I don't understand myself at all.
For I really want to do what is
right, but I can't.
I do what I don't want to, what
I hate.
I know perfectly well that what I am
doing is wrong.
And my bad conscience proves that I agree
with these laws I am breaking.
But I can't help myself because I'm no
longer doing it.
It is sin inside me that is stronger
than I am that makes me do these
evil things.
I know I am rotten through and through,
so far as my old sinful nature is
concerned.
No matter which way I turn, I can't
make myself do right.
I want to, but I can't.
When I want to do good, I don't,
and when I try not to do wrong,
I do it anyway.
Now, if I am doing what I don't
want to, it is plain where the trouble
is.
Sin still has me in its evil grasp.
It seems to be a fact of life
that when I want to do what is
right, I inevitably do what is wrong.
I love to do God's will, so far
as my new nature is concerned.
But there is something else deep within me
in my lower nature that is at war
with my mind and wins the fight and
makes me a slave to the sin that
is still within me.
In my mind I want to be God's
willing servant, but instead I find myself still
enslaved to sin.
So you see how it is.
My new life tells me to do right,
but the old nature that is still inside
me loves to sin.
Oh, what a terrible predicament I am in.
Who will free me from my slavery to
this deadly lower nature?
Thank God.
It has been done by Jesus Christ our
Lord.
He has set me free.
So there is now no condemnation awaiting those
who belong to Christ Jesus for the power
of the life-giving Spirit, and this power
is mine through Christ Jesus, has freed me
from the vicious circle of sin and death.
Verse 33.
Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen
for His own?
Will God?
No, He is the One who has forgiven
us and given us rights standing with Himself.
Who then will condemn us?
Will Christ?
No, for He is the One who died
for us and came back to life again
for us and is sitting at the place
of highest honor next to God, pleading for
us there in heaven.
Who then can ever keep Christ's love from
us?
When we have trouble or calamity, when we
are hunted down or destroyed, is it because
He doesn't love us anymore?
And if we are hungry or penniless or
in danger or threatened with death, has God
deserted us?
Verse 38.
For I am convinced that nothing can ever
separate us from His love.
Death can't and life can't, the angels won't
and all the powers of hell itself cannot
keep God's love away.
Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow
or where we are high above the sky
or in the deepest ocean, nothing will ever
be able to separate us from the love
of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ
when He died for us.
You may care to have your Bibles open
at Paul's epistle to the Romans.
And the 8th chapter.
I want to bring to you at least
a couple of messages during this Sunday and
the following Sunday morning, which will be complementary
to meditations that I shared with you on
the problem of guilt.
I made, and perhaps you'll allow me a
moment or two just to set the context
for those who were not present a couple
of Sundays ago.
I made the observation from this pulpit that
the concern of the gospel is not primarily
to create guilt within the heart of the
hearer.
That of course is one of the objectives,
but it is not the finishing post.
It may be a milestone along the way,
for you cannot trust Jesus as Lord and
Master until you're sorry for your sin.
The objective of gospel proclamation is not so
to measure on human inadequacy that one always
feels absolutely disqualified to live out life on
this earth.
Rather it is to point one from guilt
to forgiveness.
From the inadequacy within the human breast to
the all-sufficiency that there is in Jesus
Christ.
Now I cited two case histories, if you
like, to demonstrate this point during those last
two Sunday mornings.
We looked into the experience of David and
also that of Peter.
In many ways they were very similar indeed.
Both these remarkable men, remarkable in their own
right, had let the Lord down.
And they had to be confronted with the
enormity of their sinfulness.
Do you remember how we get something of
an insight into David's psychological state, his guilt
-ridden condition in Psalm 32 and 38 and
also 51?
Do you recall how God sent Nathan, his
spokesman, his pastor, to David and how this
man was dealt with in a very wonderful
way?
To the extent that David, having come out
of his period of spiritual despondency, having known
the great balm of the love of God
cleansing him from his sin, is able to
say, Psalm 32, Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord
imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there
is no guile.
