Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth (v. 17).
We continue now in our consideration of God’s way of sanctifying his people, and of the fact that the great emphasis here is that God sanctifies us not so much directly as indirectly, through and by means of the truth. He brings us into the realm of the truth in order that the truth may work upon us, and produce the desired effects and results in us. And therefore we see that the whole of the biblical message – and in a very special way the message of the New Testament – is designed to bring about this final purpose of our sanctification. For that reason we have been at pains to emphasise the unity of the truth and every part of the truth which leads to sanctification. The truth about sanctification is not some special department or one aspect of the teaching of the Bible. Every revelation of God, and everything that brings us to a realisation of our position in God’s sight, leads to and produces our sanctification. So that it has been necessary for us to look at the truth as a whole, and we are now in the process of reminding ourselves that this great comprehensive truth has different aspects, or different emphases. And in accordance with the biblical message, we are looking at these different aspects of the truth which lead to our sanctification.
We started with the great truth about God himself. There is nothing more calculated to make a man holy and to sanctify him truly as the realisation that he is in the presence of God. There is no better definition of a true Christian than that he is a godly man, one who walks in the fear of the Lord. That is invariably the biblical description of God’s people; clearly, it is the point at which we must start, because it is the centre and the soul of all truth. But then that, in turn, leads us, of course, to consider what the Bible has to tell us about sin. Why do we not all know God? Why are we not walking with him, and enjoying fellowship with him? The answer is sin. And the more we realise the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the more we shall hate it, abominate it, and turn our backs on it, and give ourselves unreservedly to God and to the life which he would have us live.
Then that obviously leads to the next emphasis. Having shown us our utter sinfulness and our complete helplessness, lest we give way to final despair, the Bible presents us with the wonderful truth about what the love of God has done in Christ for us and for our salvation. The great argument of Christ, finally, is that it is our sin which made that necessary, and that Christ died, not only that we might be forgiven, but that we might be delivered from sin.
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
Isaac Watts
‘Know ye not ... ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price’ (1 Cor 6:19–20). ‘... he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him which died for them, and rose again’ (2 Cor 5:15). If our understanding of the death of Christ upon the cross does not make us hate sin and forsake it, and hate the world and forsake the world, and give ourselves unreservedly to Christ, we are in the most dangerous condition possible. To imagine that Christ died on the cross simply to allow us to continue living a sinful and worldly life in safety, comes, it seems to me, very near a terrible form of blasphemy. There is no more dangerous condition for a soul to be in, than to think: ‘Well, because I have believed in Christ and because I think that Christ died for me, it does not matter very much now what I do.’ The whole of this message is an utter denial of that, and a solemn warning to us not to make merchandise of the cross of Christ, or to trample under our feet the blood of our redemption. So you see that every aspect of the truth drives us to holiness, and all the teaching urges us to sanctification.1
But now we come to another aspect of the truth, one which, again, is vital for our understanding of this subject. It warns us that we must be clear about our actual position as Christians as the result of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on our behalf. Here again we have one of the major themes of the Bible and one of its major emphases with regard to this particular question of sanctification: the Christian’s standing as the result of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a great theme which is expounded in many places in the New Testament, though I suppose the classic passage is Romans 6. However, it is not only in the sixth chapter of Romans; everything that leads up to this chapter is part of the argument, and it goes on in to the seventh. But in the sixth chapter this theme is presented to us in a particularly concentrated form.
You will notice that the apostle takes up at once the whole question of the relationship between the meaning of the death of Christ upon the cross and our conduct. He imagines the people in Rome misunderstanding this teaching, as others had so often been liable to do. He imagines that they may say to themselves: ‘Well, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Is this a teaching which says that now that we have believed in Christ we are no longer under the law but under grace, and that, therefore, it does not much matter what we do, indeed, that the more we sin the greater will be the grace? Is that the position?’
