The Christian's Role in a Wicked Generation #2 Defining a Real Christian

Q: What does the Bible say about being a Christian?

A biblical Christian is one who recognizes their sinfulness and trusts in Jesus Christ for salvation. A biblical Christian, as defined in scripture, is someone who has come to a painful personal awareness of being a guilty, hell-deserving sinner before God. This acknowledgement is critical as it is the first step in recognizing the need for salvation. Furthermore, being a Christian entails not just admitting one's sin but understanding the gravity of it in the sight of a holy God. It's essential to realize that true Christianity is fundamentally a religion for sinners, as Jesus Himself stated, 'I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance' (Luke 5:32). Therefore, recognizing one's need is a core tenet of being a biblical Christian.

Q: How do we know that Jesus saves sinners?

The Bible confirms that Jesus came to save sinners, and his mission is affirmed throughout scripture. The certainty that Jesus saves sinners is rooted in both His life and the confirmations by His apostles. From the very announcement of His birth, the angel stated, 'He shall save His people from their sins' (Matthew 1:21). This message is consistent throughout Christ’s ministry as He often engaged with sinners, emphasizing His purpose of salvation. In 1 Timothy 1:15, Paul affirms, 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.' As the Gospel unfolds, we see that the saving work of Jesus is not contingent on human merit but centered wholly on His grace and sacrifice. Thus, it is through faith in Him that one receives salvation, highlighting the reliability of Jesus’ promise to save.

Q: Why is recognizing our sinfulness important for Christians?

Recognizing sinfulness is crucial as it leads to true repentance and the need for God's mercy. The recognition of one's sinfulness is a pivotal aspect of the Christian faith because it brings about true repentance—a state where an individual turns from sin towards God. This painful awareness cultivates a genuine hunger for salvation that only Christ can provide. Paul emphasizes this in Romans 3:20 when he states that 'through the law comes the knowledge of sin.' The biblical understanding of being a sinner is not merely theoretical; it is an experiential recognition that we are under God's judgment. This conviction is the work of the Holy Spirit, who makes individuals acutely aware of their need for a Savior, pointing them to faith in Jesus Christ for redemption.

Q: What defines a true Christian according to the Bible?

A true Christian is defined as one who repents of their sins and believes in Jesus Christ for salvation. The Bible portrays a true Christian as someone who not only acknowledges their sinfulness but has also experienced a spirit-wrought change of heart leading to genuine repentance and faith in Jesus. This transformation results in a deep love for Christ, evidenced by a desire to obey His commandments (John 14:21). Furthermore, this repentance is an ongoing disposition, not a one-time act; it signifies a continual turning from sin and a sincere commitment to follow Christ's precepts. This doctrinal understanding is supported through various passages that affirm the connection between faith, obedience, and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life, which produces spiritual fruit.

Q: How can Christians know they are saved?

Christians can know they are saved through faith in Christ and by the evidence of a transformed life. Assurance of salvation for a Christian is anchored in faith and the observable fruit that results from that faith. A transformed life that is characterized by love for Christ, a commitment to obey His commands, and a growing likeness to Him signals true salvation. As 1 John 2:3-4 states, 'And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.' This means that true faith is always accompanied by the evidence of changed behavior and desires. Additionally, the Holy Spirit bears witness to the believer's heart, providing confidence in their relationship with God and affirming their status as His child.

