Well, we were thinking the last
time we were together about how can I know that I have eternal
life in God's Son? For we'd seen some of the blessings
that were promised to God's elect in Jeremiah's prophecy, but it's
throughout this book because that's what this book is about.
It's the promises of God to his people of salvation and what
he has accomplished. And it's, how can I know that
that is mine? I hear these promises. I know
the thoughts that I think of you. Not thoughts of evil, thoughts
of good, to give you a promised end. Promises like that, the
promises of God, the promise of entrance into eternal life. Come you blessed of my Father,
enter into the kingdom prepared for you from the Father. Is that
mine? Do I have a good hope of that? What is it that causes
me to have such a hope? Can I have such a hope? It's
called assurance. Can I have assurance of eternal
life? Is it mine? Well, last time we
saw that some of the marks of God's elect are the foundational
one, is what Paul uses when he talks to the Thessalonians. You
believe the truth. You believe the truth of the
gospel. And not the gospel of man, or of religion, but the
gospel of God's book. The gospel that God has revealed. You believe it. You hear it. It goes completely contrary to
your natural inclination, but you believe it because God has
said it. And that belief of the truth
is not just knowing facts of truth. The devils know facts
of truth about God, and they tremble. They know, but they
tremble. But the child of God believes
with the heart, and it produces heart-fruit. Heart-fruit, repentance,
sorrow for sin, faith in Christ, looking to Christ, hearing His
voice, following Him. And heart-faith, heart-fruit,
produces lip-fruit, and produces life-fruit. With the heart One
believes unto righteousness with the heart and with the mouth,
with the lip, confession is made unto salvation. Now I want to
continue this theme this morning and I want to look in the sixth
chapter of Romans, and my text is verse 17. We'll come to it
in a moment. But Romans is the gospel laid
out as clearly as it is anywhere else in the Scriptures. The epistle
to the Romans is the gospel of justification by substitution. It's the gospel of grace grace. God who is sovereign over all
things, being gracious to whom he will be gracious, and having
compassion on whom he will have compassion. It's being right
with God, not by law works. It's not a litany of what I have
done that makes me fit for heaven. It's the confession that I, in
my flesh, as Paul said, he wasn't fit to be an apostle, and he
was the least of all the apostles, and then he was the chief of
sinners. That's the knowledge of the person who is brought
to believe the gospel of God's grace. Fear of God is the beginning
of wisdom, and that fear teaches us what we are in our fleshly
condition, teaches us that we're not right with God, teaches us
that we must stand before him but we're not right for that,
and shows us the gospel of justification that answers Job's question,
how should a man be just with God? That's the most important
question that you will ever come across. How should a man be just
with God? It applies to every one of us,
and the answer to that question is in the epistle to the Romans.
It's the gospel of justification with God by the substitutionary
work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans chapter 5 and verse 20
Up to that point he's been establishing it. He says in chapter 3, he
says the law speaks to everybody and stops everybody's mouth.
You can't say, ah, but not me. No, everybody is guilty. He says
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All. He
says now the righteousness of God is revealed. witnessed by
the law and the prophets. It's not a righteousness that
you work, it's a righteousness which is by grace, in the doing
and the dying and the rising again of a substitute, a perfect
substitute, who to whom in an eternal covenant of grace his
people are united, are married, are wed, and everything he did
in the legal justice of God, they have done, and they are
counted righteous in him. So Isaiah says, he has clothed
me, I will greatly rejoice, he has clothed me with the robes
of salvation, the robes of righteousness, the garments of salvation. And
so, this glorious theme is, well, A right standing with God, then,
does not depend on who I am and what I do and what I have done.
It doesn't depend on that. It doesn't depend on it. Look
in verse 20 of chapter 5. The law entered that the offense
might abound. God gave his law that it might
be obvious what sin is. But where sin abounded, where
there was no end of sin, grace did much more abound. Grace did
much more abound. Now, he goes on in verse 1 of
chapter 6. So what's the conclusion of that? If it doesn't matter what we
do in order to be saved, well let's live as we want. We like
sinning, don't we? So let's carry on sinning, because
grace will deal with it all. This is what he's going to answer
in this chapter. The logical, fleshly conclusion
of verse 20 of chapter 5, where sin abounded, grace did much
more abound. The fleshly response to that is, oh, jolly good, let's
go and sin all we want. We like doing it, so let's go
and do it because we can get away with it. Shall we do that?
