I would encourage you to follow
in your own Bible as I read from the sixth chapter of Paul's letter
to the Romans, Romans chapter 6, and I shall read from verse
14 to the end of the chapter. Romans 6 beginning with verse
14. For sin shall not have dominion
over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not
under law, but under grace? God forbid! Know ye not that
to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his
servants ye are whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death or
of obedience unto righteousness. But thanks be to God that whereas
ye were servants of sin, ye became obedient from the heart to that
form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered, and being made
free from sin ye became servants of righteousness. I speak after
the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh For
as ye presented your members as servants to uncleanness and
to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now present your members as
servants to righteousness unto sanctification. For when you
were the servants of sin, you were free in regard of righteousness. What fruit had ye at that time
in the things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those
things is death. But now, being made free from
sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification
and the end eternal life. For the wages of sin is death,
but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. One of the most astounding things
in all of the world is the transformation wrought in the heart and life
of a sinner by the power of God through the gospel. The Bible
uses many strands of vivid imagery in an attempt to set forth something
of the magnitude and the glory of this gospel transformation. And in the passage which has
been read in your hearing, One of those forms of imagery is
very graphically drawn out by the Apostle Paul, and it is obviously
the image of the master-slave relationship with respect to
the transforming power of the Gospel. In this particular passage,
as you have been reminded in this brief series of studies,
the Apostle is refuting the false deduction drawn from the wonderful
truth stated in verse 14, namely, that in union with Christ we
are no longer under the law. The law shall not, sin shall
not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law, but under
grace. That is, the law no longer can
say to us, this do and thou shalt live, this fail to do and thou
shalt die. Our acceptance with God is based
upon the law-keeping of another, and upon the satisfaction made
to that broken law in the death of another. Well, then someone
adds to that glorious truth the devil's logic in verse 15 and
says, shall we then sin because we are not under the law but
under grace? The Apostle's answer is, God
forbid, and then he states his thesis. He says this is impossible
for if you present yourself a servant to sin, why then you will have
the end of that servitude, which is not life and righteousness,
but death. However, if you present yourself
a servant to obedience, then you show yourself indeed to be
the true child of the living God. Well, it is in the unfolding,
then, of this particular thesis that this imagery of the master-slave
relationship as it pertained to the spiritual history of the
Romans is so graphically and wonderfully opened up in this
portion of the Word of God. In the first study, we considered
what the Apostle says in this passage concerning the former
condition of the Romans. He asserts their condition as
being one of servitude to sin. He says he were the slaves of
sin. Then he describes that condition. It was a condition in which,
according to verse 19, they voluntarily presented their members as instruments
of unrighteousness unto sin and to uncleanness and iniquity. Furthermore, he describes it
in verse 20 as a condition in which there was resolute refusal
to acknowledge the claims of righteousness and of God. They
regarded themselves free men with respect to the claims of
the law of God. Then having asserted the condition,
servitude to sin, having described it, he then states the end of
that condition, and he says the end of that condition is nothing
less than death. death in its ultimate and horrendous
implications in the light of the biblical doctrine of hell,
the separation of the soul from God, that soul joined to the
body which presented its members as servants to uncleanness and
to iniquity. The wages are paid out in that
awful day when men hear the frightening words, Depart from me, ye cursed. Then we saw the new condition
of the Romans described. He asserts that condition as
a new servitude. He says you experienced emancipation
by servitude. You were the slaves of sin, but
he says in verse 17 and again in verse 22, they had become
the slaves of righteousness and of God. Then he describes that
condition. He says that new servitude is
marked by shame of the past. It's marked by the voluntary
presentation of your members now to do the will of God, verse
19. And it is marked by a life of
sanctification, verse 22. And the end of that new condition
is stated as nothing less than life. Life in all of its glory,
in the presence of God, in His own blessed place that He has
been preparing for His people. Well, so much for that very brief
review, one in which we focused upon what the Romans were, what
they had become, But now the great question which should burn
in all of our minds is this. How did this amazing transformation
come to pass? By what agency were the slaves
of sin constituted the servants of God and of righteousness? And it is precisely that question
to which we address ourselves tonight, and the answer to that
question we shall see is very compactly but beautifully given
to us in verse 17. But as we stand on the threshold
of examining the answer to that question, may I underscore in
your hearing that this is not an academic exercise or an exercise
in idle curiosity. For everything that the Romans
were by nature, you and I are by nature. We are by nature the
slaves of sin. And if we remain the slaves of
sin, the end of that servitude will be death. And unless we
become what the Romans became, that is, the slaves of righteousness,
And unless that slavery to righteousness is manifested in us as it was
in them, shame of the past, voluntarily presenting our members instruments
of righteousness unto God, the fruit of sanctification, unless
we become what they became and manifest what they manifested,
we shall not have their end. We shall not attain unto life,
for life is imparted in the same pattern of spiritual experience
for us as it was for them. So in a very real sense, this
is a matter of life and of death for each of us. Unless we experience
what they experience in the same way and by the same means that
they experienced it, we cannot escape the death which would
have been their portion. And so as we come to this great
question, By what means did the transformation occur? May God
help us not to address ourselves to that question with idle, albeit
innocent, perhaps curiosity or a mere desire to discover how
it was that this occurred in the experience of the Romans.