I. The End The. a a a a a to have you come and speak to
us again this evening. Now I'm sure that many of you
are familiar with the oft-quoted and oft-pleaded promise, at least
in our assembly, given by the Lord Jesus in the Gospel of Luke,
in which he said, if you who are evil know how to give good
gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? And as we come to
the ministry of the Word of God, I'm going to ask that again we
unite our hearts in prayer, asking that God the Holy Spirit would
be given by our Heavenly Father not to give us exotic feelings,
not to give us visions or dreams, but to give us eyes to see wondrous
things out of God's law, to give utterance to the preacher, and
hearing ears to every listener, and above all, the sense that
God Himself is in our midst, as He comes so often as it were
on the wings of His preached Word. So let us together plead
that our Heavenly Father will delight to give us of His Holy
Spirit. Let us pray. Our Father, we have sung together
and celebrate it in song with the psalmist, that like as a
father pities his children, so you pity those who fear you.
For you remember our frame that we are dust. And, O Lord, we
acknowledge that in our creatureliness and in our sinfulness, we have
no native ability to understand your word aright. We therefore
plead that you would grant us the Holy Spirit as the spirit
of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of yourself. The spirit
who takes the things of Christ and reveals them with power. The spirit who convicts of sin,
of righteousness, and of judgment. The spirit who alone can quicken
our dead and lifeless hearts. the Spirit who alone can give
utterance to your servant and cause the Word to run and have
free course and be glorified in this place tonight. And our
God with one heart, we who are your people, agree together,
touching this our great need. And we remind you of your promise
that if we who are evil both know how and delight to give
good gifts to our children, How much more are you disposed to
give the Spirit to those who ask? O Lord, we have asked, and
in the expectation of faith we trust you to hear and to answer
our cry. We present ourselves and our
petitions before you in the name and in the righteousness of our
Lord Jesus Christ alone. Hear us then. for His namesake. Amen. Now, realizing that we have at
least some who are with us tonight who were not with us last night
in the opening message of the conference, I would remind you
that the theme of the conference is entitled, The Christian's
Role in a Wicked Generation. And in our opening study last
evening, we focused our attention on the description of this generation
as one which deserves the designation a wicked generation. And I sought to prove the validity
of that assertion by looking at three very simple propositions
and then seeing their biblical basis. We saw that every generation
since the fall of man is, in a true sense, a wicked generation. But secondly, we saw that some
generations are described in the Bible as peculiarly, in an
intensified way, as wicked generations. And we looked at three samples
of such generations, the generation immediately preceding the flood,
the generation in the days of Manasseh, king of Judah, preceding
the captivity of Judah, and the generation that slew our Lord
Jesus Christ. And then proposition three, was
that this present generation deserves the description as a
wicked generation, and that particularly because of four tragic realities. Our intellectual perversity,
our moral degeneracy, our social anarchy, and our religious apostasy. Now tonight, we will focus our
attention on what we mean by the term Christian. We are concerned with the Christian's
role in such a wicked society. But crucial to our understanding
of this subject is our perception of the word Christian. If I were to ask you, where is
the word Christian first mentioned in the Bible? Would you be able
to give an accurate answer? Well, if your mind is going to
Acts 11 and verse 26, you would be correct. For the scripture
tells us that the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch. And it's a Latinized Greek word,
christianos. And we don't know whether it
was the friends of the gospel who gave that name to the disciples. or whether it was the enemies
of the gospel who became so irritated with these people who were constantly
speaking of Christ, constantly attributing to Christ all of
their virtue, all of their highest goals and deepest devotion, for
the word literally means little Christs. And the word Christian
was given to the disciples at Antioch because of their pervasive,
their radically alternate lifestyle to the pagan community around
them. It's used again by Peter in 1
Peter chapter 4 in verse 16, where he says, But if any of
you suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed. So when Peter used the word,
he packed into it all of the significance of the New Testament
doctrine of salvation. But a tragic thing has happened.
From the days of Antioch and the days of the suffering saints
of the dispersion to which Peter, to whom Peter wrote, this word
Christian has undergone a tragic devaluation as a verbal coinage
to describe a true follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. In some
areas of the world today, Christian means that you are neither a
Muslim, nor a Jew, nor a Hindu. And if you are not any of those
three, then you must be a Christian. For others, it means respectable
and upright and kind and nice. And anyone who is that is called
a Christian. In our own country, anyone who
belongs to any of the so-called major wings of Christendom Roman
Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, even the cults will get the name
Christian. So I say the term, which is in
itself biblical, has undergone tremendous dilution and currency
devaluation. And I want us tonight to restore
it to its biblical worth and vigor. And therefore we're going
to address the subject tonight, what is a biblical Christian. For when we come to our subject
matter proper tomorrow night, God willing, the Christians'
role in a wicked society, I am thinking exclusively of a biblical
Christian who has indeed a distinct and glorious role in a wicked
society. But it is only a true biblical
Christian who both has that role and can in any sense begin to
fulfill it. And so tonight we take up the
critical question, what is a biblical Christian? And I want to answer
it in four propositions or four statements. And I want you to
listen not as someone who is learning a lesson, But I want
you to listen as someone who is standing before the mirror
of the Word of God with this question. Am I what is being
described from the Word of God? And if I am not in all four points,
I have no biblical grounds to take to myself the name Christian. I may have walked an aisle, raised
a hand, prayed a prayer, been under the water. I may be on
a church roll. I may have come to my profession
of faith in a church where there is no aisle-walking and hand-raising,
and I regard myself as a Christian. But I want you to look into the
mirror of the Word of God tonight with judgment-day honesty and
ask yourself, am I What I see in the Word of God, is that a
reflection of what I am? First of all, then, according
to the Scriptures, a biblical Christian is one, man, woman,
boy or girl, is one who has come to a painful personal awareness
that he is a guilty, hell-deserving sinner before God. No one, in
any age, in any place, in any culture, in any set of circumstances,
is a biblical Christian who has not come to a painful, personal
awareness that he is a guilty, hell-deserving sinner before
God. Notice I did not say a biblical
Christian is someone who will admit he's a sinner. Most of
the gospel tracts, most of the methods of personal evangelism
have in them a part which says you're to say to the proposed
hopeful convert, if you will admit you're a sinner, then believe
Christ died for you and you'll become a Christian. My friend,
I've only met one person in my life who would not admit that
he was a sinner. I've chosen my words carefully.
And I'm going to demonstrate from Scripture that they embody
the teaching of Scripture. A biblical Christian is one who
has not come to the mere admission that he's a sinner, but he has
come to a painful, personal awareness that he is a guilty, hell-deserving
sinner before God. Now the great distinguishing
trait of the Christian faith is that it is fundamentally a
religion for sinners. That was made plain at the very
conception of our Lord Jesus. Remember the incident in Matthew
chapter 1? Joseph is wondering what he should
do as a righteous man when he discovers that the woman to whom
he is betrothed a kind of engagement that had far more committal than
engagement in our day and was sort of a halfway house to marriage. And he discovers that his bride-to-be
is pregnant. and not knowing how she became
pregnant, he assumes it was through sexual contact with another man,
for he knew his own purity in relationship to Mary, and he's
wrestling with what he should do, and God sends an angel to
speak to him, and the angel says, Joseph, do not be afraid to take