Now similarly Peter, he has to be accosted
by that denial, that terrible betrayal of all
his convictions when he disassociated himself from the
Christ of God.
Do you remember how Jesus makes an appointment
with Peter on the seashores of Galilee?
This guilt-sodden man is encountered by the
Lord Jesus.
This man who had more darkness in his
heart at the night of the betrayal, the
night of the denial, than there was in
the natural atmosphere.
Jesus deals with Peter and he is forgiven.
And when he comes to write his letters,
those two mighty epistles tucked away at the
end of the New Testament, Peter mages on
the fact of the forgiveness of the great
shepherd of the sheep, the one who brought
Peter, who ensured Peter that he was still
in the fold.
So then, here were these two case histories
of men, absolutely guilt-ridden, but God did
not leave them there.
It is never, I repeat, and I will
continue to repeat, it is never God's purpose
to leave men in a guilty condition, in
a state of wondering whether or not they
are forgiven or reconciled to Him.
What then is the major objective of the
Gospel for the glory of God?
I say it is succinctly put, it is
well summarized, it is majestically expressed in Romans
chapter 8 and verse 1.
If you haven't these words written across your
memory and you claim to be a Christian,
then shame on you.
This is one of the pinnacles of God's
revelation of saving grace to the sinner.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them
which are in Christ Jesus.
That's the goal of the Gospel.
That's the target to which Gospel preaching is
moving.
For a man having been guilty, having recognized
the enormity of his sin, having looked to
his past and being disgusted by it, to
have encountered Jesus Christ, the forgiveness that He
offers, and to move into that glorious, delightful,
exquisite experience of sins forgiven, well does the
hymn writer enjoin us to sing about a
full salvation.
And it seems to me it's more and
more necessary, not just for us to work
it in, but to work it out in
terms of our lifestyle, in terms of our
mental attitudes, in terms of wholesome personalities.
There is therefore now no condemnation.
I care not if you listen to nothing
else that I have to share this morning.
If you forget everything else that I offer
for the attention of other people, provided you
go away with this one fact burning in
your heart, that in Christ Jesus, having been
forgiven, you can then enter into the glorious
state of no condemnation.
There is not one sin in your life,
there is not one misdemeanor, there is not
one unhealthy thing in which you engaged that
God, the eternal God, now remembers.
If it be the case that you have
trusted Jesus as Lord, no condemnation.
Listen to Wesley as he puts it, no
condemnation now I dread.
Jesus and all in him is mine, alive
in him my living head, and clothed in
righteousness divine, bold I approach the eternal throne,
and claim the crown through Christ my own.
My dear friend, I tell you that there
is nothing more vital today than for Christian
people to recognize who they are, what they
have become, what they have received, because they
belong to Jesus Christ.
All things passed away, all things become new,
all things that would haunt, all things that
would create problems, they have been dealt with
by the blood of Jesus Christ, to the
extent that we can forget those things which
are behind, no longer allowing them to plague
us, because we are new in Christ.
Now, all this, I argue, can be concluded
not only from this first verse of Romans
8, but by the chapter that preceded it,
Romans 7.
However you understand the Apostle Paul in this
piece of argumentation, I'm not really concerned.
Whether you think this is biographical, or as
Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones does, that this is
hypothetical, it really does not in any way
interfere with what I am pointing to this
morning for your attention.
Here in the seventh chapter of Romans is
the situation of a man who hates his
past.
Here is the condition of one who feels
absolutely helpless to cope with the demands of
his conscience over against the deficiencies of his
weak base nature.
It's summed up perhaps more clearly than the
words I've just used.
In the 18th verse of Romans 7, I
know that in me that is in my
flesh dwelleth no good thing, for to will
is present with me, but how to perform
that which is good I find not.
And he goes on to talk about this
great problem of always feeling that he can
never cope with the past, he can never
rise to the challenge of the present, and
the future is a forbidding prospect.