And the sixth chapter of Romans answers that question. You see,
there are many in religion who say as much as that. and live
in that way. Let us sin that grace may abound.
They profess that they believe the truth, but their actions
and the way they live deny the truth. It's like the illustration
I've used several times about the troops, the Queen's troops,
on Trooping of the Colour Day in June, the anniversary of the
Queen's coronation. And the troops, it's a different
regiment each year, and the troops are proud to be part of their
regiment. And if they're called upon to
troop the colour before the nation, before the Commonwealth, before
all of that, they want to be turned out as well as they possibly
can be. They don't want for one moment
anything that they do to bring any disgrace on their regiment.
They're not frightened of punishment for having dirty shoes or a a
suit, a uniform that isn't pressed, they're not frightened of punishment,
they're not doing it because they're going to get a bonus
in their pay if they do it, they're doing it out of nothing other
than heart, love for their regiment. Like troops this is. Troops,
professing. You see, those who say, shall
we sin that grace may abound, they're like those who profess
it, but then go and deny it. Like troops who might turn up
for trooping of the colour, and they They bring disgrace on the
regiment by defiling the uniform on parade. They claim to serve
the Queen and country, but they bring disgrace on both. And they
show, whatever they say, whom they really serve. They're serving
their own interests. Look at Romans 6 and verse 16. Paul makes this clear, know ye
not that to whom ye yield yourselves, it doesn't matter what you say,
to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants
you are to whom you obey, whether of sin and to death, or of obedience
and to righteousness. But for God's true believing
people, that cannot be so. God's true believing people do
not serve sin because grace has freed them from sin. They don't
do it. Look at verse 17. But God be thanked that ye were
the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form
of doctrine which was delivered to you. That text has been bugging
me for two or three weeks, and so that's why I'm preaching on
it this morning, that's why I was led to this text. That form of
doctrine, you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine
which was delivered to you. I want us to see whose servants
we were. God be thanked, you were the
servants of sin, whose servants we were and are by nature. Secondly, how you were reshaped
and transformed into something else, made of God. And thirdly,
how that shaping, that reshaping, has freed you from the service
of sin into the service of God, as it says in verse 18, being
then made free from sin. You became the servants of righteousness. So first of all, whose servants
you were and whose servants you are by nature in your flesh.
He says here in verse 17, you were the servants of sin. The servants of sin. What is
sin? What is sin? Sin, as the old
catechism says, sin is the transgression of the law. Whose law? God's
law. Sin is breaking God's law. What is God's law? It's not just
ten commandments, it's everything that is God. Everything that
he has revealed. Everything in his nature and
personality and characteristics. Sin is the transgression of everything
that is God. Sin, the word means, falling
short. If you've ever done archery,
then you fire your arrow and it drops short of the target,
your arrow is said to sin. It falls short. For all have
sinned, and the corollary of that is, and have fallen short
of the glory of God. To sin is to fall short. of the
standard of God. It's rebellion against the nature
and being of God, and you must confess that in your heart and
in the heart of every person that has ever lived in this life,
except our Lord Jesus Christ, is that trait of sin. Rebellion
against the nature and being of God. It started with the fall
of Adam in the Garden of Eden. And all humanity in him All his
progeny, everybody that came from him, including all of us,
was plunged into that sinful nature. Psalm 58 verse 3 says
this, the wicked are estranged from the... The wicked? Those
that don't believe the gospel of grace. Those who stay in a
state of unbelief. The wicked are estranged from
the womb. They go astray. How soon did
they start going astray? As soon as they be born. That's
when they went astray. As soon as they be born. Speaking
lies. That's our nature. Even when
we think we're telling the truth. We embroider it, don't we? We
embroider it and make it look better. They go astray as soon
as they are born, speaking lies. All have sinned. All have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God. You, me, everybody. There
is, who's righteous? There is none righteous. No,
not one. What was Happy Jack's testimony?
