I think many of us have felt that
our parents have dealt with us unfairly or
that we haven't had a fair chance in
this world because of the terrible parents we've
been given.
And I think, first of all, it's important
just to share with you that I wish
we really would all stop that kind of
self-pitying attitude.
Brothers and sisters, none of us are perfect
and none of us will be perfect parents.
And we ought to see, for a start,
that all of us are in more or
less the same boat.
We've all had parents that have not been
perfect saints every moment of their days.
But really what I want to use is
that kind of example just to begin thinking
today about the verse we'll be studying.
If you feel that your parents have treated
you unfairly or you just had an unfair
deal in this world because of the kind
of parents you had or you haven't got,
you know that often you can begin to
bear a grudge against them.
And you can just be resentful towards them.
And I think the psychiatrists are right when
they tell us that often these grudges run
very, very deep in people's hearts.
Often people destroy their own families because of
this resentment and this grudge that they still
feel towards their own parents.
Now, you know that if you're in that
situation where your parents have treated you unfairly
or have somehow dealt with you in a
way that you think was wrong, you know
when you feel that grudge and resentment inside,
there are two opposing factors inside you operating
at that time.
One is the old conscience.
The old conscience keeps on saying, listen, you
ought not to feel this way.
You ought not to be so petty over
this kind of thing.
And you know that there is in you
a sense of guilt and a sense of
guilt that spreads death in your own personality
and spreads death in your relationship with your
parents.
There is something inside you that says, no,
you shouldn't be acting this way.
Even though you feel this grudge, this somehow
isn't right.
So there is something inside you that gives
you a sense of guilt even though you
feel in many ways this grudge very strongly
in your heart.
And then on the other side, there's a
sense inside your will that you feel, well,
I have every right to do this.
There's a defiance inside you that says, no,
they treated me this way.
This is the way I ought to treat
them.
And that feeling is so strong inside you
that at times it bursts out and it's
uncontrollable.
You'll go home to visit your parents and
you'll want to be loving and kind to
them, but this thing inside you will burst
out from inside and will fill you with
bitterness and fill you with a coldness.
And you'll want to love your mother with
all your heart, but there'll be a coldness
and you'll hold back.
Now, brothers and sisters, I think it might
help if we see that all of us
have come into that kind of experience.
You're not alone in it.
All of us have found that there is
something inside us that seems to condemn our
action.
There's a conscience inside us that makes us
feel we're wrong.
And yet there's another thing inside us, our
own strong will that is defiant and that
tries to justify it.
You know with the first guilt, it doesn't
matter what you do, you can't do anything
with it.
You try to rationalize it away as a
kind of adolescent hangover.
You try to say, oh no, everybody feels
a certain amount of this towards their parents
and so I can feel it too.
You try to rationalize the guilt and it
still stays.
Some of us try to work it out.
We try to be kinder to our parents
in other ways.
Those of us who have some money from
our jobs, try to give them presents.
The bitterness still stays inside us but we
try to give them presents to work over
the guilt and try to justify it and
try to make up for it.
Some of us try to be good parents
ourselves.
We decide, well, I feel this towards my
parent and I know it's wrong but I'm
going to be a good parent myself.
And we try to rationalize and work away
the guilt and you know that it's no
use.
That your conscience keeps on reminding you that
you've broken the fifth commandment of the Father
in heaven, honor your father and your mother,
that your days may be long in the
land which the Lord your God gives you.
And your own conscience keeps on reminding you,
you've broken God's law and God has committed
himself to breaking you and to condemning you
to death for that defiance against his will.
And you just know it's impossible for you
to get rid of that guilt unless somehow
someone bears that death penalty for you and
takes away the condemnation.
Unless somebody enables God to receive you despite
that thing that you've done.
And you know that that's really why Jesus
called out on the cross, my God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And the answer to it is, I've forsaken
you because of the sins you bear in
your own conscience that all the other men
and women in my world have committed against
me.
And you're experiencing forsakenness from me and eternal
death and separation from me for their sake.
