Category Archives: Reformed Theology

The Life of the Soul Set Free

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Lesson 25: Romans 8:1-13

The Life of the Soul Set Free

One day each of us, every human without exception, will stand before the Judgment Seat of our Creator. It will not be like the courtrooms we are familiar with here on earth. It will not be a time of making decisions, or presenting arguments. It will be a time of revealing eternal determinations. In that day you will stand before the perfectly Holy God who made you.

As we have seen in the first chapters of Romans, the charges if read aloud would be something like this: “You are a descendant of Adam. Along with all others naturally descended from him and represented by him there in Eden, you have inherited inexcusable guilt. This corruption which was yours since conception has produced a sinful life. Perhaps you have not been perceived as wicked in the eyes of other humans. Likely you have not all lived a life of civil crimes, open blasphemy, or blatant immorality. But your life has failed to honor God as you should have. As Romans 3:23 declares, ‘for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.’ ”

Based upon God’s revealed moral principles you must be condemned forever. Anything less would be injustice.

The gavel is raised. As it falls you know only one verdict would be fair: Guilty as charged! Only one sentence would be consistent with God’s pure character: Death for eternity! That death sentence is not mere annihilation. It will not be some comic book or Hollywood version of hell. It will be an unrelenting torment, and an unending separation from God’s comfort and joy forever.

However — when the judges gavel falls, what an astounding judgment stuns the court! He says, “You are in Christ Jesus, therefore there is now no condemnation!”

This is what Paul tells us clearly in Romans Chapter 8:1-4.

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

The word “law” is not only used to describe sets of rules in God’s word. Another common way the word is used is to describe a principle at work. We use it this way today for principles we see at work like “the law of gravity” or “the law of supply and demand.” Here in verse 2, it identifies two principles that operate in the hearts of men: the Principle of the Spirit of Life, and the Principle of Sin and Death.

The principle that originally condemns
us is the law of sin and death.

The standard by which we will be judged is God’s Moral law. This law is as a set of moral principles which emerge from the Creator’s nature as it relates to his created world. The Moral law of God is summarized in the 10 Commandments, but is not limited to those representative situations. As Jesus pointed out in Matthew 5:21-30, the sins pointed out here begin in the heart. Even personal hatred and extramarital lust violate the principles of the Sixth and Seventh Commandments. The standard is not only high, it demands absolute perfection. Since we inherit the guilt of Adam and a corrupt nature, no one can measure up.

Galatians 3:10, “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.’ ”

James 2:10, “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.”

Therefore God’s Law justly condemns us. Romans 6:23 says, “the wages of sin is death.” This is not just threatening us with physical death. It includes eternal spiritual death, which is separation from God’s blessing forever. The principle that condemns the children of Adam is that sin resides in, infects, and is at work in every heart, and that this offense demands a death sentence that never ends.

How then can we be found innocent when are all equally guilty? Certainly neither the Law of God, nor the principle of sin and death have the power to remove guilt. Paul says the Law is weak according to the flesh. Our depraved nature is unable to obey the law of God. This “fleshly life” of ours is out of touch with God. We are cut off from the flow of spiritual life which comes from our Creator to those who stand innocently before him. The law therefore can never be a way of salvation for the guilty.

Deliverance was never the purpose of the Law. The commandments were not given to redeem anyone. They were given both to expose our sin nature, and to prove our just condemnation. Their continuing benefit is as a guide only for those already redeemed so that they can know how to live in a way that honors God.

The other principle is the one that liberates us:
the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

This is what sets us free from that condemning principle. Jesus Christ laid down his life for his own people, paying the debt of sin in their place. As the “Second Adam” he represented those given to him by the Father. In their place he lived a perfectly holy life, and died an infinitely horrible death. For the believer who stands before God’s bench of justice, Jesus paid his eternal sentence in full, and has given him the benefits of his own righteousness.

This is how those justly accused are judged to be not guilty. There can be no other way. If it was not for this gospel, this good message, no one would escape his deserved and just damnation.

When Jesus satisfied the requirements of the law for you, he set you free. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those redeemed by our Savior.

This is an astounding truth! When the gavel of the divine Judge falls he declares, “Not guilty.” Though we know we deserve nothing but the fires of hell forever, in Christ we are awarded an unending place of residence in God’s glorious city.

Our sentence is served. The capitol punishment of our guilt was carried out at Calvary. Now, nothing can be alleged against us that is not already paid for in Christ. There is no sin that can condemn those set free in the Savior.

A redeemed soul is also a changed soul.

Far from this assurance of grace leaving us to become casual about sin, it has exactly the opposite effect. Christ not only set us free from condemnation, he also delivers us from our inability to do good. A redeemed soul will be a converted soul. The new life will show up in its manner of living.

Some have wondered why Paul tells us to “put to death” (“mortify” in some translations) the the deeds of the body (“the flesh” in some translations) if we have been crucified with Christ. The “old man” is dead as he said in Romans 6:6, yet in Ephesians 4:22 Paul tells us to put off this “old man.” Is he not already dead? Then in Colossians 3:9 Paul tells them not to lie since they have put off the “old man.”

There are two senses in which our relationship with sin being addressed. On the one hand we are judicially declared innocent and holy in Jesus Christ. Our guilt is credited to him who paid its penalty. The perfect Righteousness of our Savior is credited to us who do not deserve it. The “old man”, our old relationship with sin as our master, is declared to be dead. Paul has been showing us in this section of Romans that this does not mean that we never sin again. The ways of the old relationship continue to need eradication. Notice that in Ephesians 4:22 Paul qualifies his comment about putting off the old man by saying, “concerning your former conduct”. The old relationship is gone. We are set free. The habits and former influences of that old relationship now need to be brought into conformity with our new relationship. The “new man” is to be conforming his life, not just his thinking or legal standing, to the ways God has revealed for his children to live.

Not all fallen humans will be declared innocent on the basis of the work of Christ. The promise is for those not walking according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. This does not mean that forgiveness is earned by the way we live. That is contrary to everything Paul had said so far. There is no justification by our works.

What it does mean is this: the defendant standing before the bar of God’s justice does not plead his own merits. He pleads only the merits of Christ. In this life on earth, he finds assurance and confidence when he sees his life changed by Christ. Those who walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh can know that the Savior has set them free. As we will see, Chapter 8 of this Epistle to the Romans is centered upon how we can be assured that we belong to Christ.

So then, how do we know when we are redeemed? Paul clears up what it means to be walking according to the Spirit and not the flesh. The person’s true mind set is exposed by specific attitudes and behaviors. The mind includes the whole disposition of the person: his thoughts, intentions, and choices. He is either inclined to evil or to good.

In the language Paul used in the last chapter (Romans 7), either a person remains under the mastery of law which condemns him, or he is set free from that condemnation to become a servant of righteousness in Christ.

Now, here in Chapter 8, Paul continues in verses 5-13.

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors — not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

The lost person’s mind is inclined to the flesh alone. That is, he honors the body as a thing with no spiritual dimensions. Those not declared innocent in Christ are identified by these things:

  • The mind set on the flesh is death. (8:6)
    Such a person remains unredeemed and under the just condemnation of God’s law. His moral offense causes him to be forever separated from God’s blessing and forgiveness. Without this flow of spiritual life, his attitudes and behaviors are those of a dead soul.
  • The mind set on the flesh is hostile to God. (8:7a)
    Instead of living for the glory of his Creator, he measures all things by how it will benefit himself. He is the enemy of God, though he may claim to be godly and good.
  • The mind set on the flesh is not subject to Law. It cannot be. (8:7b)
    Paul has already supported the fact that the lost soul is depraved. Not one of us honors the commandments God has revealed as he intended them. The nature of the fallen heart redefines morality to meet its own self-centered standards. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” The whole concept of moral inability is confirmed here. As Olshausen said, “No man can free himself from himself.”
  • The mind set on the flesh cannot please God. (8:8)
    God is not pleased with any actions or thoughts which come from a creature-serving heart. Instead of acting with respect to what God has revealed as good, it acts upon what promotes his own interest. Hebrews 11:6 says, “without faith it is impossible to please (God)…”

Upon those minded toward the flesh, the Judge’s gavel falls with a guilty verdict. But those graciously declared innocent in Christ have a different set of mind:

  • The mind set upon the Spirit is life and peace. (8:6)
    Where once we were dead, Christ has made us alive, reunited with God. As those whose offense is removed, they have peace instead of turmoil. Instead of being the enemies of God, they are his allies, they are citizens of his own Kingdom, his dear children. They are guided and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. The mortal puts on immortality in Christ — he has hope in the resurrection of the body, as well as in the benefits of regeneration in this life.
  • The mind set upon the Spirit is empowered by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. (8:9,11)
    The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is an astounding promise that goes beyond the scope of this study. The basic benefit is that the believer has a special enablement in living for God’s glory. The presence of that Spirit will be seen in his life.
  • The mind set on the Spirit is alive because of righteousness. (8:10)
    Righteousness is innocence before the law. It is not our own righteousness that makes us alive, but the gift of Christ’s righteousness.

Those declared holy in Christ by grace are not only justified, they also begin to grow in personal holiness. That is what we call subjective sanctification. The life implanted progresses as it more and more makes us conform to the ways of our Savior, and die more and more to the false pleasures of sin. While this holiness is a process never completed in this life, is for now imperfect, and there are sad lapses at times, nevertheless it is always moving forward — if the person is truly reborn in Christ.

This leaves us with some serious work to do in our lives.

This is not a burdensome obligation to which we must resign ourselves. It is our joyful privilege and benefit to do. Though we are set free from the law’s condemnation and are enabled to truly love God, the remains of sin in our lives gives us a constant duty. We are to be putting off the ways of mere flesh-mindedness, and to be abandoning the things that offend God. We are to put on the ways of the Spirit, to dress ourselves in honorable living.

As Paul wrote to the believers in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

Our great privilege as those who are promised to be judged “innocent” through Christ, is that we are forgiven and made to be sons of God. Our great duty is to be mortifying the ways of the flesh as those who are truly members of the family of God.

How serious are you about this? Imagine that you were struggling with a horrible degeneration of your body. Medical test revealed that your body was strangely allergic to a specific type of food. The doctor said that if you just stopped your intake of that particular substance you will recover fully. That would be good news! You would go home, and clear out your house of the things that were harming you. You would make sure you provided yourself with a supply of safe foods. When hunger cravings come along, you would have planned to have no supply of the harmful foods available in your cupboard. Instead, you would stock up on the good nourishments that would not harm your body

God is telling us through his law that believers are still infected by the presence of sin. It will not condemn them to hell. They are set free from guilt, and declared righteous in Christ. However, sin will continue to put up a battle in their lives. If they have no concern for waging war with continuing sin, they have cause for alarm. Since no one is justified who is not also being sanctified, an apathy for holiness brings to question that person’s true salvation in Christ.

Is your mind set upon the things of the flesh? Or are you at war with sin in your life? Are you compelled to becoming more Christ-like?

Get rid of all those things that injure your soul, things that tempt you to sin. Clear away the opportunities for them from your schedule. Cut off the bridges to things that dishonor God. Remove them as if they were poisons destroying your real enjoyment of life. Mortify the deeds of the flesh and make no room for them. Show that you are a child of God. Get busy setting your plans and efforts to encouraging what will promote life. Put off the old man and put on the new. Stock up on those things which will promote godliness. Replace the things that tend toward sin. Build up your Christian friendships and work in the church. Attend all its worship services. Strive to obey with all the resources God has given you.

Only as evidence is shown that you belong to Christ, can you be confident of acquittal before the Judgment seat of Christ in that last day.

The Apostle John warns us in this same way. In 1 John 2:15-17 he wrote, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”

If you are not sure of your how you stand, if you fear that you might still love your sin too much, then make it right today. Come to Christ in humble confession. This is always appropriate for all of us. Call out to him who alone makes you alive by his death. As Peter warns us in 2 Peter 1:10, “Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;”

As those resting in Christ there is this continuing duty: search out and strip away all the opportunities of sin. Show the evidence of a soul set free. When that day comes, when that gavel comes down with an unappealable verdict, you can know that you will hear the words, “Not guilty by reason of the finished work of Jesus Christ.”

(The Bible quotations in this lesson are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)

Back to the Index of Studies In Paul’s Letter to the Romans

God’s Economic Solutions

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Index of Lessons in the Westminster Shorter Catechism

God’s Economic Solutions

(Westminster Shorter Catechism Questions 73-75)
(watch our video)
by Bob Burridge ©2011

God made everything to work a certain way in his world.

When the basic principles set up at creation are not followed the consequences effect our lives. Each of the Ten Commandments illustrates a primary moral principle. The 8th Commandment is about the proper ownership and management of our possessions. The Westminster Shorter Catechism introduces this Commandment in question 73.

It asks, “Which is the eighth commandment?”
The answer is a quotation of Exodus 20:15 which says, “You shall not steal.”

The Catechism expands upon that Commandment in questions 74-75.

Question 74. What is required in the eighth commandment?
Answer. The eighth commandment requireth the lawful procuring and furthering the wealth and outward estate of ourselves and others.

Question 75. What is forbidden in the eighth commandment?
Answer. The eighth commandment forbiddeth whatsoever doth, or may, unjustly hinder our own, or our neighbor’s wealth or outward estate.

In the most simple terms economics comes down to the fact that God is the Lord over all things. We are responsible to properly manage what he gives us, and to respect what he gives to others to manage.

Today’s economic problems are very complex. What our Creator says about how we should manage our things is not being followed. Solutions that ignore God’s moral principles make the problems worse.

The first principle of Biblical Economics is
that everything belongs first and foremost to God.