Paul’s answer is given with horror – ‘God forbid!’ God forbid that anybody should argue like that. ‘How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?’ (6:2). The thing is unthinkable. It is a complete misunderstanding of the truth! So he works it out, and the important thing to grasp here is that all along he relates his doctrine to the practice of the Christian. You cannot separate these two things. For the extent to which there is a separation between what we believe, and what we are, and what we do, is the extent to which we have really not understood the doctrine; because there are certain things that are absolutely indivisible. That is why the New Testament is so full of tests which Christians must apply to themselves. There is the danger of our deluding ourselves and falsely imagining that we are Christians. The whole first epistle of John just deals with that one thing – the tests of the Christian life – the way in which we must examine ourselves. It is no use, said the Lord Jesus Christ, pleading, ‘Lord, Lord’ if you do not do and keep my commandments. ‘Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name ... ?’ (Mt 7:22). Have we not done this and that? And he will answer, ‘I never knew you: depart from me ...’ (v. 23). They thought they believed in him. They said, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but he never knew them. So we must examine ourselves very carefully, and we do so by always keeping a firm grasp, at one and the same time, upon our doctrine and our practice and our conduct. Life and belief are indivisible; they must go together.
Now that is how the apostle Paul conducts this great argument in Romans 6, and I want to examine it with you in a very special manner here. The great principle, it seems to me, with which we must start is that an assurance of our salvation, of our standing before God, and of the forgiveness of our sins, is an absolute necessity in this matter of sanctification. Let me put it to you like this. I would not hesitate to say that a lack of assurance is perhaps one of the greatest hindrances of all in the Christian life, because while you have not got assurance you are troubled and worried, and that tends to lead to depression. It tends to turn us in upon ourselves, and to promote morbidity and introspection; and in that condition we obviously become a ready prey for the devil, who is ever at hand to discourage us and to suggest to us that we are not Christians at all.
The point I am making is that a condition of spiritual depression is not only bad in and of itself, it is possibly the greatest hindrance of all to the process of sanctification. This is true of us in every respect, is it not? ‘The joy of the Lord,’ says Nehemiah, ‘is your strength’ (8:10). And how true that is! I do not care what work you are doing, if you are not happy you will not do it well. If you are preoccupied with yourself, or if you have some worry or something on your mind and your spirit, it will affect all the work you do. You can never work well while there is a kind of division within you. The man who really works well is the man who is carefree and is working with joy.
A great deal of attention is being paid to this whole matter at the present time. It is one of the major problems of our so-called civilisation. Mankind is unhappy, hence all this interest in psychology. It is just being realised that if people are not happy they will not work well. All that is equally true in the spiritual life, and there is no question at all but that a doubt or uncertainty about my real standing before God, a doubt as to whether I am a Christian or not, constitutes a great hindrance to sanctification. In other words, people who are struggling to make themselves Christian can never be sanctified.
I do not hesitate for a moment to speak as strongly as that. Someone may be very pious, but there is all the difference in the world between piety and sanctification. The man who is truly sanctified is pious, but you can be pious without being sanctified. By this I mean that there are people whose whole vocation in life is to be religious. You are familiar with that, perhaps, in a highly organised form in Roman Catholicism. These people enter upon the devout life and make a distinction between the ‘religious’ and the ‘laity’. Now we disagree with that entirely, and I am simply using it to show that these people are trying, by their efforts and exertions, to make themselves Christian.
But the New Testament teaching is that while you are trying to make yourself a Christian you will never be one, and if you are not a Christian you cannot be sanctified. The only people whom God does sanctify are his own people, those who are Christian. That is why I maintain that an assurance of one’s standing before God is an essential preliminary to this process of sanctification.
So we must start with this, and the question therefore arises as to how we can arrive at this assurance. And here we must start with the great biblical doctrine of justification. ‘Ah,’ says someone, ‘there you are. You are bringing up those old terms again. These legal terms of the apostle Paul are out of date. “Justification” – I am not interested in theology and in justification!’ Well, my friend, all I say to you is that if you are not interested in justification, I can assure you that you are ignorant with regard to sanctification. Justification is an utter, absolute necessity. There is no assurance apart from being clear about the doctrine of justification. Why does Scripture tell us so much about it? Why does it expound it as it does? Is it simply to expound doctrine? Of course not! All these letters were written with a very practical object and intent. They were written to help people, to encourage and strengthen them, and to show them how to live the Christian life in ordinary affairs. And therefore this doctrine of justification is an absolute essential, for without it we shall never really assume a true Christian position and begin to enjoy its great blessings.