He loses himself in a sea of self
-pity, he feels absolutely inadequate, there is the
life that he ought to attain to, and
the life that he's living, and he sees
no possibility of reconciliation, no bridge at all.
And in the 24th verse he cries out
in a soul agony, O wretched man that
I am!
What a predicament I find myself locked into!
What an irresolvable problem!
What can I do?
I know that I'm base.
I have memories that haunt me and I
can't cope with them.
Who can come to my aid?
Dare you send this man to Sigmund Freud?
Dare you send him to the humanists?
They'll say, you're saying it's unreal, you're only
doing what other people have done.
Get rid of your complexes, be blase about
your lifestyle.
They'll stir up his emotions and when they've
settled he'll be in exactly the same condition.
O wretched man that I am!
But thank God this wretched man isn't left
in a morass of despair and despondency.
Like David, like Peter, he's going to be
pointed to someone who can deal with his
problem, even God.
And so hard on the heels of that
terrible cry, O wretched man that I am,
is that tremendous affirmation, I thank God, if
you like, for Jesus Christ the Lord.
Here is my problem, there is the solution.
Here is my dilemma, there is the medicine
that will cope with my problem.
Here is my guilt, there is my antidote.
And so, gathering all of Romans 7 together,
it's brought to its final conclusion in the
first verse of the following chapter.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those
which are in Christ Jesus.
Of myself I cannot cope.
My own endeavors I can't get rid of,
that which is unpleasant.
I will never be able to rise to
what I believe is a nobler way of
life.
Of myself, no.
But in Christ Jesus, yes.
I move from the category of the one
who is condemned to the category of the
one who is renewed, who is made again.
There is therefore now no condemnation.
That word, no, is one of the biggest
in the Bible.
And that sounds absurd.
It's only got two letters to constitute the
word.
But sometimes a two-lettered word in the
Bible has a whole dictionary encased within it.
There is therefore now no condemnation.
Never.
This is an absolute statement.
The man, the woman, who has been incorporated
into the body of Christ, who shares in
the victory of Christ, will never again be
condemned.
No condemnation, not now, not in the past,
nor in the future, because Jesus has died.
That my condemnation shall be extinguished.
Do you remember the thieves on the cross
alongside our blessed Redeemer?
They've been there for some hours.
At the beginning of the Passion, at the
beginning of the awful Crucifixion, they've been mocking
Jesus along with the bystanders.
And then, influenced by the majestic presence of
Jesus, that silent holiness, which had a remarkable
impact on those who were sensitive, one of
the criminals changed his tune.
And we read in Luke 23, verse 39,
these words.
One of the malefactors, one of the criminals,
which were hanged, mocked Jesus, saying, If you
be Christ, save yourself and us.
But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, Do
not fear God.
Seeing thou art in the same condemnation, and
we indeed justly, for we receive the due
reward of our deeds.
But this man, this man here, he's done
nothing amiss.
We are condemned, the whole human race.
Every son, every daughter of Adam is condemned.
They have broken God's law.
But this man has done nothing amiss.
Full marks to the theological precision of that
criminal's grasp of sin and the human condition.
We are condemned, every one of us here.
Condemned because we have broken God's law.
Wretched, miserable, vile.
We may not acknowledge it, but in truth,
that describes us.
Then to whom do you go when you
feel guilty?
To whom do you go when you feel
condemned?
Here's the absurdity of certain principles of modern
psychiatry who accuse, or which accuses the evangelical
church in its gospel of stimulating and accumulating
guilt within the hearts of men and women.
Why did Jesus come into the world to
make us feel guilty?
No!
Jesus came into the world so that we
might, on response to what he has done
for us, know forgiveness.
John chapter 3 makes it so clear.
You can't argue against my assertion, my teaching
this morning.
For God sent not his Son into the
world to condemn the world, but that the
world through him might be saved.