And you know, brothers and sisters, that then
we begin to see that if Jesus has
borne that penalty for us, then we are
justified in being allowed to live.
Otherwise, we really feel we're strangers in the
world.
We feel we all have no right to
be alive and we still keep trying to
punish ourselves.
But when we see that Jesus has died
that death for us, then we feel justified
in remaining alive.
And we see that God is justified in
allowing us to remain alive because already he
has condemned someone for that sin.
That's the experience of justification.
And that's what we need if we're to
become children of God.
That's what we need if we're to have
that guilt dealt with in our consciences.
But you know that most of us, even
after we've had the guilt dealt with in
our consciences, even though we've had our sins
forgiven, even though we've been born of the
Spirit and become children of God, most of
us still have trouble with that independent defiant
will inside.
And I think that's true.
Many of us go home as Christians.
We know our guilt has been forgiven.
We know we were wrong in the attitude
we took towards our parents.
And yet, we find something inside us continuing
to break out against them.
At a time when the father needs real
gentleness and real love, we break out and
we wipe out against them with sarcasm or
with criticism.
At a time when our mum needs real
fellowship and real company and real understanding, we
wipe out against her with some kind of
caustic comment that hurts.
And most of us find that still we
have the problem of the independent will.
Most of us have found as Christians, yes,
we're clear of the guilt, but that independent
will is still there.
And it will not let us be like
Jesus, even if we want to be.
We find we want to be like Him,
but we cannot because of this strong defiant
self-assertiveness inside.
And this self-deification continues really to put
God in the background of our lives.
And it makes us more and more incapable
of obeying Him.
Now, we begin to see that what we
need is not just justification, but what we
need is to be changed inside in our
attitudes and our motives and our reactions and
our desires.
What we need really is sanctification.
And that's what we've begun to discuss over
the past few Sundays.
The need for sons and daughters of God
not only to be justified, not only to
know that God accepts them because of Jesus'
death, but to be actually sanctified, to be
made more and more like Jesus inside, so
that they will act like Christians and not
only simply believe like Christians.
Now, brothers and sisters, that explains the plan
that God gave to Paul in the book
of Romans.
In the first four chapters, he deals with
justification, and in the second four chapters, he
deals with sanctification.
And maybe you'd like to look at that
now if you turn to Romans and chapter
1.
It's page 977 in that black RSV Bible,
977.
And the first four chapters of Romans deals
with justification, the need for us to be
justified in God's eyes by God Himself, by
some arrangement that He has made, rather than
trying to justify ourselves in His eyes.
And you see, Romans 1 and 28 deals
with the predicament that we were in because
we ignored God.
And since they did not see fit to
acknowledge God, God gave them up to a
base mind and to improper conduct.
And the whole of Romans chapter 1 deals
with that, the predicament that men have got
into by living independent of God.
And then chapter 2 deals with the fact
that we know we rebelled against Him.
It's not something we're ignorant about.
Chapter 2 and verse 15, for instance, they
show that what the Lord acquires is written
on their hearts, while their conscience also bears
witness.
And their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse
them.
And God deals with the truth that we
know we've rebelled against Him.
And then chapter 3 deals with the fact
that God justifies us because of our faith
in Jesus' death.
And you get that there in chapter 3
and verse 24, for instance.
They are justified by His grace as a
gift through the redemption which is in Christ
Jesus.
And then chapter 4 deals with the fact
that our faith is regarded by God as
righteousness.
We always think, you see, we have to
try to be righteous or moral for God
to think well of us.
But the fact is that He counts our
faith in Jesus' death for us as righteousness.
And you get that in verse 22 of
chapter 4 of Romans, verse 22.
That is why His faith was reckoned to
Him as righteousness.
Now dear ones, then you see Paul changes
to the great result in our lives of
justification.
And so in 5, 6, 7 and 8,
Paul begins to talk about sanctification.
And so if you don't want to hear
anything about sanctification, you shouldn't come to the
theatre for the next five years.
Because it'll probably take us that to get
through the chapters.