God owns all things because he made everything that exists, including all of us. Psalm 89:11 is just one of the passages that makes this very clear. It says, “The heavens are Yours, the earth also is Yours; The world and all its fullness, You have founded them.”

In the New Testament, Colossians 1:16 repeats this important first principle. “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.”

God is the Creator and Sustainer of all that is. He made everything for his own special purpose.

The second principle is that we humans were
created to be managers of God’s things.

Genesis 1:26-28 tells us that we were created to rule over his world and to have dominion over it. We are held responsible for how we manage it all for God’s glory. We are to use what he gives us to provide for our daily needs, to advance God’s Kingdom, and to show his compassion by how we care for others who have legitimate needs.

This transforms all our work into Kingdom Work. If you raise crops, pour sidewalks, sell furniture, teach children, or repair diseased hearts, it is all to be done to fulfill this mandate we were given in Eden.

We are here primarily to live for, and to work for God’s honor and glory. Any comforts we have beyond our basic needs are pure undeserved blessings. Coveting beyond what God is pleased to give us is the driving force behind the sin referred to in this commandment.

If God owns all things, then our ownership, though very real, is a secondary ownership. What we have are things we were given to mange for our King in Heaven.

Things become ours to manage primarily by earning them. By our labor, God assigns us as secondary owners of some of the things that are his. Genesis 1:26 tells us to subdue all things in God’s creation by our labor. What we make or earn becomes ours to use wisely for his glory.

This is what makes stealing so wicked. It violates God’s assignment of things to individuals. It is open rebellion against God himself.

There are right ways for ownership to be
transferred from one person to another.

What we grow, make, or do can be traded, sold, inherited, or given to other people. Payment for products or services changes the ownership of things. 1 Timothy 5:18 says that “the laborer is worthy of his wages.”

What you earn can be used to buy other things you need or want. At that point they become yours to manage responsibly. What you sell is not your responsibility any more. It becomes the property of the buyer to use for himself, but the obligation remains that all property is always to be used for God’s glory.

At death, your ownership can be transferred to your loved ones or friends as an inheritance. The ones chosen by the owner when he is alive become the legitimate and responsible managers of these entrustments from God.

You can also transfer ownership by giving things as gifts. What you give is not yours any more. It belongs to the one to whom you give it.

Sometimes you get compensations for your things if someone steals or damages them. The restitutions they pay become yours in the eyes of God.

When you bring your tithes and offerings to the church, they belong to God’s Kingdom. From the beginning, even indicated in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis, this basic economic principle was evident, even though few details were recorded of daily life in that period of history. 10% of all you earn by your labor belongs to God. That part of your earnings is to support the preservation of God’s word and ways, to provide for corporate worship, and to offer counsel, help, and comfort for God’s people.

If you keep back your tithe, to use it for your own use or investments, it is stealing from God. In Malachi 3:8 God uses exactly that language. There he says, “Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings.”

That was one of the big sins in the time of Haggai.

It was an important issue in the New Testament to provide for the survival of the church, and for the early spread of the gospel. While the additional tithes connected with the Levitical system no longer bind us, the basic creation principle was never abrogated in God’s word.

The Reformers, and all those who let the Bible set their priorities, have always recognized the biblical mandate of tithing for Christ’s church in our era.

Taxes are another way we legitimately transfer to others what God gives us. Romans 13 reminds us that God raises up legitimate governments. Their duty as ministers of God is to provide for national defense, and civil justice. When Jesus taught that what is Caesar’s belongs to Caesar, he was referring to taxes.

There can be wrong uses for taxes and unbiblical ways to tax people. However, what you are asked to give to your government becomes theirs to manage for God’s glory. If the government does not use it that way, they are held responsible, not you. Certainly neither Paul nor Jesus were approving of all the tactics and budgets in use by the Roman Empire of their day.

We need to be responsible citizens to make sure we elect fiscally responsible leaders who use our taxes for biblical reasons, and who will tax us fairly and rightly. Many things are wrongly taxed in our modern society. The fact remains however, that what is given to a government becomes their responsibility before God.

Stealing is when someone violates these legitimate transfers of ownership.

The most obvious violations of this moral principle are robbery and theft. What is taken this way does not rightly transfer ownership. It is a crime that deserves punishment. The Bible requires that what is taken because of theft must be paid back. The offender is obligated by moral law to make full restitution for the damage he causes.

Not all theft is done by armed criminals. Not long ago, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported that employee dishonesty costs American businesses over $50 billion every year. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated that 75% of all employees steal at least once. Half of those steal repeatedly. It reported that one out of every three businesses fail directly because of employee theft. It is a violation of God’s 8th Commandment.

Deceit is another form of theft. False advertising, keeping the money when you get back too much change from the store, or hiding flaws in what you sell, are all forms of financial deceit. It is stealing.

Lazy workers are stealing by avoiding what they are supposed to do for their wages. A lazy person tries to get paid for not working, or for not doing his share. He is happy to let others do the work, then collect the benefits for himself. This is a direct abdication of the creation mandate from God to labor for your provisions.

Some in the early church in Thessalonica were content to let others support them. In 2 Thessalonians 3:6 Paul said that violated the traditions taught by the Apostles. In verse 10 the Apostle said, “… we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” In the next verse he said these were leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, and acting like busybodies.

Compassion should make us want to help the truly needy, and those out of work. However, if we support laziness and dependency, we encourage ungodliness. It is not love to help an individual avoid responsibility. The poor should be helped to find legitimate work. It is wrong just to give able people money, housing, and health benefits while others do all the work.

Sloth, and Laziness are repeatedly condemned in the Book of Proverbs. Laziness also violates the 4th commandment. It says there that six days out of every seven are to be spent in labor to provide for our basic needs.

One sure way to destroy our country, church, or family is to let some able people just sit around expecting others to support them as if they are entitled to not have to work.

Withholding what you owe others is also a form of theft. Once you owe something, part of what you earn belongs to the person to whom you owe payment. To avoid paying off debts or obligations violates this 8th Commandment.

Socialism violates this commandment because it confuses God’s law of ownership. What you earn is yours to manage. It does not belong first to the state. When governments try to re-distribute wealth they sin grievously against God.

The responsibilities God gives to businesses, homes, and churches should not be taken over by governments. The abuse of taxes and undue regulations weaken a society, destroy incentive, wreck hopes of a sound economy, and forfeit God’s material blessing.

Gambling can also be a form of violating this commandment. In the eyes of God, the only legitimate transfer of ownership of money and the things it buys is by commerce, inheritance, gifts, restitutions, tithes, and taxes.

Games you play at a fair, or with friends are not gambling if you are paying to play the game. The money spent is a form of commerce or recreation. It is not to get wealth without earning it. The motive and amount spent is very important. Prayerful and honest judgment of you intentions should be guided by the principles of biblical economics, not by greed, coveteousness, or laziness.

This does not forbid taking legitimate risks in making business or financial investments. The Bible sees investments as part of commerce. It is a way of providing for labor and the launch of new products and services. It is legitimate to invest capitol in businesses hoping to make a fair profit.

When gambling becomes an irresponsible risk of what God has entrusted to you, or is done with hopes of getting wealth without work, it is neither wise nor morally good. It is wrong.

In the year 539 BC Israel’s horrible years of
captivity in the heathen empire of Babylon ended.

Some were still alive then to remember the devastating invasion about 47 years earlier. Many of their friends and loved ones were brutally killed. The rest were rounded up and taken away as slaves. All they had worked for, all their memories were left behind or stolen by soldiers. As they left the city of Jerusalem, all they built, owned, and their place of worship, were totally destroyed.

The children born to the Jews in Babylon were told about the past when when their nation was still free. They grew up in a pagan culture, spoke another language, and served cruel masters.

After 47 years, God answered their prayers and moved the heart of King Cyrus to set them free. They came back to a city in ruins. In gratitude to God they started rebuilding the Temple to restore obedient worship in their lives.

After a few years, with only the foundation of the Temple completed, the people became distracted by their own comforts and prosperity. They turned their attention to fixing up their homes with fine paneling and decorations. They had stopped bringing the whole tithe to the Elders for the work of God. The center of worship was neglected, and their duty to God became a remote interest.

In about 520 BC the Lord told the prophet Haggai to warn the people. In Haggai 1:4-5 he said, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins? Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Consider your ways!’ ”

In verse 6 the Prophet described the futility of their foolish greed. He said, “You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.”

They were not satisfied with all the nice material things they were laboring so hard to get. They kept wanting more, so they kept God’s portion for themselves. That just made it worse. They had plenty to eat and drink, but they wanted more. They were busy earning money, but it was not enough to buy happiness, it was as if their money bags had holes in them. They were violating the principles of economics built into God’s world.

It is God who blesses, not the things in themselves. When people believe they can have more by ignoring God’s ways, true blessings are often withheld from them.

Economics is a study of the principles that guide us in how to manage material things. God’s economics is very different than what develops in a society not centered in Christ. In the time of Haggai, God’s economics was turned up-side-down.

When you understand and obey this commandment,
there should be a true joy in your labors.

This biblical work ethic, and God’s principles of ownership, ensure economic stability. The moral principle again comes down to our place as creatures made in God’s image. We are here to show that our Creator owns all things, therfore all we have is first of all his. God does not deserve just what we do not need or can live comfortably without. All we have should be managed responsibly for his glory.

We need to respect the ownership God gives to others of all they have. We should never take what is not rightly ours. We should be responsible in paying what we owe and in doing the work expected of us.

We need to appreciate our responsibility in using all God provides for us. We should never buy things frivolously or to provide for improper activities. We should not let his kingdom go silent by keeping his tithe for ourselves.

A while ago I received some of those mass e-mailings that get circulated around the web. One was about how imbalanced our economic priorities are as individuals. It challenged us to consider what we budget monthly for entertainment, eating out, and hobbies, then compare it with how much we regularly commit to the work of our church. Such an inventory of our budgets can be an eye-opening and sobering exercise.

God gives you all you have. The tithe of it is his. With it you show the ownership of your King.

The gospel hope we have in Christ is
the way to restore God’s economics in your life.

Jesus came to rebuild your relationship with God. Sin and guilt separate you from your Creator, and produce materialistic attitudes. That is what makes people want to get things in wrong ways. That is what keeps them from being satisfied with their possessions and labor. Jesus suffered and died in your place to remove the barrier of sin and the burden of its guilt.

We need to appreciate the blessing of being a part of displaying God’s dominion in this world. The empty drudgery of our daily work is transformed into rewarding service for the King. The things God lets us own and earn become more valuable and satisfying to us.

Many today think that the happiest person is the one who has a lot, but does not have to work. That is the opposite of the teaching of God’s word. When you are restored through Christ to being able to see the Sovereign God at work in all things, your work becomes a daily engagement in the grand scheme of all creation.

We were made to enjoy the work God gives us to do, and to responsibly manage all he gives us to own. That is how God created us to live.

What ever God gives you to do today is a joy when you do it as service to your King. All that you earn, make, grow, and produce is truly satisfying only when you display the restored image of God in your life by managing it all well for his glory.

It is an awesome blessing to be able to show our love for our Sovereign and Loving Savior by how we acknowledge him as Lord of all we have and of all he gives to others.

(The Bible quotations in this lesson are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)

God’s Good Law

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Lesson 23: Romans 7:1-12

God’s law is not appreciated by fallen man.

The corrupted moral nature we inherit from Adam makes us long to be free from moral obligations, and free from our feelings of guilt.

Some who abhor the idea of answering to some higher authority than their own desires make fun of the moral laws of Scripture. They ridicule the God of the Bible. They believe they are naturally smarter than believers because of what they see as superior assumptions about the way things are and came to be. By convincing themselves that they are more intelligent, they dismiss the moral principles they dislike.

When they get caught breaking a law, they point out how many others have violated it too as if that should excuse them. They might cite special circumstances that exempt them from compliance, or they put the blame on others implying that they were the ones who instigated them and got them in trouble. Shifting blame, and excusing immoral behavior are tactics as old as the Garden of Eden.

This is how the Bible describes the spiritually dead heart. The lost find it hard to show real respect for the law that condemns him. Today we hear a lot about the decline of the “rule of law” in our world. Even the unbeliever can see to a certain degree that a relativistic view of ethics does not work. When humans replace God’s absolute standard with his own attempts to adjust morality to fit varying situations, it creates divisions and anger among people with no foundation for settling differences or ensuring a safe society.

Even some who call themselves “Christians” look for ways to explain away God’s law. Some quote verses taken out of their context to imply that the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the principle of Grace have eliminated God’s moral principles. They use an unbiblical concept of what they call “love” as if it now replaces the commandments of God. Many treat biblical law as if it was just a Jewish concept with little importance to us today. They see it as the opposite of the gospel message. On the extreme there are those who claim that being a Christian is just a change of belief which involves no change of life.

From what they say, you would think they believe God made a mistake by giving his law, and in time he came to regret it. Hopefully no one would go that far. Such a concept makes God an error-prone deity who has to learn by his mistakes. This would be nothing less than horrible blasphemy.

These desperate attempts to escape our obligation to God’s commandments are tragic. They cannot be supported with Scripture taken in its true context. Those who are taken in by them live with an obscured view of God and of how his world works.

Romans 7 helps us understand the continuing
value for God’s law when it is rightly understood.

To explain this important benefit Paul takes us through a few steps. He wants us to understand that though God’s law is not and never has been a way to life, it is and always must be the way of life.

There is a sense in which believers are released from God’s law. Paul had been telling the Roman Christians about being set free from the mastery of sin. In Romans 6:14 he wrote, “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” In Romans 7 he is dealing with some clarifying issues.

First Paul clarifies a general legal principle:

Romans 7:1, “Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?”