But may it be with the burning concern, O God, may the means
that proved effectual to their transformation prove effectual
to mine. And I suggest that the text sets
before us three things in answer to that question. By what means
In what way did the transformation occur? And the first thing our
text sets before us is the fact that God alone is the author
of this transformation. And this fact is set before us
both explicitly in the text and implicitly. Explicitly, look
at the language of verse 17. Having stated his thesis in verse
16, having asserted that whoever you obey, his servant you are. As he enters into this description
of the marvelous transformation from servitude to sin, to servitude
to God and to righteousness, he doesn't even begin to expound
the nature of that change until, first of all, He has set God
front and center in the whole description. The language begins
like this, but thanks be to God. Indicating in the Apostle's mind
that whatever follows of a description of the transformation which occurred
in the Romans Every single facet of that transforming work is
to be attributed to God and to God alone. But thanks be to God. And then he launches into his
description that whereas you were this, he became this, and
then he expands upon it, he enlarges upon it, but he never moves from
that essential and fundamental issue announced at the outset. Thanks be to God. He does not say, but thanks be
to the messenger who brought you the news of deliverance and
the possibility of an exchange of slavery from sin to righteousness. He certainly does not say, thanks
be to you Romans, you've done God a great favor by exercising
your free will and obeying the gospel. Nor does he even say,
but thanks be to the message. And certainly he does not say,
but thanks be to Mary and to the saints or to the sacraments
and to the church. He says no such thing. He says,
but thanks be to God. Indicating that in answer to
that question, how did the transformation come to pass? We are to understand
that God and God alone is the author of that transformation. That truth, I say, is set forth
explicitly, patently in the very language of the text. But it
is there latently and implicitly as well. There are five passive
verbs or participles in this section. Now you children don't
go to sleep. You ought to understand a little
grammar if you're going to understand the Bible and theology. Now a
passive verb is a verb in which something, there's a description
of an activity in which something is acted upon. In an active verb,
the subject does whatever is being done. Let me illustrate.
I am now standing on the right side of the pulpit, left to you,
right to me. If I say, I moved to the left
side of the pulpit. I am the subject and I performed
the activity. I moved from the right side of
the pulpit to the left side. But I take my glass of water
and I put it on the right side of the pulpit. It's moved to the left side.
Now I would say, the glass of water was moved from the right
side of the pulpit to the left. Now you see I've used a passive
form of the verb. I did not say the glass of water
moved from the right to the left. Or I did not say the glass of
water moved itself. I said the glass of water was
moved. Well, the minute you hear that,
you must ask the question, who moved it? Did a spook, did an
angel, did a hobgoblin, did a fairy come along, or did the preacher?