unto you Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in her
is of the Holy Spirit, and she shall bring forth a son, and
thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people
from their sins." So that at the very announcement of the
conception of the Son of God in Mary's womb, it is plain that
the mission of Jesus has to do with saving, rescuing a people
from The religion of Jesus is essentially
a religion for sinners, and that was announced at his very conception. Furthermore, it was announced
in his own personal ministry. The religious leaders of our
Lord's day got very upset with the company he kept, because
he was found again and again among the riffraff of Jerusalem.
The local union of call girls had more than one of their number
found in his presence. Doesn't he know that she is a
sinner? And the publicans, the tax collectors
who were known for their crookedness and even excommunicated from
the local synagogues because of their association with Rome,
he was found in the company of this Palestinian mafia. And on
one occasion he called one such into fellowship with himself,
and later into apostleship. And this one, named Levi or Matthew,
two of his names given to us in the New Testament, is throwing
a feast in honor of the Lord Jesus. And the Pharisees look
through the window down their long, self-righteous noses, and
they're upset that Jesus is eating and drinking, entering into social
fellowship with publicans and sinners, And they come to the
disciples and say, why do you and your master eat with publicans
and sinners? And you remember Jesus' answer
in Luke 5, 30 and 31. People that are healthy don't
need a doctor, but they that are sick. Healthy people don't
need a doctor, but they that are sick. I am not come to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance. I am come for sinners. So not only is it announced at
His very conception that the religion of Jesus is a religion
for sinners, but He was conscious that that was the very heart
of His mission. And therefore it should not surprise
us that His inspired apostles in their ministry highlighted
this same truth until there was a little saying, one of the five
faithful sayings in the pastoral epistles that became like little
holy clichÃ©s. and one of them is given to us
in 1 Timothy 1.15. This is a faithful saying, worthy
of all acceptation. Christ Jesus came into the world,
and in the original, the emphasis falls here. Sinners, to say. The word sinners comes first,
so that right next to Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit puts sinners. Christ Jesus came. Sinners, to say. And so I say
that the Christian faith is essentially and fundamentally a religion
for sinners. And if that is true, then what
is the first work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those
whom God purposes to say it is a work in which he makes them
painfully aware of how much they need the salvation that only
Jesus can give. Do you see that? If he has come,
and it was announced from his conception in his own earthly
ministry, subsequently by his apostles, that the heart of his
mission was to save sinners than any in whom His saving work is
going to come to light. The first work of the Holy Spirit
is to bring that man, woman, boy or girl to a painful personal
awareness that He is a guilty, hell-deserving sinner before
God, who can only be rescued by the mighty intervention of
the Son of God. And therefore, when we turn to
the New Testament, it does not surprise us that in announcing
the coming of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John, Jesus
says this in John 16 and verse 8, and when He is come, that
is, the Spirit, He will convict the world in respect of sin. The mission of the Holy Spirit
in connection with the world is a mission of not merely reproving,
but convincing until he shuts the mouth of the worldling of
his sinful state before a holy God. It's interesting that on
the day of Pentecost, the first sermon preached After the descent
of the Holy Spirit from the right hand of the Father, as the Lord
Jesus is exalted to the place of messianic and mediatorial
kingship, Peter is preaching away in Acts 2. And we read in
verse 37, now when they heard this, they were pricked in their
hearts. Most of the translations render
it, but that's a weak rendering. means they were stabbed in their
hearts as with a dagger. And they cried out in the middle
of the sermon, brethren, men and brethren, what shall we do? We see our sin. We see our sin
before the sight of God. And we're in a place of danger
and vulnerability. The wrath of God, like mighty
billows, hangs above our head. What shall we do? Peter answers,
repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus
Christ unto the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit for the promises unto you and to your
children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the
Lord our God shall call unto him. And when God is calling
sinners unto himself, what is his first word? It is to make
them painfully aware of how much they need the Savior. Not the
mere admission that in some general way they are sinners, but painfully,
personally aware of their guiltiness and their hell-deservingness
before a holy God. Remember the Philippian jailer?
When God is determined to save that man, what does he do? He
gives a display of his power that awes and overpowers this
man. He sees his physical power in
shaking that jail and causing all of the bands upon the hands
of the prisoners to drop off. Then a moral miracle. The prisoners
don't all split and run. He assumed they had, but they
didn't. Who performed that miracle that restrained them? God did.
And when he saw the miracle of the shaken jail, and the loosed
fetters, and the restrained prisoners. He said, this is God, and I'm
not right with this God. And he comes in running and says
to Paul and Silas, sirs, what must I do to be saved, to be
rescued? I don't want to go before a God
of power like this, naked in my sin, unclothed in the righteousness
of another. Unpardoned and unwashed, what
must I do to be saved? He didn't have a personal worker
at his elbow coaching him. Now pray after me. Oh God, oh
God, be merciful to me, be merciful to me. What nonsense! What nonsense! Do you need to
coach a drowning man how to say, Help! I'm drowning! You don't coach a man, woman,
boy, or girl whom the Holy Ghost has wounded with Holy Ghost conviction. The cry will be rung from his
own heart spontaneously. There's a painful awareness of
sin against God, and you have a detailed account of how God
did this work in proud Saul of Tarsus. For when we turn to Romans
chapter 7, and we have time only to look at it for a moment, Paul
tells us that the law is not sin, but it was the instrument
of showing him that he was a sinner. For he says in verse 7 of Romans
7, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. I had not known sin except through
the law. Now is he saying he didn't know
the word sin? He didn't know the concept of
sin? Of course not. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees.
He would go up at the appointed feast to the temple in Jerusalem,
and he would offer sin offerings. And he would go through washings
and ablutions for uncleanness. He had a notion of sin, but he
had no felt awareness of sin. That's what he means when he
said, I had not known sin. Sin was a word. That's all. It was part of my religious vocabulary. But one day it became part of
my felt experience. I had not known sin except through
the law, for I had not known coveting except the law said,
Thou shalt not covet. But sin finding occasion wrought
in me through the commandment all manner of coveting. For apart
from the law, sin is dead. That is, I did not see sin as
a living, powerful monster that controlled me. Oh yes, sin might
control the filthy Goyene, the Gentiles, but not this proud
Pharisee, touching the law blameless. Tribe of Benjamin circumcised
the eighth day, but he said, under the influence of the Holy
Spirit, the tenth commandment began to burrow its way in his
heart. And he realized, you don't covet with your hands, you don't
covet with your feet, you don't covet with your ears. Coveting
is a disposition of heart. And God, as it were, pulled the
lid off his heart. And he said, I looked down and
I saw a bottomless pit of foul, stinking, rotten, evil desire. And where sin was once just a
word and a dead issue, it now became a living reality in my
own breast. And I saw that I was a sinner
in desperate need of a Savior. So by various means and in varying
degrees, all who are saved by Christ are made true Christians,
first of all, by being convinced through the Word and the Spirit
that they are hell-deserving sinners before Almighty God,
their Creator and their Judge. And Paul demonstrates that conclusively
in the opening chapters of Romans when he takes one segment of
humanity after another until he corrals them all in chapter
3, verses 20 and 21, and says, What things soever the law says,
it says to them that are under the law, that every mouth may
be stopped. and all the world become guilty