The word translated as “dominion” by this translation is rendered by others with the word “jurisdiction”. The word in the original text is related to the word kurios (κυριος) which is usually translated as “lord”. It carries the idea of authority. In the legal sense, it is the jurisdiction a court has over citizens in its district.

Death releases a person from legal relationships. Law is only designed in its most general sense to deal with the living. The greatest penalty law can impose is execution. If a person is already dead, then the law’s harshest demand has already been met.

Paul then gave an illustration no one would disagree with who knows the Bible.

Romans 7:2-3, “For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man.”

1. According to God’s law Marriage is a bond for life.
Marriage is introduced in Genesis 2 where Adam and Eve are said to have become “one flesh”. The union of two into one flesh is to last as long as the two live. Death is the only moral means of ending a marriage in God’s sight. It cannot be ended by simply declaring it over. God is said in Malachi 2:16 to be abhorred by divorce. This is why in the traditional marriage vow we promise before God, “till death us do part.”

If the woman has another man while her spouse is alive, she is called an “adulteress.” The Bible demanded the execution of anyone who violated marriage by sexual infidelity. Since infidelity caused the execution of one partner, the marriage was ended by death. The innocent party was no longer bound because the condition of the vow had been met, “till death us do part.”

In the teachings of Jesus we see that in a society where execution is not practiced for adultery, a divorce of the innocent spouse is permitted (Matthew 19:9). It is as if the offender was put to death as God demands.

2. When death ends one legal relationship, it makes way for a new relationship.
If a spouse is dead, the living partner is free to be joined to another. Once the conditions of a legal bond are met, the bond is no longer in effect. Only then can a new bond be acceptable.

Paul used this principle, to explain the
bondage of our soul by the law of God.

Romans 7:4-6, “Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another — to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.”

It can get a little confusing in this section if we fail to follow the flow of thought. Paul is trying to explain a complex idea. To make his point he sometimes speaks of bondage in one sense, and at other times in another. In one sense the sinner is bound to sin, in another it is the law that binds him.

This bondage was explained in detail in the first few chapters of Romans. Adam represented all humans. When he sinned, his guilt and corruption passed on to all his natural descendents. Everyone since Adam is separated from God and is called “spiritually dead.” This “spiritual death” makes them unable to do anything truly good in God’s eyes (Romans 3:10-12). They take God’s glory for themselves. They do what is forbidden. They neglect what is commanded. God’s law both reveals the crime, and demands the sentence. The result is eternal separation from God. That is how the law binds the sinner to sin as his master.

Only by fulfilling the demand of the law can anyone be released from its sentence. God’s justice demands eternal suffering and death, since all have sinned. The suffering and death of Jesus in the sinner’s place releases him from his bondage to sin. Christ satisfies the law’s legal demands, so the person represented is “delivered from the law” in that sense.

Verse 5 shows that our bondage to sin is exposed by our unlawful behavior. Sin is more than just guilt inherited from Adam. It is also a fallen disposition. The corrupted nature puts self ahead of God. It influences the motives that lay behind what may appear to us to be good deeds. When people sin they reveal their sinful passions. They look for perverted ways too satisfy human needs. The law is what defines and exposes sin. It is what condemns the person to the just punishment of death.

Since it is the inner work of new life that sets the sinner free from death by Christ, he is not only released from the old master, he is at the same time joined to a new master. The new lord is righteousness. It both declares the sinner to be innocent by the righteousness of Christ which is credited to him, and it enables him to do what is truly good. The good he does is rendered possible by his restored fellowship with God in Christ.

Verse 6 shows that through the death of Jesus we are set free from our former bondage. The Savior met the demand of death for his people. Instead of the foolish and vain hope of being saved by keeping the outward letter of the law, the redeemed person comes to understand that nothing he can do will remove his guilt. When the Holy Spirit applies Christ’s work he learns that his guilt has been fully removed by Jesus as his Substitute. He is made able to do what is truly good, and is bound to a new master altogether.

Though the Holy Spirit is clearly at work in the application of the work of the Messiah, many translators do not capitalize the word “spirit” in verse 6 (KJV, ASV for example). They see the contrast in the last part of this verse as between the words “letter” and “spirit.” The “letter” [grammatos (γράμματος)] is the law, the written expression of the spiritual [pneumatos (πνεύματος)] reality behind it which is fulfilled in the now finished atoning work of Christ.

The main point in this passage is that we are released from one bondage to be joined to another. Just as the fallen human is exposed by God’s law as a sinner, the law also lays out the kind of behavior that ought to be seen in the Christian. We are set free from sin to be bound to righteousness. Moral and godly living is the goal. The moral principles of God’s law remain binding, but not in the sense of condemnation of or dominion over the redeemed sinner. It is not the law that is put to death. It is our old relationship to it. That was the message Jesus was conveying in Matthew 5:17.

The law of God must be treasured, not despised.

Romans 7:7-11, “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.”

Some might foolishly reason this way. If the law is what obligates us to a standard we cannot obey, and it condemns us inescapably, then is the law an evil thing? Is the law sin? That is the reasoning of the fallen heart. It wants to find fault with the judgments of God’s law.

Paul adds his answer immediately with an emphatic, “No!” Do not let such an idea even be considered! The opposite is true. The law has a very good and important purpose in God’s plan.

The revealed moral law of God exposes sin for what it is in our lives. Paul uses the 10th commandment, “You shall not covet,” to prove his point. It is not just the outward act that makes a thing sinful. It is also the inward greed and coveting that is in itself sinful. We would not know that even our motives and attitudes can condemn us if God had not revealed it to us. It was by God’s law that Paul learned about his corrupt nature and his need for redeeming grace.

Paul was a Pharisee before he was regenerated by grace. He imagined that he was good in God’s sight, spiritually alive, and had done nothing seriously wrong. When the Holy Spirit made him realize the inner truth of the 10th commandment, he realized that where he once saw life, there was really death.

Paul’s experience is like that of everyone else. The sinner is blinded and prejudiced against true justice. He finds fault in the system, in his circumstances, or in others, but not ultimately in himself. He adds up all the good he believes he has done, and imagines that it must count for something in God’s estimation. He fails to see that even his good deeds flow from a corrupt nature. He steals God’s glory and is discontent with God’s provisions. As the Prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 64:6, “But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags…”

God has given us his law. He graciously sends his Holy Spirit to apply the life-giving work of Christ. By these works of grace we are informed, convinced, and humbled before a Holy God. The law by which Paul thought he could earn God’s blessing, actually condemned him. It drove him to repentance and faith in his only hope, the Redeemer Jesus Christ.

By the new knowledge and life implanted in him, the law became a blessing not a curse. What he once imagined as his way to life, that way which frustrated him, became the rule of life, by which he could show God how much he loved him.

God’s law, therefore, is a good thing!

Paul concludes this section in verse 12.

Romans 7:12, “Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.”

Being released from the law’s condemnation, Paul learned that his freedom meant being bound to another master, righteousness. The law had served its good purpose, and now had become his guide to living thankfully.

So many today claim that Jesus said that God’s law is now replaced by love. To that we answer, “No!” To use Paul’s expression, “Let it not be!” One of the most tragic of modern deceptions is that Christ ended the moral law of God. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said in Matthew 5:17-18, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.”

Later Jesus was asked which is the great commandment in the Law? Far from putting down the law, Jesus quoted from the law! First he quoted from Deuteronomy 6:5, which comes right after the listing of the 10 Commandments. In Matthew 22:37-38 he said, “… ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment.”

Then Jesus quoted from Leviticus 19:18. In Matthew 22:39 he said, “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”

After that, Jesus explained that these two words of the law are a summary of the whole of the law. In Matthew 22:40 he said, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus saw the principle of love imbedded in the law. The law of God defines what love is all about. He used love as a summary of the law, not as a replacement of it.

Psalm 119 tells us that believers learn to love the law of God. The law is not a mean principle. It is one that is graciously given for our benefit. It shows us the high moral nature of our Creator. It convicts us of our depravity. It exposes what a great debt we owe to our Savior, and helps us appreciate the amazing love with which he loves his people.

Psalm 119:97, “Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day.”
Psalm 119:165, “Great peace have those who love Your law …”
Psalm 119:174, “… Your law is my delight.”

Now that we are set free from the old master, we are bound to the new one. The law no longer condemns us or dominates over us as those who remain under the slavery of sin.

The law now guides us as to how those redeemed by grace are to live for God’s glory. Therefore the Christian must keep the moral law of God in the very center of his thoughts. The law gives content to the wisdom presented in verses like Philippians 4:8. Without God’s moral revelations in his law, the terms there would remain undefined.

The Christian walk is not marked out by an attitude of self-pride, or moral arrogance. It is marked by humble obedience. In John 14:15 Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” That saying of Jesus was taken from the Old Testament law also. Five times in the books of Moses God identifies his people as those who love him and keep his commandments.

What once seemed a demanding and condemning set of rules, becomes a welcomed teacher. We use God’s law in evangelism. It is the tool God gives us for convincing the suffering and lost of their need for a Savior. We use God’s law as a guide for society. By it we know what will bring God’s blessing upon a nation and community. We use God’s law as a rule of life. By it we can know how to honor our God, and show him our sincere thankfulness for his grace.

Learn the commandments of God. Teach them to your children. Talk about them in your home. Bring them up in daily conversation. Use them to help the discouraged and depressed of heart diagnose the real cause of their misery. Use them to counsel your friends in Christ as they make decisions. List the promises and benefits of the Law laid out in Psalm 119. Do all you can to treasure and benefit rightly from the wonderful gift of God’s law.

by Bob Burridge ©2011

(The Bible quotations in this article are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)

Back to the Index of Studies In Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Serving the Right Master

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Serving the Right Master

Studies In Paul’s Letter to the Romans
by Bob Burridge ©2011

Lesson 22: Romans 6:15-23

The world has known its share of cruel masters. They have taken advantage of their workers and have driven them to sickness and death. They have often physically abused them, sexually defiled them, and treated them with inhumane cruelty as if it was their right.

Sometimes it was in the context of racial slavery where certain classes were subjugated as animals and bought as if they were mere possessions. Sometimes it was in the workplace where workers were driven into debt to the management and held in fear for their lives. Sometimes it was the enslavement of children who were forced to work against their will and considered easy prey to greedy and callused opportunists.

There is also a cruel master that enslaves all the descendents of Adam. We are all born into a state of moral bondage that deceives us into obedience. It rewards us with unsatisfying promises, and ultimately pays off in eternal damnation. When the mind itself is held in moral chains, it does not realize its own disadvantage. The lost soul knows only the false promises of its master’s lies. It comes to crave more of the unsatisfying practices which only enslave him more. Living in that awful condition, fallen man lashes out in hateful vengeance at others, or he sinks deeper and deeper in to the quicksand of depression and despondence. Sometimes he imagines deliverances which are mere fantasies. They disappoint him all the more.

That is the slavery Paul describes in the first part of Romans chapter 6. But the message of Scripture tells of a way out, an effective liberation for the bound soul. The chains of moral bondage are broken in only one way, by the effectual work of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus died, he acted as a substitute for God’s people. He paid the debt that justice demanded for their sin and for the guilt they inherited from Adam. When the Holy Spirit applies that atonement to the individual, he is set free! The bondage of sin is ended and he is united to a new master, righteousness. Romans 6:6, “knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.”

We are told to live in the reality of this promise.

Romans 6:11-14, “Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”

In that last verse, when Paul says we are not “under law,” he does not mean that God’s good law is cruel, or that we are free from obeying God’s law. No! The law was graciously revealed so we can know how to please God once enabled to do so when regenerated by grace. The law reveals our sin and our bondage to it as descendents of Adam. It shows us how much our Savior endured in paying the penalty in place of his people. When God’s grace delivers us by the work of Christ, the condemnation revealed by the law is gone since the penalty was satisfied by our Savior. We now serve a new master. We are set free!

The delivered believer still struggles with the remains of sin. Paul asks his next question to correct a horrible excuse some might suggest.

Romans 6:15, “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not!”

It is obvious as we read the New Testament that though we are not “under law” but are “under grace”, we are not now free to sin without any concern. Doing things contrary to God’s revealed moral principles offends our Creator, and does harm to our representing him as those made in his image. What Paul is saying here in the context is that we are delivered from the cruel mastery of sin, and have by grace come under a new mastery: the mastery of Christ and of Righteousness.

The same Savior who redeems us and pays for our guilt, also restores us to fellowship with God from whom we draw true spiritual life. When we are renewed this way, our moral desires are changed. Believers are no longer comfortable in their sins. The illusions and false promises are gone. We see sin for what it is; a horrible offense to God, and a wicked master who only destroys his blind servants.

What can be said about looking for such excuses to sin?

Romans 6:16-18, “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

If the soul is really made alive, it will be seen in the person’s attitudes and behaviors. What you obey reveals who your master really is. This is the test the Apostle John gives in 1 John 2:3-6.

“Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, ‘I know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.”

No one can stop sinning altogether in this life, but the believer is troubled by his sin. Since righteousness is his new master, sin weighs on the true Christian’s heart. It brings him to repentance and humbles him before God. He calls upon God to strengthen him to overcome sin. He uses the means God gives him in the battle to grow in his obedience. He isn’t going to be asking “How can I excuse my sin?” He will be concerned more with asking, “How can I overcome my sin?”

This leaves us with a clear duty.

Romans 6:19, “I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.”

Now that you are under a new master (the righteousness received through Christ) you need to be presenting the members of your body to serve holiness.

In the same manner that before you used you hands, feet, mouth and heart to serve sin, now you are to employ all you have to honor the one who redeemed you by grace. Just as in your past life of planning sinful opportunities, you need to plan for righteousness, spend time doing it, longing for, looking for, the next opportunity. Now that you are bound to serve your new master, Paul is saying that you must put forth your energy to use your hands, feet, mouth, and hearts to serve righteousness.