If it was moved, there had to be a mover acting upon the glass
of water. Well, in this passage there are
no fewer than five verbs which speak of an activity exercised
upon the Romans. It's not describing what they
did, but describing what happened to them. Look at the language. Verse 17, But God bethanked that
whereas ye were the slaves of sin, ye became obedient from
the heart to that form of teaching, here's one of them, whereunto
ye were delivered. Somebody took the Romans and
delivered them unto the form of teaching. He didn't say you
delivered yourself. He said somebody handed you over
to the form of teaching. Furthermore, verse 18, and having
been made free from sin would be a literal translation. He
doesn't say, and having made yourself free from sin, he says,
having been made free, or as we saw last week, perhaps the
most accurate translation in terms of our terminology, having
been emancipated. Somebody was the emancipator
so that they could become the emancipated. A passive verb. And then another one in verse
18, ye were made the slaves of righteousness. He didn't say
you made yourselves. You were made. Somebody put you
in that new state of a slave of righteousness. And you have
the same thing in verse 22, now having been made free, or having
been emancipated from sin, and having been made the slaves of
God. Five times in this passage, passive
verbs or participles are used, and we've got to ask the question,
if the apostle is very careful under the inspiration of the
Spirit to choose forms of the verb which indicate that something
was acted upon, he must have had a purpose for this, and the
purpose is very clear. Having said on the very threshold
of this description, thanks be to God. He doesn't want them
to forget it when he gets down into the details. So every time
he uses a passive verb, it's a finger pointing back to the
opening word saying, God is the agent of those passive verbs. By whom were they made free? Who was the emancipator? Who
brought them into the state of emancipation? God, we thank. Who handed them over to the teaching? It was God by the mighty, secret,
inward operations of the Spirit. Who brought them into this status
of the willing servants and slaves of righteousness? It was God
who did the work. And so in answer to the question,
how does this transformation occur? Our text sets before us
with unmistakable clarity this answer, God and God alone is
the author of this transformation. Now what does this tell us in
very practical and pointed terms? Well it tells us that if we have
been released from the bondage of sin and made the slaves of
righteousness, Almighty God has been mightily active on our behalf. And whatever means God was pleased
to use, we must look beyond every means, every instrument, every
element that God took into the orbit of His working and trace
the entirety of the transformation back to the living God and to
the living God alone. Here in the most wonderful and
graphic language is pure biblical monergism. And you ought to know
what that word means. Monergism in theological jargon
simply means that it is God and God alone who say, Synergism
says it is God plus something or someone else that saves. Here the apostle shows his appreciation
for the grace of God, for grace equals monergism. And the moment
you tamper God plus something else, you have ended in the realm
of synergism, and you rob God of the glory of that grace. Likewise, it says to you who
are yet the slaves of sin, you who are still living, ugly monuments
of the slavery to sin that is the portion of every fallen son
and daughter of Adam. This very day you've presented
your members' instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. You are living ugly monuments
of the reality of that slavery. Oh, my friend, this text tells
you that your hope is not to be found anywhere. but in the
living God. Your hope is not to be found
in this church, in its ministry, in any church, in any ministry,
in any ritual, in any rubric of worship. No, no. Your hope
is to be found in God and in God alone. And the sooner you
come to that conviction and begin to have heart dealings with God
Himself, begin to cry to God Himself, begin to place yourself
before the living God, pleading that He would be pleased to work
mightily in you, the sooner you come to grips with that great
reality, the more hope you will have that you are indeed in the
way of salvation. But now we must hurry on, for
the text sets before us a second dimension with respect to this
question, by what means did the transformation occur? And if
it clearly teaches that God alone is the author of the change or
transformation, it teaches, secondly, that the gospel alone is the
instrument of this transformation. The gospel alone is the instrument
of this transformation. What means did God use in the
transformation of these Romans? Did he work without means? Was it a kind of sovereign creative
work in which God just put forth divine energy, breaking in unannounced
into the lives of the Romans and breaking the shackles of
sin and making them the willing bond slaves of righteousness
and of himself? Did he work without means? Did
he work by means of visions or angelic visitations? No, look
at the text, verse 17. But thanks be to God that whereas
ye were the slaves of sin, ye became obedient from the heart
to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered. You see the
thought that he introduces in this ascription of praise to
God for the transformation. He introduces the little phrase,
the tupos didakes, the form of teaching. And that little phrase,
the form of teaching, is a distinct reference to the gospel and is
a wonderful description of the gospel. A parallel statement
is found in 2 Timothy 1 verse 13 when Paul charges Timothy
with these words, Hold the pattern of sound words which thou hast
heard of me. 2 Timothy 1 verse 13. But here, rather than saying,
you became obedient from the heart to the gospel, or to the
word of God, he uses this very rich and pregnant phrase, you
became obedient to the form of teaching. And this form of teaching
was nothing less than the gospel in its entirety as contrasted
with every other teaching, no matter what its form may have
been. It presents the gospel as consisting
in a body of truth with fixed boundaries and perimeters. It is a form of teaching. It is not some kind of mystical,
nebulous, formless, sentimental, religious slush. You see, the
vigor of this language, it is teaching. There is substance
and to that substance there is form. And in so doing, the apostle
reminds us that this is precisely what the gospel is. It is that
form of teaching with its pivotal points of assertion concerning
God. The one who has created us, the
lawgiver and judge of the universe, with its fixed propositional
pronouncements about man as accountable to God, man as fallen, man as
sinner, man as guilty, man as helpless, man as hell-deserving. It has its fixed declarations
concerning Christ in all the uniqueness of His person, in
the nature and sufficiency of His work of atonement on behalf
of sinners. It has its fixed perimeters of
declaration concerning the necessity and nature of faith and repentance. In a very real sense, this entire
epistle is a commentary upon that form of teaching. Now notice what the text says.
