Transcription
Let me, uh, focus your attention on Romans chapter seven. I want to talk this morning about Romans chapter seven. We believe the Bible is infallible, inerrant. It's a God-made book, not a man-made book, and that all of its parts are important. Obviously, it's our highest rule for faith and practice. And yet, we know that there are some sections of the Bible, some portions of the Bible, that are just absolutely foundational to our understanding of the rest of the Bible. And Romans 7, I think, is one of those chapters that if we don't understand what's going on here, we'll misread the entire Bible.
Martin Luther said one of the most important things, if not the most important thing, for interpreters of the Bible to grasp is this remarkable, beautiful, and yet important distinction between the law and the gospel. And there may be no better place in all the Bible to see this distinction than in Romans 7. And verse, I'm going to read verses 7 through 25 and then chapter 8, verses 1 through 4. At first, it may seem kind of, um, ethereal that this is an important distinction between law and gospel. But if we don't get this right, we will treat the Bible, like I said the other day, as a divine self-help manual. We will read the Bible moralistically. We'll treat it like a divine fortune cookie from above, and will completely miss Jesus. That's what happened to the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24. They, they knew the stories, but they missed the story. And, uh, they read the Bible and knew the Bible well and completely missed Jesus. And so we have to understand this remarkable distinction between the law and the gospel, what the reformers called God's two great words. And we can just generally say that when the Bible speaks about the law, it's speaking about God's word of command. And when it speaks about the gospel, it's speaking about God's word of promise. And if we read promises like their commands, or commands like their promises, we'll get really messed up. Our preaching will be messed up, our living will be messed up, our understanding of who God is and what God wants us to know about himself and how to live and what Jesus accomplished will be messed up. So this is an absolutely crucial distinction, I think. Um, so I want to read Romans 7 beginning in verse 7.
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Down through chapter 8, verse 4. "What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.' But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it, it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Verse 13: Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. Very important sentence there. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law, waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So that I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. There is chapter 8, verse 1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."
And may God add his rich blessing to this difficult and yet crucial portion of his word. When God saved me at 21 years old, I started to read the Bible. And, um, there's a lot in the Bible for a young Christian that's really tough to understand. I grew up in a Christian home, and I grew up going to Christian schools. But I, I started reading the Bible seriously for myself at 21, and there was so much that just boggled my mind and had me scratching my head and had me asking my parents and other people, "What in the world does this mean?" But when I got to Romans chapter 7, I understood it intuitively. In fact, I camped in Romans 7 for a long time because I said, "This, I get." I mean, this coming out of the raucous lifestyle that I had been living, and God then raising me from death to life and saving me from my sin and setting me in a new direction. This made sense to me. I found myself crying out with the Apostle Paul, "The things I don't want to do, those are the things that I still do. And the things that I do are the things that I don't want to do. Oh, who will rescue me from this body of death? Wretched man that I am!" I mean, I, I wrongly assumed that when God saved me, things would get easier. Okay, life would get easier. Uh, now that I was a Christian, I wouldn't have to deal with all of the garbage that I was dealing with before, and life would get smoother and better. And I realized, actually, that life got much, much harder after God saved me because now, for the first time, I was aware of my sin. I was aware of my imperfections and my shortcomings, and that created an internal struggle with me that I had not experienced as a dead sinner. So this chapter means a lot to me personally, but I think it means it should mean a lot to us theologically. In the sense that, as I said a minute ago, if we don't understand what's going on here and this remarkable distinction between the law and the gospel, we're going to misread the entire Bible. I'll give you an example. We'll go back to, um, you know, those difficult Old Testament books, you know, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, those portions of the Old Testament that give us a detailed description of the law. And we'll walk away from those portions and say, "We want to apply the Bible here." And so maybe we'll come up with a diet plan that rightly reflects the dietary laws of the Old Testament. Okay? In other words, we read the law as if it's gospel, and we make a huge mistake. And oftentimes, we read gospel as if it's law. We wouldn't go into a bookstore, for instance, and go to the poetry section if we're looking. Put this way, if we're looking for an historical account on Abraham Lincoln, we would go to the history section. We wouldn't go to the poetry section. If we pick up a book of poetry and we read it as if it is history or science, we're going to completely misunderstand the poem. Or if we pick up a book of history or science or a biography and read it as if it is poetry, we're going to completely misunderstand the book. There are various genres in which we have to understand what's actually going on. And the genre of law and the genre of gospel are two different things. Both are good, but we have to understand this distinction, uh, if we're going to read the Bible rightly, if we're going to preach the Bible rightly. So I want to do two things this morning. Just simply ask two questions. What does the law do? Because I think Paul makes that very clear here in verses 