What, then, is the teaching? Well, the great argument of Romans is that we are ‘justified freely by his grace’ (Rom 3:24). This means that God declares and pronounces that you and I who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are guiltless. Here we are – we are sinners. We have sinned, as the whole world has sinned. ‘There is none righteous, no, not one.’ We are not only born in sin, we have committed deliberate acts of sin. The greatest sin of all, of course, is not to live our lives entirely for God, not to glorify him as he meant us to do, and not to fulfil the purpose for which he created us. We have all sinned before God. We have broken his laws and his commandments; we are all guilty sinners deserving nothing but punishment and retribution.
But this is the amazing message, and this is what is meant by justification – that God tells us that, as the result of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, because of his life, his death and his resurrection, if we believe on him and trust ourselves solely and entirely to him, God pardons and forgives our sins. Not only that, he declares that we are free from guilt: more than that, justification includes this. He not only declares that we are pardoned and forgiven and that we are guiltless, he also declares that we are positively righteous. He imputes to us, that is, he puts to our account, the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who was entirely without sin, who never failed his Father in any way, and who never broke a Commandment or transgressed any law. God gives to us – puts upon us – the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and then looks upon us and pronounces that we are righteous in his holy sight. That is the biblical doctrine of justification.
Now you will notice the way in which I am putting this; I am emphasising this pronouncement of God, and I do that very deliberately because the doctrine of justification is what you may call a forensic or a legal statement. It is the pronouncement or the promulgation of a sentence. The picture we should have in our minds is that of a Judge seated upon the bench and there we are standing in the dock, charged by the law, by Satan, and by our own consciences, but without a plea and without an excuse. And there stands the Lord Jesus Christ proclaiming that he lived and has died for us, and that he has paid the penalty on our behalf. Then God the Judge eternal pronounces that he accepts that and that therefore from henceforth he regards us as guiltless. Our sins are all blotted out as a thick cloud. He casts them into the sea of his own forgetfulness, and throws them behind his back – they are gone, and gone for ever.
Not only that, he says that he regards us in the light of this righteousness of his Son, so he pronounces us free from guilt and clothed with the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible uses many analogies to bring out this idea; here is one of them. It is as if we were standing with our clothes torn almost to rags, covered and bespattered with the mud, the mire, and the filth of this world. Suddenly all that is taken from us, and we are clothed with a most gorgeous, glorious and perfect cloak, spotless in its whiteness and in its purity; the transformation is entire and the picture is altogether changed. It has all been done for us freely and for nothing.
Indeed we can put the doctrine of justification like this: if we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and belong to him, God regards us as if we had never sinned at all. It is nothing less than that! It is actually that God in all his holiness and in the light of the law and everything else, looks down upon us, and then, having thus covered us by his Son, sees us in Christ and regards us as if we had never sinned at all. If we believe anything less than that, we are not believing the New Testament doctrine of justification by faith only: that we are justified freely by the grace of God. That is the doctrine, and I would emphasise that it is the essential preliminary to this process of sanctification which God then works in us and brings to pass in us by means of his wonderful truth. That is the argument you must derive from the work of Christ upon the cross and from the Resurrection.
But clearly that is only the essential starting-point. It is a point which we must always bear in mind, but we do not stop at that. We must go on to say that not only are we thus declared to be righteous in a forensic or a legal manner, but that we are actually in union with Christ and joined to him. You cannot have read the New Testament even cursorily without noticing this constantly repeated phrase – ‘in Christ’ – ‘in Christ Jesus’. The apostles go on repeating it and it is one of the most significant and glorious statements in the entire realm and range of truth. It means that we are joined to the Lord Jesus Christ; we have become a part of him. We are in him. We belong to him. We are members of his body.
