never told you what it
was. So let's look at it. So remember, in the covenant
of redemption, we had Christ fulfilling the covenant of grace.
That was the stipulation. Christ fulfills the covenant
of grace. That is what God the Father required of God the Son
in the covenant of redemption. And the promise was that God
the Father would give to Christ a bride. Your sanctification,
your holiness, is that you have been set apart as a member of
the Bride of Christ. You have been given to Christ
by the Father. That is your sanctification.
You are blameless because Christ, Christ's righteousness has been
given to you. In Christ, you are holy because
you have been given to Christ. And in Christ, you are blameless
because Christ has been given to you. And in this we see the beautiful
marriage between Christ the Bridegroom and His Bride, the Church. One last point, and this is almost
like Bible trivia at this point. I was speaking with a pastor
friend of mine about some of these issues, and he, like probably
all of us, grew up with this understanding that our holiness
is our works. Our holiness is growing in good
working, rather than being set apart for Christ. And we were talking about this,
and he He was like, well, what about 1 Peter 1.16, where Peter quotes the Old Testament. He says, you shall be holy, for
I am holy. Be holy, for I am holy. My pastor friend said to me,
is this not a command to be holy? Something that we are expected
to do. Something we are expected to work. Be holy. And I said,
I don't know. It's in English. My Bible wasn't
written in English. So I said, let's look at the
Greek. And in Greek, it says, I mean, in English, that is what
it means in Greek. In English, it says, Holy, you will. For Holy, I am. Holy, you For
holy I am. We are holy because Christ is
holy. We have been given to Christ
and Christ has been given to us. There is only Christ. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word
that Even though we can be complete
idiots most of the time, through Your Spirit we can read this
and understand what it means. God, I thank You for the elders
of this church who labor in teaching us what Your Word means. God, I pray that as we go we
would continue to study your word and learn more about you
and what you have done for us to the praise of your glorious
grace. God, as we go, let us talk about
this stuff. Let our conversations not be
surface level and worldly and stupid. Let us talk about your
glory revealed in your word. Let us ask each other hard questions. Let us ask our elders hard questions so that we can be more intimate
with each other. Let us draw closer to each other
as we draw closer to you. Because God Your son, Jesus Christ,
has been given to us as a bridegroom, and we've been given to him as
a bride. And we are members of one body,
and when body parts aren't put together, they don't work. God,
bring us together around your word and your truth. And God,
we praise you, and we thank you for sanctifying us and expiating
us. God, we pray these things in
the name above all other names, the name of Jesus Christ.