7 through 24. And then I want to ask, what does the gospel do? Which Paul makes clear here in verse 25 and then in chapter 8, verses 1 through 4. So, what does the law do? And remember, when I say law, gospel, here is, we can nuance this in a thousand different ways. That's not my intention here this morning. But, um, we got to understand these. This is the genre of command and the genre of promise. Both are good because both come from God, but they do different things. So, what does the law do? Well, I mean, Paul begins this section, verse 7, by saying that the law is good. The law is not bad. The law is a good thing. It comes from God. It's a perfect reflection of God's character. It shows us who God is. Therefore, it is good. If God is good, his law is good. And then in verses 7 through 14, this section, he makes it clear that it was God's perfect law that helped him see his sin. And in that way, he's saying the law is really like a mirror. I mean, it shows us who we really are and what we really need. So the problem, according to Paul here, is not God's law. The problem is us. That's the issue. He wants to make it clear that God's law is not the problem. He's the problem. God's law is good. And if it was not for God's law, he would not have even known that he was a sinner. And he says in verses 8 and 9 that before he knew God's law, he thought he was good. Now, you got to think here about the Apostle Paul. Okay? This guy is super saint. All right? I mean, super saiyan. We, you know, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, or God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, Paul. Okay? I mean, that's kind of the way we think it. You know, then C.S. Lewis. It should go God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul, Billy Graham, then C.S. Lewis. But, you know, you get the point. Um, here's super saint Paul. Okay? I mean, this guy has done more for the cause of the gospel than anyone in the Bible save Jesus. And this guy has really done a remarkable job at serving Christ. Before God saved him, he was meticulous about keeping God's law. A Pharisee of Pharisees, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. I mean, this guy was the man when it came to religion. Absolutely. In fact, it was his zeal for God. It was his zeal for God that prompted him to persecute Christians because he thought they were heretics. So he was persecuting Christians not because he hated God, he was persecuting Christians because he thought he was doing God a favor. Remarkably zealous, kept the rules very, very well. A rule keeper to the core. And therefore, he says in verses 8 and 9 that before he knew God's law, he thought he was good. He thought he was pulling it off. He thought he was making it. But all of that, he says, came to a screeching halt under the light of God's perfect law. The law of God, he says, crushed him. In fact, he uses even stronger language here. He says it killed him. I thought I was doing pretty well. I thought I was a pretty good guy. I thought I was making it until God's law showed up and crushed me and killed me. When the holiness and the righteousness of God's perfect law shine down deep into my dark heart, I realized that I wasn't nearly as good as I thought I was, and I was in trouble. He's not saying this is sometimes confusing in verse 8 here. He's not saying that apart from the law, sin doesn't exist. See what he says? "But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead." That's often misunderstood. He's not saying that apart from the law, sin doesn't exist. What he's saying in context here is that apart from the law, we are blind to sin. That it's the law of God that reveals sin. It shows us that we're not making it as well as we think we are. Okay? This is very important. So, um, the culprit here, according to Paul, is not the law. The law made him aware of his sin, but the law of God itself is not sin. Okay?
And then in verses 15 to 23, he describes this ongoing internal struggle of knowing what God requires. Now, this is what resonated with me so much as a young Christian. He talks about this ongoing internal struggle of knowing what God requires and being unable to fulfill those requirements. That's what he says. Now, Paul, I know there's been debate, um, throughout church history about whether Paul is speaking here as a regenerated, Christian, justified Christian, or if he's describing himself before he was a Christian. Um, I'll just settle the issue once and for all right here, right now. He was a Christian. Okay? So, let, we'll just get past that. This is Paul struggling as a Christian. We know that existentially because we have the same struggle, and we're Christians. But we also know when he goes on and says, "The thing that I want to do, I don't do." Non-Christian people don't want that. That's what God does when he saves us. He, he awakens our affections and gives us a new wanter. We don't want God. Before God saves us, God comes to us, and the hound of heaven tracks us down and magnificently defeats us and regenerates us and then gives us new affections and new desires. And this is what Paul is struggling with. I have these new desires to do what God wants me to do. I've, I've been, oh, my affections have been awakened to do God's will, but I am a weak man and can't pull it off. That's what he's saying here. And so he just, he, he's wrestling. He describes this. I thought I was good. God's law came and showed me that I was a lot worse off than I thought I was. Um, and I'm, I'm now, I'm aware of what I need to do, and I want to do what I need to do, but I can't pull it off. I can't do it. And he basically says, "I am in big trouble." And he ends in verse 24 by simply saying, "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" Um, there's a common, uh, misunderstanding in the church today that while the law of God, and no Protestant, okay, would say that keeping God's law justifies us, okay? But there's this common misunderstanding in the church today that while the law cannot save us, it does have the power to grow us. Paul's saying it doesn't. It has the power to reveal sin, but it doesn't have the power to remove sin. The law shows us what a sanctified life looks like, but it doesn't give me the power to sanctify. The law shows me what godliness looks like, but it can't make me godly. That's the job for some, something else that we're going to see in a minute.