It's a concept that is not to be found anywhere else in all
of the writing of the Apostle, at least in this very vivid kind
of expression. If you have the 1901 edition,
It renders the passage in a way that may sound strange and it
has even bothered commentators and they've tried to alter Paul's
Greek and stretch it a bit and make it seem to be something
other than what it is. The translation in the 1901 edition
is a very good translation. He says, you became obedient
from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered. Now the picture you see is not
that the form of teaching was delivered to them. Now it was,
as we saw this morning. The form of teaching, the gospel,
is to be proclaimed to all men without discrimination. But he
says when that message came, these Romans, who at that point
were the slaves of sin, experienced the intrusion of a divine agency
which delivered them into the form of the teaching. In other
words, by the mighty power of God, the teaching acted like
a mold or a dye, and these Romans were cast into or handed over
to the influence of that dye or that mold so that it shaped
them. Their minds no longer roamed
across the wastelands of free thought. I think God is like
this, or I like to think of God as like that. I think that man
is this, and I think that man is that. And my feeling about
morals and ethics is this or that. The wastelands, the barren
wastelands of human speculation. Paul says, The transformation
occurred when, by the power of God, you were cast into the mold
of this form of teaching, and your mind began to think God's
thoughts after Him. The gospel now dictated how you
thought about God, and you understood Him to be your Creator. The one
who had every right to demand that you love him with all the
heart, mind, soul, and strength. The one who had the right to
bind your life by those standards of righteousness expressed in
the ten words of Moses, with all of their authoritative, thou
shalt and thou shalt not. He says you were cast into the
mold of the gospel. You began to think about yourself
in terms of what the Gospel said. That God is your Creator. He
is your Lawgiver. You're accountable to Him. You've
broken His Law. You began to think of yourself
as God thinks of you. As an alien. As a rebel. As one
who's under condemnation. One who is exposed to divine
wrath. And then you began to think as
God says you ought to think about His Son. that he was not just
some self-appointed religious leader who arose there out of
Palestine, but he was indeed the one who was sent from the
very bosom of the Father. amongst us. You began to let
your mind think God's thoughts concerning who He was and what
He did. And His death upon the cross
was not a tragedy. It was not merely the epitome
of selfless love in the martyr spirit. It was a propitiation. He was satisfying the demands
of the law of God. He was swallowing up divine wrath
in His death upon that cross. You began to think about him
as God says you ought to think about him. And then he says,
you were cast into the mold of the gospel. Notice, he says,
you in the entirety of your humanity were delivered to the form of
teaching. They didn't just get a shift
of their mental furniture. They began to feel about the
realities of life the way God says they ought to feel. That's
why he says they were now ashamed of the things in which they once
boasted. They began to feel grief for
their sins, and horror that they did not love God. And their affections
took the stamp and the mold and the form of the gospel. But not
only their heads and their affections, but their wills, as we shall
see. They became obedient from the heart, and then their feet
and their hands and their lives, so that He could say, you have
your fruit unto holiness. Do you see the emphasis of the
text? How did the transformation come
to pass? Well, God alone was the author,
but the gospel was the means. Not the gospel in their case
as an empty word, but the gospel as a fixed form. It was a form,
a pattern of instruction, and by the power of God they were
cast into its mold so that they were now gospelmen and women
who became the embodiment of all the truth that is preached
in the gospel as they themselves lived and thought and felt and
chose and willed. No wonder Paul could say in chapter
1 in verse 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the dunamis
of God, the power of God unto salvation. What kind of salvation? It comes to rebel sinners and
said, if you'll nod your head to the fact that Jesus died on
the cross, you're all fixed up. Doesn't matter how you live,
what you do. Nod your head to Jesus, you're in. You're in for
good. You might make pretty well, do
pretty well in living for him. If not, don't worry about it.