before God. A good definition of a Christian
is a man whose mouth has been shut before God. Has your mouth
ever been shut? Where you had nothing to plead?
You became painfully aware of your sin? Your sin in Adam? representative sin, as in Adam,
all die. By one man sin entered into the
world, and death passed upon all men, for that all sinned
in the one man. Have you become acutely aware
that you were there with Adam when he picked or took the fruit
from Eve? Your hand was in his. Have you
become painfully aware of what David said in Psalm 51 6? Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and
in sin did my mother bring me forth. Shaped and conceived in
iniquity, brought forth in sin, with no reference to the conjugal
act of sexual intimacy. He's speaking of the fact that
when the father's sperm joined the mother's ovum at conception,
what was conceived was a sinner. That's what the theologians call
original sin. And then there is not only our
representative sin in Adam and our original sin in which we
are conceived, but our actual sins, our own violations of God's
law, the sanctity of God's person. Thou shalt have no other gods
before me. The sanctity of God's worship. the sanctity of God's name, God's
day, the sanctity of authority, the sanctity of life, and of
sex, and of property, and of name, and of desire. Have you
come to see that God's law touches more than what you take with
your fingers? It touches what you desire with
your heart. It touches more than what you
may do with your primary sexual organ. It touches the look, and
the desire so that he who looks to lust hath committed adultery? What is a biblical Christian?
A biblical Christian is one who has come to a painful personal
awareness of his own hell-deservingness in the presence of Almighty God. And I want to ask you a question
tonight. I don't want you to answer outwardly, but I want
you to answer as you stand before the mirror. Can you say, that's
me? Yes. I do know and I can remember
when by this means or that means or this combination of means
God brought me to the painful awareness that I was a hell-deserving
sinner. in the presence of a holy God. My friend, if you have no such
consciousness in your religious experience, you're not a biblical
Christian. Because Jesus did not come to
call the righteous, but sinners. And that's what a sinner is.
One who is a hell-deserving sinner before God. God isn't overstating
the case. The wages of sin is death. The
soul that sinneth, it shall die. And if sin is nothing more than
a concept woven into the fabric of your polite religion, then
it's not enough. And you ought to cry to God,
O God, show me my leanness. Show me what I am, that I may
see and know how desperately I stand in need of that which
Christ alone can impart. But then secondly, A biblical
Christian is not only one who has come to see himself as a
hell-deserving sinner before God, but a biblical Christian
is one who has heard and received as true the only way of deliverance
from sin and its consequences provided by God. A biblical Christian
is one who's heard of and received as true the only way of deliverance
from sin and its consequences provided by God. Two questions
in opening up that statement. What is the only way of deliverance
from sin and its consequences provided by God? Well, the answer
of the Bible is very simple. It centers in a unique person
and it focuses upon a unique work which he did." Now that's
not a lot of big words, is it? It centers in a unique person
and it focuses upon a unique work which he accomplished. The
only way of deliverance from sin and its consequences provided
by God centers in a unique person who is as much God as though
he were never man. As much man as though he were
never God. and in two distinct natures joined
in one person forever, the God-man, Christ Jesus. I go back to the
angel's announcement to Joseph, You shall call his name Jesus,
for he it is that shall save his people. And who was he? You
read on in Matthew 1, Thou shalt call his name Immanuel, which
is being interpreted, God. with us. Jesus, who saves, is
God with us in a humanity as real as though there were no
deity. And yet, according to John chapter
1, a deity as real and undiminished as though there were no humanity,
for in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. Verse 14, the Word without diminishing anything
of His God-ness, of His very essence as God. The Word became
flesh. The Word was in the beginning
with God. The Word was God. The Word became
flesh. He did not cease to be what He
had always been, eternal God. He began to be what He never
had been, a true man. He takes to his existing Godhood
a true humanity, a true human soul, and a true human body,
but he does not relinquish anything that he always had been. He relinquishes
certain prerogatives. He relinquishes many privileges,
but he relinquishes nothing of his essence as God, for God cannot
change. For anything to change, it goes
from good to better, or better to best, or from best to something
less than best. And being God, He could not be
any better as God. And being God and perfectly holy,
He could not cease to be anything less than perfect. So the eternal
Word becomes flesh. It's in that unique person, that
person, It's in Him that the one divine provision for sinners
is set before us. That's why Peter says in Acts
5.12, neither is there salvation in any other, for there's no
other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved. And Jesus was conscious of this.
I marvel at the ignorance of people who say, well, Jesus was
a good man, but he wasn't God. Jesus was a good man and a good
teacher and a helper, but he's not the only way of salvation.
My friend, Jesus is either good or he's not God. He's either God, I'm sorry, or
he's not good. He is either what he claimed
to be, or he deserves our pity and our scorn. For he said in
John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man can
come to the Father but by me. How narrow and exclusive can
he be? And he says later in that chapter,
when Philip says, show us the Father and that will satisfy
us. He says, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. You see, my friends, God's one
way of deliverance from sin and its consequences does not focus
in the church. It does not focus in rituals
and sacraments. It does not focus in priest,
in minister. It doesn't focus in something
I do, whether it's raising the hand, walking the aisle, saying
the sinner's prayer. It centers in the unique person
who is the God-man and it focuses upon the work he accomplished
as the representative of sinners. He said in Matthew 20, 28, I
did not come to be ministered unto, but to minister and to
give my life a ransom for, on the behalf of many. I came to
do something on behalf of others. I came as the representative
of others. John 10, 11, the good shepherd
lays down his life in the place of the sheep. I come to do something
on behalf of, as the representative of, others. Romans 5 19. where the comparison is made
between Adam and Christ. Paul says in that critical verse,
as through the one man's disobedience, Adam, the many were constituted
sinners, even so through the obedience of the one Jesus Christ
shall the many be constituted righteous. He acts on behalf
of others, as a representative of others in his life. Yes. But in His death also, Galatians
3.13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made
a curse for us, on our behalf, in our room instead. He is treated
by God the way we should have been treated by God. And Paul
even waxes more bold when he says in 2 Corinthians 5, Verse
21, he hath made him who knew no sin to become sin for us. Think of it. He made him to become
sin for us. Never was he defiled with our
sin, for he is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. But so identified did Jesus become
with our sins in the court of heaven, that when God looked
upon His Son throughout His life, climaxed in His death upon the
cross, our sins are so really and truly put to His record that
Paul says, He is made sin. And when he was being made sin
and God is deeming with him as a righteous judge, what does
he do? He doesn't pardon him. He doesn't excuse him. The Bible
says in Romans 8, 32, he spared him not. He spared him not. That is, the father brought down
upon his son the full undiluted weight of all of His holy wrath
due to our sins. Isaiah said it beautifully with
stark, naked realism. It pleased the Lord to bruise
Him. It wasn't the bruising and buffeting
of the mocking crowd before Caiaphas and before Pilate. It wasn't
the spittle and the mockery of the rude, staring crowd at Golgotha. Isaiah says, it pleased the Lord
to bruise him. When thou shalt make his soul
an offering for sin, the Lord hath made to strike upon him
the iniquity of us all. That's why he who was as silent
as a lamb before her shears through all of the trial of Gabbatha
and Pilate and the horrors of being impaled upon the cross
The old Negro spiritual said he never said a mumbling word. Yet my Bible says when God shrouded
the heavens in blackness, turned his face from his own son, and