Happy Jack, this is a true testimony. Not what a wonderful person you
are or have been. This is it. I'm a poor sinner and nothing
at all. That's it. All have sinned. There is none
righteous as God counts righteousness. We all, by nature, in the flesh,
served that sinful nature, in its philosophy, in its mindset,
in its desires, the things it wanted to do, in its lusts. We're not just servants either.
We are slaves of sin. You know, in the sense that a
slave was in a worse position than a servant. A slave was absolutely
given no choice in anything. A slave absolutely had to do
the bidding of its master. was completely owned, had no
option to make any choices. A slave did every bidding of
its master, and so it is. Sin, Paul says, you were the
servants, the slaves of sin. You were the servants of sin.
You had to do its every bidding. It had complete, unrivaled mastery
over you. What it called for, we strove
to follow. Sin, do this, do this, think
this way, What it called for, we strove to follow. But, you
know, was it a hard servitude? Was it hard being the slaves
of sin? No, it wasn't. We gladly complied
in our flesh. Gladly complied. It has all sorts
of different manifestations. You say, oh, you're being a bit
general when you say it applies, there's some good people around.
Yes, I know, but It comes in different manifestations. In
some, it is blatant, it is vile, it is public, it is disgraceful. In others, it's refined and genteel,
but still sin-reigned, unchallenged. That is the hard shape that we
are by nature. Second hymn that we sang, number
905, my heart by nature is a stone and unconcerned can look upon
eternal misery. It's hard, it's bone dry. It's
a rock hard heart of stone and it's set in its ways and it won't
mold to any other shape. It's hard and unyielding. That's what we are by nature,
the servants of sin. Do you know that? Do you know
that? Has the Spirit of God shown you
that is what you are in the flesh? Has the Spirit of God brought
you under a compelling conviction of your offense to God, who you
must face in eternity? These are serious questions,
because that's what we are by nature. Do you know that the
justice of God would justly condemn you? The justice of God would
be absolutely just in saying, depart from me, you who work
iniquity, I never knew you. The justice of God would be absolutely
just in that. Do we know that we've earned
our rightful wages as the servants of sin? Look at verse 23 of chapter
6, for the wages of sin, death, That's what you get paid, you
work, you earn with sin, and the wages you get is death. But
there's a gift of God, which is eternal life through Christ
Jesus the Lord. No, a sinner is a sacred thing. Do you know that? Sounds a contradiction,
doesn't it? A sinner is a sacred thing, that's
what a good old hymn says. A sinner is a sacred thing. Why? Because the Holy Ghost has made
him so. Only the Spirit of God can teach you what you are by
nature. The natural man, as Peter said
in his prayer, doesn't receive, doesn't understand the things
of the Spirit of God. The natural man thinks, oh, I'm
pretty good, I'm better than others, I'm not as bad as them.
But the Spirit of God teaches us what we are. The Spirit of
God teaches us that by nature we're sinners. We fall short
of the glory of God. It causes us to cry out, how
should a man be just with God? It causes us to cry out as it
did that Philippian jailer when he saw his state. He's impending
death. He's impending judgment of God.
And he cried out to Paul and to Silas, what must I do to be
saved? I know I'm about to fall down
into this pit of eternity. What must I do to be saved? If
you're among the people Christ justified, you will know the
truth of this, what you are by nature, in your flesh, the servants
of sin. And you won't say a word to object
or protest. Chapter 3, verse 19. Now we know that what things
soever, whatever the law says, it says to them who are under
the law. Who's that? All of us. as the creatures of
God were all under his law. And what's the result? That every
mouth may be stopped. Ah, but no, that's not fair.