You've nodded to Jesus all this. No, no, my friend. That's no
gospel. That's the power of God unto
salvation. That's a gospel that is the power of the devil unto
deception and damnation. The power of God unto salvation
is a gospel that operates according to verse 17. It comes as a form
of teaching, and when God by the Spirit makes it effectual,
He takes sinners and He casts them into its mold until the
entirety of life is a reflection of gospel perspectives. They were cast into the mold
of the gospel. I would say by way of application
to you who are sitting here tonight still bound to your sins, if
God's method of transformation is the gospel as his means, let
me ask you a question. Are you taking the gospel seriously? Are you studying the gospel? Are you praying that God will
open your eyes to the gospel? Are you fixing your mind upon
the gospel? Now listen carefully. One of
the greatest dangers that can come to anyone who begins to
be concerned about his soul is to turn away from fixing his
gaze upon the form of teaching, the objective revelation of God
in the Gospel, and to begin to look in his own heart, to see
if he can see some repentance in his own heart, see if he can
see some seeds of faith in his own heart, see if he can see
some budding seeds of holiness in his own heart. My friend,
don't do it! That's fatal! If you've begun
to be seriously concerned about your sin and about judgment and
the world to come, Occupy yourself with the Gospel. Read through
the Gospel records. See what Jesus did whenever needy
sinners came to Him. See if you can find one instance
in which He ever turned a needy sinner away. See what He did
when the neediest of sinners begged for mercy. You see, fix
your mind upon that form of teaching which sets forth the Lord Jesus
as the Savior of sins. Read through the epistles, seeking
to discover what the writers say about the Lord Jesus, what
they say about forgiveness, what they say about pardon and justification. Oh, my unsaved friend, if you're
ever to be saved, The means God will use is the means He used
in the case of these Romans. It was the gospel alone that
was His means. Let me say a word of warning
to some of you who may be trying to stifle that form of teaching. When the gospel is proclaimed,
it stirs you, it disturbs you. Somehow your sins don't taste
quite as sweet in your mouth, and the world is not quite as
attractive. You see beneath its pancake makeup
its blemishes and its wrinkles. But then you stifle those gospel
stirrings, my friend. Don't do that. Don't do that
in God's name! Don't stifle the pressure of
the gospel upon your conscience. For if the time comes when the
gospel no longer moves you, you've already been given up to hell.
You'll be as good as in hell. For my spirit will not always
strive with man, is the teaching of the word of God. And I would
not hold over any man an idle threat. It is no idle threat
to say God is not under obligation to draw near and cause you to
feel the pressure of the gospel. He is not obligated to even bring
the gospel to you, let alone make you feel something of its
power and its authority. Oh, my friend, Don't despise
that one means by which God breaks the slavery of sin that leads
to death and through which he brings to servitude unto righteousness,
which leads to life. And I would say by way of application
to you who are the people of God, who sitting here even now
have said, you know, I never thought of it that way, but that's
what happened to me. That's exactly what happened
to me. I see now why I began to think about God the way the
Bible says I ought to think about Him, and why I began to think
about my sin and Christ and repentance and faith. God was delivering
me into the form of teaching. Oh, my friend, as you had your
own spiritual history, as it were, placarded before you, do
you see why you are under solemn obligation to love the gospel
as a Christian? How a slave would cherish a facsimile
or a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation? If that was the
means which publicly and formally and legally freed him from a
cruel master, would he ever grow weary of looking upon that transcript,
the declaration of his liberty? Oh, if a child of God grows weary
of the gospel, something's wrong with him. Now, I know there's
a sense in which you grow weary of a trite, truncated, emasculated
semblance of the gospel. Gospel dittyism. I grow weary
of that as well. But I mean this full-orbed cupos
vivicus. This form of teaching. Can we grow weary of that which
was the instrument of our liberation? Oh, study the Gospel, child of
God. Pray that God will enable you
to love the Gospel. Pray that you may be willing
to defend it at any cost, to propagate it at any cost, to
disseminate it at all costs. And what I lay upon your conscience
as an individual, I also do as a church. What do we exist for? Well, the function and purpose
of the church is manifold and should never be stated in simple
or simplistic terms, but surely, in the light of what we studied
this morning, one of our great purposes for being upon the face
of the earth is to be a sounding board of this gospel. That's the great means that God
uses. Well, there is one more major
line of thought in the text. In answer to the great question,
how does the transformation occur? Our text tells us God alone is
the author. Secondly, the gospel alone is
the means. But now thirdly, the obedience
of faith alone is the condition. The obedience of faith alone
is the condition. Look at the text. But God be
thanked that whereas ye were the slaves of sin, ye became
obedient from the heart to the form of teaching unto which you
were delivered. You obeyed from the heart. And you see how balanced is the
Bible? On the one hand, the apostle
is emphasizing the mighty activity of God. It is God that delivered
you unto the form of the teaching. But how did he do it? Did he
do it in such a way that we were, as it were, treated as stocks
and stones, passive, and suddenly the Romans found themselves,
oh, I have a new... no, no, no. He says, God so delivered
you unto the form of teaching that you were very conscious
of rendering out free and an unreserved obedience from the
heart. Unconstrained, free obedience. That's why he puts in the word
from the heart. Now what do we mean by that?