It is easy to get confused here. Many confuse what God does, with what we are called to do. One of the most destructive deceptions is the “Let go, and let God” mentality. It often makes holiness into a mystical state where we are just passive observers waiting for God to make us do what we should, rather than striving to live for his glory in all things. People sometimes excuse spiritual laziness with the deplorable excuse, “the only really important thing is to be born again.” In contrast with that, Jesus called us to “disciple all men”, to “teach them all he commanded.” We are called to live holy lives, to “be holy as he is holy,” not just to have forgiven lives.

Those taken in by this view believe they should not be concerned about doing good works or obeying law, since we are saved by grace and not by earning eternal life by the law. This is a total misunderstanding of the work of grace.

First of all, our hearts are changed by God’s work of grace alone, and not by our works. In fact law was never a means by which anyone could earn salvation from his fallen condition.

However, it is also true that after we are regenerated by grace we are made able to obey. We are commanded to do so. We are not only declared to be innocent by Christ’s righteousness being credited to us. We are also told to conform our lives to his righteousness. If we are saved from condemnation, our hearts are changed by becoming bound to a new master. We will not feel comfortable about our sins any more. The true believer is not the one looking for excuses, but the one looking for ways to change out of gratitude and love for his Redeemer.

Not striving with all our might to be holy is not Biblical. It is typical of the spiritual laziness of our apathetic world. It minimizes the offense of continuing sins, and looks for something to stop them without much personal effort or sacrifice. If the sins continue, they see it as God’s will for their lives and dismiss the issue from their minds. “No pressure Christianity” is a destructive illusion.

This kind of thinking turns the grace of God into a license to sin. Jude 4 warns about such dangerous influences in the church, “For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.”

This is the very problem Paul was dealing with here in Romans 6. Saving grace does not liberate us to sin, or to have a careless attitude about our offenses to God. It’s just the opposite. Grace liberates us from bondage to sin so that now, by the power of Christ living in us, we have the strength to overcome our sins and to be progressing in holiness for God’s glory and honor.

Gardens are beautiful places when they produce lush, healthy plants. We know that God makes the seeds germinate and grow. He provides the sunshine and rain. If that is all that is required for a nice garden, they would fill up our lawns and fields. God produces gardens by means of gardeners. He told Adam to cultivate the land and to work to bring forth the fruit of the earth.

The gardener cannot make seeds germinate, grow and produce fruit. His job is to dig up and aerate the soil, plan for good sun exposure, irrigation and drainage. He may have to add nutrients to the soil and protect the plants from freezes or insects. The gardener cannot cause the fruit to be produced. God does not do the work of the gardener. He created us to carry out that work here on earth to demonstrate what he is.

In our spiritual lives, we cannot regenerate or empower spiritually dead souls. However, God has ordained to use means to accomplish his plan. He calls us to pray, to be instructed out of his word, and to strive to obey. He warns us to flee temptation and to pursue holiness. To accomplish this we draw from the power we have promised to us in Christ. We are enabled by changed hearts. God calls us to consider ourselves to be dead to the mastery of sin. We do this by resting upon the work Christ did as our substitute. This is not just an idea to simply inspire us emotionally. It is a God-revealed fact we need to relay upon. By grace he makes a change in the condition of our moral nature.

Our rewards will differ,
depending upon the master we serve

Romans 6:20-23, “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Those who remain as slaves of sin earn its just reward: eternal death. The Bible is filled with alarming descriptions of the pains of eternal hell and unending separation from God. It also points out how our present spiritual death is at the root of pain and depression. Sin is no real rewarder of men. It is a lying employer who gives out death as its paycheck. The temporary pleasures of sin only produce shame and continuing isolation from their Creator. The anticipated rewards of sinful pleasures are lies. What we earn is not what is deceptively promised by our tempter, nor what is expected by the lost human soul.

When we become slaves to righteousness, we are given the gift of life. This wonderful slavery spoken of in verse 22 is the only real freedom. Those who serve righteousness as their master learn of the satisfaction that can be found in honorable things. Loving, God-centered obedience of the redeemed soul is not only found in the peace and strength promised for here and now, it is also ours in the eternal union with God in glory.

Paul puts it quite bluntly in verse 23. When we sin, we earn a wage. The paycheck is death. When we are in Christ Jesus, we are given a gracious gift which is not earned. The paycheck is eternal life. This eternal life works in us now to change our attitudes about sin and holiness. We demonstrate the truth of it by striving to be obedient to that which pleases God in all things.

What a wonderful master we serve! Psalm 23:6 “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever.”

As we grow in Christ,
sin ought to be detested, not defended.

When we continue in sin, we show an immature understanding of two things:
1. We fail to appreciate the deep offense of sin in the eyes of God. When the Bible’s description of sin is seen as a mere set of religious rules for earning salvation, the whole point has been missed. God gives us his word, his law, so that we might understand how offensive some things are to the Creator who made all things to reveal his nature and glory.

When we begin to comprehend how God is disgusted by our transgressions, we will have a new motive to stop sinning. We strive to obey not merely to avoid consequences for ourselves, but more importantly to show gratitude and love for our God. When the prophet Isaiah became aware of his sin, he said, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5)

2. We fail to appreciate the wonder and power of what Christ has accomplished. He did not just die as an example to us, or to inspire us to religious living. He died to actually satisfy divine justice in our place, taking that awful offense upon himself. He died to set us free so that we can become bound to a Master of Righteousness and life.

When we justify certain sins (as if we are set free from moral law to do what we please) we pervert grace into license, and cast doubt that we have been liberated to serve a new master. We live in a world where even so called “Christians” steal God’s Sabbath Day for themselves, and excuse it by imagining that the 4th Commandment given as Creation was completed has somehow expired. Many take the tithe of their income which God commands to be brought to the Elders, and they spend it themselves, making excuses by doing some good things with it. Many abandon marriage as the only moral setting for sex and family. Many kill their unborn to avoid unwanted responsibilities. They lie to serve themselves, and cheat to become rich and powerful. They cultivate the attitudes of the world. These are the socially “accepted” sins. The list in Galatians 5:19-21 includes the sins of sexual impurity, improper worship, hatred, jealousy, selfishness, envy and such things.

In the next verses (Galatians 5:22-23) God commands that we cultivate the fruit of the Holy Spirit: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

The Bible calls all these things “sin.” The wage is death. They deeply offend God and cast doubt that the soul is converted and bound to a new master.

These are our enemies. They are not the way to success as the world pretends. Do not give place to them! Do not let their cruel mastery continue another moment! If you try to pull against the chains of cruel oppression in your own strength, it will only gives you sore wrists. Come to Christ if you have not been set free. He will give you a new master.

Once you are liberated in Christ, trust in and act upon the promises God has given. You have the power in Christ to really progress out of sin and into holiness. It is not just a promise to some select few fortunate believers. It is a promise of grace to all who are in Christ. You are liberated! Live that way!

Keep striving in prayer, trusting in the change God promised he has made in you. Never let sin become less than the greatest enemy in your life. Make holiness your greatest goal.

(The Bible quotations in this article are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)

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Remembering 9/11

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Remembering 9/11

by Bob Burridge ©2011

There are times when evil shows itself so boldly that even those who know no Savior are horrified. On that September day in 2001 we were all reminded about the depth of human moral corruption. We saw the ugly side of the fallen human nature. We saw what any of us could be and would be, were it not for the restraining hand of our Creator who rules over all things, shaping them to reveal his nature and glory. It is God’s power, mercy and grace which alone keep individuals from falling into the depths of such pure depravity.

The tragedy of America’s 9/11 was not the only time in history when the pawns of wickedness took the lives of thousands, and destroyed the illusion of our temporal peace and prosperity. There was the slaying of the infants of Bethlehem by the paranoid pride of Herod when hearing of the birth of Christ, the new born King. Roman troops surrounded Jerusalem in 70 AD slaughtering over a million Jews in the siege of Jerusalem. These are but a few of the many sad glimpses at how the simple eating of forbidden fruit in Eden corrupted those made to display the glories of the Creator.

The message of hope is not found in our nation’s resolve, or in memorials to loved ones senselessly taken from us in a moment of repulsive horror. True hope is found in the hand of God that not only keeps us all from descending to the same depths of evil, but also sent the Savior to redeem from that fallen race some who would be adopted into the family of God. To love and redeem the good is wonderful. To do the same to the unworthy is astounding. Since there is no one who is truly good, considering the depth of our corruption, the work of our Savior amazes us and humbles us. We are driven to solemn worship of the Redeemer and King of all kings.

Romans 5:5-11, “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”

Set Free from Bondage

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Set Free from Bondage

Studies In Paul’s Letter to the Romans
by Bob Burridge ©2011

Lesson 21: Romans 6:1-14

Sometimes it seems impossible for us to overcome our weaknesses. Just when we think we have dodged an old recurring fault and avoided another collision with disaster, — WHAM! It seems to come out from some blind spot and hits us head on!

We all know what it’s like to keep falling into the same temptation over and over again. We make a firm resolution, only to go back on it after a few days. Sometimes it seems we have made some serious progress, only to slide back again and undo it all. We know the Bible speaks of overcoming sin, and of being sanctified in Christ. Yet we often wonder, “What’s wrong with me?” It’s obvious that we are not free from the influence of sin.

No one is fully sanctified in this life. Before our glorification someday in heaven, sin is always going to be present in some form. But the Bible assures us that we don not have to become despondent and just accept moral failure. We do not have to resign ourselves to the idea that sin is just too powerful to fight. There is no sin, no habit, no force so powerful, that we cannot be progressing out of it through the power of Christ in us.

There is hope for the Christian. It is not something so profound that only the wise can find it. It is not something so hidden that you need to search deep into your soul or trek to remote places to discover it.

Today, bewildered and gullible masses of people seek hidden truths and mystical experiences. They go from special conference to special conference, they listen to all the slick promises and promotions of one religious salesman after another. They get their hopes up with some new secret or insight, only to be dashed to despair once more when it doesn’t meet their expectations. Then they run off to find another guru to follow, another secret to deliver them.

God has told us that it should not be this way. The promise is a simple one, made clear in the gospel itself. As my wise seminary professor said, “The secret to a victorious and holy Christian life is — there is no secret!”

Paul had explained as he began Romans chapter 6, that the victory lies in our being dead to sin. He started by raising a question in verse 1, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” Then in verse 2 he summarized his answer in a very direct statement, “Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?”

He had just made the point in chapter 5 verse 20 that grace shows itself by overcoming our sin, “… where sin increased, grace abounded all the more”

To help us better understand about this grace and its benefits, he imagined someone asking this question, “So then, shouldn’t we just keep on sinning, so that God’s grace can be seen all the more at work in delivering us?”

In his answer to this question Paul is showing that someone redeemed by Christ is not going to be looking for ways to continue living in sin. A true believer should not raise a question like that, because God not only forgives him, he also makes a real change in him. He is dead to sin!

As we summarized in our last study, we are born not just to be born. We are born so that we might live in Christ, and be growing in holiness. Those who claim to be in Christ, but do not grow in holiness, and who have little interest in holiness, have cause to be alarmed and to wonder if they are redeemed at all. They ought to come to Christ in humble repentance, trusting in his suffering and death in their place. They must make certain that they hope wholly in that gospel promise of grace.

Just as certainly as grace regenerates and produces faith in the work of Christ, it also begins the process of sanctification and renews the conscience to want to do what is right.

Paul continued by showing that we are dead
to the mastery of sin by our union with Christ.

Romans 6:3-5, “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,”

In God’s word “death” is not about something ceasing to exist. It is most fundamentally a separation. Physical death is when our bodies stop working and become separated from our souls. Spiritual death is when a person fallen in Adam is separated from God.

When we are dead to sin, we are in some way separated from it. We are not separated from the power of sin. It is still present and evident in our lives. We are not separated merely from the penalty of sin. There is more here than that. We are separated from sin in its role as master over our lives.

Romans 6:6 “… that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”
Romans 6:9 “… Death no longer has dominion over Him.”
Romans 6:12 “… do not let sin reign in your mortal body …”
Romans 6:14 “For sin shall not have dominion over you, …”

As believers, we are identified with Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection. Baptism as it is mentioned here is not only a symbol of how God purifies us by removing the guilt of our sin. It also represents how we are united with that which is holy by having the pollution and offense removed that separated us from God.

The penalty of sin is death, both physical and spiritual. Jesus died as a substitute for his people. He endured the penalty in the place of those he loved eternally. When we are united with him in his death, the guilt of sin is removed because it is paid for. Notice how Paul says “we are buried with Him through baptism into death” in verses 3 and 4, then he says we are “united together in the likeness of His death” in verse 5. He is not talking about water baptism here, but the union represented by it.

When separation from God is ended, the believer is adopted as a child of God. So by our union with Christ our separation from God is ended. We are separated from the lordship of sin. It is in this way that we are dead to sin. We are separated from its mastery in our lives.

We are also united with Christ by his resurrection. Now, clothed in his righteousness and transformed, there is a living relationship with Christ. We are made able to walk in newness of life.

Paul goes on to explain this freedom from our old master.

Romans 6:6-10, “knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

The old self is crucified with Christ. That does not mean we become a different person than we were before. It does mean that we have a whole new foundation for our lives. Instead of serving sin, and foolishly believing we can find happiness and contentment in things that offend our Creator, we are united with the One from whom our sin had separated us.

This means we are bound to a new master, and that implies a duty.

Romans 6:11-14, “Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”

Our duty is to consider ourselves to be dead to sin, and alive to God. We ought to be living in recognition of this truth. This is the real promise of this passage. It is not just an attitude that imagines this to be true. It is the recognition of a reality implanted in us by the Holy Spirit.