But chapter 5, 6, 7 and 8 deals
with the results of justification in our lives
today.
You see, that's why the church has so
often failed before the world.
Because it has not allowed God to change
its life and its heart.
So often it has stood in a place
of justification, but it has not allowed itself
to be sanctified.
So often we Christians have said, oh we're
accepted by God because of Jesus' death, but
we have not allowed our lives to be
changed.
And so our friends at school and our
friends at work and our neighbours in the
street see no change in us.
And it's because there's been no change in
us that they do not believe God really.
And so chapter 5 deals with our reconciliation
with God.
You see it there in verse 1, we
have peace with God.
And then chapter 6 deals with our freedom
from sin, where God frees us from the
power of sin.
And then chapter 7 deals with freedom from
the law.
So many of us live under the law,
you know.
Even if it's the law of Freud, or
the law of our parents, or the law
of good social behaviour.
So many of us live under laws and
regulations.
And then in chapter 8 it's a description
of the life and the spirit that results
after we're justified.
Now brothers and sisters, those four chapters are
summarised in chapter 5, verses 1 to 5,
you see.
Those four chapters are all summarised in the
first five verses of chapter 5.
For instance, our reconciliation with God is stated
in the verse 1.
We have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ.
That's one of the effects of being justified
in God's eyes.
We have real peace.
And then, you see, the result of this
is a beautiful natural experience.
I think we have to see that.
Becoming like God is a beautiful natural consequence
of justification.
And it is a lovely and a spontaneous
and a joyous experience.
Now, that is described clearly for us there
in those first five verses, you see.
Look at verse 2, for instance.
Through Him we have obtained access to this
grace in which we stand, and we rejoice
in our hope of sharing the glory of
God.
In other words, becoming like Jesus is not
an old grinding, working, striving business.
It's a thing that you rejoice about.
In fact, the Greek is the subjunctive tense,
the subjunctive mood, and it means let us
rejoice.
Let us rejoice in our hope of sharing
the glory of God.
And so, sanctification for a Christian is a
joyous experience.
It isn't a striving, straining one.
And, you see, it goes on in verse
3.
More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings.
Even the trials that God allows to come
to us to expose our own waywardness and
our own inadequacies, even those we rejoice in.
In fact, the Greek mood is again the
subjunctive, and it says let us rejoice in
our sufferings.
So, you see that it is a joyous
thing.
And then, in verse 4, that these inadequacies
within us eventually drive us to the only
source of real hope, which is Jesus.
Endurance produces character, and character produces hope.
And then, in verse 5, the answer to
all our yearning and our hoping is the
Holy Spirit, that God's love is poured into
our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which has
been given to us.
But sanctification is a joyous thing.
For most of us, that isn't so.
For most of us, we give our lives
to Jesus at the beginning, and we receive
Him into our hearts.
And it's just a delight to serve Him
and to love Him.
And for the first weeks, the Bible study
is great, and the prayer is easy.
We just love to be with our Savior.
And witnessing is just spontaneous.
We just love to talk about Him.
It's easy because it has changed our whole
life.
And we walk like that for two or
three weeks or two or three months.
And then we begin to find a will
within us that does not want to bend
towards Him.
He tells us to speak to somebody about
Himself, and we begin to feel a fear
that they will think the wrong thing about
us.
He tells us to witness at work, and
we begin to feel a fear that they
will think we're wild, fanatical, fundamentalists.
And we begin to hold back.
He tells us to get up early one
morning, and we say, oh, just another few
minutes in bed.
And we begin to negotiate our surrenders to
Jesus.
And bit by bit, we begin to discover
a lion inside us that is growing stronger
and stronger.
We want to do what Jesus wanted us
to do, and it was easy at the
beginning of our lives, but now it seems
hard.
We don't want to lose our temper, but
we lose our temper.
We don't want to think unclean thoughts, but
we find ourselves thinking unclean thoughts.
And then we make an effort to overcome
these unclean thoughts.
And we pray about it for a number
of weeks, and we get victory over the
unclean thoughts.