No, none of that, every mouth stopped. Not a word. All the
world become guilty. You know, how do you plead? Guilty,
not all the world, guilty, guilty, guilty, all the world. Every
tongue shall confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the
Father. So that's what we are. The people
of God know that. You will not just assent to it
mentally, but you'll have felt it in your heart. You'll have
felt it. You'll have cried out in your
heart, save me Lord, from what I am by nature, because if you
don't save me, I'll perish. I know I will. I will justly
perish. But, that's what we are by nature. Look, Verse 17, God be thanked
that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from
the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to you, being
then made free from sin. You became the servants of righteousness.
How you were then reshaped, how you were transformed. It says
there that you obeyed, you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine
which was delivered to you. The form, the word form there
The word form is actually the word mold. Now I don't mean mold
as in the stuff that grows when you've left something in the
fridge too long and you get it out and it's got green mold growing.
I don't mean that. I mean that mold. Have you ever
played with plaster of Paris? and you get a plastic mold, a
shape, and you fill it up. Or you've played with Play-Doh
for the children. You know when you play with Play-Doh, and you
get the shapes out, and you press the Play-Doh into the shape,
and the Play-Doh becomes the shape of the thing that you squash
it into, doesn't it? Well this is what Paul's saying
here. He's saying that form is that mold, that shape, that shape. Whereas it says, which was delivered
to you, if you look in the margin, if you've got a Bible with a
margin, it says, where to ye were delivered, and that's the
better sense of it. It's, you've obeyed that mould,
that shape of doctrine, into which God's Spirit poured you,
and pressed you. Imagine, like, like Play-Doh
in a shape. God's Spirit took something that
was hard, He melted it down and made it soft, and then he pressed
it, he pressed it into that mold, into that form, and it took on
a different shape, a completely different shape. You were cast
into it, you know like they get the hot metal, when they want
to cast a shape of something, then they make the shape and
they design it, and then they make a shape out of a particular
type of sand. And then they get the hot metal,
the white hot steel, or iron, or whatever it is, and they pour
it into the mould. And it fills the mould, and then
when it goes cool, and you take it out, it's the shape that you
originally made. It has formed that shape. It's
been turned from a cold lump of steel, it might have been
an old bit of railway line or an old piece of car, and it gets
melted down and it gets poured into a shape and becomes a different
shape. You were cast into it, he says,
by God's Spirit. And you obeyed it from the heart. From the heart. What does God
say? Psalm 110 verse 3 about his people. He says, My people
shall be willing in the day of my power. His people are made
willing by his Spirit. You were reshaped to conform
to the mold of God's gospel doctrine, and your heart was in it. Your
heart wasn't objecting. Your heart was in it and with
it. And what is that doctrine? What is that shape? What is that
mould into which you've been melted down in your stony heart
of unbelief? And you've been poured into it
and made a different shape. What is that doctrine? What is
that teaching? What is that gospel of God into
which you've been formed and moulded? It's certainly these
things. It's this understanding, this
sense, I've already alluded to it. You were the servants of
sin. You know. your natural, total depravity
before God. You know how dead you were without
any spiritual knowledge in Christ, for you were, says Paul to the
Ephesians, you were dead in trespasses and sins. He's quickened you,
he's made you alive, but you were dead. You know that, that
in this your nature, there is no good thing, there dwells no
good thing. Romans 5, verse 6, you are without strength. Romans
7, 18, that's the reference. In my flesh, that is in me, in
my flesh there dwells no good thing. And Paul goes on in the
end of chapter 7, and he concludes that in his flesh, what can he
say about himself? O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from this body of death? Who shall deliver me
from it? You know That's the mold. The natural man doesn't understand
those things, has no sense of those things, doesn't feel those
things, is all in a mutual back-patting society, doesn't think about
those things. But we know, we know, as the
people of God, if we've been delivered into that form of doctrine,
if we've been melted down in our stony heart and poured into
that shape of the doctrine, the teaching of God, we know what
we are by nature. We know secondly, we know this,
we know something. Not much, but we know something
of the holiness of God as expressed in his law. Again, I don't just
mean the Ten Commandments, I mean everything that God is in his
righteousness. We know something of the holiness
of God. Look at chapter 7. Look at some
verses with me. Verse 12 of chapter 7. Wherefore,
the law is holy, God's law is holy, and the commandment holy
and just and good. This is the law of God. that
expresses the nature and the righteousness and the goodness
of God. The law is holy and the commandment holy and just and
good. That's what it says. Verse 14,
for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, fleshly, sold
under sin. The law is spiritual, but I am
fleshly by my nature. Verse 22 of chapter 7, For I delight in the law of God. After the inward man, after the
new man that God's put there, it's something I delight in.