Well, you kids know what you mean by that. Your mom may ask
you to do a task, maybe vacuum your room, or go tidy up your
room, and you want to go out and play. Maybe the guys are
playing football down the street, or maybe the girls are doing
whatever girls do down the street, and you want to be there. And
so you go up to your room and you start to pick up things and
all the rest, and your mother comes by and she says to you,
but now listen, it's obvious your heart is not in what you're
doing. What's she mean? Well, you're obeyed. But you're
just doing it on the outside. Your heart's not in it. It's
not a free, it's not a willing, it's not a joyous obedience to
her directive. You see? But now Paul says, these
Romans, in this process of transformation, became obedient from the heart! That is, it was their delight
to respond in the obedience of faith to the message which demanded
repentance, which demanded that they stack arms and cast themselves
down at the feet of Christ in submission and in trust. Now, surely, if anything, should
teach us that the gospel comes, as we saw this morning, with
overtures of command as well as in treaty. A passage like
this should teach us that. He is describing faith in this
language. You became obedient from the
heart. And that's not strange to the
apostle, even in this very epistle. Turn back to chapter 1. When
he's introducing the epistle, he says this. that it is through
Jesus Christ the Lord, verse 5, through whom we received grace
and apostleship unto obedience, and it's the same word in the
original, unto obedience of faith among all nations. He says our
apostleship has as its end the bringing of man to the obedience
of faith. And for the apostle to mix the
words faith and obedience was no problem whatsoever. You see,
any obedience that did not spring from faith is dead worse in the
eyes of God. Any obedience by which we hope
somehow to climb upward to a plateau or pinnacle, from which we may
then reach up and take mercy, that is the obedience that God
calls dead works. All true obedience must spring
from faith. There must be the casting of
the soul in all its destitution and nakedness upon the free offer
of mercy. And in that posture of trust,
in that posture of repose in the offered Savior and His complete
salvation, there is the spirit of loving submission to the Savior
and willingness to take up His yoke and to follow Him. Now you
see, any obedience that doesn't spring from faith is not gospel
obedience. Conversely, any professed faith
that is not suffused with the spirit of obedience is not the
faith that saves. It's the faith, according to
James 2.19, of the demons. It is a purely intellectual faith.
if it is not suffused with the spirit of obedience. Now notice
I've chosen my language carefully. I did not say if our professed
faith does not result in perfect obedience, it's not real. No.
I said the faith that is real is suffused with the spirit of
obedience, so that the heart that goes out in trust to the
Savior is the heart that goes out in submission to the same
Savior. And so the apostle tells the
Romans that the transformation occurred not only because God
worked, not only because the gospel was the means, but they
were brought to the obedience of faith as the condition of
entering into this new and glorious servitude to God and to righteousness. Now this should be of help to
some of you who are still entangled in a net and a web. To change
the analogy, you're trotting through the quicksands of saying,
well, if I could just sort out the matters of my election or
whether or not God was drawing me and all this, then I could
really get down to the business of believing. My friend, my friend,
you must cut yourself loose from that web. You must extricate
yourself from that quicksand and deal with God as God says
you should deal with him. Now when God comes to men with
the gospel, how does he deal with men? He says, I come to
you in the offer of my mercy. Now deal with me in faith. Trust me. Believe me. Look unto me, all ye ends of
the earth, and be ye saved. Or the words of our Lord Himself,
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the
Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth may in Him
have eternal life. You see the wonderful objectivity
when God says, Look unto Me! He's saying, Look away from your
own heart. Look away from your own questions
and cogitations about, am I or am I not the elect? Am I or am
I not awakened, my friend? Look away from yourself. God says, look unto Me. Then
He says, be ye saved. Until you look to Him in Him
alone, you will not, you cannot be saved. As Moses lifted up
the serpent, God was using that wonderful situation in Israel,
I should say that tragic situation, to teach a wonderful truth. Moses,
go out with that brazen serpent, stand in the midst of the camp.