Now, if you don't get this right, you will exacerbate your children. Okay? I got three kids, so I'm fully aware of, I'm a master at exacerbating my children, okay? Because I make the, I, because I make the mistake of believing that the law has the power to change people. And so I make a huge mistake of thinking that if I simply lay down the law, hearts will change. Now, laying down the law is necessary in home, in society, because, as the reformers said, they used, they called that the civil use of the law, that it keeps sin at bay. Okay? So that's important. If we want some measure of order in our home, there have to be rules and regulations. That's fine. This isn't anti-rule or anti-law. There have to be rules and regulations. But that's a far different thing from saying that we believe those rules and regulations have the power to affect internal change in the heart. It doesn't. My wife called me yesterday and told me that she gave a book by my friend Elise Fitzpatrick called "Give Them Grace." If you are a parent and you want to know how the gospel should shape the way you raise your kids, seriously, buy Elise Fitzpatrick's book, "Give Them Grace." It is mind-blowing. It's unbelievable. It's the best parenting book that has ever been written, okay? Um, that's no exaggeration in my humble opinion. Um, uh, but my wife calls me yesterday and says, "I gave Elise's book to a guy yesterday who is a coach and a remarkably strict coach." And, um, as we were talking about just parenting and coaching and whatnot, she said this guy said, "Too much grace produces bad fruit." And my wife said, she said, started laughing. I was like, "I'm proud of you. You should laugh at that garbage." But she, she starts la, literally, she's a great theologian. She starts laughing. She says, "I, I got something for you." And she goes to her car and gets Elise's book that Elise signed to Kim. And she said, "Here, it's yours. Take it. Read this and then let's chat." You know, or better yet, go talk to my husband. I'm nicer than he is, so you might want to come back and chat with me. But, but that's the fear. If we don't, if we don't understand the proper, see how practical this is? If we don't understand the function of the law, and we come to believe that the law has the power to change us, think about how that's going to affect your preaching. Okay? If you want to see your people change, you're just going to lay it on thick and lay down the law and think you've done your job. Or as a parent, all you need to do is give rules and regulations and create a structure in your home that enforces those rules and regulations. And while that is necessary to maintain order, it cannot change the hearts of your children. That's the job of something bigger, better, greater that we'll see here, uh, in a minute. I mean, nowhere in the Bible, nowhere in the Bible does it say that the law can engender what it commands. The law commands, and those commands are good, but there is no place in the Bible that says that law can produce change and desire. That's what Paul's saying here. I mean, if the case is closed, he's saying it can't. It doesn't have the power to do it. That's not even its function. The function of God's moral commands is to show us who God is. We're going to see here in a second what else it does, but to show us who God is and to show us how desperately we need his grace. But it does not affect change. It can't. Um, so, as I said, the law shows us what godliness is, but it cannot make us godly. Paul is saying here that the law cannot change me. I need something, someone else to produce the kind of change that I long for.