But in my flesh, in my flesh, no, in my flesh, I just contravene
it all the time in my very nature. I didn't used to think that.
But I've been poured by the Spirit of God, I've been molded by the
Spirit of God into that shape of the doctrine, the teaching
of the Gospel of His grace. And thirdly, this is the teaching
into which I've been molded. How do I get right with God?
By the things I am, the things I don't. No, no, no, no, no,
no, no, that's been melted down. And we've been poured into this
form of teaching which tells us how God justifies, how God
justifies his people. How God makes his people satisfy
his law in his Son. So that God is just, he doesn't
change. In his hatred of sin, in his
punishment of sin, in his strict condemnation of sin, in his justice,
he doesn't change. But yet, in Christ, he's the
justifier. of those who trust Him. He's
the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus Christ. He
counts them just, they are just, not just counts, He makes them
just. He's made His people the righteousness
of God in Him. He's put them in Christ In the
eternal covenant of grace, that covenant which Jeremiah speaks
of in chapter 31, this is the covenant, not like the covenant
of works when I took them out of Egypt, and gave them the law
and sinai, not like that covenant, you do this and live, because
they couldn't, because it was weak in the flesh, but the covenant
which the Father struck with the Son and the Holy Spirit in
eternity, to save a people. He put a people in Christ. He
made him their federal head. He put them in union with him.
He betrothed them to him. Everything that he did, in the
justice of God they're counted as having done. He slew the Lamb
of God, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world who had
to come in time to die really in a human body, with real human
blood, so that they might not die. For the law says the soul
that sins, it shall die. And therefore, what does it say
to every one of us? You shall die. But we cannot
die and yet live in eternity. So Christ came, that he might
die in the place of his people. Call his name Jesus, for he shall
save his people from their sins. He came as the substitute of
his people. the substitute. Just as the goats
in the Old Testament, this is why it's such beautiful pictures,
the goats, the one to be slain for sin and the other one to
be let loose into the wilderness of God's forgetfulness, to carry
away their sin. Substitutes for the people. Wasn't
not the people themselves, but substitutes. The Lamb of God,
the Passover Lamb, take a lamb Make sure it's perfect, for it
must be perfect, it must be tested, it must be shown to be perfect.
And then kill it, and put its blood on the door, because that's
a symbol, that's a picture of the one who is coming. Christ,
our Passover, is sacrificed for us. He stood surety for his people. You know, like a guarantor in
an agreement. I will stand surety for them. They can't pay it themselves,
but I will pay it for them. to make satisfaction, so that
the law of God says, deliver him from going down to the pit,
for I have found a ransom. To make atonement, where there
was nothing other than enmity, enmity. You know, we see such
enmity in the world, and people are always striving for unity,
for reconciliation, for appeasement. Christ has made atonement in
the blood of his sacrifice. He's made propitiation, for God
is angry with the wicked every day. God is angry with the wicked
every day. How is the anger of God going
to be turned away from you and from me? Someone must come and
make propitiation, for what does that word propitiation mean?
It means a turning away of the anger. It means the mercy seat,
where the anger of God is turned away. Deliver him from going
down to the pit, for I have found a ransom. Verse 19 of chapter
5, for as by one man's disobedience, who's that? Adam, the first man. As by one man's disobedience,
many, who's that? Everybody. that's ever lived,
were made sinners. So by the obedience of one, who's
that? Jesus Christ, shall many his
people be made righteous. By the obedience of one, shall
many be made righteous. This is the gospel, this is the
good news. If you're a soul that's crying
out, what must I do to be saved? These words are just the turning
on of the light. In the darkness where you are,
in your own sin and lostness, these words are the turning on
of the light. And then next, fourthly, this
is the mould, this is the shape into which we're poured. It's
not just academic knowledge, but it's the kingdom of God powerfully
set up in your heart. Yes? The kingdom of God powerfully
set up in the hearts of his people. Who's in charge? Who's in charge? Who's on the throne in your heart?