And then the jealousy comes in, and we
start working on the jealousy.
And then the unclean thoughts come up again
when we work over the jealousy.
And gradually we find that we're beset on
all sides in our hearts with strong desires
and feelings that are against God.
Now, brothers and sisters, I'm afraid most of
us do not walk into sanctification in a
glorious, rejoicing way.
But at that point in our lives, many
of us look in.
After years, maybe as Christians, we find that
we're hypocrites.
We have a double life.
We have a life inside that is not
like Jesus at all.
And outside, we're professing what we don't possess.
And many of us at that point begin
to look inside and say, well, I can't
be a child of God.
Look what I feel.
And we begin to look, you remember, at
a verse like Galatians 5 and 19.
And we see ourselves described there.
Not at all described in verse 22, the
Spirit is love and joy and peace and
patience and kindness.
But it's page 1015, Galatians 5 and 19.
We find that this is what describes us.
Now, the works of the flesh are plain.
Immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife,
jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness,
carousing and the like.
I warn you as I warned you before
that those who do such things shall not
inherit the kingdom of God.
And we say, that is what I am
like.
I get angry at times.
Certainly, I have envy.
Certainly, I get jealous.
In fact, these things are so great and
strong inside me that they're turning me apart.
I cannot be a child of God the
way I am.
And we look inside and we see the
mess there.
And we say, God cannot possibly accept me.
Now, loved ones, that's how many of us
try to tackle sanctification.
Now, brothers and sisters, do you see the
answer to that mess?
The answer to that mess is your answer
to this question.
How good were you when Jesus died for
you?
How good were you when Jesus died for
you?
Did you have no envy?
Did you have no jealousy?
Did you have no anger?
Do you see that Jesus died for you
when you weren't even trying to be like
Him?
Jesus died for you when you were an
absolute rebel.
Now, He won't cease to die for you
because you've become a little more like Him,
yet there's still a lot of uncleanness and
satanic work inside you.
Now, you see, many of us lose our
sense of our justification before God because we
look inside to see how well sanctification is
going.
Now, brothers and sisters, if you look inside
to see if you look like a child
of God, then you're trying to save yourself
by your works.
And you remember, Romans says that no man
will be justified by the works of law.
And so it wouldn't matter if you looked
inside and saw yourself perfectly sanctified.
You still wouldn't be acceptable to God because
sin is not a quantitative thing that if
I have that much of it, I need
Jesus to die for me.
But if I have only that much, I
can make it on my own.
Sin is a qualitative thing.
It's an inborn independence and rebellion against God
that made it necessary for Him to condemn
the whole world to death, unless someone died
that death for the world.
Now, you see, Jesus died for you when
you were sinner.
And He still dies for you, more especially
as you're now beginning to want to enter
into real sanctification.
But the tragedy with many of us is
that we try to start entering into sanctification,
and God begins to bring conviction of inward
sin upon us, and we start looking in
and being preoccupied with our defeats and our
inward sin, instead of seeing that the only
basis of our acceptance with God is Jesus'
death for us, not our sinlessness and not
our sanctification.
And, brothers and sisters, unless you retain an
assurance that you're accepted by God whatever you're
like, God cannot continue to work in you
to sanctify you.
Now, you see, that's the importance of this
verse today, and it's why Paul goes back
to it.
You know, it's Romans 5, if you look
at it, page 980.
Romans 5 and verse 6.
And you can see that God has taught
us how to see the connection between justification
and sanctification by guiding Paul to write of
it in this order.
He just finishes in the first five verses
of chapter 5 in telling us the kind
of thing that God is going to try
to do in us, and then he says
in verse 6, while we were yet helpless,
at the right time, Christ died for the
ungodly.
Now, brothers and sisters, even though you have
envy in your heart and jealousy in your
heart, do you see Christ died for you
when you were far worse than that?
In fact, the Greek word is repeated twice.
It's a word called ete.
And it means still.
And the right translation or a more correct
translation would be still.