made him feel in his soul the abandonment of hell, it says
Jesus cried loudly, My God! My God! Why have you My friends, He abandoned Him
because He was the substitute of sinners. A real substitute,
taking our real guilt, experiencing the real pangs of a real hell
upon that cross. And then Romans 4.25 says, He
was delivered up for our offenses, but He was raised for our justification. Not only did he die on our behalf,
he was raised on our behalf. Now, a biblical Christian is
one who has heard and received as true the facts of this only
way of deliverance. This way of deliverance that
centers in the unique person who is the God-man and this person
who accomplished a work as the representative of sinners. The
second question, what does it mean to hear and receive these
things as truth? Well, it means that your mind
has been confronted with these facts, whether in reading the
Bible hearing from Mom and Dad, or most frequently, through the
preaching of the Word. For God is ordained by the foolishness
of the thing preached to save them that believe. How shall
they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sent? And that's why I'm here. That's
why I'm pouring my soul into the proclamation of these things.
Because in a unique way, God is ordained the preaching of
these facts. to be his instrument of salvation
and life. Paul can say in 1 Corinthians
15, You know, and I remind you of the gospel that was made known
unto you, the gospel by which you are saved if you hold fast
these facts. Christ died for our sins, according
to the scriptures, and was buried And he was raised again from
the dead on the third day according to the Scriptures. And then four
times he says, and was seen, and was seen, and was seen as
was seen. These are not religious notions.
These are hard facts. As much as the oak border on
this pulpit is a hard fact of physical reality, and if I were
to make a fist and wrap my knuckles with all their might, you'd see
my bloody knuckles as the proof that you're not looking at phantom
oak as real hard, sure enough, real stuff. And the gospel is
not phantom notions! There was a real womb in which
God performed His great mystery in the dark. And there was conceived
in that womb the God-man. And though he was God upholding
the galaxies by the word of his power, he's connected to a life
system by an umbilical cord like every other baby. A true man,
and yet true God. That's a fact. And your salvation
depends on believing that fact. That's not a nice religious notion!
It's a fact! Because without that, there is
nothing unique about Christ. He died, so have other noble
men. He died, so have other great
teachers. But if He is God, then His Godhead
adds a worth to His death. That were, as one preacher said,
every grain of sand on the seashore, every single star in the galaxies
in their millions. were every one a sinner. There
would be virtue enough in the death of Christ had God chosen
to make it applicable to that many sinners. For it is the infinite
God who is joined to true humanity, and it is his deity that gives
infinite worth to his sacrifice. But it was a true man. Don't
believe that Christmas carol that says, The little Lord Jesus,
when he awakes, no crying he makes, that's a lot of bunkum.
If the cattle mooed and Jesus awoke, he waaah, as loud as any
baby ever did. And he was a nurse at Mary's
breast, and he had to learn to say his Hebrew alphabet, alef,
beit, gimel, dalet, hei, ob, zayin, He had to learn to tie
his sandals. He grew in wisdom, in stature,
in favor with God and man. He had to learn his manners.
He had to learn to say, excuse me, and please, and thank you,
and what instruments to use, and utensils at the table, to
be a cultured young Hebrew boy. It was real humanity. It wasn't
phantom humanity. And when Jesus fell in the parking
lot and scraped his knees, he came in and said, Mommy, I got
a boo-boo. Will you fix it? And she kissed it and made it
better. He was real human. And when I say to hear and receive
these things is true, this is what I mean. That you embrace
these for the facts that they are. There are no mental reservations
in receiving them. as they are presented. It's all
summarized in 1 Thessalonians 2.13. This is what I'm driving
at. Paul could say of the Thessalonians
when he conveyed these marvelous truths to them. 1 Thessalonians
2.13 For this cause also we thank
God without ceasing, that when you received from us the word
of the message, Even the Word of God, you accepted it as, not
as the Word of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God
which works in you that believe." You see what Paul said? We thank
God without ceasing that when the Word of God came to you,
it was the Word of God. It wasn't the Word of God, plus
our notions, plus our fables. No, it was God's Word. It was true. And He said, you
accepted it for exactly what it was, not as the Word of men,
but as it is, in truth, the Word of God. And it is that which
works in those who believe. Dear friends, hear me. We cannot
give up one fact of the Gospel For it's in the reality of those
facts that our salvation is rooted. Now let me ask you, looking in
the mirror again, what do you see in the mirror? Do you see
a man, a woman, a boy or girl who has become acutely aware
of his own hell-deservingness before the living God? Is that
who you see when you look at yourself? Do you look in the
mirror and say, yes, that's me, that's me? the sin that is mine
in Adam, the sin that is mine from conception, the sin that
is mine in my untold numberless preaches of God's law and the
breaking of His holy commandments in thought, in word and deed
and desire. The sin is all mine. Yes, I see in the mirror someone
who has heard and who accepts as true the facts about the only
way of deliverance from sin. facts that center in a unique
person. I believe Jesus is God. I believe He is man. And though
I cannot understand how God and man can be in two distinct, separate,
unmingled natures joined in one person, I believe it because
the Bible says it. And I believe that He died under
the wrath of God. I believe he lived the perfect
life in conformity to God's law, that God could say, this is my
beloved son in whom I'm well pleased, and that in his obedience
is my hope of a title to heaven, and in his death is my only hope
that my sins will be forgiven and that heaven's law and heaven's
demand for my damnation can be righteously silenced. Is that
who you see in the mirror? Someone who has heard and received
without mental reservation those facts Well, we go to the third
Aspect of what a biblical Christian is because you can go this far
and go to hell Listen carefully. There's nothing I've said thus
far. It isn't true of the devil He knows he is a doomed damned
spirit. I So do all the demons. Remember in the days of our Lord's
flesh, the demons that inhabited the pigs? Don't torment us before
our time! They know where they're going.
And they called him Son of God. What have we to do with thee,
Jesus, Son of God, long before the disciples confessed it? So
if you've come this far, you may have come no further than
the devil and the demons. So hear me carefully as we look
in the mirror. is the third aspect of a biblical Christian. It's
this. A biblical Christian is one who has come to a spirit-wrought
experience and state of repentance and faith. A biblical Christian
is one who has come to a spirit-wrought experience and state of repentance
and faith. After the great indicatives of
the gospel, you students now, you kids, you know what an indicative
is? It's a statement of a fact. Something
is. An imperative is an expression
of a command. Well, the Bible sets before us
the glorious gospel indicatives. Christ died for our sins. Christ was buried Christ was
raised. Those are the great indicatives.
But then it follows with its imperatives. In the light of
what Christ has done, what are we to do? Well, listen to Jesus. In Mark chapter 1, Jesus came
preaching the gospel, proclaiming the good news that in His person
salvation had come to men. The kingdom of God's grace and
the rule of His forgiving mercy was present. Mark chapter 1,
after John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee preaching
the gospel of God and saying, The time is fulfilled. The kingdom
of God is at hand. Those are indicatives. Time is
fulfilled. The kingdom is at hand. But now
look at the imperatives that follow. Repent ye. and believe
in the gospel, the indicatives and the imperatives. And what
was true of our Lord in his own ministry, he said, had to be
true of the disciples. Turn to Luke chapter 24. Here
is the least known Great Commission passage. And I think it's significant
that it's the least known because it's the only one that contains
this element of doctrinal vigor. given to us by Luke. Luke 24,
45, then He opened their mind that they might understand the
Scriptures, and He said unto them, Thus it is written that
the Christ must suffer and rise again from the dead the third
day. Now notice, And that repentance unto remission of sin should
be preached in His name among all the nations beginning from
Jerusalem. It is not enough that they should