No doubt as Moses made his way out into the midst of the camp,
people were looking at the fang marks where the serpents had
bitten them. No doubt they were looking at the red streaks as
the poisoning worked through their system. No doubt they were
looking in horror at one another as they saw loved ones feverish
and other loved ones and friends and neighbors dying. But into
the midst of that confusion of looking upon a thousand objects,
Moses sets up a standard and says, look and live. He's telling people, turn away
from looking at your street arms. Turn away from looking at the
tragedy of death all about you. And it says, everyone who looked,
lived. He didn't say, keep looking at
your arm, and when you see your arm getting better, then you'll
know God is healing you. Then you can look. That's what
some of you are doing. You see, looking at your heart,
looking for some seeds of faith, seeds of repentance. Oh, my friend,
don't look at your heart. It's an ugly sight. Look at Christ
in the beauty and the glory of his saving mercy. The obedience of faith was the
condition of their deliverance. And when they became obedient
from the heart to that form of teaching, what happened? Verse
18, they were made free from sin. That is, sin was no longer
their master. Sin's power was broken. Sin's dominion was smashed. How? in making them the bond
slaves of righteousness and verse 22 the bond slaves of God. Oh how wonderfully this text
sets forth all we need to know concerning the great question,
how can I natively a slave of sin and on my way to eternal
death? How can I be made a slave of
righteousness in an era of eternal life? My friend, drink in the
teaching of this text. God in God alone is the author
of that change. The gospel in the gospel alone
is the means of that change. And the obedience of faith alone
is the condition of that change. And until you are cast into the
mold of that teaching, if you're going to try to get saved some
other way, have God plus the church your Savior, God plus
the sacraments your Savior, my friend, you'll never be saved.
Or if you want to say some other means must be used, some other
means must be employed, Or if you think there's some other
condition, faith plus your own mourning, faith plus your own
seeking, faith plus anything else, my friend, you are doomed
to self-destruction. You must believe. You must repent. You must throw yourself at the
mercy of God in the Lord Jesus. You see, this text leaves no
room for synergism. God be thanked. It leaves no
room to hope that any other means will break the servitude of sin.
And here I want to pause in one of my final applications tonight.
There are many people who are appalled as they see the explicit,
abounding manifestations of slavery to sin in our generation. Much
of common grace has been removed. And we find men sinning with
a high hand and with a blatant boldness that is shocking. And there are many people whom
we have reason in the judgment of charity to believe are true
Christians and they are concerned and they say, how can we confront
this generation? How can we see a return to righteousness? We have some that say, well,
this generation is no longer tuned in to the ideas of guilt
and divine righteousness and divine law. So we've got to try
to alter the gospel, change its form so that it fits the mindset
of our generation. My friend, we have no such right. It is a form of teaching fixed
by Almighty God. And we need in love and in the
power of the Spirit and in the boldness of the Holy Ghost to
hurl into the mindset of this generation that form of teaching. There are others who say, well,
there's been such an erosion of law. We need to get to work
as Christians and impose the law on the structures of our
society. My friend, that's putting the
cart before the horse. Paul did not come and say their
hope was in Moses. He said their hope was in Christ. It also speaks to us, if there
should be any tendency on our part to accept the first line
of teaching in this text, And maybe your heart rejoiced as
I sought to open it up. God and God alone is the author
of the change. And you sit there and say, ah,
that's what I love to hear. Good, solid, reformed, God-honoring
preaching. My friend, that's not the whole
teaching of the passage. As surely as God alone is the
author, the gospel alone is the means, what are you doing to
get that gospel out? What are you doing to get that
gospel into the ears of men? You can't put it in their hearts!
But may I say it reverently, God doesn't put it in their ears.
That's the job He's given to you and me. What are you doing? Ask yourself. Search your own
heart. What have I done this week in
the way of conscious effort to get this message to my own sin-bound
enslaved generation? Have I prayed for my neighbors?
Have I pleaded for the salvation of my children? Have I sought,
at least sought, perhaps not succeeded, but have I at least
sought to steer a conversation at work or at school so that
I could introduce the gospel? Have I prayerfully passed out
a book, a tract, something that sets forth the form of teaching? It's one thing to sit back and
say, ah, I love to hear that. God does the work. My friend,
he does it by the gospel. May God grant that we shall not
only be known as a people who love the truth, the Bible truth
that God and God alone saves. But may we by our practice manifest
our conviction that the God who alone saves, saves alone through
the gospel. And then, for any who are tempted
to feel, well, if God alone saves and God casts men into the mold
of the gospel, surely it's fruitless to tell men to believe. If faith
is the gift of God, why tell them to believe? And if repentance
is the gift of God, why tell them to repent? My friend, for
the simple reason that God tells us to do so. And it's in the
proclamation of that message And then it's being made effectual
that the mystery is at least resolved at the practical level.