He that believeth on Jesus is not condemned,
but he that believeth not is condemned already
because he hath not believed in the name
of the only begotten Son of God.
Jesus came to create guilt.
No!
Jesus came to neutralize guilt.
Jesus came to lance guilt.
Jesus came to lift us out of the
old nature and to bring by the power
of his indwelling Spirit us into a new
nature.
He came to incorporate us into himself.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those
who are in Christ Jesus.
Oh, my friend, I tell you not for
any dramatic effect God deliver me from theatrical
attempt to preach.
I tell you from the depths of my
heart, I wish I had the vocabulary, the
persuasive ability to plant these concepts in your
mind so that perhaps they will revolutionize your
spiritual walk with Christ.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those
who are in Christ Jesus.
We are incorporated into him if we belong
to him.
I am more part of Jesus Christ than
I am part of any other organization or
if it were possible organism in this world.
For me, he died.
And my past life, those things which I
regret, those experiences that are unwholesome, the times
when I let him down, those things that
merit and brought condemnation of God, they now
no longer exist.
There is therefore now no condemnation.
Now no condemnation.
Not for the past, nor for present sins,
nor even for future sins.
He died for them all.
All my iniquities on him were laid.
He nailed them all to the tree.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe it from the depth of
your being?
When you wake up on Monday, do you
realize that as you wake up, you wake
up as a son of God, as a
daughter of God?
Not for your life to be harassed by
unpleasant thoughts of the past.
Not for you to feel in any way
that there is something that has irrevocably come
between you and God.
You're made one with Jesus.
You're accepted in the Beloved.
You're heirs of Jesus Christ.
Joint heirs with Christ of all the Father's
blessings.
If I had miraculously kept to my notes,
which rarely I seem to manage, I would
by this stage be taking you through Romans
8, which would underpin the point on several
occasions as to the position that is now
yours in Jesus.
Verse 9 tells us that we've received the
Spirit of Christ.
That won't be taken from us.
Verse 14 tells us we're sons of God.
That privilege will never be lifted out of
our grasp.
Verse 17 tells us that we're joint heirs
with Christ.
Verse 21 tells us, rather verse 23 tells
us, that we're moving to a time in
history when we shall know the redemption of
our bodies besides the redemption of our souls.
Verse 28 tells us that in the absolute
purposes of God we have a part.
Verse 31 tells us, and the language here
is majestic, that God has done all that
He possibly can do historically to demonstrate that
we belong to Him.
If God be for us, who can be
against us?
He spared not His own Son, but delivered
Him up for us.
How shall He not with Him also freely
give us all things?
So Paul comes back to the problem that
is a nightmare to the man in Romans
7, verse 34.
Who is he that condemns?
Who has the cheek, who has the audacity
to slide alongside the believer and condemn him?
No one has that right.
No one has that power.
Why not, Paul?
Well, because of Calvary.
It is Christ that died, yea, rather that
is risen again who is even at the
right hand of God, who also makes intercession
for us.
That Christ who took my sin.
That Christ into whose mystical body I have
become part.
I have been inaugurated.
He is by the Father's side, interceding for
me.
So again the apostle says in the 35th
verse, Who shall separate us from the love
of Christ?
Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine?
No condemnation, no separation.
There's nothing in my life that can ever
take from me the blessings I enjoy because
I belong to God through Jesus.
I am convinced that nothing can ever separate
us from His love.
Death can't, life can't, the angels won't, and
all the powers of hell itself cannot keep
God's love away.
Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow,
or where we are, high above the sky,
or in the deepest ocean, nothing will ever
be able to separate us from the love
of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ
when He died for us.
Do you really believe that?
Nothing.
No condemnation.
No separation.
I was reading late into last night, and
I came across a passage by that great
man of God whose name I referred to
earlier, Martin Lloyd-Jones.
And he was saying in a book that
he's written called Spiritual Depression.
I wasn't feeling depressed last night, I just
wanted to find this particular quotation.