So, in light of the law's inability to change, Paul just wails in verse 24, "Wretched man that I am." "Wretched man that I am" precedes a reception of grace. I mean, I, I was teaching the women in our church this last week, and I said, "Many of you, I know, and your good moms, and your good wives, and your good grandparents, some of you. And, you know, you've been faithful Christians for a long, long time. But until you can honestly say with the Apostle Paul, super saint Paul, Paul probably did more than he was, probably did more and was better and more spiritually mature than anybody in this room. And Paul was able to say in light of comparing himself to God's holy law, 'Oh, wretched man that I am.' If you cannot say down deep in your heart, 'Oh, wretched man that I am,' you will always be suspicious of grace. Always, always. You will operate with a 'yes, grace, but' posture. Always. We might say, okay, yeah, 'Oh, wretched man that I am.' And we might say, because we're decent theologians, we might say, 'We know the Bible says I'm a sinner. I know I'm a sinner. I know I'm bad.' That's what the Bible tells me. But do you believe it? I mean, seriously, do you believe it? When I, you know, when I hear people, well, I'll get into this in a minute. But we will always be suspicious of grace until we realize our desperate need for it. Desperate people love grace. Deceived people fear it. And what I mean by deceived people, I mean those people who basically, who think that they're basically making it. And most people inside the church, because they've, for the most part, been pretty good, at least in front of us, to keep the rules and to keep the regulations, they think they're doing pretty good. And unless we understand the crushing blow of God's law, we'll never be ready for the gospel. We'll never revel in grace. We'll be suspicious of it because we'll think, you know what, we're doing pretty good. We're doing okay. I mean, I know that everything I do is tainted by sin, I get that. But come on, I'm better than him. You know, it's the Pharisee, as I mentioned the other day, it's the Pharisee praying in the temple and looking over at the tax collector and saying, 'Thank God I'm not like him.' We do that a lot inside the church. Sometimes we're conscious of it, sometimes we're not conscious of it. But as long as that remains our posture, the gospel will remain, [Music] black and white. It will remain a theological category. It will never become your functional lifeline, and therefore, it will never set you free every day. So the law crushes us, shows us the perfect righteousness of God, it shows us God's perfect standards, it shows us, it shined its bright light into our hearts and shows us just how desperately we need God's daily distributions of grace.
Well, what does the gospel then do? If that's what the law does, if that's the function, if that's the role of the law, what does the gospel do? Well, here, after wrestling with his own inability to keep God's commands, Paul finds hope in the one who came to do for him what he could never do for himself. So what does he say? Verse 25, first part of verse 25, right after he says, "Wretched man that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?" He says in verse 25, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." I mean, that's just, there is no "thanks be to God for Jesus Christ our Lord" that runs down deep in your heart without first, "wretched man that I am." It doesn't happen. You can give lip service of thanksgiving to God for Jesus Christ our Lord, but if "wretched man that I am" does not precede, "thanks be to God for Jesus Christ our Lord," it will never be there. There won't be real, genuine thanksgiving, heartfelt, tear-inducing thanksgiving. And so Paul breaks out into loud praise here because he knows this is what he knows. Okay? This is where he finds relief. He doesn't find relief by looking in and saying, "I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm pulling it off." When he looks in, he realizes, "I am cosmically screwed up, and there's nothing I can do to rescue myself. There's nothing I can do to justify myself, and there's nothing I can do to sanctify myself. I'm in big trouble." And so where does he find help and relief? Not by looking in, but by looking up and out. We live in a very subjective world, a very subjective culture, and spirituality is in vogue. And by spirituality, most people mean looking inside. The more I look inside for peace, the less I find. The more I look outside for peace, the more I find. Okay? This isn't about you. You are screwed up. Okay? I'm just going to tell you, you're screwed up. And so am I. And that's why Jack Miller has famously said, "Cheer up, you're a lot worse off than you think you are." But God's grace is far greater than you could have ever hoped for or imagined. That's our hope. So Paul finds this. He just breaks out into loud praise here because he knows, in fact, he's remarkably grateful for the fact that the determining factor in his relationship to God is not his obedience, because he's failing miserably at that, but Christ's obedience for him. That's what makes him say, "Thanks be to God." I mean, he finds great doxological freedom knowing that his standing with God is not based on his struggle for Jesus, because he's failing miserably at that, but Jesus' struggle for him. And he's remarkably grateful for the fact that God doesn't relate to us based on our feats for Jesus, but Jesus' feats for us. So, as I said the other day, the gospel is good news. Okay? The gospel is good news precisely because our relationship to God does not depend on our obedience, our zeal, our relationship, and our generosity, but Christ's. That's why it's good news. It's no longer about you. It is finished. It's good news. My friend Mike Horton, I said this in class, I think yesterday, in Tony's class, but maybe it was somewhere else, I don't remember, but it was somewhere. I said this, maybe it was to God. But, um, my friend Mike Horton says, "The finished work of Christ is the breaking open of the piñata, and the Christian life is spent picking up the candy." It's not about you or me. It's finished.