We put this into practice by directing the members of our body to serve our new master, righteousness. Disobedience will not be completely gone in this life. We must be constantly vigilant. God’s promise is that the sinful remains of that former mastery can now be successfully combated.

Paul expanded more on this in his letter to the Galatians.

In Galatians 5:19 he described our old bondage, “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are:” Then he lists 4 categories of sin in verses 19-21, “… adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

1. Sensual sins – Galatians 5:19 “… adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, …”
The Greek text used by the King James Version includes the word “adultery” here. It is left out in those translations based upon editions of the text where more surviving manuscripts were used. The sin of adultery would be included in the more general word translate as “fornication”. That word (porneia, πορνεία) is a very broad term for sexual sins.

Another way people sin sensually is by taking illegal drugs. They try to get a momentary sensation of feeling at peace in ways God has not prescribed. The believer needs to trust God by staying with what is right in order to find satisfaction sexually and in other areas of life. We must obey his revealed ways and not give our members over to unrighteousness.

2. Worship sins – Galatians 5:20a “… idolatry, sorcery …”
The fallen heart is drawn to innovations in worship. To him, worship is judged by how it makes the worshiper feel, instead of what God asks for from his children. The true believer wants to worship God in ways he knows please his Savior, not ways that just please himself, or advance his own cause. The Bible should be our guide so that we know what God tells us is to be included in worship, both what we do and our attitude while doing those things.

3. Relationship sins – Galatians 5:20b-21a, “… hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders,”
These sins have to do with how we treat God and others. They are attitudes we need to openly combat as Christians. They are the remains of the old bondage to sin and have no place in our redeemed lives.

Again there are some minor textual differences in the Greek manuscripts available when the King James Version was translated. Aside from using some singular nouns instead of plural ones, the early Greek editions add “murders” to the list. Certainly that is consistent with what the Scriptures teach.

4. Sins of Immoderation – Galatians 5:21b, “… drunkenness, revelries …”
The tendency to overstep wise boundaries is part of our old ways. Abandonment of good judgment only destroys us, and offends God.

Paul then reminds the Galatians, “… and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

The point is that those set free from bondage to sin should be working to overcome these types of behaviors and attitudes. If we are practicing them, if we keep engaging in them, if we are making excuses for them, it should alarm us. It may be an indication that we are not set free from the dominance of sin at all, and are in need of that new birth in Christ. Even the believer will fall into these sins at times, but he will become concerned about it,
and want to overcome the temptations. That is when he must remember the victory Christ has earned for him, and has implanted in him.

Instead of these offensive things, we must be making the members of our body into servants of righteousness. The new ways which we need to strengthen, are those of a soul alive and in union with God. Paul in Galatians 5:22-23 then lists the fruit that comes from the Holy Spirit implanted in us, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”

Galatians 5:24-25 goes on to make the same application and challenge as Romans 6. It says, “And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”

Since we are now made spiritually alive, we have the power of Christ in us to overcome the remains of sin and its habits which we battle daily.

We are to be active in engaging the
living power of Christ at work in us.

In the language Paul used in telling the Colossians this same truth, we are to put on these new attitudes and behaviors. Notice how similar Colossians 3:5-10 is to the way Paul explains it in both Roman 6 and Galatians 5.

“Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him”

These are “ought” statements. God enables us in Christ, and calls us, commands us, to obey. This means we need to mobilize our whole lives to make them honoring to God.

In Romans 6:14 Paul gives us a further way to see the reason why sin should not be our master, “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”

We need to understand how we are “under grace” and not “under law”. Paul has been talking about being “under the dominion” of either sin or righteousness. So while “under law” may mean other things in other places, here it seems to have to do with sin as our master. There is a reason why Paul changed “being under sin or righteousness” into “being under law or grace.” Paul is bringing his whole argument together and unites his themes.

He made a reference to law in the previous chapter. There in Romans 5:13 he said, “For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Paul’s argument there is that since sin was imputed before the giving of the Law of Moses, therefore law itself must have been in the world from the beginning. The moral principles are a reflection of the Creator’s eternal, perfect, and unchangeable nature.

Since he calls us to stop sinning and do what God’s law tells us to do, he cannot mean that we are now set free from what the law requires. The law is presented not as a way to be saved, but as that which defines sin and determines its penalty. So to be alive to sin, is to be condemned by the law.

Since God’s grace through the death of Christ is what makes us righteous, to be under the mastery of righteousness, means to come under the power of grace.

Paul is not saying that at one time humans were obligated to obey God’s law, and now they are not. That could never be. We are always commanded to do what is right in God’s eyes. Rather he is saying that once we were under the condemnation of law, and sin was our master, but now we are forgiven by grace so that righteousness becomes our master.

This is a message of great promise and hope.

If we are united with Christ by grace, then we have spiritual life and the ability to be conquering sin. There ought to be progress in our lives. There must be obedience in our lives, evidence of Christ at work.

We need to keep Galatians 5 and Colossians 3 in mind. They give us a list of things to be working on. By the power of the risen Christ in us, we can advance victoriously.

When we sin, instead of looking at our failures as if we were still in bondage to them, we need to remind ourselves of this promise. We need to reckon, consider, ourselves to be dead to sin, and separated from its mastery. We ought to consider ourselves to be alive to God as slaves to the mastery of righteousness. We need to remove every opportunity for sinning, and press on to improve holiness. We need to come to Christ in humble prayer expecting our living Savior to deliver us.

We are not irretrievably bound to keep falling into sin as if it was our master. We are to recognize righteousness as our caring master.

(The Bible quotations in this article are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)

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One For All

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One For All

Studies In Paul’s Letter to the Romans
by Bob Burridge ©2011

Lesson 19 – Romans 5:12-21

An article in Time magazine reported an incident like so many we hear about in the daily news. Police detectives had arrested four teenagers for beating up some homeless people in a park. When they were taken into custody the boys confessed to a whole list of violent crimes. The boys were ages 18, 17, 16 and 15. In just 16 days they had beaten an old man to death, beaten several other elderly men but came short of killing them, had used a whip on two teen-age girls, had tied gasoline soaked cloth around a man’s legs and set it on fire, and had dragged a man 7 blocks before dumping him in the river where he drowned. To the shock of the neighbors these 4 teens had good school records, came from good homes, none belonged to gangs, they were active in organized sports, and 3 of the 4 had been summer camp counselors.

We shake our heads over such an article and ask ourselves, “What is our world coming to? Look at what modern ways are doing to our children to make them do such things!”

But — this Time magazine article was published in the early 1950’s. Has this kind of behavior been around that long? Even before violent video games, cable-TV and the internet? I doubt that many would disagree that crime reports are expected to rise as the population grows, but we need to be careful that we do not blame corruption so much on society that we forget its real source.

200 years after Jean Cauvin (we know him as John Calvin) succeeded in shaping the city of Geneva to operate by a biblical model, Geneva produced another man with the same first name, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The Renaissance had spread humanism world wide challenging the Reformation, but there was a problem with its message. The problem was with people themselves. Instead of becoming more noble, they still tended to do selfish, dishonest, violent and greedy things. The humanist had no way to explain how man could be so bad deep inside since he denied that there is any sin nature in him.

The philosopher Rousseau blamed culture. He believed that humanity’s bad ways had to have been learned. He wrote about the “noble savage” whom he saw as the superior primitive man not influenced by greed, commerce or Christianity. With no standards he was pressured to obey, a person would have no reason to become greedy or selfish. He thought that if man was really allowed to be free, he would be noble. He dreamed of a utopia where there were no rules, no authority — just pure natural freedom.

But the results of his thinking proved him tragically wrong. The French Revolution attempted to impose this freedom upon a whole nation. Those who would not go along with it were to be silenced by force. The guillotine became the answer to resistance. Blood flowed horribly in the streets. The quest for nobility and freedom brought totalitarianism and violence.

One of Rousseau’s students, a painter named Gaugin, decided to seek out the noble savage. He left his family and all he had to run off to live in primitive Tahiti. What he found there was not consistent with his teacher’s theory. As Gaugin got to know the primitive culture he found it anything but noble. He found despair, cruelty and greed was there in Tahiti as well. He painted his utter disappointment into a depressing painting, then he attempted suicide. His suicide attempt failed, just as did his search for the “noble savage.”

Humanists have continued to try to explain away this obvious flaw in their system. Man and his societies have been far from noble. History tends to expose an inner corruption. At first the modern humanists continued to seek innocence within, but with Hitler, World War Two, and a deteriorating national and world situation, a Second Humanist Manifesto blamed it all on society and its standards for corrupting man. It names industry, profit making, faith in God, revelation, salvation and belief in a final judgment as the evils. It ignored the fact that man is the one who makes up his societies. That’s the common element that corrupts it all.

God has explained clearly in his word that man is himself sinful, and it explains how he got that way.

Sin isn’t something we need to learn or discover. The Bible tells us that no one is without sin. We are born with it. King David knew that when he wrote Psalm 51:5, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.”

David did not mean that his mother sinned in conceiving him. The wording of Psalm 51 shows that David understood that he was corrupted by sin from the moment he was conceived.

The first four chapters of Romans clearly show that sin is universal and corrupts all men. Now in chapter five it goes on to explain how things got this way.

Sin came to infect us all through the one sin of Adam.

Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned”

That first man who lived in Eden did not just act on his own. Adam represented the whole human race. By God’s design, he stood for all of us when he sinned. The basic idea of being represented by another person is not that strange. It was the foolish anger of Pharaoh that sent so many Egyptian citizens to their deaths. Today, Ambassadors make treaties that effect whole nations. Our representatives in congress may commit us all to war where we might have to fight and die. Parents make choices that effect their children’s entire lives.

However, this representation in Eden was of a special kind. Adam stood as the head of the human race by the covenant God had announced when our race was created. When he sinned, through this one disobedience, by this single transgression, sin, its guilt, together with its punishment passed upon all his natural descendents. The only exception was Jesus Christ who was conceived supernaturally by the Holy Spirit. Jesus was a true and complete man, but not by natural birth. Therefore he is the only one who did not inherit Adam’s sin and guilt personally.

God had warned Adam in Genesis 2:17 about the penalty for sin. He was told not to eat from the one tree in the garden. God said, “… in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Death is the penalty for sin, and death has ruled over mankind since the time of Adam. This is why sin has been around from that beginning.

Romans 5:13-14, “(For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.”

Since Adam stood as the head and representative of the human race, the Bible says we “all sinned” in Adam. We are all guilty, and inherit the corrupt nature that came from that sin We all deserve physical and spiritual death, eternal and complete separation from God.

However, God did not make things that way just to leave all mankind in a fallen condition. Adam is called a “type of him who is to come”. What Adam did was a hint of something far greater. Another representative would come. Adam’s sin laid the tragic foundation upon which an amazing deliverance would be displayed and accomplished.

The other representative of which Adam was the type was Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:15-21, “But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.) Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous. Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

In 1 Corinthians 15:45 Paul calls Jesus the “last Adam”. Just as Adam stood for those he represented, so also Jesus stood to represent all those God had given to him. Unlike the first Adam, Jesus came to redeem his people. By his perfect obedience, by his righteousness, by his taking their place in death, he represented his people to make them holy. He satisfied the demands of divine justice when the perfect one died for the depraved.

The technical term for the transfer of guilt and holiness is “imputation”. The guilt of Adam was imputed to all those he represented. They are all considered guilty in him. The guilt of the one is credited to, and really belongs to, those represented. So, when Adam sinned, we all became guilty and deserving of eternal damnation.

The righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to all those he represented. They are all considered to be justified in him. The Christian is truly counted as innocent before God. It is not that his guilt is simply overlooked or just arbitrarily pardoned. The pardon is based upon real justification. For them, their debt is fully paid off.

Just as the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to the believer, the believer’s guilt was imputed to Jesus on the cross. When he died he really became sin for us. The guilt that he bore was real.

Adam represented the whole human race that would descend from him. That was the point of these first five chapters of Romans. Many other parts of Scripture teach the same thing. No one is excluded from the guilt and corruption of Adam except for Jesus Christ.

It would be reasonable then to ask who Jesus represented. If Adam condemned all people, did Jesus redeem all people? The plain answer of Scripture is, “No.”

The word “all” in 5:18 and throughout this passage, is used as it is elsewhere in the Bible. It is always limited by what is being spoken about. The context defines each use of the word. For example the Bible says that the decree of Caesar was that “all the world” was to be registered (Luke 2:1), but that tax census obviously only applied to the Roman Empire. The Bible also speaks of “all Jerusalem” and “all Judea” when only a specific group involved is meant. So also here, the “all” that Jesus represented did not include all that Adam represented. Each represented all the Father had assigned to him to uniquely represent.

Jesus directly explained who he came to represent in his lesson to the disciples in John 6.

John 6:37, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.”
John 6:39, “This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.”
John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
John 6:65, “And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”

Clearly, there are those the Father gives to Jesus to be raised up to life at the last day. Those are the ones who show the Father’s blessing by coming to Jesus in faith. All those who come are redeemed to everlasting life, and none of them are lost.

Just as clearly, some do not come to him. They are not redeemed. They are not given to Jesus by the Father. They were not represented by him on the cross. In fact, in John 6:66 some did not like this difficult doctrine and left Jesus, “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.”

Not all came to him and persevered with him. Some showed they were not his people. In his prayer of John 17 Jesus showed clearly who it was he represented when he came to be the Savior. There he prayed …

John 17:1-2, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.”
John 17:9, “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.”

Jesus represented those the Father had set him to represent. This did not include all fallen humans.