He was saying that in all his pastoral
experience, the thing that seems to dog, the
thing that seems to blight the mind of
so many Christians and interfere with their assurance
is their inadequate grasp of what Jesus has
done for them.
Let me sum it up this way, says
the good doctor.
You and I, and to me this is
one of the greatest discoveries of the Christian
life.
I shall never forget what realizing this for
the first time did for me.
You and I must never look at our
past lives.
We must never look at any sin in
our past life in any way except that
which leads us to praise God and to
magnify His grace in Christ toward us.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those
who are in Christ.
What might have robbed Paul of his assurance?
Do you remember he was the man who
if he didn't put the stones in the
hands of those who robbed Stephen of life,
he certainly was an accomplice for the death
of Stephen.
That great preacher whose story is recorded at
the end of Acts chapter 7.
I sometimes wonder how Paul ever coped with
his conscience after that death.
Paul who had been a persecutor of the
church, who had brought terror into the hearts
of Christian womenfolk in Jerusalem, who had their
husbands incarcerated in jail.
Paul who was going to set off for
Damascus to eradicate the city there of any
followers of Jesus.
He now becomes a Christian.
But the great problem for the apostle Paul
is to forget that for which Jesus died
in his past, which if he constantly dotes
upon it will rob him of his effectiveness
in the present and also in the future.
But Paul responding to the magnificent grace of
God, he looks to the past and instead
of allowing it to cripple him, it becomes
a stimulus.
If God can lift me from that, then
how great is the salvation of Christ.
If Jesus could die for my guilt as
an accomplice to the death of Stephen, if
Jesus could die for the fact that I
had been a persecutor and a blasphemer, how
great is his salvation.
And how I can say of a truth,
and all can benefit from it because they
know the life of the man who pens
the words, there is therefore now no condemnation.
Not even to the apostle Paul.
If I got time, which I haven't, I'd
share with you a further part of my
late evening studies.
I went through all the Hebrew verbs in
the Old Testament and all the Greek verbs
in the New Testament to discover what God
does with sin when it's been confessed.
And the languages of the Bible are much
more eloquent than our English vernacular in describing
what the Lord does with sin and how
the Lord forgives.
And there are some great concepts in both
Testaments which speak about, well in the Old
for example, as far as the East is
from the West so far as God separated
our iniquities from him.
The blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, keeps
on cleansing us from all sin.
Do you really believe that?
Peter one day was told not to call
unclean what God has cleansed.
The context doesn't apply just at the moment.
But there are Christian people who are looking
back to the past that has been cleansed
still allowing it to be thrown into the
present and it might even blight the future
because in effect they're doubting God's word.
It's gone.
Irretrievably gone.
God not only forgave it, he forgot it.
Dr. Sangster of Westminster fame.
On one occasion I understood, gave an illustration.
I read it about 15 years ago and
I haven't checked it so don't push the
details but this was it in essence.
Of what I believe were called the old
sludge chips that used to leave the port
of London.
Some of the untreated sewage and muck of
London was channeled into the holds of those
ships.
And when they were full they would set
out on their regular daily voyage down the
Thames to its mouth, then to the channel,
then ultimately to the North Sea and over
the continental shelf where there are fathomless depths
of water.
The holds at that point were open and
all the muck and all the filth of
London sunk, fathoms down.
I said, Sangster, that's what God in Christ
has done with our past.
The confessed sin and inadequacy of Christian people.
It sunk in the sea of his forgetfulness
and now there's no condemnation to those who
are in Christ.
They're new in him and there's no separation.
Once in him.
That made you jump.
Once in him.
In him.
Forever.
The exquisite experience of being forgiven is what
God wants you to enjoy.
Amen.
And on the merits of our Saviour's death
and resurrection we bask, O Lord, in the
joys of sins forgiven.
No condemnation.
No separation.
May this be the platform from which we
live out the remainder of our lives.
May we enjoy being forgiven.
Amen.