So, apart from the gospel, the law crushes. The law tells us what to do. The gospel tells us what God has done. The law tells us what God expects of us. The gospel tells us what God has done for us because we could not meet his expectations. The gospel is an announcement that God in Christ has come to do for sinners what sinners could never do for themselves. Which is why I say Christians are not saved apart from the law. We are saved in Christ, who perfectly kept the law on our behalf. That's what theologians mean when they refer to Christ's act of obedience. He came to fulfill the law on our behalf so that when he died, his righteousness would be imputed to us. There is no righteousness to impute if Christ did not come to fulfill the law. And he says, "I didn't come to abolish the law." I didn't say the law was way one of getting saved, and that failed. I blew it. I should have thought ahead. So the gospel is now way two of getting saved. That's never. There's law, gospel throughout the Bible. Gospel shows up in Genesis chapter 3, okay? I mean, "the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent." And the rest of the Bible is the unveiling of God's rescue plan, how that's gonna happen. Okay? So, um, the law tells us what God expects of us, and the gospel tells us what God has done for us because we couldn't meet his expectations. I love the line by John Bunyan: "Run, John, run! The law demands, but gives me neither feet nor hands. Better news the gospel brings, it bids me fly, gives me wings." That's poetry, man. Okay? I mean, this is a Baptist place, and you guys are better than Presbyterians. Come on. That's an amen. Okay? My Presbyterian church is not dead, by the way. Okay?
I mean, what a line. "Run, John, run! The law demands, but gives me neither feet nor hands. Better news the gospel brings, it bids me fly, gives me wings." Um, thank you, Chief Man. Now, let me clarify this, okay? This is important. I'll be done in, uh, 30 minutes. So just hang on. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Let me clarify this, okay? Because it's important to say that the law has no power to change us. This is very important. This is where charges of antinomianism happen. To say that the law has no power to change us does not reduce its ongoing role in our lives. We just have to understand the precise role that it plays for us. So, what is that role? Luther, my great hero, Martin Luther, I think said it best when he said, "The law is a divinely sent Hercules to attack and kill the monster of self-righteousness." Okay, what a great line. That the law is a divinely sent Hercules to attack and kill the monster of self-righteousness. In other words, the law exists to crush any ongoing sense that we can get her done. And that's, that's where we drift every day. Okay? I mean, every single day, our hearts are prone to wander. "Lord, we feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Take my heart, oh, take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above." Our hearts are prone to wander into self-salvation projects every day. We can say, "Jesus is our savior, Jesus is our Lord, he's our King, he's our Master." But the fact of the matter is, we look to a thousand things smaller than Jesus every single day to provide us with the, you know, the security and the meaning and the purpose and the joy and the happiness that we so long for. And so Luther says the law is there to keep us in check and to remind us just how desperately we need grace every day. It's the divinely sent Hercules to come. It's just, it's just as important for the Christian as it is for the non-Christian. It shows the non-Christian that he needs Jesus. And guess what it does for the Christian? It shows us that we need Jesus. Okay? The gospel doesn't just get you in, and then you move on to something different. Okay? It's, it, not, it not only ignites the Christian life, but it fuels the Christian life after you're saved. It's just as important after you become a Christian as it is before. And for so long, the churches believed that the gospel is for what people outside the church need, and they fail to understand that it's what people inside the church need as well. And we cut ourselves off from the power source. And so we're, we are like Paul says, "We are saved by grace, but we're perfecting ourselves by the flesh." Okay? That's what happens inside most, most churches. So the law exists to crush any sense that we are making it, regardless of how much progress I think I've made since I first became a Christian. When God's perfect law becomes the standard for me, and not how much I've improved over the years, I realize that I'm a lot worse than I fancy myself to be because I'm evaluating my progress based on where I was and where I now am. And if I do that, I'm doing pretty good. I'm not doing all that garbage that I was doing when I was 21. So in light of that, I'm doing pretty good. I needed Jesus a lot back then, and now I just need him a little. Right now. That's what happens. Well, the law exists to show us, no, you need, you needed Jesus a lot back then, and you need Jesus a lot right now. And when you deceive yourself into thinking that you don't, the law is there to show you that you do. Um, whatever I think my greatest vice is, God's law shows me that my situation is much greater. Okay? So if I say my greatest vice is, I'm impatient with my wife. Okay? That sounds remarkably noble. Just wow, really? That's amazing. I got bad news for you. Your greatest vice is way worse than that. Okay? It's idolatry. Way worse than that. You say, "Well, my greatest vice is, I, sometimes I, I lust." Really? It's amazing. You're doing so much better than I am. I'll tell you what, my greatest vice is adultery. That's what Sermon on the Mount does. Yeah. My, my greatest, I just, I get angry sometimes. Really? That's amazing. You're so spiritual. Okay? That's your greatest vice? No. Hello. The law says your greatest vice is that you are a murderer. Bad news. Um, I mean, the law shows us that our best is never good enough. It smashes our rose-colored glasses view of ourselves. No matter how decent I think I'm becoming, when I'm graciously confronted by God's law, I can't help but cry out, "Wretched man that I am." Okay? So the law constantly reminds us how dependent we are on the gospel.