Could it be that Jesus represented them all but does not save them all for some reason? The Puritan pastor and Bible Scholar John Owen wrote, it is “a monstrous assertion … that any should perish in whose place the Son of God appeared before his Father with his perfect obedience …” it is simply unthinkable, “… that his satisfaction in their behalf could be refused.”

If Jesus came and died to rescue all humans, and even one human is sent to hell, then Jesus would have failed!
But he did not fail. He succeeded to do exactly what he came to do.

Our fall into sin as a race was something unique as far as we know. It was not that way with the angels. They were not led into sin by a representative. Each angel that fell did so on his own. Jude 1:6 “And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;” Since they did not fall as a race, they can have no redeemer to represent them either. No fallen angel is ever redeemed.

We humans are different. We were designed by God to be represented in one person who would stand for all of us. Loraine Boettner commented, “It is as if God had said, ‘if sin is to enter, let it enter by one man, so that righteousness also may enter by one man.’ ” This is the great benefit of being part of a race that can be represented by one person. Though fallen in Adam, individuals are also redeemable by a Savior.

Notice the things in Romans five which Jesus secured for us as our representative: by his obedience, his great act of righteousness, we receive …
:15 the gift of grace, abounding grace
:16 justification
:17 abundance of grace, the gift of righteousness, the promise of reigning in life by Christ
:18 justification to life
:19 righteousness
:20 grace abounding
:21 reigning grace through righteousness to eternal life

What a glorious and amazing blessing is ours by the work of Jesus, the second Adam!

There is no mystery about where corruption comes from. We have a corrupt society because it is made up of individuals who have inherited the corruption of Adam. Sin is not the only condition that is imputed by a representative appointed by the Father. We become children of God by imputation of the righteousness of Christ.

So can we introduce real change into our corrupt society? Is there anything we can do to turn around its influence? There is a way.

It is not by tearing down rules and authority to look for the “noble savage”. It is not by forcing all men to throw off moral and religious convictions by the guillotine. It is not by building up expensive and cumbersome government programs to control society. It is by bringing individuals the gospel, by telling the truth about Jesus Christ. When God changes the heart of one man, that one part of society is transformed.

You cannot build a great fortress out of crumbling bricks, even if you clean them up and paint them. If the bricks are corrupted, they will not hold up. You have to start with good, solid blocks.

Making a strong family, a sound church, a safe community, or a godly nation is done in basically the same way, by making sure the individuals that make it up are growing in Christ.

When you go out with the gospel hope you bring with you the remedy God provides for re-structuring your family and community. While you cannot change the hearts of those who show they are not Christ’s, it will keep you busy enough seeking out those for whom Christ died. Tell them the good news. Pray with and for them. Bring them into Christ’s church. When they believe and become changed you will know that they too are redeemed by grace.

For all who are with us in the family of God’s covenant, they are here by that grace alone. We who were in Adam, rightly condemned and deserving of eternal damnation, are made righteous in Christ by having what he did imputed to us who deserve nothing. This is cause for joyful worship and thankful living. As Paul concluded in 5:20 “… but where sin abounded, grace abounded much more,”

(The Bible quotations in this article are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)

Back to the Index of Studies In Paul’s Letter to the Romans

A Most Special Name

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A Most Special Name

(Westminster Shorter Catechism Questions 53-56)
(watch the video for an expanded commentary)
by Bob Burridge ©2011

It has always been one of Satan’s tactics to make wrong things seem acceptable. In our imperfect condition we are often very willing to go along with the deception. We tend to pay more attention to our own comforts and pleasures, than to why we are here as those God created for a special purpose in his Creation.

Since we are all heirs of Adam’s corrupt nature, we tend to think of God in terms of what we selfishly want him to be, instead of what he is and reveals about himself in his word. Other interests become the real gods of our lives. We also tend to look for satisfaction of our wants in things we can see, instead of trusting in the invisible but very real God who is behind it all. Images and objects we make can distort the way God himself teaches us to worship him. These principles are summed up in the first two commandments.

The Third Commandment is about how seriously we should take all our mentions of God. Question 53 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism quotes from Deuteronomy 20:7, the wording of the Third Commandment.

Deuteronomy 20:7, “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”

Sadly, this commandment, like all the others, is often misunderstood.

First, we need to understand what it means
by the “name of the LORD our God”.

There are two words used here; LORD and God.

1. The word LORD translates the Hebrew name “Jehovah”, YHVH (יהוה). It’s often referred to as the “Tetragrammaton” which means “four letters”.
Instead of using the word “Jehovah” many translators used the all upper case word “LORD”. There is a very ancient tradition behind this. In ancient times, the Israelites did not want the sacred name of God to be read carelessly. When readers came across the four sacred consonants (the Tetragrammaton) they would say the Hebrew word Adonai (אדוני), which means “Lord”. At a later time when vowels were added to the written language, the vowel markers for Adonai were adjusted to fit into the letters “YHVH” giving us the word “Yehovah”. When the Bible was later translated into the Germanic languages the sound “Y” was represented by the letter “J”. This is how the common English word “Jehovah” was born. A closer pronunciation to the original name of God would be “Yahveh”.

When Israel was set up as a modern nation after World War 2, a lot of research went into restoring the ancient Hebrew pronunciation. More accurate research in the field of Orthoepy shows that the ancient Hebrew pronunciation was probably “yăh-VĔH”. (See: “Ben-Yehuda’s English-Hebrew Hebrew-English Dictionary” first printed in 1961 based upon the pronunciation guide in the “Merriam-Webster Dictionary” of 1947, 1951 – “Conversation Manual: Hebrew” a Living Language Course text book first printed in 1958, and “Hebrew in 10 Minutes a Day” by Sunset Series printed in 1992. Article at “Hebrew for Christians” about pronouncing this name of God. Watch the video on the pronunciation of “vav” as opposed to “wow” by Nehemia Gordon.)

In the New Testament the Holy Spirit led the writers to use the Greek word for “Lord” when the Tetragrammaton appeared in the Old Testament texts they were quoting. The Greek word “Lord” is “kurios” (κύριος). For example, Jesus in Matthew3:3 said “Lord” (kurios) when quoting Isaiah 40:3 where the Tetragrammaton appears. The same word was used by the Apostle Paul in Romans 9:29 when quoting Isaiah 1:9. In each case where this covenant name in verses from the Old Testament are quoted in the New Testament the Holy Spirit led the writers to use this Greek word for “Lord”. This is how the God-Inspired writers taught us to handle the Tetragrammaton.

This name is combined in the Bible with others words that describe God. They were used as if they were descriptive titles. He’s called:
YHVH Yir’eh [Jireh] (יהוה יראה) “The LORD will provide” Genesis 22:14
YHVH Nissi (יהוה נסי) “The LORD my banner” Exodus 17:15
YHVH Shalom (יהוה שׁלום) “The LORD is peace” Judges 6:24
YHVH Shammah (יהוה שׁמה) “The LORD is there” Ezekiel 48:35
YHVH Tsid-kenu (יהוה צדקנו) “The LORD our righteousness” Jeremiah 23:6, 33:16
YHVH Tse-va’ot (יהוה צבאות) “The LORD of hosts” 1 Samuel 1:11

2. The word God translates the Hebrew word El (אל).
The plural of that word is Elohim (אלוהים). This form is often called the “Majestic Plural” because it was used to show things of grandeur and wonder. The word for “heaven” and other such words are usually found written in this same Majestic Plural form.

He is called El Shaddai, which means “God Almighty”. In Isaiah 9:6 he is called, “… Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Sometimes God is called Lord in the Old Testament, using the Hebrew word, Adon (אדן), or Adonai (אדוני).

In the New Testament the common word for “God” is Theos (Θεος). He is also called “Lord” using the Greek word Kurios (κυριος). Our Savior was given name Jesus Iaesous (Ιησους). In his own language of Aramaic his name was Yeshuah (ישוע). It would be brought into English by using the name Joshua.

The title of “Christ” comes from the Greek word Christos (Χριστος), which means “the Anointed one”, like the Hebrew Old Testament word Messiah.

It would be wrong to limit this Third Commandment to only these words. God himself expanded on what his name is in Exodus 34:6-7, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”

Martin Luther called this verse in Exodus, “God’s own commentary on his name.” The name of God includes all the perfections and judgments that identify him. The commandment is not just about particular titles or proper nouns. It applies to all our references to him, and to whatever words we use to represent him as we speak.

God’s name must not be use in vain.

Before we can understand the teaching of this commandment, we also need to understand what it means to take up something in “vain”.

The most obvious offense to this moral principle is when people speak of God with open anger or disrespect. Blasphemy is when people show anger toward God, ridicule him, or degrade him in some way. Some angrily blame God for the wrongs they see in our world. However, that is not all this commandment forbids. The original Hebrew word translated “vain” is shav’ (שוא). It means to use something carelessly, without meaning, or thoughtlessly.

Today it has become very acceptable and common to use God’s name this way. His name is disrespected if it is use as an expletive. That is when people use his name to express their emotions. They use his name when they are surprised, frustrated, or hurt themselves. They might say things like, “Oh my God!” or “My Lord!” Or they blurt out the name of “Jesus”, or the word “Christ” when they are shocked about something.

In situations like this they are not really addressing God or Jesus. Most times it is just a habit, something people pick up because they hear it so much. They say, “Oh, I’m not being disrespectful. I don’t mean anything by it.” That is exactly what this commandment is forbidding.

God’s name, all the words that identify him or describe him, are not to be used carelessly or without thought or meaning. It degrades and offends him. It violates this Third Commandment.

There are many ways this commandment is broken every day.

One way this moral principle is violated is in profanity. The word “profane” means to treat something sacred as if it was common, or not important. It is when holy things relating to God and his work are degraded as if they were not special.

God alone is holy and all glory should go to him. People speak of “holy cows,” but they do not really mean that the cows are actually sanctified or set aside as special to God. They exclaim “Heavens!” or “for heaven’s sake”, but certainly they are not thinking about God’s place of glory. When they use those words without thinking of their awe, holiness, and glory, they are being used vainly. These are not to be treated as common things. They are things that should humble us before our Maker.

People might laugh at such an idea, objecting, “what could possibly be wrong with such innocent expressions?” They say, “Nobody really means anything by them.”

That’s exactly the point. God wants us to speak of him with thought and respect. His name and the words that describe what he is and does are holy. They should never be used in vain, carelessly, or without meaning.

The commandment also forbids vulgarity. Every language and culture has acceptable ways to describe normal things. They also develop crude, distasteful words for the same things. Every believer needs to avoid words that are offensive and in bad taste. These words degrade things God made for honorable purposes.

Vulgarity includes those words that are obscene. That means they offend with excessive immodesty or sexual indecency. God created us male and female to have children, and to love each other for life. That is the model God uses to show our relationship to Jesus Christ as his bride. Therefore it is wrong to use crude words about our sexual relationships.

Today, society is confused about the proper way to satisfy normal and good desires, so it perverts them into degrading offenses against God’s law and human respectability. Foul terms and descriptions fill music, movies, books, radio, video games, and TV programs. They even get into a child’s or teen’s vocabulary. They show disrespect for what God designed to be good and honoring to him.

This commandment forbids cursing. Cursing is when a person dares to call down God’s judgment upon someone or something. Damnation is a prerogative unique to God. Words like “hell” and “damn” are serious biblical words about the horrible consequences of sin. Only God has the right to pronounce eternal judgments and condemnations.

When people use words like that in anger, to impress others, or they just stick them in sentences meaninglessly, they degrade this fearsome penalty of sin, and trivializes God’s judgments.

People say, “It’s just a habit, I don’t mean anything by it.” That is exactly what this commandment forbids. Cursing, is when someone speaks about God’s wrath and judgment in a vain, thoughtless way.

Another area we need to be careful about is humor. Everyone appreciates a good joke. There is a lot to laugh about in God’s world. However, we need to show good judgment in not letting ourselves laugh at God or at what is holy.

Jokes about hell should not be thought of as funny if we appreciate the horror and reality of it. People would not think of making jokes about those who died in the 9/11 attacks, or the victims of a serial killer, or a child molester. It is considered bad taste to make light of things like that in jokes. But there is no greater horror than what people will face in the final judgment. To laugh at heaven, hell, Satan and eternal judgment is crude and blasphemous.

The world makes it popular to ridicule or satirize God and holy things. That sense of humor should not be acceptable to God’s people.

Of course they say, “Come on, where’s your sense of humor. We don’t mean anything by it.” Again, that is exactly what this commandment forbids. We should never make meaningless references to God and his glory. When people profane God’s name and glory, they become Satan’s unwitting accomplices.

Most surprisingly, sometimes God’s name is used in vain in worship. It is so easy to let our minds wander while our mouths keep on speaking or singing. People sing of the glories of Jesus and of God’s power, or recite creeds, while they think about their schedules, the temperature of the room, how their hair looks, or what somebody else is thinking or doing during worship.

No one should say God’s name as an empty, vain repetition. Yet, it happens in the gathering of the churches every Sunday during their times of worship. Do not be busy in your mind with your schedule, plans, or some little project while you speak or sing about God’s glory.

Our children also need to be taught to pay attention to God’s honor during worship. They should not be just entertained or kept distracted in church while worship is going on. They need to learn how to sing the hymns at a very young age. Encourage them to pay attention to the words and to listen to the sermon. Teach them to join in praying for the needs of the church, and to see themselves as a part of the family of God gathered together for this special purpose.

One idea is to have them try to draw something the pastor mentions or teaches. Use the drawings later to talk about the sermon topic. This will encourage them to broaden their attention span. Later they can graduate to writing down the main points of a sermon, or the ways it can apply to things they see or struggle with in their own lives.

We all need to be careful not to use God’s name in vain while in worship. We need to pay attention to everything said and sung.