Even at that time, at that very time
when we were incapable of doing anything to
help ourselves, at that time, Jesus died for
us.
Now, brothers and sisters, Jesus died for you
when you were utterly unclean, when there was
no even beginnings of sanctification inside you.
Jesus died for you, not because you were
beginning to move towards His Father, but because
He loved you with all His heart.
And you see, even the word that is
used in that verse is not unrighteous people
who know what the standard of the law
is, but fail to live up to it.
It's not even for unrighteous people that Jesus
died, but the word there is the word
that means ungodly.
Jesus died for the ungodly.
So, even when you were incapable of doing
anything to save yourself or make yourself right
with God, Jesus died for you and made
it right for you.
How much more, loved ones?
How much more is His death still effectual
for you now as you're beginning to receive
a new conviction of sin within?
Now, do you see that this is why
so many churches have turned against sanctification and
have said, no, it's responsible for neurotic introspection.
It's responsible for a teaching of perfectionism that
is not possible.
Because so many of us, as God has
begun to deal with us in a deeper
way about the inward sin, we've changed the
ground of our justification.
We've changed it from belief in Jesus' death
to the attitude within ourselves.
And do you see there's a subtle pride
there?
Because we only begin to look inside of
ourselves for some justification for God's accepting us
because we really think there is still some
good inside us.
And that's really why we lose the sense
of our acceptance with God.
Because we've looked inside and we're starting to
hope that there's something good inside us.
Now, brothers and sisters, a joyful, safe and
victorious entrance into sanctification depends on our right
attitude to two verses.
Now, I'll show you the two verses.
One is Romans and chapter 7 and verse
18.
Romans 7 and verse 18.
It's page 982.
Romans 7 and 18.
For I know that nothing good dwells within
me that is in my flesh.
I can will what is right, but I
cannot do it.
I know that nothing good dwells within me.
Loved ones, while we have that attitude to
ourselves, then do you see we can go
to only one place for our acceptance with
God.
And that is Romans 5 and 9.
Romans 5 and 9.
It's just one page back.
Since therefore we are now justified by His
blood.
Now, our right attitude involves our real belief
in Romans 7 and 18.
And while you have no doubt that there
is nothing good dwelling in you and nothing
good that can persuade God to accept you
as His own, then you're driven to look
to Jesus' blood and to say, that's the
only ground on which you can possibly accept
me, Father.
But when you begin to doubt Romans 7
and 18, when you begin to think, yeah,
maybe there is something good inside me and
God can look in and see how well
I'm doing victoriously in sanctification, then you begin
to doubt Romans 5 and 9.
I remember a letter that a dear one
wrote in this week's Decision Magazine, I think
it is.
And obviously, it's good coming from her because
she's just become a child of God.
But it's wrong for us to continue to
walk this way.
And it says, Dear God, I thank You
for forgiving me my sins and I hope
to walk in a way that makes me
worthy of Your salvation.
Now, do you see, we can never become
worthy of God's salvation.
And the entrance into sanctification depends on us
hanging on to the fact that the only
reason God accepts us is because of Jesus'
death.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus dies only for sinners.
Jesus can't die for people who think they're
saintly.
Now, do you see, God expects you to
become saintly.
But He expects you all the time to
have the attitude of Paul, I am the
greatest of all sinners, to be receiving more
and more conviction of inward sin within you
so that you'll yearn and cleave all the
more to Jesus and to His Spirit.
So, it's a paradox, the Christian life.
God expects you to enter into Christ's likeness.
But He expects you inside yourself to see
that none of that can come from you
yourself.
And that Jesus only dies for sinners.
Now, that's emphasized, you remember, throughout the New
Testament.
But if you look at Matthew 9 and
verse 13, there's a clear statement of it
there.
And it is good for us to believe
this fully, loved ones, as the Holy Spirit
begins to convict us of sins like anger
and jealousy.
It's good to see that our acceptance with
God depends on Jesus' blood.
Matthew 9 and verse 13.
Go and learn what this means.
I desire mercy and not sacrifice.