Now, this is the question that people ask. Okay, wait a second. If you cast the law, and I don't. Paul does. Okay? So take it up with him. If you cast the law in those categories, then this is what parents and teachers and preachers, and this is what they ask, understandably. If God accepts me unconditionally, so that whether I succeed or fail, my acceptance with God is not in jeopardy, then what incentive do I have for being good? And more importantly, what incentive do I have for being good? How do I get others to be good? I mean, you've just taken the teeth out of what I use to get people to do good. Charles Spurgeon comes to our aid here. Listen to what he says: "When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin. But when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could have ever rebelled against the one who loved me so and sought my good." Let me give you just a silly example, okay? When I know that Kim will love me just the same when I'm being a jerk as when I'm being nice, what does that do to me? Does it make me want to be more of a jerk? Does it make you want to be more of a jerk? Does unconditional love make you want to do worse? When I know that my wife will love me just the same when I'm having a good day and being sweet to her, and having a bad day and not being sweet to her, and I know she does, her love for me doesn't alter. It makes me want to be sweeter. So it's a, it's a mistake to think we need fear and guilt to get people to do good. It doesn't work. You know that if you're a parent of teenagers, you know that, okay? Like me. Paul knew that the motivation to obey comes from being moved by the completed work of Jesus for us. The fuel to do good flows from what's already been done. Now, I know that some Christians need to be shaken out of their complacency. But you don't do it by giving them law. You do it by giving them gospel. Okay? The impulsion to do good comes only out of this undomestic declaration that everything has already been done. So what are you going to do now that you don't have to do anything? Okay? That's the issue. The secret of the gospel is that we perform better as we grow to understand that our relationship with God is based on Christ's performance for us and not our performance for him.
So let me just conclude with this. I'm sorry I've gone long. This is important stuff. So, and I'm leaving, and I won't be back for a while. So, and someone's calling me right now and probably telling me to stop. So let me see if this is President Aiken. No. Okay, it's my wife. She probably is telling me to stop. And she's not even here. She's like, "I know it's five after eleven. You're supposed to be done. Answer your phone." Okay, listen. I'll close with this. I'm realizing that the sin, this is it. It's confession time for me. Okay? I'm realizing that the sin I need removed daily is my narcissistic understanding of spiritual progress. This is what I mean. I think we've, I think for the last 25, 30 years, we've gotten it wrong when it comes to defining what spiritual progress looks like. It's mostly behavioral, almost exclusively behavioral. Um, we define progress in terms of, uh, well, we certainly don't define it in terms of Paul, for instance, coming to the end of his life and saying, "I'm the worst guy I know." That is spiritual progress. We don't define it that way. So I'm, I'm coming to realize that, I mean, my narcissistic understanding of spiritual progress is a big problem for me. I think too much about how I'm doing, if I'm growing, whether I'm doing it right or not. I spend way too much time thinking about me and what I need to do, and far too little time thinking about Jesus and what he's already done. And the more I focus on my need to get better, the worse I get. I become neurotic, self-absorbed preoccupation with my performance over Christ's performance for me makes me increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective. When God, when Jesus called Peter out of the boat to join him on the water, Peter was doing just fine walking on water as long as he fixed his eyes on Christ. And the moment he looked down to evaluate his performance, he started to sink. Okay? We spend most of our lives, we, the Christian life, we think we call it pursuit of holiness, we call it sanctification. We define it how we want to define it. Okay? We can use big Bible words and theological words to define it. The fact of the matter is, you and I spend way too much time thinking about ourselves, and we're not getting any better. Your behavior might be getting moderately better, but your heart's getting worse, and so is mine. Because my struggle isn't believing that my good behavior can earn God's favor. My struggle is believing that my good behavior can keep God's favor. And so it becomes all about me. Let me close with this. Gerhard Ford, who is a Lutheran theologian, passed away a number of years ago, wrote a number of excellent books. And he closes one of his chapters on sanctification with this. He was an old man by this point, okay? He said, "Am I making progress? If I'm really honest, it seems to me that the question is odd, even a little