The Commandment shows us how serious this matter is to our God.

It says, “the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain”

Did you notice the effects this has upon our children when this principle is mentioned in Exodus 34? When God explained his name to Moses, he said he is “by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”

What the little ones hear around home and from adults will shape their own way of speaking. This is why it says this sin stays with offending families from generation to generation.

To please the God who made us, and who loves us in Christ, we should never take up his name in an empty, vain, or meaningless way. we should never degrade holy things or speak lightly of what God uses to display his truth and glory. The names of God represent what he makes known to us about himself. So to disgrace his name is to disgrace him.

On the positive side, we ought to honor God’s name.

Psalm 19:14 teaches us to speak of God very carefully. It says, “let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” (KJV)

As a believer, you bear God’s name in all you say and do. You were baptized into the name of the Triune God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is your duty to bear God’s name well. We are called “Christians”, the “People of God”, “Christ’s Church”. What the world sees in you, should be evidence of the power and wonder of Christianity.

You bring dishonor to his name if you speak frivolously, using God’s name in a vain way, or if you contradict what God’s name stands for by your attitudes, words, and actions. Along with offending God, you bring spiritual and moral disaster to yourself and to those you say you love.

It is sad if those who have the power of the living Christ in their lives, live as if he was not there. They are convinced by those around them that to appear to be assertive, confident, and grown-up they should use crude language. By trading in their moral convictions to get the world’s acceptance they show themselves to be weak and very immature. To use words about God, or about his works and glory in an empty way, is a criminal act against our Creator and Redeemer.

We are put here in this world, and given life, resources, and health to represent God as his ambassadors. When we live honorably, reflecting the words and work of Christ, our humble gratitude toward our God and Savior honors his name.

We are the light of the world. We need to make sure that our conversation does not dim that light. In Matthew 5:16 Jesus said, “Let you light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” (KJV)

In Matthew 6:9, in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught you to pray, “hallowed be thy name.” “To hallow” means to set something aside as special, to mark it out as holy. Pray that God’s name is not taken up in vain: neither in profanity, nor in the careless use of it. Pray that God’s people will display the honor of his name by using it respectfully and often. Pray that the glory of all that his name represents will be proclaimed faithfully by you and others to your neighbors, friends and daily contacts.

When you appreciate all that God’s name includes,
it stirs you to love and to honor him more.

Right after God proclaimed his name to Moses In Exodus 34:6-7, the next verse describes how Moses responded. It says in Exodus 34:8, “So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.”

The 23rd Psalm says that God leads us in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. This is why he gives us life and calls us to love him. Our obedience honors his name because we represent him to the world.

When you live obediently, God is served well, you promote his glory, and you grow spiritually. God promises great benefit for using his name honorably. You will reap the great blessings that God attaches to spiritual obedience.

It is an awesome privilege to be able to take up God’s name in ways that honor him. When you do, his grace is at work in you. You grow in Christ, and enjoy his blessings. Use God’s name as often as you can, but use it with meaning and respect. Be a beacon of light in this dark world.

(The Bible quotations in this lesson are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)

A Love Incomprehensible

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A Love Incomprehensible

Studies In Paul’s Letter to the Romans
by Bob Burridge ©2011

Lesson 18: Romans 5:6-11

For what kind of person would you be willing to suffer? What if you were in a line at a store and a rude person pushed everyone else aside, and got in the front of those who had been waiting patiently? Would you be calmly willing to give up your place for such a person? I’m sure some would. What if someone held you up with a gun and took your money? Would you gladly do without what was yours for a person like that? Some would.

What if instead of suffering little things, you were asked to die for such people? Would you be willing to die to benefit someone who was rude, or a criminal? Would you be willing to personally die for an average citizen who hadn’t done wrong? What if the person was very noble and virtuous? would you die willingly for them?

Hardly anyone would be willing to die for a rude person, or for a hardened criminal. Some might die for an innocent person. Some may even die for a virtuous person. But all that fades into insignificance compared with what Christ has done for us.

In Romans 5:6-8, Paul used this illustration to explain God’s love.

Romans 5:6-8, “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Paul builds a careful case. When a man is called “righteous” it means he is not a law breaker. As he explained, hardly anyone would die for a person simply because he was not a lawbreaker. Christ’s love was so great that he died even for the unrighteous. Remember what Paul wrote about all mankind back in Romans 3:10, “as it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one’.” Therefore, we are all criminals against God’s law. We do not measure up to being “righteous.” Yet such were the objects of God’s love.

Then he mentions “the good man”, one who is virtuous or noble in some way. Some, but not all, might even venture to die for such a person. But Jesus Christ died for us though we fall far short of this quality. Romans 3:12 says, “… There is none who does good, no, not one.” We are all unworthy rebels against God, enemies of the Creator, sinners against his law. Yet these too were the objects of God’s love.

That kind of love is truly Incomprehensible. There are many things in life that are beyond our full understanding. Some things are beyond us because we have no background in them. That is why some do not like certain sports, or appreciate some fields of science or history. It is why some get lost and bored over things that interest others. Some things are far too complex for us to understand. No one knows with certainty the actual nature of light or of gravity. No one can perfectly predict the path of a storm. There are diseases we do not know how to cure.

God’s love for lost humans is beyond our comprehension for a different reason. It is infinitely beyond our limited human nature itself to understand it. There is nothing in our make up that brings us close to understanding such an infinite love. A baby is more able to comprehend the details of quantum physics, than man is able to comprehend the love of God. Adults are many times smarter than a baby, but God’s mind and intentions are infinitely beyond the mind of any human. Psalm 139:6 shows the heart of the Psalmist as he thought about God, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.”

Though comprehension is beyond us, God made sure that this love was openly displayed for all to see. It was “demonstrated” to us, made conspicuous, by the work of Christ. Though we cannot fully appreciate its depths or understand its foundation, we are privileged to see it held up for us to behold. Paul’s reasoning here is to help us appreciate the greatness of God’s love.

Jesus told his disciples in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” Then in verse 14, in words that applied this principle to himself, he made it clear what he would do. He said, “You are My friends … .” There is only one way to take it. His love for them was so great that he would die for them.

Later one of those disciples, the Apostle John, wrote, “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” (1 John 3:16). Later in 1 John 4:9 he wrote, “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”

The death of Christ for his friends was infinitely greater than anything we mere humans could do for a friend. It was this love that moved him to take on a human body and soul, and to take on our guilt. It was this greatest of all imaginable loves that led him to the cross to redeem his people.

In his gospel (John 3:16) John wrote words that are known and loved by so many, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (KJV)

The world became so polluted by the rebellion of Adam and his race, that it is amazing that the holy God, who is the target of man’s offenses, would come to redeem any one from the human race at all.

The greatness of the giving of God the Son was not like a human father losing his son. God the Father would not “lose” his son, or become separated from him for a lifetime. This is often what we think of when a parent loses a child to death. The members of the Trinity were never really separated from one another as to their eternal and unchangeable nature.

What makes the Father’s sending his Son to die so great is different. Jesus came to take on the ultimate humiliation, and most extreme suffering possible. This one man would experience the horrors of the wrath of perfect justice. That which condemns the sinner to suffer in hell and agony forever, and which horribly offends the Creator, was collapsed into one man who paid it all in those hours on the cross. That suffering and agony is multiplied to include the countless numbers who are the Redeemed of God.

John 3:16 should not be taken to mean that he loved, and wanted to redeem, everyone in the world. That is not the point Jesus was making in John 3 as he spoke to Nicodemus. If he came to redeem all that are in the world, and even one person is condemned in the end, then Jesus failed. But nothing supports that. He fully succeeded in his work. This verse has to do instead with how great his love was, that he should love any of this world at all! The promise only addresses those who actually put their trust in the Savior. It is a very limiting verse.

R. B. Kuiper once said about John 3:16, “the point, then, is not that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad, that it takes an exceeding great kind of love to love it at all.”

Contrary to the opinion of false religion, the Bible does not claim that God loves all humans. In this same book, Romans 9:13, Paul quotes from the Old Testament and writes, “Just as it is written, ‘Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.’ ”

It is neither loving nor true to tell all people that “Jesus died to save them”. We cannot know that about any individual person. The Bible tells us to call all to repent, and to trust in his death for sin. The message is to tell them what they ought to do because of God’s call to them. It is a sincere offer that either exposes the depth of depravity that makes them reject that offer, or demonstrates the work of grace that transforms the stubborn heart to see what it was blind to see.

If they truly turn to him and believe, then it become positively clear that they were redeemed by him. To imply to them that Jesus did what he could, then leaves its effectiveness up to them, destroys the idea of grace, and makes them out to be the lord’s of heaven instead of God himself. It makes up a different gospel. It wold be a lie about the most important message for a lost soul.

The gospel revealed in Scripture is not an easy message, nor is it popular. It is the truth. The Gospel is about the love of God that is so great, it is not about the choice of the person. We choose him because he redeemed us. He does not redeem us because we first chose him. First John 4:10 says, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

At the precise time God had appointed, Jesus died not for the righteous or the good, for there is no one righteous or good. He died in place of the ungodly who would be enabled by grace alone to believe his message.

Wonderful results come from this redemption by the love of God.

Romans 5:9-11, “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”

Here it says we are justified “by his blood.” Romans 6:23 summarizes what our sin deserves, “For the wages of sin is death…” The shedding of the blood of sacrifices represented the death of the sinner. Deuteronomy 12:23 says, ” … the blood is the life.”

When Jesus shed his blood, it fulfilled that for which the sacrifices stood. He poured out his blood until he died. This was to pay the penalty we deserve. In Hebrews 9:22 is says, “without shedding of blood there is no remission.”

The only just way to restore a lost human to fellowship with a holy God, is that the penalty be paid by God himself, by the Savior clothed in a true human nature, and having poured out his life to pay the price demanded by moral justice.

What moved God to do that for sinners? In verse five of this chapter Paul spoke of the love of God for his people. He began this next point in verse six with the word “for” showing the results of that love. This infinite and incomprehensible love of God moved the Savior to die for the unworthy.

The Bible speaks of us becoming “justified” from different points of view. They are not different messages. We see it from different directions to know its full beauty. Just as we turn an expensive jewel around to appreciate it from every angle, God’s word shows us the varied parts of our redemption.

We read in Romans 3:24 that we are justified “by God’s grace.”
This shows what motivated the work of Christ. It was not anything we have done or chose, but God’s own determination. It is God’s eternal, unchangeable, and amazing grace that moved him to redeem his people. In this sense, redeeming Grace and God’s redeeming Love, are hard to distinguish.

Here in Romans 5:9 we see that we are justified “by Christ’s blood”
This shows the means God used to pay the penalty for our sins. Justice was satisfied by a perfect and infinite substitute dying in our place. Our sins were paid for by him, one who deserved no punishment at all.

We are also told that we are justified “by faith.”
This is the means by which the redeemed person lays hold of the work of Christ. Faith is that confidence put into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that drives us to rest in the gospel. It is something one would not do if Christ had not died for him. It is something one will surely and willingly do if Christ did die for him.

These different sides of the work of justification help us to see the whole picture. Our faith reveals the grace of God which included us in the redeeming work of Christ.

If this great love moved him to restore enemies to fellowship by paying for their sins, then now that we are reconciled and made friends, it is much easier to be confident that we will be saved by his life. The promise goes way beyond just being saved from judgment. In Romans 8:29 we see that those same ones he justified he also promises to glorify.

We who are redeemed, are saved by Christ’s life in several ways.

His resurrection is a pledge of life to all who are justified by his grace.
The separation of spiritual death disabled our fellowship with God. The perfectly holy life of our Savior is credited to those who are redeemed. They stand clothed in his righteousness so that their fellowship with God is restored. Where there was death, there is now life. Beyond that, we have the promise of eternal life at the resurrection when our physical bodies are glorified and reunited with our departed souls to live in God’s presence forever.

Jesus said in John 14:19, “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also.”

In Romans 8:11 Paul wrote, “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

Christ, being raised again to life, continues to intercede for his children.
Hebrews 7:25 “Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”

In the final judgment, our Savior is the one who judges our case.
Matthew 28:18 Jesus said, “… All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.”

There could be no grater words of comfort and security. Our Savior did not just make a way for us to be redeemed from punishments. He actually saves us to live fully for all eternity in Christ. By paying for his people’s sins he made enemies into friends of God. Now living, he intercedes for them, promises to raise them to life everlasting, and assures them that he will be their comfort and joy all through this present life.

Paul says that we rejoice in God now. In verse 11 he adds that in addition to this work of redemption and promise, we “rejoice in God.” This is that victorious rejoicing that he mentioned back in 5:2. The reconciliation is ours now. It is a present walk with God, restored to fellowship with him. We who were once enemies are now made right with God. None of it is deserved or earned. It is all because of his gracious and amazing love. This is a good and worthy thing to stop to think about every day.

Oh the love that sets us free from our guilt, and adopts us into the family of God!

(The Bible quotations in this article are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)

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The Worship of an Invisible God

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The Worship of an Invisible God

(Westminster Shorter Catechism Q: 49-52)
or watch the video
by Bob Burridge ©2011

Have you ever tried to put together one of those thousand piece jig-saw puzzles without first seeing the picture of what it is supposed to look like when finished? Some of them are so detailed that even when you have seen the picture on the cover it is not easy to find the piece you want.

Sometimes you honestly believe the piece you are looking for cannot possibly be there. Then when you finally find it, and it fits in, you have one of those “Ahhhh” moments. You see that you missed it because you were expecting it to look different than it really was.

Many times I have tried to talk people through setting things up on their computers over the phone. They do not know what they were looking for, and what to do with things when they find them. Some did not know what the ALT key was for, and had no idea what CTRL meant.