If you're a child of God, Christ is on the throne. He is. 1 Corinthians 2 verse 5. Your
faith should stand in the power of God. He comes. We will come,
said Jesus to his disciples. Me and my father will come by
his spirit. We will make our abode with him. We will come
into the heart. The kingdom of God is set up
in the heart. And it's a vital experience of
divine realities in the heart. It's not just mental ascent.
It's a knowledge of sin. It's a knowledge of righteousness.
It's a knowledge of what Christ has done and who he is. And it's
the practical outworking of the gospel that we believe. Look
at verses 21 and 22. He's talking about when you were
in your flesh, you had a fruit of the things that were in the
flesh, and you're ashamed of them now. You look back and you
think, how dreadful, what dreadful, offensive things to God. But
now, being made free from sin by the gospel of grace, by the
knowledge that the Spirit of God has imparted to you in the
rebirth, you become the servants of God. You have your fruit fruit
that comes from true belief unto holiness and to the end everlasting
life. This is the form of doctrine.
This is the form of doctrine that he talks about in verse
17. That mold of the thinking of God. You know, people say,
oh, Evolution is a proven scientific fact and everything that goes
with it, all the godlessness that we see in society, all the
shaking of the fist in the face of God that we see in society,
it's all absolutely proven now and there's no contest. It isn't,
it isn't. It all comes from the mold that
your thinking is set in. And the natural man has a mindset
which says, I will not have this man, Christ Jesus, to rule over
me. I will not have God of the universe on the throne of my
life telling me what to do. I won't have it. It's rebellion.
It's absolute rebellion. And then everything that you
observe, and every philosophy that you go along with, conforms
to that rock-hard mold. Well, if you're a new creature
in Christ, you've been poured into a new shape. And it's the
mould, it's the shape of the teaching of the Gospel of God.
And therefore, everything is new. And everything is different. And everything is seen in a different
way. So how has that reshaping freed you from the service of
sin to the service of God? Verse 18, being then made free
from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. Free from sin's
dominion. Servants of righteousness. And
what he's talking about is willing sons, not slaves. I want to do
it because, like the soldier wanting to honour his regiment
at Trooping of the Colour. Willing, from the heart. You
know, they talk about in the days where they used to press
gang men into the Navy to fight the King's battles for them in
the Napoleonic Wars. They'd press gang, they'd come
along and they'd capture men and the next thing they'd be
unwilling slaves in the Navy of King and country. But this
is talking about willing sons, because the officers used to
say, I'd far rather have one willing volunteer than ten pressed
men, than ten that don't really want to be there. If you're running
a project or doing anything in the workplace, you'd far rather
people whose hearts are in it, who want it to succeed to be
there working in your team, than those that have been told they've
got no choice and they don't really want to be there. No.
This being poured into the mold of the teaching of Christ, all
things become new. 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 17
says this, Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature. Old things are passed away. The
old way of thinking, the old way of viewing things, and all
things have become new. They become conformed to the
mind of Christ. Paul says to the Corinthians,
we have the mind of Christ. We have the mind of Christ. All
things become new. So while there's still the old
man of the flesh with his desires and his sins, there's the new
man of God's Spirit, who obeys from the heart, not from legal
principles, not from the threat of punishment or of the holding
out of rewards, not out of self-righteousness, not to conform to the rules of
mere religious men, No, but from the heart. Look at what Ezekiel
says. Let me read this to you. Ezekiel
chapter 36 and verses 26 and 27. God says this to his people,
a new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put
within you. And I will take away the stony
heart out of your flesh. Have you ever tried pushing a
stone into a Play-Doh shape? It doesn't go. It doesn't fit.
You have to have something that's soft. Soft like Play-Doh. You can push that into a shape.
You can make things that look like cars and other things just
because you can push it in. You can't push a stone in there.