And the teaching is that God regards us as such; and this, of course, means that now, in this relationship, we are sharers in, and partakers of, everything that is true of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. In other words, our standing before God is not only a legal one – it is a legal one, and we must start with that – but we go beyond the legal standing to this vital fact that our position is in Christ.
Now we must watch the apostle working that out in Romans 6. The first thing that is true of us, he says, is that we have died with Christ and have been buried with him. ‘Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid!’ Why? Because ‘How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?’ (vv. 1–2).
‘But,’ one might ask, ‘what do you mean by saying that I am dead to sin? I am in the flesh and I am still the same person, and I am still in the same world. What do you mean by saying that I am dead to sin? I am still being tempted, I still sometimes fall. How do you mean I am dead to sin?’ But, read on. ‘Know ye not,’ says Paul, ‘that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead ... even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death’ – if that is true – ‘we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection’ (vv. 3–5).
Paul goes on repeating that truth and working it out. But are we clear about this? Do we realise that as Christians we must make these assertions about ourselves? As we saw, the first assertion which I must make is that because I am joined to the Lord Jesus Christ and am part of him, everything that is true of him is true of me, and therefore the first thing which is at once true of me is that everything that happened to him in his death has happened to me also. That is the argument – I am in Christ.
It is important that we do not take this chapter on its own, but along with the previous chapter. There the great statement has been that we were all in Adam. And so we sinned in Adam. Everything that Adam did has been imputed to us and has become true of us. In exactly the same way, everything that is true of Christ is true of us because it is all imputed to us. And this is the first thing: the Lord Jesus Christ was made of a woman, made under the law. He lived his life in this world under the law of God. The law made its demands upon him, and if he had broken any of it, he would have suffered the consequences. But he kept it perfectly. Not only that; he died under the law. He took the sins of men, who had been condemned by the law, upon himself, and for them he died, under the law and to the law.
So henceforward the law has nothing to say to him, or to do with him. He has died to the law once, and what Paul says is that that is equally true of me. He says that as a Christian, as one who is in Christ, I have finished with the law, it has nothing to do with me and I am dead to it. Paul goes on to work that out in Romans 7 in his figure of the married relationship. He says that the Christian was once like a married woman who was bound to her husband while he was alive. But when the husband died she was no longer bound to him and she was free to marry again. He says that that was exactly our position; we were once married to the law, but that is finished with, and we are therefore married to another, even to Christ. That is why we all, as Christians, should be able to sing the words of Augustus Toplady’s hymn:
The terrors of law and of God
With me can have nothing to do;
My Saviour’s obedience and blood
Hide all my transgressions from view.
‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus’ (Rom 8:1) – none. From the standpoint of salvation, we are dead to the law; we are finished with it.
Not only that, Paul says, we are equally dead to the dominion of Satan. He works that out here – ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you’ (Rom 6:14). You are not any longer under the dominion of sin. We have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. We are taken out of the whole realm over which Satan rules; we are dead to that.
This again is a very vital aspect of the truth in its practical application. The whole world,’ says the apostle John, in his first epistle, ‘lieth in wickedness’ – but we do not; ‘and that wicked one toucheth us not’ (1 Jn 5:19, 18). He cannot touch us. We do not belong to the kingdom of Satan; we belong to the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. Satan is governing and ruling and controlling and dominating the lives of all who do not belong to Christ. Whether they know it or not, it is an absolute fact. He is just gripping them and controlling them utterly and absolutely. They cannot move without him. But a Christian is one who has been taken out of that and put into this other kingdom. He has finished with the dominion of Satan.
‘Ah yes,’ you may say, ‘but we still sin, and Satan can still get us down.’ Yes, but not because you are in his dominion, but rather because you are foolish enough, having been taken out of his dominion, still to listen to him. He has no authority over you, no power at all, and if you yield to him it is entirely due to your own folly. We are dead to Satan as well as dead to the law, and we are equally dead to sin. ‘How shall we,’ Paul asks, ‘that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?’ Here he means dead to the dominion of sin, and he puts that in a positive form by saying, ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you.’ You may fall to temptation, but that does not mean that it has dominion over you. Your life is no longer controlled by the sinful outlook. You are not living in the realm of sin. You are not ‘continuing in sin’ as John puts it in l John 3. We are dead to all that.