For I came not to call the righteous,
but sinners.
Now, brothers and sisters, Jesus died for you
when you had only sin in your life.
Now, He's still in that business of dying
for that kind of person.
And you remember what it said, you know,
in the verse that we read in the
New Testament lesson.
It's Luke 7 and 47.
And it's the same truth, Luke 7 and
47.
Therefore I tell you, her sins which are
many are forgiven, for she loved much, but
he who is forgiven little loves little.
And it is God's will that each time
the Holy Spirit brings us an awareness that
we are not like Jesus, it is the
Holy Spirit's will that we should immediately look
to Jesus and thank God that He accepts
us because of Jesus.
And then allow the Holy Spirit to begin
to deal with that spirit within.
But that is God's plan for us.
He wants us to walk joyfully into sanctification.
Not looking in and saying, oh, I failed
again.
I'll never be like Jesus.
You should say that, but say, that's right,
I never will be like Jesus.
I can never be like Jesus.
I of myself can do no good thing.
Father, I thank you that you accept me
because of Jesus' death.
And oh, Holy Spirit, I trust you to
come in and fill me completely and be
like Jesus yourself inside me.
But brothers and sisters, that is the attitude
God wants us to have, to remember constantly
that Jesus died for us while we were
yet sinners.
At a time when we were absolutely ungodly,
Jesus died for us.
Not because we looked as if we might
be godly, not because we weren't as ungodly
as the rest, but because He loves us.
Brothers and sisters, do you see Jesus died
for you because He loves you?
Not because you looked as if you might
be useful to the Father.
Not because you looked as if you might
become a saintly person.
Not because you were trying hard.
But Jesus died for you because He loves
you.
And He still loves you today.
And so He's still willing to offer His
blood to His Father on your behalf.
And He will do that as long as
you're repentant enough to offer that blood.
But brothers and sisters, when you start offering
your own degree of sanctification to God and
ask Him to accept you because of your
own worthiness, then you'll begin to doubt.
And the ground will begin to rock underneath
you.
And loved ones, do you see that it
is the Father's will that we should walk
joyously into this?
So I agree with you, it's a paradox.
The Holy Spirit wants to smack you right
down every time you get angry.
Wants to cut you right down every time
you get jealous and bring it home to
your heart that you are still on the
throne of your own life.
But He wants you at the same time
to offer to Satan's accusation, not a kind
of self-justification.
Well, I'm better than I was last week.
Or I'll pray my way through this if
you give me a couple of months.
But rather, Father, I thank you that you
accept me because of Jesus' death.
And I'm justified by His blood, whatever I'm
like inside.
And oh Holy Spirit, will you continue to
cut me down here until you cut all
this out of me and you put me
completely on the cross with Jesus.
And oh brothers and sisters, you know I'm
so anxious that you'll all begin to walk
in this way because you know and I
know, our generation knows that what has put
people off Jesus is Christians.
That's what has put people off Jesus.
And you see it so often because we
have not gone into this cross experience with
Jesus.
And so often we haven't gone into it
because we've allowed the new conviction of sin
to shatter our old confidence in Jesus' blood.
Now it shouldn't shatter it.
It should emphasize it and stress it more
and more.
Loved ones, every time the Holy Spirit shows
me something of myself that is there, I
just thank God all the more for Jesus'
blood.
And that's what He wants, you know.
He wants us to walk that way so
that we walk in continual peace and yet
in a new conviction of sin each day
so that we are really growing into His
grace.
Pray the Holy Spirit will show you it,
you know, because I know it's difficult stuff
really to understand.
So I pray that the Holy Spirit will
interpret it to each of you.
And if you have questions, will you ask
me?
Maybe come up afterwards, you know, if you
want to talk.
Or through the week, come and talk.
Or maybe it's better even to begin reading
a book like The Normal Christian Life by
Watchman Nee.
A book that would really begin to explain
this to you.
Because it is time, brothers and sisters, that
we begin to go on into scientification as
a body, you know.
Let us pray.