ridiculous. As I get older and death draws nearer, I don't seem to be getting better. I get a little more impatient, a little more anxious about having perhaps missed what this life has to offer, a little more set in my ways, and a little more self-righteous about those whose ways are different. Am I making progress? Well, maybe it seems as though I sin less, but that may only be because I'm getting tired. It's just too hard to keep indulging the lusts of youth. Is that sanctification? I wouldn't think so. But can it be, and this is the key, can it be perhaps that it is precisely the unconditional gift of grace that helps me to see and admit all of that? Maybe that's what getting better is. The grace of God leads us to see the truth about ourselves and to gain a certain lucidity, a certain humor, a certain down-to-earthness." You know what he's saying? Tell exactly what he's saying. This will set you free if you get this. When we stop narcissistically focusing on our need to get better, that is what it means to get better. When we stop obsessing over our need to improve according to the Bible, that is what it means to improve. How do you define improvement? How do you define progress? Paul defined it as saying, "Wretched man that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?" And later on, as he's about to die, "I'm the worst guy I know." That is spiritual progress. We don't define it that way. So I'm, I'm coming to realize that, I mean, my narcissistic understanding of spiritual progress is a big problem for me. I think too much about how I'm doing, if I'm growing, whether I'm doing it right or not. I spend way too much time thinking about me and what I need to do, and far too little time thinking about Jesus and what he's already done. And the more I focus on my need to get better, the worse I get. I become neurotic, self-absorbed preoccupation with my performance over Christ's performance for me makes me increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective. When God, when Jesus called Peter out of the boat to join him on the water, Peter was doing just fine walking on water as long as he fixed his eyes on Christ. And the moment he looked down to evaluate his performance, he started to sink. Okay? We spend most of our lives, we, the Christian life, we think we call it pursuit of holiness, we call it sanctification. We define it how we want to define it. Okay? We can use big Bible words and theological words to define it. The fact of the matter is, you and I spend way too much time thinking about ourselves, and we're not getting any better. Your behavior might be getting moderately better, but your heart's getting worse, and so is mine. Because my struggle isn't believing that my good behavior can earn God's favor. My struggle is believing that my good behavior can keep God's favor. And so it becomes all about me. Let me close with this. Gerhard Ford, who is a Lutheran theologian, passed away a number of years ago, wrote a number of excellent books. And he closes one of his chapters on sanctification with this. He was an old man by this point, okay? He said, "Am I making progress? If I'm really honest, it seems to me that the question is odd, even a little ridiculous. As I get older and death draws nearer, I don't seem to be getting better. I get a little more impatient, a little more anxious about having perhaps missed what this life has to offer, a little more set in my ways, and a little more self-righteous about those whose ways are different. Am I making progress? Well, maybe it seems as though I sin less, but that may only be because I'm getting tired. It's just too hard to keep indulging the lusts of youth. Is that sanctification? I wouldn't think so. But can it be, and this is the key, can it be perhaps that it is precisely the unconditional gift of grace that helps me to see and admit all of that? Maybe that's what getting better is. The grace of God leads us to see the truth about ourselves and to gain a certain lucidity, a certain humor, a certain down-to-earthness." You know what he's saying? Tell exactly what he's saying. This will set you free if you get this. When we stop narcissistically focusing on our need to get better, that is what it means to get better. When we stop obsessing over our need to improve according to the Bible, that is what it means to improve. How do you define improvement? How do you define progress? Paul defined it as saying, "Wretched man that I am, who will rescue me from this body of death?" And later on, as he's about to die, "I'm the worst guy I know." That is spiritual progress. Less of you, more of him, is spiritual progress. When you become smaller and he becomes greater, that's spiritual progress. When you look at him more than you look at you, that's spiritual progress. When you stop narcissistically obsessing over your need to get better, that is what it means to get better. And so the law shows you your need. The gospel shows you how Christ fulfilled that need. It's late. I gotta go. I love you guys. I'll come back in January. I'm grateful to be here. Um, love this place, and we'll continue to pray for it. Let's pray together.