Yes, but we must go even further: the Christian is one who is even dead to his old self, to his old nature, to that condition which he inherited from Adam. We are all born with this Adamic nature, governed by passion and lust and desire and controlled by the way of the world. I need not keep you about this: we are all perfectly familiar with it. The tragedy with men and women who boast about their freedom because they are not Christians, is that they are utter and absolute slaves to the way of the world. Look at the poor creatures as you see them depicted so constantly in the newspapers, all doing the same thing, rushing about like sheep. They never think; they are simply carried away by what is being done. That is the serfdom of this old Adamic nature. If we are Christians we are no longer like that; we are dead to it all. We are dead to that old self, to that old life. We have been given a new nature. We have finished with the old self once and for all. We are now in Christ. We have a new life and a new outlook. ‘Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new’ (2 Cor 5:17).
So let me put it very plainly in this way: there is no point in our saying that we believe that Christ has died for us, and that we believe our sins are forgiven, unless we can also say that for us old things are passed away and that all things are become new; that our outlook towards the world and its method of living is entirely changed. It is not that we are sinless, nor that we are perfect, but that we have finished with that way of life. We have seen it for what it is, and we are new creatures for whom everything has become new.
But I can imagine somebody saying, ‘Don’t you think that this is rather a dangerous doctrine? Don’t you think it is dangerous to tell people that they are dead to sin, dead to the law, dead to Satan, and that God regards them as if they had never sinned at all? Won’t the effect of that make such people say, “All right, in view of that, it does not matter what I do”?’ But Paul says that what happens is the exact opposite, and that must be so because to be saved and to be truly Christian means that we are in Christ, and if we are in Christ, we are dead to sin, dead to Satan, dead to the world, dead to our old selves: we are like our Lord.
Let me put that positively. We have not only died with Christ, we have also risen with him: ‘Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life’ (Rom 6:4). So you do not say at a meeting, ‘Yes, I believe in Christ, I accept forgiveness,’ and then go back and live exactly as you lived before. Not at all! We live in ‘newness of life’. We have been raised with Christ. Notice Paul’s logical way of putting this – he says, ‘... reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (v. 11). For before we were not alive unto God, but were dead in trespasses and sins. Oh yes, we prayed when we were in trouble, we perhaps said our prayers once a day, but we were not alive unto God.
But when we become alive to God, it means that he is at the centre of our lives; God is a living reality to us. God is not just a term, not just some mechanical agency to dispense blessings to us. God is a person, whom we now know. ‘This is life eternal,’ as our Lord has already reminded us, ‘that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’ We are alive unto God. He is real; he is living; we have fellowship with him. And when we pray we do not just utter some thoughts, and hope they will do us good, we know that we are speaking to God, that we are in his presence and that he speaks to us. It is a living fellowship.
More than that, in Christ we are not only alive to God, we have become children of God. He is the Son of God, and all who are in him are therefore God’s children. We receive his life; the very life of God himself has entered into us and into our souls, and thus we are living a new type of life altogether – a living life in the presence of the living God.
John’s dictum is that the Christian is one who goes through this world realising that he is ‘walking with God’. It is a great walk, a companionship. You journey through life, through the darkness of this world, in the light of the presence of God. That is what it means to be a Christian; hating sin and evil and everything that tends to separate us from God. If you should for a moment turn away and fall, then you go back to him and confess your sin, and we know that ‘he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 Jn 5:9). Yes, but that does not just lead us to sin again: no, we have learned to hate that, and we hate ourselves for having looked at it, instead of always looking to him. We do not want what is wrong, but rather to be alive unto God in a living, loving fellowship, walking with him through this life and all its temptations and all its sin and shame; dead to sin with him; buried with him; risen and alive with him; in him; partaking of his life; a child of God.