Didn't bother Paul in one verse to say, you were delivered to
the form of teaching. You obeyed it from the heart.
Well, did they obey it or did God make them obey it? Well,
both. Their obedience was theirs. Their being cast into the mold
of the teaching was God's. I don't like all those tensions
and mysteries. Well, my friend, you either have
to rewrite the Bible or learn to live with them. May God grant
us the humility to learn to live with them and not only to tolerate
them, but to glory. Every gospel mystery should be
a reminder that you're a creature and God is God. And anything
that makes you feel that reality is your friend. Oh, my dear people,
I ask you now, As I close our study, who's slave are you? Who's
slave are you? No free men in this building,
no free women. No free boys, no free girls.
Everyone is somebody's slave. Obedience unto righteousness
and life. Sin to uncleanness, iniquity
and death. Who's slave are you? Who's slave
are you? If you're not the bond slave
of Christ, he stands before you in the gospel tonight and says,
come, come unto me all you that labor in a heavy laden. Aren't
you weary of sin's servitude? Aren't you weary of it? The tormenting
awareness of the uncertainty of life and the certainty of
judgment, the emptiness of life without the knowledge of God
in Christ. Christ, did you come? Come all
that labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you. And when the eye beholds the
glory of forgiving mercy, the heart gladly says, Lord Jesus,
your yoke I will embrace. Anyone who would so love sinners
as to die surely cannot, cannot carve a yoke that is filled with
ugly splinters. My yoke is easy. My burden is
light. Oh, dear sinner friend, bound
by your sin, come to the great emancipator, even the Lord Jesus. And if you're able to say tonight,
I am God's free man in bondage to Christ, my friend, may your
thankfulness be increased. May your appreciation deepen. May the sense of wonder permeate
your spirit that you were delivered unto that form of teaching, that
God's mighty arm was put forth on your behalf. And bless him
and praise him. and show your gratitude by a
life of obedience and zealous endeavor that others shall know
this blessed gospel that they too might be delivered. I'm frequently asked when I'm
in pastors conferences and such matters are discussed, Brother
Martin, do you believe that there's going to be a great outpouring
of the spirit prior to the coming of Christ? Do you believe there
is any hope for revival in the classic, historic sense of the
word? And I must always answer and
say, if you're asking me if I have light from scripture that gives
me some promise upon which I can, as it were, plant my feet and
plead with God, I must claim at this juncture I know of no
such promise. It may be there and it may be
my own baldness that I don't see it, but I hasten to say this. Whether or not God is going to
be pleased to reap a mighty harvest, whether there will be nothing
but gradual declension of our own Western society and our own
country, these things I do not know. But one thing I know is
that this gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And if
it could come to Rome, the citadel of paganism, the bastion of immorality,
and a pagan flock and there mightily work and break the chains of
sin. There's not a verse in the Bible
that says God cannot do the same in this generation. Oh, that
we may labor and pray and plead and preach and witness and be
zealously involved. I'd far rather go to my grave
kicking and pleading and laboring and never see much than to just
rest and say there's no hope to see anything. Oh, may it not
be said of us, He did not bear many mighty works because of
their unbelief. Let us pray. Our Father, we rejoice
this night in our Lord Jesus Christ and in that glorious gospel
which is in a very real sense nothing more or less than the
radiation of his glory. How we bless you for its power. We thank you that it is a form
of teaching. that we need not be at the mercy
of some kind of nebulous, intangible, undefinable subjectivism, but
that we may take hold of such wonderful truths as that given
to us in your word, declaring Christ died, the just for the
unjust, that he might bring us to you. We thank you. Oh, we bless you for the gospel.
We thank you for your working in many of our hearts. And oh,
Lord, as you have had dealings with many even this day, continue
to have dealings and grant that the gospel in all of its glorious
simplicity and purity may burst upon the consciousness of needy
sinners. And that some who sit here right
now may find their hearts running out in the obedience of faith
to the Lord Jesus Christ. Hear our cry. Oh, hear our cry
and answer for Jesus sake.