While trying to talk them through the steps, they were trying to do things that made no sense to them. As long as they did exactly what they were told, and asked before they did something they were unsure of, we usually got the job done with few problems.

God’s world is vastly more complex and further beyond our full understanding than jig-saw puzzles or home computers. God has lovingly told us what we need to know as we rely upon his grace, and to try learn to do what is right. However, we do not have the whole picture yet in this life. We have to be very careful not to let our own theories and values keep us from seeing what God is telling us in his word.

Our assignment is to fulfill what we were created to be and redeemed to be. Our primary responsibility is to show the glory of our Creator in our lives. To be effective, the Holy Spirit works on Redeemed hearts by means of God’s word.

We need to listen carefully to what God says, and to follow his instructions exactly. We do not have the full picture yet, and we do not completely understand it all in this life. We need to care about the principles God tells us to live by.

The second of the Ten Commandments cautions us about how we worship God.

The 49th question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism points to the Second of the Ten Commandments. The answer quotes from Exodus 20:4-6.

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image — any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

The word translated “graven image” or “carved image” is the Hebrew word pesel (פסל). It was used to describe any image we make of something. It primarily applies to things carved or chizzled, but it was not limited to that in the way it was used.

The expression “any likeness” expands upon what God is forbidding so there will be no mistake about what he means to include. The word “likeness” is the Hebrew word temunah (תמונה). It is the common word used even today in modern Israel for “picture”. Most imagine that this is another of those “easy commandments”. Since we do not have stone, gold, or wooden idols as part of our culture today, they assume this commandment is outdated and mostly irrelevant to them.

However, there is an important and eternal moral principle summarized here: We need to honor God in ways that are pleasing to him. Questions 50-52 of the Shorter Catechism clarify this main point.

Question 50. What is required in the second commandment?
Answer. The second commandment requireth the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath appointed in his Word.
Question 51. What is forbidden in the second commandment?
Answer. The second commandment forbiddeth the worshiping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in his Word.
Question 52. What are the reasons annexed to the second commandment?
Answer. The reasons annexed to the second commandment are, God’s sovereignty over us, his propriety in us, and the zeal he hath to his own worship.

Jesus said that God is Spirit, therefore he must be worshiped in spirit and in truth. The original word for spirit both in Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek is the same word used for breath or wind. It is something you cannot physically see, but it is clearly evidenced and felt.

God is only honored when we worship him as the invisible, but all present Creator. How this should be done is beyond what we can figure out on our own, so we need to worship him only in ways he prescribes for us. That is why it is unwise to speculate or to add inventive ideas to worship.

The Bible tells us what elements belong in our worship as a Christian church.

  • There should be prayer offered on behalf of the congregation
  • the reading and teaching of God’s word in the Scriptures
  • the celebrating of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper
  • the reciting of confessions of our Christian faith together as a congregation
  • worshipful music sung to God’s glory
  • the collecting of God’s tithes and our offerings
  • the pronouncing of benedictions by the minister
  • occasionally vows such as those taken for membership and ordination

All these have to be governed by God’s directions in his word, not by our own imaginations.

    There are clear examples in the Bible where some ignored God’s rules for worship.

  • Nadab & Abihu used fire in worship in ways God did not command. They were struck dead by God for what they did.
  • Uzzah touched the Ark of God in a way not prescribed. He died on the spot. King Uzziah was stricken with leprosy for intruding into the priest’s job of lighting the incense.
  • King Saul lost God’s blessing upon his kingship for impatiently offering God’s sacrifice when he should have waited for the Priest to arrive to do it.
  • 3,000 were struck dead for worshiping Jehovah by making a Golden Calf at Sinai.

In the Middle Ages the Golden Calf mentality was brought into the church. They brought in rituals and ceremonies from the era of the ancient temple. They added incense, incantations, fancy priestly garments, altars and idols into worship. There were statues, paintings and embroidered pictures of Jesus. Later, pictures of Mary and of the Saints were brought in for veneration as well.

Of course they said they were not bowing to these images to worship them. They were just visual aids in worship. However, that’s what Israel said when they made the golden calf at Sinai.

In more recent times, some openly reject the Second Commandment. Those in the extreme say that it was only intended for Israel and does not apply anymore. That goes directly against the teaching of Jesus. In Matthew 5:17-18 he said that he did not come to end the law, but to bring it to fulfillment. He said in verse 18, “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.”

As sure as heaven and earth still stand today, all of God’s moral principles continue as always. While Jesus fulfilled the law as our representative, and met the penalties of the law in our place, the moral principles which are the stamp of the Creator upon his creation continue as long as there is a heaven and an earth.

Others have defined the commandment so that not all images of God are forbidden. The desire to rightly understand what is forbidden and what is not, challenges us to examine the Scriptures carefully and without assumptions about what we expect to find there.

The Reformer John Calvin once wrote, “the first business of an interpreter is to let his author say what he does say, instead of attributing to him what we think he ought to say.”

God provided us with all the physical things we need
for learning about him, and for worship:

Creation itself declares his glory day and night. He made humans to be the image-bearers of his moral nature. He furnished the ancient Tabernacle and Temple with things to prefigure the coming work of Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus ordained the elements of the Lord’s Supper to represent him in worship.

None of these are man’s designs. God gave them to us, and we are to use them exactly as he instructed. We dare not add to them, or modify them thinking we have the full picture of all they represent.

The Larger Catechism summarizes the Bible’s teaching in question 109. There it forbids, “… the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature: Whatsoever; all worshiping of it, or God in it or by it; …”

God did not tell us to make statues or pictures to help us in worship. Not only does that undermine God’s spirit nature, it also distorts the truth about who God is. Besides, it is always foolishly speculative to try to draw, carve, or in any way depict something we have never seen.

Pictures of Jesus have been a source of controversy among sincere believers in him as Savior and God. These pictures of his human nature necessarily add ideas to God’s word, since God did not preserve what he looks like. Statues, mosaics and drawings were common when the Bible was written, but God chose not to give us an image of the human form of Jesus.

If you asked the average person if they knew what Jesus looked like, they would likely say, “yes”. Either they would describe him looking like the actor’s portrayal in one of the recent movies, or as the gentle-faced, light skinned man with long flowing blond hair shown in many older paintings.

These images only depict what someone thinks Jesus looked like. But how can we guess at what a perfectly sinless human’s facial expressions would be when he suffered? or was challenged by unbelief? when he expressed his perfect love and compassion to redeemed sinners? Did he usually have a serious look? a far off pensive stare? a constant smile? or was there always a deep look of pity in his eyes? Was he energetic when he spoke, or was he generally soft spoken?

Actors and film directors who dare to think they’re able to portray him have to add their guesses about what this perfect man was like. To do that, they need to go far beyond the information given to us in Scripture.

The danger is that these images linger in our minds, and shape our impression of perfection. We should resist the temptation to depict him in ways he has not prescribed. That would be a violation of this moral principle laid out for us in the Second Commandment. It would be cause for celebration in the kingdom of evil.

The Bible is our only source of information about Jesus. Beyond that we would be adding dangerous speculations that imply things we cannot yet know.

Of course we know that Jesus had a real human body, but we do not know what it looked like. When those who honor the Second Commandment make up Sunday School material, they keep drawings like that abstracted. They avoid showing his facial features or expressions. They draw a simple form of a man doing the things the Bible says he did. When we make T-shirts and posters with the face of what we think Jesus looked like, we do as the middle ages church did – we bring the Golden Calf mentality into the church.

The sin of the Golden Calf at Mount Sinai
illustrates the danger of making images of God.

This first great national sin of Israel took place right after God’s law was given on Mount Sinai. It was not a civil crime like treason, a wave of thefts, or massive murders. It was a sin against the proper worship of God. 3,000 were executed by God showing the seriousness of this moral principle.

How we worship is not seen as a very serious moral issue by most people. Obviously God took it very seriously.

It is amazing that so many churches today take great pride in being innovative in worship. They advertise that they introduce new things and explore new ground.

The story of what happened at the foot of Mount Sinai shows how dangerous this is. Moses was called back up into the Mountain to receive more information from God. Before he went, Exodus 24:3 tells us about Israel’s promised obedience to God. “So Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the judgments. And all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words which the LORD has said we will do.’ ”

After Moses went back up into the mountain for 40 days, the people grew impatient and came to Aaron with a strange request. In Exodus 32:1 they said, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; …”

They probably did not actually mean that Aaron should make up an actual new god or set of gods. They wanted him to make a representation of God, one they could see and touch. That is the way life was back in pagan Egypt.

So the people brought the gold from their jewelry to use in making this idol. Exodus 32:4 tells us what Aaron did with these offerings, “And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ ”

It was probably a wooden calf covered with the gold he had melted down. They did not see it as Apis, one of the Egyptian deities. They didn’t imagine they had created a new god altogether. Here and in verse 5 Aaron clearly identified it as Jehovah, the God of Moses.

So why did they make it in the form of a calf? God himself had chosen the calf, the young bulls, to represent him in the sacrifices. The sacrifices represented the future Messiah who would die in their place. They were not intending to replace Jehovah, only to represent him in a familiar form.

So Aaron built an altar in honor of the completed calf and in verse 5 he said, “tomorrow is a feast to Jehovah.” It was not called a feast to a new god, or a god they remembered from back in Egypt. It was a feast to Jehovah. The next day they brought their offerings to sacrifice to their new image.

While Moses was up in the Mountain receiving instructions about proper worship, Israel was down below with their creative innovations violating its most basic principle.

When Moses came down to them carrying the tablets of the law, he saw the disgraceful festival. That day 3,000 were executed for their part in this horrible rebellion.

That is how serious proper worship is to God. Satan must have been very pleased that God’s people tried to reduce God from his pure spirit nature, into a physical form.

That same fallen corruption still lurks in human hearts today. The things he tells us to do in worship are corrupted and replaced.

In our era after the Cross of Jesus, animals are no longer sacrificed to represent the coming Messiah. So people make images of the Messiah himself to satisfy that longing for a physical object to worship. Ancient Israel could say, “The Messiah was represented in real physical calves, so why not make an image of one to help us think of him?” Today some say, “The Messiah had a real physical human body, so why not make an image of that to help us think of him?”

It is not just a minor matter of differences of opinion. It appears to be a violation of the Second Commandment which some dismiss as an old worn out rule.

The usual arguments claim that they do not worship through the pictures they make of Jesus. But that is troubling in another way. Do they believe they are looking at a picture of Jesus Christ, their God and Savior, but it does not stir any worshipful response in them? none at all? There’s no sense of awe? no desire to praise him as they look upon what they think is him? When Jesus is brought to mind it should stir us to worship. There’s the danger.

Another excuse is that children need to see images to learn about God and Jesus. That is obviously not God’s opinion, and he is the one who made the children. In Deuteronomy 6:6-9 God tells us to teach our children by presenting God’s word to them. They had art back then: statues, carvings, and drawings, but God’s method was to speak of him – in the home, everywhere we go, all day long.

This commandment specifically mentions the danger to the children.

Exodus 20:5-6, “For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

We damage our children by bringing them up with images of an imagined Jesus,or by implying to them by our attitudes and practices that how we worship God is something we can modify on our own. It is a danger that distorts the child’s view of God, and of his rules for worship.

When it says that God is Jealous, it does not mean it in the envious sense. It means that God is protective of his honor and glory. He is concerned to the utmost that his purpose in creation would be fulfilled. He made all things to portray his nature and truth so that it brings him glory. Distortions of his nature and truth go against the whole purpose of creation.

Some are troubled by the mention here of the punishing of children for the sins of their fathers. However, that is because the consequences of sin are usually misunderstood.

Children raised in wickedness are generally trained in the evil ways of those who raise them. Most of them will follow in those ways for a long time, maybe the rest of their lives. It may take many generations for children to shake off wrong traditions handed down in families. That is the other side of Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.”

This brings us to the blessing side of keeping this commandment. God shows great mercy to the obedient. This includes the merciful blessings attached to proper obedient worship. They who obey, along with their children, will be enriched by the good attitudes and habits they see and become accustomed to in the home. Paul reminded Timothy how blessed he was growing up in a Godly home (2 Timothy 1:5).

This all seems very odd in our modern world.

Today images of the Second Person of the Trinity are common and promoted. Even those who love the Bible alone as their source of truth about God, go beyond what God directly prescribes for worship. They speculate about things God has not made known. They provide unauthorized visible aids to worship and inspiration.

To know God as spirit requires a renewed soul informed by God’s word. Aside from that work of grace, the human heart is blind and seeks other things. Without the change that comes by resting in the Christ of Scripture, worship will be distorted.

Long ago St. Augustine was challenged by a pagan man who proudly showed him his idol. The man said, “here is my god, where is yours?” Augustine answered this way, “I cannot show you my God. Not because there is no God to show, but because you have no eyes to see him.”

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Rather than pictures, God gave us the thousand words — actually a lot more words than that. In the Bible we have a whole library about him, and his wonderful works.

God has communicated into our physical world all we need to know about him. That is what ought to guide us as we think of him, and approach him in prayer and worship.

The principle summarized in this Commandment is eternal.

There could never be a time when it is acceptable to make unauthorized visible images of God. He is always Spirit, and Jesus himself directed us to worship him in spirit and in truth. It was not a rule only for Old Israel in the time of Moses.

His word is our only faithful guide about how we should think of God and worship him. It is the picture that shows us how the pieces of the puzzle should fit together.
When we follow God’s prescriptions carefully, adding nothing, subtracting nothing, and loving all of it — it is recognized as the valuable treasure it truly is. Our God will be honored only in the way he said he should be. If that is our guide for faith and practice, we along with our children will be blessed for many generations to come.

(The Bible quotations in this lesson are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)