And the last thing which is emphasised is that we have not only died with Christ, but that even at this moment we are seated with him in the heavenly places. We are far away, above all principality, might and dominion, and every power that can be named, because being in Christ means that what is true of him, is true of us. That is what you are, says the New Testament.
As we consider this, I think we see that it is obviously the profoundest doctrine we can ever contemplate. Is there anything that is more encouraging, more uplifting, than to know that all this is true of us? That is what Paul is telling these Romans; that is what the other New Testament writers are constantly stressing. We must cease to think of ourselves only in terms of the forgiveness of sins. We must never isolate that, and leave it on its own. The Christian is one; his life is a whole and indivisible. As truth is one, he is one, and he is one with Christ; and if he is a Christian at all, all these things must be true of him. It is because these things are true, that God forgives us, and regards us as justified. That is the truth about us – the whole, wonderful truth – that I am dead even to the law of God. There is now no condemnation. I am dead to sin, dead to Satan; right outside their territory, outside their dominion altogether. I am alive to God, his child, a partaker of the divine nature, and in a living fellowship and communion with God. That is the doctrine, that is the argument.
But see the deduction: if all that is true, how can we continue in sin? Why do we even want to? The very fact that we want to should make us wonder whether we are Christians at all. It is impossible if this is true of us and if we realise this. Therefore Paul brings out his great deductions at the end: ‘But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants [the bond-slaves] of righteousness’ (Rom 6:17–18). As you wanted to do one thing, you now want to do this other. As you were a slave to that, you are now a slave to this.
Then he says, ‘I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh ...’ (v. 19). He is going to use an illustration and he apologises for doing so. He says, You force me to do it because you are so slow to understand: ‘... for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.’
In other words, he says, because of this entire change in your position, take your very faculties and powers, your enthusiasm, your joy, your happiness, take all the thrills that you used to get in that old life and turn them into this new direction. Let me put it as simply as the apostle does, and even more simply, almost in a childish manner. If you want to know whether you are a true Christian according to Romans 6, you can put it like this: Do you get the same thrill out of your Christian life as you used to get out of that old life? Does a prayer meeting thrill you now as much as a cinema used to? That is his argument. Your ‘members’ that used to be given as ‘servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto inquity’, must now be ‘servants to righteousness unto holiness’.
Let me use the modern jargon – you got a great kick out of that old life did you not? Are you getting a kick out of your Christian life? Do you find it exciting? Do you find it thrilling? Do you find it wonderful? Do you find yourself at times almost beside yourself with joy? Is it bubbling over from within? As you used to speak, going home in the underground or in the bus, after you had seen a play or something like that, and you were so animated and excited, do you ever speak like that about the word of God and about fellowship with the saints, and about praying to God, and the contemplation of eternity? That is the argument – you were that, you are now this. As that was true, so this must now be true. And as we understand something of all this, and begin to apply it and to practise it, God’s marvellous process of sanctification will be going on in us.
I have reminded you every time, from the very beginning, that sanctification means being separated unto God. It means being prepared for heaven and the vision of God and glory eternal. There is not much time to be lost, my friends. We are here today and gone tomorrow. The end of all things may be at hand – I do not know. But I do know this, that if I really believe I am going to him to spend my eternity with him, then the sooner I leave these other things the better. They keep me from him. They are unlike him, and if I do not know what it is to enjoy God here in this life and in this world, then it seems to me that heaven will be the most boring place imaginable for me: my heaven will become hell. The truth is, of course, that in that case I shall never get there, because I have never belonged to him. Let us examine ourselves to make sure that we really believe in Christ and his work on our behalf. It leads to all this – we have died with him, we have risen with him. We are alive to God, children of God. We are new creatures. Oh, beloved Christians, let the whole world know that this is true of us!
1 Unfortunately, at this point one sermon is missing from the John 17 manuscripts. However, Dr Lloyd-Jones often gave a detailed resume of the sermon of the week before, and we have left this in full, in order to show, however briefly, what the subject was of the missing manuscript, and how it connects with the sermons before and after. (Ed.)