An Unbeliever Comments on My Sermon

Last updated on: June 20, 2006 at 7:13 am by Adrian Warnock

An Unbeliever Comments on My Sermon 2006-06-20T07:13:00+01:00 Adrian Warnock

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The Daily Duck reviews my sermon “Free Because of Jesus” as follows. He seems to have grasped the message fairly well.

“Adrian placed repeated emphasis on the phrase ‘no condemnation’. By accepting Jesus, Adrian declared, one becomes free of any condemnation due to sin. There is no judgment for one in Christ, no weighing of a life’s works, good or bad. In Jesus, Adrian repeated, one is not under the Law. The Law makes us sin. In Jesus all laws are waived.

Adrian made other observations on the implications of Romans 8. The idea that we should be judged on our merits, on our life’s record of good deeds weighed against our sins, is totally discounted. If this were to be the case, no one would be saved, for no one is righteous to God. Adrian used the phrase ‘if you break one Commandment, you break them all’. Apparently God has a zero tolerance policy where sin is concerned. One strike and you’re out. It is the proverbial ‘no win’ situation. Except, that is, if you accept Christ, then it becomes a no lose situation.”

The main thing Duck did not seem to like was the notion that since the Christian was not “under the law” he could do whatever he likes. Thus it seems I have passed the famous test that my historical hero, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, said was the litmus test of whether you are preaching the Gospel. The Doctor said that true preaching of the Gospel should lead to people to ask the same objection we hear in Romans 6: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? ” Our answer, of course, should be the same as that of Paul:

By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

To some extent I approached this question in my second sermon on Romans 8. In it I looked for reasons why we can be confident that we are, in fact, Christians. One of the first reasons is that there is a desire in us to live right lives which results in a change in behaviour. Thus, it is not that Christians are exempted from morality – in fact, free from the law but driven along by the Spirit of God, the Christian’s moral standards should EXCEED those of the legalist who relies on the law to change them. We are promoting change from the inside out rather than change imposed on us from an external law. As the Bible promises (Jeremiah 31:33) the law is now written on our hearts.

Romans

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