go out and demonstrate, Christ died according to the Scriptures.
Christ rose from the dead according to the Scriptures. They were
then commanded to preach repentance in His name. That is, repentance
against the backdrop of the revelation of God's saving mercy in Jesus
Christ. They were to herald the great
indicatives of the gospel, the good news that God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son. But then they were to tell
men that they must repent if they were to receive the remission
of their sins. The Apostle Paul indicates that
this is exactly how he preached the gospel. Turn to Acts chapter
20 and verse 21. He preached for some approximately
three years at Ephesus, and here he is gathered with the church
leaders, reviewing his ministry, and he says in verse 21, I testified
both to Jews and to Greeks, This silly notion taught by so-called
expert Bible teachers, that the message of repentance was only
for the Jews and the message for the Gentiles was simply believed,
is absolute heretical nonsense. Paul said, I preach to Jews and
the Greeks one message. how anyone claiming to believe
the Bible could ever teach that, and then even be around long
enough to have his books be written, I'll never know. I declared to Jew and to Greek
repentance towards God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And what significance is this?
Look at verse 24. I hold not my life of any account
as dear to myself that I may accomplish my course and the
ministry which I receive from the Lord Jesus to testify the
gospel of the grace of God. For Paul, the preaching of the
grace of God was not Jesus has died, now nod your head and tip
your hat to Jesus and call that faith. Preaching the grace of
God was not inconsistent with telling men, you must repent
towards God and believe, not on Jesus, but on the Lord Jesus
Christ. And any other preaching of the
grace of God turns the grace of God into lasciviousness. That
was his preaching of grace. And that he repeats in Acts chapter
26. And there he becomes even more emphatic, looking back over
the full length of his ministry, coming toward the end of Luke's
account of Paul's missionary endeavors We find him again giving
a testimony of his conversion and his commission and his subsequent
obedience to that commission. Verse 19 of Luke of Acts 26. Wherefore, O King Agrippa, I
was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision, but declared
both to them of Damascus first. That's the place he went right
after he was converted. And at Jerusalem, Acts 9, he
went down, became a church member, and was with them going in and
out preaching the gospel. And throughout all the country
of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn
to God, faith is implied, for the only turning to God that
God acknowledges is turning in faith. Without faith it is impossible
to please Him, for he that cometh to God must believe that He is. It's implied. Repent and turn
to God, doing works worthy of repentance. And what did he base
that preaching on? Verse 23. He said, I didn't say
anything but what Moses and the prophets did say should come,
how that the Christ must suffer, how that He first, by the resurrection
of the dead, should proclaim light both to the people and
to the Gentiles. He preached the great indicatives. Christ died. Christ was buried. Christ was raised. Christ is
offered to Jew and Gentile freely in the gospel. Then what did
he say? Bow your head, close your eyes,
don't want to embarrass anyone, sneak your hand up, say a little
prayer, go home, you're fixed up. No, not on your life. He
said, now if you see your sin in the light of God's law, and
you see that God's law is so holy, the only way he could righteously
save sinners was to send his own son, the darling of his heart,
and send him to this pigsty called Earth. and here to live in humility,
in poverty, live being called demon-possessed, an illegitimate
child. There was no way God could satisfy
His law without sending His Son to this earth, and then allowing
men by wicked hands to take Him and impale Him upon a cross.
And then while there upon the cross, God the Father heaps upon
Him and credits to Him the sins of every single person who will
ever be saved. from those that were saved in
the garden, if they were, to the last one brought in until
the return of Christ. And he bruises his son and he
plunges him into the horrors of abandonment and dereliction. False is that's what I preached,
that Christ must suffer and that having been raised from the dead,
salvation is now freely offered. And on what terms? Trust Jesus? Accept Christ as your personal
Savior? Where does that terminology ever,
ever take hold of evangelicalism? Paul said, I preach that men
must repent, turn to God, and then do works consistent with
that professed repentance. Now, friends, I didn't write
that. That's in my Bible. And you know when I discovered
that? As an 18-year-old kid. only two months out of the womb
spiritually, sitting in the Sunday afternoon around the table in
my folks' home in Stanford, Connecticut, with the first book I got after
I got a Bible after God saved me, a Strong's Concordance, and
I looked up every usage of the word repent, and I never preached
a gospel that didn't demand repentance. You'd have had to rip my Bible
out of my hands. How in the world could two or
three generations of evangelicals preach a gospel with no repentance? And then this notion that Christ
can be received as Savior and not as Lord when Paul said, I
preach faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And every one of
those words is not just a name like Albert N. Martin or Mary
L. Smith. Everyone is an official
title that tells us who He is. He is the Lord. He is the incarnate
Jehovah. He is the ascended God-man who
is made Messianic Lord, sitting upon the throne of David, dispensing
the sure mercies of David to penitent sinners. He is Jesus,
the incarnate Son of God, given that name at His conception,
He is Christ, the Anointed One, God's last and final and supreme
Prophet, Priest, and King. And to believe on Him is to reckon
with a Sovereign, a Savior, a Prophet, a Priest, and the King. And faith
is the whole heart taking a whole Christ. as many as received Him. Not a half of Him, not two-thirds
of Him, but Him! As many as received Him! To them
He gave you the right to become the children of God. Even to
them that believe on His what? His name. What is His name? The
Lord Jesus Christ. To receive Him is to receive
a sovereign. a Savior, to receive the Anointed
One, to be my prophet, to teach me, to take my silly little head
in hand and sort it out so I begin to think God's thoughts after
Him in every area of my life. He is God's priest. I will now
look to no other object for forgiveness of sin. I will trust only in
His blood. I will trust only in His intercession
to secure my acceptance with God. He will be my only priest. I will never again take a wafer
and call it God. I'll never again pray through
a saint. I'll never again pray to Mary. He is my one, my only, my all-sufficient
High Priest. I take Him as Christ, God's only
anointed prophet to teach me, priest to forgive me and intercede
for me, and King to rule over me, and to conquer all of my
and His enemies. And the last one of them is death,
when He'll call my dust out of the grave. And then He's going
to give me a body like unto His own glorious body, in which with
a perfected spirit that will love Him with unbounded ardor,
will have a body that can respond to all the ardor of that Spirit
and serve Him day and night without any need for sleep. That's heaven
to me. Sitting half dozed on a cloud
plucking a harp, to me that would be hell. But the thought that
in a resurrected body, with no seeds of death, and a perfected
spirit that will love God perfectly, that I'll serve Him with all
the energy of that soul, joined to the energy and dynamism of
a resurrected body, and that for the ages of the ages. Even
so, come Lord Jesus. That's a heaven that gets me
excited. Now my friend, Look in the mirror. What is a biblical Christian?
He's someone who's been made painfully aware he's a hell-deserving
sinner. Secondly, he's heard and believed
the facts of the one way of deliverance for sinners, the facts that focus
in a unique person and in the work he did as a substitute for
others. But thirdly, a Bible Christian
is one who has by the Spirit been brought to an experience
and state of repentance and faith. You say, Pastor, why do you say
a state? Because repentance and faith
are not the acts of a moment. They are the acquisition of a
disposition that will last until faith becomes sight and repentance
is no longer needed. That's why in the book of John,
almost every reference to belief is a verb in the present form
or a participle in the present form. He that believeeth. When
you see that et in the old Elizabethan or in the new renderings, he
that believes. It's a present tense. And likewise
with repentance, let everyone who names the name of Christ
continually depart from iniquity. Second Timothy 2 and verse 19. And you say, why do you say spirit