God says, I will give you a new spirit, I will take away the
stony heart out of your flesh, I will give you a heart of flesh,
and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in
my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them. The new man obeys the Spirit
of God. Think about the mould of God's
doctrine that we were just thinking about, into which believers have
been poured, and think about how that moulding transforms
the slaves of sin into the service of God's righteousness. The first
one we said was about knowing our own sinful nature, feeling
it in the heart. Does the fact, if you're a child
of God, and you really have been moulded into God's mould regarding
what you are by nature, does that make you more likely to
sin? Does it make you say, oh well, God's told me what I am,
I'm a sinner, I've got no hope in my flesh, therefore I might
as well just go along with it? No, of course it doesn't. It
does the very opposite. It does the very opposite. The
new man of the Spirit of God looks knowing what he is, feeling
it in his heart, doesn't want to commit more sin. We don't
boast or gloat over our natural depravity, but a heart belief
of the truth, a heart awareness of the truth of what we are by
nature because God has conformed us to it, it keeps us close to
Christ. Knowing what we are, it keeps
us close to Christ. Secondly, a reverence for God's
law felt in the heart. That reverence for God's law
felt in the heart. Doesn't that tend to make us
flee from sin? It doesn't make us think, oh,
it's easy for us to sin. No, it keeps us close to God. It makes us want to flee from
sin. It makes us want to put off the old man with his habits
and his desires and his affections, and put on the new man, which
is created by the Spirit of God. There's an applying of what it
says in Philippians. Just look at Philippians chapter
4. Philippians chapter 4, in verse 8. He said that the peace
of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds
through Christ Jesus. And then in verse 8, finally
brethren, right? Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things
are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are
of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise,
think on these things. Those things which you both learned
and received and heard and seen in me, Do, and the God of peace
shall be with you. You see, there's that test that
we apply, knowing, knowing the holiness of God's nature. We
apply that whatsoever things test of Philippians, for what
we watch, what we read, the things we get into, the places we go,
the associations we cultivate, etc. No, that reshaping doesn't
make us more likely to sin, the very opposite, the very opposite.
Thirdly, a heart belief of what it cost to purchase our justification. If you know in your heart something
of what it cost, what it cost for God to save his people from
their sins, to save them, if you know something of that, does
that make you want to sin? Of course not. Does that, does Does looking at that, is it inclined
to make you more generous-spirited or more hard-hearted in your
nature? Of course it makes you more generous-spirited. How shall we not be generous-spirited
when we look at the One who gave all that we might have eternal
life? No. Religious folks are ignorant
of this. As Paul says of the Jews, the
religious folks of his day, Romans 10, 3 and 4, they, these religious
folks, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about
to establish their own righteousness, that's all they've got any interest
in, they haven't submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believes. And looking at that, we see what
it cost. What it cost to save our souls,
to justify us before God, does that make you more likely to
sin or more likely to flee from sin? The kingdom of God, fourthly,
established in the heart, in the power of God. This is the
righteous nature of God in part. He imputes the righteousness
of Christ to his people. He counts us righteous. We are
made the righteousness of God in him. But he also puts in with
his spirit of the new man a righteous nature that is imparted to the
believers. And the result is verse 18. Being then made free from sin,
He became the servants of righteousness. He became molded to that new
shape. Of course we still sin in the
flesh. We always will. Until we die,
until we put off this mortal form, we sin. We are by nature
sin. As Paul said, the more mature
he grew in the faith, the best he could say of himself was,
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am
chief. That's the testimony of all who
are truly Christ, the utter depravity of our nature. We don't allow
sin to reign so that grace might abound to cover it. Shall we
sin that grace may abound? No, God forbid, of course not. This is molding the believer
to the shape of gospel grace, and it's in fulfillment of that
new covenant promise we heard in Jeremiah a few weeks ago.
Jeremiah 31 and verse 33. He said, this is a new covenant
I will make with my people, not like the one I made with their
fathers, but this is it. I will put my law in their inward parts
and write it in their hearts and I will be their God and they
shall be my people.