wrought experience and state of repentance and faith? Because
the Bible makes it plain that it's the Holy Spirit who gives
repentance and faith. In Philippians chapter 129, Paul
says, it has been granted unto you on the behalf of Christ,
not only to believe, but to suffer. He says, it's God's donation
that brought you to faith. The scripture says, by grace
are you saved through faith in that not of yourselves. It is
the gift of God. And as Paul is preaching to Lydia,
it says, whose heart the Lord opened. so that she attended
to the things that were spoken by Paul, Acts 16 and verse 14. And repentance, we read, he has
been exalted a prince and a savior to give repentance, Acts 5.31. In 2 Timothy 2.26, Paul says,
if God, peradventure, will give them repentance to the acknowledgement
of the truth. Let me ask you, looking in the
mirror tonight, Do you see yourself in that picture of a real Christian?
Is there anything about you that has no explanation but that the
Holy Spirit has brought you to a position of repentance toward
God? You've turned from your sin.
You've turned from living your own life. You've turned from
your cursed creature independence. And you've embraced the living
God to be your God. and to live a life in dependence
upon him and under his government and under his rule. Do you know
anything of spirit-wrought faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,
where without reservation you've taken a whole Christ with your
whole heart? Or did Jesus say the kingdom
of heaven is likened to a man seeking goodly pearls, who, when
he found one pearl, sold all that he had to obtain? Christ
is always received as the pearl of great price, never a cheap
imitation pearl to be thrown in the jewelry box with all your
other junk jewelry. He said the Kingdom of Heaven
is like unto a man who finds a treasure in a field, and when
he's found it, he sells all that he has to gain that field. That's why Jesus said, if any
man would come after me, let him say no to himself. That's
just Jesus' way of calling men to repentance. He went right
to the heart of it. He said, you want to be mine?
Then say a great, big, resounding no to doing your own thing, running
your own life, thinking your own thoughts, living by your
own standards. Say no to yourself. Pick up a
cross. And that meant one thing in the
days of the Roman Empire. Cross equals death. It was never
used as an ornament on top of a church, I'll clue you. It was
an ugly symbol of a violent death of an outcast criminal. Jesus
said, you want to be my follower? Pick up a cross. And whatever
the precise significance may have been to the disciples then,
this much is clear. He was saying, if you would be
mine, say no to yourself and live as a dead living man. A man dead. to your own plans,
a man despised by the world, outcast by the world, but in
fellowship with me, the crucified one." That's what a Christian is, my
folks. I didn't make the standard. That's God's Word. But I want
to close and touch this fourth aspect briefly in the remaining
moments. And this is so critical. Look
in the mirror now. See if this is you. A biblical
Christian is one who can validate his professed faith in repentance
by the fruit of his life. A biblical Christian is one who
can validate his professed faith in repentance by the fruit of
his life. James says in James 2.19, Thou
believest God is one. The demons also believe and they
tremble. Verse 26, wilt thou not know, O man, that as the
body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith without works
is dead? Titus 1.16 says they profess
to know God, but in works they deny Him, being abominable, and
unto every good work reprobate. And Jesus said in Matthew 7.21,
many, many, many, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord,
did we not this? Did we not that? And He will
say unto them, depart from Me. I never knew you. No real repentance
in faith will bring forth fruit. That's why Paul said in Acts
26 20, I preach that men should repent, turn to God, doing works,
meet, or answering to the professed repentance. And what is the minimal
measure of real saving fruit? And I wrestled with this today,
yesterday, and I believe God's helped me to state it in a way
that's not simplistic, but simple. I believe if we reduce everything
the Bible talks about the fruits of repentance and faith, we can
reduce it down to two simple things. Number one, there will
be love to the person of Christ, producing a pattern of obedience
to the Word of Christ. Now that's not complicated. I
think we could say it together. True repentance and faith will
always produce love to the person of Christ, producing a pattern
of obedience to the Word of Christ. Now, on what scripture do I base
that? Well, remember what Peter said in 1 Peter 1.8. Speaking of these believers,
notice what he says of them. Without exception, it's true
of every true believer. He says, Whom having not seen,
that is Christ, you love. on whom, though you see him not,
yet believing, you rejoice. The one on whom they believed,
they now love. Saving faith always brings the
heart into a relationship of love to its object. Saving faith
never looks to Christ, gets something from Him, and then lives detached. from His person. Saving faith
is the marriage bond of the soul to Christ, the Heavenly Bridegroom. Isn't the Church called His bride?
How does one become part of that bride when by the operation of
the Holy Spirit we're brought to our spiritual wedding day,
when we take Him to be our Savior, our Master, our Redeemer, our
Teacher, our Prophet, our Priest, our King, from henceforth to
live in bonds of love to Him? So what is the fruit of repentance
and faith, love to the Person of Christ, producing a pattern? I didn't say a perfect pattern,
but a pattern of obedience to the Word of Christ. John 14,
21, he that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that
loveth me. Verse 24, he that loveth me not
keepeth not my sayings. He that loves me keeps my word. 1 John 2, 3 and 4, if we say
that we know him and keep not his commandments, we lie and
we do not the truth. Jesus said in describing His
sheep in John 10, 27, My sheep hear My voice, and I know them,
and they follow Me, and I give to them eternal life, and they
shall never perish, and no man shall pluck them out of My hand.
That's one of the most abused verses in all of the Bible. People
use it to teach the antinomian, soul-destructive Hell-spawn doctrine
of eternal security. Once saved, always saved, no
matter how you live. That's not the teaching of the
Bible. The teaching of the Bible is once saved, always saved,
and how you live proves you are saved. That's the teaching of
the Bible. My sheep hear, present tense,
my voice. And they not only hear it, They
follow Me. They don't follow perfectly any
more than they hear perfectly. But it's the pattern of their
life. And He says, I give to them eternal life. Christ is
not giving eternal life to all these goats that have a sign
around their neck. I belong to Jesus because I made
a decision. Those goats will be separated
on the left hand and cast into outer darkness. The fruit of
repentance and faith is love to the person of Christ. producing
a pattern of obedience to the Word of Christ. And then the
second great fruit of repentance and faith is this, a commitment
of heart to the goal of the death of Christ, producing increasing
likeness to Christ. A commitment of heart to the
goal of the death of Christ, which will produce increasing
likeness to Christ. And on what verses do I base
that? Well, listen. Familiar verses.
Ephesians 5, 25. Husbands, love your wives. As
Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, why? That he
might make it happy, happy, happy all the time, time, time? No! He gave himself for the church
that he might sanctify. having cleansed it with the washing
of water by the Word and presented to Himself a glorious church
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should
be holy and without blemish before Him. You see, the purpose of
Christ in His death is exactly the same as the Father's purpose
in election, Ephesians 1.4. We were chosen in Him before
the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without
blemish. If the Father chose us with that
end in view, then the Son died with precisely the same end in
view. And when the Holy Spirit applies
to us the salvation purchased by Christ and purposed by the
Father, He doesn't break the chain of command. The fruit of repentance in faith
is a commitment to the goal of the death of Christ, which is
to make me not just safe, but to make me holy. A true Christian can say, I wouldn't
want to go to heaven if heaven were not the perfection of holiness.
Heaven would be hell for me. I'm weary of sin, sin in myself,
sin in my wife, sin in my children, sin in the world, sin all about
me. I long for that purpose to be
realized. Titus 2.14, who gave himself
for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify
to himself a peculiar people. That doesn't mean a bunch of
oddballs. It means a people uniquely his own, his peculiar possession,
zealous of good works. That's why he died, Titus 2.14,
or Galatians 1.4, who gave himself for us that he might deliver
us out of this present evil age according to the will of the
Father, or 2 Corinthians 5.15. and that he died for all that
they who live should no longer henceforth live unto themselves,
but unto him who died for them and rose again. Friends, the
purpose of the death of Christ is clear, that it might bring
to an end living for myself, that it might bring me to be
zealous of works that please the Father, that it might give
me a passion for holiness. And when from the heart I've
embraced the purpose of the death of Christ, then I will increasingly,
as 1 John 2.6 says, he that abideth in him ought to walk even as
he walked. Every man that hath this hope
in him, 1 John 3.3, purifies himself even as he is pure. Now look in the mirror and say,
call yourself by name, John, Henry, Mary, Sally. Is this a
picture of you? Can you say, looking in the mirror,
that by the grace of God, By the grace of God, my heart is
attached in love to the person of Christ. And I'm conscious
of a real, albeit at times stronger, other times weaker, sometimes
barely discernible, but I'm conscious of a real desire to obey the
Word of Christ. And can you say that your heart
is committed to the purpose of the death of Christ? That you
should no longer live for yourself? that you should be holy, that
you should be zealous of good works, and you say that that's
the commitment of your heart, and that nothing pleases you
more than when God helps you to conquer some aspect in your
character and temperament and personality that is so unlike
Christ, and you're able to manifest something of likeness to Christ.
If you're without love to Christ, which constrains you to obey
Christ, you're not a Christian. You hear me? If you're without
love to Christ that constrains you to obey Christ, you're not
a Christian. If any man loved not our Lord Jesus Christ, let
him be anathema. 1 Corinthians 16 and verse 22. And if you have no desire to be like
Christ, you won't be taken to be with Christ when he comes.
For my Bible says every man that hath this hope in him purifies
himself without exception. Without holiness, Hebrews 12,
14, no man shall see the Lord. Well, dear people, I've labored
to be simple, as clear as I know how. It's grieved me not to turn
to these passages just to quote them and give you the references.
I see some of you taking notes. I like it better when you can
get it through the eyeballs as well as the ear gate. But constrained
to give you the whole picture, I had to do that. We're concerned
with the Christian's role in a wicked society. We've established
that ours is a wicked society, and there's nobody who's going
to have any significant role who's not a real Christian. What
is a real Christian? Someone who has been made painfully
aware of his sinfulness before God. Is that you? Someone who
has been brought to hear and to receive is true. God's one
way of delivering sinners, it focuses on a person and on the
work that he did for others. A real Christian is one who by
the Spirit has been brought to true repentance and to faith,
not only as an act, but as a spiritual state of the soul. Is that true
of you? And a true Christian is one who
manifests the genuineness of his professed repentance and
faith by love to the person of Christ, disposing him to obey
the word of Christ. by embracing the end of the death
of Christ, leading to increasing conformity to the image of Christ. No wonder they called them little
Christ at Antioch. They were real Christians. They
were real Christians. Christ was the beginning, middle,
and end of life. They could say with Paul, for
to me, not just to go to heaven when I die is Christ. That's
the creed of the average evangelical today. For me to go to heaven
when I die is Christ, and everything in between is career, money,
things, popularity, pleasure, with a little sprinkling of Jesus,
just enough to keep my conscience quiet. That's not Christianity,
friends. That's a hellish, bogus Christianity. For me to live is Christ! Only
then will it be gain to die. If you can't say, for me to live
is Christ, dying won't be gain to you, it'll be eternal loss.
Every true Christian can say in principle, though not in degree,
as with the apostle, for me to live is Christ! More than my
desire to have a husband and a wife, as strong as those desires
are, as honorable as they are, if I must have a husband or wife
at the expense of violating the standards of the Lord Jesus,
I'll be single for the rest of my life. For to me, to live is
not marriage! For me to live is not a career
and a nice home and a comfortable bank account. If God blesses
my endeavors in the way of righteousness and gives me the stewardship
of success, I'll accept it. But if I must compromise the
standards of Christ, I'd sooner be in a bread line with a good
conscience than live in a posh home with a bloodied conscience
because I violated the word of Christ. Brethren, that's real
Christianity. And that's the only kind of Christianity
that's going to cut it in a wicked generation, that will have any
bite and any credibility. That's why I've spent a whole
night on it. If we're not clear here, we're talking two different
languages. May God grant us with judgment
day honesty to look into the mirror and say, Oh God, is that
me? Is that my Christianity? And
if it isn't, You go to God. I can't help you, but I know
one who's mighty to save and ready and willing and able to
receive any and every who come to him. Without exception, Jesus
is so confident of his power that nobody could come up and
say, my case is beyond you, Lord, that he could say, come unto
me, all who labor and are heavy laden. Oh, Lord, but you... Yes, I do know. Yes, but you... Yes, I do understand. And I dare
to say to every generation of sinners, no matter what their
state, come and I will give you rest. But when he says, come,
he says, take my yoke. You come to get your burden relieved
while you bend over to take, have him lift the burden of sin.
He'll place his gracious yoke upon you. His yoke is easy. His burden's light, but it's
real and it's a yoke. He dares to say, all that the
Father gives me shall come to me in him that comes. And he
piles up the negatives. I will never under any circumstances
ever cast them out. Oh, dear young men and women,
boys, girls, gray haired, older sinners, professing Christians,
perhaps you've looked in the mirror tonight and you've said,
if that's what a Christian is, that's not me. You have to come
up with a different description. I don't see myself in that mirror. And thank God He's shown you
now while the door of mercy is still open. Run to Christ. Cry to God. Go to Him who alone
is mighty to save, willing to save, able to save, and cast
yourself upon Him. Let us pray. Oh, our Father, how we thank
you for your Word. We praise you for the clarity
of its truth. We thank you you have not left
us in doubt on this great and burning question, what must I
do to be saved? And on the equally burning question,
how may I know that I am saved? Lord, as we've addressed those
questions tonight, as best we know how from your Word, May
the Holy Spirit overrule all human imperfection and shortcomings. And may he make that word effectual
in the heart of everyone who has sat here tonight. And, oh
God, may it yet please you in this generation to raise up a
host of biblical Christians. Oh Lord, hasten the day when
all the shallow let's-go-play-games mentality is done away with. and when those who name the name
of Christ are jealous that Christ will have the full reward of
his sufferings in them. O Lord, bless your word to everyone
who has come this night, young and old alike, and may the final
day reveal that this word did not return unto you void. Hear
our cry and answer us for Jesus' sake. Amen. Oh. I'm so so so so The. The End

The Christian's Role in a Wicked Generation #2 Defining a Real Christian

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about being a Christian?

How do we know that Jesus saves sinners?

Why is recognizing our sinfulness important for Christians?

What defines a true Christian according to the Bible?

How can Christians know they are saved?

Sermon Transcript

About Albert N. Martin

Comments

Joshua

Articles

Featured Authors

Podcast

Sermons

Featured Preachers

Books

Browse by Format

Music

Recent Comments

About

Legal

Subscribe

Account

Articles

Featured Authors

Podcast

Recent Comments

Sermons

Featured Preachers

Books

Browse by Format

Collections

Music

About

Legal

Subscribe

The Christian's Role in a Wicked Generation #2 Defining a Real Christian

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about being a Christian?

How do we know that Jesus saves sinners?

Why is recognizing our sinfulness important for Christians?

What defines a true Christian according to the Bible?

How can Christians know they are saved?

Sermon Transcript

About Albert N. Martin

Comments

More from Albert N. Martin

Related Sermons

Same Scripture

Suggested for You

Joshua

Where this book stands in the tradition

Plato

Augustine

The Western Christian Tradition

This Book